April 9th 2035
Shatterdome, Hong Kong
Jaeger Bay 4
1312
Jónsi Haddock, nicknamed 'Hiccup,' because of his constantly brilliant yet somewhat finicky upgrades to Cherno's weaponry, was tired. He had been working round the clock with several others on the Russian Jaeger. Which to everyone else, was considered a working antique. They weren't wrong. Cherno Alpha was the oldest Jaeger still running, and that meant even without a Kaiju to fight it needed a lot of work to keep running.
Which he had to do.
At leastways that's what it seemed like in the few hours since the Crew had been downsized by one, and everyone was spreading the load from Tooth's speedy removal from the repair roster.
To say nothing of the fact that the stress of her being plugged into one of those flaming metal deathtraps right now, in a session none of them could get eyes on for love or money. Not even her also-pilot-parents. Something about decreasing the stress on her during the first test. Whatever.
Tooth being tapped as a Jaeger pilot was making life problematic for the tight knit crew of Cherno Alpha.
The routine crane-assisted armor removal the crew was engaged in at the moment was interrupted by Camicazi suddenly bustling in, all nervous energy. She was the resident team medic, the only one on Cherno's crew allowed anywhere near the test, as she was Tooth's primary physician. A red flag was raised in the minds of everyone working in the hanger bay. That could only mean one thing: Something had gone wrong with Tooth's test.
Cringing, she whispered a few things to the pilots, who had been listening to the Crew Chief's status report on the scheduled maintenance before Cami inserted herself in the conversation. She stood there after she finished, almost seeming to brace herself against their reaction. They only ignored her for a moment. Then they sprinted out into the connecting hallways in a dramatic flaring of their fur-lined greatcoats with the speed of their departure.
Hiccup looked to Astrid and the others, whom all shrugged. He turned to his Crew Chief; Master Machinist First Class Nickolas St. North. His family had emigrated to America and back over the course of the 20th century, giving the man a name left over from Ellis Island Americanization, and a thick Russian accent. He was closest to the Kaidonovskys, Tooth included. He'd taught her everything she knew about Jaeger mechanics and intricacies.
He seemed distraught, his blue eyes clouded. He walked away from Cami, who looked positively sick with worry, and he clapped his hands to signal for attention. The whole crew dropped what they were doing assembled on the concrete floor of the bay. The message he gave was brief and blunt.
"There was an accident this morning. Toothie is well, her pilot isn't. For now, that is all we know."
There was a release of breath as everyone unclenched. Horrible as it was for her partner, at least their girl was alright.
Hiccup felt galvanized, Tooth was the overbearing sister he always wanted. Most of the crew felt the same. He was far from the only one upset, the whole crew conveyed looks of worry.
"What was she even doing inside a Jaeger?" That was Astrid, their particularly outgoing control AI debugger, asking what they all were wondering.
Nobody had been privy to why a girl without any combat training had been drafted into the cockpit with a pilot so new to the base, that barely anybody had even seen him.
Hiccup suddenly moved forward, without any real intent behind the action. He felt North's hand clap on his shoulder, stopping him momentarily from whatever foolishness he was set to. His questioning look was answered by Hiccup's snort. "Pentecost and this hot shot pilot had no business putting her inside a Jaeger! I don't know about you, but I'm going to demand some answers. That is the least Toothie deserves."
He boldly began walking through the tunnel-like hallways to the Marshal's office. He soon heard the entire crew march behind him, a small mob of angry technicians. A few of them wielded heavy tools and welding torches with little menace, if much melodrama. North just followed along in the back, knowing that he could probably stop this, but bemused enough to let it play out until the crew got this little rebellion out of their system or Tooth's parents arrived for their inevitable meeting with their commanding officer.
They met another smaller crew of four dressed in black coming from the opposite direction. He just locked eyes with the short pudgy man in the lead for a second. The younger man raised an eyebrow in question and the other shrugged, signaling assent, as they together stormed into Pentecost's office.
A goliath Kaiju was above Jack and heading landward, towards his home. He sprang up and began yelling. It was outlandishly massive. Whatever it was it made the category II Kaiju that took Burgess back to the Stone Age 6 years ago seem tame.
It had more heads than was easily countable. Each a long, thin thing; oddly horse-like, but with a barracuda's gaping jaws. Each head was bone plated, and sported a plethora of small black eyes along the flat sides.
The necks were long, sickly grey and eel-like, with a trail of short interwoven spikes running on the inner edge, flexing and grasping with each minor movement. The body, what you could see of it, was little more than a knot in the king-rat that was the thing's coiling and interwoven heads and the rather stubby tails. Those were more like the tentacles on a cuttlefish, if God had been slapdash enough to put them at odd angles and random lengths. Two gnarled and thick-scaled talons stuck off to the side to drag its bulk across the ground, sickly shifting with every motion in a way that would be impossible with any bones anchoring them in place on what there was of a torso
When he'd first seen the beast, he and his sister Beth had been at the seaside, away from everything. It had risen from the water, great serpent necks writhing from the hulk of its body, whipping the bay into a froth.
Jack had grabbed the little girl desperately by her hand and ran, terrified, along the abandoned hillsides of the coast following the street that lead into the town proper, toward the shelters that had been dug in the latest bit of reconstruction.
They had to have been a few miles into the town when the corrugated steel of the warehouse behind them was demolished by a carelessly undulating tail.
Jack felt his breath slap his lungs. He coughed violently, and looked up from where the building's collapse had thrown him.
He watched as everyone began running into the reinforced bunkers, the automated locks hammering the doors down from above and sealing them away as the Kaiju approached. He turned to see Beth pinned under a scrap piece of metal pylons, her eyes wide and her hand desperately reaching out to him.
He didn't hesitate, he raced to her and hefted the debris with strength he didn't know he had, as the Kaiju trampled the nearby outlying structures of the city. Its footfall sent a small shockwave, knocking people off their feet and disorienting them as they panicked in the general direction of safety below ground.
That was when the Jaeger dropped. They were somewhere halfway between the Los Angeles and Anchorage Shatterdomes, which meant that response time from either was long in coming. Even with early warning, the Kaiju had made landfall half an hour ago. As it was, things were getting dangerous for anyone not encased in at 100 tons of armor.
The Jaeger, which he would learn much later, was Meteor Epoch, splashed-down in the depths of the bay, immediately drawing the Kaiju's attention to it. A hulking, bulky rounded body with a massive armored hump on between its shoulders, Epoch was massive even by Jaeger standards. each arm had grasping hands protruding from the inner edges of the great torpedo-like shape of it's forearms, hinting at what weapons it might bring to bear. And of course as one of the new Mark IV machines, it was the very top of the line.
Not that it mattered to the plebs on the ground.
The Jaeger raised both arms before settling its weight to brace for its assault. The rounded protuberances on the ends of Epoch's arms blossomed like a titanic flower buds, the armor giving way to recessed launching tubes that let forth a salvo of anti-Kaiju missiles. Each strike burst into flame, tearing hunks of flaming meat from the beast and sending them hurtling across Burgess' modest skyline and into the streets.
The goblets of flesh rained down on the panicked citizens, terrifying them to greater speed. What was worse was that the Kaiju bits were still wriggling where they lay, toxic blue blood pulsing out onto the tarmac.
That was just not right.
Jack quickly found an unsealed bunker, his fear giving him frenetic speed.
Just as he dragged his sibling to what was probably the last shelter still open, he saw in his periphery that the random meat-eors were starting to stretch and warp at the bloody ends into what looked like a leech's toothy maw. Bone shattered and muscle twisted horrifically as the Kaiju flesh began to shamble in the streets, dripping azure ichor everywhere.
That was so not right at all!
One of the Kaiju-lettes moved between the two of them and the safety of the bunker. They were only a few yards from the door. The police officer at the door was looking right at him. He was going to close the door, even with Jack's eyes begging him to keep it open over the monster's back.
Jack had to do something.
He slowly sidled to the side of the road. Pickling up a bit of rebar torn from a building somewhere, he gripped his little sister's hand and tried to curve around the bleeding hunk of violent meat held up on random veins and muscle fibers. But the shattered rib fragments that had oriented towards him tracked their progress, like it was watching him, and it was only a matter of time until it sprung at them.
Time to do something desperate.
He quickly pulled his sister into a one-armed hug and kissed her temple before throwing her to the side, yelling for her to run as he turned to bear on the beast. She sprinted inside and into the throng, the police officer slamming his hand on the control for the locking mechanism. The door slammed down like and executioner's axe, separating the two of them.
He gagged at the foul stench of the thing, like seawater and dead animal in a sun-heated dumpster misted with ammonia. But that was fine, Beth was safe. Everything from here was gravy.
Taking the steel in his hands he did what he could to save his own life. It was not easy. The fact he was the only thing with a pulse above ground was drawing more predatory gristle from all around.
He bashed the first one in the side and was gratified when it tumbled from its unsteady standing position and writhed in pain. But the other Kaiju-spawn were quick to close the space it had vacated.
None of them were well coordinated, they had no eyes or ears, and they used all the wrong bones to support themselves where they used any at all. But still, they were dangerous, seeping Kaiju Blue and armed with jutting bone and scale and spines.
So he fought them. Wasn't much choice in the matter. Between one thing and another he got maneuvered away form the shelter Beth was in. No way to tell if that was intentional. Where he was at was hard to figure until he realized he'd drifted back to the shore fighting the things that had chased him.
He had no idea how close the Kaiju and the Jaeger had gotten to him until he saw them. The Kaiju had gouges all over it, which explained his problem, and some heads were just missing or beaten to a pulp where they trailed on the ground. It was between him and the Jaeger. This quickly became important, because Jack was in the line of fire.
Epoch hunched over and upon its arms after a nasty body slam and on the armored hump of its back more and more missile launch tubes opened. The Kaiju rushed it, the strongest remaining head leading the charge, smacking into the head of the Jaeger. Epoch unleashed its deadly salvo, the missiles flying wide before arching back to the Kaiju, catching the Jaeger in the blast. That set off the machine's internal magazine, and that blast pulped the Kaiju, throwing great arcs of its blue blood in the air and burning what was left of the thing to a charred turquoise, and black corpse.
It would later be called a tragedy; one of the first Jaegers destroyed fighting a Kaiju. At least this time the deadly animal was killed at the same time.
For Jack it was the end.
Jack was splattered by the aerial blood spray with enough force to be knocked into the water. Blue blood spattered on his face and mouth and mixed in with the water sputtering into his lungs. He was unlucky enough to drown in blood. It covered him from head to toe, nothing uncovered.
Kaiju blue is toxic even in small amounts, working under alien biochemistry. Ingesting it invoked the term hyper-lethal.
It was also mutagenic, to a small extent.
That took major exposure, to do anything major. It was more likely to kill you, because even small amounts were fatal. Extremities were often discolored by contact, and you would often see bodies bleached white or dyed blue. That is not what happened here.
Jack was lucky. But nobody would realize that for a long time.
When he woke he was on a blue stained beach, and he could just barely make out someone running to him as his face collapsed into white sand.
Jack's eyes snapped open at once. He remembered. He remembered everything.
He had a family, a little sister named Beth. And she was alive.
Jack was lying down, and was also uncomfortably warm. Well, except for the soothing cold in his right arm. That particular sensation was the feeling of a rehydrating IV's refrigerated fluid. It was a familiar sensation for him. So, he was in the infirmary.
He felt a warm pressure on his hand and glanced down to see his co-pilot. She was muttering unintelligible words sleepily as she lay with her head in Jack's lap as he lay in the infirmary bed. He gently squeezed her hand and she started drowsily, multicolored head splayed everywhere in cowlicks as she somewhat blearily looked up at him.
He softly smiled at her, to show there were no hard feelings about the brain damage. "Hi."
Her tired, dopey smile dwarfed his own. "Hi."
Sasha and Aleksis Kaidonovsky were not what one would call restrained; especially when it came to the girl they had taken as their daughter. Their child, who they had fought every day for the last 18 years to protect, had been in an accident. One roughly equivalent to an industrial accident, that also involved her brain being wired to a machine. She was in the infirmary. That was the total of their knowledge.
They barreled down the halls like a two-car Slavic freight train until they were in the infirmary. Seeing their girl alive, well, and embarrassingly napping on a boy's lap calmed them somewhat.
But they still had some administrative ass to kick. Someone was accountable for her being in a Jaeger that had grievously malfunctioned. For that there must be a reckoning.
When the Kaidonovskys stepped into the Marshal's office, it was in utter chaos. It was crowded with hysterical Jaeger mechanics trying to explain, demand an explanation, and panic. Two sets of crews were yelling at Marshal Pentecost, who was sitting at his desk looking about ready to begin firing people.
Out of a cannon.
Into the sun.
Their presences silenced both crews, who took the silent order to leave save for North and Skipper. It was time for the adults to talk.
Jónsi looked up and groaned. Striker Eureka's mechanic crew was coming around the corner, obviously to give their daily maintenance report to the Marshal, with all of the regular egotistical braggadocio. He ignored them as they exchanged pleasantries with some of the other crew members, and by pleasantries it was more like shots at Cherno's crew because their Jaeger needed more tending than Eureka. Like wear-and-tear from running for a decade and change was something they could just fix overnight, especially being out a set of hands.
He chanced a glance up, and felt his heart break a little, even as he felt glad. Tooth was coming with her co-pilot. He looked odd, but if she was half holding him up so maybe he wasn't too bad. Even if she did curse a blue streak after they met the other day.
He registered Eureka's crew pushing through Cherno's ranks to meet the new arrivals. He watched in horror as they approached the two, and silently slipped away get the only four people who could end this in any way other than tears.
Sasha Kaidonovsky was silent, as her husband Aleksis roared and blustered at Stacker Pentecost, demanding answers the man did not have as to why his daughter was in a malfunctioning Jaeger during what should have been a routine activation.
What their commanding officer had managed to tell them, before the great overprotective oaf had gone off half-cocked, was that they were investigating the incident and as of yet the results were inconclusive.
Sasha thought that the thin one in black had been screaming something about irregularities in the Jaeger's control interface before he and the rest of the maintenance personnel were ushered out. He may have known something, but there was no helping that now.
As it was, Aleksis was tiring of yelling, though he would not admit to such nor would he soon stop. Stubborn. Stacker was about to lose his composure, in this the second of two stressful interviews in a row on this issue. And his own stress about his own foundling daughter being snatched up as Gipsy Danger's second pilot, this had to be hitting close to home, little though he showed it.
Sasha took pity on the two fools and broke into the conversation to put them out of their misery.
"Enough, Aleksis." She began, "If he knew anything about the accident he would tell us. It is too soon to know what went wrong."
Pentecost nodded his face stern. That man, even when thanking you he had to be so grim.
"Fine." Aleksis barked, switching tracts to get to the heart of why the both of them really came anyway, once they knew little Tulika was unharmed. "Why her, Marshal? Why our girl? There are plenty of recruits for this boy to fight with. Why our child, who has none of their training?"
"You know why." Pentecost shot back, referring to the recording of the simulation that had brought her to his attention in the first place, and which he had used to talk the two of them into allowing her to be entered into the program.
"That proves nothing." Sasha countered, "A simulator is not the drift. She had never interfaced with anything, man or machine, before today. It was foolish to expect anything but a disaster"
"As I said before, we do not have the time to martyr ourselves to caution." the Marshal said, "This war is about to become that much more dangerous, and we need every asset we can lay hands on. Your daughter has the skills, you taught her to fight yourselves. She was compatible with the pilot already assigned. She was drifting in the womb; our records on her birth parents confirm that. I have every reason to put her in
that Jaeger and I have every reason to do it again, unless that becomes absolutely impossible."
"That is exactly her point, Marshal!" Aleksis joined in, fists supporting him as he leaned over the table to look down on his superior, and press his point, "What if Tulika is the cause of this? The girl is the apple of my eye, but there may be good reason to keep her from another's mind. She has had night-terrors her entire life. Her mind may not be so welcoming of others."
"Rest assured," Pentecost began, "that outside of the risks inherent in our profession I have no higher priority than the lives of those under my command. If it is in fact Miss Teerthankarovna is unable to serve as the second pilot of Blue Winter, then I will find another. But we do not yet know the cause of the accident, nor whether your daughter is the cause or whether it is some other factor. There are irregularities about both the Jaeger and the other pilot that go above your clearance to know. Suffice to say-"
He was interrupted by a skinny technician in the Russian uniform bursting into his office in a panic.
"Fight…in the hallway!" He shouted, before realizing he had just made a fool of himself and finishing, "Thought you ought to know."
It was a long walk from the infirmary, but the two of them needed to debrief the Marshal on their disastrous start-up as soon as they were able. The neurologists on call had cleared him for duty so long as he reported back after the debrief for further observation. Jack was still woozy, but managed just fine. Thanks to his partner. He smiled at that.
She was nothing but what he had come to expect from his partners thus far in the Jaeger program, but that was not a bad thing. Not at all. He doubted any of his other partners would have dragged his injured but through half the Shatterdome, at least not out of genuine concern.
Too soon his good, if slightly concussed, mood was terminally interrupted by their reaching the Marshal's office.
They said some things. He didn't really pay attention because what was the use of a head injury if you didn't take advantage and not remember pointless things unimportant people insist on bothering you with.
Then somebody said the words 'Jaeger Child,' and Tooth; who had passed out from mental fatigue and distress waiting for him to finish his trip down memory lane, who had given him some idea of who he freaking was, and who carried his crippled butt a quarter mile to get here; just crumpled like a paper cup.
So, that was her. Tooth was the 'Jaeger Child.' He knew about her, the Jaeger program was a relatively small community and word got around. She was one of the bonafide urban legends of the program. They said the drift messed her up in the head in vitro when her mother entered the drift while pregnant. The fact that she was born in a torn-open Conn-Pod in a totaled Jaeger with her Father already dead and her Mom soon to follow from a hemorrhage didn't help.
It was spooky, especially with how much of Jaeger tech nobody really understood. So they made up stories about her, that she was bad luck. Kaiju followed her. She worked as a mechanic because she was trying to go back into the Jaeger to understand it and just hadn't figured out how yet. That she when she felt her parents dying, she felt what happened afterwards too. It was all superstitious crap, but people are dumb, especially in large groups.
Case in point:
These toolbags just insulted a Jaeger pilot in front of her partner. Tooth may be a bit behind most with her Kwoon training, but with her skill in the simulator it was likely her parents had taught her something for self defense. Jack, however, was very good in a fight.
A word of advice. Don't talk smack about a girl who just became basically the most important person in a black belt's life. It does not work out.
He swiped at one at the ankle, palmed another's head like a basketball, toppling them both so that only his weight leaning on their heads against the wall was keeping them from falling, threw them aside like they were toys, and used a rising open palm to the chin of the one moving to attack him from behind his back. He didn't stop till he was crouched on the floor and his enemies were scattered.
They were bruised, and their pride was in tatters, but he'd taken care not to break bones or cause permanent damage. They would be in pain for days anyway.
He turned around and found himself faced with two crews, the Marshal, Tooth's family, and Tooth herself. The crews were openmouthed and wide eyed, save for an old dude in the back that was sizing him up like maybe he wanted some. The Marshal was unreadable, stern, and likely going to send him to the stockade. Tooth's parents were looking at the punks on the ground, expressions unreadable, and her mother all frostily distance and her father in a grimace that could have meant anything.
Tooth looked a little scared.
After that he felt no better than the Kaiju he fought and killed. He didn't dare look at Tooth again. He tried to take a step, but felt his legs give out under him. He fell to his knees and sighed as a woman ran up to his side and hefted him back to his bed in the wards.
All he could think about as he shut his eyes was Tooth, after giving him everything he never let himself want, would probably never let him within five feet of her again.