Staring in disbelief at the experimental results of the kaiju tissue sample before her, Ibira took a shaky breath. The image magnified on the computer screen confirmed, finally, that she had not been working in vain for the past three years. Turning on her heels, she began to run towards the exit of the makeshift laboratory that she had practically lived in for the past 6 months. Just before she left however, she turned around, hastily grabbed a stack of papers from one of the many messy desks in the room, and spun around once more to run at full speed across the massive headquarters of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps.
Slowing down as she reached the hallway of upper administrative offices, Ibira made a mental note to work on her cardio more in the future. After getting her heavy breathing under control, she cleared her throat and banged on a door that was undoubtedly the scariest door in the entire Hong Kong Shatterdome.
"Pentecost! Marshal Pentecost!" Ibira shouted excitedly, knocking on the door of the PPDC's highest ranking officer. Hearing only muffled, overlapping voices on the other side of the heavy metal, she knocked again rhythmically. Holding her papers under her arm and wringing her hands together, she impatiently jumped down the steps to pace in the hallway. After three calming deep breaths, which was two more than she could usually manage, she climbed the steps and rapidly knocked on the metal door again, to the detriment of the knuckles on her left hand.
"Marshal Pentecost, please! This is an extremely time sensitive issue! If I don't-"
Swinging open the door and crossing his arms, Ranger Charles "Chuck" Hansen looked down at Ibira with a decidedly unimpressed expression on his face.
"If you don't what, you raving banshee?"
Standing at a very muscular 6 feet tall, the young Australian man with irritatingly impecable posture already easily towered over Ibera by almost a foot. Her position beneath him on the steps exaggerated this, and she scowled up at the world-famous jaeger pilot. She chose to ignore his question and instead ducked beneath his elbow, moving around him to face Marshal Stacker Pentecost and Ranger Hercules "Herc" Hansen. Determined not to lose her nerve, she quickly bowed her head in a greeting of respect and said, "I am so sorry to interrupt, but this cannot wait if the kaiju decomposition serum is going to be ready in time for launch."
As the words flew out of her mouth, almost too fast for the two middle-aged men before her to understand their meaning, she held the papers in her hands out for Hercules to take. His eyebrows were raised in surprise, both at her gall to burst into Pentecost's office and at the crazed tone in her voice. The woman standing before them could only be described as small, if not very small, with her petite size exaggerated by the thick knit sweater she wore in the chilly coastal climate of the Defense Corps base. When he did nothing, she shook the stack of papers and nodded encouragingly, an almost manic grin growing on her face as he obliged. He noted the dark circles under her eyes and would bet there was a layer of sleep deprivation mixed into her current frenzied excitement. The two had not spoken much before. As hard as it was to believe given her current state, Ibira was usually a quiet and pensive person, at least in every other context he had seen her. But as Pentecost's second in command, Herc knew well enough that she was a brilliant researcher who the Marshal valued enough to bring into the secret operations at the world's last remaining Shatterdome.
"Please, do come in Miss Valenti," Marshal Pentecost said sarcastically with the slightest hint of amusement in his deep, English accent against his better judgment. "This is actually a perfect time for a break in our current discussion, as good reason seems to be making no progress at the moment." With his last comment, his heavy eyes slid over to the man still standing by the doorway.
Looking over her shoulder at Chuck, Ibera said sweetly, "You can close the door now. Thank you."
This drew a chuckle out of the young man's father that was just loud enough for a smirk to pull at the right corner of her lips. Although he scowled at her, Chuck closed the door behind him.
"Have you come to tell me you finished the report on the aquatic ecosystem rehabilitation efforts that the United Nations have been hounding me for?" Marshal Pentecost asked her patiently.
Snapping her fingers and pointing at the papers that Herc now placed on the Marshal's desk, Ibira replied, "But this isn't about that! My serum is ready. With your approval, I can start synthesizing a large enough batch to have ready by the next time the jaegers deploy."
Now moving her gaze to Herc, she said more calmly, "So it's perfect that you're here."
"I thought this experiment of yours still had a long way to go," Herc responded skeptically in his Australian drawl, though the curiosity on his face let her know he was not dismissing her announcement.
"I've just never been able to test it on such a fresh sample before," she assured him. "It's worked in all my in vitro trials. And with the latest trials I ran on the samples from Mutavore's remains from your recent encounter in Sydney, I was able to map out the complete decomposition of the kaiju flesh in conditions nearly identical to field conditions."
"What is the point of this?" Chuck interjected incredulously. "We're supposed to be figuring out who can pilot a Mark 3."
"This serum can help pilots take down kaijus," Ibira finally explained. "Sir, I'm officially proposing my weapons alteration recommendation…for Striker Eureka." She had practiced that line so many times, alone in her lab over the past several months. She hadn't imagined she would be saying it for the first time in front of Striker Eureka's pilots themselves. As her words hung like the sound of breaking glass in the silence of the room, a chill ran up her spine and she was worried she had made a terrible mistake.
"How can you be so sure?" Pentecost finally asked as a deeply concerned expression darkened Hercules' face. He glanced back at his son, bracing for the impact of whatever outburst was surely impending.
She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears as she answered, "In the most recent trial, I was able to inject the serum into the kaiju flesh before the silicon-based compounds in the blood reached their half-life. That is as close as I can realistically get to testing it on a live kaiju. And my theory was right! It spread perfectly, and significantly sped up the decomposition of the flesh. If pilots could inject enough of the serum into a kaiju in battle, it should destabilize their circulatory system and make it easier to finish the job."
"No amount of tranquilizers have ever worked on them before," Herc pushed back respectfully but sternly.
"Correct," she continued patiently, expecting that critique. "But this isn't a tranquilizer. We know that the high acidity and phosphorus content of kaijus are what make it so difficult to get rid of the bodies. This serum makes the chemical composition of kaijus more similar to organic compounds that are very common on Earth. So it would slow down a living kaiju in our atmosphere and reduce the toxicity of their corpses to a fraction of what they are now! I cannot overstate the harm reduction this would provide for ecosystems and communities around the sites of a kaiju fall."
"Ah," Chuck said aloud in a disingenuously thoughtful tone. "So you want us to alter our jaeger, days away from our biggest missions yet, so that you can win some tree hugger Nobel Peace Prize."
"How can you say that?" she snapped back, finally turning to face him. Looking defiantly up at him as she stepped closer, Ibira continued, "The global marine food web is on the edge of total collapse because of all the kaiju blue that has been spilled. I can't even begin to explain how many people would starve if we allow that to happen. And the cancer rates in communities around kaiju battles are already 300% higher than anywhere else in the world! If you save millions of lives with each kaiju you take down, this will help save even more."
Chuck stepped forward, but before he could say anything, his father shouted, "That's enough out of you, junior! Miss Valenti, what weapons modification are you referring to, exactly?"
Looking towards Marshal Pentecost, he only raised his chin and waited for her to speak. She knew she had to make her own case.
Clearing her throat, she said "I've already gone over it again and again with the Eureka engineers. Because the heat from the jaeger plasma would cause the serum to degrade before it had time to reach both of a kaiju's hearts, you would have to remove the right shoulder plasma cannon."
"Like hell that's happening," Chuck said, his voice rising as he approached Pentecost's desk. When the Marshal said nothing and instead looked at Herc, the young ranger continued, "That's the old man's side of Striker Eureka, and he's already slowing down as is. That plasma cannon could be the last thing keeping us alive, not to mention actually taking down a kaiju bastard before it levels a city!"
"You don't speak for me," Herc said sternly, now standing to face his son. Where Chuck was built like a tank and as wide as a barrel, his father was slightly taller and had a more slender, but still very strong, frame. They were both tall, loud men, and Ibira gripped her hands tightly behind her back to keep them from shaking.
"Yea, but I am stuck in that machine with you, aren't I?" Chuck snapped back.
Ibira furrowed her eyebrows, shocked at the way his son talked about their drifting. From what she had heard in her time working at a few Shatterdomes over the years, she knew Chuck was generally considered a world-class jerk. And she wasn't so naive to believe the perfect father-son pilot duo story that the media loved to push. But seeing the animosity in his eyes as he looked at his father, and the mix of emotion that flashed in his father's eyes, a deeply unsettled feeling grew in her chest. A part of her had always believed, until that moment, that two people that were drift compatible could never feel such negativity towards their partnership.
"We shouldn't discount her proposal so fast," Herc told his son. "I may not be as young as I used to be, but you can't punch your way out of every fight, anyway! You're a smart kid, you could learn a thing or two from her about using your head once in a while."
Ibira looked down at her boots and groaned quietly, wishing that Hercules hadn't made his last comment. If Chuck was already hostile towards her, pitting them against each other would not help matters.
"I know this is asking a lot," Ibira interrupted gently, an optimistic smile lingering on her face. "I would not be suggesting this if I wasn't certain it would help you. They don't bleed like us. They don't die as easily. This serum could help level the playing field even more. And I know you don't understand-"
"No," Chuck growled, the force in his voice causing her to step back slightly. "You brainiacs don't understand a single fucking thing about what it means to be out there in a jaeger. My father and I hold the world record for most kaijus killed. That comes down to split second decisions and knowing our jaeger, not changing our strategy at the last minute on the whim of some lunatic."
Averting her eyes to the wall for a moment as she took a deep breath through her nose, she nodded.
"You're right," she said, clenching her jaw. "I'm not the one out there in the suit. It's ultimately your choice."
She nodded at Marshal Pentecost and Herc before making her way to the door. As she stepped down into the hallway, she glanced back at Chuck with a deep exhaustion in her eyes and said, "My lab is in the northwest quadrant, level 3 if you have any questions."
At that, the young ranger slammed the door to Marshal Pentecost's office. Standing there for a moment, she could hear shouting resume on the other side. Slowly walking down the hallway with her shoulders slumped, Ibira dragged her hands over her face and raked them back through her messy curls. Looking down at her fingers as they shook slightly, she sighed and accepted that the only thing she needed to do right now was eat and get some sleep.