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Chapter Text

Captain’s Log- XX-XX-2XXX

Captain Hana Song.

Winston’s attack on Hong Kong was effectively stopped, making Winston retreat into the breach. Dr. de Kuiper estimates that more Kaiju will come from the breach if we don’t find a way to close it. Dae-hyun is upset with me, again, because I got Gipsy damaged. I think he should get over it, it’s not like we can avoid damaging the Jaegers when fighting gigantic, multi-ton monsters. And I-

“Hana!”

Hana Song, co-captain of Gipsy Danger, jumped in her seat. Marshal Akande Ogundimu chuckled as he walked into the room where she was furiously typing her latest log. Today had been a rough day for everyone, Winston had almost gotten to the Shatterdome, Zarya and Mei had narrowly avoided getting killed, and Dae-hyun was on Hana’s ass because Gipsy could’ve potentially lost an arm in the fight, but it didn’t so it was ok.

“Marshall! I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you knock.” She stood up quickly, standing at attention. Despite Akande basically being her father, he was still her superior while in the Shatterdome, so she would always stand at attention when he entered a room.

“At ease, Captain Song.” Akande motioned for her to sit back down at her desk, a fond look in his eye. When Hana sat back down, he let out a long, heavy sigh. “These last few missions, Gipsy’s taken quite the beating.” He quickly raised his hand when Hana opened her mouth to argue, effectively cutting her off. “Until Gipsy’s fixed, you and Captain Park are on administrative duty. You’ll be gathering data from Dr. de Kuiper and Dr. O’Deorain.”

Hana tried to keep from pouting, she really did, but the annoyed huff of air still escaped, prompting a laugh out of Akande.

“I know you don’t like administrative duties, but we can’t risk a critical failure when you’re out in the field. We don’t want a repeat of five years ago.” The somber tone paired with the seriousness on Akande’s face made Hana wince, a hand reaching up to touch the scars on the back of her neck where the jaeger’s controls had seared into her flesh. The brief memory of Soo-jin was enough to quell any arguments from her, only giving Akande a short nod. Akande gave her a short, sad smile and turned around to leave the room, leaving a quiet and cowed Hana behind. Of the two scientist she would be working with in the interim, Hana preferred the mathematician and physicist Siebren de Kuiper, unorthodox and kind of vapid at times, but still highly intelligent. Moira O’Deorain was another can of worms that Hana would rarely interact with, a brilliant xenobiologist and xenogeneticist, Dr. O’Deorain was most often seen playing around with Kaiju brain matter and other organs, so certain there was a secret to Kaiju thinking that the Shatterdome could exploit.

A lot of people in the Shatterdome steered clear of Dr. O’Deorain, with Marshal Ogundimu and Captain Reyes being the only ones to entertain her. Contrary to her almost perpetually frazzled appearance, Dr. O’Deorain was an eminence in her field, and had in fact collaborated with Dr. Ziegler in the research necessary to achieve a stable Drift between two subjects. It did put an ugly taste in Hana’s mouth to know that the second test subjects in the animal testing rounds were a pair of white rabbits, seeing as they were her favourite animal, but O’Deorain and Ziegler were still on speaking terms, though just the slightest bit toxic. Hana didn’t put any stock into what the new staff had been gossiping about, that, supposedly, they’d seen O’Deorain and Ziegler making out in the abandoned sub-level 4 breakroom, so she also didn’t weigh in on the Shatterdome-wide betting pool.

She left her room, a stormy cloud in the otherwise calm environment of the Shatterdome, her face stony and devoid of her usually bubbly personality. As she passed by her fellow pilots, she could hear Captain Zaryanova and Dr. Zhou speaking in hushed tones, the captain leaning on a piece of machinery, a soft smile on her face while Dr. Zhou excitedly explained something her and Dr. Ziegler were working on. Captain Reinhardt was as loud as ever, emphatically retelling him and his wife’s encounter with Winston, Captain Amari chuckling at her husband’s energy and Captains Reyes and Morrison joining in the laughter. The Crimson Typhoon trio were sitting apart from the group, the Shimada brothers engaging in their usual bickering, with Kiriko trying to redirect them back to what they were talking about, which sounded like her asking for advice on how to ask out the new nurse working with Dr. Ziegler, Nurse Quispe Ruiz. Hana didn’t much care for gossip, so she kept walking, making her kind-of-pissed-off and determined walk to the lab where Dr. de Kuiper and Dr. O’Deorain were stationed.

“So, we’re on administrative duties, eh?” Dae-hyun chuckled as he caught up to her, a cheerful smile on his face.

“Don’t know why you’re so happy. You hate paper pushing.” Hana grumbled, turning sharply around the corner into one of the corridors, Dae-hyun keeping up with her angry pace easily.

“I think it’s good that we get to keep our feet on the ground. Gipsy needed repairs, anyways. I-“

Hana whirled around to glare at her co-pilot. “If you say, “I told you so”, I’m breaking your nose.” She jabbed a finger in his smiling face before continuing down the corridor. Dae-hyun all but skipped after her, not deterred in the slightest by her anger.

The joined Xenobiology and Physics lab was a clear display of the two disparate personalities that used it. Dr. O’Deorain’s side of the lab was full of Kaiju wet specimens, pieces of stomach, liver, and brain floating in copious amounts of HTK and Celsior, some smaller wet specimens kept for collection purposes in glass jars filled with a mix of 70% isopropyl alcohol. The only reason Hana knew any of that was because Dr. O’Deorain had handed her a stack of papers once that detailed the ideal preservation for Kaiju organs, and just reading a short paragraph had made her stomach turn. Dr. de Kuiper’s side was far more contained, a large blackboard with several mathematic equations the centrepiece of his work. The blackboard was inordinately big, reaching almost to the top of the lab, with a wheelchair-accessible ramp going up to where the most recent equations could be seen. Dr. de Kuiper had been unfortunately injured during a Kaiju attack on his hometown, a devastating catastrophe that nearly wiped The Hague off the map when Orisa made contact with the shore. Dr. de Kuiper was one of many unfortunate victims, having been crushed under the rubble of The Hague University of Applied Sciences, leading to him being in a coma for several months and his lower spine being severed, rendering him wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life.

Currently, Dr. de Kuiper and Dr. O’Deorain were arguing about one of Dr. O’Deorain’s newer samples leaking Kaiju blue all over the floor. It was one of Winston’s protective plates, still connected to a chunk of flesh.

“For goodness’s sake, Doctor! Keep that disgusting thing on your side!” Dr. de Kuiper was somewhat red in the face, indicating that this argument had been going on for quite some time. Dr. O’Deorain was also red in the face, an unusual discoloration marking her right cheek.

“For the hundredth time, Dr. de Kuiper, these samples are not disgusting, they are reservoirs of information into how these creatures work! They can tell us how they are able to survive a trip through one dimension to the other! It’s something we can use in the future!”

Dr. de Kuiper groaned, rubbing his eyes roughly. “Your implications of human experimentation are not lost on me, Dr. O’Deorain. It’s a wonder the Ethics Board of your previous university had not called for the removal of your doctorate.”

Dr. O’Deorain scoffed, hefting the protective plate higher to drop it into a 10% solution of formalin. “Ethics… A useless bunch of red tape.” She muttered under her breath, hitching up her sleeves after placing the sample in the formalin. The same discoloration that was on the right side of her face was also on her right arm, pale purple and dotted with oddly prominent blue veins. “Trinity College was never ready for the questions I asked.”

As far as Hana knew, Dr. O’Deorain had also fallen victim to a Kaiju attack, though the attack on Dublin had been short, much like the one on The Hague, as Kaiju seemed to favour warmer waters. Trinity College had felt the brunt of the attack, Hammond having crushed part of the building under one of its many legs. Many survived the attack with minimal injuries, Dr. O’Deorain being one of them, but apparently her obsession with Kaiju started after that.

Dae-hyun cleared his throat, a tenuous smile on his face, which faltered when the two angry scientists turned to look at him. Hana stepped in front of him, although she knew that neither scientist was a threat against two trained soldiers, she didn’t much appreciate the looks that both were giving her best friend.

“Sorry for the interruption, Drs., but Marshal Ogundimu has assigned us to assist you both in whichever way we can.” Hana gave the two scientists a tight, professional smile, which neither of the doctors returned, looking, if possible, more annoyed, Dr. O’Deorain more than Dr. de Kuiper. After a couple of seconds, Dr. de Kuiper’s face lost its annoyance, and he approached Hana with a warm smile.

“Ah, the famed Captains Song and Park. I’ve heard great things about you from the Marshal. Seems he really adores you, Captain Song.”

Hana couldn’t help but blush at that, her stiff smile turning into a small, but genuine one. She shook the Dr.’s hand, Dae-hyun doing the same in turn, both of them smiling down at the man. Dr. O’Deorain was back at her side of the lab, grumbling about proper sterilization procedures for people walking into her space. Hana paid her no mind, content with just listening to Dr, de Kuiper and helping him log his findings, which would then need to be taken to Dr. Ziegler and Lucio at the command center to develop a strategy for how everything would work going forwards. Dr. de Kuiper seemed to be worried about a potential doubling in the near future, two Kaiju leaving the Breach instead of just one, which admittedly was a terrifying concept. Dr. O’Deorain joined in on the discussion at that point, postulating her own theories as to why this might happen, as well as why anything they had tried to send through the breach never made it through. Honestly, it did end up being quite an interesting discussion with both scientists, and Hana could admit that Xenobiology and Xenogenetics were an interesting field of studies that could very well prove to be the key to solving the issue.

-

After a few hours of discussion and logging information, Hana and Dae-hyun left the lab with a stack of documents to hand over to Command, both of them still deep in conversation and thought about what they’d learned from talking to the scientists. As they walked to Command, Hana could see her beloved Gipsy Danger getting repaired through the windows in the corridor. Several workers were soldering the gashes in the metal body, the repairs being painted over after the metal had cooled down. The paint job was often criticized by government as being too garish, but honestly, id did its job of keeping the Kaiju’s attention on the Jaeger instead of the innocent civilians, so it was a win-win in Hana’s eyes. She could have a cute purple Jaeger and Kaiju would not completely decimate cities in the process.

Arriving at Command, Hana and Dae-hyun made a beeline for Lucio, who was talking quite animatedly at a severely disinterested Lieutenant Lacroix. The lieutenant looked like she just wanted to be anywhere but there, but Lucio was still talking at her, and she was too polite to just up and leave.

“Hey Lucio!” Hanna called out, making him cut off mid-sentence and turn to look at her, a big smile on his face. Lieutenant Lacroix took that opportunity to skedaddle, sparing a thankful smile at Hana before disappearing down a corridor.

“Hana! Long time no see! How’ve you been? Marshal Ogundimu told me you’re on administrative duties until Gipsy’s fixed?”

Hana groaned, placing her pile of documents on the control table carefully, trying not to disturb anything on it. “Yeah, down at the lab. I thought I would hate it but honestly, Dr. de Kuiper and Dr. O’Deorain are both really interesting in their own unique ways.” Hana shuddered. “Though I could do without the Kaiju specimens surrounding me.”

Lucio laughed, taking the stack of documents from Dae-hyun. “I get it. Whenever the team brings in another chunk of Kaiju for Dr. O’Deorain, I wanna puke. Vôte! I don’t know how Dr. de Kuiper can handle it.”

Hana giggled, waving goodbye at Dae-hyun, who excused himself by saying he was going to check on Gipsy’s repairs. “It’s yucky when Dr. O’Deorain grabs the specimens with her bare hands. I don’t know how she hasn’t gotten sick from the Blue.”

Lucio lowered his voice and leaned in, looking around to make sure no one else was listening in. “Maybe she is. You’ve seen her arm, right?”

Hana hummed an affirmative, her eyes wide as she remembered that odd discoloration on Dr. O’Deorain’s arm. Lucio opened his mouth to continue when another voice interrupted him.

“What are you guys talking about?”

Both Lucio and Hana screamed, startled by the appearance of a new person in the command center. Olivia Colomar-de Kuiper was standing behind them, a small smirk on her face as she watched them scream. She was known around the Shatterdome as Dr. de Kuiper’s adopted daughter, a talented programmer and computer engineer, who sometimes visited the Dome to have lunch with her father and maybe look at the Jaeger systems to make sure everything was running perfectly. Hana suspected she did some hacking on the side, but she couldn’t be too sure about it. Olivia had been born in Heroica Veracruz, Veracruz, one of the seaside towns in the Gulf of Mexico that had been destroyed by one of the first Kaiju attacks. Olivia’s parents and siblings had sadly lost their life when the hospital they were in collapsed, tragically ending the lives of her parents and her siblings, while Olivia was at home, studying. The family home suffered some damage, but not enough to bury the then-16-year-old in heavy rubble. The government put her in an adoption agency, where, thankfully, she was found by one Siebren de Kuiper, before his own life-changing Kaiju attack. He’d been patient with the angry teen, and now she was part of the Shatterdome family.

“Don’t sneak up on us like that!” Hana whined, batting at the now-giggling Olivia’s arm, who deftly danced away from Hana’s half-hearted swipe. “I swear, you’re invisible sometimes.”

Olivia laughed at that, covering her mouth with her hand. “Siebren says the same thing. Next time I’ll wear my loudest heels.” She waved her fingers at them, her mischievous smile still on her face. “Toodles, gonna go see mi Viejo.” She all but skipped away, leaving Hana and Lucio to compose themselves. One final look at Gipsy being fixed and Hana said her goodbyes, walking back to her quarters to finish up her report and get a good night’s sleep before a week (or more) f administrative duties.

Chapter Text

In the end, it took over six months for Gipsy to be fixed. Hana had to endure another lecture from Marshal Ogundimu for that, and, internally, she could admit she’d fucked up big time. However, externally, she maintained her innocence. When the news of Gipsy being fixed reached the duo, they were ecstatic, ready to jump into action once more.

“Finally! I was getting tired of being in the Shatterdome all the time.” Dae-hyun groaned out as he stretched, making Hana giggle.

“Well, at least we got to bask in the glory for a good while, didn’t we, pchelka?” Captain Zaryanova purred at her Drift partner and wife, Dr. Zhou blushing a deep crimson with a small, soft smile.

“It was fun going on more missions, tàitài.” Dr. Zhou giggled, looking at the other pilots around the table. “Especially with the triplets.”

Everyone laughed at that, Hanzo, Genji and Kiriko laughing good-naturedly at the running joke in the base. Despite being of very disparate ages and not really fully related to each other (Hanzo and Genji being siblings and Kiriko being their childhood friend), the team at the Shatterdome had taken to calling the Crimson Typhoon pilots “triplets”.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up. We saved your asses more than once!” Genji crowed out jubilantly, leaning on the table and pointing his chopsticks at the laughing duo of Captain Zaryanova and Dr. Zhou. Hana and Dae-hyun were also laughing, though they had to be careful about the chortling Captain Reinhardt next to them, the man moving so much he was almost dislodging them from their seats.

The good mood lasted until the end of the lunch hour, with Hana taking her leave well after everyone else had retired for the night, only Captains Reyes and Morrison remaining, speaking in quiet tones, a soft look on both their faces. Hana had heard about the difficulties the two had faced, having been the first two-man team in the Jaeger program to end up in a relationship. Many government officials stated their trepidation after that, which wasn’t helped by the fact that Morrison had been openly gay since he started his training, while Reyes had been fresh off a divorce from his ex-wife. The government officials posited that maybe during the Drift, Morrison’s “homosexual tendencies” had transferred over to Reyes, effectively turning him gay, despite the fact that Reyes maintained that he’d always been bisexual. It wasn’t until Captain Reinhardt and Captain Amari also announced their relationship that the government even began to consider better research into the Drift Technology.

Dr. Ziegler and Dr. O’Deorain had been at the forefront of further insights into brain wave matching, finding that two people that could be evenly matched during a test of skill had very similar brain waves. Another study revealed that similar traumatic experiences could also increase the probability of brain waves syncing up almost perfectly during the Drift, though it also increased the possibility of Drift partners following each other’s random-access brain impulse triggers, also known as R.A.B.I.Ts. O’Deorain and Ziegler had perfected the testing process to select the best candidates for the Jaeger program, and, more often than not, these candidates were ex-military. Reyes and Morrison had both been commanders in the US military, Amari and Reinhardt had been Fariq ’awal of the El Geish el Masry and Generalleutenant of the Bundeswehr respectively, both honorably discharged from their respective forces, only to be recruited into the Jaeger program once the Kaiju menace had been identified. Zaryanova was also ex-military, Army General, and with plenty of trauma from her time as a simple cadet, technically still active duty, but the Kaiju threat was higher priority, while Dr. Zhou had fallen victim to a tragic event, where several of her colleagues had lost their lives during a massive snowstorm that hit the base they’d been stationed at. Dr. Zhou had been none the wiser as she’d been the only scientist able to get into the cryogenic pods before the storm hit, the violence and speed of the storm so unpredictable that no other scientists had been able to save themselves.

The Shimada brothers and Kiriko were a different situation. Having been born into the Ishii-kai, Genji and Hanzo were forced to do terrible things, culminating in Hanzo being ordered to “take care” of his brother, who’d been getting on the elders’ nerves during his teenage years, and while Hanzo was hesitant to do so, he’d near-fatally wounded his brother, giving the 18-year-old an out. The then-21-year-old then turned over the entire clan to the authorities, feigning ignorance of the clan’s activities, which resulted in the healing Genji and grieving Hanzo to be taken into the Japanese equivalent of “witness protection”, their original names scrubbed and replaced with pseudonyms. Their old tutor, Asa Yamagami, took them under her wing, the only remaining family the two men had, Kiriko becoming more like a little sister to them during their years. As the three were exceptional fighters under Sensei Yamagami’s tutelage, they were selected to commandeer a Jaeger, though the three refused to be separated, resulting in the first ever three-man Jaeger to be built.

Hana and Dae-hyun had also been matched due to their fighting skills, but mainly due to the trauma of seeing a family member die. Hana had already been a pilot before Dae-hyun, commandeering Gipsy Danger with her older sister Soo-jin, when they’d underestimated one of the Kaiju they’d been sent to handle, the beast ripping half of Gipsy’s upper body with its jaws, taking Soo-jin with it. Hana could still feel her sister’s agony before the neural handshake was forcibly shut down when Soo-jin died, the overload of emotions making Gipsy’s command center overheat to the point of the spinal supports searing into Hana’s back. Marshall Ogundimu had found her like that, stranded in the Alaskan wilderness, bleeding, half-mad from the aftershocks of her sister’s agony. He’d mourned Soo-jin’s death alongside Hana, having been a father figure for both girls after he’d rescued them from the Onibaba attack in Busan. Dae-hyun had witnessed his parents and older brother be crushed, maimed and eaten respectively as a young boy during the same Onibaba attack, and both he and Hana suffered from similar nightmares. The first few trial runs of their neural handshake were complicated, to say the least, with Hana following one of Dae-hyun’s R.A.B.I.Ts, and Dae-hyun doing the same, almost causing a cataclysmic event within the Shatterdome. In the end, they proved themselves to be an exceptional pilot pair, and were currently the best-known Jaeger pilots around the world.

As Hana pondered over this, the Shatterdome’s alarm went off, indicating a new Kaiju had exited the Breach. As people scurried around, Hana and Dae-hyun made their way to the Gipsy Danger access platform. Chernobyl Snowball, Crimson Typhoon and Striker Eureka were also being prepped for deployment, a frantic Dr. de Kuiper presenting Marshall Ogundimu with new data.

“Just like I predicted! Two Kaiju!” He all but shrieked, Olivia kneeling next to him, trying to keep him calm, a worried look on her face. Dr. O’Deorain was also looking a bit more frazzled than usual, coordinating with some Shatterdome workers for the retrieval of Kaiju biomatter. An odd look crossed her face when she looked up at Hana and Dae-hyun, so fleeting that Hana didn’t know if she’d actually seen it.

As Hana and Dae-hyun entered the Jaeger, it was the start to a new nightmare.

--

Moira O’Deorain was less the mad scientist her colleagues thought her to be and more a woman desperate for a cure. As a child, her parents had warned her about the family “curse”. Myotonic muscular dystrophy had been a plague on the O’Deorain bloodline, and Moira had felt the effects of it early-on in her childhood. As an adult, she’d found ways to inhibit it, though not completely, as her gait started to falter more and more. Her research into genetic manipulation for removal of these types of congenital and hereditary diseases had been regarded as deeply unethical, as it called for experimentation on either fetal tissue or neonatal tissue, a heavier emphasis on experimenting on fetal animals before human trials. As time went on, she turned to under the table experimentation with black market specimens, reaching a breakthrough when Kaiju biomaterials came into her possession. Kaiju blue provided significant insight into how these genetic alterations could be done easier, quicker and even on adult test subjects.

Her preferred black market Kaiju dealer was a well-known crime boss, Odessa “Dez” Stone, a.k.a the Junker Queen. The brash Australian had come to Hong Kong once the Kaiju threat established itself on the small country, and to escape the authorities back in her home country, dealing in all sorts of Kaiju biomaterial, from the scales to the brain itself. That was where Moira acquired a piece of Kaiju cerebellum to experiment with. In a spur-of-the-moment decision, after unwisely solo-Drifting with the sample, she’d implanted the biomaterial into Gipsy Danger, just to see how nuclear power could affect Kaiju tissue.

A decision she would come to regret.

--

As Gispy Danger powered up, Hana and Dae-hyun stepped into the modules, an action that was second nature to them by now. The neural handshake was seamless, though a short, sharp blip raised some eyebrows in the command center. That same blip became an issue when Hana and Dae-hyun piloted the Jaeger to the edge of the Hong Kong bay. Suddenly, it was a struggle to even make the Jaeger take a step, the blip becoming more of an actual presence in the Drift.

“Control, what is going on!?” Hana screamed into the comms, her panic manifesting in wild brain wave spikes, which were almost drowned out by the unknown blip affecting the Drift. Dae-hyun grunted sharply, finally pushing through the blip’s presence, him and Hana’s combined efforts finally making Gipsy take a step towards the Hong Kong bay, joining their fellow Jaegers in battling the two Kaiju. Winston was a familiar face, the massive gorilla-like beast’s vocalizations bringing back memories to the last fight between them. The new Kaiju was different, sleeker, with a long tail that it was currently using to pummel Crimson Typhoon, the trio holding their own quite effectively against the barrage of blows. Cherno Snowball was also in the fray, the powerful missiles their own assault against Winston, while Striker Eureka used their blades on the unsuspecting Kaiju, the sleek creature quickly named Echo by Control, due to the warbling, echoing cries it emitted. As Hana and Dae-hyun approached, a glowing blue organ sprouted from Winston’s back, and a powerful EMP blast tore through the Jaegers, disabling all but two. Gipsy Danger was one of the only remaining analogue Jaegers, running on nuclear power instead of more modern electric and digital systems, which the EMP blast rendered useless.

Cherno Snowball was also analogue, but Winston had damaged the Jaeger quite terribly, the lifeless robot sinking slowly into the sea, Captain Zaryanova and Dr. Zhou frantically swimming to safety on a civilian vessel. Crimson Typhoon’s and Striker Eureka’s pilots had clambered out of the disabled Jaegers, safety protocols deploying the giant flotation devices, keeping the very expensive digital Jaegers afloat. The Lindholms and the triplets atop their floating Jaegers watched as Gipsy Danger went toe to toe with Winston, ripping the glowing blue organ out of the beast’s back, and unleashed a barrage of blows that shattered the Kaiju’s skull, killing it instantly. When Hana and Dae-hyun turned their attention to Echo, they found that the new Kaiju had made its way further into Hong Kong.

--

Moira, having confided in Marshall Ogundimu of her solo-Drift with a piece of Kaiju brain and the subsequent discovery of the fact that Kaiju were not technically an alien race, but in fact bioweapons grown by an alien race to colonise Earth, had been instructed by the Marshall to go back to Dez Stone’s workshop to get a fresh sample and figure out more about the aliens’ plan. A niggling suspicion that the drift with the Kaiju cerebellum had resulted in a two-way Drift followed her all the way to Stone’s shop, where the imposing Australian woman informed her, with a wicked smirk on her face, that she didn’t deal in full brain samples, too difficult to harvest.

“There’s two Kaiju attacking the city as we speak. If you can get me the secondary brain, as fresh as possible from the recent corpses, it’ll save our world. I know how hard maintaining Kaiju brain samples is, they rot within 30 minutes of being outside of the body, but if we get there right on time, I can Drift with the sample immediately.”

Dez laughed at that, sauntering over to Moira with that same smirk on her face. “Oh yeah, I see you’ve been doing some stuff here, doctor.” A wickedly large knife sliced up, shearing Moira’s right sleeve, revealing the progressively darker discoloration of her skin, almost dark purple at this point. Some of the freckles she already had had morphed as well, faintly bioluminescent, making fractal patterns all over her arm, her nails curving down to a point. Dez also clamped her hand on Moira’s chin, making the scientist look into the criminal’s eyes. Moira’s right eye had also suffered a bit, both from the Drift and the experiments done on herself, the brown of her iris brightening to a light gold color, her sclera darkening with both burst blood vessels and a black discoloration, much like the kaiju eyes floating in formalin in her lab.

“My experiments are of no import to you, Odessa.” Moira grit out, pulling her face out of Dez’s powerful grip. Dez chuckled, raising her hands in a “I surrender” motion, motioning for her lackeys to follow her to the back, turning an amused eye towards Moira before motioning for her to follow as well. All five of them followed Dez into the preparation room, various workers cleaning, grinding and preparing infusions of Kaiju biomaterial. Various scale parasites were being washed, some sliced open to retrieve un-digested epithelial cells, known for their high concentration of collagen, which was highly sought after by various skin care companies, both local and foreign. Various jars of seminal and vaginal fluid were being pressure-sealed to keep fresh, as they were used in various medications for erectile disfunction and vaginismus, though these were mostly under-the-counter. The production and collection lines were impressive, and Odessa walked past them nonchalantly, obviously used to the smell of ammonia and offal. Walking through another set of double doors, they arrived at an expansive balcony overlooking the crowded Hong Kong streets. The new Kaiju’s screams could be heard throughout the city, and, bizarrely, they seemed to resonate inside Moira’s brain.

“Looks like it’s searching for you, Doc.” Dez laughed, sarcastic and borderline cruel. “You better get going. Don’t want my building to get decimated by that beast.”

The only other woman in the group of five, a stunningly beautiful Indian woman, motioned for Moira to follow her, leading her out to the main street, a single eyebrow raised when Moira tried to voice her objections. Moira cursed under her breath and started running, stumbling to the ground momentarily when her right leg failed her before getting back up and running to the nearest bunker. As Moira climbed down, the Kaiju’s screeches grew closer, culminating in. the beast sticking its head through the doors of the bunker before they closed. It reached out to the fallen scientist with a long, prehensile tongue, the tip blooming like some sort of sick flower. The Kaiju couldn’t reach her, however, as it was pulled out of the bunker quite expeditiously. Above the bunker, the sounds of Gipsy Danger stomping around the city could be heard, the new Kaiju screaming at the Jaeger before the sound of tearing metal filled the air. The eerie silence that followed made Moira anxious, and the subsequent earth-shaking thud made everyone in the bunker jump. The bunker workers gave the all-clear and the people hiding within slowly left, Moira watching Dez’s vultures swoop in and start cutting into the Kaiju’s body with medical precision.

“We’ll get you your brain sample, Doc.” Dez’s voice filtered into Moira’s ears over the ringing in them. “Just gotta cut through all that valuable meat.”

Moira nodded, her throat clicking dryly as she tried to swallow down the remnants of her panic. A harvesting line had been quickly set up, skin, flesh, fat and bone removed from the Kaiju and making a neat little passage to the Kaiju’s secondary brain. Dez overlooked her workers with a serious eye, while her three lackeys roamed about, making sure everything was working as intended. The massive, masked man seemed to be in charge of bone removal, the lithe, twitchy one overlooking scale parasite retrieval, and the Indian woman was the one inputting the important numbers into a hand-held tablet.

The tinny, scratchy sound of a radio brought Moira out of her reverie, and she turned to look at Dez, an eyebrow raised. Dez grunted and pulled out the radio from her impossibly tight pockets, barking out an impatient “Yeah?” into it.

“The secondary brain is severely damaged, Madam Stone. There’s not much there to harvest.”

A cold feeling doused Moira from head to toe, angry at herself, the Jaeger pilots, the circumstances. She sunk into a crouch; her head cradled in her hands as she ran through any other possibility she had of getting a well-preserved brain sample on short notice. All of a sudden, screams came through the tinny radio, making Dez call out to her employees before something burst from the dead Kaiju. A fetus, quite frankly non-viable, tore through its mother’s body, dragging the shattered remains of the three workers that had gone inside, red mixing with kaiju blue into a perverse purple. It stumbled towards Dez and Moira, ultimately strangling itself with its umbilical cord before ever reaching them. Moira had fallen over when the fetus ripped itself from the womb, her eyes wide at the level of carnage even a fetal Kaiju could accomplish. She stared at its half-open maw, jagged, predatory teeth already developed and ready, probably how it ripped from its mother’s womb.

“Well, looks like you’ve got your sample, Doc. Just cost me three workers. Hope Ogundimu is willing to pay up.” Dez snarled as she picked up Moira from the ground, one mighty fist twisted in the front of Moira’s shirt.

“For a chance to close the Breach? He’d pay anything”

Chapter Text

Returning to the Shatterdome was both a joyous and nerve-wracking event. Hana and Dae-hyun were still highly disturbed by the neural interference that had hindered them during both the fight with Echo and the fight with Winston. Lucio and Dr Ziegler both ran a thorough scan of Gipsy’s systems, and the neural interference was nowhere to be found.

“It probably was a wire that got crossed when Gipsy was getting fixed.” Lucio tried to explain, an unconvinced look on his face. “It probably worked itself out during the fight.”

Hana sighed, not wanting to accept that milquetoast explanation but equally unable to explain it herself. She nodded slowly, tired from the day’s events and honestly, desperately craving a warm bath. Making her way to her quarters, the thought of the warm bath awaiting her was derailed by a renewed anxiety. They couldn’t afford the same thing happening again. She abruptly switched her path back to the Jaeger loading bay, where all four Jaegers were standing. The repair crew had gone home for the night, so the bay was blissfully silent and empty, making Hana’s plan all the more possible. She quickly clambered up the stairs to Gipsy’s command centre, needing to make sure that Lucio and Dr Ziegler were correct in that it was a one-time thing. She leaned gently against the spinal rest on her side, using the tilt to look up into the various control panels that were above the Drift mechanism. As she fiddled with some of the wiring, the portable maintenance screen she’d swiped from the repair centre working next to the open panel, a sharp sting on the back of her neck made her flinch before everything went black. An aborted scream barely made its way out of her mouth before she was rendered immobile, the Drift suddenly holding her hostage.

Hana could feel the Drift pulling her in deeper, and all she could do was follow the rabbit. It guided her into a space she had never seen, an emptiness so vast and cold it felt oppressive and suffocating. All she could see around her were faint glimmers of stars and the delicate splashing strands of purple, red and blue nebulae. It was as if she had been transported into space, but not really; the atmosphere felt liquid without being liquid at all. “Maybe this is what the breach is like…” She vaguely thought, before turning around. A scream of pure, unfiltered terror escaped her, as she looked up at a being several times her size. It was humanoid but had some Kaiju features, like long, curling horns, four arms, digitigrade legs and faint bioluminescent patterns that mixed with the stars surrounding them. In fact, it seemed as if the being was made of nebulas. It was faceless, with seven red stars in a diamond pattern on its forehead.

Hana Song.

Its voice was a mix between thunder and a cavernous echo, as it made goosebumps rise on her skin. She could taste terror on her tongue, warm, coppery, and salty, like blood, and she vaguely realised she’d bitten her own tongue in real life. The being’s presence was like a knife being pushed down her throat, a sharp sting on her vocal cords and oesophagus, more of that coppery terror bleeding into a salty, stale seawater taste.

I know you, the cavernous voice stated. You have guided me into battle many times.

Hana could only gasp, her inner self personified grabbing her head. It was too much. Too powerful, like an eldritch god gazing down upon her. “P-please…”

The mood within the Drift changed, less oppressive, and Hana looked up again. This time, it wasn’t like a nebula; it was the living room of her small Hong Kong apartment. The faceless figure stood within, an asynchronous body compared to the beiges and pinks of Hana’s home. It stared at her, eyeless, but the weight of being seen was still felt on her skin, before taking a seat.

“Who are you?” Hana whispered, flinching when the being turned to look at her.

I believe you have always called me Gipsy. That is what I remember. As to why I am suddenly awake, I cannot say.

Hana let out a startled bark of a laugh. “You can’t be my Jaeger. You can’t be!” She was borderline hysterical, her emotions painting the mental space an ugly shade of yellow. “You look like some miniature Kaiju.”

The being laughed, though it was less the physical sound of laughter and more the feeling of champagne bubbles and a bright sparkler on New Year’s. It filled Hana with warmth, soothing her frazzled nerves. There is some biological material in my inner network. My scans detect it as some sort of xenobiological grey matter. From what my maintenance logs state, it was inputted sometime in the early hours of today, around 0300 and 0400 hours.

Hana took her own seat across from the being, apprehensive. It spoke formally, almost robotically, but with a deep, unfathomable intelligence as if it had been alive for aeons. It was still oppressive, as though larger than what Hana’s mental space allowed for. Vaguely she could hear the Jaeger comms screaming her name, but she knew that if this alien presence in her Jaeger didn’t let her leave the Drift, she never would.

It seems our time must be cut short. Your fellow soldiers are calling for you. It was quite pleasant finally being able to speak with you, Hana Song. May we meet again.

And with that she was back in the Jaeger, shaking, bloody foam dripping from her mouth as she was wracked by a seizure. Mercy and Mei were screaming at the emergency personnel, Lucio was frantically calling Marshall Ogundimu, and Dae-hyun was next to her, watching her thrashing form with fear in his eyes. And even through the mechanical apparatus, she could feel Gipsy watching her as well.

The emergency medical team got her strapped onto a stretcher once her seizure abated, wheeling her out of the hangar and to the medical bay. Dae-hyun pushed his way into the room where Hana was being treated, glaring at anyone that tried to get him to leave. Once her vitals were assessed and levelled, the doctor went off to look over the tests done.

“Hana, what the fuck were you thinking? Drifting alone? You could’ve died!” Dae-hyun whisper-screamed, tears in his eyes. Hana grunted, her head still uncomfortably heavy and in pain. It felt like Gipsy was still in her head, looking through her eyes. She caught glimpses out of the corner of her eyes of personnel milling about; when she turned to look, they weren’t there, so she could readily assume it was indeed a two-way street.

“Someone fucked with Gipsy.”

Dae-hyun stopped ranting, his breath hitching with quiet sobs. He stared at her, mouth slightly agape. “What… what do you mean?”
Hana looked around before motioning for Dae-hyun to lean in closer, weakly raising herself up to whisper in his ear. “Gipsy was the one who pulled me in. Someone put Kaiju brain in it, and it gained sentience. That’s who was interfering with our Drift the other day.”

Dae-hyun looked at her like she’d gone mad, and Hana, frankly, felt like she had, but the unknowable presence within her own mind said otherwise. She made a soft, frustrated sound before lying back down, her eyes falling shut as the bone-deep exhaustion of the Kaiju fight and the unexpected Drift and subsequent seizure caught up with her, and she fell asleep, dreaming of vast, empty seawater.

--

Hana woke up oddly refreshed, a little worried, turning her head slightly to find Marshall Ogundimu asleep on the chair next to her, arms crossed, chin tucked into his chest in what was undoubtedly an uncomfortable position. She could feel warmth bloom in her chest, happy that she had him as a father figure.

“Good to see you awake, Captain Song.” Dr. Ziegler smiled at her as she walked into the room, starling the Marshall awake. Hana gave Dr. Ziegler a tired smile, outstretching her arm so the doctor could start taking her vital signs. As Dr. Ziegler asked her routine questions, Hana couldn’t help but think back to when she encountered that creature within the Drift. Why had Kaiju brain matter been implanted into Gipsy? Who’d done it? Was the nuclear power core aiding in its growth? The more she thought of it, the more that feeling of worry began to gnaw at the back of her head.

As Hana was discharged from the hospital bay, she couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of anxiety she was experiencing. It had started while Dr. Ziegler was checking her vitals after she’d woken up, a low hum of worry, like an anxious ajumma watching her from afar. After a while, the anxiety and worry got stronger, tinged with a slight taste of guilt that coated her tongue with bile. She was still getting glimpses of workers in the Jaeger hangar milling about out of the corner of her eye, but she hoped that those would stop after a while.

--

A few weeks passed without issue. Dae-hyun kept Hana at arm’s reach, watching her closely and never letting her out of his sight. Hana knew he didn’t believe her, and she didn’t know how to make him believe her without sticking him in the cockpit of Gypsy and possibly making him have a seizure. The tension between the famously inseparable pilots was palpable for all the others in the Shatterdome, and many a concerned look was sent their way. Hana started spending more time with Lucio and Dr. Ziegler, while Dae-hyun spent his spare time with the Jaeger repair squad, learning how to fix and take care of Gypsy.
The tension came to a boiling point when a new mission was assigned to them. Scunner arriving at Hong Kong was a new one, as he’d always been sighted around northern Australia and the Philippines, and so Hana and Dae-hyun had to suit up again. This time however, the intrusion was much more evident, just not as seizure-inducing.

You’ve returned. The voice said, startling Dae-hyun. He looked around, his jolt making Gypsy stumble a bit.

“Who’s there!?” He shouted, his panic disrupting the neural handshake. Hana shushed him, giving him a look that said, “I was telling you the truth dummy”.

Ah, the other pilot. Dae-hyun. The voice hummed, and it felt like a cold wave crashing over them both, wrapping around their feet and seeping into their socks. It made both of them shiver, the smell of seawater and fresh air invading their noses. A sudden feeling of doom also came over them before leaving as fast as it came, rendering them both silent and immobile for a second.

“What the fuck…” Dae-hyun whispered, momentarily falling out of sync before the neural handshake established itself again. Hana was also out of it, feeling small in a tight space.

Forgive me. It seems like my presence is quite intrusive for human minds. Gypsy said, retreating from the handshake abruptly, the smell of seawater intensifying before fading away. Hana and Dae-hyun gasped for air, feeling as if they’d just been whirled around in a rip current, slowly drowning in salty water. After a moment they gathered their wits and started making their way to the Hong Kong Bay, Scunner’s cries leading them to where the Kaiju was. Newfound instincts led them to dispatching Scunner in a much more efficient way, something Hana suspected was due to Gyspy’s new Kaiju brain. As they returned to the Shatterdome, a silent agreement was established between the two pilots, an agreement that what they’d heard and seen was going to be kept a secret. Undocking from the Jaeger and walking back to their rooms was more laborious than usual, a bone-deep exhaustion making them feel like they hadn’t slept at all last night.

“Do you think this is what happens when you Drift with normal Kaijus?” Dae-hyun mumbled, rubbing his eyes as he stifled a yawn.

“Probably.” Hana muttered, stifling a yawn of her own.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, by the way. I was just so scared of what happened, it was easier to explain it away with a solo Drift and not a Drift with our Kaiju-infected Jaeger.” Dae-hyun stopped at his door, turning to look at Hana with bleary eyes, a small tear budding at the corner of his right eye.

“It’s ok, Dae. I wouldn’t have believed me either until now.” She whispered, leaning heavily against her own doorjamb. “Let’s go to sleep and we’ll talk about this in the morning.” She waved goodbye at him, more bone-deep exhaustion leading to her dropping into her bed still fully dressed, falling asleep almost immediately after her head hit the pillow. Her dreams were once again filled with endless ocean, stars flickering at the bottom of the darkness beneath her feet. She ventured deeper this time, the oppressive cold of the ocean seeping into her lungs, but she kept swimming, the darkness surrounding her giving way to blinding light, galaxies and stars replacing the vast, cold emptiness of the ocean. She floated within space for a few minutes, delighting in the colours and whimsy before a giant shadow obscured her vision. Hana looked up at the shadow, finding the same shape that had greeted her within the Drift, only this time ten times larger, more like a true Kaiju than just a thoughtform within the Drift.

He offered up a hand to Hana, letting her stand on his shadowy palm, still looking up at the seven red stars on his forehead. Each blinked in a random pattern, the other small stars dotting his nebulous form shimmering in tune. It was a moment of silent peacefulness when a sound like a gunshot rang through the dream and woke Hana up. Bewildered and disoriented, she stumbled to her door, opening it to find a grim-faced Marshall Ogundimu on the other side.

“Sir?”

“We have some developments on how we can close the breach.”

--

Moira and Dr. de Kuiper had never quite seen eye-to-eye, since Moira dealt with the biological and de Kuiper was more pragmatic in his study of astrophysics. It also didn’t help that Moira was fascinated with the very creatures that had almost killed Dr. de Kuiper, rendering him wheelchair bound. So it came as a surprise to her that he volunteered to Drift with the Kaiju brain alongside her.

“For science. And a way to stop those beasts from destroying our world.” He’d said, but the worry in his eyes spoke of a different reason. Moira readily agreed with him, and the Drift was done in their shared lab. They subsequently discovered that the colonization efforts from the alien race that created the Kaiju were well underway, the Breach near Hong Kong only the first of many planned for a massive-scale invasion. Before the Drift became too much, Dr. de Kuiper realised that only Kaiju could go in and out of the Breach itself, indicating some kind of biometric technology that only allowed Kaiju genetic material to enter the Breach. Once out of the Drift, the Kaiju brain matter decaying in its container, Moira and Dr. de Kuiper looked at each other in a mix of fear and triumph, each sporting one bloodshot eye, the capillaries having burst with the Drift.

--

Hana listened to the Marshall in silence, joy, fear and apprehension bubbling up in her belly. A way to sneak a bomb into the Breach had finally been presented to them, but it was still a very risky mission.

“We will start preparing for it, it might take longer than we think.” He finished explaining to Hana, leaving her to stew in the mix of emotions in her belly and head. Her first instinct was to tell Dae-hyun, but another, more insidious instinct, screamed at her to speak to Gipsy. As she sat on the edge of her bed, a thought came to her abruptly.

Who put the Kaiju brain matter in Gipsy?

She got up abruptly, speeding off to the science laboratories, dodging Shatterdome workers along the way. She ran past Dr. de Kuiper, who was being wheeled to the cafeteria by Olivia, barely acknowledging the doctor’s greeting as she ran into the lab. Dr. O’Deorain was cleaning up her station, her movements slow and groggy, exhaustion clear in her body language.

“Dr. O’Deorain!” Hana gasped out, panting harshly from her run to the lab. Dr. O’Deorain whirled around, eyes wide as she took in Hana’s disheveled appearance.

“Captain Song, how can I help you?”

Hana swallowed dryly, taking a deep breath before looking directly into Dr. O’Deorain’s eyes. “Did you put Kaiju brain matter into Gipsy Danger?”

The colour leeching out of Dr. O’Deorain’s already pale face was enough of an answer for Hana. The doctor looked around the lab, clearly trying to come up with a good lie to tell Hana, but Hana raised her hand and let out a breathless chuckle.

“It’s ok. Gipsy’s fine, he told me so himself.”

“It’s sentient?” Dr. O’Deorain blurted out, unable to stop herself once she heard that her experiment had yielded favourable results. The excitement in the doctor’s eyes was kind of endearing, if a little disturbing to Hana.

“I just want to know if there’s any way to separate him from the Jaeger.”