How to defeat an apocalypse? No, how to survive an apocalypse – that was the right question. Orders of magnitude easier... and still almost impossible. He just... How? Just how?
He looked at Ichi anxiously sharpening her titanic stone spear. For the last few days she hasn’t let go of it once – probably didn’t sleep either, judging by the exhaustion mounting on her face. But again, how could she? In her mind, any given second could be their last. And she was right.
They owed their lives to not being an important enough target... At least he thought so. He painfully sighed and turned to his workstation once more... Nearly screaming from sheer frustration. He couldn’t do anything! Not even an early warning system – whatever was sending those monsters was smart enough to make them invisible on any radar or sonar. Government solved that with moving everything deeper in-land.
Not exactly viable for him to do… They didn’t have anywhere to go. From Ichi’s stories he knew that they had specifically cultivated a few places on Earth by moving titanic species in, and rooting out the ‘regular sized’ competition. That way, they had a stable ecosystem to hunt in. A few of those meant they could move between them when one was nearing depletion. Or when they got bored.
Unfortunately, this was their last island, the other two ravaged by Kaijus decades ago during their absence, one of their valleys flooded and transformed into a desert a millennia ago... And the last one was Tibet – which humans cleansed of the titanic fauna. No other place on Earth could sustain them. It was leave and die, or stay to fight, and almost certainly die.
He once again looked through the footage. China nuked their own cities to bring down the horde’s numbers, then finished off the remains. US spammed conventional weapons and sent Jaegers after the blackscales – as the armoured commander kaijus were called now – and came out... only severely damaged. FEU used half of their glide bombs, and nearly fried half of their orbital lasers, but came out largely unscathed. From what he had gathered, only some regions near the outer sea-walls were damaged, and repairs were already underway to contain the spread of toxic water.
And then, there was Japan... Or rather what was left of it. That footage dominated the internet. How the twelve sentinels fought the endless waves of monsters, how they got pushed deeper and deeper into the city itself... How they got torn apart one by one... How the machines’ carcasses littered the ground... The attack was ultimately repelled by police and conscripted civilians firing drill rockets into the horde from high rise buildings… But victory came so late that no one, not even the most stubborn nationalists could deny that the isles’ bastion had fallen. The government was in shambles, anarchy ruled in the rubble and casualties estimation ranged from ten to thirty million, meaning that over half of the population could have perished.
“That’s what you get for putting all your eggs in one basket...” he muttered to himself.
A deep breath helped force the feeling of imminent doom into the corner of his mind. What could give them a fighting chance? As insane as it sounded, the kaiju swarm wasn’t the main issue – Ichi and Ni could handle fighting those, at least one at a time, which meant that they could ‘technically’ win. No – the main issues in his ‘fighting chance’ theorem were the blackscales. Feeding them explosives during a fight was impossible and even then, he had a bad feeling that the swarm remembered it happening. Bullshit alone wouldn’t get him through it this time.
Nukes and Jaegers were so laughably out of reach that it wasn’t even funny. Lasers as well... Although... Maybe hacking one of the platforms and moving it over the Pacific could work. It was at least doable, in contrast to the other options. Then again, if by a complete miracle it succeeded, he would have to stop the owners from hacking it back, turning it off, or destroying it out of spite... And if all that worked out, he would likely get a very angry EAF kill team at his doorstep in a few days tops.
Fine, that would be his plan B... C... Okay, D. D for ‘delusional’.
He stopped for a moment, idea entering his mind. A satellite map of Earth appeared – a desolate orb of sickly water and a few regions of defiant greenery. Sure, they couldn’t survive anywhere else on their own... But maybe someone could... Help? US wasn’t in a place to want that headache, sure... But the FEU... They had a ‘species preservation’ program… Maybe he could… sign them into it? Him being American wouldn’t help with that, but...
Yes… maybe, if he asked the government to... Keep the three dragons in some sort of ZOO... They would get fed, be safe, have a place to stay... At the cost of everything else...
The girls reactions flashed before him. Ni, livid from the very idea, never mind actually doing it. Kendall crying for weeks, if not months after abandoning their home for good… again.... And Ichi...
He sighed, looking into her tormented eyes.
She would hate it. Despise it, and maybe even him for suggesting it. But she would agree to it in an instant. And then, loathe herself for it.
Okay, THAT would be his plan B... It would surely be nice to know how the fuck his plan A looked like!
“Godfuckingdamnit!” he yelled, throwing his mug at the wall.
Superfest once again proved a material stronger than his anger... And he couldn’t tell if it frustrated him further or not.
“Did something happen?” Ichi asked, voice as hollow as her eyes.
“No love, it’s just...” he sighed. “... Another idea down the drain.”
She slowly nodded, and went back to polishing. “You shouldn’t overwork yourself...” she muttered with immense hypocrisy.
“I will, until you go to sleep,” he responded.
Ichi smiled without moving her gaze from her spear and slightly shook her head. “I can’t sleep... Not now...” she whispered.
“No love, you HAVE TO sleep,” he commanded. “You can’t fight kaijus if you’re half dead already.”
She turned to him with a painful expression. Petr stood up and gestured to her to come closer, which she did almost instinctively. He jumped onto her snout to her visible surprise and walked up the length of it. “You. Bed. Now,” he commanded, tapping her forehead.
“I can’t now...”
He stretched his arm and pulled by the edge of her eyelid until her left eye closed. Opening it again took a few seconds, and left it completely unfocused.
“You are basically sleeping already.”
“I can’t, little one... What if something... Happens...” she whispered on the edge of consciousness.
“Ni’s digging ditches in front of the house. She will wake you up if need be..”
“But...” she hesitated. “... What if she falls asleep too?”
His girl was gone, and only she couldn’t see that. He rolled his eyes at her stubbornness. “If you don’t go to sleep right now, I won’t tell you my plan.” he announced, crossing his arms.
Ichi blinked several times in quick succession, her eyes widening, regaining sobriety, even if just for a second. “You have a plan?!” she blurted out.
“Of course I do,” he lied with absolute confidence. “And I will NOT yell you what it is until you are rested. Capiche?”
“But...”
“No!” he raised his hand.
“Just...”
“No!”
“Please just...”
“What part of ‘No’ do you not understand?” he asked, cocking his head. “You. Bed. Now.”
Her eyes narrowed, pupils morphing into predatory slits. A substantial part of his brain informed him that he had just angered a very cranky, and equally frustrated being forty times taller and – according to his rough calculations – at least seventy thousands times heavier than him. Ignoring the overwhelming ‘sleep on the couch’ feeling, he crossed his arms, challenging her gaze.
She huffed with frustration and suddenly snatched him, leaving only his head poking out of her fist. “Ughhh, fine! I’m gonna sleep... But you’re going with me,” she scoffed, standing up.
Ichi walked through the main room, reached the bedroom... And collapsed on the pile of leather mid-step. Slowly and painfully she shifted, bringing her catch before her eyes.
“Now... What to do with you...” she mumbled on the verge of passing out.
“Now now love!” A sense of panic flooded him. “You don’t want me exhausted for tomorrow, now do you?”
She paused for good fives seconds to consider his words. “I guess... Not...” she whispered. “I’ll just... Punish you lat...er...”
And with that, she was out – asleep in an instant, thankfully before shoving him up somewhere for the night. Normally he would sigh with relief at this development... Unfortunately, he was now stuck right in front of her, catching her snores point-blank.
“Fantastic...” he muttered, her breath moving his hair back and forth.
Hopefully she wouldn’t dream of squeezing.
***
He sat on the beach, watching the golden sunset. The warm sand, the clean water, the refreshing breeze… Almost a paradise if there ever was one. He loved the ocean – there was something sublime, yet strange in it… but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was.
The only problem was the noise. Not the sound of waves or the wind – just this constant, irritating noise dead-set on ruining his experience. Frustrated, he turned his head to face its source... And faced a mountain of metal.
A human-like mountain, even if vaguely. The titanic machine lay just centimeters away from him, unnoticed until now despite the rather obvious shadows it cast. He felt a slight itch on the inside of his skull...
The noise came from the inside, as if some systems refused to accept that their host was dead and defeated. He stood up and inspected the thing with interest. In all his years as a weapons manufacturer, he had never seen the ultimate one from up close. Truth be told, he had never been at the ocean either.
His hands graced the cold... No, surprisingly warm metal. A marvel of joints and interlocking plates that created a tough, but curiously smooth, almost leathery surface.
Strange. Very strange. How could metal be leathery?
A quick stroll along the torso revealed that the machine lacked one arm and was ripped in half. Strangely, the legs were nowhere to be found. Did someone take them? Were they comically walking around on their own now? Or maybe the machine died in the water and the torso was thrown, or dragged here? It didn’t make much sense...
He stopped dead in his tracks when he strained his brain, causing memories to flood it. He WAS at the ocean before... It’s just that it didn’t look like that... At all. The ocean he remembered was dead, foul, desolate. What he saw in front of him was an image from a vintage poster-card, not something he had ever witnessed in person. And then, the realisation hit – the shadows were somehow getting cast towards the sun... The shades snapped the other way the instant he noticed it.
Of course. It was a dream. He punched the metal in front of him and confirmed that his arm had about as much strength as a wet tissue.
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Focusing on lifting a nearby rock with his mind didn’t yield any results, which meant that it wasn’t that kind of dream. He sighed and climbed the steel carcass the usual way. Standing on top of it made him realise that it did not resemble any Jaeger he was familiar with – it was more an amalgamation of known designs and concepts of how it should look like. No – ‘could look like’ was more accurate. It had a distinct, articulated head which was something not present in any design he knew of, but notorious in toy designs.
Looking around there was nothing but endless desert., meaning that his brain was saving on rendering capacity.
“Hello?!” he yelled, looking for anyone else in the wasteland.
No answer. He walked up to the head, encountered a gaping hole in the reactor’s shield. Wait, reactor? That’s stupid. This pseudo-jaeger was obviously meant to be an older variant, and those did not carry plasma weapons – just regular blades and chainswords at most...
No. That wasn’t true. Mark 1 and early Mark 2 didn’t run on solid hydrogen – each and every one of them had a reactor. This of course meant that the annoyingly loud engine didn’t have a right to exist. He sat down on the machine’s chest, and looked at the ocean once more.
What was it all about? Some sort of warning? A prophetic dream about how the might of men would fail and nothing would be left?
“I didn’t know you were such a doomsayer.” Peter huffed, tapping his own skull.
Well, he had until morning to enjoy the view... Too bad there was no way of knowing how much time dilation would make this ‘until morning’. At the very least, the sun hadn’t heated up the metal too badly... Just as that thought finished, a wave of heat radiated from below.
He cursed himself for applying logic to a dream and stood up before it became painful. Apparently this time logic did not apply, since the warmth continued to spread... Along with a sense of wetness.
“Please don’t tell me I pissed myself...”
That would be a problem, but for the awakened him. Since he couldn’t sit anymore, decision to go and see the rest of the mech was the next best thing. Choosing against dropping into the reactor chamber he inspected the head, which looked even more ridiculous up-close with its big, transparent ‘eyes’ being the focal point, and then marched down the arm until he reached the open hand. It was crude, noticeably larger than Ichi’s hands… but so was the entire mech – you could quite easily fit an entire dragon inside of it.
And then, he got an idea – the last thing he remembered was being held by Ichi. So maybe getting into the mech’s hand was a requirement for waking up? Deciding he had nothing to lose by trying, laid down on the palm... Causing the fingers to snap around him. They weren’t soft and cuddly like those of the dragon sisters – his lungs were getting squished to the point of choking.
Passing out, he could swear that the mech’s head gave him a mocking grin...
***
The sun transformed into a golden head. The breeze became breath. The iron grip turned into a gentle hold. And the warm wetness turned out to be... A huge tongue on top of his head.
Just the tip of it of course, but still was more than enough to cover it. The warm, wet muscle twitched in regular intervals resembling a heartbeat. A droplet of dragon spit rolled down the back of his neck from his soaked hair, making him question what was he doing with his life.
Moving the tongue to the side made him realise that he wasn’t smothered in her hand anymore. Slowly and carefully, he removed himself from the grip, ending up on his knees before his poor, poor girl.
He wiped his head into the leathery bedsheet and placed a kiss on the tip of her snout before going back to the main room. On the pile of leather and pillows laid Kendall, entranced in some weird cartoon... or maybe anime on the screen. She hasn’t noticed him and he decided to just let her sip... whatever was in her mug. Her not being terrified all the time was a nice change of pace after the last few days.
“Edward? Where are you?” a distressed, clearly childish voice came from the speaker.
Ignoring the dialogue, he arrived at the base of the table and... Realised he still didn’t have a way of getting onto it on his own. Asking Kendall to help him was pointless and he really didn’t want to wake Ichi... Instead, he settled for a very, very long stroll to the cave’s exit. Fifteen minutes of climbing to eventually reach the titanic door – and the more interesting to him, regular one inserted near the base of them.
Direct sunlight flooded him for the first time in days... Surprisingly dim. His eyes adjusted and he realised why – huge piles of dirt blocked the sun.
“Ni?!” he yelled, looking around.
A golden head peeked over the mound to the left. “What’s up, midget?”
“I uhhh... I need a bit of help.”
Ni stretched and jump over the artificial hill, the quake launching him upwards a few centimeters. Unceremoniously she grabbed and lifted him above her head. “What do ya think?”
He looked at the scene before him, equal parts awed and concerned. The landscape was completely ruined by ditches. Every spot that could have a ditch had one. Even places that definitely did not need ditches had ditches. Ditches and trenches everywhere. Ditches connected to trenches, trenches transforming into ditches, ditches in ditches, trenches in trenches all forming a ridiculous maze around the cave’s entrance.
“That’s a lot of ditches,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“FORTIFICATIONS stupid midget. Not ‘ditches’,” she huffed, bringing him to her eye level. “Like in that war everyone talks about.”
Biting his tongue before asking what was she on about, he once again considered a parental lock on the computer.
“Now I just gotta put spikes on the bottom and the first part is done,” she exclaimed happily.
“First part...” he muttered, glancing up at her. “How will we... Get out of the house?”
She stared at him incredulously, before slowly opening her wings. Right. How could he forget.
“Well, they’re certainly nice... They might even help. Good job,” he relented.
Ni smiled smugly at the compliment, proud of the demolished landscape. “You know midget, I was also thinking about those... Those traps that snap around your leg. I could make those and put them around here,” she commented absent-mindedly.
“That snap... You mean snares? You would need springs for that I’m afraid...” he paused, recalling something. “Or at least, quite a lot of sinew.”
“Sinew? Cool, I can do that. You’ll teach me how to.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “But could you...”
“Help the stupid midget. With what exactly?” She cocked her head.
“Uhhh... I need help getting on the counter...”
She blinked, curled her lips, and laughed. “Aww, the wee shrimp boy wants uppies?” she mocked, patting his head with a thumb.
He gave her the finger in response, only widening her grin.
“You too,” she replied, throwing her shovel on the ground and entering the cave.
Still entranced Kendall hasn’t noticed them until Ni scared her on purpose by growling right behind her.
“It’s just me you moron.” Ni and patted her forehead, before finally setting him where he wanted. “Anything else?”
“Not right now...” he muttered, trying to lock in.
“Mehh...” she rolled her eyes, but they latched onto the clay jug near Kendall. Ni snatched it, to her sister’s visible annoyance, and drank half in one go. “Fuck, I needed this...” she mumbled to herself, sitting down on the floor so that her head was roughly level with him.
On his part, Peter went through the possible scenarios, at the same time trying to make sense of his dream. It rapidly slipped away, but he still remembered the rough outline of an old Jaeger lying in the sand. Over the years, he had learned to trust his subconscious – it had genuinely good ideas whenever it wasn’t being stupid, horny, or both.
He tapped his desk, lost in thought.
“Has your idiot pebble brain thought of anything?” Ni prodded.
He turned to face her. “Ni… Could you maybe… tone down the asshole a bit? Like, from twelve to something around seven?”
She took a deep inhale… And an equally long, surprisingly shaky exhale. “Right… sorry…” she muttered before taking another swig of the confiscated drink.
And then another gulp. And another. She seemed determined to empty the thing in one go. Absent-mindedly, he glanced at Kendall’s show, concluding that it was an anime after all. A golden haired boy in red robes talked with someone in absurdly big set of knightly armour…
His braincells developed a new synapse and he connected the pieces. That was it! He frantically searched for information about fates of early Jaegers. The list wasn’t long, but made up for it with detail – most ended up salvaged or turned into museum pieces… but there were of course, the fallen ones.
And one, very specific concentration of them. Taiwan – the lost island no one dared to visit for decades. It had… it could potentially have everything he would need.
“Uhuh, I know that look.” Ni leaned a bit closer. “What did ya figure out?”
“How to make kajius NOT eat your ass of course.”
She huffed. “And I’m the asshole one here?”
“Shut up!” He raised his hand. “I’m thinking…”
***
Ichi moaned, a shift in her sleep marking its unfortunate end. Holy hells, she needed that… She could think again… She thought so at least… The lack of logic in that loop made her less sure of that though. Her hand instinctively played with limbs of the little one… And found his absence.
Her eyes jostled open and she anxiously checked for a tiny man smothered somewhere near or under her. Confirming there wasn’t one, and determining there wasn’t any peculiar itch or soreness in her either, she mustered herself to stand up. Her body felt as if it was hanged, drowned, rammed against a wall, and just barely saved afterwards. Sleep deficit or whatever it was called. No matter, she would get enough sleep once she was dead, so soon enough.
No. She shook her head and gave herself a slap. They will push through it as they always did. Trying to throw the overwhelming fear and anxiety away, she focused on something more direct. Hunger. Oh yes, this was definitely direct – her stomach got sucked in by the lack of contents, and her dream about a juicy meatstick left her tongue salivating for more. In the main room she noticed Kendall sleeping on their ‘showtime pile’ and smiled. Ichi found some already cold chops on the pan and ate them, her eyes nearly tearing up from joy at the taste of salt.
Just salt. Something so simple, yet crucial enough to send shivers down to the tip of her tail. Getting a boyfriend was the best thing that ever happened. Period. She only wished he was a bit bigger, or that...
No. Stop. Don’t go there. Don’t EVER go there. It was perfect. As perfect as it could ever get, and deliberating about ‘what-ifs’ could only sour it for no gain. Remembering about him, she looked at his workstation and found it empty. Or at least, empty of cute little men, since it was littered with piles of paper. She approached it and tried to see what was on them, but the drawings proved far too small, her breath began scattering them even more. She did notice that the computer was on though. A single mouse flick reactivated the projector and exposed her to the horror.
Drawings and schematics of some unknowable machine numbered from one to tweny-three, with descriptions such as ‘cage’, ‘stabiliser’, ‘generator’, ‘ionising chamber’, ‘dispenser’... She couldn’t make any sense of any of it, never mind the rows upon rows of calculations with borderline eldritch symbols stuffed into them.
Deciding to look away before possession took hold of her, she instead opted to wash her face and go outside to look for the missing duo. Ni sat in front of the house, busying herself with sharpening branches into spikes with a stone knife.
“Oh, sleepyhead. What’s up?” Ni asked just as Ichi stepped out of the house.
Ichi looked at the landscape ravaged by ditches, the terrible realisation of just how long it would take to bring it back to normal striking her brain... If it ever returned back to normal...
“Where... Where’s Pete?” Ichi asked, noting his absence.
“Oh... You don’t know...” Ni sighed with regret and sorrow. “You swallowed him in your sleep. I only saw legs going down your gullet when I came to rescue him. So much screaming… And you didn’t even wake up…” Her pain and concern that sounded almost genuine.
Ichi looked at her sister and slightly shook her head to signal that she wasn’t buying anything today.
“Yer boytoy’s at the windfarm.” Ni shrugged, focusing on the spikes again.
“At the...” Ichi gasped. “You left him there alone? Are you insane?!”
“No,” Ni huffed. “HE wanted me to leave him alone. Go ask him if you don’t believe.”
Ichi tried to run and almost fell into a ditch. She looked for a way through and finding none, jumped into the air, straining her wings just a little bit from the unorthodox lift-off, landing about two thirds of the way to the wind-thingies, and going rest of the way on foot.
“For fuck’s sake Ni!” the tiny man kneeling before a pile of metal shouted. “I’ve told you to…” He turned away and realised who he was talking to. “Oh. Hi.” He smiled at her and waved.
Most of her immediate anxiety left, seeing him unharmed and mostly well. Yes, just mostly, because when she sat down next to the container of tools she noticed he looked… strange. Dirty, unkempt and… with something strange in his eyes. A twitchy obsession the likes of which she had never seen before.
She scanned the area, noticing that two out of three wind turbines were gone… No, not gone – the piles of metal he was working on were their gutted remains, but they barely resembled… anything at this point.
“I see you’ve been busy…” she commented with a mixture of hope, curiosity, and anxiety. “All of this in one afternoon…”
He laughed and shook his head. “Love, you’ve been asleep for…” He checked his clock. “… twenty hours at this point.”
Her eyes widened. “Twenty… You mean it’s the next day?”
He nodded and quickly turned around to weld again. She averted her gaze from the impossibly bright point. A good minute later he pulled up his mask and looked at the result with clear satisfaction.
“Do you need any help?” she offered.
“Mhhhhh… Nah, not really…” He scratched his head. “But since you are the least incompet…” he hesitated for a split second. “…The least disruptive, you can stay.”
“Ouch.” She pouted and lied on her belly, putting her head next to him. “I take it you have a plan?” she asked with almost desperate hope.
He grinned and patted her nose. “I have several. They all range from insane to fucking atrocious though…” He turned around to check something on a piece of paper. “So we are going for the… least bad one first.”
Before she could ask what this ‘least bad’ plan would involve, something beeped in the mess to the right of them, prompting him to drop everything and run up to his small computer. Deciding against disrupting him in a critical moment, decided to just lie without moving in fear of shaking the… whatever it was he was building. It honestly looked like several different machines connected with strings and wires that could fall apart if she just so much as breathed on it the wrong way.
“It’s ready,” he exclaimed with a maniacal grin. “If I fucked it up, we’re gonna die.”
Before she could process and voice her objections, he flipped a switch and the thing groaned, screeched, and hummed all at once, a few parts rotating in opposite directions.
And then, a small, insanely bright stream flew out of its other side, forming a small ball suspended mid-air. Fascinating… like nothing she has ever seen… She couldn’t even name it. And honestly, even thinking about how it worked scared her.
Just as fast as it appeared, the entire thing suddenly ended, the ball collapsing to the ground, melting the earth below.
“Success!” Peter exclaimed, and cuddled into her cheek in celebration.
She smiled against her own will, her attention split between him and the contraption. “Could it… Could we really have died from it?” she asked stoically after a few seconds.
“What, you don’t trust me, love?” he asked, clearly hurt by her words.
“No no, I do, it’s just…”
“And that’s your problem,” he cut her off. “You should never do that.” A small boop on her nose. “Of course it wasn’t dangerous.” He smirked, looking straight into her eye.
An urge to give him a flick manifested in her mind, with only titanic self control preventing her from sending him flying. “Sure little one,” she grumbled, downgrading accidental murder to a small head pat. “And why is this plan ‘bad’ exactly?”
He stopped for a moment to think. “Well... for starters, there will be no hot water for a while… and you’re gonna have to downgrade to cooking over the fire again.”
“Sure,” she scoffed, but not entirely sarcastically. “And the real reason?”
“The real reason? See, this…” He gestured at the machine. “… was just the start. The easy part. And now, we gotta do the hard part.”
***