post-drop, the triplets and stacker survive!!! okay!!! everyone is okay!!!
“Ranger,” says Stacker, hands bracing on the couch cushion behind Cheung’s shoulders, “you’ve been here for six hours. Tendo’s starting to worry.”
He doesn’t get a reply, Cheung’s eyes only narrowing slightly as the projection on the Shatterdome’s rec room wall displays Otachi ripping Crimson Typhoon’s head off. A recording of all three of his and his brothers’ screams echoes faintly from the speakers.
Stacker sighs. “Tendo is not the only one.”
“Marshal,” Cheung says after a moment, fiddling with the phone in his hand to reel the video back three minutes, “shouldn’t you be resting?”
Stacker watches the sequence with him– the blows Typhoon exchanged with Otachi, some of the inflicted wounds instrumental to Danger’s later success. The victory had come at a cost, and Cheung might be the pilot most aware of it. He’d escaped relatively unharmed: the usual drivesuit pinches, a few bruises, sprained ankle and mild concussion. Hu and Jin, on the other hand. Stable, for now, but not much more than that. Whatever nerve and cranial damage they had sustained couldn’t even be assessed before their bodies recovered somewhat from the extensive life-saving surgeries that had been performed on them.
Otachi rips Crimson Typhoon’s head off again.
“The breach is closed, Ranger.”
Cheung tilts his head back, regarding the bottom of Stacker’s chin. “Is it?” he asks, softly, mouth set in a grim line. “With all due respect, I don’t know that it was worth it.”
Half a wing away from the med bay, stocked with couches and mini-fridges and video games to keep patients and visitors hydrated and entertained, Cheung had essentially holed up in the rec room whenever nurses evicted him from his brothers’.
It’s four in the morning; Stacker had wandered out of his quarters, unwilling to return to the nightmare that had jolted him from sleep. He’d run into Tendo in the hall, other man double-fisting empty mugs on his way to his room, finally turning in for the night. He’d pointed Stacker to the rec area, wryly commenting that he looked like he could use some company.
Tapping Cheung on the shoulder, Stacker moves around the couch and sits after the younger man makes some space. “Watch something else,” he says.
Wordlessly, Cheung pulls up an episode of some cartoon Stacker used to watch with Mako and mutes the video.
“Do you regret it?” Stacker asks after a long minute, glancing sideways at Cheung.
“No,” he answers promptly, “but I sometimes think it may have been better if we never got involved with the PPDC.”
Stacker mulls that over. It’s not a condemnation; he’s felt the same way plenty of times, and Cheung and his brothers have always unreservedly supported the organization. Still. “How so?”
“Jin and Hu like to be heroes.” Cheung sounds resigned, tired. The latter wasn’t so unusual, especially in the late stages of the war, but the Weis’ old relentless determination seems to have abandoned him. He’s rarely so talkative– then again, he’s usually got his brothers around to speak on his behalf. “I just wanted them to be safe. At the time I thought the PPDC was the best chance for that, but things still ended up like this.”
Something tickles Stacker’s upper lip. He ignores it. “No one else could have done the work you three did, or what any of the Rangers in the PPDC have done,” he points out.
“Was it worth it?”
“We’re alive, aren’t we?”
Cheung hesitates, then reaches out and brushes the pad of his thumb under Stacker’s nose. It comes away streaked with blood, a dull red. “I meant,” he murmurs, looking thoughtful, “this.”
Oh.
The cancer has– spread. Stacker might have escaped the bomb’s blast radius in Striker’s escape pod, but the radiation had caught up, exacerbating whatever barely-controlled condition he’d already been dealing with. The nosebleeds have gotten more frequent, are taking longer to stop– the doctors give him a year, if that. Reaching for a handkerchief, he doesn’t break eye contact.
“We’re alive,” Stacker repeats. “We saw this through. The people I wanted to protect are safe.”
Cheung resolutely decides not to point out that Stacker’s definition of ‘people he wanted to protect’ always seemed to extend to the whole world. Instead, he takes the handkerchief Stacker extends him and uses it to clean the blood off his fingers. “It’s that simple?”
“For me, it is.”
Gesturing at the screen, Cheung brandishes his phone and flashes him a slow, tired smile. “Do you want to watch something else?”
“This is fine,” Stacker answers.
He wakes up what seems like moments later (a bleary-eyed glance at the digital clock hung on a wall tells him it’s been two hours), a warm, heavy weight against his side, Cheung’s breath tickling his neck. He should get up and go to sleep in a proper bed but it’s unexpectedly comfortable; besides, neither of them have slept in days, and standing up or moving would definitely wake him. Stacker shifts instead, settling into the cushions and readjusting his arm so it won’t fall asleep, discreetly reaching for the projector remote and switching off the video.
While he nods off Stacker just barely registers the soft brush of lips along the line of his jaw, the weight against his shoulder lifted and replaced with a light blanket. He musters the energy to crack an eye open, watching Cheung stretch his shoulders and crack his neck, a lean grey silhouette nearly blending into the rest of the room.
“Checking on your brothers?” Stackers mutters, suppressing a yawn.
Tense silence, then a sliver of white teeth in the darkness, firm hands pulling the blanket over his shoulders and smoothing it into place. “Sleep well, Marshal.”
hamilton/pacrim au :p altho, i wouldnt be surprised it someone else has asked
THIS IS ROUGH AND UNEDITED BUT WHATEVER DEAL WITH IT
There are plenty of prospective Rangers lined up in front of Washington, but the one who catches Alexander’s eye seems just as out of place as he himself does. Average height, lean build, dark hair buzzed close to his scalp; he could probably pass for a model, or a celebrity, but he doesn’t have to be either for Alexander to know his name. He’s the only other trainee not accompanied by a partner.
“Excuse me,” Alexander says, extending a hand as he approaches the other man, “are you Aaron Burr, sir?”
Burr eyes the hand warily before he takes it. His grip isn’t weak but it’s not overtly strong, the shake smooth and practiced. “That depends,” he says, “who’s asking?”
“Oh, sure. My name is Alexander Hamilton,” Alexander tells him, “and I heard your name at enlistment, you qualified with scores off the charts; I want to do what you did, I applied alone, I know the handbook by heart–”
Aaron glances over his shoulder, casually tuning out Alexander’s voice as Washington finishes his speech and steps out, leaving the trainees to their own devices. They’ll have half a day to themselves, several hours of downtime and free run of Kodiak (not that there’s much to do in the area) for the duration. “Memorizing the handbook,” Aaron interrupts, “that won’t get you ahead. Look, find a co-pilot and land some experience. Otherwise, you’ll just end up dead.”
“Actually,” Alex says excitedly, “I was wondering if you might be interested, I notice you don’t have a partner, I wanted to see if you’d be mine, at least for training, I think we’d do just fine.”
This guy doesn’t know how to take a hint. Burr sighs, hooks his thumbs into his belt and regards the newcomer. “Look,” he says, “I appreciate the offer. Lone Rangers are matched once the program gets started; if we’re compatible, you can drop me a line. Do you want to get a drink, in the meantime?”
Sheepish, Alexander flashes him a grateful smile. “That would be nice.”
Aaron takes him to the local pub; it’s not that he actually has any intention of continuing a conversation with this other guy, but his enthusiasm (and oversharing) are a bit of a cause for concern. Alexander’s an orphan– a piece of information he shares within ten minutes of meeting Aaron, though Burr’s history hasn’t exactly been kept under wraps, either. He’ll get on well with a crowd Burr knows frequents this particular bar.
The Laurenses and the Burrs– solely by virtue of being wealthy families, Aaron has known John since they were children and attending the same snooze-worthy Republican fundraisers. John to look good for his dad, and Burr on behalf of his parents, accompanied by his uncle. John moved out as soon as he was legally allowed to– Burr left control of the estate to Sally and applied to the PPDC. She may have switched parties at the first opportunity.
“Yo, Burr!” John waves Burr to his booth, tilting a pint of beer on its bottom rim, watching the foam shift over the inch or two of beer still left in the glass. “You know Herc,” he says, “and this is the Marquis de Lafayette. He’s from France.”
“I gathered,” Aaron deadpans, nodding politely toward Lafayette before pulling Hamilton forward by an elbow. “This is Alexander, he’s gonna need all the help he can get. Give him a chance.”
John grins at Hamilton, extending a fist. “Gonna be a Ranger?”
Alexander bumps it with his own. “Yeah! I hope, anyway, I’m qualified, I think.”
“Sit down, Burr, have a drink.”
“I’ve gotta be somewhere else,” Burr declines, “but while I’m gone, you all enjoy yourselves.”
When Aaron learns that John and Alexander have formed a pair, their scores in all sectors well within range of each other’s, he’s unsurprised. He’s matched to Lafayette, their similar childhoods being a point of commonality, though they both objected on the grounds of having completely opposite personalities.
Their first drift, Burr decides that he’s full of second thoughts and would it really be such a loss if he were to join the repair techs instead? Drift technicians and mechanics are no less important than Rangers, as the PPDC likes to claim.
It’s the intimacy of a Drift that’s abhorrent to Aaron, the thought of someone inside his head, knowing his thoughts, seeing his ambition and pettiness and resentment and thinking less of him for it. Better if no one knows him like that, better if everyone sees the mysterious, cool-headed Aaron he wants them to.
… still. He’d always wanted to be a Ranger– and maybe it won’t be so bad, he won’t be a disappointment, he won’t repulse his Drift partner–
Lafayette refuses to shave his head; has it braided into elaborately-patterned cornrows instead. Aaron doesn’t see the point, but he doesn’t dispute it– anything to get him into the helmet. Weeks later, after they’ve filled in the waivers and the questionnaires and suited up, they step into the simulator together.
They’re seconds away from activating the Drift when Aaron loses his nerve and hits the abort button (it’s common for Rangers in training to back out at the last minute; he refuses to be embarrassed about it). Lafayette even looks a bit relieved.
“Sorry,” Burr tells him, after they’ve divested their suits. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”
“No problem,” says Lafayette, somewhat understandingly, “Adrienne will be here in a week.”
The Marquess and Marquis de Lafayette never actually pilot a Jaeger before returning to France, the two of them financing the Mark III mechs almost entirely on their own savings, with plenty to spare. Aaron had known he was wealthy, but he hadn’t realized that he was rich enough to make the Burrs and Laurenses combined look like peasants.
He meets Theodosia Bartow seven weeks into a rotation in the infirmary. She’s in for a checkup, her weekly dose of Metharocin. The Schuyler Sisters accompany her, three of them hanging on her every word, Eliza and Angelica flanking her like guardians.
(Their three-pilot Jaeger, Common Sense, first deployed a year ago; four years after Theodosia and her husband’s mech, one of several dozen Horizon Braves. The Bartows are something like Jaeger pilot legends.)
By the time the Schuylers have left Aaron alone with Bartow, he’s captivated. She’s deeply intelligent, wit cutting and hilarious. She seems to see through Aaron, never lets his slip-ups past without a comment but never seems to judge him for them. She says that her husband may not be able to pilot for much longer, might need surgery, has been losing vision in his eye for months now.
Against his own better judgment, Burr tells her that if she still wants to pilot a Jaeger, that he would be happy to step in for Mr. Bartow. She laughs, and kisses him on the cheek, and tells him she’ll consider it.
Mr. Bartow doesn’t even last a year– two months later, after a drop, he passes out and never wakes up. Theodosia takes a two-month leave, and when she returns, she makes it back just in time for another kaiju attack.
The Schuylers and Laurens-Hamilton teams are losing badly by the time Theodosia orders the techs to help her into her suit– then she shocks everyone when she follows up with a request for Aaron Burr as her co-pilot. Their first Drift, being an emergency drop, they don’t have much time to explore the intricacies of their neural handshake, and Aaron has no time for second thoughts.
Thinking back on it, after, he wonders that he’d never been afraid of Theodosia seeing his innermost mind; after all, didn’t she already know?
Aaron’s five years into his Ranger career, happily married to Theodosia for four and a half of them, a proud father of one beautiful little girl with her dad’s eyes and her mother’s wit, already apparent at two years old.
He’s not the only one; Eliza Hamilton, formerly Schuyler, and Alexander had a shotgun wedding two years after Alex first deployed with John. The men are as close as ever; rumors abound that they and Eliza have some sort of arrangement, and John dotes on little Philip just as much as Alexander does. Theo and Phil play together often, and Burr likes the family well enough.
The year Aaron finally decides that he might be comfortable like this, that he has a routine, and a life, fame and prestige, everything he ever wanted– the category IV Kaiju, codename Patriot, rips John Laurens out of his Conn-Pod and Hamilton brings Indigo Revolution to shore by himself. Three days later, Theodosia collapses; she succumbs to the same radiation as her husband, Metharocin having delayed its onset but not preventing it altogether.
They hold the funerals a day apart, one after another.
“Burr,” Hamilton says after Theodosia’s service, his face haggard, “doing alright?”
“About as well as you are,” Aaron replies, mouth stretched into a plastic smile. “You should get some sleep, it’ll be a long night.”
Alexander pulls a face, clapping him on the shoulder. He tries to imitate Burr’s expression but falls short of it. “That’s not reassuring,” he quips, “everything is horrible, you’ve been hanging in dark corners like a creep, it’s a little jarring.”
Aaron lets the grin drop, his eyes slipping to the tiles under his boots. “Good night, Alexander.”
“I’ll see you round, Burr.”
Aaron considers leaving the Shatterdome several dozen times over the next month, but he’s a certified technician and Drift mechanic and the dome has been short on those, lately. He can’t bring himself to quit and his own memories of close encounters with kaiju keep him from taking a sabbatical. Not that there’s much he can do during a drop outside of a Jaeger, but there’s no safer place than a Shatterdome when a kaiju attacks.
The other factor is Hamilton.
Alexander’s been scouting trainees, working each of them over in the ring to find a suitable match. He fully intends to crawl back into a Conn-Pod once his Jaeger’s been repaired, which to Burr at least sounds like absolute madness. Still, he’d come up with Hamilton, graduated in the same class, with identical scores across the board. The idea that he might drop out of service before Hamilton keeps him firmly rooted to Kodiak, despite how much he thinks about moving back to the East Coast.
Besides, with his and Hamilton’s mechs out of commission for want of a pilot, that leaves only the Schuyler sisters to hold down the coast. They’re excellent pilots, but drops have been steadily increasing ni difficulty for several years now.
Hamilton never does find a trainee who matches his standard, and Burr catches the other man staring at him far more often than he’s entirely comfortable with (mostly because he knows exactly what Alexander is thinking, though luckily the man has enough tact to let him grieve).
It’ll be another two weeks before a kaiju surfaces again, a monstrous spiked thing that Lafayette cheekily codenames ‘King’. The Schuyler sisters deploy but in LOCCENT, standing in opposite corners of the room, Burr’s eyes involuntarily jump to Hamilton, who takes just that moment to look back at him. One Jaeger isn’t enough. Never has been, and it won’t be. They’ve lost Laurens, and Theodosia, and the thought of losing Angelica’s dry, biting wit; Eliza’s gentleness; Peggy’s indomitable cheer– Burr feels his mouth go dry. Hamilton turns back to the screen, his expression haunted.
“Marshal,” Burr says when Common Sense hits the water, refusing to wither under the look Washington pins on him. “Hamilton and I– we’ll back them up.”
Washington doesn’t like him– never has, and especially not compared to his golden boy. When he gives the affirmative, a long pause then a firm “Suit up,” Aaron is almost entirely sure that the pride welling up in his chest isn’t his own.
“We need a callsign,” Alexander says as he gets dressed, scrambling into his drivesuit with a haphazard speed that just barely matches Burr’s routine efficiency. “Something we can respond to that we’ll both be used to, but it won’t distract us.”
“If you say 'hamburger’,” Aaron snarls, “I’ll turn around right now, that’s not a name I’m willing to discuss.”
Alexander groans, stepping into the harness as Angelica and Peggy laugh over their comms, Eliza having muted her own for the sake of her husband’s pride. “Alright, fine. We can name it after you.Killjoy Sourpuss.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Burr says, trying to pull back on the smugness as their Drift initiates but knowing that Hamilton hears his thoughts anyway. It’s only a temporary codename, until they can sit down and hash one out together, but what do they have in common?
“Well,” Hamilton huffs, rolling his eyes as if acquiescing to the superiority of Aaron’s naming skills, “go ahead, if you’re so insistent.”
“This is Orphan Legacy,” Burr announces, “and we’re ready to go. Copy, LOCCENT.”
Can you do Mako /finally/ setting off on her pokemon journey and to become a Pokemon Champion like her sensei? Starter is up to you.
“You,” Stacker tells Mako for what seems like the billionth time, “should probably take Garchomp with you. Just in case. You might run into Team Rocket, or–”
“Sensei,” Mako answers, holding the Egg she’d selected from Stacker’s deposit box a little closer to her chest, “Team Rocket hasn’t been active in a decade.”
She’d been going everywhere with it for about a week– eating, sleeping, bathing. It’s a Squirtle, as far as Pentecost knows, one of the dozens of eggs he’d kept from a short and ill-advised breeding project he’d started and abandoned a few years ago. Blastoise had been a good sport about it but, well…
Mako had insisted on hatching her first Pokemon for herself, her stubborn streak a mile wide, deaf to all suggestions otherwise. Stacker tries again, sifting through the little red bag Mako had chosen to house her supplies and slipping an extra pack of Potions into a side pocket. “Are you positive–”
Mako turns on him, her face wrinkled in consternation. “Most trainers start when they’re /ten/, Sensei, I’m already eleven. Besides, I can feel this one moving, it’s about to hatch.”
“You can’t take a newborn Pokemon with you,” Stacker groans, “it doesn’t know how to fight yet. All it probably knows is ‘Gurgle’ and ‘Twitch’.”
“Those aren’t even moves,” Mako sniffs, amused at the petulance her usually-stoic teacher is displaying.
“No, but that’s all it’ll be doing.”
Before she can argue further, three knocks ring out, their door swings open, three figures looming in the entrance. “We,” Jin announces, toeing off his boots as he enters, followed by his brothers, “heard Mako’s finally starting on her journey. So, obviously, we had to come pay our respects, give our blessing…”
Mako laughs in delight, running up to give Hu and Jin ecstatic hugs, receiving only a pat on the head from Cheung.
“You realize,” Stacker sighs, “of course, that I’m not dead, and none of you are qualified to give blessings.” After a pause, “You came out from Cinnabar?”
Hu ignores Mako’s sudden distraction as he joins the conversation Stacker and Cheung have started, something about weather currents and flights from Cinnabar, how dangerous it can occasionally be to surf along the coast, mysterious unidentifiable Pokemon appearing before trainers. “We had to come greet the next Pokemon Champion, right? Make sure the reputation we established stays good…”
Jin elbows his brother in the ribs. “Ooh, you’ll piss him off. He’s been training with Mako since before she can even remember.”
“Sensei,” Mako says.
“Well, I’ve always allowed her to battle using my team,” says Stacker, “with supervision, and backup, in doubles…”
“Sensei,” Mako says, this time more insistently. She holds up the bottom half of a shell when Stacker and the Weis turn to her, a small brown head peeking out of it. “It’s an Eevee.”
“Those are rare around here,” Jin says immediately, stepping in close to inspect it. “And you’ll have a lot of options for evolution further down the line.”
“Normal type, though,” says Cheung.
Stacker picks the Eevee up and turns it in his hands, the squirming ball of fluff happily licking what it can reach of his fingers. “You’ll have to get a bit of experience before you’ll be ready to set off.”
“Just stomp on a Caterpie,” says Jin. “Eevee’ll pick it up fast enough.”
Cheung and Hu both elbow him in the ribs before Mako can properly express her horror ('I’m joking, I’m joking.’) Stacker shakes his head, sets down Mako’s Pokemon and turns his attention on the Weis. “Cheung,” he says, “you were saying?”
“Oh,” he answers, reaching into his jacket and extracting a Torchic, still fluffy with down, and depositing it in Mako’s hands, “we knew you’d be worried about Mako, so we brought a… new friend. We would’ve given her the Egg, but it hatched on the way over.”
“We were in Hoenn for a while,” explains Hu while Mako coos at the Torchic, instantly smitten, “but it’ll be a bit before this chick can do much damage. Crazy strong, though. Also, it’s Cheung’s Blaziken’s chick, so it should know some pretty good moves out of the egg.”
Mako looks dazed, her arms full of baby Pokemon. “Can I start with two?”
A voice rolls into the living room like thunder, two sets of heavy boots strolling in after it. “Start with two what?” asks Aleksis, ducking the door’s frame as he enters. “We heard Mako was about to begin journey, came to wish her luck.”
“Bit late,” Jin comments, a smirk on his face. “Party’s already started.”
“We bring present,” Sasha tells them, pulling an Aron from her husband’s massive jacket pocket. She waits for Mako to scramble for Pokeballs before plopping it in her hands, metal cool and heavy. “Is Aggron’s child,” she explains. “Will be very powerful.”
“This doesn’t seem fair,” Mako comments, though she makes no move to decline either Torchic or Aron, two Pokeballs already on her belt and the third one about to be used. “No one else starts with three, right?”
“Everyone else starts with battle-ready Pokemon,” Hu tells her, “so consider it evening the playing field.”
“Well,” she says at last, eyeing the pack of Ultra Balls Aleksis slips into her bag, the Ethers Cheung stuffs into another side pocket and the marked-up map still sitting on the living room table. Pentecost’s proud, nervous grin. “I can’t argue with that.”
Wei triplets - One of them picks up a Death Note (Not Pac Rim)
Jin snatches the book out of his hands just as Hu finishes reading the rules inscribed on the cover, casually flipping through the empty notebook before Cheung confiscates it. The older two pause at Hu's perturbed expression, quickly shifting modes to scan the book for themselves.
Hu says nothing until they've both read the page, two of them scoffing incredulously at the premise.
"Maybe we should test it," Hu says, idly weighing their options. "If it works, that'd be pretty cool."
"It's bad luck," Cheung counters. "If you wrote a name and something happened to that person, you'd feel like shit about it even if it was unrelated. Which it will be. Because this is bull."
Jin crosses his arms over his chest, stifling a laugh at his brother. "It's weird you can call this bullshit but still believe in bad luck, bro."
"Yeah," a raspy, inhuman voice cuts in, "'cause luck isn't real but the Death Note definitely is."
Cheung notices his brothers staring at something just over his shoulder, where the voice came from. He turns, casually files the apparition away in his mind as some collective hallucination the three of them are sharing, and defiantly ignores the sweat suddenly collecting on his palms and slicking the cover of the note where he's holding it.
"So," he says, adjusting his pitch down to normal levels mid-sentence, "we're decided?"
Jin hands Hu a lighter. "Yeah."
"Wait wait wait," the apparition says. "You don't have any enemies? No criminals you want to take out? There's all this evil in the world--"
"It's tempting," Hu answers, setting flame to the corner of the book farthest away from where Cheung has it pinched between two fingers, "but we're not megalomaniacs with a god complex."
"See," Jin laughs, "he's tempted! What would he do if we weren't here?"
"Something stupid, probably," comments Cheung. He drops the book when the fire nearly scorches his fingertips, three of them watching it burn completely to ash on the pavement. When they look up, the ghost has disappeared.
not for nothing but I have recast leslie odom jr. as raleigh for a marked improvement, no offense to chunnam. HOPEFULLY THE HTML IS WORKING NOW??
»
The look Mako first levels at him as she hands him an umbrella– clear-eyed, calculating– quickly turns warm when he introduces himself in Japanese, stuttering slightly over the consonants but as far as he can tell, he hadn’t badly mangled the grammar or anything. Raleigh feels his entire being involuntary shift at her expression, aiming himself toward her like a flower to the sun, returning the curious smile that sneaks onto her face with a slow, small one of his own.
Pentecost breaks in then, pointedly clearing his throat and ushering them inside, out of the rain. He gives the orientation, takes him through the hangar, leaves Raleigh in his new room with an ID hot off the press and a stack of paperwork.
He stays there for an hour flipping through the TV (it’s tuned to a wavelength that seems solely populated by news channels from around the world) before tossing the remote aside and pulling on the PPDC-issue sweater he’d found folded on his desk.
Not bothering to consult a map before heading out (after all, Raleigh had been to Hong Kong before), he recalls somewhat ruefully on his way to the canteen that he’d gotten lost the last time he was in HK as well. One definitely doesn’t need to cut through the hangar to reach the mess hall– most Shatterdomes at least have that in common.
He approaches the Weis (they’ve dropped together– they’ve played ball together or, at least, Yancy had played a few pickup games with them before), pausing at the edge of their makeshift court before one of them notices him and motions for a time-out.
“Hey,” Raleigh says.
“You wanna play?” one of them asks, brandishing the ball.
“My brother was the one who liked basketball,” he demurs, “I’m just lost. The canteen…?”
He gets three sympathetic looks (which isn’t what he was looking for, let alone from a Ranger team that had never felt that kind of loss, that never would if they were lucky) and then one of them– Cheung, according to the ID clipped to his belt– tosses their ball to Jin and motions for Raleigh to follow him.
“You missed a turn from the residential quad,” Cheung tells him, waving off his attempts to tell them that he’d be able to find it alright on his own. Jin and Hu have matched his stride at his flank, four of them walking in an eerily synchronized step, in silence.
When they reach the canteen, Jin breaks away and settles at a table occupied by only one other tech, immediately drawing him into a conversation. Cheung and Hu accompany Raleigh to the food line, both of them grabbing two trays before queuing up.
Before he can express his shock at the sheer amount of /food/ trayed up behind the glass window, Hu bumps his brother with an elbow and mutters something in Cantonese that sounds suspiciously like a swear, jerking his head toward the entrance.
Then again, Raleigh considers as a small woman uses a very large spoon to load up a plate, everything sounds like a swear in Cantonese.
They’re at the table, Raleigh gradually working through more food than he’s seen in years while the triplets decimate their plates, when someone stops behind him, inhales deeply and drawls in the single most obnoxious voice he’s ever heard, “So this is Pentecost’s golden boy.”
Raleigh wipes his mouth. Washes down a mouthful of rice and steamed vegetables with a swig of water from the tin cup on the table in front of him, and turns to meet eyes with a sheepish-looking Hercules Hansen, standing next to a sour-faced Chuck. He gives Herc a polite smile, then sneaks a look at the Weis, three of them looking supremely unimpressed– almost hostile.
Hu speaks up first, plastering on a smile that’s unnerving in both sincerity and the speed at which it’d appeared. “Settling in okay, sergeant? If you need anything, let us know. You too, Becket.”
“Just fine, boys. Thanks.”
Ducking under the table, as if searching for something, Jin pops back up and motions toward the doors. “Max?”
“Sleeping off the excitement.”
“Ah. Next time.”
Chuck whines, “I’m gonna find us some bloody seats before this place gets even more crowded.”
“Yeah,” responds Herc, “I’ll be there. Good to have you back, Raleigh.”
“Marshal must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel,” Chuck adds as he turns away, “if he’s flying in has-beens like this.”
The Weis are on their feet almost before Chuck finishes speaking, but Raleigh pushes his plate toward the center of the table. “PPDC used to screen Rangers for professionalism too,” he says, loud enough to be heard from halfway across the hall, “but they’ll let anyone pilot when they’re desperate enough.”
Chuck’s tray clatters to the floor, his face a livid shade of red before Herc intercepts him and drags him away, shouting a quick apology to the table while three sets of appraising eyes turn on Raleigh.
“We were just going to kick his ass,” Jin says, sounding amused, “but that works too.”
“Yeah, a fight doesn’t always turn out great for me. Administratively.”
“Guess not.”
Quickly changing the subject, Raleigh glances over his shoulder and leans forward, sounding hopeful. “Have you three heard anything about uh, who my co-pilot might be? Is it Mako?”
“Your evaluation is tomorrow morning,” answers Hu. “There are a few candidates. Mako wants to pilot, but the Marshal doesn’t want a rookie in the Conn-pod for Pitfall, so don’t get your hopes up.“
“How’s her record?”
Cheung catches his eye, a smile quirking the corners of his lips. “Ask her yourself. Just know that if it were up to us… we’d want her watching our backs.”
“Unsubtle,” Raleigh laughs.
“Wasn’t trying to be.”
»
It’s only slightly damaging to Raleigh’s pride that Mako takes the round, four-to-three, and after he’d goaded Pentecost into letting her into the ring too. Somewhat more galling are the triplets’ hoots and cheers when Mako floors him for the last point (he’d thought they liked him), but she’s grinning when she pulls him to his feet so he can’t really find it in himself to be upset.
He tracks her down in the hangar later, her feet swinging off of a beam suspended in front of the Jaeger, face softly illuminated by its nuclear core.
“We,” Raleigh says as he joins her, “are drift-compatible. You felt it, right?”
“The Marshal won’t change his mind,” she says distantly. “But yes. We are.”
“I felt it on the helipad,” he continues, painfully aware of the fact that he might be too forward, might be pushing her into a corner she doesn’t want to be in, but she isn’t stopping him. “Like I’ve… somehow known you for a long time.”
“You reminded me of the Marshal,” Mako says quietly, hands folded sedately in her lap, feet having stilled, her eyes dark and focused. “I will speak with him again, and try to convince him.”
Raleigh nods gratefully, shifts a little closer and grins when she doesn’t move away. As if sensing an ulterior motive, Mako cocks her head to the side and looks at him, seems to see straight through him. “You wanted to ask something?”
He’d forgotten, the way drift compatibility makes partners more attuned to each other– how a hangover after a round in the Kwoon is sometimes just as powerful as after a physical link-up. He picks a small triangle of scrap metal off the beam next to him, fiddles with it. “Those triplets seem like nice guys.”
“Not to everyone.”
“Really?”
Mako smiles, a proud look on her face. “You made a good impression.”
“Lucky me, huh?”
“You think they’re handsome?”
She’s too perceptive; Raleigh clears his throat. “Well. Objectively.”
“Cheung is single.”
Raleigh immediately tries not to think about the eldest triplet’s easygoing smiles, his voice– soft and smooth. The way he’s always got his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders to show off his biceps like every douchebag he’s ever met but, well, if anyone had a right to show off their arms. “Oh my /god/.”
Mako looks confused. “You were going to ask, I thought?”
“Yeah, but I was gonna work up to it.”
“He said you are very cute,” Mako tells him, perfectly matter-of-fact, “and he likes the way you handled Chuck. Jin and Hu want to fight you, in a friendly way. But, they want to fight everyone.”
“This is weird,” says Raleigh. “Forget I asked. It’s weird. They’re like your brothers.”
Mako’s fished her phone out of her pocket, pulled up a diagram and begun to tweak it when she answers. “When I was younger, they would be my co-pilot in simulation drops, so it’s not /very/ weird. It’s likely you are compatible with them as well.”
Raleigh mulls that over, nearly jerking upright when he finally remembers why he’d come looking for her. “I forgot to ask! What’s your sim score?”
“Fifty-one drops,” she answers, and Raleigh knows he’s not imagining the smugness in her voice, “fifty-one kills.”
He makes a face, half grimace, half teasing grin. “Overachiever.”
idk if you're a big fan of tendo but what about something about him and his chineseness (or whichever asianness you decide on, considering how gdt/ccj didn't agree or sth)
ITS SHORT AND A MONTH LATE LMFAO SORRY
“You’ve never been to a new year’s parade,” Jin says, leaning on the felt cover of the table in front of him and ticking a list off on his fingers, “eaten stinky tofu, had drunken chicken, drank bubble tea… but you can hustle at mahjong? What? I don’t understand.”
“My yeye didn’t get out much,” Tendo murmurs over the rim of his mug, taking a tile and then discarding it, “but we bonded over this game, alright? Old people are always freakishly good at this game. I learned from a master.”
“That’s true,” says Hu, idly shifting his dwindling stack of chips, “we didn’t get to spend much time with our grandparents before Shanghai got hit. And all the Triads play pool.”
Unfazed, Tendo happily claims the eight-circles tile Jin discards, matching it in a set of three. He throws out a blank-white-space tile, then leans back in his seat. “You can’t make me feel guilty about taking your money,” he drawls, “I can go toe to toe with you boys in personal tragedy and criminal dealings.”
Cheung laughs, kicking Jin under the table so he’d stop whining and take his turn. “He’s just lucky we’re not ghost drifting right now.”
“Um, yeah.” Tendo shakes his head, drains the last of his coffee and reaches for the thermos under his seat. “Urban legend.”
“Actually true,” Hu says.
“Okay, what shape is Jin–”
“Triangle,” the Weis say in unison.
“… maybe there is something to it.”
“Triplets,” Cheung gently reminds him as he draws and discards a tile. “That was the worst question you could’ve asked.”
for the fic thing (if you're still doing those?) the weis and tendo and a power outage
Mentally kicking himself in the head isn't something Cheung does very often, but then again he and his brothers don't always manage to shut down an entire city grid, kicking the PPDC's emergency generators into operation. Jin had been compiling a hefty chunk of code for Crimson Typhoon's next software update; Hu'd suggested linking up Crimson Typhoon's dozen or so supercomputer processors to speed it up a bit, and Tendo had said that overclocking seemed to be a perfectly viable option as well.
All of that talk had flown right over Cheung's head; he knows how to debug in Java and assemble a computer and solder a few key cables but compared to his brothers and Tendo, he's practically illiterate. He'd just... taken their word for it that they knew what they were doing.
"Clearly," Cheung deadpans, his face half-lit from his cellphone's flashlight while the lights in the rest of the windowless hangar dimly come on, "you three didn't know what you were doing."
"We'll fix it," Jin snaps, hovering over Tendo's shoulder with a spare flashlight he'd dug out of an old toolbox. "Go check on all the hospitals and data banks in Kowloon."
"Hospitals all have backup generators," sighs Hu, "data banks have shutoff protocols in case something like this happens. Good thing it's morning."
Looking up, Tendo swipes the back of his hand over his forehead and leans back down to twist something in the mainframe's fusebox. "Shutoff protocols before the PPDC, or...?"
"Well, I hear they got updated when Crimson Typhoon was built."
Jin interrupts Tendo's quiet chuckle, nudging him on the shoulder. "Hurry up, Tendo. Before--"
"Before," Stacker says, his shadow looming up behind the brothers, "what?"
Jin makes a gesture in Stacker's general direction, expression somewhere between petrified and resigned to death. "Never mind."
"We're trying to bring the grid back up," Cheung cuts in, physically shielding Tendo's back as if Stacker might lose his grip on his usually unerring mental control, "and we called the electric company, they're working on their end as well."
"I thought it might be you three," Stacker sighs, nodding at Cheung. The Weis had realized their mistake and taken steps to fix it in whatever capacity they're able; logically, he knows that losing his temper wouldn't help at all, no matter how tempting the prospect. "And how did this happen?"
"We were trying to compile Typhoon's new OS," Tendo says gamely, wiping his hands, standing and turning around to salute Stacker. "I suggested overclocking Crimson Typhoon's processors to speed it up, but that ah, didn't work out." He laughs nervously, glancing at the brothers before addressing the Marshal. "It wasn't them this time, I promise. You know I'd throw them right under the bus when it's actually their fault."
That gets the barest smile from Stacker, three punches on the arm from the Weis.
"I expect you'll have the electricity back up within three hours," says the Marshal as he leaves, thoughts not on the PPDC's backup generators and instead turned toward the hospitals and clinics in the city, "and that /everyone/ will follow protocol on installing new software from now on."
A chorus of sheepish /Yes Marshal/s rings out behind him, along with four enormous sighs of relief.
- pentecost (this went away after the first few months when their relationship stabilized, but bbmako has definitely wondered about it while sensei obliviously carried on being caring and kind and stern and wonderful and handsome!!! then she realized that their family unit is more meaningful than any other relationship in his life and also hers too, so things are perfect the way they are) (r.i.p. cheung and his obvious dweeby crush on the marshal, she knows that feel)
- the triplets (yes all three of them) (for very different but overlapping reasons) (cheung reminds her of sensei, he’s warm and caring and responsible, but his ability to Fuck Shit Up is better than anyone’s) (jin is so fun and interesting and happy to teach her anything! he’s adventurous and friendly, he’s the most likable of the three-- as rated by like, every chinese teen magazine poll) (hu is very focused and observant, but he has a streak of playfulness that’s a lot meaner than cheung & jin... honestly one of them has to be, mako finds it ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS)
- AN YUNA (god, teen mako’s obSESSED with team nova hyperion, she watched all of yuna’s old matches on youtube, she has nova merch, she rocks their colors whenever she’s not being strong-armed into wearing crimson or cherno’s, she sleeps with the nova figurine on the shelf above her head and NH’s the one she likes to imagine beating up the kaiju that invade her dreams, yuna’s just so skilled and cool and she gives no fucks about what anyone else thinks, she shaves her head and throws down with the weis, mako is vaguely jealous of so-yi, yuna is #lifegoals#wifegoals forever) (the trips still tease her about it even after yuna and so-yi retired with full benefits and made a complete recovery as ambassadors bc that’s absolutely what happened ok)
- a cute tech in san francisco (who’s only two years older than her and very quiet, but helped mako with homework when she was there and they spent hours in the computer labs together trading ideas and geeking out-- they never did exchange contact info or keep in touch, and no one knows about it, but they took a selfie together that never got posted anywhere, that mako’s kept on her phone through every generation, backed up so many times it’s a lil pixelated around the edges)
