I Hate Coming Up With Titles
Future: Mech AU (Pacific Rim inspired - someone talk to me about this more, I have thoughts DESPITE having not watched the movie)
This was meant to be super short… IDK what happened… Also it’s in a different style than I normally write — SO MUCH DIALOGUE I’M DYING
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The door seal opens with a hiss.
“Wrios!” a voice screams. “Help my brother!”
Firm hands restrain the man.
“Elkhardt, he’s gone. I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”
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“Did you hear about the Elkhardt brothers?”
Faye sits down across the table with her breakfast tray as Alexei takes a sip of his coffee.
“Hasn’t everyone? It’s all anyone’s talked about for days.”
“Still,” Faye continues, “it’s bad enough to lose one pilot, but two? They’re gonna have to start from the ground up with training again.”
“Thought Sio made it out alright?”
Faye shrugs and starts peeling her orange.
“He’s stable, but his psych report has put him out of commission indefinitely. Guess that leaves some spots open for the rest of us.” She grins and throws a piece of orange peel at Alexei’s face. It’s too early in the morning for him to protest, and just lets it happen, smacking off the side of his cheek. She keeps talking in the background, but Alexei stops paying attention. He glances over Faye’s shoulder to see a familiar figure heading out of the mess hall. Faye follows his gaze and snorts.
“You and I have different ideas of what hatred looks like.”
Alexei snaps his attention back to Faye, narrowing his eyes.
“Don’t start with me, Perish.”
“Making fun of Alexei already this morning?” Lovi joins the table with a grin. “Without me?”
“What else is new?” Alexei groans.
Laughter comes easy after that. Alexei takes comfort in his friends, and pushes all thoughts of broken pilots and irritating women out of his head.
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Alexei is working on his routine Jaeger weapon maintenance when the loud speaker overhead crackles to life.
“Alexei Kizer. Report to training facility 9 immediately. Alexei Kizer.”
He looks to Rowen, who’s just as covered in grease as he is, but she just shrugs.
Prism Defiant looms above him as he leaves the workshop, gleaming black and gold, with its fusion reactor core pulsing faintly red. She’s beautiful and deadly; a desirable combination.
He’s never been to this part of the base before, and will never admit it, but he nearly had to stop and ask for directions. Two people are waiting for him. He recognizes them both: Commander Imdra Arlagath and Staziya Kingsley, one of the head engineers at this base. The commander addresses him first, offering her hand to shake, grip firm.
“Thank you for coming. Your pilot simulation scores are impressive.”
“Thanks. I’ve been messing with it a bit. Can I ask why I’m here?”
Imdra’s expression hardens.
“I’m sure you heard what happened in Los Angeles.” When he nods, grin gone, she continues. “Obviously, the Elkhardt brothers are no longer able to pilot a Jaeger. We need replacements and fast.”
Staziya steps forward, the tablet in her hands lighting up with a projection.
“It’s standard protocol to have full body scans of every employee, trainee, and military officer. I created a cross referencing diagnostic to analyze potential compatibility, and we found a promising match between you and someone else.”
Alexei can’t help the spark of excitement in his chest. He knows the risks, obviously, but who hasn’t looked at those massive metal machines and dreamed of being the one at the helm? At piloting a war machine built to protect humanity from the creatures that come from somewhere else? He certainly has.
“Who’s the other person?”
Imdra and Staziya share a look, before Staziya smiles brightly.
“We’re not going to tell you yet. We want to do a blind compatibility test.” She produces a simple black eye mask from the pocket of her lab coat, as Imdra hands him a simple quarterstaff. A bell jingles on either end of the staff, the sound giving away the location of each end.
“Don’t worry, Kizer. Your potential partner will also be blind for this test.” Imdra presses the quarterstaff into his hands, even as Staziya shoves the mask over his eyes. His protests fall on deaf ears, not that he really meant much by them anyways. He’s an easy going guy. It’s going to take more than this to throw him off his game. Besides, if he becomes the new pilot, he can only imagine the look on Faye’s face. It makes him grin again, as the door slides open in front of him and each woman takes an elbow to guide him through the opening.
With his eyes covered, Alexei focuses his attention on his other senses. A second door sliding shut, the pattern of his own breathing, and most importantly a second set of chiming bells across the room.
“Socks and shoes off. Both of you.” Imdra commands as she and Staziya move away from his side as he kicks off his combat boots, and reaches down to pull his socks off while Imdra continues. “There’s a padded training mat just in front of each of you, approximately five feet squared.” Alexei immediately visualizes the space in front of him, marking the dimensions. “The intention here is to test your compatibility, and instinct to move together. Not to harm one another. We understand that this is not the most typical of exams, but we deemed it necessary under the particular circumstances. No speaking. Step forward onto the mat.”
Alexei takes a blind step forward, twirling the staff in his hand. The bells chime softly, and he hears an answering ring from a few feet in front of him.
For a moment, nothing happens. The silence is hesitant and measured. And then it isn’t quite silent. He hears a deep breath, and he swings.
His staff collides with another in the air, bells chiming, but it feels weak. They’re too far away. He steps in and swings again, and this time when the staffs collide, it’s solid. He pushes off, turning to strike from the other direction, and connects again, his sparring partner blocking. Strike, block, block, strike. He knows how they move by the pressure of their blows, where the weight of the strike is distributed. It feels instinctual. His partner gives a breathless laugh as they both push back. She’s a woman then, and based on the angles, he’s quite a bit taller than her. He hadn’t expected this to be so fun.
“So?” Staziya’s voice interrupts from the sidelines. “Does it feel compatible? It certainly looks like it.”
Alexei feels the adrenaline in his system, the eagerness to go again. He wants to keep at this, to work with her, whoever she is. He nods his head, still following the no speaking rule. There is a long pause before Imdra speaks up, his partner evidently more hesitant about agreeing than he is.
“Good. I expect you to each keep your word and to remember this feeling, even as you take your blindfolds off.”
“There’s a reason we had the two of you evaluate each other blindfolded,” Staziya says as Alexei reaches for the cloth over his eyes. “I don’t think you would have even given each other a chance otherwise, and your compatibility scores were extraordinarily high. I think you’ll make a wonderful pair.”
Light floods back into Alexei’s vision and his gaze meets the warm brown eyes of Giovanni Sereno. His smile disappears instantly, anger flooding his system. She beats him to the punch.
“Absolutely not. Anyone but him.”
“Why? Think there’s someone better than me?” Something in Alexei’s system gnashes its teeth at Giovanni’s insinuation that someone else could be better. He drops his staff and steps towards her. He towers over her, but she doesn’t flinch or back away.
“Anyone is better than you.”
It has no bite behind it. Alexei is used to snark and sharpness, a dance of vicious words that he refuses to admit that he loves. He loves to hate her, and isn’t quite sure what to do when she backs down with dull eyes and walks away without a fight.
He blinks as the door opens, and shuts, and leaves him alone with the two superior officers in training facility 9.
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Three days pass without any successful compatibility matches. The atmosphere around base is tense. If something crawls out of the breach right now, they’re defenseless.
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Alexei rolls over with a groan, looking at the clock on his nightstand. 3:07AM glares back at him. This is getting ridiculous. He sits up, shoving his feet into his boots, and pulling on a t-shirt. He knows what door is hers, and he knocks without hesitation, moving to the side so she can’t see him through the peephole. There’s a moment of quiet before the door swings open. He immediately shoves his foot in the doorframe and braces his arm against the steel.
“We’re talking about this, whether you like it or not.”
Giovanni blinks up at him. She’s wearing comfortable clothes, but looks far too awake to have just been sleeping. There is silence for a moment before she sighs and steps back away from the door. He follows her in.
“You do know what’s at risk here, right?”
“Of course I do, Alexei.”
“I’m clearly better at seeing the bigger picture than you are. I don’t want to work with you either, but even I can’t deny that we seem to do alright together, at least physically.”
She raises an eyebrow, leaning back against her desk. Her eyes flick downwards towards the waistband of his sweat pants before slowly climbing back up to his face. He knows he’s good looking, of course, but feels his ego swell under her attention anyways.
“Figures you would be concerned about physicality, Mr. Casanova. It's not the physical element I’m concerned about.”
“That was an innocent comment, and you made it dirty. You’re no better than me.” He sits down on her bed. “It’s the drift then? Scared of what I’ll see?”
“Very much so.” She looks him in the eye without flinching or hiding. “I don’t want anyone to see me. Particularly not you.”
“You’d let humanity go without defenders just to hide from me? I just don’t get how you can just sit back and do nothing. We move good together, Giovanni. And frankly, we’re the only option right now. It's bigger than us.”
He gestures between them, and she looks away, fidgeting with a pen on her desk. Her inaction is irritating as all hell, and he’s about to lose his cool completely when she looks back up at him, a little spark of fire (that he definitely didn’t miss) reigniting.
“Don’t think less of me when you see.”
Alexei is surprised to find that he means it.
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“Your ass looks good in that, Sereno.”
It’s the first thing he says to her as he steps into the prep room full of engineers and military personnel. They’re both wearing skin tight under armour, waiting to be fit into the rest of the pilot gear. Immediately she turns to roll her eyes at him.
“Classy start to a partnership.”
“Well, you checked me out last night. Thought it was only fair to return the favor.” He steps onto the pressure plate in his side of the room, letting the attendants press additional pieces of armor onto his body. “How’s mine look?”
“Flat.” Giovanni replies, without missing a beat. Alexei can’t help but laugh.
“You’re lying, and we both know it.”
“I will in about 3 minutes.”
Bolts were fascinated, and spinal transmitters whirred to life behind them both. The helmets clicked into place, and the circuitry suits came online. They step into the head of Prism Defiant together. She moves to the left as he moves right, no communication needed. There’s no more time for bickering, as calibration and startup procedures begin, Staziya’s voice issuing instructions and orders over the headset.
“Neural handshake beginning in 15 seconds.”
Giovanni tenses beside him, but doesn’t back down. It’s too late for that now anyways. The drift is happening whether they’re ready for it or not.
Their minds collide in a flash of blue, hundreds of thousands of memories crashing together in an overwhelming wave, experienced in the span of a few seconds. Addiction, abuse, loss, fear, happiness, rejection, adoration; all of it. Alexei’s senses sharpen, and he feels untouchable as hundreds of tons of steel and power move with him. Giovanni’s breathing matches his, and even though he can only see her from his peripheral vision, he feels the same excitement in her. Everything else can wait.
“Neural handshake is stable and holding strong. Right and left hemispheres are calibrated. Prism Defiant is ready for her first test run. How's it feel, you two?”
“I knew you were lying. My ass looks great.”
Giovanni groans, and with her relief tingling under his skin he laughs. Giant steel fists collide triumphantly as they take their first thundering steps forward. This is going to be fun.
2087
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