Chapter Text
When the alarm sounded, Momo Ayase was asleep in her bunk. Unfortunately for her sleep schedule, the Kaiju didn’t wait for opportune moments to strike; this was the second one that had emerged in the middle of the night this month alone. She slid out of her bed, grumbling the whole way down. Couldn’t the top brass just wake up some other Rangers in the middle of the night? It was starting to feel like she’d gotten the short end of a stick she hadn’t even known she was grabbing.
Momo rubbed the sleep out of her eyes at the mirror, and paused to take a look. She looked like shit, which also happened to be how she felt. It wasn’t an encouraging start to the morning, for sure. Still, she needed to get moving, so she brushed her hair free of knots and sleep wildness, slid in her chunky teal earrings for good luck, and headed towards the suiting area.
Jiji, predictably, was already waiting, hopping on the balls of his feet and boxing with his imagined version of the Kaiju. Momo bumped her shoulder into him as she moved past, knocking him out of the boxing stance.
“C’mon, let’s get suited up.” She was feeling a little less tired after the walk here, but the only real cure for her lack of sleep was siphoning off some of Jiji’s infinite energy in the Drift, and she wanted to get her head in working order as soon as possible.
Jiji shot her an exaggerated salute, then an impossibly large wink, and he was off into the locker room. Momo shook her head. He really was something else.
She entered her own locker room, pulling out the circuitry-laden underclothes of the drive suit. This was the most important layer, ultimately. It was what sent the electrical signals from her body to the Jaeger, the central pillar of the whole piloting thing. It was also ugly- basically a wetsuit covered in synapse processors- and she hated it.
Luckily, the rest of the drive suit was less bad to look at, if you didn’t count the boots. They were a necessary evil, but that didn’t mean she had to like them. Momo was still desperately clinging to the idea that one day the science division would put away their focus on bigger and better plasma weapons and chainswords or whatever else they were working on and figure out how to slim down the ugly, terrible, awful drive suit boots. It hadn’t happened yet, but as she kept reminding Jiji, you never said never.
Still, at least the outer polycarbonate shell of the armor was a bright neon pink, which was something. It looked better than a lot of the other Rangers’ armor, which tended towards drab and boring, because she’d pushed Jiji into agreeing to a more exciting color. Not that he’d needed a lot of pushing, really. A Jaeger with the name Neon Nessie needed to make a statement, and her Rangers did too.
Once she’d done all she could do on her own with the drive suit, Momo stepped out of the lockers and into the Conn-Pod. There were techs already waiting with the feedback cradle that fit into the back of her suit, reading additional information from her nervous system, and recording any jarring shocks to let the top brass know they were getting their asses kicked. She put on her helmet over top of the stupid little hood they had to have on underneath to read their brainwaves, tucking her earrings in gently, and then she stepped into the motion rig, locking her boots into it.
Momo shifted her weight, feeling the motion rig reacting, and then she stood still, letting the tech crew fit all the cables from her back to the appropriate spots in the Conn-Pod, all ready for them to drop into position. Jiji finally came out of his locker, and the technicians pounced on him, dragging him into his place and making sure all appropriate technology was attached to him, too.
Momo took the opportunity to breathe in deeply, and extend her aura down into the ground, feeling for the hot silver light at the heart of the Jaeger below. Nessie was several hundred feet down, but her engine, built with spiritual power all through it, was bright as the sun.
The radio in the Conn-Pod crackled, and the voice of a young woman came through. As if on cue, the technicians left, vanishing back to (presumably) their beds.
“Good morning Rangers,” she said. “We have a Kaiju, Codename Kitefin, on the coast. Ready to drop?” That was just like Sawaki, getting right to business.
Momo rolled her shoulders, letting Jiji respond.
“Yes ma’am!” Sawaki made a noise of affirmation.
That was about par for the course for their opening drop. The Conn-Pod shifted, and the familiar feeling of her stomach dropping hit. The speed of the fall slowed as they approached Nessie, the brakes engaging just at the end so they could connect.
“Locked in,” Momo said out loud as the servos in the neck of Neon Nessie locked the Conn-Pod in place.
“Ready for Neural Handshake?”
Nessie’s engine kicked into gear then, the roar of her heart breaking through the waves audibly crashing on the other side of the wall.
Jiji threw up a peace sign and gave one of his goofy little noises of confirmation, and the Jaeger dropped, her ankles landing in the writhing water of Tokyo Bay. The shudder of impact ran through the Conn-Pod, and the lights on their little wrist computers flared.
“Initiating Neural Handshake in three,” Sawaki’s voice droned over the radio. Momo turned to look at Jiji, who made an exaggerated kissy face at her.
“Two.” A wave crashed into Nessie’s ankles.
“One.”
And the Drift took them both.
The smoke of her grandmother’s cigarette, floating over the table
“See, Jin, it’s erupting,” His father’s finger pointed at the long column of smoke
“We’re sorry, there’s nothing we can do for them.” The hospital hallways, twisted by the blue blood of the Kaiju, and the doctors shooting glances between each other
The house on the hill, with his parents hanging by their necks
Her hand up on her head, pointing to the sky, while the boys ran around her, laughing
The Drift settled between them, their thoughts and memories mixing in the moments the electricity raced up their spines. Momo reached out the faintest hint of her aura to Nessie, the blinding white of her heart melding with their own auras.
The metal being poured into the molds
Her heart being forged, the plasma of its core being prayed over in a ritual lead by a figure in a white robe
The volcano erupting over the cries of the villagers, the Kaiju roaring in the background
Space and time compressed onto each other; their thoughts overlapped and intertwined.
it doesn’t matter what her feelings on it are when she means so much to me
if the Kaiju dare to try anything like what happened in Shono City again
And then they were back in the Conn-Pod, the present snapping back in around them. They were in Tokyo Bay, to fight the Kaiju Kitefin.
“Neural handshake holding.”
Momo raised one of her hands, and clenched it into a fist. She summoned the feeling of her aura, sorting it out from behind Jiji and Nessie’s, and balled it up around the fist.
They met Kitefin in the ocean, barely ten miles from shore. The Kaiju was big, its brick-shaped head peeking out over the tops of the waves. Over top of that, though, it was a smooth and bioluminescent lined thing, with a large fin spiking out of its back and six eyes lining the corridor of its nose.
It also had a mouth made entirely from a circle of gnashing teeth.
Jiji shifted his stance, ready to kick at it when they went. Jaegers weren’t normally designed for kicking or movements that took them off their very steady stance on the ground, but they’d both liked the idea of kicking the shit out of Kaiju, so she’d bribed the one pervy engineer with some Gundam models, and he’d put in some extra servos for kicking purposes.
Whatever flaws the guy had, he sure could engineer some giant robots.
Kitefin surged forward in the waves, blue acidic spit spilling out of its mouth. Momo twisted to catch it under its jaw with an uppercut. She felt Jiji preparing to unlock the water cannon in their left arm, so she altered their footing to better prep to pull the water out of the ocean. But the hit she’d given the Kaiju hadn’t knocked it as off balance as either of them would like. It reared back and its horrible mouth wrapped over their left arm, and then it crunched a whole piece out of the outside of the Jaeger. The feeling of part of her skin- and some of her muscle- being bitten through made Momo wince. This was one part about fighting Kaiju she didn’t love.
Momo shook off the thought, feeling for the heavy weight of Nessie’s arms with her spiritual sense. There was no aura, strictly speaking, in the rest of the Jaeger’s body, but there was plenty of energy in her heart, so she pulled the aura over the hands like a pair of well-fitting and worn in gloves, and the glow of a bright teal caught in her vision.
There it was.
She brought their right arm down on the Kaiju’s head, grabbing for its neck, its forelimbs, anything. The first thing that she could get a good grip on was the side of its jaw, so she pushed her whole thumb into its mouth, and pulled.
Its jaw wrenched, and Jiji brought up one knee again, and then the other, like he was juggling a soccer ball. It slid out of Momo’s grasp, and she extended the spectral arms out past Nessie’s fingers, trying to catch it, but just like a bar of soap when you really needed it, it slid through her fingers and into the ocean.
They spun.
It had vanished. That was really annoying.
Jiji’s mind brushed against hers, a low pulse of comfort. He was good at soothing her emotions when they spiked too high in anger.
It made her wish that she loved him the same way he loved her- almost.
Momo banished the thought as soon as it came, but there was no way Jiji hadn’t felt it cross his mind. The Drift was cool- it really was!- but it also did suck when your best friend was super in love with you and you didn’t feel the same way.
Especially since it was really easy to think something rude.
Was this really the time for that though?
The Kaiju burst from the ocean, mouth first.
Kitefin stuck its mouth to the area an abdomen would be on a human, then Momo felt the slicing feeling of it crunching through Nessie’s hull. She slammed both hands down onto its back, pushing her psychic constructs beyond the metal itself and past the Kaiju’s skin. It was all cartilage, no bone, so she went to snap, crush, pulverize- but it had taken another cut off the Jaeger and was spinning away.
It hurt, for sure. She wasn’t sure what Kitefin was supposed to be doing, but if all it was going to do was keep darting back in and biting chunks off of them, Nessie wouldn’t hold together for long.
Jiji nodded along with her assessment, flicking a switch on the side of his wrist to power up their water cannon. They planted their feet solidly against the ocean floor, and Momo felt the suction pulling the water up her legs.
What a goddamn bizarre feeling.
It was always weird, piloting a giant robot with your best friend touching your brain and thoughts. It wasn’t bad, exactly, though she did wish sometimes that she had given Jiji less ammunition to tease her with. He’d echoed enough Ken Takakura lines at her out of combat that if it had been anyone else, she might’ve fallen for him.
But as it was, that was Jiji. She knew him, really knew him, better than anyone else. When Kitefin burst out of the water, circular chomping mouth clearly ready to take a bite out of the Conn-Pod, she slapped it right out of the air. The blast of water that had been aimed slightly too high went wild, shooting off into the heavens.
Thankfully, it was far enough away from the city of Tokyo that they weren’t going to kill anyone with a loose shot.
Kitefin came back around, and Jiji punted it away with one of his heavy soccer kicks that would’ve worked wonders if the thing wasn’t built like a brick and several stories tall. Momo focused on her hands again, reaching out to try and crush the thing before it could get them again. Like the one crab Kaiju they’d fought.
That had been a great fight- she knew all about crabs and their weaknesses. The only thing she’d regretted even slightly was that she couldn’t eat any of it, since the whole species was toxic. Shame, that. It would be awesome to be able to eat one.
Maybe just the crab, actually. It had been huge.
“C’mon Momo,” Jiji said out loud, “This again?”
This was clearly why they would never work out. Any man who had a real chance at her heart needed to understand her love and desire for crab, and move the hell out of her way.
Ideally, he wouldn’t even compete with her for the crab, but maybe fighting over crab at the dinner table would be romantic?
She shelved the thought before it got too out of hand. They were in the middle of a fight, and she needed to focus. She’d reward herself for a job well done with a delicious plate of crab after the fact.
She felt Jiji roll his eyes, so she stuck her tongue out at him and went back to deciding the best way to fight Kitefin. It had a cartilaginous skeleton, or what could broadly be described as a skeleton, and was using some type of vacuum to take the huge circular bites out of Nessie
.
Kitefin, as if hearing her train of thought, leapt out of the water at them. Its lips were curled back, ready to bite.
Jiji smashed a knee into it, but Kitefin bit down anyways, its tough jaws closing in with an audible crunch.
Nessie wavered. Damn it.
Fighting with one good knee would be possible, for sure, but Kitefin brought its front legs to bear too, tearing off the bottom half of the leg it had just sliced neatly through the knee. Momo dropped one spectral hand off of Nessie’s hands to stabilize them. Jiji would have to hit it with the canon.
They wouldn’t be able to refuel the canon with more water, so it would have to be one good blast. To its chest, or maybe its head?
She focused instead on the stump where Nessie’s leg had been, moving the rest of her mechanically in time with Jiji’s actions. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but more Rangers died from drowning than anything else, even with the escape pods that had been added to the back of the cockpit. It was hard to get out of the mocap rig to get to the escape pods if you were fighting a Kaiju, and if you were dead in the water after the Kaiju attack, there was a good chance you were brain dead.
Jiji hit Kitefin with a blast- but it was weaker than it should’ve been. He was trying not to throw them off balance.
“All in,” She said through gritted teeth. Kitefin was circling back for more. Its large back fin, which had no doubt given it its name, was cutting through the water at them.
Momo grimaced. It was going to hit them again.
Jiji hit it first.
The blast went through Kitefin’s jaws, rippling through the Kaiju’s body. It still wasn’t as powerful as she would’ve liked- but it had got the damn thing.
Or so she thought at first. Kitefin didn’t explode, or implode, or any other sort of ‘ode’. It kept coming, jaws crunching through the armor plating around Nessie’s white-hot core. Water was now rushing into the heart of the Jaeger, weighing her down. The electronics sparked by her face, and Momo winced.
“Jiji,” She started, pulling her other hand off of Nessie’s, “Please just kill the damn thing.” She put up a wall of force over the large hole in their chest, ignoring the twinge in her head. It was going to suck if they made it out of this. But at least they’d have made it out of this.
Dimly, she registered him shooting again. A crash, and another crunch. More pain.
That wasn’t what she kept her mind on. Jiji could handle it, with her moving along with him. Her mind was dedicated to making sure they kept their heads above water until help could arrive.
Hopefully, that would be soon.