This is my entry for the PR Reverse Big Bang. Know that thestralhugs' art is the sweetest, most cutest of art ever, I am so sorry this is hardly that. Beta'd by the ever wonderful, zempasuchil, who helped me ironed this out quite a bit. All remaining mistakes are my own. :)
XXX
these aren't dragons flying overhead
XXX
.
i.
She is just ten years old and halfway around the world when Stacker gets a call from his sister. It is the year 2013, August 10th to be precise. The dread that settles fills him up, eats him from the inside out until his cellphone rings again. But it isn't Luna's voice over the line, it is Tamsin's silence, and he doesn't need it in words to put it all together.
He has known Tamsin since she was a kid, moved in next door to the Pentecosts. Tottenham was their home then, and Luna had been meek, standing behind her brother when she meets a girl with fire red hair and scale green eyes for the very first time.
Stacker doesn't know when Luna decides that she wants Tam for herself. But when he catches the two of them with their hands slipping across flashes of skin, Tamsin jumps back, all guilt. Luna though, Luna just smiles at him like she'd already slayed a dragon on her own.
This one, however, is one she slays for the world.
(Tamsin can't stop apologizing.)
.
ii.
She is the daughter of a sword maker and she grows up swinging forged metal. Before that, though, she practices with smooth wood and bamboo blades. She practices with her bare feet moving across tatami mats, mirroring the movements of a father she still has.
"A little more control, Mako."
Her father speaks to her with kindness in his eyes. There are many things she comes to forget when she is older and there is blue in her hair, but this is not one of them. This is one she will remember for the rest of her life.
So she tries again.
Her grip is a little tighter, her wrist a little looser, and her eyes a little brighter with determination when she takes another swing at the empty air in front of her. In the next room, her mother has a hand over her mouth, horror reflected in her dark eyes as she sits in front of the television and watches Trespasser tear down the Golden Gate Bridge like it's made of origami paper.
In this room, however, her father takes the bamboo blade from her hands and tells her, "You did well."
She beams as she bows.
.
iii.
A year into the Kaiju War, the Jaeger Program is born, and Stacker Pentecost volunteers himself to test the Pons System. It takes his all to move the fingers of a machine too many times the size of his entire body. He couldn't imagine piloting a giant robot then.
Now, he can't believe in anything else.
.
iv.
They name her Coyote Tango.
Well, it is more like Tamsin single-handedly names her Coyote Tango and Stacker doesn't have it in his heart to call the Jaeger anything else. He hasn't seen Tamsin smile like that since before Luna died.
Tamsin also makes it her personal goal that their insignia looks like a tramp stamp belonging across the skin of young, sweet twenty-somethings, black lines peeking out from the top of low riding jeans. It is with a gentle buzzing in the air that he finally gives in and takes a seat next to her in the tiny tattoo parlour.
Coyote Tango's lines start and break, weaving in and out of itself across the skin. Where it is a stark contrast over Tamsin's pale skin, his is black against dark, and he likes it just fine, now that the two of them are matched in both body and mind.
.
v.
Her name is Mori Mako, here in her motherland.
And little Mako is still a child but she isn't naïve enough to think that the monsters won't come back time and time again. They have come to call them the Kaijū, and she can't understand why the world decides these Japanese characters can encompass a horror quite like that.
But in four months and fifteen days, the world will know her as Mako Mori, Tokyo's daughter, an icon made against a backdrop of blue.
.
vi.
The launch of Coyote Tango is quite the sight to behold.
Every blow is a counter strike.
Every move is speed and strength.
Luna sits in their shared headspace, smiling that smile. They're knights after her very own heart when they slay dragons in her name. It is December 30th, two days before 2015 comes to an end in a country that is novel to them both.
When he clenches his fist, and she clenches hers—
Coyote Tango throws a punch that breaks Kaiju bones.
.
vii.
They don't deploy Coyote Tango until Onibaba has already made land, torn a path from the ocean to the middle of the city, leaving a trail of ruin in its wake.
The drift is silent and Stacker hates that he can't find her mind in his. He is missing one half of his headspace and everything feels as though it is splintered down the centre. He doesn't know how he does it, his memory a blank save for the impact of Onibaba against his fists, but he pushes through when he sees a tiny little red dot indicating life in the ruins.
.
viii.
He doesn't know little Mako Mori yet.
He doesn't need to when he makes Onibaba bleed rivers of blue for her.
.
ix.
She is crying a sorrow song.
And the horror is very much real when the world becomes dust at the soles of Mako's aching feet. The sun falls over her shaking shoulders, debris strewn in disarray when she finally hears silence and dares to venture outside of the alleyway still standing.
What she sees is a silhouette of twin canons, a Jaeger powered down, and a man standing above it all.
.
x.
Stacker Pentecost sees a little girl in blue.
.
xi.
People die, and people live, with or without the Kaiju War.
Some go and the rest survive; that, in itself, is a fact of life. Stacker Pentecost understands that, better than most. But it doesn't mean anything now that he's got a little girl sitting across from him, and he wants the world for her.
He needs that for her.
And he will slay dragons for her until the day he dies.
.
xii.
After Tam leaves the Tokyo Shatterdome for her cancer treatment, Stacker quickly learns that the bond of a drift remains.
(Even after she's gone and after years of being alone in his head, he will still feel the edges of her mind, a faint outline but an outline nonetheless in the peripherals of his conscious mind. But he doesn't know that, not just yet.)
The further away he is from her, the harder it pulls.
Insistent, like the red of her hair beneath the Tottenham sun, or the soft touch of her lips over hers, on repeat.
.
xiii.
Quiet. Serious. Inquisitive.
.
xiv.
They describe her as many things. And when she finally learns what they mean in her mother tongue, Mako smiles at her sensei, imagining that that's how they used to describe him when he was her age.
He doesn't tell her how right she is.
How it isn't hard to see her as his own daughter, how she is too much like him when she takes his hand into hers, her much smaller one, and doesn't let go.
.
xv.
Three years into the Kaiju War, Stacker Pentecost becomes the Marshal of the Anchorage Shatterdome. He wishes he were still donning his drive suit and stepping into Coyote's harness right next to his co-pilot, but he hasn't heard from Tamsin for too long now.
In the pit of his stomach, he knows the drugs can only do so much for Mark I pilots like them. Blood is still dripping from his nose when he least expects it, and Mako pulls at his sleeve before anyone else can catch sight of it.
He can't imagine what it might be for Tam.
.
xvi.
"Stay close to me," he tells her. Mako nods and follows him through the long stretches of hallways of the Jaeger Academy on Kodiak Island. Sensei will be making a speech for the new recruits, she's seen the preparations he did on the flight here, and she will wait in his temporary office.
.
xvii.
She won't meet the Becket brothers.
But she will learn of them in due time.
They will be brash but great, pivotal but brazen. Every fight in the simulation pods is a sight to behold, or so she's been told. Compatibility like that, Mako doesn't imagine she will have with anyone. It is not hope or faith, it's trust.
And she doesn't trust easily.
.
xviii.
A year later, she isn't surprised when the Becket brothers get their own Jaeger.
For now though, she trails after sensei as they make another turn in the hallway.
.
xix.
"Want to see it up close?" he asks her, and she can only nod vigorously for the chance.
He hoists her up onto his shoulders and reflected in her eyes is the American Mark III Jaeger: Gipsy Danger. She reaches out and touches the foot of the machine with a hand, fingertips brushing against the fresh coat of blue.
The metal is cool against the warmth of her palm, and it reminds her of the sunlight falling over her face from behind Coyote Tango and the ranger that saved her life.
She blinks and this isn't that.
She blinks and the world remains at war but they are months away from another attack.
There is still time.
.
xx.
"…You will teach me, won't you, sensei?"
Stacker wishes that he will never have to, but he wishes for a great many things when it comes to her. He never wants this for her, not if he can help it, not if he can end this war before her time. In that moment, though, he doesn't know how to say no when she is looking down at him with wonder and hope he hasn't felt for a long time now.
"Someday, Mako."
Stacker doesn't see her smile often, but when she does, he imagines that it is the one thing that matters.
"Promise?"
He nods and hooks his pinky finger with hers.
"Promise."
.
xxi.
In time, there will be 51 drops, 51 kills.
She makes her mark against simulations upon simulations and drops down from the atmosphere. Swinging with sword in hand, she falls, and the Kaiju blue is a spray against the sky.
For my family, she says.
1 drop, 2 kills.
She will mark their death with their blood and their wrecked carcasses.
.
xxii.
For now, she is having a conversation with a boy on the Kwoon mats of the Academy. He is a lot like her with his anger and desperate need for revenge coming to a boil at the pit of his gut. She sees him in her, and it's not such a bad thing when she draws her hanbō for another word with the boy.
Mako Mori is well aware of another presence joining their audience of one in the room, but she doesn't turn around, just swings to catch the tip of her bō against the curve of Chuck Hansen's ribs.
.
xxiii.
"How many drops now?"
"42."
"And kills?"
"42."
Hercules Hansen lets out a low whistle, impressed when he turns his head to Stacker with a raised eyebrow. "She's good."
"Yours isn't bad."
There is a short-lived half smile over Stacker's face. It is not without a whole lot of apology loaded into one look that Stacker hands his old friend a file, the one that officially instates Ranger Charles Hansen as Ranger Hercules Hansen's next co-pilot.
Herc flips it shut.
"…Does he know yet?"
"He's your co-pilot now, I thought it'll be better if you broke the news to him yourself."
Hercules doesn't answer, just turns his head to the kids sparring in the Kwoon.
Even though they are sixteen and have seen too much for their young age, she's still a little girl the same way he's still a little boy. Always will be when their fathers are the men that they are. Mako kicks Chuck's legs out from underneath him. As Chuck falls, he manages to knock the hanbō from her hands, the impact just enough to send her sprawling just as well.
(He sees his little girl in his little boy.)
All the while, Hercules and Stacker pretend that there's a version of this fight that doesn't lead both their children to their death.
.
xxiv.
She likes that Chuck still manages to knock her off her feet.
But it doesn't mean that she has to take it well.
"Low blow, Hansen," she says to the ceiling, letting out a breath to blow a lock of hair from her eyes. She is sweaty and the pads of her hands ache from blocking blow after blow when she takes his strength and turns it into hers.
"No such thing as a fair fight, Mori."
She pauses, and is glad he is too busy slowing down his own breathing to notice the way she is grinning like she's already won.
"Fair enough."
What he says remains the cold, hard truth. Even as she watches Striker's initial launch from LOCCENT of the Sydney Shatterdome. She sees the Jaeger walk into the ocean, breaking waves in all her Mark V glory.
"I'm happy for you," says Mako when Chuck is standing in his drive suit, and she is, beyond that first wave of bitterness because he needs his chance just as much as hers. Mako's fist collides lightly against the chest plate of his drive suit, and her nod is something of acknowledgment.
"This is your head start, Hansen."
.
xxv.
She never catches up to his eleven kills. She never needs to.
.
xxvi.
Standing in LOCCENT of the Anchorage Shatterdome, Mako Mori chances a glance at her sensei, sees the clench in his jaw and the set of his shoulders. She's never had a Jaeger to call her own, and Coyote Tango hasn't been Stacker Pentecost's for a long time now.
But Mako imagines it must hurt all the same to see her fall this way.
She closes her eyes and waits until she can hear the slow whine of Tendo's chair as he turns. She braces herself. Still, it doesn't soften the blow of his next words.
"Coyote's down, sir."
Her heart clenches; she can't imagine how sensei feels. But when she turns her head to make sense of the situation, all she sees is the Marshal, eyes trained on the dot that has disappeared off of the radar.
"Send the choppers."
.
xxvii.
The date is November 6th, 2022.
St. Lawrence Island is exactly 660 miles from the Anchorage Shatterdome.
They find Coyote Tango, beyond salvation. They also find her pilots, already gone.
.
xxviii
She pours him a cup of tea when he sits down behind his desk, pushes the steaming cup to him along with the Metharocin. She sips at her own, and it takes all herself control to sit on her hands and wait. She is halfway done with her cup before Stacker gives her a thin smile from across the table.
But the sadness is almost unbearable.
"A machine's a machine," he tells her, and a similar voice echoes in the depth of her memories.
A sword is a sword.
"Nothing but metal scraped together."
He swallows the pill and follows it up with a slow sip of his tea.
Metal forged and folded against the heat, she remembers the hot air in the workshop and the sparks of bright red that fades into grey, and we can put our hearts and souls into every blade. But it's the wielder that makes all the difference, Mako.
"It's the Rangers that die."
She thinks there is a smile, somewhere, muddled in her head of a father long gone. His hand on her head, petting the stray bangs falling over her eyes. She thinks she can understand what isn't being said.
Mako pours the empty teacup sitting in front of her sensei full again.
.
xxix.
He takes her to visit Tamsin.
Pushing open the door between them without warning, he watches as the tears start falling from Tamsin Sevier's bright green eyes. Mako stands right by his side, eyes wide when he makes the introductions.
"I'm taking care of her, she's—"
"Mako Mori."
Tamsin echoes the words at the tip of his tongue.
He smiles, and Mako takes a step forward into the hospital room.
.
xxx.
Tamsin rests her head on his shoulder.
When her tears become sobs, he holds her just so.
"You're here to watch me die, aren't you, Stacks?"
"…Depends, Tam." He doesn't tell her that she is strong enough to beat this, just pulls her back so she can catch the smile curving faintly on his lips. There's nothing like hope or faith, they both know the score. "Are the front row seats taken yet?"
Through her wet lashes and the faint thump of her fist against his chest, there is a smile.
And it feels like they are just about ready for the drop, all over again.
.
xxxi.
Stacker doesn't tell her that she is strong enough to beat this because he knows, just as well, that she needs to go out of this world in her own way. That it will be the same for him when it comes.
.
xxxii.
Mako Mori comes back from Hawaii with blue in her hair, the strands curved along her hard-set jaw. It is almost as though she can still feel Tamsin's fingers carding through every strand, the sound of running water when the bleach finally turns the black of her hair into a light, light brown.
The blue that stains stays.
She opens her duffle bag, the one with the PPDC insignia she has taken across the world and back, and sits the teddy bear on the mantle above the headboard of her bed.
.
xxxiii.
She doesn't need to ask; there is only one story to this.
The toy bear belongs to Luna Pentecost.
.
xxxiv.
She wins it for her in a carnival.
Well, it's more like Tamsin pushes the air rifle into Stacker's hands and nudges him with an elbow to the ribs until he agrees with a roll of his eyes. He makes the first shot, misses the metal cans by a fraction but a fraction nonetheless. Tamsin lets out a laugh, and it's Luna's turn to nudge her elbow into Tamsin's side.
She flashes her a grin that is all teeth, and takes the second shot.
When Tamsin misses, it is Stacker who laughs.
"Let me show the two of you how it's done."
Luna winks as she takes the air rifle from Tamsin, her hands brushing over hers and it's almost electric. When Luna is sure that they are both looking right at her, she takes the third and final shot.
The metal can tumbles from its place.
.
xxxv.
When he turns the decision over to Mako, like Tam asked that he does, she bows deeply.
"Gipsy," she tells him with a slow smile that unfolds from the corner of her mouth. She turns the proposal report for the Jaeger Restoration Project over in her hands. "Mark III Jaeger Gipsy Danger will do just fine."
Stacker gives her a nod.
.
xxxvi.
She stands at Gipsy Danger's foot, and she feels like a child in the face of the giant machine once more. She presses her palm against the metal, scratched up paint and looks up to see the early stages of their technicians installing her nuclear heart just right.
She's never had a Jaeger to call her own.
But maybe this, when it's done, will be something of the sort. She turns back to the blueprints laid out, turns to Tendo leaning against the edge of the equipment table, chewing on the end of his pencil as he makes another calculation on the side.
.
xxxvii.
Their lips taste of cotton candy.
When Luna tries to hand off the teddy bear she wins to Tamsin, the girl with the red hair and the bright green eyes just leans down to press a kiss on the crown of the toy's head with a smack of her lips.
"You can keep it, Luna."
Stacker steals another bite of the cotton candy he ends up holding on to, and it is much too sweet. But his smile doesn't go away when he sees Tam taking his sister's hand in the crowd, and doesn't let go.
He follows, at a leisurely pace.
.
xxxviii.
They lay flowers on her grave.
Mako is in a black dress that falls just above her knees and shoes that hurt the soles of her feet. The soil is freshly turned, and the smell of cut grass is heady in the gentle slopes of the Pan-Pacific Memorial Cemetery. Sensei stands at her side in his dress blues.
The bouquets sit by the stone, and the two of them stand there a little while longer.
"Naomi Sokolov should be here soon, sensei."
And it's not Stacker Pentecost that nods, but the Marshal of the Anchorage Shatterdome as he turns to go. Mako stays, just another moment longer.
When he turns his head back to catch one last glimpse of Tamsin's grave, Mako's entire head of hair glows blue beneath the Hawaiian sun. His footsteps fall steady.
.
xcix.
The move to the Hong Kong Shatterdome is simple.
The road to bringing washed-out pilot Raleigh Becket back is too.
What isn't simple is the way he falls for her. Tripwires on the Kwoon mats, heavy scent of the rain in the air, she tells him to watch out, he makes that face to mimic hers. When she sends him sprawling, he throws her for a loop instead.
Raleigh Becket is not what she expects, and he's not better or worse, just different.
So damn different that when she's in his head, and vice versa. They hold each other up the same way they drag each other down. Mako sees stars, wonders about what could be out there, looking to a completely different direction until the Kaiju keep coming. Raleigh's memories feed into her own until she is standing in debris, the ground still shaking beneath her feet.
She has her shoe cradled in her hands, soft snow falling from the sky.
The Marshal sends her out despite his better judgment.
Stacker lets her go only because she needs to slay a dragon of her own.
.
xl.
1 drop, 2 kills.
Though that is a feat all on its own, the Kaiju keep coming. The signatures are rising, the world is ending. Stacker looks at his old friend and his broken arm, and that is not resolve but understanding that washes over him. He's seen himself in his little girl, and there is little doubt that Mako sees herself in Chuck Hansen. They all have the same fire, and if it's not anger then it's the desperation to protect what remains.
The wave is calm.
And the drive suit is a little tighter than he remembers.
He tells her how proud he is of her.
.
xli.
He still remembers that first time he sees the blue in her hair.
Indignation stopping short when he noticed Tamsin stepping out of the bathroom behind Mako, her fingertips stained bright blue. Tam grins, and it's like she has Luna's hand in her own, the taste of cotton candy on her tongue—
He puts a hand on her shoulder.
.
xlii.
It is in 2016 that he turns from Ranger to Marshal, and it is in 2025 that he suits up, one last time. They both know the score when she tilts her head up to see his face. Her eyes are red-rimmed and he wishes a great deal of things for his little girl.
"But if I'm going to do this," he tells her without pause, smile faint but bravado hard in his voice, "I need you to protect me."
.
xliii.
She suits up for the last time.
.
xliv.
「せんせい，愛してます。」
.
xlv.
He clears a path for her, and she takes another step on the ocean floor in his name.
With the blast behind her and the drift silence in her head, she drops into the rift that remains open as they pass. The fall is easy. Anyone can fall.
And when she falls into the breach, Gipsy's sword gleams as she slices through Kaiju flesh.
.
xlvi.
She is in a dress, the same colour as her drive suit, when she lays down flowers over her sensei's grave. The Pan-Pacific Memorial Cemetery has the same slopes, the same perfectly-trimmed grass, the skies a backdrop of bright blue that reminds her nothing of Kaiju blood.
(It reminds her of her coat, the one she lost years ago, the one Ranger Pentecost found her in among the rubble and the debris of Tokyo.)
Her eyes are wet and her shoulders shake.
There is no one to take her hand.
.
xlvii.
Can you do that—?
She nods, and she doesn't stop.
.
xlviii.
"Mako."
She spins around, the world coming into focus around her.
It breaks in and out of itself, him swinging her on to his shoulders, laughter in the air. There are snatches of her childhood, tatami mats beneath her feet. A bamboo blade clutched too tight in her small hand.
There are a handful of his memories to match her own.
There is revenge in his heart, flames curling into smoke into the black Tottenham skies. The prick of black ink into his skin, the crack of her bō over the mats aching the palm of her hands. Holding on too tight, his cellphone ringing in a nondescript London bar as he hears his sister's voice for the last time.
She turns around, and sees a man, a silhouette much like Coyote's own.
"You're here, sensei."
Mako breathes out when Stacker draws her into a hug.
"I'm always here."
.
xlix.
The drift is silence.
And he takes nothing into it.
But for her, he will bring the world.
.
l.
…You'll always find me in the drift…
.
li.
Her sensei's last words are an imprint made into her head, his promise fulfilled time and time again. It is with mutual respect that Stacker Pentecost keeps his words to a little girl that was once small enough to sit on his shoulders, and it is with luck that Stacker Pentecost sees her all grown up to pick up a sword too many times the size of her entire body.
She chases the RABITs, one after another after another until the soles of her feet hurt. She chases them down and relives them until all she can see is memory upon memory of a time long gone. She treats them like metal, forged and folded next to her nuclear heart. She keeps little Mori Mako's red shoe next to the teddy bear on the mantle above the headboard of her bed.
When the simulator finally powers down around her, there are tears in her eyes.
Mako disconnects from the pons, extracts herself completely from the drift where she finds the man that once found her. In the dark of the simulator pods, she stands there for a moment longer.
She smiles to herself because this is the new world, the one a man named Stacker Pentecost slays for her.
XXX Kuro