At the other end of a broken bridge between two dimensions, those responsible for creating the kaiju, those that survived the blast from Gipsy Danger, conversed with one another. They spoke of plans, of how to proceed, how to survive and exact revenge. The world known as Earth bit back when they sunk their teeth into the planet's crust like no other had. They were denied what belonged to them but they refused to leave without it.

They saw little hope for anything except to slowly rebuild the tunnel on their own which could take almost more cycles than they cared to waste. Their builders began construction as the Precursors gathered up the remaining kaiju on the wasteland that was their most recently conquered and scavenged planet, with the intention of slaughtering their failed creations.

When they raised their pointed weapons to their throats, they heard the kaiju wail in unison. They cried about a human they all saw in their heads, just behind their eyeballs like his image was burned there forever. The Precursors paused, lowering their weapons, chattering to each other in an unknown language about a link. Whoever plagued the thoughts of the kaiju could act as a link between their dimension and the one they desired to reach.

They spared the kaiju, took them and plugged into their brains to see his face. And saw him they did. A small man with dark hair and images of their kaiju plastered colorfully on his arms. His body may have been small, but the kaiju also knew of his mind and that was a large treasure. He knew of the kaiju, the Precursors, and of the tunnel itself, all of which lent sparks of excitement to a new idea.

One year after the end of the kaiju war, Newton and Hermann made themselves a home at an apartment in Berlin. They'd found the place not long after the Shatterdome in Hong Kong closed and they transformed it into something of a haven where they felt comfortable.

The thought crossed their minds as Newton hung up his inflatable Jaeger and Hermann his chalkboard that perhaps they shouldn't share a space as they had in a lab for ten years. Yet, they found that time apart caused a pull in their minds, like a long piece of string wrapped around their brains that was connected to the other person. The greater the distance, the harder the pull. Raleigh informed them it was a side effect of Drifting.

They could've lived apart but they saw no reason to when it was ingrained in them for so long. They worked well together despite the arguments and their home life turned out to be no different. They kept their own spaces within the two-bedroom apartment but tended to clash in those they shared like the kitchen and the living area. However, it never became anything that couldn't be solved with a few hours of silence and quiet apologies.

"You know, there's a reason this kitchen is big enough for two people," Hermann complained as Newton invaded his personal space so that they both crowded around a black granite counter atop dark wooden cabinets.

Newton, who stood shirtless, tattoos exposed, with a tired expression, held a bowl full of dry cereal in one hand and reached out for the gallon of milk on the counter with the other. Hermann looked up from spreading jam on his toast and promptly slapped the hand away.

"Come on, man," he whined. "I need the milk too."

"Du bist so ein Kind," Hermann grumbled under his breath, slipping seamlessly into a German accent. You're such a child.

"Yeah, same to you!"

He gave up and walked out of the white tile floored room to the adjoining one with stained wood floors. The room was small with only a rectangular dining table in the center and a single chair on each side. It was well lit with three windows set into the white walls to which Hermann had already opened the curtains just as he had previously showered and dressed.

Newton dragged out the chair closest to him and plopped into the cushioned seat, pulling it back toward the table where he set down his bowl of dry cereal and useless spoon. He glared at the colorful loops of grain and sugar and popped one into his mouth, munching on it bitterly. A disgruntled expression settled on his face until Hermann joined him, taking a couple of trips to set down his breakfast, before he silently placed the milk in front of him. Newton brightened instantly.

"Thanks, dude!" Newton said, pouring the liquid over the cereal before greedily digging in.

"Don't call me dude," Hermann replied, not bothering to look over at Newton as he sipped his steaming cup of tea.

They ate breakfast in relative silence, Newton smiling like an appeased child as he practically inhaled the sugary soup.

"So, what are we doing today?" Newton asked with a full mouth.

Hermann sighed as he cut into his poached eggs. "We're just going into the lab to run some tests on a new shipment of salvaged kaiju parts."

"A new shipment? From where?" Newton said, leaning back in his chair as his brows knitted together.

"Where do you think?" Hermann said, raising an eyebrow.

Newton thought on it and a memory arose from his time in Hong Kong, specifically of the vast collection of one Hannibal Chau. "The black market? Really?"

"Where else are we supposed to get any testing material when scavengers always pick up the scraps first?" Hermann said.

Newton shrugged. He understood the ends even if the means were illegal. All he cared about was being able to test on kaiju again, though the purpose was completely different. Before, they'd hoped to learn from them in order to stop them. Their new goal was to study them to learn about other dimensions, specifically the one they emerged from.

Newton quickly finished his breakfast and carelessly dropped the bowl into the sink before he showered and dressed in his white shirt and skinny black tie. He never bothered to update his work clothes because they felt comfortable and they looked pretty good on him, in his opinion. He threw on his shoes and leather jacket as Hermann rested his cane beside the door before pulling on his fluffy parka.

"I still can't believe you spent our money on that preposterous machine," Hermann grumbled as they stepped out of their front door, Newton grabbing a set of keys on the way out.

"It's not preposterous, it's cool," Newton countered. "And it'll pay itself off with the gas money we save."

They walked out onto their short, paved driveway where a shiny, black Harley Davidson sat with two helmets, one on the seat and the other on the right handlebar.

"I think I would've rather paid the extra money for something with four wheels," Hermann said, frowning at the motorcycle.

"What, like an ATV?"

Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose before hobbling forward, leaving Newton to lock up the apartment. Once the door was securely locked, he hopped over to the bike and shoved the black, visored helmet onto his head. He reached his hand out to Hermann who forked over his cane and then he snapped it into place on the mount he had installed along the side of it.

Newton threw his leg over the bike and made himself comfortable on the seat before lifting the kickstand, keeping it balanced with his feet. Hermann placed a hand instinctively on Newton's shoulder as he moved his leg over, taking a little bit longer to sit down, fitting himself against Newton's body.

"This is so undignified," Hermann said, wrapping his arms around Newton's waist.

Newton laughed. "You know you like it."

Hermann began to protest but Newton turned the key in the ignition to drown him out. He revved the engine a few times before pulling out onto the road. Hermann's grip around Newton tightened as they sped down the streets, heading toward the local Shatterdome. The Berlin Shatterdome, like a few others, remained open solely for research purposes, all of the Jaeger's having been destroyed or shut down a year earlier.

The drive wasn't long and soon they pulled into the parking lot bustling with people carrying shipping containers. Newton had to dodge a few people before settling in his reserved parking space. He waited until Hermann climbed off the bike before putting up the kickstand and shoving the keys in his pocket. They left their helmets on the motorcycle and looked around at everyone moving back and forth, transporting crates on dollies and by hand.

"How much did they get off the black market?" Newton wondered, awe creeping into his tone.

"This can't all be Kaiju parts," Hermann said, mostly to himself.

Newton looked at Hermann and shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

He unclipped Hermann's cane from the bike and handed it to him before they walked off toward the elevator entrance. They rode down with a few of the box carriers and Newton attempted to check the package labels to see what they were. His technique was so far from discreet that Hermann smacked him in the leg with the cane when he moved to look over one of worker's shoulders.

"Ow!" he hissed, moving back to stand next to Hermann.

"Stop that. It's not like we won't know soon enough," Hermann chastised at a raised whisper.

Newton glared at him, but it didn't last long. His gaze softened and he forgave just as the elevator doors opened to the ground floor of the Shatterdome. Everyone swiftly exited and walked off in separate directions, Newton and Hermann keeping straight while the carriers veered to the right toward the open floor where the discontinued Jaeger's stood on display.

By instinct, Newton slowed his pace so that Hermann could keep up. It was an action he'd grown accustomed to after years of working with him and it occurred even more naturally after their time in the Drift. Newton even started to notice times where Hermann walked like he didn't need a cane, as if his pace mimicked Newton's.

They soon reached the rusted metal door of their lab that was carelessly thrown open, crates stacked just inside. He heard Hermann huff to his right, clearly frustrated at the intrusion. He walked around Newton and into the large space, much larger than their old lab. They received an upgrade for being a part of the team that saved the world, one that they both were grateful for as it caused them to butt heads a little less.

Newton followed closely behind, seeing all of the boxes placed everywhere on both sides of the room. Everything else still seemed to be in place, though, as Newton checked his action figures and the testing equipment he left out from the day before. Hermann muttered angrily to himself as he shifted a table slightly to the right.

"Everything looks fine, Hermann. No one touched anything," Newton said, leaning his lower back and hands against a metal table.

"Yes, well, they still could've waited for our authorization," Hermann replied, poking at one of the wooden boxes with his cane.

"Something tells me this goes far over our heads."

Newton grabbed a blade from a nearby table and walked over to Hermann, quickly prying open the top of the crate to find a sea of packing material. Hermann set his cane aside and dug through it all until he pulled out a glass cube filled with liquid that held a large eye floating in its center. Newton grabbed it from him and set it down on one of his tables before opening the one beneath it which held a sizable skin sample. The huge crate on the bottom contained a well-preserved piece of a secondary brain.

"It's a good thing we have a lot more room. We would've been fucked in the old lab," Newton said, crossing his arms.

"Language, Newton! We've discussed this."

"Tch, what are you, my mom? We're both adults."

"Some more than others," Hermann said, shooting him a pointed look. Newton stuck his tongue out at him when he turned his back.

They cleared the two smaller crates out of the lab, leaving the brain until the lab assistants arrived to help them lift it. They instead focused on what they'd already extracted, Newton more so than Hermann. Hermann, with his love and faith in numbers, spent months using what knowledge he had gleaned from the Breach, the throat, and the genetic makeup of the kaiju to calculate what the other dimension might look like, what elements it was comprised of.

Newton always preferred the hands on approach to science, getting elbow deep in kaiju guts, studying samples, doing spur of the moment experiments on mere hunches. More often than not, his results ended up wrong or inconclusive, but the moments where he proved himself correct in spite of the disbelief around him kept him moving forward.

They spent the day doing exactly that, both concentrating on what they did best while a few assistants in lab coats unpacked all of the crates, placing everything according to Hermann's shouted instructions. Newton couldn't help but laugh quietly to himself at the fear he saw in their eyes, like Hermann was the strict disciplinarian parent. They couldn't see the soft heart beneath the thick, steel shell like he could.

As the thought crossed his mind, he barely noticed that he was staring at Hermann as he navigated his chalkboards with the skill of a choreographed dance over the eye piece of his microscope. A cough at his ear startled him and his whipped his head to the side to see a young woman, no more than twenty-five, standing there, looking apologetic. She held up a container that was full of ammonia for a skin parasite.

"Sorry to bother you, Dr. Geiszler," she began nervously, her British accent thickening.

"Please, call me Newt," he said, turning toward her in his rolling desk chair.

She appeared taken aback, though it wasn't the first time he'd made the request. All of the assistants seemed too intimidated to take him at his word.

"Um, you said you wanted to run some tests on a parasite next?" she said, completely disregarding what he said. "Dr. Gottlieb told me to leave this with you."

"Yes, thank you, Anna," he said with a reassuring smile. "Just set it on that table over there. Wherever there's room. You can just push stuff aside if you need to make room."

She nodded and scurried away, setting the case on the floor for a moment to move some beakers out of the way.

"It's like you put the fear of God into these poor kids, Hermann," Newton said, returning to the small skin sample on his slide.

"Don't call me that outside of the apartment," he snapped. "And these kids could stand to learn some respect."

Newton shook his head, an amused smile on his face. "They're plenty respectful. You're just a power hungry madman."

Hermann turned and glared at him, causing him to brighten his smile. His frown deepened into a scowl as he returned to his calculations, distinctly muttering to himself in German out of anger.

"Ich hab das gehört!" Newton shouted. I heard that!

They concentrated back on their work, allowing themselves to be consumed by it as the hours flew by. The moment that the silence settled unnervingly in Newton's ears is when he finally noticed how much time passed. He looked up from the dissected parasite to Hermann, who sat in a chair, staring hard at his calculations like an art critic. He packed up the parasite in its ammonia filled case so it wouldn't decompose overnight before approaching him.

"Hey, Hermann, I think it's probably time to go."

"Hm?" he replied absently.

"I think we're the last two people still here," he said, crouching down next to him. "This stuff can wait 'til you get some sleep."

"You go, I need to stay," Hermann said without looking at him.

"Do not make me carry you because I will." Hermann finally looked at him, horror creeping over his face. "Yeah, I'm talking bridal style, Herm."

He sighed. "Fine. Give me my cane."

After the drive home, they both wearily stepped into their apartment, locking the door behind them. Newton yawned, tossing the keys in his hand onto one of the kitchen counters before walking down the wide hallway. He passed the open doorway to the living area, the bathroom, until he reached the last door on the left. An old, crinkled Pan Pacific propaganda poster featuring a kaiju was taped to it, claiming it as his and, once on the other side, he removed his clothes, leaving them in a pile on the pale blue carpet.

He stood in a white cotton undershirt and boxers, stretching and yawning once more, before he set his glasses down on his cluttered end table, a large, gutted guitar amplifier from his days in the Black Velvet Rabbits. He crawled into bed, under the covers, and looked up at the inflatable Jaeger and kaiju facing off as they hung from his ceiling. A few minutes later, as his eyes closed, he passed out from exhaustion, allowing darkness to overcome him.

His consciousness remained peacefully suspended in the black nothingness for a while, a calm dreamless sleep, until a jolt hit his brain. The blackness wavered, like a television shifting in and out of static, until a series of images overloaded his mind like a sudden volcanic eruption. Red, a sea of red, like a deep sunset or how Newton used to imagined what the apocalypse might look like. An explosion. Screaming. Pain and anger. It wracked his body as if he were experiencing it all first hand. He saw himself through the eyes of someone else and he saw kaiju. They cried out and the noise felt like drills in his eardrums.

A sharp pain shot through his throat as his body started to shake. The rush of images paused and shattered and his eyes fluttered open to a dark room. A loud sound reached his ears and a few seconds passed before he realized he was screaming. He stopped, feeling the raw burn in his throat, and looked up into the wide, worried eyes of Hermann.

Hermann finally stopped shaking him and let him go before sitting back on the bed and rubbing his face with his hands. When he pulled his hands away, he looked disapproving again, as if everything that just happened was something Newton did on purpose. Newton stole a deep, greedy breath to fill his deprived lungs and cool his throat. His shirt was plastered to his body with sweat that left a sheen on his arms and his head pounded like he drank an entire liquor store.

"Hermann, what happened?" Newton said, his voice cracking and raspy. He pushed his weakened body up into a sitting position and his head exploded from the movement.

"What happened!?" he said incredulously. "You were crying out and seizing in your sleep. How many times am I going to have to find you like this?"

Newton didn't know what to think but it explained how he felt. He absent-mindedly licked his lips and tasted something wet and coppery. He reached up and touched his face beneath his nose before pulling it away to look down at his blood soaked fingers.

"Ugh," he groaned. "Everything hurts, dude."

Hermann stood and walked out of the room for a moment, returning with a dampened cloth. He sat down on the bed and placed his free hand under Newton's chin to make him look up. Newton grimaced at the gesture but he also leaned into the touch as Hermann carefully wiped the blood away.

"Do you have any idea what could've caused this type of reaction?" Hermann asked, pulling his hands away after the last of the blood was gone.

A part of Newton didn't want the touch to stop. "I dunno. I was having some funky dreams," he said, holding his pounding head to keep it from falling apart.

"Dreams? You think dreams caused this?"

Pieces of his nightmare swam back into his head, the images blurred. He closed his eyes tightly as if surrounding them in darkness might clear them up. They felt both new and familiar and he concentrated on it until it hit him why.

"The Drift," he said, opening his eyes to look at Hermann.

"What?"

"My dream, it felt like being in the Drift," he clarified.

Hermann stared at him for a long moment before standing and exiting the room once more. He returned a few minutes later after dropping off the bloody cloth with a small, rectangular item in his left hand. He held it out to Newton who accepted it. It was a silver voice recorder.

"Is this mine? I've been looking everywhere for this!"

"Now is not the time!" Hermann interrupted. "Press record and tell me everything you remember."

He glared at Hermann for a few seconds before actually doing what he said. He waited to gather what thoughts about it he could remember and hit the record button. "Like I said before hitting record, the dream I had reminded me of my previous experiences in the Drift. It was like a series of images and feelings overwhelming my brain."

"Anything specific?" Hermann asked, sitting in a small armchair against a wall off to Newton's right.

"I remember a lot of screaming."

"Yes, that was you," Hermann said.

"Not my screaming, Hermann," Newton snapped. "It was… inhuman. And I felt pain and I remember an explosion and the color red. And kaiju. The kaiju were screaming too."

"Newton," Hermann began softly, like a parent breaking news to a child. Newton already felt indignant before he even began to speak. "Are you sure this isn't a case of post-traumatic stress?"

"Yes! I'm very sure," Newton said with a pointed look. He threw the covers off and moved so that he sat comfortably on the edge of the bed. "PTSD doesn't manifest like this. My whole body hurts. I woke up with a nose bleed. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if my brain started leaking out of my ears."

"It was merely a suggestion," Hermann said, crossing his arms.

A biting remark rolled around on his tongue but he held it back. He knew Hermann was simply trying to eliminate more probable causes and PTSD did make sense with what they both had experienced. Newton sighed, rubbing his forehead as pain pulsated against his skull. He tried to remember more about the dream but the images began to fade.

"I don't think I can remember anything else," he said, stopping the recording. "Do we have any aspirin or a vicodin?"

Hermann nodded with understanding as he stood up with help from the cane in his right hand. "Lay back and rest. You'll need it if you feel as bad as you say."

He did as told, pushing the damp sheet away from him as he lay uncovered on his bed. He looked over to his amp end table at the red numbers on his digital clock. A little after three in the morning. Exhaustion swept over him as if he hadn't slept at all and he almost fell back asleep before Hermann returned. When he did, he had Newton sit up again before handing him the pills and glass of water.

"Thank you," Newton said in a grateful breath.

He popped both pills in his mouth and drained the glass, the water soothing the soreness he felt. Hermann grabbed the glass and the voice recorder from him before settling into the armchair he sat in earlier. "I'll be staying here until morning. For research purposes," he added. "I want to be present when it begins if it occurs again. The more information, the better chance we have of discovering the source of the problem."

"Dude, I dunno if I can sleep with you watching me. That's a little creepy," Newton said, lying back down.

Hermann shot him one of his famous annoyed college professor looks and Newton held up his hands in surrender before turning away from him to sleep. He sprawled out on the bed, boxers riding up so that the tattoos on his thighs showed. Rather than feel the chill of having eyes on him while he tried to sleep, he felt oddly comforted knowing Hermann was there if he needed him. He hoped that the medication he ingested would soon curb the pain before he allowed his fatigue to overpower him and lull him into unconsciousness.