THE PICTURE

I suppose every newsroom has the guy who wants to pretend he's a hard-as-nails throwback to the archetypical 1950s reporter. Ours is a guy named Joshua Johnson. Unfortunately he's the boss.

"Peters!" Johnson barked at me. Since he's the editor, he gets to bark all he wants.

"What's up, boss?" I asked warily.

"Those two kids... the pilots. I want you to get me The Picture of them."

I blinked in surprise. I could actually hear how he had capitalized "The Picture".

Of course, he didn't have to explain who 'those two kids' were. They're insanely famous. I guess that's inevitable when you've saved the world.

"What kind of a picture are you talking about?" I asked slowly. I already suspected I wasn't going to like the answer.

"Oh for Pete's sake!" he snarled disgustedly. "Not 'a picture'. Any idiot can take 'a picture' - just look at you! I want 'The Picture'. I want a shot of those two canoodling!"

For a moment, I really couldn't think of anything to say. Off in the corner, one of our foreign interns began tapping on his keyboard. I'm willing to bet he was trying to look up 'canoodling'.

Billy Prescott, one of our best reporters, almost saved me. "Canoodling?" he repeated in disbelief. "Are you kidding me, Chief? Who the hell uses a word like that? For that matter, is it even a word?"

"Shut up, Prescott," Johnson growled at him. Then he turned back to me.

"Those two pilots are the biggest thing since we first sent Jaegers out to fight Kaiju," he lectured - he likes to lecture. "They're the pilots who came back from that mission into the Breach. They're the ones who closed the Breach. They're the ones who saved the world. And everyone loves them for it! But we just spent the last week doing story after story about them, the mission, the Jaegers, and the Kaiju. It's getting stale and sooner or later the readers are going to get bored. So give me some romance."

I couldn't resist, "Sorry, boss, but you're just not my type."

Johnson gave me an odd look as he processed what I'd said. Prescott started laughing.

"Okay, wise-ass," Johnson growled in my direction. "You just bought yourself a permanent assignment. From now on, where those pilots go, you go. I expect a steady stream of publishable pics - the usual hero-worship stuff. And I expect you to get The Picture."

I started getting mad. "Look, boss, I'm a journalist, not a papparazi. What if they aren't involved?"

He laughed, "After what they went through? Kid, you got a lot to learn about people! Now get on the first plane to Hong Kong. And don't come back until you have The Picture!"

Prescott was still laughing as I stalked out the door.

Being a journalist still has some perks. I hitched a ride to Hong Kong on a Pan Pacific Defense Corps transport. Then I became a full-time stalker.

The level of publicity that Becket and Mori attracted was crazy. They couldn't go anywhere or do anything without gathering a huge crowd. And the photographers - professional journalists, paparazzi, and amateurs alike - were absolutely ridiculous. I was more than a little disgusted to be one of them. But within hours after arriving, I knew that I wasn't the only photographer with a needy editor.

"It's the fucking Holy Grail of modern-day photojournalism," sighed a crusty Australian photographer. We were having a beer in a strip-club that was located just off the docks. "Everyone wants the world's most famous Jaeger pilots to be more than just friends. Unfortunately, our two principals aren't cooperating. They're strictly business in public."

I shook my head, "I suppose I understand why. Happy endings, true love, the handsome prince, and the beautiful princess are a part of human nature, but still..."

I paused.

"But still?" my friend asked.

I looked deep into the bottom of my glass. "I got my job after the first Kaiju attack. In San Francisco. I was just a guy with a camera, but I got a lot of good pictures and was hired on as a professional."

My friend nodded, "I remember. Those pictures you got K-Day - especially when Trespasser blew through that hospital... They meant something. It told people just what the hell was going on. Just how much trouble we were in."

Then he sighed and drained his glass, "They say the Kaiju saved journalism. But the war is over and things are going back to what they once were. Take my word for it, soon we'll be back to reporting of the semi-clothed antics of harlot rock stars."

I didn't respond. He was right.

At first, Mako and Raleigh spent a lot of time as the star witnesses at official briefings - either for the military brass or with civilian bureaucrats and politicians. I went to every meeting that I was allowed to attend. Shockingly, the two of them didn't start necking while giving testimony. Instead, they were clear, concise, and professional. Although I have to admit that Beckett's barely restrained rage when they asked him his opinion about the wall project was a sight to see.

Days passed. And the photograph that every hopeless romantic on Earth wanted to see failed to materialize. Which was actually fine by me.

Johnson took to hassling every time we talked on the phone.

"Where's The Picture?" he said indistinctly. As near as I can tell he was eating a sandwhich while talking to me.

"There's no such thing," I said - biting back a more angry response.

"Yes, there is. Keep looking," he replied complacently.

"Look, chief, what makes you so sure they're involved?" I asked plaintively.

"When the choppers picked them out the ocean, they were hugging."

"Oh, for... Look, boss, they had just survived multiple Kaiju attacks, a nuclear weapon blast, and had used their own Jaeger for a fusion bomb! And somehow, against all odds, got out of that alive! Hugging is a pretty reasonable reaction."

Johnson sighed at the depths of my simple-mindedness, "Keep sniffing around, Peters. Despite your attitude, you're actually moderately competent at what you do. Get me The Picture."

Then came the funerals. They were state events, given in Sydney, Beijing, London, and Moscow. The crowds attending them numbered in the millions.

I hate photographing funerals. No matter how respectful you try to be, there's always the feeling that you're putting people on display when they're most vulnerable. At all of the services, Mako and Raleigh stood next to one another in full uniform, doing their best to be stoic warriors.

They mostly succeeded, but Mako had a tough time at Marshal Pentecost's funeral. I got an award for a shot with a telephoto lens. I caught the afternoon light at just the right angle and showed a pair of tears trailing down her otherwise expressionless face.

Marshall Hanson looked like hell at his son's funeral. At first glance, he seemed quietly composed, but you could see what he was going through in his eyes. His eyes were a thousand years old.

The parents of the Wei triplets held hands thoughout the service and they had the look that parents tend to have at funerals. Uncomprehending. Lost. Trying to figure out why they were still here while their children were gone. They just stared out at nothing.

And who the hell knew that Kaidonovsky's had kids? I hated that funeral. The youngest boy obviously didn't know what was going on. He kept looking around for his parents.

I suppose that Becket handled the funerals the best. But I guess his brother's death had put some scar-tissue on his soul.

Of course, it wasn't a situation that lent itself to The Picture.

Inevitably, their homelands called our world's most famous soldiers home.

First up was a visit to Japan and an audience with the Emperor. The audience was private, but there were plenty of more public events. I got photos aplenty of Mako and Raleigh meeting with pompous politicians, tearfully grateful citizens, and worshipful children. They were polite and restrained throughout the trip, but I got a great shot of the two of them grinning like loons when a bunch of schoolkids gave them a hand-made Gipsy Danger model.

America was next. The meeting with the President was public and heavily staged, but I think Mako and Raleigh were genuinely moved when a retired Jaeger pilot - crippled and scarred from the loss of his Mark II in a fight off the Farallon Islands - shook their hands. A guy from a European news service got the best shot of that one.

The Picture continued to remain elusive.

Back in Hong Kong, I got photos of them in the harbor, visiting the salvage operations of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon and giving advice to the salvagers. Again, they were strictly professional - obviously friends, but nothing more.

"The stuff you're sending me is tolerable," Johnson blustered at me over the phone - he can never be bothered to actually compliment anyone's work. "But where the hell is The Picture?"

"Listen, boss," I said testily. "I've been watching those two for weeks. They aren't an item. Do you get that? Nothing, nada, zip. They're friends and colleagues. They work together and the like each other. Nothing more."

Johnson laughed at me and hung up in my ear.

I hate being wrong. I really hate being wrong where Johnson is concerned.

It was a rainy day at the Hong Kong Shatterdome - about a month after the closing of the Breach. Mako and Raleigh were standing together, on the edge of helipad, gazing out to sea. I happened to be passing by when, for some reason I can't name, I snapped a shot of them. I didn't even bother to dig out my real camera. I was talking to someone on my cellphone, saw the two of them together, and I took a quick, low-quality, rain-streaked picture with my phone. It was just a reaction on my part. If you take photographs long enough, you sometimes don't even think about the shot you're taking.

Raleigh was holding an umbrella - Mako's umbrella - over them. They were standing close together. Maybe they were standing closer than was necessary. Perhaps that was what triggered my instinct to take a picture. It was an okay shot considering that I'd used a phone, but it wasn't exactly professional quality.

It wasn't until the next day that I took a second look at the photo, and realized that if you looked carefully you could see that Mako and Raleigh were holding hands. And the smile they exchanged as they looked at one another...

I had it. I had The Picture. And to the right people - like Johnson - it was worth a lot of money.

So I sat in my hotel room, drinking whiskey and staring at The Picture on my laptop. Another window showed the day's news. An actress I'd never heard of was involved in a messy divorce with an actor I'd only sort of heard of. And some members of a boy band had been busted for drug possession. And a particularly stupid politician had been caught up in an online sexting scandal.

I'm serious. That was the news.

I remembered San Francisco and the rescue crews, the soldiers, and the just-plain civilians frantically digging through the wreckage of that hospital. I remembered that crippled American Jeager pilot, his wrecked face only able to half-smile as he shook Raleigh's hand. I remembered Mako's tears as she said her last goodbye to her adopted father.

I remembered the broken families at those empty-casket and closed-casket funerals.

That was when I knew it was time to find a new line of work.

So I deleted The Picture.