The Castle and the Enclave 3/? (Pacific Rim crossover)
Authors: khilari and persephone_kore
Summary: Fusion-type crossover with Pacific Rim, near-future setting. When Agatha turns eighteen, she joins the Jaeger program. Her family has been involved with it from the beginning, but she soon learns that's more complicated than she thought.
In this chapter, Jägers in Jaegers.
The first double event was bad, but the Kaiju went in opposite directions and while everybody was rattled and a bit below strength for a while, things seemed to go back to what passes for normal.
This time they erupt from the Rift and head off together. The Castle goes on alert, of course, but everyone breathes a cautious sigh of relief on realising they're headed straight toward the Enclave. Which is either really stupid of them or really smart, going right at the source of the defenders, but everybody's pretty sure the Enclave can handle it.
Agatha's still on edge as she watches the screens, though, and Zeetha grumbles at her a little about keeping her that way too. 'Pirates,' she says.
'Family,' Agatha counters. Not that she knows them. 'Anyway, a second double event is a pattern. The Kaiju are escalating.' She frowns. 'And I think something's wrong with their Jaegers.' She can't put her finger on it, and it could just be because they've never had to fight two Kaiju at once before and the monsters have been getting tougher anyway, but she feels like they ought to be doing more damage. The Castle sent the Enclave her plasma cannon redesigns, after all....
Commander Wulfenbach suddenly straightens, looking at her and back to the screen and then saying with explosive exasperation, as if he's said it before, as if this scene is familiar to him in a way it isn't to her, 'Your idiot genius relatives!'
'What?' Agatha asks, startled. The Jaegers fall back and to the side (one literally falls and flounders upright again in the water), and the artillery on the Enclave wall kicks in... except along one stretch, and the Kaiju head straight for it with the Jaegers in pursuit.
Tarvek winces. 'That must be why the Jaegers didn't spread out. They were trying to make up for a fortifications malfunction.’
'No,' says Agatha, bolt upright, fingers tense. 'They didn't fight hard enough to be defending their home when it's vulnerable.' They'd dodged too readily, they hadn't been thrown aside. 'What are they doing?' She grasps at hope. 'Testing a trap?'
Commander Wulfenbach points toward the hangar. 'Get ready to fly,' he says. 'They're probably trying to capture one.'
Agatha's jaw drops. Beyond him, on the viewscreen, the Kaiju trample the silent wall.
Zeetha's quivering with anticipation, like a hunting dog about to be let off the leash, so focussed on the present Agatha's not sure whether she's managing to ignore the fleeting memories or whether they're barely there, ghost impressions of a forgotten past. Drowning in Zeetha's focus could be as easy (she wants to run, stride straight out to sea, even though she knows the helicopters will get them there faster).
They still get updates during the flight. Accident or failed design, things are going poorly for the Enclave. They were prepared for a Kaiju getting into the town... sort of. The area immediately behind the broken portion of the wall is empty. They deploy weapons -- Tarvek says it looks like they're using tranquilizer harpoons -- and reinforced electrified nets. Things that should stun and immobilize the Kaiju, which might reflect capture plans or just the recognition that they really don't want Kaiju Blue running all over a populated area.
But the Kaiju don't stay down.
They land just outside the Enclave. The weapons on the wall are twitching, here and there, but they're not designed to point inwards. The nearest Kaiju has a long, sinewy body, more tree root than serpent, spiked and outsize claws digging into the ground. It shakes off an electric net, mobile spines along its back rattling. Codename: Nidhogg Agatha recalls. One of the Enclave Jaegers swings a clubbed tail at the centre of its back, trying to concuss the less protected secondary brain. The other, vaguely bear like, swipes at its head and dodges as its neck snakes out.
Guns slide from Queenie Melody's wrists, unfolding silver in the helicopters’ spotlights. Things tilt towards Agatha, like shifting weight from one foot to another, as Zeetha lets her take the lead. Agatha's the better shot. Zeetha copies her motions...no, there's enough distance between the hands that that wouldn't make the shot. Zeetha follows her thoughts, moving her own left arm as Agatha moves her right. The Kaiju whips around just as the lasers score across one hind leg, whipping it up with a grace that shouldn't be possible. They've barely scored it -- cauterising the wound as they made it. It flings itself around at them, all of it following its head like a snake strike.
'Retreat!' Zeetha yells and Agatha feels the emotions behind it (not running away, luring it back into the ocean (it won't follow they're not stupid) it might follow far enough.)
They back up for room to aim, fire again, step back. Estimating furiously, feigning weakness that they'd better hope isn't as real as the Enclave's. Nidhogg is lethally fast. They don't want to be outmaneuvered but Zeetha's confident they can win if they close with it away from the town. Agatha shares the feeling; the Kaiju are escalating in power but she designed Queenie Melody with that in mind.
The Kaiju flings itself at them and out past what's left of the wall. The bear Jaeger chases after; the other stops in the gap.
The bear Jaeger throws itself on Nidhogg's back, arms closing crushingly around its middle. The head whips back and Agatha fires. The blast hits the side of its head, turning one eye into a blackened mess and knocking it off course. It hits the side of the bear's head, not the middle, crushing the side of the cockpit in a shower of metal and glass. Agatha doesn't see any bodies.
The Kaiju flings itself away from the downed Jaeger and at Queenie, lashes up and around her arms to tie up the guns.
Zeetha grins.
They force their arms to spread.
Metal creaks.
The Kaiju's hide doesn’t rip open, but something inside it gives way, and it drops from their arms in weakened coils.
'Both Kaiju dead,' comes the radio report. 'Wait to be picked up.'
Agatha feels the burst of disappointment from Zeetha, even before the relief, that it's too late to help with the other battle now. For Agatha's part the relief is definitely winning, even as she finds herself grinning helplessly simply at having survived, at having taken down something like a force of nature.
Escape pods start to drift from the downed Jaeger, opening on the surface. The first is covered in something blue-purple when his escape pod opens and Agatha can't think what. As soon as the second escape pod opens -- and there's something stuck to this guy's head -- he swims over to the downed one, scrambles onto the raft and Agatha realises that the first one is injured as well as...whatever else is wrong with him. 'I'm going down there,' she says. Queenie Melody could scoop them out of the water, but she can't apply first aid.
'We'll both go,' says Zeetha. It's not like one of them could run a Jaeger by themselves (I bet you could (Zeetha laughs)).
They make Queenie crouch, extend a hand to give them a platform, and then they pull the headsets off together. Zeetha goes down first and Agatha follows her carefully. Queenie is cold and wet, slippery, Agatha wedges toes into her joints hard enough to bruise them, and winces when she reaches the bottom because she's probably going to have to swim. But two more pilots are in the water now and they push the injured one's raft towards her and Zeetha until it beaches on the hand.
Agatha can see them now. Her first thought is hypothermia, her second is mermaids from the odder sort of tales. Their skin is blueish, pulsating with light underneath, their teeth sharp in a way that is more shark than vampire. One of them has a jagged black horn rising from one side of his head, and their hands are almost claws. One of them, the only woman, has pale and slitted eyes, another yellow ones more luminous than his skin. 'Kaiju,' Zeetha hisses behind her and that is what they resemble. 'They do experiment on their pilots.'
'Only if ve let dem,' says the horned one, and Agatha can't tell if that's an accent or talking around fangs.
She swallows down her fear and steps toward the injured one, only for him to hold a claw up with a grimace. 'Iz toxic to hyu.'
'You bleed Kaiju Blue!' Agatha exclaims, recoiling.
'Not enuff to destroy a city,' says the pale-eyed one, pulling herself up onto Queenie's hand in one easy motion.
'I guess we should have brought hazmat suits,' Agatha says. They have them -- the need to get out of the Jaeger in contaminated water is always a possibility -- but Nidhogg didn't bleed much and they would have made it harder to climb. She feels rather ill. This is a horrifying thing to do, even to volunteers.
'I can get them,' Zeetha says, setting down the first-aid kit she carried. 'I'll radio the 'copter crews, too.' She bites her lip. 'Will you be all right until I get back?'
'I'll be fine,' Agatha says. These Kaiju-esque people are viscerally disturbing but if they're warning her off because their blood is toxic she hardly expects them to attack.
Zeetha sets off back up the arm. Agatha flips open a first-aid kit and takes out gloves and a face mask, then pushes it toward the Enclave pilots.
The pale-eyed one grabs it, dropping down to wrap a tourniquet around the bleeding arm of her co-pilot. The other two pull themselves out of the water to watch. 'Thenk hyu,' says the luminous-eyed one, giving Agatha a considering look. 'I iz Dimo.'
'Agatha,' she replies, sitting down on Queenie's palm. She hesitates minutely before adding, 'Heterodyne.'
They all stare at her for a moment and then the horned one grins, faint light spilling through the gaps between his teeth. 'Oh ho, hyu is the leedle cousin Master Faustus wanted to meet.' Master jars her. It's not a rank, it sounds either anachronistic or amoral. In the face of something like this, probably both.
It crosses her mind to wonder if she shouldn't have said anything, given her relatives' apparent lack of scruples -- but the Enclave has enough problems without adding anything as bizarre as trying to kidnap her. And even the injured pilot looks more cheerful. 'I guess so,' she says.
'Hy iz Oggie,' he adds. 'This is Jenka and Maxim.'
'Nice to meet you,' Agatha says. Good manners or not, this feels slightly inane, and she can't blame him for chuckling. 'Look, I've got to ask -- why do you seem to be partly Kaiju? Does it, um... help?'
'Ve is IJPs,' says Oggie proudly.
Jenka growls slightly, focus still on Maxim. 'No good leaving the explaining to hyu. Interchangeable Jaeger Pilots.'
'Uh-huh,' says Agatha, feeling that Jenka's explanation is only a little more informative. She looks at Dimo. 'Interchangeable? You seem distinct enough to me.' She purses her lips behind the mask. 'You can handle any Jaeger?' No, that was silly. It took some getting used to but changing Jaegers wasn't nearly as difficult as changing--
Her eyes widen.
Dimo's face splits into a sharky grin. 'Ve can all Drift vit each other. Handy, yah?'
Agatha waves her gloved hands. 'Incredible, but how does that relate to the physical modifications? Unless you're going to tell me the Kaiju are a hive mind!'
Dimo and Oggie both grin at her. 'Hyu is a schmot vun,' Oggie says happily. 'Master Faustus vill like hyu!'
Agatha stares at them in dismay, and this time not because of the word Master. 'That's how they're learning about us,' she says. 'They're not just sending stronger ones because they know what's failed -- they're getting a play-by-play of every fight.'
'Who is what?' Zeetha asked sharply, remarkably managing to climb the last of the way to them while both wearing and carrying a hazmat suit.
Agatha grabs the one Zeetha shoves at her. 'The Kaiju are a hive mind. And the Enclave -- the Heterodynes -- have known long enough to be using it in their Jaeger program.'
Zeetha grimaces. 'My Father's going to love this.'
At this point Maxim opens his eyes, blinking stickily, and declares deliriously to Zeetha, 'Hy luff hyu hair.'
They don't get anything else useful out of the IJPs, who all agree that Zeetha's dye job is magnificent, before the helicopters come.
When they get back, the IJPs are transferred first to the decontamination area and then, as they can't precisely be decontaminated, to a section of Gil's lab hastily converted for medical use. Agatha and Zeetha leave them discussing this situation with Gil, who will probably verify their claim to be reasonably nontoxic to their surroundings whenever they're not bleeding, and head straight for Commander Wulfenbach.
He's on a video call with a young man whose bleached hair shows dark roots and whose eyes show dark circles. The identifier at the base of the screen says Vanamonde Mekkhan, Enclave. Commander Wulfenbach appears to be trying to loom at the viewscreen. 'Contingent upon -- You're setting conditions?'
Vandamonde sighs. 'I said our ability to cooperate is contingent on your sending Agatha Heterodyne back here, Wulfenbach.' He stops to gulp from a coffee mug. 'The Heterodynes DNA-locked a lot of stuff and they're pretty much all out of commission. It’s like the Kaiju came right at them.’
Agatha barely stops to think before she steps up in range of the camera pickup. 'Well, send over all the information you can, for now. If I'm coming, I don't want to go in blind.'
'Of course,' says Vanamonde, looking relieved.
'Good.'
Commander Wulfenbach ends the call and turns to her, still looming. Somehow it's hard to be intimidated by him right now. She's fought a Kaiju, she's met the IJPs, she still has Zeetha beside her. 'I was not planning to commit you to that without further discussion,' he growls.
'I said if,' says Agatha.
'Not very convincingly,' he says. 'Unfortunately, we may need you there. If the Kaiju know how much they've damaged our defences....'
They sent word back about that at the first chance. 'We need to get them working again before any more turn up,' Agatha agrees. 'And it wouldn't hurt to find out what else they've been hiding.'
The prospect of getting his hands on the remaining Heterodyne secrets does a lot to reconcile Commander Wulfenbach to the plan. Agatha is in the air again the next morning, reviewing the data dump Vanamonde provided. Zeetha is with her, too, and they're bringing Queenie -- at least it guarantees one intact Jaeger on site, even if the local support structure is shaky. The IJPs sit clumped together in the helicopter; Maxim doesn't precisely look well, but he's unexpectedly recovered enough to travel.
'Ve heal fast,' he says when she asks about it. He starts to shrug and decides he's not that healed. 'Is a goot ting ve kill the Kaiju fast.'
'Usually,' Agatha says, thinking of their shaking off electrical stuns and sedatives, and Maxim grimaces agreement.
The Enclave is a place that wears its short history on a rather chaotic surface. It started as a Jaeger base, this one a series of domes radiating out from a larger central one along three prongs. Many of them are broken open like eggshells, now. As the coast became more dangerous the people along it who lacked the resources to move inland huddled closer to the base. It's a shanty town of corrugated iron, mismatched brick and tents, combined with glass and steel that indicate Heterodyne funding. Sometimes for larger, more imposing buildings, but sometimes it looks like they just replaced some random houses with something more durable. Around it, along the coast and curving considerably inland on both sides, is the wall, dominating everything almost more than the Jaeger base. The Enclave Heterodynes are pirates and black marketeers, renegades from the Jaeger program, but from here Agatha can see why people might throw in with them anyway.
As they fly lower they can see few dozen people standing around the helicopter pad, with their skin pulsing blue. The helicopter stops going down.
'Iz hokay,' says Dimo. 'Iz a velcome party.'
Someone -- Vanamonde, Agatha thinks, although she can't see much more than that he's blond -- turns and waves the IJPs away with large gestures. The fact that they amiably step back gives more reassurance than Dimo's words.
'You heard him,' says Zeetha. 'Let's go.'
They land and it is Vanamonde, stepping forward to formally welcome her while the IJPs are surged by their...friends? Co-pilots? It looks like a bit of a rough welcome, but it's both touching and deeply interesting -- it looks like their ability to Drift as a group isn't in spite of not caring about each other. Does the Kaiju blood increase their empathy towards one another? Does it, given that they're pirates, do so at the expense of decreasing it towards baseline humans? They've been friendly enough, Agatha tells herself, she shouldn't invent new reasons to be disturbed by them.
'We're really glad you could come,' Vanamonde says. The relief is in his voice, even shouting over the helicopter rotors and the celebratory IJPs. He gestures for her to walk with him, presumably somewhere quieter, and Agatha and Zeetha both follow. 'You're just in time, too. Master Faustus regained consciousness earlier this morning and I keep half expecting to hear he's bullied somebody into dragging him out of the hospital to the bloodlocks.'
Well, there's an attractive term, and not the one he used when talking to Commander Wulfenbach. To an outsider, Agatha thinks, and reminds herself that she's one too. She doesn't feel at home here, but she feels uneasily like it wants her to be. 'I take it he shouldn't be moving around.'
Vanamonde makes a face. 'He really shouldn't. I mean, yes, we won’t last long without the defences operational, but that would only help so much if they all died. Come prove to him he doesn't have to get up?'
The hospital is one of the domes in the Jaeger base. Still the base's original hospital, Agatha guesses, although it's expanded all the way down a wide corridor (now also lined with beds) and through another dome with a town to serve as well.
As Agatha approaches the second dome she can hear an argument going on in one of the screened off private rooms. 'I can't meet Bill's daughter for the first time wearing paper.'
'You are severely injured and will not be moving around in order to get dressed. Nor do I want to have to cut off several layers next time you break open a wound.'
'Cut! Those clothes were imported from Paris.'
'Then don't wear them in hospital.' A sigh, then in tones of one making a great concession. 'You may have a t-shirt.'
Vanamonde ushers her in, where she finds an old man with a forked beard lying in bed and looking wounded -- even more wounded than he actually is, he's wearing bandages as much as the contested hospital gown. Another man, just as old, is standing over him.
'Agatha Heterodyne has arrived,' Vanamonde says. 'Agatha, this is Faustus Heterodyne, and Doctor Sun.'
'Doctor,' Agatha says, offering a nod that he returns. To Faustus, she adds, 'I promise not to hold your state of dress against you.'
He smiles at her, a smile that manages to seem just a little shark-like without any IJP enhancements. 'Pleased to meet you, my dear. It is good to have all the family together again.'
'It's nice to meet you too,' she says, not entirely sure whether she means it, and takes an uncomfortable plastic chair by the bed. 'I believe I'm meant to convince you not to run all over town before you're healed.'
'Are you offering to do the running for me? I have considerably more experience not setting off the traps.'
Traps?! 'I just bet you do,' says Agatha. 'But are you sure you should be trying it right now?'
'Well, it's certainly preferable to getting caught in them,' he says slyly.
Agatha resists the urge to facepalm. 'I see I'll have to watch what I say to you,' she says, 'but yes, I was asked here to do the running around town so you don't re-injure yourself. How much trouble are the traps actually going to be?'
He waves a hand, very slightly. Agatha has a feeling he's normally the sort to gesture largely. 'A lot of them can be figured out if you're smart. I'll give you the codes to the ones that can't be. And unless you're an impostor you should get through the bloodlocks just fine.'
Agatha eyes him. 'I'm going to assume,' she says sweetly, 'that you don't want the town destroyed with you in it, so you won't leave me to walk into anything really dangerous.' A brief pause. 'Do you actually get impostors?'
'Not ones claiming to be you. A few claiming to be long lost distant cousins because they liked the idea of going straight to the top of a criminal empire with its own Jaegers, yes.' He smiles. 'We send them somewhere with a bloodlock.'
'Lovely,' Agatha says. 'I'd like to start by making sure I inherited whatever your trapped locks test for, please.' Only half her genes are from one of their relatives, after all, and she isn’t even sure if Bill’s were included in the design phase.
He looks as if he's thinking about which trap would be most amusing to send her into, but then he shrugs. Agatha hopes he's deciding he really does want her able to fix the town's defences. 'There's a safe room. It's not trapped, but it's bloodlocked. It's the first thing you should check, anyway, and if your blood works there it will work everywhere.'
'Thank you,' Agatha says. Now what? Faustus is somehow almost charming in his unapologetic unpleasantness, but she doesn't want to chitchat with him, and she doubts he should be carrying on long conversations. Do what she came for, then. 'If you give me the codes, I'll go there and then get to work.'
Agatha is rejoined by Zeetha outside Faustus's room. They don't need to leave the Jaeger base to find the safe room, just head deeper in. There are a few traps in the corridors, Faustus only promised her that the safe room would be the first bloodlock she found. But they're more along the lines of things in the corridors you shouldn't touch and there are still people walking around the corridors with tools or folders, casually avoiding stepping on the diamond shaped tiles or brushing against the red stripe on the wall as if it's business as normal. Deeper in the people taper off, and there are a few traps that do require codes before they reach some endless staircases (Zeetha is much less out of breath than she is by the bottom) and finally find the safe room. It has a shiny black door with the bloodlock affixed to the centre of it, huge and imposing with sharp toothed gears sticking out at odd angles, parts that look like they do everything from grind to crush and little blue arcs of electricity darting across bits of it.
'Most of this won't do anything but move impressively,' says Agatha, after a cursory inspection.
'Your relatives have a flair for the dramatic,' Zeetha says, sounding almost approving.
Agatha rolls her eyes and places her hand in the obviously hand shaped indentation (lined with spikes). One spike jabs upwards into her finger, the whole thing whirs in a grisly fashion while Agatha glares it for trying to intimidate her, and then the lock stops whirring and, when Agatha pulls her hand back, the door swings open.
It's dark inside, but the light spilling through the door reveals a large plastic box surrounded by machinery. Agatha steps inside -- her footfalls make no noise -- and finds the light switch. She looks at the other side of the door, finds another blood lock, and leaves it standing open.
'Why,' she asks aloud, 'is there a sensory deprivation tank in the safe room?' She goes over and opens the door.
The man inside looks familiar somehow, but she can't quite make sense of the recognition at first. It doesn't help that he got in feet-first so his face is close to her, but upside-down. He flinches at the light, eyes still shut, and an expression of bleak despair settles over his face. She thinks he just woke up. 'You never should have brought me here,' he says. 'Close it. You'll only make it worse.'
Agatha stares at him, disbelieving. 'Uncle Barry?'
His eyes fly open, wide and horrified. 'Agatha?!'
Summary: Fusion-type crossover with Pacific Rim, near-future setting. When Agatha turns eighteen, she joins the Jaeger program. Her family has been involved with it from the beginning, but she soon learns that's more complicated than she thought.
In this chapter, Jägers in Jaegers.
The first double event was bad, but the Kaiju went in opposite directions and while everybody was rattled and a bit below strength for a while, things seemed to go back to what passes for normal.
This time they erupt from the Rift and head off together. The Castle goes on alert, of course, but everyone breathes a cautious sigh of relief on realising they're headed straight toward the Enclave. Which is either really stupid of them or really smart, going right at the source of the defenders, but everybody's pretty sure the Enclave can handle it.
Agatha's still on edge as she watches the screens, though, and Zeetha grumbles at her a little about keeping her that way too. 'Pirates,' she says.
'Family,' Agatha counters. Not that she knows them. 'Anyway, a second double event is a pattern. The Kaiju are escalating.' She frowns. 'And I think something's wrong with their Jaegers.' She can't put her finger on it, and it could just be because they've never had to fight two Kaiju at once before and the monsters have been getting tougher anyway, but she feels like they ought to be doing more damage. The Castle sent the Enclave her plasma cannon redesigns, after all....
Commander Wulfenbach suddenly straightens, looking at her and back to the screen and then saying with explosive exasperation, as if he's said it before, as if this scene is familiar to him in a way it isn't to her, 'Your idiot genius relatives!'
'What?' Agatha asks, startled. The Jaegers fall back and to the side (one literally falls and flounders upright again in the water), and the artillery on the Enclave wall kicks in... except along one stretch, and the Kaiju head straight for it with the Jaegers in pursuit.
Tarvek winces. 'That must be why the Jaegers didn't spread out. They were trying to make up for a fortifications malfunction.’
'No,' says Agatha, bolt upright, fingers tense. 'They didn't fight hard enough to be defending their home when it's vulnerable.' They'd dodged too readily, they hadn't been thrown aside. 'What are they doing?' She grasps at hope. 'Testing a trap?'
Commander Wulfenbach points toward the hangar. 'Get ready to fly,' he says. 'They're probably trying to capture one.'
Agatha's jaw drops. Beyond him, on the viewscreen, the Kaiju trample the silent wall.
Zeetha's quivering with anticipation, like a hunting dog about to be let off the leash, so focussed on the present Agatha's not sure whether she's managing to ignore the fleeting memories or whether they're barely there, ghost impressions of a forgotten past. Drowning in Zeetha's focus could be as easy (she wants to run, stride straight out to sea, even though she knows the helicopters will get them there faster).
They still get updates during the flight. Accident or failed design, things are going poorly for the Enclave. They were prepared for a Kaiju getting into the town... sort of. The area immediately behind the broken portion of the wall is empty. They deploy weapons -- Tarvek says it looks like they're using tranquilizer harpoons -- and reinforced electrified nets. Things that should stun and immobilize the Kaiju, which might reflect capture plans or just the recognition that they really don't want Kaiju Blue running all over a populated area.
But the Kaiju don't stay down.
They land just outside the Enclave. The weapons on the wall are twitching, here and there, but they're not designed to point inwards. The nearest Kaiju has a long, sinewy body, more tree root than serpent, spiked and outsize claws digging into the ground. It shakes off an electric net, mobile spines along its back rattling. Codename: Nidhogg Agatha recalls. One of the Enclave Jaegers swings a clubbed tail at the centre of its back, trying to concuss the less protected secondary brain. The other, vaguely bear like, swipes at its head and dodges as its neck snakes out.
Guns slide from Queenie Melody's wrists, unfolding silver in the helicopters’ spotlights. Things tilt towards Agatha, like shifting weight from one foot to another, as Zeetha lets her take the lead. Agatha's the better shot. Zeetha copies her motions...no, there's enough distance between the hands that that wouldn't make the shot. Zeetha follows her thoughts, moving her own left arm as Agatha moves her right. The Kaiju whips around just as the lasers score across one hind leg, whipping it up with a grace that shouldn't be possible. They've barely scored it -- cauterising the wound as they made it. It flings itself around at them, all of it following its head like a snake strike.
'Retreat!' Zeetha yells and Agatha feels the emotions behind it (not running away, luring it back into the ocean (it won't follow they're not stupid) it might follow far enough.)
They back up for room to aim, fire again, step back. Estimating furiously, feigning weakness that they'd better hope isn't as real as the Enclave's. Nidhogg is lethally fast. They don't want to be outmaneuvered but Zeetha's confident they can win if they close with it away from the town. Agatha shares the feeling; the Kaiju are escalating in power but she designed Queenie Melody with that in mind.
The Kaiju flings itself at them and out past what's left of the wall. The bear Jaeger chases after; the other stops in the gap.
The bear Jaeger throws itself on Nidhogg's back, arms closing crushingly around its middle. The head whips back and Agatha fires. The blast hits the side of its head, turning one eye into a blackened mess and knocking it off course. It hits the side of the bear's head, not the middle, crushing the side of the cockpit in a shower of metal and glass. Agatha doesn't see any bodies.
The Kaiju flings itself away from the downed Jaeger and at Queenie, lashes up and around her arms to tie up the guns.
Zeetha grins.
They force their arms to spread.
Metal creaks.
The Kaiju's hide doesn’t rip open, but something inside it gives way, and it drops from their arms in weakened coils.
'Both Kaiju dead,' comes the radio report. 'Wait to be picked up.'
Agatha feels the burst of disappointment from Zeetha, even before the relief, that it's too late to help with the other battle now. For Agatha's part the relief is definitely winning, even as she finds herself grinning helplessly simply at having survived, at having taken down something like a force of nature.
Escape pods start to drift from the downed Jaeger, opening on the surface. The first is covered in something blue-purple when his escape pod opens and Agatha can't think what. As soon as the second escape pod opens -- and there's something stuck to this guy's head -- he swims over to the downed one, scrambles onto the raft and Agatha realises that the first one is injured as well as...whatever else is wrong with him. 'I'm going down there,' she says. Queenie Melody could scoop them out of the water, but she can't apply first aid.
'We'll both go,' says Zeetha. It's not like one of them could run a Jaeger by themselves (I bet you could (Zeetha laughs)).
They make Queenie crouch, extend a hand to give them a platform, and then they pull the headsets off together. Zeetha goes down first and Agatha follows her carefully. Queenie is cold and wet, slippery, Agatha wedges toes into her joints hard enough to bruise them, and winces when she reaches the bottom because she's probably going to have to swim. But two more pilots are in the water now and they push the injured one's raft towards her and Zeetha until it beaches on the hand.
Agatha can see them now. Her first thought is hypothermia, her second is mermaids from the odder sort of tales. Their skin is blueish, pulsating with light underneath, their teeth sharp in a way that is more shark than vampire. One of them has a jagged black horn rising from one side of his head, and their hands are almost claws. One of them, the only woman, has pale and slitted eyes, another yellow ones more luminous than his skin. 'Kaiju,' Zeetha hisses behind her and that is what they resemble. 'They do experiment on their pilots.'
'Only if ve let dem,' says the horned one, and Agatha can't tell if that's an accent or talking around fangs.
She swallows down her fear and steps toward the injured one, only for him to hold a claw up with a grimace. 'Iz toxic to hyu.'
'You bleed Kaiju Blue!' Agatha exclaims, recoiling.
'Not enuff to destroy a city,' says the pale-eyed one, pulling herself up onto Queenie's hand in one easy motion.
'I guess we should have brought hazmat suits,' Agatha says. They have them -- the need to get out of the Jaeger in contaminated water is always a possibility -- but Nidhogg didn't bleed much and they would have made it harder to climb. She feels rather ill. This is a horrifying thing to do, even to volunteers.
'I can get them,' Zeetha says, setting down the first-aid kit she carried. 'I'll radio the 'copter crews, too.' She bites her lip. 'Will you be all right until I get back?'
'I'll be fine,' Agatha says. These Kaiju-esque people are viscerally disturbing but if they're warning her off because their blood is toxic she hardly expects them to attack.
Zeetha sets off back up the arm. Agatha flips open a first-aid kit and takes out gloves and a face mask, then pushes it toward the Enclave pilots.
The pale-eyed one grabs it, dropping down to wrap a tourniquet around the bleeding arm of her co-pilot. The other two pull themselves out of the water to watch. 'Thenk hyu,' says the luminous-eyed one, giving Agatha a considering look. 'I iz Dimo.'
'Agatha,' she replies, sitting down on Queenie's palm. She hesitates minutely before adding, 'Heterodyne.'
They all stare at her for a moment and then the horned one grins, faint light spilling through the gaps between his teeth. 'Oh ho, hyu is the leedle cousin Master Faustus wanted to meet.' Master jars her. It's not a rank, it sounds either anachronistic or amoral. In the face of something like this, probably both.
It crosses her mind to wonder if she shouldn't have said anything, given her relatives' apparent lack of scruples -- but the Enclave has enough problems without adding anything as bizarre as trying to kidnap her. And even the injured pilot looks more cheerful. 'I guess so,' she says.
'Hy iz Oggie,' he adds. 'This is Jenka and Maxim.'
'Nice to meet you,' Agatha says. Good manners or not, this feels slightly inane, and she can't blame him for chuckling. 'Look, I've got to ask -- why do you seem to be partly Kaiju? Does it, um... help?'
'Ve is IJPs,' says Oggie proudly.
Jenka growls slightly, focus still on Maxim. 'No good leaving the explaining to hyu. Interchangeable Jaeger Pilots.'
'Uh-huh,' says Agatha, feeling that Jenka's explanation is only a little more informative. She looks at Dimo. 'Interchangeable? You seem distinct enough to me.' She purses her lips behind the mask. 'You can handle any Jaeger?' No, that was silly. It took some getting used to but changing Jaegers wasn't nearly as difficult as changing--
Her eyes widen.
Dimo's face splits into a sharky grin. 'Ve can all Drift vit each other. Handy, yah?'
Agatha waves her gloved hands. 'Incredible, but how does that relate to the physical modifications? Unless you're going to tell me the Kaiju are a hive mind!'
Dimo and Oggie both grin at her. 'Hyu is a schmot vun,' Oggie says happily. 'Master Faustus vill like hyu!'
Agatha stares at them in dismay, and this time not because of the word Master. 'That's how they're learning about us,' she says. 'They're not just sending stronger ones because they know what's failed -- they're getting a play-by-play of every fight.'
'Who is what?' Zeetha asked sharply, remarkably managing to climb the last of the way to them while both wearing and carrying a hazmat suit.
Agatha grabs the one Zeetha shoves at her. 'The Kaiju are a hive mind. And the Enclave -- the Heterodynes -- have known long enough to be using it in their Jaeger program.'
Zeetha grimaces. 'My Father's going to love this.'
At this point Maxim opens his eyes, blinking stickily, and declares deliriously to Zeetha, 'Hy luff hyu hair.'
They don't get anything else useful out of the IJPs, who all agree that Zeetha's dye job is magnificent, before the helicopters come.
When they get back, the IJPs are transferred first to the decontamination area and then, as they can't precisely be decontaminated, to a section of Gil's lab hastily converted for medical use. Agatha and Zeetha leave them discussing this situation with Gil, who will probably verify their claim to be reasonably nontoxic to their surroundings whenever they're not bleeding, and head straight for Commander Wulfenbach.
He's on a video call with a young man whose bleached hair shows dark roots and whose eyes show dark circles. The identifier at the base of the screen says Vanamonde Mekkhan, Enclave. Commander Wulfenbach appears to be trying to loom at the viewscreen. 'Contingent upon -- You're setting conditions?'
Vandamonde sighs. 'I said our ability to cooperate is contingent on your sending Agatha Heterodyne back here, Wulfenbach.' He stops to gulp from a coffee mug. 'The Heterodynes DNA-locked a lot of stuff and they're pretty much all out of commission. It’s like the Kaiju came right at them.’
Agatha barely stops to think before she steps up in range of the camera pickup. 'Well, send over all the information you can, for now. If I'm coming, I don't want to go in blind.'
'Of course,' says Vanamonde, looking relieved.
'Good.'
Commander Wulfenbach ends the call and turns to her, still looming. Somehow it's hard to be intimidated by him right now. She's fought a Kaiju, she's met the IJPs, she still has Zeetha beside her. 'I was not planning to commit you to that without further discussion,' he growls.
'I said if,' says Agatha.
'Not very convincingly,' he says. 'Unfortunately, we may need you there. If the Kaiju know how much they've damaged our defences....'
They sent word back about that at the first chance. 'We need to get them working again before any more turn up,' Agatha agrees. 'And it wouldn't hurt to find out what else they've been hiding.'
The prospect of getting his hands on the remaining Heterodyne secrets does a lot to reconcile Commander Wulfenbach to the plan. Agatha is in the air again the next morning, reviewing the data dump Vanamonde provided. Zeetha is with her, too, and they're bringing Queenie -- at least it guarantees one intact Jaeger on site, even if the local support structure is shaky. The IJPs sit clumped together in the helicopter; Maxim doesn't precisely look well, but he's unexpectedly recovered enough to travel.
'Ve heal fast,' he says when she asks about it. He starts to shrug and decides he's not that healed. 'Is a goot ting ve kill the Kaiju fast.'
'Usually,' Agatha says, thinking of their shaking off electrical stuns and sedatives, and Maxim grimaces agreement.
The Enclave is a place that wears its short history on a rather chaotic surface. It started as a Jaeger base, this one a series of domes radiating out from a larger central one along three prongs. Many of them are broken open like eggshells, now. As the coast became more dangerous the people along it who lacked the resources to move inland huddled closer to the base. It's a shanty town of corrugated iron, mismatched brick and tents, combined with glass and steel that indicate Heterodyne funding. Sometimes for larger, more imposing buildings, but sometimes it looks like they just replaced some random houses with something more durable. Around it, along the coast and curving considerably inland on both sides, is the wall, dominating everything almost more than the Jaeger base. The Enclave Heterodynes are pirates and black marketeers, renegades from the Jaeger program, but from here Agatha can see why people might throw in with them anyway.
As they fly lower they can see few dozen people standing around the helicopter pad, with their skin pulsing blue. The helicopter stops going down.
'Iz hokay,' says Dimo. 'Iz a velcome party.'
Someone -- Vanamonde, Agatha thinks, although she can't see much more than that he's blond -- turns and waves the IJPs away with large gestures. The fact that they amiably step back gives more reassurance than Dimo's words.
'You heard him,' says Zeetha. 'Let's go.'
They land and it is Vanamonde, stepping forward to formally welcome her while the IJPs are surged by their...friends? Co-pilots? It looks like a bit of a rough welcome, but it's both touching and deeply interesting -- it looks like their ability to Drift as a group isn't in spite of not caring about each other. Does the Kaiju blood increase their empathy towards one another? Does it, given that they're pirates, do so at the expense of decreasing it towards baseline humans? They've been friendly enough, Agatha tells herself, she shouldn't invent new reasons to be disturbed by them.
'We're really glad you could come,' Vanamonde says. The relief is in his voice, even shouting over the helicopter rotors and the celebratory IJPs. He gestures for her to walk with him, presumably somewhere quieter, and Agatha and Zeetha both follow. 'You're just in time, too. Master Faustus regained consciousness earlier this morning and I keep half expecting to hear he's bullied somebody into dragging him out of the hospital to the bloodlocks.'
Well, there's an attractive term, and not the one he used when talking to Commander Wulfenbach. To an outsider, Agatha thinks, and reminds herself that she's one too. She doesn't feel at home here, but she feels uneasily like it wants her to be. 'I take it he shouldn't be moving around.'
Vanamonde makes a face. 'He really shouldn't. I mean, yes, we won’t last long without the defences operational, but that would only help so much if they all died. Come prove to him he doesn't have to get up?'
The hospital is one of the domes in the Jaeger base. Still the base's original hospital, Agatha guesses, although it's expanded all the way down a wide corridor (now also lined with beds) and through another dome with a town to serve as well.
As Agatha approaches the second dome she can hear an argument going on in one of the screened off private rooms. 'I can't meet Bill's daughter for the first time wearing paper.'
'You are severely injured and will not be moving around in order to get dressed. Nor do I want to have to cut off several layers next time you break open a wound.'
'Cut! Those clothes were imported from Paris.'
'Then don't wear them in hospital.' A sigh, then in tones of one making a great concession. 'You may have a t-shirt.'
Vanamonde ushers her in, where she finds an old man with a forked beard lying in bed and looking wounded -- even more wounded than he actually is, he's wearing bandages as much as the contested hospital gown. Another man, just as old, is standing over him.
'Agatha Heterodyne has arrived,' Vanamonde says. 'Agatha, this is Faustus Heterodyne, and Doctor Sun.'
'Doctor,' Agatha says, offering a nod that he returns. To Faustus, she adds, 'I promise not to hold your state of dress against you.'
He smiles at her, a smile that manages to seem just a little shark-like without any IJP enhancements. 'Pleased to meet you, my dear. It is good to have all the family together again.'
'It's nice to meet you too,' she says, not entirely sure whether she means it, and takes an uncomfortable plastic chair by the bed. 'I believe I'm meant to convince you not to run all over town before you're healed.'
'Are you offering to do the running for me? I have considerably more experience not setting off the traps.'
Traps?! 'I just bet you do,' says Agatha. 'But are you sure you should be trying it right now?'
'Well, it's certainly preferable to getting caught in them,' he says slyly.
Agatha resists the urge to facepalm. 'I see I'll have to watch what I say to you,' she says, 'but yes, I was asked here to do the running around town so you don't re-injure yourself. How much trouble are the traps actually going to be?'
He waves a hand, very slightly. Agatha has a feeling he's normally the sort to gesture largely. 'A lot of them can be figured out if you're smart. I'll give you the codes to the ones that can't be. And unless you're an impostor you should get through the bloodlocks just fine.'
Agatha eyes him. 'I'm going to assume,' she says sweetly, 'that you don't want the town destroyed with you in it, so you won't leave me to walk into anything really dangerous.' A brief pause. 'Do you actually get impostors?'
'Not ones claiming to be you. A few claiming to be long lost distant cousins because they liked the idea of going straight to the top of a criminal empire with its own Jaegers, yes.' He smiles. 'We send them somewhere with a bloodlock.'
'Lovely,' Agatha says. 'I'd like to start by making sure I inherited whatever your trapped locks test for, please.' Only half her genes are from one of their relatives, after all, and she isn’t even sure if Bill’s were included in the design phase.
He looks as if he's thinking about which trap would be most amusing to send her into, but then he shrugs. Agatha hopes he's deciding he really does want her able to fix the town's defences. 'There's a safe room. It's not trapped, but it's bloodlocked. It's the first thing you should check, anyway, and if your blood works there it will work everywhere.'
'Thank you,' Agatha says. Now what? Faustus is somehow almost charming in his unapologetic unpleasantness, but she doesn't want to chitchat with him, and she doubts he should be carrying on long conversations. Do what she came for, then. 'If you give me the codes, I'll go there and then get to work.'
Agatha is rejoined by Zeetha outside Faustus's room. They don't need to leave the Jaeger base to find the safe room, just head deeper in. There are a few traps in the corridors, Faustus only promised her that the safe room would be the first bloodlock she found. But they're more along the lines of things in the corridors you shouldn't touch and there are still people walking around the corridors with tools or folders, casually avoiding stepping on the diamond shaped tiles or brushing against the red stripe on the wall as if it's business as normal. Deeper in the people taper off, and there are a few traps that do require codes before they reach some endless staircases (Zeetha is much less out of breath than she is by the bottom) and finally find the safe room. It has a shiny black door with the bloodlock affixed to the centre of it, huge and imposing with sharp toothed gears sticking out at odd angles, parts that look like they do everything from grind to crush and little blue arcs of electricity darting across bits of it.
'Most of this won't do anything but move impressively,' says Agatha, after a cursory inspection.
'Your relatives have a flair for the dramatic,' Zeetha says, sounding almost approving.
Agatha rolls her eyes and places her hand in the obviously hand shaped indentation (lined with spikes). One spike jabs upwards into her finger, the whole thing whirs in a grisly fashion while Agatha glares it for trying to intimidate her, and then the lock stops whirring and, when Agatha pulls her hand back, the door swings open.
It's dark inside, but the light spilling through the door reveals a large plastic box surrounded by machinery. Agatha steps inside -- her footfalls make no noise -- and finds the light switch. She looks at the other side of the door, finds another blood lock, and leaves it standing open.
'Why,' she asks aloud, 'is there a sensory deprivation tank in the safe room?' She goes over and opens the door.
The man inside looks familiar somehow, but she can't quite make sense of the recognition at first. It doesn't help that he got in feet-first so his face is close to her, but upside-down. He flinches at the light, eyes still shut, and an expression of bleak despair settles over his face. She thinks he just woke up. 'You never should have brought me here,' he says. 'Close it. You'll only make it worse.'
Agatha stares at him, disbelieving. 'Uncle Barry?'
His eyes fly open, wide and horrified. 'Agatha?!'