Air pirate AU - TTGL fanfic, part 4
Yoko awoke to new perspectives. That, actually, was an understatement. She awoke in the same gigantic hangar she passed out in, except now everything seemed small. Proportionate. It was no more than a large living room, like a comfortable hang out place for all of Dai-Gurren's fighter ganmen. Another thing she noticed was the noise. It sounded as if she were in the middle of a large group of people, all having indistinct conversation with each other, though there was no one in the hangar except for her.
"My head," she groans, slouching forward and cradling her head in her hands.
Except they weren't her hands, and it certainly wasn't her head.
"Ah, sorry. That's me." The voices hushed.
"How many pilots have you had?"
"You're the twenty-eighth. How are you feeling?"
"Besides realizing how much sleep I have yet to catch up on..." Yoko holds out an arm, finding a sudden admiration for the crimson armor that made up her new mechanical body. "I'm feeling strangely at peace."
"I was wondering about that. Are you up for some calibration?"
"Since I'm here, I might as well." Yoko stands, slowly, as to make sure she doesn't lose her balance. Once she's on her feet, she looks down at the floor. "...Lagann, has anyone told you how absurdly tall you are?"
"Well, that's mostly Gurren's doing. But he appreciates the sentiment anyway."
Yoko searches for, and finds, the hangar chute release. The door opens slowly, locking into the open position. She watches the clouds pass by below her and the sound of the wind through synthetic hearing.
"Just what I needed. A ganmen with multiple personality disorder," Yoko jests, then jumps down the chute.
Yoko enters freefall as she watches the ship pass overhead. It didn't seem nearly as intimidating as it had earlier, though she wasn't exactly sure why. Sure, it looked just the same as it did earlier, but it had a significantly different effect on her now than it had earlier that day.
She takes a moment to reflect on this as the calming sensation of wind washes across her surrogate skin. She's not exactly sure if it's because of her solitude, or because Lagann was thoroughly lodged in her consciousness at the moment, but the sight of the ship was actually kind of inspiring.
"Chouginga."
"Sorry?"
"That's her name. Chouginga."
"I wasn't aware that she had a name..." As soon as she says it, she regrets; all ships had names. Lagann, regardless, has an aura of understanding. "They don't print it. I think it's either because of superstition or because the press wants to dehumanize her."
Dai-Gurren was not a stranger to the press. They averaged at least one major headline a month and countless side articles, all involving anti-government attacks on scales that Yoko could have only dreamed about. She only had herself to blame for that--she'd limited herself to tactics that only destroyed property and had been adamant to work alone.
That's pretty much the only reason why she hadn't been absolutely excited for the reality of all of this. She had been pulled out of prison with no questions asked, and the only favor she was asked for in return was the duty to be the pilot of the single most powerful fighter ganmen in existence. These were not the soulless beasts that the press had made them out to be. They were just as passionate for the anti-government movement as she was.
Yoko had always been a pirate.
She'd found her home.
Revitalized by her sudden flare up of optimistic enthusiasm, she puts all of her will into the propulsion, blasting herself back up into the clouds.
...
"Lagann?"
The ganmen is sitting on top of Chouginga now, taking a break from calibration testing. Yoko's actually considering to call it a day once her cognitive exhaustion takes a breather.
"What's up?"
"I was wondering why won't you let Kamina pilot you anymore."
"...I'm not at liberty to say."
"Why not?"
"I think it's something he'd prefer me not to tell you about. He's pretty sore about it."
"So I should ask him, then? All he said is that you want him to be somewhere else."
"It's a partial truth. I think you'll won't get much else out of him. Or me, for that matter."
"If you insist," Yoko mentally sighs and sits forward. She's about to ask him another question, but is interrupted by the sound of klaxon alarms. In surprise, she jumps up onto the feet.
"What the hell?!"
"Sounds like someone we don't like is headed our way. Behind us."
Yoko turns to find a familiar shape. The angular projections that made up the attacking ship's frame that she'd once pledged allegiance to, but now only brought forth bitter hatred. She recognized the ship's positioning--one for going in for the kill. She stands on the top of Chouginga, taking on an aggressive stance.
The anarchist runs through her memory of the traditional ship outline, plotting the weak points of the ship's truss structure. "Lagann, do you have ranged equipment?"
Lagann feels particularly surprised and intrigued by the question. "Gurren's shades can be used as a boomerang."
Yoko looks down with an equally intrigued silence. "That's...different," she muses as she pulls them off and gives them a tentative toss to test their weight balance. "Not exactly what I'm used to, but it'll do."
The attacking ship had gained a significant amount of space between the two ships. It starts firing.
"Shit," she growls before ducking behind a structure. A voice barks into her mind: "What the hell are you waitin' for?! Attack the dumb fucker already!" That captain.
"Shit," she growls again, "don't tell me that idiot's free to yell in my ear whenever he wishes."
"You'd better do something, then."
Yoko peeks from behind the structure, measuring its distance manually and relying on Gurren Lagann's instruments for wind speed.
"Now isn't the time to be caught up in your morals!"
"I'm trying to concentrate!" she hisses.
"There's nothing to concentrate on, just kill the bastards!"
If she hadn't been so focused, she would have hit her own forehead in frustration. Instead, she steps aside, out of the protection of the structure, and lobs the improvised weapon at the attacking ship with calculated might.
Had she been breathing at all right now, she would have held her breath as she watched it take a curved path, cutting a black streak through the clouds. As it strikes its target, it violently shreds through the midsection of the ship. Yoko is more than impressed as it swings its return path back to her, and as she catches it, the fuselage of the ship erupts and the dissected sections of the ship, unable to maintain air buoyancy anymore, begin their decent to the surface.
Just as she's about to relax she notices something headed their direction. Upon closer inspection, she realizes.
"Kamikaze fighters."
Her heart sinks. The battleship had sent them out as a swan song, and even though the ship's bullets had barely even scratched the Chouginga, she knew these would do substantial damage. Despite knowing that it was practically fatal to engage them head on, she kicks off.
She aims above the closest one, killing the propulsion and falling like a rock when above it. It suddenly finds itself lodged between Gurren Lagann's thighs, twisted and flung directly at the one behind it. The pilot triggers self-destruct as soon as he can to take out the crimson mecha, but the reaction is just a fraction too late and he ends up taking himself and his fellow pilot out with him.
Yoko uses the explosion from the carnage as a disguise against the next attackers and lets them come to her. One that passes just a little too close is caught in a headlock and then forcefully relieved of its propulsion unit and left to plummet to the surface. She pitches the unit at one at the distance, knocking it permanently off course.
While she had preoccupied herself with that, another had appeared behind her, pausing as if to make a joke of the whole thing. She takes a hold of the fighter's appendage and hurls it at the falling wreck of a ship.
It takes her a second to realize that she'd taken care of them all. She takes a moment to steel her nerves, glancing at the evidence of wreckage. Then at her hands.
Today, Yoko had massacred an entire military unit singlehandedly.
She would have lost it if Lagann hadn't been there in her consciousness, actively trying to soothe her soul through shared emotion only.
Silence.
"Return to the hangar and disembark. Immediately."
"He sounds pissed." More soothing.
"About what?" Yoko was, to say the least, not in the mood to deal with someone else's anger.
"No idea, but you'd better find out before it gets worse than it is."
...
Yoko had just barely clothed herself before the captain stormed up to her, clearly in a rage.
"What the hell was that?!" he screams. Yoko doesn't back down, but she's far too confused to yell back. Yet.
"I don't understand...?"
Kamina throws out his arms. "Standing there like some sort of defenseless animal! You should have been out there in combat as soon as you saw it!"
She cocks a brow, now on the defensive. "I'd put it down, hadn't I?! What did you want me to do, charge in head-first?!"
"Well, yeah! How can you make sure to keep them at a safe enough distance that they can't physically harpoon us?!"
"You expected me to do that in one ganmen?! In fact--where the hell was my support?! I had just finished calibrating, you should be thankful I was even able to walk! Why would you send me out for calibration in clearly unsafe skies?!"
"They were running idle waiting for us! We couldn't see them!"
"That's no excuse for putting an untrained pilot and a freshly-calibrated ganmen out there and expecting her to take care of them all by herself! By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but I just took my first couple hundred of lives today! So I'd really appreciate it if you gave--me--some--goddamn--space!"
Without waiting for his response, Yoko turns heel and storms off.
To be honest, she didn't even need to wait. There was no response. The formerly torrential downpour of rage was suddenly quelled and the captain watches her walk away with a fairly surprised expression.
Slowly, he reaches up and tugs the collar of his jacket open.
Simon, who had watched the entire debacle with a respectable amount of calmness, hastily passes Kamina to catch up with Yoko. When he does, he matches her pace and follows in silence for a good while.
As time passes, she slows her pace, and finally comes to a stop. She looks up at Simon with a slightly embarrassed expression. He returns it with a knowing smile. "This way," he says, and leads the way to her cabin.
...
"You'll have to forgive him," Simon offers. "I was expecting him to take to the new pilot pretty harshly. I should have warned you somehow."
"Don't worry about it," she responds as she buries herself under the covers of her bed, preparing to sleep for, oh, about the next week or so, as Simon double-checks to make sure her cabin has all of the amenities, "as far as I understand, he's either going to have to suck it up or do without."
Simon smirks. "It's good that you feel that way," he says as he flips a switch to darken the porthole.
"Hey...is it colder in here than I remember?"
"Ah, probably. We're working on building energy stores right now, so the heat's turned low for now. Should I send up extra blankets and clothes in the meantime?"
"Yeah, thanks."
"I'll do that. Lunch will be served at the top of the hour for the next three hours."
Yoko turns over in bed. "Don't be surprised if you don't see me there."
Simon chuckles. "Yeah, I get it." He leaves, shutting the door behind him.
"My head," she groans, slouching forward and cradling her head in her hands.
Except they weren't her hands, and it certainly wasn't her head.
"Ah, sorry. That's me." The voices hushed.
"How many pilots have you had?"
"You're the twenty-eighth. How are you feeling?"
"Besides realizing how much sleep I have yet to catch up on..." Yoko holds out an arm, finding a sudden admiration for the crimson armor that made up her new mechanical body. "I'm feeling strangely at peace."
"I was wondering about that. Are you up for some calibration?"
"Since I'm here, I might as well." Yoko stands, slowly, as to make sure she doesn't lose her balance. Once she's on her feet, she looks down at the floor. "...Lagann, has anyone told you how absurdly tall you are?"
"Well, that's mostly Gurren's doing. But he appreciates the sentiment anyway."
Yoko searches for, and finds, the hangar chute release. The door opens slowly, locking into the open position. She watches the clouds pass by below her and the sound of the wind through synthetic hearing.
"Just what I needed. A ganmen with multiple personality disorder," Yoko jests, then jumps down the chute.
Yoko enters freefall as she watches the ship pass overhead. It didn't seem nearly as intimidating as it had earlier, though she wasn't exactly sure why. Sure, it looked just the same as it did earlier, but it had a significantly different effect on her now than it had earlier that day.
She takes a moment to reflect on this as the calming sensation of wind washes across her surrogate skin. She's not exactly sure if it's because of her solitude, or because Lagann was thoroughly lodged in her consciousness at the moment, but the sight of the ship was actually kind of inspiring.
"Chouginga."
"Sorry?"
"That's her name. Chouginga."
"I wasn't aware that she had a name..." As soon as she says it, she regrets; all ships had names. Lagann, regardless, has an aura of understanding. "They don't print it. I think it's either because of superstition or because the press wants to dehumanize her."
Dai-Gurren was not a stranger to the press. They averaged at least one major headline a month and countless side articles, all involving anti-government attacks on scales that Yoko could have only dreamed about. She only had herself to blame for that--she'd limited herself to tactics that only destroyed property and had been adamant to work alone.
That's pretty much the only reason why she hadn't been absolutely excited for the reality of all of this. She had been pulled out of prison with no questions asked, and the only favor she was asked for in return was the duty to be the pilot of the single most powerful fighter ganmen in existence. These were not the soulless beasts that the press had made them out to be. They were just as passionate for the anti-government movement as she was.
Yoko had always been a pirate.
She'd found her home.
Revitalized by her sudden flare up of optimistic enthusiasm, she puts all of her will into the propulsion, blasting herself back up into the clouds.
...
"Lagann?"
The ganmen is sitting on top of Chouginga now, taking a break from calibration testing. Yoko's actually considering to call it a day once her cognitive exhaustion takes a breather.
"What's up?"
"I was wondering why won't you let Kamina pilot you anymore."
"...I'm not at liberty to say."
"Why not?"
"I think it's something he'd prefer me not to tell you about. He's pretty sore about it."
"So I should ask him, then? All he said is that you want him to be somewhere else."
"It's a partial truth. I think you'll won't get much else out of him. Or me, for that matter."
"If you insist," Yoko mentally sighs and sits forward. She's about to ask him another question, but is interrupted by the sound of klaxon alarms. In surprise, she jumps up onto the feet.
"What the hell?!"
"Sounds like someone we don't like is headed our way. Behind us."
Yoko turns to find a familiar shape. The angular projections that made up the attacking ship's frame that she'd once pledged allegiance to, but now only brought forth bitter hatred. She recognized the ship's positioning--one for going in for the kill. She stands on the top of Chouginga, taking on an aggressive stance.
The anarchist runs through her memory of the traditional ship outline, plotting the weak points of the ship's truss structure. "Lagann, do you have ranged equipment?"
Lagann feels particularly surprised and intrigued by the question. "Gurren's shades can be used as a boomerang."
Yoko looks down with an equally intrigued silence. "That's...different," she muses as she pulls them off and gives them a tentative toss to test their weight balance. "Not exactly what I'm used to, but it'll do."
The attacking ship had gained a significant amount of space between the two ships. It starts firing.
"Shit," she growls before ducking behind a structure. A voice barks into her mind: "What the hell are you waitin' for?! Attack the dumb fucker already!" That captain.
"Shit," she growls again, "don't tell me that idiot's free to yell in my ear whenever he wishes."
"You'd better do something, then."
Yoko peeks from behind the structure, measuring its distance manually and relying on Gurren Lagann's instruments for wind speed.
"Now isn't the time to be caught up in your morals!"
"I'm trying to concentrate!" she hisses.
"There's nothing to concentrate on, just kill the bastards!"
If she hadn't been so focused, she would have hit her own forehead in frustration. Instead, she steps aside, out of the protection of the structure, and lobs the improvised weapon at the attacking ship with calculated might.
Had she been breathing at all right now, she would have held her breath as she watched it take a curved path, cutting a black streak through the clouds. As it strikes its target, it violently shreds through the midsection of the ship. Yoko is more than impressed as it swings its return path back to her, and as she catches it, the fuselage of the ship erupts and the dissected sections of the ship, unable to maintain air buoyancy anymore, begin their decent to the surface.
Just as she's about to relax she notices something headed their direction. Upon closer inspection, she realizes.
"Kamikaze fighters."
Her heart sinks. The battleship had sent them out as a swan song, and even though the ship's bullets had barely even scratched the Chouginga, she knew these would do substantial damage. Despite knowing that it was practically fatal to engage them head on, she kicks off.
She aims above the closest one, killing the propulsion and falling like a rock when above it. It suddenly finds itself lodged between Gurren Lagann's thighs, twisted and flung directly at the one behind it. The pilot triggers self-destruct as soon as he can to take out the crimson mecha, but the reaction is just a fraction too late and he ends up taking himself and his fellow pilot out with him.
Yoko uses the explosion from the carnage as a disguise against the next attackers and lets them come to her. One that passes just a little too close is caught in a headlock and then forcefully relieved of its propulsion unit and left to plummet to the surface. She pitches the unit at one at the distance, knocking it permanently off course.
While she had preoccupied herself with that, another had appeared behind her, pausing as if to make a joke of the whole thing. She takes a hold of the fighter's appendage and hurls it at the falling wreck of a ship.
It takes her a second to realize that she'd taken care of them all. She takes a moment to steel her nerves, glancing at the evidence of wreckage. Then at her hands.
Today, Yoko had massacred an entire military unit singlehandedly.
She would have lost it if Lagann hadn't been there in her consciousness, actively trying to soothe her soul through shared emotion only.
Silence.
"Return to the hangar and disembark. Immediately."
"He sounds pissed." More soothing.
"About what?" Yoko was, to say the least, not in the mood to deal with someone else's anger.
"No idea, but you'd better find out before it gets worse than it is."
...
Yoko had just barely clothed herself before the captain stormed up to her, clearly in a rage.
"What the hell was that?!" he screams. Yoko doesn't back down, but she's far too confused to yell back. Yet.
"I don't understand...?"
Kamina throws out his arms. "Standing there like some sort of defenseless animal! You should have been out there in combat as soon as you saw it!"
She cocks a brow, now on the defensive. "I'd put it down, hadn't I?! What did you want me to do, charge in head-first?!"
"Well, yeah! How can you make sure to keep them at a safe enough distance that they can't physically harpoon us?!"
"You expected me to do that in one ganmen?! In fact--where the hell was my support?! I had just finished calibrating, you should be thankful I was even able to walk! Why would you send me out for calibration in clearly unsafe skies?!"
"They were running idle waiting for us! We couldn't see them!"
"That's no excuse for putting an untrained pilot and a freshly-calibrated ganmen out there and expecting her to take care of them all by herself! By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but I just took my first couple hundred of lives today! So I'd really appreciate it if you gave--me--some--goddamn--space!"
Without waiting for his response, Yoko turns heel and storms off.
To be honest, she didn't even need to wait. There was no response. The formerly torrential downpour of rage was suddenly quelled and the captain watches her walk away with a fairly surprised expression.
Slowly, he reaches up and tugs the collar of his jacket open.
Simon, who had watched the entire debacle with a respectable amount of calmness, hastily passes Kamina to catch up with Yoko. When he does, he matches her pace and follows in silence for a good while.
As time passes, she slows her pace, and finally comes to a stop. She looks up at Simon with a slightly embarrassed expression. He returns it with a knowing smile. "This way," he says, and leads the way to her cabin.
...
"You'll have to forgive him," Simon offers. "I was expecting him to take to the new pilot pretty harshly. I should have warned you somehow."
"Don't worry about it," she responds as she buries herself under the covers of her bed, preparing to sleep for, oh, about the next week or so, as Simon double-checks to make sure her cabin has all of the amenities, "as far as I understand, he's either going to have to suck it up or do without."
Simon smirks. "It's good that you feel that way," he says as he flips a switch to darken the porthole.
"Hey...is it colder in here than I remember?"
"Ah, probably. We're working on building energy stores right now, so the heat's turned low for now. Should I send up extra blankets and clothes in the meantime?"
"Yeah, thanks."
"I'll do that. Lunch will be served at the top of the hour for the next three hours."
Yoko turns over in bed. "Don't be surprised if you don't see me there."
Simon chuckles. "Yeah, I get it." He leaves, shutting the door behind him.