August 9: Timestamping the Apocalypse (Pacific Rim)
Title: Timestamping the Apocalypse
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Pacific Rim
Spoilers: Post-series for B:tVS; canon divergence for the Pacific Rim movies
Notes: Scenes from the Canceling the Apocalypse universe, which I wrote here in 2013, wherein Buffy and Faith are Jaeger pilots. Because. (Two set during, and three after that story.)
Summary: Change was inevitable, but that didn't mean it was always easy. 2000 words.
"You sure you're okay with this?" Kennedy asked. Her voice was thick with disbelief; but Buffy saw how tightly her fingers were curled around the Scythe's handle.
"You know, the first time I let Faith hold it, she said it felt like hers, so it must be mine. It isn't though, really. It just belongs to the Slayer, which is all of us, now. And since Faith and I were chosen for the program...." She let her voice trail off. "Are you okay with it?"
Kennedy scoffed. "It's not like being Slayer General is all that onerous a task these days; there aren't very many demons left, and the ones that stayed in our dimension mostly have no problems playing by the rules. As for not getting a shot in a Jaeger...." She shook her head. "Like it was ever going to be anyone else."
She was probably right about that. But not because Buffy had leaned on her and Faith's friendship with Stacker, or tried in any other way to rig the selection process. She'd just... known, when she'd picked up her bo to test herself against Faith; when she'd looked up at Kaiju Slayer and envisioned fighting the next intruder on its own scale rather than the ant under a boot they'd been when Trespasser plowed through San Francisco.
Stepping into the PPDC full-time meant leaving her official ISWC roles behind, though, and she was taking her acknowledged second-in-command with her. But the rest of their support structure was still there, and Kennedy had long since seasoned into her role. She was ready.
"I'd apologize," Buffy teased lightly, "but I think Willow would have had something to say about letting someone else into your head full-time."
"Not like she hasn't Drifted with Oz, testing all the software." Kennedy rolled her eyes. "But that probably would have been a little awkward... for whoever my copilot ended up being."
They shared a chuckle, then a quick, tight hug; Kennedy was leading the girls who weren't staying on as techs or other support crew back to Cleveland that evening.
"You'll be great. Keep an extra eye on the others for me, would you?" she asked.
"You know it," Kennedy said, then reverently packed the Scythe in its case.
Change was inevitable, but that didn't mean it was always easy. Heart full, but emotions mixed, Buffy waved her successor on her way.
Piloting a new Jaeger-- or training with a new copilot-- was like rehab after a lengthy illness, stretching and relearning reflexes in a body that didn't react the same way it used to. Raleigh had been facing both problems after the demise of his old Mark III, and it made him glad that Pentecost let Chuck's dad keep Striker Eureka instead of putting Raleigh in her with Chuck. It made sure the new pair started on more or less equal footing; they both had too much ego to have it any other way.
Their first Drift in the Mark VI Cobalt Lancer only lasted long enough for both of them to wrestle their RABITs down and bring her giant palms together with an echoing clank. The neural bridge was a little rocky at first, full of raw, unfiltered emotions; but they settled into a solid connection by the time Choi announced the end of the run and shut them down, more than good enough for a first outing.
More than good enough for any Drift, after the way his last one ended. Raleigh felt pleased-- and, all right, smug; and more than a little relieved.
Then Yancy, who'd stayed mostly quiet during the test, finally spoke up.
Good job, kids, the elder Becket said, as the harnesses began to disengage.
Chuck startled, whipping his helmet around to stare wide-eyed at Raleigh. "He's really still here," he said...
...and a jumble of complicated emotions welled up, riding the fading echoes of the Drift.
Old pain: flash of a loving face that could only belong to Chuck's mother. Gut-churning guilt: it should have been me, striking against Raleigh's own dark moments after Knifehead like an off-pitch tuning fork. A little hero-worship of Yancy from his Academy days, mixing with Raleigh's deep respect for Chuck's father. And... something lighter, stronger, that hadn't been there before.
Belief: in Raleigh. That the Marshal wasn't just humoring him; that he was Chuck's equal. Mixed with acceptance: absolute acceptance, even welcome, of Yancy's presence. Raleigh was just starting to realize, much too late for caution, how much he'd actually been worried that that taking a new copilot would supplant the bond that had kept Yancy's spirit tied to his own when his body had been ripped from their Conn-Pod.
It felt like-- like finally touching bottom with his toes, after treading water in a pool too long.
Stacker's son Jacob had been five years old when the Kaiju War began.
His mother had been part of the ISWC; a junior Watcher whom he'd met during the time he'd spent with the Council in his late teens. Their relationship hadn't survived the death of his sister fighting Trespasser and his subsequent involvement in the PPDC, but she'd understood his inability to not fight back as only those Slayer-adjacent could. Their divorce had been non-acrimonious, and she'd willingly sent Jake to him whenever he had a significant break in his schedule and invited him to as many other milestones as both their jobs made possible.
Jake, being a child at the time, still only seven when Onibaba wrecked Tokyo and ended Stacker's Jaeger-piloting career, had been a little less understanding of his father's long absences. Particularly after Stacker adopted thirteen-year-old Mako. He'd tried to make more time for both of them after that, to be a consistent presence and encourage his children to support each other, but his subsequent promotion to Marshal of the Anchorage Shatterdome only made different demands on his time, not fewer. Mako spent as many evenings in the Jaeger bays as she did with him when not at school, and Jake....
Stacker pinched the bridge of his nose at the sight of the quartet brawling in the Kwoon. The Jaeger Academy had given its cadets leave to celebrate the closing of the Breach, including the junior program both Mako and Chuck had attended, which intermixed training with traditional schooling. His thirteen-year-old son had brought not only the giant chip on his shoulder but also his roommate home with him. Future Drift partner, the instructors said, and Stacker wouldn't disagree with that after this display of coordination.
Just with their judgment. "Beckets! Lambert! Hansen! Pentecost!" he barked, in ascending order of their likely responsibility for the fight.
Chuck-- who'd had much the same issues as Jake, before meeting Raleigh-- looked more sheepish than furious; the others looked resigned, dragged along in their partners' wake.
"You!" He pointed at Chuck. "Apologize. And you!" He pointed at his son. "I'm reporting this to your aunts."
The Beckets-- who knew them well-- winced at the horrified look on Jake's face. "But Dad...."
At least he was still Dad. And with the Breach closed, Stacker still had the chance to convince his son he had nothing to prove to him.
"One thing I gotta ask, doc," Oz said, standing in front of the tank holding a Kaiju's secondary brain. They'd managed to get a lot of critical pieces off the two Category Fours from Operation Doorknocker before the scavengers arrived, and that had been one of them. They'd learned a lot about how the Kaiju had been constructed already, and potentially better ways of fighting them the next time-- if there was a next time.
Dr. Geiszler, though, was convinced it wasn't enough; that they really needed to know their motives and orders to get a better handle on why they'd come and how likely a second Breach really was. Oz had tried pointing him at Illyria, but all that had resulted from that was a new, suspiciously blue tentacled tattoo and more fervent questions.
Oz knew from cultists. He wasn't very impressed. But Newt was a brilliant scientist, and Marshal Pentecost wasn't the type to fire anyone over their religion, no matter how bizarre. And there had been enough Kaiju killed on Earth in the last eight years that if they drew the line here, he'd find a way to do what he wanted anyway.
"Just one thing?" Newt snorted. "I'm only going to change our understanding of the universe here. And not just because, you know." He gestured to the brain tank. "Mind-melding with a freaking alien. C'mon, aren't you the least bit excited?"
Oz sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Where's the firewall?"
"What? Firewall? We're talking a neurological connection between two beings here; blocking any information exchange would kinda defeat the purpose," Newt frowned.
"We know they phoned home somehow," Oz pointed out. "They kept learning, adapting. Like a network. So say you Drift with this one. What if the rest of the network logs on to you?"
Newt didn't seem to know whether to find that concept more terrifying or more exciting.
Fortunately, both the Marshal and Newt's lab partner-- who by default was probably going to end up as the guy's Drift backup, to lend a more concrete science perspective to Newt's squishy interpretation-- leaned more toward the former, and Oz got both the funding and the permission to call Willow-- Dr. Rosenberg-- in for a consultation.
Changing the world was cool. But if it came with the equivalent of a telepathic ransomware attack, or worse? Oz wasn't willing to take that risk.
The day Saber Athena was delivered to the Shatterdome-- the second Mark VI ever, this one with the same modifications that had enabled a Mark III chassis to keep up with Slayer reflexes-- Faith had a hard time finding Buffy. She'd gone quiet in the low-grade mental link that was pretty much a constant Drift leftover at this point, and neither the Beckets nor Stacks nor the pseudo-niblings had any idea where she'd gone.
Faith found her, finally, up in the rafters, five hundred feet above the floor of the Dome. The perfect vantage point for the delivery, and such a tricky perch that no one except another Slayer would try the climb.
"You all right, B?" she asked when she finally got close, reaching out for the other Slayer's hand.
Buffy took it, threading their fingers together with a faded smile. "Yeah. It's just. You know. Moments of change."
"Timestamping the apocalypse. I get you. That's pretty much all our lives've been, though, the last couple of decades. What's got you climbing the walls this time?"
"The Breach is closed. We don't know for how long-- they definitely want to come back," Buffy said with a shudder. Faith didn't blame her; they'd both been there for the Kaiju Drift, and it had been damn disturbing. "But it will be awhile. The other demons aren't coming back; don't want to risk it, I guess. So I guess I thought... I mean. I'll be forty-two in January. Our job's done. I don't need another Jaeger. So why would I... why would we...."
She choked up there, tears moistening her eyes, and Faith leaned in to press their shoulders together.
"Why would we get a happy ending?" she replied with a low chuckle. "I dunno, B. Maybe because it's not an ending. You know damn well Illyria's out there turning herself back into a god-king; who knows how that'll go. The Slayer secret's out of the bag, and we've cracked cloning from alien Godzillas. World's only gonna get weirder from here. But in the meantime... we are bad ass bitches, and we saved the world kind of a lot. I think we deserve a reward."
Buffy laughed, faintly but real, as the big bay door finally opened and the choppers began lowering their new, fire-orange ride.
"We did, didn't we? Thank you, Faith. I'm glad you're here."
"Me too, B. Me, too."
-x-
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Rating: T/PG-13
Crossover: Pacific Rim
Spoilers: Post-series for B:tVS; canon divergence for the Pacific Rim movies
Notes: Scenes from the Canceling the Apocalypse universe, which I wrote here in 2013, wherein Buffy and Faith are Jaeger pilots. Because. (Two set during, and three after that story.)
Summary: Change was inevitable, but that didn't mean it was always easy. 2000 words.
"You sure you're okay with this?" Kennedy asked. Her voice was thick with disbelief; but Buffy saw how tightly her fingers were curled around the Scythe's handle.
"You know, the first time I let Faith hold it, she said it felt like hers, so it must be mine. It isn't though, really. It just belongs to the Slayer, which is all of us, now. And since Faith and I were chosen for the program...." She let her voice trail off. "Are you okay with it?"
Kennedy scoffed. "It's not like being Slayer General is all that onerous a task these days; there aren't very many demons left, and the ones that stayed in our dimension mostly have no problems playing by the rules. As for not getting a shot in a Jaeger...." She shook her head. "Like it was ever going to be anyone else."
She was probably right about that. But not because Buffy had leaned on her and Faith's friendship with Stacker, or tried in any other way to rig the selection process. She'd just... known, when she'd picked up her bo to test herself against Faith; when she'd looked up at Kaiju Slayer and envisioned fighting the next intruder on its own scale rather than the ant under a boot they'd been when Trespasser plowed through San Francisco.
Stepping into the PPDC full-time meant leaving her official ISWC roles behind, though, and she was taking her acknowledged second-in-command with her. But the rest of their support structure was still there, and Kennedy had long since seasoned into her role. She was ready.
"I'd apologize," Buffy teased lightly, "but I think Willow would have had something to say about letting someone else into your head full-time."
"Not like she hasn't Drifted with Oz, testing all the software." Kennedy rolled her eyes. "But that probably would have been a little awkward... for whoever my copilot ended up being."
They shared a chuckle, then a quick, tight hug; Kennedy was leading the girls who weren't staying on as techs or other support crew back to Cleveland that evening.
"You'll be great. Keep an extra eye on the others for me, would you?" she asked.
"You know it," Kennedy said, then reverently packed the Scythe in its case.
Change was inevitable, but that didn't mean it was always easy. Heart full, but emotions mixed, Buffy waved her successor on her way.
Piloting a new Jaeger-- or training with a new copilot-- was like rehab after a lengthy illness, stretching and relearning reflexes in a body that didn't react the same way it used to. Raleigh had been facing both problems after the demise of his old Mark III, and it made him glad that Pentecost let Chuck's dad keep Striker Eureka instead of putting Raleigh in her with Chuck. It made sure the new pair started on more or less equal footing; they both had too much ego to have it any other way.
Their first Drift in the Mark VI Cobalt Lancer only lasted long enough for both of them to wrestle their RABITs down and bring her giant palms together with an echoing clank. The neural bridge was a little rocky at first, full of raw, unfiltered emotions; but they settled into a solid connection by the time Choi announced the end of the run and shut them down, more than good enough for a first outing.
More than good enough for any Drift, after the way his last one ended. Raleigh felt pleased-- and, all right, smug; and more than a little relieved.
Then Yancy, who'd stayed mostly quiet during the test, finally spoke up.
Good job, kids, the elder Becket said, as the harnesses began to disengage.
Chuck startled, whipping his helmet around to stare wide-eyed at Raleigh. "He's really still here," he said...
...and a jumble of complicated emotions welled up, riding the fading echoes of the Drift.
Old pain: flash of a loving face that could only belong to Chuck's mother. Gut-churning guilt: it should have been me, striking against Raleigh's own dark moments after Knifehead like an off-pitch tuning fork. A little hero-worship of Yancy from his Academy days, mixing with Raleigh's deep respect for Chuck's father. And... something lighter, stronger, that hadn't been there before.
Belief: in Raleigh. That the Marshal wasn't just humoring him; that he was Chuck's equal. Mixed with acceptance: absolute acceptance, even welcome, of Yancy's presence. Raleigh was just starting to realize, much too late for caution, how much he'd actually been worried that that taking a new copilot would supplant the bond that had kept Yancy's spirit tied to his own when his body had been ripped from their Conn-Pod.
It felt like-- like finally touching bottom with his toes, after treading water in a pool too long.
Stacker's son Jacob had been five years old when the Kaiju War began.
His mother had been part of the ISWC; a junior Watcher whom he'd met during the time he'd spent with the Council in his late teens. Their relationship hadn't survived the death of his sister fighting Trespasser and his subsequent involvement in the PPDC, but she'd understood his inability to not fight back as only those Slayer-adjacent could. Their divorce had been non-acrimonious, and she'd willingly sent Jake to him whenever he had a significant break in his schedule and invited him to as many other milestones as both their jobs made possible.
Jake, being a child at the time, still only seven when Onibaba wrecked Tokyo and ended Stacker's Jaeger-piloting career, had been a little less understanding of his father's long absences. Particularly after Stacker adopted thirteen-year-old Mako. He'd tried to make more time for both of them after that, to be a consistent presence and encourage his children to support each other, but his subsequent promotion to Marshal of the Anchorage Shatterdome only made different demands on his time, not fewer. Mako spent as many evenings in the Jaeger bays as she did with him when not at school, and Jake....
Stacker pinched the bridge of his nose at the sight of the quartet brawling in the Kwoon. The Jaeger Academy had given its cadets leave to celebrate the closing of the Breach, including the junior program both Mako and Chuck had attended, which intermixed training with traditional schooling. His thirteen-year-old son had brought not only the giant chip on his shoulder but also his roommate home with him. Future Drift partner, the instructors said, and Stacker wouldn't disagree with that after this display of coordination.
Just with their judgment. "Beckets! Lambert! Hansen! Pentecost!" he barked, in ascending order of their likely responsibility for the fight.
Chuck-- who'd had much the same issues as Jake, before meeting Raleigh-- looked more sheepish than furious; the others looked resigned, dragged along in their partners' wake.
"You!" He pointed at Chuck. "Apologize. And you!" He pointed at his son. "I'm reporting this to your aunts."
The Beckets-- who knew them well-- winced at the horrified look on Jake's face. "But Dad...."
At least he was still Dad. And with the Breach closed, Stacker still had the chance to convince his son he had nothing to prove to him.
"One thing I gotta ask, doc," Oz said, standing in front of the tank holding a Kaiju's secondary brain. They'd managed to get a lot of critical pieces off the two Category Fours from Operation Doorknocker before the scavengers arrived, and that had been one of them. They'd learned a lot about how the Kaiju had been constructed already, and potentially better ways of fighting them the next time-- if there was a next time.
Dr. Geiszler, though, was convinced it wasn't enough; that they really needed to know their motives and orders to get a better handle on why they'd come and how likely a second Breach really was. Oz had tried pointing him at Illyria, but all that had resulted from that was a new, suspiciously blue tentacled tattoo and more fervent questions.
Oz knew from cultists. He wasn't very impressed. But Newt was a brilliant scientist, and Marshal Pentecost wasn't the type to fire anyone over their religion, no matter how bizarre. And there had been enough Kaiju killed on Earth in the last eight years that if they drew the line here, he'd find a way to do what he wanted anyway.
"Just one thing?" Newt snorted. "I'm only going to change our understanding of the universe here. And not just because, you know." He gestured to the brain tank. "Mind-melding with a freaking alien. C'mon, aren't you the least bit excited?"
Oz sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Where's the firewall?"
"What? Firewall? We're talking a neurological connection between two beings here; blocking any information exchange would kinda defeat the purpose," Newt frowned.
"We know they phoned home somehow," Oz pointed out. "They kept learning, adapting. Like a network. So say you Drift with this one. What if the rest of the network logs on to you?"
Newt didn't seem to know whether to find that concept more terrifying or more exciting.
Fortunately, both the Marshal and Newt's lab partner-- who by default was probably going to end up as the guy's Drift backup, to lend a more concrete science perspective to Newt's squishy interpretation-- leaned more toward the former, and Oz got both the funding and the permission to call Willow-- Dr. Rosenberg-- in for a consultation.
Changing the world was cool. But if it came with the equivalent of a telepathic ransomware attack, or worse? Oz wasn't willing to take that risk.
The day Saber Athena was delivered to the Shatterdome-- the second Mark VI ever, this one with the same modifications that had enabled a Mark III chassis to keep up with Slayer reflexes-- Faith had a hard time finding Buffy. She'd gone quiet in the low-grade mental link that was pretty much a constant Drift leftover at this point, and neither the Beckets nor Stacks nor the pseudo-niblings had any idea where she'd gone.
Faith found her, finally, up in the rafters, five hundred feet above the floor of the Dome. The perfect vantage point for the delivery, and such a tricky perch that no one except another Slayer would try the climb.
"You all right, B?" she asked when she finally got close, reaching out for the other Slayer's hand.
Buffy took it, threading their fingers together with a faded smile. "Yeah. It's just. You know. Moments of change."
"Timestamping the apocalypse. I get you. That's pretty much all our lives've been, though, the last couple of decades. What's got you climbing the walls this time?"
"The Breach is closed. We don't know for how long-- they definitely want to come back," Buffy said with a shudder. Faith didn't blame her; they'd both been there for the Kaiju Drift, and it had been damn disturbing. "But it will be awhile. The other demons aren't coming back; don't want to risk it, I guess. So I guess I thought... I mean. I'll be forty-two in January. Our job's done. I don't need another Jaeger. So why would I... why would we...."
She choked up there, tears moistening her eyes, and Faith leaned in to press their shoulders together.
"Why would we get a happy ending?" she replied with a low chuckle. "I dunno, B. Maybe because it's not an ending. You know damn well Illyria's out there turning herself back into a god-king; who knows how that'll go. The Slayer secret's out of the bag, and we've cracked cloning from alien Godzillas. World's only gonna get weirder from here. But in the meantime... we are bad ass bitches, and we saved the world kind of a lot. I think we deserve a reward."
Buffy laughed, faintly but real, as the big bay door finally opened and the choppers began lowering their new, fire-orange ride.
"We did, didn't we? Thank you, Faith. I'm glad you're here."
"Me too, B. Me, too."
-x-