Now the Day Bleeds Into Nightfall
Marshal Callaghan sent him after a black market kaiju dealer that could supposedly get him another brain specimen to work with. It wasn’t a sure thing, but it was his best shot. Not that he actually needed one, but he had to make everyone else believe that he did.
At least the guy was still in San Fransokyo- imagine if he was on the other side of the planet? He’d never make it in time. Not that he would actually have to go over there if he was, but like, he definitely wouldn’t have an excuse if he showed up back on base way earlier than expected. Yeah, that would go well. “Oh gee, Marshal, I know it takes like ten hours just to fly over there, and then ten more to get back, but I made the trip both ways in a neat sixty minutes.” The Marshal would be thrilled to hear that he’d warped the rules of space and time.
Yeah, thank whoever the hell was out there that he didn’t need to go through that.
Instead, he just had to travel a little deeper into the city, and pretend like he was lurking around the less than savory streets. Then he could open himself up to the hive mind, and bada bing bada boom! He would be all set! Then he could head on back to the shatterdome, arousing no suspicion, and give them more intel on what the Precursors were up to.
Of course, Tadashi might just kill him when he got back, but you know… They all had to make sacrifices, right?
…Okay, so he probably should have been a little more considerate of his- were they boyfriends? They didn’t exactly establish anything before he left, and well, he kind of doubted Tadashi wanted to talk about it the minute he got back… Plus, there was that whole thing where they were trying to save the world. Ah, priorities.
He shook himself, trying to get focused. A quick look around at the citizens of San Fransokyo scurrying off to the fallout shelters confirmed that no one would bother to ask him what he was doing out there. They didn’t have time to worry about some random dude in an alleyway when there could be a kaiju raging through the streets. As long as he shoved himself into a discreet corner, there wouldn’t be any problem.
Tadashi was typing furiously on his laptop, searching through the files Honey had shared with him of Fred’s work so he could try to figure out what the other was doing. Well, more correctly, what he was doing it for. He knew what he was doing. He was trying to get another kaiju brain to drift with and give himself a brain hemorrhage. If he survived, Tadashi was going to kill him when he got back.
Everyone else kept shooting him glances out of the corners of their eyes, but he ignored them. They could all do their own damn work instead of butting into his love life.
Fortunately for him, they all had other things to worry about. The kaiju, Leatherback, had finally reached where Crimson Havoc and Horizon Rayearth were positioned. That alone would have been worrying enough, but as it so happened, Honey’s prediction for a double event proved true. Otachi made it through the breach in record time, and the pair of them arrived for a joint attack.
The second kaiju made fast work of disabling Horizon Rayearth- it tore out their conn-pod, leaving the rest of the jaeger as an empty shell. The screams of the pilots were cut off abruptly, and Tadashi felt his blood go cold. It seemed that this category IV was as intelligent as Odokuro- perhaps even more so.
He grabbed Hiro’s hand, and for once, his brother didn’t complain.
He knew he wasn’t the only one thinking of that attack. There had barely been any hesitation before the kaiju had focused in on where the pilots were and struck. They had got in a few good strikes first themselves, but even with the advantage of having a third arm and pilot, there was nothing they could do after the conn-pod was ripped out. Crimson Havoc had rushed to defend them, but were too late. Soon enough, it was their turn to fend off the beast.
Thalia’s voice crackled in over the speakers, requesting to back them up. Marshal Callaghan refused, reminding them of the mission they had yet to fulfill. She and Luke argued with him about how they couldn’t just sit back and watch their fellow rangers die, and as they did Tadashi watched through the screens as Otachi opened its mouth and spewed acid at Crimson Havoc.
Hiro leapt up from his chair so fast it fell over, but no one noticed, eyes fixed on the screens in horror.
Kronos Albion charged forward to help, but before they reached them, Leatherback sprang from the water to join the attack against Crimson. It brought down the jaeger in a burst of brutal blows, the hull already weakened by the acid attack.
The Summer brothers went down in a blaze of fire as their arc reactor exploded, and Tadashi barely heard Wasabi reading the description of their vitals. Alex, the older one, was dead. There was no reading from Scott’s suit.
Kronos Albion prepared to launch missiles at Otachi, and LOCCENT was a mess of people yelling back and forth as they scanned screens and tried to figure out what to do. It was already a terrible situation, and it only got worse from there. Honey drew everyone’s attention back to Leatherback, whose whole body lit up to release an electric blast. Kronos went quiet, all feed cutting out- from the jaeger and the city.
“What the hell was that?!” Gogo yelled through the dark.
Wasabi was scrambling around, trying madly to get something- anything- back up. “I don’t know! Some kind of EMP attack. This is- nothing like this has ever happened!” They all knew that, but it was still hard to grasp that it was actually happening now.
“Is Kronos-?” Marshal Callaghan began before Wasabi cut him off.
“No! It’s down- all the jaegers- they’re digital!”
Tadashi stood up carefully, hardly noticing the way Hiro clutched at his arm. “Not all the jaegers,” he said. Everyone turned to him as he explained. “Amaterasu is a Mark-3. It’s analog. Nuclear.”
Callaghan gave him a searching look. When he found what he was looking for, he nodded once and said, “Then suit up.”
They didn’t waste any time as they followed his order.
Fred ran through San Fransokyo like his ass was on fire. Physically it wasn’t, but metaphorically it was. He’d be the first to admit, he wasn’t always great at thinking things through. After all, he’d left his species thinking he was dead, and basically turned himself into a human on a whim. So really, the situation he was in right now was hardly unpredictable for him.
Experiment 829- his closest viable sibling to make it out of the lab- was currently smashing through downtown San Fransokyo to try and get to him.
He had forgotten when he drifted that it was a two way process, and the hive mind could totally see everything that happened to him since he convinced them he died. Oops. Then, he had thrown oil on the flames by joining the actual hive mind like normal, and well… Here he was now. Sprinting through the streets as Experiment 829 blundered after him, screeching in fury.
He was sure LOCCENT had given the kaiju another name, but he wasn’t exactly privy to that at the moment. It also didn’t matter, given that no matter what he called it, it was intent on killing him. Or taking him back to the Precursors. Either way, not ideal.
“Oh, come on, please don’t do this!” he shouted uselessly as he ducked under an archway to avoid getting smashed by its tail. “Family reunions don’t have to mean we try to kill each other! Let’s not be a cliché!”
Apparently, his sibling didn’t appreciate his attempts to keep them from being a reality show rip-off, seeing as they tried to claw him out of his hiding spot.
He almost cried for joy when Amaterasu Bold came thundering down the street to stop the kaiju from destroying the city. Then he remembered who was supposed to be piloting Amaterasu, and how they were supposed to be grounded, and started screaming in his head. Because what the hell were the Hamadas doing out there? Who had let them back in a jaeger after their last attempt? They still had nightmares about it!
Where were the other jaegers? Horizon Rayearth, Crimson Havoc, Kronos Albion… What happened to them? He could make an educated guess, but it was too horrible to consider.
All he could do was watch as Otachi carried Amaterasu with them into the sky, praying that they would make it out alright.
Tadashi and Hiro returned to cheers of adulation back at the shatterdome. The battle had been harrowing, but they couldn’t deny that it had made their blood sing. It felt good to be back in a jaeger and protecting the city like they were trained to. They could never erase what they’d done before, but they couldn’t let it stop them. Not anymore. They were going to push forward and defeat the kaiju for good, so nothing like that would ever happen again.
And maybe they would still have nightmares. Still have trouble just living. But they were going to try anyways, because at the end of it all, what more could they do?
When Marshal Callaghan ordered the workers to restart the clock, the cheers died down, and the reality of the situation sunk in. They had emerged as victors in the end, but they were two jaegers down. Alex Summers was dead, and his little brother was missing- probably dead as well. The rangers of Horizon Rayearth had all miraculously survived, thanks largely due to their intelligence and wilderness survival training- what they learned at their middle schools in Japan, he had no idea- but obviously couldn’t fight without a functioning jaeger. The conn-pod was the most important piece, and recreating it would take weeks, if not months. Still, it was comforting that they hadn’t died during the attack, even if they were a little worse for wear.
He and Hiro went to visit them for a short bit once everyone else had returned to their tasks. All three girls had smiled sunnily at them despite all the horrors they’d been through, and congratulated them on their victory. They chatted for a bit before Callaghan called them back to the bridge.
Of course, nothing good could ever last.
Two more kaiju had already come through the breach, although it seemed that they were holding position there instead of trying to make their way to shore. They couldn’t just leave them there though- the kaiju were obviously planning something. So they suited up again along with Kronos Albion, now that it had been fixed. There was no telling if there would be another EMP attack, but there was no other choice. Amaterasu got lucky with Leatherback and Otachi, but they couldn’t take on two more category IV’s on their own. At the bottom of the ocean. Right by the breach. With a possible third kaiju on the way.
Yep, things were going great for them.
He tried not to think of how Fred hadn’t returned to base yet. Even though he’d left hours ago, deep into the city that the kaiju had just been razing. No one had heard from him. Tadashi tried to act like he didn’t notice, but he saw the way they all looked at him. They knew he was worried.
It wasn’t until they were at the breach that Fred turned up. He could hear him over the coms, shouting for them to stop what they were doing.
“Just because the breach is open, that doesn’t mean you can throw a bomb through! Listen, it’s just going to bounce back off of it if you try, like all the other attempts! The breach reads their DNA like- like a barcode at the supermarket! If you don’t have the right barcode, it won’t let you through. Power means nothing to the breach- you can’t get through it by force! If you’re not a kaiju, it won’t let you through!”
“Well, then what the hell do you suggest we do?” Luke groaned, and Tadashi didn’t have to see him to know he was rolling his eyes. Sometimes he really wanted to punch that guy.
Hiro snorted lightly, grinning at him and giving him a thumbs up. Not surprising. Hiro spent a lot of time fantasizing about punching Luke himself.
“You’re going to have to convince the breach that you are one,” Fred said.
Which didn’t really help. “Um, how are we supposed to do that?” Hiro asked.
Honey piped up this time, her face popping up on a little screen in the corner of their jaeger’s visor. “You need to fool it into thinking you carry the same code as the kaiju! Lock onto a kaiju and ride it through the breach!”
Well, that sounded perfectly insane, but didn’t these days? And naturally, that wasn’t the end of it.
“There’s another kaiju coming through the breach!” Wasabi squealed. He may have been a professional, but he had his limits to what he could handle, and this was really testing him.
“What category?” asked Marshal Callaghan.
He gulped audibly, not soothing anyone’s fears. “Category V.”
Honey moved slightly out of the screen to check something, and Tadashi caught a glimpse of Fred standing behind her. He was roughed up, but okay. He was covered in dirt and what looked like building debris, and his hands were torn up like he’d gotten in a fist fight with a brick wall, but it didn’t look like he had any serious injuries. He was clutching his chest though, as if something were hurting him.
“Fred, are you okay?” he asked without thinking. He flushed, realizing how ridiculous he sounded. There was like….a thousand other things he should have been thinking of just then- like the kaiju that were still prowling around them- but it came out without his permission.
He startled, eyes flicking to meet his through the screen. “What? Oh,” he said, glancing down at his ripped shirt and dropping his hand. “Yeah, I’m… I’m fine. Just, uh, the old scar, you know? It’s okay though, I’m fine.” He smiled weakly, and Tadashi felt something clench in his chest. Something was up, that much was clear, but he didn’t have time to drag it out of him. They all had bigger problems to deal with.
Hiro shot him a reassuring look, conveying through the neural link that everything was going to be alright.
Their biggest problem reared its ugly head, emerging from the breach like a gigantic nightmare. They couldn’t even see it properly in the dark, but the volcanic light was just enough for them to see its hulking shape as it approached Kronos Albion.
“Kronos, we’re about a hundred feet behind you. We’ll back you up-”
Scunner slammed into them, cutting him off. They held it off for a minute, but once they activate their right chain sword, Raiju came racing through the darkness to rip off their whole arm. They screamed at the pain, and stumbled straight into Scunner’s open mouth. It chewed on their left leg, and it took all their willpower to activate the second sword and drive it into the kaiju’s scull. For good measure, they used it to drag the beast over to one of the volcanic vents, burning its face.
It may have backfired on them slightly when the kaiju flailed in its pain, dislodging their sword and scrambling away.
They barely reacted in time when their coms shouted at them to watch out, raising their sword at just the right angle to cut Raiju from head to tail. No time to celebrate though as Kronos delivered more fantastic news. “We can’t deliver the payload! The release is jammed. Our hull’s been compromised, and half our systems are overloaded. We’re still armed though!” Thalia said.
Now would have been a great time for the kaiju’s to activate some secret self destruct button on the breach themselves, but to no one’s surprise, they didn’t do that. Instead, Scunner turned around and charged for a joint attack on Kronos.
“We’re coming for you!” Hiro said as they took one stumbling step after the other. They were missing an arm and a good portion of their leg, but they were coming.
“No!” Luke yelled, halting them in their tracks. “You know what you have to do! Amaterasu is nuclear! Take her to the breach and finish the mission!”
Silence on all ends, as his words sunk in. It was easy to forget sometimes, that despite his often asshole-ish nature, Luke was actually a decent guy. Tadashi swallowed past the lump in his throat, and forced his hands to stop shaking. “Roger that. It’s been an honor, Kronos Albion.”
He and Hiro didn’t look back when the payload detonated. They simply ran as fast as their battered jaeger could take them.
They didn’t succeed in entirely avoiding the blast- how could they in their condition- but they were still standing by the end of it. Sure, their systems were critical, fuel was leaking, and life support was down, but they were still there. And they were going to finish the mission if it was the last thing they ever did.
Tadashi reached down to pick up half of Raiju’s corpse. “You guys better be right about this. Because one way or another, we’re finishing this,” he told LOCCENT.
“We know you guys can do it, and it will work! Right, Freddy? Freddy? Where did-?”
His split second of distraction let Slattern barrel right into them. They were barely functional as it was, and of course his one hand was full of dead kaiju at the moment. He dropped it to punch the living one in its face, but it did little to deter it. He was about to accept a gruesome death at the bottom of the ocean, when something incredible happened.
Another kaiju dashed in from the surrounding water and slammed into Slattern. Vaguely, he realized it hadn’t come from the breach. But then where could it have been?
It wasn’t until the molten light caught it just right, that he realized what kaiju it was.
Odokuro.
He suddenly felt very small and vulnerable, and he wasn’t sure he was breathing or not. Years. It had been years since the attack, and the kaiju had disappeared after Hiro slashed it with their sword. It was supposed to be dead. How could it not be? No one had ever found its body, but the ocean was a big place- they all assumed it had merely been carried out further to its depths. But it was alive. And here. And attacking the other kaiju?
That last thought made him snap back into focus, and he watched transfixed as Odokuro- the kaiju from his brother’s worst nightmares- spewed fire right in Slattern’s face. Never in his wildest dreams did he think he’d be happy to see the kaiju do that again, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“What the fuck?” Hiro voiced everyone’s thoughts. He could feel that his brother was reeling from the kaiju’s arrival, but like Tadashi, he was glad it wasn’t attacking them. Not yet, anyway.
They watched as the kaiju clashed, and as they twisted through the water, he saw a long scar weaving across its torso.
“The breach. Now,” he gasped out, realizing that it wasn’t just Odokuro’s surprise reappearance that was making him short of breath. He’d almost forgotten that their systems were down- including life support. Slattern’s assault hadn’t helped either, and they had only minutes left before they were dead in the water.
They staggered towards their destination, ignoring the battle that raged on behind them. Amaterasu was barely holding on, and he was pretty sure they were losing more chunks along the way, but they continued. Dimly, he heard Wasabi note that Hiro’s oxygen was at ten percent. He disengaged to give him his, shoving him gently into an escape pod. They had always been in this together, but this was where Tadashi drew the line. It was where he always drew the line. Like taking that one step forward when Odokuro had blasted them, he was going to protect Hiro, one last time. He smiled as the pod disappeared.
“Tadashi, you have to get in the breach. Do you still have a kaiju’s body to use?” Marshal Callaghan asked softly. Everyone else was quiet. Waiting.
“I have it,” he gasped out, lurching back towards the controls. He was pretty sure he still had it. No, wait, he had dropped it to punch Slattern before, hadn’t he? Shit. He could go back and get it. He could do it. He just needed to….to focus.
He stumbled into something unusually soft, and not metal. That was weird. What had he…?
“Okay, there, Smiles. Everything is going to be alright. We’re just going to get you in that second escape pod, okay?”
“Fred?” He blinked up at him, not comprehending what was happening. Was he already dead? Or was this some sort of oxygen deprivation hallucination that he had conjured up in his final moments?
He must have mumbled that last part out loud because Fred had the nerve to laugh at him. “Sorry, Smiles. You're not dead yet. Not on my watch. I’m getting you out of here, and finishing the mission for you.”
Well, that made absolutely no sense. He didn’t even know how Fred got there. They were at the bottom of the ocean for fuck’s sake. Also, how did he get into Amaterasu? She was sealed shut, and he was pretty sure that even with all the shit that had been happening, he would still notice if a bunch of water had flooded in with the opening of the hatch to the conn-pod.
“Uh, yeah, there’s like, a shitload of stuff I need to explain to you, but we don’t really have time for that. Your oxygen levels are way past critical, and mine… Well, I made sure to fill my lungs up really well before shifting into this form, and I did make most of my internal organs smaller so I could keep my lungs larger to help compensate for lack of oxygen in here- really it would be more convenient if this place was just filled with water for me because then I could just make gills, but that’s not important right now. Anyways, I shifted into something tiny enough to squeeze through the cracks basically, and then I shifted back to normal me, and here we are!”
He told Tadashi all of this as he strapped him into the last escape pod, all in what seemed like one breath. None of what he was saying made any sense to him though. Shifting? Making his internal organs smaller? What the hell?
“Fred, I don’t understand,” he breathed, reaching out to touch him. He felt so solid, so real, but this was all so… He didn’t have the words to describe what was happening. The scar on his chest peaked out from his torn shirt, and he couldn’t help running his fingers across it.
Fred smiled sadly at him, and Tadashi wished dearly that he could stop him from ever looking that way again. Fred should never be sad. He was supposed to be happy. Light- hearted. “Smiles, there’s so much I wish I could tell you, but we just don’t have the time anymore,” he said with a hitch in his voice. “Listen, no matter what happens, I want you to know- I’m so sorry. About everything. No, don’t say anything,” he said, holding up a hand to stop him.
“You’ll understand what I mean soon enough. And I- I hope you can forgive me. You know, I never,” he chuckled. “I never realized how much one person could change everything. When I came to this world, and I saw you- who knew how much my life would change? But you did that, you ridiculous, wonderful human. From the moment we met, you were the one to set me on the right path, even if you didn’t know it. And I am so glad you did, and I’ll never regret the time we spent together.”
Tadashi didn’t like the way this conversation was going. He was making it all sound very final, like they’d never see each other again. Which was not what he wanted, even if he’d been ready to accept it when Slattern had last attacked Amaterasu. That was different. This was…This was too much. His eyes blurred, and he wasn’t sure if it was the oxygen deprivation or tears.
“I love you, Tadashi.” And God, how he’d longed to hear those words from the other’s mouth for ages. But hearing them like this made his heart twist violently in his chest. “You take good care of yourself, okay?”
And just like that, everything went black.
The next time he opened his eyes, his little brother was crouching over his escape pod. The only thing around them for miles was the ocean.
“What is… Where’s Fred?” he rasped out.
One look at Hiro’s dejected face gave him his answer. He cried so hard, he didn’t even notice when the choppers approached.
Fred was gone.