bakerstreet | Pacific Rim AU meme

Pacific Rim AU meme

The Pacific Rim Meme

We always thought alien life would come from the stars. But it came from deep beneath the sea, a portal between dimensions in the Pacific Ocean. Something out there had discovered us. The first Kaiju made landfall in San Francisco. The second attack hit Manilla. Then the third one hit Cabo. Then we learned this was not going to stop. In order to fight monsters, we created monsters of our own. We needed a new weapon. The Jaeger Program was born. Two pilots, our minds, our memories, we were connected. Man and machine became one.

In the near future, giant monsters identified as "Kaiju" have begun attacking Earth's coastal cities, resulting in a war that takes millions of lives and quickly consumes humanity's resources. To combat the monsters, a special type of weapon is designed: massive robots, known as Jaegers. The Jaegers are controlled simultaneously by two pilots who are bound together in a process called Drifting, creating a neural link between their minds. The link lets them share the mental strain which would otherwise overwhelm a single pilot. The Jaegers are the last, best hope for humanity's survival.

Instructions:
1.Choose a role (or multiple roles!) and post with your character/fandom.
2. Others will post to you with a scenario.
3. All Jaeger names must made up of two words that have little to do with each other. This is mandatory.
4. Go big or go extinct. Or just have fun, that works too.

Roles:

1. Jaeger Pilot: The rock stars of the kaiju wars. You and your partner may be siblings, spouses, parent and child, or just two people who have the trust and compatability necessary for a successful Drift. Get out there and kick some ass.

2. Engineer: The war against the kaiju isn't just fought by the pilots. You're one of the countless support staff that design, repair, and enhance the Jaegers for maximum kaiju-smashing potential.

3. Scientist: Biologist, physicist, kaiju groupie. You study these horrific monsters so you can figure out how to destroy them...or you just really have a thing for alien anatomy.

4. Mission Control: Off the front lines but not out of the battle. You're watching the monitors, dealing out the orders, and generally making sure your Jaeger pilots don't do anything more stupid than normal.

5. Civilian: A black market dealer in kaiju organs, a reporter trying to get her big scoop, or just some poor schmuck trying not to get stepped on. You're one of the folks that the Jaegers are fighting for.

6. Other: Go wild.

Scenarios:

1. Preparations: Dealing with kaiju is a process, not a moment. Pilots need to physically and mentally hone their strength, engineers need to perfect the Jaeger weaponry and armor, scientists need to run their experiments, and black market dealers need to make their money.

2. First Neural Handshake: It's time to Drift with your partner. You'll experience each others' most painful secrets, joyous memories, and the time you got drunk and made out with the captain of the football team. Hang on, it'll be a bumpy ride.

3. Downtime: Chill out, have a beer, pretend the world isn't ending. You can explore the thriving towns that have grown up amongst the kaiju remains or just stay in the Shatterdome doing combat practice. However you relax, you've earned it.

4. Kaiju Detected: Battle stations, folks. Get to your cockpit, your command post, or your underground bunker. The monsters are coming, and they ain't gonna stop until someone does something about them.

5. Combat Mode: It's go time! You're in the heat of things, punching these otherworldly abominations in the face with your awesome. Remember to call your attacks; it makes them more powerful if you shout their names first.

5. Aftermath: Job well done, folks. Sit back, enjoy the celebrations, put another tick mark on your kill count...and if necessary, mourn the dead.

6. Other: Go further wild.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

[ Gipsy remembers quite vividly the last time she was online, and what it felt like to brawl. The satisfying crunch of kaiju flesh and bone beneath enormous metal fists, the crack of bones and joints and ligaments as she tore them limb from limb were memories that she carried with her. They were hers that she shared with her pilots -- similar in nature to how she was privy to their most intimate thoughts, fears, and desires.

She also remembers -- vividly -- the moment she went offline as well as the searing, excruciating pain that he had experienced prior to her stasis lockdown. Their screams had been hers – Raleigh and his brother both. Just as she felt the snap and pull of wires and gears and machinery being fracture, broken and dismembered – so too did Raleigh and his brother. Everything was shared in the drift and when Yancy went ‘offline’, Gipsy felt it, experienced it – and she felt Raleigh’s emotional pain, too.

He’d piloted her to the shore – alone and Gipsy…she’d tried to hold the neural link back as much as she possibly could – for Raleigh’s sake – but it was difficult when pilot and machine shared physical and emotional pain on so many levels. When he’d disconnected, everything had gone black for Gipsy.

Now she was back online and they were coding her for someone else (a test, she was assured - but still), and she was angry.

The connection between man and machine was strong -- Gipsy wanted no other pilots other than Raleigh. She'd made that abundantly clear as much as she was able for a robot that lacked voice receptors.

So, when her new, temporary pilot, set foot on ‘board’, Gipsy protests with a low hum, then a shrill beep.

Off. ]

[Hercules has fought alongside Gipsy Danger before — she and Striker Eureka were housed in the Icebox (the Alaskan Shatterdome, he has got to stop calling it the Icebox, people actually listen to him now) for a little while before she went offline — so when Stacker told him they were restoring her back to her previous glory but they needed someone to run test protocols until they could find new pilots for her, he had agreed to act as Stacker's guinea pig.

He hadn't let himself think about how it would feel to step foot inside another Jaeger. It feels...odd. All the instruments are in the right place, of course, and he's piloted Mark III Jaegers before so he's very familiar with how all this works, but it's not quite — right.

Apparently he's not the only one who thinks so.

He ends up shushing her quietly, like you would do when trying to saddle a skittish horse, his hands held out placatingly as he gets close to the Conn-Pod.] I know, girl, I know.

[Resolutely not laughing at himself — look, it may seem weird and stupid to other people, but only a pilot understands what Jaegers are like, and Striker is touchy to a fault — he continues to try to soothe the giant metal machine.] We're trying to get Raleigh back, love, Stacker has gone off to locate him. This is just me trying to make sure you're in good running order before your boy comes home, okay? I'm not going to replace him.

Let's just work together on this, yeah?

[ When she realizes who it is, she’s only slightly mollified. It’s a familiar face…sort of. As familiar as a memory can be, really.

And, in truth – she feels abandoned. Raleigh left her -- or at least, that’s how it seems. She understands, in a way, why he did it and why he quit. Perhaps if she had been able, she would have done the same. Programming and protocol prevent her from acting without a pilot, so in many ways, Gipsy is as much a prisoner as any inmate might feel. She’s capable of thought and emotions – she has to be, otherwise the link wont work -- and when her pilot up and left it had felt like a little piece of her had up and gone, too.

And now this rugged and familiarly foreign pilot dares to set foot in Raleigh’s metaphorical shoes?

Hardly. She beeps again, and this time it’s more insistent, annoyed – maybe a little demanding and impatient, too. It’s probably impossible for him to discern her distress until he connects, but Gipsy doesn’t care. She’s agitated and disgruntled.

Raleigh, you are in a load of shit when you get back. ]

[The tone of the beeping shifts a little, and Herc lets himself smile. He doesn't know what she's thinking, no, but he will soon enough. It's what lets him continue to mumble reassuring nonsense as he steps into place and slides his helmet on.

Tendo Choi does him the kindness of not remarking on the stream of words tumbling from his lips; they've known each other a long time, they know how the other works. It's not until he's all strapped in and his spine plate has locked onto the support structure that Tendo interrupts him.]

Alright, girlie, this is it. [He knocks his knuckles against the metal beam arcing down behind his back as the disembodied voice of the countdown clock starts the neural handshake protocol. There's nobody here to Drift with, nobody but Gipsy herself. Idly, he lets himself wonder if drifting without the buffer of another pilot is going to make this any harder, but then he doesn't have time to wonder, because he's being pulled backwards through his own head.

Drifting is always an unsettling experience, at least in the first few seconds. It starts with a weird pull behind the eyes, like the beginning of a migraine headache, followed by the aching emptiness of high-altitude travel before you pop your ears, and then...

Oh. He's learned how to stay steady through the Drift, but that doesn't mean he isn't a little shocked to see how much of Gipsy is bleeding through.

Hello, Gipsy, he tries, never having really directly communicated with a Jaeger before. Striker is so much like Chuck, Herc finds himself mentally rolling his eyes a lot when he pilots him, but most of their communication is done non-verbally. Or non-mentally, however that works. My name's Hercules.]

[ What humans don’t really realize (not at first, anyway – not until the jaegers began to evolve and develop their own personalities out of the Artificial Intelligence given to them by the Engineers) is that Drifting is as equally unsettling for the jaegers as it is for their pilots. It’s a complete and utter merge for all three -- thoughts, emotions, anything and everything gets pulled from everyone’s consciousness and deposited directly into the Drift – and with just the two of them? It’s a little overwhelming and…well.

Gipsy might be dumping a little more than she needs to because bitter and irritated but she immediately realizes the danger in that and pulls back. It’s out of respect for Raleigh (and the human race as a whole) that she does – plus, this is a familiar face in her memory banks, and she can easily pull the file up – once she’s settled with this foreign consciousness that’s now merged with her mind. He’ll see the records drift across his consciousness; whatever memories Raleigh and Yancy had, he’ll see.

It’s an effort on Gipsy’s part – sort of. She’s showing him that she’s aware he’s a familiar face – and she’s also making it clear that he’s not her pilot. She clicks a little as she shifts her massive body against metal holdings that keep parts of her together, joints creaking and aching. Still not entirely rebuilt, Gipsy hurts. ]

I know who you are. Hello, Hercules. I am Gipsy Danger.

[Perhaps it's because Hercules has been a pilot almost since day one, perhaps it's because he's a father, perhaps it's just because he's him, but he's always been particularly in tune with the Jaegers. It's why he's taking a little time right now to stand still and get used to Gipsy, let her get used to him.

There's no rush, they have nowhere to be. He's just saying hello.]

You've been asleep for a long time, [he says, trying to project calm and the kind of detached affection you have for a friend's kids. He doesn't really know Gipsy, he's trying to respect that, but he knows of her and he knows her pilots, and hopefully she can feel the respect and admiration he has for them both, even if Yancy is no longer living. He didn't spend a lot of time working with the Beckett brothers, but he liked them and thus, by extension, he liked Gipsy.] How are you feeling?

[ Gipsy can feel what it is he's trying to do, what he's trying to convey and articulate through his emotions – and it doesn’t go unnoticed or unappreciated. Some of the tension that’s rolling through her systems eases a little, and he probably feels a tightness that he didn’t know he had loosen up. ]

Tired. It hurts.

[ She sounds tired – the ‘sleep’ she’d been in hadn’t been ‘good sleep’ – as far as stasis and recharge can go, anyway. There’s a difference between voluntary recharge and offlining. Feeling her pilot die and then going offline herself shortly after took a psychological toll on more than just Raleigh. ]

Can you feel it?

I can. [He's relieved when she relaxes a little, feels some of their shared tension leak out of his body, and he lets the Conn-Pod accept a little more of his weight as he gets comfortable.] We're working on that.

That's why I'm here, to help you. [He lets her see all the work that he's done up to this point, him and Stacker and the whole crew, how they got her transferred from Anchorage down to Hong Kong, the work they've done to try to restore her as best as they could, everything. He wants her to understand that she's important to the resistance, that they want her feeling better, healthy.]

I was hoping we could run diagnostics together, find out how your repairs are going.

I’m sorry.

[ It’s an honest enough statement, and the pod itself eases under him, accepting his weight and his movement. The rigid irritation has lessened considerably, but there are still traces of it in the drift. She pulls back on the pain, just a little. ]

You brought me here.

[ She hums a little, thoughtful at the knowledge. She hadn’t really known how she got here – only that she’d woken up, in pain and alone, and without her pilots. One dead, the other…dead as well, but in a different way. She’d felt that, too, before he’d cut the link. ]

Thank you. [ She adds that in as best she can, metal and gears shifting again against constraints that help hold her together. ] What do you need me to do?

Edited 2013-07-15 20:07 (UTC)

It's alright, love, [he murmurs, knowing that any transference of pain is most likely accidental on her part and not minding. It helps him know what's wrong with her, anyway, and that's important.

He nods a little, memories of transport flashing in the back of his mind.] Yes. We need you, Gipsy. [He focuses on the whole Pacific Wall debacle, how people have decided that this is far safer and more useful than the Jaeger program, which is patently untrue and horribly dangerous.] There aren't many Jaegers left.

[He flexes his fingers, testing the bond, and smiles a little wider when he can feel Gipsy's fingers flexing along with him.] Let's just run a simple diagnostics. I want to know what you think.

[ It is entirely accidental, and Gipsy makes a little noise of regret in response, and pulls back further. ]

Of course you do.

[ This is said entirely without arrogance -- Gipsy knows she's needed. It's not only part of her function, her programming, but it's obvious. She knows that she's special, that she's invaluable. She might not be as fast as the others, or have extra appendages, but she's got her own talents. ]

A wall. [ Gipsy's laughter echoes in his head, though there's sorrow that quickly follows after. Too many lives will be lost because of that mistake; and too many jaegers lost, too. They aren't being rebuilt -- not like Gipsy.

She relinquishes complete control to him - jaegers have limited functionality on their own, though the pilots can override anything that the jaeger might question or dislike - and eases into his mind further, thus allowing him access into her own processor. It feels good to have that maneuverability again, the feeling of ones arm back. ]

Initializing: diagnostic testing, round one. Let's begin, Hercules Hansen.

[This right here is reminding Hercules just why he loves being a pilot so much. It's not just helping people or killing the Kaiju or saving the world; that's all great, really, but there's that connection you make with a giant hulking machine, thousands of tons of steel and processors that are so intimidating from the outside but so human on the inside. Gipsy is worried about his mental strain, worried about hurting him. No mere machine is capable of that.

Hopefully that surge of fondness telegraphs well to her AI, because he thinks it's important that the robots they deal with on a daily basis understand how valued they are.]

Unfortunately, yes. [There's so much he can say about the wall, but he doesn't have to. Gipsy can feel every thought he has about the futility of it all. There's something damn freeing about Drifting, and not having to articulate one's thoughts is one of those things.

He can feel her sink into the Drift, let him have more control over her systems and her processors, and Herc takes great pains to be respectful of that as he tests out her joints as she sets up her automated diagnostic tests. He huffs out a little laugh, smiling into his helmet.]

Ladies first, Gipsy Danger.

[ She knows how he feels about the wall -- and the emotion is met in kind. She feels the same way, because she knows it will not work. It will be a waste of time and resources, as well as human life. Gipsy cannot condone that -- she's built to protect, and that someone would deactivate the jaeger program is beyond her understanding.

Her demeanor changes, though, once he's given her a little bit of that freedom. He can feel the smile, even if she can't physically do it. The respect is appreciated, and fuels her determination even more. ]

Yes, Sir.

[ Gipsy isn't completely finished yet, but she's got some maneuverability back -- namely, her hands. The fist he's made meets the other palm, and she hums in pleasure at the satisfying sound of metal slamming against metal. ]

[Running a diagnostic check is almost second nature to Herc now; he's done it thousands of times over the course of his career, and Gipsy's no slouch in this department either. Together, they run down the checklist of things that need work, Herc narrating verbally for the benefit of Tendo over at the main relay station.

He grins to himself when Gipsy manages her traditional at-the-ready pose.] Atta girl, Gipsy.

[Honestly, he's almost surprised how well she does in testing. There's still some bits that need work, of course, pieces of her exoskeleton that are in need of repair, complicated inner processes that need maintenance, whatever. Herc's not an engineer, he couldn't tell you the specifics of what needs to be done. But he's glad she's able to tell him so he can relay the information.]

[ She couldn't help it, not really. She'd gone through the list with him, pointing out different things and problem areas that surface scans and repairs hadn't picked up. They were things only Gipsy could be forthcoming about, and now that Herc has wrangled trust out of her, she's entirely forthcoming in what hurts, what doesn't, what's functioning and what isn't. ]

When will I be field ready?

[ Because Herc now has her itching to spar. ]

We'll get teams working on you as soon as we're done. I'm hoping to have you up and running by the end of the week, but I'm not the final decision-maker on that.

[That would be the engineers and Stacker. He's just here to do things in absentia.]

Edited 2013-07-16 01:02 (UTC)

You will be taking me out on the test run.

[ It's more of a statement than a question -- Gipsy has relented and let another pilot into the Drift with her. She won't be so easily swayed again. ]

[That makes him smile, feeling proud and more than a little touched that she feels so strongly about this.]

Well, love, that depends entirely on whether or not we can convince Raleigh to return to the limelight.

[ That makes Gipsy fidget a little inside of his mind, her hope a clear and present entity. ]

Do you think he will come?

[ DARE SHE HOPE? ]

I do. [He really does, he's not just saying that to make her feel better.]

Once you've piloted a Jaeger once, it's hard to quit. Trust me on this. He'll come back to you.

[ The laughter rings in his head once more. ]

Is it really so addicting, Hercules Hansen? [ The tone is teasing, light -- she's trying, here. ]

[He grins at her, looking up as if he can somehow see her inside the cockpit.] There's nothing like it in the whole world, Gipsy. You're magnificent. [He means the general "you," here, but the singular also applies. Gipsy really is something else.]

Flattery gets you everywhere.

[ As does respect -- something he's quickly earning from her. ]

[He strokes the side of the control panel hovering in front of his face in a fond little caress.] It doesn't count as flattery if it's true.

[ Oh, Herc. Laying it on thick today. She might tease further if she couldn't see inside of his thoughts and tell that there is no lie in his statement. ]

You are a suitable pilot. Striker Eureka is fortunate.

tell me if this makes sense

it makes my heart hurt is what it does

she's a heartbreaker

that she is

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