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Chapter Text

Alarms blared, jerking Luo Binghe out of a slumber that had already been fitful and restless. He stared at the ceiling overhead for a moment as he tried to piece together where he was.

Cang Qiong Shatterdome. (He'd made it.) The base from which the Jaegers were based, standing sentinel against the incursion of kaiju from the demonic realm. Those otherworldly monsters driven to relentlessly seek out and ravage human settlements, unless they were stopped. (They must stop them.)

They're coming. They're coming now.

Luo Binghe rolled out of bed and dressed himself in record time; he was long in the habit of sleeping in most of his clothes, so he only had to pull on an outer robe and his boots to be decent in company.

The hallways of Cang Qiong Shatterdome were never fully abandoned -- at any hour of the day, even the middle of the night, you could find late-shift technicians or insomniac personnel roaming the halls. They would have been the ones to sound the alarm, to raise the whole Shatterdome and send everyone scurrying to their stations. Already people were rousing, rooms opening up as people trickled into the corridors, hurrying and intent on their goals.

They all had their stations -- the places they needed to be -- and he had his. Luo Binghe skidded to a halt outside one of the bedrooms and hit the control pad to the door; it beeped green, affirming his right to be there, and hissed open to reveal a set of private quarters. On the far side of the room, a man was just now sitting up in the bed. "Shizun!"

Shen Qingqiu must have been woken from a sound sleep by the alarm, same as Binghe, yet he seemed perfectly calm and unruffled by it. "It's all right, Binghe. No need to be worried. The kaiju won't arrive for hours yet," he reassured his young assistant.

"I know," Luo Binghe said. "That's the detection alarm, not the proximity alarm. Not until the proximity alarm is triggered will the base really be in danger."

Shen Qingqiu looked faintly surprised that Luo Binghe had learned the meanings behind the different tones of the alarm. But Luo Binghe had been in the Shatterdome for four years now, and he had made it his business to learn everything that was part of the fight against kaiju.

Luo Binghe couldn't remember a world without the kaiju -- the alien, gargantuan monstrosities that had broken into their world from some unknown hell had arrived twenty years ago. The world had risen up to fight them, human and demonic societies putting aside their old feuds in the face of the greater threat, turning their arts of cultivation and war into that of desperate defense. From that uneasy alliance, the Jaeger Warden program had been born -- the building and fielding of equally gargantuan mechanical defenders.

Like the rest of his generation, Luo Binghe had been raised from childhood to respect and honor the Jaeger Wardens as the defenders of this world. And he always had honored them... in an abstract sort of way. The kaiju themselves had always been more of a lurking horror in the hinterlands, far outside the boundaries of the walled towns, a bedtime story to scare little boys into compliance. Much more imminent threats were the dangers that lurked within those walls -- angry masters, loose dog packs, gangs and enforcers were much more regular threats to his daily life.

Young Luo Binghe had revered the Jaeger Wardens, but -- like a naive fool -- assumed that they and the monsters they fought belonged to a world far away from him.

At least until the day that the kaiju Spinejackal defeated the jaeger Dou Niu Shi and raged unchecked down the Luo River Valley. And on that day, Luo Binghe had learned what it really meant to be scared. When his mother put on her shoes, wrapped her shawl around his face, told him to stay put and stay quiet. When his mother went out into the city, taking a desperate risk. When she never came back.

Another Jaeger had been dispatched and Spinejackal had been defeated... but there was nothing left for Luo Binghe in the valley. He'd made a vow that day that he would make his way to the Jaeger Wardens, and do whatever he could to help push the kaiju back into the hell that they came from.

It had taken him ten days to walk to the nearest Shatterdome. By the time he made it to Cang Qiong he was half-frozen, three-quarters starved, penniless and shoeless -- but he'd made it.

And at Cang Qiong, he'd met the man who would one day become his guiding light.

"Even if it's only the detection alarm, I'll need to get down to the War Room," Shen Qingqiu said. "Whatever images they have of the kaiju, it will help me get started on identification."

"And they wouldn't be foolish enough to even try launching an attack before receiving one of my shizun's strategies," Luo Binghe filled in.

Everyone in the the Shatterdome knew -- most likely, everyone in the jianghu knew -- that when it came to the kaiju, there was no one more knowledgeable than Cang Qiong's Senior Science Officer, Shen Qingqiu. Not only did he have a vast index of knowledge about kaiju they had faced in the past -- their names, their attributes, their dates and locations and the swathes of damages they had wrought -- but he had an uncanny talent for identifying new ones in record time. A quick study of a new specimen was all he needed to be able to diagnose its strengths and weaknesses, likely attacks to defend against as well as clever strategies to take it down. With Shen Qingqiu advising on their defenses, no kaiju attack had gotten past the Cang Qiong Jaeger line in three years.

Shen Qingqiu heaved his legs over the side of the bed, swung them experimentally, and then grimaced. Luo Binghe perked up, alert as ever to that grimace. "Binghe, could you fetch my clothes over here?" he said.

Shizun's pain was bad today, then. Luo Binghe hurried to fetch the requested set of robes -- far more elaborate, with more badges of rank and accomplishment than his own -- and to help his master into them. Shen Qingqiu turned his back to him and Luo Binghe made short work of combing and pinning his hair -- much less attention than the task deserved, but needs must drive.

It was quickly done. Shen Qingqiu -- once more every inch the accomplished and invaluable scholar that advised the Cang Qiong division of Jaeger Wardens -- gave Luo Binghe a small smile (which he immediately buried within the safest chambers of his heart, to take out and review later) then reached out and grasped the handles of his forearm crutches, heaving himself up to his feet. He swung into balance between them, and set off at a brisk pace for the War Room.

Luo Binghe, as ever, followed behind. He would far rather be in this shadow than anywhere else, especially on a day like this one.

By the time Shen Qingqiu was ready to go, the trickle of people in the corridors had turned to a throng. It made navigation a challenge, but it could have been worse -- people tended to melt out of the way when they saw Shen Qingqiu coming.

The conversation dropped as Shen Qingqiu swung his way into the War Room, Luo Binghe following behind, to find most of the senior officers already present. Qi Qingqi, one of the other Division Heads whom Luo Binghe only passingly knew, looked up as he entered the room and said "Ah, who would have thought? It's the human spider, come to grace us with his presence."

Luo Binghe bristled at the insult, but Shen Qingqiu was unfazed. He made his way to his station chair and dropped into it, setting his forearm crutches aside, and gave them a little pat. "Shimei, even if you count these, that would still be six legs at a maximum. Arachnids have eight. Call me a human stick-bug, if you must."

Qi Qingqi rolled her eyes. "Of course that's the part of it you object to," she scoffed. "Heaven forfend that anyone be incorrect about disgusting creatures in your august presence."

Shizun's grace really was incomparable, Luo Binghe mused; if it had been up to him, he would have slugged the other officer for her insult. But Shen Qingqiu, as was usual these days, merely let it roll off his back and even managed to smile and laugh about it.

Shen Qingqiu tapped the tip of his crutch against the leg of her chair, then returned it to his side. "That is indeed what you all pay me for," he reminded her cheerily, and looked around the rest of the room. "Well? What have we got? Don't tell me this was a false alarm -- to be woken at this hour I expect at least a category three."

The atmosphere in the War Room was tense, but not rushed. Today's sighting was a goodly ways into the wasteland, it seemed, still several hours away. It would take some time to prepare and get in position, but they had at least an hour to get a read on the new enemy and decide the best tack to take.

An argument had broken out between the Engineering and Logistics departments over the best transport they could use for jaeger deployment. Luo Binghe's shizun ignored the scuffle in order to page through the clips delivered in a folder to his desk -- aerial shots of the new kaiju taken by their Eagle Eye drones. Most of the shots, from what he could see, were not very good. This monster seemed to be kicking up a lot of dust as it moved (it had been weeks since the last rain passed through the Wasteland) and its constant restless motion meant that many of the shots were blurred. But from one shot to the next -- whether the picture was of a flailing limb, a heaving flank, or a mysterious shadowy line that could be a tail, maybe? -- Shen Qingqiu narrowed his gaze in on the new foe.

"Unquestionably a terrestrial," Shen Qingqiu muttered under his breath; even Luo Binghe, stationed at his elbow, barely caught it. "I can't imagine this thing in the air. We don't get many aquarials, as far from the water as we are. A Burrower?" He narrowed his eyes, turning one of the photos ninety degrees, then ninety degrees again. "Hard to tell... I don't any signs of armor plating, nor shells, nor quills. Hmph. These odd mottled patches, though..."

He stopped at one picture, staring down at a clear shot of the kaiju's neck and one enormous leg. "Oh yes, a Burrower for certain; those eyes would never work above the surface. Don't like the look of those claws. And teeth! Ooh, a very nasty set of chompers to be sure. Better stay out of the range of these things, look like they could punch right through even grade three armor..."

Luo Binghe loved listening when Shen Qingqiu got lost in his work like this; as horrific as the things he was describing was, the clinical curiosity with which he dissected them made them seem almost... everyday. Like they weren't nightmares from beyond the boundaries of the world, come to ravage and ruin all they touched, but more like discussing the neighbor's naughty dog who kept getting in over the fence. He made them seem so... manageable.

"Looks like a fairly standard tank and spank, but things can never be that simple." Shen Qingqiu leaned on one elbow, toying absently with his folding fan in his free hand. "Claws and teeth, they've all got claws and teeth; what else? The tail? Scorpion's sting? No, the spine's going all the wrong way for that. Acid spit, maybe? Venomous spurs? Flamethrower breath?"

Luo Binghe quietly took back the thought about the kaiju seeming manageable.

Shen Qingqiu returned to the picture of the head and neck and went over it again, examining the shot closely for any clues around the mouth area. "No other teeth," he muttered. "Highly suspicious, that; what else is he hiding?"

The room was packed full; as well as the division heads, there were at least as many assistants hovering around the walls and the consoles, supporting their seniors in this discussion without being part of it. He didn't know most of them at all, though he was technically one of their ranks. One of them, a tense-looking young woman, waved a hand in Luo Binghe's peripheral vision to get his attention, then passed him another folder. He opened it and took a quick glance; the latest shots from the Eagle Eyes. "Shizun," he called softly, not wanting to break his teacher's concentration. Shen Qingqiu held out an absent hand in his direction, and Luo Binghe put the new photographs in that hand.

Shen Qingqiu leafed through the new pictures, then went through the first set again; then he put four of them in a square, stared at them, and let out a sudden thoughtful oh.

"-- get the lifters to start moving San Xin Shu towards the drop point." The one speaking was salt-and-pepper bearded Ruan Qingruan, the head of logistics, and Luo Binghe tuned back into the discussion with a start. San Xin Shu, one of the three Jaegers stationed full-time at Cang Qiong -- he remembered mostly that they were remarkable in that they were piloted by a trio of siblings instead of the usual two. "I've alerted their pilots --"

Shen Qingqiu cleared his throat, timing the noise together with a snap of his fan that had everyone in the room looking over at him. "Gentlemen," he said, fanning himself lightly. "I believe that in this case the unit best suited to fight this foe is Qie Dai Tao."

A dozen pairs of eyes turned on him in astonishment.

The first one to object, surprisingly, was Mu Qingfang -- the head of the medical division, Luo Binghe had met him in the infirmary a few times over the years. "Liu Qingge and Liu Mingyan are on rest rotation," Mu Qingfang objected. "They fought an engagement near Hua Yue City only three days ago. They're not ready to return to the field!"

"But they have had a chance to rest since that time, have they not?" Shen Qingqiu pointed out. "They should be the ones to go."

Several other protests broke out between Medical, Logistics, and (predictably) that one lady from Public Relations who seemed to really have it out for Shizun and made a point to object to him whenever the opportunity presented. Shen Qingqiu waited, fanning himself in a show of idle unconcern.

A tall man in black robes, collars weighed down by silver bars, stood up and the conversation died down instantly. Yue Qingyuan, the Commander of the Cang Qiong Shatterdome, usually let his lieutenants debate among themselves -- but when he choose to step in, everyone deferred to his aura of authority. "Mu-Shidi," he said, momentarily blocking out the other two in favor of their primary physician. "In your medical opinion, are the Liu siblings fit to fight?"

Mu Qingfang hesitated, looking torn. "Yes," he said.

"And is there any chance that entering another fight so soon would bring harm to them?"

"It shouldn't do any physical harm, no," the doctor said reluctantly. He followed up with: "But the pilot rotations are meant to ensure optimal performance -- they should not be overturned on a whim!"

"Of course," Yue Qingyuan said, relinquishing a nod. "I understand the importance of protecting our pilot's well-being in both the short and long term, and we would not lightly impose upon their recovery periods. That said. Shen-shidi."

Yue Qingyuan was looking over at him. Shen Qingqiu put on his most serious, professional face. "Yes?"

"Do you truly believe, speaking as our resident expert on kaiju, that San Xin Shu would be in danger if they fought this opponent?"

"I do," Shen Qingqiu replied. "Given the cloud of reduced visibility and the speed of its movement, San Xin Shu would be at a distinct disadvantage in this fight. They have a weakness to close combat."

"And what about Tianlang-jun's team?" Yue Qingyuan said. "Jing Wang She is in the reserve rotation, behind San Xin Shu, and close combat is their specialty."

Shen Qingqiu shook his head. "It has to be Qie Dai Tao."

For a moment the room seemed to hold its breath; everyone stared at Shen Qingqiu, waiting to see if he was going to explain himself any more than that. Luo Binghe seethed over their skepticism; when had Shen Qingqiu ever been wrong? Why bother to have an expert, if you weren't going to listen to him?!

"Very well," Yue Qingyuan said at last. "Alert Liu-shidi and Liu-shizhi that they are needed in the docking bay. We will deploy within the hour."

Round 2 of navigating the hallways, this time with twice as much hubbub and rushing bodies. Even the wide berth the staff gave them couldn't fully protect them from getting crowded and jostled on the trip to Mission Control. Once they reached Shen Qingqiu's station there, the sight of his crutches propped against the console -- bright fluorescent blue, with ridges and ropy coils winding from the handles down the shaft in glistening detail -- ensured some amount of personal space.

(Luo Binghe had always suspected that was half the point. Shizun really didn't like it when other people touched his mobility aids. Even he -- in his early days at the Shatterdome -- had suffered his fair share of bruises when he got in the way of Shizun's cane one too many times.)

While the War Room was centered around a broad table, Mission Control was dominated by a large screen at the front of the room. At the moment, it showed the feed from a single drone. Once they reached the interception point and the jaeger and kaiju closed in on each other, the views would split as a dozen different Spirit Eagle drones circulated in the air. Right now what the camera feeds were showing was mostly a lot of swiftly passing scenery.

Admittedly, the scenery of the Wasteland was far from boring. The Wasteland -- the vast, desolate stretch of karst that took up the center of the continent here -- was a real mayhem of rock and water. Nothing but rock and water; there were few plants that grew there, and fewer animals. The topography threw sheer cliffs and piercing spires of rock above deep, vast caverns whose roofs crumbled under the weight of the edifice overhead, throwing mountains down into caverns and then pouring in a sea's worth of chemical slurry on top. The result was a maze of caves and tunnels, cliffs and gullies that was impossible to build any kind of base in and which provided endless amounts of cover for any approaching kaiju.

Somewhere out in the Wasteland were the Abyssal Rifts that brought the kaiju to their world in the first place -- but so far, nobody had been able to venture deep enough into the no-man's land to find them. Someday, maybe, if they had the right Jaeger -- if they had the right team, with the best strategic minds behind them, they could mount a real expedition. Maybe -- if he played his cards right -- he could be a part of such an expedition...

"We're coming up on the interception point." Liu Qingge's gruff voice came from the speakers, jolting Luo Binghe out of his daydreaming. "I have eyes on the kaiju."

"Do you actually have eyes on it, or do you have eyes on the traveling dust cloud it's kicking up?" Shen Qingqiu asked dryly, leaning forward to be in range of the mic.

Liu Mingyan's voice came over the channel next, matching him for dryness. "Shen-shibo. Do I understand correctly that we have you to thank for rousting us out of our down time to climb back into the cockpit?" she asked. "Remind me to find a proper way to thank you later."

Some muted laughter echoed around the channel, but Shen Qingqiu took it in good part. "Well, I didn't think your brother would forgive me if I passed up the opportunity for him to get into another fight," he said.

"Clear the channel. It's almost on top of us," Liu Qingge cut in sternly.

The video feed began to divide into different angles and perspectives as the Spirit Eagles peeled away from the escort, rising up and circling the approaching kaiju in order to get the best vantage. Beyond the narrow walls of the passage, the ground opened up into a wide, fan-shaped canyon, a broad flat expanse of tan stone that sloped away downwards towards the far end before rising abruptly into shallow cliffs. It was as clear an arena as one was likely to get in the Wasteland, and not surprising that the Liu siblings would pick this as the place to make their stand.

The Liu siblings' jaeger, Qie Dai Tao, moved out of the bottleneck into the open space and struck up a firm stance. In their left hand they held a blast rifle at ready; in their right, the side controlled by Liu Qingge, was a sword. Well, it was simplest to call it a sword, anyway -- no single piece of metal forged at that size could possibly hold up against a kaiju's side, so this was more of a machine of its own. What Qie Dai Tao wielded was an amalgamation of razor-sharp edges braced into a titanium framework, with engines built-in to propel it.

The Jaeger was a beast of wires and weaponry, sixty meters tall and a hundred tons of reinforced armor plates. But against the beast which burst shrieking from the ground in a spray of pulverized rock, they looked small.

The kaiju -- they were calling this one Gnasher for now, though no doubt it would be cleaned up in the press releases -- clawed its way out of the ground as though it had dug its way straight up from hell. This one had huge, heavy claws on its front feet, which served to break casually through rock and shovel its way through earth. Its maw opened to unsheathe a pair of deadly outsized incisors, top and bottom, like a bear trap ready to spring closed. The Jaeger's armor could stand up against any blow up to and including a plane crash, but these deadly tusks looked like they could punch right through. The skin of its head was raw, pink and shiny, and its tiny eyes were sealed shut with a membrane of filmy white.

Qie Dai Tao opened the fight with a blast shot. A burst of flame blossomed from the side of its head, and Gnasher shrieked and scrabbled forward. Qie Dai Tao lurched to the side, backing up rapidly as they loaded another shot, but Gnasher rapidly closed the distance, powerful front feet churning up rock and earth in its path.

Seconds before collision the jaeger jerked to the side, barely clearing the ravening path of destruction. There was no chance at this close range to get off a shot; Qie Dai Tao moved in with the sword instead, slashing at the monster's massive flank. Rocket boosters flared on the jaeger's legs as they darted in, then up. One slash, up, on the upswing; another, down, on the downswing, carving two trenches into the kaiju's side.

Gnasher turned on them and Qie Dai Tao turned with them, still hacking, hacking away at the wound they had opened in its side. Ichor spattered and white bone glistened inside the wound, revealing a weirdly striated pattern of ribs. The sword stabbed in between two ribs, deep, and the jaeger wrenched it to the side as the kaiju roared and lashed out.

This time, Qie Dai Tao wasn't able to dodge in time; the monster's lashing claws knocked them from their feet, then pinned them before the mech could get away. The kaiju's squat legs, bulging with muscle, tried a rake that would have opened the mech like a tin can -- Qie Dai Tao threw themself to the side and kept rolling, getting out from under its belly barely in time.

The two opponents scrambled for footing, coming up to face one another again in the barren gully. Gnasher screamed in rage, lowering its head and scrabbling its massive claws into the dirt, and then lunged forward again without warning. This time Qie Dai Tao was ready; they met that massive charge head-on, left arm clamping onto the side of the monster's neck as their sword flashed in the harsh sun.

For a moment the combatants struggled for footing, for grip, with Gnasher straining its jaws to bite to the side while Qie Dai Tao struggled to find a mark for their blade. But the kaiju far outweighed the smaller machine, and with a heave it sent them both lurching to the side, lumbering up to a charge that slammed Qie Dai Tao against the side of the cliff.

The impact broke a crater into the wall of the gulley; cracks spread out, then upwards, as rock splintered beneath the weight of the two behemoths. Then all at once there was a gush of water as the edge of the gulley began to crumble, a river beginning to pour rapidly into the basin.

Gnasher seemed confused by the sudden change of terrain, off-balance, and Qie Dai Tao took advantage of its uncertainty; with one hand it reached out to seize one lashing, off-balance leg, and with the other the sword arced overhead and came slashing down. Ichor spurted, mixing with the flowing water to flash a weird fluorescent blue in the bright light, and a long strip of meat and several gnarled toes separated and fell writhing into the growing puddle of water.

The kaiju screamed, a bellow that washed over Mission Control with a flood of static; it twisted and fought its way free of Qie Dai Tao's grip, and then in a sudden heave and flash of massive claws, it vanished.

"Where'd it go?" someone in the room yelled.

"It's a burrower, all right," Shen Qingqiu said grimly.

Water was pouring in fast, mixing with the kaiju's toxic blood. Qie Dai Tao turned for the edge of the cliff and began to climb rapidly, jamming giant metal gauntlets into the side of the cliff to make handholds.

The video feed dissolved into a kaleidoscope of viewpoints as the drones scrambled to keep up, hurrying out of the way of the rushing flood and crumbling avalanche. Most of the drones followed Qie Dai Tao; Shen Qingqiu's was one of those that hunted around for the missing kaiju, instead. With its monstrous strength it could claw through solid rock like drywall; it really could be anywhere.

"Is it running?" asked Ruan Qingruan. "Maybe the pilots should retreat, protect the Shatterdome."

"Kaiju do not run," Yue Qingyuan said, with a deathly calmness. "It will return. Liu-shidi, Liu-shizhi, watch your feet."

"Copy," Liu Qingge said tersely. The Jaeger was still making for higher ground, seeking solid stone that wouldn't crumble underfoot.

With every nerve pitched to a hair trigger, it was actually Luo Binghe who saw it -- a flicker in the corner of the camera view where a section of the rock suddenly and silently vanished downward. "Look out!" he cried, jumping forward to point at the screen. "On the left!"

Qie Dai Tao jumped away to the right just as the ground exploded right at their feet, heralding the return of the kaiju to the surface. It lunged forward out of its self-made burrow with a primal scream, and for a moment the entire Mission Control was treated to a camera view straight down the thing's gullet. There was a writhing darkness there that was nauseating to look on.

Shen Qingqiu sat tense, literally gripping the edge of his seat as he leaned forward. Luo Binghe wasn't even sure his shizun was breathing.

A black streak shot across the camera's view, then another, leaving only fragments of the white sky and dusty rock between them. Then -- blackness.

There was a moment of confusion before the main viewscreen switched over to a different drone's view, one that had been circling higher and out of reach. From there they got the full picture: from Gnasher's open maw stretched a long tendril of blackness, like a frog's extended tongue, which had wrapped itself around Qie Dai Tao's upraised left arm.

Metal screamed against rock as Qie Dai Tao braced against the wrenching pull. But unlike a frog, the monster was not limited to only one tongue. Another black ribbon shot out from the kaiju's mouth, questing for Qie Dai Tao's other arm; they managed to evade the grab, but a third one wrapped around their right leg, and then another around the mechanical torso. Qie Dai Tao resisted the pull, but an insistent yank on their leg broke their stance. Qie Dai Tao stumbled, and began to be dragged forward across the churned-up ground.

The jaeger was too large to actually fit itself into the kaiju's mouth. But once they were pulled into range of those guillotining teeth, they would find themselves in much smaller pieces soon.

Before the kaiju could get in biting range, however, Qie Dai Tao recovered their equilibrium; their sword arm was still free. The motors on the back edge of the blade whined and burned hot as Qie Dai Tao set the sharp edge against the first tendril and fired.

The motorized sword cut through the black ribbon like a hot knife through butter. Shen Qingqiu sat back, exhaling at last, as Qie Dai Tao deftly maneuvered the sword around to cut every seeking tendril, leaving them flopping and leaking black ichor into the wind. Ribbon cutter, indeed.

Now Luo Binghe saw his shizun's strategy. San Xin Shu wouldn't have been able to keep this kaiju at range; it would have rushed them, and those terrible tendrils pulled them down. Even Jing Wang She wouldn't have been able to break out of its grip. Only Qie Dai Tao had both the close-in grit and the agility to finesse it.

His Shizun had been right! Again. Luo Binghe couldn't help but preen, caught in the glow of secondhand accomplishment.

The battle was still going strong. Having lost its bid to drag Qie Dai Tao into biting range, Gnasher had pushed its way out of its burrow and was lashing out at the jaeger with its massive claws. Qie Dai Tao feinted and slashed, cutting through tendons and chipping claws, but was unable to make much headway from this angle. The kaiju was simply too bulky; it was losing blood, black liquid spurting tarry puddles across the stone, but not fast enough. Unless Qie Dai Tao managed to get in a lucky hit on a critical spot, they'd just have to try to wear it down by attrition.

Of course, Gnasher could always get in a lucky shot on a critical spot, too. This wasn't over yet. Shen Qingqiu was locked in on the battle, his hands tight on the edge of the console, his gaze fixed.

"Shizun, there's nothing to worry about," Luo Binghe told him, in a whisper that was not quite loud enough to be heard over the frenetic chatter of the mission control room. "Liu-shimei will be sure to get it done, even if Liu-shishu gets too excited. She never loses her head."

The bid for distraction worked; Shen Qingqiu looked up at him with an expression of mild reproof. "Binghe! Don't talk about your shishu that way," Shen Qingqiu chided him. "Anyway, of course I'm not worried. The pilots have the situation well in hand. I'm merely concerned that their energetic style will leave no whole parts of the beast for me to study."

"What part of it do you want?" Liu Qingge said abruptly.

Someone in the audio channel groaned, and Liu Mingyan huffed a breathy laugh. "Surely by now Shen-shibo has at least three of every possible monster part imaginable?" she said.

"The tail, if you please," Shen Qingqiu said. "I'm very interested in making a closer examination of those ridges along the ventral side."

"Science, don't clutter the channel. This is live fire," one of the communications officers said warningly, and Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes.

But Liu Qingge said: "I'll get it," and the jaeger suddenly shot forward as the jet-powered sword flared to life.

Of course, Liu Qingge's antics drew attention back to Shen Qingqiu, who looked momentarily taken aback at all the stares; he cleared his throat softly and fanned himself ever more languidly. "Liu-shidi's contributions are extremely welcome," he said in explanation. "There really is no one in the Shatterdome more helpful in advancing Cang Qiong's kaiju research --"

A metal-rending shriek from the speakers grabbed most everybody's attention, and thankfully turned it towards the gory spectacle onscreen. Gnasher was on the ground thrashing and spraying blood -- on two separate monitors, the tail now severed from its body with the clean sweep of a rocket-driven blade.

Two stations over, Wei Qingwei -- chief of the mechatronics division -- burst out laughing.

"...That will do nicely, thank you, well done Liu-shidi," Shen Qingqiu said primly, over the continuing laughter.

Liu Qingge merely grunted in acknowledgement, while Liu Mingyan let out a soft groan. "Please save this for another time," she grumbled.

"Yes, please do," Qi Qingqi said crankily. "Shen Qingqiu, must you use the public channels to flirt?"

"I'm not!" Shen Qingqiu squawked, then hastily switched channels to keep some of this drama out of the public ear. "I am not flirting with Liu Mingyan!" he hissed, glaring at Qi Qingqi from across the aisle.

"I didn't say you were," she said dryly, but her expression told another story.

"Of course you weren't," Luo Binghe jumped in. If no one else would defend Shen Qingqiu's honor, he would! "My Shizun wouldn't be so crass as to try to sneak courting gestures in the middle of an important battle."

Someone else snickered. Shen Qingqiu glared impartially around at everyone, turned back to face his station, and pulled the headset back over his ears with a huff, locking everyone else out.

Truly, despite the stern warnings about staying on task and not cluttering up the radio channels, the atmosphere in mission control had grown easier. Qie Dai Tao had fended off the monster's worst advances, and was now keeping up a relentless meticulous rhythm; feint and slash, seize and stab, drop back and fire the blast rifle whenever possible. Kaiju blood splashed in gory profusion around the barren landscape, and Gnasher was beginning to flag. From there, it was only going to be a matter of time. A few folks were beginning to relax at their stations, turn around to chat in low voices to their fellows.

Shen Qingqiu, however, stayed laser-intent. Luo Binghe watched over his shoulder as he directed his Spirit Eagle to circle around the kaiju, getting shots from the flanks and rear. The viewline dropped down, nearly brushing against the blood-spattered rocks as the drone circled again, angling for shots of the creature's underside or different angles on the joints. The footage wasn't great -- the sun flashed directly in the camera's lens at some angles, dust clouds obscured the battle from others, and both the jaeger and its prey kept moving -- but he kept at it.

From his new angle, low to the ground and shot from behind, Luo Binghe noticed that the ugly mottled patches on the kaiju's hide were -- shifting. At first he thought the skin was peeling off, maybe sheared from the monster's flesh by earlier cuts from Qie Dai Tao, but -- no, the shreds of hide were still firmly attached to the body by strips of tendon. But they were moving, first shaking and shifting and then lifting away from the monster's legs entirely.

That... was weird? Luo Binghe glanced up to compare it with the central camera view, wondering if their his signal was distorting. No, you could see the same movement from other angles, it was just less obvious. The... frill? Scales? were definitely shifting into position, each one with an oily black mark in the center, lifting up and overlapping. "Threat display?" Shen Qingqiu muttered, mostly to himself. "A little late for that, wasn't it?"

"That frill would be awfully inconvenient to deploy underground, wouldn't it Shizun?" Luo Binghe offered uncertainly. "Isn't Gnasher a burrower?"

Gnasher was a burrower --

Shen Qingqiu slapped his comm button so hard he nearly cracked it. "Qie Dai Tao! Close your eyes!" he snapped into his mic, making the order as fierce and forceful as he could. "Now!"

"Shibo, what are you --" Liu Mingyan started to ask, before her voice cut off in a strangled scream.

In the same instant, as all the strange dark scales of Gnasher's frill spread wide, the black centers of each scale suddenly let out an actinic violet flash. The center camera feed went white.

And stayed white, a frozen afterimage of the kaiju's silhouette staying imprinted on the display, a burnt echo of the blazing flare.

As screens all around Mission Control cut to black, or to pixelated noise, as the Spirit Eagle drones burnt out.

"Shen Qingqiu!" someone shouted. "What did you do?"

"I --" His shizun looked shell-shocked, all the blood drained out of his face, gripping his fan in a white-knuckled fan -- but he retained his air of academic poise, even then. "The kaiju had a unique ability, a, a photovoltaic discharge -- an offensive ability developed for fighting other, other low-light creatures --"

"Then why didn't you say something earlier?!" Qi Qingqi demanded, rounding on him. "Why didn't you give them more warning!"

"Qi-shimei, that's enough," Yue Qingyuan said, his carefully controlled tone dropping over the room like a weighted blanket, calming the panic. "Qingqiu gave warning as soon as he knew. We need to focus on the situation at hand. Wei-shidi, can we re-establish contact with the pilots? Are there any drones still up?"

"I've got signal!" one of the techs cried, and that wrenched the attention of Mission Control back on the screens again. The man's screen showed a clear, though far-off view of the same rocky lea that the battle had been taking place in. Gnasher's bulk -- toylike from this size -- was unmistakable, and still standing against it, sword flashing in the glaring sun... "Qie Dai Tao is still up!"

A sigh of relief ran around the room, and the hostile scrutiny that had been focused on Shen Qingqiu dropped away. The cold breath of terror eased with renewed hope, circulating throughout all the stations. Still up!

The feed from the surviving Spirit Eagle was patched to the main screen now, though all the other feeds were still dead. As it drew closer Luo Binghe noticed that Qie Dai Tao, though still standing, was sluggish on their left-hand side. Gnasher, too, was moving slower as the long battle and multiple bleeds finally caught up with it. Even as the spirit drone moved into close range and began to circle, the kaiju abruptly turned on its severed and bleeding tail and vanished again into the earth.

One of the techs groaned. "This again?"

"I still can't raise the pilot channel, sir," the communications tech reported. "This isn't one of the drones that was set up for communications. We'll need to get another relay drone out there."

"Then we'll just have to trust in the pilots," Yue Qingyuan replied. "They know what they need to do."

When Gnasher disappeared into another cloud of dust, Qie Dai Tao did not attempt to follow. Instead the mech turned and made for one of the columns of rock that littered the landscape, dotting the valley like the ancient stumps of felled trees. Maybe they were the remains of petrified trees, Luo Binghe didn't know, but Qie Dai Tao scaled the rock side with relative ease and managed to perch precariously on the flat top of the column. From there it kept turning from one side to another, craning its neck to watch the terrain below.

"Are they just going to hide up there?" Wei Qingwei said under his breath. "Dispatch! Get another relay tower out there!"

"No need," Shen Qingqiu said, beginning to recover his equanimity now that it was clear the pilots were all right.

The video feed of the valley was patchy and grainy, thanks to the long-distance degradation of the feed. They couldn't clearly see the cloud of dust that appeared on the ground at the base of the stone tower, but Qie Dai Tao did.

The kaiju resurfaced from its burrow with a deafening roar, slamming its shoulder against the stone pillar hard enough to fracture it from the base. The tower began to topple to the side, sending jagged splinters of rock against everything within the impact radius, but Qie Dai Tao was no longer there. The moment before the kaiju resurfaced, the jaeger leapt straight up -- tumbling in the air as it rose to its apex and reversed itself, descending like a meteor with the sword point first.

Gnasher, still half-buried in the earth, was unable to dodge -- and Qie Dai Tao's aim was unerring. The sword drove straight down through the kaiju's skull, and the point emerged from the underside of its jaw to drive into the churned earth below.

The kaiju thrashed for a second -- the rest of its body too massive to realize in that instant that its owner was dead -- and then stilled, sagging into a pool of slowly spreading neon blue.

Cheers erupted throughout the Shatterdome, and Shen Qingqiu let out a slow sigh and eased back in his chair, closing his eyes. His lips moved, soundlessly without air, but Luo Binghe thought he could still make out the words: Not yet.

Not this time.

The crew of Mission Control celebrating -- cheering, pumping arms in the air, getting up from their stations to hug or exchange high-fives with one another. But Luo Binghe only had eyes for his shizun. To him the tiny, relieved smile that passed over Shen Qingqiu's face when he opened his eyes again and looked at Luo Binghe, was brighter than all the celebratory fireworks in the world.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

When the summer blockbuster On the Proud Way hit the screens, it racked up thousands of words in media reviews on local newspaper and rating sites. Not often featured among those many words, however, was "intellectual."

It was a cheesy, brainless, cash-grab of an action flick. The very premise was ridiculous -- giant robots fighting giant monsters? And this was supposed to be a film for adults to take seriously?! -- and it was clear that the budget had all gone to the flashy, CGI-heavy special effects, leaving only pennies left to pay for things like 'decent script' and 'actors that literally anybody but commercial directors had heard of.'

It was certainly not going to be winning any film awards for its year. But despite the corniness and plastic-looking monster effects, Shen Yuan had liked it. There was a certain appeal in a good old punch-em-up scenario that didn't constantly delve into depressing politics or whatever weird messaging was in vogue among the high art crowd these days.

With its rotating stable of giant evil-fighting robots and bottomless pokedex of different kaiju, On the Proud Way had won a fair following among the collector-curator set. Shen Yuan had preferred the monsters, typically; an old childhood fondness. And while the cast of characters could occasionally get unbearable, the movie's protagonist -- a scrappy young pilot named Luo Binghe -- had been endearing enough. A diamond buried in the coal.

It was a universal experience, surely, to wish to be picked out for some special career? To struggle through a training routine, through endless hospitalizations and physical therapy, in order to become the best? The first film had followed young Luo Binghe on his determined path to becoming a pilot, his quest for revenge against the kaiju for the rampage that had killed his adopted mother. Through constant tests and trials, vicious harassment from his evil boss and bullying from his fellow trainees, constantly beset by the hazards of the post-apocalyptic hellscape, Luo Binghe had clung to his goal with determination and finally emerged as a full pilot by the end of the first movie. Not only as a pilot -- as a rare, once-in-a-lifetime talent of the field -- a solo pilot!

Pilot pairs were part of the worldbuilding of On the Proud Way. Ostensibly, because the Jaegers were so massive, the neural strain placed on a human pilot trying to control them was too great for any one mind. But that burden (conveniently) could be split with a fellow pilot in something called the Drift, a weird woo-woo science fiction concept that allowed to people to technologically, telepathically bond long enough to smash through some kaiju face. But such a bond couldn't be performed by just anybody; the pilots needed to be 'Drift compatible,' an obviously arbitrary restriction that kept Drift pilots from being too game-breakingly OP. Compatible pilots were hard to find, took a long time to train, and if anything happened to their partner, they would also be unable to fight.

Except, of course, for Luo Binghe. A young prodigy, a marvel of mysterious science, Luo Binghe and only Luo Binghe could drive the mighty Jaegers without need for a second brain to share the load. While other pilots were vulnerable to the death of a partner or even just to mundane interpersonal squabbles, Luo Binghe needed no-one.

All in all, On the Proud Way had been a fun summer flick with some intriguing worldbuilding concepts and a fast fanbase of interested collectors. Of course, the studio had capitalized on the success of their first movie to fund and sell a sequel. On the Proud Immortal Way had had more robots, and more monsters, and more punching, and a surprisingly mature thread of psychological horror throughout the film as the narrative began to hint towards darker secrets behind the kaiju and the creation of the Jaegers.

It wasn't all beer and skittles. The CGI was still clinky. The perfectly nice love interest from the first movie -- Ning Yingying, a scrappy girl mechanic -- had all but disappeared, replaced by a rather unconvincing love triangle between Luo Binghe, fellow pilot Liu Mingyan, and brand new love interest Sha Hualing. On the Proud Immortal Way had ended on a dramatic cliffhanger -- Rifts opening all across the map, kaiju flooding into the world by the dozens, and not enough Jaegers in the whole planet left to deal with them all.

By then Shen Yuan had fully bought in to the franchise -- clunky CGI, mediocre love triangles, and all. Luo Binghe had hooked, reeled, and landed him; Shen Yuan was fully invested in watching him grow from a scrappy trainee to the most famous and celebrated hero in the world. He bought both movies on DVD, and then again on Blu-ray. He papered his apartment with posters and made thoughtful perusals of resin kaiju minifigs versus metal ones. He frequented message boards and subreddits, and argued extensively in the latter about how Proud Way kaiju compared with the ones from classic monster movies. He'd attended cons.

Then in 2014, the third and final movie in the franchise -- On the Proud Immortal Demon Way -- had come out.

And it was, in the local idiom, one giant stinking pile of kaiju shit.

Rather than picking up where the last movie left off, taking up the crisis of the multiple-rifts invasion, the third movie opened with a brief reel that simply announced that all of those problems had been solved. Instead, the new crisis was that Luo Binghe had -- somehow -- fused with his jaeger in order to turn into a monstrous kaiju and was now rampaging across the continent, smashing Shatterdomes left and right. How did it happen? Who knows! Why would he turn against the very people he'd fought so long to protect? Who cares!

Ninety percent of the cast from the first two movies was killed off in the first ten minutes, most of them offscreen. An entirely new cast of bland, forgettable characters was brought in to replace them, including two of the most flat and unconvincing "love interests" to ever disgrace the silver screen. Suddenly everyone was capable of solo Jaeger piloting, explained away by "new neural technology" that made all the previous restrictions obsolete. The new cast of "heroes" spent a hundred minutes faffing about on stupid side plots to Unite The Shatterdomes, before pulling a deus ex machina out of their ass (to which the other Shatterdomes contributed nothing, making the entire rest of the movie worthless!) and shooting the new Binghe-kaiju out of the sky.

And that was it. That was the end of the story. The origins of the kaiju were never explored; how the Rifts formed was never explained. There was no reason given as to why the kaiju would stop coming now, merely a ten-second dialogue observing that they had. The dull, forgettable replacement hero and his bland, forgettable love interest spent a supremely unsexy seven minutes sucking face in front of the cameras, and then the credits rolled.

Shen Yuan could have bit iron and spat nails. He wanted a refund! Forget his money back, he wanted to call the producers of this movie and make them refund the two hours and sixteen minutes of his life that was wasted on this pile of crap!! This worthless excuse for a sequel was more than an insult, it was spitting in the faces of everyone who'd given their time and money to the first two movies! It wasn't just terrible, it retroactively made the entire series into a joke!!

And the worst thing of all (he discovered, when he got back home from the movie and went onto the forums to share his rage) was that other people liked it.

Oh, not all of them -- a fair few were as disapproving as Shen Yuan, although less passionate. But some tasteless toadies actually argued that the third movie was better than the first two, simply because the CGI graphics used to animate the kaiju were higher quality, or because the mechs now had a visually exciting 'reconfiguration' mechanism which was very clearly a ripoff of the Transformers franchise. Shiny new SFX was apparently all it took for a solid chunk of the audience to forgive On the Proud Immortal Demon Way for its many, many cinematographic sins.

Hacks! Sycophants!! Sheeple, all of them!!!

Shen Yuan went through the rest of that day -- and the day after that, and the day after that -- in a rage-fueled haze, waging war in the comment section of the forums, the reviews section of the local movie theater, and the feedback form of the studio's website. He'd barely stopped to eat -- until the last hour, when he'd apparently eaten something he very much should not have.

He remembered a burning, cramping pain in his stomach, and folding up on the floor next to his chair. After that... well... it was all a little fuzzy.

Until he'd woken up again on a cot in a hospital room -- all too familiar a sight, even if he didn't recognize this one -- to someone calling out to him in a concerned tone.

An unfamiliar voice.

An unfamiliar room.

An all too, too familiar name.

"Qingqiu-shidi? Shen Qingqiu, can you hear me?"

And thus had begun his accursed second life, in the very setting he had died cursing!

Shen Yuan had kept his head -- as much as he was able -- and played it cool, reaching for a convenient fan to cover his face and conceal his expression. With reserved tone and careful wording, he tried to determine where he'd been sent.

The answers he got did not fill him with confidence.

The world of On the Proud Immortal Way! The one currently in the middle of an extended, agonizing, kaiju-driven apocalypse!

Fuck.

Cang Qiong Shatterdome! The one destined to be smashed and decimated by the rampaging Luo Binghe after his transformation!

Fuuuck.

Shen Qingqiu! The villain from the very first movie, who spent the entire time antagonizing the future hero and digging his own grave! The twisted, bitter man who was doomed to the most horrific death in the setting -- abandoned by his colleagues in their stampeding rush to flee to safety, half-trapped under a collapsed wall, found by the transformed Luo Binghe, and then -- the final, most appalling abuse -- straight up ripped in half at the monster's hands!

Shen Qingqiu. Why did it have to be Shen Qingqiu!?

Shen Qingqiu was made to be a hate sink, and he fulfilled that job spectacularly. Shen Yuan would have appreciated that accomplishment more if the creators hadn't made him so offensively stereotypical. Wow, an evil villain who was also a cripple! So novel and brave of them. With his visible scars and his heavy iron cane, which heralded his arrival on any scene with a dreaded deep clang, Shen Qingqiu really was just a caricature mad-scientist type. Why not throw in some latex gloves, flamboyant body language and a lisp, while you're at it!!

To absolutely all indications Shen Qingqiu had been mad, bad, and dangerous to know -- a rogue researcher bent on gleaning all knowledge about the kaiju that there was to know, probably for nefarious purposes. In pursuit of this aim he'd forced his underlings -- most notably Luo Binghe -- into danger, driving them out onto recent battlefields to harvest toxic kaiju parts for dissection, some of them still twitching and lashing out at those around him.

And when Luo Binghe's unique piloting abilities were revealed, along with the way that Luo Binghe alone of all the laboratory crew seemed immune to the corrosive effects of Kaiju blood, Shen Qingqiu had made a malicious leap of intuition -- and seized Luo Binghe to be the target of his unethical experimentation, pinning him down like a butterfly in order to obsessively dissect and analyze his unique physiology.

Was it any wonder that when Luo Binghe went on his rampage in the third movie and laid waste to Cang Qiong Shatterdome, he'd taken a moment of particular time and attention to rip Shen Qingqiu limb from limb? It was only paying back the same thing Shen Qingqiu had tried to do to him!

Fuuuuuuuck.

...Shen Yuan really, really wanted a refund on this entire transmigration experience! Wasn't an isekai fantasy supposed to be good? To be magically transported to a dreamy fantasy world, filled with ethereal immortals flying on swords between cloud-wrapped cultivation peaks, populated by divine beasts and fantastic plants that promised immortality?!

Instead, he got this! This! A dingy half-military base in a world overrun with monsters, stuck in the body of the guy doomed to leave his legs behind on the floor when the protagonist finally went nuclear!

Yes, hello, he'd like to speak to this world's manager!!!

But there was nothing to be done about it. All the raging at the universe received no response; and Shen Yuan (now Shen Qingqiu) had to be careful to keep all his thoughts on the inside lest he be found out for an imposter and a fake before Luo Binghe ever got his claws on him. So he played along, and bided his time, and learned the rules and ways of his new life as quickly as he could.

It wasn't all bad. There was a definite upgrade in the looks department, for one; Shen Qingqiu might have been a hateful son-of-a-bitch, but he was a Hollywood son-of-a-bitch, with requisite Hollywood good looks. (Very much of the 'a lean and hungry look, such men are dangerous' mold that smart villain characters got folded into, but still an upgrade from Shen Yuan's common-schlub looks.) And for all his dire future, Shen Qingqiu was in a pretty good position now. A military base was a military base, but Shen Qingqiu's accommodations were the best they had to offer. He held a high enough rank at the Shatterdome -- that of the senior science officer -- that for the most part he could go where he wanted and do as he pleased, as long as he justified it in the name of 'research.' That had been part of his villainy in the first movie, in fact; that the rest of the Shatterdome personnel, up to and including the Commander, had let Shen Qingqiu run wild and abuse the young protagonist with nary a word of protest.

Not that Shen Qingqiu would be doing any of that any more. Ha! Time to hug the protagonist's golden thighs for all he was worth! Goodbye shitty boss, hello World's Best Mentor!!

Oh, yeah -- Shen Qingqiu was also Luo Binghe's shitty evil boss. That was a thing. Because Shen Qingqiu was the senior science officer at the Cang Qiong Shatterdome, and Luo Binghe was a lowly lab assistant.

Honestly, it was never really clear why Shen Qingqiu had taken Luo Binghe on as a lab assistant -- he never seemed to do any actual lab work. Instead Luo Binghe's daily duties seemed to mostly consist of doing menial and humiliating chores for Shen Qingqiu while serving as the target of his abuse and an outlet for his perpetual shitty temper. Like a modern-day Cinderella, Luo Binghe spent most of his time cleaning messes or making tea, while his boss knocked around in the laboratory and accomplished nothing!

"Shizun, the tea is ready!"

Which. Well.

Was a fair amount of what Luo Binghe still did, even now that Shen Qingqiu had definitively changed tenants.

In his defense, he'd tried to lessen the boy's workload, but Luo Binghe seemed to genuinely like doing the cooking. And, well, at least it ensured that he was getting enough to eat -- Shen Qingqiu remembered his brothers at this age, how they'd vacuumed up every bit of food in the house and still gone around hungry.

"Thank you, Binghe," was all Shen Qingqiu said to that beaming smile. "I'll be right there."

He reached for the grab-bars near his bed and hauled himself up, shuffled across the span of the room to the table and seated himself there with the ease of long practice. Luo Binghe used to try to help Shen Qingqiu from one side of the room to the next, but Shen Qingqiu had gently but firmly set him back from that, so now he just hovered. It was sweet that he cared, all the same.

Almost as sweet-brewed as the tea. Shen Qingqiu sipped it appreciatively, letting the steam and the heat wake up his brain a little more. Luo Binghe also sat neatly at the table, though he didn't pour himself tea until Shen Qingqiu nudged the second cup in his direction. "Would Shizun care for breakfast to be brought up?"

Shen Qingqiu thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. The Original Goods had eaten in his rooms most of the time -- and done most other things there as well, avoiding the public areas like the plague unless he decided to be the plague -- but Shen Qingqiu was making an effort to appear in public more often, to see and be seen by the others and try to repair some of the damage to his relationships. It did mean missing out on the Protagonist's god-like cooking, alas, but there was always dinner. "No thank you, Binghe, I should head down to the canteen," he said.

Luo Binghe wilted a bit in disappointment, and Shen Qingqiu was struck by the urge to reach out and pat his head. "No need for that face," he said. "Surely Binghe has better things to do than hang around this old master all day, hm? People to see?"

Shen Qingqiu was beginning to despair of him; he'd done his best in the last year to arrange a bit of walking-out space for Luo Binghe, around the restrictions of their respective duties. But Luo Binghe hadn't taken advantage of any of it; he tended to cling close to home.

As his status in the base rose (attached to Shen Qingqiu's, now that he was seen to favor him,) Luo Binghe was able to move more freely around the base. And yet, his path never seemed to take him down to the requisitions desk in Supplies with the bubbly curly-haired girl there, nor to the base security kiosk where the smoking redheaded marine was stationed, nor to the pilot's mess, where Liu Mingyan usually took her meals.

Really, with the way he clung to Shen Qingqiu at all hours, at this rate he wasn't going to have time for a romance arc with any of those girls!

Giving Luo Binghe's bangs a final ruffling he said, "If you wouldn't mind, you could bring some snacks to the laboratory later," he said. "But until then, if you're free, perhaps you could set aside a few hours to train in the simulators."

Luo Binghe perked up immediately, eyes going large. "The simulators, Shizun?" he exclaimed. "But -- I'm not in the pilot training program! Those are reserved for --"

"Nonsense." Shen Qingqiu waved the concern away with a scoff. "Those pilots can hardly spend every hour of their day training, now can they? It doesn't make sense for the rooms to sit idle when we could be getting more use out of them. And you do have great potential, Binghe, even if they haven't found you a compatible partner yet."

Not yet, nor ever; the Protagonist was never going to have a co-pilot, because he was never going to need one. But of course he couldn't reveal that little tidbit yet. Still, Shen Qingqiu was determined to try to get Luo Binghe a head-start on his piloting career. In the movie, the first time he'd ever gone out against a kaiju solo, he'd had to take a crash course in controlling a jaeger at the same time, which had been excruciating to watch and had nearly gotten him killed against the Cat-Three he'd been up against.

"If -- if you say so," Luo Binghe said. Despite his efforts to sound dutiful and meek, he couldn't conceal the excitement in his voice. Shen Qingqiu repressed a smile. Of course, what teenage boy wouldn't be mad for the prospect of getting to control one of the great Jaegers, even if only in a simulator? "Then I'm sure it must be true."

"Mm-hmm." Shen Qingqiu fished around in his pockets and came up with his access card -- unlike most of the low-level Shatterdome personnel, his was blank, without an accompanying photo or identifying information. "There you are, this will get you in through the administrative entrance. The simulators will be free until ten-thirty -- don't waste any time!"

"Yes, Shizun!" Luo Binghe took the key-card in both hands and dropped him a bow, eyes shining with enthusiasm. "I'll make you proud!"

He left, and as always, took much of the energy of the room with him. Shen Qingqiu took a few minutes to finish his tea, though it had cooled, and meditated on how astonishingly Luo Binghe had transformed over the last few months.

The first thing Shen Qingqiu had done, once he'd settled in this body and managed to undo some of the OOC locks, was to seek out Luo Binghe and begin the arduous process of making amends. The original goods, since he was a fucking psycho, had locked the poor kid into a (thankfully disused) walk-in freezer in the lab, for hours after his latest temper tantrum. Shen Qingqiu had let him out, made up some bullshit talk about lessons learned, and sent him off to the canteen with a token to get a hot meal in him.

Over the next few weeks, he'd gone overdrive to try to put the protagonist's life back on a better trajectory. He'd worked with Ma Qingze in the facilities department to get Luo Binghe's meal card issues straightened out. There were no spare bunks in the trainee barracks to house him -- legitimately, he'd found out, overcrowding was a real problem here -- but he'd cleared out one of the unused patient recovery rooms attached to his laboratory and converted it to a little bedroom and storage space where Luo Binghe could sleep.

When he'd offhandedly presented the new berth one to the boy -- trying his damnedest to be cool and fly casual -- Luo Binghe had nearly melted down in tears about it. Was that really any surprise, Shen Qingqiu wondered; he'd spent years homeless, a hard life for a kid even without the monster apocalypse ravaging the social safety net.

He'd lurked around the other trainees and made enough sinister, threatening comments on the topic of how little need the Jaeger pilot program had for bullies, to make it clear that those caught tormenting the younger candidates would no longer be candidates at all.

(Occasionally -- very occasionally -- the Original Goods' evil-vizier face and bitchy attitude came in handy.)

And in response to this little bit of care, Luo Binghe had blossomed. He'd grown from a dirty, silent, withdrawn delinquent into an energetic and confident teenager, keen to help out around the lab and full of fervor to contribute to the Jaeger program in any way he could. That motivation, at least, stayed the same. Luo Binghe had joined the Jaeger program in the first place seeking to protect the world from the kaiju menace, but also to pay back the monsters for the death of his only family, a poor cleaning lady who had adopted him from the streets when he was young.

There were too many like him -- children who had lost their parents to the kaiju attacks, or to some natural disaster or riot that followed the breakdown of society, lost between the cracks as the social safety nets disintegrated. Luo Binghe had come to the Cang Qiong Shatterdome in search of a place to shelter as much as for vengeance, but the Shatterdome was no kind of an orphanage -- they existed to fight the kaiju, not to raise abandoned children. They couldn't help everyone.

Well, Shen Qingqiu could help one, at least.

Just as promised, Shen Qingqiu headed to the canteen once he'd finished up his tea. He'd learned, through trial and error, that breakfast was actually the best meal of the day to spend in the canteen; the food was at the very least fresh and hot, and hadn't had the chance to sit out all day coagulating under the heat lamps. And at the very least, he no longer had to scrutinize the ingredients list of every bite he put into his mouth (which was good, since the kitchen staff here didn't bother with such niceties.) No matter how greasy, salty, or spicy the food was, there was no risk of it triggering an unpleasant flare-up -- his new stomach might as well be made of iron. He had the Original Goods to thank for that, he supposed.

He had the Original Goods to thank for a lot of things, like the way conversation dropped or atmosphere chilled anytime he walked into a room. Like right now, as he swung his way into the cafeteria to find the pilots of Jing Wang She already present, surrounded by a small crowd of admirers as usual. Shen Qingqiu was used to the way heads turned towards him and stared, the way talk stuttered and died; they'd done that in his first life, too.

Ah, well, it couldn't be helped.

Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang were an uncle-nephew pair that had featured only in the background of On the Proud Way, never having any lines onscreen before they got killed off in one of the first battles. Though now that he'd had a chance to meet them in real life, Shen Qingqiu wasn't sure whether Zhuzhi-lang would have had any lines even if he'd been in a starring role; the mousy-looking, sallow young man seemed to have a case of terminal shyness. Socially as well as in the piloting role he was fully overshadowed by his uncle, a gregarious and honestly quite obnoxious jock of a man, who seemed to regard every room he was in as his personal stage and every other person in his presence as a captive audience.

Like now: instead of actually sitting at a table like a normal person Tianlang-jun had arranged himself up on top of the table with one boot planted in a chair and the other swinging, chowing his way through the rather limp and unimpressive breakfast spread with completely unwarranted gusto. "Ah! Senior Officer Shen!" he called out as Shen Qingqiu cleared the door. "Man of the hour! Nice of you to grace us with your presence!"

Shen Qingqiu suppressed a sigh, and continued on at his steady pace as though he hadn't just overcome the temptation to turn around and go right back out again. "Tianlang-jun," he said, giving the other man a calm nod of greeting. "And Zhuzhi-lang, of course. I certainly hope you've left enough for the rest of us," he said, switching his address back to the older man again. There was no telling what Zhuzhi-lang thought; he rarely spoke in public and did not do so now, instead choosing to train an unblinking stare at Shen Qingqiu from his uncle's shadow.

"Of course!" Tianlang-jun said with a laugh. One hand flicked out lazily and a small missile came spinning towards Shen Qingqiu; he managed to shift his weight and get a hand free just in time to catch it against his chest. It turned out to be a wrapped red bean bun, which Shen Qingqiu tucked away in his pocket before shifting his grip back to his crutches. "Got to keep plenty of fuel to keep that big brain ticking, after all!"

Shen Qingqiu was never 100% sure whether Tianlang-jun's particular brand of aggressively obnoxious friendliness was meant sincerely or as a subtle form of bullying; he was choosing to interpret it as the former, mostly because sniping back at him was more trouble than it was worth. At the very least he was one up over any number of Shatterdome personnel who looked right past Shen Qingqiu, or avoided meeting his eyes, or otherwise pretended that he and his crutches didn't exist.

"Say, Senior Officer Shen, I really wanted to thank you for sending Qie Dai Tao out in our place on the Gnasher fight," Tianlang-jun went on. He smirked. "Very nice of you to give my nephew and me an extra day off. I need my beauty sleep, after all!"

"You certainly do," Shen Qingqiu said drily, but that only made Tianlang-jun laugh and slap his leg. "But I confess, I wasn't thinking of such things. Gnasher's ensnaring attack was one that Jing Wang She would have been ill-equipped to counter; Qie Dai Tao was better suited to the match-up. That was all."

Tianlang-jun let a hoot of laughter. "So considerate, Senior Officer Shen! Who would have thought that in addition to being an expert on kaiju biology, you also had such an unexpected talent for Jaeger tactics?"

Shen Qingqiu shrugged. "Well, each of us must bring to the cause what we can best contribute," he said. "Which is why we would not dream of burdening our honored pilots with such undue expectations."

If he was being fully honest with himself Shen Qingqiu didn't really have expectations for Tianlang-jun and Zhuzhi-lang; he had no idea where their destiny lay. His meta-knowledge wasn't helpful in this case -- Jing Wang She was supposed to have been destroyed by a kaiju attack on Fu Chen Fortress eighteen months ago.

Tianlang-jun was supposed to have died crushed under a mountain's weight of kaiju bulk, just like Zhuzhi-lang was supposed to have drowned when the cockpit breached and the water rushed in fighting Tarrasque. Just like Liu Qingge was supposed to have died of neural overload when Liu Mingyan was knocked out of the Drift battling Scarapede two and a half years ago -- barely six months after Shen Qingqiu's arrival into this world.

It was a little surreal, sometimes, spending time in the company of dead men. But as a dead man himself, Shen Qingqiu supposed he couldn't really complain.

When he had finished up with breakfast and obligatory socializing, he checked the time; barely nine, Luo Binghe would still be training for a while longer. He could of course head to the laboratory to start his day, and probably should -- but once he got head-down in his next project he was unlikely to leave, so anything else he wanted to accomplish should be done first.

On his way out of the canteen he swiped one of the packaged rice puddings from the dessert tray, as well as a clean napkin. A few minute's work with a pen and a bit of wire, and he had the rather bland pudding wrapped up in a pretty ruffled package, decorated with makeshift stars and moons. It wasn't much, but Shen Qingqiu knew the utter tedium that came with being hospital-bound, and the way that even a little effort in presentation could be the difference between a mundane item and a treat.

Prize in hand, he headed to the Shatterdome infirmary. It was quiet right now, which on the whole was surely a good thing. Only acute cases were treated in the infirmary; anyone with a longer recovery time tended to be sent to recover in their own beds, if they could.

"Ah, Shen-shixiong, just the man I wanted to see." Mu Qingfang smiled pleasantly at Shen Qingqiu as he stepped into the infirmary. He really was a good-natured sort of chap, honestly kind of surprising given how much stress his role as chief medical officer in a Shatterdome placed on him. Perhaps only someone with such a sanguine attitude towards life could survive in such a high-strung role. Or perhaps living in a constant state of emergency and crisis had simply rewired his baseline of what was worth getting upset about. Either way, given how much time Shen Qingqiu spent in the other department head's presence, he was grateful for the calm and even temper the man displayed.

The second thing Shen Qingqiu had done, once he'd gotten Luo Binghe back on a better track, was to take himself down to the medical wing and sit down with the department head Mu Qingfang about a better treatment plan. The doctor had been surprised to find his nastiest colleague suddenly coming over so cooperative, but hadn't wasted the opportunity to prescribe a whole new regimen of steroids, muscle relaxants, and PT. Ah, PT, his old friend; even transmigrating into a new universe entirely wasn't enough to get him out of it, it seemed.

He'd ditched the iron-tipped cane at the first opportunity. Even aside from marking him as sinister it was heavy as fuck, didn't do shit to support his right side, and wasn't even at the correct height to properly support his left. In its place he requisitioned a pair of forearm crutches more like he'd had in his old life -- lighter, more maneuverable, providing better support to both legs and not just the worse one. He'd then gone on to customize his new crutches with the best 3d-printed replica kaiju tentacles he could manage -- it discouraged other people from touching them and anyway, Leviathan had looked cool as fuck. Except for Binghe (who was of course a cocky teenager who feared nothing,) nobody ever wanted to risk brushing up against Shen Qingqiu's crutches.

Medical side secured, Shen Qingqiu set out to try to repair some of the damage that the Original Goods had done to his reputation and relationships among the rest of the senior staff. It had been hit or miss so far. Some, like Mu Qingfang, were amenable to burying the hatchet; some, like Qiu Qingye, still regarded him with hostility and distrust; some, like Yue Qingyuan, had been ridiculously forgiving towards him in the first place and hadn't changed one bit.

All in all the changes to his lifestyle had left his colleagues at the Shatterdome thrown for a loop, but at least none of them suspected him of having been replaced by a stranger from another world. After all, what were the odds of that?

"Mu-daifu, I hope I'm not disturbing you," Shen Qingqiu said politely.

"Not at all, I always have time for my fellow officers," Mu Qingfang replied with a smile. "And it's always nice to get to chat with people when they aren't in the middle of a crisis -- you aren't in the middle of a crisis right now, are you?"

"No, no," Shen Qingqiu hastened to say. "I thought I would stop by to see how Liu Mingyan was coming along. Assuming she's up for visitors?"

"Certainly." Mu Qingfang seemed pleased. "Honestly, she could probably be discharged now, except she'll recover quicker in a quiet and dim environment and I can't think that the pilot quarters would be better for that than here."

"No, probably not," Shen Qingqiu said. His mouth twisted a bit at the reminder of Liu Mingyan's injury, and how she had acquired it. If only he had identified the kaiju's flash ability just a few seconds earlier --

Watching his face, Mu Qingfang added, "I for one appreciate a kaiju battle ending with minimal casualties, Shixiong. But I know better to expect that any fight with a twenty-ton extraterrestrial goliath which can level a city single-handed can be won without some scrapes and bruises."

"I suppose you're right," Shen Qingqiu said with a little chuckle. "Still, we can always strive for perfect, can we not?"

"Even if we fall short," Mu Qingfang agreed.

They chatted for a few minutes longer; Mu Qingfang inquired politely after Shen Qingqiu's medications, and he assured the doctor he was keeping up with his regimen. But despite the CMO's claim of always being happy to chat, there really was no end of work for him to do; so after a few more minutes of conversation he disappeared back into his office, no doubt to tackle another ream of paperwork.

Shen Qingqiu was unsurprised to find Liu Mingyan recuperating in one of the side rooms, the blinds drawn and lights dimmed as she recovered from the flash bomb that Gnasher had unleashed on Qie Dai Tao.

Shen Qingqiu leaned against the doorframe and knocked softly, and the young woman's face turned towards him. She blinked blearily in his direction, and he saved her from squinting by calling out, "Liu-shizhi, are you doing well? It's me, Shen Qingqiu."

"Oh, Shen-shibo," Liu Mingyan relaxed somewhat, settled back against her cot. The lower half of her face was covered in a cloth mask, but it didn't cover her eyes, or the way the pupils were slow to react to light and shadows and couldn't quite track his form. "I -- I'm doing all right, as well as can be expected."

"May I come in?" At her nod, he moved inside the patient room and settled on the chair that had been pulled out already, with room to stretch his leg out. He set the little package down on the bedside table. "I'm surprised that you've been left alone. I would think that brother of yours would be hovering."

Liu Mingyan laughed a little. "You'd think right. He was lurking in the corner there all night, the stubborn oaf. I kicked him out this morning to get some food and a shower -- he needed one, badly."

"Mm. He does tend to work up quite a lather," Shen Qingqiu said with a chuckle. "If I may ask, what does your recovery look like?"

He'd already heard the gist of it from Mu Qingfang, and if he wanted, he could probably demand to see her patient chart; but that wasn't the point, and he wasn't going to speak over her head if he could avoid it.

She shot him a grateful glance. "I can already see much better today than last night," she said. "Doctor Mu mandated low levels of light for at least twenty-four hours, and to avoid bright lights or strobes for at least a week, to avoid headaches. But I should be back to the duty roster after that, Shibo."

Shen Qingqiu waved that away. "When you're ready. Shang Qinghua doesn't predict another event for another twenty days at least," he said. "And we still have the triplets, in case of any surprises."

Liu Mingyan nodded, but then her expression crumpled. "Sir... I'm sorry," she said. Tears welled up in her eyes, and Shen Qingqiu immediately froze up. "You warned us -- about Gnasher -- you told us to close our eyes and I wasn't fast enough, I wasn't..."

"Ah, ah! None of that," he said, profoundly uncomfortable. No tears! No crying! If anyone came in right now, would they think he had done something untowards to the young lady?! He hunted quickly around on the table by the bed, and turned up a pack of stiff tissues, offering her one. "If anything it's my fault, for not realizing sooner. I'm only grateful that my mistake didn't compound further, and that neither one of you were... badly hurt."

Or killed. Shen Qingqiu knew the lore. Qie Dai Tao had been destroyed, and half its pilot team killed, before Luo Binghe ever embarked on his own career as a ranger. Their loss in battle had been widely attributed to Shen Qingqiu, who was known to have an acrimonious relationship with Liu Qingge; the rumor was that he had sabotaged him, by giving him an erroneous file before heading into battle against a dangerous kaiju.

For a moment, in the command room yesterday, Shen Qingqiu had thought that the backstory was repeating itself with a new cast of characters, that Qie Dai Tao would fall in battle against Gnasher and that he himself would be blamed. Worse -- what if this had been his fault? Because he was an imposter, a fake, because he wasn't a real scientist like the Original Goods had been. Would the real Shen Qingqiu have realized what was happening sooner? Would he have been able to warn the pilots faster? Was it going to be his, Shen Yuan's, fault if Liu Mingyan and Liu Qingge were killed?

Not today. Not yet. "I'm very glad," he said again, meaning it with every fiber of his being, "that the two of you are all right."

Liu Mingyan smiled tremulously at him -- so he thought, by the way her eyes crinkled -- and straightened up a bit, sitting up on the bed instead of lying in it. "Thank you, Shibo," she said. "I'm glad that ge and I have you helping us."

Shen Qingqiu lingered a little longer, picking lighter topics to chat with the young pilot in an attempt to lift her spirits, before he excused himself.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

Shen Qingqiu opened the door of the lab to find it deserted except for one, lone figure among the stacks of servers: Cang Qiong Shatterdome's other science officer, Shang Qinghua.

Where Shen Qingqiu's area of study focused on kaiju -- their biology, morphology, biochemistry, life cycle, and weaknesses -- Shang Qinghua's focus was on Rift mechanics. The strange portals between this world and the next that opened and closed sporadically throughout the Wasteland did so not at random (so went the theory,) but according to a complex interactions of qi flows between the terrain, the atmosphere, and yet unobserved movement of celestial bodies. If all factors were sufficiently accounted for (so went the theory,) one could craft long elaborate equations that would allow you to predict the opening and closing of the rifts; could allow you to unlock the very secrets of interplanar travel.

So went the theory. In practice, Shang Qinghua was hunched over his workstation playing Galaga.

"Pathetic," Shen Qingqiu announced to the world, and let the laboratory door slam dramatically behind him. Shang Qinghua jumped like a startled rabbit but then, infuriatingly, relaxed again when he recognized Shen Qingqiu. "I expect nothing, and yet you still manage to fall short."

"Hey, bro," Shang Qinghua said. "You're in a rare mood today. Who pissed in your cheerios?"

At times like this, he admitted, the Original Goods really might have had the right idea with that iron cane; if all else failed, it was handy to beat a motherfucker with. He sneered at Shang Qinghua as he marched his way across the room. "Can you at least not even pretend to be serious?" he demanded.

"I can!" Shang Qinghua protested. "And I will, as soon as the Protagonist gets here. But it's not like anyone else but you comes in here, except maybe Yue-zhangmen, and he always calls ahead when he comes to visit. 'Cause he's a decent and considerate dude, unlike some."

"I am considerate to those who deserve consideration," Shen Qingqiu said, and tossed the red bean bun he'd brought from the canteen down onto Shang Qinghua's lap. "Which does not include you."

"Aw thanks bro, I knew you cared," Shang Qinghua crowed, and tore open the package to demolish the bun. Around a disgusting mouthful he said, "Seriously though bro, what's the big deal? It's not like we're doing real work down here either way. We already have the schedule for the next six months written out."

"No thanks to you," Shen Qingqiu grumbled as he made his way over to his own workstation. He sighed as he eased down into his workstation chair, one of the few pieces of furniture in the entire Shatterdome with anything like decent ergonomic supports.

Honestly, he was lucky to have even that. It had never been explicitly stated when or even where the story was supposed to take place. The maps looked vaguely like China, but with coasts and borders nowhere to be found and a vast uninhabitable wasteland stretched across the middle. Technology in this setting was equally hodgepodge; on one hand they had incredibly powerful mechanic and engineering capacity, and yet the communication systems within the Shatterdome still used rotary phones to call between stations!

Which meant that the 'timetable' that the whole Shatterdome ran off of, rather than being a nice sensible excel sheet that could be CC'd to the whole office and updated on an hourly basis, was a series of huge sheets of paper tacked up on the walls and drawn on with thick black ink. The schedule stared down at them, hours marching into days, with bright red markers for the next imminent Rift formation and kaiju attack.

"Good job with Gnasher, bro." Shang Qinghua sprayed a few crumbs, then stopped to dust himself off before he continued. "At least up until that last bit. How'd you manage to forget that this one was a flasher? And here I thought memorizing the kaiju pokedex was the only thing you were good for."

"Well, at least I'm good for something," Shen Qingqiu retorted. "And you, supposedly the expert in Rift technology! Why am I the one who has to write all the damn timetables?!"

"Because you're the one who memorized the wiki, bro," Shang Qinghua replied. "Me, I didn't have time for that shit. I had work to do."

Shen Qingqiu considered, not for the first time, the spectacle of Shang Qinghua at work. In his first life as a fuerdai, Shen Yuan had always been a big fan of the idea of a universal basic income. Mostly because over the course of that life, he'd met a lot of people who convinced him that the world would be a better place if certain people just didn't work at all.

"You know as well as I do that the schedule won't mean shit as far as the plot's concerned, " Shang Qinghua continued. "Kaiju attacks will happen when it's narratively convenient to happen, so why should I be expected to memorize the fussy little details?"

"Because you --" Shen Qingqiu took a moment to double-check that the door, which was a bunker door that could resist a high tide let alone an eavesdropper, was well shut. "-- as the writer of the actual movie, are responsible for this world's very existence, you absolute hack!"

Shang Qinghua groaned. "How many times do I have to say this," he said. "I only came in on the third movie. None of the setup -- this wasn't my idea! I was just doing the best I could with what I was given!"

"Given a pile of gold, and you managed to un-spin it back into dross. Well done there," Shen Qingqiu drawled. "No wonder the third movie, the only one you worked on, tanked after the first weekend. No one who expected to go to the movies to see On the Proud Immortal Way would have been pleased to see that cast of fakes -- "

"Ugh, this again," Shang Qinghua moaned as he slumped forward over his console. "For the last time, that was not my fault. Because the strike dragged out so long and delayed production, the contracts for the leads we had for Proud Immortal Way expired. By the time they were ready to start shooting again Luo Binghe's actor was off playing a villain part in The Unchained. And Ning Yingying's actress was in the middle of shooting Love Between Claire's And A Hot Topic, she was the freaking female lead! What did you want us to do? Recast them?"

"Yes," Shen Qingqiu lied. Actually if they had tried to recast Luo Binghe at the final hour, he would have been apoplectic. "At least that would have been better than the schlock we got, who wanted to watch a camera follow a dull block of ice around for two hours?"

"It's what viewers wanted! Focus audiences said that they thought Luo Binghe was too emotional, and that an action hero should be silent and stoic," Shang Qinghua muttered, slinking even lower in his chair.

"Nothing's ever your fault, is it?" Shen Qingqiu said with a sneer.

"Yes!" Shang Qinghua sat up straight and slapped the console soundly. "Now you're getting it. I'm a victim too, you know."

"How?" Shen Qingqiu scoffed.

"At least you got to transmigrate in as a senior officer of a Shatterdome already," Shang Qinghua pointed out. "Me, I had to grow up in this shitshow."

"Yes, I'm sure that'll be a great comfort to me when I'm lying on the floor of the shatterdome with my legs ripped off once Luo Binghe goes on his stupid plot-mandated rampage --"

Footsteps echoed in the hall outside; Shang Qinghua froze like a deer in the headlights, and Shen Qingqiu cut his rant off mid-word. By the time the door hissed open they were each at their respective workstations, Shang Qinghua frowning studiously at a fountain of data while Shen Qingqiu copied diligent notes from yesterday's kaiju attack.

The newcomer was Luo Binghe, of course; as Shang Qinghua had pointed out, not many other people came by the laboratory. The boy looked a bit flushed and sweaty, as though he had run the whole way here, or had just gotten out of the training salle. "Binghe," Shen Qingqiu said with a smile, putting aside his work for a moment as his assistant came in. "How has your morning been? The training exercises are going well, I hope?"

"Yes, Shizun." Luo Binghe came in and put his satchel down at the little desk that had been set aside for him. "I'm getting better, I think. I can manage up to a Rank Four in the simulators now."

"That's very impressive," Shen Qingqiu commented. "Even the pilots usually only train at Rank Five unless they're drilling a specific sequence. You're coming along very well, Binghe."

Luo Binghe ducked his head, but his flushed face was pleased.

"No snacks today?" Shang Qinghua observed from his own workstation. Shen Qingqiu shot him a glare, but he only shrugged. He called it one of the perks of the position, getting to eat snacks that Luo Binghe cooked, not that Shang Qinghua really deserved them.

"Ah..." Luo Binghe looked down at the floor for a moment. "Not today. Sorry, Shibo."

"Don't worry about it," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. "You have more important things to worry about than bringing food to a couple of old men. Now, are you ready to get started for the day?"

They settled into their routine -- Shen Qingqiu pulling apart the kaiju on every level from the structural to the chemical, Luo Binghe hovering at his elbow to fulfill his every request before he more than half-thought it. As they did, Shen Qingqiu couldn't help but reflect on the status of his ongoing missions.

Operation: Hug Protagonist's Thighs was going very well, determined effort turning him from a shitty boss into a wise old mentor. Operation: Repair The Scum Villain's Relationships was coming along as well; more of the Shatterdome's officers were now pleased to see him than not. Operation: Pretend To Be An Actual Scientist was a little more up in the air; he still didn't know what the hell the Original Goods had been doing in this lab most of the time, but between the stacks of notes and his own meta-knowledge of the kaiju, he was faking it fairly well.

Of course, it was all bound to come crashing down sooner or later. The world might still end, the Shatterdome might still be destroyed, and Luo Binghe might slide inexorably into his tragic destiny. But until that happened, Shen Qingqiu was going to keep on keeping on.

What else was there to do, after all?

By the next day, the flurry of activity around the Gnasher and Qie Dai Tao battle was finally starting to die down some, and Shen Qingqiu felt confident enough to approach Yue Qingyuan for a favor.

Ever since the first day he'd woken up in the world of On the Proud Immortal Way he'd been a bit overwhelmed by Yue Qingyuan. The man was just... so cool! In the movie he'd run the Shatterdome with a velvet glove over an iron fist; in times of peace he was patient, kind and diplomatic to a fault... until you crossed a line and pissed him off. Then you got to see the martial spirit behind that diplomatic facade.

Yue Qingyuan was one of the oldest Jaeger pilots still living, and the only one still actively involved in the Jaeger Warden program; all the others from his generation or before had died in battle, died of medical complications that came from piloting for long periods, or retired into semi-seclusion due to the same. He'd been through so many battles, in fact, that he'd outlasted several Jaegers and gone through a succession of Drift partners -- one of the few in the jianghu who'd ever managed to do so. Most people never even managed compatibility with one partner, let alone a string of them! If not for the Protagonist's unique ability to eschew partners at all, Yue Qingyuan would be truly unmatched in world of pilots.

Competent, experienced, badass, with a calm demeanor that could bring calm to the most chaotic of emergencies -- all that and he was good-looking too! There was really only one flaw that kept Yue Qingyuan from being the uncontested superstar of the On the Proud Immortal Way franchise:

His inexplicable partisanship for Shen Qingqiu.

No matter how many complaints Shen Qingqiu racked up among the other Shatterdome staff, Yue Qingyuan never once disciplined him. No matter how bad his reputation among the rest of the jianghu became, Yue Qingyuan never ejected him from Cang Qiong. No matter how bad Shen Qingqiu's abuse of poor young Luo Binghe got, Yue Qingyuan never stepped in. Not even when Shen Qingqiu, paranoid and seething with jealousy over Luo Binghe's unique talent, went full mad scientist and locked Luo Binghe up in his lab to perform cruel and invasive experiments on him!

(Allegedly, in order to isolate what made Luo Binghe able to perform solo piloting, but what would a xenobiologist know about Drift mechanics? It was clear, to the audience if apparently not to Yue Qingyuan, that Shen Qingqiu was driven by nothing so much as mad envy for Luo Binghe's special talents. Even if he wasn't, medically torturing a teenage boy was simply beyond the pale! This was full on supervillain territory!! Yue Qingyuan, please! Whatever's driving your weird partiality for this dude, please get over it!!!

But he never had -- not even when Cang Qiong Shatterdome itself was destroyed.)

...So, with all that in mind -- the new Shen Qingqiu, ever since arriving in this world, had tried his utmost not to lean on or abuse Yue Qingyuan's favor too much. He would do it, a little, when it came to making sure his strategic advice on battling kaiju was followed -- but only because he wasn't able to explain his source of knowledge! If he could have been up front with them, he totally would have! Probably. But he refused to lean on Yue Qingyuan's indulgence for anything that didn't directly further the war effort.

Honestly, it was a wonder he hadn't been caught out as an imposter already!

Weirdly enough, Yue Qingyuan actually brightened up when Shen Qingqiu approached him for a favor. "A vehicle for the day?" he asked. "Of course, that can be arranged! Where does Shen-shidi plan to go?"

"Just out to the river on the far side of the shooting range," Shen Qingqiu replied. "Where Liu-shidi dropped Gnasher's tail, after bringing it back to the base."

Liu Qingge, who'd been passing by, heard his name and decided to invite himself into the conversation. "I could go get it and bring it closer to the base," he said.

"Not necessary, Shidi," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. "Even if it's mostly bled out by now, that's still far too much toxicity to want to bring onto the Shatterdome grounds if we can avoid it. Which we can."

"I could take you out there in Qie Dai Tao," Liu Qingge offered. "You wouldn't need a van."

"Shidi, please! I couldn't put Liu Mingyan to the trouble, not when she's still recovering!" Shen Qingqiu scolded him. Honestly! He turned back to Yue Qingyuan. "A van would be preferred, if we can spare one, so that I can bring back samples if necessary."

"Certainly," Yue Qingyuan said, favoring Shen Qingqiu with that gentle beaming smile that always made him simultaneously feel privileged and also about ten years old. Ahh, Yue Qingyuan's big-brother aura really was too strong! "In fact, I'll speak with Wei Qingwei about getting a van assigned to your office on a permanent basis. It really only makes sense that the Science division has its own dedicated resources."

Shen Qingqiu hadn't planned to ask for that much, but he was sheepishly grateful that Yue Qingyuan had thought to offer. If only so that he didn't keep having to ask! "My gratitude to Commander Yue," he said. "That would be a great benefit."

Liu Qingge stood off to the side and glowered. Don't get jealous just because this science officer got a car, Shidi! Your ride is still much cooler. "I can drive you," he offered abruptly. "Without Mingyan. You'll need help driving that van, won't you."

He didn't state it as a question, but then again, he wasn't wrong. Yue Qingyuan visibly flinched at the reminder, and Shen Qingqiu bit back a sigh. "There's no need for that, shidi," he said, striving for a reasonable tone. "What else are assistants for, if not to help their seniors with such trivial matters? You really should take the day to rest, Qingge. You work far too hard."

"I work too hard?" Liu Qingge looked outraged, as though that had been an unreasonable thing to say. For some reason. "What about you?"

"As just a science officer, the workload really can't be compared," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. "I appreciate the offers, but your work as a pilot is far too important to be disturbed with low-priority tasks like this. Go rest! Spend a day with your sister! Really, I don't need anything from you."

Yue Qingyuan, watching this interplay, mercifully intervened. "Qingqiu is right, of course," he said. "I'll make arrangements at once. Qingge doesn't need to be involved."

Liu Qingge scowled and stalked off, leaving the two of them alone once more. Yue Qingyuan turned back to him. "Do you plan to go out on your research trip today?"

"If possible," Shen Qingqiu said. "Before the tissues start to decompose, certainly."

"And you're sure you won't need any additional security? I could make arrangements with Guo-shidi."

"Security from what?" Shen Qingqiu chuckled. "There's not another kaiju due for at least twenty more days, and I'll be within a mile from our own shooting range. No need to disturb Guo Qingchen for this, I assure you."

Yue Qingyuan nodded, though he bore a faint frown as he did. "Of course. I'll send the orders down the motor pool at once," he said.

"Thanking the Commander," Shen Qingqiu said with a smile.

"It's my pleasure, Shidi." Yue Qingyuan's eyes grew oddly intent on Shen Qingqiu. "You know, you can ask me for whatever you need to assist you in your work. You can ask me for anything that would help you, and I'll make it happen. Anything at all."

Aiyah, that was exactly what Shen Qingqiu was trying to avoid! "That is appreciated," he said, trying not to let his tone reflect his discomfort. "I'll keep you apprised."

Yue Qingyuan looked disappointed, but let him go without any further weird moments. Shen Qingqiu walked away at the fastest pace he could manage without being ungainly. Honestly, Yue Qingyuan! You're simply too obliging! If you let unsavory types take advantage of you, they'll drain you to the dregs!

To tell the entire truth, the chance to get an up-close look at the severed kaiju tail was only one of his motivations; it was also just a gorgeous day outside, and he wanted to get out in it. Now that he could, in his brand new body that didn't threaten to unexpectedly crap out on him if he tried to do anything more ambitious than running his trash out to the parking lot.

While his accommodations at the Shatterdome were generous, the fact remained that it was a military institution first and foremost; comfort and aesthetics always had to take a back seat to security and efficiency. It was nice to get a break from that, if only for a day or so. And the countryside around the Shatterdome, once you got out past the perimeter, was surprisingly beautiful; you could see the harmony and nature that had once marked this place as a cultivation sect.

He brought Luo Binghe along, of course; not only to drive the van and help him with observations but also just because he thought the poor kid could use the break too. Honestly, poor Luo Binghe's life had been one long trauma conga line even before he'd come to the Shatterdome and into Shen Qingqiu's nasty crosshairs; he'd gone from slum to refugee camp to bunker to dormitory with hardly a break, except for the thirty-mile walk to Cang Qiong Shatterdome, which of course had been done in the winter. In the rain.

So it would do them both good to get out of the base for a bit, he thought, to soak up some rays and breathe some fresh air.

Well.

Fresh aside from the rank and rotting carcass of a kaiju tail a dozen meters in front of them, at least.

Qie Dai Tao had dropped the tail on the mudflat on the far side of the river before returning to the Shatterdome; sometime since then it had slumped over to fall across the river itself, which couldn't be doing great things for the downstream ecology, but oh well. Once Shen Qingqiu was done here he could pass on the tip to the nearby city; there were enough shady types that made a business of carving up kaiju parts for nefarious purposes that he was sure they could clear it in a hurry. Not unlike a whalefall being picked clean by scavenger fish, he supposed.

Shen Qingqiu sat on a little folding canvas chair on the near side of the river, on a bank with enough height to give him a clear view of the whole specimen. He had a sketchbook in his lap that he was using to make observations. Luo Binghe bobbed about with a camera, taking shots of every new angle he could find.

It was all very conscientious and scientific, but also pretty pointless; Shen Qingqiu already knew everything he needed to know about this kaiju. All this was really only cover to explain how he knew, without being able to reveal his meta-knowledge. And so it was that his attention was straying from the task at hand, wandering to just enjoy the spring sunlight and the river scene around them.

When Qie Dai Tao had tromped through here, knocking aside trees and crushing rock ridges and flinging monster slabs around, no doubt the local wildlife had fled; but after two days of no further disturbances, they were beginning to creep back. Shen Qingqiu saw dragonflies flitting across the surface of the water, toads crouching in the mud unmoving save for their pulsing throats, and even the striking elongated silhouette of a maned wolf passing through the grass on the far side of the trees.

Where the kaiju tai had fallen across the river, it served as a sort of dam; the current had carved a new channel under the narrow end, but it was still enough to form a wide pool above the blockage. Shen Qingqiu didn't even want to think of what was happening downstream, but up here at least the river was teeming with fish, seeming very confused at the sudden change to their home.

"Shizun?" Luo Binghe came up beside him, out of breath from bouncing around the kaiju tail like a cricket. He'd managed to work up a light sweat and a rosy glow, which Shen Qingqiu was glad to see on him; a young boy needed fresh air and exercise, indeed. "I've run out of room for more pictures on this camera, should I..."

"Hush." Shen Qingqiu beckoned him closer; bewildered, Luo Binghe shut his mouth and moved to his side. Shen Qingqiu indicated a pale shape on the far riverbank. "Do you see that bird?"

Wading through the shallow, muddy water on the riverbank was a large heron. It was keeping a respectful distance from the two humans, but otherwise ignoring them, intent on feasting on the bounty of fish in front of it.

Luo Binghe looked doubtful. "It's... pretty, I guess," he said quietly, "but it's not really what we're here for, is it? I mean, our job is learning about the kaiju..."

"They aren't so different as you'd think," Shen Qingqiu told him. "Form follows function. If the kaiju has certain features, structures, or body parts, then you can get an idea of what sorts of attacks or abilities it will have. Observing the natural world will give you a pool of data that you can draw from, in order to make those connections. Learning is never wasted, Binghe. Ah -- look!"

The heron had been gliding forward along the surface of the water, wings half-spread and body kept low to the waterline, with its neck arched in a tight S-curve and beak pointed unerringly towards its target. As the two of them watched it struck -- its neck straightening out and beak snapping forward in the blink of an eye, with the force of a javelin launching. The blow landed true -- and the bird flipped its head backwards, flinging a surprisingly large fish into the air and onto the bank.

"As you can see, even ordinary animals have traits that make them special," Shen Qingqiu told his apprentice. "And even if this particular observation is never used, it's still a sight worth seeing for itself. This is an extraordinary world we live in, after all. It's a privilege to get to be here, to get to see it."

"Oh," Luo Binghe said, very quietly.

A privilege, especially, for Shen Qingqiu -- whose life had already ended once -- to get a replay token, to be allowed to be here today and sit on a riverbank with his precious assistant. Ah, but he couldn't explain that to Luo Binghe; not any more than he could tell the boy the truth about the brilliant future ahead of him, when all this muck work would be a distant and hazy memory.

For a few minutes the two of them sat, under the spring sun and hazy blue sky, and just watched the scene. The heron finished its fish, and turned back to the water to hunt again; just then, a movement from the underbrush startled it as the wolf he had seen earlier made its own play for dinner. It missed the first lunge; the heron flapped aside, startled and indignant, and then launched into the sky, calling urgent warning to its fellows. Half a dozen other herons rose from the riverbank, and flew in shining formation overhead.

Shen Qingqiu sighed happily. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said, turning a smile onto Luo Binghe.

Luo Binghe returned his gaze, and his smile. "Yes," he said. "It is."

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

As Luo Binghe wheeled around, the shadowy outline of the Jaeger turned around him. The landscape blurred around him, dizzy and disorienting, the feeling of moving-without-moving threatening a gut-wrenching vertigo.

He ignored the sensation and focused on the controls, the pedals under his feet and joysticks slipping in his hands. Luo Binghe pulled; glided; fired; the beam cannon arm traced a leisurely arc across the panorama, following a slightly irregular arc, and bursts of fire bloomed in its path. One -- two, three, five -- all six of the targets burst into colorful blooms of light.

The simulated scenery ground to a halt, and the lights changed color as the buzzers sounded. On the scoreboard overhead, neon words flashed: COURSE COMPLETE. TARGETS DESTROYED: 100%. DAMAGE ACQUIRED: 0%. COLLATERAL DAMAGE: 13%. FUEL EFFICIENCY: 87%. OVERALL SIMULATION SCORE: 95%.

The simulator went inert, screens going dark and control rig powering down. Luo Binghe let out a sigh, then began the process of stripping himself out of the harness and putting everything in the training salle back to rights.

95% wasn't bad. He knew he could do better -- one memorable time last week, he'd gone all the way up to 99%! -- but consistency was important, too. He'd managed to get over 90% for every simulation he'd done this week, and he was consistently getting the collateral damage under twenty, which was important.

Consistency in training helped a lot, too. With Shen Qingqiu away --

(senior officer's business, he said, and he'd sounded regretful when he'd said that Luo Binghe could not accompany him, and yet he went without him all the same! How was Luo Binghe supposed to support him, to help him, if Luo Binghe wasn't there? How was Luo Binghe meant to make a difference...)

--with Shen Qingqiu away, and the lab locked down, well, there wasn't much for Luo Binghe to do except train every day.

As Luo Binghe finished shutting down the training salle and putting everything back to rights, he tried to stay optimistic. Shizun was going to a lot of trouble to give Luo Binghe this chance to train, after all -- he wasn't going to waste it! Even if...

Even if, in his heart, Luo Binghe doubted whether all this training was ever going to amount to anything. Oh, he could ace every training course, he knew all the katas and practice routines down to his bones, he held all the top scores in the simulations -- but none of that amounted to anything real.

The number one factor that the Jaeger Rangers program looked for in its pilots wasn't brains, or physical condition, or even skill at fighting. Every pilot candidate had to have those, of course, but that was just to even get screened. The real metric for making it in the pilot corps was Drift compatibility.

In order to be able to Drift together and successfully manage a Jaeger to the degree needed to fight a kaiju, a pilot team needed to have a synchronization score of at least eighty-five percent. The really good teams, like the Liu siblings, scored in the high nineties on most days. In a dire emergency, a pilot could Drift together with a partner that they only had a seventy percent score with. The Cang Qiong Shatterdome pilot program tried to keep a stable of pilot-candidates who could top at least sixty percent -- if not with one of the active pilots, then at least with another candidate, with the hope that they could grow closer over time and eventually be phased in as pilots themselves.

Luo Binghe had never scored more than six percent synchronization with any other candidate.

Back in the changing rooms outside of the training salle, Luo Binghe sighed and slumped down against the bench, feeling the unpleasant itch of cooling sweat all along his neck and down his back. He wanted to do well, to prove Shizun's faith in him, but... who was there for him to work with?

The best pilot teams tended to be family. Close siblings were the best -- identical twins or triplets tended to have unusually high scores, but they were rare enough to begin with. Sometimes you could have more distant relations as long as the pair were close; the pilots of Jing Wang She were uncle and nephew, and Luo Binghe heard that one of the other Shatterdomes had another uncle-nephew pilot pair. Huan Hua Palace even fielded a pilot pair of father and daughter.

(...Though not every set of siblings was equally suited to becoming a pilot pair. Luo Binghe had heard the gossip about the Qin siblings who had come to Cang Qiong together to be tested for compatibility. Whatever had happened in that particular screening test, it had ended with the sisters breaking apart permanently -- Qin Wanrong giving up on any piloting ambitions to take a post in the Communications department, and Qin Wanyue left Cang Qiong entirely, eventually becoming a pilot at Tian Yi Shatterdome instead. Nobody had told Luo Binghe the details, but the two sisters no longer talked to, or about, one another at all.)

Luo Binghe had no family. All he'd ever had was his mother, and she'd died when he was barely ten. He'd struggled to survive alone in a world where the normal social supports had been smashed by wave after wave of kaiju attacks -- a world that could barely keep its fighting forces clothed and fed, let alone excess orphans with nothing to give back.

Luo Binghe had survived, and fought his way step by step to the Shatterdome, where he swore that he would find a way to join the fight. He would avenge his mother; he would revenge himself on the monsters that had done this to her. He would find his place among the ranks of the brave heroes and stoic supporters that were the last hope of civilization against the ravages of chaos!

Of course, the reality of life in the Jaeger Wardens program sometimes fell a bit short of these lofty ideals.

Luo Binghe... was really happy that Shen Qingqiu tried to stop him from being bullied. He appreciated the sentiment! And it was apparent that Shizun thought he had stopped the bullying. They didn't dare pick on Luo Binghe when he was in Shen Qingqiu's company, nor when he was in any public areas under the eye of the other Section Heads.

But that just meant they cornered him when no one else was looking, instead. Like the other day when he'd been on his way back to the lab from the kitchens, and had been overtaken by a pack of ravenous teenage boys. They hadn't cared that the snacks were for someone else -- for a senior officer, even! For one of the highest-ranked men in the Shatterdome! -- they had only cared about their own stomachs. The carefully crafted dumplings had mostly wound up in the floor, in the end, feeding no one, helping no one. Even now, the memory of the waste simmered a rage in him.

The sound of footsteps and voices from outside the locker room brought him out of his maudlin thoughts. He scrambled to his feet, tired muscles snapping tense, but it was too late to try to get out of the way -- they were already here.

A pack of other boys -- the youngest about Luo Binghe's age, the oldest almost twenty -- filed into the locker room. Luo Binghe felt a surge of sour unpleasantness as he recognized their leader -- Ming Fan. An awful little toad of a teen, who spent most of his time around the Shatterdome hanging around trying to trade on his reputation as a pilot.

Ming Fan didn't actually have any reputation yet -- he had never been in the harness, had never fought a Kaiju. But, as a reserve candidate with a Drift synchronization score of 65%, he was still one of the senior disciples in the piloting program. And he never let anyone else forget it, either.

Luo Binghe kept his head down as the other boys filed in, shoving his things into his bag, but it was too late. He'd been spotted.

"Hey, little rat! What are you doing lurking around in here?" one of the pilot-candidates shouted.

"I'm just leaving," Luo Binghe muttered, turning to go. Ming Fan stepped into his path, bringing him up short.

"Leaving? You shouldn't even be here in the first place," Ming Fan said with a sneer. "Only pilots are allowed into the training salle, not scrubs. Sneaking around without permission -- "

"I had permission!" Luo Binghe protested. "Shizun said I could use it to train. My authorization came right from Officer Shen!"

"Shen Qingqiu?" one of the other pilot-candidates jeered. "The science officer? His permission isn't worth spit! He spends all his time pickling kaiju parts -- he's a waste of space, just like you!"

Luo Binghe's head snapped up, and he shot an ugly glare at the boy who'd spoken up. It was one thing for the bullies to insult him -- Heaven knew he was used to it -- but at the insult to Shen Qingqiu, his temper flared. "Better that than spare parts, like all of you!" he spat. "You think you're such big men? The only reason you're here is to wait around in case someone better than you dies and you can step into their boots!"

Ming Fan's face went puce, and his features twisted with fury. "You're the one who's gonna die!" he shouted, and the fight was on.

The locker room quickly devolved into a mess of fists and flailing limbs. Luo Binghe gave it everything he had, driven by his anger on behalf of his beloved mentor and his own seething frustrations -- but he was outnumbered, outweighed, and quickly overwhelmed. The only saving grace was that once he'd dragged Ming Fan and one of the other pilots down into a clutch on the locker room floor, the other pilots didn't have much access to hit him. He held grimly on to Ming Fan's arm, trying to black the other boy's eye, while kicks and blows rained down around them.

"What's going on here?"

The new person didn't shout, but their voice managed to pierce through the melee all the same. One of the pilot-candidates next to Luo Binghe's ear suddenly sounded scared when he said: "Oh, shit! It's Pilot Liu!"

Several of the older boys tried to scramble away, to extricate themselves from the melee, but they didn't get the chance; Liu Qingge grabbed two of them by their collars and hauled them back, tossing them towards opposite corners of the room without seeming effort. The process was repeated until Luo Binghe was alone on the floor, trying to catch his breath, while the other pilot-candidates lay groaning against the walls.

Liu Qingge did not look even the slightest bit winded by hauling the miscreants around. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. "The world is coming down around our ears outside, and you spend your time picking petty fights?" he demanded. "If you've got the energy to fight, you aren't training hard enough! Ten laps around the main deployment bay."

This produced moans of dismay from the other candidates, followed by a sullen mutter of "Yes, sir" from around the room. Only Ming Fan seemed to have the spine to stand up straight and protest. "But, Pilot Liu!" he said. He pointed an accusatory finger at Luo Binghe. "This little wimp was taking up the training salle all morning! And he isn't even in the pilot program!"

Liu Qingge looked at Ming Fan, then looked back down at Luo Binghe. "You were using the simulators without authorization?"

"I had authorization!" Luo Binghe protested, gaining enough of a second wind to push himself up to his hands and knees. "Senior Officer Shen assigned me to train in the simulators this morning!"

"Shen Qingqiu isn't --" one of the other pilot-candidates began, surging furiously to his feet. Liu Qingge looked over at him; Luo Binghe couldn't see his expression, but the other boy shut up very thoroughly.

"Twenty laps," Liu Qingge said. "Go."

More groans accompanied the boys as they trooped out, one jostling the unfortunate speaker with his elbow and muttering "Good going, dumbass."

The sound of their footsteps breaking into a ragged trot thundered away down the corridor. The locker room was left with only Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe.

Slowly, Luo Binghe pushed himself to his feet. Liu Qingge didn't offer him a hand up, not that Luo Binghe especially wanted one. "Am I in trouble -- sir?" he muttered.

Liu Qingge looked him up and down. "You're Shen Qingqiu's lab assistant?" he said.

"Yes, I am." Luo Binghe lifted his chin proudly. He wasn't ashamed to be associated with Shizun, no matter what any of the rest of them said! And if Liu Qingge was going to challenge his right to be here -- in the training salle, in the pilot's wing, in the Shatterdome -- then Luo Binghe would fight tooth and claw to keep his place!

But all Liu Qingge said was, "If you're done with the simulator, then leave," and turned to do so himself.

Still shaken, Luo Binghe picked himself up off the floor. With the laboratory closed and locked, there was only one other place he could go.

Ning Yingying was the youngest member of the Cang Qiong Shatterdome, and one of very few younger than Luo Binghe himself. Her slight weight and petit hands made her the best person on the engineering team for certain delicate operations, like climbing out along the frameworks or reaching into tight spaces to get at bolts or circuits.

The rest of the engineering section regarded Ning Yingying like a little sister, or perhaps a bit like a mascot; our little monkey, they called her fondly. When she wasn't working on tasks that specifically needed her she had the lightest schedule of any other member of the team, and was largely allowed to go wherever she wanted within the warren of docks, storage racks, and workbenches that made up the engineering bay.

Back when he'd first come to the Shatterdome, Ning Yingying had been one of the only ones who was willing to take pity on him -- even to so much as talk to him. She would let him hide from Ming Fan and his cronies from the candidate pool, tell him all the news and gossip from around the base, and even share some of her food with him -- though he held himself back from taking too much, lest he bring the wrath of the rest of the motor pool down on his head for taking advantage of their little sister.

He'd been scared and grieving and desperately alone, and she'd been a friendly face in a place that had very few of them. Even after he finally gained a permanent role as a lab assistant, even after Shizun finally started to see him in a kindly light, Ning Yingying remained his first friend in Cang Qiong.

She would accompany him on some of his errands, getting in the way more often than not. She would talk at him for hours about the cartoons and singers she liked best from before the Rifts opened, and Luo Binghe would listen to them all, even though he didn't particularly care about any of them. And on days like these, when Shizun was out of the Shatterdome on important business... Ning Yingying's berth in the docking bay was still the best place to hide from the bigger boys.

Today they sat across from each other in a niche formed by the crossing of two different scaffolds, making a wider and more stable platform than usual. Luo Binghe was poring over the notes they'd taken from the field excursion to Gnasher's tail last week, but he wasn't really seeing them; there wasn't much more to be gained from old data.

Yet, he had nothing better to look at. Shizun had been called away on important business -- Luo Binghe understood that! A conference of senior Shatterdome officers had been called at Zhao Hua Monastery, inviting the different branches to pool their data and look for patterns, and of course Shen Qingqiu had to be there -- he was the top expert of kaiju biology and behavior that the jianghu had! Luo Binghe just wished that he could have gone along. Not because he had anything to contribute, of course, but so that he could support Shizun.

Shizun had refused to take him along, no matter how Luo Binghe argued and pleaded. If Shizun got hurt or, or stuck somewhere, and couldn't reach his cane or his crutches, how was Luo Binghe to help him from here? If Shen Qingqiu needed his medicine ahead of schedule, what would he do without Luo Binghe there to produce it on request? If they ran across some gangers looking for a rich target, and they saw Shizun's fine uniform and his crutches and decided he would be easy pickings, and Luo Binghe wasn't there --

Ning Yingying's bright, eager voice broke into his catastrophizing like a wave crashing over a rock. "A-Luo, A-Luo, look at this video!"

Luo Binghe took a moment to reign in the surge of irritation he felt at being shaken out of his thoughts. A part of him was grateful to be distracted from his worries, and he tried to hold on to that as he looked over Ning Yingying's shoulder to see what had caught her attention now.

Honestly, the video didn't mean much to him. The tiny, grainy frame showed the top half of a perky-looking young woman, her hair streaked with green and blue, waving her arms in some kind of dance move. There was staticky music coming from the speakers, but it was tinny and flat.

For lack of anything to really say about the singer or the music, Luo Binghe squinted at the datestamp in the corner of the video. "Oh, this one's new?" he said.

"Yes, she just put it up two days ago!" Ning Yingying ran it back to the beginning, watching avidly, and tried to tentatively move her hands in the same pattern.

Luo Binghe shook his head. "I'm surprised that anyone's still writing music, when the kaiju are attacking everywhere," he said disapprovingly. "Don't they have better things to do?"

Ning Yingying went quiet for a moment, biting her lip, eyes still trained on the screen. After a moment she looked up at him with a soft, earnest smile. "I think it's good that people are still singing songs and playing games, A-Luo! It means we're still protecting something."

Luo Binghe looked away, feeling a twinge of shame. "I guess you're right," he said quietly.

Ning Yingying rewound the video clip to watch it again. "Faye lives in Hua Yue City now! So she's safe, and can concentrate on her music, because Cang Qiong Shatterdome will definitely protect her!"

"That's nice," Luo Binghe said.

And he meant it; it really was nice that people in the city could still live carefree lives. What else was the Jaeger corps for, if not to protect the ordinary folk?

...Not that he, Luo Binghe, was protecting much of anyone right now. And with his Drift synchronization scores as low as they were, it didn't seem likely that he ever would.

He gazed out over the docking bay, the expanse of scaffolding and infrastructure and machinery. In this lull between Jaeger attacks, the three sentinels of Cang Qiong sat at rest in their docking cradles. San Xin Shu, all pearl-white plating and silver chrome trimming, a collar of mirrored panels rising around its head like a corona. Qie Dai Tao, also a white base but marked with green bands and lavender panels, a long cascading braid of cables trailing from its crown. Jing Wang She, looming menacingly in dark green and dark red, back and arms marked with poison-green diamonds like warning flags, the eerie bright red markings on the faceplate now dimmed in rest. Normally he felt nothing but deep awe and respect for their titanic protectors, but today... the blank visages seemed to be laughing at Luo Binghe, mocking his incapacity.

"A-Luo, is something wrong?"

"No, I just... I wish I could do more," he admitted. "I'm happy that Shizun has faith in me, but... I feel like I'm letting him down. I can train in the simulators every day for a hundred years, but I still won't be a pilot."

"Huh." Ning Yingying scooted over to sit side by side with him, rather than across. She let her legs swing over the edge of the scaffolding, and her gaze wandered across the bay to where the Jaegers stood, silent and stoic. "You know, Shizun says the only way to really learn about Jaegers is to get in there and start taking them apart, in an environment where we don't have to worry about breaking something important. Maybe Shen-shibo is thinking the same thing for you?"

"Maybe," Luo Binghe said, but he couldn't really see how.

"That's why we practice on Ku Ye Zhu!" Ning Yingying continued cheerily.

"Ku Ye Zhu?" Luo Binghe had never heard that name before. And he thought he knew the names of all the pilots and their machines.

"Yeah, you know, Ku Ye Zhu!" Ning Yingying hopped to her feet and wriggled out of the little scaffolding nest, nimbly scaling the rigging up to the next platform. Luo Binghe scrambled to follow, feeling slow and clumsy in comparison.

He followed Ning Yingying up to the platform, around the corner and over to the wall on the far side of Jing Wang She's docking cradle. This angle faced away from the enormous hangar bay doors and away from the wide-open expanse towards the middle which was left clear for Jaegers to traverse. Instead, they faced a folded corner of the hangar which was crowded with scaffolding, lifts and cranes, and enormous pieces of... scrap metal? Deconstructed Jaeger parts? Luo Binghe couldn't even identify all of it on sight.

"See, that's Ku Ye Zhu there!" Ning Yingying pointed, and Luo Binghe followed the line of her finger to a... shadow, one that took up one entire corner of the hangar bay. He squinted; it took a moment for his eyes to adjust, to pick out the familiar silhouette of a Jaeger laid out sideways, half-covered by machinery.

Less familiar of a silhouette; this Jaeger looked to be half-assembled itself, panels opened up to show hydraulics and wiring, the cranial module detached entirely and sitting on a platform off to the side, as though the Jaeger had casually taken its head off and set it on a shelf. It gave Luo Binghe an odd feeling, to see one of the great machines -- the ones that everyone, in the wake of the kaiju invasion, had been taught to regard as angels of salvation -- in such a state of disarray.

"I've never heard of a Jaeger called Ku Ye Zhu before," Luo Binghe commented. "The name is kind of inauspicious, isn't it?"

"Ku Ye Zhu never got used," Ning Yingying shrugged. "It was one of the first models they ever made, before they'd really figured out the Drift. All analog."

"But there were other early models that got retrofitted with the Drift later, right?" Luo Binghe asked. "Like Meng You Zhe from Huan Hua."

"Yes, but Ku Ye Zhu couldn't be," Ning Yingying said matter-of-factly. "Nobody's sure why. Something about the integrated chest cannon system, or the frequency of the power transmitters it uses -- it disrupts the Drift. No pilots could stay in it for more than five minutes without the Drift breaking down and kicking them both out of it. After a while, they gave up on refitting it, and now we get to use it to try out new modules!"

"Why, though?" Luo Binghe said blankly.

"Because we can't risk damaging one of the active Jaegers by installing a part we haven't tested yet, silly!" Ning Yingying exclaimed. "We put them in Ku Ye Zhu first to test to make sure they're running right to scale, and then we can move them over to the real Jaegers!"

"I guess that makes sense," Luo Binghe said. The fighting Jaegers were irreplaceable, not only in cost but in importance; you wouldn't want to risk something happening to them during normal maintenance.

"So it's just like you, A-Luo!" Ning Yingying concluded with a bright, sweet smile.

Luo Binghe looked at her, then looked over at the disordered heap of black metal and smeared oil in the corner. It wasn't that he disagreed, but wasn't that rather a harsh judgment?

Ning Yingying slid up against his side, tucking her arm into his elbow. "Everything in the hangar bay plays a part, that's what Shizun says," she explained. "Even the things that never leave the hangar, they're all important to keep the Jaegers up and running. And you are too, A-Luo. Even if it doesn't feel like it right now. You'll find your place, I'm sure of it!"

"Thanks, Shijie." Luo Binghe managed to summon a real smile, this time.

She was right; even if he never set foot in a real jaeger, he still had a place. A place in the laboratory, at his shizun's side. Even if he never did any real fighting, that was still more than enough.

Shang Qinghua was having a miserable life.

Which sounded pretty hyperbolic but in fairness, he did actually have a frame of reference for a better one.

In his current life, Shang Qinghua had lived an unexceptional childhood that turned into a nightmare adolescence once the kaiju invasion had erupted onto the world. For Shang Qinghua, and for him alone, this world-wracking event did not come as a surprise -- because not only did he still have memories of his first life without it, he was actually one of those who had written it into existence to begin with.

In that life, Shang Qinghua had been a struggling creative type trying fruitlessly to gain a foothold in Hollywood, among a sea of other struggling creatives. When the production team for On the Proud Immortal Demon Way approached Shang Qinghua with a job offer, it had seemed like a dream come true. Shang Qinghua had spent so long waiting for a break -- for a project that didn't fall apart, or peter out, or derail into some wannabe auteur director's unhinged sexual fetishes. To be asked to come onboard such a professional, prestigious operation -- one guaranteed to be a blockbuster, with two successful movies already behind it! -- was absolutely the golden ticket.

And sure -- yes -- it would mean he was crossing the picket line. It would mean he was breaking the strike, and no one from the writer's guild would ever work with him again after this.

But so what! So what! Who needed other projects when he had On the Fucking Proud Immortal Way under his belt! He could live off the residuals for that forever, probably! He could leverage his connections into doing indie projects the writer's guild would never touch! And anyway, wasn't anything better than working four jobs trying to keep himself in ramen noodles while waiting for a 'proper' opportunity that never came? What did he owe the rest of those assholes at the writer's guild, anyway? Sure, it was easy for them with their family legacies paying their way, but working-class joes like him had rents to pay, damn it!

And -- he'd loved the On the Proud Way series. He really had. He'd always been a sucker for that sort of rockem-sockem beat-em-up robot genre, and he'd been looking forward to getting to play in their sandbox.

Really, it had been nothing short of a dream come true.

Except that very soon, the dream turned into a nightmare.

It wasn't until he'd signed the contracts, and showed up at the studio that the full implications began to reveal themselves. Like the fact that the original plans for the third movie had either been lost, or never written, in the first place; Shang Qinghua would be on the hook to produce the entire script by himself.

In less than a month.

Because On the Proud Immortal Demon Way was facing drop-dead dates that would make a necromancer blanch. The project was already overdue and over budget and filming hadn't even begun yet. And then there were all the hurdles that the On the Proud Way franchise was facing; the actors they couldn't get back, the parts of the story and worldbuilding that they couldn't mention any more since they'd settled in the IP feud, the sets and props that had been broken down or stolen by other productions and couldn't be used any more, the lack of any sort of on-site script doctor...

But he'd known all that going in! He'd known it would be hard, that just meant he needed to work even harder! So he'd put his head down and worked, doing his teeth-gritted best to weave a coherent story around all the rocks and shoals, and at the end of the month he'd come out with a script that he felt pretty okay about. It wasn't going to quite be on the level of the first and second movies, but how could it be? At the very least, it would tie off all the loose ends and give a nice grand finale to the story.

And then the executive meddling began.

The director had a daughter he wanted to get into a starring role. The sponsors had a product that absolutely had to be featured. The test audiences didn't like the new hero he'd written; he had to go back and rewrite his entire part of the script. The producer insisted that the post team had to use the new graphics engine that his company had stock in, and demanded that he find a way to fit it into at least ten separate scenes. The animatronics team was fired halfway through the month, and the director insisted they'd "just make the funny little monsters up in post."

Every day, Shang Qinghua sat through meetings and bent further and further under the weight of endless new demands. Every night, he stayed up till five AM trying to re-work the script -- again -- to accommodate them. Every morning, his new script would be pored over, holes poked in, sneered at, and then the meetings would begin again.

Maybe he wasn't supposed to just say yes to everything they demanded? Maybe he was supposed to have pushed back? Maybe if he'd been sent here from the writer's guild, with a real force of solidarity behind him, he could have.

By the time On the Proud Immortal Demon Way finally hit theaters, Shang Qinghua was numb.

Every bit of his creative spirit had been burnt out of him. He had crossed the picket line, sold his soul and dignity and morals, and his reward for that devil's bargain was to have his name picked out in blazing colors on the worst movie to have hit theaters in fifteen years. The only writer's name.

The tomatoes flew in, and they were all rotten. The forums had come alight with the flames -- some of them longer in word-count than Shang Qinghua's final script had been. He hadn't even been able to care any more. He'd holed himself up in his shitty studio apartment with a phone that was pointedly not ringing off the hook, gotten ripped out of his mind, and watched old episodes of daytime television on rerun on his crappy old television until all consciousness left him.

...Left him for good, as it happened; he wasn't quite sure what had gone wrong, but he had only blurry memories of flashing lights, the acrid smell of something burning that wasn't supposed to burn, and overwhelming suffocating feeling in his lungs.

And that was the last thing he knew, before being delivered into his new life on the Proud Immortal Way.

After the Gnasher attack, life in the Shatterdome went on. Society might be collapsing around the globe, but within the walls of Cang Qiong the graveyard shift still gave way to the morning shift, meals still had to be made, the floors still had to be cleaned, and the technicians in the PR department still argued over which was the best background music to use for their latest "we're keeping up the fight!" propaganda broadcast.

A new Rift formed right according to schedule, and Shen Qingqiu bucked the pilot rotation once again by insisting that San Xin Shu be the ones to take on this battle; his strategy once again proved sound when this particular kaiju turned out to be able to detach and throw around an array of horrible disgusting parasites like pokeballs, and the triplets proved more than up to the task at shooting them out of the sky like a game of Galaxy Defender. Tianlang-jun sulked performatively in the canteen for another week, complaining that he had now been sidelined for five missions in a row, until the next scheduled Rift rolled around and he was finally allowed to take Jing Wang She out for some exercise.

The fight to defend the world against kaiju was ticking right along like clockwork, which of course, meant that something was due to go wrong.

This time, the 'something' to go wrong was a distress call from Huan Hua Palace.

In the Tactical Room display screen floated the white-crowned head of a wrinkled old man, hair bound in a stern topknot, collar glinting with gold pips. "Jaeger Wardens, now is the hour of our greatest victory," he said; his voice was quavery with age, but ironclad in conviction. "At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. I believe that the other Shatterdomes will answer this call, will support their brothers and sisters in arms, will fight back this terrible threat. In that hope, I await your response. Lao Zhousi, signing off."

It was a name to reckon with. Lao Zhousi -- known affectionately and informally around the Shatterdomes as the Old Fortress Master -- was a legend in the Jaeger Wardens. Indeed, as much as there could be said to be one singular leader of the whole program, it was him; though each Shatterdome was independently controlled and run, there was not one of them that couldn't trace ties back to Lao Zhousi and the Huan Hua Shatterdome.

Huan Hua was the first Shatterdome -- initially a military base that built itself out to stage and deploy the first experimental prototype Jaegers. Lao Zhousi had led the first Shatterdome science team to develop Drift technology -- large-scale weapons system -- Kaiju xenobiology. Others might have taken up the banners and carried them further, but it was his team that had turned out one after another revolutionary concepts that made the Jaeger Wardens possible. Even nowadays, Huan Hua was frequently in the forefront of developing new breakthroughs.

Though Lao Zhousi himself was never a pilot -- already in middle-age when the Kaiju first invaded, no one at this venerable age would expect him to climb into a cockpit -- he had trained and led the first generation of Jaeger pilots. Yue Qingyuan himself had fought many battles under Lao Zhousi's mentorship, before graduating to the new Cang Qiong branch of the Jaeger Warden program and eventually rising to the role of Commander. Not all of the other Commanders were Lao Zhousi's proteges, but pilots who had trained under him could be found in every Shatterdome.

When Lao Zhousi called for aid, there were none who would dare to refuse that call!

Even if what he was asking for was, in fact... a lot.

As in, "completely strip your defenses in an enormous expedition to someone else's territory" a lot.

"According to the measurements of the Jin Lan City sensor array, the Rift is an unusual size, unstable shape, and emanating more than twice the level of energy that usually precedes a Rift," reported Xu Qingli, section head of the Communications department. "Huan Hua's scientists are concerned that this could indicate a double event, or perhaps even a triple."

"How can it be a triple event, if it's not triple the usual size?" Guo Qingchen, the head of base security, said.

Wei Qingwei scoffed. "Don't be stupid," he said. "It's like a doorway, they don't all have to fit in through the same time, they can come in one after another --"

"Well, why don't they do that all the time then?" Guo Qingchen argued back.

"Because the Rifts don't stay open for long enough! But this one --"

"Forget it," Qiu Qingye said roughly. She glared across the table at the Science division. "The real concern is, our schedule didn't account for an incursion in Jin Lan City at all, let alone now. Why didn't we see this coming?"

Yue Qingyuan usually conducted these meetings with a faint benign smile, but there was no smile on his face today. "That is a good question," he said. "Shang-shidi?"

Ahh, fuck, fuck, he knew he was going to be thrown under the bus! Shang Qinghua couldn't help but squirm in his seat as the collective eyes of the Shatterdome. "I've told you before, the schedule can only be a guideline, it's not prescriptive!" he protested. "I can project where the Rifts are likely to form based on known factors, but I can't actually see the future! If conditions change, then there may be variance from the schedule."

"How could conditions change? I thought they were based on geographical factors!" Qi Qingqi said. "Are the mountains getting up and moving now? Are the stars playing musical chairs?"

"Those are only the conditions on our side! If conditions on the other side of the Rift change, then that throws the whole equations out of balance," Shang Qinghua argued back.

Wei Qingwei leaned forward. "Are you suggesting the kaiju are changing their patterns deliberately?"

"I'm saying we don't know they aren't!" Shang Qinghua decided that somebody else needed to be on the spot, to take some of the heat off him. "Right, Shen-shidi?"

It worked; the collective eyes of the Shatterdome turned to Shen Qingqiu instead. He, at least, kept his cool under the weight of the stare, finishing the sip he was taking out of his cup of tea before setting it down and looking up to meet their eyes.

"By all the data we've collected from the start of the incursion till now, there is no indication that the kaiju are possessed of sapience, language, or any kind of higher thinking," Shen Qingqiu said exactingly. "Nor have they shown any particular tactical competence other than the use of their own native powers. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is not impossible that there is a higher intelligence driving their movements, which has not heretofore revealed itself to us."

"So you're saying you don't know anything?" Qiu Qingye said heatedly. "What use are you, then?!"

Liu Qingge slammed his hand against the table, making everybody jump. "Arguing over whose fault this is is pointless," he said. Yeah, Shang Qinghua noticed that he was in a hurry to point fingers right up until Shen Qingqiu got put on the spot, huh. Thanks for the support, shidi! "The rift is forming; the kaiju will be coming through. We have to deal with that."

"Indeed," Yue Qingyuan said. "Huan Hua has requested that we send aid, as the risk of a multiple event seems high."

"Why do they need us to cover their asses?" Qi Qingqi said, sounding annoyed about it. "Can't they manage their own territory? Even if it is a triple event -- and we have no proof that it is -- they ought to have enough active Jaegers to handle it!"

"It is always better to outnumber the enemy; by a half if you can manage it, by a third failing that," Yue Qingyuan quoted. "Our first concern should not be territory, but in showing a united face against the kaiju threat and ensuring the safety of civilians."

Ah, fuck, this was shaping up to be a major event. It was just like Shang Qinghua had warned Cucumber-bro about a week ago -- the Rifts would come when the plot said, not according to any schedule they could devise. If something abnormal was going on at Jin Lan City, then that was a sure sign that the plot was about to show up big time.

"Yeah, how come it's always Cang Qiong that's showing solidarity, and Huan Hua that's taking credit?" Wei Qingwei muttered, but he did so relatively quietly, so Yue Qingyuan didn't feel the need to address it.

Shen Qingqiu made a little arresting motion from his side of the table. "That may be so, but it would not be wise to leave Cang Qiong undefended."

"Yeah, especially if this 'schedule' can't be relied on!" Gao Qingchen called out.

"We must not be seen as stinting to our allies," Yue Qingyuan said firmly. "We will prepare a support team to go to Huan Hua Shatterdome to help them during this incursion. San Xin Shu and Qie Dai Tao will be our active combatants. Jing Wang She will remain behind, as they are on the rest roster, but will serve as backup in case of unanticipated trouble." He looked around the table, from one face to the next, impressing on each of them the seriousness of the situation. "Section Leads, make the necessary arrangements, and prepare your personnel for departure by 1500. Dismissed."

Transporting one Jaeger any distance away from its home base -- or with the intention of being gone for more than a few hours -- was a job of magnificent proportions. The Jaegers needed to be moved, the maintenance teams needed to travel along with them, the pilots and their support teams went along, logistics, comms and coordination, food and housing and supplies for everyone -- it was a circus. Transporting two Jaegers the same distance -- along with the Commander and most of their inter-Shatterdome relations team -- was a straight up carnival.

Almost every department got dragged in, and more of the Section Heads ended up going than staying behind. In the end the only ones remaining behind were Qi Qingqi, who immediately took the opportunity to take some time off to visit her hometown, and Mu Qingfang, since medical support was going to be provided by Zhao Hua Monastery this time around. Mu Qingfang, too, disappeared into his supply rooms with sharp instructions not to be disturbed.

And the Science division, of course.

As the crowds cleared out and the base quieted down, Shang Qinghua flung himself on the couch in the emptied-out rec room and heaved a huge sigh of relief. "Man, I'm glad that's over with," he said. "Whatever plot is going to happen, it's all the way over in Jin Lan City. I can finally relax for a few days!"

"Oh no you don't," Shen Qingqiu said, rapping him smartly on the shin with the tip of his crutches. "We're going on a field trip."

"What? We are?" Shang Qinghua sat up again and gave Shen Qingqiu an incredulous look. "Why? You know we aren't actually scientists, right? We don't need to, like, compile data or muck around digsites and shit."

"We do if we want to find the site of the Sun and Moon Laboratories," Shen Qingqiu replied.

"The -- what?" Shang Qinghua squinted. That sounded very very very blurrily familiar, but -- "Bro, you know I don't remember stuff from the first two movies."

"This was from your movie, you hack!" Shen Qingqiu snapped. "You wrote the stupid cheap hackneyed plot device that allowed for the whole 'Gongyi Xiao came back as a clone' nonsense plotline!"

"...Oh, yeah," Shang Qinghua said. "Yeah, right, that."

Shang Qinghua had had to make a lot of choices he was not proud of in the writing of the third On the Proud Immortal Way movie, in order to work with the constraints the production had handed him. This was one of his less shining moments.

The delay caused by the writer's strike had made it an extremely patchwork prospect which of the cast of the first two movies they'd been able to get back and which roles had to be re-cast. Luo Binghe's actor had been the biggest loss, but not the only one; the studio had been desperate to reclaim absolutely any of the actors from the first movie they could get, so that they didn't lose the audience entirely.

Unfortunately, one of the only actors who had been able (and willing) to return to the set had been the actor for Gongyi Xiao, a pilot from the Huan Hua Shatterdome who'd gotten only a few scenes in the first movie before dying dramatically in a kaiju battle during the climax. (Killed by Gnasher, actually -- Shang Qinghua wondered if they'd managed to completely change the timeline on that.) His death had, unfortunately, been caught on camera and there had even been a memorial service held later that showed his name explicitly; how, then, were they supposed to explain his survival and return?

Well, that had become Shang Qinghua's problem to solve.

Faking his death would have been impossible with the timeline as it was known, and Gongyi Xiao hadn't had any convenient twin brothers. In desperation Shang Qinghua had thrown the I Ching, read the will of the heavens and declared a secret experimental scientific facility had created a perfect clone of Pilot Gongyi, right down to having all the same memories. Sure, it was hokey and dumb, but who cared? Hokey and dumb was the name of the game for this franchise. What did it matter how Gongyi Xiao had returned from the grave, as long as he did?

But it mattered now.

Shen Qingqiu tapped his fan guard against his palm, a tic that Shang Qinghua had come to read as 'nervous.' "That whole plotline was idiotic and unbelievable, but we're in the world now, and that means it's real. If we can find the laboratory -- if we can commandeer their facilities -- we can put a backup plan in place for when we die."

Well, that was unencouraging. "Don't you mean 'if' we die?" Shang Qinghua interjected.

Shen Qingqiu's eye twitched, and his knuckles turned white with the force of his grip. "When we die."

...Yeah, Shang Qinghua was not going to poke that particular bear. "There's just one problem. I don't know where this stupid experimental lab is. I didn't put that much thought into it!"

Shen Qingqiu settled back into his chair, his face turning pensive. "The subreddit did some geolocating work on that," he said after a moment. "Based on what we knew about Gongyi Xiao's history and the timing of his reappearance, cross-checked against locations that were known to be able to host that kind of facility without it being discovered. They narrowed it down to somewhere in the Bai Lu Evacuation Zone."

Wow. Never underestimate the power of nerds. "Uh, I thought that area was completely underwater?"

"Not completely," Shen Qingqiu said. "Enough of it was submerged that the city had to be abandoned, but there were still pockets that were habitable. And no one would be looking for them there."

Shang Qinghua couldn't believe what he was hearing. "So, you're going to to hare off on a wild goose chase to search an entire drowned city for a facility that might or might not even be there, in the hopes that they can grow us a couple of backup bodies on the off chance that if we die --"

"When we die!" Shen Qingqiu snapped.

"-- we can come back to life somehow?" Shang Qinghua ignored the interruption. "Bro, what will you do if they bring back the original goods, not you?"

Shen Qingqiu scowled, then sighed. When the usual bitchy expression drained away, it mostly just left him looking tired. "That's a chance I'll have to take." he said. He glanced up at Shang Qinghua, and his expression sharpened back to alertness once more. "But you're wrong on one count."

"Eh, what?" Shang Qinghua said.

"We are going to search a drowned city." Shen Qingqiu whacked his shins again, causing Shang Qinghua to pull his feet off the furniture in sheer self-defense. "Get your boots on, Airplane. If we leave after Zhangmen-shixiong departs and get back before he does, he never even has to know we were gone."

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

Luo Binghe didn't usually use the dormitory showers. There was a little shower stall off the laboratory (meant for washing off chemical spills, but it worked fine for his needs) that he used most of the time instead. But with Shizun out of the Shatterdome again on his special research trip, he didn't have access to it -- so if he didn't want to wallow in his own dirt the whole time Shizun was away, he had to venture into the pilot's wing to use their facilities instead.

He waited until the wing was mostly clear, hoping to be in and out quickly. At first, he had the showers to himself -- but not for long enough. As soon as the door opened and another boy came in, Luo Binghe moved quickly to rinse off the remaining soap and shut the water off. He moved towards the changing area, drying himself roughly with a towel and reaching for his clothes.

Not fast enough. Two more boys came in when Luo Binghe had only his pants and socks on, and that was enough to block the exits.

Luo Binghe eyed the other boys warily as they circled him, water still dripping off the ends of his hair. Ming Fan, as always. He recognized Zhao De, one of Ming Fan's usual toadies -- one of the worst when it came to egging the other boy on. The weight of the water pulled the curls out straight, plastering against the back of his neck and sending trails of droplets down his back. The air was cold.

"What's this?" Zhao De sneered, stopping in front of him and gesturing contemptuously towards his chest. His mother's necklace, the one he never took off, not even to bathe, was currently visible hanging around his neck. "I've never seen it before. Something you've been hiding, beast? Valuable resources that could go to support the war! Or did you steal it?"

He reached for it, and Luo Binghe knocked his hand away in a flare of anger. Zhao De's two little cronies jumped into action, grabbing his shoulders and wrestling his hands behind him. Zhao De seized the necklace and pulled it off, tangling painfully in his hair and tearing at his scalp before it came free.

"Give that back!" Luo Binghe kicked at the two bullies holding him, jerked against their hold, but couldn't get free.

"Low-level freeloaders like you don't get to keep valuables, brat!" Zhao De tossed the trinket through the air over Luo Binghe's head; Ming Fan caught it, scrutinized it, then let out a sputtering laugh. It made him sound like a donkey, Luo Binghe thought resentfully.

Luo Binghe's fury surged as Ming Fan pulled out a penknife and dug at the stone. It left a pale scratch, and the boy let out a scornful laugh. "Oh, never mind, it's fake!" he said. "Worthless, just like you."

"My mother gave it to me!" Luo Binghe snarled.

Zhao De laughed cruelly. "Then I guess that means your mother was cheap, huh?" he said. "! wonder how many people could have had her for a dollar."

Luo Binghe saw red, and he lunged forward with such force that the other boys lost their grip on him. "I'm gonna kill you!" he roared.

His first tackle knocked Zhao De to the ground, and he got in one good punch before Ming Fan's hands on his upper arms hauled him back again. "Oh, the little lab rat wants a real fight?" one of the onlookers jeered. "Your spastic Shizun isn't around to step in now!"

"Good!" Luo Binghe said savagely. "Then he won't be here to stop me when I rip your throat out!"

"Shit!"

He was so lost in rage, vision red-tinged and blood thundering in his ears, that for the first few seconds he didn't even notice the siren. The first thing he noticed was that his foes were suddenly freezing, falling back, instead of piling on. For a few seconds more he pressed the advantage, lunging forward -- but then the pulsing red light reflecting off the tiles registered to his senses, and he too froze up.

A voice crackled over the alarm system. "All personnel, to your stations! All personnel, to your stations! We have kaiju inbound. Repeat: we have kaiju inbound!"

The pilot-candidates looked at each other, their faces blood-washed in the carmine light. The same sudden, scared uncertainty played over every face: all of their senior officers were away. What were they going to do?

"Fuck this," one of the pilots swore, pushing himself away from Luo Binghe and to his feet. He stumbled, limping a few steps, and Luo Binghe felt a surge of vicious satisfaction despite the dire circumstances. "We'll find you later, scrub. Later!"

The rest of the boys split apart, milling as they scrambled for their shoes and gear. Luo Binghe lunged after Ming Fan. "Give me back my pendant!" he hissed.

Ming Fan shoved him aside. "I don't have it! I don't know where it went," he said angrily. "Look for it yourself. I have to get to my station!"

Luo Binghe fell to his knees, staring at the tiled bathroom floor. He couldn't see his mother's pendant anywhere; with the red light of the siren and the pounding in his head, he could hardly see anything.

His station. He had to get to his station, there wasn't time for this now. He -- he'd just have to come back later, after the kaiju attack was dealt with, and it would be here.

Ever since their days as a cultivation sect, Cang Qiong Shatterdome had a strictly observed hierarchy of seniority. For the most part, each Section ran itself more or less independently, answering up to their Section Head. But, in the event of disaster, each Section Head also had their own second-in-command, an assistant who was up-to-date on the running of their department and the strategic situation in case they had to take over in an emergency.

Most of the seconds-in-command, of course, had gone along with their superiors to answer the distress call at Huan Hua. What was left behind was only a skeleton crew of juniors, intended only to hold down the fort until their seniors returned.

Luo Binghe, as Shen Qingqiu's personal assistant, was the only representative of the Science division; Ning Yingying, despite her junior status, was the only one who could be spared from Engineering. In the corridor outside Mission Control they ran across Yang Yixuan, an older boy from the Pilot's Section that Luo Binghe had only met once or twice. Technically he was an assistant for Liu Qingge, one of the few members of the division who wasn't a pilot-candidate in his own right -- and thus one of the few that didn't have ongoing beef with Luo Binghe -- but he did have the authority to dispatch a Jaeger piloting team, if necessary.

It might be necessary today.

The three of them entered Mission Control to find it already a scene of barely-controlled panic, juniors from the rest of the Sections clustered there uncertainly. Luo Binghe was able to identify a white-faced Qin Wanrong from Communications, sitting in a headset that was too big for her; Cui Zhida, a somewhat pompous young man under Yue Qingyuan's Administration section, and Jianqing, a demon-descended boy from Logistics. The rest of the people crowding into the room, he didn't recognize at all.

"What's going on?" Yang Yixuan, the last to pile in, demanded of the crowd already present.

"It's -- there's --" Qin Wanrong swallowed hard. "A rift has opened in the sulfur springs to the west of the Shatterdome!"

"Don't freak out," Cui Zhida said. "Shizun prepared for this. That's why they left Jing Wang She behind."

"Yes, but -- but -- it's a double event! There's two kaiju coming through!"

A ripple of dismay ran through Mission Control. "But there was a Rift up north at Huan Hua too, right? I thought it wasn't possible for this many Rifts to form in close succession!" Ning Yingying exclaimed.

"It isn't," Luo Binghe said grimly. "The energy readings at Huan Hua Palace must have been a feint."

"Call back Zhangmen-shixiong and the other pilots!" Cui Zhida was ordering Qin Wanrong.

Her pale lips parted on some protest, but Jianqing cut in before she could reply. "Impossible," he said with conviction. "Even if they started back now, it would be over eighteen hours before they made it back."

"Wait!" Qin Wanrong said suddenly, holding up a hand as she zeroed in on a blinking light on her console. "I -- I have an incoming transmission. It's Shen-shibo!"

"Shizun!" Luo Binghe took an eager step forward. "Can you -- can we hear? Can we talk to him?"

With a set expression, Qin Wanrong changed several connections on her board; when she flipped a switch, Shen Qingqiu's voice filled the air with a buzz of static. "Cang Qiong Shatterdome, I see activity on the emergency channels," he said, sounding as calm and unruffled as he ever was. "Shang Qinghua and myself are heading back now. What's going on?"

"Shen-shibo!" Qin Wanrong sounded a bit hysterical with relief, or maybe just hysterical. "Th-there's a new rift opening! Two kaiju came through!"

There was a brief pause, but Shen Qingqiu's voice continued in that same calm tone. "Are both kaiju converging on the same target?"

"N-no, sir! One is heading right towards us, but the other one -- the other one is going southeast, towards Hua Yue City!"

The pause this time was much longer.

"Sir, what should we do?" Qin Wanrong asked anxiously.

"Hold the fort until I get back," Shen Qingqiu ordered. "I will need to review what information we have gathered about the targets to plan a strategy. Make sure Jing Wang She is standing by to deploy. Oh, and is my assistant there?"

"Er...." Her doubtful gaze crossed over Luo Binghe's, who stared back in equal astonishment. "Luo Binghe? Yes, sir, he's here."

"Good. My ETA is thirty-four minutes. Shen Qingqiu out."

Time seemed to crawl by agonizing slowly; at the same time, the minutes on the timer seemed to drain out like water, drawing their enemies steadily closer.

Instead of feed from the Spirit Eagle drones, the main screen showed a map of Cang Qiong and surrounding environs. The kaiju -- both of the kaiju -- showed up as blood-red dots leaving glaring crimson trails. Bogey one, the one they were calling Harlequin, was honing in on the Shatterdome itself; even more ominous was bogey two, dubbed Lumpback, drilling steadily down on the walled city of Hua Yue.

"We have to protect the city! It's our mission!" Ning Yingying insisted.

Jianqing reacted angrily. "Mission, my ass! How much protecting are we supposed to do if the Shatterdome gets smashed? Do you want to trade one lousy city for the whole world?"

"Maybe -- listen," Cui Zhida said hopefully. "We send Jing Wang She after the second kaiju. Then we evacuate the Shatterdome --"

"So you want the Jaeger pilot team to have to fight a kaiju with no support and no backup?" one of the other juniors yelled. "Two kaiju, even?!"

"It's better than standing around with our thumbs up our asses --"

"Stupid! It takes everything we have to even defeat a kaiju one at a time!" Yang Yixuan said angrily. "You want to try to split our fire?"

"We can't just sit back and let innocent people die!" Ning Yingying said passionately.

"Silence."

Shen Qingqiu swept into the control room like a stormfront, his visage set as grim as a thunderstorm, the bright blue of his crutches standing out like grounding lightning. The whole room watched, breath collectively held, while he strode up to the Commander's chair and turned to seat himself in it. Luo Binghe was there in a flash, carefully moving the swinging console arm out of the way to make room for his crutches.

No one dared to contest it. As the senior-most officer left at the Shatterdome, he certainly was in the chain of command; as Yue Qingyuan's overindulged favorite, everyone knew that he would take Shen Qingqiu's side in any challenge. Assuming there was enough of Cang Qiong left by the time Yue Qingyuan made it back to even level such a challenge.

"Give me the headings and ETA on Harlequin," Shen Qingqiu ordered.

"Sir, it's heading right for the Shatterdome, it will be here in less than an hour!" Qin Wanrong reported.

Shen Qingqiu's jaw clenched, his knuckles white on the edge of the command chair. "And Lumpback?"

This time, there was a moment's hesitation before the report came. "It's -- it's southwest, at twenty-four knots," she said. "It might change course, but if it doesn't, it's going to make impact at Hua Yue City in two and a half hours."

"Is Jing Wang She ready to deploy?" Shen Qingqiu asked.

"Standing by to deploy, Acting Commander," Tianlang-jun's voice came in through the comm channels. For once, there was no hint of a joke in his voice; even on the words Acting Commander, his voice was dead serious. "Where are we deploying to?"

Shen Qingqiu took a long moment to respond, his eyes moving rapidly over the screens as he took in every line of information they had to feed to him. When he finally did speak, his voice was grim. "Jing Wang She, deploy to intercept Harlequin," he said.

"Roger that, Acting Commander," Tianlang-jun's voice said.

"But -- Hua Yue City! It'll be destroyed!" Ning Yingying burst out. "Shen-shibo, you can't --"

Shen Qingqiu's eyes cut over to her. Ning Yingying faltered, but rallied. Luo Binghe would have been proud of her, if it wasn't Shizun's authority she was challenging. "Acting Commander! We have a duty of protection to those people, we have --"

"I am aware of our obligations," Shen Qingqiu cut her off. "I'm not done."

"Sir?" Cui Zhida asked uncertainly.

In response, Shen Qingqiu turned towards Ning Yingying. "Engineering," he addressed her. "As soon as Jing Wang She has cleared the landing bay, start prepping Ku Ye Zhu."

"Ku Ye Zhu?" Ning Yingying burst out. "Shibo! That jaeger isn't cleared for battle! It has dangerous flaws! It's --"

"I am aware of its flaws." Once again, Shen Qingqiu cut over the interruptions without mercy. "It is still a complete and functional Jaeger, is it not?"

"But we have no pilot teams to fly it!" Yang Yixuan protested.

Shen Qingqiu stayed quiet for a long moment, then spoke. "Luo Binghe."

"Yes?" Luo Binghe looked up, startled at being addressed.

Shen Qingqiu's dark, impenetrable eyes rested on him. "You will go out in Ku Ye Zhu and engage the second kaiju."

A shocked hubbub broke out in the command room. Luo Binghe barely heard it over the echo of Shen Qingqiu's words in his ears, the static that broke out in his head. It felt like all the blood drained down into his feet, as he choked out, "Shizun?"

"Were my orders unclear?" Shen Qingqiu's eyes were hard as flint, and his voice was cold. "You have the requisite training to pilot a Jaeger; you have completed more than enough time in the simulations. You will enter Ku Ye Zhu and pilot it to battle against Lumpback in defense of Hua Yue City."

"But sir," Yang Yixuan protested, "Luo Binghe's simulation scores might look good on paper, but his synchronization rates are --"

"Not relevant to this situation," Shen Qingqiu said firmly. "Ku Ye Zhu is not suitable for use by a pilot pair; it can only accept a solo pilot in any case. Luo Binghe will be that pilot."

Oh, Luo Binghe thought, in a weird sort of remote calm that descended on him. I get it now. Shizun doesn't expect me to win at all. He's choosing me because I'm expendable.

From the muttering going around the command center, the same idea had occurred to most of the rest of the crew. Some were outraged... others seemed thoughtful, even grudgingly admiring of Shen Qingqiu's ice-cold calculation. Here was the solution to their double-forked dilemma: abandon the Shatterdome, abandon the town, or try futilely to protect both with halved capacity? Shen Qingqiu must be hoping that by sacrificing one pawn, he could delay Bogey Two for long enough for Jing Wang She to finish off its first target and move to intercept.

And if that meant that Luo Binghe ended up ripped apart by Jaegers or permanently mind-fried by an unsupported Drift, well, what was the loss of one junior pilot-candidate and a faulty Jaeger compared to the entire Shatterdome or a whole town?

"But, Shibo! You can't --" Ning Yingying wailed. Shen Qingqiu cut her off without a further word.

Luo Binghe bowed, though his head felt light and his limbs were trembling. "Acting Commander, this lowly disciple accepts this charge," he said shakily, and tried his best to gulp back his tears. "He only hopes that his death will prove worthwhile for the greater good."

"What greater good? What death?" Shen Qingqiu demanded, and the acerbic exasperation in his voice jolted Luo Binghe out of it, a little. "Luo Binghe must not get the wrong idea. This is no kind of suicide run. I expect you to survive -- and I expect you to succeed."

Shocked, Luo Binghe looked up and met Shen Qingqiu's eyes -- they drilled into his own with ferocious confidence, and for a wild moment, he wondered if there was actually some way to obey his Shizun's injunction. To ride the riptide currents of neural overload and survive, to fight a twelve-ton monstrosity alone and win.

But how?

Luo Binghe's feet carried him to the docking bay on autopilot, his eyes barely taking in the familiar corridors around him. Ning Yingying had run ahead, insisting she had to get something ready. His head was full of a white static, ears ringing, hands and feet numb. The only emotion he could really process at the moment was shock. He had an impression that shock was probably preferable to whatever he'd be feeling once the shock wore off.

Why? he wanted to ask, although he knew there was no one to answer. Shizun, why? Was all of your care a lie? Was I ever anything to you other than a sacrifice?

Was he a fool, for ever expecting anything else? For thinking that he might be important to someone, despite how little he had to offer? Making tea and carrying messages -- what was that worth, in the grand scheme of things? Surely, this was the most use his pathetic life could ever have. Surely, this opportunity to protect people like his mother was the best chance he could have hoped for.

If it was his fate to be a sacrifice, to buy time, then he would give them more of that time than anyone could have imagined.

Once he got into the piloting bay, he got whisked off by the pilot prep team so fast he hardly registered the rapid change of surroundings. The prep team had this down to a science, and the identity of the pilot they were preparing really didn't matter. They had him changed out of his clothes into a flight suit, had him sized and fitted for the rig, had a helmet put on him and the HUD configured in record time.

By the time they led him out into the docking bay, Jing Wang She was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Ku Ye Zhu stood in the scaffolding, looking like a black blot against its surroundings.

Time seemed to speed up around him once again; he found himself in the cockpit, being connected into the control rig in what felt like fast-forward.

"We'll be sealing you in now," the mechanic -- Luo Binghe wasn't even sure what his name was -- told him, holding up the last piece of his helmet faceplate. He hesitated for a moment, seeming at a loss to say for anything that wasn't part of the script. "We won't fire up the neural connections until after the drop, so that... you won't be in the Drift any longer than necessary. If... well, just get as far as you can."

"A-Luo!" a piercing cry came through the open cockpit of the Jaeger, and Luo Binghe turned as much as the rig would allow him to see Ning Yingying scrambling up the gantry ladder.

"Ning-shimei, this is an active operation, it isn't safe," the technician warned her. "We're less than two hundred seconds out from go time --"

"I know how to fix it! I know!" Ning Yingying interrupted breathlessly. "A-Luo, you have to use this!"

She was carrying a double armful of some kind of black webbing, which she spilled all over the platform. Luo Binghe followed the motion, trying to make sense of what he saw; he saw a cluster of wires sewn into black vinyl straps, and long metal leads that gleamed ominously in the lights of the hangar bay. "What... is this?" he asked in bewilderment.

"It's a portable Drift rig!" Ning Yingying bounced on her heels, looking simultaneously anxious and hopeful. "It can be used anywhere, so A-Luo can use it to share the neural load --"

"Shimei!" The technician overrode him, angry now. "You don't have authorization to deploy that! It's only a prototype, it's not tested! And besides --"

"It will work, it will!" Ning Yingying insisted. "A-Luo! You can have a copilot! You just need to hold onto this lead, here, let it contact with your qi --"

She was trying so hard for him. She -- she really cared. Luo Binghe took a breath. "Ning-shijie... it won't work," he said. "Whether with this Drift system or some other built-in rig... I still don't have anyone I'm compatible with. It's just going to be me."

"But you'll die!" Ning Yingying cried wildly, and burst into tears.

Luo Binghe looked away, helplessly; he was half-tied into the cockpit's rigging, he couldn't spare an embrace to comfort her. The technician, his anger melting into sympathy, put a hand over her shoulder in his place. "Luo-shidi is right; it wouldn't work," he told her. "The second piloting rig isn't even hooked up; the other would have no way to get input from the jaeger, so they wouldn't be able to split the neural feedback anyway. And besides, we still don't know what it is about Ku Ye Zhu that disrupts the Drift. Would it help Pilot Luo to get ten miles outside of Hua Yue City and have his Drift bridge dissolve? Furthermore..."

She shrugged him off with a wail, and surged forward to cling fiercely to Luo Binghe's neck. He laid his free hand across her arm, careful not to snag her hair in the wiring.

"Ning-shijie," Luo Binghe told her, and his voice came out calm, as though none of the chaos in his head were happening. "I have to do this. Shizun gave this to me specifically, and Shizun's strategies are never wrong."

"This one is!" Ning Yingying sobbed. Luo Binghe's hand clenched, then flexed open on her arm. She didn't seem to notice the sudden painful grip. "A-Luo, you can't --"

"It's okay," Luo Binghe said. "It's okay. I'm going to defend the town and everyone in it, you'll see."

"A-Luo, you have to come back," Ning Yingying said. She was crying, and Luo Binghe kind of wished he could. "No matter what happens! You have to make it back alive!"

"I will," Luo Binghe promised her, not that he had any idea how. "Shizun is entrusting me with this mission; how could I dare fail?"

"T-minus thirty seconds," the technician said. Ning Yingying gave him one more painful squeeze then turned and fled. A single ringing sob hung in the air behind her. The technician gave Luo Binghe a sympathetic look, a pat on the shoulder, and then he sealed the last piece of Luo Binghe's faceplate.

That left him in shadow -- not complete darkness, since some light and sound still filtered in through the helmet, but the control system hadn't been activated yet and he wasn't connected to the Jaeger. He felt his surroundings jolt and sway, the sensation of moving without moving, and then a series of muffled thumps and clangs that he couldn't identify with any certainty.

"Ku Ye Zhu is clear to lift," a woman's voice came through the comms -- Qin Winrong? Luo Binghe couldn't be sure, at least not distorted by the radio as it was. "Docking bay doors are clear. Bridges have retracted. Say again, begin the lift."

Then there was a jolt that would have thrown him to the floor, if not for the harness; the empty co-pilot rig swung wildly for a moment before settling. Then a whining, grinding noise from above; and he was moving, lifted by the coptors in order to prepare him for a drag-and-drop.

This part had always looked so cool, on the video feeds; Luo Binghe hadn't prepared for how foolish it would feel to actually be in one of those suits, carried along by the current like a baby strapped into a car seat. Maybe it helped to actually be in the Drift; as it was, he just felt helpless. He swallowed against a dry throat, wrapped his hands around the rebar for lack of any other point of contact, and waited.

"Ku Ye Zhu, you are coming up on Lumpback," a voice chimed in his ear. Luo Binghe started; he'd almost fallen into a trance, unable to see out, unable to control his movements. "Stand by to initiate the Drift; we will drop you within half a kilometer of the target."

Half a kilometer? That would barely give him time to find his feet, let alone form a plan of attack. But... it was the best way to shorten his time in the Drift without a partner, so that was how it had to be.

"Initiating neural bridge in five," Mission Control droned in his ear. "Four... three... two... one. Drift initiated."

And then the helmet lit up around him, and the world lit up around him, and Luo Binghe -- Luo Binghe was hovering in the clear air, the landscape rolling away below him, a birds-eye view of the world he had never seen from this vantage before. Oh, he'd seen the feed from the Spirit Eagles, but that didn't even come close -- the space unfolded around him, crystal clarity in three hundred-sixty degrees. Not just sight but sound, the whine of the coptors suddenly buzzing directly in his ear, the intermittent roar of the wind as it tugged on his/the Jaegers limbs.

This must be the neural connection to Ku Ye Zhu, he thought. It was nothing at all like the simulations. It was powerful, incredible.

He wondered when it would start to destroy his mind.

"Pilot, you have control," Mission Control said. "Do you have a visual on Lumpback?"

Oh, he had a visual on it, all right. No kaiju were pleasant to look at -- or pleasant in any other way -- but this one seemed to Luo Binghe to be exceptionally ugly.

Huge -- grey -- bulbous -- slimy. It was hard to put a shape to it, under the layer of heaving grey slime that seemed to slough off it in all directions, except for "round" -- a shapeless conglomerate of protoplasmic bulges, with a faintly self-luminous sheen. Hard to put a color to it, under the thick oozing mucous, other than some strange mixture of green-blue-purple-grey. Hard to tell even which side of it was the face -- if it even had something that could be called a face -- except for the way it was purposefully going. He could make out nothing like ears, a nose or mouth, and eyes seemed to open and close in long lines across its sides, never the same number of blinking staring eyes from minute to minute.

It made a long putrid trail after itself, leading back from the edge of the Wasteland, making its way steadily inland. Off to the south, along the ridge, glowed the lights of the civilian city. With each step, the kaiju sloughed a wave of greenish slime, thick enough to fill the cracks and ditches of the ground it covered. If it reached the city, even if it did nothing else but stand there, it would flood the streets with toxic sludge in a matter of minutes.

"I have visual," he remembered to say back. "I -- I'm ready. Put me in there."

As the coptors slowly lowered him down to the ground he could see, he could feel the racing, heavy grey clouds, the seething sheets of rain over the rocky slopes, waves of vegetation bent flat under the force of the wind. Luo Binghe's vision had never been poor but he could suddenly see so much further -- as though his vision extended all the way to the horizon, forest and rock and roads and buildings all in miniature clarity.

He took a step. On one level he was aware -- barely -- of his normal body moving in the darkness of Ku Ye Zhu's cockpit, one leg pushing against the control rig and sliding back without ever having moved at all. On another, he -- the giant that was now him -- took a step in the real world, and covered half an acre in the stride.

Luo Binghe reached across his -- Ku Ye Zhu's -- side and pulled Ku Ye Zhu's -- his -- laser rifle free from its holster. In this moment he wasn't even thinking about his own looming death to neural overload; he had no further motivation than to kill this disgusting thing.

As soon as he unshipped the rifle and brought it into position, all other cares faded away; he could have been back in the simulator, drawing the crosshairs into careful alignment on his target. Fired, again, three times; the blasts impacted on the monster, sending blood and ichor splashing as ripples of impact burgeoned across its blank.

Lumpback whirled to face him with a roar, and -- oh -- there was its mouth, all right, a chasm that split half a kilometer wide, across the entire width of the monster's body. It dragged its quivering bulk around to face him -- it seemed to have a dozen legs, sprouting and withdrawing into the main bulk as it turned -- that scuttled across the pocked stone ledge with the low-slung gait of a beetle.

Luo Binghe fired again, directly into its face -- his shots were connecting, but it didn't seem to be making much of a dent. He held its ground as it charged him, only realizing at the last moment that it wasn't going to turn aside -- and so was forced to scramble to one side, diving towards the ground to get out of the path of impact.

Not quite. Lumpback slammed into him with a jolt that rattled his teeth, and shook his armor plates -- he lost his footing and went down, skidding over the crumbling rock. The kaiju landed half on top of him, filling his view with its churning gray bulk, and Luo Binghe struggled to lift its thousand-ton weight off him at least far enough to escape.

Crunch -- he didn't realize at first what the noise meant. Half-metallic screech, half-wet flesh -- he didn't feel it, though he half expected to. Instead, the noise inside the little cockpit suddenly changed pitch as the outside world flooded in -- on the point of a dozen wicked spikes, which had driven through his armor to pierce the cockpit, spearing into the empty half of the space where his copilot's empty rig hung. Luo Binghe stared at it, seeing two worlds at once -- with his own eyes and with Ku Ye Zhu's -- and realizing just how close he came to a bloody death.

Panic made him fight harder, scrambling to push back against Lumpback with all his might, and he felt the ground give way under him -- he practically dug a new groove in the rock, clawing to get away from the kaiju. At last he found solid earth under his feet and managed to kick free of the kaiju's overbearing weight, clawing at Ku Ye Zhu's forearm for the forearm blade. He managed to get it unsheathed, slashing forward, only to find his blows landing soft and muted against the slimy hide.

The kaiju rounded on him, pushing back against his blows with a force that nearly knocked him off his feet. "Shit!" he blurted out loud, scrambling for footing.

He heard a crackling sound from beside his ear. "Ku Ye Zhu, this is Mission Control, reminder that you have an open channel."

At any other time Luo Binghe would have been mortified, but right now nothing was getting past the panic. "It's not working! I can't cut it!"

A pause, then the voice spoke again. "According to our readings, this kaiju does not possess armor, what is the problem?"

"I -- I just can't seem to get through!" Luo Binghe felt light-headed, his chest fluttering rapidly. Couldn't they just tell him what he needed to do? Didn't they know?! "It -- it doesn't have armor, but this slime is so thick, it just seems to absorb anything I can throw at it --"

"Pilot Luo," said Mission Control. "Can you hold until Jing Wang She gets on the scene?"

"I -- I don't know." Even this guidance, as unhelpful as it was, was enough to give him something to hold on to. The kaiju's reach wasn't very long, and it didn't move very fast. He could keep ahead of it, he only had to stop it from turning back towards the city. "I can try?"

All the trek out here, the clash with the kaiju, and now the tense standoff, trading blows and keeping distance. Still no signs or symptoms of the neural overload he'd been dreading. Was it just not coming? Instead this vision, this feeling of immenseness, of power -- it felt right, natural, in ways that his own body never had. 

Just then, as if in response to his hubris, a shrill alarm began to sound in the back of his head. He nearly froze up in terror, thinking this is it, it's starting, I'm going to die --

"Shit!"

"That's the low power alarm!"

-- but Mission Control seemed to hear it too.

"Why are we getting the low power alarm now, it hasn't even been thirty minutes! Jaegers are supposed to have at least --"

"We weren't ever planning on deploying this Jaeger, it wasn't ready!"

Ah, Luo Binghe thought with a delirious sort of calm. So I am going to die. Not of neural overload, but annihilated by the kaiju when his Jaeger failed him. Had he really come all this way, trained for so long and fought so hard, just to die the same way his mother had?

"Ku Ye Zhu, you need to retreat," Mission Control ordered him. "You have one hundred seconds left of power. If you can clear a range of five kilometers, there's a chance that the kaiju won't pursue."

"Won't it go for the town, then?" Luo Binghe said shakily. He didn't want to die, he didn't, but -- he didn't want to just stand by and let all those people get killed --

And then, a new voice slid into his audio channel. There was a click, and even before a word was spoken Luo Binghe's heart lurched, because he knew the sound of that breathing --

"Binghe," Shen Qingqiu said. "Can you hear me?"

No matter how his faith had been shaken by the day's events, the sound of Shen Qingqiu's voice still was enough to calm Luo Binghe's panic, to steady the wobbling world on its axis. Luo Binghe was able to regain his feet, to fire off another shot, keeping the kaiju at bay. "Shizun! What should I do?" he asked. "I'm hitting it, but nothing makes a dent!"

"Its slime coating dampens any impacts," Shen Qingqiu said, and oh. Of course he knew what was going on. Shizun always knew. "You won't be able to kill it from the outside."

"But then what -- what can I do?" Luo Binghe kept an anxious eye on the blood-red timer at the edge of his HUD, the swiftly running count of seconds. "I'm almost out of power --"

"Binghe, listen to me very closely," Shen Qingqiu said, and Luo Binghe immediately shut his mouth. "I need you to drop your rifle."

What? What?

This was insane. Was Shen Qingqiu truly trying to kill him? Was it not enough to send him out here alone, was he trying to finish the job? Luo Binghe felt like crying.

But in the past three years he had built up a great store of admiration for his teacher, and not even the shock of the past hour was quite enough to dispel it. If this was what Shizun wanted of him -- then there had to be a good reason. There was always a good reason, no matter how much people protested, and it was always so obvious after.

He had to trust him.

He dropped the rifle.

Almost immediately Lumpback changed tacks; instead of circling and snapping from a distance, it swerved and lunged straight at him. The mouth gaped wide, lipless chops stretching like a crack in the earth, and there was no time to try to dodge.

It didn't hurt. He felt the impact through the plating, felt the world lurch around him, but the feedback didn't come through as pain. That didn't make it any terrifying, though, to see the world lurch and wobble as that dark maw eclipsed the sky. Shen Qingqiu's voice in his ear, saying, "Now, what you'll need to do is --"

But as the kaiju's mouth closed over his head, shutting out the sky, the voice on the radio dissolved into garbled static.

It was strange -- he would have expected the kaiju's belly to be completely black, but instead there was an odd, greyish light that seemed to come from all directions and none. From the Jaeger's external cameras he saw the shape of monstrous, crawling viscera -- some pulsing with a toxic blue glow, others moving like sluggish black worms in the distance.

More alarms began to scream, as the vicious stomach acid began to eat its way through Ku Ye Zhu's plating. Not so much the armor -- that could stand up for a few more minutes, at least -- but engulfed as he was, the corrosive ooze quickly found its way into the joints and cracks of the jaeger's frame. Bright red error screens popped up over his viewscreen as he began to lose control of the Jaeger's servos, one after another.

He looked up. Overhead there was a bright, crystalline structure of quivering cyan -- a kaiju's brain. It looked nothing like a human's brain, but he recognized it from the number of organs that he'd witnessed Shizun dissect in the lab.

"Got you," Luo Binghe whispered, and his hand slammed down on the emergency eject.

The engineers who had put together the conn-pod eject had not been fucking around. The system was meant to function even in the most dire of circumstances, since those would be exactly the circumstances where a pilot would need to bail out. It was self-contained, disconnected from all other systems, and protected in the most heavily armored section of the Jaeger. Nor was the eject any kind of easy release. It came with built in explosive thrusters, unreliant on the rest of the power system, meant to push the pilot as far away as possible from whatever the source of the danger might be.

Hard, fast, and brutal, the conn-pod blasted forward out of the malfunctioning wreck towards clear sky above -- letting nothing, especially not a soft slimy thing like a kaiju's brain, stand in its way.

It was possible that the ejecting pod would have destroyed the brain entirely on its own, even without the dozen spearlike spikes that had been embedded into it ripping a dozen separate paths through the jelly of its brain. But it never hurt to be sure.

After the hyper-awareness that piloting Ku Ye Zhu had granted, looking at the world through merely human eyes was a distinct step down.

The conn-pod landed hard, bounced twice, and skidded a good hundred meters to a stop. Luo Binghe lay stunned there until the sound of engines and muffled human voices signaled the arrival of the extraction team. The shadows of the conn-pod were too dark and blurry for Luo Binghe to see; the light that flooded his eyes when the hatch was opened was too bright to see.

Fortunately, his cooperation wasn't really required. The team extracted him neatly from the conn-pod and bundled him into the back of an ambulance carriage. Several of Mu Qingfang's medical disciples pounced on him; within minutes he was wrapped in a heat-reflecting blanket and his arm pricked with an IV that began infusing fluid into his veins.

They spent the rest of the ride back to the Shatterdome taking his vitals -- then taking them again -- and again, with increasing bafflement at the results.

"I can't explain it, Shizun," one of the disciples reported to Mu Qingfang, upon arriving back at the Shatterdome and transferring him briskly into the infirmary. "I don't see any signs of neural overload at all."

Mu Qingfang stroked his moustache, looking thoughtful, but had no alternative theories to offer. "Well, well," he said to Luo Binghe once the disciples had gone. "I suppose wonders truly never do cease, do they? I won't complain that you're here and well, my boy, but this certainly does leave us with a mystery."

Luo Binghe couldn't muster much interest in the mystery, right now. "Did I do it right?" he asked, voicing the question that had been lodged in his throat from the moment he'd stepped Ku Ye Zhu out of the hangar bay.

"Eh?" Mu Qingfang looked at him in surprise.

"Did I do it wrong?" Luo Binghe asked, anxiety beginning to build in his chest. "I -- Ku Ye Zhu. The kaiju. Did I mess up?"

Mu Qingfang's eyes softened, and he patted Luo Binghe on the shoulder. "No, kiddo," he said. "You did just fine. Just fine indeed. Hua Yue City is safe, both of the kaiju are dead, and the Shatterdome is intact. I must admit, I was furious when Shen-shixiong announced this unorthodox strategy, but -- it seems to have paid out, this time."

Heart eased, Luo Binghe lay back on the medical cot and stared at the ceiling. Shizun's unorthodox strategy. He didn't know what to think.

A few hours ago, he'd been certain that his teacher had sent him out to die, had weighed his life against the great good and found it too incidental to consider. But -- Shizun had been so confident, so certain, that Luo Binghe could pilot. This is no suicide run. I expect you to survive -- and succeed.

How had Shen Qingqiu known? Nobody had known -- not even Luo Binghe himself.

The sound of rapid clattering in the hallway pricked up Luo Binghe's ears, and he sat up on the cot as Shen Qingqiu himself burst through the infirmary doors. Mu Qingfang tried to intercept him, but Shen Qingqiu -- with surprising agility -- maneuvered around him and parked himself at the edge of the bed. "Binghe!"

"Shizun," Luo Binghe returned, feeling more than a little unwell.

"Silly boy! What did you think you were doing?" Shen Qingqiu scolded him.

Luo Binghe stared. What did Luo Binghe think he was doing...? What did Shizun think Luo Binghe was doing?!

"Why didn't you use the chest mounted laser cannon?!" Shen Qingqiu shouted at him. "The kaiju was vulnerable on the inside -- you could have cut your way free within seconds!"

The what? "I -- I didn't know Ku Ye Zhu had a chest-mounted cannon?" Luo Binghe said faintly. How would he have known!? "Was -- was that what you wanted me to do?"

"Of course that was what I wanted you to do!" Shen Qingqiu said angrily. "Why else would I have told you to let Lumpback swallow you? It was avoiding showing its vulnerable flank until it saw you were unarmed -- of course I wouldn't have told you to do that without a hidden weapon!"

Luo Binghe said nothing, still unsure how to respond. He genuinely... did not know what to say.

Before he could muster a response, there was suddenly a pair of arms around him, crushing him with surprising strength against a green-clad silk chest. "Silly boy," Shen Qingqiu repeated, softer, whispered against his hair. "What would I have done if you'd been hurt? You can't get yourself killed, don't you know that?"

Luo Binghe closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against Shen Qingqiu's chest. If, in the darkness of Shen Qingqiu's embrace, he let some of the stress of the last day take him and silently cried, well, Shen Qingqiu didn't comment on that.

And if in the darkness of Shen Qingqiu's embrace, Luo Binghe's tears flared a bright neon blue for an instant before fading into a dull sparkle, Shen Qingqiu did not comment on that either.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

The problem with the hangar bay, Shen Qingqiu thought for the dozenth time, was that there was no good place to sit down. He adjusted his stance again, shifting his weight from one leg and crutch to the other, then easing slowly back again. Really, wasn't this all kinds of ADA violations! He had started off today as a good pain day -- he wasn't going to be able to hold on to that rating after this.

He was only here in the first place, waiting for the return of the pilot teams, because there was nothing current down in Mission Control. This particular mission -- this three-day battle waged against the kaiju swarm, dubbed Bruchus, on the rim of the Great Divide overlooking the churning White Sea -- had been coordinated by the Tian Yi Overlook Shatterdome, not by Cang Qiong at all.

It made the most sense -- the Great Divide was on the far side of the Overlook from Cang Qiong, to say nothing of how radio signals got deflected and scrambled when passing over that mountain range. But it was still frustrating for Shen Qingqiu to be so out of the loop when it came to their own Shatterdome's pilots! With the new wave of kaiju attacks, they had one Jaeger on loan to threat response pretty much all the time now. This week, it had been Qie Dai Tao on standby to assist the other Shatterdomes with any threats; this week, Tian Yi had put out a call for aid. Liu Qingge and Liu Mingyan had responded to that call.

And so, according to the little chatter he had been able to hear, had Luo Binghe.

This wasn't unexpected. Ever since the kaiju first invaded the jianghu the attacks before had always been random, scattered. A Rift would form periodically and spit out a kaiju, which would move in a straight line towards the nearest settlement and attack anything in its way. Since the near-catastrophic attack on Cang Qiong Shatterdome ten months ago, however, a clear shift emerged in the patterns of kaiju behavior.

The Rifts were larger now, and could let multiple kaiju through them at a time before collapsing. Double and even triple incursions, once regarded as calamities of the highest order, were becoming routine. And the kaiju had started coordinating their attacks, too, in ways that betrayed obvious signs that there was a higher intelligence driving them.

In response, the forces defending humanity had had to adjust their behaviors to match. The Shatterdomes had always kept to themselves, patrolling their own territory and ignoring attacks on other Shatterdomes unless and until they were forced to intervene. Now, though, the Sects couldn't afford to be so proud. The Shatterdomes would all have to work together, with all their Jaeger pilot teams in a coordinated network lest they find themselves overrun and destroyed one by one.

On this new battleground, Luo Binghe and Ku Ye Zhu quickly became invaluable resources. The fact that his jaeger could be piloted solo made him far more flexible and reliable than other pilot teams. Two-pilot teams had their advantages, but they were much more vulnerable to incidents; anything which affected or disabled either half of the pair would effectively disable both. A substantial amount of pilot and motor pool time was spent in upkeep and tinkering with the Drift, a maintenance cost which was irrelevant for Luo Binghe. Additionally, the fact that his Ku Ye Zhu didn't need to devote any hardware or infrastructure to a second pilot meant that it had a faster movement speed than any other Jaeger.

Most of all, Luo Binghe's status as a brand new jaeger in action meant that he did not come with prior commitments or obligations; rather than settling into a patrol route or battle rotation, he could simply be held in reserve to deploy when a fight went badly and needed to call for backup. And in the new wave of the Kaiju assault, more fights went badly than ever before.

Before six months had gone by, Luo Binghe's piloting record had as many kaiju encounters as some pilot teams that had been fighting together for years. His reputation and acclaim shot up like a firework, as well; every Sect knew him, and most had been helped out of a tight spot by him at one time or another. Modest, courteous, and charismatic, Luo Binghe charmed Sects and civilians everywhere he went. And his work took him everywhere.

With one thing and another, Luo Binghe hadn't been back to the Cang Qiong Shatterdome in nearly a year. Even the last time he had been, he hadn't stayed more than a few hours -- and had been too busy for Shen Qingqiu to see him. Luo Binghe was living the life of a hero now, and he had no room in his life for his old mentor.

Well! That was just fine! That was the expected way for things to go. They were firmly into the second movie's timeline now, and Luo Binghe had spent most of that time based out of Huan Hua Shatterdome, not Cang Qiong. According to the canon plot, he would stay in the role of a maverick -- going where he was needed, answering to no one -- until the finale with the multi-Rift invasion happened.

And the next time he spent any substantial time at Cang Qiong Shatterdome, it would be to destroy it.

Because Shen Qingqiu...

Shen Qingqiu hadn't really come up with a way to fix that yet. Had yet to think of a plan that would avert the coming disaster and derail the shitty apocalypse.

They just didn't know enough. Somehow! Despite having encyclopedic knowledge of the world and the plot; despite having the actual author onboard, there was just too much they didn't know about how the kaiju and the rifts actually worked. Maybe, if either of them had been actual scientists... but then again, actual scientists in this world had been studying the problem for near on twenty years already, and still had come up with nothing definitive.

And as for Binghe's rampage -- bah! Shang Qinghua had written the damn thing and even he hadn't been able to give a useful explanation as for why it had happened, let alone how to avert it! He just insisted that Luo Binghe had 'snapped' under 'too much pressure.' Snapped! Just like that! If being pushed to emotional extremes was enough to transform one into a kaiju, then Shen Qingqiu could have done better in his last life than merely keeling over dead in his rage at that last, shitty movie!!

Shen Qingqiu's best hope -- their only hope, as far as he could see -- was to find a way to... lower the pressure. Sure, the multiple events were coming regularly now; sure, the multi-rift event was on the horizon. But... the Jaeger Wardens were in a better place, now, than they had been in the movies. So many of the pilots were alive now who had died in the original; so many Jaegers were still out there fighting that had been nothing more than scrap by this point. Maybe, with enough of them sharing the load, there'd be no need for Luo Binghe to cross that Godzilla threshold.

Maybe Shen Qingqiu had been able to ease, a little bit, the pressure of Luo Binghe's awful childhood. Maybe the years he'd lived here, and been happy, would be enough of a foundation to stand on later, and not buckle under the unfathomable pressure. Maybe, just maybe, Shen Qingqiu had done enough.

And if he hadn't... well.

They were still searching for the hidden cloning lab, after all.

Shen Qingqiu eased his weight off his throbbing leg again and let out a long sigh. Maudlin! He was getting too maudlin!

Fortunately, before his thoughts could circle too many times around the same dark well, a commotion at the hangar bay doors heralded the return of the Jagers. Jing Wang She was the first to clear the doors and head back to its cradle, with Qie Dai Tao quick to follow. Shen Qingqiu unbent his aching leg to shuffle aside, waiting for the hubbub to clear down. In only a few more minutes, the gangway was lowered down to the cockpit hatch, and the two pilots emerged in a puff of hydraulic steam.

"Liu-shidi!" Shen Qingqiu said brightly. Liu Qingge spotted him, did a double take, and changed course towards him, his sister lagging curiously behind. "It's good to see you in one piece. As to be expected from a pilot team of your skills, of course." He gave Liu Mingyan a polite acknowledging nod, and she waved back but didn't approach.

Liu Qingge took off his helmet in order to better scowl at Shen Qingqiu. "I didn't bring back any kaiju parts this time," he said.

"No, that's fine," Shen Qingqiu said quickly. "I didn't expect that you would. From the description we received, it sounded like Bruchus was using the Flying Hive bauplan, no new abilities or features that hadn't been seen before. Unless something new came up during the battle?" He would be surprised if it had. One of the bigger complaints about the second movie in the On the Proud Immortal Way franchise was that all of the kaiju designs had been repeats of the first movie; up until the very end, no new creatures had been introduced. Whatever the reasoning behind it, the lack of new variety seemed to be holding steady into this universe as well.

"No. It didn't. What are you doing here?" Liu Qingge said, breaking through the pleasantries as directly as ever.

Shen Qingqiu kept his smile. "What, can't I show some appreciation for the returning heroes?"

Liu Qingge swept his gaze pointedly across the barren hangar, coming back to linger meaningfully on Shen Qingqiu's crutches. "There's no place to sit," he said.

Well -- he wasn't wrong. Shen Qingqiu had just been complaining about that right before his arrival. But he didn't have to say it just like that! "I'm fine, Shidi, I don't need to be coddled," he said. "I just wanted to be sure that you and Liu-shizhi returned safely!"

"We did," Liu Qingge said shortly. "If that was all, you can go back now. Get off your feet."

"We really ought to go change," Liu Mingyan added, though she made no move to chivvy her brother away.

"There's no hurry!" Shen Qingqiu exclaimed. "You can tell me all about how it went, surely? Was the fight long? How many kaiju did you face? Who, ah..." He faltered for a moment, then regained his composure. "What other pilot teams joined the fight?"

Liu Qingge and Liu Mingyan shared a long look, which Liu Qingge eventually broke when he glanced to the side. He sighed. "The fight went for six hours, we took a two-hour rest in the middle while the other jaegers rotated through," he reported crisply. "There were seven enemies in total. All Flying Hives, like you said. And we were joined by Meng You Zhe from Zhao Hua, Lei Ting Zhe from Huan Hua, and Ku Ye Zhu."

"That sounds like quite the fight!" Shen Qingqiu exclaimed. He knew it had been; he'd watched it on the big screen. "It's lucky that you had the resources to spell each other." He paused for a moment, wondering if now was the time to... no, he had to ask. "And how was Luo Binghe?"

"Fine," Liu Qingge said.

"Did he contribute well to the fight?" Shen Qingqiu said a touch anxiously. Not that there was any real chance that The Protagonist would have put in anything less than a stellar performance, but, well. "I know he hasn't been a pilot for as long as you all, but I would hope..."

"He fought well."

"And..." Shen Qingqiu chewed his lip slightly, then blurted out, "Was he hurt?"

"Not a scratch," Liu Qingge said.

"Good, good." Shen Qingqiu settled back, relieved. "Did he, ah, seem well? From what you could tell?"

Liu Mingyan joined in the conversation. "You know that can just write to him, right?" she said. "It's not as though there's a communications blackout at Huan Hua. If you recorded a message and sent it through their mail system, I'm sure he would send a response."

"Ah, no, no!" Shen Qingqiu quickly disclaimed, flustered. He really wished he could spare a hand for his fan right now, but he was just going to have to bluster through it. "Binghe is -- he's far too important nowadays to waste time thinking about his old mentor. I wouldn't want to distract him at a critical moment, after all. No, it's fine, I don't want to bother him."

"I'm certain he would be glad to hear from you," Liu Mingyan prodded him.

Shen Qingqiu was certain of no such thing. In fact, he had good reason to believe the opposite!

The first movie ended with Luo Binghe making his (naturally) spectacular debut as a jaeger pilot, though the town he'd gone out to protect had been half-destroyed in the process. The sequel, On the Proud Immortal Way, had opened on Luo Binghe firmly established in his new niche as a much-in-demand solo pilot. All Jaeger pilots were celebrities to some degree, but Luo Binghe was a step above even that -- due to his unique skillset, youthful good looks, and lack of set attachments to any one Shatterdome, he was viewed as not only desirable but acquirable. Every time there was a news segment about Luo Binghe -- and the movie had frequently intercut the action scenes with yet another fictionalized news report -- it would end with the newscasters as good as turning to the audience with a wink and an added ''all that, ladies, and he's single!''

But every silver cloud had a dark lining, and not all public attention was good attention. The second movie had also included a minor but persistent subplot about a rogue reporter who had continually chased after Luo Binghe, hounding him for interviews about his connections to Cang Qiong Shatterdome and the infamous Shen Qingqiu. She was on the hunt for a big expose about the corrupt nature of the Jaeger Wardens, but Cang Qiong had closed ranks against her; she saw in Luo Binghe a handle that she could use to wield a weapon against them.

For Luo Binghe, just now escaped from his unpleasant training period at Cang Qiong and trying to establish his own identity, all this had accomplished was to plunge him again and again into the traumas he had but recently escaped. It was unfair, the movie made it clear, that Luo Binghe should be made to suffer for the crimes of Cang Qiong and Shen Qingqiu, and for the ambition of one rogue self-appointed muckraker.

Well, they were firmly in second-movie territory now! And if there was anything Shen Qingqiu could do to head off one of the more humiliating, frustrating subplots from that movie, he was going to do it! And that meant that under no, repeat no, circumstances could he be seen reaching out to Luo Binghe! With Shen Qingqiu's poor reputation -- not at all helped by the scandal, last winter, of sending an unqualified pilot in an underprepared suit out to defend a civilian town -- any connection between himself and the protagonist would do nothing but smear mud over poor Luo Binghe's name.

No, it was better to make the break as clean as it could be. Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe wouldn't see each other again until the third and final movie, the former's gruesome demise and the latter's feral rampage.

"I just wanted to know if he'd shown up to the fight and the fight went well," Shen Qingqiu said, coming back to himself out of the dark fog of his thoughts with a bit of a bump. That's all."

Liu Qingge rolled his eyes, which was rather hurtful, Shen Qingqiu thought. "He did and it did," he said. "Now will you go get off your feet already?"

He almost didn't want to, just to be contrary; but Liu Qingge ended the conversation by striding past him without stopping, and Liu Mingyan followed after her brother, pausing only to give a brief bow and murmured well-wishes on her way past.

That left Shen Qingqiu alone on the walkway once more, the ratcheting echoes of the machinery and shouting of the engineers filling the space out to the walls. He lingered a little longer, staring over at the dark corner where Ku Ye Zhu used to lurk. There was no one there any more.

His legs were killing him. Ah, Liu Qingge was right after all. He really wasn't suited for this kind of thing.

It really seemed like everyone wanted a piece of him.

Luo Binghe slumped down in the curve of the pilot's chair and stared at the screen with glassy eyes and a blank expression. 103 unread messages, the cursor blinked. This since yesterday, the last time he'd cleaned out the account.

He could already guess most of the content of these, just from the pattern of the past six months. Journalists, wanting an interview. Fans, wanting a signature or a photo or a meeting or just any gesture of acknowledgement at all. From some of the female fans (and a smaller number of the male ones) came propositions, lewd or demure, inviting him out for a night of fun. From a smaller number yet, filthy explicit speculation about his body or his bed habits. These demanded no particular response; he was pretty sure that it satisfied the writers just to imagine it being read by him.

Other pilots wanting to collaborate with him. Random strangers claiming to be long-lost uncles or cousins wanting to meet with him. Random strangers wanting to borrow money.

No message from Shizun.

He had to check the whole list, just to be sure he wouldn't miss it -- but so far, there had been nothing to miss.

Luo Binghe hit the button to delete all messages, and slumped back against the chair with his eyes closed and his head tipped back.

Shizun really... really didn't care about him any more, did he? Now that he was off on his own. Shen Qingqiu had pushed so hard for Luo Binghe to step into the role of a full-fledged pilot -- but now that he'd done so, now that he was pushing every day and fighting kaiju twice a week, Shen Qingqiu had nothing more to say to him.

Did Shen Qingqiu even think about him any more? Luo Binghe thought morbidly. Or did he simply check him off as a completed project, now that he'd achieved the result he wanted?

When he'd first come to Cang Qiong, first started in the lab alongside Shen Qingqiu, he'd lived with the constant itching feeling that he was doing something wrong. Never fast enough, never smart enough, he fumbled to follow the most basic instructions. There was no place for him in the Shatterdome, no place for him in the fight to protect their world from the kaiju -- until Shen Qingqiu had taken an interest in him personally.

There was still so much he didn't understand. Luo Binghe had picked up enough about the Drift and the Jaegers in his years living in the Shatterdome to know that no one should have been able to do the things he could do. And yet -- his extraordinary abilities had proved consistent, reliable, reproducible. Every new move he made served to astonish the world...

But not Shen Qingqiu, who acted as though he had expected no less from the start.

Luo Binghe still didn't understand. What had Shen Qingqiu seen in him, back then, to treat him that way?

(Or worse: what had Shen Qingqiu done to him, to make him this way?)

Eventually, the rumbling of his stomach roused him from his morose abstraction. He left Ku Ye Zhu's cockpit, climbed down the scaffolding, and headed into the Shatterdome proper.

Luo Binghe had to check his HUD map more than once, trying to find his way through the maze-like corridors of Huan Hua Shatterdome. As the oldest Shatterdome in the jianghu, Huan Hua was also the biggest, and had expanded outwards several times from the original facility. They certainly had the funding for it; Huan Hua was also the richest, as well as the de facto headquarters of the Jaeger Wardens program.

To young Luo Binghe, fresh from the streets, even Cang Qiong Shatterdome had seemed like the height of security and wealth. Seventeen-year-old Luo Binghe, now, looked at the luxurious padding and shining chrome plate of Huan Hua and felt that the chambers and corridors of Cang Qiong were austere by comparison. Just one of these extra meeting rooms, scattered throughout the facility, would have given the salvage gangs from his old shelter heart palpitations.

He finally managed to find a cafeteria on the map -- one of the cafeterias, anyway, the closest one -- and headed for it. Before he could get there, however, he heard a familiar voice hailing him from down the hall.

"Ah! Young Master Luo, how lucky to have caught you!"

Luo Binghe turned to see Lao Zhousi, the Commander of Huan Hua and premier sponsor of the Jaeger Wardens program, stepping briskly on an intercept vector.

Luo Binghe stifled his initial reaction; he didn't want to have to socialize or make nice, he just wanted to eat and then go back to his Jaeger to sleep. "Lao-gongzhu, this one is honored to see you," he said. "I was just going to have dinner."

Lao Zhousi caught up, huffing slightly as he shook his head in mock disappointment. "A pilot, having dinner in the technician's galley?" he exclaimed. "Perish the thought! The food in the pilot's lounge is much finer. Come with me, I'll take you there."

There was no getting out of this; Luo Binghe concealed a sigh as he fell in beside the Lao Zhousi. Shizun had drilled him in recognizing all of the higher-up executives of the Jaeger Wardens, and proper etiquette when dealing with each of them. At the time, Luo Binghe had never thought he'd need such knowledge. Now, though...

"I wouldn't presume on Huan Hua's hospitality by inviting myself to your private lounge," he said politely.

"Nonsense! You can use the any of the pilot facilities here at Huan Hua, my boy," the old man chuckled. "One of the many perks of being a Huan Hua disciple!"

Luo Binghe stiffened. Lao-gongzhu's attempts to poach him were becoming increasingly less subtle. "Pardon, but I still consider myself a disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain," he said. "After all, it is to them that I owe my training and sponsorship. I wouldn't dare be ungrateful."

"Of course!" Lao Zhousi said soothingly. "Of course! I only meant to say that you are entered in the Huan Hua systems as a pilot with full privileges here. It makes more sense that way, don't you think, if important people are able to move smoothly between one place and the next? It's not like we and Cang Qiong are in some kind of competition; we're all fighting together against the kaiju, after all."

"I agree with that, sir." Luo Binghe bit his tongue on anything else.

"Of course you do." The Old Fortress Master smiled, and his eyes glinted like black glass. "Of course, there are some people who are able to, mm, contribute a little more to the fight against the kaiju than others! And for such gifted souls, wouldn't you say they have an obligation to do so?"

Luo Binghe glanced to the side as they passed through what must have been recreation commons for the wing. Huan Hua certainly had more resources to throw at the fight than Cang Qiong; how did they manage to have half again the size, but even fewer full pilot teams? Some people really could stand to contribute a little more, he thought. "I would say they have a duty to all righteous folk to do so."

"Good, glad to know you agree." They fetched up at the entrance to the pilot lounge, and Lao Zhousi placed a firm, friendly hand on Luo Binghe's shoulder. "Well, I won't breathe down your neck during dinner, boy; make sure to eat up, you'll need the energy for healing! Have you been by the infirmary yet? I saw that tumble you took, in the last battle with Brachus!"

Luo Binghe shook his head. "It's not necessary to trouble them, sir," he said. "I'm fine."

"Nonsense!" the old man snorted. "You don't need to pretend to be tough, young man; your health is all our highest priority. You should at least go in for a checkup!"

The last thing Luo Binghe wanted was to put himself under the care of the Huan Hua Shatterdome medical personnel, but he was not going to say so to the Huan Hua Commander. "I'm fine, sir. Really," he insisted. "The bruises are already mostly faded. I heal quick as lightning; I always have."

"Hmm." The old man smiled, gripping his shoulder a moment longer, then released him with a pat. "Well. That's good to know."

Shen Qingqiu had been aware for some time now that the head of the PR team -- Qiu Qingye -- had a particular dislike of him; when he'd been patching up his other relationships after transmigrating in, he'd made an attempt to smooth things over with her as well. Unfortunately, she had proved resistant to all his best attempts at diplomacy, and he'd resolved to simply avoid her as much as possible.

Avoidance was no longer possible after the double kaiju event and Luo Binghe's debut, however. She had pinned him against the nearest bulkhead and delivered a cross-interrogation that would have made Phoenix Wright blush.

"Why did you neglect your duty to protect Hua Yue City?" She really came out the gate swinging, ah. "Why did you not send Jing Wang She to defend them?"

Shen Qingqiu held onto his cool with an iron-clad grip, and kept his fan at the ready to act as a shield. "I also had a duty to protect the Shatterdome, and I did," he said calmly. "Having fulfilled that obligation, I then dispatched what aid was available to protect the city."

She looked unimpressed, but then, she always did. "You 'dispatched' a single unqualified teenager to fight a thousand-ton juggernaut!"

"I evaluated the threat level of the two kaiju and determined that Lumpback would be a more manageable target for a new pilot to engage."

The breath hissed through her teeth, in what might have been a well-suppressed swear word. "Shen Qingqiu, you sent Luo Binghe into the field in a suit of spare parts. Did you intend to sacrifice him as a cover for your own unpreparedness?"

"Binghe was never a sacrifice!" Whoops -- he hadn't meant to let that edge into his voice. He tried to moderate his tone, settling back slightly in his chair and waving his fan slightly. "I knew he had the aptitude for jaeger piloting from the way he excelled at training. It was always my intention for Luo Binghe to move into the piloting program, this simply accelerated the timetable."

She looked outraged. "But you didn't even attempt to assign him a copilot!"

"I believed he did not need one." Shen Qingqiu refused to let his expression crack, no matter how he was sweating. Fuck! How was he supposed to explain how he knew? For anyone who didn't already know the plot of On the Proud Immortal Way, this really just looked super bad!

"Ridiculous!" she sputtered. She slammed her pad of paper down on the desk, pushing up to surge half-over it. "How could you even --"

Yue Qingyuan stirred from his end of the table, and held out a hand towards her in a negating motion. "This does not need to be an inquisition, Shimei," he said quietly. "Shen Qingqiu judged that Luo Binghe was capable of opposing Lumpback, and he was correct. Hua Yue city was untouched, the Shatterdome still stands, and we have gained a talented new pilot from it. That is all we need to print."

She faltered. "But -- Commander! People will want to know --"

"What is there to know?" Yue Qingyuan asked rhetorically. "Shen-shidi was put in an impossible position and yet managed to pull off a miracle. Who do we expect to be casting allegations? Surely not Huan Hua, whose plea for help set us up for disaster in the first place. Zhao Hua? Tian Yi? In this shifting time of uncertainty, more than ever we must be able to work together." He stood, pushing his chair back, unequivocally signalling the end of the interview. "We won't be aided in that endeavor by undermining our own credibility in the eyes of the world."

Shen Qingqiu let out a slow, very quiet breath behind his fan. Saved! Thank heavens for Yue Qingyuan's ridiculous partisanship.

"Luo-gege!"

Luo Binghe stopped in his tracks when he heard the call from behind him, and let out a quiet sigh.

Over the past year he'd gotten a lot of practice in dodging admirers, in smiling and playing nice and ducking away the moment an opportunity presented itself. But there was no point in trying to dodge this one -- this was her house, after all.

He turned around to greet the person trotting across the hangar towards him. She was a petit young woman in a bright gold, custom flight suit, barely coming up to his collarbone and yet exuding an aura of perfect confidence that he would stop and wait for her -- and indeed, that the entire crew of the hangar bay would turn as a wheel around her. "Luo-gege, where were you going off to in such a hurry?" she said, canting her head to the side and sending a coy smile up at him.

"I just got back from Lushui Lake; I was going to the cafeteria, to get something to eat," he told her truthfully.

She laughed, a sweet tinkling sound, and looped an arm around his. "Luo-gege, silly, you weren't going to eat in the cafeteria!" she explained.

"Maybe I like the cafeteria food," he deadpanned. It was not entirely a joke, although the quality of the food was a joke among the base staff; plain, unseasoned food, mostly processed from cans or cooked in large batches. He could -- and had -- cooked better in his time as Shen Qingqiu's assistant. But in truth, it reminded him more of the food he had grown up eating than the fancier fare served in the private lounges.

"Luo-gege, you're so funny!" she giggled, then tossed her head. The ornaments on her buns tinkled with the motion. "But I don't like the cafeteria food, so we aren't going there. Come on!"

Lao Ying, the granddaughter of Lao Zhousi and pilot of Lei Ting Zhe, treated the entire Huan Hua Shatterdome as her personal playground and was allowed to do so pretty much unchecked. It was an ongoing source of minor chaos and generator of complaints among the Huan Hua staff and other Jaeger pilots, though the Huan Hua Public Relations department did a fair job of keeping any fallout from that out of the public eye. But her grandfather was so old, and so universally respected, that people were forgiving of this minor personal indulgence.

Luo Binghe had stopped finding her high-handed assumption that her wants and needs should be everyone else's top priority charming several months ago, but if you wanted to work with Huan Hua Shatterdome, you had to play along. He wondered how her copilot managed to keep up with her -- or maybe they didn't. He didn't even know the other pilot's name.

Once again, he was grateful that his particular situation didn't require him to let other pilots into his head in the Drift. It was hard to imagine another human being he would ever want to let that close. Unless Shizun... no. That road was closed to him.

Lao Ying escorted him through the Shatterdome through a warren of smaller rooms and corridors, finally fetching up in a sumptuously decorated lounge near the center of the complex. It wasn't an especially large room -- compared to the workspaces like the hangar bay or the lab -- but it was notable for how much empty space it contained, and how much of that space was filled up with decorative bric-a-brac. The only real furniture was a dining table and a nearby tea service, and three cushions.

The third cushion was already occupied, by Lao Zhousi himself. He smiled at the two pilots as they came in, every inch the benevolent grandfather. "Ah, Xiao Ying, there you are," he said. "I'm very glad that Pilot Luo has agreed to join us for a family meal."

"Well, he's got to start getting used to it sometime, since he's going to be part of our family!" Lao Ying said breezily. She towed Luo Binghe to one of the empty cushions and plopped him down on it, seating herself beside him close enough that he could barely move his elbow without bumping into her chest.

"Won't you pour for us, my dear?" Lao Zhousi asked his granddaughter.

She frowned. "Granddaddy, you know I don't care about that stuff," she said.

"Nevertheless," he said, and his dark eyes glinted briefly. "Show some manners to our guest, Xiao Ying."

She gave a put-upon sigh but relented, pouring out tea in the three cups set around the table. Lao Zhousi gave Luo Binghe another beaming, wrinkled smile. "Do try the tea, Binghe. It's an excellent blend, from a stash that is increasingly rare since the plantation that grew it was destroyed."

Lao Zhousi demonstrated by taking a long slurping drink from his own cup. Luo Binghe obediently lifted his cup to his lips, nostrils flaring as he breathed in the scent of the tea. It didn't smell like much of anything. He took a drink.

And bit back a curse, head jerking back and tea sloshing over his hand, as a sudden pain flared in his lip. He stared down at the teacup, tilting it to the side to take a better look. There was a jagged edge underneath the lip of the cup which he hadn't noticed until it cut into his skin; the rim of the teacup was now lined with bright red droplets of blood, while the taste of metal flowed into his mouth.

"Luo-gege!" Lao Ying jumped to her feet with a shriek. "What's wrong with you! Don't bleed on me!"

"Ah, settle down my dear, it's just a scratch!" Lao Zhousi said hastily, putting a hand on his granddaughter's elbow to stall her retreat. "I do apologize, Pilot Luo! I didn't realize that we had such a poorly made item among our dishware. Here, take this handkerchief to stem the bleeding..."

"Don't worry about it," Luo Binghe said, striving to keep his voice even. He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth rather than accept the handkerchief. His next words were slightly muffled; "It's -- this is just a minor thing, accidents happen."

"Would you like to go get cleaned up?" Lao Zhousi offered in a concerned voice. "Dear me, that can't be hygienic."

Luo Binghe seized on the opportunity gratefully, and made himself scarce in the nearby restroom. "Granddaddy, get rid of those cups!" Lao Ying fussed as he left. "One of them is dirty! I don't want to use them any more!"

Luo Binghe lingered in the bathroom far longer than it actually took to treat the -- admittedly very minor -- wound. He had always healed quickly, but it gave him an excuse to be away from the grandfather-granddaughter pair and to take a deeper breath.

By the time he finally did return, the cup with the jagged edge had vanished, to be replaced by one that was perfectly smooth. No matter how much the tea set cost, it could be replaced in an instant by something just as fine. That was how things were at Huan Hua, Luo Binghe was learning.

At the Cang Qiong Shatterdome, the feud between the Public Relations and Science departments -- entirely one-sided, in Shen Qingqiu's opinion! He was doing his best to be conciliatory and collegiate, but Qiu Qingye was relentless! -- was coming to a head. At a section heads meeting, Shen Qingqiu made (perhaps, one too many) wistful comments about Luo Binghe's absence. So sue him, he missed the boy!

Qiu Qingye returned a biting putdown about Shen Qingqiu trying to ride on his apprentice's glory to make up for his own irrelevancy.

Shen Qingqiu quickly covered up his chagrin -- embarrassment, mixed with an honest hurt he was loath to display -- and replied coolly that he was certain Shimei would never be one to ride the coattails of her students' great accomplishments -- if they had any.

The squabble that then broke out completely derailed the biweekly status meeting they were supposed to be having, and nothing productive got done for the next ten minutes. Shen Qingqiu was getting into it -- maybe a little too riled, all things considered; he hadn't been able to really let loose his sharp-edged tongue since his forum days! -- when Yue Qingyuan intervened, settled the argument in Shen Qingqiu's favor, and dismissed the meeting.

Once the immediate tiff was past, Shen Qingqiu felt more than a little ashamed of his conduct. He waited until the other Peak Lords had left the room, then approached Yue Qingyuan.

"Qingqiu-shidi. Is everything all right?" Yue Qingyuan straightened up and smiled at him, warm and brotherly as he ever was.

"Ah, I just wanted to thank the Commander for his intervention," Shen Qingqiu said. He fiddled with his fan, manfully resisting the urge to hide behind it. "It wasn't necessary though, truly. I can handle a little criticism."

Yue Qingyuan's expression hardened. "Qingqiu deserves better than to endure unnecessary backbiting from his own team," he said. "Are we not all supposed to support each other as brothers and sisters? I remember that, even if some people don't."

Well, yes, but Shen Qingqiu had vivid enough memories of his original life's siblings to be very sure that siblinghood and ferocious rivalry were oft-overlapping categories. "Still, thanking Yue-zhangmen for his defense."

The cold expression thawed again, and Yue Qingyuan looked at Shen Qingqiu with a smile. "Of course," he said. "I will always come to your defense. Never doubt that."

That is -- Shen Qingqiu hadn't been about to doubt it, but something about the way he said that made it a little bit weird. Shen Qingqiu made an attempt to turn the conversation. "Honestly, I don't really know why Qiu-shimei dislikes me so much," he admitted. "I've made overtures, tried to make amends... whatever it was, the grudge seems to run deep. I don't understand it."

Yue Qingyuan sighed. "It's not so mysterious, really," he said. "I know it's little comfort now, but... Shidi... I think she feels guilty."

Shen Qingqiu was confused. He'd expected some more platitudes about how the Original Goods was justified in everything, not for the script for suddenly be flipped. "Guilty? What for?" he said. Why would anyone else feel guilty towards the scum villain?

"For..." Yue Qingyuan gave him a look that seemed to convey an equal confusion; whatever he was searching Shen Qingqiu's face for, he didn't find it. "For the cover story, what else? It may have been on the Commander's orders, but he wasn't the one who actually wrote it. Why shouldn't she feel guilty, for what that press release did to your reputation?"

Shen Qingqiu stayed silent. What on earth was Yue Qingyuan talking about? What cover story?

"Maybe it was true that you would never pilot again," Yue Qingyuan said. "But that's no excuse for blatant slander. The official story... it was a lie and Qiu-shimei knew was a lie. But the Commander was so adamant... he wanted to keep at least one pilot. So he dictated the story. But it was her hand that wrote it, in the end. She destroyed an innocent man. I think that haunts her, somewhere deep down."

It certainly haunts me, his expression said.

His eyes on Shen Qingqiu were heavy with expectation, his face limned with a guarded hope. But there was no chance for Shen Qingqiu to figure out what response he was looking for, since he was busy having an internal freakout of his own.

A pilot? Scum villain, mad scientist Shen Qingqiu had been a pilot?! How was this possible! There was nothing about it, ever, in any of the three movies! Nothing in the scripts, which Shen Yuan had practically memorized; nothing in any of the guidebooks or supplemental materials or official websites; not even a nod or subtle clue placed by the set designers in the background of Shen Qingqiu's scenes to hint to it! There was no way the fan community of On the Proud Immortal Way could have missed such a dramatic and juicy story turn -- it was nowhere!!

It was true that there was never much backstory given on Shen Qingqiu; he was barely a character! Most of the other characters had gotten some amount of fleshed-out background in the supplemental materials -- in-character interviews, blurbs on the movie's website, something. But for Shen Qingqiu, there was nothing -- he didn't have an official bio on the website, and his actor had never done character interviews. None of the movie sets had been 'his' domain, from which more personal information might be gleaned; the closest that came was the laboratory, which he shared with Shang Qinghua.

But one thing that always stood out was the unexplained weakness Yue Qingyuan had always shown for the Science Officer. In every other respect Yue Qingyuan was the ultimate commander, a paragon of authority -- except when it came to Shen Qingqiu. Remaining silent when he should have condemned, holding back when he should have brought in base security to shut Shen Qingqiu's operation down.

The why of it was never explained in the movie; the most common fan theory was that Shen Qingqiu had been blackmailing the Commander somehow. (The second most common fan theory was that Yue Qingyuan was hopelessly, unrequitedly in love with his Science Officer, but no reasonable people took that theory seriously.) There was certainly no indication that they had ever been copilots.

Apparently, they had.

And apparently, he'd taken too long with his own bluescreen reaction to reply; Yue Qingyuan had moved in, placing a hand on his elbow. Shen Qingqiu jerked his head up, startled, to meet Yue Qingyuan's eyes, and found them glinting with tears. "Shen-shidi -- Xiao Jiu," he said, and huh?! Who the hell was Xiao Jiu? "You're doing a wonderful job as Science Officer, but... you don't have to work so hard to justify your presence. You will always have a place by my side -- my offer stands open."

Ah fuck shit dammit. Shen Qingqiu didn't have time to dither any more; he needed to handle this. After a moment more of hesitation, he overcame his paralysis; took a step to the side, sliding his elbow out from under Yue Qingyuan's hand, in the same movement that he brought his fan around up to shield his face. Smooth, natural. "Yue-shixiong is very busy," he said, striving to keep his tone calm and neutral. "He has better things to do with his time to coddle this one."

Yue Qingyuan let out a little puff of an air, like an unvoiced laugh, or perhaps a man punched in the stomach. He shook his head slightly. "Just... any time. Let me know. I'll make time, I'll block off the pilot's compatibility testing suite all day, I'll even commandeer one of the Jaegers if... whatever works. However you want. I want to Drift with you again. Just like we used to."

Drift with you again. Right. Because they'd been pilots together, they had piloted a Jaeger together.

And as much as Shen Qingqiu ardently wished he could take him up on the offer, that he could see the inside of the Drift for himself -- he knew he absolutely could not. Ever. Because there was no hiding your thoughts, or yourself, in the Drift; your partner could see everything that you were. The moment he hooked up to that Drift system, the entire scam of his identity and life as Shen Qingqiu would be revealed.

"Your offer is appreciated, but unnecessary," he said, forcing the words out between stiff lips.

"I'm not just offering for your sake," Yue Qingyuan protested. "I miss piloting with you. I miss you."

Shen Qingqiu wished for a kaiju to break down the door, or maybe a pit to open up under his feet, anything to get him out of this conversation.

"Xiao-Jiu --" Yue Qingyuan swallowed audibly. "I would have given anything to change places with you. I know how much it meant to you, being a pilot."

Of course it did! Who wouldn't miss being a pilot, getting to drive one of the giant kickass hero robots fighting the alien menace? Only the man who'd never been that in the first place.

"I miss it, too," Shen Qingqiu lied softly. "But the past is the past, and we can't go back. Not even in the Drift."

Yue Qingyuan looked -- more than doleful, but he accepted the rejection with an air of tragic misery. Shen Qingqiu hoofed it out of the conference room as fast as his crutches could carry him. He needed to be alone. He needed some space. He needed to think.

For years -- ever since being unceremoniously deposited into the Proud Way universe -- Shen Qingqiu had been relying on his own meta-knowledge of the movie trilogy and the supplemental materials to carry him through. It was the only edge he had, that he knew things that nobody else knew -- that he knew everything there was to know.

But he hadn't known this. Such a huge, fundamental fact about his own character, and he hadn't known.

What else had he missed?

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

When he'd left the conference room, he was thinking only that he wanted to get out of Yue Qingyuan's line of sight. Shen Qingqiu was double-timing it back towards the laboratory when he found himself in the pilot's wing of the Shatterdome, near one of the training sailes. Through an open door at the end of the hallway he saw the chiaroscuro flash of Liu Qingge -- his back and white pilot's outfit whirling around him as he went through a set of training katas. Liu Qingge truly was a marvel of athleticism, wasn't he? No wonder the original movies had to kill him off; otherwise, he'd truly be giving Luo Binghe a run for his money as the role of Action Hero!

Shen Qingqiu didn't usually bother pining after impossible things, but for some reason today he felt a ghostly twinge of melancholy watching Liu Qingge train. Was it possible that he -- this body, the original goods -- had once gone through the same training routines, worn the same uniform, fought the same bottles?

On a sudden impulse, he stepped forward, letting the tip of his crutches scrape against the matting as he did. Liu Qingge immediately turned his face towards the doorway, though that didn't stop the rest of his body from flowing through the kata. Shen Qingqiu settled in to wait, pleased admiration for his friend's accomplishments battling with a strange unsettled feeling in his stomach.

After only a minute more, Liu Qingge finished his routine and thumped to a halt in the center of the salle. He turned and strode towards the door, grabbing a towel to sling over his neck. "Shen Qingqiu," Liu Qingge said. "Something wrong?"

"Liu-shidi." For a moment Shen Qingqiu worried his lip, trying to find a way to phrase this in a natural way. In the end he blurted out, "Remember when we were pilots together?"

Liu Qingge stopped in the middle of doffing the practice gear to stare at him. "What are you talking about? We were never pilots together."

Shen Qingqiu smiled brightly while his brain flared in a panic. Shit! Fifty-fifty chance, and he'd guessed wrong. Was Liu Qingge going to --

Liu Qingge was going to keep talking, apparently. "I was still in training when you and Yue Qingyuan were pilots," he said. "And by the time I started piloting Qie Dai Tao, Jian Yu Jing was destroyed. We didn't overlap at all."

The panic subsided, but Shen Qingqiu had to bite down against a fresh wave of aggrieved indignation. Why the hell did everyone else know about this but him!

"I meant -- broadly." Shen Qingqiu made a sweep of his arm to indicate appropriate broadness. "We were pilots together broadly, in the great brotherhood of Jaeger pilots."

"Yes?" Liu Qingghe frowned at him.

"So how, ah... from one pilot to another, how would you... rate my performance?"

Liu Qingge had looked faintly perturbed through this whole conversation -- though he often seemed to, when around Shen Qingqiu -- but now the look he gave Shen Qingqiu really did make him feel like he must have grown a second head. What's that fishy glare for, ah! Just answer the question!!

After a long moment, Liu Qingge answered. "If I'd been in charge of the pilot program then, I would have put you through retraining fifteen times for your collaterals," he said slowly. "I never understood why old Commander Lao let you get away with it."

Shen Qingqiu winced. He had enough familiarity with the terminology of the Jaeger Rangers to know what that meant; collaterals were the degree of havoc and destruction a Jaeger either leveled themselves or failed to stop the kaiju from wreaking. A low score meant that the jaeger had successfully kept the kaiju away from all targets; a high one could flatten a city as thoroughly as any unopposed kaiju attack.

(...So the original goods had had a problem with collateral damage? That was the first thing he'd heard about this whole former pilot business so far that made him believe it.)

"But at the end of the day, you and Yue Qingyuan killed eight kaiju," Liu Qingge said firmly. "That's eight cities that are still standing because of your work. None of the details matter more than that."

"Yes, but..." Shen Qingqiu bit his lip again, tasted a faint iron sting. "What about... the accident?"

Liu Qingge looked away, his face flexing in a grimace. "I wasn't there that day, so I don't know what really happened," he said. Then he gave Shen Qingqiu a sharp look. "But I'll say this -- Shen Qingqiu, I never believed the official story. You were never one to chase the rabbit. I've never met a less sentimental man in my life."

Shen Qingqiu chased the rabbit? Or... didn't?

Shen Qingqiu thanked Liu Qingge and apologized for interrupting his training routine, all in an absent haze, and left. He needed to think. And to talk to Shang Qinghua.

Shang Qinghua scrambled up from his terminal as soon as Shen Qingqiu came through the door. Empty nutshells scattered all around him. "Shit! I was totally working, I swear! Look, um, I've got a job running in the background --"

Shen Qingqiu made his way over to his own workstation and sat rather heavily. For once, Shang Qinghua's general aura of messiness didn't grate on him; it hardly registered at all. "Hey," he said. "I have a question."

Shang Qinghua paused mid-scramble, giving him a wary look. "That's never a good way to start a conversation," he said.

Shen Qingqiu ignored him. "Did you know Shen Qingqiu was a Jaeger pilot?"

"Eh?" Shang Qinghua's eyes popped wide, and he sat back onto his own station chair with a thump. "He was? Wait, since when?!"

So it hadn't been something added in at the last moment, then; whatever the writers for the first two movies had come up with, they hadn't bothered to pass along to their replacements. Typical.

"Since some time before he got a job as a science officer here, apparently," Shen Qingqiu said. He realized he didn't even know the timeframe. It wasn't something he could have asked Yue Qingyuan casually -- not when he was supposed to know this stuff already.

Shang Qinghua scratched his neck and shrugged. "I wouldn't know," he said. "By the time I came on here as their Rift Mechanics expert, Shen Qingqiu had already been established as Senior Science Officer. There was a fair amount of gossip back then, though -- common opinion around the water cooler was that he'd only been hired as a favor by Yue Qingyuan. Looking for a cushy job without actually being qualified for the work. There was some doubt about his credentials, too..."

Shen Qingqiu looked up. "If Shen Qingqiu used to be a pilot -- when would he have had time to get degrees in xenobiology? Was Shen Qingqiu ever a scientist?!"

Shang Qinghua spread his hands helplessly. "I genuinely don't know, dude," he said.

Shen Qingqiu frowned and turned towards the computer console. The technology in this world was touchy, but surely he ought to be able to access something as simple as archives of old newspaper reports?

It was a tedious hour's searching, but he did eventually find it. Jian Yu Jing, stationed out of Huan Hua Shatterdome, had been one of the Gen Two jaegers -- one of the first batches that really managed to make the Drift system work. The pilots were listed as Pilot Yue and Pilot Shen -- so it really was true.

Ten years ago, Jian Yu Jing had gone out to face what they were told was a Category Two kaiju near Heng Chuan City. The kaiju Ceremander had turned out to be much more dangerous than expected -- the article listed it as a Category Four instead (though Shen Qingqiu would have ranked it among the high threes, personally.)

Jian Yu Jing, the first responder on the scene, had fared badly from the start. They had barely been holding it outside the city limits, trading shattering blow for blow, when something went terribly wrong. The neural bridge desynchronized, the Drift dissolved, and Jian Yu Jing was left crippled in the mud when Pilot Shen chased the rabbit.

Shen Qingqiu remembered this from the movie now. The Drift -- as it was explained in the movie -- was a sort of technological mind meld, drawing both pilots into a shared mental space that let them think and act together. It was impossible to hide things from your Drift partner; thoughts, emotions, and memories would all be put on display for the other to see.

Naturally, handling the thoughts and emotions of memories of two people at once tended to be overwhelming -- most people could barely manage one! Pilots were supposed to spend the Drift in a kind of meditation, keeping their minds clear of thoughts except for the immediate matters of piloting and fighting. Supposed to wasn't always did, though; and when a pilot failed to keep their restless thoughts under control, well, that's when you got RABIT.

Random Access Brain Impulse triggers happened when a pilot got hung up on something -- a memory, an emotion, an intrusive thought. Pilots were advised not to "chase the rabbit," because once an intrusive thought surfaced, it became exponentially more difficult to lock it back down again. The shared nature of the Drift meant any kind of stray thought threatened to spiral out control, amplifying back and forth between the two people controlling it until it became impossible to withstand.

Sometimes, a pilot could refocus themselves and pull themselves out of the spiral, stabilizing the Drift. Other times, they were lost to the rabbit hole, the neural bridge destabilized, and the other pilot would be thrown out of the Drift with a massive case of mental backlash. It was a traumatic and damaging thing to happen at any time, but in the middle of a kaiju battle like this one?

It was a catastrophe.

Ceremander, left to rage unopposed, had flattened the town -- the only survivors were those that had made it to the shelters in time. Jian Yu Jing had been thoroughly trashed -- weapons, shield and hydraulic systems rendered to so much twisted wreckage. It was nothing short of a miracle that the cockpit, taking several hits, hadn't been completely destroyed. They hadn't even bothered trying to repair it later, only breaking it down for scrap and spare parts. Or perhaps the vessel's name was now so inauspicious that it wasn't worth repairing.

The public outcry was furious. The Jaeger Wardens had just been on their way to proving themselves to the general public as a functional defense against the kaiju, and this threatened all the progress they had made. The investigation was swift; within a week the internal investigation returned the verdict that Pilot Shen had been responsible for chasing the RABIT, for breaking the Drift, for the destruction of the city and the loss of the jaeger. As soon as he was discharged from the medical wing, he had been stripped of his station and expelled from the Wardens --

Wait. What had he been in the hospital for? The newspaper articles didn't say. Shen Qingqiu had to back out and dig around in the personnel files, instead; eventually, he found a copy of his own -- Shen Qingqiu's -- file that had been imported from Huan Hua Shatterdome when Shen Qingqiu first came to Cang Qiong. He opened it up.

Shen Jiu, the file said on the top line. Shen Qingqiu had a name?

He stared at the file, his eyes burning. He'd known on some level that 'Shen Qingqiu' wasn't a name that anyone was born with. Cang Qiong had been a martial sect long before dire necessity had converted them into a Shatterdome; it still followed the traditional generational naming conventions. All of the officers shared the 'Qing' character in their courtesy names; none of them would be so gauche as to use a fellow officer's given name.

Except for Yue Qingyuan, who had called him Xiao-Jiu. Shen Jiu. Shen Qingqiu before him.

He read on.

A crushing blow from Ceremander had buckled the metal frame of the cockpit inwards, an I-beam catching Shen Jiu across the legs. Shen Qingqiu considered himself to have a pretty high tolerance for medical shit, but the report was frankly brutal in a way that his first life hadn't prepared him for. No photographs, thankfully, but the x-ray scan that showed the bones of his right femur completely shattered and the left one cracked through were enough to make his legs flare in phantom sympathy.

This was how Shen Qingqiu had lost most of the use of his legs? The new Shen Qingqiu had never bothered to think about it. The scum villain was disabled in these sorts of stories as often as not, typical evil-coding bullshit. And there were certainly enough people in the world of On the Proud Immortal Way who bore old injuries from kaiju attacks, that it wasn't something that particularly needed to be explained.

But it did explain a lot. No wonder Shen Qingqiu's piloting career had ended so abruptly. Unlike Pilot Yue's injuries, which were painful but not crippling, it was clear that Shen Jiu would not have been able to pilot ever again. Even without the scandal, and the investigation, and the involuntary discharge...

Shen Qingqiu's thoughts slowed, as a number of statements turned around in his mind to fall into new alignment with this.

'She knew what she was writing was a lie.'

'I never believed the official story. You were never the type to chase the rabbit.'

'The Commander was adamant... he wanted to keep at least one pilot.'

Oh.

The accident hadn't been Shen Jiu's fault at all.

Yue Qingyuan had been the one to chase the rabbit, to break down the neural bridge. Shen Jiu had been thrown out of the Drift and unable to handle the Jaeger solo. The subsequent thrashing by the kaiju had cost him both his legs and his piloting career.

Shen Jiu's piloting career was over either way... but Yue Qingyuan could still pilot. So Lao Zhousi, the Huan Hua Commander, made the decision to cut his losses, and keep what assets he could while turning the casualty loose to absorb the public's ire.

Shen Qingqiu kept his expression neutral, but his inside thoughts were one long shriek of No wonder Shen Qingqiu was so bitter! No fucking wonder!

According to the file, there was a gap in Shen Jiu's record of about three years after he was discharged but before he came to Cang Qiong. No indications of where he might have gone during that time. There was no home address and if he had any living family, the file didn't list them. More likely Shen Jiu, like so many kids and teenagers in the On the Proud Immortal Way, was an orphan.

For years there wasn't a trace of him. Even retired pilots tended to get plagued with media attention so long as they lived, but the story of Shen Jiu's dishonorable discharge had made him radioactive.

Until, about five years ago, the Cang Qiong commander retired -- his failing health, caused by years of exposure to toxic kaiju emissions, made him unable to continue. Pilot Yue -- Yue Qingyuan -- had been tapped as his replacement, and had stepped up to the challenge.

And one of Yue Qingyuan's first appointments, before the ink on the signature was even fully dry, was to contact his old co-pilot and bring him back to Cang Qiong -- in a cushy researcher position. Given the conspicuous lack of any kind of degrees or schooling in Shen Jiu's record, it could not have more transparently been a handout.

A handout Shen Jiu had accepted.

To be brought back to the Cang Qiong Shatterdome, not as the hero he had been but as a charity case, a disgrace, a washed-out pilot whose reputation was smeared with mud -- only to be stationed awkwardly in a role he had never really studied or prepared for, floundering his way through his new duties while having his face rubbed in the ashes every day by watching other people flaunt the career he'd lost!

Yeah, Shen Yuan would have blown his top like Vesuvius!

More than anything, Shen Qingqiu was shocked to learn of the role that Lao Zhousi had played in Shen Jiu's downfall. No matter how unpleasant a person Shen Jiu might have been to work with... he hadn't deserved this treatment. Hadn't the Old Fortress Master ever heard of standing by his men?

With the revelation of the true story, it was hard to place the same trust in the old man as before. Shen Qingqiu had always thought -- he had always believed that Lao Zhousi was a Big Good, a load-bearing pillar in defense of the world. Shen Qingqiu had sent Luo Binghe off to his career as a solo pilot, based mostly out of Huan Hua Shatterdome, with the belief that Luo Binghe would learn much and benefit greatly from the sponsorship of such an esteemed figure.

But if Lao Zhousi was willing to treat his pilots like this -- to use and discard them so carelessly -- then was Luo Binghe...?

No. No, he was overreacting, Shen Qingqiu reminded himself. He'd seen the movie; he knew how this arc went! Lao Zhousi had never done anything to harm or sabotage Luo Binghe. There was no reason to think that would change.

Really, wasn't this just displaced jealousy, that he was no longer the most important authority figure in Luo Binghe's life?

Shen Qingqiu ought to get over himself.

Luo Binghe was not sure how tea with the Commander had become part of his regular schedule.

True, Lao Zhousi was persistent. He sent invitations to lunch, or tea, or just to talk, pretty much every time Luo Binghe stopped by the Shatterdome, and didn't hesitate to send Lao Ying to follow up if the invitation went unanswered.

Still, Luo Binghe had ways of avoiding unwanted attention, if he really wished it. His early years on the streets had taught him a lot about evading notice; later experience of ducking around the Cang Qiong Shatterdome -- trying to stay out of sight of Ming Fan's posse and Shen Qingqiu's temper -- taught him more.

But at the same time... he didn't completely want to avoid the old man's attention. There was a part of him that found it -- not flattering, exactly, because what need would the Old Fortress Master have to flatter him? Most of the hangers-on that swarmed around Luo Binghe wanted a taste of his fame, his reputation; Lao Zhousi had enough of his own that he didn't need to feed off anyone else.

And.

And it was nice to be wanted by someone. (Since he wasn't wanted at Cang Qiong Shatterdome, any more.)

So today, he accepted the invitation to tea. Lao Ying wasn't present today, which Luo Binghe could only find a relief. Lao Zhousi poured the tea himself, and called him my dear boy in that benevolent voice, and encouraged Luo Binghe to share all the details of his recent battle with Tailspitter. That one, had truly been a solo battle; Luo Binghe had defeated the thing before the nearest Jaeger team could scramble and reach the site of the battle.

Luo Binghe didn't bother to check the tea before drinking it, any more. But then again, maybe there had been nothing to sense.

He first realized something was wrong when the teacup fell from his hand, fingers losing their grip. For a long moment he just stared at it, surprised and a little embarrassed, not understanding what had happened. "Sorry," he mumbled, and his voice came out slurred and mushy in his mouth. He reached down to pick up the dropped teacup, and nearly fell over right on his face.

Luo Binghe pushed himself up on his hands -- his arms were shaking with weakness, and his head seemed to have gained the weight of a thousand pounds. He managed to raise it enough to stare over the table at the Commander.

Lao Zhousi just sat there, a small smile lingering about his white lips, and just watched him.

"You..." It was hard to speak, hard to move his mouth and throat in the right shapes. "You drugged me!"

"Mmm, yes. It seems so." The Commander took another serene sip of his tea. "Which is really quite fascinating, because the agent I put into your tea should be completely inert for humans. It's a little cocktail that my laboratories designed to be poisonous to the kaiju -- though of course, there's always a problem in scaling it up. Still, it shouldn't be affecting you -- unless of course you are something other than a human." He smiled. It was the same saintly, fatherly smile as before; from this angle, it looked a lot more sinister.

"How... did you...?" he managed to get out.

"Find you?" Lao Zhousi interrupted him, though that wasn't going to be what he was asking at all. "It wasn't easy, I can tell you that. That wretch Shen Jiu certainly put in the work to bury you! If not for that fortuitous battle at Hua Yue City, I might never have known you existed at all." He leaned forward over the table, his eyes avaricious. "But of course, once I saw you in person, there could be no mistaking the resemblance. Huan Hua Pilot, Su Xiyan. It's quite uncanny how much you look like her, you know."

"Su Xiyan... who?" Though he was afraid he could guess. "My b... mother?"

Luo Binghe had never known his birth mother. He'd never wanted to, especially; he had a mother, right until he didn't and he'd never wanted another. He'd always figured she'd died during the first few years of the invasion. If not killed by a kaiju, then killed in one of the riots, or died from some other ill that ravaged the populace as civilization collapsed -- disease, exposure, starvation.

Either she'd perished along with millions of others, or she had left him behind in order to lighten her burdens and improve her chances of survival. Luo Binghe had resolved not to especially care which. He'd never, ever thought that she might have been a Jaeger Pilot.

"Oh yes. Quite exactly like, in fact." The old man was still smiling. "And I have a little theory about why that might be. You see, before Su Xiyan departed from Huan Hua on that unfortunate excursion, she had been pregnant. Which should have been impossible, since she had been isolated from all others for eleven months before her escape."

Luo Binghe's mouth dropped open. "She... what?" he choked out.

Luo Zhousi nodded benignly. "A pregnancy wasn't exactly how we thought the fruits of our experiments were going to manifest," he said offhandedly. "But I was most interested in seeing how the infant came out. I was expecting a monstrosity, in all honesty. Something that really looked like a hybrid between human and monster ought to look."

At last he stood and came around the table. Luo Binghe collapsed to the side of it, his limbs losing the strength to hold him up. Lao Zhousi squatted down a few feet away, just out of striking range, if Luo Binghe had still had strength in his limbs to strike. "But to look at you -- it's clear that no other human's genetics were involved at all in the making of you," he murmured. "You are her exact clone. Except, of course, for that very peculiar blood of yours. That part is not human at all."

Luo Binghe struggled to push himself to his feet -- or at least his knees -- but only managed a half-shove, half-roll onto his back. He was wheezing for breath, now, as the poison crept inwards towards his chest. His arm and legs curled up against his torso, spasming uncontrollably, unable to extend them. Lao Zhousi watched it all happen; interested, clinical, detached.

"I wonder how Shen Jiu knew?" he mused. "It's clear that he did -- sending you on that solo mission gave you away. But when did he find out? Was he conducting his own research on you in secret?"

Was he? It was a new and horrible thought. Luo Binghe didn't think his shizun had been experimenting on him -- at least, never anything like this -- but, he just didn't know. Shizun seemed to know so much about him, more than he knew about himself some times. How had he known?

"I'd dearly love to see his notes, just to see if we could eliminate a lot of tedious trial and error." Lao Zhousi. hook his head, looking regretful. "Ah, well."

"Su Xiyan's death was a fiasco, but I can't think of a better return on my investment in her," Lao Zhousi went on. He got back to his feet, and walked over to a cabinet at the side of the room. A rattle of keys unlocked it, and a white metal drawer slid smoothly out. He rustled around and pulled out a few flimsy gloves, which he snapped onto his hands with brisk practice.

"Because she gave me you -- the perfect pilot, the secret weapon in our war against the kaiju." Lao Zhousi turned around, beaming. "And now that I have you, I'll be able to figure out how to make more of you."

Luo Binghe let out a strained wheeze. He could no longer force words out at all, but he hoped his expression contained all the murderous fury he could no longer speak aloud.

"Oh, don't give me that dirty look, my boy!" Lao Zhousi tsked. "We're all men of science here, aren't we? Flesh exists to be used! And your flesh contains something exquisite. Possibly, the secrets to defeating the kaiju invasion once and for all. You're a service to humanity -- be proud!"

He pulled something metallic from the drawer; it flashed bright and silver in Luo Binghe's darkening vision, though the edges of things were beginning to blur. Lao Zhousi walked towards him and stopped, looming large in his vision; he crouched down and reached out one gloved finger to trail lightly across Luo Binghe's cheek.

"Make no mistake -- there really was no DNA in your sample except for Su Xiyan's," the old man said softly. "But you should know... I would have made the same choice even if you were mine."

Luo Binghe wanted to vomit -- but his body wouldn't cooperate with him even that much. His body was a wooden block, stone-frozen, his blood sluggish and slow.

"Now, don't struggle too much," Lao Zhousi continued in a suddenly brisk tone. "Nothing's messier than a jagged biopsy site, after all."

The silver needles descended. A fleeting, hysterical thought flew through Luo Binghe's mind; They really do want a piece of me after all.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

Something was wrong.

It took Shen Qingqiu too many days to realize it -- he was head down in his own drama, wrestling with the shock of the recent revelations about Shen Jiu's past. No, that was no excuse -- days, days went by before he resurfaced enough to notice that something was wrong.

He hadn't heard any news about Luo Binghe for over a week.

That wasn't right. For the past year, Luo Binghe hadn't been out of the news cycle for more than three days in a stretch -- if that. Even if there was no new kaiju battle for a stretch of time, there was still some magazine or star-hungry paparazzi that would publish some kind of interview, or thinkpiece, or just a candid photo taken with a telescopic lens. If one spent long enough looking through the news channels (and Shen Qingqiu had spent a lot of hours looking) they were sure to turn up something.

But there had been nothing. For eight days. And not only was there no new news about Luo Binghe, there was no old news. No reporters or journalists speculating what Luo Binghe was up to, or wondering why he hadn't appeared in the public eye for so long.

That -- that was strange. Why the sudden silence?

The last news he had of Luo Binghe's whereabouts was a distress call off of Anping, on the north side of the Wasteland. The kaiju -- Tailspitter, according to the reports he got -- had been dealt with by Luo Binghe alone; no other Jaeger pilot teams had witnessed the battle, nor talked to Luo Binghe afterwards.

Before Tailspitter, Luo Binghe had been staying at Huan Hua Shatterdome -- he'd left for Anping from there. Why wouldn't he have gone back there afterwards?

Shen Qingqiu sent inquiries to the HHSD communications department -- was everything going well? Huan Hua returned a bland statement of normal operation.

His next message was a little more direct: had they heard anything from Luo Binghe recently? Was he there? This garnered another bland statement: Luo Binghe was in residence, but recovering from a minor illness.

Illness? Like hell! As though the action-hero protagonist of On the Proud Immortal Way would be caught dead suffering from anything as mundane as a common cold! Even if the narrative would have allowed it, his unique physicality wouldn't have allowed for it! Luo Binghe's body was built different; regular human viruses couldn't make a dent. Even in the years he'd spent struggling on the streets before meeting his adopted mother, Luo Binghe had never so much as gotten the flu.

Petitioning Huan Hua's communications department was a lost cause; Shen Qingqiu began sending messages to other pilots directly. This time, he got back a confusing story that Luo Binghe was resting at Huan Hua after having sustained an injury during a fight against a kaiju.

Recovering from an injury, or recovering from an illness? Which was it, Huan Hua?!

Shen Qingqiu sent back a sharp demand for clarification, and got back only silence. Nearly a full day later, they finally received a response: Luo Binghe was resting in the Huan Hua infirmary, recovering from a bout of pneumonia brought on by a set of broken ribs that he'd acquired in the battle against Tailspitter.

Shen Qingqiu sent an offer for Luo Binghe to return to Cang Qiong Shatterdome to recover at home, and not strain the Huan Hua facilities any further. Huan Hua returned quickly that they were more than happy to play host to the great hero, and anyway their facilities were much more expansive than Cang Qiong's for every eventuality.

Shen Qingqiu ground his teeth, and the next message that made its way to Huan Hua Shatterdome Communications Center was a two-thousand-word lecture on Luo Binghe's medical history at Cang Qiong -- including the greater experience and expertise that famed doctor Mu Qingfang could bring to bear -- ending in a sharp demand for their Cang Qiong trained pilot to be returned to his home facilities at once.

This time, the radio silence lasted for three days.

At the end of it, they sent back a simple message: Luo Binghe had succumbed to his injuries and was dead.

Cang Qiong was in shock. The Shatterdome went into mourning, as they would for any fallen pilot; white banners were hung over the doors, and incense hovered in the common room from a shrine set up in vigil for Luo Binghe. The rest of the pilot-candidates, the younger personnel -- Luo Binghe's agemates -- drifted around the corridors in a state of shock, of disbelief. Luo Binghe was their youngest pilot, their shooting star -- how could he have fallen, already, so soon after his meteoric rise? Shang Qinghua, too, set up a white banner over the laboratory door and hid away in there.

Everyone was mourning -- except for Shen Qingqiu.

"This is absolute bullshit." Shen Qingqiu was flying from one task to the next, anxious and agitated. When seated he fidgeting ceaselessly until his restlessness drove him to his feet again, to make another circuit of the room as though the message would change if he looked it from another angle. "Luo Binghe can't die. It's literally impossible! He's the hero of this entire story!"

On one hand, Shang Qinghua thought Shen Qingqiu had a point. On the other hand... he knew that Luo Binghe could indeed die, because he'd written his death.

He'd had to. It was handed down to him before he wrote the first word that Luo Binghe had to go. They couldn't get the actor back, they were going to have to somehow continue the franchise completely without its star character. Not only that, but a breakdown in negotiations on the details of right to use image meant that they couldn't even stitch together a sendoff scene with reused or unused footage from earlier movies. No, Luo Binghe had to be excised from the story entirely.

Shang Qinghua had thought about just killing Luo Binghe offscreen. It would have been the simplest, the cheapest way to remove his character from the narrative. Simply announce his death, and let the tension in the narrative be introduced by the On the Proud Immortal Way's hero no longer be available to defend them, by needing to fend for themselves now. Let Luo Binghe die a hero, unseen, unaltered.

But then he'd thought: I wonder what Luo Binghe would think about being disposed of like that. So neatly and quickly that no one thinks or talks about him for the rest of the movie. That'd kind of feel on point for him by now, wouldn't it? People only think about him when they need him. As soon as he stops being useful, they drop him like a stone. Wonder what that's like?

I mean, this Luo Binghe guy, what would it feel like to be in his shoes? He's really a kind of child soldier, huh? He started piloting when he was only fourteen. He's gone from being treated like shit to everybody to being adulated by the entire world, how weird must that feel to him? Like he's only worth seeing as a person so long as he's out there wrestling titanic horrors for them. Like none of what he went through, like none of his efforts ever meant anything as soon as he was out of people's eye. And for all that time, there was not a single person who actually looked out for him. Hell, Cang Qiong was prepared to sacrifice him just to buy a little more time!

This world really... really failed him at every turn, didn't it?

I bet there's a lot of resentment there, buried under that heroic duty. I bet there's lot a rage down there, on slow boil. Shit yeah, that's way more juicy than Luo Binghe just dying anticlimactically off screen. Let's dig into that. Let's see what a heroic jaeger pilot looks like when they really go bad!

Unfortunately, almost none of his work around that plotline had survived through the many revisions of the script. The studio was basing their merch heavily off the Jaeger Wardens, so anything that made the institution look bad had to go. They certainly couldn't say anything to imply that they were responsible for Luo Binghe's rampage. Then two-thirds of the dialogue explaining Luo Binghe's motivations had to be cut for time; then the other one-third was completely incoherent by itself, so it was quietly removed. As far as the rest of the Proud Way world was concerned -- as far as the audience was concerned -- Luo Binghe had just gone crazy for no reason, turned into a monster for no reason, and had to be put down like a rabid dog. For no reason.

He had a feeling that Shen Qingqiu -- Binghe-brained as he'd been since the start -- wasn't gonna appreciate being reminded of any of this. He didn't feel like being whacked for it, either.

"Yeah, but... we're not in a movie now, dude," was all he said. "This is real life. People die when they are killed."

"Real eloquent," Shen Qingqiu said with a roll of his eyes. "Look. This whole mess is still governed by movie logic -- you said it yourself; the kaiju attack when it's narratively correct for them to attack and not for any other reason. If narrative logic is still in effect there, it must still be in effect for Luo Binghe. Which means he can't be dead, just captured. We have to save him!"

Shang Qinghua was silent for a long moment, before he said quietly, "Do we, though?"

"What?!" Shen Qingqiu turned sharply to face Shang Qinghua, incredulous. "Of course we do! He's the protagonist!"

"He's only the protagonist until the start of the third movie," Shang Qinghua pointed out. "At which point, may I remind you, he goes on a rampage that flattens the Shatterdome and leaves Shen Qingqiu to be buried in three different coffins."

That stopped Shen Qingqiu's fidgeting, and indeed all his movement for a long moment, staring out unseeing over the room.

Shang Qinghua felt a little bad for triggering such an intense emotion, but he needed to be sure Shen Qingqiu was in tune with the stakes of this current little crisis. "I'm just saying, bro," he said finally. "Either the narrative isn't a real force, in which case Luo Binghe may just be dead, or else it is one, in which case we may be better off it he were."

Shen Qingqiu spoke softly. "I don't want to hear another word out of your god damn mouth, Shang Qinghua."

Shang Qinghua reared back, startled by the uncommon profanity, and Shen Qingqiu swept his way out of the room. 

---

Shen Qingqiu was ready to claw out of his skin, with the way everyone in the Shatterdome was treating him. Walking on eggshells, treating him with kid gloves, 'out of consideration for his grief.' Grief! The only grief he felt was at the tragedy of him winding up in a setting with such idiots! How could they really believe that Luo Binghe could be dead?!

It helped maintain his sanity that there were at least a few people in the Shatterdome who agreed with him. Not Shang Qinghua -- nothing about that man was helpful in any way, shape or form -- but some of Luo Binghe's friends.

Huan Hua Shatterdome returned Ku Ye Zhe, mangled from its brutal battle with Tailspitter. It sat now in its once-accustomed place in the back corner of the hangar bay, where once it had served as a testing rig for its bigger, more modern cousins. Again taking up station there, now draped in sheets of mourning white, it served mostly now as a memorial shrine. Well, what else were they going to do with it? It wasn't like any other pilots could drive it! Only Luo Binghe --

So it made sense that they weren't assigning the Jaeger to anyone else. Shen Qingqiu was expecting that. But what he didn't expect was to find that the Jaeger was in the process of being repaired! Surely the engineering team wouldn't have spared the time and resources to maintain a Jaeger with no pilot?

Apparently they had. Or at least, one specific member of the engineering team had made it a priority. As Shen Qingqiu approached, he saw Ning Yingying back out from the space under Ku Ye Zhu's paneling. She shut off a blowtorch, pushed her goggles back on her head, and only then noticed Shen Qingqiu standing off to the side. "Oh -- Shen-shibo!" she exclaimed.

Shen Qingqiu gave her a measured nod. He pushed aside his own restlessness, his teeth-grinding frustration, in order to better play the role of the wise old mentor. "Ku Ye Zhu looks well," he told the girl. "You've done a fine job restoring it."

"Thank you." Ning Yingying smiled briefly at the praise, but it sputtered out quickly into her overall air of subdued melancholy. "I want -- I just want, whenever he comes home... I want him to know I've been keeping it ready for him. Because he will come home, he will! I know he will."

"Mm," was all Shen Qingqiu said. She was correct, of course -- but there was no way she could know that for sure. There was no way he should know that for sure, except that he knew all too much about this bullshit world. Without being able to explain all that... "You must miss him terribly," he said.

"Oh yes, Shibo. Every day!" she said emphatically. "Don't worry, you aren't alone."

Shen Qingqiu shot her a questioning look at that odd remark; they were talking about Binghe, what did this have to do with him? But that wasn't what he was really curious about. "I was wondering," he said cautiously. "If... well... before Binghe left... had you and he... become close?"

Ning Yingying nodded fiercely. "He was my friend!" she exclaimed. Then, she sighed. "But... he didn't always want to be close."

Shen Qingqiu gave a long, slow blink. "How... so?" he said. She was the primary love interest from the first movie, for Heaven's sake! Who would Luo Binghe possibly be close to, if not her?

"I mean A-Luo was always holding people at arm's length," Ning Yingying said sadly. "I always thought, maybe it was because he was living rough for a long time. Maybe he had trouble trusting people after that. He didn't really get close with anyone!" She glanced up at him. "Except you, Shibo."

Shen Qingqiu took that comment in, turned it around in his head for a little bit, and then decided to lock it away somewhere very secure in his mind. "What's that... contraption?" He nodded towards a muddled mess of black webbing hanging on the wall next.

Ning Yingying flushed slightly. "Oh, that's just the portable Drift rig," she said dismissively. "I know, I know it wouldn't really help because he doesn't have a compatible partner, but it's still -- we have a Drift rig without a Jaeger and a Jaeger without a Drift system -- it just fits, doesn't it?"

"Portable Drift Rig?" Shen Qingqiu was still stuck on the first half of her sentence. Since when did that exist? There was no such thing in the movies! Not in any of the movies, not even the bullshit handwave tech of the third movies! Shen Qingqiu would have remembered something like that!

"Well, it's only a prototype," Ning Yingying said casually, as though she wasn't turning his idea of this universe upside down. "It's really stripped-down, it can't process full-body proprioception at all, but it's also a lot easier to use. The engineers mostly use it to run next to other components to make sure neither energy field is going to interfere with the other." She scowled. "Hao-shixiong says the rig can't be used with Ku Ye Zhu because of that, that it would run a high risk of disrupting the pilot's connection with the Jaeger, but what does he know? We've never tried it!"

"I see," was all Shen Qingqiu was able to manage. He took another grip on himself, and filed this novel information away in his brain, though he couldn't immediately see a way it was going to be useful. It wasn't like there were any opportunities for him to experiment with the Drift, not unless he wanted to immediately blow his secret to his Drift partner. The only person in the Shatterdome it could possibly be safe to Drift with was Shang Qinghua, and the thought of being in his head? He'd rather shoot his own foot off.

Ning Yingying had let her chatter lapse, uncharacteristically, staring up at the repaired Jaeger with an expression of longing. Shen Qingqiu hesitated. "Yingying... you seem very certain that Binghe is alive," he said tentatively. "Do you and he have some kind of... connection...?"

She shook her head. "No, Shibo, it's not like that," she said. "It's just -- I've been helping with the repairs for Ku Ye Zhu. I'm the only one who's been on it from start to end. And -- and Luo Binghe can't be dead. This can't have killed him."

"The cockpit wasn't compromised?" Shen Qingqiu went still. "Huan Hua said..."

"It was compromised, but... not by a kaiju," Ning Yingying said. She pointed out across the bay to a huge, jagged scrap of metal that was now being slowly taken to pieces on the hangar floor. "That was what broke through the cockpit wall. No kaiju did that. And... all of the other marks, the little scratches and break, all were inflicted about the same time. This, the piece of metal that broke through the cockpit, that happened later."

"Later," Shen Qingqiu echoed. "I see."

"And if he didn't die in a fight with a kaiju, then..." Ning Yingying trailed off. Her face was pale, her hands twisting anxiously around the cold blowtorch. "Shen-shibo... please help A-Luo come home."

"I will, Yingying," he said quietly.

Once Ku Ye Zhu was returned to Cang Qiong, Shen Qingqiu found himself visiting it every day. Not like a grieving widow visiting a family shrine, for Heaven's sake; he just... liked to see it coming along, that's all. He liked the thought that when Binghe came back -- because he would come back -- he would see how carefully they had kept this space for him.

Today, as he picked his careful way across the docking bay, he saw someone there ahead of him, climbing up the scaffolding and leaning half-into the empty cockpit. Not Ning Yingying -- she was another regular visitor, in between her other duties in the motor pool -- but a young man, dressed in the grey and black of the pilot-candidate division. Who?

The tip of his crutches scraped against the metal step as he scaled the stairway, and the pilot-candidate jumped and whirled like a startled cat. Shen Qingqiu reared back in equal surprise -- he recognized the young man. Ming Fan, one of the top pilot-candidates in the program -- and one of Luo Binghe's early bullies, from his time in the Shatterdome before Shen Qingqiu's transmigration. What was he doing here?

"Shen-shibo!" Ming Fan scrambled down from where he had been half-climbing the Jaeger, his hand clutching something protectively against his torso. "I..."

Shen Qingqiu frowned at him. "What are you doing here?"

"P-paying respects to Pilot Luo," Ming Fan stuttered out.

"I don't recall that the two of you were ever friends," he said drily. Certainly not in the movies, and he didn't think now as well -- Luo Binghe had never made a lot of friends at the Shatterdome, no matter how he'd encouraged him.

"No, sir," Ming Fan said. "But... well... that kind of makes it even more important, doesn't it?"

Shen Qingqiu blinked. What? "Explain yourself," he ordered.

Ming Fan looked left and right, as though hoping for someone to come along and provide a distraction, before heaving a silent sigh. He opened his hand from where it had been curled against his chest, and displayed a small green pendant on a broken chain. It was plain -- ordinary -- but Shen Qingqiu recognized it as soon as he laid eyes on it, and a cold jolt went down his spine.

"This... this belongs to Pilot Luo," Ming Fan said. He swallowed. "Belonged."

Shen Qingqiu didn't bother to correct the past tense right now. "Then why do you have it?"

Ming Fan lowered his gaze, studying the corrugated metal of the catwalk at his feet. "On... on the day of the double event, Pilot Luo and I were... having a disagreement," he said, his voice barely audible. "A fight. We were having a fight, because he was in the pilot-candidate's suite and we... and I didn't think he should be there. So..."

"The day of the double event?" Shen Qingqiu interrupted. "But that was only a year ago!"

"Yes, sir," Ming Fan muttered.

"Do you mean to tell me that your torment of Binghe was still going on right up until he left the Shatterdome!?"

"No, sir!" Ming Fan protested. He wilted. "Well... not so much, by then. Once he proved that he was a pilot -- a real pilot -- we respected that! We left him alone after that..."

Shen Qingqiu clenched his teeth, trying to reign back on the temper which wanted to rage freely. A pilot -- a real pilot?! Luo Binghe was ten times the pilot Ming Fan had ever been, would ever be! Since when did second-rate make-weights like this have the gall to be passing judgment on real heroes?!

"So," he said, when he thought he could control his voice -- it only came out icy-cold. "You and your little friends ambushed him, attacked him and stole his personal property. Is that so?"

Ming Fan shuffled miserably. Good; let him squirm. "Yes, sir," he muttered. "I - I mean -- I wasn't trying to steal it! It got dropped on the floor, when the alarm went off and we all went for our stations. I found it on the floor, later."

"And why did you not return it to him on the same day you found it? Since you had learned to respect him, so you say," Shen Qingqiu sneered.

If Ming Fan wilted any further, his chin was going to end up in his navel. "I was wrong, Shibo," he mumbled. "I -- I was jealous. I had worked so hard, trying to become a pilot... he wasn't even a candidate, and he just waltzed in and -- ! But we -- I was wrong. I should have realized it sooner."

"Realized what exactly, Pilot Candidate Ming?" Shen Qingqiu's voice was icy-cold.

"Realized that..." Ming Fan swallowed. "...that everybody in the Shatterdome is important, and we're all in this against the kaiju together. That we should be fighting the kaiju, not each other. And that everyone has something to contribute."

"A pretty sentiment," Shen Qingqiu sneered. "It might even have done some good, if you'd come to it three years ago. As it is -- just like the rest of you, it comes too tepid and too late."

Ming Fan cringed. Chin in the belt buckle, just as anticipated.

Dressing down a teenage boy, however pathetic, did nothing to satisfy him. Shen Qingqiu took a step forward, echoing ominously through the metal catwalk, and then another. "That pendant is not yours, Pilot Candidate Ming," he said, and held out his hand.

"I know! That's why I was going to leave it..." Ming Fan looked up at Shen Qingqiu, very briefly, before his eyes dropped again. "...Yes, sir."

He stretched out his hand, careful not to touch Shen Qingqiu's skin with his own, and dropped the pendant into it. It was still warm and a little bit moist from being held in his sweaty palm; Shen Qingqiu's hand clenched white around it.

With another wretched look back at the silent Jaeger, Ming Fan backed away until he hit the railing of the stairway, then turned and fled without another word. Shen Qingqiu did not bother to watch him go; his gaze stayed fixed on the pendant, the sound of footsteps retreating across the catwalks in his ears.

So. He hadn't managed to protect Binghe from his bullies, after all; it had still gone on, out of his sight.

He hadn't managed to protect Binghe from having to fight the kaiju, either.

Nor -- he was increasingly certain -- from Huan Hua.

Had he ever done anything right by Binghe, at all?

A week of harassing and haranguing through the usual channels had yielded no better results. He'd even gone down to the PR section -- an area of the Shatterdome he normally avoided like a plague ward -- in order to try to drum up their support in taking Binghe's absence to the newspapers. That had ended in a screaming match with Qiu Qingye that Security had ultimately come in to break up, and no progress.

There was nothing to it but to go to Huan Hua and continue his harassment in person.

Honestly, the technology of the Proud Way world was truly all over the map -- their computers took up whole rooms and monitors were all CRT monstrosities, and yet they had super-advanced technologies like the Drift and antigravity. Every ten-year-old in Shen Yuan's world would have been slavering for something as small as a hoverboard, and yet here, in a setting where shelters were lit with gas lamps and contact lenses didn't exist, antigrav was so ever-present and casual that even more cars than not were flying ones!

(Without which, he had to grudgingly admit, most cars wouldn't be able to get around the wrecked and rugged terrain of the jianghu. For that matter, those tiny helicopters would never have been able to lift or carry the enormous jaegers without it -- so maybe that was why. Whatever.)

(All that, and they still didn't even have fucking cellphones; the best they could manage were pagers.)

(Whatever!)

Shang Qinghua (whose fault this all was anyway) refused to come along; Liu Qingge, however, caught him in the garage.

"I hope you don't think you're going to stop me," Shen Qingqiu said, a faint murderous overlay on his voice. Under normal circumstances he would never have spoken so to his friend and colleague; these were far from normal circumstance.

Liu Qingge shook his head. "I'm going with you," he said.

"What?" Shen Qingqiu stared at him, then scoffed. "Absurd. It's not like I'm going to fight a kaiju. Aren't you needed here?"

"I'm off rotation," Liu Qingge replied. "And you shouldn't go alone."

"Why not?"

Liu Qingge gave him a hard look. "If you're right and Huan Hua is holding Luo Binghe against his will, then they're willing to do underhanded deeds to get their way. What were you going to do if they decided to snatch you too?"

Shen Qingqiu tched. Like he would just let himself be snatched; he had his trusty taser, after all! "And if I'm wrong?" he demanded. "Then you'll have wasted your day off and then what?"

Liu Qingge shifted, his gaze slipping away but his jaw set.

"You don't think I'm wrong, do you?" The aggressive edge slipped away from Shen Qingqiu's voice as the realization sank in. Somebody believed him -- Liu Qingge believed him. "You think I'm right."

"This whole thing is shady as fuck," Liu Qingge said flatly. "Anyone can get unlucky in a fight. But the Luo Binghe I fought beside -- he wouldn't have gone down so easy."

Shen Qingqiu felt something settle, as though the universe had slipped back onto the right track. He wasn't alone in this. "Right," he said. "Let's go raise hell at Huan Hua, then."

Someone had to drive the truck, anyway. Since he didn't have an assistant.

Raising hell at Huan Hua turned out to mostly be a bust; they were refused entrance with exquisite politeness that never broke no matter how Shen Qingqiu cussed and ranted. Every possible entrance to the facility was met with another stonewall. Through it all, there was no trace of Luo Binghe anywhere.

"I'll come back tomorrow," Shen Qingqiu vowed under his breath as they limped back to the car to lick their metaphorical wounds. All right, he limped; Liu Qingge strode out as strong as ever. "And the next day, and the next. They can't blow me off forever. If Luo Binghe is in there --"

"He isn't," an unfamiliar voice said.

The words were quiet, almost at the edge of hearing. Shen Qingqiu swiveled his head around to find the source of it, his gaze finally settling on a young man lingering in the shadow of a nearby pillar.

He was wearing what looked like a Huan Hua issued flight suit, though the logo was covered up by the heavy jacket he'd pulled on over it. He had fine black hair that curled around his ears and nape, a high forehead and clear brown eyes. Shen Qingqiu didn't recognize him.

Liu Qingge, apparently, did. "Pilot Gongyi," he said. "What are you doing here? You're not on rotation."

"Neither are you," the young man -- Gongyi Xiao, apparently?! This was the first time Shen Qingqiu had seen him in person; he'd hardly recognized him from his onscreen appearances. Gongyi Xiao stepped forward, glanced from Shen Qingqiu to Liu Qingge to the car, and said, "There's a teahouse in Shangyuan City near the old dam. Meet me there in an hour."

He turned and melted back into the shadows of the parking garage.

---

They arrived at the teahouse a little more than an hour later -- less to keep with Gongyi Xiao's instructions and more because it took them that long to find the damn place. God, Shen Qingqiu missed Google Maps. (And GPS. And properly maintained street grids. And cities that ran properly and weren't broken-down post-apocalyptic ruins. And Starbucks.)

But the teahouse itself seemed to be in fairly good order; the atmosphere was subdued, and everyone kept their heads down as they scurried around the tables, but at least nobody was getting into knife fights over year-old rations here. As they entered the teahouse, a figure -- hooded, but with a familiar silhouette -- stood up and beckoned to them, then vanished into a back room. The two Cang Qiong pilots followed.

Gongyi Xiao slid the door closed behind them, then locked it; only then did he turn to face them and push his hood down. He met Shen Qingqiu's gaze squarely. "I heard you were looking for Luo Binghe," he said.

"Yes." Shen Qingqiu took a step forward, trying not to vibrate off his crutches. "Huan Hua Shatterdome insists they don't know, but -- "

Gongyi Xiao shook his head. "He's not at Huan Hua Shatterdome. I'm certain of that."

Shen Qingqiu's temper flared. "Don't you dare try to parrot the line that he's dead!"

"No, no," Gongyi Xiao agreed quickly. Then he hesitated. "Or at least -- he didn't die in a fight against the kaiju."

"Then..." Shen Qingqiu tried to gather his thoughts -- plotlines -- plot devices -- tropes and tricks -- but they all seemed to be escaping him, falling away through his fingers and leaving his thoughts muddled and unclear. The protagonist -- dead? It couldn't be. Luo Binghe...

"There's a lot to explain." Gongyi Xiao gestured towards the table and with some reluctance, Shen Qingqiu sat. Liu Qingge remained standing behind Shen Qingqiu's chair, arms crossed over his chest.

Gongyi Xiao looked... grave. "Senior Officer Shen... do you know anything about Huan Hua Shatterdome's private research facilities?"

Shen Qingqiu blinked. "You mean -- like the Sun and Moon Laboratory in the Bai Lu evacuation zone?"

"You know about that?!" Gongyi Xiao looked shocked.

"I, err, had heard rumors." Shen Qingqiu coughed. "Nothing substantiated, of course, until just now."

"I'm impressed that you'd even turned up rumors," Gongyi Xiao said respectfully. "The Old Fortress Master keeps that information very close to his chest. Only people who have directly worked with the projects know anything about it, and all of them are sworn to silence."

Liu Qingge leaned forward, breaking into the conversation for the first time. "Why are you telling us about it now?" he challenged.

Gongyi Xiao looked down at the table. His face was a study in conflict, but his voice, when he spoke at last, was low and resolute. "Because the things that go on in that laboratory are... terrible," he said. "The Old Fortress Master asked for volunteers, and I wanted to help, to do my part... but..."

Shen Qingqiu made a connection. "You were the primary test subject for the cloning project," he said.

"How did you --?!" Gongyi Xiao broke off, then sighed. "Yes. I was. A successful test subject." The word was laced with a deep, bitter loathing, reflected on his face.

Shen Qingqiu was almost afraid to ask: "What..." He cleared his throat and tried again. "What did they do to you?"

"It isn't what they did to me that was the problem." Gongyi Xiao's lips twisted in bitter remembrance. "The tests, the procedures... they were uncomfortable, unpleasant, but I could bear it. I wanted to -- the Commander said he wanted to produce the perfect pilot. That in case we were killed in battle, we could be revived and go back to the fight, without having to waste time on compatibility testing or training."

Liu Qingge shifted. "So what was the problem?" he demanded.

"Like I said," Gongyi Xiao said. His voice was echoingly hollow. "A successful test."

"They -- created a clone of you?" Shen Qingqiu surmised.

"Yes. I woke up after one of the procedures and it -- he -- was on the other bed." He looked up from the table for the first time, and his face was shockingly vulnerable, recounting this. "I... I don't think I was supposed to wake up yet. I looked over and saw him and -- and he looked back at me, and I... I knew. I knew him, and he knew me. He was me. And --"

Shen Qingqiu's thoughts were spinning in circles. Wait, was it possible for two people to have the same sets of memories, at the same time? Was the man they were talking to even the original Gongyi Xiao, or one of the clones? What did this mean?

Liu Qingge, in the meantime, stayed unwaveringly on-target. "What did they do to the clone?"

"They killed him." Gongyi Xiao's voice broke, and his eyes squeezed shut against the memory. "Just like that. A shot to the head, and they dumped the body in a lye bath."

Shen Qingqiu's spinning thoughts screeched to a dead halt, and he stared at the boy across from him in a speechless horror. Gongyi Xiao looked away, expression crumpling.

"I don't... I don't know how many others they did that to," he said. "I asked the Commander, and he said... he said there was no need for spares so long as I stayed in the pilot program and did a good job."

Gongyi Xiao took a deep breath, and laid his hands flat on the table. "I used to respect the Commander. But now, now I've seen what he really is. A monster. He doesn't care who he hurts in his experiments. And he's been doing this for years. Decades. I don't even know how many lives he's destroyed. And now he has Pilot Luo."

Liu Qingge stirred. "For years -- and how long have you known?" he said hotly. "Why haven't you gone public about this?!"

"I've tried! Nobody I've talked to will take the story!" Gongyi Xiao defended himself. "The news media all dance to Lao Zhousi's tune -- no one dares to say a word against him. He's made sure of that!"

The argument spun out around him, sounding like a droning buzz to his ears. A whole world was unfolding under their feet, a lifetime of perfidy and concealment under the Old Fortress Master's facade of saintliness. It didn't matter -- none of this mattered.

Shen Qingqiu slammed his fan on the table with a clack that echoed loudly enough to cut through the voices. Both other men looked at him, Gongyi Xiao with surprise, Liu Qingge warily; whatever they saw in his face was enough to smother the argument.

Shen Qingqiu spoke slowly, enunciating each word. "Where. Is. Binghe?"

Gongyi Xiao swallowed visibly. "I can give you the coordinates," he said. "The... the Commander has been going out every day for a week, and I've been tracking his flights. It's not all that big of a facility, there isn't a lot of staff, but the Commander --"

"Give us those coordinates," Liu Qingge said. "And we'll do the rest."

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

Liu Qingge and Shen Qingqiu returned to Cang Qiong, by all appearances frustrated and rebuffed by Huan Hua's stonewalling. Over the course of the next few days Shen Qingqiu continued to harangue the Huan Hua communications department, just for verisimilitude. It wasn't hard; the seething, angry, anxious frustration in the pit of his stomach needed somewhere to vent itself.

Qiu Qingye tried to protest his "stirring up unnecessary discord between Shatterdomes," but Shen Qingqiu ignored paid her no mind. There was no way Yue Qingyuan was going to take her side over his; there never had been, he was starting to realize, and it was an uncomfortable feeling.

On the third day Shen Qingqiu received the news he'd been waiting for; Huan Hua had dispatched its Jaegers west to Tian Yi in order to assist them in defending the walled town at Lu Shui Pass against the kaiju Agitator. It was an eighteen-hour trip; they'd be gone from Huan Hua territory for at least a day and a half.

Perfect.

Shen Qingqiu moved around his lab, throwing into a bag anything he thought might be useful for this raid. First aid supplies. The trusty taser. Smelling salts. A dark coat. Soft-soled shoes, the better for moving quietly in...

Shang Qinghua trailed in his wake, trying to coax him into abandoning this plan. Shen Qingqiu was ignoring him.

"Bro, c'mon, this is the perfect opportunity," Shang Qinghua said. "Weren't you the one who wanted to find the Sun and Moon Laboratories, to make use of their cloning facilities? For 'when' we die, you said? You said!"

"I'm not going there to make use of anything," Shen Qingqiu said. "I'm going there to flatten that fucking lab to the ground."

"Bro." Shang Qinghua spread his hands in appeal, which was ignored. "This is a bad idea, man. You're gonna kick off a civil war!"

"Huan Hua did that when they kidnapped my disciple!" Shen Qingqiu spat the words from between clenched teeth. "They started it, I'm merely finishing it."

"Easy for you to say! Shen-bro, if the Shatterdomes start fighting, absolutely everybody loses!" Shang Qinghua cried. "Remember how the kaiju always attack whenever it's least convenient for us? While the jaegers wreck each other, the kaiju are gonna rampage over civilian towns unopposed! Are you sure you want that on your conscience?"

"Conscience?!" Shen Qingqiu rounded on Shang Qinghua in a fury. "I don't want to hear you talk about conscience! Your cute little 'cloning' plotline turned into a fucking nightmare for poor Gongyi Xiao! They were shooting teenagers and dumping them in lye pits! That's on your conscience!"

"What the fuck, dude!" Shang Qinghua shouted. "I -- don't put that on me! I was just writing a story! For a movie! A. Fictional. Movie! Which you paid good fucking money, to go see people fight and bleed and die on the big screen! Did you get popcorn to go with that? How's your conscience looking, huh? Huh?!"

A shattered silence rang between them, for a long moment.

Shen Qingqiu turned back towards his workbench, hands clenching on his half-packed bag. "Look. It's like what you said earlier," he said finally, quietly. "Either the narrative force is real or it isn't. If it's real and it's working, then rescuing the Protagonist is the right move no matter what. If it's not real, or it's not working... then there's no reason to think that things will go wrong.

"We'll go in, get Binghe, get out. Once we're safely back at Cang Qiong, Lao Zhousi won't dare to follow up, not without admitting what he's done."

"And what if the narrative is real and we're on the losing side of it, bro?" Shang Qinghua returned bitterly. "You're the scum villain. I'm cannon fodder. Cang Qiong exists to get smashed. What if we're doomed to a shitty death anyway?"

Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath, lifted his chin. Threw a few more things into his bag, and secured it over his shoulder. "Then I'll spend the rest of my life doing what's right," he said.

"I hope so, bro," Shang Qinghua called out after him. "I really hope so."

When Shen Qingqiu reached the garage, he found Liu Qingge there and ready to go. That was expected. The addition of Yue Qingyuan and Tianlang-jun, however, was not.

"Qingqiu." Yue Qingyuan stood up as Shen Qingqiu entered, cinching the straps of his own knapsack. He essayed a bright, hopeful smile. "Shall we?"

"Qingyuan." With an effort, Shen Qingqiu kept his voice cool. "I hope you aren't entertaining some absolutely idiotic notion of accompanying us to Huan Hua."

"I'm afraid I must disappoint shidi, then." Yue Qingyuan's smile faded, and he stood straighter. "I am not entertaining it; I am committed to it."

Liu Qingge looked like he thought this was all a terrible idea, but that he at least admired his shixiong's dedication. Shen Qingqiu was not so moved. "Commander, you can't possibly go with us," he argued. "If it's just Qingge and myself and we were to be discovered -- we could still be explained away as rogue agents, acting on our own recognizance. But if you're involved, Cang Qiong will be implicated."

"I am well aware of that," Yue Qingyuan said steadily. He looked straight into Shen Qingqiu's eyes. They were almost of a height, actually; he had always thought of Yue Qingyuan as being taller, but it was only his aura of authority and Shen Qingqiu's habitual posture that made it so. Like this, they saw almost eye to eye. "But I won't let you take the fall. Not again."

Shen Qingqiu looked away, jaw tightening as he was forced to swallow this. "Is this guilt, then?" he said through gritted teeth. "You rebuked Qingye-shimei for hers, but you'll allow yourself to be ruled by yours -- is that it?"

"Qingqiu," Liu Qingge said, breaking into the tense standoff. He pushed off from where he had been leaning against the wall, and stepped forward to put a hand on Shen Qingqiu's shoulder. "Don't be so stubborn. He wants to come. We have a better chance of success with him on our side. You want to rescue your disciple -- isn't that the most important thing?"

Damn Liu Qingge for being so -- so ruthlessly pragmatic. And for being right. "Yes," Shen Qingqiu agreed grudgingly.

"Then he'll come," Liu Qingge said.

Shen Qingqiu glowered over at Tianlang-jun. "And you?" he said bitterly. "I hope you weren't thinking of inviting yourself along on this escapade. Because you're not. Invited."

"Oh no, not I," Tianlang-jun said. His lips twisted in a wry smile and he stepped to the side, revealing Zhuzhi-lang, sticking to his uncle's shadow as always. "But this one has made his intentions clear."

Zhuzhi-lang stepped forward, his pale eyes fixed on Shen Qingqiu in the by-now familiar stare. "Begging Officer Shen's indulgence," he said, his voice quiet and raspy.

"I think this is a fool's errand," Tianlang-jun went on. "Pilot Luo is almost certainly dead -- but I won't even try to talk you all out of it. And if you're going, Shen-shixiong, then I suppose my nephew is going as well. The heart wants what the heart wants, I suppose."

"What?" That made no sense. He looked from uncle to nephew. "Of course you aren't going. Where did you get such a foolish idea?"

"That's what I said," Tianlang-jun put in from the side, but nobody paid him any mind.

"We don't have time for all this," Liu Qingge said, exasperated. "Just get the keys and let's go."

Shen Qingqiu blinked. "I thought you had the keys, Liu-shidi?"

Zhuzhi-lang cleared his throat, the sound a near-hiss coming from his throat, and produced a small ring of keys. "I would be more than happy to assist Officer Shen in this matter," he said, and made no move to give up the keys.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Liu Qingge groaned. "Fine. You come along too. The whole Shatterdome can come, why not."

"I should hope not," Yue Qingyuan put in, serene again now that he was getting what he wanted. "There are only four seats in the van, after all."

Despite the various delays, they left Cang Qiong Shatterdome well under cover of darkness. It was still night when they arrived at the coordinates Gongyi Xiao had given them, on the edge of the Bai Lu Evacuation Zone.

The aircar plunged into a narrow valley thick with fog. The bottom of the valley was underwater, the source of the precipitation that beaded along the windshield and roiled in thick clumps outside the window. To the south lay a dark, shallow lake broken up with clumps of debris; to the east was a wide furrow gouged into the earth by some fallen titan. The west and north were steep, impenetrable hills.

The roads didn't take them all the way to their destination. It probably wouldn't have been a good idea to drive right up even if they had. Instead, they took their truck off-road -- struggling between the trunks of surviving trees and over the decaying ruins of trees that had not -- before finally parking on the far side of the final ridge. From there, they could see the building Gongyi Xiao had described -- a two-story building of glass and metal, the windows along the top floor cut into abstract shapes of circles and half-circles.

The Sun and Moon laboratory.

"Zhuzhi-lang, perhaps you should stay with the car." Shen Qingqiu spoke quietly in the half-dawn light. "We may need to leave in a hurry."

The thought had occurred to him that if Lao Zhousi really was the sort of person to go disappearing and experimenting on his pilots -- and it seemed he was -- then Zhuzhi-lang especially might be in danger. For a young man of demonic heritage, who knew what a sadistic bastard like the Old Fortress Master would make of him?

Zhuzhi-lang was imperturbed. "Pardon me, Officer Shen, but I will accompany you," he said.

"You should stay in the car," Liu Qingge said, giving Shen Qingqiu a pointed look.

"Absolutely not," Shen Qingqiu denied. "This is my mission, and that's my disciple. If he needs to be convinced to come with us --"

Yue Qingyuan made a half-aborted, frustrated gesture in the air between them. "Shidi, it will be dangerous," he said softly.

"I am aware," Shen Qingqiu said icily.

"It's a rough hike to get down there at all, and we don't know how many enemies we'll encounter," Liu Qingge objected. "You'd slow us down."

Shen Qingqi spoke through his teeth. "I will endeavor to keep up."

Maybe there was still some of the Original Goods' acid on his tongue, because neither of the others argued with him further.

It was sheer bravado, anyway. The last half-mile hike was a nightmare of jagged rocks and fallen branches, many of them slippery from the mist and shadowed by the darkness. Shen Qingqiu gritted his teeth and pushed himself to the limit of what he dared, and for the most part -- for the most part -- was able to cover it, a few slips and bruises aside. His body protested the abuse, but Shen Qingqiu was used to ignoring his body.

His companions waited for him to catch up, and said not a word of protest, not even Liu Qingge. Good.

The lab itself didn't look at all sinister from the outside. If anything it looked like a normal office building, two stories, big glass windows that now sat dark. According to Gongyi Xiao, much of the more intensive work was done in the sub-basement levels, but its main concealment simply lay in how normal and innocuous it looked.

At this time of day the research staff shouldn't be in yet, but there were guards. Gongyi Xiao had warned them of this, and they had come armed; a pistol each, and Liu Qingge also brought his sword. Shen Qingqiu had his taser, concealed in his sleeve, but it didn't seem like non-lethal options were the order of the day.

Liu Qingge and Yue Qingyuan kicked into action the moment they caught sight of the guards, splitting up to cover one each, taking them by surprise to give them no time to reach for their communicators. Yue Qingyuan's pistol made only quiet thumps past its suppressor; Liu Qingge's flashing steel sword made less sound than the bodies did hitting the floor.

Shen Qingqiu did not attempt to argue with them about fatalities. They were here to rescue Binghe; his companions were putting themselves at risk to help him, risking their own lives as well as the prospect of open war between Shatterdomes. Shen Qingqiu wasn't going to be the one to try to encumber them with more handicaps than they already had.

He still avoided looking at the faces of the bodies they passed.

The inside of the laboratory was clearly in night-mode, offices dark and hallways empty of personnel, but fluorescent lights still illuminated the corridors and the sound of some far-off equipment still hummed through the walls. Generators, probably; there was no way this place was still on the grid. An imposing set of doors gated off the rest of the compound, guarded by a now-empty security booth behind a glass wall.

"According to Gongyi Xiao's directions, the labs are most likely on the lower level," Shen Qingqiu said. "We'll need to get in through these doors somehow."

Liu Qingge eyed the doors speculatively. "I could try to break them down," he suggested.

"Too noisy, would take too long and I doubt you could do it even if you tried, Shidi," Shen Qingqiu shot this idea down.

There was a computer terminal at the security booth; Shen Qingqiu seated himself before it. The computer was old and clunky compared to the ones he was used to -- in his first life, anyway -- but after several tries he was able to get into the directory and bring up what seemed to be some kind of access control program.

"This will open all the doors, but -- damn!" Shen Qingqiu scowled at the screen, now blinking a bright red 'AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.' "And we have no way of knowing what that password is."

On a bit of a longshot, he tried entering administrator and hello. 'AUTHORIZATION REJECTED,' it blared back at him. Ah, fuck. '1/3 TRIES UNTIL SYSTEM LOCKOUT. CONTINUE?'

Unexpectedly, Yue Qingyuan came around the barrier to sit next to him. "Shidi, let me," he said.

Somewhat surprised, Shen Qingqiu made room for him. Yue Qingyuan took over the keyboard, then sat there for a long moment with his eyes closed and his hands on the keys. Just before Shen Qingqiu was going to demand an explanation, he moved, entering a long string of numbers and letters.

'AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED,' the system bleeped at them, and there was a loud buzz and a clank as the door unlocked.

"Yue-shixiong!" Shen Qingqiu was astonished. "How did you know Huan Hua's password?"

Yue Qingyuan looked both pleased -- a little smug, really -- and embarrassed. "Ah, well, that is...," he said. "I used to pilot with Chu Guangren..."

Liu Qingge made an enlightened hm noise. Shen Qingqiu was still at sea.

"He was one of Huan Hua's most senior pilots, do you remember?" Yue Qingyuan said. "Back when they were first really expanding their facilities. He had ground-level access to all of their systems. And since he never made it to retirement, I thought perhaps Huan Hua would not have bothered canceling his account."

Shen Qingqiu blinked. "Chu Guangren told you his password?"

Yue Qingyuan turned to look at him full on, and his expression was a little bit lost, a little pained. "In the Drift, shidi," he said. "Nothing gets held back -- you remember."

Right. Yue Qingyuan had gone through a whole string of co-pilots, Shen Qingqiu remembered that. He'd known that, he'd just never thought through all the implications of it before. Never thought about how many traces, how many bits and pieces of other people's lives, must still be floating around in Yue Qingyuan's head -- how many of those former partners were now dead.

"It was never the same as it was with you, Xiao-Jiu," Yue Qingyuan told him softly. "We moved so well together... do you remember? We still do."

Shen Qingqiu had no idea how to respond to that. Fortunately, Liu Qingge intervened, "We should get moving. We don't have all night."

"Yes... yes, of course." Yue Qingyuan drew back into himself, folding away that strange intensity. He drew himself up, all serious authority once more. "Finding Luo-shizhi takes priority."

The double doors led to a sloping ramp, which bottomed out in a kind of atrium -- skylights far ahead still reflected only blank blackness, but more hallways branched off in all four directions.

Yue Qingyuan let out a frustrated breath. "Too many options," he said. "We'll have to search the facility."

Liu Qingge gave a brusque nod. "Zhangmen-shixiong, you take the left, I'll go right."

"Split the party?" Shen Qingqiu frowned. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Liu-shidi is right that there is no time to waste," Yue Qingyaun replied. "Still, we must not let ourselves become isolated. Stay within earshot and call your location every time you move."

"Understood."

He strode to the first doorway, directly opposite the entrance, and looked inside. "Director's office," he said, leaning back with a grunt. "Nobody here. Shen Qingqiu, you stay in here while we search."

"What?" Shen Qingqiu said. "I can help search!"

"No time for that," Liu Qingge said. "We can move faster. You can help the most by staying put."

Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes. "If you insist. I suppose with the three of you --" He paused. Did a double take. Counted heads. "Wait a moment. Where's Zhuzhi-lang?"

The young man was nowhere to be seen.

"Fffu --" Liu Qingge bit back on a swear word. "Run off. Again."

Yue Qingyuan let out a sigh, covering his face with one hand.

"He never learns," Liu Qingge muttered angrily. "How many times do I have to tell him, driving his Jaeger into danger chasing freak impulses --"

"Shidi," Yue Qingyuan reprimanded him mildly. "I know Jing Wang She's piloting team makes... problems, for you... but let's keep it clean."

"I knew Jing Wang She had, um, something of a reputation for erratic behavior," Shen Qingqiu said tentatively. "But I always assumed it was Tianlang-jun driving it?"

"Yes, it would be natural to think that..." Yue Qingyuan said distantly.

"No." Liu Qingge gave a brief shake of his head. "Tianlang-jun is all talk. It's all him."

"Then why did we let him come on this mission?!" Shen Qingqiu said, outraged.

Yue Qingyuan looked at him. "Well, you wanted to bring him, so..."

Great.

"We don't have time for this," Liu Qingge said impatiently. "He'll catch up. Or he won't. We need to move."

And then, patience apparently exhausted, he strode off down the fluoruescent-lit hallway off to the right. Yue Qingyuan gave Shen Qingqiu an apologetic smile, and split off to the left.

What was he even supposed to do here?! The Director's Office didn't even have a computer he could fool around on! There were just shelves and shelves of boxes, groaning to bursting with papers!

He dropped down onto the Director's station chair. It was annoyingly comfortable, and an ease to his overstrained legs. The insistent throbbing in the left dulled to the thump of a heartbeat, the pain in the right from the feeling of being stabbed with a railroad spike to maybe a mechanical pencil.

In a fit of pique, Shen Qingqiu started rolling the station chair around the room. He wasn't going to just sit and wait for everyone else to do the quest for him!

Somewhat to his surprise, on his second lap around the desk, something caught his eye -- a flash of color against the sea of paper. The angle was odd; it seemed to be stuck to the underside of one of the shelves, impossible to see from standing height.

That wasn't what riveted his attention, though. Instead, it was the fact that the outside of the paper envelope was stamped with the logo of the Proud Way franchise. Not the emblem of the Huan Hua Shatterdome, nor even that of the Jaeger Wardens as a whole -- this was very specifically the logo for the movie franchise, the one that adorned hats and t-shirts and water bottles and keychains back in his old world. There were some similarities -- both shared a similar base design of two crossed swords with a flowered vine twining between them -- but this logo specifically had the stylized visage of a Jaeger helmet drawn around the outside.

What in the world...?

Shen Qingqiu moved over to pick it up, and his disquiet only grew. This folder -- it looked familiar. And it shouldn't have. But the logo, the font, even the pattern of faded discoloration along the edge -- this. This was the design for the Proud Way official art book. Shen Qingqiu should know; he owned it. It had been a limited-edition, exclusive bonus item for people who pre-ordered the platinum boxset of the first two Proud Way movies. Full of extra lore, easter eggs and tantalizing hints of the long-awaited sequel -- it had been the jewel of his collection!

It wasn't the art book; to his temporary relief, when he opened the folder it was another perfectly ordinary set of papers, reams and reams of forms and printouts and charts and graphs. Shen Qingqiu flipped rapidly through them, the uneasiness not leaving him, and paused on the last page.

There it was. Again. He knew this handwriting, this style of margin, the very color of the paper. This page, this exact page had featured in the artbook. Or at least, part of it had -- a torn-off scrap of paper, serving as a filler illustration between chapters, which spoke in bombastic terms about the pilots of the Jaeger corps: the "proud immortal warriors" that defended the world against the alien invaders. Except that this page was not a ripped excerpt, but the full abstract in context.

In the final conclusion of his grand, ambitious endeavors, the Old Fortress Master had written:

"What once had been seen as a calamity from Heaven can instead be conceptualized as a kind of divine broom, which sweeps away the accumulated detritus of history in order to leave a clear road for the future. And it is upon this road that we shall set out a new kind of man: improved, perfected, strengthened with the blood righteously taken from those monsters that will destroy us; the strength of one perfect warrior, multiplied a thousandfold! And those who take up this task, who walk on the proud immortal warrior's way, will lead the way into humanity's bright future..."

On The Proud Immortal Warrior's Way? That had been leaked on reddit as the production title for the third Proud Way movie. Before the strike, before the hiatus, before all the bullshittery and shenanigans that led to the steaming turd that was Proud Immortal Demon Way --

Was Lao Zhousi another transmigrator?

No. Not possible. He would have noticed, dammit! He'd figured out Shang Qinghua's status as a transmigrator within a few days after arriving here! There was no way that a third transmigrator could have gone unnoticed for so long! And even if that weren't the case, this behavior made no sense. Any transmigrator ought to know better than to interfere with the trajectory of the Protagonist; doing otherwise was just digging your own grave!

But if Lao Zhousi wasn't a transmigrator... then how did he know about the plans for the third movie?

Or maybe the question should have been: did the third movie know about Lao Zhousi's plans? Was this where the series had been headed all along, before Shang Qinghua's incompetence derailed the plot?

"I found him!" Liu Qingge's voice cut through the fast-building atmosphere of dread, and Shen Qingqiu was on his feet in a heartbeat. He shoved the dossier into his lapel, distracted, as he grabbed for his crutches and double-timed it out the door.

Every door along the hallway was open, some showing signs of force. Not the one Liu Qingge's voice had come from; that one had opened easily from the outside. It was meant to keep people in, not out. Shen Qingqiu barged through the door, and stumbled to a dead halt as he was greeted by the sight within.

They'd found Luo Binghe. And Shen Qingqiu abruptly realized that he was not ready for this -- not at all.

He'd thought he had a strong stomach for anything medical related. He'd spent most of his first life in and out of hospitals; the human body had no mystique left for him. He knew what people's insides looked like. He'd seen pictures, in helpful diagnostic snapshots or instructional videos -- both other people's insides, and his own.

He wasn't ready for this, oh, god, he wasn't ready.

It was all so deliberate. That was the worst part. Shen Qingqiu had known doctors and techs and surgeons and all of them took people apart on a daily basis, ruthlessly pragmatic, but the intention was always good. To help people, even if you had to cut them open to get at where the problem was, it was never done without care, without compassion.

This was -- ugly, and agonizing, and horrible, and it was on purpose.

He could barely recognize his little student under the mess of surgical sites that was on that bed. Half of his curly, fluffy hair had been cut away, not for hygiene, just to get at him. There were needles and tubes where needles and tubes shouldn't be and no sutures, no lidocaine patches, no supportive IV drips, no bandages at all. Just open wounds and oozing sores and skin that was already starting to turn black and shrivel away from the livid flesh underneath.

He hadn't said anything, or moved -- but whatever was on his face, it was enough to spur Liu Qingge and Yue Qingqyuan into action. "Shixiong, guard the door," Liu Qingge rapped out, and forcefully turned Shen Qingqiu around in his spot to face the entryway. "The Commander and I... we'll extract Luo Binghe."

Right, Shen Qingqiu thought numbly, and he turned to face the corridor with unseeing eyes. Guard the door. He could do that. There was no sign of Zhuzhi-lang. That was probably something to be worried about? Though the junior pilot might well have announced his departure and Shen Qingqiu simply hadn't heard.

He briefly entertained the thought that Zhuzhi-lang had betrayed them, then discarded it. Impossible for a Jaeger pilot to be an undetected mole or double agent -- the very reason Shen Qingqiu had to avoid the Drift. On the other hand, it was possible he had gotten cold feet and decided to make a break for it. If that was the case, Shen Qingqiu only hoped he made it home safely.

Finally his breathing was evening out, his heart rate was returning to something normal, and the horrible twisting sickness in his gut was subsiding. He was beginning to feel rather silly about it, after all, when Liu Qingge behind him said "All right. He's ready -- let's go."

Shen Qingqiu turned around. All of the needles and tubes had been detached, thrown on the ground like beheaded snakes, and a spare lab coat had been thrown over Luo Binghe's torso, hiding the most distressing parts. But Luo Binghe hadn't stirred once throughout the entire process; his eyes were closed and his breathing barely perceptible. He wouldn't wake, let alone walk to freedom.

"I'll carry him," Yue Qingyuan declared. He slid his firearm back into its holster, pushed back his sleeves. "Liu-shidi, I'll have to trouble you to guard our escape."

"Don't be ridiculous," Shen Qingqiu scoffed, regaining some of his equilibrium as he stepped forward. "You both need to have your hands unencumbered!"

"You can't carry him," Liu Qingge pointed out bluntly, his eyes cutting once again to Shen Qingqiu's crutches. Yue Qingyuan flinched, as he always did when attention was called to Shen Qingqiu's old injuries. Now, Shen Qingqiu supposed, he knew why.

But this was no time to rehash old drama. "Who said anything about carrying him?" Shen Qingqiu asked.

The cot looked like a repurposed hospital gurney, meant for easy transport from room to room. Shen Qingqiu hunted around the legs of the gurney. There ought to be -- ah! There it was. He found the lever to lower the wheels and snap the locks, and gave the bed a push. With a metallic rattle, it rolled a few inches across the linoleum floor. "There. Now let's go!"

The four of them retreated swiftly through the laboratory halls, retracing the route they'd come in; the scrape and rattle of the gurney made stealth a lost cause now, if it hadn't been before. Shen Qingqiu felt horribly conspicuous, horribly vulnerable, knowing they might have to fight while protecting Luo Binghe at once, but not seeing any way around it.

"There's the main lobby," Shen Qingqiu said as they turned the last corner and saw light filtering down from the skylight above. "From here we can cut through --"

No sooner had they set foot into the wide room then the sudden buzzing crackle of a nearby energy field burst into life. Shen Qingqiu felt something grab at his feet, drag at his shins as though wading through water; he stumbled to a halt and had to grab the edge of the gurney to avoid planting on his face. The gurney also screeched to a stop as though mired in thick mud. Beside him, Liu Qingge swore profusely as he apparently ran into the same trouble, and Yue Qingyuan ground to a sudden halt as well.

"It's a fucking tanglefield!" Liu Qingge spat, which -- was he supposed to know what that meant? More of this setting's schizo tech! Was it some variation of the anti-grav technology, then -- locally increasing gravity instead of --

Still fighting for his balance, Shen Qingqiu was not prepared to fight against the sudden yank against his hand. He let out an embarrassing yelp and this time, lost the battle with balance; his knees hit the floor with a painful crack and his left thigh went entirely numb. The pistol that Liu Qingge had pressed on him tore its way out of the holster and slammed against the ceiling as though drawn up there by a wire. A second pistol joined it from behind him, and then both a pistol and a sword he recognized as Liu Qingge's. Also a smaller clattering of objects he briefly recognized as a set of lockpicks, a large heavy key, and a handful of small change.

"A countermagnetic field?" Yue Qingyuan said helplessly. "I've heard of such security measures in passing, but I've never --"

"It didn't activate when we came through earlier," Shen Qingqiu said, knowing it was an obvious thing to point out, but not sure what else to say. "Does... it sense Luo Binghe somehow? Or is there someone --"

He broke off at the sound of footsteps in the hall behind them. Someone else here, his thought finished for him.

He recognized the man who appeared in the doorway, although he'd never seen him below the shoulders before. Lao Zhousi, the Old Fortress Master, Commander of the Huan Hua Shatterdome and senior patron of the Jaeger Wardens.

"Ah, Number Seven," Lao Zhousi drawled as he stepped into the room, moving at a leisurely pace. The energy field that tangled all their legs didn't seem to affect him at all. "You haven't changed at all, have you? Still appointing yourself a babysitter for stray children. I really thought you had grown out of this, you know, and made something better of yourself than playing nanny."

Yue Qingyuan was silent. Frozen in place, as though the energy field had paralyzed him completely. Why? Shen Qingqiu glanced at him, then pushed himself back to his feet, taking the lead when it didn't seem like Yue Qingyuan was going to answer. "Let us pass," he demanded. "We're taking Luo Binghe, and we're leaving."

Lao Zhousi chuckled. "No, Little Nine, you are not," he said. "What you have there is my intellectual property. I've invested too much time and effort in that experiment now to let it out of my sight."

"He is a pilot of Cang Qiong!" Liu Qingge tried to lunge forward, but was unable to free his feet from the energy field. He was able to catch himself -- barely -- and regain his balance, remaining poised on a trigger point. "He's not yours to command!"

"Ah, Pilot Liu. I can see how you might think that," Lao Zhousi said nonchalantly. "But you see, only human beings can be pilots. And that one is nothing of the kind."

"What... what are you talking about?" Yue Qingyuan spoke up at last. His voice was unsteady -- it sounded twenty years younger, as though his voice belonged to a teenager, in the throes of breaking.

"Didn't you know? It may look like a human boy, but it's not. It's an abomination -- human DNA tainted by the poison of the kaiju. Which makes it the perfect vector for testing our new weapons against the kaiju. Don't you care about defeating the kaiju, boy?" Lao Zhousi turned back to Shen Qingqiu. "You won't get a better test subject than this."

Shen Qingqiu gritted his teeth. "Human or not, Luo Binghe is a person. You had no right to do this to him!"

Lao Zhousi's feathery eyebrows flew up; for a moment he looked genuinely taken aback. Then he chuckled. "Backtalk, Little Nine? I really thought I'd taught you better than this. But I guess after all this time, you still haven't learned your lesson."

The old man's voice was heavy and dark, nearly dripping with implication. It would probably be very effective if Shen Qingqiu had any notion at all what he was supposedly implying. Was he supposed to be intimidated by this? Or -- even more ludicrous -- convinced?

"You of all people should know that a jaeger pilot's duty is whatever the war demands of them," Lao Zhousi went on. "A pilot is ready to fight, to die, in a thuggish brawl against the monster of the week; how can they be ready to do anything less to advance the cause of science? To find the kaiju's weak spot, to master their secrets for the benefit of mankind? I ask nothing of the boy that he didn't sign up for when he became a pilot!"

"That's insane!" Liu Qingge denied furiously. Shen Qingqiu was reminded that Liu Qingge was section leader of the pilot program at Cang Qiong; while he didn't always agree with his management practices, he'd never doubted for a day that Liu Qingge would ask nothing of his pilots that he wasn't willing to do himself. "We never consented to any such thing!"

"What of that?" Lao Zhousi scoffed. His benevolent smile had slowly soured, the more Shen Qingqiu failed to respond to any of his provocations. He leveled a nasty glare over at Yue Qingyuan. " 'Consent' is a children's fancy! Only a weakling would let petty things like that stand in their way. All that matters is results. And I've gotten them. I've gotten results no one else could ever dream of!"

"You're a madman," Shen Qingqiu said, the words coming out surprisingly calm, almost conversational. "Lao Zhousi, you've gone too far!"

Once again, Lao Zhousi seemed taken aback by Shen Qingqiu's rejection. "Oh? That's a surprise to hear from you, Little Nine," he said. "Surely we've already settled this: what is the worth of one young man against the sake of the entire world? Don't tell me you've changed your mind after coming this far."

Shen Qingqiu opened his mouth, then closed it; not so much because he was moved by the old man's argument as because he really didn't get why Lao Zhousi seemed so sure that this would move him. What the hell had happened between the Old Castle Master and the Original Goods?

"You... we... you won't get away with this," Yue Qingyuan said, but his voice wavered weakly.

"Who's going to stop me? You?" The Old Fortress Master laughed, a cruel sound. "Surely you wouldn't be so foolish as to risk your command, Number Seven. Not after you went to so much trouble to get it. Wasn't there something you wanted from that? Something you were willing to move heaven and earth to secure?"

Yue Qingyuan flinched, and sent an agonized look over at Shen Qingqiu, but he made no further protest.

Lao Zhousi began to pace back and forth before them, short jerky steps and sharp turns. "It's my laboratories that lead the way in new science, in new discoveries to fight back the kaiju menace. My Jaegers that defend the world against the invaders! My investments that pay for the Jaeger Wardens to continue! How dare you seek to stand against me?" He wheeled around to face them, his expression dark as thunder, and roared: "How dare any man who calls himself righteous?! I am the greater good!"

"Unfortunately for you," Shen Qingqiu said, "I'm the scum villain."

Shen Qingqiu raised his left hand, which had been concealed by the sleeve, and hit the button on the taser. The cables shot out swiftly with a loud pop and landed a solid hit on Lao Zhousi's chest. The old man let out a loud grunt as the charge activated, his arms stiffening at an angle and his neck tipping back as electricity coursed through him. His hands clenched into fists, and Shen Qingqiu stumbled forward as the pressure against his shins and feet abruptly vanished. The weapons sticking to the ceiling fell with a rattle and a clatter, and Liu Qingge cursed.

Shen Qingqiu staggered a step to the side and pulled on the stun gun's cables with a swift yank. But the electric charge had already left its mark. The old man was on the ground, face up and staring at the ceiling, eyes wide with surprise. His chest and throat worked for several more seconds; flecks of foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. Then, as the seconds ticked by, the convulsive movements stopped.

Shen Qingqiu started to step forward, to check his pulse, but Liu Qingge stepped swiftly in his path. "Stay back," he said curtly, and Shen Qingqiu perforce hung back, clinging to the side of the gurney for support.

Liu Qingge stepped cautiously forward, prodded Lao Zhousi in the side with the toe of his boot. After a moment, he knelt down and reached for the old man's wrist, placing two fingers on to take a pulse. A moment later he shook his head, dropped the arm, and came to his feet again.

"Is he..." Shen Qingqiu's mouth was dry.

He already knew the answer before Liu Qingge's curt, "Dead."

Dead.

Fuck.

Shen Qingqiu had killed him. He hadn't meant to, exactly, but he'd known it was a possibility. It was always a possibility, with stun guns -- especially if the target was elderly, or frail.

He'd just killed the Commander of the Huan Hua Shatterdome, the most respected man of the Jaeger Warden Program, the Old Castle Master. Shen Qingqiu -- wasn't sure what to feel about that. But glancing over at Luo Binghe, still three-quarters dead on the gurney, it wasn't exactly remorse.

"We can't stay here," Shen Qingqiu croaked. "We -- we have to get moving."

"Officer Shen is correct," a familiar voice said. Zhuzhi-lang appeared from the corridor ahead, facing them over the Old Fortress Master's body, and beckoned them urgently onward. "We must leave this facility immediately."

"Where the fuck were you all this time?" Liu Qingge demanded, although he was already moving. "The old goat had us pinned down here!"

"Officer Shen seemed to have him handled," the younger man said, sounding unruffled. He slotted himself back into their party, taking the fourth corner of the gurney and ushering them all down the corridor towards the exit. "And I was investigating the generators. Which is why we need to leave in less than a thousand seconds."

"Why, what happens in a thousand seconds?" Shen Qingqiu asked weakly. He let the others take command of the gurney, and concentrated on trying to keep up; it was harder with only one crutch, but he was determined not to let himself fall behind.

"Nine hundred and fifty, now," Zhuzhi-lang said with a glance at his wrist, "and that is when the first of the generators will explode."

"What?!"

There had been no time to stop for explanations, not that Zhuzhi-lang seemed inclined to give any; all he would say was that there was more than Pilot Gongyi knew down in those lower levels. He refused to say any more, and this wasn't the place for an interrogation. Everything else was going to have to wait until they made it back to the Shatterdome.

They made it to the far side of the ridge before the explosion shook the earth; a cloud of smoke tinted the rising sun an eerie orange, but nothing fell on their heads. They reached the van unhindered, loaded Luo Binghe into the back, and sped away; nothing blocked them, and nothing was chasing them.

There'd been just room for the gurney in the back, but no room for anyone to stay with Luo Binghe; that, too, would just have to wait on their return. Liu Qingge was fully focused on driving, Zhuzhi-lang riding shotgun beside him. Shen Qingqiu shared a sickly silence in the back of the cab with Yue Qingyuan, who hadn't spoken since they'd left the laboratory.

Shen Qingqiu hardly dared to disturb him, but there was a topic he couldn't leave. "You should see these," he said, pulling the pilfered dossier out of his lapels, now crumpled and a little sweat-stained from their hectic flight.

He tossed it over to Yue Qingyuan, the emblem blazing across the cover. "Documents from Lao Zhousi's private office, detailing his experiments with cloning and... with human augmentation. He was trying to... build some kind of army, I guess. It's all in here."

Yue Qingyuan looked down at the paper in his lap, then slowly back up again to Shen Qingqiu. But when he spoke at last, he said:

"How did you do it?"

"Do what? Find the dossier?" Shen Qingqiu shook his head. "It was just in his office, not exactly in plain sight, but not locked up, either. I guess he was counting on the security --"

"Not that," Yue Qingyuan interrupted. "How did you stay so calm? Facing him again, after all this time... I thought I could stand up to him. I thought I could be strong. But as soon as I saw his face again, it was just like... like I was standing on the carpet in his office again, and I couldn't say anything. I couldn't do anything. I was just... fifteen again, and helpless. How did you -- how did you find the strength?"

Shen Qingqiu looked away, uncomfortable. It was clear -- both from Lao Zhousi's creepy gloating and from what he'd read of the files -- that the Old Fortress Master had a stranglehold on both Yue Qi and Shen Jiu's psyche. He'd been their mentor, their master, dispenser of life and death. His word had launched both of their piloting careers, and for Shen Jiu, had drowned it.

"I --" Shen Qingqiu said, then broke off. He looked out the window, at the roof of the truck, at anything except Yue Qingyuan's hollowed-out expression. Aargh, this was excruciating! Yue Qingyuan didn't know, couldn't know, that the broken boy he'd once known had been wasn't the man who'd pulled the trigger on Lao Zhousi at all. The old man had been pushing Shen Jiu's buttons left and right, but they weren't his buttons, so how could he be credited with any kind of inner strength?

"I didn't want to let him hurt anyone else," Shen Qingqiu said at last. He wanted to cringe as soon as the words left his mouth. Fuck, that was cheesy! And it sounded so much better than the real motivation: that he'd panicked, and hadn't known what else to do.

"He won't," Yue Qingyuan said, suddenly fierce. Shen Qingqiu met his eyes, and was surprised by the fire burning in them all of a sudden. "No one will hurt us again. I'll make sure of it, if I have to stand against the whole world to do it."

Shen Qingqiu looked away. That's what I was afraid of.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

Shen Qingqiu ran through the hallways of the Sun and Moon Laboratories. They'd lost the gurney somewhere, and his crutches, so he had to carry Luo Binghe in his arms. Surprisingly, he could still walk and run even without them, although his limbs felt like he was running through mud.

He turned into the atrium with the skylight, except this time it contained the furniture and equipment from his own lab, set against Huan Hua's crest on the walls. Once again a figure stood in their way, barring Luo Binghe from safety. Except that this time, the one barring their way to freedom was Shen Qingqiu himself.

"What is the life of one young boy against the fate of the entire world?" Shen Qingqiu asked. "What do any of our wants or needs matter, against the greatest good?"

Shen Qingqiu raised the taser and shot himself, and he fell to the ground convulsing. But as Shen Qingqiu drew nearer, his own eyes opened and looked straight back at him. "After all," Shen Qingqiu said, over the old man's death rattle. "That's how it was for me. Why should he deserve better?"

And then Luo Binghe was getting up, standing up from the table with his skin peeling back, his eyes black as old wells, streaming tears of electric blue. He strode forward and with every step he seemed to grow; he was making no progress forward but stretching up, up into the sky, until he was as tall as a skyscraper. Shen Qingqiu could see him towering over the roofs of the Shatterdome, in weird wavering black-and-white, saw him lift an arm in slow-motion and bring it down with a dull-drawn out roar.

He could hear the clicking of the film, the cameras all running. He'd seen this one before; he knew this one.

Shots of destruction, panic and screaming, people running every which way as fires sprang up and the roofs came down. Zoom in. Wei Qingwei ushering his people out of the docking bay -- Ning Yingying's face pale and frozen like a snapshot. But the melting metal raining down from the roof met the burning equipment on the hangar bay floor, and the whole scene was engulfed in flames.

Cut away. Pan in on the War Room. Walls shaking, monitors tilting and falling down. Yue Qingyuan staying at his post until the end, as the lights went out and the ceiling collapsed, as the desks and chairs dissolved into splinters, a captain going down with his ship.

Cut away. Dissolve to the laboratory. A puddle on the floor electrified by live wires, sparking and deadly, spreading towards the corner, where a shaking Shang Qinghua has been backed with no escape.

Cut away. Interior, a hallway at Cang Qiong. One wall had collapsed, letting the rain blow in and soak the floor; a ceiling beam had come down. He saw himself, again -- he saw Shen Qingqiu trapped under that beam, his legs paralyzed and unmoving. Other Shatterdome personnel ran through the hallway, screaming, fleeing; not one of them stopped or turned aside to help him.

The roof cut away and Binghe was there, his face transformed into a monstrosity. He leaned down towards the trapped Shen Qingqiu, examining him closely. He was both watching it happen from a point in the audience and he was there, trapped under the beam, looking up at Luo Binghe looming overhead --

Luo Binghe reached down one monstrous hand, closed it around his torso, and ripped him away, leaving bloody stumps to splash blood on the trapped legs still left behind.

Shen Qingqiu woke abruptly, jerking back to awareness to the nagging pain of a crick in his neck, an aching in his back -- in all his bones, through his legs to the floor. He groaned and sat up, scrubbing his face with his hands; rubbing away the gunk of his impromptu trauma nap, wishing he could rub the black fog of exhaustion away as easily.

What time was it? He didn't have a clock handy, and there were no windows in this protected inner room -- even if there were, they wouldn't have told him much. By the time they made it back to the Shatterdome from their excursion to the Bai Lu Evacuation Zone, the sun had vanished behind a steadily mounting black bank of thunderclouds that didn't look like they were going to clear in a hurry.

Whatever doubts or weaknesses Yue Qingyuan had been experiencing on the ride back, there were none in his bearing as he took command of the Shatterdome on his return, ordering people left and right to start making preparations for whatever fallout was to come. He'd ordered Wei Qingwei to ensure that all of their machines were in ready condition; Guo Qingchen to bring the base security to alert status, and allow no one in without authorization; and Qiu Qingye to prepare a press statement denouncing the Huan Hua Commander for perfidy and corruption.

This last had been protested, even when Yue Qingyuan delivered the damning dossier right into her hands. "Commander, you can't possibly be thinking of starting hostilities with Huan Hua Shatterdome! It's madness!" Qiu Qingye had said.

"Too late for that," Yue Qingyuan said grimly. "Hostilities are already well under way, whoever instigated them; our best course now is to put our own side of the matter out there."

"Sir! This is a disaster!" she wailed. "Huan Hua commands far greater respect in the public eye than we do! There is no way a conflict between us and them can turn out well for us!"

"If you read the documents Shen Qingqiu procured for us, I think you will find much in there to change the public opinion of Huan Hua."

Shen Qingqiu's name, unfortunately, provoked the usual reaction in Qiu Qingye. "I warned you not to listen to that little snake! This is his fault, isn't it? He's been trying to stir up trouble for us and now he's succeeded! If you'd listened to me and gotten rid of him years ago -- "

Yue Qingyuan cut off her budding rant with a glare that sliced through anything she might have to say. "Shimei," he said, his voice glacier-cold. "My office. Now."

Shen Qingqiu didn't know what else had passed between them once they'd disappeared behind the barrier of the Commander's office. But when Qiu Qingye had emerged she'd been ghost-white and shaken, and hurried back to her own domain without looking anyone else in the eye.

Everyone else had gone about their new assignments, except for Shen Qingqiu. He'd initially made to follow Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge to the War Room in order to plan for a possible counterattack. Yue Qingyuan had -- gently -- set him back from that, suggesting that his knowledge of kaiju would not be needed here, and that he should follow his wounded disciple to the medical bay instead.

And so he had. And apparently, the tumultuous events of the day had caught up with him, and he'd passed out at Luo Binghe's bedside.

Luo Binghe's room little bubble of peace and quiet in a Shatterdome gone hectic with preparations. The patient ward was cocooned with plastic sheets and sanitation talismans, Mu Qingfang's best attempt to contain any unknown contaminants that might have come in with Luo Binghe's blood.

The young pilot's condition had puzzled Mu Qingfang alarmingly, though the news that he had been the target of the Old Fortress Master's vicious experimentation had been received with a grim lack of surprise. He'd ordered Luo Binghe quarantined -- it had taken all of Shen Qingqiu's best persuasion to be allowed in to see him, arguing that if there was any contagion in play, he'd already been exposed.

Truthfully, the doctor had good cause for alarm. Luo Binghe had been in poor condition when he'd arrived and had not improved since then, despite all of the IVs and medication they attempted to get into him. The incision sites where Huan Hua had injected their poisons were the center of a black, festering sore that spread across half his torso, obscuring the neat blue ink lines traced across his skin denoting the boundaries of each sector.

The center of the wounds were disturbingly sunken, but there was no visible glimpse of viscera. There was unsettlingly little blood at all, in fact -- instead, bright glints of blue seethed at the bottom of the deepest cracks. A dark grey slime oozed from the injuries, pooling on the sheets of the hospital bed despite all the towels that had been sacrificed in an attempt to wipe them up. The infirmary nurse who had been performing this chore had been grateful to give their post over to Shen Qingqiu and flee back through the plastic curtain barrier.

Right now the dark corruption only extended as far as his torso, but the rest of him did not look so good either; his skin was grey with an underlying cold tinge, like a drowning victim, and veins of darker color snaked through the veins of his neck and upper arms. Shen Qingqiu picked up his wrist and felt his pulse; it thundered through his veins like it would burst free in a spray, but the fluid below the skin was cold.

Luo Binghe's eyes were closed, sweat on his brow. Shen Qingqiu picked up one of the surviving towels and wiped it away.

"Binghe? Binghe, can you hear me?" Shen Qingqiu said softly, as he had done many times since his arrival yesterday. To no avail. Luo Binghe's tight expression of anguish did not change, and he did not wake.

When the alarm sounded throughout the Shatterdome, warning of hostile approach and signalling all hands to their stations, it was almost a relief.

All Shatterdome personnel were at their stations, which meant Shang Qinghua was too, not that there was fuck all he could do about an invasion of other Jaegers from an enemy Shatterdome. There wasn't even supposed to be such a thing as an enemy Shatterdome.

It was shaping up to be a shit day to be outdoors, too. The cloudbank that had followed the Commander in yesterday had spread from horizon to horizon, blocking out the sun. No rain was falling yet, but it was only a matter of time, and those clouds sparked with ominous flashes of white-blue lightning.

Shang Qinghua checked his meteoric readings. Then his tectonic readings. Yeah, there was definitely lightning striking not too far off; it was sending shudders through the earth perceptible even at this distance. "I don't like the way things are shaping up, bro," he remarked to Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Qingqiu gave him an are-you-stupid look. "Obviously?!" he said, incredulous.

Shang Qinghua returned the look with a scowl. "No, I mean, like, seismically!" he said. "We aren't exactly built on steady ground here to begin with; a storm of this magnitude would be bad enough without Jaegers mixing in."

Back in the day when Cang Qiong had been a cultivation sect, before the kaiju apocalypse pushed them to evolve into a Shatterdome instead, most of the facilities had been up on the Tian Gong Mountain Range. They'd had twelve semi-autonomous settlements, one for each peak, with a Sect Leader standing as a sort of first-among-equals deal whose job was mostly mediating disputes or providing a single face to deal with other Sects.

Everything changed when the kaiju attacked. The egalitarian power structure went out the window in favor of a more military hierarchy; the pursuit of cultivation and self-improvement was set aside in favor of sheer firepower. And the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect had come down from its high peaks and built most of its new facilities -- machine manufacturies and hangar bays and dormitories and supply warehouses -- on the flat open ground at the foot of the mountains, mingling with the common folk once more.

There had been a city here once, probably; it had been stomped flat before Cang Qiong started building. But there still remained a broad swathe of land from the foothills of the mountain down to the river which had been cleared and left clear, to give them plenty of space to deploy their gargantuan machines and provide long sight-lines to spot any kaiju before it could sneak up on them.

They hadn't been expecting attacks from other human beings -- especially not other Jaegers. But today, that was what was coming out of the forest, their broad metal treads flattening any structures in their path as thoroughly as any kaiju. As they watched, the HUD screens uncertainly flickered the green icons of friendly units to the orange of potential hostiles.

Shang Qinghua had always thought the Huan Hua Jaeger design was kind of... well, kind of dumb-looking. While most Jaeger designs kept the cockpit and all critical machinery in the chest cavity, leaving the head only as a weapon and sensor platform, the Huan Hua Jaegers shifted all that mass to the head instead. That left them with a wasp-waisted torso and a tall, blocky cranium module that looked weirdly unbalanced.

All three of the approaching Jaegers were of that template, though the one in the lead was somewhat more streamlined and balanced than the others. Like the other two the skin was plated -- or at least painted -- a gold color, but this one had bright platinum lightning bolts embossed along the limbs and chest. Lei Ting Zhe, the most advanced Jaeger prototype in the jianghu, piloted by Huan Hua Shatterdome's star and heir.

Lao Ying, granddaughter of Lao Zhousi.

"Miscreants at Cang Qiong Shatterdome!" A voice trumpeted across the open sward, projected by loudspeakers on Lei Ting Zhe. "I demand justice for the cowardly murder of my grandfather, Commander of the Huan Hua Shatterdome and rightful senior leader of the Jaeger Wardens! Stand forth to account for your crimes, or be slain where you cower in your holes!"

She wasn't going to put forward an offer for surrender, apparently. Well, not like they could get Cang Qiong to give them up; Yue Qingyuan himself had been on that disastrous raid. They were in it all the way up to their necks, now.

"Pilot Lao, consider what you are doing," the communications officer tried. "We cannot afford to have Jaegers fighting each other, not while we can barely stem the kaiju threat as it is. Your grandfather would not have wanted --"

"Well you should have considered that before you murdered him!" Lao Ying cried out. "Enough of this! Pilots, burn this nest of vermin to the waterline!"

Yeah, that probably could have gone better.

One of the Huan Hua Jaegers in the back turned towards the Shatterdome, their shoulder cannons folding out as they leveled a targeting solution towards Cang Qiong. Before they could get off the shot, however, a deafening blast rang out from the south, quickly followed by two more.

The Huan Hua Jaeger staggered back, his aim going wildly askew, as San Xin Shu nailed him with three precise shots from their own cannons. His fellow Jaeger quickly wheeled about, seeking to return fire, but San Xin Shu quickly moved from their original sniper position; the cannon blasts tore up rock and dirt in a line behind them.

Not content to sit back and exchange fire from a distance, Lei Ting Zhe charged forward. The long, deadly whip that her Jaeger was known for unfurled, each link in the chain a mass of razored steel the side of an I-beam. She cracked it once, and vicious energy sizzled down the chain to spark wildly from the tip; the sound of the whipcrack was echoed by the growing thunder.

Qie Dai Tao was the one to step forward and stand against her charge, meeting the vicious whip with their own sword. Metal clashed and screeched, and the two combatants teetered in an unstable balance. The ground itself began to give way under their feet, as they locked and strove against each other.

"Don't just stand there, you blockheads! Help me!" Lao Ying cried out. The two Huan Hua Jaegers quickly jumped forward, moving in tandem to flank Qie Dai Tao from either side.

Qie Dai Tao tried to leap back, disengage, but found themselves trapped; Lei Ting Zhe's whip had wrapped around the blade of their sword, and they could not retreat without abandoning their weapon. They brought their cannon around instead, firing several shots at point-blank range as their enemies closed in, but the bulky armoring shrugged off the shots.

In the next moment a blur of black and red crossed the view as Jing Wang She threw itself into the melee from the side. Long, vicious claws which could break through kaiju bone latched onto Leiting Shen's armorplates and dug in, causing even that gilded armor to shred and buckle. "Now now, Princess," Tianlang-jun's laughing voice came over the comms. "Ganging up three on one isn't sportsmanlike at all."

"Get your hands off me!" Lao Ying screamed. Her whip lashed and retracted, freeing the battered sword; Qie Dai Tao immediately turned to fend off its two opponents with the newly freed weapon. Lei Ting Zhe turned towards its new opponent, and the two gargantuan machines locked into a tussle that shook the earth around them.

Even with full command of their weapon, it was difficult for Qie Dai Tao to fend off two opponents at once. It was clear that the two Huan Hua Jaegers had trained together, and their tactics were too well-coordinated. One of them grabbed at Qie Dai Tao's arm, and with a deep buzzing noise like a whole flying hive, activated some sort of energy field that glued them together. It looked like a scaled-up version of the tanglefield that Shen Qingqiu had described running into at the hidden lab. Shit! More proprietary Huan Hua technology, it seemed, that they hadn't bothered to share with the rest of them.

San Xin Shu circled uncertainly, firing off shots where she could, but was hesitant to dive directly into the melee. He understood why -- San Xin Shu wasn't equipped to be a brawler -- but that left the melee dangerously unbalanced, with Jing Wang She outweighed by his technologically superior opponent and Qie Dai Tao fighting two against one!

Just as things were getting dire, though, another strange sound crackled over the comms, an echo of a noise that whispered across the battlefield. The air blurred like a heat haze, just behind a stirring of dust and dirt that tracked a swift line across the churned-up ground --

One of the Huan Hua Jaegers lurched and stumbled, calling out a frantic call of distress as metal screamed. A blurred red shadow appeared out of nowhere directly behind it, crouched like a mantling bird of prey with its beak extended in a vicious stab.

A new voice -- unfamiliar, female, gloating -- cut across the airwaves. "Aww, is Xiao Ying upset because everybody doesn't roll over and do what she says once she's out of her own little nursery?" The red shadow resolved into a crouching figure -- a Jaeger, smaller than the rest but sleek and deadly fast, hands wrapped around the haft of a long and viciously jagged spear. "Does Huan Hua dare speak of cowardice? Hypocrites! After you pulled out and left my sisters to die at Lu Shui Pass!"

Now that the stealth field had dropped, Shang Qinghua was dizzily able to identify the newcomer as Chi Yin Mi, the Crimson Saint -- the glitzy, unnecessarily sexy Jaeger piloted by Sha Hualing. She'd appeared in the second movie to work alongside Luo Binghe during his solo career, though she'd done very little onscreen fighting and spent most of it flirting or catfighting against Liu Mingyan. Shang Qinghua wasn't even sure who her copilot was; they hadn't been an important enough character to even be named.

Lao Ying screeched in fury. "Sha Hualing, you backstabbing bitch!" she shouted. (Harsh, but considering the blade of her qiang spear was literally digging into the trunk of one of her fellows, perhaps deserved.) "You dare to side with Cang Qiong? After what they did to my granddaddy?!"

"Who's siding with anyone?" Sha Hualing's voice came as a bored drawl across the channels. "I don't care about them! As far as I'm concerned, they're equally to blame for this whole clusterfuck. But the one who gave the order and left my sisters to die was you -- so you'll die first!"

Chi Yin Mi braced its clawed boots against Qie Dai Tao's flank and launched backwards, ripping the spear sideways out of her enemy's back as she went; the unfortunate Jaeger stumbled forward and went face first into the dirt. While he began the long, ungraceful process of wallowing up again, Chi Yin Mi flipped backwards in the air and blurred into a red shadow once more, impossible to focus on directly.

Shen Qingqiu groaned quietly and slapped his forehead into his hands; Shang Qinghua couldn't help but cringe a little bit in second-hand embarrassments. Robots really didn't need to do sexy poses like that! But if Sha Hualing was here to cause trouble for Lao Ying -- and it seemed that she was, at least primarily -- then that could only be a benefit for them.

The battlefield devolved into a messy slog. A Jaeger's armor mostly shrugged off cannon blasts, so the combatants were forced to close in and duke it out with their melee weapons instead. Qie Dai Tao, San Xin Shu and Jing Wang She battled against Lei Ting Zhe and Lao Ying's two lieutenants. Chi Yin Mi darted in and out of the melee, aiming strikes primarily against the Huan Hua Jaegers but not disdaining to send a kick or a careless slash to the Cang Qiong Jaegers instead.

Cannon fire couldn't do much against another Jaeger's armor, but the Shatterdome was not so well protected; every time they could get a clear shot, the Huan Hua Jaegers would attempt to line up a blast against the walls of the Shatterdome. One or two got through despite the Cang Qiong team's best attempts, crashing into the walls and leaving deep craters in the buildings.

Seven Jaegers could do a lot of damage to the surrounding terrain; ditches were gouged with every lunge and clash and widened with a careless kick into deep trenches. Hillsides were ripped out, sending waves of trees crashing sideways as the ground crumbled under its suddenly unsupported weight. The riverbank was torn open, sending water from the current beginning to leak into the torn-up terrain, threatening to turn it into even more of a mudhole than it was.

All at once, a new sound blatted across the battlefield, a long foghorn of a note that drowned out every other sound. Even from the distance of the Shatterdome a mile away, the personnel at Cang Qiong clutched their heads in agony; to those in close quarters, the sound was utterly deafening.

"Cease," a new voice crackled across the radio, into the stunned silence left after that foghorn blasts. All eyes swung to the nearest ridgeline, where a stocky Jaeger with deep blue plating and ice-white trim stood with one arm raised towards the sky. The sonic weapon he'd deployed a moment ago was leveled onto the battlefield in warning. "Are you men, or are you beasts? Jaeger Pilots cannot be permitted to rage so indiscriminately."

"Who the hell is this joker?" Sha Hualing demanded.

"How dare you give me orders?" Lao Ying shrieked.

"Identify yourselves!" Liu Qingge demanded.

"Oh great, it's the replacement goldfish!" Shen Qingqiu screeched, close enough to set Shang Qinghua's ears ringing. Motherfucking ow. "Of all the people to crash this absolute clusterfuck of a situation, it had to be the shitty knock-off third movie protagonist! Mobei 'The Author's Poorly Disguised Daddy Issues' Jun, the wunderkind pilot hero of a sect literally nobody had ever heard or given a shit about before, coming out of the woodwork to take over the narrative after Binghe went nuclear!"

Well, that was harsh, Shang Qinghua thought, but probably fair.

"We come representing Ba Qi Zong, the arbiter of justice and order among the Jaeger Wardens," Mobei-jun's copilot -- Linguang-jun -- helpfully provided, his pleasant amiability neatly playing the Good Cop to Mobei-jun's stark harshness. "The purpose of the Jaeger Corps is to defend the world against kaiju. Use of Jaeger equipment for any other purpose is not permitted. By engaging in this disorderly brawling, you are abusing the public trust that has been placed in you."

Linguang-jun was Mobei-jun's uncle, and their relationship was... somewhat fraught, with a deep resentment on Linguang-jun's part that he'd managed to keep a secret from his nephew right up until the first time they drifted. Mobei-jun's mother had originally been Linguang-jun's bride, until a nasty divorce fetched her up at the side of Mobei-jun's father instead. Linguang-jun was equally parts deeply covetous of Mobei-jun as the son that should have been his, and spiteful that Mobei-jun existed at all, living proof of Linguang-jun's loss. It had made for some very tense Drift sequences, Shang Qinghua remembered.

Yeah okay, maybe Shen Qingqiu had a bit of a point about the daddy issues.

Beside him, Shen Qingqiu groaned. "Why. Even in a post-apocalyptic version of a xianxia fantasy world. Did you have to make the hero. Another goddamn cop," he gritted out.

"Audiences associate cops with safety and order," Shang Qinghua mumbled. Besides, the director had insisted.

Fortunately, their argument had gone unheard. "Ba Qi Who?" one of the Huan Hua backup dancers could be heard to say.

"Disorderly brawling?" Tianlang-jun said indignantly. "These miscreants came into our territory with the stated intention of destroying Cang Qiong Shatterdome! We were defending ourselves! How dare you accuse us of 'abusing the public trust!' "

"Don't you dare try to claim innocence now!" Lao Ying said shrilly. "Your pack of lowlifes invaded our territory and murdered my grandfather!"

"Yeah, but we didn't use Jaegers to do it, so I don't see why the hall-monitor has to get involved --"

"Not helping," Liu Qingge said.

"Indeed not," Mobei-jun said, still in his cold, flat tone. "All present have violated the laws of Jaeger conduct. Desist immediately from this conduct, stand down, and exit your Jaegers. You are under arrest."

"The fuck we are, cone-head!" Sha Hualing yelled, and in the next moment her Jaeger was once more occluded from view.

There was an off-chance that she could have made a run for it -- but nobody was surprised when Chi Yin Mi resurfaced once more behind the Ba Qi Jaeger with her qiang spear poised for a deadly thrust. Mobei-jun evaded the strike -- barely -- and lashed out with its left arm, from which poured a thermodynamically improbable wave of ice that stuck Chi Yin Mi's clawed feet to the ground. Chi Yin Mi turned like a cornered animal, releasing a blast from the flame jets in its forearms to melt the ice. The red Jaeger managed to break free, but Sha Hualing had lost her momentum; she danced back, evading the newcomer's precise, repeated strikes.

This was getting out of hand. Well, it had gotten out of hand five trespassing Jaegers ago, but now it was really getting ridiculous. At this rate, there wasn't going to be a Shatterdome left in the Jianghu that hadn't been drawn into this stupid mess! What were they supposed to do if --

As if on cute, the alarms within the Shatterdome began to sound. Shang Qinghua lunged forward over his console, eyes moving rapidly over the suddenly spiking readouts. "We've got Rift instantiation!" he shouted.

"What? Where?" Shen Qingqiu demanded.

"Right under our feet!" Shang Qinghua said.

Shen Qingqiu gaped at him. His eyes flickered to the chart posted up on the wall. "That's not on the schedule," he said dumbly.

"Yeah, no shit," Shang Qinghua retorted.

"This isn't even an instantiation zone!"

"It wasn't this morning, but it's turning into one in a hurry," Shang Qinghua said. "I was trying to tell you, bro. This is a real bad place for a Jaeger battle."

Shen Qingqiu looked bewildered. "You'd think right next to a Shatterdome would be a perfect place for a Jaeger battle," he said.

"That's because you're not thinking with Xianxia brain," Shang Qinghua groaned.

"What are you talking about?"

Shang Qinghua chewed nervously on the edge of his thumbnail. Oh, this was bad, this was real bad. "You know how the Shatterdomes used to be cultivation sects?" he said.

"Yeah, so?"

"So cultivation sects were always placed on or near powerful ley lines, convergences of natural qi," Shang Qinghua explained. "Great for cultivating. But it means if the earth in those areas gets disrupted -- like, say, by having skyscraper-sized beings fight on it -- then those conduits get broken. Instead of flowing naturally, qi gets blocked, it builds up, bad shit happens. Add in a big enough weather front, and... it's a lightning rod for Rift formation. We could get over a dozen forming in the same spot."

"So you're telling me a hurricane rolls in, just conveniently at the same time that a bunch of people are fighting on the ground, and suddenly we've got new Rifts popping up at just the right dramatic moment?" Shen Qingqiu demanded. "That's asinine. That could not be more contrived!"

Shang Qinghua snapped. "Why are you arguing with me about this, bro? What do you expect that will accomplish?" he demanded. "I am just telling you what I see! Maybe you should go argue with the hurricane, and if you win, it will considerately leave us alone!"

The two transmigrators glared at each other and for once, Shang Qinghua didn't back down. Shang Qinghua lost patience with Shen Qingqiu's constant nagging, especially when it was his actions that had brought this about, especially when Shang Qinghua had warned him of what might happen, of what might go wrong. Of the likelihood of the narrative fucking them all over for maximum fuck potential!!

It was too late to undo what had been done, and likely too late to avert the disaster from steamrolling on to its inevitable conclusion. But by god he was not going to sit here and let Shen Qingqiu blame him for this catastrophe.

Apparently Shen Qingqiu knew it too, because he broke off the staring contest first, looking down at his keyboard. "We have to get them to stop fighting," he said.

Shang Qinghua laughed. It was not a happy sound. "Yeah, good luck with that, bro. Lao Ying is out for blood, and Yue Qingyuan would rather die than give up any of his men. Especially not you."

"We have to at least warn them of what's happening," Shen Qingqiu said. His face was dead-white. "We have to at least try."

"Yeah." Shang Qinghua sighed, and picked up his pager to key into the Tactical Room. He was not looking forward to making this report.

---

The other officers acknowledged Shang Qinghua's warnings, though they weren't happy about it. Xu Qingli dutifully repeated the Rift warning to the Cang Qiong Jaeger pilots, then switched to maximum broadcast to let the enemy Jaegers know as well. The results were -- mixed.

"Your warning is acknowledged," Mobei-jun's cold voice responded from the cockpit of Hei Liang Bing. "The offending Jaegers must cease operations and their pilots surrender to custody."

"Fuck that!" Lao Ying snarled, surging forward to let out another volley aimed at San Xin Shu. "Let the kaiju come, let them all come! Cang Qiong will fall, if not by my hands, then the kaiju will see it done!"

So, that went about as well as expected.

It was the first time they'd gotten to see Rift instantiation up close -- not just distant instrument readings, but close enough to see with the naked eye. A patch of churned and charred earth, where the battling Jaegers had furrowed a deep trench in the earth and then fired a volley of energy bolts after it, began to agitate -- the earth churning as though a horde of ants had woken up under it. Then the unsettled ground drained away -- dropping abruptly out of sight -- and lurid orange light glared through a new hole in the universe.

The instruments on Shang Qinghua's panels went crazy, pegging the needles on dials Shen Qingqiu didn't even know the names of. Limned in that hellish glow was a writhing darkness, a shape that at first just looked like the flicker of shadow cast by the light, but quickly grew to a solid mass that seemed to suck up all light that hit it.

The first kaiju burst upwards through the earth, a hellish shriek erupting from its beak -- a long bony protuberance of charcoal-grey limned with the toxic blue glow of kaiju blood. The head was smooth and streamlined, no visible eyes or ears or nose, and following the head came a long, sinuous neck... and a long, segmented body... that kept coming and coming far past the volume that the furrow should have been able to hide.

The snakelike kaiju -- there was no time to sit down and christen it with a proper codename -- lunged up out of the dirt, locking onto and bearing down on the closest target. That had the misfortune to be one of the Huan Hua backup dancers; the Jaeger tried to jump back out of range, but underestimated how fast the monster could extend itself. The Jaeger tried to shove the kaiju off it, but the monster clung with a surprising tenacity -- and a smaller set of pincers that emerged, mandible-like, from the inner edges of its layered shell. And another, and another, each set of legs emerging from the segmented body to lock on to its target and begin to methodically chew through the protective plates of armor.

Understandably, the Huan Hua pilot squawked for backup. Lao Ying ignored the call, focusing on the Cang Qiong Jaegers, but his partner broke off their attack run to turn back towards the new threat. The two Jaegers struggled to detach the wormlike monster from its perch, to no avail -- but as their stomping footsteps and stray energy shots struck the ground, another patch of it began to glow.

The next monster that slithered out of the rift was heralded by a cloud of fluttering antennae, a forest of fine-looking hairs with ominous glittering liquid drops at the end of each. This kaiju made itself flat -- as flat as an insect scuttling under a closed door -- but moved fast as lightning, skittering through the churned-up rock and earth of the battlefield to lunge at Chi Yin Mi. The crimson Jaeger had to launch into the air to avoid its scissoring mandibles, doing a highly unnecessary tumble in the air before landing on a ridge to the south. The kaiju attempted to lunge again, to be held off by the Jaeger's flame cannons: a roar of red flame was accompanied by a belch of black smoke that clung close to the ground. "Fuck, there's bugs!" Sha Hualing exclaimed over the channel.

A flurry of movement resolved itself into a bundle of long, sticklike limbs -- one pair, two, three, as a third kaiju pulled itself out of the hellish red glow and lurched onto the battlefield. This one had a long, narrow jaw with two rows of jagged teeth and beady, kaiju-blue eyes. Those jaws opened, gaped to let out a high hissing scream, the legs bunched and folded ready to pounce.

The third kaiju found no targets in its range; instead, it unfolded its spindly limbs and began to lope towards the Shatterdome. The perimeter defenses activated with a crackling boom, halogen lights and electric arcs repelling the intruder with prejudice; the kaiju flinched back into a low crouch, folding down to half the height of its long legs, and let out another ululating wail.

And then, apparently finding the Shatterdome too tough a target for it, it turned tail and began to lope off -- making a beeline for the nearby civilian town.

"Pilots, stop that monster! It can't be allowed to get through!" Yue Qingyuan ordered. San Xin Shu broke off from providing covering fire to the Cang Qiong Jaegers, and began directing fire towards this new threat instead.

The Rift flared again, pulling attention back from this latest deadly clash. The infernal light wasn't dimming; it only seemed to get stronger with each creature that it disgorged. With each creature --

Shen Qingqiu paused. Something about that thought nagged at him, if he could only take a moment to come to grips with it -- with this deadly parade of creatures --

The next kaiju to emerge from the Rift exploded into the air, dark wings beating the hurricane wings and stirring them to a new frenzy. This one had bat wings on a raptor's body, lambent markings on the underside of the membranes reminiscent of the ones on Gnasher's fins. Dangerous to look at, but deadly not to watch -- the powerful talons could rip and tear even a Jaeger's armor, and the beak was no less deadly. As he watched, the neck pulled back in a perfect S-curve, before striking forward with the force of a javelin, piercing through armor and mechatronics to stab through the shoulder of the blue Jaeger --

Wait. He knew this.

There was a fishing bird, a type of heron, whose neck was perfectly engineered to strike with all the force of a spear, stabbing its prey dead in the blink of an eye. There was a creature that had long, stilt-like legs like that, long jaws like that, a hyena's cackle like that. There was an insect that had those feelers, those mandibles, that long segmented body. There was --

"There's too many of them," Linguang-jun said. "We can't keep this up. We have to fall --"

Beneath Chi Yin Mi's feet, the ridge suddenly lit up with red -- fault lines cracking throughout the rock face as the earth shuddered and began to crumble. Chi Yin Mi stumbled, stabbing downward with its spear to anchor itself as the entire hillside began to heave upwards. A fissure split the rock from one side to another, revealing a black cavern within.

A pair of enormous lambent orbs blinked open in that dark cave -- and then a second pair, flanking the first, as a gargantuan head began to slide forward out of the shell it occupied. A colossal tank of a monster, with a shell formed of volcanic stone, a beak that opened to breathe fire. A beak.

The pieces had always been there, but Shen Qingqiu had never put them together before; there was always some obscuring overlayer, a poetic name of legend, some alien coloration or impossible configuration that disguised them. But the underlying layer had always been there: a parade of creatures. Terrestrial creatures.

"They're animals," Shen Qingqiu said.

He said it in a normal tone of voice, almost conversational, completely drowned out by the increasing panic coming over the comm channels. He wanted to shout it, to scream bloody murder, to grab the mic and yell it over the intercom for the whole Shatterdome to hear. But no amount of volume would be able to capture the furious shock and sheer bloody outrage that accompanied this momentous revelation.

"They're animals!"

The kaiju weren't monsters that came in from another world. They weren't built in an foreign laboratory or plucked from the jungles of an alien reach. They came from Earth. The Rift didn't transport the kaiju, or admit them; it made them here. Plucked up from whatever local animal it found: a mole rat, or a fox, or a komodo dragon, or a toad. It grabbed them, hijacked their DNA, and used that as the basis to built a gargantuan titan that rampaged over the world without a care.

Shen Yuan, you smooth-brained, short-sighted motherfucker! He'd been so stupid. The evidence had been right in front of his eyes the whole time; he'd had access to the entire catalogue of kaiju, had observed the characteristics and matched them to Earth animals as a passing piece of trivia, never once realizing the underlying connection.

His own knowledge had blinded him -- because the kaiju had been made in another world. His world! They'd been designed by screenwriters for the purpose of making good fights, and he'd known that, and so he'd dismissed the similarities as being visual shorthand. Aesthetic stereotypes. Shoddy worldbuilding. He'd been so smug in his own meta-knowledge that he had completely missed the simple insight that they looked and acted like animals because that's what they were.

Shen Qingqiu still didn't understand how they made it happen -- what bizarre, Annihilation-esque alien technology was at work -- but he knew what a kaiju was, now. An Earthling, hijacked and rebuilt to the image of a monster. It could take any Earth animal at all as a template; a spider, a bird, a dog, a cow.

Or a human.

Humans were Earth animals, too; they weren't special. Somehow, the Old Fortress Master of all people had been on the right track. A normal human woman, Su Xiyan, had been inculcated with kaiju DNA -- and had given birth to, for all appearances, a normal human baby. One who grew and developed just like a normal human boy, the kaiju mutagen lying dormant until the correct stimulus arrived to activate it.

Binghe.

He turned and grabbed Shang Qinghua by the shoulders, getting right up in his face. "Shang Qinghua! What happens if too many portals open in the same location?" he snarled.

Shang Qinghua blinked at him, looking startled. "I... I'm not sure, he said. "It's not like this has ever happened before. But... I think that if the surrounding terrain weakens to a critical degree, and the blocked energy reaches critical mass --"

"How can energy reach -- never mind! Keep going."

"-- then that will tip the Rifts over the edge to being stable," Shang Qinghua went on. "To staying active indefinitely."

Shen Qingqiu hesitated. He knew what he wanted to ask, but he didn't want to ask it. "Isn't that what happened in --"

"The opening of the third movie." Shang Qinghua's lips twisted. "Yeah. The Rift that only Luo Binghe could close."

Shen Qingqiu let go of Shang Qinghua's shoulders, and they both fell back into their seats. Shang Qinghua didn't have to say any more. They both knew what that meant.

Luo Binghe was the only one who could close the portal. His Kaiju heritage made him able to interact with the portals directly, in a way that none of their Earth technology could. He could close the portal, and cut off the kaiju invasion midstream.

But in doing so, he would lose all that remained of his humanity. He would plunge himself into a state far beyond reason, one that would lead him to rampage as ferociously as any kaiju.

And if he didn't, the kaiju would keep coming until there was nothing left in this world but splinters.

"All right," Shen Qingqiu said. He pushed himself up from the console with shaking arms, groped for his crutches. "All right."

Shen Qingqiu walked back to the infirmary in a daze. He ducked through the plastic curtain and this time, he ignored the protective gear to go right to Luo Binghe's bedside. What Luo Binghe had wasn't contagious, he knew. He'd only been wearing the mask to assuage Mu Qingfang's suspicions. But there was no point in maintaining appearances now. Reputation wouldn't matter if they all died in the next day. In the next hour.

Shen Qingqiu set his hip on the side of the bed, put his crutches aside, and reached out to touch Luo Binghe's face. His hand hovered over the dark, swollen orbit of his closed eye, mottled an ominous purple-black that didn't quite look like bruising, and finally settled for carding through his curly hair instead.

"Binghe... my Binghe," he said, voice catching. "Can you hear me? You were so brave. You endured so much. And you're away from those monsters... but... I need you to wake up now, Binghe. I need you to get up and go to Ku Ye Zhu."

Luo Binghe's hand twitched, and his eyes opened a hairline crack. A tiny glint of light showed from behind the lids. Shen Qingqiu was briefly reminded of his dream from the night before, and repressed a shudder. He licked his lips and kept talking.

"I'm so sorry that I have to ask this of you," he whispered. "So very sorry. It's not fair to you, I know, that you endured so much and we still have to ask for more. But we need you, Binghe. You are the only one who can do this -- who can save us. We need you. We need you to wake up."

Luo Binghe's eyes flicked open, and he lurched his way upright.

"Binghe?!" Shen Qingqiu cried, but Luo Binghe didn't answer. Shen Qingqiu wasn't entirely sure he was capable of speech, right now. His chest was still a weeping ruin; it was possible his lungs had been compromised. There was an extended, harsh whistling sound coming from Luo Binghe's throat, but Shen Qingqiu wasn't sure that it wasn't just his breathing.

Luo Binghe lurched off the bed and stumbled over the piled plastic sheeting. He swayed for a moment, then started to limp forward. Sheer bloody-minded determination took him over; he would walk to the hangar if he had to crawl the whole way.

Shen Qingqiu was quick to snap off the gurney brakes again, pushing the mattress under Luo Binghe's wavering hand before he could fall. Keeping his hand clutched on the rail, he began to drag it forward, using the bed as a makeshift rolling cane.

Shen Qingqiu shadowed along behind him, feeling his heart writhe in his chest like a swallowed mouthful of worms. This was agonizing, not being able to touch him or directly help; watching Luo Binghe stagger along, dripping slowly onto the gurney beside him and overflowing to the floor below.

Not dripping blood, exactly. Or at least not dripping red. The ichor that oozed from Luo Binghe's weeping chest was the same color as the necrotizing flesh; a deep, charcoal grey ichor that deepened in some places to black, and there sparked with unnatural neon blue.

They made it to the hangar. This was easier, actually; with all of the jaegers gone out to fight, the expanse was wide-open and echoing. The only machine left was Ku Ye Zhu, still draped in white banners, still with incense and offerings scattered around it. The cockpit hatch gaped in the middle of all this funerary decoration like the lid of a polished casket.

Luo Binghe crawled inside, to the piloting chair that Ning Yingying had faithfully restored to all of Luo Binghe's settings. Still so sure, even after almost everyone in the Shatterdome had given up, that Luo Binghe was alive and would be coming back to pilot Ku Ye Zhu again. She'd been right, Shen Qingqiu thought as Luo Binghe slumped down against the chair, and the control framework began to drop down around him. But her faith wasn't going to be rewarded with the reunion she hoped for.

The black ichor continued to drip down Luo Binghe's side onto the metal contacts of the controls, the metal plating of the cockpit. Actually, under Shen Qingqiu's horrified gaze, the floor of dark liquid from Luo Binghe's skin seemed to surge as soon as it made contact with the skeleton of the Jaeger. Dark ichor flowed, growing deeper and darker with every second, the faint points of blue light beginning to flare and writhe in the shadows.

He'd already been standing at the cockpit hatchway, unwilling to climb all the way in; but he still had to move back at an awkward scrabble to avoid the sudden wave of darkness that engulfed the cockpit floor and surged out in all directions. He watched, heart beating in his throat, as the darkness rose up over the hatchway and concealed Luo Binghe from view.

Once started, the black ichor spread rapidly throughout the Jaeger's metal frame; tides surged upward, downward and outward from the cockpit that had been ground zero for the infection. Even before the blackness had fully reached the outer extremities, the trunk of the Jaeger had begun to change.

The jaeger's sharp edges began to soften and slump, pristine artificial lines melting like plastic in hot sun into something more... organic. More like flesh than metal. The limbs stretched out, attenuating oddly before thickening with lumpy masses.

From the crown of the Jaeger, a cluster of oil-slick spikes erupted; they curled outward and upward through the air until they froze in place, fragile and fractal. The same angular, recurring pattern followed by the horns echoed its shape all the way down Luo Binghe's body, lines of slick blackness forming the symbol over and over across his skin. The charcoal surface and oil-black pattern were sparked from below by deep, swirling flecks of blue.

The jaeger lurched to its feet, staggering like a man drunk. The machine stiffness, the steel rigidness that should have characterized its framework was absent. The jaeger -- Ku Ye Zhu -- Luo Binghe -- reached one hand to catch itself in its stumble, and the digits of its hands dug into the hangar wall like modeling clay.

The behemoth that Luo Binghe had become looked at its hand for a long moment. Then, with slow deliberateness, Luo Binghe brought his other hand down to the steel surface and dug in as well. With a long, deliberate movement, Luo Binghe tore the hangar wall apart.

The weather blasted them, the rising typhoon-strength winds buffeting Shen Qingqiu where he stood on the catwalk; he had to cling with one hand to the scaffolding not to be swept from his feet. Luo Binghe ignored him, pushing his head and shoulders through the rent in the wall and following with one long leg, then the other. The frozen tangle of horns crowning his head scraping against the jagged edge of the hole as they went by, digging furrows and gouging sparks.

This sequence had looked so very cool in the movie. Now, seeing it in real life, Shen Qingqiu wanted nothing more than to scream and keep screaming.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

When Ku Ye Zhu hit the battlefield, several of the Jaegers stopped in their tracks -- Jing Wang She and his opponent actually stopped hitting each other in order to swivel their heads in astonishment. Shen Qingqiu couldn't blame them; if you didn't already know, it wasn't immediately clear what you were looking at.

The nearest kaiju -- the long, sinuous behemoth with myriad legs and segments -- reared up on high alert as Ku Ye Zhu barreled forward, its path taking it across the kaiju's hitbox. It darted forward like the strike of a whip, mandibles arching wide as its coils started to circle around Ku Ye Zhu in a deadly constricting embrace.

--To no avail. Ku Ye Zhu moved as fast -- faster -- as its enemy, seizing the striking head in one hand. The kaiju let out an earsplitting shriek, thrashing and struggling, but couldn't loose itself from that crushing grip. Neon-blue light pulsed up Ku Ye Zhu's arm, faster and faster like synapses firing -- and then, in a sudden spray of pulp, it ripped the kaiju's head clean off. The long, trailing body seized and thrashed, then fell still.

After that, the rest of the kaiju (normally so bloodlust-driven, attacking anything in their path in a berserker rage) scrambled hastily aside.

Shen Qingqiu watched the progress of Binghe's Jaeger -- of Binghe -- through the monitors. Once Luo Binghe had ripped the hangar bay wall apart, letting the driving wind and rain come in, he'd retreated back inside and deployed his last remaining Spirit Eagle drone. The picture was poor-quality, rain seething across the picture and static chasing with every nearby bolt of lightning. It was enough.

For the first time now, with the naked eye they could actually see one of the Rifts. It looked everything and yet nothing like Shen Qingqiu had expected.

In the movie, the Rifts had hung in the air like a murmuration of starlings, shifting silver against a backdrop of sky. He saw the same shimmering effect here, but -- it was flat on the ground, a weird staticky shifting over and through the rock and earth itself. It didn't seem to interact properly with the world around it, either. Water that flowed into the area of the Rift flowed right out again, and some jagged piles of stone poked dark edges up above the Rift with no visible effect, but --

But the grass and weeds on that patch of earth had vanished as though evaporated, and the animals -- geese and rats, from what he could see -- were fleeing from it screaming. Those that didn't move fast enough to stay ahead of the ever-shifting boundary were dragged into it, as though picked up by a whirlpool current, and were not seen again.

Not in those forms, at least.

The behemoth -- Luo Binghe -- surged forward, pushing headlong through the wind-whipped bank of churning clouds. It -- he -- churned up the very edge of the Rift and stopped, teetering on the edge. Shen Qingqiu watched, heart beating a painful rhythm in his throat. It looked like he might lose his balance -- like he might fall -- right into the shifting silver anomaly, never to get up again, thrashing and screaming as his flesh unknitted around him --

And he did fall, but not into the pool of silver. Instead he hit his knees with a thump that shook the earth, sending several unsteady trees on the nearby ridge sliding down into the ditch. He went to his knees, then his hands and knees, digging into the earth at the edges of the Rift; lowered his inhuman face towards the surface, and howled.

Black ichor (blood? Was that his blood? Was he bleeding out, now?) welled up and gushed from that enormous inhuman face -- from the dents were the eyes would be, from the center of the nose. The black slime dripped at first slowly, then in a steadily growing flow, and everywhere it touched the silver curled and blackened and died.

It took a long time. The Rift wasn't deep -- even a touch of the black ichor seemed enough to kill it in a broad swath -- but it was bigger than any anomaly they'd seen before, and Luo Binghe... whatever he was doing, it didn't seem to come easily. He let out another unearthly scream, rearing back, and the razor-edged claws of one massive hand slashed across his chest. More black fluid splashed and flowed, extinguishing the silver shimmer with a ghastly hiss, and there could be no denying -- that was blood, Luo Binghe's blood, kaiju and human blood together. Was that what it took, then to kill this thing? Blood sacrifice?

They'd been doing that all along, he realized, thinking back to the Old Fortress Master and his callous disposal of one pilot after another. They just hadn't been doing it right.

It took a long time, but at last -- it was done.

The fighting between Jaegers had died down, at least temporarily -- Lao Ying was still raging, urging her fellow pilots to fire on Cang Qiong Shatterdome, but they were ignoring her in order to engage with the kaiju instead. Qie Dai Tao kept Lao Ying occupied, mostly subdued, and the rest worked together -- temporarily -- to fight the monsters. Even Sha Hualing had, grudgingly, put aside her grudge.

The gusting winds that had been tearing at the landscape died, and the rain fell straight down instead of sideways. For a long breath, it seemed like everything would be all right.

Then Luo Binghe threw back his head -- long tendrils streaming down his back, hissing and steaming in the cold wind -- and howled.

One of the Huan Hua Jaegers broke away from its fellow and leveled a gun at Luo Binghe instead. "No!" Shen Qingqiu screamed, but of course, the pilot couldn't hear him. Energy bursts crackled from the barrel as he fired, full auto.

Did he think that Luo Binghe was another kind of kaiju? Was he trying to renew the feud against Cang Qiong? Shen Qingqiu didn't know and wasn't going to ever find out, because as the blasts burst and dispersed along Luo Binghe's back, he whipped around and flung himself at the offending Jaeger.

Luo Binghe's Jaeger was human-shaped, but moved with the reflexes of a beast; he overbore the Huan Hua Jaeger, slamming him into the ground, and ripped a deep gouge into the Jaeger's head that destroyed the cockpit in one blow.

Cries of outrage and fear began to crackle across the airwaves, and several other Jaegers began to turn their weapons towards Luo Binghe. The second round of energy blasts, like the first, thudded dully against Luo Binge's blackened surface and died with a sputter. The blue veins pulsing through his skin seemed to flare briefly with the infusion of energy, then vanish.

Chi Yin Mi's qiang spear, however, flew through the air like a dart and buried itself into Luo Binghe's stomach. Black ichor bloomed around the wound, and Luo Binghe screamed again.

This time, the scream was more than sound. A ripple of something spread outwards from Luo Binghe at the center, something that atomized the falling rain and bent the air like heatwaves. The edge of it reached the Spirit Eagle -- and then the video feed cut out.

A moment later, the lights all around Shen Qingqiu died and plunged him into twilight; the familiar deep humming of the systems running through the Shatterdome sputtered out. Shen Qingqiu swore, with feeling, and turned to run back to the lab.

Some of the lights came back on as he pushed himself as fast as he could make his crutches carry him, dim red lights lining the edges of the corridor at ceiling and floor. The door to the laboratory wouldn't open for his card; he slammed his shoulder into the door to force it open, and it gave. "Shang Qinghua!" he snapped to his spooked-looking fellow transmigrator. "What the fuck just happened?"

"That -- was an EMP," Shang Qinghua sputtered. "I -- I've never seen one so powerful. It fried half the Shatterdome's defenses -- we're lucky the backup generators caught. If we get another blast like that -- "

Shen Qingqiu felt like he'd taken a punch to his chest. "And -- the Jaegers?"

"My king's all right," Shang Qinghua reported, a weird note of pride suffusing his voice, and Shen Qingqiu rolled his eyes despite the terror of the moment. Yeah, good for your very special blorbo, Shang Qinghua. "His Jaeger is shielded against that kind of energy blast. One of the Huan Hua mechs is still moving -- guess it's an older model, all analogue. And -- and Qie Dai Tao is still up. That's it."

Three Jaegers left out of eight. Against a foe that had killed one and incapacitated four more in an instant. Shen Qingqiu's stomach churned with apprehension.

"It's not looking good, bro," Shang Qinghua said apprehensively. "If we can't cool him down, then -- then it's gonna be On the Proud Immortal Demon Way for real this time. You know how that goes."

The memory of last night's dream replayed behind Shen Qingqiu's eyes again. Yes, he knew how that went.

He didn't think Luo Binghe, his Binghe, would do all that. Would want to do all that. But with Luo Binghe as lost as he was now, how could Shen Qingqiu hope to get through to him? How could anyone?

"Maybe you should get down to Mission Control, bro," Shang Qinghua suggested.

Shen Qingqiu started. Yes, he supposed he should. Shouldn't he? It was one thing when the fight was Jaeger on Jaeger; his expertise on kaiju didn't apply. But the battlefield had shifted, and now with the kaiju in play... Binghe...

And, what? Give advice to Cang Qiong on how to defeat Luo Binghe? Shen Qingqiu let out a bitter scoff. As if! As if anything he could say even would be of use, for that! Luo Binghe didn't have weaknesses! It had taken the combined efforts of all the Shatterdomes to take him out, in that terrible third movie, and this time there was no technological MacGuffin that could...

His thoughts slowed, as though to make way for an approaching epiphany. A series of almost-formless images flashed through his mind: an echoing cavern, a looming mound, Ning Yingying, a white banner, a black spider's web. Oh.

Oh. Yes? 

That would just about do it, wouldn't it.

Feeling light-headed, Shen Qingqiu stood up. He reached out for his crutches without looking, his groping hands closing over the handles, and swung for the door.

"What are you doing, bro?" Shang Qinghua said, apprehensive.

"Something stupid," Shen Qingqiu said.

---

Shen Qingqiu had seen the Shatterdome through many battles, but never thrown into this much chaos. Ma Qingze's disciples rushed through the corridors, working desperately to get the power back on and the defenses up. Mu Qingfang's medics fought to transport the injured back to the medical wing, or in desperate cases, performed triage right on the spot. Everyone who had posts to be at were at them; as for the rest...

Qiu Qingye stumbled into Shen Qingqiu before he could reach the hangar bay. Literally stumbled, staggering through the red-lit corridors as though sleepwalking. Shen Qingqiu bit his tongue to keep from shouting in pain as she shoulder-checked him against the wall, then fell against him, her fists pounding against his chest.

"Why did you have to come back!" Qiu Qingye raged. "After what happened, after what I -- after what you did! Everything was better when you were gone! Then, then, you had to come back and everything's gone wrong!" In the half-light, streaks of tears on her face gleamed a lurid red. "The commander said that I -- but it's your fault! It's your fault!"

Shen Qingqiu steadied himself with an effort, took a breath, stood them both back up. "Shimei," he said. He couldn't keep the sharp edge out of his tone, no matter how he strove for calm. "The world is ending. Is now really the time?"

"It's ruined! It's all ruined because of you! If you hadn't... if I hadn't... what am I supposed to do?" Her wild fury broke down into sobs, her fists falling lax and sliding off his shoulders to clutch the front of his robes. "I can't take it back. I can't undo it. What can I do? What am I supposed to do?"

Oh, for fuck's sake. He did not have time to pander to her weird dislocated guilt complex right now. Shen Qingqiu took a firm hold on her wrists and pulled her hands away from his chest. He pushed her back, stumbling a few steps as he regained his own footing, and looked her straight in the eye.

"Move on," Shen Qingqiu told her, simply. "I have."

He went on, and left her sobbing in the hallway.

---

With the new rent in the hangar bay wall, the indoors had become outdoors. Pouring rain and driving wind had already made steady inroads on flooding the hangar already up to an inch. It wasn't just water, either; there was an ominous rainbow sheen of a thin layer of oil floating on top of the puddles, stirring up by rising rills and trickles. Keeping his footing in all this was a bitch.

His steps were weak and staggering, and there was a stitch in his side that felt like being stabbed with a scalpel, but his end goal was in sight. As he approached the platform where Ku Ye Zhu had formerly been docked, he saw a familiar head pop out over the edge of the catwalk. "Yingying!" He had to shout to be heard over the thrumming of the wind.

Ning Yingying climbed over the side of the railing and slid down a bare metal pole to land beside him. "Shen-shibo?" she shouted back.

He resisted the urge to tell her off for being out in such dangerous conditions -- but the all-hands alarm had sounded in the Shatterdome, and Ning Yingying was one of their most nimble hands. Of course she, too, was at her post. Instead he said: "The prototype -- the portable Drift rig -- how does it work?"

He could see the question in her eyes but thankfully, she didn't ask it; she merely leaned over to point to different parts of the rig and yell back the answers. "This lead needs to be held by the first subject, and this other one by the second," she said. "It just has to contact their qi flow, that's all, the rig will activate automatically!"

"Does it matter who gets which?" Shen Qingqiu yelled over the storm.

"No, but you have to initialize the qi signatures before you begin!" Ning Yingying tapped against a dark socket in the base of the lead.

"All right," Shen Qingqiu said. "Thanks. Alright. You need to get out of here and back under cover. These winds -- they could rip you right off the rigging, do you hear me? Get inside!"

Ning Yingying looked deeply unhappy, but retreated at his words -- leaving Shen Qingqiu alone in the hangar bar by the empty dock. He stared at the prototype in front of him, and wondered if this was a stupid idea. If this was going to get him, and thus all of them, killed.

No time to second-guess. Shen Qingqiu reached into his sleeve to retrieve Luo Binghe's mother's guanyin pendant, and slapped it into the socket meant to initialize qi. He found a cable near to hand and wrapped it around the filled socket so many times that it was invisible under the bundle of cord. Then he slung the whole thing over his shoulders and around his chest for easier carrying, and stood up.

The rest of the Shatterdome was behind him. Before him, the breach that had provided Binghe's quick exit onto the battlefield. Shen Qingqiu stood transfixed at the gaping hole in the wall, staring up at the leviathan that now towered over Cang Qiong. Locked in battle with three other titans, it took all three of them combined to even keep him at bay, let alone push him back.

Unlike every other kaiju he'd seen, it had the form of a human -- two arms, two legs, a head, all in the right configurations. If he let his eyes wander and his gaze unfocus, he could almost see the familiar (beloved) silhouette of his little sheep in there, outlined against the sky.

But that was just an illusion. The monster's howling aura raged about him in a tempest, sending gusts of wind ripping at Shen Qingqiu's clothes and hair even from here where he stood. His fluffy mane of hair had become a thundercloud, crackling with dark forks of lightning. And over his skin -- starting from the forehead, down his face and neck and rippling over his shoulders, and down the gargantuan arms -- blazed the psychedelic, poisonous patterns of kaiju blue.

How was he going to reach Luo Binghe when he was like this?

Literally! No metaphors! How the fuck was he supposed to reach him, when the nearest wrist was four stories off the ground?!

If this was a video game, and he was some kind of action hero, maybe he was meant to parkour his way up there -- scale a nearby building, carom off a signal tower, double-jump through the air to land on Luo Binghe's knee and cling to his thigh in order to swarm his way up to his heart.

Fuck that!

Shen Qingqiu wasn't doing that!

He backed out of the doorway and called Liu Qingge for a ride.

"Shen-shibo," Liu Mingyan's voice crackled over the pager. He could almost track the battle, blows exchanged and shots fired, from the pattern of static that washed across the line. " -- with you, but is now really the time?"

"Now is exactly the time," Shen Qingqiu replied. "I need you. I need to get up to Ku Ye Zhu. I have to make contact with him."

Silence. Another wash of static, another grinding jolt. " --you sure?" he heard from the open channel. He wasn't even sure which pilot had said it.

"Please." Heart in his mouth, he added, "I would not ask if it wasn't absolutely vital."

Static. Then, "All right."

That gruff tone was definitely Liu Qingge. Shen Qingqiu nearly slumped with relief. Good old, reliable Liu-shidi.

On the other hand, it was way too early to feel relief! This was just the start of this stupid, crazy plan! First Qie Dai Tao had to disengage from the battle, which wasn't easy -- and then they were jumped from behind by the kaiju with eerily long, spindly legs. Qie Dai Tao fired all of its remaining ammunition rounds directly into its face, leaving it reeling and disoriented, and stumped back towards the Shatterdome and where Shen Qingqiu waited with his heart in his mouth.

Qie Dai Tao skidded to a halt in front of the shattered wall, and one giant metal hand slammed to the ground in front of him. That still left a dozen feet for Shen Qingqiu to cross, as well as the difficulty in climbing up into that metal palm; an exercise that left him sweating and gritting his teeth as his joints and bones screamed in protest. Fuck! He was leaving this driver a one-star review!!

But then he was up, and then it was just a matter of hanging on as Qie Dai Tao lifted their hand and turned back towards their destination. Shen Qingqiu got a far better view than he would have liked of the battlefield -- of the raging storm that twisted around the now-closed hole in the world, and Ku Ye Zhu at its heart, pulsating with flickering waves of electric blue.

Oh god, he hoped that wasn't actually electricity, or else he was going to get fried the moment he touched him.

"Binghe!" he shouted, as Qie Dai Tao carried him across the battlefield towards the man-turned monster. "Binghe!"

There was no way Luo Binghe could have heard him, even if his voice hadn't been lost to the storm. But Ku Ye Zhu turned, all the same, and fixated on the approaching jaeger. Shen Qingqiu was horribly aware of his own, squishy mortal body, barely a handful when compared to these two titans. He held on to Qie Dai Tao's metal thumb, heart pounding in his throat, trying to keep his legs under him.

Ku Ye Zhu didn't attack. Qie Dai Tao drew closer -- well within striking range -- but Ku Ye Zhu held still, head cocked at an angle of birdlike curiosity, fixated on the package in their hand. Did he see Shen Qingqiu? Did he recognize him? What of Luo Binghe remained, inside that nightmare?

"Binghe, it's me," Shen Qingqiu said, as the outstretched platform of a hand drew nearer. "I know you're confused, I know you're hurting. I can help."

God, he hoped he could help.

"Let me help you."

Qie Dai Tao raised their arm, hand held out before them. Ku Ye Zhu mirrored the posture, holding out one long clawed appendage level with its chest. There was still a gap between the two, a chasm two meters wide and four hundred straight down. 

Could he even do this? He didn't have his crutches. He didn't even have his old iron cane. Just good old fashioned flesh and bone, and it was fucking faulty. As usual. Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath -- another -- edged back to the furthest side of the platform that was Qie Dai Tao's palm -- blundered forward, and jumped.

He felt something in his leg snap as he tried to push off it, a white-hot scream of agony from ankle to hip, and the jump disjointed before he was even fully in the air. For a heartstopping moment he was sure he was going to plummet, but then his straining arms hit something solid, scrabbled and grabbed and clung with all his strength. Fuck fuck fuck! He didn't have the breath to scream, except in his mind. This action movie shit sucks ass!! 

Thank god, Luo Binghe moved to steady him, bringing up his other monstrous hand beneath him. With his pulse thundering, he swung his useless dangling body over the second cupped palm, and eased up on his death-grip perch to drop down. Somehow -- miraculously -- he ended up on a solid platform again, only his trembling arms keeping him from landing fully on his face. 

His left leg was white-out agony; his right leg was silent, utterly numb, which was even worse. He pushed himself up and tasted a trickle of iron wending down his lip; he hadn't even felt the pain of a bloodied nose.

He looked up. Ku Ye Zhu's enormous, impassive carapace looked back. In the dented hollows where its eyes would have been, a deep blue-violet light flared.

Shen Qingqiu took a deep breath. The experimental Drift harness was still strapped to his chest, not lost in all the clowning around; he wasn't going to get a better opportunity than this.

"Sorry for this, Binghe," Shen Qingqiu muttered, and he drove the first contact spike down into the skin of Ku Ye Zhu's palm.

The giant lurched and howled, and Shen Qingqiu found himself tumbling as the kaiju's extended arm lurched backwards, and he clung to his handholds for dear life, his legs having no strength for purchase any more. He could hear Binghe's voice in that tortured metal scream, and it --

Shit! Falling. He was out of time! Shen Qingqiu hurried to connect the other end of the contact, to complete the circuit that would enable the Drift. In the careening scramble, he misjudged the angle -- misjudged the amount of force he would need -- and the sharp blade of the metal contact pierced clean through his hand, inches of bloody steel emerging from the far side.

Shen Qingqiu thought he screamed, too, but he never heard it. There was a humming sound in his ears that rose to fill his entire head, and then he was gone.

Shen Qingqiu found himself standing in a plane of mist, empty and formless. There was no temperature here -- and although he wore the same body and robes as before, there was no wind twisting his hair nor rain soaking his robes. He stood on his own two feet again -- the pain in his legs was gone.

Was this the Drift? He wished he knew. He wished he'd taken Yue Qingyuan up on his offer to Drift with him, if only so that he'd know something about the process. But this certainly wasn't the howling storm he'd left behind, so if this wasn't the Drift, it wasn't anywhere.

Which meant that Luo Binghe should be here.

"Binghe?" he called out. He turned around, looking for some sign of his disciple, and called again. "Binghe, can you hear me?"

No one answered, but the mist around him began to flicker and move, flowing over the formless ground like a river through its banks. He braced himself, but the fog blew over and through him without sensation. "Binghe!" he called again, urgently.

This time, when he turned around, the mist had begun to solidify into images. Shen Qingqiu felt his heart drop as he got close enough to make them out, because he did recognize these scenes. He'd seen them on the big screen, after all, back in his own world; the flashback sequences of Luo Binghe's early life.

The images here were only shades, flickering in and out of existence almost as fast as he could recognize; shadows moved towards and past him without acknowledging him at all. But he recognized the alleyway where a gang of street kids had cornered a young Luo Binghe, and beaten him up for trespassing on their territory. Recognized the refugee camp he'd been thrown out of, for having no papers and no one to vouch for him. Recognized the dirty corner of a kaiju shelter where Luo Binghe huddled, terrified in the flickering light of the storm lanterns, hearing Spinejackal bellowing overhead.

He saw Luo Binghe's mother, the cleaning lady who had taken him in and shared her own ration with him. Who carried him for miles and miles following a refugee caravan, hoping to find a city as yet unravaged by the kaiju attacks, where they could find work and shelter. Her name had never been spoken onscreen, but Shen Qingqiu knew it from the supplemental materials: Luo Ren.

She'd died. Of course she'd died. A kindly single mother in an adventure story like this? She was more fridged than a twelve-pack of beer. The amorphous misty landscape of the Drift didn't play out the whole tragedy porn sequence, but Shen Qingqiu remembered how it went: she'd left him with a neighbor and gone to work despite the warnings of Rift activity in the area, because the rich house she'd been working for didn't allow their servants to take time off and she couldn't afford to lose another job.

Of course, the kaiju attacked. Of course, the rich family had refused to evacuate to the shelter and had all been killed. Satisfying to see the jerks get what they deserved. Not satisfying to watch a misty Luo Binghe picking through the wreckage after to find his mother's body. Back then, the camera had discreetly angled the shot to only show Luo Binghe looking down at the silhouette; here and now, Luo Binghe's memory rendered her mutilated body in perfect detail. Shen Qingqiu looked away.

This was the event that had set Luo Binghe on the path of vengeance against the kaiju -- that had driven him to walk a hundred miles to the nearest Shatterdome and beg to be allowed to join them in any capacity, even as minor a thing as being able to scrub their floors. This was what had set his feet On the Proud Immortal Way.

What a cruel fucking story this was.

Joining the Shatterdome was meant to be the start of something better, but it was only a new chapter in the saga of misery that was his life. The memories were coming faster now -- his utter failure at the pilot-candidate screening, the jeers of the other boys, the bullying, the beatings -- red mist swarming over everything -- toxic gas and bare concrete and blaring alarms splitting his sleep, cold metal and icy trickling water -- memories flowing faster and faster, churning like rising rapids -- a clenched fist in place of an open hand, a handsome face twisted into a sneer, eyes glittering green, a thrown glass vessel with caustic liquid --

Shen Qingqiu fought to keep himself clear of the tide of trauma, the rushing river of memory that sought to submerge him. This wasn't real. This wasn't his life, wasn't his memory. This -- this was what the sources all warned about, when they talked about the memory hole, chasing the RABIT. He couldn't let himself be lost here, in the howling void of Luo Binghe's despair.

"Binghe, please!" he called -- and this time, someone answered.

"Shizun?"

At the familiar address the tide of memories slowed a bit, the level dropping. Shen Qingqiu turned around.

In the open space behind him, more images were beginning to appear. Like mountains seen through humid air, they seemed tinted with a haze of blue-green. Shen Qingqiu saw his own home town, apartment and office buildings crowding against the skyline with bright glass and metal towers clustering in the downtown. Long strips of lights -- neon shapes or LED screens -- blipped colorful ads to the uncaring crowds below.

Bright train cars moved along the monorail, buses and bicycles jostling for space on the streets. Green open spaces of parks, undisturbed by concrete bunkers, filled with casual joggers and picnickers and pets. Crowds of people flowing unhurried over the streets below, shopping and working and eating and talking and laughing with no thought of fear for their lives, for their safety, for their world.

Oh, Shen Qingqiu thought with a pang.

He hadn't thought he was homesick until he saw it again. Now he was almost nauseated with it.

"This... this is where you came from?" Luo Binghe's voice spoke from his side. Shen Qingqiu only had to turn his head to see him. In the Drift, he looked like himself again, just a little bit younger than the strapping young man he had grown to be. His voice was breathless with awe and his eyes, looking out over the scenery, sheened with tears.

"Yes," Shen Qingqiu admitted. "It's another world. My world."

He hadn't meant to admit that out loud. He hadn't said it out loud. But this was the Drift -- every thought, every memory, every scrap of longing laid bare.

Luo Binghe shook his head, his breath huffed a disbelieving laugh. "Why would you ever leave it, to come here?" He gestured contemptuously at the broken-down ruins of his own memory.

"It wasn't planned," Shen Qingqiu said quietly. "I just wanted -- in my world, the kaiju are only a story. You were only a story. And I... I fell in love with that story. With you."

"Love... with..." Luo Binghe's breath caught, and he swallowed visibly. "With me?"

Out loud, Shen Qingqiu said: "What's that disbelief for, ah? Have you not looked in a mirror lately? Who wouldn't be in love with you!"

But in his heart, Shen Qingqiu said: I think I was brought into this world to love you, Binghe.

Luo Binghe's eyes overfilled with tears. "I don't understand," he said, his voice small and choked. And his heart said: Why me, why me, of all the people in the world, why me? I'm no one. I'm nothing. I'm trash. I'm not even human.

"Don't you know... didn't he tell you?" Luo Binghe said shakily. Flashes of Lao Zhousi, looming over him, leering impossibly wide, informing him: A mutation. A beast. That filthy blood -- not even human at all.

Shen Qingqiu remembered Lao Zhousi's words, too. It may look like a human boy, but it's not. It's an abomination -- human DNA tainted by the poison of the kaiju. "Yes, Binghe. He did tell us."

(But I already knew. I knew what you were before I even met you.)

"Then you know that I'm a monster!" Luo Binghe cried out. "I... I'm not even human. Those ugly freaks that destroyed so much, killed so many... my own mother... they're in me, they're part of me, I won't ever be clean of them...."

Shen Qingqiu's heart ached, and he reached out to Luo Binghe, to pull the boy into his arms. "Oh, Binghe," he sighed. My brave, bold, beautiful boy. There really was no point in trying to save face, was there? Not in the Drift.

"Listen to me -- there are people all over the world who hate the circumstances of their own birth. Okay?" he said. "You aren't alone in that. The choices that led to your birth were awful, but they weren't your choices. You aren't a kaiju. You aren't Lao Zhousi. You're Luo Binghe. And what Luo Binghe is now, it's incredible." Flashes of more recent memories began to replay in the space around them; Luo Binghe's emergence into the hangar, his passage through the storm, his battle with the Rift. "You closed the Rift. You saved this world. You were magnificent. Every form of Binghe's is magnificent."

"Even this?" Luo Binghe's eyes flashed with angry challenge, and the space around them flashed too. This time it was Shen Qingqiu's memory of Luo Binghe in the infirmary, rotting from the inside, black ichor sloughing off onto the cot and to the floor.

Shen Qingqiu winced, but stayed firm. "Tch, what of it?" he said, dismissing the horrific picture with a flip of his hand. "You were sick. Nobody looks good when they're sick, believe me."

That last came out a little more bitter than he would have liked; in the space of a breath they were treated to an involuntary fast-forward parade of hospital beds, tiled floors, the insides of bathrooms and bathtubs, vomiting into a long succession of toilets, hacking fits that brought up gobs of bloody phlegm. Luo Binghe's eyes went wide, drawn out of his own pain by Shen Qingqiu's.

"It's just all part of having a body, of being alive," Shen Qingqiu said with a sigh. "It doesn't have to look pretty."

"Shizun," Luo Binghe whispered. I wanted to be by your side always. I wanted to be the one to help you.

"I wanted to be the one to help you, too," Shen Qingqiu admitted, wrenched into a like confession. "I wanted you to have so much better than what you got. You should have had... victory parades, and a peaceful life, and happiness. I wanted the world for you."

For a long moment, Luo Binghe was silent, and the space around him was dark.

"You... you crossed worlds... to make me happy," Luo Binghe said at last. His voice was small, vulnerable. "Not because... you needed something from me. You wanted this for me."

"Of course, for you. Only for you." I just... I wish I could have done more. I screwed up. I tried to make things better for you, but I think in the end I did nothing.

"No," Luo Binghe said, his voice low and taut. "You did everything." You said you wanted to give the world to me... but you did. The space lit briefly around them, a hazy view of a riverbank, Shen Qingqiu sitting in a camp chair with a sketchbook on his lap, herons rising into the air above him. Oh. He hadn't realized Luo Binghe would remember that day. You made this awful world beautiful. You made me want to live here again.

Shen Qingqiu reached out; Luo Binghe reached back. The Drift wasn't a real space, they weren't actually making contact, but Binghe felt real and solid. Shen Qingqiu clung to him, and for just a moment, they could pretend there was nothing else out there waiting.

"I... I want to go back," Luo Binghe admitted at last. "I want to see you in the real world again... I want to believe that a world without the kaiju is possible. But I don't know how. I don't know who I am any more."

Shen Qingqiu smiled, lifted his face with a finger under his chin, brushed the curls out of his face. In the real world, the real Luo Binghe topped him by several inches; here, Shen Qingqiu had to look down slightly to meet his eyeline. "My beautiful Binghe," he said, full of fondness. "Don't be afraid. I know who you are. Just trust me."

Luo Binghe still wouldn't look at him. He trembled in Shen Qingqiu's hold, fear and grief and agony still churning out from him in waves. Ah, this poor kid, what a miserable fucking time he'd had.

"I'm not a kid," Luo Binghe mumbled. "I haven't been a child in -- a long time."

"I know. You had to grow up too soon." Shen Qingqiu was so, so, so damn sorry for that. He would have protected Luo Binghe's childhood for years longer, if he could. This is all my fault. I asked too much of you. We all did.

We should have protected you; instead, you had to protect us. I'm so sorry.

"I wanted to help," Luo Binghe whispered. "I just -- I just wanted to help."

"And you did. You did." Shen Qingqiu rocked him, a little. "You saved us all. Now let me save you."

Luo Binghe opened his eyes at last. They were gleaming full of stars, blue-white figments dancing, but the lips that parted on a breath were fully human. Shen Qingqiu leaned down and met them in a kiss.

As they connected, Shen Qingqiu let his mind flood with thoughts of Luo Binghe -- with the Luo Binghe he had once known. The protagonist of On the Proud Immortal Way, the young trainee who struggled bravely against a harsh world, the celebrated hero who posed for magazine covers and moved through crowds of admirers, the picture-perfect principal player who starred in every movie poster and trailer and even in the worst battles and disasters, never showed an uncinematic side.

--But also the Luo Binghe he'd come to know since he came to this world, the lab assistant more full of enthusiasm than grace, the cheeky brat who mouthed off to his superiors and then turned to Shen Qingqiu with a wink and a sly grin, the disciple who'd stood stunned with tears in his eyes when he thought Shen Qingqiu was sending him off to his death.

They were one and the same, the character he'd idolized and the boy he'd grown to love; they were both the same man. They were all Binghe.

---

Somewhere far away, in a place that didn't matter at all, the black colossus that throbbed with the electric blue lightning of a summer storm began to shrink. First, it seemed to just be slumping towards the ground; then, faster and faster, it began to collapse in on itself. Black ichor rushed outwards from the center like water from a dropped vessel, etching into the ground with an evil hiss, oozing outward in a slow begrudging river of sludge.

At the very center of the thing, in a lifeless carbon shell that had the fossil-cast shape of a piloting cockpit, a small hollow chamber began to emerge from the shroud of black ooze. In the heart of the chamber were two figures. For one, the markings on the elaborate robes and insignia on his sleeves marked him as a senior officer of Cang Qiong Shatterdome, though few would have recognized the fussy and pristine Shen Qingqiu under the layers of filth. He was sprawled on the floor of the cockpit, tangled in the black webbing of the portable rig and legs numb and spent under him, and cradled in his arms was another person.

If Shen Qingqiu was covered in layers of filth, the body in his arms was almost lost under them; the layers of black ooze seemed to be coming from his body in waves, pulses that forced them outward through the gaps in the cockpit to join the spreading black lake around them. The body shuddered and choked, breath coming in gasps, as more and more of the blackness was exorcised from him.

When it was over, what remained was a human figure -- though there was nothing human about the figure's skin. It was an obsidian black, no human shade, and shot through with electric blue markings that centered on its forehead and spiraled out to cover the face, the head, the neck and shoulders. Gradually, though, the striking colors began to fade; black ebbed into grey, then into an ashy tan, with the patterns slowly fading into imperceptible streaks along the lines of the skin.

What remained was a human -- almost, if not for his eyes. Those eyes, when they opened, were a solid ebony black from lid to lid, the depths filled with countless blue stars.

The science officer held the figure, hitched close on his lap, and the figure wrapped its arms around his torso and hid his face in his stomach. The figure howled with grief, a keening wail that made itself heard even over the lingering thunder of the storm, and only gradually tamped down to the sobs of a human voice.

Shen Qingqiu waited, stroked his hair, and held him close while he cried.

~to be continued...

Chapter Text

What becomes of a Shatterdome in a world without kaiju?

Following the Battle at Tian Gong Mountain -- as all the newspapers called it, despite the fact that it took place miles away from any actual mountain -- this was the question that the Shatterdomes of the jianghu were left to answer.

Each answered in a different way. Some believed that the kaiju were not -- could not be -- fully gone. They vowed to maintain their numbers and keep their vigilance against the day that the Rifts would start again. Tian Yi insisted that even in the absence of Rifts, there still might be -- must be -- kaiju roaming the world somewhere, and feverishly retooled themselves into long-range hunters, capable of scouring the wastes in search of their prey.

Others, led by the monks of Zhao Hua, were more willing to accept that the kaiju threat was truly gone, and that the world could move on from it and embrace an era of rebuilding. Zhao Hua was working on a way to convert their Jaegers to peaceful purposes, dedicating their efforts to great construction projects.

(Ba Qi Shatterdome insisted that since their mission was to police other Jaegers, not kaiju at all, then the disappearance of the Rifts made no difference to them. So long as one Jaeger existed in the world, they claimed, they would continue their mission. Very few people took notice of this claim.)

Huan Hua didn't get the chance to decide what kind of Shatterdome it wanted to be in a post-kaiju world, because it dissolved before reaching that point.

Cang Qiong's broadcast of Lao Zhousi's crimes, coming hot on the heels of the announcement of Lao Zhousi's violent death, had severely shocked the public. Either of those events would have been a scandal to rock the world; as it was, they were nearly overwhelmed with the calamitous events of the Battle at Tian Gong. A knock-down drag-out battle between Jaegers, compounded by the surprise appearance of a new Rift and a dozen new Kaiju in quick succession, followed by the appearance of the strangest kind of kaiju yet, one who had attacked the Rift and -- to all appearances -- destroyed it for good. So many tumultuous doings all jostling for front-page headline space -- Shen Qingqiu almost felt sorry for the newsies.

(Almost. He still remembered their silence after Luo Binghe's disappearance, when Gongyi Xiao was striving to bring attention against the Old Fortress Master, when Su Xiyan vanished from the world without a blip. No, Shen Qingqiu didn't feel sorry for the newsies, after all.)

Hard to say, after all of that, whether the news media would have taken Huan Hua's side or Cang Qiong's in the brewing schism; as events turned out, there wasn't really a choice to make. Lao Ying had charged off to attack Cang Qiong before the rest of the world even had a chance to react to the news, dragging the rest of Huan Hua leadership into her revenge scheme whether they liked it or not. Things might have been different if she had stayed home, gathered her resources, and launched a legal or PR attack instead, but such subtlety was not in her nature.

Even after the battle, things might have been different if Lao Ying had been able to champion for her home sect. But during the free-for-all that had broken out between Jaeger and Kaiju, Lao Ying's high-running emotions had slipped too far; either she or her copilot chased the RABIT, the Drift bridge desynchronized, and she ended the fight having to be cut out of her Jaeger unconscious from the neural backlash. It took her three days in a hospital to even awaken, and even then she was in no shape to continue her campaign against Cang Qiong. Rumor had it that she was still convalescing, if that wasn't just an excuse the Huan Hua elders put out to keep her out of the public eye.

The new narrative had already taken off. The Old Castle Master, the founder and benefactor of the Jaeger Warden Programs, had fallen hard from his high pedestal. Now safely beyond any risk of retaliation, the news media had flipped enthusiastically into blaming him for all the sins he'd committed over his long lifetime (and some that he hadn't, just for fun.) His reputation was in shambles, his legacy tarnished, and the sharks were already circling around his old Sect.

Without either the Sect Leader or his granddaughter to take up the banner, the rest of the Huan Hua Shatterdome leadership had collapsed. Some had disappeared, taking a share of the Sect's treasures with them. Other assets were already frozen, at risk of being repossessed as payment for the many, many lawsuits that were already brewing.

Shen Qingqiu had not been on this side of a media feeding frenzy before; he didn't envy Huan Hua their portion.

He wasn't following all the details of the investigation, but he did take notice when the papers announced that more of Huan Hua's remote laboratories had been uncovered. Raids had been conducted, evidence collected, captives freed -- they had found Gongyi Xiao in a deep underground cell, imprisoned there in retaliation for tipping off the Cang Qiong scout party to the location of the Sun and Dew Labs, Shen Qingqiu gathered.

They'd found three of Gongyi Xiao, actually, imprisoned in various locations. None of them -- nor any of the investigators who'd found him -- were at all sure which was the original, or if any of them were.

...Shen Qingqiu was not going to mix in that at all. He had enough existential crises of his own, thank you very much!

At any rate, the three Gongyi Xiaos -- two clones and the original, or perhaps all three clones? -- had shaken off the public attention and gone to ground at the first opportunity. In fact, he'd moved in with the three triplet pilots of San Xin Shu! The tabloids were awash in scandalous suggestion of what the six of them were probably doing in bed -- but frankly, Shen Qingqiu suspected that it was more a matter of those three girls understanding all too well what it was like to exist effectively as one person in three bodies.

With Huan Hua Shatterdome firmly taking the role of the butt monkey in the current narrative, that left room for Cang Qiong Shatterdome to be cast as the hero. The details of exactly how Cang Qiong had uncovered Lao Zhousi's misdoings was largely glossed over in favor of the exciting battle at Tian Gong Mountain and the emergence -- and subsequent destruction -- of a Rift closer to human civilization than any had been before.

The newspapers were a bit confused about the exact details of the victory -- which was fair, so was Shen Qingqiu, and he'd been there.

The official story was that the Cang Qiong Science Team had long been working on an experimental technique to close Rifts. The supposed technique required them to reach the Rift within an hour of its opening, which had never been possible before. Shang Qinghua, of all people, had spun a long and convoluted story about how their experiment had worked even better than expected, since, as it turned out, every Rift was connected to all Rifts, so closing even one of them had a distributed effect on them all!

(Of course, in the end it would be Shang Qinghua's specialty in writing nonsensical sci-fi bullshit, not his knowledge of Rift mechanics, that won the day. It was cheap, hokey, plot-convenient nonsense -- but after having to live with the effect of the kaiju assault on human civilization for years now, Shen Qingqiu was past the point of complaining about it. Whatever gave them some peace, had the green light from him.)

The bizarre appearance of Ku Ye Zhu on the battlefield had been explained as an experimental prototype exoskeleton, and its subsequent clashes with other Jaegers waved away as confusion from the initial Huan Hua-led assault. That was... close enough to the truth that Shen Qingqiu didn't feel bad about letting it stand. Shen Qingqiu's desperate drive to reach Luo Binghe and bring him back had been omitted from the official story, and he was happy to keep it that way. He was not in a hurry to explain himself to them any more than he already had. About the Drift, and Luo Binghe, and his own unkept secrets. Some things were private.

Luo Binghe was the young hero again in all the broadcasts, anyway. And that was the important part.

There was a massive outpouring of public sympathy for the young man who had fought the kaiju and closed the rift, even struggling under the heavy burden of Lao Zhousi's cruel mistreatment. A publicly-funded campaign had sprung up to pay for any ongoing medical expenses, which Shen Qingqiu was not going to say no to. Any funding that didn't require him to face off against Qi Qingqi for authorization to spend Cang Qiong's budget was more than welcome.

It was unclear -- exactly -- what was going to become of Cang Qiong Shatterdome. From what he'd heard, the Cang Qiong Jaegers -- or at least, Qie Dai Tao and Jin Wang She -- were sort of following Zhao Hua Shatterdome's lead in helping out with the clearing of rubble and rebuilding of walls. Whether that would prove a permanent occupation or a transition to something else, Shen Qingqiu couldn't say. Yue Qingyuan had declared the intention that Cang Qiong should return to its roots and become a cultivation sect again, withdrawing from the world now that the threat had passed. It was a nice sentiment, but didn't really account for the three surviving Jaegers and literal metric tons of supporting equipment that the Shatterdome still possessed. Was cultivation expected to pay the gas bill for all that?

But Yue Qingyuan's announcement meant that the old sect grounds up in the Tian Gong Mountains had been reopened. Not that they'd ever been fully abandoned, but there had been no time or personnel to maintain them in the desperate scramble to field all against the kaiju. Now, at last, they were able return.

Cang Qiong had once claimed twelve of the mountain peaks in a cluster. So far, only three had been reopened: Qiong Ding, historically the seat of leadership and administration; Qian Cao, the medical peak; and Qing Jing, the scholar's retreat.

Mu Qingfang, who had been complaining about the cramped lack of elbow space and deleterious atmosphere of the Shatterdome for as long as Shen Qingqiu had known him, had absolutely jumped at the chance to relocate his office and his long-term patients. Up the mountain they could spread out, breathe freely, benefit from the qi-rich natural circulation of the mountain range, and -- the most critical benefit of all -- avoid the crowds of reporters and admirers who wanted to press in every day.

Luo Binghe had been the first of Mu Qingfang's patients to be relocated to the more sedate environment of the mountain, to recover in the clear calm quiet of the bamboo forest. The little house they'd been assigned on Qing Jing Peak was nice enough; well-appointed, beautiful and serene, stocked with household goods and with a regular supply of food and correspondence. Shen Qingqiu would be happier with his new situation if the mountain peaks had any sense whatsoever of ADA accommodations -- and he'd thought the Shatterdome was bad! At least it was all more or less built on level ground!! -- but he was making the best of it. He'd already put in three requests for ramps and two for handrails, and he was willing to submit as many more as it would take to make this place habitable!!!

Luo Binghe was...

Luo Binghe was getting better.

In truth, he was physically recovered already. Shen Qingqiu knew better than to be surprised; the Protagonist's body was made of iron, after all, or how else would he survive all those exciting action sequences and be back for more after the next commercial break? But it was still a relief to see the awful lesions Huan Hua had left on his skin wiped away, bruises fade within days, wounds heal up without a scar.

Physically he was recovered already, but he was still... fragile. Nervous. At random times of the day he would burst into tears, crying silently but unstoppably, for several minutes until he managed to compose himself. He clung to Shen Qingqiu with a palpable anxiety, and was silent and withdrawn in any other company. And, well, the less said about his sleeping habits, the better.

But the steady daily routine they'd adopted was good for him, Shen Qingqiu thought, and so was the peace and quiet of the mountain cottage. For that, he was willing to put up with any number of poorly ratio'd stairs.

And as for Shen Qingqiu himself?

Well, he was hardly going to allow anyone to separate him from Luo Binghe now. Even if he didn't feel like he really needed to be in medical custody, or seclusion, or recovery, or whatever Mu Qingfang was calling it -- he'd accept the role if it meant the two of them could be moved together.

It felt a little bit ruthless, to abandon all the task of cleanup and fallout to Yue Qingyuan and the rest of the senior officers -- but really, what else could he do? There was little place for a kaiju researcher now, in this post-kaiju world. Shen Qingqiu was more than willing to step back from the public eye for a time.

All vacations had to come to an end eventually; Shen Qingqiu couldn't stay on the bamboo-forested mountain forever. He was obliged to come down periodically to check in with the rest of the Sect. Since Luo Binghe was still on strict rest duty, another member of the Sect was detailed to be his driver; this week, it was Ming Fan.

He had mixed feelings about that, actually. He wasn't terribly fond of Ming Fan as a character from the start, and the negative impression had only worsened after the realization that his bullying had gone on behind Shen Qingqiu's back. And yet -- Ming Fan had stayed on, even after everything.

Since the Battle of Tian Gong and the closing of the Rifts, there was no longer any need to cultivate a pool of pilot-candidates. Most of the young men and women in the pilot department had since either left Cang Qiong, once it became evident there was no further chance that they would get to pilot a Jaeger someday, or had been semi-voluntarily escorted out. Ming Fan was one of the few who had stayed; he now seemed to be acting as a general all-around handyman. Or perhaps as a disciple? Shen Qingqiu still wasn't sure how Yue Qingyuan planned to finesse that particular Sect requirement.

Either way, he was now in the regular rotation of the Sect personnel that helped keep up their residence. Ever since their confrontation in the docking bay over Luo Binghe's memorial shrine Ming Fan had changed his tune; he had gone from rude and aggressive to meek and attentive, at least when in Shen Qingqiu's presence. A dutiful, respectful attendant. If anything, it was a little embarrassing to see a young man full of confidence and swagger cut down to this!

Oh, well. Ming Fan's character development wasn't his problem.

The meeting with Yue Qingyuan went well. Shen Qingqiu had started out dreading these regular check-ins; he'd expected either smothering overprotective concern for his health, or more guilt-tripping about their long-gone piloting days, packed into a meeting he had no way of avoiding or escaping.

Much to his relief, that wasn't the case. Yue Qingyuan inquired after his health of course, and Luo Binghe's, but seemed willing to accept his assurances that both were improving steadily. This week, he'd wanted to talk to Shen Qingqiu about the possibility of opening up a fourth Peak, the next in an ongoing series of operations to shift Cang Qiong back to its ancestral home. Shen Qingqiu vetoed the suggesting of moving Wei Qingwei and his whole motor pool up the slopes, and allowed that Qi Qingqi and her regiment of terrifying accountants could probably do their job just as well remotely, and gave further advice on the preparation for such a move.

Neither of them suggested that perhaps the PR department could be relocated closer to Qing Jing.

Shen Qingqiu found Yue Qingyuan extraordinarily hard to read. More proof, if any was needed, that he was not the Original Goods; anyone who truly had Drifted with Yue Qingyuan in the past would not need to guess what he was thinking or feeling.

But if anything, Yue Qingyuan truly seemed to be... happy for him. Happy that he was well, and that he was safe.

Well -- good for him. Shen Qingqiu was happy for himself, too! Being safe and well kicked ass!!

He escaped the meeting at last -- truly, Shixiong, you don't need this shidi's approval on every single one of your ideas for running Cang Qiong! It wasn't like he was second-in-command for the Sect or anything, for Heaven's sake! -- and decided that as long as he was down the mountain for the day, he could afford another stop.

The laboratory had an almost bittersweet nostalgia to it, but that was dispelled by the absolute mess that had overtaken the place in the months since he'd absconded up-mountain. Shen Qingqiu wrinkled his nose as he shoved miscellaneous cloth... somethings out of his way, at least enough to make a clear path for his wheels. "You live like this, bitch?" he demanded of the laboratory's now-sole occupant, as soon as the door was safely shut behind him.

"Come on, bro, stop busting my ass," Shang Qinghua whined, not bothering to get up from his station chair. Depending on what the hell was in that pipe he was holding -- it did not reek only of tobacco -- possibly he couldn't.

"Must you smoke inside?" Shen Qingqiu said with distaste.

"I don't do it in public areas, and didn't do it at all when we were roomies," Shang Qinghua said promptly. "It's not like they need me on a moment's notice in case there's more Rift shit anymore, either. I think I deserve the break."

"Pathetic," Shen Qingqiu pronounced, and Shang Qinghua shrugged agreeably.

"How's life on the immortal mountain treating you?" Shang Qinghua asked, taking another pull on the pipe, and Shen Qingqiu gladly let himself be drawn onto a rant on this new topic.

The discussion circled back, as it inevitably did, to the events of three months prior. That night had been talked to death by all sources, but there were very few people who really got what had happened on the higher levels, and it was a relief. To have someone who understood.

Speaking of understanding. "The one thing I don't get -- " Shen Qingqiu started.

Shang Qinghua coughed and sputtered, waving his hand in front of his face to squint at Shen Qingqiu through the smoke. "Wait, what? You admit there's something you don't know? Hang on, I gotta mark the calendar!"

Shen Qingqiu graciously ignored the interruption. "-- is what the plan was for the third movie," he said. "Because it was obvious they were going to tackle the question of what was on the other side of the Rifts, what was driving the invasion of Earth, all of that shit -- we never got an answer for any of that! And before you say it, yes I'm aware, they didn't leave any notes for you to build off of."

Shang Qinghua, who had raised his hand in pitiful objection, dropped it. "Thank you. Yes."

"But they had to have planned something that dealt with all that!" Shen Qingqiu continued. "And now it turns out that they were planning for Lao Zhousi to be the big bad all along? How the fuck were they planning to fit that whole storyline AND resolving the rifts in the same movie?!"

"They could do it," Shang Qinghua opined. "It would just be kind of a crowded movie."

"It would be an incoherent movie!" Shen Qingqiu snapped. "Those are two completely different directions to go in! Who is the villain supposed to be, huh? This one dude or aliens from the stars?"

Shang Qinghua shrugged. "Maybe Lao Zhousi was behind the kaiju invasion all along, then," he said. "Maybe it was all part of his plan to generate a crisis that he could use to set himself up as uncontested world leader."

"So, what, the greatest villain of the franchise is just a creepy old guy?" Shen Qingqiu said. " 'Man is the greatest monster?' I hate stories like that! If you're going to introduce a sci-fi element, then fucking follow through on it, don't default to this navel-gazing social pseudocommentary bullshit!"

"Well, maybe the third movie was going to focus on Lao Zhousi and the Jaeger Wardens, and not deal with the kaiju much at all," Shang Qinghua theorized. He was much more sanguine discussing someone else's story than his own, Shen Qingqiu had noticed.

"That's even worse! If that was the plan, then why'd they end the second movie when they did, huh? All those Rifts opening at once! That's not something you can just ignore, they had to have something planned for that!"

"Not necessarily." Shang Qinghua tapped out his pipe on a nearby dish, one of several scattered around his workstation. "They might've thrown it in at the last minute just to give the second movie a sequel hook, to increase their odds of getting funding for the third. Or maybe that bit wasn't even the writers' idea, the producer wanted it for some reason. Or maybe the guy that wrote the dossier and had all those plans for Lao Zhousi wasn't talking to the guy who wrote the Rifts opening and had all those plans for the kaiju. It could be a lot of things."

"Ugh!" Shen Qingqiu sat back in his chair, huffing, fanning the smoke away from his face. "I hate the thought that there could be writers out there who are even more sloppy than you!"

Shang Qinghua sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, dude," he said. "For all the time we've known each other, you've had this idea in your head of Proud Way as this larger-than-life, pristine, perfect story that had everything planned and marked out perfectly and all the loose ends tucked neatly into the braid.

"But I've seen the sausage get made and I'm just saying, a movie is a messy production, it's got at least a hundred people with a hundred different ideas directing a thousand different moving parts." He spread his hands as though to try to encompass within it the entire complex film-making process. "In the end, what you get is just what you gotta live with, even if it doesn't perfectly match up to the artistic vision."

Shen Qingqiu eyed him resentfully. "I suppose you're going to tell me that's show biz." he grumbled.

Shang Qinghua shrugged, and lit up once again. "I think that's just life," he said.

Shen Qingqiu decamped the Shatterdome shortly before sunset, and watched the shadows grow longer and deeper over the Tian Gong mountain range as Ming Fan dutifully chauffeured him up the mountain road. This truly was a beautiful world he'd landed in, ah. All the more beautiful once it was no longer constantly in terror, in pain. Did it matter why the attacks stopped, or only that they had?

But to him, on some level, it still did matter.

Luo Binghe welcomed him home, as always, a relieved happiness only slightly tinged with hysteria. That was better than it had been, Shen Qingqiu thought. They were both getting better.

"Binghe," Shen Qingqiu asked him, once the cleanup from dinner was done, and they were both sitting in the main room reading. "I don't mean to upset you..."

Luo Binghe raised his head from the tablet he'd been reading, then closed it and tossed it aside. "Well, that's an ominous way to start a conversation," he said. His tone was half-joking, half real apprehension. "Did... is Shizun upset with this one?"

"No, no. Of course not." Shen Qingqiu quickly abandoned his current task -- only idly playing around, really -- and opened his arms for Luo Binghe. The younger man came to his side quickly, as he always did -- nearly crashing into the cushion beside him and burrowing up against his side. "Nothing like that. I just... I don't know how much you remember of that time, but I always wondered..."

Luo Binghe went still, ceasing his ostentatious squirming, with his head still buried against the fabric of Shen Qingqiu's shoulder. After a moment he sighed, nearly silently, and adjusted his seat until he was sitting like a reasonable person again, albeit still pressed against Shen Qingqiu's side. "It's not that I don't remember it, so much as I don't remember it in a way that makes sense," he said quietly.

"If it hurts to remember it --"

"Shizun asking doesn't hurt," he said quickly. "It's... well, I won't think about it it any less for not talking about it. Maybe talking about it would... make it make more sense, make it something that fits in this world."

"Ah." Shen Qingqiu couldn't reach Luo Binghe's head, at this angle, but he could still stroke the tumble of Luo Binghe's curls down his arm and chest, so he did. "I'm sorry."

"There is nothing for you to be sorry for," Luo Binghe said resolutely. "What did Shizun want to know?"

"Tell me, if you can..." Shen Qingqiu hesitated. "Could you see -- could you tell, at all -- what was on the other side of the Rifts?"

"Ah." Luo Binghe stared off into space; his eyes were glassy in a way that looked slightly worrying, especially for the faint gleams of neon blue that showed in his iris at times like this. "It's... hard to explain," he said slowly "I... got the sense of another place -- a hellish abyss full of smoke and fire, oceans of burning stone and rains of black glass."

Shen Qingqiu listened closely, petting Luo Binghe's hair, but didn't interrupt.

"And... a presence there." Luo Binghe's voice was hushed; half awed, half intimidated. "It had been there for a very long time, and it was alone. Somehow, it became aware of a place that was... not that place. And it wanted to go there. It could make windows, but not doors. But through the windows, parts of that other place leaked out.

"And then I... I looked back. Through the window." Luo Binghe swallowed, hard. "It was... surprised. It wasn't expecting that, for some reason. And then I shut the window."

Shen Qingqiu sat back, disturbed and intrigued. It wasn't much, really. A few sentences; halting, unpolished words. It raised more questions than it answered, really. And yet...

"But Shizun, don't you already know all this?" Luo Binghe turned to focus on him, his head tilting like a curious bird. "From the story in your world?"

"Ah, well..." Shen Qingqiu reddened slightly, as he always did when Luo Binghe brought up the truth of his origins. "Actually, no. The story never actually told us this part. We never found out what had made the Rifts, or why."

"Really?!" Luo Binghe's eyes widened.

"Really. It was a big mystery that was never explained..." Shen Qingqiu sighed. "But I always wanted to know. I guess you could say I died still wanting."

"Then, I'm sorry I couldn't answer the mystery for you."

"Don't be sorry, Binghe." Shen Qingqiu turned to scold him, half-heartedly. "You've done more than enough."

Truly, he'd done more than enough. Since the day of the hurricane, there had never been another Rift. All the work that was left for the Jaegers to do -- hunting down kaiju that had formed in their world before that day, clearing away the destruction, helping people rebuild -- there were more than enough others to carry that burden, now. They didn't need Luo Binghe's hands alone to save the world.

If Luo Binghe never worked a single day more in his life, he would already have done more than enough.

"You know," Shen Qingqiu said, after a few more minutes of cuddling had passed, and Luo Binghe was beginning to return to his normal levels of squirminess. "I really thought you'd be more upset about the whole 'actually from another world' thing."

Luo Binghe tilted his head back to look up at him. "Why?" he said, sounding honestly baffled.

Why. Well. Indeed, why? Shen Qingqiu had always just assumed it would be a disaster, if anyone ever found out the truth about him. True, it might still be a problem if Luo Binghe were to spread the news around -- but since they had both moved up the mountain, and Luo Binghe seemed to have little interest in remaining in contact with the Jaeger Wardens, it wasn't likely to come up.

Just in case he added, "Please don't tell anyone else, though."

Luo Binghe's eyes brightened, as they always did anytime Shen Qingqiu asked him for something. "Shizun's secrets are safe with me!" he said enthusiastically.

"Oh," Shen Qingqiu added. "Except maybe for Shang Qinghua. He already knows."

Luo Binghe froze -- all senses immediately snapping to red alert. "What? Shang-shishu? Why does he get to know?!"

"Binghe!"

~the end.