Pacific Rim – Gintama Style

Kagura walks through the large gaping hole that probably used to be a door and her eyes widen at all the people hustling around. She has a bag over her shoulder, just a single large duffel, and no one is paying her any mind as she meanders through the masses. The only time people look at her or speak to her is when she gets in their way. They’ve all got somewhere to go and Kagura doesn’t know where she’s supposed to be. She was only told where to be, what facility, but nothing beyond that.
“You look lost, kid.”
“Can’t be lost if I’m in the right place.”
Kagura turns to the sound of the voice and she’s surprised to find a blond staring at her. She’s taller, older, and has a scar on her face, but she’s still one of the prettiest women Kagura has ever seen. Her hair is held up in a tight bun and her eyes are an unusual color, one that Kagura can’t quite put a name to. She’s well built and looks strong, the sleeveless shirt she’s wearing highlights the slender curves of muscles in her biceps.
“You one of the recruits?”
“Yeah, who’re you, lady?”
“I’m the one that got sent to show you around.”
“Oh, I get a tour guide?”
“That’s one way of putting it. You’re Kagura, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, who’re you?”
“You can call me Tsukuyo.”
“Okay, Tsukki! Where do we start?”
Tsukuyo frowns and starts walking for Kagura to follow. “It’s Tsukuyo.”
“Of course, Tsukki, that’s what I said!”
Kagura grins when Tsukuyo gives her a look of reprimand, but it’s a harmless one. She follows Tsukuyo down through a few hallways shoots and as they go, the amount of people thin out. With less voices to ricochet against the walls, it’s quieter and makes it easier to talk without having to raise their tones.
“Can I ask you something, Tsukki?”
“What is it?”
“Are you a pilot?”
“I am.”
Kagura sucks in a breath and runs forward to get in front of her to stop her. “You’re a pilot! Who’s your partner? What’s it like? Have you seen my brother?”
“You’ll meet my partner at some point, you have to experience what it’s like being a pilot in order to understand it, and no, your brother hasn’t been around for a long time.”
Tsukuyo pushes by her to keep leading her and Kagura hikes her bag up to hurry after. She can’t believe she has only just arrived and she has already met an actual pilot! Kagura has spent so long living in poverty while only being able to catch snippets of the fighting on the public big screen news feeds and from small articles she has managed to snatch from the trash to read.
Coming here had been one of the most difficult decisions she has ever made.
With her mother sick, her father abroad working in construction to support them, and her brother away fighting, Kagura had had to take on the role of caregiver at a young age. Scrounging up food, helping her mother, doing all the cooking and cleaning, and running all the errands are all endless jobs she’d had to repeat every single day. When she’d gotten an invitation to come all the way out here and tryout for a potential piloting position, it’d felt like a dream. She knows her invitation extends from her brother’s success as a pilot, but that doesn’t take away any of the surrealism that still has her reeling.
She’d originally planned on refusing, despite her desire to do more than just watch everything break apart around her. She has always wanted to do more, to help fight, to be more than some street scuttling rodents that picks at scraps and barely gets by. There’s two reasons she’s here right now, the first being that her mother had encouraged her to go and the second, most important reason, is that once Kagura had gotten in contact with the right people, she’d been able to arrange care for her mother. Again, that’s thanks to Kamui’s outstanding prowess as a fighter and that puts a lot of weight on Kagura’s shoulders since she has so much to live up to while in his shadow. It has been years since she has seen him and she’s still angry at him for abandoning them, but a part of her is still proud of him for all he has accomplished in the war against the Amanto.
“Dump your stuff here.”
Kagura throws her bag into the indicated spot amongst other belongings and follows Tsukuyo down another hall. She’s not worried about leaving her stuff, there’s nothing of value in there and all the important things she keeps on herself. The sounds of fighting can be heard and Kagura can feel her heart beating faster in reaction. She hasn’t been trained in fighting, but she knows how to do it – no on survives in the streets without learning to fight.
There’s a bunch of people in the room they walk into and some of them are fighting while others linger back in small clusters to talk amongst themselves. She looks around and takes it all in while keeping Tsukuyo slightly in front of her. Kagura isn’t used to being in a place like this and the familiar streets and hotspots she used to visit are hundreds of miles away. She can’t recognize anyone since the big screens at home are cracked enough to muddle the images and actual pilots are never shown, only their Jaegers are.
“These are all pilots?”
“No, not all. A lot of them are here to try out like you while some have just come in here to train and check out the recruits.”
“Oh.”
“What do you know about piloting?”
“I wasn’t told very much, but they gave me some stuff to read on my way here.”
Tsukuyo nudges Kagura farther off to the side so they have more solitude and asks, “Was it one of those tablet tutorials?”
“Yeah!”
“What did you learn?”
“It taught me about the right and left hemisphere, drift compatibility, the categories of the Amanto, all the risks involved, and it had a copy of what my contract would look like if I got one.”
A small, pleased smile curves Tsukuyo’s lips. “Glad you were paying attention.”
“I didn’t want to be behind when I got here.” Kagura eagerly looks around the room again as Tsukuyo casually leans against the wall. “Which ones in here are pilots?”
“See if you can pick them out.”
Kagura takes her time studying different people, but she’s finding it difficult to tell which ones might be recruits, pilots, workers, trainers – they all look the same. There are some that she’s sure are there just to hang out or mingle with the pilots, they just don’t have the… vibe of pilot material. She points to her top five picks and Tsukuyo shakes her head each time with an increasingly amused smirk. Frustrated, Kagura starts blindingly picking people out and she swears Tsukuyo is taking pleasure in telling her no.
“Who’s that angry guy over there?”
Tsukuyo follows where she’s pointing and her smirk disappears. “That’s a pilot.”
“Him? He doesn’t look it,” Kagura says and her nose curls a bit.
“That one there, he’s the left hemisphere and the one across the room with the bright permy hair, that’s his partner, the right hemisphere.”
“How drift compatible are they?”
“You’ll see for yourself.”
“That’s not fair, Tsukki! You’re supposed to be my tour guide, but you’re being very stingy with information here!” Kagura looks back to the two pilots and looks them over carefully as she tries to figure out what physical traits might contribute to good pilots. “Are his eyes naturally red or does the drift do that?”
“Natural, so far as I know.”
“Are they good at piloting?”
“Yes, very.”
“Why aren’t they near each other?”
Tsukuyo scoffs, “They’re fighting again, probably.”
“They don’t like each other?”
“You misunderstand,” Tsukuyo corrects, “it’s more the opposite problem.”
Kagura tilts her head in confusion, but Tsukuyo stills anymore questions with a raised hand. The topic gets dismissed and Kagura keeps trying to pick out more pilots only to find that Gintoki and Hijikata – she at least learns their names – are the only ones around.
-o-O-o-
It’s the next day and Kagura is on her way to meet up with Tsukuyo. She had been shown to her room the night before and Tsukuyo had escorted her around the large compound to give her a general feel for where everything is. They ate dinner together and she’d gotten quizzed on different parts of a Jaeger and how it functions. Tsukuyo takes Kagura’s questions in stride and answers them all as best she can when she isn’t deflecting them with cryptic phrases like, “You’ll find that out later.” Kagura’s first night had been restless and it doesn’t help that she has to share a space with three other girls. The compound is tight on housing, so a lot of people get bunked up together, and Kagura’s relieved she doesn’t have to share a bed.
“Morning, Tsukki!” Kagura greets and as soon as the words leave her mouth, a shrilling alarm blares from the intercoms. She slams her hands over her ears and shouts over the noise, “What’s that?”
“Amanto warning,” Tsukuyo replies and waves to her, “follow me!”
She takes off running and Kagura sprints after her, but finds it difficult to keep up. She has to really push herself to not be left behind or get lost in the crowds and when they reach a large metal door, she’s breathing a lot harder than Tsukuyo is. Once they’re passed the thick metal through a smaller door built into the slab, the sirens aren’t nearly as loud and seem almost far away.
“What’re we up against?” Tsukuyo asks as she moves up toward one of the modules in front of a panel of huge windows.
“It’s a category three,” replies a tall man with broad shoulders and dark short hair.
“Need me to go out?”
“Not yet, we’re starting with one unit and seeing how they handle it. If they need reinforcements, you’re first in line.”
“Who’re you sending?”
A bespectacled boy closer to Kagura’s age laughs and punches some buttons on the module. “Who do you think?”
Tsukuyo sighs. “Isn’t their Jaeger still under repair?”
“No, that was finished a couple days ago,” a young woman answers.
“Come over here,” Tsukuyo says and puts an arm around Kagura’s shoulder to guide her off to the side.
They stand together out of everyone’s way and Kagura watches through the window as a massive Jaeger gets prepared to be dispatched. Everyone in the room has a job and start taking their positions with headsets over their heads, chairs pulled up to monitors, and there’s a visible communication network that flashes up onto the screen. A moment later, a new screen pops up to show the inside of the Jaeger itself and Gintoki and Hijikata can be seen entering in their suits. The audio isn’t on yet, but she can tell they’re talking or perhaps arguing as they take their positions. They get locked in and a picture of the Amanta flashes up onto the screen to show that it has almost emerged from the portal.
“You two ready to rift?”
The speakers come on with a static blip and Gintoki says, “We’ll be good to go as soon as this asshole admits to throwing out my favorite pants!”
“They were old,” Hijikata yells incredulously, “there wasn’t any part of them that didn’t have holes in them!”
“So you did do it!”
“Who else would go into your things and toss it? We live together, dumbass!”
“Why not just say that? Why pretend like you had no idea where they were?”
“Because you broke my lamp, so I enjoyed watching you look for something that wasn’t there!”
“That was an accident!” Gintoki wriggles against the system locking him in so he can glare at Hijikata. “I didn’t purposefully break anything!”
“Like hell! You were mad at me for –”
“You two can continue this later,” the man on the center podium interrupts, “don’t forget there’s an Amanto attack….”
“Ready for drop,” Hijikata says.
“Ready,” Gintoki echoes.
The Jaeger gets dropped from the bay area and the two pilots easily land while clicking some buttons within their control center. Their spat seems to have been forgotten and both of them are on task and working efficiently.
“Finish up,” the man voices and Kagura labels him as some kind of Commander, “we need to engage neural link.”
“On it,” Gintoki replies and finishes with his setup.
Hijikata stands straighter. “Initiate rift.”
A button gets pressed and suddenly the main screen lights up to show two brains. There’s a cluster of links that fill the screen and there’s a small model of a body in the lower right hand corner. Kagura’s eyes go wide as she watches the two pilots stand with their eyes closed and while it’s quiet in the room, there’s a whirl of motion happening on the screen. She glances up at Tsukuyo to find her staring at the screen as well and there’s a rumple in her brow that Kagura doesn’t know how to decipher. Hijikata opens his eyes and shakes his head, but Gintoki remains motionless and there’s a lot of red encompassing part of the screen.
“Tosshi, you’re stable, but you’ve got to reel your partner back in, he’s way out of alignment.”
“Yeah, I got it. Oi! Bastard! Let go of – wait… what? What’re… oh. Kondo-san, hold on just a second.”
Hijikata’s eyes close again and it’s a short buzzing silence later that Gintoki’s eyes pop open. He shakes his head and his face gives nothing away as he comes back into himself. Kagura watches the meters and bars spike, then Tsukuyo directs her attention to a set of vitals in the center. There’s a percentage at the bottom of the interface and Kagura’s lips part slightly as she sees what the compatibility number for the two of them settles on.
“Ready,” Hijikata says as his eyes open.
Gintoki smirks and shouts, “Time to kick some Amanto ass! Woo! Strawberry Mayo is on the move!”
“That is not what we’re called!”
“It’s better than Mayo Blaster!”
“That was Sougo’s idea, not mine!”
The two of them continue to bicker and Kagura is transfixed as the Jaeger moves out with the pilots in perfect synchronization. Their legs move to make the Jaeger walk and their suits are glowing in some parts, especially at the hands where some controls are. There’s so much to this world that she doesn’t know yet and seeing it like this, she’s getting a glimpse into what her brother does and how he lives. Slipping out from under Tsukuyo’s arm, Kagura heedlessly gets closer to the mainframe because she doesn’t want to miss anything. She’s hungry for insight, for any kind of information, and now, absurdly, she’s terribly curious as to how these two pilots came to be partners.