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Chapter Text

Twenty miles off the Cape Disappointment Shatterdome, the two Jaegers patrolled the coastline. Lumberjack, the newer and bigger Jaeger, was playfully painted in a red plaid pattern covering its chest and arms. Its pilots, “Manly” Dan and his eldest daughter Wendy, sang traditional lumberjack songs as they patrolled. The younger pilots in the other Jaeger, an old and bulky model jokingly nicknamed “Shacktron” for its triangle-shaped head, were not as carefree. 

“Any news, Soos?” Dipper asked the J-Tech Officer. 

“Nothing yet, Dipper! The kaiju signature’s definitely headed for the North American coast, but who knows? I mean, not that Portland’s all that populated, but this area’s got more people than Anchorage, right? Definitely a juicier target,” Soos answered from LOCCENT. 

“Not helping, Soos!” Mabel warned cheerfully, feeling the sharp spike of anxiety through the Drift, and set out to reassure her brother: “C’mon, bro-bro! Third time’s the charm! Don’t you wanna punch a kaiju for reals this time?” she said through the private line. 

“At least it’ll be better than this wait,” Dipper sighed. 

If he were honest, he would have preferred another job in the PPDC, designing new Jaegers under McGucket or analyzing kaiju samples with his uncle Ford. But Mabel had wanted to try out at the Jaeger Academy and Dipper joined in out of moral support. He hadn’t expected to score so high on Drift compatibility with his sister, though it wasn’t particularly strange. What was more of a surprise, to himself and the people who knew him, was that he’d managed to survive the training and become a skilled fighter. Mabel had always been the confident, physical one, but after long hard years at the Academy, they were evenly matched in strength and speed. 

“Hey kids,” that was Marshal Stanley Pines on the line, “no need to worry. This ain’t called the Shatterdome of Disappointment for no reason: we have a perfect record! Zero kaiju battles! Zero kills!”

“That’s not something to be proud of!” Mabel complained. 

“Haha! Not from where I’m standing. Trust me, kid: there is absolutely no way that kaiju is coming here,” sentenced their uncle. 

That was precisely the moment when the alarms started ringing. 

“Uh, guys? Guys! That’s the proximity alert! The kaiju’s coming this way!” Soos’ panicked voice crackled with static and was interrupted as the man dropped the LOCCENT microphone in shock. 

“What? Oh, come ON!” Stan’s pained groan could be heard over the line before the mike was picked up again. 

“Okay, Rangers. I know you’re panicking, Dipper. Don’t. Let’s see, where are the damn buttons on this thing?” Marshal Pines took over the microphone and noisily slapped the buttons on the LOCCENT console. “Here it is, the ugly thing. Category 3 – this guy’s big. Ugh, it’s got reinforced armor all over its back, two nasty-looking horns on its head, and a mace-like bump thing on its tail – a tough guy for sure. So- 

“Marshal Pines, you have to name it! Wait, no, let me name it!” a scuffle was heard over the line as Soos tried to wrench the mike away from the Marshal, finally managing to squeeze between the Marshal and the console. “Oh, I know! It’s like one of those horned lizards, only with a freaky dinosaur tail! Thorny ! Thorny-tail ? Oh, THORNTAIL! How about that?” Soos said enthusiastically over the line. 

Marshal Pines grunted. “Fine, Thorntail it is. Now, what we’re gonna do-

Wendy’s voice rang out over the common line: “LOCCENT, this is Lumberjack. We’ve spotted the kaiju at 11 o’clock, we’re heading to intercept!” 

“Wait, what, you- oh, fine. Kids, approach the area but stay back – let the Corduroys have at him,” the Marshal instructed. 

“But Stan, we can help!” Mabel complained, raring for a fight. 

“No buts except yours on the sidelines! And that’s Marshal Pines to you, Ranger!”  Stan said with a steely voice.

“Oh, now he’s all formal and adhering to protocol!” Mabel said, in Shacktron’s private line to Dipper. 

“Oh, boy, oh, boy,” Dipper muttered, more to himself than anything. 

“Hey,” Mabel said, trying to balance her brother’s anxiety with her own warmth, confidence and thirst for action. “Stay with me, Dip-Dop. We’re the Kickbutt Twins, remember?”

“I hate that nickname,” Dipper complained, but he calmed down. 

Both twins squared their shoulders, the Jaeger moving with them. 

Up ahead, the waters parted as a huge, hulking beast emerged, just in front of the running Lumberjack. Without flinching or hesitating, the Corduroys launched their fierce attack, punching its jaw as it roared at them. The kaiju reared back and charged head-first, its sharp horns threatening to rip apart the Jaeger if it got caught. The Corduroys rolled away just in time. 

“Lumberjack, that armor looks like it might repel a shot from the plasma cannon – let’s not take the risk. You need to turn it around and fire into the belly!” Stan instructed over the comm. 

“Roger that, Marshal,” said Wendy. Circling the kaiju, the Corduroys engaged Lumberjack’s secondary weapon – a giant throwable ax – and threw it with deadly precision at the same moment Thorntail lunged at them. 

Everyone heard the Corduroys’ mad war cry as the ax connected with the creature’s jaw, neatly severing off a third of it. Thorntail stopped and roared in pain, kaiju blue spreading through the water below it. Lumberjack dived in, engaging the plasma cannon, but the kaiju reacted too quickly – before the Jaeger could make contact, it turned around and slammed its tail, spikes and all, right into Lumberjack’s chest. Everyone in the channel heard the Corduroys’ cries of pain. 

The Jaeger was thrown aside like a rag doll, and Thorntail pointed its horns at the fallen Jaeger and charged. 

Before he realized it, Dipper found himself running alongside Mabel, propelling Shacktron forward as Mabel raised the left arm and took aim, firing an explosive arrow bolt. It sunk into the kaiju’s hind leg and exploded upon insertion. It didn’t make a lot of damage but it did make Thorntail turn around to face the new enemy. 

“Kids! What are you doing? I told you to stay back !” Stan’s voice rang through the comm channel, and there was definite panic in his voice. 

“No can do, old man. Wendy needs us!” Dipper and Mabel answered as one. 

Thorntail charged them, horns pointed and roaring madly, spreading kaiju blue everywhere. With a cry, the twins faced it head on, Mabel deploying the pincer hand, ready for the attack. A second before contact, the twins moved aside and grabbed the kaiju’s horns. Mabel’s pincer twisted and cracked one of them, and they used the creature’s own strength in a judo throw, twisting its horns so it landed on its back. They didn’t give it time to react, pouncing on the creature. Dipper engaged the plasma cannon as Mabel held out her pincer arm to hold the swishing, flexible tail mace. 

“Fire now!” Stan yelled from the control room. 

Mabel was struggling to hold the tail and keep balance. “Just a bit more,” said Dipper, gritting his teeth, waiting for the cannon to load. 

Before the cannon was fully loaded, however, Thorntail managed to grasp the Jaeger’s leg with one of its hind legs, and kicked, wildly. Mabel lost her grasp on the mace tail, which swung at them immediately. The twins narrowly avoided being hit, but Shacktron overbalanced and fell in the water. Thorntail was above them in an instant. 

Several people were screaming from the LOCCENT comm, but Dipper and Mabel could only pay attention to Thorntail dripping shiny blue blood on their Jaeger, pointing its one remaining horn directly at Shacktron’s nuclear core. There was no time to think, to formulate a plan or a strategy. 

Years of being beat down into a tatami mat kicked in, and the twins reacted – Mabel punched her pincer hand straight into the kaiju’s broken jaw, and the second the plasma gun screen flashed green, Dipper punched it straight into the kaiju’s neck and fired – one, two, three times in quick succession. 

Thorntail’s head blew apart and the body fell heavily into the water. 

The twins righted the Jaeger and stood up, immediately looking at the area where Lumberjack had fallen. 

 “LOCCENT- I think it’s dead. Any news from the Cord-“ Dipper started to ask, when he noticed a sudden movement from the water. 

They barely had time to turn around as the kaiju’s tail rose up and hit the Jaeger right on its triangular head. 

It was like being hit in the face with a football and at the same time having a bomb explode in the room next to you. The comms fuzzed with static and were lost for a long moment, while plastic and steel bent and shattered around them. The triangular titanium frame of Shacktron’s head was the only thing that kept it from collapsing.

Dipper felt pain, and he wasn’t sure if it was his own or Mabel’s or the Jaeger’s. There was a lot of noise, the outside world crashing into the impenetrable Jaeger. Mabel was screaming something at him. Blackness ate at his vision at an alarming rate, and his last conscious action was to raise the plasma gun again, blindly, until it connected with something, and he fired. 

***

The foggy world coalesced slowly into something that made sense. Dipper woke up to a soft clicking sound, familiar and soothing. He tried to open his eyes, but the light hurt too much. 

After a while, he realized the sound was Mabel quietly knitting beside him, and it reassured him beyond words. He turned his head, painfully, to peek at her. She was wearing a baggy pink sweater on top of a hospital gown, and her head was so bandaged he couldn’t see her short hair, and her hands on the needles were slower than usual – but she was sitting up, awake, alive . 

“Thank God,” he muttered, and then she turned to look at him and dropped her knitting when she noticed he was awake. 

The next moments were blurred, inconsistent – nurses poking him painfully, medication, he probably fell asleep at some point. 

The next time he was awake for a longer amount of time, Mabel sat beside him and patiently answered his questions. 

The tail had been connected to a secondary brain, so it could still move after the main kaiju brain had been destroyed. Thankfully, it hadn’t lasted on its own long after Shacktron went down, and the plasma shot had helped destroy it. 

When he asked about Wendy, Mabel smiled and ducked out of the room, limping a bit. She came back minutes later with a smiling Wendy, her arm in a cast. 

“Hey dude,” she greeted him. “Glad to see you alive.”

“Same,” he replied in a croaky voice. He took a moment to take her in, the bags under her eyes and pale skin, red hair coming out of her normally tight braid. 

“You ok? What happened to you guys?” he asked. 

“I’m fine. I just did something stupid and got myself out of the harness, got my arm busted. My Dad’s fine too, got burned as we were trying to leave the Conn-Pod, but he’ll live. Thanks to you guys, by the way,” she smiled proudly at them. Then she looked worried. “Dude, what about you? Are you going to be okay?” 

“Apparently I broke, like, every bone in my body. Or that’s how it feels. Doctor says-

The door to the room opened with a bang, making everyone jump. “How are today’s heroes? I brought you pancakes!” said Stan, brandishing a plate of pancakes. He’d taken off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his shirt, so he was probably off-duty.  

“Did you make them?” Mabel asked, eying the pancakes suspiciously. 

“Nope! They’re from the kitchen, special order,” Stan said, beaming. 

“Great!” Mabel cheered, and they crowded around Dipper’s bed to eat.

Stan gave them the latest news from LOCCENT while chewing with his mouth open: “So McGucket says Lumberjack’s energy core was damaged, and it’s gonna be hell to fix – those budget cuts aren’t doing humanity a favor. On the bright side, good ol’ Shacktron’s still fixable, we just need to replace the Conn-Pod, though McGucket was going on about an update…”

Suddenly, his pager beeped. 

“Ugh, I’m ignoring that,” he said, rolling his eyes. 

And then, for the second time in less than 48 hours, the Kaiju alert sounded all throughout the Shatterdome. 

Stan grabbed his pager so fast his plate fell, spattering ceramic shards and pancake bits on the floor. 

His face was deadly pale as he turned to look at the three wounded pilots. 

“Movement in the Breach. Another kaiju is heading this way. And this one… this one’s a Category Four.”

Chapter Text

There was an unusual amount of noise and movement beyond the doors of the K-Science Lab, but Ford’s brain tuned it out automatically, too focused on the many lines of research he was working on at once—long lists of equations on a board, a Breach simulation running on the computer, a kaiju DNA analysis compiling on another, the careful separation of several layers of Kaiju tissue he was doing at that moment.

The sound of the proximity alert startled him into dropping the scalpel, which clattered to the ground. He huffed and bent over to pick it up from under the examination table, and he banged his head on the way up. He cursed and shoved the tray away, making the fleshy layers separate.

“It can’t be,” he muttered. They’d never had a Kaiju battle in the Cape of Disappointment before.  He was about to leave the lab and make his way to LOCCENT when he caught sight of a small anomaly in the tissue he’d been examining.

“Huh. Hadn’t I seen this before?” he muttered, coming closer to inspect and measure the oddly shaped lump. A sudden suspicion made him turn to the DNA analysis to double-check some data. As his suspicion solidified into hypothesis, all thoughts of a possible Kaiju battle disappeared from his mind. He ran to the blackboard, flipped it over to a clean slate and started scribbling madly on it.

He was still there when the lab doors opened and his brother walked in.

“Well, this doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Stanley’s voice behind him. Ford blinked slowly but took a few more seconds to finish writing out an equation before turning around to face his twin.

“I won’t ask how you could possibly miss the fact we’ve just had our very first Kaiju battle and kill in this Shatterdome,” Stan said. Ford suddenly remembered the alert and the second of panic he’d felt before getting lost in the rush of a brainwave.

“The kids?” he asked.

“All the pilots made it. The Shacktron took a bad hit, though. Dipper’s still mostly unconscious. He broke both his legs and a few ribs, but he was lucky. For a moment, I thought—” Stan cut himself off.

Ford rushed to one of the computers to access the recording of the fight.

“We could have used the expert input,” Stanley chided.

“You seem to have done well enough on your own,” Ford said distractedly. “I have a new hypothesis I’d like to take to the higher-ups, but it’ll be tricky to verify… Wait! The tail moved on its own—that’s a secondary brain!”

Stan shrugged. “Eh, who knows? We left the carcass there. Retrieving and fixing the Jaegers is our priority. Obviously.”

“If the secondary brain is intact, perhaps… it could work!” He turned his intense gaze to his brother. “Stanley—this is extremely important and urgent—do you have a way to contact your former associate, what was his name? Gilbert? Gleeful?”

“Ugh, Li’l Gideon? What d’you need the creep for?”

“There’s no time to explain. I need to get moving immediately if I want to retrieve the secondary brain on time!”

“You do remember that as Marshal, I am, in fact, your boss? Could you perhaps take a moment to explain what’s going on?” Stan said tetchily.

“Only because nobody else wanted this job,” Ford muttered under his breath, his back to Stan, foraging in the supply closet for the materials he needed. He ignored Stan’s prodding as he retrieved the necessary items and put them in a trolley, wheeling it to the entrance of the lab.

“Do you have a way to contact your associate or not?” Ford asked impatiently.

“For the record, he was never ‘my associate’. I have never knowingly taken part in a kaiju parts smuggling ring,” Stan said in a loud voice for the benefit of any recording devices in the lab. Then he handed over an annoyingly bright business card adorned with a five-pointed star with an eye in the middle. “Don’t trust him,” he warned, but Ford was already running off.

“What are you gonna do, Ford?” he yelled at his brother’s back.

“I’m going to Drift with that kaiju brain!” came the cheerful reply.

“WHAT?” Stan screamed, but it was too late. Ford was gone.

Marshal Stan Pines cursed his brother inventively for a long moment. Then he deflated.

“Fuck it. I’ll go get pancakes,” he muttered, leaving the empty K-Science Lab.

***

For what was supposed to be an illegal venture, Gideon Gleeful’s business was annoyingly colorful and easy to find, a large circus tent set up in what used to be a busy beachfront boardwalk and was now an evacuated area.

A large man with round cheeks and a cheery smile greeted Ford as he entered the tent.

“Esteemed gentleman! What brings you to our humble Tent of Temptations today? Are you looking for charming antiquities, locally made rugs, or something more…exotic?” The man said, unsubtly winking at the word “exotic”. Ford looked around the dusty collectibles showcased around the counter and sighed.

“I’m looking for Gideon Gleeful,” he said.

“Li’l Gideon? Oh, he’s busy, but I, Bud Gleeful, will help you find anything you need! Let me guess—Kaiju bone powder?”

Ford glared at Bud.

“Hm, maybe not. Extract of Kaiju blue? How about a Kaiju eye for decoration? Those are popular,” Bud said, dragging a curtain behind him to show the illegal Kaiju products he wasn’t supposed to sell.

“Those are fakes, and no, I don’t want any of that! This is a matter of extreme urgency! The fate of humanity hangs upon this!” Ford said, banging his fists on the counter, making the bottles and ceramic figurines rattle.

“Listen, buddy—” Bud started, but was interrupted by a high-pitched voice calling from the back of the tent.

“Father, is that Stan Pines I hear? Bring him in,” said the voice.

It felt more like being taken prisoner than being received as a customer. Ford was marched into the deeper reaches of the tent, to a larger workroom crowded with technicians and Kaiju parts. In the middle of the room stood a short boy younger than Dipper and Mabel, dressed in a glittery cowboy get-up and smiling evilly. The smile soon faded into a frown as the boy stared up at Ford.

“You’re not Stan Pines,” Li’l Gideon said. “Unless you somehow became more handsome in the last five years.”

Ford smirked. “Well spotted. I’m his brother, Stanford Pines. K-Scientist at the PPDC. I have a job that I’m sure will interest you,” he said.

A minute after Ford had explained his plan, Gideon was still rolling on the floor, tears of laughter dropping from his eyes. Bud knelt beside Gideon with a handkerchief ready, so when Gideon finally stopped laughing and made an impatient “give me” gesture, Bud wiped Gideon’s face immediately, helped him rise, and patted down the dust from his jacket and pants.

“I don’t know what’s so amusing about something so bold it could change the course of the war,” said Ford repressively.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact you want me to retrieve the most dangerous, least useful part of a Kaiju, for free, after what your brother did to me? You waltzing in here expecting every demand to be met when you’ll be lucky not to get thrown in the sea with weights on your feet?”

“The PPDC is fully prepared to pay handsomely for your efforts,” promised Ford confidently.

Gideon’s laughter almost sent him to the floor again, only kept from it by his father supporting his shoulders.

“The PPDC? Pay? With what? Spare rations? You don’t even have money for new Jaeger parts!”

Ford clenched his fists and his jaw, aware that his time was running out with every passing minute he spent negotiating with this clown.

“Listen, I’m desperate. I’m prepared to give you anything you want if you can get me that secondary brain.”

Gideon stopped laughing, a considering twinkle in his eye. “There is something I’ve wanted for the longest time,” he said, batting his eyelashes coquettishly at Ford.

“Anything,” Ford promised, knowing full well he was about to regret it.

The gleam in Gideon’s eye was triumphant. “A date with Mabel Pines,” he said.

Shit. Ford had seen his niece flawlessly execute the Piledriver with bigger men than him. He was dead, but then, so was the little creep before him.

“It’s a deal,” he said, shaking hands while crossing his fingers inside his pocket.

Gideon took a few precious seconds more to kiss a printed photo of his niece from the latest press release of the PPDC, muttering endearments that Ford made the greatest effort to ignore.

Then he turned around, all business, and started shouting orders to his people. Ford got to work unpacking his equipment.

***

The Kaiju alert was sounding again by the time Ford recovered consciousness. As he groggily sat up, trying to make sense of what he’d seen in the Drift, he saw Gideon’s people efficiently packing up the workstation, products and the tent itself inside a truck in record time.

“Goodbye, Stanford Pines! I will come to collect my payment soon, so please don’t die until you’ve told my darling Mabel she should expect me!” were Li’l Gideon’s parting words.

***

Mabel Pines made funny robot noises as she wheeled her brother through the long hallways of the Shatterdome on their way to LOCCENT, ignoring any complaints or cries from her brother to, “Slow down Mabel! You’re going to run over that tech!”

She dropped him off at the doors to LOCCENT, gave Dipper a quick pat on the shoulder and turned to go, but Dipper grabbed her hand before she could move away. Mabel paused, her back to him.

“Mabel… it’s going to be okay,” he said softly.

“Of course it is, Dip-Dop!” she replied, bopping him on the nose. Her cheer and her smile were strained, but Dipper smiled back all the same, trying to inject optimism in his words: “Get going then, Uncle Stan’s waiting for you!”

Stan arrived at the same time as Mabel to the Conn-Pod, looking uncomfortable in the tight Drivesuit and mumbling under his breath about aging and changing bodies.

“Hey Uncle Stan!” Mabel greeted him. “Ready to be the Dream Team of Kaiju Punchers?”

Stan knocked fists with her with a wry smile, then slumped his shoulders as they were connected to the Jaeger.

“Listen, kid…” he said as the techs finally filed out. “This is a desperate move. You know I never actually piloted a Jaeger, right? If it doesn’t work out, it’s all on me.”

Mabel shook her head, stubbornly refusing to consider that option. “It’ll go well,” she said in a low voice. “It has to.”

Their Drift Compatibility scores weren’t nearly as high as Dipper and Mabel’s, not even as high as Stan and Ford’s had been, years ago. But with the rest of their Drift-compatible pilots out of commission, it would have to do.

Once connected, they tested out a few moves in the hurriedly fixed Shacktron.

“All readings looking good, fellas!” Soos said from LOCCENT, watching along with Dipper the stats as they came in real time. “Wait—”

Because it had been fixed in a hurry, a few screws and bolts in the Jaeger hadn’t been tightened enough. Mabel and Stan felt a rough jolt as something came loose in the right arm, and just like that, they were brought back to Mabel’s vivid memory of the Kaiju’s tail crashing against Shacktron’s head, the reverberation, pain and pure panic as Mabel realized—I can’t feel Dipper anymore—

“Mabel’s out of alignment!” Soos called.

“Sweety, focus on my voice, come back!” Stan called to her, felt her struggling to remain calm as the thoughts startled to jumble in her mind, a cold feeling of guilt and self-hatred bubbling through the Drift.

You ruined your brother’s future, you useless boy! Get out!

“Oh shoot, now Stan’s out of alignment too!” said Soos’ voice through the comms, but neither of the pilots were paying attention to him now.

Dipper’s hurt—he only signed up to be a pilot because of me—if he dies—

You ruin everything! It’s your fault!

It’s—

My fault!

The Jaeger lost controlled and stumbled like a drunken baby, crashing into the platform behind it, sending pieces of metal and screws as large as a person clattering to the ground below, before the power was forcibly disconnected.

The Drift ended suddenly, and Mabel and Stan were left on their knees, sobbing.

“Sorry,” Mabel gasped. “I’m so sorry”.

“No, please, it wasn’t your fault, it was me, I’m the one who—”

“Stop that!” Mabel screamed in a burst of anger and frustration. Stan shut up and was left silent as Mabel hurried out of the Conn-Pod.

“Well, shit,” said Stan.

***

For the second time in than 48 hours, the Kaiju alert was sounding throughout the whole Shatterdome. However, the loading bay, where most of the Shatterdome crew had gathered, was silent.

Marshal Stan Pines looked at the people under his command. This was the moment for an epic, inspiring speech that would help them come together and stave off the growing sense of panic.

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “So, um… Here’s the bad news: a category four Kaiju, codename Supreme Horror—thanks Soos—has emerged from the Breach. Its trajectory and speed are constant, and it looks to be headed in a straight line directly toward us. We calculate it’ll hit the shore in,” he checked his watch, “four hours, twenty-six minutes, fifteen seconds.”

From the crew, there was silence and wide-eyed gazes.

“McGucket and his crew have been working non-stop to repair the Shack- I mean, Mechatron II, using parts taken from Lumberjack when needed,” he saluted McGucket and the Corduroys. “More bad news: we still don’t have pilots,” he grimaced. “And reinforcements from other Shatterdomes will take at least five hours to get here. So we’re on our own until then.”

People were fidgeting now, looking at the exits as if calculating how fast they could get the hell out of there. Stan didn’t blame them.

“The good news!” he exclaimed, remembering that his speech had to be motivational. “The good news is, uh… uh… The cafeteria has pancakes, all you can eat!” he finished, lamely.

He wondered how many people would be deserting their posts in the next few hours. Before he could add anything else to his speech, however, what looked like a crazy homeless guy came running up to them. Stan blinked.

That was his brother.

“Ford, you’re—” Stan started to say, but couldn’t decide how to finish the sentence. Alive. Covered in mud, ammonia and Kaiju blue. Interrupting my speech, goddammit.

The crew members cleared out from Ford’s staggering path, until he came face to face with Stan. Up close he looked worse: with bloodshot eyes, dried-up blood on his nose and ears, and stinking of vomit.

“Stan, Stan—I did it, I drifted with that Kaiju brain—” Ford stammered, his eyes wide and crazy. He grabbed Stan’s lapels and shook him a bit.

“Shit, Ford, calm down—Someone get a glass of water! Tell me, what—”

“I know how to close the Breach,” Ford said.