Work Text:
The year is 2030. 5 years after the closing of the breach and your sacrifice. The Kaiju are returning, Marshal, and we need you. I don’t know how we – I – can fight them again. You were all I had left after I failed to help Yancy. I could have caught the signature sooner. I should have caught the signature sooner and I didn’t and Raleigh lost his brother. You reminded me what my grandfather told me. “Endure this.” And endure I did.
And then we lost the Kaidonovsky’s.
And the Wei-Tang triplets.
And we endured.
And then you and Chuck got in Striker, she wasn’t even your Jeager, and you helped stop the Kaiju, at the expense of yourself. The Kaiju weren’t coming back but neither were you. I was adrift again. More adrift than when you first found me, inspired me, really, and got me to sign up. To become a part of something bigger than myself.
Tendo looks around, standing in the footsteps of a fallen giant, watching the Shatterdome sputter back to life in preparation to fight the Kaiju once more. The metal of the empty bay that once housed Striker Eureka seemed to whisper at him, comforting sounds of a man who sacrificed for the survival of a planet.
But this time. This time, we have a hand up. They may have had time to build bigger and stronger kaiju, but humanity knows we can beat them. We’ve done it before and we’ve got one thing on our side they will never know.
Hope.