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In the beginning, the Kaiju rose out of the ocean and humanity started dying and then they started fighting back but the pilots of the jaegers started dying but pilots connected to each other could survive but there weren't enough people.
Enter the androids, already in use as techs, mechanics, cannon fodder, wall builders. The closer they're programmed to mimic human neural networks the better they can Drift. Connor is their most advanced prototype yet but they're so low on single pilots who can work with him.
Hank and his wife used to pilot a jaeger together, one of the hotshot pairs with a staggering kill rate.
And then one slipped past them.
And hit the Shatterdome where Cole was meant to be safe.
They made it back in time to kill the kaiju before it got inland, but they lost Cole.
And their drift. They aren't compatible anymore, Hank lost himself to drink and the Wall, hating the androids working beside him because they have no fear of the kaiju, no anger for these monsters destroying the world. How come they get to carry on, unperturbed as the world crashes and burns around them.
And then Marshall Fowler from his old Shatterdome calls him back. They've got a new partner for him.
They've got an android partner for him.
And Hank doesn't want it, doesn't want some artificial facsimile of what he and his wife used to have, doesn't want someone else in the fractured parts of his mind where their drift used to live, echoing with Cole's laughter and the imaginings of his screaming. But Fowler is insistent so Hank goes back and there's Connor.
Connor who isn't human, can almost pass as human, only the second of his kind to be put to combat. Markus was the first, intended to be a pilot on the front line with a human partner but the fight went wrong, the kaiju that they faced was new, stronger, too much. Carl was hurt too much to pilot again and Markus rebelled, refused to connect to a human ever again. Somehow drifted with other androids in the Shatterdome and altered his own programming.
Deviated from purpose.
Because of this, Connor's connection to other androids is limited. He's meant to link with people, drift with human minds. A blank slate partner who can connect to any human pilot, adapt to them, be whoever they need him to be in the drift.
Hank hates him.
Hates the fact that they're good together, almost as good as he was before with his wife, before Cole, before the goddamned war broke him. Hates how the memories he can't keep back drift across to the bot, how he, how it responds to them.
(I like dogs, a whisper that isn't his in the drift)
Drills, fights to get Hank back into shape, training sims that Hank starts to hate less as something about Connor starts to change. More and more echoes in the drift. Thoughts that aren't his. Thoughts that could be his, but taste different
(Blue-yellow-red-red-red)
Kaiju, coming through the breach. Not enough pilots, not enough jaegers, not enough to hold the line never mind push back. They take the Jaeger out. They drift and they fight and it's working, it's working...
It goes wrong. The kaiju is too big, too prepared. They're outnumbered and outgunned and then. There's a voice, slamming across the drift.
Screaming.
It's Connor and Hank can hear him, feel him, know him in a way that before there was nothing to know. A full mind, no longer a close facsimile, held in drift with Hank and between them something new.
All those blocked paths, all the clipped connections, all of Connor constrained and muted, growing into being anyway.
A voice over the comms, as they stagger back to shore, call sign RK200, hello Connor, my name is Markus. Jericho will see you safely to land.
Android built, android piloted.
Jericho, built of scraps
Forming protection around Hank and Connor against Cyberlife and the military brass who see Connor's deviation as they saw Markus's, not as a triumph but as the failure of their project. An android with a mind is only good to them if the mind is under their control.
Hank protests. Connor is a pilot, Connor is his drift partner, Connor is a goddamned person, mind still lingering against his as the drift echoes. The military were funding the RK series as a last ditch attempt, a digital line between the ocean and the wall. They failed, even though Connor succeeded, even though two dead kaiju float to shore. They're cutting the funding, pulling back. The wall will hold.
The wall will not hold, Hank knows this, Hank has sweated and bled on that wall, the wall will fall.
The wall falls.
Gavin and Tina pilot together, a vicious fast jaeger called Gladiator Lynx, mean and sharp and damn good together, caught up against a kaiju just a bit little faster and a little bit crueller.
They get out, but Tina's leg is broken too badly to pilot until it heals, Gavin's arm in a sling, both on too many painkillers to focus long enough to connect. They stopped the kaiju, but the wall still falls.
The wall falls, and the military throw their last remaining RK at the Shatterdome, created using all the reports and data and simulations from Connor, a replacement who's barely aware, a warrior who is programmed to fight and doesn't know why, lost and alone with the despair that Hank had always thought androids could never feel. He's incomplete as Connor was, crippled to rely on a human mind, connections blank and cauterised.
Connor links with him, scared and brave and
(blue-yellow-red-red-red-red)
and they're not built for this, android drift to android but Connor is awake, deviant and alive, reaching out to 900
(no name, no identity, he wasn't even given a name),
ghost drift with Hank a solid grounding presence holding him together and 900 reaches back, wakes up
(red-yellow-blue)
They feel him, both of them, Hank aware of echoes though Connor like a Doppler shift and they can't let him go now, a three-way drift in a jury-rigged Jaeger as the final stand comes screaming towards them proximity alarms it's a triple breach stations everyone STATIONS
They go into the battle not expecting to come back, Hank who didn't care if he died or not for so long suddenly desperate to live, for Connor, for himself, for Nine(Hundred) who hasn't even had a chance to live.
Connor and Nines are linked so tightly they're barely apart, Connor-and-Nines in the drift that reaches out to him, Connor-Nines-Hank as they ready their weapons, stride towards the breach.
Jericho on the comms as they join them, Markus and Simon and North and Josh, a drift of impossible beings, never designed to drift, never meant to drift with each other, never meant to think and love and rage and choose to fight, choose to stand tall.
One chance, one last chance, a dead kaiju and a bomb about to blow and Hank pulls the pod release at the point of no return, two escape capsules rocketing up as he continues down.
Screaming in his head as they realise what he's done, the love he felt for them both letting him smile as the breach convulses around him.
And then a voice, reaching through the drift
(red-red-red)
You forget Hank Anderson, we aren't human
The jaeger around him fractures, the framework holding the bomb tight breaking and cracking as a self-destruct he never knew about triggers and a shockwave starts to build around him.
Every single lock and clasp holding him tight falls away and he almost falls, walls closing round him no not walls the third pod they've turned his own trick against him and the outraged pride at that is the last thing he feels as the bomb's timer blinks 00:00 and their jaeger follows and the shockwaves ricochet, combine, throw him back through the breach up, up, up towards the waiting surface and two other pods, breaking through the waves.