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Gipsy didn’t know how it happened. None of the Jaegers did.
At the very least, she could say with confidence that none of the j-techs had anything to do with it, especially since none of them believed the “rumor” the Jaegers held sentience and their own will. As impressed as she was by their skill and level of detail, she was pretty sure they didn’t have any understanding of how to do this to her.
Maybe Dr. Newt was involved, but he always seemed more into Kaiju then Jaegers, and that honestly had always suited Gipsy just fine. She didn’t like the idea of the fanatic scientist digging into her under armor and plating and looking for a sample, even when she was metal and didn’t exactly have samples.
But, then again, there was something wrong here and she couldn’t figure out what it was.
One second, she had been standing perfectly still, conn-pod not even attached to the rest of the armor but still able to feel every scrape and twist the j-techs made on her body, connecting wires and replacing pistons and gears as needed.
The next, her vision was hazily fading in and out of focus – blinking, her rangers would call it – and she was staring up at a ceiling that was unfamiliar to her own eyes, but that she recognized anyway from her rangers’ memories.
It was her. Her conn-pod’s ceiling, looming above her with ambient bio lights and smooth plating. She could see every screw, every seam between metal plating, the shaft that the racks mounted upon, and–
Gipsy managed to clumsily roll from her back onto her abdomen, knees underneath her.
Moving was easier than it had ever been in her life. She always moved too slow, to both her own and her rangers’ frustration, but thankfully still fast enough to take out a kaiju. Now, no matter how slow her own speed was, she could tell it was because of her own lack of effort rather than an actual problem that needed fixing.
Regardless, it was stranger to be moving on her own, without her rangers forming a safety net around her, guiding her back on track whenever she faltered. It didn’t take her long to decide it was strange in a very bad way.
Strange like she was lying in the snow, barely able to glimpse Raleigh stumbling away from her, bloodied and broken, trying to put distance between himself and– “the death machine that got his brother killed”. (Not that she blamed him for thinking that. It was nearly impossible to control thoughts, and he was delirious at the time, but it stuck with her. It hurt.)
Strange like she woke up from years of slumber to find a thousand hands on her again, but never the pair that she wanted.
No. Whatever was happening, she didn’t like it. She didn’t like feeling small and stuck in her own conn-pod, only able to tell it was her from the dull flicks of memories of memories.
From Yancy, who looked up at her ceiling and prayed before a mission. From Raleigh, who looked up at his mount and patted it as he left, muttering out a “good job, girl” after every successful deployment. From Mako, who lovingly planned out how she would look, the miniscule changes, who knew every bolt and every nut from her feet to the top of her conn-pod.
Gipsy had never exactly had a mirror to see herself and her inside with. This situation was terrifying in the worst of ways.
She stared down at her hands, something she actually did know what they looked like, and found that they were small and fleshy, like her rangers’ when they were small. Her fingers could not exactly be called stubby, but they had more baby fat then their adult selves did.
When she made the actual effort to twitch them, they moved.
There were no rangers to confirm the movement, or direct her in a new direction. It was her. By herself. On her own.
That was somehow scarier then everything else, scarier then the fact that she just blinked to life as a human.
Gipsy had to find Raleigh and Mako. She only had blurry memories of what the Shatterdome’s layout was, but if she found one, she was pretty sure she’d find the other. They’d know what to do, how to fix this.
Probably. She knew everything they did, with very, very little gaps.
She stumbled up to her feet, balance uncalibrated. There was no setting she could pull up to run a diagnostic, no way to stabilize herself other than her own perseverance. As she planted her feet, Gipsy waited until the world stopped spinning before she looked back up at the ceiling. It was still so far away. Comparing herself to her rangers’ mounts, Gipsy found that she was even shorter than Mako was next to them.
She was pretty sure that meant there was no way to connect herself into one of the racks, even without one of their suits.
Gipsy looked down to confirm, and sure enough, no suit was in sight. Just a particularly baggy shirt and pants that barely managed to cinch around her waist. She didn’t even have shoes.
How did she even wake up in clothes, anyway? How did any of this make sense–
She shook it off. It wasn’t like it mattered. She had more important things to get to, anyway.
Gipsy hurried to the door, punching in the pin she had seen j-techs and all three of her rangers punch in a thousand times over. Sure, she had to kind of squint to make out the numbers, unused to seeing so close in so fine of detail, but at least she was able.
As soon as the door was open, she was sprinting through the docking chamber, through the room where they kept the aforementioned suits of armor, and into the hallway beyond before a single j-tech could register the unauthorized human who had just sprinted through their workspace.
Human. Oh, she was a human, shorter then any of the j-techs, shorter than her rangers, watching people thunder past without a look. Gipsy Danger was a human, a human without her rangers.
This was not good. This was not good.
Gipsy turned her head, trying to calculate where to go next, trying to recall through the flickers of memories how the hallway turned.
She couldn’t recall the Shatterdome enough to know alternate pathways that would avoid as many people as possible. All she could really recall was the main path, but even that was fragmented in her memory.
Ugh, this wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
Finally, one of the j-techs wandering nearby froze, turning his head around to blink at her in confusion. He took in her outfit, the way she stock-stood still, regarding him and everything else with wide eyes, and he frowned. Gipsy could see the exact second he registered she wasn’t just a particularly short j-tech.
“Hey,” he said slowly, taking a cautious step towards her and weaving out of the way of three more j-techs that thundered nearby. “What are you doing here? Kids aren’t supposed to be– Where are your parents?”
Parents. Gipsy was a human without parents.
Crap, Gipsy was a Jaeger, trapped in a human body, who was already spotted and cornered, and she was never going to find Raleigh and Mako if the j-tech decided to grab her and bring her to a superior officer. She highly doubted that she would be going to Pentecost or even Herc, the only two she could trust to even maybe believe her.
No, no, above all, she had to find her rangers.
She took a sharp step to the side, ignoring how the world started to lurch on its axis again. She had the soul of a machine, after all, forged and built for war, she couldn’t let a funny thing like equilibrium get the best of her. Managing to plant her feet, Gipsy pivoted and took off running.
Actually running, not just a slow trudge through the water, running, like she was a person, small enough to exist on this planet without complication. The thought gave her an awkward burst of delight that was quickly overshadowed by the fear that echoed through as the j-tech yelled after her.
Gipsy could feel the eyes of several more j-techs turn on her at his call, but she didn’t stop. She just kept running, and running, no matter how much her legs burned from overuse. Honestly, it didn’t take long before she completely lost track of where she was going. At some point, the hallway blurred together, and she could no longer tell how far she had run, if she missed her turn. It didn’t really matter all that much, anyway.
She would’ve gotten lost pretty quickly no matter what happened.
Gipsy came to a halting stop, chest heaving as she struggled to recollect air within her lungs, turning her head back and forth until she found the nearest door that had a “stairs” symbol on it. Dashing towards it, she slipped through the throngs of people and warm bodies – she had never felt warm flesh before, seeing as how kaiju were cold-blooded in more ways than just metaphorical – and scrambled with the latch until it pulled open.
The stairway was mostly empty, most people vying for the elevators, but it was perfect anyway. If she could get to ground-floor, to the bay, she’d be able to find her way to her rangers’ rooms. That much was very clear to her.
Gipsy took the stairs one at a time, hating how every step rattled her sense of balance and direction, bouncing her up and down even when she tried to walk down them instead.
She had no time to waste, but being a person had already done an excellent job at proving that it was, in fact, the hardest thing she had ever had to do.
Two of the very, very few j-techs in the stairwell looked at her funny as she rattled by, but at least they didn’t try to stop her. Maybe they really did think she was off-duty or something.
Finally, Gipsy got to a point where there were no more stairs, and swung open the door.
The blistering orange light hit her eyes, and she had to lift up a hand to shield herself. There were j-techs and officers marching past, tools being transported with golf-carts, the sound of a ball distantly hitting the ground over and over again. There was a dog barking, she thought, and a distant ripple of terror that could only be her own.
It was too much. Too many people.
She looked up, craning her neck up as far as she could, and towering high above, there she was. Her rangers’ memory of her lined up perfectly with the real thing, even just from her nuclear core and down, no conn-pod clearly visible from her vantage point. Gipsy Danger, looking every bit of the threat everyone told her she did. Waiting peacefully to be deployed…
Except she couldn’t be deployed. She was standing right here, three seconds away from panic.
She turned her head, and there was Striker Eureka, Crimson Typhoon, and Cherno Alpha, equally in all their beautiful glory. Her friends, in a way. Her fellow jaegers, the only people she could talk to who weren’t her rangers.
Once she was back in her own body and able to access her comm systems, they were never going to believe her. They’d just send back their own laughs and rolls of disbelief. Striker would tell her she was dreaming, (even though they were all decently certain jaegers couldn’t dream), and Crimson would complain about not being able to join her and be human himself, and Cherno would pretend like she hadn’t said anything at all.
Less than ten minutes apart, and she already missed them. She wondered if that had already realized she was missing, but it seemed unlikely. None of them talked that often anyway.
She shook the thought from her mind. Whatever they noticed, or however they’d react, wasn’t important right now. Right now, all that mattered was getting across the base.
Gipsy turned her head, observing everything around her, trying to find the door beneath the clock that would mark her quick exit out of the bay. There it was, the countdown still ticking up, waiting until the next attack.
The problem was that j-techs were coming in and out of the door constantly. She thought she spotted a blur of a black uniform among the throngs, but as soon as she saw it, it was gone again, fading back into the crowd.
She just had to squeeze past them all without being stopped or grabbed. Should be easy, for someone as skilled and powerful as her, but. Weak human body.
Screw it. She could stay standing here forever, but she’d be seen and grabbed eventually anyway, and she needed to find Mako and Raleigh, regardless of risk.
Gipsy took a step forward, breaking into a run towards the door. She accidentally rammed her way right through a crowd of j-techs, who released cries of alarm and curses as she peeled through. She didn’t bother apologizing, something she knew Yancy would’ve scolded her for, were he still… alive.
But she couldn’t be bothered to try and find her voice, her head set straight forward as she shoved through the door.
It wasn’t easier to breathe on the other side of it, but she couldn’t afford care, and continued to march herself forward. Weaving her way through the pulsating crowds, Gipsy managed to stay mostly undetected, very few people’s eyes finding the top of her head and even less seeming to care.
Maybe only one stopped to stare at her as she trotted past, but Gipsy did her best to ignore them. She kept her eyes on the left wall, searching for the third hallway to turn into. By the time she did, the constant inflow of people was starting to still, and turning into the hallway did offer her some amount of peace. She inhaled, letting the feeling fill her chest.
Humans were awful. Her rangers were the only good ones, she determined. There were too many of them in one place, and none of them actually smelled all that good, and it was just…
She was supposed to be Gipsy Danger, killer of Kaiju, a high success rate in the field aside from her… one fatal failure. She wasn’t supposed to be small and lost and frustrated all at once! She was supposed to be able to–
Ugh. Ugh, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t focusing on the long term goal, just on her short-term frustration, which was, all things considered, an easy fix. She knew how to get to their berthings from here.
It was a straight shot for a while, and then a staircase – or elevator, but as much as she hated the staircase they were more discreet – up to the fourth deck. She kept a hand against the wall for stabilization as she trucked along. Every step was a surprise when she was met by no resistance, no water washing up to her knees if not her shins, no gravity pulling her down in awful ways as her rangers fought to keep her upright, trucking along themselves through the resistance the mount provided.
She was supposed to feel free, but she didn’t. How little, how small. She felt like she was the smallest human in existence, the smallest to ever exist. Gipsy knew she was just a child, but still.
It took far longer than she would’ve liked to reach the stairwell, and longer still to scale it, wrapping around the circumference until she reached the proper floor. Getting back on steady ground was a relief, but she still took her time peeking out the door before fully stepping into the next hallway. There were very few officers or j-techs around, most busy on tablets or simply hurrying along to get to their own berthings.
Gipsy waited until the last passed by before stepping out into the hallway, clicking the door shut behind her. Raleigh’s berthing was only two hallways down, fourth door on the right. Mako’s was right across from his.
It should be easy to find them.
Gipsy walked as fast as she could, while still doing her best to avoid suspicion, across the hallways, navigating as best she could. Another j-tech gave her a funny look, but a chirp from their radio drove away their attention.
A few more turns, and Gipsy found herself in front of Raleigh’s door.
Please don’t be asleep, she silently begged, slamming her fist against the door.
She waited.
And waited.
No sound greeted her.
She knocked again, but it was the same. She tried to look into the peep hole, but it was just too far up. She didn’t even know if it worked from this direction; all she had was a distant memory of Mako peering out at Raleigh, and it wasn’t like he’d be waiting on the other side of the door, just waiting for her to knock.
But maybe Mako would be?
Gipsy pivoted on her heel, crossing the hallway to knock her first against Mako’s door first. Mako was good about answering her door. She was a light sleeper, and wouldn’t sleep through Gipsy wanting to get in, would she? No, no, Mako had woken up from far less, and Gipsy might be new, but she knew her knocks weren’t that quiet.
She knocked again, desperate when no response arose from the other side of the door.
It’s me, she pleaded with the door, tipping her head forward to rest against the metal. It’s me. Open up, it’s me. Gipsy Danger. Please listen to me. Please open up for me. I don’t want to be alone out here. You have to fix me.
Of course, there was no answer, because her rangers were not drifting with her, were not in her, weren’t…
She was alone. So utterly alone. She couldn’t stay outside their rooms forever, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.Where was she supposed to go without them? How long until they figured out her frame was empty, without a consciousness formatted by their own?
What if a Kaiju attacked? What was she supposed to do? She needed help, she needed to be fixed, but if the people she wanted weren’t here, how was she supposed to–
A tap on her shoulder startled her, and she whirled around, hand coming up in defense, raising to shoot an energy blast that didn’t exist.
Instead she met the eyes of another human kid, her height, with short messy brown hair and sharp blue eyes. He was frowning, eyebrows brought together sharply, wearing his own baggy set of clothing, and–
Gipsy relaxed before she could think better of it, leaning forward to press her forehead against his shoulder. Striker’s hands immediately came out to grab her shoulders and push her away.
“What are you doing?” He snapped, scowling down at her. “The first time we see each other like this, and this is how you act?”
Yep. Definitely Striker. Gipsy lifted her hand towards her throat, trying out the sounds. “Heeee… lloooo, Striiiker!”
“You haven’t even tried your voice yet?” Striker scolded, pretending like his eyes and stance didn’t relax the tiniest bit at the sound of her voice.
“No!” She scowled at him. “Waass tryyyying toooo… sneak!” Satisfied at finally getting a word out without having to struggle through the syllable, she stood up taller, satisfied.
“Sneak,” Striker echoed, but he gave her a firm nod anyway. “Good. I don’t know what the j-techs would do to us if they found us, but it probably wouldn’t be good.”
More of an annoyance, really, but Gipsy figured one person’s ‘not good’ was another person’s ‘annoying’.
“I know.” She returned snarkily, turning to frown towards the door behind her. “I thought… Raleigh and Mako could help.”
“They’re not here.” Striker said impatiently, clearly waiting for her to get with the program. “They’re… I don’t even know. But neither is Herc or Chuck. They’re a dead end, Gipsy.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Gipsy demanded, frustration coursing through her. She grabbed her very human ears and pulled the lobes, trying to get out her frustration. “I wasn’t built to be this small and helpless!”
“None of us were, but we have to adapt.” Striker responded firmly. “Or else we’re going to get stuck here forever, and then what?”
Gipsy diverted her eyes away from him. “Do you think it happened to the other two? Do you think they’re wondering where we went?”
“Crimson Typhoon is with the triplets.” Striker told her. “I saw him when I was coming over here. He’s already got together with them. He’s horrible at balancing.”
Gipsy frowned, about to say she was too and there was nothing special about that, until she realized what Striker meant. Right, losing two extra limbs would do that to a person, or, rather, a Jaeger. No wonder his balance was notably worse, even next to theirs’.
“And the triplets just accepted him?” Gipsy asked, only just figuring out it was a fear that neither Raleigh or Mako would recognize her until she asked. “No questions?”
“I don’t know!” Striker snapped. “I didn’t stick around to ask questions! But he was with them, and they didn’t seem upset. They’ll protect him if something happens.”
But if he was just some random kid, how were they supposed to know to protect him? Gipsy had to find her rangers, fast, if only to lay her own paranoia to rest.
“I was going to see if Herc was with Pentecost.” Striker said. “And then I saw you, and… you’re closer to Mako. If something happens, if they don’t believe me, maybe they’ll believe you.”
“Right.” Gipsy nodded firmly, turning her head one way and the other to try to remember which direction Pentecost’s office was in.
“You don’t know where it is?!” Striker demanded, but also didn’t start walking himself, which made Gipsy just want to laugh from the pure hypocrisy.
She remembered Raleigh wondering once if Striker inherited more of Herc’s personality or Chuck’s, hoping for the former. She hated to dash his hopes, but if Striker got anything from Herc, he had buried it far beneath the snark and egotism of Chuck that it rarely got the opportunity to come up for air.
“No,” Gipsy told him, meeting his Chuck with the fire of Raleigh. “Do you?”
“Herc’s been there a million times. Give me a second to remember!” Striker snarled at her, but his eyes darted nervously away. Gipsy wondered how long he had been pacing, trying to figure out where to go, before she appeared at the berthing.
Gipsy inhaled carefully, in the way that she had heard Mako do thousands of times over, in her memories, in her conn-pod, forcing herself to calm down and focus. There had to be a memory, somewhere buried, about Mako walking to find Pentecost about something.
Something with a strong enough emotion that she could detect it, and—
There. She found it. She found it.
“Come on,” Gipsy said, grabbing Striker’s hand and turning sharply on her heel. She could see j-techs down the other way watching them, eyes boring into them even as they left, breaking into a run. “We have to go. They’re watching us.”
“I know, I know.” Striker scoffed. “We’re lucky nobody’s sounded the alarm against us yet. I doubt it’ll last long.”
Gipsy hoped it would. She really, really did.
(:)
Gipsy managed to press Mako’s personal number into the pad implanted behind the door as Striker stood watch, carefully staring out over the hallway behind her.
She half hoped Mako was already inside, and was sorely disappointed when the door opened to nothing but Pentecost’s desk and no sign of either.
“Ugh,” Striker said, peering over her shoulder as she slipped inside. “Where are they?! They can’t just… all go missing! That’s just not fair at all!”
“I don’t know,” With irritation, Gipsy moved on, guiding him along. “I’m sure they’ll come back soon.”
Striker scoffed at her shoulder, and she did her best to ignore it. She slipped into the room, taking a seat on one of the chairs facing Pentecost’s desk, neatly folding her hands on her lap. Striker, however, spread himself out as much as he could over the chair, legs spread and arms covering the back of it completely.
Gipsy wanted to roll her eyes at him. He looked unprofessional. If they wanted Pentecost to listen to them, he should shape up.
“I wonder where Cherno Alpha is.” Striker mused to himself, eyes closing as he rested the back of his head against the chair. “Do you think he’s found Sasha and Aleksis, yet?”
“I don’t know.” Gipsy said. “Maybe he got spared. Maybe he’s not a human like the rest of us.”
“I bet he found them.” Striker said quietly. “Or he got in a lot of trouble trying—”
“Who are you, and what are you doing in my office?!”
Pentecost’s voice echoed out behind them, and Gipsy winced, slumping into herself, cringing away from his wrath.
Striker, however, had no such fear and decency. “Oh, good, you’re here!” He said, turning around in his chair to wave excitedly at Pentecost. “And Herc too. That’ll make it easier to explain.”
“Explain what?!” Pentecost continued, marching toward to grab the back of Gipsy’s chair and forced her to turn around. Shame faced, Gipsy cringed into herself and curled her knees to her chest. “What are children doing onboard my Shatterdome?!”
“We’re not children!” Striker scoffed, standing up off his chair and managing to clumsily put himself at attention. “We’re— well, with all due respect, we don’t know what happened, but we’re the Jaegers! I’m Striker, and this is Gipsy.”
“Hi,” Gipsy said shyly, slowly standing up herself to mirror Striker.
Herc and Pentecost stared back with matching looks of disinterest and disbelief. “You… expect me to believe that?” Pentecost stared, before reaching down to grab both of their arms. “Until we find your legal guardians, you two are both spending a long time down in the brig, and—!”
“We know the jaegers are sentient!” Gipsy squeaked, the only thing she could think to say and admit before she was pulled into the rest of the base. “It— we can’t lie about being the jaegers if we didn’t know about it!”
“Yes, you could.” Pentecost said without pause, handing Striker’s arm off to Herc. “Children have active imaginations. I can tell you with full certainty, Jaegers are not sentient.”
Gipsy knew he was just lying to keep a secret, but it hurt anyway.
“When you— When you first took Mako somewhere, you took her out for ice cream!” Gipsy squeaked, digging in her heels as best she could. “You took her to a place a few towns over, even though you weren’t given leave to do so, and you talked to her about her life, and—!”
Pentecost came to an abrupt halt, finally, staring down at her.
“And you two met for the first time after your Jaegers got deployed together!” Striker added desperately. “All four of you went out for beers afterwards and hit it off!”
Herc stopped as well, and the two of them exchanged a long look before Herc finally reached forward to hit the button and close the door.
“Okay.” Herc said, frowning at them. “How do you know that?”
“I told you!” Striker said, wrenching his arm out of Herc’s grasp. “I’m Striker Eureka! There’s no other way I’d know everything about you, there’s no way I would–!”
Striker fell silent with a stuttering breath as Herc set his hands on his shoulders, the older moving just enough to cup Striker’s chin and lift it up. The two stared at each other, a silent standoff, Striker daring Herc to tell him “no” again, and Herc just… looked.
It was unnerving.
What was worse was when Pentecost exhaled in a quiet, furious way, and Gipsy found an identical stare boring into her eyes. She wanted to flinch away, but Raleigh never had, so she didn’t. She stared back, unyielding.
“You are not the Jaegers.” Pentecost told her firmly, not blinking or scowling or anything else. “I am willing to bet they developed mind-reading technology to keep an eye on the Shatterdome before I believe that you were given human bodies. It doesn’t make sense, even in the barest sense of the word.”
“I know.” Gipsy grunted back, irritated. “Maybe Newt did it, or another scientist, or someone. I don’t know. I was going through maintenance, and then I was awake. That’s it! I don’t know how I can make it any clearer!”
“Maybe start with the truth–”
“Stacker.” Herc said, without moving his eyes off of Striker. “Look at him. He… look.”
Pentecost kept a firm grip on Gipsy as he turned away, looking at Striker instead. “What is it?”
“He looks like Chuck.” Herc said, turning the former Jaeger’s chin to the side so that Pentecost could look at him. “Whatever he is, he’s a Hansen.”
Pentecost’s jaw tightened, so subtly that Gipsy almost didn’t catch it if she wasn’t staring at him so intently. She allowed her gaze to turn away from him to stare at Striker instead, and…
Honestly, she couldn’t see it. The few glimpses she had of Chuck in Raleigh and Mako’s heads were slightly off-kilter, neither of the two caring enough to memorize his face. She could see that he might look a little bit like Herc, but she couldn’t tell if that was just because they were standing next to each other, or because they actually did.
When Pentecost turned back to Gipsy, she turned back, too, his grip on her arm softening before fully dropping away. He regarded her for a long second, hand reaching up slowly, fingers brushing underneath her hair before he held it up carefully, cupping the middle portion in his palm.
Gipsy looked without turning her head, catching the slight of blonde hair reflecting the soft lighting of the office.
Pentecost had stopped looking at her hair, eyes planted firmly on her face. There was something deep and searching in his gaze, and when Gipsy met his gaze again, his expression began to unknot, too.
“You do look like Mako.” Pentecost told her, voice gentle as he stared at her. “You have her face and her posture.”
Gipsy wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. She was decently sure it was, offering a small bow that Pentecost didn’t return, but made the tension slowly melt out of his stance.
“I assume this is Becket hair.” Pentecost continued, though he had long since dropped her locks. “You’re a mix of your pilots, then.”
“You believe us?” Gipsy asked in relief, feeling something tense unwind in her shoulders at the quiet admission.
“We’ll call your rangers.” Pentecost said, giving Herc a nod. “See if they can prove it. If Hansen thinks he’s Striker, then it might be true. I’m not believing anything until I talk to all four of them.”
Gipsy didn’t know if it was grief or not that convinced her that Yancy would’ve believed her in a second.
She allowed Pentecost to guide her back to the seat he had found her in as Herc did the same with Striker. Herc looked firm and soft all at once, staring at Striker as if he was something new entirely. Gipsy was almost jealous about it, even though that was nonsensical.
She just wanted her rangers to get here as fast as possible, if only to save her the frustration and pain of watching the two of them essentially bond together.
Pentecost grabbed the receiver end of his radio, lifting it up to his mouth. “Fetch me Ranger Becket, Mori, and Hansen.” He ordered, barely waiting for a confirmation before he set it down, glancing up at Herc. “Follow me.”
Herc stepped away from Sticker with one quick squeeze to the shoulder, joining Pentecost in the distant corner of the office. Gipsy strained to evesdrop in the way all three of her rangers would’ve.
“Hansen, how sure are you about their identities?” Pentecost demanded quickly, glancing at them. Under his gaze, Gipsy wriggled nervously. “Just because they bear a resemblance to our kids does not mean they’re Jaegers.”
“When the rangers get here, I recommend we drift inside our Jaegers.” Herc said instead of answering. “Whether or not our Jaegers are conscious should answer the question of… them. I’m just wondering why they’re… so small.”
Both higher ranking soldiers turned to stare at the two Jaegers, and Gipsy and Striker exchanged an awkward glance. From Striker’s expression, he had clearly been listening in, too.
“If they were aging like a human, they should be toddlers, not teenagers.” Pentecost said thoughtfully, barely bothering to keep his voice low. “We should be grateful they’re not any younger. They barely have any memories of their own. I’m impressed they found my office.”
Herc nodded back slowly, his eyes only for Striker, studying him over and over again. Gipsy could well remember Raleigh’s conversation with Herc, discussing Chuck and his firey temper and ego. How Herc confessed that he wished he had done things differently sometimes.
Maybe Striker was a do-over in his head.
Gipsy didn’t like that, because for Striker to be a do-over, that meant they would have to remain in human bodies for that, and she didn’t like that thought at all. She hated being reduced from a war machine into this soft exterior, where any human could easily beat her in a fight.
She put her hand over where her nuclear core should be. She was greeted only by the quiet, rhythmic pounding of her heart. Maybe a little faster than it should be, brought on by nerves, but that made sense. She was anxious, after all.
“The next question is how this happened.” Pentecost continued. “They don’t know, and we don’t know. It could be Newt, but he doesn’t seem like the type to run experiments like this.”
“I’m not sure he has the know-how, either.” Herc agreed. “But if he did, then he’d sooner turn a Kaiju human than Jaegers. Especially since he doesn’t know they’re sentient.”
“I’d rather keep it that way.” Pentecost muttered. “If we question him, we’ll have to be careful not to give anything away. The less people who know about this, the better. If they really are the Jaegers, given human form, we’ll claim it’s a… program of some kind. Younger relatives of the rangers, given freedom to visit the Shatterdome.”
“With all due respect, nobody will believe that.”
Pentecost shrugged. “I would rather not keep humanity’s last hope locked up in some room while we try to find a workaround. I’d rather lie to the j-techs and officers than make them mad.”
Striker puffed out his chest, ego feeding itself directly into his brain. Gipsy scoffed at him with a roll of her eyes, completely irritated by how quickly he latched onto everything, whether it was an actual compliment or not.
“Hear that, Gips?” Striker teased, leaning over close as he murmured out the nickname. “I’m important.”
“We’re both important!” Gipsy scoffed back at him, hand on his face as she shoved him away. “There’s nothing new about that. We’re just allowed to feel the special treatment this way, now. Instead of staying at attention the whole time.”
She did think it was funny that Raleigh and Mako didn’t really get special treatment beyond personal berthings, and they were the only sentient people on the team that the general population were aware of. She guessed it made sense, in a strange, off-kilter sort of way. After all this was over, the rangers would be endlessly pampered and adorned.
Gipsy tried not to think about what would happen to her and the others.
The door buzzed open, and when she turned to look, it was filled out by their three missing rangers. None of them took immediate notice of the kids sitting on the chairs in front of Pentecost’s desks, instead turning their attention to Herc and Pentecost’s small huddle.
“Marshal,” Raleigh said, taking a few large steps into the room that the other two obediently mirrored. “You wanted to see us?” Catching Gipsy’s eyes for just a second, Raleigh refocused his attention on Pentecost before doing a double-take, twisting back around to stare at Gipsy as if she was a cryptid.
“Yes.” Pentecost said, taking a step over to rejoin the Jaegers at his desk. “Ranger, take a good look at these two. These two… children managed to sneak through the Shatterdome and break into my office.”
“How did they get here?” Mako asked in confusion, tilting her head.
“How is that our faults?” Chuck demanded with a roll of his own eyes, already disinterested in the conversation. Gipsy did not miss the way that Striker wilted at her side.
“Because, Hansen, they’re also claiming to be your Jaegers, given human bodies.”
In the resulting silence, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Gipsy twisted her fingers together, waiting anxiously for whatever her two Jaegers would say. She was both expecting and wasn’t the sudden exhale that Raleigh gave off, humor and disbelief playing itself on his face. “Pardon me, sir?”
Pentecost sighed, lifting up his own hand to massage his face. “Believe me, Becket, I could hardly believe them either. But Herc is vouching for “Striker” here, so I’ll entertain the theory. For now.”
Mako’s eyes were glued onto Gipsy, taking her in. Her expression was loose, mouth slightly agape as she looked between Gipsy and Raleigh. At one point she looked at Pentecost, who only offered her a quiet shake of his head.
“Raleigh.” Mako said, crossing the distance to Gipsy and kneeling beside her, arm tucked around the back of Gipsy’s chair. “Look. We look the same. Like a mirror.”
Raleigh’s expression pulled and creased, doubling in over itself as he stared at Gipsy, jaw clenched as he slowly worked through the possibility in his head. “You… No, that’s not possible. I’ll admit, a lot of strange things have happened, things I never would’ve believed, in the last ten years. But this?” He gestured at Gipsy, shaking his head. “This takes the cake. She can’t–!”
“Look.” Mako repeated, reaching over to point at Gipsy’s hair. “She looks like Jazmine.”
The younger Becket sibling. Raleigh had not seen her in years, avoiding the family like the plague after Yancy’s death, but he still had memories of the teen. Memories that, of course, both Mako and Gipsy had seen a thousand times over.
Gipsy hadn’t taken stock of her hair yet, aside from the fact thats he was blond like the brothers, but when she reached up, she could feel the bangs and the shoulder-length hair that she had come to associate with Jazmine.
Odd enough that she apparently looked like Mako, and now her hair resembled the only other adolescent girl that she had a firm image of in her head. The idea that an outside force had done this seemed more implausible by the second. She must have had some influence over how she looked. She must.
Chuck and Herc were muttering to each other over Striker, pointing out features to each other, getting more and more confident in the Jaeger theory as they talked. Now that she could actually see Chuck, Gipsy could admit that he and Striker did look decently similar, even if Striker’s nose was a little off. “Scott,” she heard Herc say to Chuck.
“She does.” Raleigh said slowly, coming over to stand over them, not falling to a kneel quite yet. His eyes studied Gipsy, boring into her. He didn’t trust her yet, and she guessed she couldn’t be too surprised. It still twisted in her chest like Knifehead’s teeth, though. “But that’s not… proof of anything. It’s a popular hairstyle.”
“She’s Asian and blonde.” Mako scoffed at him.
“Bottle blonde, maybe.” Raleigh said, even though Gipsy had never touched a bottle in her life. Still, he was studying her intently, trying to figure out what she was. “Okay, Gipsy, tell me something only I and Mako would know.”
“Yancy took your date?” Gipsy offered the first thing to pop into her head. “Your dad used to hit you. When you were seven, there was a miscarriage. First time you learned something was wrong with your mom. For your birthday, seventeen, you went to a concert. They had a Kaiju mascot come on stage, and you left. You weren’t happy they would do that. You wanted to kill them.”
Mako slid her hand down to hold Gipsy’s, squeezing tightly.
“I want to kill them, too.” Gipsy said quietly, wincing when Raleigh took a knee next to her, something pleading and deep in his eyes as he stared at her, studying her. “I still do, but I cannot. Because I am small now.”
“You are.” Raleigh agreed, studying her intently. “You’re… you’re a human. How did this happen to you? Who did this?”
“I do not know.” Gipsy said, adverting her gaze down to her knees. “I just woke up like this. We do not know what happened.”
“So, Rangers,” Pentecost prodded, impatience and determination rolling off of him in waves. “What do you think? Are these your Jaegers?”
“Yes!” Mako said immediately, turning to stare up at her adoptive father. “She’s Gipsy!”
Raleigh was slower to respond, staring at Gipsy for a long moment before slowly lifting up his hands to wrap her in a hug. “Yeah.” He agreed. “She’s Gipsy.”
Gipsy held him back just as tightly.