Chapter Text
Iwaizumi had always been passionate about monsters and Kaiju and giant beasts. He wanted to watch movies with them in all the time, he wanted to read about the scientific side of these fictional creations, he sometimes wished he could see one.
But not like this.
Never like this.
When Kaiju had emerged from the ocean, Iwaizumi had realised with a sense of dread that it was nothing like he imagined. It wasn’t just structural damage and awesome roaring from a magnificent beast. It was lives lost, survivors traumatised and deafened, and a living being that was not capable of co-existence.
Kaiju had emerged from the ocean seven times, each rising up from just beyond the coastline and wrecking tragedy as far inland as they could before they were felled by the military. The first Kaiju had emerged just after Iwaizumi’s 14th birthday. Kahului in Hawaii had been erased to the ground, and it took three days for the US military to bring the beast down. 3 days, and half of all life on Maui. It had been thought to be a one off. Like a Godzilla movie, it was the kind of tragedy that only happened once.
Except it didn’t. Yangon in Myanmar. Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. Los Angeles in the USA. Nha Trang in Vietnam.
By the time Iwaizumi reached high school, he no longer admired Kaiju and he most definitely never wanted to see one. The Kaiju attacks grew more rapid. They got scarily close to Japan. Tianjin in China was levelled to the ground. An attack on Incheon in South Korea only ended when North Korea fired their atomic weapons at it, killing millions and spreading radiation. The act was frowned upon, but ultimately, the Kaiju had been destroyed and it had saved more lives than it ended.
After that, it was decided borders would be opened. Hostilities and wars would be dropped. The globe had to work together to find a way to fight back. Iwaizumi watched the news channels with interest and hesitation at every progressed development. So far, a Kaiju had never appeared from the Atlantic, and it was decided that Europe was the safest place for construction. Suddenly, everything went... Quiet. There was no more news released, no more developments. Kaiju seemed to have stopped. For now.
Iwaizumi went into his third year at Aobajosai, pretending like things had never happened and it would never happen again. Like it was a nightmare he’d had after too many monster movies, or a story he’d written long ago. Kaiju were no longer on the radar, so Iwaizumi could pretend it had never happened. He could focus on volleyball and friendships and his education.
The same year, Jaeger Tech was presented to the world. Contractors and technology from around the globe had united in France to produce seventeen Jaegers – referred to as Mach 1, so it was presumed there would be more created - that would be distributed to the pan-pacific cities. Major cities that lay along coastlines had been building up for the event, refuges called Shatterdomes that could hold up to five Jaegers each and thousands of people in residency. The Shatterdome in Tokyo received three Jaegers. It would also be protecting the Korean coastline, the Russian Peninsula, and if things were really bad, it would be sending Jaeger as backup/support in the Yellow Sea area.
Kibō was their hope. It was green-chrome in colour and almost as wide as it was tall. The shoulder struts were huge, as were the ‘hips’, but it wasn’t thickly shielded which allowed it to move considerably fast, for the current Jaegers.
Mirai was their future. It was a massive bulk of a Jaeger, designed for defence instead of offence, heavy and slow-moving, but shielded enough to take multiple hits. Mirai was the type of Jaeger that could end a battle in one move, as long as it didn’t miss.
Shōri stood for victory. It was the exact medium between Kibō and Mirai. It wasn’t lithe, but it could dodge an attack. It wasn’t bulked out to the max, but it could take a couple of hits. Shōri was the frontline of the Japanese Pacific Defence Corps.
As quickly as things about Jaegers and Kaiju had gone quiet, they burst into full bustle once more. Recruitment posters appeared in shops, high schools, parks, offices, and streets. They wanted engineers, mechanics, scientists, medics, Jaeger pilots, pilot assistance and rookies they could train to fit into one of the groups. Some people were eager to sign up, for their chance to become a hero and save the world. Others dwelled on rumours they had heard – that the Jaegers were rushed production and had many flaws, that people had died during the testing, that there was no way they were strong enough.
The chance to test the Jaegers came all too soon. Lima - Peru, witnessed the first Kaiju since Korea. Zorro Rojo was dispatched from the Lima Shatterdome.
Two hours later, it returned triumphant. 400 were dead, but that was nothing compared to the devastation the world had first faced from the attack. The dead were mourned, the battle memorialised, and everything moved on. More Kaiju emerged from what was designated as ‘The Breach’, but each time, they were beaten down before they could traverse more than one city. Sometimes, they didn’t even make the coastline.
The Jaeger had become effective weapons. Their pilots became heroes. Kaiju became propaganda and toys and people everywhere celebrated. More ordinary citizens signed up for their role in the fight against these deep sea alien invaders, especially when it was announced that production lines were halfway through developing the Mach 2 Jaegers.
Everything seemed... Fine. It was a minor inconvenience when The Breach expanded and Kaiju rose from the depths. They were fought back down as soon as possible. What the media failed to report was that battles were taking longer. Kaiju were growing stronger. Jaegers were only as strong as their pilots, and many casualties were swept under the rug, cheap and questionable medicine administered as a quick fix before the pilots appeared on talk shows or interviews. They were not allowed to talk of their struggles. They were forbidden from mentioning the growing strength of the Kaiju, out of fear of causing mass hysteria.
At some point, something had to give. It just happened to be the Japanese Defence Corps that were first on the line.