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Despite what’s said about her, she does actually know her own name. She doesn’t need to look at her dog tags to tell if she’s Sasha or Alexsis. She remembers her history, remembers being the over-indulged, over-funded daughter of Moscow elites.
After the second attack, when it was clear these things were not going to stop, she decided to drink and fuck her way to the end of the world. After watching Brawler Yukon take down Karloff in Vancouver, she decided to fight and fuck her way there instead.
He stood a head and shoulders above everyone else in the Jaeger Academy. He knew they were drift-compatible the first time they met. She didn’t give him a second look. He was too young, a baby still. And he had a terrible dye job.
A group of cadets went out one night to celebrate the christening of the new jaeger: Cherno Alpha. He convinces her to dance with him, to some terrible American music on the jukebox. They take one turn around the small dance floor and she knows. After their first drift, she lets him dye her hair platinum blonde.
They hold the Miracle Mile. For three years, no kaiju gets closer than eight miles to shore along their entire sector. Then Raythe appears. They battle it through a raging blizzard, Cherno Alpha screaming their rage and their defiance into the wind.
The Shatterdome loses and regains communications several times during the mission. At K-contact plus six hours, thirty three minutes the line stays open for twenty seconds, long enough for the scream of the kaiju to echo around the command room.
At K-contact plus twelve hours (eighteen hours, fourteen minutes after initiating the neural handshake) Cherno Alpha is seen limping towards the Vladivostok Shatterdome. Medics pull the unconscious pair from the Conn-Pod. They wake up simultaneously, as soon as they’re out of their jaeger. She’s laughing, he’s bellowing in fury.