neverbelievedintheend | (no subject)

(no subject)

Hong Kong's harbour is very nearly fogged in.

In the old days, the average temperature in the city was around fifteen degrees C this time of year, and January the driest month. But it was chill and wet and foggy when Pentecost left for Alaska, and there's mist swirling about the blades of the Sikorsky's rotors as it touches down. It's soaking wet out there.

(Stacker Pentecost, name to the contrary, has never been a religious man. But he remembers how King David mourned and wept endlessly when his child by Bathsheba fell ill, hoping to move the almighty powers to spare the child.)

(He remembers what made the king's weeping stop.)

(They have a week left.)

There's a bump as the helicopter touches down. Time is moving again, and they're going to be greeted.

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She won't be holding the second umbrella long. As soon as the helicopter lowers its stairs Pentecost hops out, comes over to her, reaches for it; he dips his head in greeting, offers the smallest of smiles. Then he steps away, opening the umbrella to hold over both his and his companion's head.

"Mr. Becket, this is Mako Mori," he says, raising his voice over the hum of sound around them. "One of our brightest. Also in charge of the Mark III restoration programme. She personally handpicked your co-pilot candidates."

Raleigh has enough vestiges of etiquette to bow his head in following Pentecost's lead towards the woman. She's a new face, trimmed in neon blue tipped hair. It's a striking effect - serious mannerisms, Juneau-barkeep colors.

Is she on that list?

She bows, twice - a deep inclination of her head to the Marshal, a small dip to Mr. Becket.

"Honored to meet you," she replies, and then diverts to Japanese to address Stacker.

"I imagined him differently." (His file hadn't exactly contained photos.)

"Hey." Assumptions are bad things, Ms. Mori.

"Better or worse?" he asks, overly-accented Japanese.

She flushes, beneath her umbrella.

"My apologies. I've heard so much about you."

Becket speaks Japanese now. That's new. Pentecost files it away mentally as they exchange nods of acknowledgment.

"At ease," he says to the PPDC guards when they stride into the Shatterdome lift. There are yellow-lit tanks on the lift ahead of them, organs and tissue samples taken from the kaiju that smashed into Sydney; he ignores them. To Becket he says, "We'll tour the facility first, and then Miss Mori will show you to your Jaeger, Mr. Becket-"

"Wait for us!" cries a familiar voice, and, "Hold the door, please!" cries another.

The first of the two darts in, a short, bespectacled man in an unzipped leather jacket and jeans. Lagging behind him by several steps, the second of the two gives an impression of having expected far colder weather than this- his jacket is puffy with insulation and the hood is ringed with fur. "Thank you," he gasps as he steadies himself on his cane, "thank you."

As the doors close and the lift starts to drop the smaller one pushes past everyone else to stand beside one of the glowing tanks. "Stay back!" he says, waving his both hands frantically. "Kaiju specimens are extremely rare, so look, but don't touch, please."

"Mr. Becket," says Pentecost with a dryness born of long familiarity, "thi is our research team. Dr. Gottlieb-" He nods towards the taller man. "-and Dr. Geiszler."

"Oh, no," says Geiszler, turning away from the tank a moment. "Call me Newt. Only my mother calls me Doctor." He starts to peel the jacket away and adds, brightly, "Hermann, these are human beings! Why don't you say hello?"

"I've asked you not to refer to me by my first name around others," mutters his companion as he pulls back his massive hood. "I am a doctor with over ten years of decorated experience-"

"Ten years!" repeats Geiszler- Newt- in a cheerfully strained imitation of the other man's voice. "I'm very sorry!" He blithely ignores anything else Gottlieb might be saying in favour of rolling up his sleeves to reveal forearms more heavily tattooed than a Yakuza member's.

Scientists. Over-excited, tattoo-happy, grumpy --

"Who is that," Raleigh's eyes hit Newt's forearm, "Yamarashi?"

"Oh, this little kaiju?" says Newt, pointing to his left forearm. "Yeah, you got a good eye."

In a surprising moment of bragging (it's been awhile), "My brother and I took him down in 2017."

"You know he was one of the biggest Category III's ever?" says Newt, leaning against the metal part of the sample tank. "He was two thousand, five hundred tons of awesome."

Pentecost says nothing. But he gives Newt a Look. As does Dr. Gottlieb. And pretty much everyone else in the lift, come to think of it.

"... or awful?" says Newt, who gives the impression of having realized he said something untoward, but not really being clear as to exactly what it was. "You know. Whatever you wanna call it."

Dr. Gottlieb can't stand it any longer; he leans forward and says firmly, "Please excuse him. He's a kaiju groupie; he loves them-"

"Shut up, Hermann. I don't love them, okay? I study them." He turns back to Becket and the others. "And unlike most people, I wanna see one alive and up close one day."

With the elevator doors opening like a sigh of relief for everyone inside, Pentecost and Ms. Mori walk out ahead of Raleigh. He stops himself first, dropping a hand on Newt's shoulder.

"Trust me...you don't want to."

When he catches up: "That's your research division?"

Edited 2014-01-20 22:30 (UTC)

Pentecost doesn't bother looking over his shoulder. "Things have changed," he merely says as Mako punches in the access code for the door ahead of them. "We're not an army any more, Mr. Becket. We're the Resistance."

There's a clatter of massive metal unlatching, and the doors slide open on lights and sounds and- there, in the distance- Jaegers.

"Welcome to the Shatterdome."

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