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In the wake of the devastating attack on San Francisco a single image became the rallying point for Hope to the world.  A young boy of about six or seven, small for his age, standing in the middle of the destroyed city.  Eyes wide in incomprehension, he stares and reaches out.  His fingers just brush the enormous nose of the Kaiju in front of him.  He is ever so slightly backlit, giving him a soft glow, while the Kaiju is all harsh and sharp in the sunlight.  No one knows how the boy survived the attack – just that he did; with only a peculiar scar on his forehead to show for it.   He became the symbol for hope for the entire human race.

-          Excerpt from Into the Blue: A History of the Apocalypse

The following excerpts are the parts highlighted in Lily Luna Potter’s copy of Dr. Dennis Creevey’s seminal work Into the Blue: A History of the Apocalypse.  The textbook is considered the premier text on the time period and has been translated into over 100 languages.  It is used as the primary text for the time period in most post-secondary history classes.  Dr. Creevey’s access to primary sources such as journals, official reports, and interviews with people involved lends this text credence that most history texts cannot claim.

Chapter One: Responses to First Contact

The boy in the photograph was in San Francisco with his aunt’s family and they did not survive.  Neither did the photographer.

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According to her journal entries from the time, Hermione was seven years old when the first Kaiju attacked.  She wrote about staring at the tv screen, fascinated, as the giant alien monster wiped out millions of people and left only one tiny child, her age, in all the destruction.

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Within a few years of the first attack, all Hermione’s classmates wanted to be Jaeger pilots.  She watched the giant mechs fight the Kaiju and wanted to take them apart.  In her journal, she wasn’t sure if she meant the Kaiju or the Jaeger. According to later interviews, she still didn’t know which, even much later in life.

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Dr. Lily Potter didn’t create the drift system or the first Jaeger, but after seeing her child almost destroyed by a Kaiju, she figured out who was actually working on a way to halt their progress and did not accept rejection until she was allowed to join the project.  She made herself a name at the forefront of Jaeger engineering.

Chapter Two: The Birth of the Jaeger Program

James Potter followed his wife to the Jaeger Program.  He and his friends, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew were officially hired as caregivers for Harry and support for her.  Their childcare program was very successful.  Lily Potter is on record from multiple sources as doubting his truthfulness and figuring he was afraid of being lonely.  They were too late for James or Sirius to be pilots of Mark I Jaegers. In later interviews, Lily talks about how much a blessing that turned out to be, despite all of their frustration at the time.  Once the Mark IIs were in the field, James and Sirius became pilots of the Horny Grim.  In multiple interviews everyone associated with the two were completely unsurprised at the name; which is a fact that describes their character completely.  The Horny Grim defeated Reckoner in its first outing; which set the tone for its tenure.

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As with many Drift partners, Sirius and James became even closer than before and Sirius ended up more part of the Potter’s marriage than anyone involved ever would have thought possible.  Lily Potter reportedly didn’t have time to think about it because she was developing new systems for the Jaegers.  In private correspondence she said that if pressed she would say she was happy that James had support while she was busy.  Remus Lupin became a trainer for the Jaeger program.  Peter Pettigrew seemed, according to all reports at the time, happy helping out around the base that had been newly-christened the Shatterdome and caring for James and Lily’s son, Harry.

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Harry Potter grew up with his parents in the Shatterdomes.  In interviews he said that the giant mechs and their hangar were more home to him than any other place in the world.  General Dumbledore wanted him to stay protected and help inspire people but all Harry wanted to do was pilot a Jaeger like his father James and uncle Sirius.  Lily and James tried to reassure him that the photoshoots of him playing or with his James in the Horny Grim, or the times he went on TV and talked about how he thought the Jaegers were the Best Thing Ever and how they were totally going to kill all the Kaiju were helping, but Harry never stopped asking if he could pilot a Jaeger.

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The Weasley family made great contributions to the Jaeger program and the war against the Kaiju.  Molly Weasley was in charge of the first Shatterdome.  Arthur Weasley was the government liaison with the Jaeger program.  Fred and George Weasley trailed the engineers from the first days of the Jaeger program.  Ron Weasley grew up  in and around Shatterdomes and became best friends with Harry Potter.  Ginny Weasley was eight when she began her career as a Jaeger mechanic; she was found half inside a Jaeger using her tiny hands to fix something that the adults couldn’t touch.  No photographs exist after that age where she is seen without a streak of grease somewhere on her person.

Chapter Four: Pushing Back Against the Kaiju

Then Dr. Lily Potter created Erised Phoenix, the first Mark III Jaeger.  She ran the first tests with her husband James.  Once she’d Drifted with him she refused to let anyone else Drift inside Erised Phoenix as well as expressing discomfort with the idea of James Drifting with Sirius Black again.  By this point there were numerous engineers working on the Jaegers, so she pulled herself off the engineering corps and told command that if they wanted the Erised Phoenix to fight, she and James would be its pilots.  There were more people applying to pilot training than engineering but Lily refused to consider this.  Sirius is on record just laughing every time someone asks him about it.  General Dumbledore attempted to persuade her out of it; he cited her engineering success, her career, and eventually asked her if it wasn’t irresponsible for the two of them to go out and leave Harry behind.  Lily refused to be swayed and actually reported the General for sexism. James Potter refused to hear any of the arguments – there is video footage of him putting his fingers in his ears and yelling “LALALALALALALA” when General Dumbledore was trying to talk to him.  Under pressure, General Dumbledore and the leaders of the Jaeger program allowed Lily and James to pilot Erised Phoenix.  The new Jaeger and its pilot team were a great success, destroying every Kaiju they fought.

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When James Potter started piloting with Lily, Sirius Black went to the training center and begged Remus Lupin to pilot the Horny Grim with him. The cell phone video recorded by one of Remus’ cadets captures Sirius on his knees in the middle of one of Remus’ classes. The cadets are cheering in the background. In his report on the incident Remus Lupin says that he will never forgive Sirius Black for the incident.  However, the stunt worked - a fact which Sirius Black was extremely proud of in his report.  They took over the Horny Grim and worked in tandem with the Erised Phoenix.  They were extremely successful - no Kaiju was left standing.

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Bill Weasley left the first Shatterdome after he finished his pilot training.  Molly Weasley refused to let him pilot.  He found Fleur Delacour, his partner, and a Jaeger in another Shatterdome and shot to stardom.  He and Fleur both looked like movie stars so it was no wonder they became the face of the Jaeger program in Anchorage.

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Charlie Weasley moved to live on the coast so he could more easily research Kaiju Blue and what it was doing to the planet and how to counteract it.  There are extensive private letters in which Molly Weasley tries to convince Charlie to move back inland.

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Fred and George are on record all over as loving Jaegers.  Before the first attack, they had been on track to go into Robotics and work on spacecrafts.  By the time the Mark IVs were created neither twin could remember in interviews what exactly they had been studying before the first attack.  In an interview about the Mark IV Jaeger design the twins said their interest “is Jaegers all the time, any way we can get them”.  They started as the lowest of the mechanical staff, sweeping floors and scrubbing bolts.  They worked for their mother at the first Shatterdome.  They were too talented to stay in that position.  They were driven.  They studied any parts of Jaegers they could find information for: the mechanics, the code, the power source, and much more.  They learned, spending long hours with the engineers in the Shatterdome.  In an interview after her death, the twins reminisce about the time they got to listen to Dr. Lily Potter talk about the Mark IVs and how it was still a highlight of their entire careers.

Chapter Six: Insidious Infiltrators

I watched Erised Phoenix leave the hanger and trembled.  It was time.  I was doing what none of my brothers and sisters had the courage to do.  When I’d first met my brothers and sisters, I’d been skeptical and hostile to their beliefs.  But over the months I’d seen the truth.  Our Gods were returning.  Showing their strength and wiping the unworthy off the earth.  I came to believe with a fervor that only the most pious of my brothers and sisters could match.  And now I was going to show our Gods my belief in such an irrefutable and real way that I would be known and venerated for it.  The God-Killer left the hanger, hanging from cables like a convict from the gallows; the helicopters dragging it to its fate like prison wardens with their hands on the chains.

I watched on the giant projection screen in the Shatterdome, and felt a surge of excitement as the God broke the surface of the water – giant feet reshaping the ground as it graced the land with its presence.  The unbelievers around me cheering for the God-Killer, Erised Phoenix, as it dropped from its chains.  I watched and waited.  And waited.  Had it not worked? The God-Killer gained the advantage and struck and I nearly buckled in relief as the God proved its divine heritage by slithering out of range.  Just as my hope began to flicker and fade, despair and defeat and self-recriminations taking its place, the God-Killer faltered.  Just a tiny wobble of the knee, but enough.  The God was ruthless in its advantage and tore into the Weapon with its divine wrath.  The God-Killer went down with a massive crash and the Shatterdome went silent.  I felt elation like I’d never felt before, stunned and overwhelmed that I had done this.  I had sacrificed a God-Killer.  The chaff around me were silent, as they should be in this great moment, before an announcement came on.  “Ready Horny Grim” the PA system roared and the chaff around me surged into motion.  Finally, someone noticed my unmoving body and obviously took it for grief instead of overwhelming victory.  “You okay Peter?” they asked.  I grinned with too many teeth in return.  I had done it.

-          Excerpt from the diary of Peter Pettigrew.

This entry was used as evidence to convict Peter Pettigrew of treason to the human race.

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Harry Potter was twelve when his parents died.  He spent a year in shock.  After that everything changed just a little.  The Jaeger program had enough support that no one really needed Harry to take pictures or give interviews.  He wasn’t a cute kid anymore either.  Humanity was moving on.  In interviews Harry said that part of him was relieved; he wanted to enter pilot training with his best friend Ron Weasley.   But General Dumbledore and Molly Weasley refused to allow that.  They were both too young for the program and Harry was too precious to ever be allowed to Pilot.  Their applications were rejected.

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Only months after the deaths of the Potters and Erised Phoenix, Ginny Weasley had an encounter with a Kaiju.  She was helping with a Jaeger that had just gotten back from killing a Kaiju and she ended up in a problem area, down inside the Jaeger where no one else could go.  She reports being cramped and twisted around when suddenly there were tiny, beady eyes staring at her, glinting in her headlamp’s light.  She screamed and lashed out with her wrench.  It grabbed her and wrapped itself around her arms.  She reports seeing things that day that she couldn’t understand.  After the final incident she would report that she parsed these images with the help of Dr. Luna Lovegood, Dr. Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and several bottles of alcohol.  But Ginny was a younger sister first and foremost and she reports that her first instinct to things that bother her is to hit them until it stops.  So she hit the thing repeatedly until it let go and the eyes stopped glinting.  The scientists were thrilled with the mini-Kaiju to dissect, the pilots were terrified as the implications of it being inside the Jaeger, and Molly Weasley was horrified.  The only reason Molly Weasley allowed her to go back to work after she got out of the hospital was that Ginny refused to stop no matter what her Molly did.

Chapter Eight: The Peak of the Jaeger Program

On her fourteenth birthday, Hermione Granger dropped all pretence of being a normal child and tested out of highschool and most university undergraduate courses she was interested in.  Private correspondence shows that her parents did not understand her but tried to support her when they could.  She could have done anything; university masters programs were fighting for her attention, sending letters of enticement and promising grant money.  She chose Mathematics and Quantum Physics.  In interviews she revealed that this was because she believed that this was because there were enough people building the Jaegers and not enough focusing on the Kaiju.  Also that taking the Jaegers apart was too easy now, there were plans and schematics but that Kaiju were a black box of mystery.  She wanted to figure out where the kaiju were coming from and why.  Every piece of research and every project she did was on that topic.  Her professors called her “driven”.  Her classmates called her “obsessed”.  Hermione ignored them all in favour of her unending thirst for knowledge.

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By the time Harry Potter was fourteen, he was well practiced in giving speeches that inspired entire Shatterdomes.

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Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were sent out increasingly often because the Horny Grim kept winning, until the day that Sirius made what he called “a stupid mistake in even stupider circumstances” and shattered his spine in the process.  Remus took him to recover inland.  Harry Potter did not follow his caregivers; he stayed with the Shatterdomes, explaining that was all he’d ever known and maybe if he was patient enough, he would be allowed to help the way he always wanted to and pilot a Jaeger.

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Sirius was taken out of the game by a stupid, stupid mistake.  It was a skateboard of all things.  Sirius was one of the best Jaeger Pilots and famous because of it.  We were taking care of James and Lily’s child while saving the world.  What more could a person ask for?  Apparently, Sirius could ask for a little fun because he went out skateboarding.  And fell.  It was the stupidest injury and it meant that he’d never get back into a Jaeger. I am secretly relieved; Sirius was reckless even with James and without him, well, I’m just glad that Sirius is still alive.

-          Excerpt from the diary of Remus Lupin

Chapter Ten: The Decline of the Jaeger Program

By the time Harry Potter hit seventeen years old, the Shatterdomes were shutting down along with the entire Jaeger program.  Harry refused to endorse the Wall and the public reviled him for continuing to say that the Jaegers were necessary.  They called him “fear-monger” and “just trying to keep himself relevant when the world didn’t need him anymore”.

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By the time Ron Weasley was old enough to enter the Jaeger program they were shutting it down.  He entered the reduced program anyway, leaving Harry behind to make speeches. Ron writes that he had come to terms with the fact that he’d never have his own special Jaeger but he’d never thought about the Drift.  He’d always just assumed he’d partner with Harry, but Harry was on TV and not by his side.  He thought maybe one of the two other boys in the training but the moment they got into a ring together they stopped being Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan and became DeanandSeamus.  In the end Ron did find a partner, a girl named Lavender Brown.  They were good and they Drifted well.  Then they actually went out and everything fell apart.  Ron had never seen a real Kaiju; neither had Lavender.  He wrote later that he realized that if the Jaeger program hadn’t been dying, he and Lavender would never have graduated as early as they did.  They panicked in that moment and lost the Drift and then lost the Jaeger.  Only quick thinking by one of them, neither could ever remember which, got them into their escape pods and out of harm’s way.  Lavender left the program completely in the aftermath and Ron was left without a partner.  He said later that he felt like a kite with no string; wanting to help but afraid to even touch a Jaeger.

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General Dumbledore wanted the twins to fight in a Jaeger.  When he asked they refused.  They’d Drifted before; part of working on a Jaeger meant knowing how everything worked and they had Drifted to get a feel for it.  They were the best synch anyone had ever seen and the pilot program pursued them relentlessly.  They continued to refuse.  After the apocalypse they revealed why they did not ever concede: they dreamed together.  They dreamed together of missing limbs and pain on the sides of their head and blinding green light.  They dreamed together of doom and death.  So they refused and continued to refuse and would until every last option had been exhausted and the world was ending.

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After the Jaeger program was defunded and new Jaeger production was halted, the Weasley twins started moonlighting.  They still did their regular jobs during the day, but at night was when they did their true work.  They salvaged scraps and bits from defunct Jaegers, scrap yards, wherever they could get them, and they pounded them into shape over the course of years.  Ginny Weasley caught them in the early stages and demanded to be part of it.  She was better than either of them at the actual mechanics and building so they let her in on their secret.  They worked as Jaegers continued to be shut down or outright defeated.  They worked as the Wall came into being.  They scrambled to finish as the world was ending.  Fred said that it felt unreal when they finally got to stand back and look at the thing they had created.  Unlike any Jaeger before it, it looked more like a combination of a scrap heap and an old-school Transformer than anything.  “Ginny asked its name and the twins responded by glancing at each other and naming is the Wizard Wheezey. According to Ginny Weasley, it looked like it would fall over if someone sneezed on it.

Chapter Eleven: Important Individuals

Charlie Weasley became famous after he discovered a type of algae that thrived on it and cleaned the water it was in or land it was on.

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Rumours about Dr. Luna Lovegood were abundant even before she finished her undergraduate.  They only got more intense and pervasive as she became more prominent in her field of Kaiju Studies.  The following were gathered from various recordings and first hand interviews:

There were whispers about the Xenobiologist in lab four.  Her name is Luna (is it her real name? No one really knows).  According to the whispers, she was doused in Kaiju blue as a child which changed her body and mind.  The whisperers weren’t saying it made her a little bit psychic but they weren’t not saying that either.

Rumours circled the base about the scientist in lab 4 that thought she could drift with a Kaiju and came out of it bleached and bug-eyed and obsessed. (and - the more enterprising rumourists said - half Kaiju herself.)

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The official record of Luna Lovegood’s hiring on to the Jaeger program was lost to a Kaiju attack. There are those that point to this as evidence that the Kaiju are an experiment by a secret government agency based in the deep ocean that are being released in order to control the population and keep people in fear.

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Luna told anyone who asked that Kaiju were just “misunderstood” and were “one of life’s mysteries”.  Then she went on to talk about the “little folk” living in her lab and the fey that helped her with her research and the other creatures that she befriended.  By the end of the conversation, whoever she was talking to had no idea whether she was serious or just trolling them.  No one ever found out.

Chapter Twelve: The Apocalypse

Luna put on the Drift helmet. She saw blue and orange and neurons and a vast, vast network.  She evaded the eyes that searched for her and knew the Kaiju.  Knew their hearts and souls and bodies better even than they knew themselves.  Knew what it would take to stop them. To destroy them. Knew they wouldn’t stop until they were destroyed.

-          Excerpt from Dr. Lovegood: A Biography

Luna and Hermione agreed; the world was ending.  Public opinion was that their agreement was a sign of the apocalypse.  Dr. Hermione Granger’s numbers supported Dr. Luna Lovegood’s hypothesis that the apocalypse was imminent.  The numbers said that there was going to be a triple event and that the Kaiju that came through the breach would tear through the Wall as though it was tissue paper.  At the time, there were only two Jaegers in nominally working condition and barely enough pilots to fly them after the massacre of Dean and Seamus’ Painter Lion. Dean and Seamus had survived the massacre; but only barely; neither pilot was out of the hospital at the time. Both had taken injuries that left them unable to pilot again even once they were released.

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The day before the triple event, Luna Lovegood exited her workshop half dead and raving.  She said they needed a nuclear bomb.  Her information told her that the alien homeworld was flammable and that the bomb would cause a chain reaction and destroy the entire planet.  Hermione Granger checked the math and agreed.  No one asked where Luna got her information; there were rumours but everyone interviewed agreed that no one really wanted to know.  None of the countries and programs that had possession of a nuclear bomb would give one to the defunct Jaeger program.  Even with most of the brilliant scientists and engineers on the planet as part of the program they were unable to make one on such a tight time limit.

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The Weasley twins had an idea.  If they could get it up and running, they would not only have a bomb but also a delivery device.  They told General Dumbledore and the assembled crew that they had an idea.  They brought Wizard Wheezey out of hiding and according to the report from the Weasley twins, people looked on in awe.  According to Ginny Weasley’s report, it was a general expression of “WTF?!”

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Even with the addition of the Wizard Wheezey to the Jaegers, humanity was still in peril.  The Jaeger program had no one to pilot it.  The breach was opening and all the Jaegers were prepared but they were scrambling for pilots.  Blade Dancer was ready with its usual pilots.  The now famous two figure skaters and their experimental Jaeger developed by the Weasley twins were a miracle.  How they lasted until the apocalypse without dying or burning out is a mystery no one can solve.  When asked, they just looked extra soppily at each other and most people tended to back away before the declarations of love began.  The Weasley twins are on record saying that they were ready to meet their dreams and deaths as pilots to destroy the invaders once and for all in the Wizard Wheezey.  General Dumbledore pulled Remus Lupin out of retirement and they were planning to pilot the remaining Japanese Jaeger, Juudaime Eros, together.

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However, when the klaxons went off and Lee Jordan yelled out orders over the PA system, Fred and George Weasley were surprised to find the Wizard Wheezey already occupied.  Harry Potter was there, dressed and ready, clear-eyed and determined to finally be of use; along with him was a girl.   Video footage shows the twins gasping.  Chrome Dokuro was infamous as the only person to survive her partner dying while in the drift.  Her contemporaries called her “eerie” and said she claimed he was still inside her head.  When she was piloting, the Vongola Mist had pulled stunts that did not seem physically possible so her piloting skills were not in question.  She and Harry had logged many hours in the Drift, readying themselves for a time they would be allowed to fight.  In the video, her eyes were determined too.  Both Chrome and Harry knew that the Wizard Wheezey was a one way trip.  Neither of them flinched from the knowledge.

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The Weasley twins ended up back in the pilot’s seat but of the Juudaime Eros instead; General Dumbledore had a heart attack moments before they were going to launch.

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The following is directly from The Final Day, the novelisation of the event, written by the six Jaeger pilots involved:

The apocalypse had begun.  Three Kaiju met three Jaegers.  Blade Dancer took out the biggest of the three new Kaiju before getting torn apart.  Juudaime Eros took out the smallest and cleared a path for Wizard Wheezey to dive into the breach before the middling Kaiju came to avenge its comrade and tore off the side of Juudaime Eros’ head before hitting it through the chest and causing it to explode.  Wizard Wheezey, in a series of events that no one would believe later, grabbed the living Kaiju and used it as a shield against the exploding Jaeger, then rode its thrashing body into the breach.  After all was said and done, the Kaiju fought, a bomb detonated, a Jaeger gone through the breach:

the sea was silent.

Then two escape pods bobbed to the surface of the ocean.  Yuuri and Victor embraced – the longest living Jaeger Pilots, still not dead.  After an interminable wait another escape pod broke the surface and a head of red hair emerged, the side of his face covered in blood, and the look on his face so awful and terrible that the former figure skaters had to look away.  The three waited in silence for the helicopter to arrive to pick them up.  Then another escape pod floated up and George scrambled over to it in hope and fear, but the person who emerged was too female and not his mirror and he screamed out to the horizon in pain.  She merely put a hand on his shoulder.  But then, “Hey, a little help here? I think my suit is caught.” And George turned and saw his twin.

Harry was the last to emerge, doing so when the helicopters (with cameras and Colin Creevey, a journalist that had stuck around after everything) had arrived.  Harry emerged; rising from the pod like a modern version of Venus, soaked and triumphant.  Harry stood on his pod and let the world know:

“We’ve cancelled the apocalypse.”

Chapter Text

Table of Contents

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Harry Potter and the Kaiju Apocalypse, written by Opalsong as part of pod_together 2017 and read by frecklebombfic:

That Hermione and Luna could agree that the end of the world was coming was probably on its own a symbol of the apocalypse.

Hermione had only been seven or eight years old when she had first seen Kaiju on-screen. Watching the huge mecha battle it out with them, tearing up whole cities along the coast, watching millions of people’s homes be destroyed. She knew then that she had to learn to take them apart, but she wasn’t sure which of them that meant.

Luna knew there were rumours about her. That she’d come into contact with Kaiju Blue at a young age, that it had changed her somehow. People weren’t saying that she could predict the future, but they weren’t not saying that, either.

One single image had become a rallying point for the whole human race: a small child, skinny, young-looking for seven years old, reaching out to touch a Kaiju with his hand. The buildings around him decimated, back-lit in stark contrast to the Kaiju in front of him. The child himself, Harry Potter, carried a scar on his face from the encounter, and it, and he, became a fixture in the San Francisco Shatterdome. His mother, Lily, after so nearly losing her child, knew then that she had to get involved in a meaningful, hands-on way in the efforts to fight the Kaiju. She had no single, brilliant idea to contribute, but she found people who were already in on the effort and started pitching in. Her partner James and his friends came along too, to provide care for Harry and support Lily in her efforts, they said. She ended up seeing almost as much of his best friend Sirius as she did of him. She felt good knowing James and Harry has someone else there to support them when she was pulling long shifts in the workshops. By the time James and Sirius had qualified to pilot a full Jaeger together, unsimulated, they were up to the Mark II model.

Ron grew up in a Shatterdome. His mum had been working in one as long as he could remember, and his dad had always been involved in coastal protection politics. Fred and George were in training a few years earlier than was strictly permitted, and were on track to be some of the best Jaeger pilots of their age. And Ginny had been fixing Jaeger since she could sneak into one.

They knew something was coming. They just had to be ready for it.

Harry grew up in the Shatterdomes. General Dumbledore told him that the photoshoots of him playing with his dad and Sirius, and living his life, inspired people and gave them hope. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wanted to do something real. He was surrounded by engineers, after all. Lily has been working on the Jaeger Mark III, the first ever. And on its first test run, which she would of course not let anyone else do, she Drifted with James, and after that she wouldn’t ever go back. General Dumbledore pleaded with her, citing her engineering expertise and years of service, but that was it for her. She was a pilot.

Fred and George loved Jaeger. They were all set to go into robotics, Before. They worked their way up from the janitorial level, sweeping floors and doing everything they could to help, just to be in the same room as the engineers. They did once have a conversation with Lily about the Mark IVs, which may have been the best thing that ever happened to them.

Ginny had her first ever Kaiju encounter while on a duty shift, She was 11. She had crawled deep inside a Jaeger, somewhere nobody else could reach, but a recurrent trouble spot, when she saw two eyes reflect the light of her head-torch back at her. She swung her wrench at it, instinctively, but it wrapped itself around her arms. She was a youngest child by nature, and her first instinct was to kick repeatedly until whatever it was let go, and it served her well. If Molly had had her way she would never have been allowed into the engineering lab ever again. Ginny managed to hold her ground, though, and was back on shift the next day.

Luna emerged from her lab pale, half-starved and raving, She said the alien home world was flammable, and all they needed was a nuke to ignite it. Hermione checked her work, said it was sound, but there was no way anyone would agree to give them one. Their defunct, under-funded outpost didn’t have the clout to get one, or the resources to build one. Or so they thought. When Fred and George heard the discussion, they exchanged a look, and beckoned everyone to their own personal workshop. It seemed like their home-made Jaeger was going to get some use after all.

The official record of how Luna came to start working at the Jaeger programme has been lost to a Kaiju attack. There are those who would use that information to support their theory that all Kaiju are the product of a secret government research facility deep in the ocean to keep the population afraid and under control.

As soon as James and Lily started piloting together, Sirius went to Remus and begged him to say they could pilot together. There is one telling of it that says he literally interrupted a training session to ask (beg). And, well, it worked. They were often partnered with James and Lily: an effective battle combination.

Harry was twelve when he lost both his parents. Thankfully, humanity was in a different place than when he had suddenly become an icon for the survival of the seaboard. There was less demand for him at photo opportunities and speeches, and he was able to turn into the safety of the friends who had become more like family. What he wanted more than anything, now that it seemed possible, was to enter the training programme with his friend Ron, but General Dumbledore and Molly both forbade it. They were both too young, they said, and Harry in particular would never be allowed to pilot.

By the time Ron had graduated it, the Jaeger programme was dying, fewer and fewer resources and graduates every year. He missed Harry by his side, who, all too often, between his own schedule and whatever appearances Harry had booked in, he saw on the TV screen more than in person. He thought maybe he might Drift with one of the other boys, but as soon as they got into the ring, Dean and Seamus became DeanandSeamus. He did find a Drift partner, though, in Lavender, and the two of them were even eventually assigned their own Jaeger. They worked well together, until they actually went out. It was only because one of them thought quickly, it was impossible tell who, in the moment, that they got to their escape pods in time. It was the last time they ever went out.

Hermione tested out of high school the moment she could, She could have done anything she wanted. Theory was where her heart lay, though. Research. She went for mathematics and quantum physics. What she really wanted was to get to the bottom of where the Kaiju were coming from. She just wanted to understand what was happening down there. Where were they coming from? Why were they coming here? She caught flak for it, but she didn’t really care. She just wanted to figure it out.

Fred and George had been asked to fight in a Jaeger, but they refused. They’d Drifted together, as part of their research, and after Drifting together they had started dreaming together. Dreaming of bright, bright green light, and the most intense pain, of death and destruction, and they refused. They refused and they knew they would continue to refuse until there was no other option but the end of the world.

Luna had a somewhat unsettling habit of calling the Kaiju ‘misunderstood’ or ‘just one of life’s little mysteries’. But then she would go on the talk about the Little People who helped her in her lab, or Fae in general, and people would stop listening altogether. It was never quite possible to tell whether Luna was trolling or not.

By the time Harry was a teenager, Jaeger programmes were almost completely defunded. He was used to giving speeches to entire Shatterdomes. He refused to endorse the Wall programme though, which earned him huge amounts of public criticism. He was accused of ‘trying to keep himself relevant’ and called ‘a relic of a past era’. He settled into the same Shatterdome as his Uncles Sirius and Remus, until Sirus’ ill-advised accident caused them both to move inland so he could recuperate. Harry stayed in the Shatterdomes because they were what he knew. And because maybe if he stayed around long enough, they’d let him help in the way he really wanted.

After all new Jaeger production was defunded, the twins started working by night. Ginny caught them early on, breaking into a closed-off workshop to salvage parts, and she was a better mechanic than either of them so they let her in on it. They built as the wall went up along the seaboard, brick by brick. Slowly, their bootleg Jaeger took shape.

Before the accident, Sirius and Remus piloted one of the best Jaeger in the fleet, in any fleet. But then Sirius had to go and fall off a skateboard and fracture his spine. Sirius was forced to retire. He was never getting back into a Jaeger again.

The twins’ fleet, slightly grown since they built their first prototype, was ready. They were finally going to get to pilot their baby. General Dumbledore and Lupin had both come out of retirement and were going to pilot the sole remaining Japanese Jaeger. But when the twins stepped up to open the first-ever new-Mark Jaeger, their Jaeger, they found it was already occupied. Harry was sitting in it, ready for battle, and next to him, a girl. Chrome, the only pilot to ever have survived her partner dying while in Drift. She said she could still hear him inside her head. They said they were Drift-compatible. They said they were ready. Just then, somebody shouted that General Dumbledore was having a heart attack and, well, the Breach was opening. They needed all the pilots they could get. Fred and George ran over to the other Jaeger. It looked like they were going to pilot a mecha into battle after all, just not the one they expected to.

Luna pulled off the Drift helmet. She had seen an endless network. She understood. She understood them in ways even they didn’t understand themselves, and she knew, now, how to destroy them.

The buzzer sounds, and he watches the mecha leave the hangar. He was hesitant when he met his Brothers and Sisters, slow to see their Gods. But now he is the most pious among them, the most fervent believer. Now is his chance to prove his worth, and his devotion. The God-killer is lifted from its hangar by helicopters, and hangs there from cables like a convict from the gallows as it’s flown out to its drop-point. On the giant screen he can see the ripples, the vast wake of the God cresting the ocean’s surface. He’s never seen one so big this close, and has to fight tears back at the grace with which it moves, the power in its enormous flanks. The God-killer is upon it in moments, swinging its blade down and around at its momentarily-exposed neck. He holds his breath, but the God twists and slithers away. Had it not worked? he thinks. He waits. The God-killer wheels around, repositions, and they clash again and again. The heathens around him cheer. Any moment now, he thinks. Then all his work, his practice and prayer, is fruitful. The Weapon of the Unbelievers falters. Its right knee buckles, the couplings failing under strain, as he’d intended, and it stumbles. The God, divine in its wisdom and awesome in its strength, seizes the chance to wreck it, tearing through it like so much wet tissue paper. He has fulfilled his divine duty, sacrificed a God-killer. Silence falls around him as the huge screen cuts away from the wreckage.
“Are you ok, Peter?” someone asks him, a gentle hand on his shoulder. He raises his head, smiling with too many teeth. He had done it.

The twins’ original prototype was a one-way trip: a universally, but silently-acknowledge fact. That they were now in a different Jaeger meant that the battle strategy had to be changed on the fly, they were now one of the decoys. The three Jaeger were met by three Kaiju in open water, two merely huge and one colossal. Fred and George extended their sword and signalled to the others to get into position. They needed to take out the biggest one to give Harry and Chrome a chance at their mission. Before they had a chance to move, the twins were cut off from the others by the first, snake-like Kaiju. Risking a glance over their shoulder they saw that the smallest Jaeger, their other decoy, was occupied too, but the goliath was nowhere to be seen.
Harry and Chrome plummeted, their jury-rigged suit creaking under the combined strain of water pressure and the enormous Kaiju wrapped around its back. They hit the ocean floor softly, and its claws scrabbled around in the dust they’d kicked up as they dragged it further and further towards the unmistakable glow of the Breach, just as Luna had described it. All they really had to do was get there.

Everyone saw the plume of water erupt on the Shatterdome screens, felt the aftershocks come up from the foundations. Fewer and fewer were left to scan the water’s surface, once it had stilled, for signs of their pilots.
Three escape pods bobbed to the surface at once into empty ocean. Fred tore open his exit hatch and swam over to the others. Both pilots from their third Jaeger were safe, and sent up their rescue flares, but there was no sign of George. Then there was a shout in the distance and a single arm waving out of a fourth pod, the hatch dented shut. They levered it open as soon as they reached it to see…. blood. George, covered in more blood than should be possible for him to still be smiling like that.
The last two escape pods appeared after the medical and press helicopters had arrived, after George’s severed ear had been seen to, and after hope of finding the two last pilots had gone. But what it meant is that everyone saw them climb out, exhausted and relieved. Every camera caught the grief and triumph on their faces, for everyone they’d both lost to get here: parents, Drift partners, and friends. Every microphone recorded the first words that Harry spoke, standing on his escape pod and facing the fleet of observers: “The apocalypse has been cancelled.”

That was Harry Potter and the Kaiju Apocalypse, written by Opalsong as part of pod_together 2017 and read by frecklebombfic.
And now for some reader freetalk:
This was billed as an experimental writing project based on memory when I signed up to it, which was very exciting, and I didn’t know anything about the fandom or content when I signed up. You might have read this when you downloaded the podfic, you may have read the full script, you may have read the transcript for this or others, you may have listened to other versions of this already but the summary is: I received this in a series of five transmissions, which I was allowed to read once and then had to recreate from memory. Now, the way I personally did this is: I read it once, and then after I’d read it I would usually digest it for a couple of hours and then make notes. Usually about the sequence of events, the sequence of scenes, and a list of keywords, phrases that stuck out to me. Notes on things like which tense to use because I was paranoid about switching tenses, which I may have done. Things like which characters cropped up, any names to use, although I know I’ve skipped names because that’s a weak point in my memory that I’m aware of, and I thought it would be better to not try and do that than do it badly.
Something that changed throughout the transmissions is that I started filling in more information not from memory, so… I started adding detail. Particularly because the first four transmissions were made up of a larger number of short scenes, and the final transmission was fewer scenes, but very long and quite detail-heavy and I just couldn’t remember that much. You know, I reflected on it and tried to absorb it and I just couldn’t remember it. So instead what I did is I took my notebook out and re-wrote the scenes, essentially. I tried to keep the chronology of how I remembered the scenes to be, kind of? But I just added in more detail. So I feel like the climactic scene of the whole work is much more detail-heavy than the build-up, but I think that’s ok. I haven’t edited it yet, so I haven’t actually listened back to anything I’ve done while I’m telling you this, so I hope it sounds ok [laughs]. But I hope you enjoyed listening, I hope you go and listen to other podficcers’ versions, I myself am going to download all of them and listen to all of them, because I am so excited about how this is going to turn out, and to listen to how other people have interpreted this writing. And to read Opalsong’s cleaned-up version of the whole thing, because I remember being incredibly excited when I got every single transmission. Intimidated, about how I was going to remember all of it and record it, but incredibly excited to see where the story was going to go.
So thank you for listening, thank you for getting to the end of this freetalk, which was longer than I thought it was going to be, and I hope you have a lovely day!
[Click - to signal beginning of blooper reel]
[seriously] No, that’s horrendous, why would you say that?
[Click]
The official record of how Luna came to start working at the…. the Kaiju programme, no, Jaeger programme, fuck… Words, words??
[Click]
By the time Ron graduated the training programme… [pause] By the time Ron graduated it, the Kaiju— oh fucking…
[Click]
[Whispered] How do I say all this, fuck… [long pause] No.
[Click]
...with some disprising— disprising? [clearing throat, pause] And some disprising— disprising, fuck. [with snorting laughter, pitch steadily rising] Ughh, this is so hard? Words?? I don’t have to write like this normally, oh my god? I just read things off the page, I don’t have to do this. Oh my god?? [shaky, deep breath] Ok.
[Click]
The only pilot to ever su— Fuckinn’… [pause] Diction.
[Click]
Just as Luna had described it. [background sound of overhead plane, increasing in volume] Aaah, for fuck’s saaake. [frustrated pseudo-singing] Aaaaaaaaaaaaah. [sound of pages turning] I have three more pages to read. [sullenly] I’m gonna cry.
[Click]
End

yue_ix

originally

People whisper about the xenobiologist in Lab 4. Her name is Luna, so she says. If that’s her real name, no one knows. They say she was covered in kaiju blue as a child. They say it made her a little bit psychic.

She knows the apocalypse is coming.

They say she tried to drift with a kaiju, came out of it bug-eyed and bleached, raving, incomprehensible. She says they need a nuke. No one asks her how she knows.

There was another child in San Francisco who became the symbol of resistance, of hope. When those around him perished, he survived, with nothing but a distinctive scar on his forehead. There’s a picture--just the one--him touching the nose of a kaiju. It’s enough.

His mother is a Jaeger engineer; his father, a pilot. This is all he knows. Shatterdomes are where Harry spent his childhood. Erised Phoenix; that’s what Lily calls the Mark 3. She drifts with James once, and then no one can pull them apart.

He was twelve when they died. It was hard to be a symbol of hope when consumed with thoughts of revenge. General Dumbledore wanted him to stay back, to do interviews on TV and stay away from Jaegers. They won’t let him partner with Ron, so Ron finds a new partner, and it all goes horribly wrong.

Hermione grew up watching the kaiju and the mechs on TV, and she wanted to know all about them. As she grew older, she had a singular focus: maths, quantum physics, all to let her do the research she wants to do. She graduates early, could have her pick of masters courses, but she knows where she needs to be.

When Harry was fourteen, he was giving speeches to inspire Shatterdomes. By the time he was seventeen, the Shatterdomes were closing down. The Jaegers were all silent, dismantled, and there was no one left to fly them.

Fred and George Weasley had drifted once, together, the most compatible that anyone had ever seen, and then they had refused to ever pilot a Jaeger. They didn’t tell anyone about the dreams: the flashes of green light, the pain of cuts, the darkness, the separation. But then there’s a Breach, and they have to do something.

They have a Jaeger: a secret project, cobbled together from cannibalised parts of other Jaegers. Erised Phoenix. Horny Grim. Blade Dancer. A dozen others. They call it Wizard Wheezy. It barely looks like it could survive a hit from a kaiju, but they have to try.

When Luna put on the drift helmet, she saw orange and blue neurons, a vast network, and she knew they would not stop until they were destroyed.

The apocalypse began. Kaiju met Jaeger, and Wizard Wheezy went down, down into the depths, through the Breach. A suicide mission that was their only hope of salvation.

This was what the nightmares had foretold , thought George as he surfaced, the side of his head awash with blood.

But no. Finally, finally, there was Fred, his escape pod surfacing.

“We’ve cancelled the apocalypse,” he said, his voice full of laughter.

robinfyre

*fuzz* testing testing, one two, *fuzz*

*fuzz* testing testing, one t- oh for chri- *static*

*fuzz* Mione please, why are we trying to record now? We just saved the world, there’s no need to g-

(silence, someone else muffled speaking) 

I know this is the best set up we have, but that isn’t the point, we could do this later in better conditions, I’m not going to bloody forget what ha- oh, its on? Finally decided to work?

*small cough*

I’m sitting down!!

Ok. Um. This is Harry James Potter, copilot of Swooping Mist, the date is... *papers shuffle* whatever, the day after we collapsed the breach, 2033. Anyway, it’s a beautiful cloudy day, and I’m supposed to tell you, whoever you are, how I saved the world. No joke. Even if I wasn’t the one who did it.

I suppose there’s a certain amount of leeway granted to me because I’m the one the media ‘knows’, as if all jeager pilots weren’t celebrities by themselves….

*another sigh*

But, as I’ve heard, since I’m the one with credit, I’m the one who has to ‘do it for the record’

(calls to the side) THANKS HERMIONE

(distantly: YOU’RE WELCOME)

I don’t know where to being. This is the story that’s shaped me, shaped everyone I know. It might seem weird to future generations, but I don’t know of a single person who can’t tell you at least the outline, of what I’m about to say.

*laughs briefly*

Does make a guy feel redundant.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, before I start? Before I talk about stuff everyone knows about, I want everyone listening, everyone who’s lived through this? To know that this is our story, not just mine. It belongs to everyone who’s survived.

I suppose it starts in San Francisco.

The city is a lot smaller than it used to be, and I’ve seen photos. After the kaiju attacked…. Yeah. It was leveled. I’m told 40% of the infrastructure was totaled after it crashed through, and the exact number of casualties are. Tough to look at.

I was at San Francisco. Or, well, I was but I don’t remember it. Does anyone remember what was going on when they were 15 months? I was tiny. All I really know about that time is what other people have told me, and the photographs. Or should I say the photograph?

I’m sure you know the one; me, in a blanket, nearly untouched with San Francisco in ruins in the background. Some journalist took it, and then died of kaiju blue. Didn’t even stick aroun- *sigh* I’m still not sure whether to be glad or not that I never got to talk to them. Without that photo, I doubt I’d be nearly as well known today.

Mum said it was on the TV for ages after that. All I know, is that whenever I went to interviews back then, that was always the photo they pulled up. Me, in San Francisco. I suppose it was symbolic or something.

Anyway, after that, despite what most people think, jaegers weren’t really a thing. My mum, Lily J Potter (yes that Lily Potter, my whole family was famous), already had the idea floating around, but they all thought it’d be a one time thing you know? That they’d defeated it, and that was the end of the monsters. I can’t imagine a world without Kaiju, but Da used to say the second one was just a big shock as the first.

Mum started campaigning pretty soon after that, for funds, for backing, for recognition that nukes just weren’t going to cut it. There’s still parts of California you can’t visit because of that first blast. And don’t even mention Sydney. Mom used to rant forever about the idiocy behind that choice.

It was what won her funding though. Half a city destroyed, and the whole thing nearly unlivable due to the radiation. It certainly made the international community see that nukes weren’t sustainable long term. I don’t know what they were doing before, but Sydney lit a fire under their collective arse. Mum was already talking to a lot of government aides, who had been telling her, politely of course, to go away and stop asking to see their leaders.

*sigh*

Once she managed to meet and convince the united nations, she and Caitlin Lightcap managed to collaborate and create jaegers as they’re known today. Caitlin was one of the first pilots, and survived to see mark-4s start production, but I knew her best as ‘aunty cate’. She stopped by to visit, often when I was young. She was one of the reasons I- *chokes*

*breathing for a few seconds*

We made sure to kill the kaiju that got Brawler Yukon.

After the jaeger program started getting big, big enough to protect the pacific, the United Nations threw their support behind it, and established the PPDC, pan pacific defense corp.

And then.

Well, those were the glory years of the program. The academy was established a couple of years in, and the world just. Adapted.

I grew up in that time, running in the 6 ring circus that was the public eye, and tried hard to be overshadowed by my mum and da, who had begun piloting Stagger Delta by then. Uncle Sirius and Uncle Remus had begun piloting Horny Grim by then too, after that mess in Korea.

That was the way of things for years. Over a decade of peace from 2016 to, approximately 2029. Someone else could give you a more accurate date, when the Kaiju attacks became significantly more often. When, my.

*chokes again* *breaths*

Public support declined around that time. Kaiju started to learn from the jaegers, and started to *breath* win.

Stag fell in 2030, Grim in ‘31. *breath*

Around ‘28 ‘29 ish, I began to talk to the pilots in shatterdomes around the world. I even got to talk to Cherno Alpha before they were reassigned to Hong Kong, and tried to raise support for the jeager program. It never used to be a problem until they started losing. *snort/sigh*

Yeah, that went poorly. The united nations switched funding from the ppdc to the wall program in 2030, right around mid november. I remember Hermione, Hermione Granger was hopping mad about it. Both of us had met at a jeager fundraiser, and she already had a doctorate and a half to her name at 15. We were both so young.

Nothing we did seemed to work. No amount of campaigning, coaxing, or arguments about the wall’s structure seemed to reach the UN. I’d met Ron (Weasley) the same year I met Hermione, and by the time they cut funding, he’d only been a pilot for a year. He tried to appeal to them too, but no one was able to convince them.

*laughs bitterly*

Sydney had to happen again for them to see sense. 2033, Mutavore broke through the wall, and only Blade Dancer, who had just been decommissioned was able to take it out.

*laughs, happier this time*

I don’t know if you’ve seen Viktor and Yuuri together, but they’re one scary pair in a pons. Scary for the Kaiju that is. Blade dancer ripped up Mutavore, with a minimum of casualties. They do a hell of a lot better than some bloody wall.

I guess that must’ve proven to the UN that the program was worth something . Dumbledore managed to gather everyone up in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and scraped up enough funding to finish some old jeager projects. That’s actually what Swooping Mist was at first. Barely finished in time, it got its first run with  Chrome Dokuro and Mukuro Rokudo for the test runs until Mukuro broke his arm in the double event. Fred and George (Weasly, they’re Ron’s brothers) rescued the jeagers in front of the shatterdome, but it was too late for Mukuro’s arm, and Cherno Alpha.

Sky Fire was part of the double event too, working with Swooping Mist and Wheezing Wizard to bring down Leatherback and Otachi. Tsunayoshi Sawada and Gokudera Hayato are quite the pair. I think they actually lit their hands on fire to overcome Leatherback’s acid. No one can say that not effective.

*soft snort* Tsuna denies it was his idea, but we all know Gokudera wasn’t the one with accelerants.

Anyway, once everyone who supported the jeager program, which at this point was down to 3 working jeagers, and two in progress. The working ones were Cherno Alpha (of course), Sky Fire, and Blade Dancer. Wizard and Mist were still undergoing repairs, or in Wizard’s case, actually being built . *sigh*

Fred and George, the pilots of Wheezing Wizard, are the only ones I know of who would actually be able to design and build a jeager without ppdc funding. I suppose their family helps, them being Fred and George Weasley . From what they’ve told me, they had the idea for Wizard for ages, even before the pilots started losing. After they did though, they ramped up production. I know there’s a lot of scraps used in its production, parts of Gipsy Danger, Stagger Delta, Horny Grim, I think they even got some of Cherno Alpha to finish repairs after the double event.

And, of course, none of that would be possible without their sister, Ginny. Ginerva Weasley, the best mechanic and jaeger specialist I know. She’s- *laughs* one of the hardest working people I know. Fred and George designed Wizard, but Ginny, Ginny built her.

Her mom and dad were part of the ppdc until they had to start lay offs, and Dumbledore hired them again, right after Sydney happened a second time. So, she, and her brothers grew up around jaegers their entire life. They have some wild stories. Just ask about Ginny and the kaiju baby. *laughs*

Anyway, Ron, who I mentioned before, he and Neville used to pilot Cannon Army before they got taken out by a category 4 with a armor mutation. They both survived, but neither of them. They’re not piloting anymore, not just because they don’t have a jaeger. 

The point is, Ron is a pilot, Charlie works with Luna in Kaiju behavior analysis, Bill and Fleur used to pilot Harpy Curse before Bill lost his arm, Percy lobbies for jaeger funding, the twins pilot Wizard, Ginny helped build it, it’s in their blood.

So, it surprised no one when Ginny was hanging around the jaeger hangers.

She told me, once, about meeting my mum. She’d tagged along to a charity benefit with Bill, when he was still piloting, and mum happened to be speaking about the breakthrough they made with mark-3 tech. Anyway, Ginny, she was only 11 at the time, walks up to her and starts asking questions about the hydraulics in the arm, and one thing lead to another, and mum got carried away talking to Ginny who had a better understanding of the practical part of jaeger design than most of the people there. *laughs* I think the twins heard of that. It was when her brilliance with jaegers really started to show, and Mrs. Weasley finally took her seriously about that apprenticeship to the head mechanic.

If you can keep up with Lily Potter in her own field, you’re clearly doing something right.

Of course, I didn’t meet her until Hong Kong, but she was well established as queen of the shop by then.

Ron on the other hand, I met him a lot earlier.

We’d both been trying to apply for the academy at the time. I’d snuck away from Padfoot, who had been watching me, and went to the nearest recruitment center, to try and apply.

It seems stupid now, but back then I was furious that they weren’t allowing me to help, and fight. I was still in the media, dragged out every time a new kaiju hit. And that was the only time I mattered. I was 15 then, and everyone was used to Kaiju. They understood they’d be protected, and just, got on with their lives. I doubt more than 1 in 10 really thought about the kaiju everyday like I did.

When I met him at that station though. (wistful) Man. Someone else who was just like me.

Of course, he got into the academy and I got dragged off to another press meeting. We kept in touch though. He would send me letters about what they were training in, and I’d send him pictures from all the charity events I went to.

It was at one of those that I met Hermione. She was already working on her second doctorate, and wowing all the people near her with math based models of the breach. We were the only kids that young, at that event, and everyone seemed to think that would make us get along. Lucky for their ideas, we did, and she told me about her ideas on the kaiju attack frequency for several hours. Its fascinating stuff, if you can understand it. I can’t, but the way she talked about it, like she thought about kaiju attack patterns everyday, well. That was just like me.

We kept in touch too, through the whole wall funding disaster, and the attack rates increasing (just like she had predicted).

She got a job with the ppdc science division, after she got her second PHD in Numerical Analysis. They funded her research into predicting when the next kaiju would arrive.

She and Luna were the last of the ppdc scientists. In Hong Kong they had to share a lab. *laughs* I hear it was rough. Hermione would come bang on my door at 11, and tell me all about what Luna was saying.

(whispers) I think she liked trying to figure it out.

The important thing about them working together, is that they started to share theories. And what they agreed on, was that the kaiju were coming sooner, more frequently. Hermione predicted the double event, Luna predicted what would come.

We still don’t know a lot about how the kaiju are made, though the fact that they are is something Luna insists on. Luna, well. She had a bad case of kaiju blue when she was younger. It left its mark.

She’s right though. Dead on predictions about behavior and abilities, so much that its uncanny. Her and Ginny bonded over it I think. No one bothered to ask, not when they were giggling over kaiju remains in the lab. I’m glad they’re happy, but never ask me to be the one that inturrupts them.

Heh. Even when everything was falling down, we were all still there for each other.

And that was that. Not much changed, until Luna and Hermione’s prediction of a double event came true.

That was where the real damage started. We lost Cherno Alpha, and Wheezing Wizard got seriously damaged. Blade Dancer made it out safely, since they were only deployed near the end of the fight, but Swooping Mist was nearly as bad off as Wizard, and Mukuro’s arm was shattered. Sky Fire had serious burns all down its arms from the setting-self-on-fire incident, and there were lots of questions from the public. I got to handle those, being someone the crowd knew, but theres. There’s no good way to say I’m sorry your husband died but we can’t do anything about it.

After Dancer took out Otachi, Luna was near enough to find its baby, which was still alive for some reason. She and Hermione drifted with it, they still won’t tell me how or why, though if Hermione is getting everything down for the record… I’m sure we’ll all know soon.

Right after the double event, that’s when things got serious. Because Luna and Hermione were drifting with that thing for hours, and Dumbledore sprung his plan while they were unavailable. Not around to tell him it was kinda stupid. Really stupid.

You see, Dumbledore had this idea, that based on Hermione’s math based model of the breach, if something interrupted it, the whole thing would collapse. This is actually really well proven theory, or so I’m told. Its about as much of a sure thing as you can get in theoretical mathematics dealing in interdimensional portals.

So, the obvious solution was to send enough jaegers to storm the breach, and blow it up right? And I’m sure you know it’s been tried before right? Well, the thing about this time, is that we were the last hope. The double event made that clear. So it was decided to gamble it all, one final push against the breach.

They loaded Wizard down with a nuke and some hasty repairs, and sent her off with blade dancer, Sky fire (though sky was currently missing most of her hand functions), and swooping mist. Heh. Me and Chrome that is.

The thing is, we both knew we’d be drift compatible. It’s just something you know. Whether you can make it work is the hard part, but I’ve been around enough pilots to know. If you’re drift compatible you don’t need the Kwoon room, or fancy machines measuring your sync rates. You just know. So, its no surprise, that we got in Mist, and lit her up. What is surprising is we got her out of the hanger. Its thanks to Molly Weasley and Neville Longbottom that we did. I’d never been more grateful that they went into communications tech than in that moment.

So there we were, 4 jaegers, 8 people heading down hundreds of feet below the water, intent on saving the world.

That’s when Hermione called.

Well, not literally. Neville tells me she and Luna called him, and demanded to be patched through to our comms, said there was something important they needed to say. Neville, who knew Hermione, patched them through. What we got was frantic babbling in our ears, half a mile out from the breach.

They told us it wasn’t going to work. Not without kaiju bio material that is.

And so we formed a plan. Sky Fire would lure the kaiju out (there was predicted to be another event soon. We had been planning on detonating before that happened, but we could use it to our advantage), Blade Dancer would Take it down, Wizard would take the bomb into the breech, and we’d take the biological material once Dancer finished it.

It was a solid plan.

Only problem? Wizard’s left arm, and leg were destroyed in the battle. Blade dancer took out Scunner, Sky Fire and Wheezing Wizard had to tag team Raiju, but me and Chrome weren’t a match for Slattern. The first catagory 5 ever. And the last.

Wizard had to step in, and take it down. Mist would have been mince meat if she didn’t, but that didn’t make getting the nuke into the breach any easier. Me and chrome detached it from their back, and started preparing to try and drag both it, and slattern’s carcass into the breach, but Blade Dancer stepped up. Sky Fire would have too, we could see them down there, trying to make her hands work. But blade Dancer was the only other one with working hands, and legs.

So we got to the breach, Blade Dancer threw Slattern over the rim of the breach, Chrome and I took a deep breath, and jumped in after..

I can’t describe the breach. Everything is snapshotted, and fragmented, too blurry, and too close.

The best I can say, is that it- rippled. Space was distorted down there, and we lost touch of why we were there.

I’m not sure what saved us, be it one side of the pons, or Mist herself. All I can say is after those endless minutes in blue light, the nuke’s countdown was activated. We tried to get out, but, well. It’s impossible to swim upwards in a jaeger. It just doesn't work.

So we activated our escape pods, chrome first, then me, and got the bloody hell out of there. The last thing I can recall before waking up on the surface, is the brilliant white of explosion, and alien faces, turned at it, as if to the sun.

And then I woke up. And we had won.

*click*

*End Credits Music (Pacific RIm Theme)*

This has been Harry Potter and the Kaiju Apocalypse, read and written by Wirenth, aka Robinfyre. The original text was written by Opalsong. This podfic is part of the pod_together challenge (where writers and readers collab on a fic designed podficcing), and created as part of the Pensieve Project. The Pensieve Project is a project in which podficcers were given a single read of the base text (in this case, 5 snippets about a harry potter/ pacific rim fusion) and asked to record based on their memories. No rereads were allowed. I had a lot of fun with the idea, and I hope you had just as much fun listening to the result! Special thanks to the pod_together mods, for making such a wonderful event possible, Opalsong, for the enthusiasm and wonderful original text. Please do leave a comment! This work is available on archive of our own, under the pod_together collection. Thank you for listening!

duckgirlie

looneyngilo2

SomethingIncorporeal

Out of the Drift, by SomethingIncorporeal

   Luna knew she was strange, or at least, that was what people said.

   “They said she fell in it; the blue .”
   “No, no way!”
   “She can do things.”

   “And, you’re mad.”
   “Not as mad as her…”

   She didn’t know if the stories were true, but she knew she was different. Harry was different too, but not like her. It was close though, closer than anyone else at least. Every time she saw that picture, the one blown up and plastered over every flat surface in the Shatterdome, she was reminded of just how different. Because when the others saw that picture, of a baby reaching out to a huge Kaiju, they saw hope for humanity's victory, while all she saw was a different sort of hope; a hope for coexistence.
   People saw so little, and mocked so easily. Not that she minded. They could call her a fool all they wanted, but she knew they could learn more…

   [A strange wind rushes by. An unearthly sound rises as a strange voice laughs, growing closer and louder. Another unfamiliar voice speaks of the inevitable apocalypse and the coming of a third event. Slowly the voices multiply and grow louder and louder until they are cut off with an unexpected chime and-”]

   Luna gasped as she emerged from the drift, eyes burning and red and just, everything . The world continued to rush past her eyes as someone pulled at her arms and voices shouted and shouted and-

    “What was she thinking?”
   “Look at her, didn’t I say that she was mad-”

   “Just, stop moving! ”

   “General Dumbledore, she’s not-”

   As the world continued to swirl, and rush, she smiled and let her limbs go slack. This was it. This was it .
   When she dreamed, she saw him. She didn’t know if he was really there, but it hardly seemed to matter. She reached a hand out; floating in starry nothingness. Luna reached out a hand and placed it on his nose.

   And then she knew. He knew. He told her and tears stung at her eyes. She awoke, her fingers still tingling, and the dark knowledge firm in her heart; that there was no end . Could be, no end . No end she could stomach anyway.

   She looked down at her hands before clenching them, and standing with a hard expression. She had someone to talk to.

   Hermione had listened, and nodded thoughtfully. Luna had been convinced she was going to laugh, and shoo her away from her workshop. Not that Luna enjoyed being surrounded by all the machines, and people, and buzzing tools. The creatures and fey beasts who stayed in her lab tended to avoid the hustle and bustle of the upper workshops. Luna was aware that her presence was earning whispers, and glances. But that was nothing compared to the commotion that ensued when she mentioned the word: bomb .

   What ensued next was a blur of red hair, late night robotics, and the comings and goings of more people than Luna could handle. She knew that there was no other way out. That there would be no cooperation, or negotiation. But it still made her eyes sting, to think of the end they were working towards.

   The twins’ Jaeger was already standing tall and solid, and the ragtag group of the other Jaegers stood alongside the scrappy Wizard Wheezy. Luna noticed new people; an intense young girl, who wore an eyepatch, and occasionally murmured to herself like she was expecting an answer. The first time she met her, Luna knew they were somehow alike in their differences, but that final day came too quickly for her to really know why.

   It was dark, and also bright, and intense in the drift. She saw everything. Heard the voices of the Kaiju, these monsters, her friends, her enemies.

   It was the end.

   She flew through them, around them and in between; the helmet was a small link to what the rest of the world called ‘reality’. This was her final drift. And now would come their final fight.

   And it all stopped.

   She heard Harry calling out their victory, the boy who had been spared by the monsters. She knew, knew it was the right thing. Knew that this was their only way to survive. But that knowledge did not stop the strange knowledge that prickled against her skin. Before she stepped out, to join the celebrations.

The end.