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I. Know your enemy
The first one shows up about a year after the Chitauri invasion. Twenty-seven hundred tons of mean that the news would later refer to as Trespasser. It takes Iron Man twelve minutes to get across the country to San Francisco. He finds SHIELD there, but the Golden Gate is long gone.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“I have no data to answer that question, sir.”
“…”
“Sir?”
“Get Bruce.”
Sometimes it takes a monster to beat a monster. Iron Man, SHIELD and the Army fight and fight with no result. In the time it takes Jarvis to contact Bruce and the Hulk to jump his way to the West Coast, San Francisco is decimated. Still, his arrival brings hope. Only months ago, the world saw him take down a Leviathan in one mighty blow.
Trespasser doesn’t fall with the first blow. Or the second. Or the third. It takes the Hulk, Iron Man, SHIELD and the Army two days to take the thing down.
*
There is little celebration after the battle, which is understandable. Less understandable is that there is little of anything else. The world mourns San Francisco, sensationalist journalists ask pointy questions, geeks develop wild theories, politicians in campaign demand answers and politicians in office assure the population everything is fine. But no meaningful research is conducted, no bigger plans are made. Except, you know, up in the Helicarrier, where SHIELD ‘doesn’t’ spy on us all. Or down by the beach in Malibu, where a billionaire genius mixes exobiology with Johnny Walker.
*
The Japanese headlines call the thing a “Kaiju”. Big, strange beast.
It catches on.
*
Six months after Trespasser, neither Tony nor SHIELD have any useful clues as to what the thing was or where it came from. They know its tissues degenerate too fast for any proper study. They know their most basic structure is different from any other living thing on this planet. They know its blood is poisonous (a piece of knowledge that came too late for too many people).
Then Hundun rises across the Pacific and rips Manila into pieces before even the ones who had been preparing can react.
*
“Alpha, you are getting too close.”
They know. But what else is left to do? Steve and Natasha exchange a look. He can survive it. The rest of the team won’t.
“Alpha, do you read? You are too close.”
“Any sign of Banner?” he asks again.
Natasha shakes her head.
Steve looks out. Nods once.
“Go back,” he says, and jumps.
He misses his mark by a few meters, climbs through the thing’s face to reach it. Attacking the eyes may not kill it, but if he can distract it, it could be helpful for the guys who can take it down. As if summoned by the thought, Stark’s voice comes through SHIELD’s restricted channel.
“What the hell are you doing, Rogers?”
“Just trying to help,” he says, as he brings the shield into the thing’s left eye and runs for cover inside its ear. The thing howls and a huge paw covers the face, leaving the body open for attack.
“Ok… that’s… seriously unhygienic. Also, you are one crazy Capsicle,” says Stark, before firing a blast into the thing’s right eye. “See? A lot more efficient. Now go back to your Quinjet before you start growing tentacles.”
“I’m fine,” he retorts, moving back to his mark. Truth is he can barely stand the Quinjet. He wasn’t made for long distance war. He was made for the front lines, to move, to hit. He has no idea what to do with a monster he can’t even tickle.
In the end, he doesn’t need to figure it out. A distant rumble becomes closer and Hundun falls to its knees as a mass of green rage hits its head with a mighty roar. The force of the blow throws him down. Iron Man catches him, probably saves his life. He goes back to the sidelines, firing weapon after weapon while the Hulk delivers blow after blow.
*
They recover more tissue, discuss more possibilities, try more weapons.
Kaiceph hits Cabo San Lucas four months later, and they feel just as underprepared as the first time.
*
II. Get a little help from your friends
“Is it me or are these things getting stronger?” asks Tony when it becomes obvious that Hulk is not holding Kaiceph back.
“It would seem so, sir,” agreesJARVIS.
Steve can’t hear them from the mainland, busy taking the population to safety, along with anyone else on duty who isn’t a fighter pilot, a green giant or a cocky genius. It’s no easy task, either, with people running in panic, trying to save whatever little they can from their lives, desperately screaming for loved ones, watching their homes destroyed in one blow.
Steve gathers them, tries to calm them, promises to look for the ones left behind and sends them away. He looks, too. For parents away at work, for teenage daughters out with friends, for Mark, who went to get tickets for some concert, for Grandma, who lives all by herself in that old building. He finds some of them, but not all.
From time to time, he looks up. The pilots shoot and shoot, Iron Man blasts and blasts, the Hulk hits and hits, Kaiju Blue drips from a thousand wounds over the shore, but the thing never wavers, never stops.
“Is it me or are these things getting stronger?” he asks to no one. No one answers.
Ten hours into the battle, Iron Man falls in a ball of fire and doesn’t come back up.
The Hulk strikes a blow that elicits the loudest, most terrifying sound Steve has ever heard from the Kaiju, but instead of relenting, the attack seems to enrage it, somehow making it more aggressive, more destructive.
There are survivors under the blue dripping ruins, and he knows he needs to keep looking for them, even if the world is ending two hundred feet away. But it feels that way, exactly. Like the world is ending. Like no hero can save them, this time.
That, of course, is when the Bifrost rips the sky open.
*
“Rogers to Central.”
“Central here. Can you confirm? Is it dead?”
Oh, it is dead. The body goes on and on over the coast. People may have been saved from the attack, but there’ll be no way to save them from the radioactive residues in the water. San Lucas is gone.
“Yeah, it’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
He pokes the decomposing flesh with the tip of a red boot.
“I am.”
“Any sign of Banner?”
“No.” But that’s not news. For a three ton green monster, Banner is really good at disappearing.
“He’s shy like that.” And that’s Tony in the restricted channel, voice like a ghost, walking slowly through the debris (walking, not flying) towards him. Tiny sparks shoot randomly through the armor, which looks like it just came out of a grinder.
Steve says the only thing that he can think of. “I thought you were dead.”
“Sorry, just unconscious.”
“You fell three hundred feet.”
Tony looks up into the sky. “Yeah, that seems accurate.”
“You were on fire.”
“I remember, thanks.”
“How resistant is that thing?”
Tony looks down on the armor, assessing. A random spark flies from his knee. “A lot less than it was yesterday? Let’s find Bruce, I need to get back to the workshop. Also, samples. JARVIS, send the drones, will you?”
“Of course, sir. And may I recommend you let the drones do the work this time? The radiation filters are not working at full capacity.”
“You’re unprotected?”
“I’m not…”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“Get out. SHIELD will lend you a protective suit and have a doctor check on you. Then you can come back.”
“I don’t need a doctor! Or a protective…”
“You fell three hundred feet.”
“ … suit. Have you noticed how fast these things decompose? I don’t have time for SHIELD. See? My drones are here. Now move and let the genius work.”
“I’m not letting you get any closer without protection.”
“You realize you’re wearing blue spandex, right?”
Steve takes a deep breath. Not the time. “I’m immune.”
Tony looks at him for a while. “You’re immune to Kaiju Blue,” he says. Then he rolls his eyes. “Of course you are. Get out of my way, golden boy,” he adds, putting on the helmet. “Real people have useful work to do.”
“What are you going to do with the samples, anyway?” asks Steve to change the subject. “They never make it to the lab.”
“They do if I submerge them in ammonia,” says Iron Man’s metallic voice, which somehow manages to convey Stark’s know-it-all smirk. “Now, will you please move? I need to… Hey! Hey, what are you doing? Not like that! The whole thing! The whole… Don’t cut it!” He fumbles with the drone for a second; faceplate open like radioactive contamination is something that happens to other people. Little sparks fly to and fro. “See? Like that. Wow. That’s a big gland. Hey, Cap!” he yells, distracted. “How many Leviathans do you think we could fit in a… Ow! Ok, seriously, what’s with all the static?”
“Residual from Thor’s attack?” ventures Steve, more worried about the radiation than the sparks.
“Thor was here?!”
Right. Tony fell before that.
“Yes. He delivered the final blow, but he took serious damage. SHIELD’s taking care of him.”
“Of Thor.”
Steve nods. “And his four friends.”
“Four friends,” repeats Tony. “So… Four Asgardian warriors, plus Thor, plus the Hulk, all against Godzilla’s high school bully here… And I slept through the whole thing?”
“It would seem so.”
“Seriously? I missed the Fight of the Century happening over my head?”
For a second, Steve wants to smile. Then his gaze drifts to the huge corpse lying along the shore.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll get another chance.”
*
The Avengers have a full reunion for the first time in over a year. They’re not innocent enough to wish it was in better circumstances. There are never going to be better circumstances in their line of work.
Asgard is as puzzled as Midgard about the nature of the Kaijus. They don’t belong to any of the nine realms. Not even Heimdall, who sees it all, has seen them before.
Tony and Bruce, however, have some information to share. As others had inferred, the Kaijus are not coming from the outside, but rather from the depths of Earth itself, the Mariana Trench. However, they are silicon-based, unlike all the other carbon-based life forms on Earth. Are they extraterrestrial, then? If so, how can they be coming from the inside of the planet? Are they an unknown kind of silicon-based life, independently developed in the Center of the Earth?
“Oh, come on. It’s a billion degrees there!”
“They seem resistant to a lot.”
“Also, how could they survive in our environment, then?”
“Maybe that’s why they decompose so fast.”
“They’re not Verne monsters, Banner.”
“I’m just saying, we’ve thrown a lot of stuff down there. And I’m not going to be the one to dismiss the weird effects of radiation.”
“So, what? Godzilla? That’s what you think?” says Tony with vague disdain. He’s been distracted the whole meeting, looking over at Thor again and again.
Steve asks.
“What do you think, then?”
“Me?” Tony’s voice is all innocence, eyes never leaving their Asgardian friend. “I’m thinking about portals.”
At once, all eyes follow his.
*
They spend the following months conducting experiments to figure out whether or not there is an interdimensional portal hidden in the depths of the Pacific.
It turns out there is.
Sadly, this knowledge is not enough to close the breach or keeping Scissure from coming out and falling on Sydney four months later.
This time, humanity has Thor on its side.
But humanity may not be the only one gathering information, because Scissure has four legs, wing-like membranes coming out of its arms and a weird bioluminescence in the back on its throat that seems to be powered by the large amounts of electricity that it is very, very capable of resisting.
*
III. Accept your limitations
He has never felt this useless. Not even when he was a sickly kid left behind in Brooklyn while everyone else was leaving to fight for freedom. Even then, he had hope, he kept trying. But these… monsters. He has no idea what he could possibly do, what kind of experiment he could sign up for this time to make any sort of difference, to help in any way. He breathes. He punches. Too much rage inside, too much frustration. Years of research and Erskine’s life, and for what? Some guy who can punch real hard. He breathes. For all the good it can do for anyone right now. He punches.
“Wow. That bag must have done something real bad. Are you picturing it with claws and 300 feet tall?”
Steve startles, more out of embarrassment than surprise. It’s Tony’s house, after all. It’s become a sort of Avengers HQ, in case they need to be called to action. He’s not sure why he was invited, though. Thor, Bruce, of course, that makes sense. Even Clint, who’s an amazing pilot, or Natasha as SHIELD’s liaison. But him? He wants to ask, but it sounds too pitiful, even in his head.
“You look tired,” he says instead.
“Yeah, probably. What time is it?”
“2 AM.”
“Ah. Then I’ve been up for…”
“Two days,” says Steve. “You really should go to sleep.”
Tony shakes his goggled head. “Can’t.”
“You’ll be no good fighting in this state,” Steve tries to reason.
Tony snorts. “Were you watching the last fight? I’m no good fighting in any state. I need to upgrade everything. And even then…”
There a lost look in Tony’s eyes. Realization hits Steve like a blow. He’s not the only one feeling desperate and impotent, racking his brain for a plan that never comes. The big guns, the geniuses, they all feel as lost as he does.
But if we start doubting ourselves, we are doomed.
“You’ll figure it out,” he says. No, that’s not right. “We’ll figure it out,” he corrects. “Tomorrow, though. Right now, you need to sleep.”
Tony gives him a funny look before answering.
“I mean it, I can’t. I’m too restless. I would just lay there crawling out of my skin.”
Steve gets nights like those, too. In fact, that’s why he… “Is that why you came down here? You wanted to unwind?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the bar is that way,” says Tony, pointing towards the main hall, where, indeed, the bar is located.
Steve smiles. There’s something about Tony Stark, always loud and flashy in front of others, but strangely quiet in the rare moments they spend alone, signing his name in bright letters on the top of a building, but hiding from himself behind a glass.
“Alcohol won’t help you rest. Come here.”
“Why?”
“We’re going to wrestle.”
“We’re going to what?! Why on earth would I want to do that?”
“Because your body will get tired and you’ll sleep better. Also, you could use the training; you rely too much on your systems in battle.”
At this, Tony smirks. “Do I, now? You know, maybe it’s because my systems are way awesomer than wrestling.”
“Just come over here, will you? I’ll go easy on you.”
“Oh, will you?” Tony half laughs, sort of offended and sort of amused. But he goes.
And they wrestle.
Steve doesn’t need to hold back his punches nearly as much as he thought he would. Tony is swift, creative, and a really fast learner. Still, he hasn’t slept in two days. Soon they’re sprawled on the floor, and he can feel Tony’s deep breaths relax his body more and more, until he’s snoring softly by Steve’s side, mouth slack, a rare peaceful expression in his face.
“You’re not half bad, you know?” whispers Steve, even though Tony can’t hear him (or maybe because of it). “If you were a hundred feet taller, those Kaijus wouldn’t stand a chance.”
In the end, he doesn’t have the heart to wake his host up. He would probably just go back to the workshop. So he carefully picks him up, puts him in bed and walks away.
Tomorrow. They can think about alien monsters tomorrow.
*
“Giant robots?”
It’s an obvious idea, but somehow it takes all these months to materialize. Months of hard fights, being swatted like a fly from the sky, watching the fucking God of Thunder beaten into unconsciousness.
It takes a realization. The realization that they are not enough. That all their combined power is not enough. More Kaijus are coming, and each will be stronger than the last. It will take more than a bunch of geniuses and superhumans to stop them. It will take humans.
Well, humans in giant armor.
“Not robots, no. Robots are independent AIs; these are more like giant suits of really high-tech armor.”
“Giant Iron Men?”
“Something like that” says Tony, even though he doesn’t see them that way. Iron Man… Iron Man is a part of him, or maybe he is a part of Iron Man, he’s not sure at this point. What he knows is that he can build a hundred Marks, but there will always be just one Iron Man.
These things are gonna need their own name.
*
“Recording: Giant armor, test 1.”
“You haven’t named it yet?” asks Steve from the glass door. Tony jumps a bit. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s ok. Too much caffeine. What are you doing down here?”
“Couldn’t sleep. First trial?”
“Yep. Wanna stay? You can disconnect me when it fries my brain.”
Steve laughs softly. “It’s not gonna fry your brain. You’ve been wearing armor for years.”
“True. But this one’s different. Iron Man responds to my movements or voice commands. For this, I need to connect my brain to the main system, so that it can respond to my thought waves; otherwise it would be too slow.”
“It will read your mind?” asks Steve with that look of his, the one that makes Tony feel like no matter what he does, what he accomplishes, he can never, ever be as good as some people think he is. Really, Steve was much easier to deal with when he doubted every word out of Tony’s mouth.
“Only if it works,” he tries. But nope, the look’s still there.
So he puts on the neural interface and begins the test. It’s not the whole thing, yet. Just the torso. He moves left, it moves left. Good. It’s beginning to feel heavy, though. Not physically heavy, but heavy. Like his mind is doing lifts.
“Are you ok?” asks Steve.
“Fine.”
He raises his right arm; it raises its right arm. There’s a heavy pain at the front of his skull. He needs to check on that. He starts the weapons system, the weapons system starts.
“Tony?”
The pain is getting worse. He really needs to fix it; it would be really hard to fight like…
“Tony!”
*
There’s a doctor peering into his eyes when he wakes up. Apparently, he had a seizure. A minor one, but only because Steve disconnected him on time. No damage that can’t be fixed with rest, but also, no working neural interface. Damn giant things. The neural charge is too heavy, too much.
“You were lucky, Mr. Stark,” says the doctor, in typical doctor fashion. “How do you feel?”
“Like a bad Jaeger hangover,” he answers, in typical Tony Stark fashion.
Steve is looking at him intently from across the room, concern all over his face. Just concern.
“I told you it would fry my brain,” he tries.
But Steve just never looks disappointed anymore, does he?
*
“Maybe I can handle it.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“We should try, though.”
“Mm hmm…” Tony adjusts the shades. Bright lights still make his head pound. “So it’s reckless if I try prototypes on myself, but it’s ok if I do it on you?”
“Well, a lot of people have experimented on me. I’m used to it.”
“Well… I’ve experimented a lot on myself. I’m used to it, too.”
“It could work,” Steve lures him. He’s smiling. Tony smiles back.
“You just want to get off the sidelines, don’t you?”
“What? No, I…” He goes all red, like a child caught looking at Dad’s magazines.
Tony laughs.
“You just want to get back to action. You’ve been crawling up the walls since they took you out. No, I mean, I get it,” he tries to placate, because he’s not making fun of Steve, not really, it’s just funny. “You were the golden boy against the Nazis, you fought an alien invasion… Hey, I know, I was there. And now there’s Kaijus coming out of the ocean and you can’t… I get it. I do.” And then it isn’t funny at all. “You know what? Let’s do this. Put the thing on.”
Steve puts the thing on.
He lasts twice as long as Tony. Which is about 30 seconds.
“Hey, don’t worry,” jokes Tony, giving him some water, “it happens to the best of us.”
But Steve is not smiling anymore. It’s taking a real toll on him, not being able to help. Yeah, Tony gets it. He really does.
*
III. Take a leap of faith
“Jaeger, Mark I, test one.”
“You named it Jaeger?”
Tony jumps. “Would you stop doing that? I have a fragile heart, in case you haven’t noticed. Also, how did you get in? I’m pretty sure I locked the doors,” he adds in an accusing tone directed to the walls.
“I took the liberty of calling Captain Rogers for the test, sir,” answers JARVIS with no hint of remorse, “since he was so helpful last time.”
“Of course you did. Did I program insubordination into you or did you develop the subroutine on your own?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Yeah, I figured it was you.” He turns to Steve. “So, you want to watch me get fried again?”
“Actually, I was thinking it would be better if I went first.”
“Yeah… That would be a no. My Jaeger, my ride.”
Steve seems to be holding back a smile.
“Jaeger, really?”
Tony shrugs. “It seemed to fit.”
In a few years, the official version will be that the name refers to “the strength and fierceness of great hunters,” but the press will half laugh, half believe Tony when he claims that “it’s what I was drinking when I got the idea.”
“I don’t even remember what a hangover feels like,” says Steve.
Tony smiles. “I’m sure I can think of better ways to remind you.”
When did they develop inside jokes, he wonders. Or such an easy communication. When did “Captain Rogers” become JARVIS’ first choice for keeping Tony out of trouble?
“Come on,” says Steve, more serious now, looking straight at him with those blue, blue eyes, “let me do it. I’m more resistant and if something goes wrong, you’re the one that knows what to do.” He puts his (huge, rough) hands on Tony’s, and slowly pries the interface device from them. It takes Tony a second (or ten) too long to react, and by then Steve has the device on and it’s too late to win the fight.
Tony has cleared the channels of any kind of pollution, has improved the distribution of the neural charge, and has installed all kinds of failsafe routines and alarms. If this was the torso they originally tested, he would be sure of their success. But this is a full Jaeger and it might be too much for one neural system, even one enhanced with Super Soldier Serum.
Steve moves his right arm. The Jaeger follows.
“Everything OK?”
“So far, yes.”
“Try the legs. But don’t kick. We want to keep the walls where they are.”
Steve takes a step to the side. The Jaeger takes a step to the side. The foundations of the hangar rock with it. Steve wobbles.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I can handle it.” He throws a punch. The Jaeger throws a punch. His arm is shaking.
“Steve…”
“I can handle it.”
“There are plasma cannons in the arms. Try activating them.”
The cannons activate. Steve groans. His legs are shaking now, too.
It’s too much. Too much neural charge, too much information coming and going. Just too much for one brain to handle. “JARVIS, disconnect…” Wait a minute. “JARVIS, connect the alternate device to the main system” he says, putting the device on. Of course. Too much for one brain to handle.
Of course!
Tony?!
There’s a moment inside the Drift, in which neither of them knows what’s happening. Then Tony’s brain supplies them both with the information. It’s like nothing they have experienced before. Or anyone else. Not even twins in the womb. He’s inside Steve’s mind and Steve is inside his, and for a second Tony feels a stab of blind panic about the things that Captain America is going to find there; but then Steve feels that panic, too, like a knife in the gut, and he slides it out with steady moves, soothes the fear with solid warmth, brings down the walls, and builds instead a strong foundation to support them both. A bridge, thinks Tony. He can feel Steve smile in reply.
Tony raises his right arm. Steve raises his left. When the plasma cannons activate, a low, pleasant buzz drifts across the Neural Bridge.
*
A month later, Karloff emerges from the Breach and heads for Vancouver.
250 feet of hot-rod metal, high-tech weaponry and stubborn determination stand in the way. Tony is used to flying and repulsors, Steve is used to close contact and a shield. But they are one in the Drift, and they fight as such.
The press calls the prototype Red Avenger. Military production starts within the week.
Karloff never reaches the shore.
*
Neural Bridge: Stable.
Systems: Fully activated.
Deploying: Ninja Hawk.
As it turns out, Tony and Steve were lucky. Not everybody is Drift compatible. SHIELD agents in particular have an incredibly low rate of success, probably due to their extensive training in never letting anyone inside their heads. In a surprising turn of events, however, the first perfect match is achieved by the most devious woman in the history of espionage and a guy that still has nightmares about a dark presence lurking in his mind.
In the field, as out, they are highly resourceful, accurate and deadly.
“We see it.”
Visual confirmation is usually the last they hear from Clint until the fight is over, though Natasha may send a few more short, dispassionate comments if something interesting arises. They never talk much. Not to the comm, anyway. Who knows what goes on inside the Drift, though, except for the swift movements and subtle changes in strategy that never fail to hit the target. (There are those who would kill to know.)
Two years after the defeat of Karloff, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps has built 6 Shatterdomes along the coasts of the largest ocean on Earth, each with at least one Jaeger ready to deploy. Red Avenger has a lot of help these days, which is good, because Tony is too involved in development and research to be on call duty 24-7. (He’ll never admit it, but as much as he resents missing the action, he’s secretly grateful for the respite.)
“JARVIS, what category is that thing?” he asks from the lab, studying the images in the holoscreen.
“Category IV, sir.”
“There is no category IV,” says Coulson from Control.
“Apparently, there is now.”
Ninja Hawk fires and hits the thing right between the eyes. It falls. It gets back up. A long tail that had been hidden underwater rises 200 feet and falls on them like a whip. Ninja Hawk ducks and fires again. They never miss, but Raythe never falls again, either.
He hears Coulson call for the twins just as he’s starting to gear up.
When Pietro and Wanda Maximoff showed perfect compatibility (not uncommon among siblings, especially twins), Tony wasn’t sure it was a good idea to put those two behind 1000 tons of lethal weaponry. First time he and Fury agreed on something, too. But they are good. Oh, they are good. Pietro’s super speed doesn’t translate exactly into Chaos Streak (Tony is working on it), but it still makes it the fastest Jaeger in existence. And Wanda… Wanda’s ability makes it completely unpredictable.
Chaos Streak is exactly what its name promises.
Category IV has no chance in hell.
*
The Malibu Shatterdome is always busy. Mechanics coming and going, experts arguing theories, pilots training or celebrating with the same intense focus. It’s getting increasingly harder for Bruce to find quiet places, places where he can close his eyes, breathe deeply and forget for a second that there are monsters both out and inside of him.
Hey, how is Banner like the Pacific Ocean?
Ha ha.
He walks until he reaches the empty hangar. It won’t be empty for long (Tony is always working on something new), but it is now, and Bruce is used to taking whatever peace he can when he can. Only it is not empty now, because Thor is there, looking uncharacteristically quiet and pensive.
“My friend,” booms the God of Thunder, before he can escape.
“Hi.”
“Are you seeking quiet? Are you feeling burdened, too?”
“As much as usual, I guess. We’re all a bit stressed.”
“Yes, I guess we are.”
It seems more than that, though. So he asks, “is everything ok? I mean, besides the obvious.”
“It’s nothing,” says Thor. And Bruce will leave it at that, because he knows what it’s like to want to keep things to yourself. But apparently, Thor doesn’t. “I can’t Drift with humans,” he confesses like a dark secret. “Not even with the Captain or the Mutant Twins. Tony believes it to be a matter of compatibility among our races, but we cannot test it. After our encounter with the Kaiju Kaiceph, Odin has forbidden further intervention. Asgardians are not even allowed to come to Midgard.”
That gets Bruce’s full attention.
“You’re here, though.”
“I am,” replies Thor, seriously. How many times has Thor defied his people for humanity, Bruce wonders. “But what good is that if I cannot make a difference in the field?”
That’s a strange thought. Truth is, Bruce doesn’t remember much from the fights, but he always thought that Thor and the Other Guy were the heavy hitters. Of course, that’s changed now. They don’t even need them on the field now. Thor is here, against his father’s (his king’s) orders, and he’s starting to feel useless.
“And you think you could make a bigger difference in a Jaeger?”
“An Asgardian Jaeger,” corrects Thor, and Bruce gets it. Oh, yes. Yes, that would be mighty.
“But no other Asgardian can come to Earth. I see your problem.”
“Actually, there is one Asgardian willing to come against Odin’s wishes, and he is in all likelihood perfectly compatible with me. That is my problem.”
*
“Loki? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Cool down, will you? Don’t go green on my samples.” Tony fixes a plate in the microscope and motions for Bruce to look. “I never mentioned Loki, ok? I just said an Asgardian Jaeger would be awesome. And it would. The psycho brother was Thor’s addition. I was actually rooting for a hot Valkyrie.”
“What am I looking at? Do you think he’ll actually do it?”
“Raythe’s brain tissue. I don’t know. Send Steve to talk to him. He has a gift for knocking sense into people.”
“You mean into you.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Uh huh. Wait… Raythe?”
“Yep. And what does ‘uh huh’ mean?”
“Raythe, are you sure? It looks just like...”
“Onibaba. Yeah, I noticed. So I pulled out the older samples. They are too damaged to be conclusive, but they seem extremely consistent.”
“So, same cell structure? That makes sense. What about...”
“DNA? Still running,” says Tony, pointing towards the Thermal Cycler in the back.
“Wow. You’ve had a busy morning. Is Steve out on assignment again?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just asking,” says Bruce with half a smile.
“They found a Hydra base in New Mexico.” Evil doesn’t stop just because there are monsters invading the world. “You realize this could be our greatest achievement in getting to understand the Kaijus, right? And that you’re being a high school girl?”
“Sorry, Mr. Stark.”
*
So, the Kaijus are clones.
Well, modified clones. But clones. Not different organisms, but the same organism, subjected to a level of bioengineering Earth is centuries from achieving. A bit like that thing they did when they grew an ear in the back of a mouse, only a billion times more advanced (in fact, never mention that comparison to a K-scientist unless you want to be kicked out of the lab).
This is what they call a revolutionary discovery. It shatters most theories about Kaijus and raises enough questions to send every brain in the program into overdrive. Everything they thought they knew has to be revised. A thousand little details that went overlooked suddenly become relevant. It is exhausting and exhilarating.
In the middle of this excitement, they forget all about Asgardian Jaegers. That is, until Loki shows up in Asgardian shackles for a Drift compatibility test.
“Oh, no. No no no no no. You can’t do this.”
“Clint is right, you can’t,” intervenes Natasha, definitive. “The Defense Corps would need to approve it, and they never will.”
“An Asgardian Jaeger? I think they might.” Tony looks at Thor. He clearly knows he’s crossing a big line here, but there is a hint of hope he doesn’t manage to hide. Hope to be more helpful against the Kaijus? No, that’s not it. Not all of it, anyway. What is it even like to have a brother who tries to take over the world? “How about this? I’ll test them… Wait. Wait. I’ll test them for Drift compatibility but I won’t put them on a Jaeger without authorization. Oh, come on! If your brother tried to kill you, wouldn’t you want to know what the hell he was thinking?”
“No,” lies Natasha.
But the idea gets to Steve, like Tony knew it would.
(He’s not supposed to know, but they found Bucky Barnes a few months back, working for Hydra. He’s been totally brainwashed. Steve is turning every rock that Hydra may have thought of touching, but apparently the guy is really good at hiding. And terrorism.)
So, Steve gets all Captain America and Thor and Loki get to Drift together.
It is a mess.
“Well, at least now I know that bastard will never get into a Jaeger,” says Clint with satisfaction.
But Tony is not so sure. One track of his mind is taking in Thor’s intense expression, Loki’s barely held tears. Another track is drawing blueprints for a Jaeger that can redirect thunder.
*
The thing with Drifting is that it doesn’t have to be a pleasant experience to be successful. Not everything you find in somebody’s mind is something you wanted to know. But there is a connection, something deep and strong that once established, is established for good. You can’t hide inside the Drift, hard as you try. You can fight it and lose your focus, waste your energy, or you can let go, lay all your secrets wide open and make it to the field.
Random volunteers get one chance, maybe two. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t learn to surrender, given time.
Three months after Thor and Loki’s first test (yes, first, if there is someone that can keep secrets from SHIELD right under their noses, it’s Tony Stark), they find Bucky Barnes. He keeps looking at Steve with a mix of longing and confusion, and Steve just keeps looking back. They try Drifting as a way to help him get his memories back, but his mind is too fragile and he fights too hard. It might take a while.
The situation is too serious for Bruce to joke about Tony being jealous, but he clearly wants to. Tony isn’t, though. That’s the thing people who have never Drifted don’t get about him and Steve. They’ve been in each other’s minds. They’re not dancing around anything, here. Whatever they needed to tell each other, whatever feelings, easy or complex, lie between them, they understand them in a way no one else can. Things will happen if they happen. Tony knows where he stands.
*
Trickster Thunder is a sight to behold.
*
IV. Think before you drop the bomb
Five years after Trespasser, you’d think humanity is winning. The media is full of images of Jaegers taking down Kaijus, Jaeger pilots are total rock stars, and famous Kaijus are made into toys. It’s only people in the Shatterdomes, the ones who get to see the action from up close, that have doubts.
Yes, every Kaiju since Karloff has been defeated. But also, every Kaiju since Karloff has been different. One has a spiky tail, the next, acid spit, the following, wings. Jaeger engineers are constantly working, thinking of better ways to conduct energy, to make stronger weapons, to kill faster. But Kaijus are also upgrading, improving, constantly changing their shapes and increasing their power.
Kaiju engineers must be extremely busy.
“I thought Kaiju engineers were just a theory,” says the Defense Corps inspector during a visit.
“Well, gravity is just a theory. Are you going to deny that, too?” replies Tony. Sometimes Bruce likes Tony’s inability to keep his mouth shut.
There’s been a lot of controversy about the origin of Kaijus since they found out they are clones. Or, well, since they presented the evidence supporting their “theory” that they are clones. People are scared. They don’t want to know that the giant monsters coming out of the ocean are built by alien scientists that have access to technology beyond our wildest dreams. No, they’d much rather celebrate the latest human victory and feel safe enough to buy their children little stuffed Kaijus. It’s understandable. That doesn’t make it right.
Because there are, aren’t there? Kaiju engineers. There must be.
Tony has been studying Clawhook’s secondary brain for over an hour when he asks “do you know what I’ve been thinking?” and Bruce takes a deep breath, because of course he knows. It’s an obvious idea. Tony has probably been thinking about it ever since they brought the brain from the field, just as Bruce has.
“That we could try Drifting with that thing?”
“That we should try Drifting with this thing. It’s a living organ. Who knows when we might get another chance to recover living brain tissue.”
“I don’t know, Tony. I mean, you’re right, but… we don’t know what’s in their brains. It might be too much to handle, it might seriously harm a human.”
“So we don’t use a human.”
Bruce has thought about that, of course. They have more than their share of superhumans. Not Steve, because his body is enhanced, but his brain is quite normal. One of the twins, maybe. Or Thor or Loki, if Asgardian incompatibility doesn’t prove a problem. But speaking of compatibility, isn’t it obvious who should be doing the Drifting? Which freak among their troops has the biggest chance to be Kaiju-friendly?
Yeah, of course Bruce has thought about that.
*
The roar shakes the Shatterdome and triggers the Kaiju alarm.
Iron Man and Thor try to contain Hulk, but it’s no use. The lab is completely destroyed. Samples, experiments, equipment, all lost. Fortunately, the “Other Guy” breaks through the ceiling and disappears into the ocean before reaching Control (or the hangars, who knows what a raging Hulk might do to a disconnected Jaeger).
The strange part, thinks Fury, is that Banner hasn’t had an unprovoked episode in years.
“What did you do, Stark?”
“Me? Why are you accusing me? I’m a victim here. All my research is gone.”
“Right. You seem surprisingly calm about it, by the way.”
“I’m in shock.”
“Of course you are.”
The alarm goes off again twenty minutes after Hulk disappears into the ocean. This time for real.
“Category III,” informs some guy behind a monitor “… And Category IV, sir.”
Nicks turns sharply to look at the radar. There are two dots moving there, both heading straight for Malibu.
“Two of them?” asks Natasha, already in full gear. “There have never been two.”
“Yeah,” says Fury, throwing a dark look at Stark. “I wonder what pissed them off.”
*
It is a mighty fight.
Loki has figured a way to use the Neural Bridge to amplify his illusions, and Atticon keeps lashing at fake Trickster Thunders, until the real one smashes down.
It takes both Red Avenger and Ninja Hawk to take down Ceramander. One is swift, the other strong, one deadly aim, the other blasting force. There are reports of Jaeger pilots that have issues fighting as a team, too used to relay on the Drift for coordination. But these are Avengers, in or outside their Jaegers.
They are inside their Jaegers, though, and there are no secrets there.
“You made him Drift with a Kaiju?!”
“Shh…” Tony tries to keep Steve quiet, but they are both high on post-battle adrenaline. “I didn’t make him do anything, okay? He’s a grown up scientist that makes his own decisions about risk taking.”
“Are you serious? He turned himself into a green monster. And apparently he learned nothing from it!”
“Oh, come on! So he Hulked-out. It was a calculated risk. He’ll Hulk-down soon and come back with tons of useful information.”
“A calculated risk? He destroyed years of research!”
“Actually, I might have been a bit melodramatic about that,” says Tony with false (so very false) chagrin. “JARVIS keeps a backup of everything in NY. It was just the equipment. We can replace equipment.”
“People were endangered.”
“Thor was in the next room. I had my armor on. Calculated.”
He knew what Steve was thinking. And Steve knew that he knew. Sure, he was worried, but he was also a guy that used to go against Nazi troops armed with nothing but a shield. He might feel the need to fill his role as the team’s mom, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have done the same. In fact, exactly the same.
“It couldn’t be you, you know? No humans.”
“Bruce is human.”
“No humans with regular brains.”
“How do you know Bruce doesn’t have a regular brain?”
“Come on. Have you heard the music he likes?”
Steve almost smiles, and that is a sign that they will be okay. Hopefully, so will Bruce.
“Those Kaijus were coming for him, weren’t they?”
Tony nods. “I think so, yeah.”
“How did they know?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, the Drift works both ways, but the organ was disconnected from the individual, so that shouldn’t have been a problem. Bruce should have seen a glimpse, a burned image of the Kaiju mind. He wasn’t supposed to actually connect to them.”
“Did he?”
“Well, that is the question. It could just be a trigger, some sort of signal sent by Kaiju brains when someone tries to experiment on them. That could be all.”
“Or?”
“Or… We could be dealing with a hive-mind.”
“A hive-mind? You mean they’re all mind connected?”
“… Or mind controlled.”
*
It takes Bruce three days to Hulk-down. Then he walks. He walks and walks and walks, with no destination, his mind swimming with images he’d rather not have seen. A patrol picks him up at some point, and he lets them take him back to Malibu. The second he sets foot on the Shatterdome he’s brought to Fury for debrief. He’s tired, shocked and hungry. He answers in autopilot, barely listening to the questions.
“Was the Drift successful?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see their world?”
“Yes.” There’s a lump in his throat, an echo of painful howls in his mind.
“Are they a hive-mind?” asks someone (Tony?) from the back.
“Yes.”
“Do they have a Queen, a Central Brain?”
“No.” Well… “Sort of. There is a Control Unit, but it’s not one of them. They are controlled by a different species.”
“The engineers,” says Tony, like a piece of a puzzle just clicked right.
Bruce nods.
“They breed the Kaijus as an attack force. They keep moving from world to world, consuming the resources until there is nothing left. They’ve been here before, but the environment wasn’t right. Apparently, pollution made it right. We terraformed for them,” finishes Bruce with a dark laugh.
There is a short silence as everyone processes this. Then Fury is back.
“Why can’t we penetrate the Breach?”
There have been numerous attempts to attack the Breach, either to take the war to the Kaijus or close the portal, but they have all been unsuccessful. The portal only opens when the Kaijus are passing, and even then, nothing has been able to go through. The idea has been resurrected lately, since a German mathematician came up with an equation that predicts Kaiju events with high accuracy.
Bruce doesn’t make the connection just then.
“It’s protected with a DNA signature. Only Kaiju DNA can go through.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” mutters Fury.
“Not really,” says Tony. “We could cover the bomb in Kaiju fluid, or put it inside a dead body.”
That wakes him up.
“Bomb? What bomb?”
*
Five years after Trespasser, you’d think humanity is winning. That is, if you are the kind of person that believes everything the TV says. Truth is the Jaegers are getting stronger because the Kaijus are getting stronger, and nobody knows who will run out of ideas first. War may be profitable for some (nasty) individuals in the short term, but it is most definitely not a sustainable endeavor.
Also, there are kids out there sleeping with stuffed toys in the shape of giant beasts who killed thousands, and that is just plain wrong.
“We need to end this now,” says Fury. There are murmurs of assent around the room.
Bruce is seeing green.
“By nuking them? Didn’t you listen to what I said? They are not in control of their own actions. They are victims, just like us.”
“I listened,” continues Fury, impassive as ever. “I feel for them, really. But they are killing us, and we need to stop them.”
“There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way.”
“There is always another way! Haven’t we learned anything from history?!” He looks around and finds himself surrounded by expressionless SHIELD agents that will never get his point. He takes a deep breath. It tastes green. “I did not sign up to blow up innocents,” he says, and his voice feels rougher inside his head, “or to help you blow up innocents.” Everyone is on alert now, bodies edging for the exit. All except Tony and Fury, who like to pretend Bruce can’t smell the fear coming out of their pores. He takes another breath, and then one more. “There has to be another way.”
Fury waits a second for him to calm down.
“Gottlieb’s prediction gives us three days. If you have a better plan before that, I’d be glad to take it to the Defense Corps. Otherwise, there’s not much I can do.”
“Three days?”
They can’t do it. He won’t let them. The green inside him won’t allow it.
“Before three days. Preferably, long before. Take Stark,” he adds as an afterthought, “he has useful ideas once in a while.”
*
The lab doesn’t look as bad as he expected. They’ve obviously had time to clear the debris and replace some of the equipment. Tony probably had all the drones working on it. Must have been a funny sight.
“So… Kaijus, uh?” says Tony zipping a glass of something amber.
Bruce knows what he means.
Tony has been trying to explain him the Drift for ages, but he always ends up saying you have to try it to get it, and Bruce has always been too afraid to trigger a transformation. Now he gets what Tony meant. You don’t just see what’s inside someone else’s head in the Drift, don’t just know their secrets, feel their pain. You are them. You are trapped in a life you never asked for, an alien inside your own skin, forced to kill, forced to die, forced to be born, feeling the echo of your pain in the minds of all your kin. There is a connection in the Drift, says Tony, that once established can never be broken.
Bruce understood it before, in theory. He gets it now.
*
Slowly, the team assembles in the lab. It’s how they make their decisions, how they cook their plans. They are under the jurisdiction of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps (and therefore, SHIELD), but they are Avengers first.
Bruce tells them everything.
Natasha, practical as usual, is fine with the idea of a nuclear bomb. There are always casualties in a war, she says. Thor seems more affected, but supports her position. Clint is conflicted, his SHIELD training clashing with his memories of mind control. Tony says nothing, mind twirling. Okay. Okay, that’s good.
Only Steve supports him 100%, as nauseated with the idea of blowing up innocent beasts in suffering as Bruce himself.
There’s this thing that Steve does that Bruce intermittently loves or hates. He doesn’t listen. He’s supposed to be a soldier and therefore used to follow orders, but once he sets his mind on something, there is no superior, friend, or democratic decision that can stand in his way. He will do THE RIGHT THING, and if you don’t follow him, you better stay out of his way.
Right now, he loves it.
Tony looks at Steve, who is standing with his arms crossed over the star that he seems to be wearing even when he’s not, and sighs heavily.
“So… This Control Unit, what do we know about it?”
*
Once they stop arguing over whether or not they need a new plan and start working on one, they are on fire.
Tony talks non-stop, but somehow Steve seems to follow a lot closer than the rest, jumping in with twists that make Tony pause and change directions, here and there. Bruce is sidetracked for a moment thinking about that. He figured Steve’s improvement in understanding modern technology was a consequence of Drifting with Tony, but now he wonders what else is there. For years now, all locked in the Shatterdome, talking and eating and breathing on top of each other, Bruce has wondered about his friends’ romantic lives, about the things left unsaid between Steve and Tony, Natasha and Clint (and okay, he’ll admit it, Thor and Loki). But maybe he was wrong all along. Maybe there’s nothing unsaid. Maybe there’s no need to say anything at all.
“So, we need to take down the Control Unit, which means we need to get someone through the Breach,” says Steve, always the man in charge.
“Me,” corrects Bruce. “I’m the only one who knows where it is.”
“Can’t you draw us a map?”
“Not with enough accuracy, I’m not that familiar with the area. But once I’m there, I’ll know where to go.” Oh, he’ll never forget that place.
“And how exactly are we going to get you 40,000 feet below the ocean?” asks Natasha.
Bruce looks at Tony.
“I guess we could put you in an Emergency Pod,” says Tony, “as long as you promise not to trash it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“And then a Jaeger can take you out.”
“A Jaeger? Why would there be a Jaeger?”
“You’re going to need a distraction” explains Steve. And yeah, Bruce is pretty sure they are reading each other’s mind. Has Tony invented wireless Drifting while he was away?
“No. No way. You haven’t seen that place. There are literally hundreds of Kaijus. A Jaeger wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Steve and Tony share a look.
“So we take them all.”
*
Fury is about to pop a vein.
“This plan is crazy. You’ve come up with crazy stuff before, but this is just… Are you all out of your minds? Did radiation finally hit your brains? Listen to me. There is no way I will risk humanity’s single line of defense in a crazy, half-cocked plan.”
“Well,” says Stark, and Fury braces, because nothing good ever comes from that bastard opening his mouth. “I guess you could try to stop us. But I have all your systems hacked, so… you probably can’t.”
“What Tony means,” interrupts Banner, which probably saves Stark’s life, “is that we are determined. We trust this plan. We will follow it, even if we have to do it on our own, but it would be much easier with your help.”
*
There are Kaiju parts for sale all across the globe, but it’s usually the cities that have survived an attack that develop the biggest markets. Hong Kong, Lima, L.A.… It is said that you can still find the powdered bones of Trespasser in some of the shadiest streets of San Francisco. It may seem weird, a cruel trivialization of a horrible event; thousands dead, your family, your neighbors, and you want to make money out of it? On the other hand, it may be a completely understandable reaction. Thousands dead, your family, your neighbors, your city destroyed; are you going to dwell on it or are you going to get on your feet and survive?
So the team takes a walk through the back alleys of what used to be Chinatown. They find bones, glands, full organs, some in better shape than others, but none so degraded that they can’t be rubbed on a Jaeger for disguise. They are in a hurry, but they take the time to try meaty fried balls at little corner stands (and some of the steamed ones that Bruce prefers), to take in the city around them, alive and thriving less than a year after Yamarashi.
You can’t kill humanity. You can smash a city, poison land, take away everything we take for granted. But we’ll find something new to stand on, will build it from scratch. We’ll learn to harvest the microbes that feed from the poisoned land. Cities will grow from the ruins of cities, as they always have. You can kill people. Humanity will survive.
*
The Shatterdome is buzzing with anticipation. Everyone is geared up, hooking up communications, getting ready to deploy. Anxiety is eating Bruce’s stomach, and he breathes deep and pauses, lets the air out slowly. He can make it in. He has no idea how he will make it out, but he can make it in.
A different kind of buzz gets his attention.
“Tony? What are you doing in armor? Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”
“I am ready. Iron Man can stand the pressure as well as any Jaeger.”
“What? But…”
“You can’t be on your own on the ground, ok? You need back up,” he says, and points to himself. “Back up.”
“What about Red Avenger? We need it in the field.”
“Steve is trying a new copilot. He seems, surprisingly, ready.”
Bruce frowns.
“A rookie? For this battle?”
Tony laughs.
“Oh, he has plenty of combat experience. Just not in a Jaeger. Don’t worry, Steve can handle him.”
There was a time when Bruce thought Tony was jealous of Bucky Barnes. In the light of recent experiences, it seems rather stupid. Also, this is not the time to be thinking about other people’s romantic lives.
The call for the pilots to get ready for deployment rings through the Shatterdome.
*
Three Kaijus come out of the Drift. A dozen Jaegers wait for them.
*
The Anteverse is just as Bruce remembers from the Drift, a barren wasteland with a thick yellow sky, populated by nothing but empty-eyed Kaijus and their creators. Was it always like this? Or is this what this hideous species does to the worlds they take? Is this Earth’s destiny if they fail?
His breath is becoming ragged. Green is taking over.
Will the damn pod open already?
*
“Fuck.”
Bruce had said there were hundreds of Kaijus, but somehow Tony had never pictured what that would look like. They need to get this done now.
Hulk comes out of the pod with a roar that attracts way too much attention. Fortunately, Ninja Hawk moves fast and diverts it. The team is holding, but that won’t last long.
“Hulk! Hulk!! The Control Unit! We need the Control Unit!”
Hulk stops, looks around and gets going. A lot of stuff gets smashed in his path.
As they approach a building-like structure (if you’re into organic, bioengineered buildings) the Creators finally catch onto them. Tony blasts and Hulk smashes, and for a while it’s enough, until someone gets over the shock of being under attack by such an inferior species and calls the Kaijus in. In a second, the whole planet’s attention is on them.
They’re so fucking dead.
The Jaegers fight bravely (too bravely, can they have some sense and quit the hero act?), but the Kaijus’ hive-mind is on a different target now. Two of them grab Red Avenger and throw it away like a sack of potatoes. Trickster Thunder’s copies lose their effect when the Kaijus stop trying to fight them and just move through them. They team up with Chaos Streak to send a shock wave that stuns the entire frontline of the Kaijus, but the line behind it takes its place. Red Avenger and Ninja Hawk are back in the game now, as are Diablo Intercept and Cherno Alpha, Lucky Seven and Coyote Tango.
They won’t be enough.
Then Bruce gets inside the structure, and Tony goes after him. He can hear the fight outside, but the Kaijus would need to take the structure down to get to them now, and if this is what he thinks it is, if this is the Control Unit, the creators won’t allow it. So he blasts and blasts to help Hulk clear the path, but it’s easy, in the end.
That’s the problem with arrogance, you see? You underestimate your enemy. You never expect weak little humans to build giant Jaegers to fight your giant monsters, to hack your mind control and find out your secrets, to find a way across your impenetrable portal and bring a Kamikaze attack to your doorstep. So you don’t prepare for it. And you get smashed.
Hulk’s roar as he tears apart the Control Unit console (or what Tony assumes to be the Control Unit console) is echoed by a thousand voices. Tony stops. The Creators stop. Something tells him that outside the structure the Jaegers stop. The roar goes on. It grows louder. It grows fiercer. It is not a battle cry, though it is, without a doubt, the most ferocious thing Tony has ever heard.
*
“Tony? Tony, can you hear me?”
“We’re fine. But I’m going to need some help getting Hulk in the pod.”
Red Avenger helps Tony distract Hulk long enough to shoot him with something that should put a Kaiju to sleep. Then he finally stops roaring.
“It won’t last long. We need to get back ASAP.”
The Jaegers are assembled. The battle goes on (if that is what it is, it looks more like giant demolition operation now), but it has no longer anything to do with any of them. The portal stands open by the organs they stationed on the mouth for that purpose. They take it, one by one.
When the last Jaeger crosses the Breach, they blow the portal.
*
“Do you think they’ll make it? In that dead world?”
After the Shatterdome celebration, they take the party to the city. There are people dancing in the streets and fireworks in the sky. The world is light and loud and shiny. Thor is eating way too much sugar, and Loki has a funny expression, somewhere between fondness and “what am I doing here with all these humans?” Bucky seems more focused, strengthened by the Drift and a righteous battle, but he’s still the quiet guy in the dark corner, so maybe that’s who he is, now. Clint and Natasha keep drinking in silence, but everybody knows they’re having secret conversations with every shrug and raised eyebrow. Tony is happy, bubbly happy, pressed against Steve’s side and already missing the Drift, even though he knows he no longer needs it to know what Steve feels, hasn’t for a long time. He turns and nuzzles Steve’s clean-shaved face as he thinks of Bruce’s question, feeling the buzz of L.A. around them, the sounds and smells and flavors or a life recovered.
“I think they will. They seemed resistant. They survived slavery, they will survive freedom. Maybe even make their world a better place.”
They say you can never win a war, and they are right. There has been too much death, human and Kaiju, too much unnecessary pain.
But as they stand by the shores of an ocean that can once again be called the Pacific, having stopped an invasion, having freed a species, hope blooms in their chests, outgrowing pain to the point of oblivion.