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Size-wise, rad-wise, it was only a Category III. Speed-wise, the kaiju they dubbed 'Taurax' was a match for any Cat IV Pentecost's ever seen, and Mindanao took a hell of a beating from the beast.

There's going to be reveling in the streets of a dozen Australian cities tonight, just as much as there will be in what's left of Mindanao. It was the Hansens, at the controls of Striker Eureka, who caught up with Taurax and put it down for good.

Stacker wasn't there to oversee the operation. He watched, though. The Shatterdomes are all connected, and he's in command of the one in Lima, and when the Breach spat out its latest abomination every single one of the Dome commanders woke and made ready, just in case. The others are probably going back to sleep now. Stacker...

Well, it took too long even with the fastest Jaeger in the Corps. Not by Stacker's standards. He knows what's involved. By the standards of the bureaucrats who sit in their inland offices, who overlook the Atlantic if they overlook any ocean at all. By the standards of safe men who're looking for an excuse to hide.

They have to do better next time. Every time.

Stacker Pentecost needs time to go over everything that happened today. If there's any way to improve anything at all about the Jaegers he has at his disposal, he needs the chance to see it and figure out how to make it happen, and he can't do that in Lima without his responsibilities interrupting him. Maybe here he'll have that chance.

God help you if you spill anything on the documents he's spread out over his table.

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There's another man at another table with papers and documents spread out around him as well. Sharp eyes would note a combination of reports of cases and personnel files.

In an off moment, he looks up. "I know that feel, man." Drowning in paperwork is not what he signed up for.

Pentecost glances up with a 'hm?' expression. He hadn't noticed the other man; hyper-vigilance is a common issue in Rangers who live long enough to be medically retired, but it's not one he's had to deal with.

"Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to break your concentration." Joshua runs a hand through his hair and makes an expansive gesture that indicates all of the files and papers on his table. "Just noticed the paperwork, and commiserating."

"Ah," says Stacker. "And here I thought I was the only one who retreated to this place when it came time to clear the bureaucratic hurdles."

Joshua snorts. "Not at all. I run away here with my paperwork all the time. Case reports, personnel files, sometimes being actually in my office is too much." He shrugs. "Also, I tend to get a bit distracted." Happens when your office is also your science lab.

Pentecost nods. "I suppose it happens to the best of us," he says. "Although I haven't been able to come here as often as I might find useful. Where is it you've come in from?"

"South Dakota, the year 2012, to be specific." Joshua shifts a bit in his chair and closes the file he was reading. "I... well, I'm probably spoiled that the door here doesn't move in my world. I've had the bad habit lately of not only hiding out here when I need to do stuff, but using Bar as a vending machine."

One day, she'll probably cut him off for it, but he does pay his tab.

"Where're you from?"

Edited 2013-09-04 20:10 (UTC)

"Currently? The Lima Shatterdome. July twenty-fourth, 2022." Pentecost considers the other man's papers. "Can't say I've ever been to the Dakotas, although I'm told they've become a popular real estate market in the past several years."

Joshua's papers are mostly case reports mentioning objects called Artifacts, and people collecting them. Other files are on various law enforcement agents. All are quite detailed.

"Wait. Are you sure we're talking about the same South Dakota?" Joshua cracks up. "Uh. Sorry. It's just I grew up there, and, well, there's not much to it."

Stacker fixes the other man with a cool look. "Nothing but several thousand miles of separation from the Pacific Ocean," he says. "If your timeline differs from mine I suppose it won't much matter, but believe me, by 2022 people who have the money for it are only too happy to get as far as they can from the shoreline."

His own papers, for the most part, are budgetary and scientific documents, but they have the look of military budget items. Even if there's nothing outright recognizable as a standard 2012 weapon in any of the accompanying diagrams.

Joshua does look quite sheepish. "Sorry. I do believe you. Everyone's world's different and all. I'm just used to South Dakota as the out-of-the way place." Part of why the Warehouse is there after all.

He eyes the papers, especially anything even vaguely scientific, but it's always rude to stare at someone else's work.

"Out of the way is precisely its draw," says Stacker. "Tell me- does the word 'kaiju' have any significance to you, other than referring to Japanese movie monsters?"

"In more ways than one, really."

He makes a bit of a confused face. "Uh, clearly I don't watch enough monster movies because that's not ringing any bells at all."

"It literally means 'strange beast'." He steeples his fingers a moment. "The term was adopted to refer to any of the giant monsters of movie history- Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, any other gigantic creature played by a man in a rubber suit on a set built to look vaguely like a city. And it stayed that way for decades, until the Breach opened."

"The reason South Dakota is prime real estate in 2022 is because in 2013, a creature some two hundred and fifty feet tall emerged from a dimensional rupture beneath the Pacific and launched itself directly at the city of San Francisco. It was the first of its kind. The Ring of Fire is no longer the most dangerous thing about living along the Pacific coastline."

"I... can see why everyone wants to move to South Dakota, then." Joshua looks a bit stunned. "Um. Well, if that happens next year, I guess the Warehouse's property values are going up." Not that they technically have property value anyway.

"Huh. The monsters sound like something from movies that one of my co-workers would like. I... am just going to really hope that we don't open a dimensional rift."

"So far as our scientists have been able to determine, the only place the rift conditions are even viable is at a deep sea juncture between two tectonic plates," says Pentecost. "I suggest avoiding the oceans south of Guam, for starters."

"I tend to avoid oceans anyway." Joshua smiles cheerfully and holds out a hand. "I'm Joshua Donovan, by the way."

"Stacker Pentecost," says Pentecost as he reaches to shake the offered hand. "Marshal of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. Currently in command of the Lima Shatterdome, overseeing most of the southeastern Pacific's defenses."

"Oh, er, if we're going with titles, uh." He's a bit sheepish, but straightens a bit. "Doctor Joshua Donovan, theoretical physicist and Regent of the thirteenth Warehouse."

Pentecost inclines his head briefly. "Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Donovan," he says. "Collegiate title, or something else?"

"Mostly a doctorate in bullshit, but, er, yeah. Theoretical physics. I'm no medical doctor. Hate needles with a passion." He makes a face.

"I work with mathematicians, biologists, engineers, and experts in a good many other scientific disciplines," says Pentecost. "The number of non-medical doctorate holders I deal with is several times the number of MDs I know. I tend to assume the title refers to a PhD long before the thought of needles comes to mind, for whatever that's worth."

Joshua laughs. "Yeah, I actually haven't worked with too many non-medical doctors. Mostly college professors, and a couple where I used to work." There were plenty at CERN, but he tended to work with one or two people.

Stacker may or may not have noticed the child seated in a corner, trying not to peek at him from over a massive book clutched in split-knuckled hands.

Trying. Not succeeding--until his attention is diverted by a wait rat, whom he squeaks at.

The squeaking is louder than Stacker's grown accustomed to. He glances up sharply in the direction of the sound; is something going wrong?

No, it's just a kid alarmed by the appearance of a rodent carrying drinks. He cranes his neck to follow the rat's path, shakes his head, and then returns to not peeking.

Hm. Well, that's something.

Is anyone looking after the boy, though? He's too young to be left alone.

Oh, he knows that look.

"Excuse me," he says softly, shutting his book. "What do you do?"

"I'm a military commander," says Stacker, considering the boy. Somehow he doubts that more detail than that would make much sense to him. "I've just come in from my base. Why do you ask, young man?"

The kid adjusts his glasses. "Because you look important. You're wearing a suit I've never seen before, with medals"--not to mention a skin color he's never seen; hooray for slightly homogeneous small towns--"and you're frowning a lot at some papers."

"Ah. Reasonable question, then," says Stacker. "This is the uniform of a Shatterdome commander in the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps. If you haven't seen one like this, then the PPDC probably doesn't exist in your world."

He almost says 'yet', but avoids it. He's... still working on the many-worlds thing. It's easier simply to assume he's from the future compared to people he meets here.

"My name is Stacker Pentecost. The markings are those of the Marshal of the Corps."

"Hello, Mr. Stacker Pentecost," he says, skinny and pale and politely deferential. "My name is Autor. How do you do?"

That said, he tilts his head, trying to piece together what he's just been told. Pan-Pacific makes sense, but he doesn't know how highly ranked Mr. Pentecost is. "What's a Shatterdome commander?"

"'Mr. Pentecost' will be fine, Autor," says Stacker. "And I'm very well, thank you."

He doesn't deal with young children much. The only one he's ever known to any great degree was Japanese. Manners are a thing to be encouraged and worked with.

"The PPDC operates out of eight regional headquarters along the Pacific coasts of the world," he says. "We call these headquarters 'Shatterdomes'. The one I have command of at the moment is in Lima, Peru. Are you familiar with South America at all?"

"A little? Chile is thin. Brazil is large, and produces nuts," Autor says, frowning at the gap in his knowledge--and the way he presents it. "How large are the Shatterdomes?"

"They're staffed by hundreds of people, and they're large enough to house at least one or two Jaegers each, along with all the personnel needed to support them," says Stacker. "Jaegers are the names we give to the machines we use to defend cities from attack."

Autor immediately sets his book aside and laces his bruised fingers together.

"Hnn," he hums, kicking his feet in a 3/4 rhythm. "What sort of attacks? Who attacks you? And what kinds of machines are they? I've seen a picture of a horseless carriage before."

Pentecost raises an eyebrow. "If you're planning on a career in journalism, young man, you may want to take a few lessons in interview technique," he says. "The barrage of questions approach isn't going to win you much cooperation when you're working for the newspapers."

It's a bit of an assumption on his part, but it's based on experience. Anyone who's ever been a Jaeger pilot has ended up on the business end of reporters more than once. Pentecost's position means he's been there more than most. And there've been interviews from people of school age along the way as well- publicity for the PPDC.

"But so far as the machines go-"

He riffles through his papers and eventually comes up with a blueprint of the proposed upgrades to a hypothetically repaired Mark III Jaeger. Hypothetically. Gipsy Danger's still in Oblivion Bay; there's no budget to change that yet.

"This is a fairly typical design of Jaeger. You should find a human figure down by its left foot to give you an idea of the scale."

The boy shrinks. "Oh, I didn't mean--I'm sorry, Mr. Pentecost," the boy says, glancing at the table and back up again as he mumbles. "Sometimes I talk too much. Please don't tell."

At the blueprints, though, he perks up enough to approach the table. He leans over enough to get an eyeful, clasping his hands behind his back. "Ooh. That is magnificent. Did you have to use magic to build it?"

Pentecost waves one hand vaguely. "It was advice, not a reprimand," he says. And leaves it at that. Raising one child is quite enough for him.

At the question, he smiles briefly, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it look that nonetheless lingers a moment about the eyes. "No. No magic. Only machines and human skill," he says. "We don't put much store in magic where I come from."

The kid blinks, surprised, and then nods.

"I've never even heard of a machine like that," Autor murmurs. "They look like people. If that's what you had to build to defend yourself with... do the other countries have them as well?"

"The Pan-Pacific Defense Corps," says Pentecost, just a touch dryly, "is a coalition of twenty-two different nations with Pacific coastlines, and advisory membership from several European nations. No nation would be able to defend itself against the kaiju alone."

"Oh. Ohh. That's quite a few countries, then." Well, he thought he knew what Pan-Pacific meant. The kid sways a little, quietly humming a few seconds of Chopin's Waltz in E Minor to cool his tinted cheeks, thinking.

"Kaiju?"

Pentecost nods. "It's Japanese," he says. "It means 'strange beast'. It's the word we use for the creatures that began coming out of the ocean close to nine years ago and attacking our cities."

He indicates the top of the Jaeger's head on the page.

"The majority of them are around this size."

"Wait, the oceans? And there were none before that?" the kid asks quietly, wrinkling his nose. "They took you by surprise."

He hums a bit more of the song and stares at his shoes. "You had to take time to build these"--he glances at the Jaeger blueprints, clearly marveling--"so a lot of people died, didn't they?"

"They're nothing native to Earth's oceans," says Pentecost. "They come through an opening that leads to another world entirely. But, yes; they took us by surprise. We threw the might of several nations' militaries at them at first. It stopped them- one at a time, often not until the battles had raged for days- but left ruin and wasteland behind."

( "What will it take to grab this monster by the throat and drag him back to Hell?" )

"The Jaegers were our eventual alternative."

The boy furrows his brow, hastily looking to his door. He lets a breath leave through his nose and returns to comparing the scale of the little human to the robot on the page.

"How long did it take you to build the Jaegers?"

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