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Giant Robots: Someone To Blame
This is totally unaffiliated with the writeathon, and is purely me writing for fun. Enjoy!
Someone To Blame
Word Count: 1251
Prompt: H/C Bingo ‘witch hunt’
Summary: M.D. and Biff inherit a Jaeger, and then a position.
Notes: A Giant Robots fic, takes place a little after Virus Factory.
“Give it a name,” Tendo Choi says.
“Why? It’s already got one.”
“Shitheap McLargeHuge isn’t a name, it’s an insult. You pilot a Jaeger now, so it gets a name.”
Admittedly, the robot formerly known as McLargeHuge does look better. Not ‘good,’ exactly, but better. It has actual weapons now, and no longer sets off Geiger counters. It’s even painted now, a dull gunmetal gray that is noticeably devoid of any country markings or advertisers—thus its budget appearance. It doesn’t need to look good; M.D. and Biff don’t expect to do more than pinch-hit for the Becketts, who are the real rock stars with the entire US backing them up.
“So hurry up and come up with a name,” Choi continues. “Preferably before Yancy comes down with pneumonia again.”
“Fluffy Bunny,” M.D. says immediately.
“No.”
“Asskickatron. WD-40.”
“Something appropriate.”
“Asskickatron is plenty appropriate.”
Choi gives Biff a pained look, but Biff ignores it. Not like he has anything better, and anyway, it’ll always be the Shitheap to him.
“Look,” Choi says. “I had this exact same talk with the Becketts when they wanted to name theirs Bob. You’re a Ranger. Act like it.”
M.D. sighs and rolls her eyes. “Venus Delta?”
“Nice try, but hell no.”
Biff has spent enough time shouting at Choi through a crappy comlink to have picked up the military alphabet. “Whiskey Delta 40,” he says.
Choi closes his eyes and rubs his forehead as though getting a headache. “Axe the 40 and I’ll approve it.”
M.D. holds out a hand, Biff high-fives her, and Shitheap McLargeHuge is rechristened Whiskey Delta.
…
It turns out, there’s a lot of politics around getting a Jaeger, and not just regarding the name. Jaegers are expensive, usually requiring the sponsorship of an entire country. (And some, like Oceania’s Blue Wave, required resource pooling from a dozen tiny nations.) There are far more Rangers than there are Jaegers, and the myth is that only the absolute best and brightest should get a Jaeger.
Biff and M.D. are not the best and brightest. They’re just good enough to get the job done, lucky enough to have a salvageable testbot in Oblivion Bay, and coincidentally, the only Rangers in the area who are solely beholden to Pentecost, rather than a country. And Pentecost can tell which way the wind is blowing; the UN has been pushing to decommission the Jaeger Program for years. Having a Jaeger and pilot team with no other allegiances is expedient.
So Biff and M.D. getting a Jaeger is a political decision, just like every other. But the rest of the Rangers don’t see it that way. Biff and M.D. have always held an uneasy social position on Kodiak Island, but now their reception chills even further.
One day, M.D. comes home from Doc Kaur’s to find Biff with bloody knuckles and an ice pack clapped to his face.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
Biff doesn’t want to tell her, but he doesn’t get a choice in the manner. After M.D. learns what she needs to know, she nods, lets go of his arm, and then turns around to head out again.
“Back late,” she tells him. “Don’t wait up for me.”
That evening, a couple Californians (who are sorely aggrieved at not having a Jaeger of their own) meet M.D. in the hall.
“Buddies!” she declares. “Pals! Friends…”
Nobody’s entirely clear what happens after that. The official explanation is that there is a freak electrical short, leaving the Californians with minor burns, short-term memory loss, and the coincidental after-effect of destroying every watch or Pon Systems electrodes put on them. Their career as Jaeger pilots are ruined.
Biff is furious when he finds M.D. groggy and stupid in the hospital bay—she knows that the more seizures she has, the higher the risk for more—but she just mumbles, “worth it.”
Nobody bothers Biff after that—though he gets a lot of snotty remarks about letting his co-pilot protect him. (Except they don’t call her his co-pilot. Nobody seems exactly sure what he and M.D.’s relationship is, but apparently they all think it’s perverse.) M.D., on the other hand, gets jumped until Biff stops leaving her alone in common areas. Sure, she can electrocute people, but not without consequence. Her seizures are almost under control; he doesn’t want her to go through yet another meds change and risk upsetting the balance. After that, they mostly get baleful glares or the cold shoulder.
“Whatever,” M.D. says, scratching the sockets in her head. “In a few months, some other undeserving meatheads will get the next Jaeger, and they’ll forget all about us. It’s not like we’ll ever see much action; we’re just the Becketts’ clean-up team.”
It’s January 2020 when she says that. But then it’s February 29th, and they’re in Anchorage, watching the Becketts go out to take on Knifehead, and M.D.’s jittering in her motion rig, muttering in Biff’s mind, “Do your job, guys, or die, but do it QUICKLY.”
She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t actually think the Becketts will lose. They never lose; they’re the golden boys. But then they disobey orders to save a fishing boat, because that’s what rock stars do and why people love them, and it turns out that the kaiju know what a cockpit is, and… and…
Whiskey Delta’s first mission is to finish off the crippled Knifehead, then drag the remains of Gipsy Danger back to shore. Raleigh Beckett’s body is found still in his motion rig, dead of an aneurysm. They never find Yancy.
And just like that, Biff and M.D. are no longer the pinch-hitters.
Biff and M.D. sleep-walk through the inevitable press conferences. At least the zeitgeist has figured out they’re not charismatic or camera-friendly and moved on. After the requisite changing of the guard, they return to their bunks, Biff digs up a pack of cigarettes, and they burn through all of them together.
“You know I didn’t mean it, right?” M.D. says. “I didn’t actually want them to die, right? I didn’t think… I didn’t want…” she throws the empty cigarette pack at the wall and shouts, “fuck you for dying, you stupid assholes! You knew better!”
Biff doesn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t they listen to Pentecost? When does not listening to Pentecost ever end well? Stupid, stupid—and Yancy just got over pneumonia… why did they pull this now?” She’s starting to shake. “And Raleigh was just… lying there…”
They don’t sleep that night, just sit. M.D. shakes. Until now, they’ve been a part of the PPDC because it was the least bad of their options and because of M.D.’s personal loyalty to Marshal Pentecost. Now, though, it’s become clear that this is something more serious than just holding down healthcare. There are lives on the line, real ones, not just numbers on a screen.
“You know, the whole island is going to be after us now,” M.D. says, trying to lighten the mood. “I give it two days before the rumors that we rigged the whole thing start circulating…”
But that doesn’t happen, because there’s bad news yet to come, news far more important than anything Biff or M.D. are doing. And that’s about something far worse than kaiju: it’s about the budget.
The UN decommissions the Jaeger Program two months later.
Biff, M.D., and Whiskey Delta follow Pentecost to Tokyo, then Sydney, and finally Hong Kong. They can’t afford M.D.’s healthcare otherwise, and besides. They have a promise to keep.
Someone To Blame
Word Count: 1251
Prompt: H/C Bingo ‘witch hunt’
Summary: M.D. and Biff inherit a Jaeger, and then a position.
Notes: A Giant Robots fic, takes place a little after Virus Factory.
“Give it a name,” Tendo Choi says.
“Why? It’s already got one.”
“Shitheap McLargeHuge isn’t a name, it’s an insult. You pilot a Jaeger now, so it gets a name.”
Admittedly, the robot formerly known as McLargeHuge does look better. Not ‘good,’ exactly, but better. It has actual weapons now, and no longer sets off Geiger counters. It’s even painted now, a dull gunmetal gray that is noticeably devoid of any country markings or advertisers—thus its budget appearance. It doesn’t need to look good; M.D. and Biff don’t expect to do more than pinch-hit for the Becketts, who are the real rock stars with the entire US backing them up.
“So hurry up and come up with a name,” Choi continues. “Preferably before Yancy comes down with pneumonia again.”
“Fluffy Bunny,” M.D. says immediately.
“No.”
“Asskickatron. WD-40.”
“Something appropriate.”
“Asskickatron is plenty appropriate.”
Choi gives Biff a pained look, but Biff ignores it. Not like he has anything better, and anyway, it’ll always be the Shitheap to him.
“Look,” Choi says. “I had this exact same talk with the Becketts when they wanted to name theirs Bob. You’re a Ranger. Act like it.”
M.D. sighs and rolls her eyes. “Venus Delta?”
“Nice try, but hell no.”
Biff has spent enough time shouting at Choi through a crappy comlink to have picked up the military alphabet. “Whiskey Delta 40,” he says.
Choi closes his eyes and rubs his forehead as though getting a headache. “Axe the 40 and I’ll approve it.”
M.D. holds out a hand, Biff high-fives her, and Shitheap McLargeHuge is rechristened Whiskey Delta.
…
It turns out, there’s a lot of politics around getting a Jaeger, and not just regarding the name. Jaegers are expensive, usually requiring the sponsorship of an entire country. (And some, like Oceania’s Blue Wave, required resource pooling from a dozen tiny nations.) There are far more Rangers than there are Jaegers, and the myth is that only the absolute best and brightest should get a Jaeger.
Biff and M.D. are not the best and brightest. They’re just good enough to get the job done, lucky enough to have a salvageable testbot in Oblivion Bay, and coincidentally, the only Rangers in the area who are solely beholden to Pentecost, rather than a country. And Pentecost can tell which way the wind is blowing; the UN has been pushing to decommission the Jaeger Program for years. Having a Jaeger and pilot team with no other allegiances is expedient.
So Biff and M.D. getting a Jaeger is a political decision, just like every other. But the rest of the Rangers don’t see it that way. Biff and M.D. have always held an uneasy social position on Kodiak Island, but now their reception chills even further.
One day, M.D. comes home from Doc Kaur’s to find Biff with bloody knuckles and an ice pack clapped to his face.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
Biff doesn’t want to tell her, but he doesn’t get a choice in the manner. After M.D. learns what she needs to know, she nods, lets go of his arm, and then turns around to head out again.
“Back late,” she tells him. “Don’t wait up for me.”
That evening, a couple Californians (who are sorely aggrieved at not having a Jaeger of their own) meet M.D. in the hall.
“Buddies!” she declares. “Pals! Friends…”
Nobody’s entirely clear what happens after that. The official explanation is that there is a freak electrical short, leaving the Californians with minor burns, short-term memory loss, and the coincidental after-effect of destroying every watch or Pon Systems electrodes put on them. Their career as Jaeger pilots are ruined.
Biff is furious when he finds M.D. groggy and stupid in the hospital bay—she knows that the more seizures she has, the higher the risk for more—but she just mumbles, “worth it.”
Nobody bothers Biff after that—though he gets a lot of snotty remarks about letting his co-pilot protect him. (Except they don’t call her his co-pilot. Nobody seems exactly sure what he and M.D.’s relationship is, but apparently they all think it’s perverse.) M.D., on the other hand, gets jumped until Biff stops leaving her alone in common areas. Sure, she can electrocute people, but not without consequence. Her seizures are almost under control; he doesn’t want her to go through yet another meds change and risk upsetting the balance. After that, they mostly get baleful glares or the cold shoulder.
“Whatever,” M.D. says, scratching the sockets in her head. “In a few months, some other undeserving meatheads will get the next Jaeger, and they’ll forget all about us. It’s not like we’ll ever see much action; we’re just the Becketts’ clean-up team.”
It’s January 2020 when she says that. But then it’s February 29th, and they’re in Anchorage, watching the Becketts go out to take on Knifehead, and M.D.’s jittering in her motion rig, muttering in Biff’s mind, “Do your job, guys, or die, but do it QUICKLY.”
She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t actually think the Becketts will lose. They never lose; they’re the golden boys. But then they disobey orders to save a fishing boat, because that’s what rock stars do and why people love them, and it turns out that the kaiju know what a cockpit is, and… and…
Whiskey Delta’s first mission is to finish off the crippled Knifehead, then drag the remains of Gipsy Danger back to shore. Raleigh Beckett’s body is found still in his motion rig, dead of an aneurysm. They never find Yancy.
And just like that, Biff and M.D. are no longer the pinch-hitters.
Biff and M.D. sleep-walk through the inevitable press conferences. At least the zeitgeist has figured out they’re not charismatic or camera-friendly and moved on. After the requisite changing of the guard, they return to their bunks, Biff digs up a pack of cigarettes, and they burn through all of them together.
“You know I didn’t mean it, right?” M.D. says. “I didn’t actually want them to die, right? I didn’t think… I didn’t want…” she throws the empty cigarette pack at the wall and shouts, “fuck you for dying, you stupid assholes! You knew better!”
Biff doesn’t say anything.
“Why didn’t they listen to Pentecost? When does not listening to Pentecost ever end well? Stupid, stupid—and Yancy just got over pneumonia… why did they pull this now?” She’s starting to shake. “And Raleigh was just… lying there…”
They don’t sleep that night, just sit. M.D. shakes. Until now, they’ve been a part of the PPDC because it was the least bad of their options and because of M.D.’s personal loyalty to Marshal Pentecost. Now, though, it’s become clear that this is something more serious than just holding down healthcare. There are lives on the line, real ones, not just numbers on a screen.
“You know, the whole island is going to be after us now,” M.D. says, trying to lighten the mood. “I give it two days before the rumors that we rigged the whole thing start circulating…”
But that doesn’t happen, because there’s bad news yet to come, news far more important than anything Biff or M.D. are doing. And that’s about something far worse than kaiju: it’s about the budget.
The UN decommissions the Jaeger Program two months later.
Biff, M.D., and Whiskey Delta follow Pentecost to Tokyo, then Sydney, and finally Hong Kong. They can’t afford M.D.’s healthcare otherwise, and besides. They have a promise to keep.