Giant Robots: Drown
Jun. 22nd, 2016 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeDrown
Series: Giant Robots (Infinity Smashed/Pacific Rim crossover)
Word Count: 2000
Summary: The apocalypse hits, and no matter what happens, Biff and M.D.'s giant robot is going to be left at the bottom of the ocean. M.D. just assumes she'll go down with it, but Biff isn't going for it.
Notes: Title comes from a song by Nojahoda. This story wasn’t a winner of the poll, but its price was the same as the remaining money left over, so here it is! This is the END of the Giant Robots series, and you’d be best served reading the rest first. Further notes at the bottom.
After so many years in the pilot seat of Whiskey Delta, M.D. is practically half-robot herself. She seems happiest strapped into the braces and the Drift, where there's no pills, no pain, and all the strength and power she could ever need.
“It's not being a gimp that bothers me,” she tells him once, unprompted. “It's all the baggage everyone else has about it. Well, that and the pain. I'd be okay without the pain.”
Biff grunts and tosses down his hand—flush. She grins and reveals a straight, and he rolls his eyes and shoves his wager of candy at her.
They're waiting for the apocalypse together, while Marshal Pentecost makes plans and argues with Mako Mori. He hasn't figured it out yet, but his adopted daughter is dead-set on helping him, and she's going to win that battle of wills. Gottlieb and Geiszler are arguing apocalyptic science. In half an hour, everything will be chaos and mayhem, but Biff and M.D. are grunts, which means that right now, all they can do is play cards.
“You scared?” she asks.
He says nothing.
“I'm not.”
Sure.
“No, really. My meat-sack's been falling apart since 2013; I'm just happy I get to see the apocalypse before I kick it.”
Biff hates it when she gets like this. And she's been doing it a lot lately, since Gottlieb called the end of the world and her painkillers stopped working. It's like she's prepping him for her impending death, and he's not going to accept it, whatever the docs or the pill bottles say. They're going to live and be big fucking heroes and make shit-tons of money, and everything's going to be fine.
And just to prove it, he deals another hand and trounces her. She isn't dying, so he doesn't have to let her win. By the time the alarm sounds, he's taken all her candy, and he doesn't feel bad about it at all.
They dash into their driftsuits—he needs to help M.D. with hers—and hurry to the Con-pod.
Surprising no one, Marshal Pentecost is flying with Mako; they'll be nuking aliens in Danger, a robot Mako's been upgrading for years but never been allowed to drive. It'll be Mako's first mission, Pentecost's last, and both of their faces are completely unreadable. By now, it's an open secret how sick Pentecost is, cancer and radiation poisoning from too much time in battle, but he's still formidable. The Wei brothers will be escorting them down in Crimson Typhoon.
There's no doubt over Whiskey Delta's role in it all. M.D. and Biff don't have the tactical brilliance the Weis do, or the weapons upgrades of Danger. Their role is what it's been from day one—a distraction, cannon fodder. And Biff would never admit this to M.D., but he is kinda impressed that they've survived this long doing that.
Then they're suiting up, strapping in, and then their giant robot is slogging deep into the Pacific.
Whiskey Delta was not intended for this. Alarms are going off within fifteen minutes, and not much later, a leak springs in the Con-pod, spouting water down the floor. Biff grimaces in disgust.
“Really, guys?” M.D. asks through her headset. “You couldn't even duct tape it a bit?”
“Look, your shitheap was designed for shallows, at best,” Tendo reports, as Biff and M.D. try to adjust their motions to the pressure of the water around them. “No amount of duct tape is going to fix that. Best case scenario, you've got three, four hours before you flood out. That gives you just enough time to hit the destination, distract the Kaiju, and eject out.”
“Just as well this'll be our last mission,” M.D. chuckles. “You served us well, Whiskey.”
Biff sends a sharp look her way, but she ignores it. She's full of adrenaline and endorphins, resisting giggles, itching to go, and it's taking half his concentration just to keep her head in the right place.
Then they're at the spot, there's something looming in the murk, and Biff lets M.D. go.
“Don't worry,” her mind whispers, “you knew it was coming.”
And then they're fighting monsters, in the murk and dirt of the deep Pacific, and even if Biff had time to respond, it wouldn't matter because M.D.'s long gone.
The Weis do their work well. Their are four Kaiju, and they manage to take out the two fast ones before succumbing to an EMP from one of the remaining two. Slattern and Leatherback are slower, enough for Whiskey Delta to keep up with, so Biff and M.D. focus on them, but it's far from enough. Mori and Pentecost have no choice but to keep fighting, even as the clock runs down.
Somewhere in the madness, Geiszler apparently kicks Tendo off the comm. He shouts, “The portal will only open for Kaiju! That means--”
Whatever else he might have said gets cut off with a Whiskey Delta going dark and dead with a groan. Biff swears. Leatherback's EMP again. That's it, they're done. Nothing left to do but eject. Probably just as well; the water level's rising inside, and M.D. seems out cold.
Biff's made it out of his braces and just verified there's no way he's finding her crutches in ankle-deep pitch-black water when something smashed into Whiskey Delta. The big robot tilts, then slowly, very slowly, crashes over onto its side. The mechanical gyros manage to compensate for some of it, but Biff still hits the wall with a splash.
The impact also seems to wake M.D. up. Her nose is bleeding, but at least she's lucid and her braces kept her from falling over. “Ugh, what?”
Biff reaches for her—fuck voice, it's faster to mentally info-dump—when Whiskey Delta gets hit again. It seems to rouse M.D. a bit.
“Leatherback?”
“Yeah. Can you see?”
She struggles against her braces, but can't budge. “Yeah. Biff, get me out, I'm going to reboot Whiskey and then blow this stupid thing up. If you hurry, we can take out Leatherback before ejecting.”
It requires a ladder down to the central core power and generator, which is a special kind of hell with a hundred pounds of co-pilot and driftsuit on his back and the Kaiju still knocking their robot around, but they make it down. There's water up to their knees now.
He puts her down where she says, and she flops in the water, digging into the cables and wires.
“Sorry,” she calls to him. “There's too much water for you not to get zapped. So this'll hurt.”
It does, but at least the emergency lights come on. Whiskey Delta will never fight again, but at least they can blow it up and leave.
M.D.'s not moving.
Biff pulls at her shoulders.
She looks at him and pulls cigarettes from her pocket. “You know, we've been nagging Engineering to make this stupid robot accessible since we got it...”
She doesn't have to say it; he hears it anyway. “You promised,” he accused.
Her voice is flat. “I promised I'd work for Pentecost till he kicks it. Regardless of how this turns out, that's now.” She taps the cigarette, but she's too wet to light it.
And Biff is furious; this is stupid, they have power, they have emergency eject pods, they've even survived this battle, and now they're fucking dead because of a fucking ladder. Because there's no way he can get her up that ladder; he barely got her down it.
Whiskey gets slammed again, and he nearly falls over.
“Biff, come on. We've been over this.”
It's not fair. She's not even twenty-five yet! She's not done. He's not leaving her down here, not after everything.
He reaches over her, punches the self-destruct button far harder than necessary, and sits next to her with a splash.
“Self-destruct in five minutes,” the perky robo-voice announces.
“Seriously, Biff? You want to drown down here with me?” The water's up to their chests now, like this. The driftsuits are too heavy to float. “Is that what you want?”
Biff snatches the cigarettes from her, pulls the lighter from inside his shirt. For him, it lights.
“You fucking dumbass, I'm doing this for you--”
Biff inhales.
“I'm not afraid, damn it. I'm not afraid. I had this planned, why can't you just fucking--”
The water's cold, and she's starting to cry out of sheer frustration, and Biff lets her scream at him till she runs out of words and the robo-voice announces two minutes left. Then he lets her have the cigarette.
“You done?” he asks.
She's silent.
“We stay together.”
Her face crumples. “You know, I planned to die fighting. Not because of a stupid ladder.”
The water's climbing. Biff has enough insulation, but she's starting to shiver. Another crash loses their cigarette in the water. And M.D. looks at him with a sigh.
“Okay,” she says. “Let's do this.”
…
The eject pod beats the self-destruct explosion just barely. By the time it breaks the water's surface, Biff is out cold with the bends, and when he wakes up, everything hurts and he's confused and dizzy.
Choi's first words to him are, “Congratulations. You killed Leatherback.”
Biff is beyond caring. “'Kay.”
“Where's…?”
Biff just rolls over and throws up.
He spends the entire celebration in a recompression chamber. But he's not alone; Mako Mori and two of the Wei brothers are in there with him. All of them are quiet--Mako and Hu because of their losses, Jin because he's in traction. It's a strange atmosphere, celebratory and mournful, and Mako recovers in time to go out in person to take over as Marshal and order the Doomsday Clock down. When she comes back, she informs them that there's a lot of booze.
Biff doesn't take any. He feels too awful. His head is swimming, he can't keep anything straight, and he apparently carries conversations without remembering afterward. If this is what things were like for M.D.--
He doesn't want to think about that.
When they let him out, he just goes straight to bed. No celebrating. No media. No people. The apocalypse is over, his piloting days are over and at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean--
No. Sleep. Just sleep.
…
There are funerals. For Marshal Pentecost, for Tang, for M.D. Mako Mori stands ramrod straight and seems to get through on pure force of will; Jin and Hu seem deep in a world of their own, unreachable by anyone else. Biff sleepwalks through, doesn't speak, doesn't dress up, just comes in his driftsuit and stares at the empty coffin.
He hasn't vanished, really vanished, in years. He does now. He lets everyone go, all the people drifting away until it's getting dark and the grave diggers are leaving. He stands there and tries to get used to the M.D.-shaped void in his mind.
His head is still swimming.
“So, Mako's in charge now, huh? God, I can't believe it, seems only yesterday she was that cranky teenager following us around Kodiak...”
Biff's head jerks up.
The grin hurts his face. “Sure,” he thinks.
“Man, your meat-sack is weird. Everything's all in the way--”
It's a good day to have survived the apocalypse.
Notes: Yes, M.D.'s trick for rebooting Whiskey is total bull, but so is the in-universe explanation for how Danger survives the EMP, so at least I'm breaking the same rules as the source material.
Series: Giant Robots (Infinity Smashed/Pacific Rim crossover)
Word Count: 2000
Summary: The apocalypse hits, and no matter what happens, Biff and M.D.'s giant robot is going to be left at the bottom of the ocean. M.D. just assumes she'll go down with it, but Biff isn't going for it.
Notes: Title comes from a song by Nojahoda. This story wasn’t a winner of the poll, but its price was the same as the remaining money left over, so here it is! This is the END of the Giant Robots series, and you’d be best served reading the rest first. Further notes at the bottom.
After so many years in the pilot seat of Whiskey Delta, M.D. is practically half-robot herself. She seems happiest strapped into the braces and the Drift, where there's no pills, no pain, and all the strength and power she could ever need.
“It's not being a gimp that bothers me,” she tells him once, unprompted. “It's all the baggage everyone else has about it. Well, that and the pain. I'd be okay without the pain.”
Biff grunts and tosses down his hand—flush. She grins and reveals a straight, and he rolls his eyes and shoves his wager of candy at her.
They're waiting for the apocalypse together, while Marshal Pentecost makes plans and argues with Mako Mori. He hasn't figured it out yet, but his adopted daughter is dead-set on helping him, and she's going to win that battle of wills. Gottlieb and Geiszler are arguing apocalyptic science. In half an hour, everything will be chaos and mayhem, but Biff and M.D. are grunts, which means that right now, all they can do is play cards.
“You scared?” she asks.
He says nothing.
“I'm not.”
Sure.
“No, really. My meat-sack's been falling apart since 2013; I'm just happy I get to see the apocalypse before I kick it.”
Biff hates it when she gets like this. And she's been doing it a lot lately, since Gottlieb called the end of the world and her painkillers stopped working. It's like she's prepping him for her impending death, and he's not going to accept it, whatever the docs or the pill bottles say. They're going to live and be big fucking heroes and make shit-tons of money, and everything's going to be fine.
And just to prove it, he deals another hand and trounces her. She isn't dying, so he doesn't have to let her win. By the time the alarm sounds, he's taken all her candy, and he doesn't feel bad about it at all.
They dash into their driftsuits—he needs to help M.D. with hers—and hurry to the Con-pod.
Surprising no one, Marshal Pentecost is flying with Mako; they'll be nuking aliens in Danger, a robot Mako's been upgrading for years but never been allowed to drive. It'll be Mako's first mission, Pentecost's last, and both of their faces are completely unreadable. By now, it's an open secret how sick Pentecost is, cancer and radiation poisoning from too much time in battle, but he's still formidable. The Wei brothers will be escorting them down in Crimson Typhoon.
There's no doubt over Whiskey Delta's role in it all. M.D. and Biff don't have the tactical brilliance the Weis do, or the weapons upgrades of Danger. Their role is what it's been from day one—a distraction, cannon fodder. And Biff would never admit this to M.D., but he is kinda impressed that they've survived this long doing that.
Then they're suiting up, strapping in, and then their giant robot is slogging deep into the Pacific.
Whiskey Delta was not intended for this. Alarms are going off within fifteen minutes, and not much later, a leak springs in the Con-pod, spouting water down the floor. Biff grimaces in disgust.
“Really, guys?” M.D. asks through her headset. “You couldn't even duct tape it a bit?”
“Look, your shitheap was designed for shallows, at best,” Tendo reports, as Biff and M.D. try to adjust their motions to the pressure of the water around them. “No amount of duct tape is going to fix that. Best case scenario, you've got three, four hours before you flood out. That gives you just enough time to hit the destination, distract the Kaiju, and eject out.”
“Just as well this'll be our last mission,” M.D. chuckles. “You served us well, Whiskey.”
Biff sends a sharp look her way, but she ignores it. She's full of adrenaline and endorphins, resisting giggles, itching to go, and it's taking half his concentration just to keep her head in the right place.
Then they're at the spot, there's something looming in the murk, and Biff lets M.D. go.
“Don't worry,” her mind whispers, “you knew it was coming.”
And then they're fighting monsters, in the murk and dirt of the deep Pacific, and even if Biff had time to respond, it wouldn't matter because M.D.'s long gone.
The Weis do their work well. Their are four Kaiju, and they manage to take out the two fast ones before succumbing to an EMP from one of the remaining two. Slattern and Leatherback are slower, enough for Whiskey Delta to keep up with, so Biff and M.D. focus on them, but it's far from enough. Mori and Pentecost have no choice but to keep fighting, even as the clock runs down.
Somewhere in the madness, Geiszler apparently kicks Tendo off the comm. He shouts, “The portal will only open for Kaiju! That means--”
Whatever else he might have said gets cut off with a Whiskey Delta going dark and dead with a groan. Biff swears. Leatherback's EMP again. That's it, they're done. Nothing left to do but eject. Probably just as well; the water level's rising inside, and M.D. seems out cold.
Biff's made it out of his braces and just verified there's no way he's finding her crutches in ankle-deep pitch-black water when something smashed into Whiskey Delta. The big robot tilts, then slowly, very slowly, crashes over onto its side. The mechanical gyros manage to compensate for some of it, but Biff still hits the wall with a splash.
The impact also seems to wake M.D. up. Her nose is bleeding, but at least she's lucid and her braces kept her from falling over. “Ugh, what?”
Biff reaches for her—fuck voice, it's faster to mentally info-dump—when Whiskey Delta gets hit again. It seems to rouse M.D. a bit.
“Leatherback?”
“Yeah. Can you see?”
She struggles against her braces, but can't budge. “Yeah. Biff, get me out, I'm going to reboot Whiskey and then blow this stupid thing up. If you hurry, we can take out Leatherback before ejecting.”
It requires a ladder down to the central core power and generator, which is a special kind of hell with a hundred pounds of co-pilot and driftsuit on his back and the Kaiju still knocking their robot around, but they make it down. There's water up to their knees now.
He puts her down where she says, and she flops in the water, digging into the cables and wires.
“Sorry,” she calls to him. “There's too much water for you not to get zapped. So this'll hurt.”
It does, but at least the emergency lights come on. Whiskey Delta will never fight again, but at least they can blow it up and leave.
M.D.'s not moving.
Biff pulls at her shoulders.
She looks at him and pulls cigarettes from her pocket. “You know, we've been nagging Engineering to make this stupid robot accessible since we got it...”
She doesn't have to say it; he hears it anyway. “You promised,” he accused.
Her voice is flat. “I promised I'd work for Pentecost till he kicks it. Regardless of how this turns out, that's now.” She taps the cigarette, but she's too wet to light it.
And Biff is furious; this is stupid, they have power, they have emergency eject pods, they've even survived this battle, and now they're fucking dead because of a fucking ladder. Because there's no way he can get her up that ladder; he barely got her down it.
Whiskey gets slammed again, and he nearly falls over.
“Biff, come on. We've been over this.”
It's not fair. She's not even twenty-five yet! She's not done. He's not leaving her down here, not after everything.
He reaches over her, punches the self-destruct button far harder than necessary, and sits next to her with a splash.
“Self-destruct in five minutes,” the perky robo-voice announces.
“Seriously, Biff? You want to drown down here with me?” The water's up to their chests now, like this. The driftsuits are too heavy to float. “Is that what you want?”
Biff snatches the cigarettes from her, pulls the lighter from inside his shirt. For him, it lights.
“You fucking dumbass, I'm doing this for you--”
Biff inhales.
“I'm not afraid, damn it. I'm not afraid. I had this planned, why can't you just fucking--”
The water's cold, and she's starting to cry out of sheer frustration, and Biff lets her scream at him till she runs out of words and the robo-voice announces two minutes left. Then he lets her have the cigarette.
“You done?” he asks.
She's silent.
“We stay together.”
Her face crumples. “You know, I planned to die fighting. Not because of a stupid ladder.”
The water's climbing. Biff has enough insulation, but she's starting to shiver. Another crash loses their cigarette in the water. And M.D. looks at him with a sigh.
“Okay,” she says. “Let's do this.”
…
The eject pod beats the self-destruct explosion just barely. By the time it breaks the water's surface, Biff is out cold with the bends, and when he wakes up, everything hurts and he's confused and dizzy.
Choi's first words to him are, “Congratulations. You killed Leatherback.”
Biff is beyond caring. “'Kay.”
“Where's…?”
Biff just rolls over and throws up.
He spends the entire celebration in a recompression chamber. But he's not alone; Mako Mori and two of the Wei brothers are in there with him. All of them are quiet--Mako and Hu because of their losses, Jin because he's in traction. It's a strange atmosphere, celebratory and mournful, and Mako recovers in time to go out in person to take over as Marshal and order the Doomsday Clock down. When she comes back, she informs them that there's a lot of booze.
Biff doesn't take any. He feels too awful. His head is swimming, he can't keep anything straight, and he apparently carries conversations without remembering afterward. If this is what things were like for M.D.--
He doesn't want to think about that.
When they let him out, he just goes straight to bed. No celebrating. No media. No people. The apocalypse is over, his piloting days are over and at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean--
No. Sleep. Just sleep.
…
There are funerals. For Marshal Pentecost, for Tang, for M.D. Mako Mori stands ramrod straight and seems to get through on pure force of will; Jin and Hu seem deep in a world of their own, unreachable by anyone else. Biff sleepwalks through, doesn't speak, doesn't dress up, just comes in his driftsuit and stares at the empty coffin.
He hasn't vanished, really vanished, in years. He does now. He lets everyone go, all the people drifting away until it's getting dark and the grave diggers are leaving. He stands there and tries to get used to the M.D.-shaped void in his mind.
His head is still swimming.
“So, Mako's in charge now, huh? God, I can't believe it, seems only yesterday she was that cranky teenager following us around Kodiak...”
Biff's head jerks up.
M.D.'s mental voice is faint and a little garbled, but still undeniably her. "Sorry for the delay. I'd never tried this before, things got kind of scrambled—it's not going to be like it was before, you know that right?”
The grin hurts his face. “Sure,” he thinks.
“Man, your meat-sack is weird. Everything's all in the way--”
It's a good day to have survived the apocalypse.
Notes: Yes, M.D.'s trick for rebooting Whiskey is total bull, but so is the in-universe explanation for how Danger survives the EMP, so at least I'm breaking the same rules as the source material.
