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K-Day changed the world. Changed everything on a scale too big to describe in words. Up was down, left was right, there were fucking monsters coming out of the ocean. But it changed things on a smaller scale too. Not immediately, but soon after, once the first successful drift took place. People who had been considered nothing particularly special were suddenly valuable beyond measure because of what they could do. What they could do together. And Max wanted so desperately to be one of them. To be a ranger.
Getting into the Jaeger Academy had been the easy part. Plenty of people got that far. Even after the first bunch of people scrubbed out, there were plenty of others left who had the same dream as her. But graduating to PONS training was something else that she barely dared to dream about. She had always been individualistic almost (and sometimes past ‘almost’) to a fault. Being so in sync with someone else—to be able to mirror, anticipate, feel another person like they were almost an extension of herself? That shit was magical.
Maybe too magical for her…
Max sat down heavily in the mess and poked rehydrated veggies and greasy cuts of unidentifiable meat around her metal plate dejectedly. Esti, the Cuban kid who didn’t really speak much English, was sitting at the end of the bench, looking as miserable as she was.
The thing was, Esti was drift compatible. With more than one person even! But, surprise, surprise, they were both already in a Jaeger team together.
Max felt sorry for her, but also jealous, because at least Esti knew that it was possible for her. Max worried that she wasn’t built for that kind of connection sometimes. If you’d have asked her before she got started with all this, she’d have said that if she’d have it with anyone, it would probably be with Clance. But Clance went into J-Tech and would rather sell her soul to the Kaiju than get into one of the ‘giant robot death machines’ that she herself had helped to design and build.
She sighed and looked down at Esti, who was cutting up a single baby carrot into ever babier pieces.
“Hey,” Max called down to her. “Want to sit together?”
Esti looked up at her in alarm. Max raised her eyebrows and mimed lifting her fork her mouth to eat a few times before patting the seat beside her. The teenager slid down the bench slowly and sat next to her, head bowed.
“The food here sucks,” Max said conversationally, and Esti looked at her again with a creased brow. Max pointed at her plate. “No bueno.”
“Oh,” Esti replied. “Yes. Very bad.”
Max nodded and they both went back to eating. Esti sighed gustily.
“I know,” Max said, patting her on the back. “Me too.”
They began to eat together regularly. They were chalk and cheese, but they got along fine despite the differences between them. Esti was a deeply girly girl, which Max was… not. But she knew enough from growing up in a beauty shop to keep up with nodding along to the pictures Esti would show her of nail art and fancy crown braids.
“I could do that,” Max said, pointing at a picture of a set of well-manicured, gradient polished fingernails. “I got a nail certification at some point.”
Esti looked at her, awed.
“You know so much!” she said and, well, that was probably stretching it a bit. But it felt good to be appreciated.
Max brought a bottle of nail polish (and shut up, she didn’t buy it special or anything, she just borrowed it from Clance) the next day and painted Esti’s nails for her. Not a gradient, nothing that Esti probably couldn’t have done herself, but it was nice to do something for a friend.
The day after that, Esti gave her her pudding cup wordlessly and wouldn’t allow her to give it back.
The thing was, they weren’t drift compatible. They already knew they weren’t; they’d been tested together over and over in the Kwoon Combat Room. But they resonated together in a different way.
It was nothing like when she’d made friends with Carson, the LOCCENT officer, and they’d been so simpatico that Max had felt certain that if Carson would step into the Kwoon with her that they’d both be in a Jaeger before the end of the month. But, like Clance, Carson didn’t want that. She was the eyes and ears of all the rangers in the Shatterdome when they were deployed and that was what she wanted to do, what she wanted to be. Max had been devastated and felt almost betrayed, but then she was left wondering if she’d been selfish in hoping to turn a friendship into a way to fulfil her own dreams.
With Esti there was no expectation of that, it was just an uncomplicated camaraderie. Instead of being what the other lacked, they each lacked the same thing. And that was kind of nice too.
“I’m telling you: it’s never been done!”
Lupe threw her hands in the air and walked down the corridor, Jess loping after her, somehow still nonchalant even as she matched her in speed.
“In theory a three-way drift would be more stable. The neural load on each of us would-”
“More stable to bring a rookie into the equation who’s going to mess up our rhythm at best and, more likely, freeze up and chase the RABIT the first time she gets into a Jaeger?”
“Spoken like someone who’s never, ever chased the RABIT,” Jess said, pulling a cigarette from behind her ear and sparking up. “Look, the kid is a natural. And after that last drop Hermano is basically fit for scraps, we’re gonna need a new Jaeger either way. Why not give Esti a chance?”
“‘A chance’ is not something I want to take with the fate of the world.”
Lupe brought the heels of her hands up to her forehead and groaned, stopping dead in the middle of the corridor. Jess leaned against the wall, toes braced against it and one knee jutting out. The people walking past the two of them had to weave around the twin obstacles they made between them.
“I know what this is really about,” Jess said, tapping her temple. “And it’s not some high-minded fate of the world crap.”
“Fine,” Lupe replied. “You’re right, it’s not. Congratulations, you’ve been in my fucking head, and I can’t lie to you. Can you see why I don’t want to go there with her? With anyone who isn’t you?”
Jess pushed herself off the wall and punched Lupe once in the shoulder before taking her hat off and ruffling her hair, then replacing the hat.
“I can see it fine,” she said. “And I’m not saying that we go to the J-Techs right now and tell them to start designing a three person Jaeger. I’m just saying that we should try drifting with her before we write it off.”
“Okay, fine,” Lupe said, groaning. “If it’ll get you off my back, I’ll let you show me for certain that this is a terrible idea.”
Jess clutched a hand to her heart.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“You’re such a pendejo,” Lupe muttered, but she smiled back when Jess smiled at her.
It was hard to understand what Esti was trying to tell her at first, but when Max got it, she felt a tightness in her chest and her eyes began to sting.
“I’m really happy for you,” she said, smiling through it.
And she meant it! She just… she wasn’t a saint, okay? It was hard not to be at all jealous. She hoped that her friendship with Esti was strong enough and built on a more solid foundation that just shared disappointment to weather this change, but… well.
She’d probably be back to eating alone pretty soon.
Max looked up as several trays were put down on the table next to and across from her. She looked over and saw Jess McCready and Lupe García grimacing at their food and grimly picking up their cutlery. To her right, Max turned and saw Esti.
“My friend Max,” Esti said to the rangers, gesturing towards Max.
“Yeah, uh, h-hi,” Max replied. “Hello.”
Jess replied with a quick two finger salute and Lupe nodded.
“Is it okay to sit here?” Jess asked after a brief pause as Max eyeballed her incredulously.
“Yes! Yeah, of course,” Max replied.
An unfamiliar figure slid into the bench at the far end of the table, looking surreptitiously down towards them.
“Do you want to sit with us?” Max blurted out and just about stopped herself from slapping her hand over her mouth.
The stranger picked up her tray and walked down, sitting down on Max’s left.
“I’m Max Chapman,” Max said, sticking out her hand.
“Esther,” the newcomer replied. She looked around. “You all Jaeger pilots?”
“More or less,” Jess said around a mouth of mashed potatoes.
“I’m less,” Max said, lifting her hand. “I’m, uh, I’m still in training. Haven’t gotten on to the actual, you know-”
She mimed throwing a punch and Lupe leaned out of the way. Esther smiled widely.
“Or, uh… drifting with anyone, I guess,” Max added, shrugging with one shoulder. “I don’t know if I am drift compatible with anyone yet. But, you know, still working on it.”
Esther nodded. “I’m just starting the training programme. That’s all ahead of me, I hope.”
“Even if you don’t make it to PONS training, you’ll qualify to be an officer in some other stream if you make it past the first round of cuts,” Lupe said. She turned and pointed to Max with her fork. “That’s something you could look into if you want to cover your bases.”
‘But I wanna punch the Kaiju!’ Max very deliberately did not say aloud.
“Yeah, but she wants to punch the goddamn sea monsters,” Esther said, miming a short jab.
Max blinked and then laughed.
“Yeah,” she said. “Exactly right, yeah.”
She picked up her fork and somehow the food tasted a little better than normal.