go_exchange | Happy Holidays, LadyLier! Part 2 (Reply)

Pacific Omens - Part 2

Chapter 3 - Once Again Through the Water

Three weeks later, fighting in robots was still brilliant, but now rather tiring. It hadn’t occurred to Adam and his group of friends back during the Almost Apocalypse, nor during the visits from Crowley and Aziraphale throughout the years, but the Them had more than fully realized how useless demons and angels were at solving any actual problems.¹¹ The Them were the only group of functional pilots who’d had a success rate against the Kaiju in their Jaeger, considering the only other active pilots on base were Michael and Lucifer and their all-time record of working together while in the drift was twelve whole seconds. The Marshall had been so proud that day, much to the confusion of the Them.

“It’s twelve bloody seconds!” Pepper complained loudly. “It’s not hard to get along with someone you loathe for twelve seconds. I do it all the time with my sister!”

“Eh, that’s how they’ve always been,” Crowley shrugged, throwing pens at the newest Kaiju corpse the Them had brought in. That’s how Crowley conducted his research on the Kaiju, much to Wensleydale’s despair.

The day after they had arrived at the Shatterdome, the Them had been introduced to their Jaeger; a giant, nearly hundred meter metal giant, with a large enough head to hold four pilots. A vaguely familiar red-headed technician had shown them the weapons installed on the Jaeger with a smile full of gleefully pointed teeth. Pepper soon mirrored the technician’s excitement when she heard that the Jaeger came specially equipped with an electric saber, flamethrower, and laser rifle.

“Did anyone else feel like they’ve seen that lady before?” After the weapons programming was all done, Brian had squinted after the skipping technician.

“Yes and no.” Adam had said casually, “I expect her associates are around though, so it’s okay.”

No one had been sure how that was okay, but then again, it was the end of the world so maybe it was okay.

Three weeks into being in Hong Kong, and the Them had managed to take down six Kaiju, all of which had ended up either on Crowley’s or Aziraphale’s lab table. According to the angel, the long-time supernatural agents on earth had been given the task of examining the Kaiju for any weaknesses and attempting to contact the original Precursor species to inform them of their ineffable demise.

“It’s a rather silly task,” Aziraphale sniffed as he poked the interior organs with a sixteen foot spear to keep as far away from the bodily fluids as possible. Even under his lab coat, the angel still wore his favorite camel hair coat, and he would hate for it to get dirty. “No one really cares about finding a weakness, they just want us to be busy so we don’t get in their way of absolute destruction.”

“But they are absolutely terrible at fighting these guys,” Brian pointed. “We’ve been doing all the heavy lifting around here.”

“All the denizens of Hell and Heaven are absolutely terrible at everything except lurking around and trying to look important,” Crowley chimed in from the back of the lab where he was cutting up pieces of Kaiju for a new fertilizer for his plants.

“Does that include you and Mr. Aziraphale?” Wensleydale asked.

“Nope. I know I’m at the bottom of the food chain in Hell. Definitely not important at all.”

“Well, I think you two would be more useful in a Jaeger than the dramatic duo,” Brian grumbled. “You would be more drift compatible at any rate.”

“Of course, of course.” Aziraphale waved a hand, “However, with our track record, neither of us are allowed near the Jaegers. Not that I would want to, at any rate. Did you know that -“

“Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Aziraphale, we really have to dash. I think I hear my dad.” Adam said hurriedly, already half running out of the room before Aziraphale could get rolling on one of his rants.¹² The rest of the Them were right on Adam’s heels, shouting their own farewells.

Aziraphale pouted as his audience disappeared out the door, and Crowley winced as Aziraphale opened his mouth to start another rant. Luckily, throughout the long millennia of being acquaintances, Crowley had found the best way of derailing Aziraphale from his rants. A good old fashioned distraction.

“Hey, angel. Want to drift with a dead Kaiju?”

———————

The thing about drifting is that it’s an extremely personal and invasive engineering breakthrough, designed to have multiple people think in the same ways and achieve full tandem. For instance, when two - or four people in the case of the Them - enter the Drift, they are able to perform feats of acrobatic miracles in a giant robot because everyone has the same thought and knows what to do. Everyone is fully aware of their limits, of their strengths, and of their lives. It's a merging of multiple people into one being, which is why Michael and Lucifer have such a difficult time maintaining an active connection in the drift: Lucifer can’t stand thinking the same as Michael; it’s practically an insult.¹³

Crowley and Aziraphale had drifted once before for fun when the technology had just been released and the humans were the ones still piloting the Jaegers before sixty percent of the population got wiped out. For them, drifting was no different than living; they had known each other for far too long and shared too many drunken meals to be shy around the other.

Adding a Kaiju, even a dead one, to the mix, disrupted that easy merger like a taking a hallucinogenic drug at a funeral filled with silent mourners.

“That,” Crowley nearly fell over as he tossed the helmet that connected all three of them to the ground, “was a terrible idea.”

“I think it might have been your worst idea to date.” Aziraphale’s voice boomed through the ringing in Crowley’s ears and he winced in pain. “Dear, your nose is bleeding a bit. You might want to wipe your face before it stains something.”

“Ugh, I don’t think I can move my arms anymore.”

“Well, we do need to move to tell The Marshall at least that the Precursors are sending the Kaiju through a tunnel in the ocean.” Aziraphale was marginally better off than his counterpart; by power of logic, they both figured the Kaiju were biologically similar to reptiles.¹⁴ Crowley had once been a snake, also a known reptile. So it had made sense at the time that Crowley wear the primary helmet connecting directly to the Kaiju corpse and Aziraphale would wear a secondary helmet and piggyback off of the connection.

Turns out, those reptilian qualities also included brain capacity levels which were not so surprisingly, lower than the brain sizes of angels and demons. Modern day angels and demons, some creatures¹⁵ would add with a sniff of disdain. Being drifted with a Kaiju meant that Crowley got a first-hand experience - and Aziraphale a second-hand experience - of the utter emptiness of any thoughts while trying to shriek opinions into a massive crowd of other Kaiju. If someone were to be reading this account, they may equate it to some politicians currently at the forefront of the United States government.¹⁶ Secretly, Crowley felt a quick jab of sympathy toward Michael; this was probably what his head was like all the time.

“I’m surprised they don’t already know about this,” Crowley grumbled. “Can’t we just call everyone over the intercom, instead of running around to find them?”

“Why not?” Aziraphale shrugged as he reached for the phone. “Now what button do I press?”

“The button that says ‘intercom’ right next to it. I labeled the phone for a reason.”

“HEY EVERYONE, GABRIEL FUCKED UP WITH HIS STUPID METEOR TRICK.” Aziraphale bellowed into the phone.

Crowley would swear upon his dying breath that Aziraphale had never looked more pleased with himself in all six thousand years than he did at that moment.

----------------------------------------------

“I can’t believe you blamed Gabriel on the intercom so everyone could hear.” Crowley told Aziraphale, hours later, after running from a furious archangel, while explaining the whole tunnel that connects the worlds that had been damaged but not destroyed all those millennia ago when Gabriel had been charged with terminating the Precursors. He'd followed that whole debacle with a quick snake nap to shake off the Kaiju drift and felt as good as new.

“Well, it was his fault,” Aziraphale sniffed, “If he had just done his job properly and destroyed the one thing he needed to instead of everything around it, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“Facing another apocalypse?” Crowley guessed.

“No, being forced to pilot a giant robot.”

Indeed, after Aziraphale’s continued dislike of Gabriel made itself apparent and they were forced to explain how they had obtained the information by drifting with one of the many Kaiju bodies in their “lab”, a plan was made up quickly on the spot among all the residents of the Shatterdome. The Them would pilot their Jaeger, The Robot, to the spot where the tunnel opened in the Pacific Ocean, and blow it up. The red-headed weapons technician pulled high grade explosives from her pockets and everyone took a careful step back, except Pepper, who edged closer.

In order to get the Robot close enough without wasting all its energy on fighting the Kaiju that would most definitely come to attack, a distraction was needed. And what better distraction than a drift compatible angel and demon pair that could potentially last longer than fifteen seconds while in a Jaeger.

“But I wanted to punch the Kaiju!” Michael had whined.

“No, Michael, you already tried and it took me years to heal you properly,” Raphael had scolded. “I’m sure these two will be just fine, and you can punch the leftover monsters.”

“But I don’t want to pilot a giant robot,” Aziraphale had scowled and Lucifer had laughed.

“You should have thought of that before pissing off the Messenger,” the Morningstar said from across the room. Next to him, his second in command, Beezlebub, twittered, his wings shaking in obvious amusement.

Crowley bet that Beezlebub didn’t even know what was so funny, he just saw his Lord of Darkness laughing and joined in.¹⁷

The animosity Aziraphale held for Gabriel was well-known to Heaven (and to Crowley) and was mostly one-sided until Gabriel had decided to take Aziraphale’s jabs personally. The only good thing about this revenge tactic, is that Crowley finally got a chance to pilot a Jaeger; he’d been wanting to since the humans had first come out with the giant robots. It looked cool. But Aziraphale’s strong dislike – for angels never hated – of the ridiculous giant robots had nipped that dream in the bud. Going into the drift to pilot a robot without Aziraphale would have been weird, and add on the whole untrustworthiness from Heaven and Hell, and Crowley thought he would always remain watching everyone else pilot the Jaegers from the sidelines.
Not any longer; in the morning, Aziraphale and Crowley would be joining the other Jaegers for a last ditch effort to wipe out the Kaiju and ruin the Precursors’ plans of domination.

“Hey fellows, I know this is rather last minute, but does anyone know how the precursors were able to biologically engineer the Kaiju?”

“Who cares, dude?” Michael rolled his eyes from his spot in the center of the room. No one really did care, not even poor Wensleydale, who had asked the question. “Let’s just go explode some Kaiju.”¹⁸

——————————————

The next morning was chaotic. While Crowley and Aziraphale were drift compatible, neither of them had ever been inside of a Jaeger before, or knew how to pilot it. Aziraphale barely knew how to drive a car, having had relied on Crowley the past century for most of his transportation. Pepper and Wensleydale had stayed up late adding more and more weapons and functions to their Jaeger; arguing with the scarlet haired technician - who for convenience’s sake, we shall simply call War for the rest of this story - who was upset that they hadn’t asked for her opinions of what proper weapons to add. Two other vaguely familiar technicians, one dressed in all black and hauntingly thin and the other covered in oil stains while wearing all white, came from a side hallway to pull War away.

By the time everyone was ready and suited up in their Jaegers or behind their computers on the base, it was late afternoon and everyone was cranky. The Marshall had stopped talking to anyone to just drink out of a giant wine bottle they pulled from a pocket.

The sun was high in the sky when three Jaegers waddled into the Pacific Ocean, all heading towards the giant hole on the ocean floor that had been overlooked by humans, angels, and demons alike for so many years.

The Them in their Jaeger, The Robot,¹⁹ were marching in the water in the center of the formation, slightly ahead of the other two. Michael and Lucifer had managed to walk down the shoreline and waist deep in the water before their Jaeger stalled, and everyone cheered at the new broken record of ‘longest time getting along’ at a whole forty-two seconds.

“Miracles do still happen,” everyone heard Raphael weep happily into the microphone.

The Tartan Bentley²⁰ was lagging behind The Robot, stumbling over its own feet.

“Angel, please put the book down, I really can’t move this thing with you thinking about cooking recipes printed in a 16th century Bible.”

“You’re the driver,” Aziraphale turned the page of his unique misprinted Bible from the early days of the printing press. “This is how we always drive.”

“In a car! This is not a car!” Being in a car would have been more enjoyable. Crowley was beginning to realize just how silly it was walking around in a giant metal robot attached with weapons; the machine didn’t even have a stereo installed.

“I hate to interrupt,” Adam said mildly through the communication network, “but we have incoming Kaiju straight ahead.”

“They’re definitely coming in through the breach.” Pepper pointed out the obvious as The Robot readied its flamethrower and electric saber in each of its hands.

“We can distract them.” Aziraphale snapped his book shut and put it carefully in his jacket pocket. “You lot keep going on ahead; I’d like to get this over with quickly and get back to whatever’s left of my bookshop.”

Crowley didn’t have to ask what Aziraphale had in mind; he knew what Aziraphale’s thought process was and raised his left hand.

The Them didn’t turn around to see how exactly Aziraphale and Crowley had managed to get all of the Kaiju positively stunned but Michael and Lucifer had a prime seat watching a hundred and thirteen meter tall robot skip around with its hands flapping like a bird. They watched, mesmerized by horror and awe as the Tartan Bentley successfully captivated its intended audience with its rendition of the Gavotte Mignon²¹. The Kaiju, while not having as evolved intelligence as their creators, could ignore their rage and murderous intent to appreciate a good show whenever one popped up.

Adam, Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale felt rather cheated as they sprinted as best they could in the water towards the breach.

“You know, I thought this would have been much more dramatic,” Brian grumbled as he prepared his side of the Jaeger to drop the modified explosives Pepper and Wensleydale had designed overnight. “You know, more near death experiences, the dramatic tension of our inevitable failure before winning with impossible odds.”

“I’m glad it’s almost done. I’m ready to go home.” Adam narrowed his eyes as The Robot stopped right at the coordinates for the breach. As one, the Them took a deep breath and dove down below the surface, lamps installed in the Jaeger providing them limited light to see underwater. The ocean was empty near the hole that connected Earth with the Precursor’s Anteverse; any schools of fish that used to swim through had all perished by the Kaiju years before.

“This is Metatron,” A deep voice announced through the communications network. “Adam Antichrist and fellow humans, do you copy?”

“We have names,” Pepper grumbled, “are they really that difficult to remember?”

The Metatron continued as if Pepper had not said anything.

“The machines are picking up several large Kaiju approaching from the tunnel.”

“How large is large?” Adam’s question came too late; he didn’t need a scanner to tell him that the head popping through the tunnel was massive.

“We should have had a ranking system in place,” Brian seemed pale underneath his helmet, “because that thing, that thing is on top.”

“Well come on! Just start whacking its head until it goes down!” With practiced motions, Pepper pulled up and down on the levers in front of her and The Robot's whip - now with added spikes that could scourge flesh without even trying - snapped down in The Robot’s right hand.

Adam thought as he matched the others’ movements to keep striking their enemy, preventing it from leaving the tunnel entirely. Pepper and Wensleydale had made explosive devices that were the size of The Robot’s hand. They somehow needed to get a device into the tunnel without the massive Kaiju bating it aside. The Kaiju weren’t affected by Adam’s abilities as the Antichrist; but that didn’t mean he couldn’t manipulate other things to what he wanted.

He didn’t need to explain to the Them what he wanted to do; the drift said it all for him and he saw the approval of his plan with their sudden smiles.

Adam concentrated on the explosive devices that rested in their Jaeger’s left hand, fingers curled protectively around it. There was water around them but Adam didn’t want water, he wanted something else to cover the explosives. The water hardened and grew dark, and Adam smiled as the universe once again bent to his whim.

If Jesus could transmute water into wine, Adam, who was still forbidden to drink by his real dad, could transmute water into chocolate. Because everyone knew that chocolate was irresistible.

The Robot tossed the chocolate covered explosive into the tunnel and watched as the Kaiju grabbed it to hold it gently in its massive claws, just looking at the chocolate like it was the most beautiful thing it had ever seen. The Kaiju floated in the mouth of the tunnel, too distracted to continue attacking its prey, but too intelligent to turn its back on the giant robot that kept hitting it.

“Well, at least it’s still in the tunnel.” Brain said optimistically. “We just gotta find a way to push the Kaiju down further. Any ideas?”

“I had the chocolate idea. Someone else should try and come up with something.”

“We could try stepping on it to push it down with our Jaeger,” Wensleydale offered, “no wait, but then we wouldn’t be able to get out of the blast zone in time. It’s set off to explode in three minutes and thirty three seconds once it disconnected from the Jaeger.”

Silence rang throughout the head of The Robot.

“Well boys,” Pepper looked at the rest of the Them, “who’s ready to go sacrifice themselves for the greater good of humanity?”²²

“No one is going to die.” Adam said firmly. “I won’t let that happen.”

The Earth was his to control after all; that was his reason for being born, even if Adam hadn’t agreed with the idea. But it was a useful mindset to have for short term crises, of which Adam had only faced twice before.²³ With a grunt, Adam closed his eyes and forced himself to focus.

“Um, Adam,” Wensleydale peered out of the glass pane that served as The Robot’s eyes, “are you using your devil-granted powers to call a kraken here?”

“What? No, I’m trying to increase the pressure of the water and gravity to push the Kaiju down.”

“Well, Wen is right, there’s a giant kraken heading this way.” Brian said just as the kraken zoomed past their Jaeger, leaving a stream of bubbles in its wake, and tackled the Kaiju still floating in the entrance of the tunnel.

Readers, there is a fun fact about kraken that you most definitely have never covered in your biological science lectures: kraken absolutely adore chocolate, especially dark cocoa chocolate from Ghirardelli’s Square in what is now the destroyed town of San Francisco. They can smell any sort of chocolate from 132 kilometers away (82 miles for those American readers and the writer) and will display their more aggressive tactics to obtain the chocolate from whatever creature is holding it.

In this case, it was a giant biologically engineered giant amphibian, designed to eradicate life on planet Earth that was holding the piece of chocolate the kraken craved.

The Them watched as the kraken and the Kaiju swam down the tunnel connecting the two worlds, chasing a large chocolate-coated explosive that had slipped from the Kaiju’s fingers.

“I guess we should get out of here?” Through the drift, the four members of the Them, were blinking in shock, unable to fully process that the kraken, terror of the seas and small fish and enemy of sushi chefs everywhere, had saved the entire world.

“Sounds like a good idea, Pepper, yeah.”

They were only halfway towards the surface when the aftershocks of the explosion hit them and sent them spinning in The Robot. Through the communication devices, they could hear cheering from the people still hiding out at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong so they assumed they must have won.

“Thank you, Mr. Kraken,” Adam said solemnly, holding his hand high, Wensleydale, Brian, and Pepper echoing him, “Your sacrifice and determination will never be forgotten.”

When they finally breached the surface of the water, they found Crowley and Aziraphale floating above a destroyed Jaeger that had once been the Tartan Bentley and Lucifer and Michael’s Jaeger - they hadn’t ever decided on a name so it remained nameless - punching the remaining Kaiju into a bloody pulp.

“Oh good, you four made it out.” Crowley waved. “I told you they would be fine, Aziraphale.”

“Yes, well, you know how I feel about the effectiveness of robots.”

“Don’t mind him.” Crowley landed on the shoulder of The Robot, Aziraphale landing shortly after. “He’s just a bit upset that Michael and Lucifer both didn’t like his gavotte dance moves and can agree to mutual destruction if it means never watching them again.”

The Robot’s head opened up and the Them clambered out onto the body of the Jaeger to feel the fresh breeze.

“Well, I think it’s time to go back to Lower Tadfield, then,” Adam shrugged.

“Job well done and all that, yeah?” Wensleydale pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Do you think The Marshall will let me keep some of the weapons?” Pepper asked. “I want some souvenirs from this adventure.”

Brian didn’t say anything, just held out his fist for a group fist bump.

Now, at least for the moment, all was good.

Still only for some people, of course. The Kaiju and Precursors were clearly not of the same opinion, not that they had opinions any longer. The Marshall didn’t really care, and that is what truly mattered.²⁴

____________________
¹¹But give them problems that had never existed and suddenly their efficiency rate tripled.
¹²His rants were infamous as being Aziraphale’s most effective attack. Back before the Arrangement was in place, Crowley would deliberately discorporate himself to escape. Several angels, who do not wish to be named, will testify that they have thrown themselves off of the clouds that make up Heaven whenever Aziraphale visited.
¹³ Lucifer isn’t the only one to think this; Gabriel and Raphael very much agree with the disgust. Gabriel because he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and Raphael because he’s patched up too many of Michael’s concussions throughout the years.
¹⁴ The research methods to discover the false claim that the Kaiju were similar to reptiles involved a lot of poking of the hard, scaly-like armor and assumptions. A foolproof scientific method.
¹⁵ Crowley
¹⁶ The author isn’t apologizing for this statement.
¹⁷ Crowley would be pleased to know that he would have won that bet had he placed it anywhere.
¹⁸ No one had the heart to break it to poor Michael that his track record was worse than Gabriel’s. He would throw a tantrum and mope about it for decades.
¹⁹ Named courtesy of Adam’s superb naming skills.
²⁰ A name courtesy of Brian who had always believed Crowley and Aziraphale belonged on a ship together.
²¹ It is important to note that Aziraphale doesn’t really remember all of the dance steps for the Gavotte, but instead substituted those steps for flapping and hopping like a chicken. There wasn’t that much of a difference and no one but he ever noticed.
²² Pepper’s answer was a resounding no; she hadn’t yet destroyed patriarchy on a global scale and had vowed not to rest until it had all been dismantled. She would make for a very vengeful ghost years later.
²³ The first was of course the first Apocalypse seven years ago and second was when Adam had been in secondary school and was rejected by his crush, Thomas Burgandy. Brian had been the one to knock some sense into Adam and prevent the schoolyard from being sucked into a black hole.
²⁴ As it was apparent to all, The Marshall had a very selective attention span and made most of Their important decisions on a whim. They were very much a child at heart; a child who could drink, vote, and legally rent a car in most countries.