Marshal Kim strides into the war room on long, purposeful legs, his face tight with worry.

You and the other pilots sit wherever you can; the room wasn’t made to hold thirteen Rangers, plus Head J-Tech Zhang and the marshal himself. You scurried over as soon as Marshal Kim gave you a pointed look, zoning in on you despite the triumphant chaos taking over the room. The others, you assume, were pulled aside or target-locked in a similar fashion, but the few seats are far from enough. You’re just glad to have secured one through your expediency.

All around you, other pilots cram themselves into corners or sprawl out along the floor (the ones just returned from the battle more likely to be slumped over with fatigue). Sehun stands in his patent position -- leaned against the wall in your peripheral vision.

“Lighten up, boss,” Baekhyun jokes. “We won that fight. It was a victory.”

A victory indeed -- the hallways outside the otherwise quiet war room are alive with muffled cheers and merrymaking.

Marshal Kim shoots Baekhyun an exasperated look, but it’s Technician Zhang who rushes to the rescue as the mouthpiece.

“Victory is fleeting -- there’s no real semblance of safety until this all ends. While we won, we lost Cherry Bomb while barely saving Yuta and Taeyong --” Technician Zhang nods at Yunho, who had barked the split-second order for the younger pilots to evacuate right before his own Jaeger was short-circuited by Kaiju Blue. “-- Rising Sun was rendered useless after the electric shock, and Psycho had to eject her nuclear core into the caved-in kaiju to detonate it. We barely finished the fight or kept our pilots alive.”

The room hushes into silence, the sobering truth reminding everyone of the ongoing war.

“That’s three Jaegers out, with only the oldest model being somewhat repairable. We won’t be able to fend off another attack until Tornado Spiral and Rising Sun are back online. I’ve already made calls to the other ex-Shatterdomes to see if anyone has a core to spare, but it’s looking unlikely.” Marshal Kim sighs, pulling down his glasses to rub at his nose bridge.

From the corner of your eye, you can see Sehun stiffening at Gipsy Valor going unmentioned. Interesting; you hadn’t expected him to look forward to stepping into a rig with you, despite the unspoken shift in your relationship.

But you train your gaze on the marshal, wondering how he plans to lead you all through this. Kaiju attacks aren’t tied to a schedule, not as far as anyone can tell -- but the best scientists from all over the world constantly work on a prediction model.

Until you have one, though, you can only hope that no new threats arise soon.

Marshal Kim’s face is drawn tight, and he begins to pace in what few free square feet he has. The room waits with bated breath. The marshal’s nervousness permeates throughout -- the energy changes from one charged with victorious adrenaline to panicked dread.

“Deux Lunes.”

Chanyeol and Kyungsoo scramble up from their cross-legged seats on the cold concrete, Kyungsoo a bit more gracefully than his taller partner. Two ‘yes, sir’s’ echo out.

“I hate to break this to you, but you’re going to need to run one-on-two events in the simulator from here on out. Go see your J-techs and formulate a plan; you’ll want to exclusively focus on Cat-4 threats.”

The two pilots exchange worried glances, but Chanyeol quickly bursts into a brave smile and claps his friend loudly across the back as they exit the room.

“Technician Zhang, you’ll have to take a break from Gipsy’s renovations and help Rising Sun with their circuitry problems. Kaiju Blue’s extremely dangerous, but if anything can be salvaged or repaired from repurposed parts, try to get the wiring redone.”

Technician Zhang ducks his head with a small bow, then beckons to the two oldest pilots.

“Gipsy Valor.” Marshal Kim sets his gaze on you before scanning up to his tall friend’s face. Sehun peels himself off the wall in record time, and you catch the glitter of intensity behind his irises.

“Yes, sir.” You’re surprised to hear the words fall from Sehun’s lips first; it’s the first time he’s shown this level of enthusiasm about working with you since you first came to the Busan Shatterdome.

“Still have some tech chops?”

You both nod. Your memory of Jaeger technology is still fresh from cadet training. Still, you wonder if Sehun’s tech knowledge is as good as his legendary piloting.

“Good -- whatever you remember will have to do. Take over Technician Zhang’s supervision of Gipsy’s retrofitting. The new tech should be familiar,” Marshal Kim raises his eyebrows, nodding in Sehun’s direction. “Especially to you.”

The marshal pauses. “Actually, scratch that -- it’ll be a more effective use of your time to perform the repairs for damage from the last fight instead. Technician Zhang should be able to balance his own duties, and Gipsy Valor needs all the maintenance hands she can get.”

Sehun frowns a little, tilting his head, but Marshal Kim has already moved onto the next team before Sehun can get a word in edgewise.

“Psycho, you’ll call the rest of the Shatterdomes to look for a new core; remember, it has to be from a 2023 Mark-3, not anything newer…”

Marshal Kim’s voice fades into the background as you follow Sehun out of the tiny room to Gipsy Valor’s bay.

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

One week later

There’s a kind of peace and calm that comes with maintenance work, you think. The world -- especially this high-anxiety one -- falls away completely, then it’s just you, your tools, and the task in front of you.

Today you hang from precarious wires, booted fleet planted on Gipsy Valor as you ‘sit’ mid-air with a welding tool in gloved hands. A thick, protective helmet protects your face from flying embers, but it’s so damn warm underneath that you’ve compromised your safety somewhat by tying your PPDC-mandated pilot’s jacket around your waist instead.

Even with just a tank top leaving your shoulders bare, it’s still too warm. You take a peek over at

A voice rings out beneath you both. You turn, holding onto your wires and leaning back to twist your torso around. Both you and Sehun flip your protective visors up over your heads. You squint, lifting one thickly gloved hand to block the glare from the overhead lights. Sehun pushes off of Gipsy Valor’s chest plates and swings over to you -- he reaches behind you to shut off the valve of your soldering iron.

You lift grateful eyes to Sehun, who nods briefly in affirmation before shifting his gaze to the voice below.

From this vantage point, Technician Zhang looks like a pair of shoulders, a head, a hand held over his brows, and nothing else. He tucks a clipboard beneath his arm, pressing it close to his torso, then lifts his hands to his mouth.

“Can you guys spare a moment? I’ve been running some models and I don’t…. I think something’s up.”

You exchange a worried look with Sehun. Technician Zhang is almost always chilled out -- in his own way, of course -- so it’s incredibly rare to hear even the slightest fear in his voice.

“Yep,” Sehun calls down quickly, ripping off a glove to better grasp the pulley system on wires. The mechanical zipping sound rings out as he deftly drops down to the floor a few stories below, and you immediately follow suit.

You unclip your wires, stepping out of the harness and tugging on it lightly to send it back up to the top of the pulley.

“What happened?” You ask, but Technician Zhang only gives you a grim, tight-lipped look and beckons for you both to follow him.

Sehun shrugs, pulling his jacket over his arms and jogging easily after the senior ex-pilot.

------

The elevator doors open to a research lab in chaos. Technician Zhang surges forward, totally unbothered, but you’re first to admit that you’ve never seen your typically calm-and-collected scientists in such pandemonium.

Crowds like this only gather when the entire Shatterdome watches a fight with bated breath -- it’s rare to see this kind of activity in between attacks.

It’s Sehun who cleaves a path behind Technician Zhang to his frontmost console. It helps, truly, to keep you from being unnecessarily jostled, and you find yourself suddenly grateful for his height and broad-shouldered obstacle removal. You pull up beside him, squeezing in as close as you can to avoid bumping into a harried researcher, but you try your best to not press yourself against Sehun’s lean frame.

But you can’t see the holoscreen, not from where you stand. As if attuned to your woes, Sehun wordlessly lifts up a long arm to carve out space for you, before grasping your shoulders and squeezing behind you. His body cages yours against the back of Technician Zhang’s chair, and as he leans his weight against the console with one hand, you find yourself hyper-aware of his warmth all around you.

You clear your throat, eyes forward at last. Then you ingest the data projected in three-dimensional blue-red-green in front of you.

Sehun leans in closer, thick brows deeply furrowed. You imperceptibly shift towards Technician Zhang -- anything to avoid the electricity radiating from your co-pilot’s lanky frame -- and you ignore the way Technician Zhang’s office chair cuts into your hip.

“Is that… the breach?” Sehun asks, tilting his head and reaching into the projection. He pulls at the air with his fingers, expanding the hologram and zooming into a section of the diagram.

Technician Zhang swivels a few inches in his chair, forcing you to back away lest you lose circulation in your hip. You freeze, holding yourself tightly in the little space between Sehun and the scientist.

“Yes,” Technician Zhang murmurs. “If the readings are right, then there’s a way to close the breach once and for all.”

Sehun’s sharp eyes scan the calculations running to the side of the breach diagram. He rotates his wrist, spinning the breach simulation to face you. Then he lifts up both hands, palms together as if in prayer, and inserts his hands into the seam. Separating his palms by a few inches, Sehun opens the breach and the diagram expands to display a tunnel-like channel behind the Marianas Trench’ gaping juncture. Technician Zhang fiddles with a few toggles, and the view speeds through the channel before exiting to an opening on the other end.

“There’s more than just a bio-portal,” Sehun’s voice drops to a low, musing whisper. “There’s a literal shaft between two worlds.”

“Mmhm. And here,” Technician Zhang moves the image back to the center of the tunnel, pointing at the narrowest section. “The ‘throat,’ as I’m calling it, because it’s alive in most senses of the word, is the most fragile here -- this is the centerpoint between the two universes. Either end of the throat has a valve, an epiglottis of sorts, that separates each world from the throat itself. But at the narrowest point, the readings have totally gone haywire -- everything is unstable there, where atoms from our universe meet with theirs. It’s at this point where the Kaiju seem to come to life from their dormant forms in their world.”

Engrossed and focused, you lean in to squint at the various charts and graphs to the side, describing the activity at the breaking point.

“Can we send in some kind of gas cloud of organic material, something that would interfere with the atomic makeup of their universe -- effectively blocking the throat there?”

“Maybe,” Technician Zhang ponders. He clicks away at the keyboard, inputting a variety of data and rerunning the models. “But I’ve tried that, and I think that it’s more likely for that matter to be repurposed in ways we can’t imagine.”

A hand brushes against your shoulderblades, and you jump before leaning into the touch against your better instincts. You glance up at Sehun, but his gaze is somewhere behind you. You turn, only to see Marshal Kim crouching over you, and you realize whose hand is on you. Your spine straightens immediately, stiffening out of respect and military deference, but Marshal Kim absently waves your formality away as he stares at the display.

“I think she’s onto something, though,” Sehun frowns, expanding one of the charts. “If the throat is weakest there, we might be able to trigger a collapse.”

You shift closer to him, your body moving for you. It’s your term to expand the throat, pinching and pulling at the air around the hologram. Your eyes flick to the chart Sehun pulls up, and then it hits you.

“Not biomaterial, then,” you correct yourself. “Heat. Explosives. We could take down a bomb and detonate it there; if the data on the Kaiju universe is correct, it will respond the same way our half of the throat will -- and dissolve.”

Fingers flying on the keyboard, Technician Zhang updates his input and reruns the model. “I had an inkling that it might work,” he murmurs, eyes completely focused on the numbers. “But I wanted to see if the two highest K-science exam scorers I personally know from our ragtag collection of pilots would agree with me. Pilots bring different perspectives in, and if you’re suggesting it, it might actually be feasible.”

You blink, whipping your head around to look at Sehun. “You? You scored ninety-nine points on the K-science tests?”

Sehun blinks back, equally as shocked. But his face quickly slides into a smirk as he rests his backside on the console and crosses his arms in confident pride. “One hundred,” he nearly purrs. “But I didn’t want to be a researcher, so Junmyeon-hyung let me become a pilot instead.”

Your fist half-heartedly punches into Sehun’s shoulder before your mind can register your reaction. “You? A perfect K-science score? I don’t believe that; it has to be a lie.”

“Oh? You didn’t pay enough attention in the drift, then, we can go grab a sim unit and go through cadet memories, if you want.” He laughs, turning his torso to look back at the model.

“Or you could go grab a room,” Marshal Kim mutters under his breath, but you barely catch it above the din of scientists behind you before the marshal looks curiously between you and Sehun.

He straightens up, brushing at the front of his suit-jacket. “As troublesome as you are as co-pilots, at least you’re as good of a match as the data suggested. Yixing, let’s get some numbers on what kind of explosives we should use, and how much of it. If we try something like this, we’ll only get one shot at it, and we need to know that it’ll work.”

Technician Zhang scoots his chair forward and traps himself against the console. He beckons for a small, clamoring army of scientists to come towards him, and they surge forward as one lab-coated unit. The speed of their movement startles you and the sudden influx of people in this section of the room is suffocating. But the impact from their bodies never comes -- nobody shoves you aside. A large plane of darkness passes before your eyes, and you quickly realize that you’re staring at a Gipsy Valor pilot’s jacket.

A hand grabs at your elbow, and you’re ushered out of the chaos.

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

Despite your K-science scores, the scientists don’t particularly want you or Sehun around to meddle in their affairs -- sure, you brought your Ranger’s perspective to the table, but with a new strategy to organize, they want you out out out, out of their way so they are free to do their thing.

Not that you mind -- your textbook knowledge about Kaiju biology may be near-perfect (damn Sehun and his perfect score), but you’re not a K-scientist by trade. Best to leave it to the professionals. In the electric quiet that follows in the days after the detonation strategy suggestion, you find yourself back amidst Gipsy Valor’s open wires and dented metal.  You lie on the floor of the comm pod now, head and shoulders leaning over the edge of the foot gear opening. Your fingers grasp at the sharp lip of the metal, and with one hand wrapped around a truly manual wrench, you navigate through the complicated system of cogs and wheels to tighten and clean any dirtied nuts or bolts.

Sehun stands at the other edge, biting on his bottom lip as he almost-effortlessly tightens screws on his lifted harness.

Today has been a long day, not because there’s a lot of intense work to do but because the comm-pod alone is made of thousands of tiny moving parts. There are countless objects to check and re-check, and it’s easier to fall into a silent rhythm than to sit and chat as is possible with welding tasks.

You shift into a seated position when your back starts to cramp up, using your hands to hoist yourself up. Feet dangling over the edge of the exposed gear unit, you flop backwards onto the cold metal with a loud sigh of exhaustion.

An amiable scoff floats over to you from the other side of the cabin, and you just-barely lift your head to look at Sehun down the length of your nose.

“What?” You challenge, reaching around blindly for your wrench so you can wave it in accusation.

“Nothing,” he muses lightly. “If you’re tired from just the foot gear nuts, you’re in for a ride, honey.”

The suspiciously sarcastic ‘honey’ makes you roll your eyes and drop your head back to the metal.

“I know from Johnny’s letters -- and now memories -- that you constantly ed about maintenance work. Don’t you start with me.”

He chuckles then, a genuine laugh leaving his lips. He grips the screwdriver, twisting his torso to give this screw one final bit of extra torque, then he tosses his tool aside as well. Sehun folds himself into a seated position across from you, one leg dangled over the edge and the other folded and tucked against his body. He rests one elbow on his knee, gazing up and around the legendary Jaeger’s comm-pod. His eyes stray everywhere else except on your form.

Minutes of silence pass. You hear his breathing and presume he hears yours. Outside, construction staff go about their business, metal clanging and muffled voices hollering to each other. You don’t know how you got to the point where you didn’t need words with Sehun. Maybe you’d just given up, defeated, and decided not to fight him anymore. It was easier to cooperate, certainly, even if volumes of unspoken topics still filled the air between you.

It surprises you, then, when Sehun is the first to address it. But it’s not his initiative that unsettles you -- rather, it’s that you’ve come to expect it. You’ve come to learn that Sehun, despite all the hiding he did before, is quite an open person with much to say. What surprises you is that you are unfazed by the changes; that his interactions with you feel not only natural, but right.

“Do you hate me for hiding it?” Sehun’s voice comes out timidly. “Or for pushing you aside?”

It doesn’t take any sleuthing to figure out what Sehun means by ‘it.’ You’ve had an elephant in every room you shared w