#kawato

The only train to Izumo Taisha is operated by private company Ichibata Dentetsu, or Bataden. Twas not always thus, as the JNR had a short 7 km branch line from Izumo-shi to Taisha until 1990. It was served by direct expresses from Nagoya and Kanazawa (11-hour day express Taisha) and night expresses from Ôsaka (Daisen).

“Shit, shit! Something’s out of alignment!”

Poppy’s voice cuts through the cacophony of alerts and alarms surrounding Jackal and Anndra in the test deck. Jackal can feel the drift skipping, faltering like an arrythmia, and Anndra’s eyes are flicking around the room, seeing something that’s not there. He’s all the way down the RABIT-hole, whatever memory he’s trapped in glitching over their link in fits and starts, and the technicians are yelling orders and the machinery is just too fucking loud, and-

“Kawato! Kawato, don’t you fucking dare follow him down!” and

                                                         “Oh, Christ, Sidhe’s chased the RABIT!” and

           “Get Sidhe out before-“ and

Silence. The drift closing over their head like cold, cold water. They’ve slipped- gone too far-

                                Fallen back into the ocean

                                                                                                Of two minds

                                         “Máthair! Mama! Where are you?”

The water’s blue. It’s so beautiful.  

“Áthair, please!”                          

                                                                            Down and down and down.

                  “Baba!”

 Jackal’s eyes snap open to utter devastation in a city- shit. This is Sydney. How it used to look, rather: the buildings destroyed in Ventress’ attack haven’t been rebuilt. Which means-

A young family rush past them, the mother carrying a child maybe six, seven years old, their face tucked firmly in her neck. The father is carrying a briefcase marked ‘Kaiju Prep’, running alongside the woman and child, curses in a thick Glaswegian accent. The kid raises their head to look around, aiming a teary thousand-yard stare straight through Jackal, and- and he’s Anndra-

“Hey! Give that back, baba, I swear I’ll-“

                                                              Chasing, laughter around the table-     Margo holds a camera-                                     

                                                     -door slams

                                                                                    “-you have no fucking way of knowing how I feel!”

They shake it off, spin, knowing what Anndra’s seeing. It’s one of the only clear memories he’s spoken about from this day, and sure enough, Ventress’ sickly white, reptilian form clambers around the skyscraper at the end of the street. The kaiju roars, the horrible, wailing sound Jackal remembers so vividly. Anndra cries in fear and clings closer to his mother as his parents run harder. Jackal starts to run, too, trying to catch them up, but they won’t get there fast enough, here in this memory or with Lockup in real time, the PPDC directors hemming and hawing over whether they could justify a Mark 2 deployment over a trusty fucking nuke for a precious hour before Marshal Windu ordered it anyway, his last act as Marshal before the bureaucratic assholes fired him.

Ventress is leaping from building to building, the rubble falling like rain around the family now. Anndra’s mother shifts her grip to protect his neck, his father holds the briefcase over the kid’s head. Anndra’s audibly crying, now, and Jackal’s heart is torn into by the knowledge that he lives, they keep him alive like they are trying so desperately to do but neither of them will live to know it-

Anndra’s mother trips suddenly, and he goes tumbling from her arms just in time to roll free of the rubble that falls on her, pinning her lower body. She cries out, and Jackal winces, the spike of fear and pain from Anndra rushing through them as the father wheels around to try to help.

“No! No, Peter, get Anndra, he-“ she muffles a sound of pain- “you need to go!”

“Mae, we’re all getting out of this, I promi-“

“It’s right there, Peter!” Anndra’s mother- Mae- cries, as Ventress roars from somewhere above their heads. “You need to run!”

Peter looks around, then kneels to grab Anndra’s shoulders. He presses the briefcase into the boy’s arms.

“You need to take this, and get to a safe place as fast as you can, okay? Anndra, can you get to a safe place?”

Anndra nods, once weakly, then again with determination as he answers, “Yes.”

“Great,” Peter says, a tear beginning to cut a track through the dust on his cheek, “I’m so proud of you, kiddo. We both are, and we’ll be just behind you, I promise. Head to the playpark, alright? We’ll find you there. Now go, go!”

Anndra takes off, running around the rubble, looking back only once to where his father’s trying desperately to shift the rubble off of his mother’s legs before he turns the corner of a side-street, and they disappear out of view. Jackal sends a silent apology the Sidhe’s way as he follows their son, just before Ventress screams again and the whole building above them goes crumbling down. Anndra keeps running, even though the tears that are definitely clouding his eyes keep coming, he picks up speed, clutching the briefcase desperately to his chest. Ventress’ roars follow them, fading louder and softer as Anndra corners the back-alleys and side roads of Sydney.

Anndra stops suddenly, breathing hard, at the end of an alley looking into a dilapidated playground covered in dust, but miraculously intact in a skeletonized field of buildings and cars, and Jackal nearly falls over him. They kneel, painfully aware of how they’re mirroring Anndra’s father as they rest a hand on his shoulder, searching panicked eyes that just don’t see them.

“Anndra, kid, listen to me. This is a memory, you’ve chased the RABIT,” they tell him, and his appearance flickers, tattoos appearing and disappearing, his hair suddenly longer, then not. “Come back to me, now. There you go, come on, you can do-“

Ventress leaps over their heads, and Anndra screams, scrambling back against the wall with the briefcase clamped firmly down over his head. The Kaiju roars, and it almost sounds like she’s laughing as she crushes the playground under one huge, scaly foot. She leans down until she’s at eye height with the alley’s entrance, growling low as she fixes her gaze on the boy trying desperately to make himself smaller. She rears back on two legs, and Jackal remembers this part- Bubblegum Talon launches straight into her, neon pink and purple armour impacting on hard scale as they drive her straight into the ground.

“Hey!” calls Lockup, through the PA speakers he bribed the engineers to install as they fire the plasmacaster into her arm. “Leave the kid alone!”

The kid in question is watching, eyes wide and sparkling as Talon and Ventress fight, ducking when the Kaiju’s tail whips over the building above him as the Jaeger tosses her a good few blocks.

“Hey, kid!” Jackal’s own voice comes through the speakers now, “stay here! We’ll come back for you as soon as we kick this Kaiju’s Ventr-ass!”

On the ground, Anndra giggles as Talon stomps after the kaiju, his eyes never leaving the Conn-pod until the Jaeger disappears behind a miraculously still-standing skyscraper.

“Ventr-ass…” he whispers to himself, and the little smile he makes Jackal feels themself echo.

“Hey,” they say, reaching out to touch the side of Anndra’s arm, repeating what they told him all that time ago. His eyes snap to theirs. “You’re safe. You can let go, now.”

The memory falters, halts, burns bright, aquamarine blue, and they’re falling in reverse out of the water of the drift back into

                                                        Bright lights and loud noise and something dripping out their nose, and shit, that’s blood. They look over to Anndra, who’s wiping his own nosebleed away with the back of his hand, and Jackal’s suddenly aware of the tear-tracks running down both their faces. They tear the headgear off, breathing like they ran a marathon, as Poppy’s voice comes over the speaker.

“Test failed. Pilot life signs adequate, Medical personnel alerted. Alright down there?”

“Ugh,” says Anndra. “We’re alive. I’m sorry about that.”

“Jesus Christ,” groans Fox from the observation box. “Get the first aid down there, then I want to see these two in my office.”