Braids, Lorikeets, and Baby Girls

(Originally posted here.)
Short fusion fics between Athene Noctua and Kurago 'verses.
==Meta==
Notes: artificiallifecreator and rorykurago have difficulty containing their Pacific Rim feels. And their Ranger feels. And their Rangers with babies and bad habits feels.
==Naming of Solar Prophet==
Please see "Naming of Solar Prophet". 
==Sticky==
In which Dana Collier and Chuck Darling commence passive-aggressively leaving sticky notes around the Shatterdome to mark their territory (and get mutually agitated when third parties attempt to Sort Out Their Problems.)
Hong Kong, July 2016
. 
Dana can see one person in DriftSci; she knocks on the open door. 
The person - thigh-length black braid and electric green headphones - standing by a desk doesn't acknowledge. 
"Doctor Dao sent me,” Dana offers. “I have the candidate tests?"
Braid raps their knuckles on an adjacent desk, storms to a bookcase. 
"Thanks." Dana enters, deposits the exams on a reasonably flat (clear) spot. "Doc say when she’d be back?”
Braid slams down a stack of binders. 
“Should I leave a note...?”
Braid keeps working. 
“Want to help me out and point out a sticky pad?”
Braid flicks a wrist across the room. 
“Thanks.” Dana finds a couple pens and a very-used stack of blue stickies next to a worn sofa. She scribbles, returns to the pile.
Braid strides to another work station. 
“Hey, uh,” starts Dana. “You mind if I hang around here for a bit? My sister’s kind of commandeered our quarters; found herself a new tech. He’s flexy, apparently.” 
Braid ignores her. 
“I'll be quiet? Over here? Out of your way? By the couch?”
Braid huffs. “You talk a lot.” Aussie. Bit of a northeast drawl mixed up with some other stuff.
“Only when folks can’t muster up a yes/no/bugger off,” Dana replies flatly. “Look, I’ll shut up.”
Braid shunts a file aside harder than needed to find the one beneath. “Yeah, fine, whatever.”
“Thanks.” Dana returns to the couch and sags down. 
She keeps her mouth shut. Drifts off at some point running through combat PACE plans. When she wakes up the lab is empty and there’s a sticky note on her forehead.
-If you’re going to snore in here, next time bring cocoa.-
“Right. Sorry.” Scrunching it up, she scrubs a hand over her face and gets up. Pitches the ball across the room into a wastepaper basket. She returns to the sticky pad and draws a simple flower before she leaves.
.
That note is stuck to the door of their quarters when the twins get back from dinner. In tidy print around the edge is a note:
-And don’t waste DriftSci resources.-
==Soft Blankets==
rorykurago: uuugh just READING the next bits of Kurago is a kick in the guts
rorykurago: My poor babies..
shmoo92: >holds Colliers and Rory close with soft blankets in the meantime<
rorykurago: *reaches out very carefully to tuck them tighter around Tahnee* *slowly retracts her hand at the growl*
.
Miyahira and her tablet-file stroll by the huddled personnel, checking things off every few steps.
Collier, Dana and Tahnee, both with severely moderate symptoms, shiver together a few soft blankets. 
Miyahira frowns, takes her thermometer from her apron, flicks on a new cap. "Tahnee?" 
Left Twin grunts. 
"I'm taking your temperature." 
Twin grunts. 
Miyahira pokes it in Twin's ear.
One two three four five--
Beeep
Miyahira checks the reading. "Dana?" 
Right twin grunts. 
Miyahira flicks off the old cap, puts on a new one. "I'm taking your temperature." 
"Sure, keep sticking things in my ear. I love that on a first date."
"I prefer sleeping with people who can stand up on their own--" Miyahira sticks it in Twin's ear. "There's this great closet near room 3-A. If you're interested, though--"
Right Twin glowers. 
Miyahira returns the thermometer to her apron pocket, reaches out very carefully to tuck blankets tighter around Left Twin--
Left Twin growls. 
"Okay then." Miyahira sloooowly retracts her hand. "I'll leave you guys to it."
==Lorikeets and Baby Girls==
(Please see also "Infant-sized Shuttershades".)
Notes: In which the eponymous lorikeets appear.
Hong Kong, August, 2016
.
Dana and Tahnee are en route out of the Shatterdome.
Dana and Tahnee are en route out of the Shatterdome with two daypasses, 400HKD and a nappy bag.
Dana and Tahnee are en route out of the Shatterdome with two daypasses, 400HKD, a nappy bag, and the marshal's baby daughter, and really it's almost too much like hard work; they nearly turn back at the sentries' quizzical stares.
But they want a selfie on the Victoria Peak cable-car for the envious folks back in Medowie, there's a botanical garden they haven't been to yet, and someone told them there are flamingos. Little ones.
A LOCCENT tech shoving Fei Yen at them with a nappy bag and a brusque "entertain her" is hardly a deterrent. (Or they assume it was 'entertain her'; it was Canto, and they've barely mastered 'where is the train station', but no one took her back.)
Tahnee loves the anklebiters; she gets the papoose (and the baby), and Dana hikes the tote bag up her shoulder and turns her broadest grin on anyone who steps in front of them.
...
Fei Yen is nonplussed by tiny flamingos. The twins are disappointed to learn this, but they move on anyway. The tamarins go over better, and the pygmy marmosets that twist their heads nearly 180 degrees around to look at her squintways better still. But the Colliers are drawn to something else. In an enclosure at a split of the path, mixed in with pigeons and mynahs, are Rainbow lorikeets.
Fei Yen claps her hands.
"Ding ding ding, we have a winner," Tahnee murmurs.
Dana, sizing her up to get sister and baby and birds all in one photo, just smiles. "Say vegemite," she teases.
"No."
Tahnee's sticking out her tongue in the photo. Fei Yen is too, one hand clenched in Tahnee's uniform collar as she leans toward the cage.
"Es'cuse me?" Thick accent, but clear.
They turn in unison. A middle-aged Chinese man stands by the next cage, a girl at his side staring at the twins (and their passenger); a boy on his other side is more interested in the birds. The girl looks about nine; the boy, six.
The man waggles his camera at shoulder height. "You are Rangers, yes?" He nods to Dana's shirt. The snuggy hides the PPDC insignia on Tahnee, but on Dana it shows bright and clear.
—a lesson in grabbing 'dome inventory for excursions — Tahnee's mind nudges into Dana's, an odd pastiche of concepts translating like pictograms. Dana shakes off the image of a lyrebird in a bomber jacket and sends back Graduation Day: flashing cameras and soundbite news interviews.
How stacked are the odds, really? There's a lot of Westerners in Hong Kong (more now) but identical twins with shorn hair and PPDC patches?
They smile at the man. "Yes, we are." (Careful to speak properly. Careful not to slur their words.)
"You mind if I take photo? My daughter, she is big fan of Jaegers."
The women look at each other, look at Fei Yen, look at the man's daughter—
She looks about to burst or cry.
—and smile. "Sure." (Elongating the vowels this time so it comes out shaaaw, because there are expectations, and they don't mind playing up the Aussie.) "With your daughter?"
The girl edges closer to bursting. Her fingers twist in the turned-up hem of her shorts.
"Uh," he holds up a finger. "One with her, one all together?"
The twins nod. The girl's face is turning red. (Dana remembers Tahnee turning that red the first time she asked someone out; she doesn't grunt in pain when Tahnee elbows her. Fei Yen makes a quizzical sound at the sharp movement.)
"Sure mate," Tahnee says smoothly. "We can do that easy. Just excuse our passenger; we're babysitting."
"Nesting, you mean," Dana mutters as the girl approaches. Ignoring Tahnee's indignant sound, Dana smiles. "Hi. Wǒ shì Dana."
Fei Yen looks at her funny.
Whatever the girl thinks of Dana's pronunciation (terrible), she's too polite to say. (Her nose wrinkles a little.) Shyly she says, "My name is Li Hua," in English. She hurries to add, "but in class, my name is April."
Tahnee bounces Fei Yen, who isn't thinking much of all this standing around and talking when there are birds to admire, and says "Li Hua is lovely."
Dana adds, "That's the Marshal's name, you know. " Li Hua nods: she knows. Of course she knows.
Tahnee clears her throat. "Do you want to stand beside us or—"
Nobody stands between them; it's not a point of contention, just... nobody does. There's an awkwardness, then, to parting when Li Hua wedges herself between them, splitting her face with a beam, and throws her arms around their waists. It's the closest non-family non-sparring-partners have been since... They push away the swell of salty cold and smile for the camera 'Richard' repositions at arm's length to get all five of them into a squished selfie. A quizzical lorikeet lands on the closest side of the cage to investigate, photobombing.
Li Hua takes the opportunity to reveal her extensive knowledge of exotic birds. "—and they're from Australia," she says finishes breathlessly, pointing to the bird on the tiny screen, "like you, yes?"
Dana grins, because "Yeah, kinda, although we're inlanders; they're coastal—like Jaegers", but Tahnee's thinking of something else. She pulls a face for the last photo—
"A silly one! Please?" chirrups Li Hua.
Little brother doesn't care about any of this; they aren't Horizon Brave, or the Weis, so— Dana quietly imparts to Richard that Horizon Brave will probably-but-he-didn't-hear-it-from-them be in Kowloon tomorrow afternoon for a community talk on kaiju blue; left hemisphere's a marine biology hobbyist. Richard's handshake is heartfelt.
Both children chatter at their dad like marmosets as the family departs.
The twins watch them leave. The interaction was invigorating, but Fei Yen's making cranky noises and something's tugging at Tahnee's heartstrings.
While Dana's scoping out a place to get Fei Yen cooled down and fed, Tahnee looks back at the cage. Her thoughts ghost through Dana's mind: lorikeets, bright colours, dusty colours, home—
She can't fault Fei Yen's choice (although lorikeets are loud and raucous and honestly proof that no animal can be pretty and sound pretty, that's just greedy) but watching them has nudged something in her and it stings at the disturbance. A powerful wave of homesickness washes through the twins' connection. Close on its heels is a pang of loss.
When she looks back to Dana and starts down the path her eyes are a little too bright. 
... 
They buy a fruit juice and coconut water from a vendor near the entrance and sit on the grass to share them while Fei Yen has a bottle of her own. (Juice for Dana, coconut water for Tahnee, though they sip at both.)
...
By the time Fei Yen's finished her bottle and had a micronap on the grass, the shadow's drifted away from Tahnee and they're ready to go wandering again. They owe some people a selfie on the Peak, and some other people things from the various markets.
Onward!
...
It ends with a screaming baby, Hannibal Chau's minions smugly soothing her when stressed out twins fail, and three pots of tea they can't pay for in a teahouse with black-lights beside the door, but it starts well enough.
==Cimanon Rolls==
(Colliers & Chuck Darling)
Date/Timing: 2016 August 
Setting: the Madhouse, HK 
Summary: In which unusually-drunk Australians discover a sober Australian and adopt it, in a feat they will be embarrassed by for months.
Chuck is not surprised to find drunk Australians multiplying in her vicinity; it's eleven at night, and drunk Australians seem to gravitate toward her when she least wants like she puts out some kind of Aussie Aussie Aussie shortwave.
"Taaahnee! It's Chalk-Chark—its our friend!" Dana drags Tahnee into the Rec. At least Chuck guesses that's Dana. Bloody identical twins. (The idea to tag their ears like cows drifts through Chuck's mind, but she files it away. Carefully. For later reference, maybe.)
Tahnee giggles.
"Chhhuck!" Dana flops across Chuck's lap. "Ya know your name means 'puke' right? How'd that happen?"
Chuck eases her work loose. "Americans. And I threw up on someone." The twins seemed normal when they were sober.
"Oh."
Tahnee sprawls across a chair. "Na-na, maybe she don' wanna talk about it."
Dana wiggles over, worms off Chuck onto the other side of the couch. An overly complicated rearrangement of limbs later, she kneels and leans against Chuck. "Dude, your hair's so puuurty."
Chuck flips a page. "Don't call me 'dude', please."
"Na-na," says Tahnee wearily. She's flagging a lot quicker than Dana. Her cheeks are alcohol red and her eyes are half-closed as she contemplates the movements required to fetch the vid-screen remote. "I will sic Uncle Wal on you. See if I don't."
Dana pulls back. Pouts a little.
(Drunk pout. Exaggerated. Puppyish? Chuck reconsiders tagging them. Or microchipping maybe.)
"S'rry," Dana mumbles. Then: "Kin I touch it?"
"Sure." Chuck tries vainly to read the stapled sheets.
Dana perks up. Runs her hands along Chuck's braid.
"Soooo prrretty."
"Thank you."
"Hey Tahn, waddya reckon the tens'le strength on a braid this thick'd be?"
"Don't know. Ask Chief." If Tahnee sinks lower into the armchair, they'll have to get a digger in to excavate.
" 'cause," Dana says, "ninjas us'ta make like ropes out of hair for climbin' and shit, cause it's so light and it folds up so small? 'n—hey! 'Trauma-catalysed CORO mutation'? What'cha reading?"
"Doctor Lightcap's hypothesis on gestalt identity theory. I don't agree with all—" Dana's eyes, half the size of her head, grow wider. "—of it—-"
"Tahn, did you hear that?"
"I'm hereee."
"She speaks SCIENCE!"
The armchair giggles.
"Sure—"
"TOO PRECIOUS FOR THIS WOOOOORLD!!!!!!!!"
Chuck finds herself in an odd headlock which she supposes may be a hug.
"My precious cimanon roll!" Dana cries, stroking Chuck's hair. "Precious, icing cimanon roll!" Cradles Chuck's head, rocking back and forth. "Protec' you, 'n keep you, 'n rough up boards t' ge' you funding—" Hums, presses the side of her to Chuck's crown. "And you shm—you sm—your scent issss preeetty!" Buries her face in Chuck's hair.
Chuck can't seem to escape drunk Rangers but she can escape head locks...
Dana's fingers are all over Chuck's jaw and squishing her cheeks. "Jus right for a precious cimanon roll."
But that would involve damaging said drunk Rangers. If something of the like came up in self-defense class, it may actually be useful.
"Such a precious cimanon roll," Dana croons, petting Chuck's hair. "Jus' wanna protec' you 'n lick you 'n pull out your insides. Like your brain." Petting continues. "Mos' amaaazing brain—" More petting. "I jus wanna open it up an... look 'nside..."
Tahnee pours out of the armchair laughing herself hypoxic, and Chuck's eyebrow twitches. 
This. Ends. Now. 
She leans into the 'hug'. "Daana?" 
"Yeaaa?" 
Tahnee: still laughing. 
"You like my hair, ay?" 
Dana melts against Chuck. "I /love your hair." Resumes stroking. "So shiny. So softy. So hair--"
"D'you wanna hold my braid?" 
Dana leans back, beams. "I can hold your braid?" 
"You bet!" Chuck plasters on the biggest smile she can. 
Dana trills, slithers off, and wraps herself around Chuck's braid. 
Chuck eases off the couch, kneels beside Tahnee. "Heeeey."
Tahnee laughs herself onto her front. 
Chuck sighs, looks heavenward. 
Dana coos. 
"Nothing for it." Chuck stretches her arms over her head. 
Dana's now wearing Chuck's braid like a scarf. 
Chuck tugs her closer--
Dana giggles, flops over. 
Chuck worms her arms under Tahnee, rolls her over one shoulder, twists, gets her braid over her other shoulder, and finishes the firefighter's carry. "Hey, Danaaa?" 
Dana hums. 
"You wanna keep holding my hair?" 
"Really?" 
"Really really! You just hafta walk a bit." 
"I get to hold your your hair?" 
"Yes, you do!" 
Dana squees--
Chuck's head snaps back. 
"Are you ready?" 
"Aye, aye, Captain!" 
Tahnee erupts in a fresh round of giggles. 
Chuck pretends the 'thump' is Dana getting to her feet. 
A minute later, halfway to the residential zone of Mini 'Dome, Chuck realizes she has no idea where the twins’ve stashed their key; Tahnee’s still giggling into her neck and Dana’s humming to herself and swinging Chuck’s braid like a skipping rope (thank god she’s not trying to skip). 
Chuck does, however, know where she’s stashed her key. 
"Holding on, back there?" she asks. 
""Yup!""
Tahnee blows a raspberry.
There’s a slap of skin on skin; Tahnee jolts. Then another one. Then a snort. 
Chuck’s braid bounces off her back and an elbow digs into her shoulder, and then—
""Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac, all dressed in black black black—""
"Are you taking the piss?" Chuck demands, craning her neck back. 
They’re playing handclap games while she coddles them to bed. (From the sounds of it, they’re doing pretty well, too. Bloody twins.)
""We nev'r take th' piss wi' Miss Mary Mac,"" one twin intones eerily.
"Miss Mary Mac is very important," says the other.
Chuck’s leaving that question right the hell alone, digs for her key. 
Fingers brush Chuck’s lower back; Dana’s gotten bored and picked up her braid again. (Tahnee makes a disappointed noise.) She’s swinging it again.
"This isn't our room,"" scolds a twin. 
Chuck asks for patience, doesn't snap, "Then which one /is?" 
""Mm… Fourteen. Level 46, corridor C, second from th' end. Left side.""
An elevator ride later, Chuck rolls Tahnee off onto their step (doesn't drop her like a sack of potatoes; thinks about it). 
Tahnee lolls against the doorway, grinning. "Thanks, Fireman Sam."
Chuck turns to Dana. "Where’s the key?"
"Not sleepy."
"Liar," Tahnee mumbles.
"Tell me, or I won’t let you touch my hair anymore."
Dana clutches the end of Chuck’s braid to her chest like a wallaby with a treat, eyes huge. 
Chuck extends a hand. "Give."
"No." Jaw set mulishly. (Christ on a cracker, are they like this in the Pod?)
Tahnee rolls her eyes and then rolls herself. She collides full body with her twin. 
Wallaby is right: they grapple like intoxicated paddymelons. 
Chuck pulls her braid clear and waits for them to fall off the step. 
They don’t: Tahnee dives a hand down Dana’s jumper--
Dana squawks. 
The pawing subsides. Tahnee holds out a hand out to Chuck (and the key), cradling her twin's head against her neck. Dana’s eyes are closed, arms looped loosely around Tahnee's waist.
"Don’t fall asleep," Chuck grunts, turning to the door.
""Thought 's what w're here for,"" a twin mumbles.
""And don’t be a smartarse. ‘coulda left you in the Rec for Weis to draw on.""
There’s a shuddery noise. Chuck assumes all the terrible things they might have to ask Chinese techs to translate are filtering through their sodden brains.
The door opens with a metallic scrape. She turns back. "Right—" 
They're legitimately asleep standing up, curled around each other like sweetpea vines. 
"Oi, quit that!"
They grumble as she pilots them into their room. Bunk beds. What is it with Rangers and bunk beds? Roughly, she dumps both upright on the bottom bunk; slaps their faces lightly to wake them up. Shoves bottle of water she scavenged from the desk into each’s hands. 
"Drink." She stands over them while they knock it back—admittedly, like champs. No fight this time. 
She gives up on a refill when Tahnee collapses into Dana and they domino onto the pillow. 
She doesn’t know whose bunk that is. Doesn’t care. (Bugger this for a lark; she’s supposed to BE a Ranger, not /babysitting Rangers.) They can sleep with their boots on for all she cares. Still: she rolls Tahnee off Dana so they’re lying side-by-side, positions one of Dana’s feet on the floor and then puts the paper bin from the desk beside that. 
They mumble in their sleep. When she turns back with refilled water bottles, their heads are rocked together. It’s almost cute except for the matching frowns. Based on what she heard this afternoon, either they’re lightweights or Scott Hansen is a puddle somewhere and Mimmi and Jauna are camped out in a hotel close to the bar. 
Tomorrow’s gonna be rough. (Funny for her. But rough.) She pulls the door closed behind her and goes to retrieve the work she had to abandon.
==It's On==
(Weis, Colliers, Fei Yen & Chuckles. And a Cat.)
Date/Timing: 2016 August
Setting: the Madhouse, HK, Hong Kong
Notes:
It's Chuck Hansen's fault.
Someone makes Fei Yen cry, and then it's ON between the Weis and the Colliers (who already fight over who gets to be the infant's mattress during naptime). 
.
Fei Yen's gleefully tearing pages out of his textbook, so Chuck pulls her away — maybe picks her up wrong, how's he supposed to know? Babies are weird — and she screams. 
The adults come running like she's a kaiju klaxon and there's Chuck standing by the coffee table holding Fei Yen by the armpits. (The book, face-down on the floor, is quietly forgotten.)
"Aw, Charlie—" starts one twin, rocking back on her heel; the other swoops in and lifts the anklebiter out of his hands. 
"She was ripping my book!"
Twin 2's bouncing the kid, making shushing noises (and isn't that typical: Chuck's the one getting shafted, someone else is getting the sympathy).
Twin 1 (standing left of Twin 2; Tahnee?) starts, "Kid—"
The cavalry storms in with a basketball under one arm.
Dana's eyes flick to Chuck.
Chuck's eyes flick to them; he doesn't swallow. Chuck is not afraid of Mako. However—
"Why is she crying?!"
—he's a little afraid of the Weis. (He'll never admit to it.)
"What'd you'd do?!"
Tahnee's shoulder angles in front of Dana. "Nothing!"
Dana looks at Chuck, at Chuck looking at the Weis, bounces Fei Yen and says straight on the heels of her twin, "Sometimes babies just cry."
Fei Yen squawks in her ear and grabs a fistful of shorn-short hair.
"Sure," scoffs Triplet 1 (longest head), "like you would know."
The gap between the groups shrinks.
"Why wouldn't we?" demands Tahnee. 
"We've known her longer!" 
"She's an infant!"
Triplet 2 (broadest jaw, face set to 'evil') shifts his weight, goes for Dana—
Tahnee sidesteps—
Triplet 2 snatches— 
Fei Yen howls.
But Dana's hands are up and the triplets retreat, Hu glaring now, package safely in arms.
Tahnee edges back but her lip's creeping up.
It's on.
" 'just cry'," Triplet 1 mimics as he and Cheung close ranks around Hu. "Mm, 'Pull the other one', isn't it?" 
"Aw, sod off, kids do just cry," Tahnee fires back.
"Yeah? You tell that to her amā," says Cheung.
Fei Yen screams, beating her tiny fists against Hu's chest.
"What's going on in here?" The actual adults have arrived: Kaori and Herc, Duc not far behind.
Chuck visibly shrinks, ears flaming 'here I am, me, I did it, it was my bad'.
Herc glances at him, frowning, but:
"Just a little light child abuse," Hu shoots, eyes narrowed at Dana and hand cradling Fei Yen's head protectively.
"Excuse me?"
"All right, enough," Kaori snaps. "You two—" (a jerk of her head at the Colliers) "—Staging Area Safety briefing, Kurago. Go."
"Yes, ma'am." They slink out in tandem. 
Fei Yen heaves a sob, wiggles into Hu.
"You three—"
(A defiant tilt to Jin's chin and Hu's fingers tightening on Fei Yen's chubby leg.) 
"—don't stir shit just for the sake of it."
Their jaws twitch mulishly, but Cheung nods a fraction of an inch. 
Fei Yen sniffles, burying her snotty nose in Hu's shoulder. (He doesn't seem to notice.) One hand clenches his collar; the other flops against his shoulder, curled in a fist around a scrunched-up bit of paper.
Eyeing it, Herc says, "Who was supposed to be watching her?"
"That would be me, Ranger Hansen."
Duc and Kaori pivot, open a line of sight to the soft voice in the corridor: 
Feng, a little shame-faced. He has a puff of grey fur gathered in his arms. "We were playing and Maau escaped. I was away for only a minute."
"Kids for you." Herc offers a smile. "Think it's time tyke went back to her mum, hey." 
"Yes, Sir." 
Maau leaps for Cheung, sticks claws-first to his shoulder. 
Feng demurely retrieves Fei Yen from Hu and carries her out, head down.
Herc pauses him just before the door, gently prying free the scrunched-up paper.
Fei Yen squalls again.
"Hey, now," he says gently, nudging her fingers off one by one, "none of that."
She glowers into Feng's neck. 
Herc squeezes his shoulder and sends them on their way.
The triplets exchange looks (then eye Herc and his best Flight Sergeant face) and troop after Feng, Hu cuddling Maau (not an equal trade-off, but the cat'll do). They shoot a suspicious look back at Chuck like they know something's fishy before Kaori shoos them down the hall. Duc makes noises about taking them on in the court for the honour of a dessert and wanders after, satisfied the fuss is over for now.
"All right," says Herc when the footsteps stop echoing. "What happened?"
"She ripped my book," Chuck says defensively, thrusting the assaulted text onto the table right-side up. "Look, it's ruined now! It's not even mine, it's Chief's, and he's never gonna let me borrow stuff again 'cause of that stupid—!"
"Chuck."
Chuck subsides, flopping mutinously onto the couch with arms folded.
Herc crouches by the table, paper in hand. "Let's see what we can do, hey?"
"It's busted." Herc gives him a Look and Chuck turns his head aside, chewing on a cheek.
A rustle draws his eyes back. Herc's fitted the torn piece back in its gap—smoothed the pages, flattened the worst of the creases. Nothing to be done about the grubby little fingerprints, but that'll have to do. He catches Chuck watching sidelong, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. "See, sport? Little bit o' sticky and she'll be good as gold."
" 's not the same."
Herc sighs. "Nah, mate. It isn't. But we gotta do what we can with what we've got. So tonight, I reckon you oughta go thank the Colliers for taking that heat for you; guaranteed them and the Weis'll be getting into it now. Chief's got kids of his own; you tell 'im what happened, he'll understand. Meantime, let's go find that sticky tape, yeah?"
==Mushu==
Please see "Mushu and Gold Thread".
==They Come in Threes==
Please see "They Come in Threes". 
==Stamina==
(Joneses & Colliers)
Date/Timing: 2017 January
Setting: Madhouse and Hong Kong
Notes: The inimitable Jones brothers are the creations of Pickleplum.
"Endurance," Logan brags over breakfast, and Dana looks at her twin again as if needing a reminder who thought Australian Teammate Bonding by sharing a mess table was requisite. (Probably Chantell.) 
"'Straya," Tahnee mutters into her porridge. (Chantell beams at the four of them from the tray line.) 
Jackson's busy frowning at an Aboriginal woman sitting at the other end of the room beside Chuckles; no help from that quarter. Vulcan's other - the woman - already ate so no help there either. 
"No Jaeger'll fight longer," Logan drawls. 
Okay, yes: tactically (according to the brass), Vulcan Specter and Dingo Kurago are supposed to be complementary. Vulcan goes hard, Kurago goes fast. But: 
(Tahnee rolls her eyes around a deeper-than-necessary swig of water.) The 'complementary' bit has escaped Jones. Repeatedly. At length. 
Kurago's smaller; she was finished faster. On the other hand, she's also not technically an Australian Jaeger, Vulcan's pilots are older, and Vulcan is ostensibly the 'primary' in this one-two punch. Logan's decided that makes them the boss. So there's that. 
There's also this: 
They deadset disagree. On everything. (Mostly on Jaegers. And martial arts. And PT, and toast, and—) Generally, the Colliers sit back and quietly let everyone have their own opinion, but Logan makes a fight out of everything and if he calls them Skip and Sally and dog-whistles at them through the comms again during manoeuvres, he's gonna cark it. 
There will be blood. 
Today he's gnawing his favourite bone: Kurago's armour deficiency. 
"'traded strength for speed', yadda yadda," he parrots from the briefing. "It's bullshit. 'f ya can't take a hit, yer useless." 
"We don't get hit. That's the point," Dana says. "We're the fast one." 
"In the bloody sim." 
"Specs don't say we can't take a hit, Jones," Tahnee says, less patiently than Dana. "We're not made of glass." (Yes we are.) "Anyway that's the point of a Strike Group: strengths and weaknesses. That's why we're running Crossfire, shadowing each other." (Don't remind me.) 
"Well we know who the weakness is," Logan snorts around a mouthful of vegemite toast. Jackson huffs and sags his head lower, forking eggs into his mouth mechanically. (He's still glowering at the Aboriginal tech from under his fringe.) 
Tahnee could be fixing a glitch in her gauntlet; Dana could be consulting techs about metal stress. She toes Tahnee's boot. 
Logan's grinning like a goddamn sideshow clown; getting his strife fix. " 'm just sayin': Vulcan'll outmatch ya half-arsed tincan in a proper brawl any day."
"Don't need t' last through a brawl if we can make a quick kill." 
"Yeah but what are the odds of that?"
"What's your sim score, again?" Tahnee squints at him. Her hand's aching again and it's making her tetchy. Logan spreads his feet a little wider under the table and just grins.
"No endurance," he taunts as they get to their feet.
"Don't need it," Tahnee says, anti-freeze sweet. 
"Why take twice the time to do what we can do in half?" 
"Thought women liked stamina." 
The twins bare their teeth in something that might be smiles. "Nah. Results." 
"'Stamina' 's just what we tell blokes as can't get 'em."
Chantell pouts as they pass her on her way to a table. 
""Oi, my results are great,"" Logan shouts after them.
.
He whistles at them through the comms during manoeuvres. 
Kurago sprints past so fast the wash thumps a line of fishing boats into their mooring posts, and Vulcan doesn't catch up to her for an hour. 
("Tell you what, Mark III," Dana says when they come back into line, "you get into our Mark II motion rig, run for an hour, then tell us what your quads reckon." 
Vulcan flips them off with one robotic finger.)
==ROM==
(Chuck Darling & Dana Collier)
Date/Timing: 2018 Q1
Setting: Icebox, Fire Island, Alaska, USA
Notes:
"It's a simple experiment," Dr Lightcap says when Chuck throws a wooden alphabet block at her. "They do it with rats."
Dana, leaning back against the desk beside Chuck's swivel chair, thinks about computer science lessons and bad Drifts.
Nobody has a good time when the Drift is 80% trauma, 20% family.
Post Chuck's brain-melt trial with little Chuck, and Tahnee's car accident. Lightcap's trying to upload brain layouts into Chuck's head with varying degrees of failure, the last of which fried what was left of her depth perception so stairs are once again her worst enemy. When Dana moved to help, Chuck snapped at her to back off. Things have been... Alaskan between them. 
. 
Chuck's in the bar nursing two fingers of scotch. She doesn't normally drink (Lightcap'd probably pitch a fit if she knew Chuck was scrambling her brain more) but today was a shitshow, after that godawful 'Read-Only' Drift with—
"Hey," rasps Collier.
Chuck grinds her teeth. Half turns on the barstool. "Look, 'm sorry for perving on ya mum or whoever—"
"Godmother."
"—but have ya heard of 'personal space'?"
Collier looks rough as guts, haggard in the chop-and-change downlights of the pub. Her grin's flat as a tablet. "Yeah, but I haven't seen you in here before, 'n yer in my seat."
Chuck looks down. Stool's the wrong height. She looks at her glass; cut's wrong. Crushed ice instead of cubed.
Bugger. 
"Albatross is down the street," Collier's voice cuts low through her cussing. 
Chuck's walked into Collier's bloody haunt (only needed to stop twice), still hungover from the bloody Drift. Last time Lightcap gets to run a 'simple experiment' unquestioned. Chuck cusses under her breath again and goes to knock back her drink and stand in one. 
Collier's hand clamps on her shoulder. "Siddown," she mumbles. "Finish ya drink."
Chuck's about to break her pinky when the hand retracts; Collier's taken a stool beside her. (The right, Chuck notices. Cheeky bint.) "Oh, thankee kindly," Chuck says snidely. "Don't mind if I do."
"Piss off," Dana snaps, hard-eyed. "I just meant don't pull up stakes 'n go running off." 
—hard eyes, hard mouth, don't look at me like that, Wal I just—
The bartender deposits a scotch in front of Collier as Chuck shunts the echoes to the back of her mind. Read-Only. Pheh.
Collier's mouth twitches. She buries it in a heavy swig from the glass. 
The taste rolls over Chuck's tongue, smoky ('peaty', says Wirriri, spose'ta be anyway. Smells like bullshit t' me—). She's maybe being too harsh. It's not all Collier's fault it went pear-shaped.
"So," Chuck tries. "Godmother, ay?"
"Haven't spoken to her in ten years," Collier says after a moment. "She's kind of a..."
"Cunt?"
That startles a huff of laughter out. Not the word Collier was grasping for but exactly the one she meant. "Kind of."
They lapse into silence. People leave. A couple more arrive. (No PPDC; maybe she'll fight Collier for this place as a watering hole? The Joneses wouldn't find their way here; though she wouldn't trust 'em not to find it just t' get up her nose.) Three songs spin through the radio. Some country tune comes on
—where do you go when you're lonely, where do you go when you're blue, I'll follow you—
Chuck's surprised to find she doesn't hate it completely. "She looks like my auntie Cass," she says reflectively.
Collier squints at her in the bar mirror. "What?"
"Ya god-mum. She looks like my Auntie."
Collier snorts. "Unless your auntie ever threw live chickens in an argument, I doubt there's much resemblance."
"Wouldn't put anything past that shriveled-up old catfish."
That's almost a smile on Collier's face.
Chuck feels marginally less bad about plotting to murder her for the stairs incident.
==Like A Fox That Needs Shooting==
(Jones & Collier)
Logan knows what sore spots to poke at to get his jollies. After ten months pushing away over-zealous cadets at the Academy and a tenuous transition to J-Tech, Dana's are chafed red-raw.
===Meta===
Notes: Once again, the ill-advised Jones brothers are pickleplum's babbies. I'm just watching them for the weekend.
Related work: "Incendier"
.
Date/Timing: August 2018
Setting: The Shed, Sydney, NSW, Australia
===Text===
Dana's been back in Sydney half a month when Logan gets to her.
At the time—bruised (inside and out), no copilot, nursing a pinched finger because nobody said this J-Tech gig would be easy—she has zero endurance for Jones' particular brand of targeting. 
It's no excuse.
Stahl's bodily between them before she can fully react to the first verbal jab, quick with his earnest, "Not worth it, grasshopper." A tilt of his chin; raised eyebrows. (Don't you reckon?)
Rangers are valuable, the expression says. Techs are not. Not even ex-Ranger ones. Dana turns back to the filter she was cleaning with wire brush still gripped in hand like a truncheon.
That was the first shot. The rev-up. ("What, d'ya give up bein' a Ranger? Too much like hard work for Daddy's little girl?")
Stahl prevented her taking the bait; Jones doesn't move, but the techs go back to working. No show today. (No show ever, most likely: Dana has good control, Stahl is vigilant, and the Joneses are their commanders.) Stahl still looks back over his shoulder like Logan's a fox he'd like to shoot.
It's the second shot that gets her. Logan's got his hands in his pockets, squinting up at /Vulcan with his cheeks sucked in. This dart hits flesh, dead centre of an abscess shaped like a dead sister, and envenomed to boot:
"She musta been a pretty shithouse Ranger. Dunno how she drove a three-megatonne robot if she managed ta wrap a two-tonne ute around a tree."
Dana nearly tears his face off.
Logan gives back as good as he gets, but he's getting what he wants: blood. Strife. A cortical rush.
Psych file says he's got Antisocial Personality Disorder, but it's a good thing Dana's non-verbal or she'd be shouting that he's a fucking sociopath in the middle of the Staging Area. That never goes down well with the brass.
(With her luck, he'd laugh and wear it with pride.) 
They're hard up against /Vulcan's foot by the time anyone gets close enough to intervene—muffled thuds of elbows on forearms and ribs poorly-cushioned by coveralls drawing a crowd. Someone's already alerted the MPs. LOCCENT. There'll be hell to pay.
There's blood down Logan's grey shirt. A dirty bootprint just above Dana's knee.
Her head bounces off a metal panel with a straight she's too slow to dodge when he follows the jam through with a one-two. Equilibrium's fucked; Logan tagged her in one ear and the other one feels like it's bleeding. Sirens whining in both of them: stop now stop now stop now.
Logan sways away from a knee to his guts, hamstrung by her fistful of his collar, and comes in with a straight. (Endurance, he said.)
She ducks; sweeps, locks, sidesteps.
Logan smashes face-first into the panel, his elbow locked straight by her armpit.
Stahl catches the hook that muscle memory launches at the back of Logan's head in the crook of his own elbow. Yanks Dana out of the scrap like faulty wire. Logan's arm goes with her, flipping him off the panel. There's a face-print smeared bloody on the metal.
He comes out swinging: left rip at her ribs.
Dana wears it. Hauls on his arm for leverage and drives a knee into the margin of soft tissue and veterbro-chondral ribs.
Logan grunts and tries to jag her.
They spin away from Stahl (away from /Vulcan) grappling. This time they go down. Logan gets a hand tangled in Dana's dogtags and rips.
.
It takes Stahl and two more men to drag Dana up and away. Two more to hold back Logan.
Dana's got two black eyes and a bleeding ear but Jones looks like a Kaiju stomped him and he's not breathing right when he gets up.
The MPs have arrived. They form a bodywall between the combatants, directing the techs holding each to the appropriate destination. Dana bares bloody teeth at Logan over their shoulders as Stahl and Oboza frogmarch her away.
Slapping off the tech trying to steady him, Logan sucks blood off his own teeth and spits.
.
He gets a reprimand. ("Third time this month, Ranger—and Collier, for fuck's sake?") Another set of psych reviews.
Dana gets three days in confinement, then three months mandated anger management courses.
When Logan limps back to quarters, there's no sign of Andrea (she won't stand the sight of him for a week), and Jackson just gives him that Look and takes his work to do elsewhere. 
(When Derek shows up four months later, he avoids Logan more assiduously than usual, but more than all the time is still all the time. Logan's even more pleased when Little Bro gives Collier the same wary looks he gives Logan 'n Jack. That oughta put a bee in her oily little patrol cap.) 
.
It doesn't sweeten Dana to learn when she gets out of confinement that she earned people a lot of money in a betting pool on how long it'd take Jones to get around to trying to rile her, or that her perforated eardrum matches his cracked ribs.
(It might, the tiniest bit, when Stahl uses some of what he earned to tote in a handful of fresh nectarines from his family's farm.)
.
Logan grins for three months like he's counting down the days. Jackson just watches, eyes narrow. 
If Logan's a fox Stahl would happily shoot, then Dana's a working dog that bites.
Category:Ficlet dump
Category:Ficlet
Category:Braids, Lorikeets, and Baby Girls
Category:Pages in need of tags
Category:Kurago!fusion Portal
Category:Ficlet (archive)