Summary: In which Jiang is a badass mecha pilot, Robin is a scientist hired to work on said mecha, and the third person POV continues to kick my ass.
"And here are the suits," Monifa said as she led Robin into the specially-built hangars where they were kept. The suits, as she offhandedly called them, were each several stories tall, marvels of modern engineering, each code-named for a mythological creature: Dragon, Quetzalcoatl, Bird of Paradise, Leviathan... Of course, Robin didn't know how they worked. Nobody outside of Ballentyne did; it was a closely guarded trade secret. But he'd spent years making a name for himself in robotics with the goal of working here and finding out the last great secret in the field.
"So how do they work?" Robin asked, leaning on his cane just a little as he gazed up at the Dragon.
"Not even going to wait until the tour is over before you start working?" Monifa asked with a small chuckle.
Robin shook his head. "Everyone is dying to know! You know that. If I'm going to be working on them, surely you have to tell me."
Monifa nodded. "Magic."
"Very funny."
"It is pretty funny," Monifa turned to look up at the Dragon with him. "It's also pretty true."
"What are you talking about?" Robin was curious now.
Monifa resumed walking, intentionally keeping a comfortably slow pace as she took Robin past each of the suits in turn. "There's a reason each is named after a mythological creature, Robin. That's what powers them. They choose their own pilots. We have no idea why they do what they do, We found them by accident. We can only be grateful that they oppose the Mulians as much as we do."
"That's... oddly disappointing," Robin admitted. He stared harder at the suit in front of him, the Dragon, as if it would give up its secrets to him. Well, maybe it would, but he'd have to get further in than this.
His new boss chuckled again. "Your work on electrochemical interfaces is what got my attention. I want you to work with the biology department and see if we can't figure out what, exactly, is going on here. You'll have full access to the suits and the pilots."
"Who's going to have full access to me?" Robin looked around in surprise at the interruption and felt his breath catch a little when he did. The identities of the pilots were not trade secrets like the workings of the suits were, but some liked the spotlight more than others. He'd only seen occasionally pictures or video of the first pilot, Jiang Tsuyung, and he was forced to admit now that none of them did him justice.
He caught himself as soon as he could, firmly shutting his open jaw and looking from Jiang back toward his suit, the Dragon.
"Jiang, this is Robin Blaser. He's a robotics expert who's going to be working with the biology department."
"Not where you usually put them."
Monifa's eyes narrowed just a hint. "He's going to be working on the Firebird project, and I expect all of the pilots to give him their full co-operation, including you."
"Yes, he looks like he'd like that." Jiang smirked. "As a matter of fact, I'm headed up to the suit to let Dr. Li run some new tests. Seems like it would be a great time to introduce him."
"I suppose it would," Monifa agreed, pulling Robin away from the pilot and toward the stairs at the back of the hangar. "Don't get distracted, Blaser."
"Why, is he taken?" He couldn't help noting the tension between the pilot and the director. Jiang didn't like being given orders, he surmised, and Monifa didn't care for that.
She was facing away from him, so Robin couldn't see the look on Monifa's face. "You wouldn't be the first to try, but no one's succeeded."
"Noted," he said, and wrote Jiang off in his head. Not that it mattered, really, did it? And he'd get to appreciate the man in his skin-tight pilot suit plenty.
"This is Doctor Ixtli Li," Monifa interrupted his train of thought. "She's the best and brightest in biotech, which is why she's got this project."
"So what is this project?" Robin asked. Dr Li looked up from where she sat in her wheelchair and smiled, a little more excited than he expected from a high-ranking biologist. She had close-cropped black hair and freckles on her dark skin, and of course he couldn't help noticing she wore trousers pinned up where her knees would otherwise be. She pushed her glasses up and rolled over to shake his hand.
"You're Doctor Blaser, right? Robin? Nice to meet you! Is he all mine to play with, Monifa?"
Monifa nodded. "She should be able to answer any other questions you have, Robin. Have fun."
Ixtli was pulling him over toward the instrument panels, completely ignoring his stumble as she drew him off-balance. "So I get to tell you about Project Firebird?"
"Yes, please do."
"One second." She flipped some switches and spoke into a mike. "Ready, Jiang?"
"Ready," the pilot's voice answered over the speakers. The monitors below her blinked to life, showing a variety of statistics and numbers, including what looked like two sets of vital signs.
"Go ahead, then," Ixtli instructed. There was a minute of silence and then both sets of vitals jumped, eventually settling into an identical pattern. Where the suit had previously been standing stiffly, like armor on display at a museum, it now stood... poised was the word Robin settled on in his head. The contrast was particularly noticeable with Leviathan still standing next to it, unmoving and silent.
"Ready, Dragon?" Robin assumed she was asking the question again to make sure the unit was fully functional
"Ready." Robin startled. The voice that answered sounded very little like the pilot he'd met a few minutes before. He could have almost attributed the difference to the speakers, but he'd heard Jiang answer. This was not Jiang, as far as he could tell.
"Standard exercises," Ixtli ordered, and the suit- the robot- Robin was no longer sure how to think about it - moved forward into the open space at the center of the hangar. As he began a simple movement routine, Ixtli looked back at Robin.
"You noticed," she said.
"What am I noticing?"
"They're not just empty suits," Ixtli glanced back down at the numbers and seemed to like what she was seeing. "The pilot is essential for the process to work; they won't run without the right pilot. But once the pilot enters the drift state, he or she isn't the one controlling it."
"Why is it called Project Firebird?"
Ixtli leaned forward until her face was almost pressed to the glass and pointed to the far end of the hangar. "That last one down there? You see her?"
The angle was awkward, but Robin managed to catch sight of a red and black suit at the end of the row. "I've never seen that one before."
"She doesn't have a pilot."
"Why not?"
"The suits pick their pilots. Jiang... well, Jiang arrived when the suits did. And he helped us find the pilots for each of the others. But he's never said a word about Firebird, and frankly, we need all the help we can get. So our job is to figure out how to make the Firebird interface with someone else."
Robin nodded. "And I like interfaces. Makes sense now."
"Doesn't it?" Ixtli went back to the microphone. "Want to put on a show for the new guy, Dragon?"
The robot tilted its head in a way that I thought might be a smirk - had I seen that angle on Jiang earlier? - and the room below filled with light. When my eyes could focus again, a spectral dragon curled around the suit. The dragon slowly uncurled, an elegant swimming motion along its length, and the suit began to go through its motions again. Now instead of a simple routine, it was a dance. No, Robin thought, a puppet show. The spectral dragon and the metal one moved in perfect coordination, but he couldn't quite tell which was moving the other.
It was mesmerizing, really.
Robin found himself surprised and a little disappointed when it ended. He looked up to see Ixtli watching him and blushed furiously.
"Don't. That's a normal reaction. They're beautiful," she assured him. "I'm about done for today, I think I'll clean up the data in the morning. Why don't you head out? We can meet in my office tomorrow morning and decide where to start. Oh, and - I noticed your limp. There's an elevator I use at the other end of the platform."
Robin thanked her and found himself at the bottom just as Jiang finished descending from the Dragon.
"Waiting for me?" Jiang asked. There was still a bite to it, and Robin wondered if that was just his personality or if this was some special disdain. Well, he'd figure it out eventually.
"Do you want me to be?" he countered, pasting a lopsided smile on his face.
Jiang almost looked surprised for a split second, then smirked wider. "I'm here to serve, remember? That's what Monifa told me."
"Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow then. I want to start with some questions about the experience of piloting. Can I meet you for lunch?" The question was out of Robin's mouth before he realized what he'd said and he wanted to take it back before Jiang could answer. Instead, he stood and waited for the cutting remark.
"If you like. Meet me here at noon." Jiang turned and left, and Robin quickly turned to go the other direction before realizing that there was only the one entrance.
"Very smooth," Ixtli's voice came over the intercom. "You want to head to your left and then take a right to get back to the main hallway."
"... Thanks." Robin waved to her as he oriented himself. He wasn't sure if he should be embarrassed that she heard him or triumphant or something else altogether.
+++
That night he had the first nightmare.
It was only darkness, and containment, and suffocating smoke, and he woke breathing deeply, grateful for air-conditioned apartments and unsure what he'd been dreaming.
+++
"Call me Keiji if you want. I'm not going to be here much longer; I've been ready to retire since before the Mulians arrived." The first pilot recruited after Jiang had been a soldier. They'd brought in three dozen of the best in the world, not knowing yet how the process worked. Three had been accepted from the original group. Keiji was the only one still alive. He stood rod-straight even in jeans and a button down shirt, giving the impression that his casual facade was exactly that. He and his protege had a training run first thing in the morning, so he met them in the hangar.
"He's also been threatening to retire for that long. It took five years to find somebody else that Leviathan would accept as a pilot," Ixtli added through the overhead speaker. Robin made a note of that, not sure what would end up being relevant.
"Akane will be better than me," he said. It was matter-of-fact, no pride or bitterness. The girl sitting next to him beamed from under an awkward, bushy haircut. She was barely old enough to drive a car, but the suits took who they would.
Robin nodded. "I've looked at the numbers. You may be right."
"Numbers don't mean anything," Keiji insisted. "She's just that good. I've been in there with her. She and Levi- well, she knows him better than I do."
"Tell me more about Leviathan..."
++
Leviathan fought alongside Dawon, who was piloted by Akane's older sister, Emiko. The Mulians were more than a single fighter - even the pair of drifted pilot and suit - could manage. It had been trial and error figuring out which suits worked best together, though eventually the pilots learned enough from their suits to sort themselves.
Emiko had been trained specifically for Dawon after the suit's previous pilot died from a neural overload in one of Oc Ha's attacks. It was an awkward fact of the project that the suits could heal themselves, given time and energy, but the pilots... well, it was a surprisingly fragile business, being a pilot inside this huge, powerful being.
She had been only twelve when she was chosen by the suit, and the military had taken it upon themselves to make her into Keiji's mold. Some people would be stunted by that, but apparently not her. Robin noticed echoes of Keiji in her mannerisms as they spoke. On the subject of the pairs and fighting with Keiji, she couldn't praise his skill highly enough, though there were turns of phrase that made me second-guess her respect for him.
She was all business until the very end, when Robin asked off-handedly if she thought she'd work even better with her sister.
"Akane..." Emiko leaned in. "She's not really meant for it. I don't think she'll cut it."
"That wasn't the impression Keiji gave me."
Emiko shrugged. "He's tired. I worry sometimes, that he's not up to it anymore."
"Do you trust him?"
"In the field? Absolutely. Regarding my sister..." She glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. "Please excuse me, I'm expected for an exam in ten minutes."
++
"Hello, Remiel. Nice to meet you. Quetzalcoatl is yours, right?" He was compact and almost sullen, as if he resented having to look up at Robin when he spoke.
The young man didn't answer, but the woman sitting next to him did. "Remy, please. He prefers that. And I'm Ruiqi." She was his opposite in almost every way - tall, dark-skinned, outgoing. They were a surprising team, but all of the pilots had surprised him so far.
"The president's daughter, correct?"
"Yep! He was so mad when Bird of Paradise chose me. He didn't want me to do it."
"Did you want to do it?"
Ruiqi looked away, past Robin and up at the sky. "At first, I wasn't sure but I figured I had to. And then she flew for the first time, and I knew I'd never stop."
++
And then it was lunch time, and Robin half-expected that Jiang would blow him off, but there he was in jeans and a simple black t-shirt, sitting at the Dragon's feet, meditating. His eyes were closed. As Robin approached, he thought he could almost feel an electric charge in the air, as if it were too dry and he was going to get a shock when he touched the giant robot.
Jiang opened his eyes before Robin reached him and looked directly at the scientist.
"Oh, hey, sorry to interrupt..." Robin mumbled, but the pilot stood without a word and started toward the door. Robin hurried to catch up, his cane clicking along the steel floor, and he noticed that Jiang adjusted his gait to match by the time they reached the exit.
"You don't have to think of it as research," he insisted when they reached the restaurant. "This can just be a casual lunch hour chat between two colleagues."
Jiang seemed to consider this as they were seated. "I know it's not the focus of your work right now, but I want to hear something about you. That will make it feel less like an interrogation and more like a lunch date."
Date? He said date? Robin blinked at that. "If you like, but I'm not very interesting."
"You must have at least one story or two. You could tell me about your college experience, or your limp, or your childhood..."
"I don't have adventures so much as I have questionable life choices," the roboticist confessed. "I lost my leg in the... the first attack. Nobody knew what was going on; something was going on at the waterfront, and that was all I knew from a few blocks away. I was eighteen and nothing could hurt me, right? So I ran toward the screaming, instead of away. In college, so I suppose that's two for one. It was Chenek, that first attack. Once I saw... he was not focused the way he usually attacks; he was almost confused? Like he was looking for something. I tried to run then, but I ended up getting a building dropped on me for my trouble."
Jiang nodded seriously, then smiled. "There, now, you see? You've made yourself more human already."
"Less, technically," Robin said, tapping the shell of his prosthetic with the bottom of his cane. "If you're speaking by volume. But now will you tell me about yourself? I'm told you're the only pilot who's defeated a Mulian by yourself."
"Hardly by myself. The Dragon was with me, after all." It turned out the secret to getting Jiang to talk was simply that he loved to be talked to instead of about. That, he could handle.
++
The nightmares got worse. He would wake up shouting sometimes, or unable to breathe. Sometimes he woke with the sense that Jiang had been there. Sometimes he dreamed of work, of the suits. Of the attack he'd lived through before he started working at Ballentyne, and of the attacks he watched from the control room alongside Ixtli and Monifa.
++
Robin hadn't really expected there to be an easy answer, but after studying the interfaces of all the working suits with the pilots, he was amazed how little they had in common. Despite appearing to be nothing more than metal shells and wires, each had what Ixtli called a biological core. The pilots wore gear that was sterilized between missions, because nobody knew if the suits could get sick, be infected, nothing. The way the suits reached out to each pilot was subtly different, much to Ixtli's chagrin, and that was where Robin came in.
Taking a biological process and mechanizing it was his forte. But since each was different...
"I need to see the Firebird," he told Ixtli, explaining the reasoning.
"You can try," she shrugged, "but they only open if they want to. Maybe see if Jiang will help?"
++
"Only because I'm curious what you think you're going to do," Jiang insisted, but he agreed to meet Robin atop the scaffolding by the robot that afternoon.
Robin got there a few minutes early, intending to climb the ladder-like stairs before the other man was there to watch. He left his cane at the base and climbed slowly, focusing on one step at a time with both hands on the railing. He hated leaving it, but it seemed likely to get caught in the grated floor or get in the way of his grip.
About halfway through the climb, Robin thought he smelled something - smoke? Was that smoke? Crap, he panicked, looking around. Nobody else was in sight, but neither did he see smoke or a fire. Was it an electrical issue? Maybe one of the suits - He redoubled his efforts, climbing faster with the hope he'd be able to see the problem from the top of the hangar.
The smell was even stronger when he pulled himself up onto the catwalk scaffold, but there was still no sign of trouble. There was something familiar, something that was driving Robin to panic even more than when he thought there really was a fire.
Leaning heavily on the handrails, Robin walked up to the back of the Firebird.
The entry panel was open.
Beyond it, Jiang was standing, watching him.
"You opened it for me after all?" Robin asked him. "You said you couldn't."
"I didn't," Jiang answered. "But I had a feeling. Or maybe the Dragon did."
Robin blinked at that. "Are you-? You can't be serious!"
"It's not my call," Jiang pointed to the opening. "Talk to her."
"But I'm- I-" he gestured at his leg as if the pilot might have forgotten. "I can't pilot anything! I barely got up here."
Jiang smirked. "You don't actually have to walk, you know."
"That's not the point!" Robin shouted.
"Then what is?"
"I am a scientist! I am not a pilot! I tried messing with a Mulian once, and it went pretty badly."
Jiang sighed. "Arguing with me doesn't accomplish anything."
"So what am I supposed to do?"
"Get in the robot, Robin."
Glaring at the other man, Robin let go of the handrail and stepped gingerly into the open portal. The space was quite small and dark, reminding him more of the intimacy and mechanical hum of an MRI machine. It was not an association that made him like the situation any more.
The walls were soft, porous, but warm to the touch. Quick pinpricks dotted the skin up his arms - it was so dark he couldn't really see what they were - and they burned where they touched. The fire spread across his body, under his skin, and the first time the Firebird moved inside his mind, Robin screamed.
+++
+++
+++
"I feel like a fish out of water," Akane confessed.
"Then let's see about getting you back in," Keiji answered as Leviathan's cockpit opened for them.
The idea of training a replacement pilot while the original still lived was a new one and Akane felt like she was some awkward luxury everyone was putting up with to keep Keiji happy. Keiji was adamant he was going to retire, after all, and so Akane found herself standing atop the catwalk, extremely aware of how her bodysuit sat against her skin. She'd seen Emiko in hers, and her sister looked flawless in it, but Emiko possessed a combination of good genes and confidence that Akane knew she could never match.
"I'm not sure how this is going to work," Keiji admitted. "But I think the easiest way for you to learn is to step in with me."
Akane nodded.
"You should probably leave your glasses here, just so they don't get broken. Maybe we can get you some sports goggles."
"But I won't be able to see," Akane protested, picturing the giant robot fumbling around with arms forward the way she did sometimes.
"You won't need to," Keiji assured her.
Akane swallowed hard and removed her glasses, shaking slightly. The suit, and Keiji, softened into blurry shapes. The rails of the catwalk fuzzed and nearly disappered. Keiji guided her hand to a cubby hole where the glasses would be safe, and once she set them down, he led her gently into the cockpit of Leviathan.
The space was so dark that Akane didn't miss her glasses so much as the weight on her nose. She smelled the ocean, salt and spray without the fishy smell of the bay. Keiji stepped in close behind her.
Ixtli was on the intercom, checking on them, and Keiji answered "ready" for them both.
"How am I supposed to-" she started to ask, as she felt cold water lapping around her feet.
"Just let it come," Keiji told her, his hands on her shoulders. "Let him in."
Akane forced her body to relax as best she could, focusing on her breath as the water rose around her. When it reached her mouth, she tried to hold her breath.
"Trust him," Keiji whispered.
She opened her mouth, and her last individual thought was that if she drowned, that would solve her problems too.
When she opened her eyes, she could see.
The sensation was so novel that it took her a moment to process the perspective: yes, this was what Leviathan saw.
The view's even better when you leave the hangar, she thought, and had to process out that the thought was not her own.
"Ready, Leviathan?" came the voice over the loudspeaker.
"Ready," Akane answered, Keiji answered, Leviathan answered.
She struggled to separate herself, and the robot lurched forward.
Relax, came the thought, and she did, without intent.
There was a string of things she remembered doing then - learning to work with Leviathan, fighting with him, eventually coming to see him as a comrade in arms and a friend. Around that were other snippets. The loss when Dawon went down with Hao inside. The war before this war, one fought with guns and sometimes with knives, hand-to-hand, and sometimes with small explosives.
Her own memories came up automatically, as if to separate herself, and then they ran in tandem, fights with her mother, fights with Keiji's father, his memories of fighting alongside Emiko matched with Akane's of fighting with her.
Akane found herself appreciating her sister's skill and training almost for the first time, now that she had a frame of reference for it.
There were other memories underneath everything else, slow-moving, of the ocean and the peace disrupted by the Mulians. These threatened to drown her, and Keiji pulled her back to herself, just enough to stay in control.
That was more than I expected, she thought, and realized that could be either of them thinking.
Let's do this. The movements were not as flawless as she remembered them being, but Akane had enough sense of herself to know she was doing it alone. Keiji was watching, but not helping.
The practice moves came more easily after a few minutes, and once she'd settled in, she had the sensation of a grin on her face.
"Control, please open the harbor doors," Leviathan asked. We're going swimming.