Deep Beneath the Pacific (Pacific Rim)

Chapter Twelve: Every Day Has a Sunset

[ EDIT: holy kaiju! this thing is 18 pages long! D: Should I cut this in half...? So sorry for those of you who hate long chapters... but i owe you guys a lot... ]

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March 1st, 2020 - Friday - 10:19 AM.

Life's weird.

There. I said it.

But in all seriousness, this was true. It was like a never-ending cycle. You lose something, you gain something. Then it starts all over again, continuously repeating.

Maybe it wasn't like that for everyone. Maybe some had more steps involved in their lives. More steps, however, didn't mean an easy life - it could possibly be worse. But for me, I only saw two at the moment. And that alone was a hassle to deal with.

I've lost this game of life so many times. My mother, my father, countless other family members, my only real friends and now my Uncle, Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld, was drifting further away from me as well.

And then there are those rare moments when I finally won some rounds - well, at least we came to a tie. I was fortunate to have grown up in the Shatterdome with a warm place to sleep and three meals a day. Even after my father's death, I managed to take care of myself, had friends that cared for me, and a place to call home. Now I basically had my dream job and I talked with my brother for the first time in years.

After being washed over with warmth and love so early in the morning, you can only imagine what a good mood I was in. Nothing can ruin my day now!

Those were my actual thoughts.

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I hummed an upbeat tune to myself as I rode the elevator down to ground level. I looked up at Glacier Hijack, the Canadian Jaeger I was just working on. I was going back down to check on the progress of the J-Techs who were working on the lower parts of the Jaeger. I heard someone had messed up the wiring in the Jaeger's foot, so I was on my way to take a look.

Now, that may sound funny and a bit ridiculous. But before you start laughing, let me just say that it honestly wasn't a difficult thing to do - get the wiring mixed up. Especially with the amount of wiring a Jaeger had. It was like taking a giant bowl of spaghetti and throwing it into a metal container, hoping that it will all fit correctly - that every single strand was accurate down to the angle that the wires were bent at. It was actually more complex than that... but that's the best I can do to describe it because that's pretty much what it looks like.

With a concerning creak, the rusty elevator doors opened up. Need to have some guys check on these doors - probably just needs a little oil here and there... Shrugging it off, I mentally put the task aside in my brain as a minority. I walked out with confident strides, feeling quite pleased with the world. One graceful step after anoth-

"Whoa!" My foot caught something, my arms flailing. I somehow managed to catch myself and swing back. Looking down, I saw that someone had irresponsibly left a jumble of cables on the floor along with three buckets full of screws and bolts. A fat wire was what caused me to lose my groove. I sighed, irritated - not just because my gracefulness was stopped so abruptly... but because this was just unacceptable. You just don't leave stuff on the ground on the pathway where people (like me) who can trip and seriously injure themselves! Irreresponsible... Whoever did this-

My thoughts were interrupted by what sounded like a stampede. I glanced behind me, my eyes widening as I saw a literal stampede heading my way. I hopped over the mess of wires and buckets, bringing myself to safety off the pathway just as the first jogging Strike Troopers whooshed by me, their pounding boots sounding like thunder.