#humans: hi jaegers: these are my blorbos and I'll kill for them

[raileurta]

Pacific rim x tf

I love just the idea of the autobots and deceptions coming to earth to try recruiting the sentient jaegers, but being harshly declined. Why? Well for one they're already busy dealing with large monsters on a regular basis and two they love their humans too much. With plenty of evil robot related movies fueling paranoia among engineers they hardcoded into the jaegers that they want to protect humans.

So they are pretty reasonably pissed at the bots for dragging their people into their war. Anyways they force the autobots and decepticons to make up. (All this because of a messy breakup? Jeez and you call humans violent.)

So now with the Cybertronians new free time the yeagers will reach them the joys of human beings.

[kevtching]

Ok time to infodump about blorbo of the week!! AKA my main Pacific Rim OC. I'm telling things in sorta chronological order, just know my friend and I have been RPing this and there's stuff we havent gotten to yet.

Ariel Cassidy (though they usually just go by their last name so I'll be calling them Cassidy/Cass) is the child of a now retired Jaeger pilot duo based in Valparaiso, Chile. They grew up in a shatterdome and have been training for as long as they can remember. So, even though their parents said they could be anything they wanted and they'd still be proud no matter what, how could they ever even want anything else?

Their upbringing was Odd, to say the least. School didn't go well for them (being socialized around 0 kids their age and a bunch of really intense and nerdy adults didn't help) so they were mostly tutored by scientists at the shatterdome and now they know a lot about really specific topics and are sorely lacking very common knowledge in some areas. They are incredibly skilled in pretty much everything pilot-related, and that often comes with incredible arrogance. They have a complicated relationship with authority, they've had rules and respect drilled into them from a very young age but they're a little too familiar with Marshall Velez, top dog in the Valparaiso shatterdome and also their godmother (she's very good friends with their parents and often had to look after Cass while their folks were out kicking Kaiju ass) so they often step out of line. They constantly have to deal with allegations of being a nepo baby and they HATE it. More than anything, they want to prove they're more than just their parents' child, and show just how hard they've worked to be an amazing pilot. Overall they're a bit obnoxious, but they have a deep admiration for all the work done in all areas of the shatterdome and are a friendly and passionate person to talk to if you can get past initial impressions.

Though they became a pilot recruit as soon as they were old enough to qualify, they couldn't find a partner until recently. The gap in skill between them and other newbies made it hard to synchronize with any of them, but their lack of experience in the real world made them a pretty bad match for veteran pilots. This all changed when Harrison Reyes (@therafofgod's character) transferred from the Taipei shatterdome after failing to find a partner several times himself.

I'll let Raf explain Harris more in depth if he wants, but he's also from a pilot family (his brother Melchor, specifically, who trained him after having to retire following an incident that got his partner killed) and he's garnered a bit of a negative reputation after having to transfer several times. He looks scary, but he's actually a sweetheart. Cass wasn't intimidated by him, and once they got to spar together, they instantly clicked.

Their first drift test went pretty terrible. Cassidy didn't rabbit, they didn't even have time, they just rejected the drift altogether and started freaking out. Some tests were done to try and determine why they had such a strong reaction, and instead of figuring that out, they found traces of Kaiju DNA in Cass' blood. They were extremely confused, until their parents explained that Cassidy was actually made as an experiment, without their knowledge or consent, by a fringe group of scientists in the shatterdome who had long been fired for doing exactly that. They combined human DNA (they had Cass' parents' blood available from medical testing) with a bit of Kaiju to try and create basically a living weapon. They weren't sure what results it'd yield, but hopefully something that could go up against the Kaiju- they never found out, though, because when the Marshall caught wind of them creating a literal person she shut them the fuck down and was going to have the experiment terminated, but Cassidy's parents begged her to let them keep it.

They raised Cass as normal as they could and never got around to telling them they're actually a little bit the monsters they've trained their entire life to kill. So there's their first identity crisis. The enhancements aren't all that noticeable, but they can't help wondering if all their talent is just due to being a little stronger, a little tougher than a person should. At the very least, when they found out, they expected Harris to be disgusted by them. Instead, he stuck by their side, comforted them, and promised to protect them no matter what.

So, they kept training as normal and trying to figure out what went wrong with the drift and whether Cassidy can even pilot at all, considering what happened. They had a successful test (well actually they did have one between the first one and this but it got derailed by Harris rabbiting) and uncovered some trauma that Cass had blocked out from their mind. When they were young, far too young to be anywhere near drift tech, they were made to drift with an experienced pilot to gain some of his expertise, reflexes and muscle memory for fighting. This also happened without their parents, or even Marshall Velez, finding out. Cue second identity crisis, even the one thing they're good at isn't truly theirs (although they've been training continuously, and have built upon the foundations they got from that experience to make their fighting style better suited to themselves), etcetera. Worse yet, the pilot who did this was Jun, Melchor's old partner and someone who Harris really looked up to growing up. Jun was the soft edge to Mel's harshness, a kind and stable presence in an otherwise very rocky childhood. Finding out he did that to someone Harris now cares about so deeply was devastating.

Harris spoke about this over the phone with Melchor, and he decided it'd be better to have this conversation in person and just showed up uninvited. He jumpscared the duo while they were just trying to eat breakfast in peace and proceeded to be a huge dick while acting superficially nice and Cass decided they hate this fucking guy. After a very frustrating conversation and covert threats from Mel to get Harris transferred again, Cassidy decided they were getting nowhere with finding out more about Jun and excused themselves and Harris to go train. Mel tagged along and asked to try sparring with Cass, they half-accidentally punched him in the throat and that finally got him to fuck off for a bit.

Last we wrote, the duo finally had a fully successful and not panic inducing drift and simulation! With Mel's threats, they're more determined than ever to prove their worth as a duo. Harris has decided that if Cass won't be their partner, no one will. So now, they have to have a successful drop and kill a Kaiju before Melchor's meddling can tear them apart and end both their careers early.

This is about as concise as i can make anything. There's a lot more about the duo's bond which is so lovely, and also Harris is a really interesting character and so are Mel and Jun and the Marshall and we have a bunch of great side characters I didn't even mention. Raf if you wanna reblog and explain some more about Harris I would love that very much but no pressure.

Also, it hasn't been written yet but once exposed to Kaiju, Cass will start to manifest a few subtly monstrous features. Does it make sense? Not really. But this is my house and I do what my heart demands and my heart wants fucked up little guys.