#anyway essek is in mako's position and caleb is beckett. the restless assistant and the tired veteran

[wizardnuke]

the shadowgast pacific rim au that exists in my brain.

#LONG TAGS LORE DUMP FOR A FIC I'M NEVER GONNA WRITE PROBABLY #deirta is pentecost she lost her husband in a battle and piloted the jaeger to shore alone - verin is tendo he could fight but deirta #doesn't want either of her sons in a jaeger ever. verin is okay enough with this. essek is not. #caleb ran a triple arm jaeger with astrid and wulf and lost his mind a little bit when they died. he felt them die. the added stress of #piloting a jaeger to shore on his own put him in the hospital and then a psych ward for three months #before he began helping with wall construction as equipment maintenance. clearly this is still a magic au and tech = magic etc etc #I CANNOT stress enough that jaegers are powered by luxon beacons. #anyway essek is in mako's position and caleb is beckett. the restless assistant and the tired veteran #essek chooses caleb's candidates - the candidate process is a little more complicated because these fantasy jaegers #work off of both magic and manual physical effort - candidates have to be evenly matched in both physical and mental fields #blumendrei only worked because caleb and astrid combined matched wulf in physicality. astrid and wulf matched caleb in casting. #it was. unhealthily competitive between them at times and astrid was the worst about it. he still misses them every single day. #it's like. shit hurts to do when one arm or leg is weaker than the other. it's like that. it has to match #essek and caleb have little noodle arms and truly insane skills w casting. so they're compatable. essek is sure. caleb does the same #'why do you keep making that face' bit like beckett did bc he's tired of essek's attitude and deirta's flat dismissal of him #they metaphorically roll the same exact initiative and the fight ends in caleb casting firebolt/essek casting sapping sting #and the two of them both use their reaction to counterspell. they both move to cast again when deirta is like Okay Stop Fighting I Get It #heehoo. the first time they drift together caleb leans that essek secretly recovered a beacon from a downed jaeger and has been using it to #advance his research while passing himself off as a genius - not that he isn't. he just has another stepping stone as well. #essek gets to live thru caleb's experience of feeling two (2) people die at the same exact moment. yeah verin has to pull that fuckin plug. #other notes. veth and yeza r the scientists. OBVIOUSLY veth drifts with a kaiju brain like are u KIDDING me #other jaeger teams are fjord+jester yasha+beau and the tealeaf triplets.