saucefactory:

Wade’s brain was doing the boogie-woogie again, which was hardly a surprise considering he was piloting a fucking Jaeger without a partner. His nose was bleeding by the time he returned to base, and the veins in his eyeballs had swollen, popping a few of the subconjunctival capillaries and giving his vision a reddish haze. 

And that wasn’t all. Dizziness gripped him in wracking waves, sending bile climbing up his throat. Wade’s guts churned and his mind fizzed like a bottle of cola, but hey, at least he’d killed Thanatos, the infamous Kaiju whose entire head was made of teeth. Yard-long teeth. Now that was a creature in need of an emergency dental job.

Except that it was dead, so… less dental job, more dissection. Stark would have a field day with the remains.

“Wilson,” said Marshal May Parker. She was waiting for him on the landing bay, stern and in uniform. “You’re still alive.”

“Eh, I’m already healing. I’ll be okay. After all, I’m the only freak around here who survived a Kaiju’s poison. And that was worse. Way worse.”

Marshal Parker fell into step beside him as Wade headed to the medbay, as was routine after a skirmish. “Dr. Stark argues that your body metabolized the poison and converted it into a healing serum. I hope he hasn’t been pestering you overmuch for tissue samples.”

“Tissue samples are sorta meh. Fluid samples, though? Those can be fun. I offered to jack off for the sample if Stark had a nudie magazine lying around.”

The marshal huffed out a startled laugh, her diminutive frame somehow managing to exude both authority and amusement. “Did he?”

“’Course he did. He’s Stark.”

“Well, let’s all hope he’s making progress with simulating your metabolization of the poison. If we can figure out how to replicate that process on a cellular level, all the Jaeger pilots will be able to heal themselves.”

“Aw, I’m gonna miss being the resident freak.”

Marshal Parker frowned. “It’s a pity you’ve been ostracized by the pilot community.” She paused. “I might have a remedy for that situation.”

“A cure for my personality? Sorry, Marshal, but not even Stark has a serum for that.”

“I mean,” the marshal said, “I might have a partner for you.”

Wade stopped dead in his tracks. “A what?”

“A copilot. His epigenetic sequence matches yours in the relevant categories, rare as your sequence is. He’s only just graduated from the pilot program, so he’s eighteen and without a partner. I’m going to suggest you two spar in the Kwoon Combat Room to determine whether you’re as compatible as your genes suggest you are.”

Wade’s heart began pounding.  An agonizing, terrifying hope bloomed within him, a hope he’d never dared to entertain. “Who… Who is he?”

A wry smile curled Marshal Parker’s lips, and that itself—the sight of the marshal, smiling—was astounding. Her voice changed, too, into a gentler version of the cool, confident, commanding tone Wade was used to hearing. “My nephew.”

To be continued.