So, I saw Pacific Rim for the first time the other day (tragic, I know,) and decided to write fanfic about it, because that's what I do with stuff I don't own. Honestly, this first chapter is the one I'm most hesitant about which is unusual for me. Anyways, hope you enjoy!

It starts, in early 2020, with a void. With nothing. With the past shattered, the present a mess, and the future murky.

In 2020, Raleigh Becket has just watched his brother die. He has been dismissed from the Jaeger program, and has hooked up with those who follow the building of the new coastal wall, picking up shifts when he can. He avoids attachments, the only truly significant items left in his life the photographs that live at the bottom of his duffel since he never stays anywhere long enough to put them up.

In 2020, Chuck Hansen is in his second year at the Jaeger Academy, trying to live up to his father and trying to live down his uncle. He gets a dog since his childhood friend is gone, and works on making himself one of the cocky, brash rangers he idolized on the television screen.

In 2020, Mako Mori has just left Sydney, and the childhood friend she was already drifting apart from, for Hong Kong. She is preparing to enter the Jaeger Academy for pilot training, but has been studying Jaeger engineering for over a year already. In the closest she gets to teenage rebellion, she dyes the tips of her hair bright blue upon arrival.

In 2020, funding is already ebbing for the Jaeger program as politicians hoot and holler about the wall.

In 2025, the Jaeger program is scant inches from extinction, even as the coastal wall crumbles in Sydney.

In 2025 Mako Mori still hasn't used her pilot training, but she has put her engineering qualifications to work. She has mostly withdrawn from the world, though she interacts with fellow engineers and technicians, there is no one she can truly call a friend, a confidant. She is okay with this, she is devoted to the restoration for the time being, and to her revenge in the (relatively) long run.

In 2025, Chuck Hanson leaves home, (though it isn't really leaving home if your father, your dog, your boss, and your giant robot come too is it?) for Hong Kong because he doesn't know what he would do if he didn't. He doesn't consciously remember the person he grew up with, in more ways than one, until he sees her waiting for him, his father, his dog, and his boss as they step off the chopper. (The giant robot is already inside.)

In 2025, Raleigh Becket is dragged out of his stupor by a reinvigorated wish to die doing something exciting instead of from manual labor that he knows from personal experience is futile. He arrives at the Hong Kong shatterdome expecting to do that and nothing else.

It ends, in early 2025, with a rekindled light from years ago merging with two new ones to form something whole, something complete. Nature abhors a vacuum.