"The year is 2017, and here, behind me, you can see hopeful citizens looking to sign up for the Jaeger program with the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. and Sydney's newly established 'shatterdome'." The reporter on the television smiled out at the audiences in their homes, and a certain little thirteen year old glared at the screen and curled herself into a tighter ball. She ignored the slightly more comfortable lounge behind her in favour of the wooden floorboards, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped tightly around herself.

"Elleni-" The voice was loud enough for the young girl to hear it, but soft enough to remain calm, as one of the women who tended the orphanage called out to the girl in front of the television. The girl shifted, pressed her lips together, but didn't turn away.

"El." The thirteen year old cut her short, not taking her eyes off of the screen. "Nobody calls me Elleni but my mum." She said, bitterly. The woman walked over, rubbed a comforting hand over the girl's hair, her voice soft as silk.

"El," El hated the syrupy way she spoke, the way grandmothers talked to toddlers in families, it said 'I'm being kind because you're young and don't understand the world yet', but she knew the older woman was just trying to help. It didn't keep it from stinging though. "Why do you keep watching these?" The older woman ran her fingers through the child's hair as El leaned against the caretaker's leg. She shrugged, her warm, honey coloured eyes raking over the lineup of people as the voiceover explained that is was a reaction to the increasing number of Kaiju attacks in the Pan-Pacific region of the world. Footage flashed up, a Kaiju (one El had affectionately named 'Hurricane') destroyed the harbour bridge, along with all of the cars on it. El flinched involuntarily, seeing the cars, some whole, some in halves, fall into the water, crashing about the Kaiju's feet, pressed underwater by its steps.

She could see the gaping, fluorescent mouth of the Kaiju as it tore through the steel frame of the bridge, its long, sharp claws dragging across the tarmac of the road before it was ripped away, along with halves of cars, whole cars and families. She could feel the gut wrenching terror of seeing half of her car plummet off the harbour bridge, her parents still screaming inside, their eyes wide and fearful as she reached out to them, trying to get them back with sheer willpower alone. She scrambled out of the car as fast as she could, snagging her clothes and grazing her knees, the metal of the bridge groaning in protest of holding such a large amount of weight with its primary support missing. She remembered hiding out around the base of her building, knocking upon her door and getting no answer, too afraid to try and force her way in, unable to go back to get her things, unable to move on. She remembered the sirens blaring, the hoards of people yelling and running through the streets of the city, trying to get out of the blast radius when they finally destroyed the thing. She hid in a coffee shop, technically still inside the blast radius, stealing cookies and curling up into a ball of El. She remembered going back to the smouldering wreckage of her old house, the porcelain head of her favourite doll staring at her with one, unblinking eye, her dad's prized model plane in pieces, scattered about the ash before her, warped and twisted from the heat. She stole a gas mask to get in, forgetting about the radiation, not connecting the nosebleeds she would suffer from later in life, to the two days she spent crying in the debris. She remembered someone picking her up, wearing a full radiation suit, carrying her with haste from the scene, lying in hospital beds, the steady beeping of heart monitors, the sad whispers of nurses and mothers, talking to their own children, explaining why El never had any visitors.

She was ten.

"El, come on, it's time for bed." The caretaker told her, flicking off the television with the remote balanced on the edge of the lounge, stopping her petting of El's chocolate locks of hair. El sighed, defeated. She slowly uncurled herself from the safe cocoon she had created with her own limbs, stretching out and rolling her neck to get the kinks out. She didn't realise she had been sitting there for three hours, flicking through different channels just to see the news of Sydney's new Shatterdome, with all manner of attractive presenters smiling at the camera.

The caretaker placed a comforting hand on her back, leading her through the old halls of the building, past the doors of other sleeping children. El had spoken to them, El had interacted with them, El had helped them with bruises and scrapes and she knew them. None of the other children dreamed of blue jaws and death. None of the other children spent hours a day teaching themselves how to pick locks, or how to fight with knives and fists. None of the other children spent their small allowances getting lessons in martial arts. None of the other children wanted to be Jaeger pilots.

"I'm going to be a Jaeger pilot one day, I promise." Her voice was quiet, too quiet for the caretaker to hear, but it didn't matter. She knew what she wants, she knew that the deaths of those Kaiju scum would bring her the revenge she's always dreamed about. She would split the skulls and bright blue, snapping jaws. It will be the deaths of the Kaijus she dreamed about, not the deaths of her parents.

Elleni Stryker was thirteen years old, and she already lived with blood on her hands and in her heart.