Chapter Text
Captain Archibald Haddock misjudged the curb and nearly stumbled onto the sidewalk. An old lady scuttled out of the man’s way and frowned in disapproval of his nautical themed curses. Haddock was a long way inland, mostly because he couldn’t find a bar closer to the docks that would give him a lick of credit. The plan was to stop over in San Francisco and refuel his freighter ship before daring to cross the Pacific Ocean en route to Asia. And since he was taking a risk and travelling the ridiculously dangerous Pacific, Captain Haddock felt it only just that he should fill up on his favorite whiskey while in port. If you were going to travel anywhere in the area of the Pacific, you might as well be hammered.
The Captain remembered a time when the Pacific had just been another ocean. He had been a young man captaining a different ship. But that was back in 2012. Back before giant monsters came pouring out of a damn inter-dimensional rift in the Pacific Ocean.
When gargantuan aliens come springing out of the ocean, things change. Haddock abandoned the sea to become a Jaeger pilot; one of those crazy daredevils who pilot metal monsters as tall as sky-scrapers. Taking down Kaiju, those city-crushing aliens, had been his job. He had been good at it.
Then he made a mistake.
Haddock wanted nothing more than to already be back aboard his ship. He shoved a hand in his pocket and felt the bottle. Loch Lomond whiskey, half empty already, was a gift bought for him by some fanboy in the last bar. Even disgraced as he was, being a former Jaeger pilot still yielded some perks. Suddenly depressed, the Captain took a hearty swig.
He’d been out of the fight long before the war against the Kaiju even ended. In 2025, the same year the Jaeger program was prematurely shut down, an American boy and Japanese girl piloted the Jaeger that finally closed the dimensional rift and ended the war. Haddock had already resigned by 2023.
Though the breach collapsed in 2025, the victory was short-lived. Six months later, another breach opened. Then another and another. The world now knew how to mask their Jaegers and penetrate a breach using a fusion of Jaeger bodies laced with Kaiju DNA. But new portals opened as soon as others were closed and the monsters were no longer confined to the Pacific. By 2028, Kaiju attacks where coming every few weeks from multiple spots on the globe.
Haddock was bumped by a woman with an oversized purse and staggered against a shop window. He caught a good look at himself in the dark-tinted glass. He wore the black Captain’s hat and thick, blue sweater with the anchor stitched to the chest; the same getup he’d worn the first time he was a sea Captain. But the face was so much older looking than he remembered, his beard much more unkempt. Haddock raised the whiskey bottle to his lips and knocked it back only to realize it was bone dry.
“Now you’ve done it, Haddock,” he lamented to himself. “Gone and drunk the whole thing.”
The Captain starred at his reflection, wondering if he might suddenly wake up and realize these last five years had been a dream.
Out of the corner of his eye, Archibald noticed it. A single spot of red, there one second and gone the next. The Captain whirled and stretched to his toes scanning the crowd. He’d seen it. He was convinced. Not just once, but several times while he’d been docked in the last two days. Yet whenever he turned, it was just the same humdrum crowd of office workers and shoppers.
“Blistering-“
A shrill siren cut off his curse. The crowd on the street sent up a collective shriek of panic before bursting into frenzied movement. The Captain scowled at the people shoving past. Just over head, a red siren specifically for announcing Kaiju attacks was screaming with all its electronic might.
Some fat man in sunglasses was jostled from the stream of humanity and plowed into the Captain. The whiskey bottle flew from Archibald’s hands and shattered against the pavement. Already forgetting the bottle was empty, the Captain cursed and threatened the streaming crowd. The squeal of tires and crunching car frames joined the din of hundreds of civilians on foot. Traffic piled up then stopped as people abandoned their cars in the street and fled for the nearest Kaiju shelter.
Captain Haddock was busy demanding a panicked businessman replace the shattered whiskey bottle. Behind Haddock erupted a roar so powerful it shook the sidewalk and set the glass vibrating in shop windows.
Realization finally hit his whisky-addled brain. The Captain turned. Like something from an old monster movie but much, much more realistic, a Kaiju lumbered around the corner. The 27-story monster crushed a little Syldavian restaurant under its massive foot.
“Ahhhhh!”
Haddock flinched away from the screaming businessman in his grasp. The slasher movie-style screaming upset the Captain’s delicate drunken state so he released the man and watched him flail as he ran. The Captain cupped his hands around his mouth turning his impressive volume up to megaphone levels and shouted at the retreating crowd. “COWARDS! You’ve got to stand up and fight!”
Grabbing a nearby trashcan lid, Haddock climbed atop a deserted station wagon to address the Kaiju. “Listen here you big-headed beast! I’m Captain Archibald Haddock, and you’re not welcome here you…you brute! Bully!”
The captain chucked his impromptu weapon but lost his balance and tumbled down the hood of the car. The trashcan lid landed pathetically shy of the monster's feet. Rumpled but not discouraged in the least, Haddock sprang to his feet. Changing tactics, the Captain scrambled for new insults to scream at the top of his lungs. “Assassin! Great gaitor gallute! You interplanetary iguana!”
With a crunch of pavement, the Kaiju paused in the street to face Captain Haddock. The Captain was surprised yet terribly pleased with himself as he swaggered closer, fists up in a boxing guard.
“There we go! Come to fight me, have you? En garde, nitwit!”
The Kaiju dug its claws further into the road and growled. The sound rumbled through Haddock like a train rumbling through a station.
“Oh ho! Nothing but a blowhard! Come on, landlubberscum! Volatile vegetarian!”
The Kaiju roared with enough volume to rattle the Captains teeth in his skull.
Archibald’s blood boiled in anticipation. In two strides, the Kaiju was close enough that Archibald had to clasp his cap to his head and lean back just to look at the thing’s ugly mug. It was all teeth in an alligator snout, fluorescent green splashes around yellow eyes, and sharp bone ridges spreading from the tip of the snout to the top of the skull. Definitely a Kaiju you’d want to attack from behind. No sooner had the Captain thought this then a massive spiked tail flicked from behind the Kaiju and scraped four floors off the nearest department store. Straggling civilians below ducked and darted away from falling debris as they tried to outrun the creature.
The Captain stared in amazement at a man across the street who’d barely avoided being smashed by a safe like some cartoon coyote. Their eyes met and the stranger pointed frantically above the Captain. Archibald looked up to find a giant chunk of red metal soaring toward him. Before he could move, something struck him in the gut and sent him flying onto the sidewalk.
Grunting in pain, Haddock struggled to sit up. The process dislodged more tomatoes from the vegetable stand he’d miraculously landed in and sent them skittering all over. Just a few feet away, where the Captain had been standing, stood the massive thing that had almost killed him; a giant red “H” from a neon sign.
“Are you alright, Archie?”
Archibald jerked left toward the voice and the move carried enough force to upset the display he sat on. The Captain, along with several crates of produce, were dumped spectacularly onto hard concrete. He batted a pesky piece of greenery away from his face determined to see the Neanderthal that had tackled him and dared call him by that old nickname.
Skillfully picking his way through the ruined stand was a boy in a produce-smeared trench coat. Or he might have been a teen. It was impossible to say what age he might have been with a baby face that was contradicted by the square set of his shoulders. What really struck the Captain though was the reddish tuft of hair standing like an exclamation point above the rounded face. The sounds of mayhem continued all around but that red hair sparked a niggling sensation in the Captain’s head.
Captain Haddock’s mouth hung open until his brain wrestled the feeling into a thought. “It’s you,” he finally sputtered. “You’re the one who’s been following me!”
The boy seemed not to hear as he stepped over the Captain to check the Kaiju’s position. Two more strides would bring the creature directly on top of them. “We have to go, Archie!”
Haddock snatched his elbow away from the boy’s grip. “No one calls me that anymore!”
Hurt flickered across that baby face but it was immediately replaced by a hard stare. “Get up.”
The Captain staggered to his feet, half in startled compliance and half in drunken anger that this boy would order him about.
“We have to-“
“Now see here-“
A sharp crack startled the two into silence. Down the street, the pavement split and spread out in jagged ripples under the foot of the Kaiju. Its massive head cast a shadow over the street. Anger always lurked just underneath Archibald Haddock's skin, but the arrival of the Kaiju compounded with the ruined bottle of whiskey and the appearance of this bossy, little redheaded stalker positively set the Captain on fire.
Haddock pushed the stunned boy aside and marched into the street with the Kaiju.
“Archie! What are you doing?”
The Captain brushed the kid off his arm, or at least tried to. Kid had a death grip!
“I’m telling that monster what’s what,” the Captain bellowed.
Another monstrous roar had the redheaded boy clapping hands over his ears, Haddock breathed it in to fuel his next tirade. Surprisingly strong arms squeezed the breath right out of the Captain and he only managed an indignant yelp.
“Are you out of your mind?” The boy wrangled Haddock off the street and under a nearby awning.
“I wasn’t finished with that Cretaceous cockatoo! That...”
The boy gave Haddock a stern look that caused his insults to stutter to a near halt.
“That…ah… lackadaisical lizard.”
The Kaiju, unfazed by insults or the sudden disappearance of its tiny adversary, continued it’s rampage. Another massive stride had taken the thing’s body passed the Captain and boy but the ever swinging tail crashed into the storefront overhead. Haddock was yanked by the font of his sweater just as the window frame behind him collapsed. Glass blew outward and shattered against the Captain’s back as he wrapped the boy in his arms and spun away. They grunted in unison as they bounced off a brick wall and landed in a dazed heap back in the street.
Haddock was the first to move. He gripped the boy who’d landed atop him and rolled them clear of the spiked tail tearing through concrete. Haddock watched the Kaiju’s tail until it was several storefronts away before looking to the boy he hovered over. “Are you alive, lad?”
Underneath the Captain, the boy groaned and tried to raise a hand to his head. Exactly when he’d hit it was hard to tell.
“I…yes. I’m alive.”
Captain Haddock exhaled a stale breath. The boy shifted and Haddock remembered he was still a hands width away from that soft face. Other parts of their bodies were much closer. Hastily, Haddock stumbled to his feet and brushed glass and dust from his clothes. Only when he was sure he’d composed himself, did the Captain turn and offer a hand to the boy.
Somewhere behind the Captain came the sound of propellers. Multiple sets judging by the racket they made. Chopper blades were replaced with the whirring of hundreds of gears and pistons then the forceful rush of air and roar of ignited fuel. Fire consumed the world for a horrible moment as missiles burst against the Kaiju’s back. Haddock clasped the boy to his chest once more to shield him from possible debris.
A shadow passed over Haddock and he briefly thought, A spaceship at a time like this? But the spaceship touched down a few blocks ahead making a crater in what was left of the street, and it turned out to be the massive foot of a Jaeger. Without ado, the giant metal warrior threw itself at the snarling Kaiju. The Jaeger grappled and wrestled the Kaiju's snout into submission while the creature flailed its massive tail.
The appearance of the Jaeger should have elated the Captain. Instead, a cold cannonball settled in his gut as he watched the battle. To pilot a Jaeger, to be a hero; these were things Captain Archibald Haddock was no longer capable of.
*****
Several drunken miles after his hasty retreat from the downtown Kaiju attack, Haddock was growing severely irritated. And the more he sobered, the more he felt the weight of his uselessness. He’d been nothing to that hulking Kaiju. He would never be a Jaeger pilot again. But that wasn’t what was really getting to Haddock. He stopped to squint at a street sign he couldn’t quite read.
“Do you need help finding someplace?”
Haddock slapped his face and dragged his fingers down, dramatically distorting his face. That voice was what bothered him. Well, the voice wasn’t unpleasant; a nice tenor with a slightly French accent, but it was the presence that lingered. That redheaded man/boy followed a constant three steps behind the Captain even after they’d cleared the danger zone. Haddock found he was having a hard time focusing on the sidewalk beneath him instead of the youthful figure behind him.
“No, I can find it,” Haddock growled. “Just can’t read the signs. Damn Kaiju’s making the signs shake.”
“Sir, the Kaiju’s gone.”
The distinctive battle sounds had faded ten minutes ago, something the Captain just now registered. The roads were nearly deserted since people tended to stay indoors during Kaiju cleanup. He grunted and fanned his face with his cap. It was warm out and he was feeling thirsty. The boy quickened his pace to pull aside Haddock.
“Why don’t we stop and rest someplace?”
Haddock grunted again at the friendly suggestion. He wrestled his blue sweater over his head and used it to wipe the sweat from his face. His shoulder popped audibly and reminded him just how badly all that running and tumbling had roughed him up.
“Archie, please.”
There was that name again! The Captain growled and whirled to stick a broad finger into the boy’s personal space. “Why are you here?”
“You tried to fight a Kaiju barehanded,” came the dry response. “Can’t I worry about you?”
“No! You were following me before that weren’t you?”
The redhead had the decency to blush a little but did not shrink away from the accusation.
“As a matter of fact, I was.”
“Why? Who are you?” Grabbing massive fistfuls of yellow polo and skinny red tie, Haddock pushed the young stranger against the nearest wall. Haddock vaguely worried he might give the boy another concussion. But aside from startled eyes, the boy seemed fine. The redhead’s hands settled on the Captain’s arm to keep the bear strength from crushing his collarbone.
“My name is Tintin. I’m a reporter.”
“A reporter? Blistering Barnacles! Another one of them trashy magazines come to slander my family name! I suppose you want a story. ‘The washed up Jaeger pilot, Archibald Haddock! Where is he now?’ That what ye want?”
“It isn’t like that. Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”
“…a drink…”
Tintin thought he'd gotton a handle on the man by now and expected the Captain to be intrigued. Instead, Tintin was startled by the Captain’s renewed ferocity.
“A drink from a baby-faced reporter? Did Allan send you?”
Tintin grunted when his head hit the wall. Tired of being manhandled, the reporter brought his hands up between Haddock’s arms and knocked them aside. Tintin ducked underneath one of Haddock’s arms and, with a well-placed foot sweep, had the larger man pinned to the wall.
Haddock stared numbly at the brick façade. He felt the warmth and weight of the boy at his back and cringed against his own thoughts. Soon enough it was gone. Haddock turned and rubbed the scratched tip of his round nose. The reporter had backed a safe distance away from any retaliation and his hands were thrown up in a placating gesture.
“I don’t know an Allan. Please sir. Just let me buy you a drink.”
The boy’s eyes were soft, remorseful. That should have sent the Captain on his way straight back to his ship, across the sea, anywhere in the opposite direction. But, for years, Haddock had not been good at doing what he should.
And Haddock’s throat was dry.