Title: Cancelling the Apocalypse
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen (violence and swearing and blood?)
Length: 2600 words
Content notes: mecha and monsters, violence, swearing, blood/injury
Author notes: So Pacific Rim happened. And now I have a Mecha AU. Of which this is one part. Umi wins her fight - but she's trapped as a result of it, and Clef will NOT leave her behind. (All you have to know is Umi and Clef are both Pilots involved with a mecha-development program run by Emeraude, to read this? Um.) (Clef/Umi)

oOo

Selece’s gears were shrieking, a wail like the world’s ending as Umi grit her teeth and heaved, throwing all her weight and all the strength she had left against the rig. The interfaces about her were smoking, the ones which weren’t cracked were flashing red, nothing was responding – the metal strapped to her arms and legs was a dead weight, but manual control was the only thing she had left, and it had to move. She was still strapped in place, at least, her suit ragged in patches across the arms where debris from the buckled plating had hit her, a stinging burn creeping up one calf where acidic saliva was eating through the leg guard and the material below, into her skin. But the connectors were in place down her spine, and she could feel the boiling heat of Selece pressed against her thoughts, still reading her intent. That meant – she hoped that meant – the blast should be active. If she could just add some action to that, just-

Because she was still standing, but so was the creature. Her cameras had gone, but there were gaping holes in the plating about the cockpit, where its teeth had ripped into metal, searching for her: she could see it, the slick grey curve of its spine, the spikes rearing out of it. There were streaks of yellow-green glistening on the scales and its head hung low, near invisible under the pained hunch of the back, and she could hear the rattling wheeze of its breath even over the rush of the water about them, the waves of their battle breaking against Selece’s battered hull.

One more hit, just one more hit – that was all she needed, and it would be down – and it had to go down, because there was no one else left between them and the city glittering in the distance as dusk gathered. Even Griffin and Silence seemed to have been dragged into the fighting now, the creatures spreading out in an attempt to get between the mech. None of them had managed, yet – at least, she didn’t think they could have, but her comm was spitting static and not much more. She thought she heard her name, once, but there was nothing more and she must have imagined it. Even if she hadn’t, there was nothing anyone else could do now, everyone else had their own damn problems to face.

If only she could just- get her legs – to move!

Her muscles screamed in protest as she dragged one foot up, the straps biting into her leg through the pitted remnants of the acid-eroded armour plate. The levers below her ground together, and the whole mech shuddered with her, with every breath she took, with every pulse of the reactor below. Sweat dripped down her face, mixing with the salt-spray which was coming in through the cracks in her helmet’s faceplate, stinging on the cut where she had bitten her lip – was biting it still. Sweat or blood, or both, was trickling down her back as she flung herself against the controls, staring out through the gashes in the metal before her. She could see the ocean churned grey by their battling, the seeping stain of blood and oil mixing, and the monster turning as Selece creaked under her.

“Come- on! ” She screamed. “Selece! Please! ”

The whole world jolted violently as finally, finally, they took a step forward. Her other foot came up, gears shrieking again but Umi exploiting every inch of momentum she could throw into the motion, and the creature was moving faster than she could, responding to the terrible sound of straining machinery, but that was alright: that was alright. It was coming, and that meant she didn’t have to go to it, just get her hands up – Selece’s hands up – in time for it to run into them.

For one moment Umi saw the vicious blue-white flare of the blast-cannon streaming about Selece’s hands, radiating back through the broken shielding about her. She had just time to be relieved before the creature hit and the cannon went off and she was falling, falling, water and metal and wires slamming down about her as she crashed into darkness.

oOo

“-mi! Umi!”

A voice, crackling, somewhere. So distant.

“Fuck it, Umi! Answer me, damn you!”

Voice she knew. But so far, so fuzzy – and then she shifted, just slightly, and there was pain lancing through her shoulder, her legs, radiating out and building into a static which ate even her own voice as she cried out.

Unconsciousness swallowed her whole for a second time, and it was a relief.

oOo

“Madoushi – Clef! ” Emeraude snapped, voice sharp over the comm. “Get away from there, that’s an order! The shielding about Selece’s reactor has been breeched, and for some reason none of the failsafes have shut it down. As soon as water gets to it-“

“Like hell I’m leaving her in there!” Clef snarled, and Griffin was smaller than Selece by a generous third, but that just made it easier to get under the other mech and get a grip about its waist, push up. It took all that Griffin had to get them even vaguely upright, but finally most of Selece’s chest was out of the water – the cockpit no longer threatened by every wave. And now he could see the terrible holes ripped through the chest, knew there was no chance water wasn’t seeping and sloshing down through the damaged layers of shielding already, that there was little chance he was even delaying detonation with this, but at least – at least she was out of the water, because the piloting suits were awful for swimming in-

“ Clef! ” Emeraude snapped, and he growled back. “Don’t you dare-“

“Fuck that! We both know she’s worth more to the program than Griffin and I combined, so don’t you dare tell me to leave her behind! Just let me get her out of there!”

“The chances of her being alive are-“

“She’s alive.” He was pulling himself out of the controls as he spoke, dragging free quicker than the straps wanted to release, and he nearly crashed to the floor in the confusion of the moment as the connection with Griffin broke, but then he was up and moving, and what could Emeraude do to him, over eighty miles of ocean? “She’s too stubborn to be dead.”

He released the shoulder hatches and scrambled up, and it was even worse in the brutal reality of fresh sea air. Selece’s hull was bleeding oil and coolant, and he could smell the acid corroding it where blood and spit were smeared over the metal. Some was dripping down onto Griffin – he could hear the alarm beginning to go off, counting down how long it would take to eat through the carapace, and didn’t care.

The holes at least made it easy to get up, fingers latching into dents and rips until he was high enough to pull himself through into the cockpit. He landed on a floor tilted badly to one side, knee-deep in water and littered with debris: he stumbled again, swearing under his breath as his ankle twisted painfully below him.

Then he looked up, and the words stuck in his throat.

Umi was still strapped into the rig – into what was left of it – and the rest had smashed down onto her. Girders lay over her legs, pinning them, blood seeping through below, and one pole – one round pole, an inch wide, had punched straight through her left shoulder.

“Fuck, fuck – don’t you be dead, Umi – don’t you dare be dead-“

He waded through the swirling water, tripping on bits of console, wiring. The water was washing down through the grates in the floor – and the thought of the reactor still blazing away below them had his hands shaking, because there was no way he was going to be able to get her free in time.

There was blood still oozing about the edges of the pole. That had to mean her heart was still beating, right?

Clef made his fingers grip the slick glass of her faceplate, what was left of it, and pull it away – it came free in his hands, and he made a hysterical mental note to tell Presea they needed better armour, this clearly wasn’t strong enough.

He was swearing, low and constant, and there was complete silence down the Comm line as he yanked one glove off and pressed his fingers against cool skin, damp from the sea and sweat and blood-

He felt her pulse below his fingertips, and in the next moment her lips opened about a small, pained noise. The relief was static shattering through him, and his knees threatened to give way; he held on grimly to the strut still supporting Umi’s weight and for a second let himself rest his head down against hers, their helmets clicking together. But only a moment, because the vibration of Selece’s reactor was still singing through the struts about them, the broken systems fighting on. “She’s alive,” he said, raising his voice so the Comm would pick it up clearly. “Alive, but pinned. I can’t get her free and get out of here in time – there has to be a way of getting the reactor to shut down! The failsafes- get Presea, get-“

“I’m here, Clef.” The engineer’s voice was tightly controlled. “The manual overrides for the Mark Nine are on the main console. If it still has power-“

Clef’s laugh was bitter, and short – he didn’t turn around. The remains of the central console were holding most of the metal which had Umi pinned down. If the power hadn’t cut out when it was smashed, the water sloshing about his legs would have carried the charge through the rest of the room.

“Not an option.” He said, shortly. “There has to be something else!”

Presea swore, quietly. Clef didn’t think he was meant to hear that. “There’s – there’s an override on the top of the reactor block, but you’d have to get down to it, and it means opening up whatever shielding’s still intact to the water in the frame. If the chest is even partially underwater-“

“ Fuck.” His fingers flexed against Umi’s neck, pressed between skin and the heavy material of the suit. She whimpered again, a small noise, and- the vibration through the floor increased, just slightly, just for a moment. Clef looked up to see her eyelids fluttering open, and she was – she was still in the rig, he realised. The back half, anyway – the half with all the connection to the AI.

“Clef?” She slurred, and again there was the faintest swell of vibration through the floor, the water, the metal holding her pinned.

It shouldn’t have – but he thought back to the battle, to Fuu’s startled gasp when she turned and fired straight through a creature coming for her back, erupting from the water. She’d moved so quickly – he’d been suspicious then, because how could she have seen the threat flagged on the screens and then reacted that fast, but what could he have done, middle of a fight?

“Emeraude.” He said, voice low. “You didn’t – you –“ He dragged in air, made himself shut his eyes, shaking with anger and – if she’d put the next stage of the link into the Mark Nines, without telling anyone, without the failsafes they were still developing – he’d told her the upgrade wasn’t ready!

Umi had crashed out of consciousness in mid-battle. She didn’t know it was over. Neither did Selece – and so he was trying to respond, without understanding that he was now the threat, because Umi wasn’t conscious to understand it either.

But at the same time, it gave them one last hope of getting out of this alive.

He pushed his faceplate all the way up and leant in closer, thumb brushing restlessly along Umi’s jaw. “It’s me, Umi. I’m going to get you out of here – I just need you to do one thing first, okay? One thing for me.”

“Hurts.” She whimpered, and he had to close his eyes again, feeling so helpless.

“I know, I know – just do this for me, and then I can make it stop, okay? Just – you have to tell Selece to power down.”

There was a sudden babbling in his ear, someone saying ‘what? But how can she- even if the AI is still running, the interface-‘ and Presea, replying with ‘the AI systems are all at the back of the rig. If that part of the cockpit is still intact, then they should be running, but-‘. He blocked them all out to focus on the girl whose breath was short, pained gasps against his cheek.

“Tell him to shut down, now. For me. Think it, think nothing else, just about shutting down. For me.”

“But – the creatures, we were –“ she started, and he wanted to laugh, to cry.

“You won, Umi. We won, it’s okay – Selece needs to shut down so that we can get him back home, fix him up for the next fight. Just think that at him, think it hard. That’s all you need to do-“

Her face creased, with pain or concentration or both – he couldn’t tell. Clef held his breath, not daring to speak, and just hoping – hoping - He’d been working on the AI programming since the beginning, had always known Emeraude’s plan, or at least the shape of it. He’d made certain they were designed to protect their Pilot before anything else, at all costs, against every protocol, and it had let the Reactor stay on but - if Umi could pass the message through, if Selece was even connected to the reactor controls anymore…

He was growing dizzy with the need for oxygen, so much that when the vibration about them stopped it was a long second before he registered it, and when he had his leg’s threatened to go out from under him – he had to hold tight to the rig behind Umi and fight to breathe deeper while he shook.

But Umi was still trapped, bleeding, breathing harshly. The sound was half eaten by the thrumming of Griffin’s engines, and he pulled himself up and made himself actually examine the wound in her shoulder. “Base, this is Madoushi. Selece’s reactor is powered down. I repeat – reactor is going cool. Please send a med team – Umi’s lost a lot of blood, and I think at least one of her legs is broken – we’ll need metal-cutting equipment to get her out.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Get here quickly. Please.”

“Acknowledged, Madoushi.” Emeraude said, quietly. He could hear cheering in the background, chants of ‘Selece is safe! Ryuuzaki is safe!’ He hoped the second was true. “Help is on its way. Just sit tight, they should be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Not going anywhere.” He promised, softly, and he was looking at Umi when he said it. Selece going quiet had knocked her out completely again; probably for the best, until someone with heavy drugs and a better idea of first aid got to them.

“You ridiculous, stubborn, idiotic girl.” He muttered, pulling his hand away from her neck – but she was too still, without the reassurance of her pulse under his wrist. Clef dropped down to the floor, in the water which was now only ankle high, and let his head fall back against the part of the rig still supporting her – and let himself hold onto her wrist instead, where her suit had torn, where her heartbeat lay under his touch.

oOo