<strong>Ryan Kodo<br/>Room 1003-A<br/>Civilian Barracks</strong><br/><br/><em>"General alert, general alert.  Kaiju event ongoing, all staff report to ACTIVE configurations."</em><br/><br/>Ryan groaned and cursed into his pillow, punching the bed with a curled fist.  "Kaiju, kaiju, fucking<em>kaiju</em>," he muttered, futilely trying to avoid the klaxon strips by pressing his face deeper into his pillow.  Xin, as usual, was panicking.  Between the synthesized voice's repetitions, Ryan could hear the frantic<em>click-clack</em>of his turtle scraping against the glass of her tank.<br/><br/>The time was way too fucking early, according to his watch.  His alarm hadn't been set to go off for another three hours, but then again he'd always been one to sleep in.  Being a researcher, Ryan had no specific role to fill in a Kaiju event, but his studio's strips went off all the same.  He could get up now and help Athena in the lab, but then he'd be chugging coffee all day to stay lucid.  Or he could sleep in, but that damned alarm would probably go off again anyway, and he'd feel like an asshole for sleeping through an Event.  Miserable, he muttered darkly into his pillow.<br/><br/>Ultimately, it was Xin's own torment which motivated him to truly wake up.  Cursing, he threw the blankets off him and stood beside his bed, slightly unsteady.  His room had been transformed into an alien environment, illuminated as it was by strobes of red and orange from the klaxon strips on the ceiling.  Faster and brighter they strobed, coming in waves of intensity, like a line of ambulances driving past the window.  Poor Xin scrabbled at the invisible walls of her home, her head poking in and out of her shell like a piston.  Ryan threw a jacket over her tank, big and thick to block out the light.  That usually calmed her down.<br/><br/><em>"General alert, general alert.  Kaiju event ongoing, all staff report to ACTIVE configurations,"</em>she repeated again, this time in Mandarin.  Ryan told her to go fuck herself as he pulled on a relatively clean pair of jeans he found below Xin's tank.  He had slept in his shirt, so he threw that off and snatched a faded black tee off the foot of his bed.  It still smelled like the cheap detergent he used, so he pulled it over his head.<br/><br/>Shoes proved to be a bit more difficult.  He found one near the door, but the second eluded him.  His studio had become a dungeon of red flashes and hard shadows, and it took him nearly a minute to find his second sneaker.<br/><br/><em>"General alert, general alert.  Kaiju event ongoing, all staff report to ACTIVE configurations."</em><br/><br/>Ryan stumbled towards the front door, awkwardly kicking his sneaker on as he went.  With more force than was strictly necessary, he slammed a fist into the light switch.  The synthesized voice cut off mid-sentence, and a calming cyan light filled his room in place of the klaxon's strobes.  He dimly wondered why he hadn't done that in the first place.  He pulled the jacket off Xin's tank, grabbed his wallet, phone, and keys, and left for the lab.<br/><br/>The hallway outside his room was a flood of humanity.  Ryan had the luck of being one door away from the elevator, which meant a shorter walk for him.  However, during an Event, it meant he had to deal with the rest of the 10th floor trying to use the same elevator as well.  Ryan threw himself into the crush, rubbing elbows with maintenance techs, desk jockies, and all manner of support staff as he let the flow carry him.<br/><br/>On his way to the lab, Ryan checked the news and Shatterdome updates on his phone.  "Stingsnapper," he muttered, stifling a yawn.  "<em>And</em>Terapede?"  Two Kaiju, a double Event?  As far as he knew, such a thing had never happened before.  A chill of fear dripped down his spine when he saw that Terapede was inbound for Tokyo.  It didn't matter that this was essentially the heart of the PPDC, or that they had at least three Jaegers waiting to pound Terapede into mush at the Miracle Mile.  Tokyo had had Jaegers back in 2016, but that hadn't stopped Onibaba from destroying most of the city before it was put down.<br/><br/>Ryan hadn't been able to reach a shelter then.  He had hid with the other faculty and staff in the basement of Yo Hall, huddling around a battery operated television one of the professors had found.  For three hours, they watched as Onibaba breached the Mile and came ashore just south of the Downtown.  It leveled skyscrapers, killing millions before Coyote Tango had drawn it off.  When Onibaba damaged the Jaeger's head, sending one of the Ranger's into a coma, Ryan and the others despaired.  He did not remember much after that.  There had been tears and desperate phone calls.  Someone had destroyed the TV, and the power had long since gone out.  Ryan had tried to stop someone from fleeing outside towards the end, and earned a rock to the temple for his trouble.  When he woke up, he had been in stretcher secured to the bed of a medical helicopter.  To his left, on the smoke stained and dusky horizon, Coyote Tango stood inactive over the hulking corpse of Onibaba.  After the Kaiju's rampage through the city, the Jaeger had been the tallest object Ryan could see through the medevac's narrow windows.  In his addled state, he had stretched out an arm and named it god.<br/><br/>The elevator<em>ding</em>'d when it reached the ground floor, returning Ryan to the present.  From there, it was a quick walk to the lab.  He checked the Shatterdome updates every few seconds.  Grave Digger had been assigned to Tokyo, and was en route.  It should be able to intercept Terapede before the Miracle Mile, but Ryan was worried all the same.  Oft times, there was a large difference between what<em>should </em>happen and what actually happens.  Even if Terapede breached the first line of defense, the Shatterdome held one of the toughest Kaiju bunkers in the world, and was itself a massive reinforced structure.  He was safe here.  He was safe here.<br/><br/>The lab proved to be empty, as Ryan had expected.  After all, it was largely his domain.  Athena's work was mostly hands on with the Shogun, while Ryan's was more R&D.  Most of his projects were nearing completion, and could probably be run through live tests in the Shogun itself, but Ryan had yet to pass it by Athena.  Shogun was her baby; nothing happened to it without her leave.<br/><br/>Shogun's hangar was nearby, and the walk was made all the quicker by the fact that the R&D level was deserted.  Not many people found reason to be here during an Event.  Ryan had instructed his own staff to "do what you will" when a live Kaiju was on Earth.<br/><br/>The hangar was immense, as Jaeger hangars were wont to be.  Immaculate Shogun was not the biggest or bulkiest of the Jaegers, but when it was just you and her in a hangar, it didn't matter.<br/><br/>Ryan found Athena on the Jaeger along with her Kaempfer, working with an armor plate.  Not for the first time, he marveled at her ability to piece something like this together with minimal help.  Not many people could say they built their own Jaeger.<br/><br/>He pocketed his phone and picked up a nearby loudspeaker; he liked to use them for communicating across the hangar.  It was sure as hell easier than screaming at the top of your lungs.  "Mornin' Athena!" he said, his amplified voice echoing inside the massive room.  "Didn't you hear?  There's a Category 2 inbound for Tokyo.  Grave Digger is moving to intercept."  Ryan paused, considering, before he raised the loudspeaker back up to his mouth.  "Are you seriously working during an Event?"