Life in the exclusion zone was better than you'd think, free scrap, Peace and quiet and lots of dead jaegers to harvest power from. I'm surprised there's so many just abandoned here. Not to mention even after a week, humans haven't even bothered coming to look for me.
The only problem are the pests.
Scrappers, humans that have trespassed into the exclusion zone to find expensive junk from both jaegers, downed buildings and even dead kaiju. Of which there were quite a few.
They were pests, the kind you could easily squish underfoot with minimal effort, too bad I don't want to be humanity's enemy. Still, I have to watch out for the buggers, I can't be seen by them. Powered or not, they'll either rally an armed force against me, or tear me apart from the inside... and that sounds even less appetising.
But there was one scrapper that had caught my attention, she had stumbled upon me while I was powered down the first night, and returned every night since. She hasn't gotten inside and doesn't try to, nor has she taken any parts attached to me. She just sits there on my hand, head, leg you name it. looks at the sky and then falls asleep. She looked to be about 9 years old, but the kid had strength and agility climbing up my chassis with ease or freeing loose scrap that had collected throughout the day. I didn't mind, I'd even bring more valuable parts I wouldn't need for her sometimes. Her silent company was worth it.
Right now I was looking for a jaeger with a charging mechanism similar to one I had blown before, my plasmacaster was too good a weapon to just leave in disrepair. And even without it, I could use such a mechanism in other ways. An electrified exoskeleton for one, though I'd need to fix my exo-skeleton first, I had a lot of repairs to do.
Repairs were difficult because my hands were huge and still rusty, making fine motor control impossibly hard. Even power core replacement turned out to be impossible since it's located internally I could eject the cores, but I had no means of inserting them. Not like I could wake Bob up in there which I also wanted to be rid of; corpses rot and err.. I don't want rotting things inside me. So I would simply store the power cores in my cockpit for now, but this would become a problem fast. My power was depleting faster than anticipated and my 2 weeks had dwindled to 1 and a half thanks to overuse of my power supply.
"The jaegers, are running dry recently. Power cores ripped right out of them, some left crushed. With entire limbs missing that were there the previous day, you don't think the rumour of the rogue Jaeger is true do ya boss?" Humans, and close. Too close, I was lucky to hear them before they saw me, and so I used the surrounding buildings to hide as best I could. So not very well, but these humans are stupid so no problem there.
"Are you still going on about tha'? I told you once and I'll tell ya again, that was some demonstration to scare us away from all that green moolah! Now come on, the sector ahead has been raided a few times; no point in going there" and with that they began to leave, choosing a location with no loot as home was my best choice yet. As they left they said something that caught my interest.
"Alright Boss, say when are we gonna catch that lil brat? She's been taking all the good stuff! I saw her sell the parts of a mark 6 plasma chainsaw! They sell for like 10 mill now! What does a kid need all that for???" I remember her finding that piece, she squealed so loud I had to turn down my damaged audio input drivers. So they're after her? Should I help her? I barely know the human only having seen her 4 times. Then again I do need the help. That much is obvious, I have no chance at replacing my power cores or doing internal repairs alone and I only have 4 days until my current power source runs out. This needs some serious addressing.
"Ohh we'll get her alright and all that money she has. Tomorrow tho, we have a quota to fill today so get back to work!" It is decided, I will seek this young one out and ask for her help, I'll die otherwise. Or at least sleep for a very long time if I'm not scrapped by some miracle. During my thoughts the human scrappers had already scampered off to find some scrap elsewhere. If only they knew how close to a fully, kinda, functioning Jaeger they were. Hmm no more tempting fate I think, assuming what I'm doing is thinking that is. After a few hours of gathering my own scrap in hopes of possible repair, I returned home. Hopefully that child will be there tonight again. she was my only real chance at survival, wow my life in the hands of a 9 year old.. Is this what they call desperation?
