Fanfic / From Out the Ocean Risen

"With the Breach sealed at last in a daring final act against the kaiju threat, many people are now wondering — where do we go from here?"

— Chapter 1, That Ocean Is Not Silent

From Out the Ocean Risen is a Pacific Rim series of fan fiction written by Bluestar and hosted on Archive of Our Own. Part one and two, That Ocean Is Not Silent and Strange, Far Places respectively, are finished. Part three, The Hosanna Anteversal, is currently ongoing. The entire series is currently over 576,000 words long. The series has also inspired some fan art collected here.

Has the apocalypse been canceled for good? Hercules Hansen, Mako Mori, and Raleigh Beckett are trying to keep the Jaeger Program operational and moving forward. Hannibal Chau wants to secure future profits. But the most disturbing movements are coming from the K-Scientists. Newton Geizler is having splitting headaches and starts to feel something out in the ocean that does not want to be alone. Creating a safe bond between humans in the Drift is hard enough. What are the consequences of drifting with a kaiju?

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From Out the Ocean Risen provides examples of:

• Blackmail: Hannibal Chau orders his lieutenant to set this in motion to “convince” the new Marshall to continue dealing in kaiju parts.
• Blood from the Mouth: Exhibited by Scunner as it succumbs to the severe physical injuries it took in the film, and eventually turned up a notch as it dies. This also affects Newt's hivemind representation, but not his physical body.
• Body Horror: Scunner’s mortal wounds and slow, agonizing death.
• Brain in a Jar: This is what Meathead has been reduced to after its death.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Scunner may be desperate for company, but that doesn't mean it likes who it's stuck with. It torments Newt, ripping him out of his own body and throwing him into the kaiju hivemind to fend for himself; when Scunner and the hivemind are dying, it attacks Newt with the full intent of badly injuring him.
• Cassandra Truth: Even though Newt had advance warning of Scunner's arrival at the Shatterdome, nobody but Gottlieb believes him until the kaiju is literally lying outside their front door.
• The Chains of Commanding: Herc is really starting to feel the strain.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: While spying at the Los Angeles Shatterdome Chau's lieutenant internally debates calling help for Hermann and ultimately does so, at the risk of herself being discovered.
• Defiant to the End: Newt exhibits signs of this trope as Scunner dies, inadvertently bringing him down with it.
  “You did this to me,” [Newt] shouted, furious. “Have the decency to look at me before you kill me, you son of a bitch!”
• Eye Scream:
  • In a carryover from the film, the effects of drifting with the kaiju hemorrhages Newt's left eye. In the hivemind, it glows kaiju blue.
  • Seagulls peck at Scunner's ruined, irradiated eyes and subsequently drop dead from the poisonous kaiju blood.
• A Father to His Men: Herc looks out for Newt, expressing horror when it seems he has died with Scunner, and has deep respect for Hermann, even in the aftermath of their heated arguments.
  Hercules Hansen: Nothing you have is worth bartering my people's souls to get.
• Fighting from the Inside: At first, Newt is able to wrest control of himself away from Scunner. As he weakens under the kaiju's influence, he is no longer able to resist and Scunner takes over completely.
• Foreshadowing: The global surges heralding a new opening of the Breach.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: The kaiju are designed to communicate via a hivemind, and without it, this is what happened to Meathead. Scunner also showed signs of this before its death, and it's heavily implied that being separated from Gottlieb is beginning to cause this in Newt during Strange, Far Places.
• Grand Theft Me: While Newt wanders through the Hivemind Scunner projects itself into his body and mind to escape its excruciating wounds and the frigid cold.
• Guilt Complex: Newt blames himself for the death of the crews of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon, as well as Chuck Hansen and Stacker Pentecost. In the events of Strange, Far Places he realizes that Drifting with the kaiju hivemind gave the invading Precursors information to alter kaiju design to better fight off Jaegers, and prompted the triple event that ultimately killed Pentecost and Hansen.
• Hates Being Alone: The hivemind is a single mind and isolated from all else and anyone else after the events of the movie…except for Newton.
• HiveMind: Introduced in the film and expanded upon. The hivemind is literally that, one mind that remembers it has multiple manifestations, the different kaiju. When Meathead became separated from the main organism it became its own hivemind, remembering only the kaiju that came before it and none of the ones after.
• Just Following Orders: The kaiju are literally coded to follow orders, so much so that they start going insane when cut off from the Precursor’s directives.
• Madness Mantra: Anytime Newton cannot distinguish between himself and the kaiju.
  • Meathead before it bonds with Newton, and sometimes after.
• Nuclear Option: Subverted - it's no longer an option due to a lack of actual bombs and the fact that previous attempts to use nuclear bombs on the kaiju have already irradiated a lot of land; they simply can't afford to use any more nukes.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: After some haranguing and wielding of the popular public opinion by Hansen the UN finally green lights the salvage the old Jaegers. Scunner’s sudden reappearance probably also helped.
• Psychic Link: The Drift left one of these between Newt and Gottlieb, as well as a second link between Newt and Scunner (and by extension, the rest of the kaiju hivemind). Following Lightcap's experiment in Strange, Far Places, Newt is also connected to Meathead.
• Psychic Nosebleeds: In a similar vein as the film, Newt and Gottlieb both suffer frequent nosebleeds as a side effect of the Drift. Overlaps somewhat with Deadly Nosebleed, though it has yet to be fatal to either character (and hopefully will remain that way).
• Sanity Slippage: Newt shows signs of this, to the point where he considers drowning himself in a bathtub to make it stop, but ultimately doesn't go through with it.
• Shapeshifter Swan Song: Scunner again - it shifts through several different kaiju as it dies in the hivemind, though its physical shape remains the same.
• Suicide Mission: Meathead and the other early kaiju were created and sent through the Breach so that the Precursors could first scout out and study humans (alongside destroying as much as they could), and then later on study the Jaegers. They were never intended to survive the encounters.
• Taking You with Me: Scunner, whether it does so intentionally or not, very nearly pulls this trope on Newt at the end of That Ocean Is Not Silent, though it's ultimately averted.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Newt's Badass Boast in chapter 22 of Strange, Far Places starts with this.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A mild example with Herc, whose attitude has soured quite a bit since the end of the movie. It's actually pretty justified too: Over the course of the war, he's lost his wife, his close friend Pentecost, and finally his son, Chuck. To add insult to injury, he's a man of action stuck in what could be seen as a glorified desk job. Going through all of this would make just about anyone a little cynical, but he's still a good man.
• Tragic Monster: Subverted and Played Straight. You can’t help feeling sorry for Scunner as the broken kaiju slowly dies, but it never stops feeling anything except pure loathing for the humans and Newton. All that is left of Meathead is the brain and it has been alone for so long it no longer cares about anything else but staving off its loneliness and behaves like a clingy small child.
• Voices Are Mental: The hivemind is a very, very chatty entity - and Newt is the one stuck listening to it. What starts as disembodied, vague voices escalates into screaming and ranting, to a point where it begins influencing Newt's actions.
• You Have to Believe Me!: When Newt realizes that he is still bonded to the kaiju hive mind, he and Hermann try to convince the Marshall and others that one of the kaiju is still alive. However, until Scunner shows up they believe that Newt is more likely going insane.

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