Pete Coast stepped off the subway, wiped the sweat from his dark face, and squeezed into a carriage with the countless construction workers returning home from the defensive wall. It was clearly not a pleasant experience.
"Raleigh, is this how you've lived for the past five years? The smell is truly awful."
The general asked the former pilot behind him. Raleigh Becket and his brother had once piloted Gipsy Danger, but his brother had been killed in a battle against a Kaiju five years ago. After that, Raleigh, who had been rescued, vanished.
Only a few days ago had the general found this former ace pilot at a Wall Program construction site. He had used every means at his disposal before finally persuading Raleigh to return to the force.
But the former pilot had not actually decided to rejoin. He was only going back to the base to take a look.
"The Jaeger Program has been shut down. People would rather build walls now. Heh, Australia's proposal." The man called Raleigh was unshaven and looked like a vagrant. His spirits were also somewhat low. "I don't know when those walls will be finished, when they'll collapse after they are finished, or when the monsters will kill us. Why should I care how I'm living?"
Jaegers required multiple pilots to share the burden the neural control system placed on the human nervous system. Because of that shared burden, the pilots of the same machine also had what was known as a Mental Power synchronization rate.
The higher the synchronization rate, the more of a Jaeger's performance they could bring out. Otherwise, they would not even be able to start the machine.
Generally speaking, twins had relatively high synchronization rates, but close friends and married couples could also form pilot pairings.
Five