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There was a kaiju attack on St. Lawrence Island today. The memorial service for Gunnar and Vic Tunari is scheduled for three days from now.

Pentecost is not about to admit it in front of everyone in the Shatterdome, but he needs to punch something.

Perhaps there will be an opportunity somewhere at Milliways.

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Pentecost would've shaken the hand regardless. Just as firmly and as steadily as he does now.

"Pleasure to meet you, Raphael," he says. "If the gym's staff-only, I'd settle for reasonably flat outdoor space."

It's not as if Jaegers can ever count on the ground beneath their feet being as flat as a proper floor, anyhow.

Yeah, but then how could Raph showcase his limited range for manners?

"Pleasure's mine. It ain't that the gym's Staff Only," he says rising to his feet and taking the bottle with him at the last second. Raph waves Stacker to follow him.

"I mean, it's down the Staff Hallway, but it's the first door so it ain't like you're likely to go an' get lost or nothin'. 'Sides, everyone knows who lives down here, an' it ain't like they're jumpin' at the chance to go pissin' them off."

Stacker falls in behind him, listening. "Understandable," he says. "Ordinarily I wouldn't bother. We have facilities of our own at the Shatterdome. I suspect they'll all be in use for some time, so I thought I'd try my luck here."

"Shatterdome?" Raph doesn't stop walking, but he does cast a glance over his shoulder. "Never heard of it, but it sounds pretty epic."

The swinging door to the Hallway gets pushed and then held open. The doorway to the gym is easy enough to spy, what with it being the only doorway with light pouring through.

"There's plenty of space out back, but if you're looking for more to do than run or shoot, you're probably better off in here."

The room isn't much to look at. There's no high-tech gadgetry. No state-of-the-art machines. Just what you'd find at your local neighborhood Gold's.

Well, if your local neighborhood Gold's had a large blue tarp covering a motorcycle in the way far back corner of the room.

"One of several. If you haven't heard of it by now you probably haven't got kaiju either, other than the sort in Toho Pictures films."

It's nothing fancy, but then the Kwoon usually hasn't got more than a few staves and other suitable pieces of equipment. Tech belongs elsewhere. "Not bad," he says.

"Not to my knowledge we don't, but I ain't been home in sometimes."

Though Raph's pretty sure that if there were giant monsters rampaging New York Donnie would have dropped him a line.

"We do got them in movies though. Gamera was a personal fave of mine as a kid."

Raph takes a look around the room, and sighs in contentment.

"Yeah, it ain't bad at that. Does what it say on the tin, so there's that. There's a shower in back near the john. We don't stock towels in here, though sometimes the rats'll bring in cases of bottled water."

"The ones we get've been coming out of a dimensional rift called the Breach," says Pentecost. "Between two tectonic plates south of Guam. I think it's safe to say that ours are the opposite of friends to all children."

He nods. "I don't think it'll be necessary. I can move quickly enough when I have to. If I need a shower and a towel that badly I'll either go upstairs or go back to Anchorage."

"I freakin' hate dimensional rifts," he grumbles between clenched teeth. And he really does too. Almost as much as he hates magic.

"How do you guys fight the big guys? If you don't mind me askin'."

"I suspect the feeling is mutual," says Pentecost. "Aside from one of our scientists who dearly wants to study the kaiju close up I can't think of anyone who has much reason to like them in the first place."

At the question, he smiles faintly. "We call them Jaegers," he says. "Mechanical suits, of a sort- if you consider something three hundred feet tall to qualify as a 'suit'. When the first few kaiju came through we tried more conventional means, and it cost us multiple cities. The only way to take them down that didn't require tactical nuclear strikes was direct melee combat, built up to their scale."

Raph...well he just sort of...blinks.
His forehead begins to furrow the more he blinks.

"You fight monsters with robot suits."

He just wants to be sure he's gotten it right.

"Linked to, and directly controlled by, the nervous systems of a pair of trained fighters each," says Pentecost. "With one exception, the only Jaeger piloted by a team of three. But, yes."

The rest of that is mumbo-jumbo better told to his brother Don than Raph, which is why he ignores it in favor of the truth he was able to glean from the jargon.

"That's the coolest fucking thing I've ever heard."

He inclines his head; there might be something of a smile to his face. "Thank you," he says. "Our Jaeger pilots tend to agree."

"I bet they freakin' do! What sort of qualifications you need for that kinda thing? Special license or somethin'?"

"No license," says Pentecost, "but we do put promising candidates through a training program. Assuming they pass the physical and psychological tests, of course. But they also have to be able to handle linking their minds with their co-pilot- it's part of the Jaegers' control system. We call it the Drift."

"Linking...their...minds? Like a mental link?"

Okay, this suddenly got a whole lot less cool, a whole lot quicker than Raph was expecting.

"So someone's in your head the whole time you're driving the thing?"

"Just as you're in theirs," says Pentecost. "The neural load of piloting a machine that size is too much for the human nervous system to bear. The control system used effectively links the pilots as two halves of a single brain- including sharing memories and thoughts."

Yup. That settles it. No dice. Raph's dreams of fighting Godzilla in a giant robot suit come to a close.

"My brother's got a setup somethin' like that. Don't exactly sound like fun to me."

"It isn't for everyone," Pentecost agrees. "How does your brother achieve the link, if I might ask?"

"Magic."

Remember that face he made when dimensional rifts came up in conversation? Yeah, it's back.

"I see," says Pentecost, who doesn't sound like he thinks much of the idea himself. "Deliberately?"

"Yes an' no," he says running a hand over his scalp. "She chose him, an' he chose to keep the thing going."

He leans back a bit, so as to get a view of the door and a bit down the hall. When he's sure there's no one there, his voice lowers.

"My brother's kind of an idiot."

"Must make his life more complicated," comments Pentecost. "Even the Jaeger pilots who report Drift hangover only seem to have it in momentary patches."

The idea of a permanent, ongoing Drift is... not one he would care to pursue. Not after what happened when the link with Tamsin broke so sharply.

"I assume he comes here as well."

"you got no idea," he mutters.

"Come here? He pretty much straight up lives here. Just down the hall from here, actually."

"I see," says Pentecost. "I might want to ask him a few questions about that in the future. Assuming that wouldn't be taken amiss."

The room gets one more brief once-over.

"Not until I've had a chance to practice, though. I didn't come here to interrogate anyone today."