We had all heard what had happened to the Becket brothers. Some were full of pity for the surviving one, Raleigh; many mourned the loss of Yancy. Others hid their fear behind scoffs at their clear mishandling of the mission.
I was one of a set of twins. Identical twins, actually. We had grown up as one entity, Helen-and-Hadley. No one could tell us apart, not even our physician. We went everywhere together. We were young when the first Kaiju attacked, but even then we were top of our class, even categorized as "geniuses". After the institution of the Jaeger program, it was no surprise to many that we were selected. We were considered one of the most Drift-compatible sets of people that had ever been seen. When we spoke, we often spoke together or finished each other's sentences. We had the exact same mannerisms, and our movements were often in sync.
We were only fourteen.
Our first Drift went more smoothly than butter. It was like we had been missing half of our brain our entire life and we fit together more closely than two pieces of a puzzle. Our Jaeger, Scorpion Chaos, was a prototype of the Betas, a line of Jaegers intended to be much more flexible and accurate in battle. Our natural flexibility and kinesthesia came to be incredible assets to our fighting style, and we carefully studied the biology of the Kaiju which had attacked so far in order to be able to pinpoint weak spots in their bodies.
However, with our great success came some measure of adversity among the Alpha line pilots. Squall was a pilot holding the current record of successful missions - five. He was cocky and overbearing, and he was one of those who mocked the Becket brothers' story.
When the news first came in, all of the pilots were eating supper, with a team on standby for Gipsy Danger. The two of us were horrified. The concept of losing my sister, particularly during Drift, was paralyzing. We had looked up to the Becket brothers because they were far more individualistic than many of the other pilots, and we had spent some time with the elder brother, Yancy.
Yancy was the only person we had ever met who could tell us apart. He was like a big brother to us, and we had desperately latched on to the only real source of human comfort in the cold military complex.
We gripped each other's hand tightly under the table and tried to move past the shock that had gripped us upon the announcement.
We were broken from our moment of silence by a scoff.
Instantly we whipped around. Squall leisurely stood and coldly commented, "Too bad. Honestly though, what losers. I'd call that mission a failure, really, because -"
"Shut up, Squall!" we snapped. "The Beckets are twice the man you'll ever be!"
He slowly turned to face us. He considered us for a moment, then said, "Tsk. Well, at that statement's most literal, yes, they are, since there are two of them. But really, I think I'm fairly better off, seeing as I've carried out five successful missions, but then again, you two haven't even had one successful run yet, have you?"
Our jaws clenched. "But you haven't piloted your Jaeger alone, have you? You'll never be able to pull that one off, Squall."
He stiffened. "Well, what would you two know? You've only got one brain between the two of you, anyway. Everyone knows it. It's like you got permanently stuck in Drift."
We jumped to our feet. I grabbed my sisters hand, partly to keep myself from doing something rash but also to hold her back. She was trembling with anger. She snapped, "Oh, I don't know about that Squall. We are two -"
"-separate individuals, you know?" I cut in. "On a more serious note, though, Squall -"
"-five wins is a record, isn't it?" she picked up. "You'll want to be -"
"-careful, it sounds like you're-"
"-due a loss any-"
"-time-"
"-now," she finished.
He looked slightly frantic, eyes flickering back and forth between us. I couldn't prevent a smirk from crossing my lips, and I knew my sister was mirroring me. We chimed together, "Then what will you be able to hide behind? Not your record, that's for sure. And that's if you're lucky enough to be alive."
He snarled. "Shut up! Shut up!" He roughly pushed past us and slammed the door on the way out.
He and his copilot died on the next mission.
When my sister and I next visited our Jaeger, we clipped a picture of Raleigh and Yancy to our console.
Two months later, when my sister and I were first deployed against a Kaiju, we stared at that picture moments before contact.
As I spoke into my microphone and shouted at the Marshal that the Beta line was too fragile, the Kaiju played with us, crushing one of our legs. When the Kaiju crushed half of the cockpit and my sister's mind was ripped away from mine more painfully than anything I had ever felt, I reached forward and grabbed the picture, tucking it beneath one of my chest plates. I desperately tried to fend off the Kaiju's fierce attacks, wondering distantly how Raleigh had done it. As the Kaiju's pincer pierced my stomach, I laughed slightly and coughed blood. I managed to choke out, "You're really something, Raleigh. You may no longer be the only one to singly pilot a Jaeger, but damn if you're the only one who survived it…" With a final laugh, I slammed my right hand forward and dragged Scorpion Chaos' longest knife across the Kaiju's stomach, disemboweling it, before everything went dark.
I was buried in a small plot in our hometown. They found the picture of Raleigh and Yancy when they retrieved my body and our Jaeger, and they buried me with it placed neatly in my hands, over my heart. I'm sure there was lots of speculation that blew out of proportion because of that picture, but I'm just glad in a small way that they let me keep it. I was buried under my name and my sister's name in a gesture of respect to her too, but mainly because…
…they never did figure out whether I was Helen or Hadley.