Caught unawares, the Kaiju seized its opportunity and began its own relentless assault on Gipsy Danger. We watched from afar, helpless to its plight. Dead silent as our pilot steered us to a safe distance away from the fight.
I felt sick to my stomach and I know most men aboard the copter felt the same way. We couldn't do squat to help the Beckets, yet they were laying their lives on the line for us all. If the Kaiju were to win this fight, we would scuttle away to safety, leaving behind two men that were responsible for a significant amount of Kaiju deaths. These two men were heads and shoulders better than we are. They shouldn't have to die so.
Gipsy was no slouch though. In its arsenal was a deadly weapon called the plasmacaster. Think of it as a bad ass weapon for a 280ft metal brawler. There was only one problem, it took a while for the plasmacaster to load and the Kaiju had wrapped itself up in such a way that freeing the plasmacaster was near impossible.
Knifehead in one instance of brutality pierces the cockpit, damaging the Cons-pod and eventually ripping away Gipsy Danger's entire left arm. I watched with tears streaming down my face, as poor Yancy went flailing away into the wind, connected to the side of the machine that was just ripped apart. Days after, I would adamantly refuse to let my editors put the shot of it I had gotten into the daily news of that day. Those men should be lionized, not ridiculed in such a fashion.
What I did let my boss put instead, was what happened right afterwards. Perhaps spurred on by his brother's death, Raleigh would perform a feat only one other Ranger had been successful to do. He unloaded the plasmacaster onto the Knifehead's chest, killing it in the process. But our solitary hole wasn't done just yet, he was able to steer his badly maimed Jaeger onto land, all whilst badly injured himself. Such act of heroism is beyond my comprehension, human beings are not supposed to be able to do what he did on that day. He is a man unlike any other.
The Jaeger was decimated beyond repair. Yet by some miracle, it began to move. Farther and farther away, into the night, towards the heart of the storm. Till this date I don't know how Raleigh got that machine to land. Only he and Staker have successfully been able to power a Jaeger without another ranger in the cockpit. Raleigh's feat is even more impressive considering half of his machine was gone and he was badly injured. The only thing I have to prove it wasn't something my imagination had cooked up, were the few shots I was able to take of the machine shooting down its enemy, and also the gigantic robot walking off into the distance with most of its left side missing, sparks coming out from the joints supposed to hold arm and body in place.
Alas, Raleigh was never the same man after that incident. Though Gipsy Danger won the battle, humanity lost badly that night. The highly rated Beckett duo was no more, gutting one of our most important Ranger partnerships in the last decade or so. Raleigh quit being a member of the defense corps, too saddened by his brother's death. Gipsy Danger was too damaged to function again. Granted, time heals all wounds and both machine and ranger would reunite down the line, but looking back at the events that transpired after the Knifehead attack, things were looking quite grim.