A/N: Many thanks for all the great reviews and feedback! Please keep them coming! Feel free to post questions or comments at my Tumblr: 3fluffies.
A little note on our heroes: When it comes to their sister Jazmine, Raleigh and Yancy aren't always reliable narrators. There are very few "bad guys" in this story, but there are also no saints, and Jazmine's problems are seen through the skewed perspective of two teenaged boys who are way out of their league in understanding mental health.
Another note on our heroes: While Guillermo del Toro has emphasized that Raleigh is not in any sense The Chosen One or super special in any way, he did do something remarkable even by Jaeger pilot standards, piloting solo. So I do think it's reasonable to foreshadow that perseverance and drive a little.
Also: this story is GEN. There is flirtation and the occasional casual fling, but apart from canon relationships, romance will be at most background scenery.
Chapter Two: The Bet That Changed The World
Jaeger Academy, Kodiak, Alaska, Class 2016-B, Term 1.
July 2016…
"What happens if you're too hurt to finish?" Raleigh wondered as their break-out class took a turn in the weight room. "Didn't a guy have to withdraw because he broke his ankle?"
"That wasn't a withdrawal - they dismissed him. Honorable discharge or whatever you call it. He can try again when he heals." Yancy rubbed his taped shin. "The medics think this is okay, but want me to ice it every day." He grinned sheepishly. "Doctor Tán made a point of saying that nobody gets a black mark for asking for ice or ibuprofen, but if we're hurt and haven't had it looked at, we might."
"Duly noted," said one of the other guys, sitting down to bench press. "Hey, somebody spot me?"
"I gotcha," said Raleigh, letting Yancy have a turn on the bars. "I get their point, though. We're not fighting people, we're fighting alien sea monsters. If they've got more qualified pilots, that's a good thing."
"Are there ever going to be more Jaegers than pilots?" asked Don the Douchebag, rolling his eyes. Raleigh wasn't sure if he was military or just had major pretensions, but god, he was pompous.
"2016-A had only three pairs declared Ranger Ready," said the guy Raleigh was spotting, sitting up to stretch his shoulder. "We're 2016-B. They're supposed to be rolling out three more Mark IIs this year, and replacing a Mark I team. That's a lot of pilots. I'm Cady Spencer, by the way." He held out a hand.
Raleigh shook it. "Raleigh Becket. My big brother Yancy," he gestured to the bars, where Yance was doing pull-ups.
"You guys get interested when they asked for siblings?" asked Don.
"Yeah," Raleigh half-lied, not wanting to hear Don's opinion of their level of commitment. Yancy was listening, but didn't elaborate.
Even so, conversation between sets passed comfortably enough, and there were a few more introductions to their fellows. Raleigh was starting to think maybe Don wasn't so bad - maybe just a little nervous - when a group of women walked into the gym.
Raleigh wouldn't blame any of his gender for looking; of course, he looked. Most of the girls seemed sturdy and fit, and he recognized some of them from the big drill sessions. But one of them was so small that he'd have thought she was too young for high school. Five-foot-one at most, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. She avoided all their eyes and dropped onto an empty mat to stretch out.
Raleigh and most of the guys quickly returned their attention to their own tasks, but Don mouthed at them, Really?!
"Mind your business, dude," Yancy muttered.
You too, Rals, he told himself, and swapped out with Cady. But he did steal a few furtive glances, and found he was rather gratified to see the mousy little girl down next to a stocky black woman, doing full-length push-ups like a pro. Petite or not, she had some muscle.
When she slipped past their group to an empty bench, Raleigh couldn't resist leaning towards Don and muttering, "Really." Because although she had less weight than the guys, she had a lot more than most women he'd seen bench-pressing.
"Do you need a spotter?" Yancy offered gallantly.
She hesitated, well aware of the stares, and Raleigh mentally kicked himself and went to another station. But after a second, he heard her say, "Thanks, yes."
Eyes on the job, man, he told himself. There were cameras in just about every room of the Academy. Pentecost and the instructors had made it clear that the recruits were being scrutinized for their behavior on and off the clock - and their attitudes. He'd better make sure he kept a good one.
Towards the end of the term, the remaining class - now whittled down to about a hundred eighty - got a tour of the simulators and pons testing facilities.
"A lot of the publicity has focused on how hard it's going to be to make the first cut," said the instructor. "And that's not wrong, but keep this in mind: an even smaller percentage will make the second. Unlike the first term, failure to make the second cut isn't due to lack of effort or some quality that you can change. The most difficult part about being a Ranger is drifting with a co-pilot."
Raleigh and Yancy had dutifully read the material on the pons neural bridge and its purpose. He still wasn't sure that he really understood any of it, and Yancy had reassured him that it was just as confusing to him.
He'd gradually gotten more confident about asking questions. In school, he hadn't been reticent (on the contrary - he'd gotten in trouble for having a smart mouth plenty of times), but as everybody kept reminding the entire class of recruits, this wasn't school. So he'd been uncharacteristically quiet and just listened to everybody else most of the time, and when he did decide to dare drawing attention to himself, he rehearsed his question over and over in his head.
"Neural load. It's not just a question of size and weight, is it?"
The instructor nodded. "We human beings have a tremendously complicated nervous system. The human mind is still a better computer than anything we've ever invented. And the Jaeger is the most powerful, complex machine ever built. But to take control of that system and everything in it means that you're not only operating your own complicated body anymore. You're operating another one, much larger, with systems that no biological being has. That's a lot of information to process."
The big guy from the Caribbean pondered the rest of the class. "How much alike do the two pilots have to be?"
"Physically, not at all. The rig and drivesuit system in the conn-pod are all designed exactly to the individual pilot's measurements. For the most obvious example, here's Cherno Alpha." He tapped his computer, and one of the photos of the big Russian Jaeger's launch appeared. He zoomed in on the pilots. "Note the size difference. Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky are a married couple, and they're very drift compatible. Adapting for a drastic physical difference like this is tricky, but it can be done. Finding another partner for either one of them who can make that Jaeger fight? Next to impossible."
"So the ones who signed up in pairs have an advantage?" said Don.
"They do, although we've had several successes with people who first met in the PPDC. Last class, in fact, one of our three sets of pilots had only met after K-Day. An open mind is crucial for both sides. And we had over a dozen sets of blood relatives who didn't make the second cut last term."
"How many made the first cut?" asked Brandon Pines.
"Last class...we started with... forty-eight, if I recall. You'll be put through compatibility tests, then some initial drift sync testing. Depending on those results, there's a cull mid-term, and the majority will be out. Seven pairs made the second cut in the spring. Three completed full drift and simulation training and were deemed Ranger Ready."
"What can we do?" Raleigh asked without thinking. "I mean - to prepare for it."
The instructor smiled. "This term, learn the material. It's the foundation not only for being a Ranger, but for being a PPDC officer. If you make the first cut, you're eligible for officer status, and there are a lot of career paths available. It takes over six hundred people just to deploy a Jaeger and its pilots, not counting the engineers, neurologists, and the people on watch and studying the kaiju. There's opportunity, and there's need."
He paused thoughtfully, then brought up another image, a clip from a video. It was two guys sparring in the Kwoon. "This was one of our teams from the spring: Vic and Gunnar Tunari. Brothers." Raleigh couldn't help looking at Yancy, who grinned at him. "Each of these clips gives us an indicator of their compatibility."
The sparring wasn't surprising, but the next thing was - Dance Dance Revolution, from the looks of it. Laughter rippled through the group. Next, the Tunaris were playing table tennis. Next, checkers.
Yancy's eyes widened, and his hand went up. "Is that what all those board games are for in the mess hall?!" He and Raleigh had pulled out the chess set once only to fall asleep on it after eating.
"Got it in one, Recruit. Didn't you notice the DDR floor in the corner? No? Well, most of you are too exhausted this term to do more than eat and sleep off-hours." The instructor grinned at their astonishment. "Marshall Pentecost drew the line at Twister, but there's also a rather good boom box available. You'll see the Tunaris singing karaoke with their crews now and then. They're very musical."
"Sounds like a good gig if you can get it," someone murmured.
August 2016…
By finals, Yancy knew that Raleigh's attitude had changed, but so had his own. Rals had always been a good student, solid grades, honor roll, but his strength lay in humanities. Yancy preferred hard math and science, and that gave him an edge in the PPDC. But his little brother was focusing hard on the academic training, and doing very well on the physical side.
The physical basics were no problem for either of them. They could run the various distances well within the acceptable times, and lift the required weight for the prescribed duration. Jaeger Bushido with all its Eastern roots was harder, but they both kept up the drills and the practices, competing - as the fightmasters pointed out - with themselves rather than each other. Sparring was actually fun, especially together.
All the objective exams came first. That was exhausting enough; hours upon hours of written and verbal drilling. Just memorizing the stuff wasn't enough; they had to be able to process it.
Raleigh was fretful when they came out of Oceanography. "I may have blown it on the forecasting, Yance," he said. "I know I screwed up at least two of the formulas. Just tried to write out my reasoning for everything and hope they could at least follow where I thought the damn bogey was going."
"No pressure, kiddo. This whole thing's a long shot; we said that going in. You did damn good on the tech practical."
Raleigh shrugged, brightening a little. "Helped to think about it like the planes I used to build instead of just a bunch of wires and plates and numbers. It's all for something."
It always pissed Yancy off when people (*cough*Jazmine*cough*) referred to Raleigh as mediocre. His little brother wasn't, and neither was Yancy, but because neither of them were Number One in most of their pursuits, a lot of people (*cough*Dad*cough*), didn't think they were worth noticing. If Yancy hadn't gone to Raleigh's wrestling matches, he'd have had no family there at all. Jazmine occasionally came to Yancy's matches and games, but half the time, Yancy suspected that was only to serve as a reminder to Raleigh that she wouldn't be caught dead at his.
For most of high school, Mom was too sick to get out much, but Yancy had once asked Dad to go when Raleigh had made the state meet. "Really, Yancy, he's ranked eleventh. Between work and taking care of your mother, I don't have the energy to spend hours cheering for an also-ran."
Yancy had never asked again and prayed that Raleigh wouldn't; if Jazmine ever overheard a remark like that, she'd Twitter the entire human race. (Not that Raleigh was any saint in their bitching sessions. He'd posted a gif of one of her error-riddled D-graded essays to Facebook that same year asking for brain cell donations.) Mom and Dad had never been willing to intercede with them even before Mom got sick, so it always fell to Yancy to keep them from killing each other.
He had a few more blissful memories of the times the three of them had gotten along, before Jazmine hit her teens and turned almost psychotically hormonal. Their verbal and written confrontations were vicious and ugly - they'd both been called out for cyber-bullying each other by teachers more than once. And Jazmine didn't restrain herself on the physical side.
Neither of their parents were interested in showing up at teacher conferences past age twelve, so one teacher had quietly suggested to Yancy that she thought Jazmine needed therapy, maybe even medication. He hadn't bothered broaching that subject to Mom and Dad. They would have laughed. The more violent Jazmine got, the more Yancy feared that Raleigh was going to lose it and inflict some major injury on her.
But Raleigh never did. Yancy remained proud - and a little incredulous - that his brother, unlike his sister, had never crossed that line. He'd told Raleigh so more than once, like when Jazmine had had split Raleigh's lip and blacked his eye with a hockey stick.
"My little brother is tougher than anyone gives him credit for," he'd told his friends. He tried, damn it, he tried, to treat Jazz equally, to love and take care of them both, because Mom was sick and Dad didn't give a shit. But in his heart, he bitterly admitted Jazmine sure didn't make it easy.
Raleigh did. He wasn't a tag-along in Yancy's eyes; he pulled his weight in whatever they did together, often when he started at a disadvantage. Yancy appreciated that, even admired it. In their later teens, once Rals finally started having some serious growth spurts and put on some muscle, they were within a couple inches and twenty pounds of each other, and could partner in a lot of things.
Some guys - not exactly friends - had sneered when Yancy decided against college. The Beckets didn't have the money for a university with Mom's medical bills, and with Dad gone so much. There was no one other than their neighbor Diane to look after Raleigh and Jazmine and get Mom to her treatments if Yancy was busy at the community college. But he wasn't interested in explaining his reasons, and people had simply judged.
Boy, had they judged.
The Beckets were no-accounts; Yancy had heard that kind of thing from mouths of his peers and adults. They were destined for dead-end jobs and their parents' basement. One of aforementioned frenemies had snidely proposed that Yancy join the army, and when the PPDC Academy had sprung up at Kodiak Island, someone had suggested that - until the recruiting package circulated and everyone saw the screening test requirements.
"Never mind - no chance Becket could get in there. That place is tougher than the Citadel, look at this!"
When another recruiting call had gone out looking specifically for siblings... an idea had occurred to him. It started as a joke when Raleigh was a senior, sifting without much enthusiasm through the course tracks at the community college and vocational school. "Hey, Rals, how about we both blow off college and join the Rangers?"
"Awesome! I'm totally in!"
Then Raleigh had gotten the same lip at school that Yancy had - no way in hell could the Becket losers get into the Ranger Academy - and Jazz had repeated it gleefully one day at home.
Challenge accepted.
They'd spent the spring studying the material available and made a few bets, defiant to the taunts. They'd been fairly optimistic about the screening part, but figured it would be next to impossible to make the actual gut if the press was to be believed. No pressure, no pressure.
Here they were. And Yancy had to admit that in his heart, he was more invested than he'd been at the beginning. He knew Raleigh was too. Had he gotten them both in over their heads?
The Final Spar, or "Final Final," as most of them called it, was a full-on physical sparring session against the fightmasters, timed for the very end of exams when they'd all be as run-down as possible. "Man, that's so unfair!" a few of their fellows groaned.
But Yancy and Raleigh read between the lines of their instructions. Nearly all the grading criteria was subjective on this last spar, but it would account for a large chunk of their final score. They'd already been tested severely on their mastery of the Jaeger Bushido positions and strategy drills. This one wasn't about knowledge. It was about all those things Tessori had reminded them couldn't be quantified.
They all drew their time slots, and weren't permitted into the Kwoons until their own session was done. Raleigh appeared to be dead last on the list. "Shit."
"No pressure," Yancy told him.
Raleigh just looked at him, serious and tense, and countered, "Pressure."
Well, alrighty then. "You've got it, kid," he told him firmly, and headed off for his Final Spar.
His opponent was Tessori. Of course it was. "This is not a test of your memory," he said, confirming what Yancy already suspected. "Not even your skill. This is our final test of you, Recruit. You wish to be a Ranger?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. I am the kaiju, you are the Jaeger. Stop me."
They started with hanbōs, and it all went to hell from there. This man, twice Yancy's age who'd probably been practicing this stuff since before he could walk, laid into Yancy with no quarter. His whole body rang with the blows until he was disarmed, then he had to focus every reflex into dodging the staff and trying to get a hit in around it. Clearly, when it was Jaeger versus kaiju, there were no rules.
He shocked himself when he managed to disarm his opponent, then abandoned the Bushido all together and went straight into Greco-Roman. Tessori smiled - Oh shit! - and advanced again to demonstrate just how much he knew about those forms.
He had Yancy pinned in short order. "Finished?"
Yancy blinked. You giving me a choice? "We have time for another round?" he grunted.
"We have all the time in the world."
Ohh, I get it. Yancy stood and bowed. "Then no, not finished." He knew better than to look at the judges, but Tessori smiled again.
It was pretty embarrassing; Tessori mopped the floor with him. His only consolation was that in all likelihood, everybody else had gotten the same treatment. He chanted to himself what he'd worked out about this exam: they wanted to see adaptation, endurance, force of will. Jaeger versus kaiju, no holds barred. So he worked around the growing collection of major weak points that Tessori pummeled into him and tuned out everything and everyone else.
When Tessori pinned him for the seventh time, he knew he was in major trouble; he couldn't put his weight on his left foot, and his right arm was numb. When he tried to get up again, he fell. Damn. Tessori didn't bother to declare an eighth round but simply knocked him over and pinned him again. "Enough, I think."
"Yes, sir," he grunted, and managed to bow with all his weight on his other leg without swaying too much. He did have to sort-of hop off the mat.
To his intense relief, once he took stock of his fellow watchers, most of them were in the same sorry condition he was. "Nice work, man," murmured the big Jamaican. "Don bailed in two rounds."
Well, that made him feel better about his own performance, but Yancy was a bundle of nerves when Raleigh came in. Had they deliberately put one of the youngest guys dead last?! Yancy gritted his teeth. Watching Raleigh wrestling and playing hockey had stressed him out sometimes; this was going to be nerve-wracking.
Raleigh knew better than to look at him, but Yancy shamelessly willed himself to transmit everything he'd picked up in his head as Tessori went over the instructions.
In wrestling, Rals tended to be over-aggressive and leave himself vulnerable. To Yancy's intense relief, he had the sense not to try it with this fightmaster. He was cautious, measuring his opponent. Good, kiddo, good. When they finally closed, in the first few shots, Raleigh actually landed a couple of hits.
Then they went at each other with a blood-pounding volley, and like Yancy, Raleigh was soon overcome and disarmed. He approached the new disadvantage as Yancy had, evading the hanbō and trying to get it out of his opponent's hands, but Tessori pinned him in a few moves. Fuck... don't give up, Rals, don't give up.
"Are we finished?"
"No." Raleigh lashed out and sent the staff flying.
"You did not wait for the next round," Tessori protested, but he was already in stance.
Regrouping, Raleigh pointed out, "Jaegers don't. Neither do kaiju."
There was that feral grin from the fightmaster. "No, they don't. No rules." He switched to Greco-Roman and gave Raleigh no more opportunity to think, only react. Yancy bit the inside of his mouth until it bled as they grappled, then Tessori pinned Raleigh painfully. "Enough?"
Raleigh lashed out with a foot and rolled away. "No."
After the fourth pin, when Raleigh nearly bit Tessori's hand to get loose, Cady hissed in Yancy's ear, "You're hyperventilating!"
Dazed, Yancy caught himself and realized there were a lot more people in the room now watching Raleigh get pounded. That little mousy girl was in the front of a clutch of other women, her eyes huge as Raleigh went back for the hanbō and he and Tessori tore at each other in a volley that left Yancy's ears ringing.
Finally, Raleigh was pinned, and Yancy knew he wouldn't be able to stand again with Tessori nailing that pressure point behind his knee. "Are we done?"
"No."
Goddammit, Rals, enough! He was at nine rounds, for fuck's sake, he'd gone longer than Yancy had.
But just then, scrambling backward, Raleigh suddenly looked over his shoulder. Yancy was certain he'd said nothing aloud, but his little brother's eyes flashed, and he gave a quick jerk of his head.
No. Stay out of it. He'd done that when Yancy had tried to intervene in fights before. Yancy didn't always accept being warned off... but this wasn't a brawl, it was the Jaeger Academy. They might claim no rules, but they couldn't very well kill a student. He chanted that at himself and bit his tongue as Raleigh was down again and couldn't get any limbs under him.
But Raleigh rolled onto his back and kept defending. Yancy was half-proud, half-mortified as Tessori pinned him face down and twisted his arm mercilessly until he yelled in pain. "Now?"
Raleigh rammed his head sideways into Tessori's knee, probably concussing himself in the process, but crawled free and grunted, "No."
What the fuck was Raleigh trying to prove?! Moreover, why the fuck weren't the judges calling the match when he couldn't go on?
His restraint fell apart when he saw Tessori's arm around his brother's throat. "Done?"
Raleigh gasped out, "No - "
Arms grabbed Yancy as Tessori shifted to press down on Raleigh's jugular. Raleigh's eyes were rolling back, he was going limp, and people were hissing at Yancy, "Don't!" - and someone announced, "That's enough."
Tessori let go, Raleigh slid to the floor, and people gasped, including Yancy. He'd never noticed Pentecost coming in.
Seething, he hoped to see the fightmaster get chewed out for letting his ego run away with him, but Pentecost didn't. His back to the watchers, he looked on as Tessori carefully helped Raleigh to his feet, supporting most of his weight, murmuring instructions as he always did when somebody got injured - disregarding that he'd been the one to inflict the injuries, Yancy thought furiously. Most of the guys who'd grabbed Yancy weren't letting go, which was probably a good thing.
"What's your name, Recruit?" Pentecost asked as he scanned his tablet.
"Becket, sir," Raleigh panted. He was glassy-eyed, but not as bad off as Yancy first feared.
Pentecost didn't seem to notice or care as he looked at his tablet, then he paused and looked up. "Which Becket?"
"Raleigh Becket."
Pentecost turned to the watchers, and his gaze fell on Yancy at once. Granted, it wouldn't be hard to work out who the other Becket was: the one with half a dozen guys holding him back, looking ready to murder the fightmaster.
Pentecost regarded Yancy with a neutral expression, then turned back to Raleigh. "There was no way you could have defended yourself further. You could honorably yield at any time. What was the point of that?"
"He said - kaiju versus Jaeger. Jaegers don't yield," Raleigh said.
For god's sake, kiddo, this wasn't a movie, Yancy shook his head. "Do you know the difference between perseverance and ego, Mr. Becket?"
Raleigh had to think about that for a minute, and finally said, "No, sir. I guess I didn't think it mattered."
"Dismissed, Recruit. Go straight to the infirmary."
Raleigh tried to bow and would've ended up on the floor again if Tessori hadn't caught him. Tessori smiled at Yancy, ignoring the scowl he got in return, and helped Raleigh down from the mat to his brother. "Can you manage?"
"Yes, sir," Yancy said coldly, slinging Raleigh's arm over his shoulder and taking his weight. Tessori just smiled again and returned to Pentecost and the judges.
"Recruits, your first term is complete," Pentecost announced. "Decisions will begin to be issued this evening, and all of you will know by 1800 hours whether you've been chosen to advance to the second term as candidates. Those of you who fail to do so have earned the right to try again." Pentecost paused for a moment. "The Ranger Academy favors persistence."
Trying to keep Raleigh's feet under him, Yancy completely missed that, but his fellow recruits didn't. "Son, I don't know whether you're a genius or a complete moron!" exclaimed Cady.
"I do," Yancy muttered. "You idiot. You might've taken yourself out of contention by getting hurt!"
Raleigh blinked at him and gave a vacant smile. Oh, shit. "Just wanted to... see how far I could..."
He dropped, and Yancy caught him, cursing under his breath. One of the women came running over. "I'm an EMT. Come on, Spunky, wake up." She patted Raleigh awake, then checked his pulse and peered into his eyes. "How you feel?"
"Like I'm... either gonna pass out or puke."
"Well, you already passed out, so don't puke on me," Yancy sighed. The little girl came over and wordlessly offered a bottle of water. "Thanks. Rals, come on, stay with me!"
By splashing his face and getting him to drink, they brought his brother around, and Raleigh managed to get his feet back under him and walk, if leaning heavily on Yancy. It wasn't far from the Kwoons to the infirmary - probably by design - but Yancy still ended up more or less carrying his brother through the door. Raleigh'd gotten a good deal heavier than Yancy remembered.
"Wow," said Dr. Tán when they came in. "This isn't as bad as I thought."
"What?!" Yancy demanded as he got Raleigh onto a bed.
"Last term they put three guys in here at finals. Don't worry, Recruit," he said, cutting off an explosion. "There's no major damage. That was the point. The fightmasters know when to draw the line."
"Do they?" Yancy snapped before he could catch himself.
"We do." He did not want to have to deal with Tessori again so soon, but stood there and fumed while the guy walked in and watched the doctor finish looking Raleigh over.
Raleigh gingerly sat up and faced him. "I'm okay, sir."
"He is," said the doctor, speaking more to Yancy than anyone else. "Keep ice on those bruises, especially the ones on your neck, and stretch out well. The term doesn't officially end until tomorrow morning. You can go back to quarters to sleep, but come back here if you have ringing in your ears or loss of vision, or if your balance is still off in the morning."
"Yes, sir." Raleigh grinned.
Dr. Tán looked from him to Yancy, then laughed. "Hate to tell you, Anjin, but your name is officially mud with the elder Mr. Becket."
"Oh, I noticed." Tessori was unconcerned. "We did warn you that we would grind you to dust to see what was left, and push as far as we can safely go. This was the final step."
"It's fine," Raleigh murmured, shooting Yancy a warning look. Yancy grudgingly supposed he was looking better already.
"I'm glad to hear it, or it might complicate things next term." Yancy blinked. Tessori was holding out an envelope to him, and another to Raleigh. "Congratulations, gentlemen. You have both passed the first cut. Report back in one week as pilot candidates. Enjoy your rest; you've earned it."
With a small bow, he walked out, and left both Beckets gaping after him. They fumbled their letters open to confirm what he'd said. There it was: congratulations, they were approved to continue to second term, instructions for their week-long break and where and when to report back.
It even gave their test scores. No real indicator of where they'd fallen in rank, but at least it showed how they'd compared to themselves and each other. On most of the objective material, be it Jaeger Bushido drills or K-Science written exam, Yancy scored just a little higher.
The exception was the Final Spar. Raleigh had the higher score.
To be continued...
Coming Soon: We switch to the POV of another recruit who passed Class 2016-B's first cut - Tendo Choi. Several fateful meetings take place as the focus of the Academy turns from academic qualifications to drift compatibility... and the Academy goes on alert for movement in the Breach in Chapter Three: We Answered The Call!
PLEASE remember to review!
Original Character Guide
Anjin Tessori - one of the senior martial arts instructors/fightmasters at the Jaeger Academy. Japanese national, age mid-60s (looks mid-40s).
Dr. Steven Tán - the Jaeger Academy's chief medic, early 30s, Chinese-American
Cady Spencer - one of Raleigh and Yancy's more laid-back classmates, mid-20s
Brandon Pines - one of Raleigh and Yancy's more gung-ho classmates, early 30s
Don the Douchebag - That Guy. We've all known one, thinks himself (or herself, to be fair) More Worthy than everyone else, whether based on sex, race, class, education level, whatever. This was the last chapter he'll appear, since he did NOT make the cut (and he probably won't try again, just huff off and blame everybody else.)