[ Don't ask me that ever again are the words that sit heavily on Raleigh's tongue as the question brings him up short, full stop - like his heart's stopped, all the warmth in his blood frozen up. His hands are balled up into fists, the knuckles white - his teeth gnashing at the pressure he puts on his jaw.
All pilots never come whole. Maybe they were, before they put themselves into the connpod; they certainly never come out of it the same way. Every kaiju knocked back into the sea carries away with it pieces of who they are, like waves raking over the sand and dragging bits of other people's lives into the water. They made monsters of their own - they made monsters of their own, out of people, until they don't remember what it was they were before.
w13 d5;
All pilots never come whole. Maybe they were, before they put themselves into the connpod; they certainly never come out of it the same way. Every kaiju knocked back into the sea carries away with it pieces of who they are, like waves raking over the sand and dragging bits of other people's lives into the water. They made monsters of their own - they made monsters of their own, out of people, until they don't remember what it was they were before.
(And then the world left them behind.)
(Raleigh can't do that again.) ]
No.