I'm glad I asked. Some stuff like this, it's so much better to be safe than sorry.
For his history, this is what I think I'll go with:
Mike grew up in the sole company of his mother, not knowing his father, and thanks to his mother's austerity, he grew up bullied. Instead of just taking it, though, he started to fight back against the bullies for his own sake and the sake of the other underdogs that were being picked on. His mother never stood up for his behaviour and, instead, sent him to military school. When he shipped off, he told her he'd never see her again.
While Mike was in military school for his behaviour issues, Trespasser hit San Francisco, and he lost track of his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. (This leaves it open if anyone wants to app Sarah later.) He went directly from military school to the Jaeger Academy, and that's where he was tapped by Sarah's father, a computer genius named Charles Graiman, for the AI drift compatibility experiment. It would, after all, make finding pilots so much easier if an AI could take the place of a second pilot.
Unfortunately, the AI had ideas of its own and actually took over Mike's mind, using him as its own weapon to kill the people who had experimented on it. They were able to subdue Mike via tranquilisers and separate him from the AI, which was then decommissioned. Graiman's last act was to push for Mike to be allowed into the jaeger program as he had proven his potential, and offered his own retirement following the incident as incentive for them to let him stay.
The only hitch was that Mike knew what they'd done, and the experiment wasn't exactly something that anyone was supposed to know about. So they used a serum that was known for enhancing susceptibility and implanted a chip under the skin of his arm that would keep the memories at bay, then hid the implantation scar with a PPDC tattoo. As far as Mike knows, he got it after his Academy graduation after a night of drunken revelry before shipping out to Valparaiso.
He'd still have some nightmares based on those memories, but he makes himself write them off as inspired by the attack from watching Trespasser take San Francisco. That's better than the other option.
That's where he would enter the game, probably with an unknown watcher at the Valparaiso dome to make sure those memories stay gone. How's that?
no subject
For his history, this is what I think I'll go with:
Mike grew up in the sole company of his mother, not knowing his father, and thanks to his mother's austerity, he grew up bullied. Instead of just taking it, though, he started to fight back against the bullies for his own sake and the sake of the other underdogs that were being picked on. His mother never stood up for his behaviour and, instead, sent him to military school. When he shipped off, he told her he'd never see her again.
While Mike was in military school for his behaviour issues, Trespasser hit San Francisco, and he lost track of his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. (This leaves it open if anyone wants to app Sarah later.) He went directly from military school to the Jaeger Academy, and that's where he was tapped by Sarah's father, a computer genius named Charles Graiman, for the AI drift compatibility experiment. It would, after all, make finding pilots so much easier if an AI could take the place of a second pilot.
Unfortunately, the AI had ideas of its own and actually took over Mike's mind, using him as its own weapon to kill the people who had experimented on it. They were able to subdue Mike via tranquilisers and separate him from the AI, which was then decommissioned. Graiman's last act was to push for Mike to be allowed into the jaeger program as he had proven his potential, and offered his own retirement following the incident as incentive for them to let him stay.
The only hitch was that Mike knew what they'd done, and the experiment wasn't exactly something that anyone was supposed to know about. So they used a serum that was known for enhancing susceptibility and implanted a chip under the skin of his arm that would keep the memories at bay, then hid the implantation scar with a PPDC tattoo. As far as Mike knows, he got it after his Academy graduation after a night of drunken revelry before shipping out to Valparaiso.
He'd still have some nightmares based on those memories, but he makes himself write them off as inspired by the attack from watching Trespasser take San Francisco. That's better than the other option.
That's where he would enter the game, probably with an unknown watcher at the Valparaiso dome to make sure those memories stay gone. How's that?