Major Payne looked from the General to myself, his face was set in a stern expression, but I could see the interest dancing in those eyes of his. "Not sure what a Zaku 2 is, but I'm more than willing to do what needs to be done for my country."
The General snorted at that while I rolled my eyes, "Yeah, you can leave the political shit at the door, but lets get you fitted and we can see how ready you really are."
"Alright, you heard the kid, lets get this show on the road." General Hackett stated with a clap of the hands.
With that said, we found ourselves in the armored hangar inside the Pokemon world dimensional pocket. The hanger was massive with eight bays on both sides even though only a few of them even had Gundams. On the right side were my Striker unit, my Megatron, and Optimus Prime units because, of course, I would make myself a couple.
On the left side, standing nice and tall, were three Zaku Type 2 units waiting for their pilots. Fortunately or unfortunately only 1 will be in operation today, The General wasn't very happy to discover that the operation was run by skin-tight plug suits. Then again, with the way he was eyeing the units I had a feeling he might say to hell with propriety and just suit up anyway.
Shifting my attention, I watched as Major Payne went through a few motions with his arms and legs. The man even went down in a squat to check his rage of motion. I said nothing, of course, because only certain operators would even know to check something like that. The average person would just grab their junk and do leg rotations, not check the limits of their bend and stoop.
"How are you feeling?" I asked while holding out a helm.
Major Payne blinked as he stopped his check, twisted one way then the other. "Pretty good, actually, It's snug but not in the worse spots, and it's not bunching anywhere which is good."
In reply, I gave him a nod while he took the helm. "Yeah, when I designed it I wanted to make sure it didn't give swamp junk so I included a shorts template around the lower region and a t-shirt for the upper body. Along with other things, now as we explain before you suit up, the neutral lattice will pick up your motions and neurons firing and translate that into movement with the Zaku. The helm will do the same with the visual aspect of things along with an all-purpose general thought to data signals. And yes, it's one way." I stated with a motion towards the helm.
The Major looked at the helm that I offered; then I watched as he braced himself before accepting it. Turning away, I let him get settled with the crew while I went for my own mecha unit, Megatron. It was a quick and easy trip for me to get to the other side of the hanger before stepping into the Gundam's chest cavity and into the wireframe harness.
My endo sym armor activated swiftly as the coating combined with my body suit. Along the main points of my body neural plugs appeared allowing the wireframe to hook into my suit. I then stepped away from the frame. One massive fiber-optic cable followed behind me as it flowed down my back and just hung in the air.
There wasn't much space so when I stepped forward, I stepped into the feet clamps of the control harness. Then with a mental command, Megatron came to life, with the helm in place over my head. I smiled as the helm gave me a full panoramic view of the world, the HUD was overlaid on top of that, but my attention was currently on my hands as my fingers flexed.
As I tested my range of motion, the thrum of the cockpit fell away as the noise cancelation of the helm settled in. In the lower-left corner of my vision, I noticed the sync rate increase along with the bar showing my full shields. I pushed another mental command outwards and the sound of the releasing cables of the mecha cradle sang to my ears.