U.C. 0077...
A direct flight from Side 3 arrived at a South American spaceport.
Char Aznable, a passenger on the Earthbound Flight 702, had been held responsible for the "Dawn Rebellion" incident and discharged from the Autonomous Republic of Zeon's Space Defense Military Academy. He had then chosen to be sent to Earth.

From the spaceport, Char traveled via airplane to the Manaus airport located in the Amazon River basin. Since the days of the old calendar, large-scale manufacturing and agriculture had turned Manaus into a huge metropolis.
From Manaus, he headed along the Amazon River by boat. His destination was Jaburo, where the construction of an Earth Federation Forces base was in full swing. It was in the heart of the Guiana Highlands, atop a mountainous plateau.
The base construction covered a vast area underground, as well as aboveground where there was a dense tropical rainforest. Char was involved in the construction of the surface facilities.
Due to a shortage of manpower, Char soon began working as the pilot of a mobile worker heavy construction type. It appeared that his military academy training had come in useful as a qualification for operating mobile workers.

As a result of the Jaburo base construction, infrastructure projects were under way around the Amazon River.
As well as development of the river transportation network and construction of roads and bridges, this included gas, water, electrical, and communications facilities, as well as hospitals, waste disposal facilities, and lodging for the construction workers, not to mention business offices for the related work.
There were also large-scale consumer areas, and commercial districts and pleasure quarters expanded. A huge "castle town" was growing around the base.

The population was increasing. As well as the influx of workers from all regions of the world outside South America that the work demanded, underworld gangs were also drawn in, aiming to use and exploit the workers' earnings.

Soon after starting work, Char began taking time off and hiring a boat to go up the nearby rivers, in an attempt to secretly learn about the progress of the underground base construction.
Naturally, he was unable to get as close as he'd hoped to the Federation Forces' classified secrets, but meanwhile he took the opportunity to contact those who had lived in the area for a long time, via people who knew about their way of life.
The people of the jungle, who had coexisted with nature for countless centuries, saw the construction of the Jaburo base as a destruction of nature and opposed it. This could be extended into a spirit of rejection towards the Federation government, which attempted to govern the entire Earth Sphere in the same domineering fashion.
Perhaps this meeting would be useful later on. Char was determined not to forget it.

One more meeting was waiting for Char.
A casino had been built in a town near Jaburo, which was modeled on Manaus. Amid all the tremendous activity, he encountered a girl who was using an uncanny power to predict games of roulette.
Her name was Lalah Sune.
This girl of Indian ancestry had the ability to accurately perceive the number that the croupier running the roulette wheel was aiming for. The accuracy of this targeting depended on the skill of the croupier, but Lalah was still able to sense it.

When Char visited the newly built casino in a town near Jaburo, along with his site foreman and coworkers, Lalah was accompanying a gambler who was cleaning out the casino.
Predicting the numbers that the roulette croupier would hit, Lalah secretly wrote them on the gambler's back. The gambler then bet exactly as she instructed, and the ball fell into the roulette wheel just as per his bet.
Using Lalah's powers, the gambler swindled his way into a huge amount of money. However, the casino manager had noticed that he was using some kind of trick, and replaced the croupier.
The new croupier was inexperienced, and in a sense, the numbers she was rolling were the wrong ones. It was difficult for Lalah to read these numbers, and one after another, the gambler began making the wrong bets.

It was the day after the gambler incurred these heavy losses that Char first spoke to Lalah. Though Lalah was on guard, she gradually relaxed and they began a conversation.
However, just as Char had taken note of Lalah's powers, a Manaus gang boss who had lost money to the gambler was also searching for Lalah in order to make use of her powers. Knowing that there was an Indian girl at the Jaburo construction site, the gangsters launched a mass raid.

Char took action to stop the gang boss from seizing Lalah, who was supporting her family in Mumbai by sending them money.
This was not only because he felt an unusual compassion for her. It may also have originated from anger at those who tried to force other people into an unsuitable way of life in order to make use of their abilities, such as the Federation government which forced the Spacenoids to submit, and the Zabi family which let his mother die.

After this encounter at the Jaburo base, Char returned to the world of the stars, bringing Lalah with him.
The people who lived in this world of stars, and those at the heart of Zeon, were steadily making preparations for war.

Admiral Gopp, who served as chairman of the Earth Federation Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the highest-ranking of the uniformed Federation Forces personnel who had decided to construct the Jaburo base.
The clash between mobile weapons in Mare Smythii on the lunar surface, which ended in utter defeat for the Federation Forces, brought the threat of Zeon to a head.
And then Zeon, now calling itself a principality, declared its independence from the Federation.

U.C. 0078...
Gopp decided to relocate his headquarters to the completed Jaburo base. The wars of the Universal Century were drawing near.