academyooc | test drive meme (#2)

Test Drive Meme The Pan Pacific Defense Corps was usually offered any of a variety of local buildings to set up their testing centers. For reasons of access and availability, most testing clinics were set up in central areas for any given community. Those of the PPDC staff on hand vary in their personal intensity. Some of the men and women wearing Strike Group insignia seemed overly serious, to the point of frowning with intensity at some of the youngest checking in for this testing round. Those from the K-Science division are tight with nervous energy as they direct prospective cadets through various activities. Everything was meant to measure potential, looking for that spark that meant they had somebody who was Drift Compatible. The majority of people were turned away after the first series of seemingly random tests, officials looking in eyes, placing odd looking contraptions over heads, asking for people to play a series of short games, one even in a virtual reality set-up.

	( SCENARIO ONE ) If you are still here now, you've made it past the first cut. You'll be sat down in a room with the rest who have made it this far, then systematically led into smaller interview rooms as pairs. If you came with a partner, they're your first interview candidate. If you came on your own, all your interviews are random assignment. All who have been asked to stay are required to sit through and conduct a series of short peer to peer interviews. The questions are straightforward. What kind of pets would you like to own? What game do you gravitate toward first in an arcade? What does the fox say? Where do you squeeze your toothpaste tube to get toothpaste on your toothbrush? What do you believe the Drift is like? Peer to peer interviews last for half an hour to an hour, and each person is asked to participate in at least three peer-to-peer interviews. There is no punishment for going off script. There is a one-way mirror looking into each interview area, and one door leading into the room with a small panel of glass located on the door. There is a clock on the wall in each room. The time they report is odd when examined. These are not digital clocks, but timers, counting up time since the last Kaiju attack.

	( SCENARIO TWO ) You've been accepted into the Jaeger Academy. You've been assigned to your barracks, issued your uniform and necessities, shown the overall layout of the Shatterdome, and told the wake up call is at 0530. You're settling in to the Academy schedule, and for many, it may be brutal indeed. When you're brought into the indoor swimming pool, it's to an overwhelming stench of chlorine. Your swimsuits are all the same for the men, simple swim-trunks, one uniform blue. Women wear a blue and white racer style swimsuit, in the same cut across the board. Uniformity doesn't disappear for swimming lessons. Lessons start out basic, teaching each Cadet to rely on themselves and each other to keep them afloat. From there, maneuvers get more complicated. Learning safe diving techniques, practicing proper holds to keep an unconscious or panicked partner afloat. Speed, agility, and endurance: all will be in demand. Then you start hearing rumors about full uniform swims coming up the next session.

Please set up your own scenarios as you like. The above two scenarios are suggestions. Anything goes! If you want to stop by and see about doing some communal AU Worldbuilding, check out the new AU Worldbuilding Meme!

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That earns Eren a grin and a nod, as Hanji turns to the whiteboard and scribbles down "Toxic blood", "That's right! Their blood is highly toxic to us and to other wild and plant-life - not only that, but it's acid, capable of corroding almost everything we've tested it on. Which is really quite fascinating - you can't imagine the amount of lab equipment we had to run through before we figured out-"

She adds "acidic" as a subheading as she prattles on for a minute or two about the difficulties of dealing with kaiju blood, "...as you can imagine, that makes it difficult for us to get a hold of any specimens, even when we do kill them."

She offers Eren a quick thumbs-up, mentally running through the list of candidates she was handed this morning, "You're Eren, right?"

Edited (Typoooos and adding one or two things.) 2014-02-24 02:22 (UTC)

"Yes, ma'am," with a blink and a furrowed brow and a bit of surprise at being called by his first name instead of a barked cadet or Jaeger after so many hours of drill instructors. She's a little different, huh? She's also pretty damn enthusiastic about all this, and not in a way he's used to hearing. Fascinating or not, the fact that the kaiju are so acidic has made fighting them all the more dangerous, doesn't it? Even once they're dead, they can still kill scores of people for days and days afterward.

"What do you need the specimens for?" he asks, impulsively, without waiting for permission to speak, because it's still easy and it'll take more than a few days to beat military deference into his head. It's not like they can learn to kill a kaiju any better from a tiny lump of flesh, can they?

Hanji blinks at the question. She's not used to getting all that many from the new initiates. At least not before they're sitting in one of her instructional classes. Usually during this part of their experience she gets blank looks and a few shuffling feet. Maybe they'll have the dignity to at least look embarrassed (not that she minds that they might now know much; not many people are well-versed in kaiju biology and she knows she's a bit of a oddball).

Then her face splits in a grin.

"To learn more about them, of course! We didn't discover everything we know about them by chance!"

Her tone isn't arrogant or chiding - just enthusiastic.

Edited 2014-02-24 03:49 (UTC)

Eren's idea of kaiju biology is sketchy. More detailed than someone without a vested interest in the topic, maybe, but no more than is widely available in the media. He doesn't know all that much, and he's suddenly very aware of the gap between his knowledge and hers. Instead of looking embarrassed, his kneejerk reaction is to try to close it.

"They're already dead, aren't they? The specimens, that is." So he presses, and it earns him a few stifled groans from the trainees behind him as he prolongs (what was supposed to be) a brief introductory lecture.

"Ah, that's right!" Hanji exclaims excitedly, "You see, that's the thing - every kaiju ends up dead before long, so we haven't been able to get our hands on a living creature for testing, so we have to make to with the dead tissue."

She gestures to emphasize her words, seemingly oblivious to the grumbling from the other candidates, "That's why we usually need to work quickly whenever we take one down - they decompose incredibly quickly and we're not sure why just yer. It seems that their decomposition is accelerated somehow, perhaps artificially or maybe it's something to do with our atmospheric content-"

She's talking quickly now, running through theories and ideas, throwing out tangents about their DNA and how they're silicon-based. The five-minute stop looks like it might stretch out a little bit longer. At least until Hanji catches herself.

"-ah, but you'll all hear this in my lecture course, eventually."

She laughs, although it's not sheepish in the least, "Besides, you're really not mine to keep just yet."

test drive meme (#2)

i apologize in advance, because I switched back to Hanji.

ITS COOL tbh I can bounce from Jaeger to Yeager depending on how much I'm paying attention oops

Re: ITS COOL tbh I can bounce from Jaeger to Yeager depending on how much I'm paying attention oops

early** not easy, wow my typing, I'm sorry.

I know that feeling well.