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test drive meme

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 is your least favorite color? Which tool in a standard toolbox is most useful to you? What time of day do you accomplish the most? Do you have children? 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 ) Congratulations! You have been judged Drift Compatible, and sent home to pack after giving a definite yes to the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. The next thing you face down is the flight into Santiago, Chile, and the subsequent drive in to Valparaíso's Shatterdome. You and the rest of the crowd of soon to be PPDC Ranger Cadets have been gathered together to wait for the old bus scheduled to take you to the Shatterdome. While waiting in the open air, those from any Northern Hemisphere countries may find the summer weather strange. Today's high is going to be in the upper 80's, and there's not a cloud to be seen that's not clinging to the distant mountains. Welcome to Chile. When the bus arrives, it's another hour ride out toward the coastline to get to the Shatterdome. Even better? The bus Air Conditioner is broken. Safe travels, Cadets!

Please set up your own scenarios as you like. The above two scenarios are suggestions. Anything goes!

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They'll ding you if you're too anti-social.

[That probably wasn't true--or very true, anyway--but it definitely could be. One just had to look at some of the most popular Jaeger pilots to notice that most of them had pretty affable personalities. They just seemed to eat, sleep, and breathe good PR. And the Drift, well, you couldn't get friendlier than that.

He was kind of messing with her, but his smile was easy and sincere: trying to share the joke instead of cracking it at her expense.]

( Now that made her stop. )

Wha — No, they wouldn't.

( ... would they? She obviously hadn't considered that. She understood how apathy might lead to incompatibility towards drifting but there was nothing in the readings that she went through about being anti-social. Being anti-social didn't mean lack of empathy. Not to mention that there wasn't any rule like that in the handbook, otherwise she'd have given attention to it.

And really, she was about to argue that — until she saw his smile. Not exactly teasing (though she had a feeling a part of him was just doing that awhile ago) but it had worried her for a moment back there. )

... That was terrible.

SCENARIO 1

[He'd done research on the admission process, of course, but the first round of the tests had still been...odd. Not unpleasant, but odd. But video games and so forth hadn't required much interaction beyond the odd remark to keep himself and his partner on track to their objective. The peer-to-peer interviews, though... Making small talk with strangers had never been high on his list of things he enjoyed. Still, it could have been worse.

Sitting straight but relaxed in his seat, Akito waited with a neutral expression for his next interview partner to be shown into the room. He gave them just enough time to sit before pulling the list of interview questions towards himself, reading off the first in quiet, lightly-accented English.]

What is your least favorite color?

SCENARIO 2

[An exhausted silence had long since settled over the last batch of cadets. Some occupied themselves with books or games, some murmured to each other in soft voices. All of them peered anxiously down the road for the already-late bus that was supposed to take them to the Shatterdome. Akito himself had settled off to one side, letting the murmur of their voices and traffic around wash over him.

On the one hand, being alone meant he didn't have to make small talk in the stifling heat. On the other hand, it meant that when the bus did finally arrive, he was one of the last to stow his bags and get on. The bus driver was yelling at the stragglers to hurry up and seat themselves, the bus engine already revving, and the bus pulled away just as Akito slid into his seat.

The swaying of the packed bus threw Akito into the person already seated by the window as he sat down. He quickly righted himself with a soft apology.]

Ah, excuse me.

SCENARIO 3

[OOC: Neither 1 or 2 work for you? Hit me with something else.]

In most situations like this, there is some excuse. Luke was in a huge hurry, about to miss a bus or needed to catch up to a friend, took a corner too fast and just ran flat into the unsuspecting pedestrian coming the other way. But this is Luke we are talking about, so no reasonable excuse is needed. He just wasn't minding his god damned business, either deep in thought or deeply thoughtless, and his natural carefreeness let him run smack into an oncoming ranger.

He could have kicked himself. Would, later. For now he bounces off the larger man's chest, backpedaling several feet, mildly disoriented, but instantly apologizing before he even recognizes who he's run into. "Sorry! Shit, um... I wasn't watching..."

(Welcome to the lab)

"So, is this your first time seeing a K-science lab?" Tenpou was in an amiable mood and was prone to chatting as he worked, but he knew it was unlikely that any of the new Academy recruits had experienced anything quite like his lab. The room was large, but almost claustrophobically crammed full of unusual equipment - most of it custom-made - and enormous vessels crafted from tempered glass and steel. Inside these glass cylinders, the alien shapes of Kaiju organs and tissue samples floated in a murky ammonia solution intended to slow their rapid decomposition. The harsh scent of ammonia was heavy in the air, almost masking less pleasant smells from a robotic dissection apparatus in the corner of the lab. There were also several moldy containers of half-eaten Chinese takeout piled by a computer workstation. Most showed evidence of having been used as makeshift ashtrays. "It's not that bad. You get used to the smell after a while, and if you fail out of Ranger training, I can always use lab assistants." Tenpou paused to light a fresh cigarette. "For some reason, the lab assistant turnover rate is quite high..."

He continued his meandering tour of the lab, stopping occasionally to peer into digital displays or check the timer on a centrifuge. "The PPDC has an international think tank of scientists studying the Kaiju, but after seven years, we're only beginning to be able to identify the major organs. Part of the problem is that their bodies start decomposing into highly toxic by-products as soon as they're killed, and the other is that giant robots with swords really aren't equipped for careful dissection and sampling." Tenpou shook his head, as if he saw this as a great oversight in Jaeger design. "I keep telling the higher-ups that we're going to start losing Rangers if we don't get the data we need to fight those things, but..." He cut himself off immediately and shook his head until his sudden look of cold focus flattened back into a vague, pleasant smile. "But you don't really want to hear about that, do you? You're here to become a hero."

The lurch of the bus combined with the girl stumbling into the seat are enough to knock Akito out of his thoughts and out of his slouch, almost out into the aisle, even. He can't help but be a little annoyed, even if it's understandable, and his annoyance shows faintly as he rights himself in his seat.

"...Were you trying to open the window?"

The Drift was inevitable, following the list. Andrea knew the questions typed on the white page, having seen drafts of similar questionnaires over the last six months.

"Talking about grinding down, are you much of a handyman?" Her finger tapped over the second question on the list, looking his way with a calm sort of curiosity. "First tool that comes to mind: go."

Straight into it, indeed. Mikasa'd always been known for being rather... efficient but she wasn't trying to be so brusque on purpose. It's too late to backpedal for a warmer greeting now so she chews her lip, thinking too hard about the question at hand.

Running her fingers absentmindedly over the tail end of her scarf, "Gray," And after a moment, she realizes she ought to offer some sort of an explanation, "It reminds me of a storm." The color of the sky the day the first Kaiju attacked, she was still very young, but she'd never forget the gray of the sky, the twisted metal of the damaged city.

Pulling herself out of her memories, she clears her throat awkwardly, "I haven't really thought about questions like these very much."

She manages to keep her eyebrow from inching up toward her hairline, maintaining a neutral expression. The carefree way in which he lists off what he does indicates some definite degree of his background, and his familiarity with what might be termed as casual reality.

"Nothing as historically relevant as the broadsword," she says, her lips turning up into a brief smile of amusement. "I played Ultimate Frisbee when I was in college, did a lot of mountain biking around the same time."

What's more important to her than hearing he might have all kinds of things to learn or unlearn is that he's been part of any sport team event at all. "You should look into the fútbol teams if you end up down in Chile. Basketball tends to do well in the Shatterdomes. Doesn't need much space. Baseball's not quite as universal," she adds, thinking of the United States and Japan. "Though American Football is even less so."

"No, it's important to know. A scientist's job is just as important as a Ranger's." Though it did get his back up a little that Tenpou managed to make becoming a hero sound simultaneously childish and selfish, Sugane tried to keep his expression neutral and focused. As a cadet, it was his place to treat his superiors with respect, even if they weren't affording him the same. "You're right that I've never seen a K-science lab, though. I've been focused on combat training."

He narrowly missed bumping into what looked like it may once have been a stack of file folders and pizza boxes but that seemed well on its way to achieving sentience and decided maybe it was best to find a large open area and not move unless asked. Part of him hoped desperately that Tenpou would decide he wasn't cut out for science and not ask him back, because he already felt like he was getting hives just from standing in the lab. His own space in the barracks was spotless and spartan, a cluttered room being a sign of a cluttered mind, after all. To see a mess like this made his hands itch to clean it up, except this particular mess might melt his hands clean off...

"What was it you needed me to do, sir?"

Please let it involve a hazmat suit.

Leila, seeing that she nearly knocked him out of his seat, reaches out a hand to grab and pull him back, only to stop herself upon seeing that he can do it himself. How mortifying. First day, and already she's being a nuisance to other people. And all because a window wouldn't cooperate with her. She'll need to work better on this, both on the window and her tendency to be a klutz at times.

"Ah, yes," she replies with a hint of a smile, if only to reduce the sudden tension she's feeling. "It feels rather stifling, don't you think?"

And she just made it more with that little stunt she did. She turns around in her seat and back to the window in question, to work on it and to stop from further embarrassing herself. The next best course of action to take is to simply move to a different seat, one with either a cooperative window or an already open one. With someone already seated beside her though, it doesn't seem like that's an option that she can take.

She takes ahold of the latch again, this time sliding the window to a different direction from the last. But like before, "— it's not opening. I don't understand."

"I think gray's technically a shade, not a color," Amelia says, the crinkle of her eyes giving away that she's not serious. "But that's okay, I don't think they're judging our actual answers."

She shifts, sitting up stiffer and straighter and looking down her nose in imitation of some imagined tester. "'She doesn't like gray? Oh, no, she can't possibly be a Ranger - all the Mark IV drivesuits are gray, it just wouldn't work!'"

The affected tension eases away, and she grins, darting a glance at the one-way mirror for good measure. They're gonna love her for that, she's sure.

There's a brief pause while Luke parses what she just said. "Oh right, that's what they call soccer outside the states." Honestly, he never had been much a part of team sports. Not for any particular reason, as long none he'd ever thought hard about. In reality it was probably a mix of it never being encouraged and his tendency to aggravate people within short periods of time.

"I don't know if I'm that good with my feet, but if that's what's big around here I can give it a try." Just the same, despite the inexperience he was game. Particularly when the advice came from someone like Andy. "I don't think I've thrown a Frisbee around since I was ten, but I've done some mountain biking." The biking part, at least, he enjoyed. Taking trails between comfortable locations. He wasn't much of a camper. "I bet that could be pretty fun around here, too."

This was kind of nice. Luke wasn't the sort to have any particular aim with his conversation. He wasn't looking for any achievement, not even to make a friend or earn her respect. But it felt like it'd been a long time since he's gotten to talk casually with someone. He's quick to forget it's still essentially a test.

The summers in Tokyo get hot and muggy, but Chile is just a little more unbearable. Maybe it's the heat, maybe it's the fact that Toji still hasn't quite adjusted to the new time zone, or maybe it's the impact of realizing the fate he's chosen finally hitting him, but the kid is definitely not paying full attention to his surroundings. So he's caught completely off guard when a flash of red smacks him right in the face.

"The hell-?!"

He yanks the offending scarf off his face and looks at it, bewildered. This is definitely winter clothing. Nobody in their right mind would have brought this along... right? He glances upwind to see if he can spot the owner, wondering if they even noticed it's gone.

The thought of someone getting that deep inside his head had been one of those things he honestly wasn't sure about. It scared him and got under his skin at the same time, making him want it in a way he'd never really wanted anything else. Mike bit his lips while he thought, trying to imagine what it would be like, but he wasn't really the imagining type. For him, it tended to be there, or not there. Nothing in between.

"I guess I'll actually have to feel it to know," he finally said, taking a deep breath afterward. "If I get that far, which I hope... Well."

He gave her a wry smile.

"Everybody hopes."

"Okay, man, you can have your opinion, and I'll have mine." And Mike would just have to hope that any kind of future interactions between them would go differently. He knew better than to think that he could avoid talking to the other guy - after all, that was kind of what people did in military situations. Put you with someone you obviously didn't see eye-to-eye with and make you get along. Luckily, Mike had practice. "Truce."

...Yep, this one didn't have a clue what the hell mystery meat was. Maybe it was time to make up some horror stories. "Yeah, man, some places they put in horse, other places they put in dog, or guinea pig, or whatever's closest. Usually, it's the pieces they can't sell any other way - like lips or as-- ...I mean buttholes."

Better to watch his language, right? Right.

His experience with a few foreign languages, mostly thanks to indoctrination via exposure, had him repeating her name pretty close to right. "Well, Ngaio, I'm here with just about the same reason about everybody else is," he answered as he settled his duffel more comfortably on his shoulder. "I want to kick ass in a giant robot. You?"

[ Chuck’s seventeen and he’s piloting the fastest Jaeger in the world, Striker Eureka, with his old man, Herc Hansen. Striker’s a Mark V with gorgeous, sleek lines – fastest (and most expensive) Jaeger to date.

Striker’s kind of the love of Chuck’s life.

He’s the youngest to ever enter the Academy, youngest to ever set foot in a Jaeger. He’s creating records only to shatter them himself, and really? Chuck’s on top of the fucking world.

He’s a hotshot young man, a damn good Ranger and part of the problem? He knows it. He knows how good he is, knows that he’s been training for this half his life, knows that this is what he was meant for, what he was made for. Chuck’s been working towards this goal since Sydney, since Herc pulled him outta that school and Chuck watched the city burn, his mother with it.

He arrives in Valparaíso with his dad and they part ways, because – well, lets be honest, here. Outside the Drift, their relationship is nonexistent and Chuck doesn’t really have anything to say to his father in regards to anything other than their job.

Chuck’s kind of excited though – yeah, he’s annoyed to be leaving Sydney but there’s a brand new fucking Shatterdome to play at and he’s stationed with Gipsy Danger and the Becket brothers, the Marshal’s star team that had everyone and their mother drooling over Jaegers and their pilots.

Chuck had posters of Gipsy in his room, collected magazine spreads and articles about the brothers. They’re an inspiration to him, and now?

He finally gets to meet them himself because there they are, smiling and shaking hands.

Chuck’s still in his drivesuit when he approaches, cheeks still flushed from the Drift and from adrenaline. ]

So you’re the famous Raleigh Becket. [ His voice is a drawl, and he keeps his giddy, childish admiration out of his voice and instead puts a still gloved hand out. ]

Chuck Hansen, Striker Eurka.

[Raleigh had just been about to make his exit when Blake trots up and both Beckets turn. He hears him out and immediately moves to shake the guy's hand, nodding for Yancy to go ahead and go on without him.]

Sure, but I thought everyone came on a bus, together.

[Because, you know, the first meeting is kind important and all. If only just to make you feel like you're part of the group. And the look on his face says as much but he's not mad. He'd hardly even been listening when it was him in the seat, he'd been too excited to pay attention.

In any case he nods for the guy to follow him and Raleigh makes for a table up towards the top of the room with some assorted papers which he pulls together and sticks in a folder before handing over.]

Have you checked in yet?

Interview

Sugane is sitting ramrod straight in his chair with his hands folded in his lap. He's wearing a suit he dragged up from the back of his closet and ironed within an inch of its life before arriving at the facility, so you can imagine his chagrin at seeing so many of his fellow candidates dressed casually in their street clothes. Don't they realize how important this interview is? They can't possibly be treating it with the level of seriousness and dedication that it requires.

He's already memorized the interview questions and his answers to them, so there shouldn't be any problems. He's sure to impress the observers with his dedication and focus. At least that's what he's been telling himself all morning.

[ooc: I'll match however you want to respond. Present tense, past tense, prose, brackets, anything is fine.]

He didn't mind the heat particularly, but her fiddling with the window was making it difficult for him to withdraw into his thoughts again. Akito half-turned in his seat so he could study the window himself, its frame and mechanisms. It took only a moment, and once he was satisfied, he said, "Let me try."

[Luke was not looking any more comfortable in uniform, yanking at the collar with a quiet whine as he looked for somewhere out of the way to spend his free time. He didn't exactly dislike being around people, but in his experience it made it harder for them to yell at him if he wasn't around. Anyway, this was all just kind of... A lot. He'd never been on his own before, and now he was alone on the other side of the world.

He honestly didn't notice Yuri, that he'd headed for the same out-of-the-way escape, until he was almost upon him. But when he does notice he stops abruptly, staring, and clearly debating just walking away. ]

Edited 2014-02-01 19:56 (UTC)

"Duct tape," he said immediately. "That's about as handy as I get."

It was just a fact that something was always falling apart in his old neighborhood, but anything more involved than hammers and screws was beyond him. He'd always joked with the old lady who'd raised him that he just wasn't a very constructive person. Trying to pick things in the two years after the kaiju attack on Telluride, he'd wished he'd been wrong.

He shook his head a little to clear it--was the whole interview going to be like this, constantly bringing his thoughts back to his hometown? He could blame that on the company, at least.

Still, he'd like to avoid it. He tilted his head, looking at the list without really reading it as he pondered his return question. "... What about you? Find yourself doing much home improvement around base these days?"

The suggestion surprises her — though she had a feeling that he was getting particularly annoyed by it (not exactly by the window itself but the entire attempt of opening it). And that he would rather deal with it now than endure it for the rest of the trip, hence his offer to help. Understandable, really, but still it was better than nothing. She gives him a slight nod before moving back a little from her seat to allow him space to work on.

"Go ahead." If it still doesn't open — and she's hoping it does — she'll just have to deal with it like everyone else.

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test drive meme

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