academyooc | test drive meme

Entry tags:

#test drive

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!

→ Directory ←

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( ONE )

It's too hot.

It's probably the only thing in Leila's mind at the moment and despite looking like the picture of calm and composure with an open book on her lap, she's nothing but. Gaze listless, fingers moving to loosen the ribbon on her blouse, lips pulling to a tight line ... it's a clear sign of distraction and soon, she puts down her book to stare outside. Or more specifically, to stare at the window and figure out how to pry it open.

Perhaps it's just her; everyone else seems to be unconcerned. She's simply not used to this sudden change in climate in less than a day: from cool and mild to sweltering and oppressive. And with the change comes the uncomfortable feeling of her clothes sticking to her skin. Perhaps it's the fact that her window's shut tight, preventing any form of air circulation where she's seated. Or perhaps it's both.

Fighting back a sigh, she struggles to stand in a moving bus to address the easiest one: the window. One hand sets her book down and steadies herself against the seat while the other runs along the dusty edges of the window, in search of a latch. She soon finds it and attempts to slide the window open — only for it to stay stuck. She frowns at it, rather confused.

"... Am I doing it incorre —" The last word gets cut off as the bus lurches, forcing her to stumble back into her seat and bump into her unfortunate seatmate. "Sorry."

( TWO )

Leila's been wandering through the shelves of the library, several books already resting in one arm: several history books, an almanac, an atlas and a French copy of Guibert's Essay on Tactics. Her eyes easily scan the titles on each and every book, fingers brushing the edge of the spines without pause. From an onlookers perspective, she's aimless, not knowing what or which book to pull out and read.

She pulls one out of the shelf, pushes it back in, moves to the next book. Rinse and repeat. After she's done with her seemingly pointless search, she moves to one of the desks in the library and spreads the material she's collected so far, effectively occupying the entire table. Setting up camp, as she would like to call it.

Needing a table? There's one over there in the far corner because really, good luck getting her to move.

Eren's talents lean far more to the physical side of their training, but his breakneck dedication extends to all of it. Which means he has to try a little harder with the written portions—study a little longer to drive it into his memory, as if he can physically hammer it home the way he can a martial arts stance—but he throws himself into it with the same focused enthusiasm. Which means that he often ends up spending his free time at the end of the day in the library, head bowed over a book until the text starts to blur and his best friend nudges him back toward the barracks to actually sleep for a while.

Armin's running late, taking care of some thing or another, so Eren's on his own for now, digging through the shelves in the back until he hears movement coming from the tables. He's already talking before he leans around a bookcase to find the source. Probably a little too loud for a library, and clearly directed at her, even if—

"Hey, Armin? That-" you? —It's clearly not meant for her. Nope, that sure isn't Armin. He falls silent, blinking owlishly at the tablefull of books and the wrong blonde head bent over them. That is a lot of books. Some of them don't even appear to be in English. At least he remembers what manners he has, if belatedly. "Shit, sorry. I thought you were someone else."

Leila's just managed to open the topmost book on her pile, shaking her head upon realizing that she's picked up the incorrect one, when the voice surprises her. At first, she had thought it might have been the library assistant again, calling her attention and clicking his tongue at the organized mess that she's created. It isn't exactly a violation in any way but the way she's reprimanded sure feels like it (and this is despite the fact that she returns everything back in the correct shelves).

Still, the name is incorrect though; last time she remembered, her name isn't Armin or is close to Armin in any way.

When it wasn't the library assistant, Leila releases an inward sigh she didn't think she was holding then offers him a smile. She's seen him a few times in the library, near the end of the day when she's returning several books she's borrowed for classes and usually with another student. Most likely Armin, the person he's looking for.

"It's fine. It happens to every one of us." She looks down on the table again, past the open book and everything beneath it. More books, papers, a notepad ... "Were you planning on using this desk?"

She doesn't seem mad, so the vague contrition fades out of him and he relaxes. He shakes his head.

"It's not a big deal," he brushes the question off. He hadn't really thought about it. "There's another one left, I think."

Maybe. There were a few free tables when he came in earlier, one less shouldn't hurt. Even if there aren't, it's not that big a deal. Hell, he has no problems sitting on the floor if he has to. The library assistants sure seem to have problems with it, but since they don't do much about it but give him long-suffering and weary looks if he resorts to it, he hasn't broken the habit. He's never looked—or acted—the part of the traditional bookish type. He has, however, always found himself saddled with a healthy measure of curiosity, and he's never had much shame about pursuing it.

Which means, now that he's gotten her question out of the way, he continues to study her setup with unabashed and obvious nosiness and asks—

"You're going to read all these?"

It's either a comment on the quantity or the content or the fact that they're not even all in the same language. (Thanks to his father's side of the family he knows a few words of German, but only really the incredibly impolite ones. He can't make heads or tails of French.) Or all three at once. Blunt, but not skeptical, at least not in a way that means to be accusing. If anything he's a little impressed.

Edited (corrects self belatedly) 2014-01-30 02:12 (UTC)

Despite his response, Leila begins pulling the books closer to her, piling some on top of the other until a substantial surface on the desk starts to show up. Satisfied with the result (as minor as it is), she gestures for him to take a seat before she takes one herself. She doesn't really mind if he waits there for his friend and while she rarely seeks the company of others, it's refreshing to have someone with her once in a while.

"Not all of them, no. I'll never escape the library if I did." She chuckles at the thought of that (since she'll probably never hear the end of it from the library assistants) and opens the atlas, flipping through the pages until she gets to the map of the Pacific Ocean and the countries surrounding it. Already, there's a sticky note stuck on it somewhere on the lower half of the page. She soon opens another, placing it side by side.

"Er, these ones over here —" She waves a hand over a bigger section of the pile. "— have just one or two articles I need as references."

For what, she's a bit hesitant to say. After all, this is simply what she considers as "light reading". Not exactly a homework or a project that one of her classes require but supplementary knowledge. And more often that not, she's gotten questionable looks once she's dropped that information. Instead, she gives him another smile before she starts taking down notes.

"What about you? Here for homework?"

He frowns a little when she clears him a space anyway, but sits. Mostly so he can lean over the table to watch as she flips through the atlas and makes notations.

"Yeah, mostly," he confirms her guess in good humor. He'd always done decently enough in school, but the physics and advanced mathematics and such involved in qualifying to pilot take a lot of slowing down on his part to comprehend. And slowing down is not a thing he does very easily on his own, which is why Armin's been tutoring him in the evenings. None of this, though, is anything he recognizes having studied during the day. Not yet, anyway.

"Is that what all this is?" he asks, "Homework?"

She momentarily pauses at that, her pen hovering just above the paper. She supposes it counts as homework. Sort of, kind of. Personal homework that's not exactly assigned to her by someone else.

"You could say that, yes," she replies slowly, nodding. "... Tactics class."

Her hand starts moving again across the notepad, brows furrowing as she looks up a specific term. There. She's said it. Anyone who's taking said class would realize that no homework was given earlier that day and that she's probably (most likely) doing something completely unnecessary, never mind that it's part of her studies. Possibly that's why people seem to think she's too difficult to approach since she's too - for the lack of a better word - serious.

Apparently he's alright with carrying on a conversation while someone is trying to concentrate, because he doesn't seem to mind that she works and writes as they do. Instead of seeming put off by her going above and beyond—even if he may not have deduced the full extent of it, tactics is an elective he's better off staying away from— he grins and leans back into his chair a little. Dedication is a thing he honestly admires in other people. Takes training too seriously could be Eren Jaeger's middle name if it wasn't so many unnecessary syllables.

"You'll like Armin," he says, and he seems utterly sure of that, despite the fact that she hasn't agreed to meet the cadet in question once he finally shows up. "He's always been real good at this sort of stuff."

Tactics. Armin had racked up high scores in SRPGs when they were kids, a talent that seems to have translated to real live battle simulations with (frankly frightening) ease.

"He ought to be around here soon—" Enthusiasm running a little faster than his common sense, he leans back until his chair is propped only on its two hind legs, which allows him to crane his neck for a better view of the door in the most casually reckless way possible. Something resembling common sense does catch up to him, though, because while he doesn't move from his perilously balanced position, he looks back over at her and says, "Hey, what's your name?"

He'd definitely seen her around before, but they haven't spoken before now. She usually seems to be keeping her head down.

Enthusiastic seems to be a better middle for him, in her opinion. For one thing, he doesn't look like he's about to stop talking anytime soon. And while admittedly it's a bit distracting and she has to pause once in a while to make sure that she's still writing what she's supposed to write, Leila doesn't mind it one bit. He actually reminds him of a friend from back home who has the same tendencies, talking tirelessly and endlessly about anything and everything. It makes her stop and wonder how she is at the moment, if she's still catching grasshoppers to draw them.

That name again. Armin. A very close friend or someone he's known for a long time, no doubt, with the way he just spoke about him. And to say that she'll like him with such confidence, as if he already knows her just by looking at her once. She supposes it's an almost accurate deduction. Almost.

"It's Leila," she replies with another smile, pointedly eyeing his chair. "And I look to forward to meeting your friend. Hopefully we don't get thrown out of the library before then though."

She can already tell what he's doing, with the creaking of the wood and the scraping sound on the linoleum floor. And she can only imagine what kind of a sound a person crashing to the floor would produce and how fast it would summon the closest figure of authority to them.

"Eren," he returns the favor in turn. Eren "enthusiastic" Jaeger. Possibly someday to be Eren "who-decided-to-let-this-guy-in-a" Jaeger if he makes it through to be a Ranger. He manages to rock himself back dangerously again before she distracts him from watching the door. His balance, if nothing else, is actually pretty good. He leans forward, and the feet of the chair make a staccato noise against the hard floors that echoes through the room.

"Thrown out?" Expression creased in concentration, he frowns over at her stack of books, "Has that happened to you before?"

The noise forces her pen to stop its movement again, this time for a long while. She gives it a few minutes to see if someone decides to reproach them on that matter. When all they get is a few glances and stares from the other Cadets, Leila lets out a quiet sigh under her breath, smiles at Eren then resumes her work once more. Perhaps she's just being oversensitive and too cautious.

"No, not yet." And she doesn't intend to. While admittedly the internet can be useful in terms of data gathering, she still prefers having a book in hand. And she's always been comfortable that resembles the study back at home.

She has no idea why the library assistant seems to nitpick on her whenever she's around lately though. She can't remember doing anything to offend the person other than hoarding a few (but seemingly unused!) books. "I don't suppose they actually would but I've never gone through it and they're not exactly ..."

Leila stops herself and shakes her head, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth. Enough. She's exhausted the topic already.

The way she cuts herself off doesn't go unnoticed, and it doesn't sit right with him. Eren's always suffered from a particularly stubborn sense of personal justice. It's not at all hard to push him into righteous indignation on behalf of others, and it's gotten him into more than a few fistfights over the years. Her hesitation puts a spark to the embers of it burning low in his chest. His brows draw together, and his jaw goes a little tight before he opens his mouth again.

"Not exactly what?" he presses. Not particularly gentle, but not exactly unkind, either. The question comes in earnest, and he is—mercifully—still and quiet as he waits, watching her carefully for an answer. Once he's really sunk his teeth into something, deterring him will take more than a cut-off sentence.

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?"

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."

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."

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.

With the bus still rattling along, Akito's careful when he stands up, propping himself up with one hand. It makes it easier for him to reach across his seatmate for the window, gives him more room to maneuver without having to get too close. Even if he offered to help her out, he'd still rather keep his distance.

It takes a few moments of fiddling with the lock - the mechanism is maybe a little jammed, or maybe the bus's constant swaying makes it hard to keep applying the right kind of pressure - before it pops open. And ne hard shove from him opens the window enough to let in a gust of air. It's not much cooler than the bus's interior, but at least it's air that's moving. When he drops back into his seat he looks a little more cheerful thanks to his success. Just a little.

"Better?"

The rush of warm air shocks her for a moment; it certainly isn't what she was expecting. But while it's not the air-conditioned system that one could hope for in this heat, it's definitely a lot better than the makeshift oven they call a bus. A mild improvement is an improvement at the very least. She leans out the window, her long hair whipping out behind her, if only to briefly catch a cooler breeze outside.

"Much better, yes." It's still a long way from Valparaiso and the searing hot wind on her face tells her just that. Hopefully it turns cooler by the time they get there, considering how close it is to the ocean. She's read that Valparaiso's a port as well and thinks that it might not be so much different from home.

Leila settles once more in her seat and turns to him with a smile. He looks a little less uncomfortable, though it may have something to do with the ventilation. She wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. "Thank you for your help with the window. I honestly thought it wouldn't open at all."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

test drive meme

leila malcal ( code geass )

two!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

one!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject