academyooc | test drive meme

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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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Dodging, hm. It was strange to recognize his own patterns in someone he'd conceived for so long as completely different from him.

"The Drift," he states, gesturing wide like a marquee through the air with his hand, loaded and awestruck in his tone... though he sinks back casually in his chair with a sigh. "Isn't this unfair? Don't you have insider information? Are we graded for accuracy?"

He smiles at the theatrics, but it turns wry. "No, I've never drifted. I couldn't find a partner back in Alaska, so I'm just as clueless as everyone else." Though he'd shown a baseline of compatibility with plenty of people, none of his prospects had been good enough for them to try a Drift.

"So we're on even ground after all," Guy says, smiling a little. "So much for a sneak peek."

The Drift... an unspeakably world-altering development impacting the very core and history of mankind, psychic links made real. And Guy didn't think deeply about it. It was like staring into the sun of your secretive bullshit will be done for. Considering his behavior some one of the most important relationships of his life, maybe avoidance wasn't a surprise.

"We won't really know until we try, will we?" he finally answers with a sigh, looking at the table. "I'm not a picnic anymore, but that's not special. Whoever I Drift with," he says, pausing... then glancing up at Yuri. "They'll have their fair share too. Isn't that the point?"

"I guess so," he says evenly, gaze level with Guy's, letting the promise both of them were to cautious to verbalize hang between them.

If Yuri were to be honest--and he wouldn't be, not right now, maybe not until the Drift dredged up both their shaded histories--he would have said he thought the Drift felt like this: a conversation that existed entirely in things unsaid, foregrounded only by everything he knew about Guy, everything he knew about himself that he saw in Guy. A chill seeped down his spine as he considered himself under Guy's scrutiny. All these months he'd been letting the PPDC prepare him to Drift with someone, and despite his own preparation... He suddenly felt vastly unprepared for someone to Drift with him.

Well, he had a few months more to go to correct that. And he would.

Edited 2014-02-03 23:56 (UTC)

Guy holds eye contact with Yuri as the moment stretches. Seconds tick by, feeling shorter and faster somehow, and Guy's fake expression melts off. He knows they're passing any acceptable length of silence in civilized conversation, logically, but he doesn't look away - Yuri doesn't either, so he's just as much to blame! - and he just can't figure out the words that say more than saying nothing.

As little as Guy had thought of the Drift itself, he had imagined the type of people he'd be able to Drift with en entirety. It would have to be a complete stranger, he'd decided. Another survivor. Someone else with giants crushing their memories. Probably someone not very nice - his deeper thoughts might disgust someone too noble. The most common conclusion Guy reached was, quite simply, a criminal with a chip on his shoulder.

He swallows, the bob in his throat sliding, under Yuri's gaze. Now, in just a few minutes, he isn't so sure he's right about that, and for the first time he feels unprepared.

Yuri Lowell... the orphan brat who'd pulled his hair, called him names and yelled at him to believe in himself. It feels like he was inside his walls already, and they hadn't even talked.

Edited 2014-02-04 01:03 (UTC)

Yuri watches Guy's face--one second, two, three seconds, eyes narrowing with focus--and then breaks the moment, loudly tapping the clipboard against the desk like he's straightening a stack of papers, easy smile back in place as he straightens himself up, too. "I guess it's my turn, huh?" If Guy's looking, now--and frankly Yuri doesn't care if it he is--he'll catch one more focused sweep, something quiet and almost proprietary in his eyes.

He really wants to blow this room, already. Just the thought of the lab coats looking them over makes his shoulders tighten. He can't help but shoot the glass a dark look, even if they dock him on his anti-authoritarian temperament. Again.

But just as easily, he meets Guy's eyes again, casual. "I should probably avoid giving the same answer I gave earlier," hid voice is deliberately sly.

It's almost a relief that Yuri breaks the moment, though Guy's pulse is a bit quicker still. He was really unaccustomed to social interaction that mattered.

His eyebrows lift as he follows Yuri's gaze and parses his problem, his mood. Still? Well, of course, Guy thinks. It's almost funny. It isn't like Guy is a huge fan either, what with high-stakes competitive Jaeger technology killing his family, and all. (At least, as far as he's concerned.) But this is the PPDC they're talking about, and they're not even past initial scans. Being obstinate for the sake of it isn't going to get Yuri anywhere.

Omelet, eggs, something like that.

"If you can give a better one," Guy replies, plenty sly in reply - but just because he's goading. You can do a little better than that, right?

He'd told Luke the Drift was like sex just to screw with a naive kid; he doubted he'd get the same reaction out of Guy. Five years ago, maybe, but they were both grown up, now. Guy didn't look that easy to fluster.

"Well," he mused. "If you believe the official literature..." Which of course he didn't. Had he ever? "It sounds pretty respectable and dignified. A pure marriage of minds." His tone is obviously flip and mocking. "The symbol and result of the indomitable human will against the kaiju menace, no more prurient than a firm handshake."

Yuri expected the drift to be an ugly place, because emotions in general could get pretty ugly. That's why they were told to 'master their minds'--so co-pilots could clear the Drift of all their emotional detritus and focus on the fight. That was Yuri's theory, anyway. No telling how much it worked except to ask an actual pilot.

"Hmmm," Guy sighs, leaning back and rubbing his chin, as if deeply ruminating. Yuri was being brazenly flip, but the answer itself... For someone with such an attitude... "That's right out of the literature, alright... almost word for word." Almost. Prurient, not so much.

He levels a smile at him, his eyes dancing again. Like he's having fun.

"Well, they say it's the quick studies that get bored the fastest. I guess that hasn't changed at all."

Edited 2014-02-04 04:43 (UTC)

Yuri scowls at him, not liking the implication.

"I was reading because I was bored." That was sort of a lie. Yuri had never been much of a student; academics had just plain never interested him, and he thought his chances of going to any kind of college were pretty damn slim, so he hadn't really bothered. But he did read all that recruitment pamphlets and, when he joined, the assorted hand books. He liked to know the rhetoric, and to see how the PPDC measured up to its own standards.

"You liar. You just don't believe in doing things halfway."

Guy is all casual, teasing confidence - three things a skinny, tawny-haired Gardios had exactly zero of. The only reason it isn't completely alien is the invested accusation of it - the scenario is an echo of long ago, little desperate arguments between kids that don't make any sense.

Like the time Guy had shouted, as a bold-faced, crying, below-the-belt retort, that Yuri was nice.

And it had actually worked. (Am not! Yuri had screamed again and again, until Mary had broken them up.)

Does it still work?

There's that uncomfortable sense that Guy knows too much again; even as Yuri shifts his weight, he winces, wondering if Guy has caught on he only fidgets when he feels pinned. Where the hell did Guy get all this confidence from? In the past it had always been Yuri pushing him, dragging him yelling at him to speak up. Guy had been meek.

"How will I know how to break the rules and disappoint their standards if I don't know them?" It's a another breezy answer, but stubborn in its content.

Guy's eyebrows go up, and it's an effort to resist glancing at the one-way window, so he certainly doesn't manage to mask it for Yuri. Rather than being impressed Yuri's stubbornness, he's amazed the man was only transferred instead of kicked completely out. Insubordination was no joking matter, not in any war - and especially not in this war.

It wasn't like the planet was crawling with Drift Compatible people, though. Plenty of hotshots made the cut anyway - and were media darlings, naturally. Did Yuri test that well? Were they hoping the right collar and leash would come along?

"Still nursing a vendetta against The Man, huh," Guy says dismissively, like he doesn't believe Yuri is truly serious for one second. "You sure have guts saying that in your position. But..." he pauses as he goes on, and a more sincere tone softens his voice. "... I'm glad you're serious enough to tolerate being transferred."

Otherwise, they may never would have met again. Despite all the damage, it was still a very big planet.

The people behind the glass new all too well--and Yuri knew they knew--that he'd never actually broken any major rules, aside form the incident that got him transferred. And he'd worked hard at the training, even if he'd been mulish about the officer training. At its core, Yuri believed in what the PPDC was doing, and he believed in the way it structured and presented itself. It was the uniforms he didn't trust. Coming from a neighborhood like his, where a cop was more like to rob you than a actual mugger, that wasn't much of a surprise. Authority was power, and power went to people's heads.

His eyes lock to Guy's again as he catches his tone, and he's thoughtfully quiet for a moment, studying Guy's face before me speaks. "Yeah," he says agreeably. And then, with an air of finality: "This is where I need to be."

Guy doesn't realize he's not breathing until he has his answer. He couldn't put a word to it before, but looking into Yuri's eyes felt... cutting. Like he wasn't ignoring how much he'd changed, but it didn't matter how much he tried to hide, either.

"Me too," he says.

It's all he can think to manage, but it's all he needs, anyway. No matter who he hated, or why, what he was afraid of, or even how strong he was. This was the only thing he'd done in a long time that made any sense.

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