academyooc | 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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

test drive meme

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