[ open ] Welcome to Chile, Cadets.

[supportadmin]

Characters: ALL.
Location: Valparaíso Shatterdome, Chile.
Date/Time: February 15th-28th.
Summary: The first shipment of recruits into the new Jaeger Academy program arrive. Some are staggered throughout the month, but they all have the same basic greeting. Here you are, there's where you sleep, here's what you wear, get going.
Additional Notes: See here for additional information. For information on the current weather, check out this link.

The Shatterdome didn't look futuristic, swatches of metal and concrete transforming a portion of the harbor into five enormous bays. Nevermind that only two were currently in use. The stark greys stand out against the colorful face of the city, a hulking monolith that's been carved into the face of the city that had once upon a century been termed the Jewel of the Pacific.

Note: Players are welcome to start their own interactions outside of the three main prompted scenarios. Go wild!

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BARRACKS | TURNING OVER PERSONAL ITEMS

[supportadmin]

When a second PPDC soldier appears, she's more serious, taking in the group of cadets with a glance. She doesn't seem impressed. "Attention! Cadets, fall in line! Double file, quick now, did your mother raise you lazy?" She stood at point, calling out further encouragement as needed.

"Most of you won't know how to march yet, so don't try. I'm Captain Zhang, and this is Lieutenant Contreras. You will refer to us with ma'am and sir. We're here to keep you in line and alive, so when we say jump? You jump. No asking how high."

She takes them inside not long after, Lt. Contreras bringing up the rear. It wasn't far to the barracks, where Contreras steps forward and calls out which names are assigned to which series of bunks.

"All personal items will be stowed until completion of the program. Items related to personal hygiene may be retained, and all barrettes and hair ties matching the color of your hair. You may keep a photograph, up to five. Report to Lt. Contreras for tagging and numbering. Dismissed."

After turning in their personal belongings, cadets will be allowed to sort themselves out, selecting their bunks in their respective rooms.

Re: BARRACKS | TURNING OVER PERSONAL ITEMS

[protagerrant]

By a near margin, Yuri manages to resist rolling his eyes. Ah, the dulcet tones of authority. He hadn't it missed it much at all, and even six months in Alaska hadn't made him used to it. It wasn't even the content he minded--just something about the pitch, like those whistles only dogs could hear, drove him nuts. And if he so much as raised on eyebrow out of line for the next three months, they could throw him out on his ear. Fantastic.

At least prior barracks experience meant he knew exactly which bunk he wanted. He headed straight for one of the bottom bunks nearest to the door, dropping the bag of hair ties he'd salvaged from his personal belongings onto the mattress and then settling down on it himself, watching the other cadets file in with open curiosity and a short nod of greeting.

[secondtry]

Mike had tossed his bag things onto a bottom bunk and was very nearly humming as he went through the process of putting things away. After all, he'd been doing this almost all his life, so really, this was nothing new or different for him. It was just warmer here than it had been anywhere else, and that was just about perfect. He could handle all the physical work, all the yes-sir-no-ma'am with no problem, but finally he could say, "So much better than Alaska," even if it was slightly under his breath.

[protagerrant]

"Tell me about it," Yuri sighed, pulling out the clip he'd used on the bus to keep his hair off his sweaty neck and tossing it in the back with the rest. He briefly rifled a hand through his hair to get it to sit straight. "Regular daylight hours and everything."

Re: BARRACKS | TURNING OVER PERSONAL ITEMS

[heliokleptic]

Luke wasn't expecting others to know him, but he honestly hadn't put much thought into what he'd do if he recognized anyone. So he freezes up a bit when he sees Yuri, a slow confused blink, and then an openly wry smile. Why was he surprised? Yuri was a lot more qualified than him, and had already been to a different shatterdome. He absently squeezes the bundle of uniforms he'd been given.

"Sorry." That he was here, and that apparently they were going to be sharing a building. "I'll... grab a bunk on the other side."

Re: BARRACKS | TURNING OVER PERSONAL ITEMS

[protagerrant]

Yuri had to suppress a sigh. Honestly, this kid... standing there hugging his uniform like a security blanket. Could he look any more pathetic?

Whether he could or not, Yuri would have to get used to it. He had to stop having these knee-jerk reactions every time Luke came around.

"Don't go out of your way."

[secondtry]

There hadn't been much for Mike to turn over. His toiletries, yeah, they stayed, but his hair was short enough that he didn't have any thing special for it, and he didn't even have any photos to sit around. All he'd exchanged, in the end, had been his clothes (which, if his prior experience held true, would be loose when these three months ended).

Now, left to choose his bunk, he'd chosen one at the bottom and was putting his clothing away in the preferred military manner. In some ways, he already missed Vegas. In others, this was just business as usual.

[nisemoron]

Yaichirou had picked out a top bunk but he wasn't settling in well. He had unpacked and re-packed 3 times already. Judging by his furrowed brows, the entire war effort hinged on exactly where he pinned his photographs and stacked his shirts. When he wasn't re-arranging things he stole glances at the other cadets, eyeing them with equal parts curiosity and apprehension. He had never had to live in such close quarters with so many people. He could handle it, of course-- he could handle anything-- but he wasn't looking forward to this part of academy life.

His gaze lingered on Mike and he made a valiant effort not to frown. Given how uneasy he was, it was downright annoying to see someone so relaxed.

"You seem like you've done this before."

[secondtry]

"This isn't my first rodeo," Mike agreed, tucking his socks into neat little rolls in their place in his drawer beside his underwear. "I was in Alaska a few years ago. Military school before that. So, really, nothing new, nothing different. Just stand up straight, tack a 'sir' on to everything, and be prepared to run your ass off."

He looked up from his arranging to offer a hand for a handshake. "Mike Traceur."

Re: BARRACKS | TURNING OVER PERSONAL ITEMS

[heliokleptic]

Luke carries the telltale look of someone whose never really been given such direct and clear orders, and is terrified of somehow getting them wrong. All wide green eyes, his stand to attention more stiff than starched. For once he's grateful to be on the shorter side, hoping perhaps he can go as long as possible without being called out for clearly having no idea what he was doing here. And luckily, at least so far, it works. Captain Zhang moves on and he briefs a sigh of relief before beginning to unload his personal items a little sadly.

He didn't have much. He was mostly going to miss his phone. He fires off a quick text to his mother to let her know he wouldn't have a phone for the next three months but promises to call when he gets a chance. That by itself was rare for him, but he'd been worried about her ever since their father died, and he'd been trying to do better about leaving her with no idea what he was up to or when he'd be safely home.

Good son duties accomplished, he stows his phone and other personals in a bag with his name on it, and goes to find a bunk that looks like it hasn't been claimed yet. Ideally something in a corner, where at least there was slightly less chance someone who hates him would end up sleeping within feet of him.

((Optional read on luke's public background))

[spareheir]

Someone hung backward off the top bunk across from Luke's, watching curiously as he moved his things in. The boy was fairly petite himself, with fine features and a lively expression in spite of all of the glum looks that the others in the barracks seemed to be sporting. He'd already tacked up his 5 photographs to the ceiling, though there was no guarantee he wouldn't be made to take them down. They were happy scenes. Kou holding a laughing baby, Kou with his arm around the shoulder of a much taller boy in a track suit, something that must have been a family portrait, and two that seemed to be clipped from a school newspaper.

He recognized Luke, if the spark that briefly crossed his eyes was anything to go by, but he didn't address the other boy by name. Instead he flipped off the bunk with a somersault and landed gracefully on his feet.

"Best view in the barracks." He said instead, nodding to the window beside the beds. It was why he'd chosen something so out of the way. No matter where you were at night, if you looked up to the stars -even an unfamiliar set of stars, as these were- you'd feel at home. It was all still the same sky.

[heliokleptic]

Luke blinks, attention torn between the flip and the offered view. After a confused moment he decides to respond to the view, since Kou had played the flip off so casually he almost felt like it would be weird to treat that as... weird.

"The best view, huh? I'll take your word for it." Luke hadn't exactly been checking out the other options, and he wouldn't say this view is particularly spectacular... but there was a sizable slice of sky above the grey buildings.

He smiles though. He always felt nervous meeting new people, lately, but he was glad this guy was apparently friendly, and didn't seem to know who he was. "I guess we're lucky we got here so early, huh?"

Under 18 Barracks

[inferiorcomplexes]

She tosses her bag up the top bunk. There's nothing fragile or particularly important in there anyway. She climbs up the ladder slowly, relishing her last day in properly pressed clothing. Sweat drenched as they may be, they're hers.

She sits on the edge of the bunk, swinging her boot-clad feet by the ledge. (Let's take a moment of our time to pity the fool who may or may not be on the bottom bunk.)

She will watch everyone who enters the barracks from this spot. Maybe she'll call them out using a nickname based on their most prominent feature.

[counterattacked]

As painfully earnest as he is about becoming a good solider, there is absolutely nothing 'properly pressed' about this guy right now. Messy haired and casually clothed and carrying with him the general air of dishevelment that comes with being a sixteen year old boy with more restless energy than social graces. The swinging boots and their sweat-drenched and starched owner catch at his attention from the corner of his eye, and he frowns upward at her on her perch. Since she's yet to address him directly, he beats her to the punch. And he proceeds to state the obvious.

"Aren't you hot in all that?"

18+

[karearea]

After a text to her mum to say she's down to landline calls only and please could you print some photos of the whanau and snail mail them, Ngaio unpacks her hygiene things and hands over her suitcase, carry on bag, and the floppy hat she'd been carrying and fanning herself with. She's pouting furiously as she claims a bed and starts packing her Academy issue gear away, but despite the frown, her packing is neat and military, thanks to her time in Air Cadets.

Still, she waits until their senior officers are out of the room before she whines, "This is balls! My photos are on my phone - they let us keep our crap at Woodbourne."

[secondtry]

"It's three months," Mike answered from his bunk, lacing on the new boots and wiggling his feet around in them to start the breaking in process. At least combat boots felt natural on his feet. "And it's just a phone. You'll live. Unless you step in front of something heavy, anyway."

[inurhead]

After watching the new cadets arrive Yancy had made a trip back to his quarters to grab some papers he was supposed to be over. On the way there the barracks had been mostly empty, but by the time he was headed back down they were teeming with new blood. He wasn't about to get caught sneaking into cadet barracks, but it wouldn't hurt to give this particular surly cadet a reassurance from the doorway.

"You don't have time to use it the first couple months anyway."

He'd know. He went through the program himself a few years back.

[counterattacked]

Turning over personal effects

Eren doesn't expect to take very long with this part of processing. He's got little to sort out of his belongings, little to turn over in the first place. But there is the old fashioned key hung on the cord around his neck. And he pauses despite himself after pulling it over and off his head. Takes a moment to study it, as if committing the dings and scratches in the surface to memory, mouth drawn into a tight and tense line.

The last thing he has left of home, (of him,) and not entirely in a good way. The door that it opens had no doubt been destroyed with the rest of Oakland. Along with whatever had even been kept down there. It doesn't matter, does it? But he's held onto it all this time anyway.

He exhales sharply through his nose, as if to vent his frustration, or his irritation, or his anxiety, then wraps the cord around the key and hands it over with the rest of his things. He doesn't need it anymore.

Under 18 Barracks

They'd mostly made their way on their own for the past seven years. For a long time, Eren had been too angry and too proud to accept much in the way of charity or government aid, but the cooler heads of his companions had prevailed long enough to keep their heads down and to keep them warm and fed until they were old enough to earn their own keep. So in some ways, it's good to know they won't have to think about where their next meal is coming from here. And that they're going to earn every one in the defense of humanity.

So the sparseness of the accommodations is a small price to pay. (He'd sleep on the floor of the damn hangar if it meant getting a shot at being a Ranger.) After setting his bag down on the floor, he drops down against the bottom to try it out— and he does it with enough of his usual measure of reckless energy to rattle the frame. It shakes audibly, but holds fast. For now, this is home. They made it.

[europeanunion]

The rattling confuses Leila for a brief moment, looking up from her occupation of neatly folding and pressing their issued clothing. Without her portable steamer, tucked away along with her personal belongings in her second luggage, keeping her clothes from getting wrinkled is going to be a tough one. Ironing their uniform was protocol back in the Naval college but it doesn't seem to be the case here in the Academy. So she'll have to make do with carefully sorting them all out.

"Is everything all right?" she asks from her seat on the floor on the opposite side of the hall, her hands moving on its own to fold the last white shirt in place.

He seems to be as tensed as many of the other Cadets who've just arrived with them but that's to be expected given it's their first day. It's not at all different when she's first gone to Dartmouth, all nerves and high energy. She thinks it'll either soon mellow down (a week will soon feel like a month with the routine) or it'll even get more pent up with the coming training.

[boomerangarrow]

For being such a rich kid, Kate didn't bring much from home with her. She'd rather not have the reminder that her father disapproved of what she was doing. The less she brought from home the better. The only thing Kate even deemed worth keeping were her purple tinted aviator sunglasses, a compound bow and her phone. She sends a mass text to her friends informing them that she'll be busy for three months before placing it away. The sunglasses she'll give up easily, but she stares at the bow for a long while before placing them with her glasses. Three months without her bow. She can deal with that, she's still got all of her other training to fall back on. But there's nothing quite like a bow and arrow for comfort.

She shakes it off and takes a look at the bunk beds. She'll throw her bag on one of the top bunks to claim it for herself. It's not like anything fragile was left in it.

[bushidork]

Sugane nearly jumps out of his skin when the next bunk over rattles with the impact of Kate's bag. He'd been thoroughly inspecting the bottom bunk he'd chosen after stowing away what little he'd been left with in the footlocker. He's never even stayed in a dorm before, so close quarters like this are going to take some adjusting to. Especially since they're co-ed. He hadn't even considered that part. Still, that's not an excuse to be impolite.

"Hello?" How do you introduce yourself as the guy from the next bunk over? Do you do it at all? His English is passable, but his cultural knowledge is cobbled together from imported TV shows and official PPDC literature. Not the best.

[prioritized]

Turning over personal items:

While she didn't put up an argument about keeping her scarf, it did take some time and a stern look from one of the higher ups for Mikasa to finally place the tattered thing in her box. Carefully folded and placed on top of the sparse few belongings she already packed away. She'd never considered herself the kind of person to get sentimental over items, but the scarf had been with her since before the first Kaiju attack, from a happier time.

She catches herself staring in the nearly empty box forlornly, and suddenly she seems to pull herself out of a memory and quickly places the lid on top. There's no use getting sentimental over a scarf.

Under 18 Barracks

The accommodations aren't much different, even a step up from the various refugee centers she'd stayed in with Eren and Armin. Even though the bunks were packed in the room like sardines, they looked sturdy and clean, and that's good enough for her.

Being at the top of the alphabet, she'd managed to get released to choose a bunk before the room got too packed and so she picked a bunk in an empty part of the room, swiftly claiming a top bunk where she could sit and watch for her friends. It's inevitable that they wouldn't be able to stick as closely together as they had for the last several years, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't try. Unlike some of the other recruits, her interests lie a little more selfishly than just the benefit of mankind.

[counterattacked]

Mikasa's stalling as they stop to give up their personal belongings. Nearly naked without the slash of red around her neck and staring down at the lid of the box before it can be tagged and filed away. And Eren notices as he makes his way past her to the exit, stops to stand beside her, close enough to knock his knuckles against hers. (They're the same height, they always have been.) He doesn't move to take her hand, even to touch her otherwise, but he stands beside her. There's a long silence before—

"You'll get it back," And it's blunt, a little impatient, but the edge to it is a little softer than usual. That scarf used to belong to him. And Mikasa has hardly been without the thing since they met, even though she'd moved down to the mild weather of the Bay Area to live with the Jaegers after her parents had been killed. She'd never seemed to care that she's usually a bit overdressed for the weather. If they let her, she'd wear the damn thing even in this heat. "It's just a few months."

[chosethewar]

Aside from a few family snapshots he kept in his wallet, Tom hadn't had much of anything worthy of turning over. He had a spare change of clothing that he traded for a cadet uniform, some toiletries and handed over his cell phone without even a fuss. Tom wasn't sure if they wanted their personal items because it helped to strip them of their civilian mentality or to make sure no one was surreptitiously spying on them but he didn't care either way.

He was anxious to get started and thus surrendered his personal affects with a tight lipped smile before heading down the hall towards the barracks set aside for the adult cadets.

Tom scanned the room for an open bunk and once he spied one nearest the door, he wandered over to it. The lack of even the most basic of personal belongings meant that it was easy to stow his kit away and once he'd done so, he settled onto the bunk to watch the other cadets stroll in. The quiet young man was studying each and every one of them, visibly accessing them for habits, quirks and other miscellaneous data. After all, these were the competition, correct? Who knew how many of them would make it through the Academy. Best to learn what he could about them now before people drifted into like-minded peer groups and loose alliances.

[reengineered]

Lucy didn't really have anything other than a phone and her clothes when she came in, and she was happy enough to hand them over. Now with just her uniform and necessities, along with a small notepad and pen, she felt ready to take on the whole program fearlessly. Alright, maybe not fearlessly. Maybe part of her was still concerned about her viability in some small way, but she knew that she could push through if they really, truly gave her a shot.

Practically speed-walking for the barracks, Lucy tried to seek a bunk as close to the door as she could, wanting to be at the front of the hustle and bustle more than anything. If it meant she got roughed up a little more, so be it. It meant she'd always be seen, even if she wasn't heard.

Of course, there was someone already at the bunk she'd have wanted, so he got a little bit of an alarmed look as she stepped sideways and took the next one over.