[ open ] Welcome to Chile, Cadets.

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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!

Comments

[counterattacked]

It feels a little like sneaking off. But they'd been given the tour and given leave to familiarize themselves with the base, and he's pretty sure that he isn't actually bucking any orders right now by shaking his sister and wandering back toward the Jaeger Bays on his own. Curiosity is a powerful thing. And while it'll be a long while before he even gets to touch a Jaeger—if he gets to touch a Jaeger. He won't even let himself consider failure as an option—there's no way that he can resist taking a longer and closer look while he can.

And that's Hydra Corinthian. In the flesh, so to speak. The scale of it is breathtaking from down here, enough to set his pulse to pounding in its own right. He's so caught up in craning his neck up at it that he doesn't even notice the woman standing at its feet until he's practically on top of her.

But once he does, he recognizes her immediately. And it flashes across his face, along with a look of vague awe and not-quite-panicked contrition, like maybe he has been caught doing something he's not supposed to. But he steadies himself. Square shouldered, if wide eyed in a slightly starstruck way.

"Ranger Martin?" he pauses, as if to be sure he'd gotten it right, then adds on— "Ma'am."

[doubleshot]

She waited for him to realize she was there, placing the face to a name (Eren Jaeger, United States) when he looks at her. Andrea had been over the Cadet files so often she swore she dreamed about combing through their contents.

Most were spare. Reports and psychological evaluations ran light compared to the physical work they'd be put through soon enough. He remembered to address her correctly, a good indication of his attention to detail.

Much like remembering her face, but she wasn't so ignorant or arrogant to presume anyone did that for less than the obvious reason. With no more than thirty active Jaegers in the world, it wasn't difficult to keep track of a portion of those faces hailing from your own country.

"At your ease, Cadet Jaeger." She suppressed the urge to smile. "You're most the way through Day One at the Valparaíso Shatterdome. What do you have to report so far?"

[counterattacked]

It's probably the only very exceptional thing about him. He's young, he's not remotely the model soldier or the most qualified recruit in any tangible respect. But he is, if nothing else, taking all this very seriously. And he has for a long time, before he'd ever set foot in a shatterdome. There are those who are here because of the glamor of being a pilot, those who are here because of some kind of family obligation. Eren's here because he wants to save humanity. Not just to hold the kaiju at bay, but to defeat them once and for all. And he's always held the existing Rangers in incredibly high respect because of it, ever since the program became known to the public.

So there's a blink of real surprise when he hears Andrea speak his name back at him without needing to introduce himself first. She may have managed to suppress her smile successfully, but he's never been good at that sort of thing. As soon as he manages to relax out of his startled attention, he can't quite help but break into a very determined species of grin.

"It's amazing, ma'am," and he remembers to tack on the honorific, even if his enthusiasm is hard for him to hide. Because he's standing at the foot of Hydra Corinthian and talking to one of her pilots. A real live hero in the battle against the kaiju. Because he's taken his first step to contributing, himself. "This place is part of humanity's counterattack. That's amazing."

[doubleshot]

He's a study of expressions and posture. Andy takes it all in, adding her own mental notes piece by piece to the files she kept in her mind. She glances back up, following the scaffolding of maintenance crews instead of Corinthian's lines.

What was even more amazing was getting the funding for this project. She doesn't know how many people thought about what it meant to have the Mach V production line stop after Eureka Striker was launched. She hopes it isn't an overly optimistic move.

"By being here today, you're continuing along your own path, lending strength to humanity's counterattack, as you say. It's a big job. We need hundreds of people working together to keep Hydra Corinthian in operational shape, and she's not even heading out and tangling with aliens anytime soon."

She looks back toward Eren, watching him. She makes the decision to tread backward with a careful sort of precision. Old hurts can be their own sort of ammunition. "I hear you grew up in the Bay Area. You were around for Trespasser?"

[counterattacked]

The information has his eyes wandering back toward the Jaeger for a few scant seconds. Hundreds of people just to keep one up and running. He's never had a head for mechanics, exactly, nothing like the sort of science that makes them work. All that manpower for every Jaeger in service, just for a chance to fight back. And it can work. That humanity has managed it at all is a point of pride.

But his attention turns sharply back onto Andrea as soon as she addresses him again, and not least because of the subject matter. There's a moment of silence in the wake of it, because the question takes him off guard, it shows clear on his face. Mute surprise that resolves itself back down into determination with a healthy undercurrent of old anger. Eren's never been talented at schooling his reactions, least of all regarding anything this important. Lives his life with his heart on his sleeve and hands drawn into fists.

"Yes, ma'am," he answers, deliberately, and to his credit his voice stays steady when he does. There's an edge on it that he can't hide, even if he cared to. Because it's an old hurt, years old, but it's not one that he's allowed himself to try and heal. His teeth grit. Jaw tight and posture rigid. But he continues, because it's important. "I saw what it did to Oakland. That's why I'm here."

[doubleshot]

The San Francisco Bay had been lost in 2013. She could remember it in pieces, ultra-vivid and juxtaposed with the images that had been coming out for the months following. Andy remembers the refugee camps personally, before moving down to Los Angeles.

He couldn't have been more than ten at the time.

"To prevent the same thing from happening anywhere else?" She leaves the question as prompting. Disaster motivates people for all sorts of causes. What about being part of the last stand, or biggest stand, against the Kaiju drives him forward? She has her guesses.

[counterattacked]

"Yes, ma'am," his answer this time is firm and immediate. It's easy for someone his age to be taken in by the propaganda, by the high profile and celebrity status of the pilots. It's far more personal than that. Some parts justice and some parts vengeance, and honestly he'll be hard to convince they aren't one and the same in this case. "I'm here to fight."

There's nothing that can ever compare to the sight of the first kaiju as it swept across the coast. But in the wake of the attack, the first few days were their own sort of hell. The stark terror of the masses, the uncertainty of it. Shellshocked and scattered, huddled together in crowds of refugees as the rest of the world held its collective breath. Straining for any news that might explain what had happened, what was happening, if it was going to happen again. Hiding, helpless, like rats in a cage. (Or cattle for the slaughter.) Waiting for the hammer to fall. Most of the world has moved on, forgotten that feeling, grown complacent and taken comfort in the safety brought on by their new defenders. He hasn't. He can't.

"We can't just assume we'll be able to hold the kaiju off like this forever," Without a thought that maybe he shouldn't be talking this way to a superior officer on his first day. He's never had much trouble speaking his mind. The Jaegers and their pilots are heroes, they're humanity's best hope, but it's still a stopgap measure at its core. That they've gotten better at killing kaiju doesn't change the fact that they're still just reacting every time there's an invasion. They're on the defensive. They need a counterattack. "It's wishful thinking. We need to find a way to take them out for good."

And if he has to kill every last one of them to do it, he will.

[doubleshot]

He isn't wrong. Andrea listens to what he says, but she continues to watch him, too. It's a driving need in man people she's met, regardless of them being in the cockpit of a Jaeger or in any of the invaluable support positions that made any of this happen. Different from the obsession observable in the cults that worshiped the Kaiju, but as thrumming and alive with that sense of conviction that something would end.

Andrea doesn't plan on letting it be the kaiju, but Eren says exactly what they've always known. "Not a new idea, but it's a problem the PPDC has been working on for the last six years. Do you know the PSI down in Challenger Deep?"

The question is rhetorical. Andrea provides the answer a moment after. "16,099 pound force per square-inch. We still don't know how the Kaiju can manage the change in pressures without imploding." What they lack is knowledge, and it's something they're constantly scrambling to acquire. With how quickly the Kaiju decomposed after death, learning anything from them came in spurts and fits of luck which weren't entirely fit to be called luck in the first place.

"What are the sorts of things you expect we'll need to move past wishful thinking, Cadet?"