trans_9 | When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you. [OPEN]

Entry tags:

When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you. [OPEN]

It was the second time in seemingly as many days (it was unclear how long he’d been gone) that Ender had been spit out of an organic structure. Shakily, using the wall for support, he raises himself to a standing position and tries to regain his bearings. He is back on the ship. Clearly having gone to the city for rest had not saved him from being taken in for “study”. Why the voice had kept promising him cake was beyond him. He hadn’t had cake since his sixth birthday, and Peter hadn’t let him enjoy that one anyway. If his /greater purpose/ is to be a guinea pig for further mind games... It had thanked him(the voice, not the cake) and let him go. It also specified that there was a cake shortage.

He walks apprehensively down the hall, tense and alert, for fear of being borrowed for another experiment.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ender lifts his gaze up the length of the contraption, pupils dilating. Some sort of personal training device? He takes in the paraphernalia that make up the jungle gym the way he’d once looked into the Battle room. It wasn’t so dissimilar when it came down to it. He’d even had Bean’s toon train with similar ropes towards the end of their time in Battle school. This was what he’d have made his Jeesh train in had the equipment been available. The only difference was that this one has gravity.

“Preparing for any possible tactic the enemy might have?” he asks, almost smirking.

Despite himself, he's pleased to be in a familiar setting. He can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He wants to try this thing out!

The Chief built this out of his memories of the first obstacle course he'd ever run, the one that had taught him his first hard lessons about teamwork. He's made some modifications of his own of course, some are improvements of failings he remembers and others are his invention entirely. He doesn't just mean to test the endurance of the people he's taking responsibility for as trainer, but also their minds. Knowing how to think on his feet has saved the Chief's life time and time again, and if he can give it to these kids it can protect them when he himself cannot.

"At the least," the Chief says, "this can build some muscle. And some brains, if all goes according to plan." It rarely does, of course, and he's already coming up with backup plans. He walks up to one of the platforms, about six feet off the ground. He ignores the ladder on the side, putting his hands on it and muscling up, then rising to his feet.

"You can come up if you want to. It's not finished yet." He has additions to make, testing to do, paths to build and refine and correct. He wants to know this better than anybody before he uses it in earnest.

"Got a name?" he adds.

“Ender.” The boy replies over his shoulder, taking up the offer. He eagerly crosses the room to a rope and scrambles up to a higher platform. He’s surprised to find that the ease with which he’d mastered the Battle Room’s equipment doesn’t translate here. On Eros, it was brains and psychosomatic endurance that mattered to the teachers, not muscle and agility. It had been too long since he’d gotten to really Move.

Like a child on a playground jungle gym, he goes through the obstacle course step by step, trying the bars, the cables, the jumps. By the time he gets to the third level, he’s thoroughly enjoying himself. He speeds up, takes the jumps with momentum, struggles with the pulley systems. At some stations, it takes him a moment to figure out what he’s meant to do, but his mind quickly supplies solutions, the way it always has. After the fourth level, he slides down a bar back to the second to join the Chief. He’s grinning, the way he had when he first met Mazer Rackham.

“Did the ship provide you with all the materials?” He asks, catching his breath.

The Chief watches Ender run the obstacles, using this as a chance to watch him and see what he can learn about him. Ender thinks, that much is clear as he makes his way up through the course. Not only does he think, he thinks quickly. He's also no slouch, to get up there and back down here like that.

It also provides useful proof that this course can be run. The Chief's had to adjust things and make guesses because he's been doing a lot of his own testing and he's much bigger, heavier, stronger, and faster than most of the people on board. This is encouraging.

"Yes and no," he says. "The sensoriums can take anything you can come up with and make it out of solid light. Stacy takes the specs out of your mind and makes it pretty close to real." That's the less ridiculous-sounding way of telling him it runs on imaaaaagination.

"This," he explains, nodding to the course, "Is based on something I was trained on. I've added a couple of tricks of my own as well, but the sensorium lets me skip building it with my own two hands."

He’d suspected something of the sort, though it wasn’t any more comforting. Mind games that teachers were able to observe and analyze for a concrete, known purpose were one thing; his mind being able to create a scenario physically incarnated to the point that others could interact with it was an altogether disturbing idea. While the solution seems obvious enough, simply not to create anything himself, it would be wasteful not to use the resources at hand. He would have to give it a trial run on his own before allowing anyone else to be present for it. Considering the way he’d treated the last fantasy game, he’d decided his mind wasn’t a trustworthy place. Thinking back to the Giant’s Drink darkens his mood.

Ender nods, looking up at the maze of cables and platforms. He recognizes and values the complexity of the task at hand; to both train a team physically and to challenge them intellectually. He also recognizes that the Chief doesn’t have the advantage of selecting the brightest and most capable the way the Launchies had been selected in Battle School, he would have to work with the available candidates.

“How large is your team?” he inquires , leaning against one of the rope-ladders.

(OOC: My apologies, I've been busy lately. >.<)

"A further problem," says the Chief, "is that I'm Command Staff. I don't have any one team, Stacy will be shuffling me into different groups as the need goes." This bothers him, he's used to a group that he knows and has worked with and can trust.

"Regular teams run about nine individuals. Skillsets are mostly mixed enough to keep them versatile but organization is low."

No worries. RL will do that C:

He frowns. Adapting a training routine for each team would be a massive endeavour in itself, never mind equipping them with the tactical skills to work together without the instructor. Moreover, nine wasn’t enough to split into smaller groups that could make decisions independently on the field, so each team would have to adjust seamlessly to a new situation. Otherwise, there were bound to be some strays that could potentially lead to disaster.

“They’ll need obstacles that can’t be run by themselves then, that or they would have to go up against one another.” He was suggesting the very institution he’d just left...but he couldn’t think of any other way.

The Chief isn't usually one to smile. He's been a faceless man for years, but even without his helmet he's gotten so used to masking his emotions (or just not feeling them) that he often doesn't express much.

But there's a slight upward twitch to the corners of his mouth. Echoes of his argument with Samus come back to him. Teamwork. If they can get that going on this ship, that will be half the battle won.

"Exactly," he says. Somebody finally gets it! "This is mostly a test for the training sessions I'll be doing. We need to know what page everyone's on before we start."

He already has some ideas where to go from there. He's not in charge of Phys Ed, he's the one for combat training. But there's a certain level of ability required for that.

"I have other plans for team building, but you've nailed it." He's looking forward to that, though he won't admit it to himself. This isn't the Obstacle Course of Doom and Mindhurt he's been working out in his spare time on his omnicom, he still needs to get that built. He also fully intends to take Paco up on the paintball idea.

It’s become increasingly clear to Ender as this conversation progresses that he could work with this man, or under him, as it was unlikely that he would be put in a position of authority here, at least not until he decided that he wanted to be. He knows he’s been naive in the past in regards to trusting the motives of adults, but this man was a soldier, a tool, not so unlike himself. He may be in the position to manipulate those below his ranking, but he wasn’t Colonel Graff. He wants to prepare them and protect them for the dangers of the ship. The Chief didn’t seem to have a Master Plan. He’s merely doing what needs to be done in order for the majority of the crew to survive the voyage. Ender doesn’t like fighting, he never has, but if that was his purpose, as Stacy had called it, so be it. He gets to work.

Another nod of agreement. “You’ll have to adjust the lever on the third platform there.” He points. “It’s too high for most to reach unless they can get up that bar.” He takes another few steps, “And that’ll be too heavy.”

Ender would have endorsed the paintball idea wholeheartedly, if he knew what paintball was and if he could read minds.

The Chief looks where Ender points, and nods. He'd been concerned about that one, and it's good to get confirmation one way or the other. "Hard to judge sometimes," he says.

"Any of the jumps too long, or close to it?" That's another concern. He can generally hazard out how far a normal soldier could jump, with full kit or no kit, but that's quite apart from his own abilities and probably equally different from those of an untrained person or a teen or a child. He doesn't want to hurt anybody if he can help it, they don't have time to deal with that. He'd rather keep the distances at a level where they don't take extra effort.

Ender has virtually no experience with adults, only children. It's a strange area of expertise but at least it will be of use.

"The jumps are feasible with enough momentum, though it’s a long drop if you miss. I guess they need to learn to fall too.” There was no way around some bruises and scrapes while training, he thought. Even without gravity they hadn’t been able to avoid collision until they’d gotten the hang of it.

“How long do you have with each team?” He remembered the extra training sessions he’d held with the various outcasts from other teams. It had seemed so important then! That was before...

"Learning to fall," he says, "would be lesson number one." What else do you do when your feet are swept, or you trip? The Chief's first goal with the younger crew members is going to be to teach them how to avoid getting hurt. The ability to fight right out of the gate makes you cocky, you have to learn to run properly first.

"It's minimal," says the Chief, by his tone this bothers him. "Most of what I want to do is get the team leads able to hold their groups together and give them resources to train with. I can't be on everyone all the time so I'm trying to delegate."

((ooc: Sorry this took me way too long. School just started D:

Delegating is the only alternative, but it would pose it's own challenges since there was essentially a lack of data from all sides. There isn't enough information to gauge whose leadership abilities would translate into tactical and quick decisions. There isn't enough to evaluate individuals within a team outside of training, nor to know the animosities, the schisms, the power dynamics and the loyalties that would naturally have developed within each group. The Chief is also painfully outnumbered considering the sheer volume of crew members. He peers up at the obstacle course gravely. He hopes there are others with this task in mind.

“Can you show me how the sensorium builds?” he requests. Briefly, it dawns on him that he would probably be distributed into a team himself, and therefore would be more likely to be running along these obstacle courses than helping in their creation. He pushes the thought aside, as long as he’s given permission to roam on the ship and help where he chooses to, he won’t willingly subjugate himself to worrying about being part of anyone else’s plans.

((OOC: Me too! [/empathizes]))

The Chief nods. "Sure."

"Mostly you ask Stacy for things, or will it hard enough. If you're going by memory try to keep it clear, sometimes the details won't all be exactly right and you'll have to smooth them out."

"I've been making whole parts of this up, and you can do that from thought. But it helps if you write things out on one of the omnicoms."

"It's not hard." He directs his next words to the ceiling and holds out a hand. "Stacy, give me a baseball."

And one's there in his palm. The Chief tosses it up and down. "See? Simple."

There it was, materialized from thin air. The possibilities were enormous!

"And these things vanish when you leave the Sensoriums?" He wonders if this is like an internet database, and whether things are traceable once they disappear. "... and does it only access information through your mind, or does it have external sources?"

If it's like a mirror, that's one thing, but if it can create images based on actual fact...

"You can save things and pull them back out later, even tell it to remember what you were doing and not let anyone else mess with it, but it clears out when you leave," the Chief says.

"I can only guess it does. Probably has the contents of the media library to go from, too."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you. [OPEN]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject