trans_9 | Back in Business [Open]

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Back in Business [Open]

Asuka wasn't sure how long she'd been running that maze. It had seemed like forever to her. Just endless circles, following the commands of an AI, trying to get out. She could handle the puzzles and traps. She'd hated the isolation. Finally, she'd been spat back out into the welcome (the fact that she'd been relieved to see them disturbed her) corridors of Stacy again. She ran a hand through her hair with an irritated huff. How long had that taken, anyway? She needed to check up on her training and she needed to get back in the saddle. Quickly.

She headed off on the run - the sensoriums were calling her name. Grounded or not, she intended to take a virtual X-Wing out for a spin. It was the work of a few moments to call it up. She spent a few minutes circling the virtual craft, the virtual hangar deck stretching out white and empty around her. Yeah, she'd get in trouble if she got caught, but she wasn't going to get caught (although part of her was afraid of that and part of her wanted to go and see Arha). She shoved those feelings away. She wanted to have some fun first.

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"Hey! ESWAT is Olympus's first line of defense!" Asuka was a nice enough kid, but she'd better not have been running down Deunan's job.

"The catch is right here." Deunan reached over and triggered the landmate to open. "Climb in. You don't need a datasuit if you're just going to stomp around trying things out. The worst you can do is damage the landmate." She shrugged. "Which doesn't matter here."

Deunan indicated the lower set of arms on the suit, roughly human-sized. "Your hands go in those, and the main arms follow their motions.

"Hit this button--" Deunan pointed it out "--to seal the armor. Watch your legs. You don't have to bend your knees as far as you think you do."

Deunan backed off to let Asuka try the power suit. Even if the girl had no knack for it, in the sensoriums, she couldn't hurt much more than her pride.

Well, Asuka couldn't knock them too much. NERV had been a paramilitary organization itself, after all. She took a step back as the suit opened up and then crept forward, peering at the internal mechanisms curiously. After a moment she grinned again and clambered in. She slipped her arms into the control ports and then carefully made sure sure her legs were in the right position. She tapped the button and a moment later found herself in a whole different kind of powered armor.

"Whoa..." She took a few steps as she tried to keep an eye on her own legs. "Seems pretty easy!"

"Walking's not too bad. You might get tripped up trying to run, so go easy."

With half an eye on Asuka in case the redhead did manage to find some way to hurt herself from the inside of a landmate, Deunan conjured up a Guges of her own and climbed inside. Its systems got indignant about her missing helmet, which she'd left in her room, but grudgingly supplied her with an internal display.

All systems green. They'd better be--this was an imaginary landmate, after all.

"How's it going?" she asked Asuka over the suit radio.

"So far so good! This is easy!" Asuka raised her arms experimentally, turning and twisting her torso. It was different from the Eva. Although Unit 02 responded to her thoughts and her analog controls, this was all analog - but it was through the movement of her body, so she might as well be in sync with it. Interesting. She took a step, then another and then tried to run, grinning to herself. She might get tripped? Her?

Of course, a moment later there was a crash and Asuka found herself sprawled out on the floor. The armor had managed to cushion most of the impact, but she thought she'd bruised something, somewhere. She grumbled to herself as she tried to stand up. "Stupid suit..."

"Look, I told you the knees take some getting used to." Deunan made a grabbing motion, and one of her suit's main arms grasped a hard point on the back of Asuka's landmate to help lift it to its feet.

"Check the diagnostics. Anything red?" She didn't think there would be, not from that little stumble, but it didn't hurt to drill in good habits early.

Asuka glanced over the readouts. Really, she only had half a clue what any of them meant, but everything looked OK and she'd learned that, in general, when something went wrong the display would usually be flashing something large and alarming in your face. "No, everything's fine!"

She clambered back to her feet and flexed her fingers, making sure everything still worked. "I could've stood up on my own, you know."

"Sure." Deunan rested her hand on her cocked hip, and the landmate followed suit, which was an interesting sight. "But the point in having backup is so you don't have to do things on your own. A tight fireteam's way more effective than any solo."

The exact same thing that everyone else kept telling her. But Asuka didn't want help! She didn't need help! Did she? She grumbled and setteled both of her hands on her hips. "I shouldn't need help."

Well, maybe they had a point. "I should be good enough on my own!"

Deunan frowned, the landmate's armor hiding her expression from Asuka. The attitude confused her. Was the girl trying to get killed? "Even if you're the best in the world, teaming up with the second best is only going to make you both better. The right team is way more than the sum of its parts."

Asuka huffed inside of her suit. Sure, the Rogues weren't holding her back. She wasn't even the best pilot in the squadron. And then there had been that stupid training exercise. She let out a long-suffering sigh. "Fine, fine. But I don't like it when people slow me down."

"Me either." Deunan sighed.

"Look, you don't have to listen to me. This whole conversation's turning me into my Dad, anyway." She packed the appropriate mix of disgust and horror into that last sentence.

Her father, huh? Asuka remembered her own. Barely. She shrugged inside of the suit. "I just want to learn how to use this thing! I... can't pilot my Eva here."

She was quiet for a moment. "So I need to do something! I'm not getting left behind! And I'm not going to be second best!"

Asuka had mentioned there was no one from her world here...the poor kid must be terribly lonely and afraid. Even though Deunan's father had been an unspeakable bastard when she was Asuka's age, she'd at least had a father around, and Briareos's shoulder to cry on when that father became unbearable. Asuka had none of that, not even familiar surroundings. The bravado was understandable, even admirable.

"I'll teach you to pilot a landmate, sure. But you'll need to be wearing a proper datasuit if you want to get fine control. This is just playing around." Deunan gestured dismissively.

If Deunan knew about the kinds of parental issues Asuka was carrying around, she'd probably have even more sympathy for her. Not that Asuka wanted sympathy or wanted to be treated like a "weakling", but that was entirely on her. She eyed Deunan's landmate through her display. "A datasuit? Sure. Can't be any worse than a plugsuit."

She actually liked the plugsuit, even if they were disposable garments.

"What's a plugsuit?" Deunan asked, while thinking about a Asuka in a datasuit hard enough that the sensorium would produce one in her size. Best to stick to the unarmored variety for now. They were a little too tight for Deunan's taste, but a close fit was necessary to get the proper feedback, and there was no one here to see, anyway.

"I guess it's like a datasuit except for an Eva. It helps me synch with Unit 02 and keeps me alive in the entry plug - that kind of thing." Considering the environment, she simply dismissed her landmate for the moment and dropped to the floor. She stood with a stretch and a moment later her skin - her clothing - rippled as it changed. A few moments later she was clad in her plugsuit (http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y77/havoc88/Eva%20Fanart/Asuka_sky_by_Myth01.png). She settled a hand on her hip and grinned.

"Not bad, huh?"

"That is similar," Deunan agreed. "Datasuits don't have any built-in life support, though. You're depending your landmate for that, not that they're designed to go into outer space or anything." She shrugged, which was an interesting thing to see a landmate doing.

"Okay, let's get a datasuit on you." She concentrated on her mental image of Asuka wearing a Guges D datasuit and hoped Stacy could figure it out from there.

"There's a whole lot of stuff in an Eva that needs that sort of thing..." Asuka shrugged. It wasn't all that relevant right now. Her clothing changed again as Stacy put her in a datasuit. Asuka glanced down at herself. Yeah, very much like a plugsuit. Form-fitting, not exactly practical.

"So, now what?"

With a thought, Deunan brought back the landmate for Asuka. "Hop in. You'll get all kinds of feedback now that you've got the suit. It'll make things easier and give you finer control."

While Asuka was getting herself situated, Deunan sorted through her memories for one of the beginner landmate training courses. It had been a while since she'd had to work on basic movement, but Olympus had an extensive course that she'd run a few times....

The Olympus Police Department training facility appeared around them, and Deunan was suddenly hit with a wave of homesickness.

Asuka clambered back into the landmate. She remembered how to get it rolling, at least. A button press here and there and she was suited up again. Duenan was right - she could feel and sense quite a bit more. It was almost like her Eva, in a way. Almost. She took a few more steps and glanced from side to side, taking in the new setting. "Where are we?"

Deunan swallowed hard before she answered. "Olympus. Where I'm from. This is the police department. The obstacle course is over that way." She highlighted the location on Asuka's nav display.

Asuka barely noticed the catch in Deunan's voice; she was too busy trying out her new toy. She turned towards the blip on her HUD and tried a little land navigation. She could feel the impact through her feet, but the absorbers were doing their job pretty well. It wasn't any worse than walking normally.

"It's nice!"

"The Guges D is top of the line," Deunan replied automatically, still shocked at how perfect the sensorium simulation was. She hadn't thought to put any people in the virtual Olympus, so it was eerily quiet, the footfalls of Asuka's landmate loud on the pavement. Deunan herself moved quietly, out of habit, and because she was starting to develop that itchy feeling between her shoulderblades she got when there was no one covering her back.

"Only the best for the best, right?" Asuka's tone was eassy, arrogant. Self-confident. She was probably referring to herself, but her comment could have been interpreted to mean Deunan as well. She paused at the edge of the obstacle course and eyed it skeptically.

"Olympus polices the world. We have to be the best." On Deunan's HUD, where there was only the one green dot representing Asuka's landmate. The thought that at least a lot of horrible people had died along with the good wasn't much consolation.

What was Asuka waiting for? Oh. Right. "Basic movement at the beginning," Deunan said, pointing to a series of ditches and walls that even an unarmored human could have made a credible attempt at navigating. "It scales harder as you advance. Some portions of the course are designed to break away if you put weight on them, so watch for that." She wasn't too worried about Asuka hurting herself; the landmate would protect her from the majority of what she could do to herself on the training course.

Back in Business [Open]

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Dear Databook: Thank you for existing.

Huzzah!

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