2024-04-23: What Is This Training?
- Cast: Yume Minami, Yomogi Asanaka, Koyomi Yamanaka, Chise Asukagawa, Gauma
- Where: A Remote Location Adjacent To Nouvelle Tokyo
- Date: U.C. 0099 04 23
- Summary: Thrust together by fate, four people and a plus-one discover one another in a dance as old as time: tugging on the stick of a giant robot until everyone lands on top of each other.
<Pose Tracker> Wing Combine Force has posed.
Four-thirty in the afternoon. That is, 'start-time'. Early enough to get good movement training in, before the sun goes too far down to watch yourself. It was supposed to be late enough to let everyone get here, but that is clearly not the case. It isn't that the number of people is too low, it's that one of them has no actual reason to be here, while someone who actually does have a reason to be here is not present. No text. No call. That is, to whit:
Gauma is present, and was actually here insanely early, for no good reason. He's pacing back and forth, muttering to himself. He does not own a watch, so every minute or two he marches over to someone else and demands to see their phone, then scowls and storms away, to continue his endless whining. Something about 'can't even make it to one thing', and 'wasting my time' and 'he said he'd be here'. His voice isn't really constrained at all, either, just barely loud enough to tell exactly what he is saying, and just barely quiet enough to tell he's technically not speaking to them. Pacing. Pacing.
Koyomi and Chise are here, but only one of them really has to be. Why not, though? It isn't like they had something better to be doing.
Yume Minami is here, and is employing the opposite technique as Gauma; instead of making a show by pacing back and forth and whining just barely loud enough to be noticed, but not so loud someone might feel like doing something about it, she's sitting just close enough that you could count has as 'part of the group', and also so far that she genuinely might not hear Gauma. Maybe. Whenever Gauma notices her - remembers she's here? - he complains that 'even she's here, come on, man'. Over, and over.
Despite having the right number of people, the wrong people are here. They're still missing someone, even though they're all here. Yomogi Asanaka is flat out late.
---
"Oh, yeah, sure. I can finish counting that before I leave." Yomogi Asanaka is still at work. It shouldn't take that long. It's already four thirty, but that's fine. Fifteen minutes pass.
"Hm? Yeah, I can sweep up." Fifteen minutes pass. "Oh, uh, sure, I can wash those windows." ... And, finally, fifteen minutes pass again.
It isn't that he didn't want to be there on time. It isn't like he just ignored them and made them wait for no reason. It's that he was busy, is all. With work. Ah, and he didn't call ahead and let them know he would run late, because...
---
Five-fifteen in the afternoon. That is, 'forty five minutes'. You might as well say 'basically an hour'. Still early enough to make things happen, but late enough to be annoying that you had to wait this long, for no reason. Yume has sat and done something on her phone for the last thirty minutes, when it was clear Yomogi would not make it on time - and even Gauma more or less gave up his whinging. It's just in time to see a blue blob turn the corner.
"Oh," he says, when they're still there. The disappointment doesn't make it to his voice, as flat as it is. "Sorry for making you wait." Lingering there, on the far side of the bridge they're all gathered on, he speaks awkwardly. Stiltedly, as if he didn't really expect to deal with this, and does not have it in him to put on a better face for it.
"I was caught up working." His excuse is as lame as his tone.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Chise's lollipop bandolier has already had casualties. She and Koyomi weren't here before Gauma, but they have approximately equal amounts of stuff to do, at least. Chise's gnawing the last few scraps of her previous stick, fiddling with her phone idly. Koyomi has hunkered down by the riverbed, throwing stones into a body of water that isn't actually big enough to make skipping stones much of an enterprise worth attempting. One gets the impression the duo are used to whiling away the time, nearby but not engaged.
Chise's bops her head back against the railings, spitting out her lollipop stick. "These training videos suck," she notes.
"Told you," Koyomi calls up. "It's like...a fiddly joystick kinda thing, but those VF cockpits are a whole other mess."
He levers up and starts clambering up the slope toward the bridge when he sees Yomogi has arrived.
"Oh hey," Chise says. "Workin' man's here."
Koyomi grimaces, his hands sliding into his jacket pockets uneasily.
<Pose Tracker> Wing Combine Force has posed.
Gauma stares at him for a second, and huffs. "Yeah, whatever, glad you could make it." Yomogi looks like he spilled someone's drink on the way back from the store, in terms of embarrassment.
"I couldn't get out any earlier." He's going to keep trying to explain, until - "Can we just start?" It's the first words the other girl actually said to any of them. Gauma and Yomogi both turn to look at her, and she freezes. Shouldn't have said anything. The three of them are caught in a momentary 'silence lock', where they each want to make the other person take the next turn, but really, it's still Yume's turn to talk. She did interrupt, and all. "... my legs hurt and I don't like this weather. Let's just... start." Neither of them are excited to be here and do this.
It's a little awkward between Yume and Yomogi, and neither of them actually look at one another, instead both staring down Gauma, who has almost nothing to do with their teenage drama. Fortunately, he also can just push through that much. "Yeah, sure. Oi! Koyomi! You too, let's get started. We don't really have much time to do this, so let's get it done."
"Mmm... Gauma-san?" Yomogi's voice dips a little quiet, as he sidles up to him, looking up at the sky. "You could've just started without me."
He doesn't have an answer for that, and ignores him. "I just want to go basic movements today. Nothing fancy, just gotta get a hold of how to make these things move around, right?" Yume, silently, gets the small Dynawing plane from her clothes, and holds on to its wing while she waits for the others to do something. Or for Gauma to actually tell them what to do.
He does not do this. "... Eh, Gauma-san. Are we just supposed to... get them out? And start?" Gauma continues to ignore Yomogi, who looks around.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Chise has no unit to bring to bear, so she finishes closing out her phone and kicking to her feet, letting the small argument simmer off to the side. "That's the spirit!" she cheers when Gauma makes the decision. "C'mon, Yume~ Yomo~ Let's see 'em!!"
Koyomi, who is old and his body rapidly decaying to dust, gets his way back up the hill miraculously alive, and reaches into his pocket for the brick of Dynastriker, slowly pulling it out.
And then...there's no signal. ....
"Should I just...like, do it...?" Koyomi asides to Chise, nervously, eyes peering down from the break in his bangs.
"Maybe it's like a team spirit thing...?" Chise mutters back. "Ehh...I mean... you gotta do it to get the joystick, right...?"
Koyomi mutters unhappily, but, "Yeah I guess..." he says, eyes flicking to where Gauma is studiously not addressing Yomogi at all, then to Yume. Eh....should he....it doesn't really...like, isn't the vibe weird...but... ...
Chise pats his back, and he yelps a little, then looks down at the grinning goblin of his cousin. Hmph.
Finally, he thrusts Dynastriker to the sky. "Access Code: Dynastriker!"
The data field forms above, Koyomi vanishing as the toy rapidly expands from the size of his hand to the size of a house, and then crashes down into the shallow riverbed below with a clamor.
Chise cracks a lollipop in half in accomplishment.
<Pose Tracker> Wing Combine Force has posed.
The vibe is one thousand percent weird, and will never recover at this rate. Yomogi and Yume nod, and Yume walks back about twenty paces to give them some room - and, Yomogi does similar, walking off the other way, reaching into his bag to pull the red and yellow toy out of it. He felt kind of stupid carrying this thing all day, but he wouldn't have time to run home, and would've been even later, so it kinda paid off. Kinda. Well, no one saw it, so...
"Access Code: Dynawing!"
"Access Code: Dynasoldier!"
Gauma looks between the stock still Dynasoldier and the hovering Dynawing, and nods appreciatively. "Alright! Keep it within a few hundred meters, and don't get too close to one another, cuz you don't know what you're doing and you're going to hit one another." A collision probably wouldn't really hurt anything, but it would suck, so he wants them to be careful. They can practice actually moving fast or doing anything hard later. Right now, it's just being able to move around.
He smirks. It's been years since he really practiced or had to practice, and so he's confident when he pulls out the Dynadiver.
"Access Code: Dynadiver!"
There is an immediate, loud crashing sound, as the submarine hits the bottom of the shallow river they picked. As Koyomi observed, it isn't really large or deep enough to even bother skipping stones down, to say nothing of the massive submarine that is suddenly, impossibly beached there. His mouth opens inside the Dynadiver, but he says nothing.
The echoes carry for a second, and Yume is the first to break the silence. "Nice movement." Dynasoldier, finally, takes a step. It is an impossibly wide step, swinging its right leg way forward, and lurching, half falling forward. Like trying to take the stairs four steps at a time, but also missing a step. The left foot drags into the ground, not even lifting, to get back to the right. It is the clumsiest motion possible.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Chise, who is cute and therefore immune to all harm and consequences, says, "Oh, it's stuck," at Dynadiver's predicament, out loud, in front of God and all Mankind. Or at least like a couple of birds.
Dynastriker's enormous engine rumbles a little. Unlike Dynasoldier, who has to work out how balancing like an Entire Man works, or Dynadiver, who uhhh has some logistical problems to work out, or even Dynawing, where three dimensions can famously be disorienting to drive in...really, it's not like he's NEVER driven a car before. "Right, so," Koyomi says, and carefully tries the controls, murmuring, "Slowly...geently......" and then IMMEDIATELY accelerates at full acceleration directly into Dynadiver. "Whoa!!"
<Pose Tracker> Wing Combine Force has posed.
Fortunately, as Gauma guessed, these things are durable enough to stand up to some punishment. It does, however, suck, just like he thought; the Dynadiver lurches slightly, but is a stable enough structure with enough weight that hitting it is kinda like driving into a wall, except that someone is inside the wall to be made uncomfortable by it. Uncomfortable enough that he starts yelling. "What kind of lead foot are you! Be careful with the accelerator, that thing has fifteen thousand horsepower, it weighs more than ten cars, you've gotta be careful with it. Put it in reverse, and --"
Simultaneously, Yomogi has figured out how to take a better step. Well, half of a better step. Enough to lift the Dynasoldier's left leg, and actually bend the knee this time, as if he was actually walking. The motion, however, is jerky and sharp. "Ah, wait..." Not like that. The knee joints don't have a perfectly human range, because of the armor, so he has to adjust the whole leg a little, twisting it just so. That's a good lesson, that was worth learning. Sure, the Dynasoldier is currently standing on one leg, which is a little perlious, so he moves both arms out, to help balance it. ... Is what he tried. Instead, both arms go straight forward, like a Jiangshi, but on one leg. Of course, that only goes one way.
That way is 'down'. With that, the Dynasoldier falls straight forward, also crashing into the Dynadiver. From above, the Dynawing does a lazy circle, and flicks a light on to look at the ground better. An actual productive thing to learn.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
"It has a specs sheet!?" is what Koyomi takes away from Gauma's anger, a speck of fire running through him rather than his usual response to people shouting at him (cower until he vibrates out of reality). The impact is actually kind of impressive even with one party *not moving*, a thunderous CLANG ruffling some treetops.
Hhhghg, "Yeah, right, where the heck is the reverse button on this thing," Koyomi mutters, accepting his destiny and pecking the unlabeled buttons until he hears the enormous engine change noises. "...oh, no, it's manual isn't it..."
Before he gets much further than that, he hears, "Uh, Big Guy, Cap'n Gauma sir, you have a uhm oh jeeze!" from Chise, immediately before he gets knocked on his ass again from a thunderous CLAAAAAAAAAANG of Dynasoldier piling on top of both of them.
Chise peeks her eyes open.
"Hey, not a dent," she adds, sounding much less worried.