2023-03-01: Trainable Skills
- Log: 2023-03-01- Trainable Skills
- Cast: Guy Shishioh, Akane Shinjo
- Where: GGG Orbit Base
- OOC - IC Date: 0097-03-01
- Summary: Guy proctors Akane's first test as 3G's junior mobile operator. They talk a little about good judgment -- and about a personal issue the test reminds Akane of.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Unable to cut Bus 012," Akane reports, sounding strained. "Recommending a manual cut."
Over to vitals. They're in judgment call territory; she could risk a power surge if she felt they weren't going to complete Fusion Out in the next minute. LinerGao chewed through so much more time than it should have, and DrillGao isn't exactly making a great case for its safe removal here, either...
"CYS, Red 8, 2, 7, 2 -- 7." ... the vitals mean none of that actually matters. Having CY team in formation is more important than micromanaging Mechanics and Engineering.
Manual DrillGao out... that's so slow -- aggh -- people are shouting at her to pull the cyborg instead of bothering with the drill --
No, she tells herself. They can't see his vitals. They're bad, but they're not immediate pull bad. Mechanics doesn't have that, so... ignore Mechanics. Procedure it is.
They have about 20 seconds to get Fusion Out to Galeon before Akane has to order a hard pull regardless of damage to the machine or the cyborg. DrillGao disengaged -- "DrillGao Out." Just re-clamp the legs and --
"F-fusion out! GaiGar, Fusion Out to Galeon and cut power!" she calls; she is not nearly as calm as she ought to be...
... but she is a good student.
She's cutting it a bit closer than back then -- two seconds before she would have had to pull the plug by force, not six; a little time lost to micromanaging StealthGao Out. She did gain time back by pushing for that manual bus cut rather than waiting for Mechanical to make the call, though.
She also looks like she's about to have a heart attack even while knowing it's a simulation, so there's that.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Footsteps walking up behind, an arm reaching into view and setting down a cup of...water.
"Figured you wouldn't need coffee about now," Guy says, his own cup in hand, a wry grin on his face. His eyes scan the results coming in from the simulated departments. "Looks like 'I' will have a bit more of a headache than usual, but everything turns out alright. Not bad for this point in the training, not bad at all."
He sets his hip against the console in a comfortable lean, and sets to just...watch her decompress.
"You've really been giving this your all," he says.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Ahaha, yeah, no, the last thing I need is to ramp up the stimulation," Akane says, taking the water and downing it. It's gone in an instant; she desperately needs it. She flops back in her seat, staring up at the ceiling for about thirty seconds, not saying anything else, just breathing out and letting all of that back out of her head now that it's over.
"That was the simulator option I was... thhhhhird most afraid of getting, tested on," Akane admits, rubbing at the back of her head, once she's got the spare brain cycles to talk again. She's still panting a bit. "The first half sucked. I guess that's why the first thing you guys upcycled was StealthGao, though. The connector configuration is a mess and that seemed like it ended up making Liner harder too..."
Fluffing her hair back out, she says, "I want to keep moving forward. Plus, uh, studying is kinda the easy win option when it comes to trying to get Alexis out of my head..."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy chuckles. "Entouji built a lot of them," he confides. "I hear the one for the adrenaline surge during EI-02 has a whole second scenario where Mamoru never turns up." Guy smiles, fondly, thinking of his missing friend's handiwork. "Takes creativity, to look at the facts as seriously as he does."
He turns his gaze back down to the Repli-Compoid in front of him, a smile on his face. "It was probably the closest call we had for a good while. Some of the later scenarios have more spectacular problems that require execution and communication. This..."
He sets his hand on the console, watching the simulated video feed of his own 'safe' extraction. "This is one of the best tests we have of decision-making, for the Mobile Operator." He chuckles, lightly. "And maybe it's a bit personally important to me that you get a taste of just how completely the Mobile Unit's lives are in your hands."
He leans back to his neutral perch, chuckling. "The fact that those interlinks work at all is a miracle. And we're back to them, for now. Galeon can't be upgraded with Program Ring technology or even much in the way of firmware improvement as he is now. My Genesic Server connection improves a lot of the data management, but..."
He motions to the console. "GaoGaiGar's Final Fusion isn't that different from it was that day, right now."
His eyes flick back to Akane herself, lips pursed for a moment. "Still bothering you," he says, quietly. "Sorry." I couldn't get him, he doesn't say.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane absently plays with a little of her lavender hair. ... will she still be able to do this when she's back to meeting the world as just one more human, all the time? She's definitely aware that she's just a little different in her engagement style, when she's wearing her Repli-Compoid guise. ... it's a little heavy to think about that, though, so she focuses on the present moment.
"I can get that," Akane says. "It's... a lot, but at the same time, like... knowing there's a procedure for all this stuff makes it easier. At first I was trying to do everything myself? But when you're really in the middle of it, it's just... watch the numbers go down! When they go down enough you do the thing. Some of that stuff is judgment calls, sure, but a lot of it isn't?"
Chewing on her lip a bit, she says, "Next time I want to focus on the stuff where we play backup for Intelligence. I'm feeling pretty confident on Operations right now, but a lot of the Intelligence and Research backup activities kinda hit for me. Plus it'd give me a chance to work with the people I'd be working with?"
... Alexis, though. "It's... not like I'm scared of him attacking me or anything," she concedes, glancing off. "All he did was point out that I don't know everyone in 3G, or in Sayla's house. And that guys like BioNet could probably hack a Repli-Compoid pretty easily. I know he's just trying to make me feel less safe, but still..."
... she concedes, lamely, "... that's the real reason I want to get a little more experience with the off-time Intelligence and Research stuff Mobile Ops ends up doing. The only way it's gonna get better is if I know more of you guys and get better at sorting through all this information."
Swallowing hard, she mumbles into her empty drink cup, "I'm scared, but... I don't wanna give up." A beat, before she says: "No, I can't give up."
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
Guy is making no secret of keeping his eye on Akane for the moment. In this, he's both Mobile Captain and Chief; any fondness he's developed for the girl must be put aside. He wants to understand what she's thinking and why, how she's processing what she's just done and seen. She seems to be holding together...
He nods, at her self-assessment. "That's how a team operates. It's knowing your theater, but also trusting that the other guy knows his. It's not easy, It's hardly even intuitive, really. Which is why we have to train it." He lets himself smile. "Trusting in courage...it's a skill you can practice, it turns out."
He listens to her story, her fears and thoughts on Alexis, grimacing at the shade that still haunts them.
Finally, what he says is: "You're right. You can't. I'll put some of that on the docket. Data gathering and analysis is a job that Operations performs regularly when there's not an active mobile operation going on, it'll be good for you to have a taste of that." He wonders if Yang could put together something based on her own tricky Kaiju, but...perhaps too personal. He lets himself smile. "We certainly have no shortage of samples there, heh."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
"Yeah," Akane agrees, at the idea that it's legitimately hard to trust that the other guy knows his. "I could tell I was... getting out of my lane, a little bit, with StealthGao. I got kinda overwhelmed by the number of bus failures on the right side." She did get it back together by the time they were working on DrillGao, at least.
She owes it to Guy to be honest about where her weaknesses are; if there's a scenario that trades even more on undifferentiated clumps of warnings, that could be a problem. ... then again, it'd be hard to beat Manual Fusion Out on that particular point.
Akane... weighs whether she should share what her #2 and #1 scenario fears were. She doesn't want to feel weak in front of Guy, but...
... no, she realizes, that's stupid. The only way she'll be able to meet those situations is meeting them. Her mouth opens to say it...
... and she can't. She feels tongue-tied. "I," she starts -- and then she realizes: she doesn't have to say it to say it.
Pulling out her phone, she tap-tap-taps at it, then hands it to Guy.
> BioNet captive assessment and overriding a pilot call are my #2 and #1 anxieties here. Don't let me squirm out to doing data vis with Intelligence.
> Please.
It's... as close to working her way around to 'asking for help' as she can get herself to, in this particular environment. For now.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
A scenario that would ask her to deal with the monitors screaming at her even more than a Crisis Manual Fusion-Out would be Intelligence or Research's job anyway and her main responsibility would be to push the button that makes Swan skip the fancy underwear. "That's what the practice is for," Guy says, with a firm nod, to her vocalized concerns. And then...
His eyes narrow a little, worried, at her hesitation. Then she passes him a phone and he purses his lips in reply to the words there.
%His eyes cut up toward her, meeting them, and nodding.
A little >Got it. appears, a light use of his Evoluder powers to send text straight to the device. Overriding a pilot call...he's not sure it's ever actually happened from the Mobile station...hell, Taiga barely overrided him, for that matter. "I'll work it into your training program," Guy says, with a nod. "Might need Yang to help me with some ideas."
But his eyes do go back to crawling over her uncertain face, thoughtful. "You're not sure how people will handle being given instructions," he intuits. "Trusting your own instincts when they clash with someone else's."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane takes her phone back, and takes a few breaths. She isn't actually sure she can bring herself to voice this stuff again -- she has to try, but... she may need to fall back on that move again. ... it's nice to see Guy play ball with her on it, though. She'd been worried.
Once it's out there, it is a little easier to talk about it -- especially when Guy finds the thread. "... I hate hearing it so, probably, yeah," she agrees, a little limply. "Sometimes it's just a numbers game and that part's fine, but the other two... there's really no way around it, right? You have to know you, like..." She gropes for the words. It's a messy concept to express.
What she settles for is, "You need to know that the stuff you know is real and the stuff they know is at least kinda wrong. Or at least that they don't know what you do." ... it's depressing to realize that it's that simple -- and what it suggests about her confidence in her ability to have justified true belief about the world.
She looks down at the console, and murmurs to herself, "It's a skill. You can train it."
She takes a breath, and then manages a smile, if a kind of shaky one. "I'm gonna ask you a weird question, and it's fine to say if it's none of my business." The topic pivot is necessary at this point. "... Was it hard for you to, like... have your body keep changing because there's stuff going on?" It's top of mind, since this is a test calibrated for Cyborg Guy.
There may be another few reasons it's top of mind, too.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
That really took some courage, he judges. He smiles at her and lets her have it all to herself.
He lets her express herself, having prompted her to, and nods at her assessment.
In the end, what he says is: "It is. And practice will help. Being able to filter data out from the noise, and what data's yours to worry about, that's all part of it. We'll get you there." He smiles, and winks. "Count on that."
And then she shoots him with a gun, or at least the way his face changes sorta looks like she did. He segues from a cringe into a lighthearted chuckle, scratching the side of his head.
As always, Akane Shinjo has his number.
Which is why he just replies, entirely earnestly: "Yeah," he says. "That body was a miracle, there's no denying it. I wouldn't be alive now without Dad's hard work, let alone all the other people I saved from the Zonders. But..."
His lips go crooked and he finds himself looking away, to the display's default GGG Blue background image. "I just wanted to be a scientist, you know? Explore the stars like the old days. And I wake up in a body that can fight like nothing else, and sure can't go five AU away from its support unit. I don't regret it, and Dad and Mikoto helped a lot keeping myself together. But it was difficult."
Quietly, he says it: "And then I woke up again with a new miracle. A body that's..."
He shakes his head out. "Sorry. You don't need all that. But yes, it was. And...is, still, sometimes."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Knowing that she can get there -- knowing that Guy genuinely wants her to develop that keen sense of judgment -- makes it a lot easier on her. "Thanks," she says, nodding to him and breathing a sigh of relief. It's nice to have an adult in her corner -- especially one that really, truly wants to see her grow.
Akane lets Guy express himself, having prompted him to, and nods back. "Yeah. You would have done really good on a Macross, if it's anything like Eclatant makes it look," she agrees, and... it's hard for her to think about that too closely. After all, if he'd had a real shot at that dream, he wouldn't have been there for her.
... and she does need him.
"... yeah. It's... I dunno. It was a little different for me! A body that changed in ways I didn't want, and then a body that changed in... all the ways I wanted, but was kinda just an accident. And then a body that changed in ways I really didn't want. I'm trying to get okay with going back to being a normal person, but I... ahaha, it's a mess. I dunno what I'm even saying. But it's nice to have someone to talk to who kinda gets it."
Hesitantly, she adds, "But I guess... I'm pretty flexible as long as it's a body that can cuddle my girlfriend." She knows that's a knife into Guy right now, even if she doesn't realize that the knife is WAY BIGGER than she could possibly imagine. So she adds, almost immediately, "... You got me there, so I guess now it's my turn to get you there as Junior Operator, huh?"
If she thinks about it like that... it is a little easier to be less anxious about the seat she's in.
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
She offers him a kindness, and he grins - just a bit reserved. A dream deferred. The most powerful weakness of the Adult Human. "Sounds like there's a lot of fun going on out there. Maybe someday we can take the show on the road."
She expresses her own thoughts, and he nods along with a thoughtful face. "Thinking about yourself, what makes you happy and comfortable, is a lot harder than you might hope. Don't worry too much if it takes some time to sort out." He chuckles. "Half my wardrobe is just copies of the uniform, after all."
Then she stabs him in the kidneys. His face twitches into a slightly more rigid smile, but her recovery lets him get into a more natural look after a few seconds. "I'll be counting on that," he says. "We're gonna need all the help and every surprise we can get."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane finally turns to more fully face Guy, spinning her seat around -- and when she does, it's with a confident little smirk that sits a lot better on her face than the moody, gloomy looks. "Oh, is that what we need?" she asks, playfully. "Don't think that I've run out of those just 'cuz I don't have kaiju to rely on anymore." ... she doesn't know what the surprises inside her are yet.
... but she thinks she has 'em for sure. "So! Anything else on this one, or should I go to Medical?" Akane asks. "This is apparently, uh... my last weekly that has to be here. It sounds like there's nothing that's going to explode!"
<Pose Tracker> Guy Shishioh has posed.
"Who knows what we need?" Guy says with a shrug. "It's people every bit as clever and courageous as we ever were. Things they aren't expecting us to do are the best thing we have in our pocket. Which means that you, Akane Shinjo, might just be our Key to Victory."
He stands up taller, stepping toward the back of the chamber. "We're done for today. Go get checked out and spend some time with your friends, alright? Learning how to relax during downtime is also part of training."