[FEB 24, 2015]
Noah once again had no reason to leave his house other than school. Pilot Trainer was the only thing he was excited to do, and his own father had taken that from him. Noah had spent hours pleading with his father to release the blacklist, but he was either unable or unwilling to budge, probably both.
Noah's parents had always been protective of him, valuing his safety far above arbitrary things like fun and enjoyment. They knew Noah would devote all the time he could to excelling at the simulator, and that he had a good chance of doing very well at it, and even being accepted into the pilot program. Thus his father had pulled some strings with an old friend at the department of defence and managed to get Noah completely blacklisted from participating in the testing.
Noah now had to choose to continue fighting a lost cause and somehow break the blacklist, or give in and put the whole thing behind him, and there wasn't chance in hell he would do the latter. Noah's last ten days had been spent scouring the depths of the internet for any information he could find. Everything he'd found so far was either surface level or completely falsified by someone trying to make a quick buck on the trend, and anything with even a tiny bit of credibility seemed to mysteriously disappear without a trace. NERV was working twice as hard to keep their system intact as anyone else was to break it… but they couldn't catch everything.
Today Noah happened to be browsing a popular message board concerning the simulators when a very interesting post appeared. A simulator in the south had been damaged in a flood, and the owner of the property had taken it apart to see what was inside. Noah immediately saved the entire post and the attached photos, only to see them deleted moments later like clockwork. Heart racing Noah looked closely at the attached photos, they'd been taken with a grainy phone camera with harsh flash lighting so it was hard to make out much, but they were certainly pictures of the inside of a simulator. It was in a poor state, with water damage clearly visible, but it had also been forced open. Inside the egg near the back the motherboard was hanging loosely from its mounting points, different color wires protruded from it and went in various directions.
Poor image quality made it difficult to discern any details, but it was possible to at least see the layout. With no other leads and nothing else he wanted to do, Noah started comparing the board to ones he could find on the internet, it was fairly distinctive so if he could find a match it might give him insight into other components or even software.
To Noah's great surprise he found a near exact match, the board belonged to a popular gaming console, with only a few minor changes. He stared at his screen and smiled, this was a major step to finding vulnerabilities, and if NERV hadn't changed much there was already a whole community looking for them without even knowing. Noah immediately went to make a post of his own sharing his findings, but he stopped. Usually Noah would elect to share his work to get as many people working on a problem as possible, but this was a special case. Not only would sharing give more people an edge and decrease his own, it would almost definitely alert NERV that someone was making progress breaking their system, which would cause them to defend. Noah had to do this alone.
[FEB 26, 2015]
Kara had watched the Pilot Trainers completely metamorphosize the social structure at Bon Air in less than a week. Status in the facility had previously been determined by seniority or physical strength, but the promise of a pardon and subsequent rush to progress in the simulators had made those who were eligible into celebrities.
One of Bon Air's conditions for allowing NERV to install their simulators was that they didn't have doors for security reasons. This allowed people to look directly into the cockpit while someone was making an attempt and even opened opportunities for people to sabotage runs. It seemed this would be a hard problem to solve, but as soon as some of the older inmates caught on they volunteered their freetime to guarding the simulators while they were in use.
Open viewing of runs allowed for much more direct comparison between players, so anyone with higher skill than others would be noticed and cheered on. At the moment Kara was one of those skilled pilots.
She'd first tried out a simulator the day they had arrived, and had managed to avoid the opponent for quite a while, thus drawing the attention of people around her. She'd only improved since then, getting fairly far into the first stage, people would now line up on either side of her simulator to watch her runs, cheering all the way. Kara didn't like this at all, a handful of excited children yelling in your ears made it very hard to focus, but there was nothing she could do so she simply started to get used to it.
Word had spread about her performance so there was an extra face or two there to peer in on her today, but she took a breath and tuned them out as she input her information. Kara settled into the pilot seat and watched the screen fade into the battle arena. Voices on either side of her faded into nothing as all her focus went to the enemy across from her.
Kara stepped into the fight, she felt good about this run, she could do it. As she dipped in the enemy was pulling back for a punch, Kara saw it coming and sidestepped, she shoved the incoming arm out of the way to create an opening and took it. A lunge with the pedals and a quick jab of the control stick put her right virtual fist squarely on the jaw of the enemy, It took a step back to compensate for the hit but Kara pushed her advantage and stepped in again. She shoved the computer to keep it stumbling and used the arm response to land another hit, then another. Her hits were keeping it staggered and backing up. After five consecutive hits the opposing robot lost its footing and fell on its back. Kara's spectators all burst into cheers, but she wasn't done. Next she knelt down over the first enemy like it had done to so many others, pulled back a powerful knife handed strike, and dealt a crushing blow to its chest. The opponent went still and the screens faded to black, the people standing around her exploded with excitement.
Green text appeared on the center screen. Nobody at Bon Air or anywhere else had seen this screen yet, it was just a few words followed by a countdown:
Stage One complete;
Projected synchronization rate: 23%
Beginning next stage
(5)
Kara had gotten the first confirmed kill across all simulators in the United States, the game had finally begun.