Chapter Text
“Pinch me Yoonchae, I can’t believe I’m here.”
Sophia felt every inch of her body vibrating with nerves and adrenaline as she slid into a seat at a round table next to Yoonchae. Her first Angel Training course- she was officially on her way.
“Ouch! It was just an expression!” She cried, pouting at Yoonchae and rubbing her upper arm.
Yoonchae was smirking devilishly. “You told me to,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
Sophia sighed, pulled out a notebook, fiddled with a pencil, adjusted her chair, glanced around the room. She felt like a tornado, but she couldn’t settle down.
“Hey, you don’t need a notebook, this class is practical.” Yoonchae said, tugging on the sleeve of Sophia’s black and gold angel in training jumpsuit to reclaim her attention.
“Sometimes I like to take notes in practical classes.” Sophia replied, turning to face Yoonchae.
“Trust me,” Yoonchae said quietly. “Put the notebook away. The less attention you draw to yourself in here the better.”
Sophia tilted her head to the side, but tucked the notebook and pencil away.
“You’ve taken this unit before then?” Sophia pressed.
“Yes, just for practice.” Yoonchae replied. “I’ve never actually participated before, just watched.”
At this point a very tall woman strode into the room. Sophia thought she looked like every poster of Rosie the Riveter she had even seen- blue jumpsuit, a bandana used as a headband. She also wore a thin pair of glasses. “Welcome to Bomb Diffusal 101. You can call me Harrison, I’ll be your instructor for this course.” She said authoritatively.
She walked to the center of the room and crossed her arms. “This unit has a singular purpose- staying calm in the face of something that could kill you instantly. I don’t care if you’ve never worked with mechanics before, I don’t care if you’re so good at engineering that you’ve accidentally programmed mind control remotes.”
Sophia shifted in her chair awkwardly as Harrison glanced in her and Yoonchae’s direction.
“If you can’t keep calm in the face of immediate danger you will make mistakes, even if you know what you’re doing.” Harrison continued, beginning to walk to the back of the room.
At this precise moment Lara and Megan slipped through the entrance to the room, Sophia watched Megan release a sigh of relief when she saw the instructor’s back was turned. They quietly slid into the two empty chairs at Sophia and Yoonchae’s table.
“Lovely of you to join us, ladies.” Harrison said without turning around. Sophia winced for them inwardly.
Harrison was walking toward their table holding two brown boxes stacked on top of each other. She placed on in front of Megan and handed the other to Lara.
“You two use these units, everyone else, please head to the back of the room and pick up a unit for yourselves.”
Sophia lingered long enough to watch Megan and Lara give each other looks- Megan looked nervous and Lara looked annoyed- and then walked to the back of the room behind Yoonchae to pick up a box. When she got back to the table she noted that her unit, along with the other eight that were picked up by the rest of the Angel trainees, was in a white box as opposed to the brown boxes in front of Megan and Lara.
She wondered what was in store for them.
“Okay kids open them up!” Harrison said cheerfully.
Sophia carefully opened the top of her box, which was sealed with packing tape, and removed a plastic box with hinges on the sides, and a pair of pliers. There were a few differently colored wires protruding from the inside of the plastic box. A quick check of the rest of her table told Sophia that Yoonchae, Lara and Megan all had similar boxes to her own.
“Okay, since this is a lot of your first training course, I’m going to explain what a baseline is in terms of Hybe’s training. The first session of most courses will be a baseline- for me and you to figure out where you are in comparison to the passing standard for this course, and what we need to do to get you to passing standard.” Harrison explained.
“This baseline is simple- the boxes in front of you will explode after a set amount of time. Your job is to is to attempt to deactivate it before it does, using the pliers provided and any method you can think of to neutralize the threat, without running away or throwing your explosive from the room.”
Sophia was aware of nervous shuffling from the other trainees, and she couldn’t help but wonder if these “bombs” really would explode.
“If you deactivate your bomb before it goes off, a green flag will pop up, and that means you survive. If you don’t, that will be a fun surprise for later! When the baseline has finished leave your units at the table so I can see what you managed to figure out.” Harrison said jovially.
There was a pause for a moment before anyone, including Sophia, figured out they were wasting precious time and should start. As Sophia opened her box she had to stop herself from mentally berating herself for not starting immediately.
Because of course as soon as you realize there’s a bomb in front of you that’s going to do something to you, you should immediately act. Duh.
Sophia’s hands were shaking due to the adrenaline of this first test, so she struggled to get the hinges of the box open. Once she got it open however, she calmed immensely.
This was her bread and butter.
She ignored an obvious red wire that appeared to be connected to itself through the center of the box and traced a long black wire from the edge of the box to what looked like a battery pack. Ignition point, power source, there were many many ways to disable a device like this. She used her pliers to carefully lift the battery pack up and found a blue wire underneath it. A quick trace of that wire led her to what looked like a small cannon of some sort. Curious, she cut the blue wire.
A green flag popped up in her face and she flew back, startled. “Aaah!” She shrieked into the silent room.
“How did you do that?” Megan whined, peeking up at Sophia and her flag. “I’ve cut like every wire in this thing.”
Sophia whistled “You’re lucky it didn’t have fail safes, you would have already-“
Before Sophia could finish her sentence, there was a lot of mini popping sounds as her fellow trainee’s “bombs” exploded, releasing confetti into their faces. Yoonchae sighed and began trying to pull it out of her hair.
“Wait, so do we lose too? Do we have extra time or something?” Megan asked, wrinkling her nose in confusion and turning toward the instructor. Both hers and Lara’s devices had not gone off yet. Lara was still bent over her device while Megan was distracted.
Harrison looked at a very beat up looking watch she was wearing. “Three, two….” She said quietly, and then pointed at Sophia’s table.
Megan and Lara’s devices went off. But instead of confetti, they were splattered in red liquid that Sophia really hoped was paint, or something of the like. It was all over Megan’s left side, as she’d been turned away from her bomb and toward the instructor, but Lara had gotten a direct face full of it and jerked back immediately, spluttering in surprise and disgust.
The other trainees began murmuring, but Harrison just chuckled. “Oh relax everyone, it’s tomato sauce, but point proven right? Everyone but our resident engineering genius is dead, and Raj? Bruiser? Come to this course on time and clean up will be much easier in the future. Got it? That goes for everyone.”
There was a dull murmur of assent from everyone in the room. Lara looked particularly sullen, glaring at a guilty looking Megan.
Harrison walked over to stand directly behind Sophia’s chair. “That’s it for today, you’ll likely have a short class on all baseline days. Rest of the session time will be for me to evaluate what work we need to do. Dismissed.”
There was a scraping of chairs around her, but unless Sophia wanted to ram into Harrison with her chair, there was no way for her to leave. Yoonchae shot her a quick sympathetic look before sweeping gracefully from the room.
Once the room was empty except for the two of them, Harrison took a seat in the chair Yoonchae had just vacated.
“Your reputation precedes you, Genius.” She said candidly.
Sophia shifted uncomfortably. “I gathered as much. Do you have to call me that?”
Harrison ignored her. “It’s rare that anyone figures out that baseline explosive even if they have engineering expertise. Worked with explosives before? It wasn’t in your file.”
Sophia recalled the door she recently blew up. “Not intentionally.” She said carefully.
Luckily this made the instructor laugh.
“Look, I’m going to level with you here. I’m not sure this course is going to be a challenge for you. I recommend you use your time and energy in this course to focus on making connections rather than taking apart what I put in front of you. Get the picture?”
Sophia didn’t really understand, but she did not want to let Harrison know that. She would debrief with Manon or Yoonchae later.
Or maybe Dani, she bet Dani could help. She’d visit her later today.
“Yes, okay. Understood.” She said after an awkward beat of silence. Harrison gave her an appraising look.
“We’ll see what you make of all this.” She said with an arm gesture that told Sophia she was free to leave.
She decided to press her luck with a question. “This course? Or Angel Training in general?” She asked as she stood up and grabbed her bag.
Harrison leaned over to inspect Yoonchae’s practice bomb.
“Both.” She replied without bothering to look at Sophia.
Sophia nodded to herself and turned toward the door.
She would definitely need to talk to Dani later.