<strong>Location</strong>: ADAMS Headquarters (First Haven, Watcher’s Island). Central Command - Personal Office of Director Percival Yao<br/><strong>Date</strong>: 5 January 2099. Monday<br/><strong>Time</strong>: Afternoon<br/><strong>Who</strong>: Percival Yao<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Yao wouldn’t have been surprised if Julie was well aware and understood why she’d been called into his office. The recent decision to elate her from trainee to full fledged pilot wasn’t exactly a classified secret, though within Administration and the program they did try to keep it quiet until the decision was official. The likelihood of someone letting something slip or someone overhearing something was high. And little<em>somethings</em>had a tendency to worm themselves into the gossip grapevine and grow. Though it was equally as likely Julie discerned the reason herself. Yao wasn’t in the habit of speaking personally with the trainees or pilots unless it was important.<br/><br/>Promotion certainly counted as important.<br/><br/>“Yes,” he replied, though Yao failed to clarify what exactly he was agreeing with her on. Though there was nothing in his tone or posture that suggested he was actually agreeing with Julie’s assessment that she might be there for promotion, or review, or her voice counted as babble. Yao’s ‘yes’ could have very well just been a sound with no more meaning behind it as a breath. As he got to the last page of the document he was flipping through Yao penned his signature with such a unique and downright lazy flourish that his name was barely legible.<br/><br/>Yao clicked the pen closed and set it on his desk. He finally looked at Julie properly for the first time. Yao took a moment to memorize her face. It wouldn’t be difficult. In a job like Yao’s it was necessary to keep track of hundreds of people and remember details concerning who they were and what they did. Julie Tanaka. Her full name was easy enough for him to recall due to its similarity to his own, that increasing common meeting of traditional eastern and western names matched together. It was the face he knew might trouble him in the future. At forty-six Yao was only considered old by the standards of children, but he almost could have sworn a flip of that mindset was valid. The older Yao got the more young people started to all look the same to him. Mostly because all Yao could focus on when he looked at them was just how young they were, how many opportunities awaited them for the world to screw them over or devour them or do it all over again if it had already done it once before.<br/><br/>“A 24% synchronization rating on an individual level may be low, but when you place that rating in the context of actually operating a Grigori Unit it becomes a passable rating if the other pilot’s rating is high enough to compensate. Pilots are never alone.” Yao leaned back in his chair for a moment. He still needed Julie’s signature penned to the last page of the document to make her promotion one step closer to being official. Though he didn’t slide it over to her and explain fully why she there. Not yet. “Why do you want to be a pilot, Tanaka?”