Fire Pits and Blue Skies

Data Simulation

~Mello~

I didn't find out what had Matt so happy until a week later. Matt was being called out of classes almost daily and so I followed him.

When Roger came to take him away during first hour I waited a couple minutes before raising my hand.

"What is it Mello?" The instructor asked and I felt a hint of irritation. I hid that well though and assumed an urgent expression.

"I need to pee." I stated and (God I wanted to slap myself!) from the teacher's almost comical expression I could tell how childish that sounded. I kept a straight face though and wiggled my fingers a little to show just how important my need to pee was.

"Go ahead." The teacher said and I hopped up from my chair before making my way quickly out of the room.

Once out of the classroom I dropped the look and scanned the hallway for any sign of Matt. There wasn't but I could hear receding steps so I followed in hopes of finding out where my room-mate was disappearing to.

To my surprise (and pleasure) Matt actually did go to the office but I had little time to celebrate as he soon re-emerged with...Wammy in tow? What was Wammy doing here? Was L here as well?

I continued to follow, now if only to get to the bottom of why Wammy was going anywhere with Matt. Waiting until the were out of sight so they wouldn't see me I followed them to the second story. However when I rounded a corner after them I had to duck back when Wammy looked toward where I was.

"Do not hide young Master Mello, you are not in trouble." I heard and took deep breath before rounding the corner to face him.

"I'm not hiding." I lied and he smiled.

"Yes, of course." He said and started toward me. I craned my head around him to look at the door he had come from.

"Where's Matt?" I asked as I followed him. He looked down at me and straightened his glasses.

"Training. Master L has decided to train each of his successors according to their strengths. That means you, Matt and Master Near will each be taken out of your classes in the morning."

"Then why haven't you started training me yet?" I questioned. I didn't consider the fact that Near hadn't started his "training" either given the fact that he was still attending morning lessons. I didn't really care about Near.

"The thing about Matt is that he is easy to understand. He enjoys games and excels with computers which made him easy to place for assessment. You on the other hand haven't been here long enough for L to get an understanding of your specific skill set. You are complicated. Near will be working with L on his ability to compartmentalize in tense situations as well as solve complex puzzles. I will however assess you and Matt." Wammy told me and I frowned as I thought about what he was saying.

"Why hasn't Near been pulled out of classes then?" I asked as Wammy paused outside of a door and removed a key from his pocket.

"That is because L is busy setting up the new schedules for you three. Your classes will have to be picked and arranged according to your training. Once that is taken care of he will start working with Near.

Opening the door he beckoned me in as he turned on the light. Inside was another room with a large one-way window, a computer situated on a desk with cords running the floor, and... a gun? Wammy chuckled when he caught me staring at it.

"It's not real, at least not in the sense of being dangerous. It's for a simulator." He gestured to the room. "As you progress the scenarios that you are placed in become more complex and dangerous. The data taken at the completion of each level is recorded here." He tapped the laptop before logging in and setting up a program. As the application started to run what I thought had been a two-way window lit up with script.

Reading it over quickly I looked back at the old man with a raised eyebrow. "SRS-2?"

He nodded and gestured toward the script as a menu flashed on the screen. "Shooting Reality Simulator; it's second generation. The first was designed for military and use in the police force. The SRS-2 was something that I collaborated on to enhance performance. Instead of simple target practice, as the SRS-1 was, this Simulator is designed to test your ability to process information, eliminate enemies, and solve cases. Go in that room there and I'll set up an assessment for you." Wammy told me and I did as directed after taking the gun from the table.

When I stepped in the room the screen blinked before pulling up my credentials There was a picture of me with my alias below it as well as a graph for recording my progress.

Wammy set up my first assessment and, as a summary of the scenario I was supposed to complete flashed on the screen, I readied my gun.

~Matt~

My fingers flew over the keyboard as I worked with the computer to stream a line of code. Various data windows opened as I typed in commands for the computer. The ones that I was running were fairly simple to comprehend being Python.

As I ran different commands for the computer such as:

my_int=38

my_add=54

my_sum=92

The computer would take in the data and record it before sending back the messages I would need to continue.

It wasn't something hard for me to do but Wammy insisted that I run the basics before going onto hard sessions so that I knew exactly what I was supposed to be. Basically I was running through how to place variables before exchanging those values as the system ran through the commands. It was simple. The challenge was keeping up with the computer on the script. If I messed up I had to erase everything before starting over.

Reading through the responses the computer sent in a Data window at the right of the screen I continued to code the foundation of the program. It was a virus detector in all it's simplicity and I was supposed to fix the Python Code running through the program to get it running as smoothly as possible. After setting the variables for the computer to store I was supposed to white-space the script that was coded wrong. Essentially the whole thing was a mess that Wammy had set up for me to repair. Once done he'd test it out against a virus of his design on a computer of his choice. If the program did it's job the virus would be blocked and broken down before being wiped.

That is, if everything went correctly. If it didn't the computer was going to be wiped and I would have to recreate everything.

To make matters worse he was going to test it out on MY laptop/

Hopefully Mello's training was going better.

Sorry for any mistakes in the code. I'm still learning how to use Python. It's actually pretty cool to learn if you don't mind a little brain work. If you're interested, check out Codecademy.

Also! Half of this chapter was written in Doc Manager because the Word program I have doesn't has spell-check. So PLEASE excuse any errors.

Review?