Maria remained silent throughout the walk, merely observing, listening. Once within the room she took a quick assessment of possible exits, took a headcount and peered up to the podium, she finally removed her flight helmet and said nothing as the masked woman left, moving to the nearest empty seat and sitting down, sitting the helmet on her right knee, resting her wrist upon it as she waited to see what would happen next.
"Ahem." The figure in question cleared his throat audibly, capturing the attention of all those present in front of him. His eyes darted from left to right in rapid succession, evaluating the possible future members. An elongated sigh escaped the man, whether it was that of relief or disappointed, none of them could tell. Several steps were made forward, each step echoing throughout the filled room. "You." The handler paused for a split moment after speaking in his usual mellow tone, averting his gaze upon the woman that had been just brought into the room. "Right on time." His lips curled into a snide smirk before he spun himself around, marching back towards the podium in a nonchalant fashion.
It had been a week since Maria's trials, she wasn't exactly sure how many in that room made it through, she had made her way to the mess hall, appropriately named it was about as horrifically fashioned as everything else in the run down base known as Camp Gore. Seemingly an old smelting area that had never been brought back online due another station of the same kind being elsewhere on the base, the station's old cryo core designed to advance the process tenfold had been re-purposed to infinitely freeze food brought to the base, the long main storage area repurposed as well, housing several long banquet tables designed for Xeno Alliance personnel to sit and eat upon were more like slabs of dark heavy metal, some chairs being straight up empty crates, others being old flight chairs and a few just being regular chairs, everything here was improvised. Maria had saught to avoid drawing necessary attention to herself in the T shaped room by moving as close to the end of the western slab as she could, remaining silent as she consumed her meal. She was becoming restless, so many hours on tests, so much energy spent, stir crazy and fed up with waiting she wished so badly to take the fight to those that force feed their pretty lies to the people of Liberty. Thankfully her training allowed her to keep such impulses at bay for she knew the foolishness of pointless outbursts, she knew her time would come... eventually.
When that small bit of respite was eventually over, every recent inductee was immediately ordered, by way of a particularly loud set of speakers in convenient locations, that they were all expected to report to the firing range. It was obvious why, their proficiency with firearms was going to be tested, no doubt under equally improvised albeit clever circumstances.
With her arrival into the room, it was perhaps a little admirable how much work had been put into this section of the room, it should have been expected of the Xenos to prioritize purposeful infrastructure over idle comforts given the nature of their movement. The quality of their lives did not matter, the impact of it on the landscape of Liberty did. A long stretch of an entire wall was absolutely lined with every firearm imaginable, any designer, any configuration, if you could think it, then it was there and ready to be fired. Though perhaps this sight would be slightly undermined that the original fifty candidates Wilhelm would have first counted had now dropped down to forty in the span of a mere week. Clearly this regiment was burning through the weaker willed inductees.
"Firearms have already been laid out in every row, so stop drooling over the display wall, you don't get to touch anything until you've proven you can hit a mark. Grading is simple, the more targets you hit, the higher your score. The more shots you miss, the harder your score will tank. Landing shots on vital parts of the body will count for double the points and ammo conservation will net you an additional point bonus." Instructions blared out over the speakers in this room, and if people were particularly observant, then they would notice two men observing them from an elevated observation room not far from the flank of all the inductees. The white haired one seemed quite keen on what would come next.
Maria was particularly concerned that these would be inductees would turn their guns on each other, she approached a corner row so that if sh*t went seriously south she only had to worry about gunfire from one direction, she looked down at the table, recognizing a standard issue laser rifle of some kind that had definitely seen better days. She lifted the rifle, judging its rough weight before checking the battery capacity, then pressing the butt of the stock to her shoulder and aiming down the sights, letting it fall back to a cross rest in her arms as she awaited further instruction or... whatever was about to commence without warning.
They went one by one, each candidate having a moment to hit as many targets within a minute from the first shot they fired. Twenty targets were jettisoned from various directions down the firing range, usually just highly abused plates of metal with sensors attached to register laser impacts from the firearms being used. Out of these twenty, at least two targets were captives, people like Hunters or pesky foreigners who had been unfortunate to end up as target practice for this test. One of the first people tested froze up when he saw a highbrow Rheinland aristocrat thrown straight up into the air. His hesitation didn't account for much because the person came down with quite a thud, ending up a crude splatter on the cold metal floor. Wilhelm would eventually have her turn, being the last person to be tested from this batch of candidates.
There was no prompt besides five seconds of silence and then a sudden sharp whistle-like noise which marked the beginning of her test. Her first target would be fired out from the wall all the way to her left and was clearing the distance of the room quite rapidly. She'd need to lead her shot carefully and make it count, any missed shots would see her score suffer and it was better to not shoot rather than shoot and miss. There was still the looming possibility of live targets being thrown around, something she'd have to keep in mind as the numbers went by.
Thankfully Wilhelm was able to get her mass confusion and outright shock out of the way by the time it came to her turn, these trials were meant to weed out the weak willed of mind and body, just like her training for the Navy and LSF, this vile hall was merely another test she had to power through if she was truly to reach her goal. Her eyes snapped to the left wall, though her rifle didn't follow, instead she aimed where she saw the object heading and let off a shot dead center of where her target would be in the next fraction of a second. landing impressive blows meant nothing, missing meant everything and she couldn't allow letting this opportunity slip and dying for nothing.
It was obvious that somebody was keeping score as the targets continued to keep shooting by from a multitude of directions. Around the fifteenth target or so, it happened, a bound captive dressed in the striking blue and gold uniform of Liberty's forces was thrown straight up into the air, legs first so that when they did get brought down by gravity it was on their head. The target just after this one would be more of the same, and the remainder would default back to regular plates being thrown across the room.
Wilhelm kept her focus, not taking risky shots for vitals for those sweet bonus points, firing at the largest center of mass for confirmed shots, she wasn't a gambler and that was obvious in her careful placement, if she knew she couldn't hit the flying target, she refused to fire at all. Though with the flying Naval Officer she aimed directly for the gold plates around the neck, the laser burning right through his neck, the second she managed a chest shot, though she was uncertain where that shot had landed precisely as she immediately looked to more targets flying into her view. This was just twisted, but this was the path she chose, knowingly or otherwise.
There was a five minute period of absolute silence and no updates after everyone had finished their turns but then a score board to the far left of the room came to life and started listing out scores from lowest to highest, needless to say seeing your name projected quite quickly was a disappointment, because you had failed.
Wilhelm's name came last, separated by the next best score of this batch by a single point, it was by no means a record, no there were far more malicious and methodical people than her or any of her batch-mates who had superseded their scores here by easily twice the points. But at least this ordeal was over and they were subsequently dismissed and allowed to disperse at will, all the while being watched by those two people in the observation room.