Library, 9/13 (Monday)

[ancientbschamp.livejournal.com]

You'd think Gabrielle's mind would be at ease this morning, since after Karla's voicemail message of a couple of days ago she'd woken up this morning to find her roommate back.

And it was, on that note.

It was just that she'd found a little handheld game lying on the ground on her way to the library this morning, one of those little enclosed plastic cases with a tiny plastic ball inside it, where you had to roll the ball around until you got it to settle into an indentation in the bottom of the case. And she could not get that ball to settle. She'd come really, really close and then the ball would veer off course when it was within a hair's breadth of its target, and --

Okay, she'd gotten it to settle, once. On the way into the library, at which point she'd jostled her elbow against the edge of the door and all her hard work went up in (figurative!) smoke.

. . . she was going to be at this all day, so while the Monday aide's expression of intense concentration was nothing new, the cause was . . . well . . . a novelty.

Macro-Tactics, Monday

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

"Today, we're back to a little hands-on work," Kerrigan said. The Danger Shop had been set up as... a hallway with four identical doors, this time. "I want you to form up as pairs. One of you takes a black box, the other a white," and she waved two small, also identical boxes around. "Pressing the right side will put down a pawn. That's your footsoldiers. Pressing the left puts down a tower-- archers, riflemen, snipers, whatever you want to call it."

She tossed one of the two to the first student she laid her eyes on.

"Behind these doors are four different kinds of terrain. You will pick a door without knowing which. You will then both walk into opposite directions for five minutes, while assessing your environment. Then you will deploy your 'troops'."

Her lips widened in a not entirely genuine smile.

"The computer will determine which one of you would 'win' by most fortuitous troop placement alone," she said, "Though it's not going to tell you. I want you to come back out, fire up one of the computers over there, and look over what you did in birds' eye-- figure out what you did, what your opponent did, and how fucked you are. Now, go."

Introduction to Personal Weaponry [Monday, second period]

[furious-maximus.livejournal.com]

Rather than a general pile of weapons strewn about, this week there was a very neatly arrayed set of them laid out on Max's desk as his students arrived.

"If you'll recall the first week of this class, we talked about fist-load weapons. The advantage of those, as we discussed, is that they are simple. It's easy to improvise one," Max pulled a roll of quarters out of his pocket and tossed it on the desk as a reminder. "And they can be an excellent tool for surprise if someone things you're unarmed."

"But while there are advantages to them, fist-load weapons aren't incredibly powerful. You still have to punch people, after all, and if they're wearing any sort of armor you can be in trouble. And I don't mean massive pieces of plate-mail, though if you run into someone wearing something like that, punching them with a roll of quarters in your fist won't be much fun. But a leather jacket, or a heavy winter coat can serve as equally effective armor against a punch or a kick, and that's worth remembering."

"Another thing to remember about fist-loads is that even with the extra power, you're still just punching people. Which can hurt, but if someone's big, tough, or just plain angry enough, that won't stop them."

( Max grinned slightly and picked up a weapon from his desk... )

"Which brings us to the hands-on part of today's lesson." Max waved toward the back of the room where all sorts of things were stacked against the wall. Styrofoam blocks, boards of various sorts, squares of carpet and cloth, a few thin metal plates, and all sorts of other moddable things. "Everyone come up to the desk here and pick up a few things that strike your fancy, then find someone to hold some stuff up while you try hitting it. Give it a shot unarmed first, but be careful not to hurt yourself punching a piece of wood or something. After you've got a feel for what you can do to something unarmed, try hitting it with one of the weapons we've discussed today to see what kind of difference it makes. Then trade places with your partner so that they can get the same experience."

Max's eyes narrowed slightly. "And at the end of class I want all my weapons back. I'll be counting." He clapped his hands once. "Now get to it."

Spaceships 101- 1st period- Week #3

[solo_sword]

"Hey, guys. We've got a special guest in class today," Jaina greeted the class, gesturing to the little astromech next to her. "This is Sneaker. Say hi, Sneaker."

The astromech let out a short series of whistles as a hello, and Jaina patted his dome. "Where I come from, starfighters tend to be flown with the aid of astromech droids. They help you with the flight and repairing systems if anything goes wrong. While the ships can be flown without them, I don't recommend it. Feel free to say hi to him, you probably won't understand a thing he's saying and I don't actually know his personality too well yet, but it doesn't hurt to be polite.

"And yes, this means we're getting you into actual starfighters today. This means you get weaponry, and things to fight against. We're starting off with the B-wing," she said, activating the hologram to show them exactly what the B-wing was. "These things have been around for a few dozen years now, and I'm not starting you off easy. The B-wing is clunky. They're heavily armed, nicely sheilded, and this also makes them difficult to maneuver. They're not fast, either. I'm setting you up in what seems like a simple run. You're going one at a time, flying in formation with your standard twelve-ship squadron, under attack from a few TIE fighters, because why not. You're working on a time limit, just get through those fighters without getting shot down. You're going to take hits. Get used to it, it happens to the best of us. Just see how you do, and if you need me, just ask."