Keeping Your Advantage: Terrain & You

[unusual_sith]

"Right. Hello," Lana said from the Danger Shop console. "Lady Ghanima couldn't make it, so she asked if I would see to the class instead. I don't know a lot of different terrains, so we're getting the one I probably know the best - Korriban."

She pressed one last button, and the walls faded away, replaced by a desert planet with red skies and high-tech platforms and encampments around ancient ruins.

"That pyramid there is my last school, the Sith Academy. First, though, we're going here." She pointed at a dark entrance. "This is the tomb of Ajunta Pall. He was a fierce Sith Lord millennia ago. His spirit used to reside here, but he hasn't been seen for some time now, and most useful artifacts have been recovered already. Now, it's mostly a place for acolytes to be sent to prove themselves. There are known to be several nests of k'lor'slugs, as well as quite a few shyrack and some tuk'ata - Sith hounds - descended from the tomb's original guardians. Possibly also a few ancient guard droids, and maybe some looters. So, make your way through the tomb from this end to the other, and we can all go into the Temple and have a drink. The actual Temple is off-limits to non-Sith, so I've just programmed the inside of this one to be a cantina," she explained. It might be a little sacrilegious, but it was the lesser evil, she felt.

"Oh, right - so, generally everybody would get vibroblades, so I've programmed those, but you can choose other weapons if you like. Blasters, or your own. I'm not actually trying to kill anybody, even if it isn't real."

Library, Monday

[intotheout]

So the lights in the library weren't working. Neither were the lights in the dorms, so Tip wasn't very surprised. It gave her a great excuse to be on her phone all afternoon.

She could do without the faint, creepy scuttling from the stacks, though.

"It's a bad idea to go over there and try to investigate, right Bill? I would totally get killed. Or kidnapped. Or startled by a cat. I'm just going to stay right here on my phone and pretend the scuttling isn't happening."

The scuttling got closer.

[open!]

The Ever-Changing Facets of Reality, Monday, Second Period

[stickitupmyjinx]

"Babe? Babe, are you there?" Wade called. Because none of the fucking lights worked today. It was probably the best day to skip class and insist you were actually there. Just, you know, FYI.

"Hang on," Vanessa's voice came from somewhere in the darkness. "I'm trying to program some torches or something but it's hard when I can't see the remote." They should have held this class somewhere with windows.

"While she does that, we're going to talk about fear. No, not the existential dread of student loans or the hellscape you people have inflicted on the world," Wade said. "We can say that. We're Canadian."

Well, one of them was.

"Today you will face your fears and... touch spooky things. Look, it's Halloween week and we spent most of our prep time getting a nice couple's costume together to go out and get wasted on Thursday. So it's time to play Fear Factor with whatever low budget shit we found."

"Ooooooh, so spoooky," Vanessa said. Which probably was kind of spooky, considering the pitch-blackness. Finally, there was light, in the form of flickering torches in sconces on the walls. Also, they appeared to be in a dungeon. "Okay, I think this is some other teacher's program--or at least, I hope it is--but whatever. We have light! And activity stations!" The activity stations were card tables with random stuff on them. Look, these two didn't go for aesthetics.

"Whoever wimps out, fails the class and must repeat their graaaade," Wade said in that spooky voice.

Introduction to Law Enforcement, Monday

[my_own_advocate]

Today, the class would meet Lucifer...

... at the gym.

Was Lucifer wearing gym teacher apparel? Damn right he was. In fact, he looked entirely too enthusiastic about the Stars and Stripes-patterned shorts he was wearing. "Before we get back to the cerebral," he said, "Sometimes policework is all about chasing down your suspect and apprehending them. That means running." Beat. "And we can't all be in as perfect a physical shape as I am. So today, you will be running quite a bit. Up and down. Until you can't."

He pointed aside helpfully. "Anyone who runs out of breath can go on the trampoline."

He blew the whistle.

Why did he blow the whistle? Because he could, frankly. He had a whistle!

Computer Science and Repair- Tuesday- 2nd period

[throughaphase]

The Danger Shop today was made up like a workshop, with dozens of containers of parts and benches with tools on them, and a pile of sketchpads on a table.

"Morning, everyone. Before you got to build your own computer. Today you're going to start making a robot," Kitty greeted them. "There are all sorts of ethics when it comes to robots and artificial intelligence, what machines should and should not be used for, and the limits they should have. I, for instance, once got impaled by an AI who had gained actual sentience and been mistreated so much that she became murderous. Meanwhile you have things like Roombas and virtual assistants that will help you do all sorts of things and no one really thinks about it because they're everyday objects we're typically used to now. And even then Alexa is spying on you. What I'm saying is, you have to be careful what you're putting out there, and you should really think about what it is you're doing.

"Today we're totally not going to think about that yet. You're going to design a Battlebots. Basically, those are robots that will fight each other in a ring. This is going to be a three-part project: this week we design, and you can start working on it if you have time, next week you'll build, and the week after that, we're going to face off against each other. Anyone have any questions? If not, grab a pad and get to work!"