fandomhigh | Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Tuesday

The woman whose boots tapped firmly against the floor as she entered, moved with a more than obvious confidence. Her long red hair had been pulled into a loose ponytail, and her clothes were utilitarian, showing fairly little.

"My name is Lieutenant Sarah Kerrigan," she began. "Or rather, that's what it once was. I served as a lieutenant, yes-- in a group called the Sons of Korhal. They treated me like I was invaluable. Something special. And I did my job pretty well."

She stopped moving in front of the desk, and leaned on it with her hands. "Then one day, as it turned out, a dead pretty young female lieutenant is a good martyr for the cause. I was suddenly more than expendable." Beat. "Lucky for me I'm a little hard to expend. And I'm a little more important currency these days."

She pulled away from the desk. "I'm not interested in why you joined this class," she continued. "I'm not interested in what year you're from, or what your favorite meal is. I'm sure somebody's going to wind up asking you these questions this week, but I won't. All I want is your name, and what you plan to be. Take that as esoterically or as practically as you'd like."

"The truth is, life isn't fair, and I'm sure that's not news to most of you. Unless you're from a very specific subset of life, you're going to wind up expendable, or worse. People are going to try to keep you where you'll be useful to them - until you're not. What we're going to be working on these next few weeks is making you useful to yourselves."

In a manner of speaking. They'd find themselves useful to Kerrigan, too.

"Which is why what we want from the future is the first and last thing we need to know about ourselves. Or you're going to wind up just another chess piece with only two squares to move to. Talk."

[[ ~~wait for the~~ ocd up! ]]

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"Useful," Kerrigan prompted, with a slight lift of her chin. "As a good soldier?"

"As a good tool," she said, with a bit of a shrug. "Soldier, sure. But tool is probably more accurate--I don't know that I'll ever be giving orders. So I want to be the very sharpest sort of tool I can."

Kerrigan chuckled. "At least you're honest," she said. Her lips quirked. "If a little short-sighted. Everybody's a tool waiting to be picked up, and everyone has a sharp end somewhere. Being a tool in and of itself only requires you don't stop anyone from using you."

Ino wrinkled her nose. "I guess I could say that I want to be a very useful tool in my chosen profession--which is that of a soldier, of sorts. Otherwise I don't want to be no one's tool but my own."

"And is that the extent of your aspirations?" Kerrigan asked, "Be a means, not an end?"

"I don't know what sort of end I'd be," Ino said, twirling a feather in her hands and making a face as it stuck. "Maybe I'll end up being an end, but you could say I was born to serve my village and fight for it. I'm a spy, not a leader."

"You don't get the options 'underling' and 'leader' and be done with it," Kerrigan said, a hint of something joining her voice. "But that does illustrate the easiest way to get someone under your control."

Ino eyed her.

"I can be very very good at what I do and still be an underling," she pointed out. "I have no intentions of being mediocre."

"Oh, I know," she said, her mouth twitching slightly. "That's why it's in the interest of all leaders that their underlings don't get any ideas about there being alternate options. A clean line of command makes it so much easier to get your way at any cost."

"And that's a bad thing, people having loyalty to their village and home?" Ino raised her eyebrows, but her voice was level and civil. "'Cause that's what it's soundin' like you're implying to me, begging your pardon. Am I supposed to think outside of that line of command when I think they're doin' fine?"

"The more power you let someone have, the more likely they are to abuse it," she said, mildly. "Loyalty tends to leave you with a knife in your back."

"That's not true," she replied. "Loyalty doesn't mean being blind. There are good leaders to give your loyalty to. And power given can be taken away."

"What you're describing is blindness," Kerrigan said, but her voice was still at that very even tone. Not academic, no. Something else. "Black and white hierarchies. The follower and the followed. How long are you going to justify being loyal to a leader with his or her own hidden designs? Everyone has one."

She leaned back. "But I'm not here to start an argument with you," she drawled. "Just some advice to a sharp tool from someone who used to be the sharpest... with the most benevolent leader."

"I don't understand you," Ino said honestly, unsettled by the undertones to this conversation and knowing she was going to be spending time thinking about it afterwards. "How can you serve as a tool without trusting the ones who're using you at all? What's the point in letting yourself serve, then?"

"I don't," she said, simply. "I gave every drop of my loyalty to a man who wanted to change the universe for the better, and who saved me from being abused by my former masters. He used me to commit genocide; he used my loyalty to kill me when it was convenient."

A slight, slight hint of bitterness. "I bear the scars of servitude," she noted. "It's not something I'd advocate."

Ino studied her with blue, blue eyes.

And didn't say what she was thinking, keeping those thoughts behind her shields. "What would you suggest I do then?"

Kerrigan looked back -- evenly. And she held it just as evenly for a few seconds, letting Ino's question fall were it may.

"Always have a back-up plan," she said, casually, and turned her head, directing her attention to another student.

Edited 2010-05-11 14:30 (UTC)

Ino just nodded, the gesture solemn even as another feather made a break for it.

Well, yes, she'd think about it.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling, Tuesday

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