fandomhigh | Kicking Ass, Teamwork Style [Wednesday, Period 3, Week 7]

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Kicking Ass, Teamwork Style [Wednesday, Period 3, Week 7]

As usual, class met in the Danger Shop today. Said Danger Shop was programmed so that students would find themselves in a small cave that led off into a subterranean maze of half-lit (if actually kind of spacious) tunnels, and the occasional scratching sound or muffled shriek could be heard echoing out of the darkness. As for a clue to the source of those sounds, Kennedy was standing near one wall of the cave with her thumbs hooked in her pockets and one boot resting casually atop the prone figure of a human-sized reptilian creature. (Basically, a bipedal sewer alligator. Friendly-looking thing, wasn't it?)

"Enough of me talking at you," Kennedy began as soon as it looked like the class was assembled. "'cause honestly, I've spent more time lecturing you guys the past few weeks than I really have the patience for myself, and I'm a big believer in hands-on learning. So this is the sitch: you find your way out of here, or keep everyone in one piece until the end of class, but the key is you stick together. No letting your classmates get lost or fall into a hole or get dragged off by the lizard-man things wandering around in here, even if you can't stand them." Maybe Topher got a pointed look there. "I'm not gonna tell you what your roles are. There's one rule, and that's to watch each other's backs and not leave anyone behind. Simple enough, right?"

She paused just long enough to punctuate the rhetorical question, then snapped her fingers and gestured toward the tunnels.

"Okay then, let's do this thing."

[[ocd is up, so do as that last line says.]]

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Less of a maze than just a long, winding tunnel. At least this section is steadily lit, and a little more open, but, well. These ~~moddable, I'm sorry, but it's gonna be a Day~~ alligator-things might pop out at you from hidden alcoves every now and then. Please don't let them drag off your classmates before you make it through this part?

Topher had Tunnel Trauma. That was fine. He'd accepted that. Getting attacked by giant rats in an abandoned subway tunnel tended to do that to a guy, and it wasn't an issue that he'd thought would really come up again, but here he was, taking his exam in a tunnel.

Typical.

So. Until now he'd been doing fine with taking baby steps and pointing his phone at the floor for light, but then he heard... skittering.

"OH MY GOD IT'S A GIANT RAT."

No. It was a lizard. But good try, Topher!

"No, Kitten, it's a lizard," Surreal informed him, pushing past to jump on the back of one and wrench its head around with a sickening 'crack.'

"Generally? They taste like chicken."

"So do giant rats," Ace said in response to Surreal, making a face at the memory of her boss at the ice-cafe's newest flash-frozen imported delicacy, not the cracking lizard-neck. She flashed the beam of her torch over the 'corpse.' "We don't actually have to eat these things, though. ....Right?"

"Rat is gamey," Surreal complained, nudging the corpse with a booted foot before moving on. "But no, I doubt we can or need to eat them. It is a computer-thing, yes?"

"Far as I know," Ace confirmed happily. Not just because she didn't have to eat fake giant-lizard; she was still far too impressed with this technology. "Way more advanced than anything I ever saw, though, and I was in the future for a while."

Topher stared. "You've eaten them?"

Somehow that strategy had never occured to him when he and Kenzi had been trapped with a bunch of them, no.

"More like I've eaten some frozen meat that somebody told me used to look like a giant rat," Ace admitted. "But it still counts. It tasted like it used to look like a giant rat."

In other words, like really bad chicken.

"Gross," Topher said emphatically. "...But probably less gross than one of them trying to eat you. I bet."

"Dunno." Ace shrugged. "Nothing's ever tried to eat me yet."

She'd sound a little saner without the tinge of disappointment in her voice.

"Lucky. It's not as fun as it looks in movies."

Because in movies it looked like a blast.

Such a blast.

Which is why Ace refused to believe him. "You sure you weren't doing it wrong?"

Because there's a right way to almost get eaten, clearly.

Well, it wasn't like he'd been all Skywalker about it or anything, but...

"Pretty sure I was sticking to the conventions of the trope," Topher assured her. "...Eventually I fried it with a subway track."

"Whoah, nasty. Did it blow up?" Some people really did watch too many movies, yeah.

"Pretty much," Topher reported kind of gleefully. "And then I got a cell signal and we called Portalocity and escaped. I'm sort of a badass," he gloated.

Topher. No. You were in no way a badass.

Shh, Topher. Don't ruin it. Ace was actually kind of impressed.

Though maybe not with his sense of assessment. "So...what part of that wasn't as fun as it looks in the movies?"

"Oh, the part before I was a badass," he explained. "When I couldn't get reception and there was a giant rat and Kenzi looked like she was about to wet her pants."

Real nice, Topher.

"...She doesn't do that a lot, does she?"

Ace had 'sharing a tent' reasons for being concerned.

"I think just when she's being attacked," Topher said helpfully.

Beat.

"And occasionally when she's creeping around trying not to be noticed by a really short kid and a nun."

"There's nuns h--hey!" That was a size six Doc thumping hard against a reptilian skull. "You mind?"

THWACK. And that was a followup electric torch to the side of the head.

"We're trying to have a conversation here!"

About incontinent nun-stalkers.

Topher squeaked and leapt about a foot into the air at that interruption, but he did his best to cover the noise up with a cough. He didn't do a great job, but, you know, the important thing was that he tried.

"Uh, just the one nun," he filled in. "Singular. It's a long story."

Seriously long. It hadn't even fit into a single post!

And Ace totally respected that he tried. Even if, yes, she did not entirely believe any sentence coming out of his mouth ending in the word 'badass.'

"Well, if she ends up weeing on my boots, I'll just steal hers," Ace declared, punctuating that last word with another thud of her own boot on the now-down reptile. "Might do anyway; they're well wicked."

"I don't think she actually does that," Topher amended, because it occured to him that maybe good friends did not accuse their friends of peeing everywhere. "Just, you know, freaks out to the point where it looks like a possibility."

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

upmysleeve.livejournal.com - 2012-06-22 02:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

dollpocalypse - 2012-06-22 13:41 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

upmysleeve.livejournal.com - 2012-06-22 13:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

dollpocalypse - 2012-06-22 14:33 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

upmysleeve.livejournal.com - 2012-06-22 14:42 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Maze: Look Out For Lizards

dollpocalypse - 2012-06-22 14:51 (UTC) - Expand

Every time Victor saw an alligator thing, he zapped it with everything he had.

If he ignored the fact they were threatening his classmates with gruesome stimulated death, and that they kept snapping their teeth at him and charging every time his aim was a little off, it was almost fun.

Angelica was ready for any alligators to pop out so she could blast them with a nice stream of microwave radiation. She was totally used to stuff like that from Emma's danger room.

Though did she have to save Topher?

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