fandomhigh | 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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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."

Ace snickered. "Yeah, I got that. I was just--- REALLY?"

Really, she needed to drag the baseball bat out of her rucksack? "STAY DEAD!"

More squeaking! Lots more squeaking.

"Dude," Topher said, peeking up at her when he was decently sure the thing was dead. "You're a little insane, aren't you?"

"I'm not insane." Ace took a moment to decide if she was offended or not, and decided that since he didn't call her a freak or laugh at her, she'd go with not. "I'm 'socially maladjusted.'"

There were no airquotes, but her nasal imitation of her vocational guidance counselor's voice served pretty much the same purpose.

"Hey, me too," Topher reported cheerfully. "...But I'm not as good at killing things."

Yeah, Topher. She could see that.

"Eh, you'll do." She was giving him credit for the third rail, after all. "I never had to kill real things, anyway," Ace admitted. "Easy enough when it's fake. This is just like a video game, but with better art."

Keeping in mind that she was from 1987, so her idea of good video game art involved monkeys throwing barrels.

Yeah, when you thought a Danger Shop simulator put together by a Buffyverser was good art... you were wrong. Or from the eighties. What were those again?

"Eh, 's decent," he granted. "Not that convincing, though."

Then something stirred in the shadows and he screamed.

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

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