fandomhigh | Try Not to Die!!! [Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 3rd period]

The class had been instructed to meet by the Portalocity office where they were met by a tall blond man in traditional Jedi robes and a shorter redhead about five years younger in jeans and a t-shirt.

"Hi," the younger one said. "I'm Ben Skywalker and this is my grandfather Anakin: long story if you're wondering about the age thing and you're new to Fandom. Welcome to Try Not to Die!!!"

The extra exclamation points had been his idea.

Anakin looked more serious. "It's summer time, so our classes aren't quite so...fraught with peril," he began, "but it's still not a time to let our wits and our instincts atrophy. This class will place you into unfamiliar situation and make you complete tasks in a certain amount of time, then return to a final location. It tests your ability to adapt, follow directions, and navigate through places where you might not know the languages or customs of where you are."

"But today we're starting out fairly easy," Ben assured them. "Through that portal is modern-day England, though your tasks are more medievally focused. Your job is to race as quickly and as safely through your obstacles, then make your way to the checkpoint where Granddad and I will be waiting for you."

Anakin, who watched far too much Amazing Race, intoned, "Your time starts...now!" and stepped out of their way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The class finds themselves at the front of Eastnor Castle.

Climb a rickety rope ladder up the exterior wall of the castle while people dressed as peasants throw buckets of cold water onto you. Once you get to the top of the wall, retrieve one of the medieval flags and then use a coracle (read: weetiny leaky boat) to cross the moat with your flag. Deliver it to a knight in shining armor who will hand you your next clue.

Edited 2013-05-14 10:38 (UTC)

Was it cheating to use biotics to keep the water from crashing onto her head as she climbed? Liara was not so certain she cared, exactly.

The boat... that was a different sort of challenge.

Edited 2013-05-14 12:28 (UTC)

Oh, no, not water, however would Korra cope?

Quite easily for some bizarre reason...

Maddie would have been able to do this just fine if she could use her powers. But she'd seen the Amazing Race too and didn't want to get disqualified based on not actually climbing. So it was really too bad her training had been in things like fighting and not rope-ladder climbing, because it definitely slowed her down.

Theo didn't know what he'd gotten himself into but at least he was getting to use his previous experience on the track team for a...really weird class.

The water slowed him down though and Dev roared angrily in his head.

"Calm down," Ange said, trying to soothe him. "It's just a class."

"We're soaking wet, Ange! This isn't fun!"

"Shut up, I'm trying to concentrate," Theo mumbled, grabbing the flag and heading for the boat now.

Gert wasn't really a talented climber on her best day, and drenched with water, she was even less of one, especially as she kept stopping to yell at the peasant simulations to give her a break. It was probably no surprise that she didn't make it up to the top of the wall until long after most of the others were already up there, and then took her time catching her breath before grabbing a flag and heading down for a boat.

She hated this class already, obviously.

Victor could use the minerals in the ground to give himself a tiny bit of a magnetic boost up the wall, but the rest of the climb was more than difficult enough -- he could do it, but he did not like getting wet.

Which made the boat even more fun. Vic was hoping for an easier challenge next time as he took his clue.

Alex didn't have much trouble climbing the rope ladder. Even the water didn't slow her down. She did lose some time on the boat, though. None of her training with Nikita had included boats.

Anna considered just being up there on the castle walls, but she thought the simulation might be set up to not let her do that. So she climbed the ladder quickly, since the water didn't bother her in the least (or even get her wet) and collected her flag. The boat wasn't much of a problem, either--her father had been a fisherman, she knew how to handle a boat.

Edited 2013-05-14 14:48 (UTC)

Well, if nothing else this was going to help keep his reflexes sharp while he kept out of regular action.

Anakin didn't really hesitate to use the Force to deflect the buckets of cold water, but it seemed like the more he did that, the more determined the peasants were to try and soak him, and it got fairly . . . 'heated' wasn't the right word to use, was it? Suffice to say there was a lot of water splashing down toward him, to the point where he nearly reverted to his battle-meditation state to anticipate and evade it all.

That, unfortunately, meant that he wasn't really concentrating on the actual ascent, and the decrepit state of the rope ladder led to a lot of swaying, slipping, and generally losing ground.

At least he was mostly dry by the time he got to the top, even if it took him a lot longer than he'd have liked?

Crossing the moat in that tiny little coracle, though -- that was frustrating, and he was scowling by the time he delivered his flag to the knight.

Chaz was surprisingly good at dodging the buckets of water, calculating trajectories was rather useful for that, but crossing the moat had turned into a more complicated task as he kept going in circles.

Raven regretted wearing actual clothes today -- not just because she could have shifted from a skirt to pants if she were just mimicking her clothes, but also because her mimicked outfits tended to dry faster.

Instead, she was trying to climb a rope ladder in a deluge wearing a crinoline-supported circle skirt and a (oh lord) white blouse.

She would definitely plan more carefully in the future.

This is when it paid to be in good shape, Emily thought.

Almost falling off her boat a couple of times didn't really bring any other useful realizations for her though.

The knight was just plain weird.

The rope ladder was easy enough, despite the cold water. The boat on the other hand, well, werewolves avoided large bodies of water since they couldn't swim, so Mercy had never really done anything like this before and it took her a while to get the hang of it.

Try Not to Die!!! [Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 3rd period]

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