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modern workplace and you

The Modern Workplace and You: Friday, Period 1

Some of you would be delighted to know that Babou was back in class this week. Others would probably be terrified. Choose your seats accordingly!

“So, let’s talk about Personal Safety,” Pam said. Okay, she hadn’t ever recovered her notes, from when Babou had shredded them; she was just gonna wing it. “This is important not just in the workplace, but in everyday life. Like, in case you do a lot of mescaline and think you’re a coyote, and chew up the furniture. Or, while you're high on mescaline, your dumbass roommate manages to freeze the whole house. Or even, say, if your boss makes you teach Gun Safety and you accidentally shoot a coworker. There are all kinds of bad things lurking around the corners, and it’s good to know how to prepare yourself for the worst.”

If you were wondering what Personal Safety had to do with the Modern Workplace, then clearly you weren’t working for an international spy agency or anything. And besides, Pam had been pretty high when she wrote the syllabus.

“Our house is beautiful and now you won't get all overheated and sweaty anymore!” Cheryl argued. “And yeah, okay, there's tons of bad shit you could run into. Like maybe if your coworker repeatedly threatens to pistol-whip you.” Mmmmm, Lana, someday you'd deliver. Someday. “Or like, let's say someone...for some reason...wants to kidnap you and, like, maybe they grab your coworker or something. That could happen.”

Maybe they'd grab your coworker because you were calling her by your own name. Just a thought.

“Anyway. That's the thing we're gonna focus on today: what to do if you get kidnapped. Which Pam knows way more about, because she got kidnapped once!” Good job, Cheryl. Make it sound like fun.

Pam looked less thrilled than Cheryl did, about this. “It sucked,” she announced. “They couldn’t punch for shit, and then my boss only offered a measly five grand to get me back. Then they were gonna cut my eyes out to get past the retinal scans, but I convinced ’em to just take me hostage and drag me along instead. I made ’em think I was on their side, which is one way to deal with bullshit kidnappers when your so-called friend gets you kidnapped instead of her.”

Oh, look, a death-glare in Cheryl’s direction!

“It was a case of mistaken identity,” Cheryl said, waving a hand. “So anyway, pair up. One of you is a kidnapper. One of you is the kidnappee. And it is your job, little captives, to figure out how you're gonna get the hell out of this by negotiating with your captors.” She grinned at them. “Sexual favors are allowed.”

“Theoretical sexual favors,” Pam hurried to add. “Ones you use conversationally as a negotiating tactic. Not real ones. Do not actually engage in sexual favors here in class, are we understood? That’s the kinda thing that teachers go to jail over.”

“Only if you get caught,” Cheryl stage-whispered, winking exaggeratedly.

(Live ocelot, round two!)

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Whelp. Elsa was lost already.

"A suspicious what?"

Please be patient. She wasn't from around here, Raven.

"A car?" Raven said, then remembered that, oh yeah, some people were actually from longer ago than she was. "A vehicle."

"Oh. A... bit like the... thing that the school sent to pick up the new students with?"

Elsa had been a bit overwhelmed that day by... everything.

"They're often used for kidnappings?"

"You mean the shuttle bus?" Raven said. "Yeah, that could work. You see those things everywhere, so it'd be pretty inconspicuous. . . ."

Wait, the assignment wasn't to plan an actual kidnapping, here.

"I think it's usually, like, a black van, though, these days. Not as large, and really nondescript."

At least, that was the sense that television had given her.

"I. Well." Elsa, use your words, dear. "I'll take your word for it, I suppose. I'm still a little behind, in that regard."

A smidgen. A touch.

"So... how should we do this? Do you want to be the kidnapper, or should I?"

Raven shrugged. "Either way, really. Is there anything you think you might get kidnapped for? I guess if you wanted to practice? I don't know, I'm not really sure why this is an exercise in this class."

"I can think of plenty of reasons I might be kidnapped," Elsa admitted, smiling sheepishly. "I'm a member of a very prestigious family, back home."

She was the future Queen, actually. That was slightly different.

"But really," she added, dropping her voice down low, "I'm not terribly surprised that we're covering something like this in this class. If not because of the class subject itself, then because of the teachers."

"True. I'm hoping for a class on big cat care, myself."

Not that she expected Cheryl to be super good at caring for her poor ocelot.

Elsa was looking dubious at best, glancing from Raven to Babou and back.

"Would you take everything they tell you and then just do the opposite?"

Look, she didn't know what those little biscuits were that Cheryl was throwing at the poor cat, but she was fairly certain that they weren't ocelot-friendly.

"Pretty much," Raven admitted. "Or maybe record it and then use the evidence to report them to the ASPCA."

"The ASP--" Elsa bit her lip, deciding that maybe it would be better to not smother her class partner in questions. "Nevermind. I really do feel sorry for him, though."

"It's a group that helps protect animals from being hurt," Raven explained. "When are you from?"

"Several hundred years ago, apparently," Elsa replied, with a small shake of her head. "I'm... still wrapping my mind around electricity. And flying machines. And... well, here."

Which, in fairness, meant a bit of adjustment for people who were from now, too.

"I'm pretty sure everyone has to adjust to here a little. Well, except maybe Cecil. His town has a five headed dragon running for Mayor."

And Elsa's parents once asked for medical and child-rearing advice from a pack of trolls, but these were the things she wasn't so inclined to share.

"Dragons are real?"

This was somehow less believable than trolls.

Roll with it.

"Where Cecil's from, anyway." Or when Raven decided to turn into one.

Wait, did Raven turning into one count as making them real? It wasn't like she was real dragon, was it?

"A lot of people's worlds have different rules about real or not real, I guess. Not sure we can really count anything out entirely."

"No, I suppose not," Elsa agreed, frowning a little as she remembered the boy who was making his luggage float behind himself, using science rather than magic. "This place on its own is unbelievable enough. Any island that can make me a master at crochet for a couple of days..."

She shook her head. At least she'd gotten some nice gloves (that she would never wear) out of the arrangement.

"I'm in the process of learning that the words 'that's impossible' really don't apply around here."

Edited 2014-01-24 23:47 (UTC)

"Not so much," Raven agreed. "But on the other hand, some of the bad stuff I always worried about back home apparently doesn't happen here at all."

"No?" Elsa looked at Raven curiously, biting her lip. "I've seen some people just... open up about things I wouldn't dream of talking about, where I'm from. It's jarring, a little."

Heck, she'd met somebody who had very similar powers to herself. What did she even do in the face of that?

"It really can be," Raven agreed. "Some of the stuff people around here do just as a matter of course would get them labeled a demon or evil or something back home. And I'm not from that long ago."

"I've noticed that, too," Elsa said, a little more softly. "That there are perfectly pleasant people here who are afraid of being taken for monsters, while other people will take the same thing and call it a gift, and encourage people to nurture... that."

That nondescript thing, there.

"It's a little confusing."

"You do start to get used to it, eventually," Raven said. "Well, sort of. And only slowly." She took a deep breath, unsure about whether she should admit to having a power, herself. She was trying to start being more open about it all, but Elsa had just said that she found it pretty overwhelming. "It's a whole paradigm shift, as my brother would say. So it just takes time."

Elsa would probably take the news with a grain of salt, and add it to the list of reasons why she was being ridiculous about hiding her own powers around here. It was still a bit of a work in progress.

"Well... time is something I have a fair bit of," Elsa replied. "I am going to be here for at least a couple of years. Maybe it will just start to seem like second nature before long."

She offered Raven a faint smile. "Just like your brother says, it's a shift. It's not a bad shift, I don't think. It's just... new."

"Totally new," Raven agreed. "I've been here since this summer, and it still throws me a little bit. Then the trick is . . . learning when to share your own secrets. Hiding is a hard habit to break."

"Especially," Elsa replied, "when you've been told that you have to conceal those secrets for most of your life."

She was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that they were relating to one another, here.

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