fandomhigh | The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

"Rookies." It had been far too damn long since the last time Reno was standing in the Danger Shop, looking at a classroom full of kids he didn't know. It was kind of like coming home, and that much was apparent in his relaxed posture as he surveyed the group. All around them, the holographic landscape was a barren desert, the sky above them a sickly haze except for the giant burning rock hanging overhead, which managed to dwarf the moon by far. "Heh. Rookies."

Yes, this was his opening line. Hello, class.

"Look up there. That? That up there, is what brought my world as I knew it to a crashing stop. You wanna know what happens when a rock like that falls down from the sky?" He lifted his eyebrows pointedly as he looked at each and every student in his class, one by one. "No. No, you really don't. But you're in this class, so over the next few weeks, you're gonna learn anyway, yo. We watched that bad boy falling down on our heads for weeks, and there wasn't a godsdamned thing we could do to stop it, either. And believe me, we tried. The only reason I'm standing here right now is because the Planet tried even harder. We're gonna cover more than 'rocks fall, everyone dies' scenarios over this term, of course, but I figured, hey, probably not a bad way to catch your attention."

Thanks for that, Gaia.

"This week, we're gonna keep it light, yo. I'm not new to the island, but I'm new to all of you, and I want to know what the hell I'm working with this summer. So, you Rookies are gonna give me your names, tell me any experience you might have with the end of the world, or if you have none, tell me what it is you're hoping to get out of this class. And, if you were to look up in the sky and see that thing, and there was sweet fuck-all you could do to stop it, tell me how you would spend your last few weeks alive. I'm Reno. I'm here teaching this class because I lived that once or twice or... I lost count. And when I was faced with that one up there? First, I got pretty damn drunk. And then I tried to help evacuate what was left of Midgar, my world's biggest city, anyway."

On orders, sure, but that hardly mattered. When you were a Turk, you Did The Job.

"Your turn."

[Open!]

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"My name's Eleanor Lamb," she began, "and I -- what I lived through wasn't the end of the world. I mean, not all of it."

She fidgeted a bit in her chair. "The colony we were in, it -- it was full of deranged splicers looking for a fix, and cult members looking for a Messiah. I did what I had to do, to get out of there."

That had mostly involved a pile of dead bodies. Maybe she shouldn't have started this story in class.

"A-anyway, that was a single city, not the world," she said. "I don't know what I ought to learn in this class. Perhaps how to shake it off and learn to move forward, once the world's no longer in peril. How to find some kind of normalcy. And if I only had a week ..."

She allowed herself a wry smile. "I ought to say something brave and heroic about how I'd try to stop it, but I don't ... know how to stop that thing, in the sky. And if I only have a week left, I want to live before I die. Go see India or Ireland. Maybe both."

Ah, students that knew what hell looked like. Reno had figured he'd get several for this class. He wasn't disappointed.

"A single city usually means the world to somebody," he noted. "I watched Midgar crumble to the ground. Not a big fan of cults looking for Messiahs either, now you mention it, yo."

Fucking Avalanche.

"You have a life, live it while you can, yeah. And we'll see what we can do to help you figure out moving forward, too. In the wake of Meteor, that was one of Gaia's biggest challenges, yo."

"It seems rather a large burden to put on one person," Eleanor said. "To be the Messiah, or to save the world from itself, or to bring about salvation. No one should have that laid at their shoulders."

She looked up at the sky again, and then at him. "So ... some of the planet survived, then," she said.

Clearly he had, but she had half been wondering if he had stumbled into this place by accident just before that asteroid had crashed to ground.

"Some," Reno confirmed. "Most of it's still in ruins, and a hell of a lot of people died. All at once when that rock finally got close enough to do its damage, and then for years after with this sickness that was eating them apart from the inside. Nasty shit, that."

And wow, was Reno happy that they didn't have to deal with Geostigma any more.

"We got a hell of a lot to answer for, after all that, yo."

She'd seen people whose bodies were degrading faster than ADAM could repair them. She wondered how similar this sickness was, in source and in symptoms.

"So there's a long road ahead," she said. "Rebuilding and starting fresh. I ... I just left. I'm not sure if there's anything left to salvage, there."

"You have any interest in finding out? You have no obligation to go back to hell once you finally get out. Took me a long time to figure that one out, yo."

She didn't seem to have the same sort of guilt on her head that he did. She carried herself differently.

The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World, Wednesday, Period 4

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