fandomhigh | The Day After Doomsday, Wednesday, Period 4

"Aaaalright." So, Reno had missed a few classes, and now the term was over. He licked his lips as he looked over the students gathered in the Danger Shop. "So I was a bit AWOL back there. I trust my Rookie and Rikku had you in pretty good hands the past couple weeks. If they didn't... Hey, means you get a trial by fire now, don't you."

The entire room shimmered, taking the students back to a scenario similar to the one that Reno had set up for their introductions class several weeks back. They were surrounded by a vast expanse of desert with no readily available water in sight. The sky was a sickly shade of spinach green, and in their immediate area, they were standing in what had presumably once been a thriving city, considering how huge it was. It was a pity that it was all sitting in ruins now, a sort of double-decker heap of twisted metal and shattered glass with very little that was still recognizable as a livable building or functional vehicle.

"Welcome to my home," Reno said, his tone almost eerily devoid of inflection, today. "Midgar, at ground zero. Millions dead, literally nothing will grow in the dirt in and around the city. No food, very little shelter, no water, the place is crawling with monsters, the entire city is radioactive, our best fuel source has been rendered impossible to use, and the world government was located at the middle of that city full of wreckage. Presumably, the guy in charge is dead. Try not to die. Anything else you do today is up to you, but you're going to want to do it as a group, aren't you?"

And then he turned around and walked away, taking a seat among the ruins to watch.

Yeah, that was it.

[Open!]

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Four's lips quirked up. "That's Dauntless," he agreed. "The Unafraid."

"And that's what you are," Reno replied, looking thoughtfully at Four. "Dauntless?"

Four nodded once. "Yes."

Reno gave another nod at that, filing it away like so much else.

"You end up getting anything out of this class at all, Four?"

"Definitely," Four replied, nodding. "I didn't have to start quite from scratch like you did, but it's good to be prepared for the worst case scenario. Dauntless are the protectors: when I go back, I'll train our new initiates and watch the borders. Learning other ways to do things gives me a different perspective than everyone else, and that's an advantage worth having."

"That's what I like to hear," Reno replied, skipping over his usual 'rookie,' in this case. It seemed as though Four had already put in his time and earned that promotion, student or not. "Anything you wish we had managed to cover? I dunno what Rikku and Barry taught while I was incapacitated, but it probably was't on the syllabus, yo."

Four thought about his biggest problem, then chewed his lower lip for a moment. "I'm in Teamwork for Jerks, too," he said finally, "but I'm still not sure how to deal with a guy I trained with who's now been placed in a position of power. He's a--" he searched for a way to summarize Erik. "--scarily smart person with no capacity for compassion that I've ever seen, and he hates me. Any advice other than being smarter and faster than him all the time?"

Reno gave a little nod at that, thinking back to the way things had gone to hell on the Turks, years and years ago.

"Make allies," he said, finally. "Make a fuckload of 'em. Make 'em with people at the same rank as you, make 'em with people who are in a position of power over you. And over him. Make it so that if he wants to make a move against you, he can't do it without raising the ire of people on every goddamn level."

A beat.

"Unless assassination is an option, but I'm not technically supposed to endorse that, yo."

Edited 2014-06-20 14:20 (UTC)

"We're Dauntless," Four said with a little shrug. "The very first part of initiation is jumping off a building into a hole you can't see that leads to our headquarters. Accidents happen all the time...but Erik is on the ruling council, so that's more work than I want to put into things unless he really pushes it. I'll work on the allies, though. I'm not exactly a natural socializer."

Edited 2014-06-20 14:23 (UTC)

"It's a good skill to have," Reno noted. "Work on perfecting the art here, yo. Means you'll be in better shape for it once you go back, and you never know when you're gonna need to call the cavalry. Fandom saved my ass that way before."

Edited 2014-06-20 14:55 (UTC)

Four's eyebrows rose. "Really?"

"Really," Reno replied with a nod toward the wreckage. "Somethin' crawled outta the woodwork to try to tear apart what was left of Edge. I got called back for an emergency, and when I fell off the map, they came in after me."

He gave a chuckle, shaking his head.

"I'd be buried under a ton of this shit too, if they hadn't come."

"Not a nice way to go out," Four said.

"Yeah, I could've gone without the experience," Reno agreed, "but I brought it on myself anyway, yo."

Yes, bombs will do that.

"Point is, you make enough allies around here, all you have to do is make the call and they'll round up the troops and march out to help however they can. I've seen it countless times, yo. People comin' to my aid, me runnin' off to theirs. Takes some getting used to, maybe. Especially for a loner type. But it's worth it."

The Day After Doomsday, Wednesday, Period 4

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