fandomhigh | Creative Problem Solving, Tuesday, period 3

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problem solving

Creative Problem Solving, Tuesday, period 3

[Class #8: The Prairie Dog Maze Job!]

“Welcome back! I hope you guys had as much fun as we did on break.” Parker was looking manically pleased with herself about that job. “And I hope you didn't get arrested in Mexico.”

"Though if you did, you clearly got back out," Eliot said with a shrug. "So see it as a learnin' experience."

Parker had to nod in agreement on that point, then went on, gesturing to this week’s Danger Shop set-up: what looked like a high-tech cubicle farm, with people working on computers and phones, ignoring the newcomers, except to pop a head over a divider every once in a while. Floor-to-ceiling windows comprised two walls, and there were clearly marked exits.

“Your job is to get out of this building. It’s 55 stories, and the elevators may not work for you. You aren't suppose to be here. Also, there are security guys roaming around, and they've been told to hang onto anyone who isn't cleared. Those exits? Go to other rooms like this one. So you better be able to remember where you've been before.”

"Basically," Eliot said, looking juuuuust a little too pleased with himself. "It's a giant maze. That really wants to put you in jail."

“So! Pair up, or triple up, or go it on your own, and try to get out.” Parker beamed at them all. “Do it with computers, do it with smarts, do it with punching people. There’s popcorn of all kinds once you get out, so you can watch other people try.”

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"Kathy!" Eliot greeted. "You really didn't need to." But judging by the way his eyes lit up when he saw the box, he wasn't going to object any harder than that. "I'm just glad I could help out."

"You didn't need to walk me through an emergency medical procedure at ridiculous o'clock, either," Kathy said. "I'm just glad I can say thanks."

She brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, telegraphing her nervousness with a bullhorn. "May I ask you something? Why weren't you surprised to get my call?"

Edited 2015-03-04 12:04 (UTC)

"Was I expectin' you to one day call me up and ask how to deal with a bullet wound? No. But -- you weaponized your ribbons," Eliot said. "Doesn't take much of a leap from that to figurin' out you get yourself into situations."

"Oh." Duh. Kathy felt like an idiot for not realizing that sooner. Wasn't she supposed to be smart? "That was definitely the closest I've ever gotten to a gun, though."

And Eliot still didn't know how close she'd been to Fernando's gun.

"I'm pretty sure I can live without ever getting that close again, though. That was terrifying."

And loud in the confines of the car. None of the TV shows or movies ever showed how very loud guns were.

"Hopefully, you'll never end up that close to one again," Eliot said. Though if she was going out and finding fights, he wouldn't bet on it. "They're nasty pieces of work. Built for only one purpose and not even the most efficient way of doing that."

She was from a not-great-neighborhood in LA. Even if she didn't have her extra-curriculars, she'd still wouldn't bet on it.

"Why aren't they the most efficient?" Kathy asked, hoping that Eliot wouldn't think she was being weird or morbid. "I mean, they do a lot of damage and from a distance. You don't even have to be that good with them to take someone out with one."

Sure, if you were aiming for a leg and shot out an engine block, that was one thing. But if you were aiming for a leg and shot someone's stomach or arm or most anywhere else, they were still going down.

Well, unless they were zombies. But who worried about those?

"They have a very specific range of efficacy," Eliot explained. "Get too close and it's real easy to get disarmed. Too far -- and that ain't as far as you think it is, especially with a hand gun -- and you're not gonna be able to aim for shit. Most people are as likely to injure themselves or an innocent bystander as they are an attacker, and let's be seriously here: guns are built to kill. That is their only purpose. But most bullet wounds are survivable, you get to help in time."

"What would you say is the most efficient?" Kathy asked. "Knives had limited range and aren't nearly as traumatic overall...blunt weapons like bats and things can do a lot of damage, but I'd think they'd take even longer and more effort to kill someone."

"Uhh, not that I'm trying for that!" she hastened to say, lest Eliot think that she was looking for ideas on how to murder people. "I'm just wondering if there was a more efficient way, since guns...weren't...yeah."

Because Eliot was totally worried Kathy was gonna go and start offing people.

Well, at least he knew that if she did, she'd apologize profusely afterwards.

"You wanna guarantee a kill, you have to get close. Knife range close. Fist close. Which means training -- a lot of it. You wanna take someone down, get 'em out of the way, that you can do well enough from a distance -- and better and cleaner without using bullets. You wanna kill? You look 'em in the eye."

Yep, that wasn't creepy at all.

The cops would find her not more than two feet away from her first victim, doing exactly that.

She shuddered at Eliot's description, wondering--not for the first time--just what exactly her teachers had done before coming to work for Fandom High. 'Security' just didn't cut it. "I think I'll keep to the distance," she said softly. "I don't think I could kill someone for any reason. Take 'em down, yeah, absolutely. But the kind of down that means they can get back up again."

Fiddling with her hair, she asked, "Do you think that requires more training, overall? At least, in its own way? I mean, knowing how to incapacitate someone so that they can't hurt you but won't have any lasting damage? Or am I overthinking it?"

"Nah, you're not overthinkin' it," Eliot said. "People are . . . fragile. It's easier to break 'em than you think. You want to make sure you're not doing lasting damage, you need to be in constant control."

"That's what I need to learn then," Kathy said firmly. "Like, if I could have taken Painkiller--" why, Fernando, just why? "--down faster, he might not have gotten the second shot off."

Gorgon still would have been hurt, but she might have skipped out on that whole ear-ringing moment of terror.

"Back home, the Seventeens are bad. And anyone enforcer and above won't go down without a fight. But even so, I don't wanna hurt anybody. Not permanently, anyway."

Eliot nodded. "Spent some time in LA in my world. Had a run in or two with the local gangs. Lotta guns on those streets. Tell ya what: you find me when you want some practice, I'll show you some tricks. Start with how to disarm a guy, work from there."

"That would be awesome" Kathy breathed. "I mean, I'm fast and I'm agile, but I don't have the kind of stopping power that, say, Gorgon or the Mighty Dragon do. So I have to make up in training what they do just by being who they are."

She glanced down, suddenly self-conscious. "If, ahhh, you had any other, kinda...outre...skills you'd like to teach, I probably wouldn't mind learning those, too. Like maybe Ms. Parker has?" She was blushing now. "I kinda learned this past week that sometimes you end up doing all sorts of things that you wouldn't otherwise expect. Like...procuring, uhhh, supplies?"

Like stealing, Kathy. You stole things. With many apologies and money, but you stole.

Edited 2015-03-07 19:59 (UTC)

Eliot smirked a little. "Ask Parker to show you lock pickin' tricks sometime. She does it like other people knit."

"I should," Kathy mused. "I mean, I'm getting better, but it still takes me a long time to get even easy padlocks open."

Conversations with an authority figure she never thought she'd have for $1000 please, Alex?

"Umm, can I tell you how I got all the supplies?" she asked, tentative.

Eliot shrugged. "If you want to. I ain't here to judge."

Well, he was a teacher, so he was actually here to judge things like her performance in class. But that wasn't the point.

And he'd already told her how much stock he put in grades!

"Oh, sorry, I meant if you were interested," she explained, since it had been whole minutes since she'd apologized for something. "I don't mean to keep you or anything."

Or bore him.

Oh, Kathy.

"Pretty sure listenin' to the students is part of the point of me bein' here," Eliot said. That part of being a teacher, he could do. "Go on, now I'm all curious."

"There was no way I could afford all those supplies with what I had on me," she explained, unconsciously wringing her hands a bit. "And there's no way they would have let me get the painkillers and penicillin without a prescription. So, I...I kinda robbed a store. I mean, I left as much money behind as I had, but that doesn't change facts."

She described to him the events of the robbery, from the realization she could use her bloodsoaked uniform to good advantage all the way to kicking the chair out of the way of the door and fleeing into the night.

Eliot nodded along, impressed. "You came up with that on the fly, huh? Nice. I probably woulda let him stew in the store room longer, though. Never know when a guy's gonna think he's Ratman and go after ya."

"I figured I'm faster than he is," Kathy said, perking up like a flower after rain with his approval. "Though, I guess that wouldn't have mattered if he'd had, like, a weapon..."

That hadn't occurred to her at the time.

"But I wasn't sure when I'd be able to go back and get him and it seemed cruel to leave him in there overnight."

"Most times that won't be a problem. Employees are told not to chase shoplifters anymore -- it's a whole insurance thing." The insurance industry was actually quite a boon to thieves, so long as they didn't employ crazed geniuses to chase them down. "But yeah, you never know when you're gonna find an outlier. 'Course, best way to deal with that is to make sure the employees never know what's happening at all."

You were hoping for a lesson in being a better con artist/thief, right, Kathy?

...Yeah, kinda actually.

"I don't think I could take hidden everything I needed without some kind of bag of holding," Kathy said, dubious.

"You'd be surprised by what people don't notice. You distract someone properly, and you could literally turn into a different person without them noticing."

RE: Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

RE: Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!

Re: Find your teachers, eat some popcorn, observe others!