fandomhigh | Competitive Teambuilding, Tuesday, period 1

Eliot had decided to let his partners sleep in this week (there may or may not have been late night teasing about Jacob Stone and the things he'd had to say about Eliot's life style over the weekend), and met the students in the Danger Shop alone. Jake's notes from the weekend had all sounded rather more mechanical than artsy or magical, all about "power, focus, and effect", which had gotten Eliot thinking about some of his old class assignments in a real actual public high school, and after some poking around in the system, he'd found an old scrap yard program he felt would work well for his purposes.

"Hey kids," he greeted as class was scheduled to start. "Hope you enjoyed the movie last week. Or the nap you took during the movie last week. This week we're getting back to work with something that may well be pretty familiar to those of you who've taken any modern American science classes." He picked an egg up out of a carton sitting somewhat precariously on a broken car seat. "Congratulations!" He grinned. "This is not your baby."

What? Ethics had that crap covered.

He tossed the egg into the air and caught it, then picked up two more from the carton and idly juggled them. "Your mission, yadda yadda, is to work out a way to drop one of these suckers off of that sucker," he pointed to a cherry picker, "without breaking it. You can use anything you find in this junkyard to do it. Points are awarded for lightweight design, speed of the drop, and creativity. Word to the wise: a banana is not actually a lightweight option here. But would've counted for creativity if I hadn't just told you about it." He caught the eggs again and tossed one to one member of each team. "You've got the whole class to work something out, and a whole carton of eggs to test drive with before the grand event. Get crackin'."

Yeah. He didn't even notice that pun. Sorry.

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To be honest, Ada was having a hard time paying attention to the lecture. She was too busy scoping out the junkyard with glee.

Carnies were great scavengers, and this place was ripe for exploration. It was just too bad it was all fake, and she wouldn't be able to take any of it out of class with her.

Quarians were excellent scavengers too, and Tali was sizing up the various objects with practiced ease.

"You look like you're having fun," she observed.

"Industrial salvage means gears," Ada said absently, bouncing on her toes. "Gears are so easily re-purposed, and if you talk 'em real sweet and shine 'em up, they last forever. Bet there's lots of copper, too, and wiring. Car engines, too, especially the old ones, just need love to remember how to live."

She gave Tali a sideways grin. "With all this here, I could probably build us a whole ferris wheel eventually."

"You know your way around salvage! I like the way you think," Tali said, chuckling. "I can think of at least a dozen things I could make with the things in this yard. FTL's probably not a possibility, not with these resources, but with a little bit of time I bet I could at least make something fly. So much potential left in all of these things, and no one bothers to see it."

"Just 'cause one part got dinged up, or something new an' fancy has come along, doesn't mean the bones aren't good," Ada agreed. "I think there's an actual junkyard on the island somewhere. Wonder what sort of scrap we'd find there!"

"Some of our fleet's ships may be hundreds of years old, but they hold up. Take care of anything well enough, and you can make it last. ~~But you still can't get cloth out of old cigarettes what even Fallout.~~" Tali stopped to inspect what looked like a section of an old refrigerator door. "You haven't been to the junkyard? You should go. It's actually pretty interesting."

Ada gave Tali a side-eye. "And I ain't gonna get yelled at for nicking anything people ain't using?"

In another life, Ada would totally be a Quarian.

She absolutely would.

"I haven't yet," Tali assured her, "and I stop by to pick up a few things at least once a week."

"Yeah?" she asked, perking up. "What are you working on?"

"A few different things. Mostly, experimenting -- a lot of this is really primitive technology to me." She felt vaguely bad about saying that, like she was being judgey. (And then she'd meet Javik eventually, and feel less bad about it.) "There's a few engines of some kind or another, though. They're actually pretty fascinating."

Competitive Teambuilding, Tuesday, period 1

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