fandomhigh | 101 Ways To Survive In The Field, Tuesday

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field survival

101 Ways To Survive In The Field, Tuesday

"Hey, class," Atton said.

He was sitting at the front of a perfectly ordinary classroom, though his butt was decidedly on his desk, and not his chair. "Welcome to the second day of Blow-Off Week, or as radio likes to call it, Introductions Season. I'm Atton Rand. I've served in two armies, been around for three wars, and nowadays I'm a Jedi knight, which is a fancy word for 'member of a group of monks with fancy powers who are also special operatives'." He shrugged. "Yeah, I don't really get it either, and I am one. I do know you never ask a Jedi about their teachings, though, unless you want to get a wall of cryptic mumbo-jumbo thrown at you."

Somewhere, Mical was getting a headache.

"So I've been around the block a few times," he said. "You don't make it through three wars purely by running on fumes and luck: there are things you can learn to keep yourself going while you're in a threatening situation - combat, infiltration, whatever - and it looks like things might go downhill. Now, there's no substitute for sheer, bull-headed stubbornness, and if you've already got that one, then you'll probably figure out half of what we're going to be talking about yourself if you haven't already. At the same time, having a hard head isn't going to stop your leg from bleeding out if you get hit. You need basic medic skills. You need to know how to keep your adrenaline pumping so you can keep functioning until you're out of there. You need to know how to get out of a locked room. And so on. I know all of that stuff because I've lived it."

He shrugged. "Now I know that at this school, the chances are high most of you know at least some of this already. Maybe even more than me, though I doubt it. So let's kick this off with name and year, and then you can tell me what 'in the field' means to you and what skills you already have that are useful in it."

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"Laura Kinney. In the field applies to any situation you find yourself that qualifies as an operation, mission or assignment. It denotes a state of mind regarding the sort of affairs involved." It was partly what she had been taught partly what she had come to learn.

"I am highly proficient in both black and covert ops. Among other things." So you know, just your average teenager.

Hey, no judging from the guy who (stupidly) ran off to war when he was sixteen, here.

"So infiltration and combat techniques," Atton said. Remarkably lightly for someone talking to a teenager about this, yes. "Anything else? What's your specialty?"

"Basically, yes." If he was trying to make it not sound like he was talking with a child soldier of sorts, Laura was grateful.

She was about to answer his question, but ultimately just bit her lower lip and looked away. "I have been told not to speak lightly of it." And she was want sure admitting she was proficient in killing people would be the best way to settle in the island.

There might be people in the classroom who'd have problems with it, so Atton got that.

It wasn't like he was eager to talk about his body count, here. "So that kind of training," he surmised. "Right. Okay, let me rephrase that: is there anything specific you want to learn while you're in this class, or can I just sit back and let you do the talking from here on in?"

That was a joke.

And Laura really didn't want to talk about hers. "I- I do not think I am qualified to teach."

Laura Kinney, assassin extraordinaire, bad with simple humor." I am sure there are things I do not know yet." Just a few, but there were.

Like how to distract people away from the important stuff with humor, apparently. That one had always worked pretty well for Atton during his assassin career.

"Guess we'll just have to figure those out," he said, shrugging. "If you think of anything, let me know. I've got some idea of the kind of training you probably got, but hey, it's different in every universe."

If Laura wanted a distraction, she used flash bangs. Although her preferred method of action involved getting shot a lot and just power through it.

"Okay." That he was willing to deal with her meant a lot to Laura. She wasn't sure he actually knew what kind of training she had had, but she was getting the feeling his own training wasn't all that nice, to put it in a ridiculously nice way. "Thank you." She was probably going to thank all her teachers at this rate.

When you were more or less baseline, confronted with people with powers beyond your imagining, it was usually best to have a distraction arsenal.

Though sometimes flash bangs worked, too.

"Eh, don't mention it, kid," he said. "You'll do fine."

She seemed like she needed a 'you'll do fine'.

Laura nodded in silence.

She sort of did.

"Necessity, huh?" Kathy asked quietly, once Atton moved on to another student.

Laura looked down. "It is more complicated than that."

"Hey," Kathy said, voice soft not just in volume but in intent, trying to get Laura to look up again. "Is it? Sounds like they wanted a more efficient tool. I bet they didn't ask if you wanted that training, either."

Atton'd noticed the conversation from the corner of his eyes, but he'd let it go, largely because he didn't want to call any attention to it.

But the body language was starting to make him wonder if he had to cut this short quick. They were in class, here.

"They had one, and lost it. So they made another." She wasn't looking up just yet.

Emphasis on made. "Asking was never in their plans."

"Asking might have reminded them that you're a person," Kathy said. "That they didn't have the right to do--any of it. Any of the things they did."

Which, yeah, Kathy wasn't going to assume ended at removing her claws to replace them with adamantium. She might not yet have figured out that Laura had meant made in its most literal sense, but that didn't make the conclusions she was putting together any nicer.

And even if she had, her response would have been the same. She was still a person, however she'd come into being.

"Unlikely", she muttered.

And she would be right, but probably far enough from the actual reality so that she wasn't outright terrified by it.

Funnily enough (or not), Kathy's well founded anger was making Laura feel bad, as if she was being blamed. She knew this wasn't the case, but she couldn't help it. It didn't make her less of a monster.

But she didn't want to talk about it, so she simply decided to close up.

Kathy recognized that closing off for what it was and realized that, once again, this was neither the time nor the place for any major conversation. She wracked her brains for something to say, something that could pull the conversation back to calmer waters, something that could deflect without being dismissive.

"You have breakfast yet?"

The change of subject was an obvios way to alleviate the conversation, and most likely continue it somewhere else, but Laura was grateful.

"Only some tea."

"I can show you where the cafeteria is after class if you want?" Yeah, this was a terrible attempt at a conversation shift, but Kathy was going to stick to her guns. "I've got a major assignment that's due this afternoon that I need to finish up, but ten minutes to make sure I don't pass out while I'm working on it seems like a fair trade."

Ten minutes. Not enough for a deep conversation about--whatever. But enough to just talk, like two girls on the first day of a new semester, even at as weird a school as this one.

"Assignment?" Hadn't they just begun classes? "I could help... if help is allowed." She was surprisingly good at many subjects, but maybe it was a personal thing.

"Besides that- yes, I would like to see the cafeteria." And talk, or pretend to talk, or something.

"I take extra classes on the computer," Kathy explained. "I'm trying to get into Stanford and UCLA and a handful of random classes won't cut it. Which is why I've got to write an essay about what I did over Christmas in Italian." She gave Laura a hopeful look. "Do you speak Italian?"

"I see. Impressive." And it made Laura realize that, despite her heroic streak, Kathy was thinking about her future. She was so much more real than Laura had ever felt... it made her think.

"I am fluent in several languages," Laura said. "Italian included."

There were shining eyes being pointed your way now, Laura. Shining. Eyes.

"You do?! Ohmigosh, breakfast is on me then, if you're willing to help. I picked up Italian because it's so close to Spanish, but that's also the problem. It's so close to Spanish that I sometimes forget which rules belong to which language."

Laura remembered her day at school with Megan. This was nothing like it. This was a lot better.

"I will. There are simple ways to tell them apart and to use their similarities to remember them." At least the Facility had made the effort to train their little assassin in all sorts of things, an actual education being in the mix.

"Well, sure. I know a lot more cursewords in Spanish than I do in Italian," Kathy joked. "But, seriously, learning that would be a lot of help. I'm learning Italian on my own from a book in English and I'm in the difficult place between knowing how to ask for directions to the library and actually being fluent."

101 Ways To Survive In The Field, Tuesday

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