fandomhigh | 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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"You're one of those roof-climbers, aren't you?" Atton asked.

'Cause he remembered you, Kathy.

Kathy shrugged. "It's an easy way to get around," she replied. "And people don't normally look up."

"Yeah, but I imagine that takes different techniques than fighting on the ground," Atton said. "Can you talk a little more about that?"

"I usually engage on the ground," Kathy said. "There's not usually a whole lot of actual rooftop work going on, at least not in the parts of Baltimore I patrol." She sounded apologetic that she couldn't immediately deliver an entire treatise on the subject.

"But from what little I've fighting I've done on rooftops, you've got to be a lot more careful. The space is more limited and if you miscalculate, you don't end up running into a wall, you end up falling several stories. And not a lot of cleanup and maintenance are done on roofs, so you have to watch for debris, puddles, weak spots. It's easy to trip on something, slide on loose shingles or brick, or get caught on cracks in the concrete. And the debris is not only a hazard but a potential weapon for someone to get their hands on. It's a lot like fighting on an unexpected obstacle course. You've got to avoid industrial fans, chimneys, and piles of junk, while not sticking your foot through a patch of rotten wood or accidentally dodging over the side."

Atton nodded. Hey, that was treatise enough for him.

"So how do you get down while you're patrolling?" he said. "'Cause if you take the slow way down, I take it you'll miss your target."

That got him a grin that was just the littlest bit bloodthirsty around the edges. "Why bother with the slow way?" she asked. "I jump. In the city, you never really lack for things to bounce off of on your way down."

"So parkour, basically," Atton said. "That won't be a bad one to try in class one of these days. Thanks."

101 Ways To Survive In The Field, Tuesday

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