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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"I'm Frank Doyle, and I'm a... Junior, I want to say? And this is a Scotch which is of college age," Frank said, holding his glass up. "Being in the field to me often means dealing with ghosts, demons, monsters, and the like, or it could mean being in an actual field for some reason. If you need somebody to deal with exorcisms or just plain scolding of spirits, please look elsewhere. But if you're really in desperate need, I can help, but not until after this drink."

And he drank.

Right, it was the walking distillery that made Atton's head hurt a lot.

"You might wanna go easy on that while you're in class," he said. "So, ghost experience? What's that like?"

"You're probably right. I hereby promise to resort to no more of three of the flasks I have about my person should this bottle empty," Frank said, holding an empty bottle up. "Make that five."

"And ghost work is surprisingly lively," Frank said. "Most of the time it's more a discussion than a fight, but when it's a fight, it pays to play dirty. I have held seances to call a ghost's parent and tattle."

Atton blinked. "Wait, you can take down ghosts by calling their parents?" he said. "We should've known that two weeks ago."

"It needs to be the right kind of ghost. A child ghost throwing a tantrum? Who better than its parents? But then you do run the risk of the parents overstaying their welcome and before long you're summoning their inlaws," Frank said. "Or you can just use the proper incantation to rid yourself of the bunch, but it's tidier to convince them to leave our world."

101 Ways To Survive In The Field, Tuesday

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