fandomhigh | Diplomacy, Relationships & Tactics: the Art of War [Monday, Period 1]

Ghanima was sitting on her desk as the students arrived, her text placed neatly in her lap. Exactly like any other day of class.

The moment the last student was seated, she flipped her book open. "Good morning, class, and welcome. Today with the Third P'ien," she said, holding up the book. "'Attack by Stratagem.' Or as one of my former co-teachers once called it, 'Avoiding Attack by Stratagem from my side of the fence: Make Love, Not War and Drink Sake and Keep Calm ♥.'" Some days Ghanima missed Shunsui very, very much. "Or, in the words of Tzu, 'Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.'"

"Sun Tzu also said that 'He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.' And, of course, there's the phrase everyone knows, but rarely do they know the source. 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.' Know thy enemy and know thyself."

"So, how do you formulate a plan of attack, if are forced to fight? Resorting immediately to violent means is not always the best option. 'Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans;'" Ghanima recited, watching all of them carefully. "'The next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces; the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field; and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.' So speaks Tzu. I'm curious as to how you feel this reflects the every day world, and if you have seen this applied at all in Fandom."

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"To... to whatever problem the island is up against," Peridot hedged, sounding faintly uncertain, now. "Has your assigned sibling told you about the island's occasionally hostile situations, yet?"

"Yes, but so far I have not found any information on the defense strategies," Breq replied. "I considered bringing it up at the Student Council meeting, but they were more concerned with parties."

Peridot reached up and scratched her head in thought.

"I'm not familiar enough about Earth to know if there's any way to plan defense strategies," she confessed. "But I don't know if there's anything in place, exactly."

"If there isn't, there should be. I would be willing to help with this, should there be a way to organize it."

Perhaps it would at least feel familiar to her, even if she had spent her long life attacking rather than defending.

Peridot nodded her head a little, looking curious.

"What would you do?"

"First of all there should be a warning system in place, to give us time to prepare," Breq said. "Then everyone have to have their assigned roles, so that in case of attack everyone knows what to do and who to report to."

This was quite elementary, really, but if the island didn't even have this...

How had the place survived?

Peridot squinted for a moment, looking thoughtful.

"Though... how would you set up an early warning defense system for things like reality breaking? I haven't been here all that long, and I've already seen that happen once as it is."

"Doesn't that depend on how reality breaks?" Breq actually considered this. "How does reality break?"

Reality breaking? Maybe this was a Gem way of putting things.

Peridot shrugged a little.

"In my experience so far, the source of the break was elsewhere," she replied. "Any early warning system would, in circumstances like that, have to somehow span every corner of the multiverse. Every timeline. Every reality. Every possibility."

Maybe a Sapphire could manage it?

"No warning system can cover every possible event," Breq replied. "That doesn't mean they're useless."

After a moment she added: "But tell me, what happened?"

Because where she was from, reality didn't break.

Peridot spread her hands a little.

"People went to sleep one night in Fandom. People woke up in the morning in another Fandom."

That was about what she'd gathered of that.

Breq considered this for a moment.

"I'm not sure that can be considered an invasion, strictly speaking."

"I'm not entirely certain 'a hurricane throwing sharks around' really counts as one, either," Peridot noted, "but that seems to be the game this island plays. Not many 'invasions' really count as... invasions. Not in any sense I've ever known."

"I would say a hurricane counts as a natural disaster, not as an invasion," Breq said. "You can make defenses against those as well, but I have less experience of that."

"Hurricane plus sharks," Peridot stressed, and waved her hands around a little. "Mean ones."

She didn't even know what a shark was before that had happened.

"What was used to defend against the sharks?" Breq asked, curious.

"Spaceships," Peridot replied, and then shrugged. "Carrying more sharks."

"Why more sharks?" That seemed illogical. But now she also had another question:

"Are there spaceships here?"

"We froze the sharks and used them to stop the hurricane," Peridot said. It seemed logical enough to her, anyway. "And of course there are. Some people did come here from space, after all."

It made no sense to Breq whatsoever, but she wan't going to pursue the subject further right now.

"What job did you find for yourself in this?" She asked Peridot.

Then, regarding the spaceships, she added: "Where can they be found?"

Peridot shrugged her shoulder.

"I think there's a landing pad on the roof of the MCA apartments," she shared. "And another one in the scrapyard. That's the one I'm more familiar with."

Though she didn't have a ship.

Diplomacy, Relationships & Tactics: the Art of War [Monday, Period 1]

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