fandomhigh | Culture Shock, Thursday, Period 2

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culture shock

Culture Shock, Thursday, Period 2

Once again, class was being held in the danger shop, and this time around, students were stepping into.... Some manner of dark forested swampland. There was a rack with assorted weaponry on it, mostly blasters or vibro-lances, sitting next to a tree nearby.

Kanan was looking entirely too smug about this setup, class.

"Last week we discussed some of the strange transformations that the island can throw at you, which led to people turning into animals. A few people even turned into animals from their respective realities, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Wildlife from home versus wildlife on the island." He waved around the forested terrain and grinned. "This could be pretty much any swampy jungle planet back in my galaxy. The exact where of it doesn't matter. The important thing is..."

A howling screech of a roar cut through the terrain, so loud the ground underfoot shook.

"... It's got rancors."

Yeah, that would definitely be the puddles at your feet rippling to a rhythm faintly reminiscent of the water in a certain movie about hungry dinosaurs on an island somewhere.

None of those elements seemed to be helping Summer much with the Abyssinian cat clinging to her and staring at...everything with her giant, beautiful, prettiest eyes in the whole multiverse. "And I'm from the suburbs!" she chirped happily, while trying to move Pancakes away from digging her claws into her shoulder and hold her out for everyone to see. "We've got crap for wildlife, so I just brought my cat!"

A cat who was clearly thrilled to be there.

"Hey, she is pretty," Kanan mused, looking at Pancakes appreciatively. "... Should I tone down the rancor sim a little? We were going to let people take shots at them."

Kanan, nobody needed plural rancors.

"Naaaah," said Summer, who was now hunching slightly to accommodate for the fact that Pancakes seemed to think that the back of Summer's shoulders was clearly the best perch for stiffly watching out for plural rancors "we good. So, yeah! Rancors! And shooting at them! Because sometimes, that's honestly the best way to deal with wildlife, but if shooting's not your jam...there's a cat."

Someone please take the cat.

"And once the rancor sim has run its course and you've gotten your cat cuddle fix over with, we can go over a few examples of wildlife local to Fandom," Kanan added. "So arm yourself with blasters or cat treats, and-- Summer, we aren't running the gremlin sim yet."

Apparently nobody had informed the gremlin that was launching itself out of the branches of the nearest tree directly at Kanan's face of that plan. His eyes went wide, he threw out a hand, and the gremlin went flying back again, bouncing off the nearest tree, bouncing to its feet, and snarling before looking around for an easier set of ankles to chomp.

Apparently it was also not a sim.

And of course that was the moment not one, not two, but three rancors stormed into view.

And of course there went the cat, launching herself from Summer's shoulders to make sure she was running as quick as she could in the opposite direction.

[OOC: Open!]

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Oh. Oh no.

Lana Beniko

Keyleth

Sabine Wren

Well... That happened.

Keyleth had been thinking she’d spend most of class making happy flaily grabby hands at the cat because omgsopretty.

But then the gremlin happened.

And then the rancors.

. . . might as well just get used to it, Kiki. This was basically going to be your life anyway.

Rancors to shoot! Cat to catch and cuddle! Actual gremlin trying to bite you all! Because nothing says culture shock class like absolute chaos, right?

Yeah! Wildlife!

This was where the Force came in handy.

Lana was grabbing one of those vibro-lances, finding a good tree, and jumping up into it.

Rancors she could try to handle. She wasn't risking the gremlin. If she spotted the cat, she'd try to pull it up here, too.

Keyleth decided she wasn’t going to even try to talk to the rancors, because she wasn’t using up a good chunk of her magical reserves for the day on reasoning with creatures that weren’t even real, but she did cast Speak with Animals anyway, just to yell for the cat.

“Kitty! Kitty kitty kitty! Just . . . stay away from the big stompy things, okay? Please? Like up in a tree somewhere nice and safe? Don’t worry about not being able to get down, okay? We’ll find you when all of this is done, promise!”

And then she made a little meep noise and summoned a thorn whip to lash out at one of the rancors, which didn’t do much more than wrap around its ankle and give it a few scratches (and pull it ten feet closer toward her, whoops), but yay she was helping?

"Speaking of trees, heads up!" Lana Force-grabbed Keyleth and pulled her up to her branch, safely (well, safer) away from the rancor.

"Don't get yourself stomped, either. Those things have hide like durasteel," she said. "Got anything that can get through that?"

"Not really," Keyleth said, wincing, then blurted out, "Wow, that was so cool how you did that! I mean .. . I can try and get them tangled up in vines, or cause a small earthquake and knock them down, but nothing that can really get through that hide."

Lana smiled. "Thanks. That whip was pretty great, too. It'd probably be really useful on anything other than a rancor." Kanan, you were getting such a stinkeye.

"Hm. Knocking them over would be good. Can you knock them over and then cover them in vines? I can hit them with lightning, but it won't kill them straight away, and then they'd know where we were. But if you knock them over and hold them down...?"

"I could," Keyleth said, sending another thorn whip at the rancor. "It'll just about tap me out for the day, but I can do it. Try, anyway."

Muttering something under her breath in Elvish, she gestured toward the ground below the rancor; with a low rumble, the ground in a ten foot square patch beneath it started to shake, and sent the rancor toppling.

"Hey, look at that!"

Another string of muttered Elvish and a few more gestures, and weeds and vines began to sprout from the swamp beneath the rancor, entangling it fairly thoroughly, and likely causing problems for any other rancors that might try to pass through the area.

"Thank you!" Lana grinned and sent streams of lightning down at the rancor, going for its face. It writhed and howled and eventually mostly stopped moving.

She kept it up as long as she could before stopping and clutching the tree trunk to look around. "Do you think we got it?"

“Oh wow, that was cool,” Keyleth blurted out, wide-eyed. “I haven’t figured out lightning yet.”

Experimentally, she summoned another thorn whip and took a whack at the rancor.

“I . . . don’t think it reacted to that?”

"I don't think so," Lana agreed. "So, one down...more to go." Because Kanan was insane.

"I can't do that whip, either," Lana pointed out. "Or the earthquake. There's a sort of whirlwind I can do to keep someone from moving, but it wouldn't work on anything that big."

And anyway it broke on damage.

"You do a lot of things with plants?" she asked curiously.

Sabine could ignore the gremlin. Her armor protected the parts it was most likely to bite. And hey, at least she could use boaters!

Even if she grabbed a couple and said, "Well, these are boring," and wondering if she could get away with painting some at work later.

Anyway, shooting!

"Well, you got your shooting," Lana called down.

"Yeah... this is a 'be careful what your wish for' situation," Sabine called back.

"At least you have blasters!" Yes, Lana was annoyed at the lack of lightsaber. "For all the good they'll do against rancors."

"If it helps, I'd rather be using explosives!" Sabine pointed out. She finally had enough for this sort of thing...

"I'd rather you were using explosives, too!" Lana called back.

Honestly, rancors!

About what? Who knows. Just discuss something once the sim gets shut off and the gremlin gets shown out. Which could be good and educational depending on whether that gremlin got lucky today.

When they tag in!

If anyone needed Kanan during all the chaos, they'd have to grab him while he tore around the woods, attempting to catch the gremlin before it could cause any harm to the students. He was pretty certain he recognized the little bastard as the one he'd evicted from his bathroom on the weekend.

If anyone needed him after it, he'd be the one leaning against the danger shop wall, facepalming. Forever.

"I know you promised we'd get to do shooting, but..."

Because of course Sabine would have to say something.

Really, Kanan's hand was going to just become a permanent fixture on his face, at this rate.

"What would you have changed, Sabine?"

Kanan would have changed all of it after the whole gremlin cameo, but since he hadn't had control over that bit...

"Well, we can start with the gremlin," Probably obviously, "and then move on to the cat."

"That gremlin. If I get my hands on that gremlin, I swear, I'll..."

He'd probably pitch it out another window.

Which would make for a great ongoing feud between man and gremlin going forward, no doubt.

"You'll get bit?" Sabine guessed.

Kanan deflated slightly at that.

"I mean, the goal here would be to avoid that," he muttered.

... He'd probably get bit.

"It is the Danger shop, maybe it's not a real gremlin?" Sabine was also not working off that idea, just in case.

"It was a real gremlin," Kanan sighed. "It has a completely different feel in the Force than a holo-sim projection."

In that it actually had a presence in the Force.

"Okay, then I wouldn't try getting your hands on it, then. At least it was an interesting class!"

Yep!

"At least it was that," Kanan sighed, leaning his head back to thunk against the wall. "... I'll try to get something a little less chaotic to shoot at in the future."

But no promises, with gremlins.

"Maybe not three rancors," she suggested.

"... Four?"

Kanan.

"Kanan."

Was he starting to get used to that tone from her? He probably should be.

It was entirely possible that he aimed for it.

"Fewer rancors," he promised, holding up his hands in surrender. "Probably no rancors, going forward. At least until whatever disaster I end up teaching in the summer."

"Maybe one rancor, so the newbies don't get scared," she said. "Will the summer have shooting?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead, Sabine," Kanan laughed, shaking his head. "I suppose I could just finally cut to the chase and do some kind of 'so you want to start a rebellion' class. But..."

He was not actually vastly experienced on the subject yet, himself.

"Maybe just a class that is, full stop, 'we're going to fight things now.'"

"I'd TA for that," she decided. Either? Both?

"I'd have you as a TA for that," Kanan replied. For either. Both.

"You could at least have given us lightsabers!" Lana groused.

Loudly. From up in a tree, avoiding the rancors.

"Yeah, it would've been useful for the kriffing gremlin," Kanan called back.

While chasing the aforementioned gremlin. With a vibro-lance in one hand.

Lana rolled her eyes, considered shooting lightning at the gremlin, and then thought better of it. She might hit Kanan, and she wasn't that annoyed with him.

Also he deserved the gremlin for the rancors.

Ohhh, don't mind Summer. If anyone needed her, she was totally available. In between little hisses of regret as she sort of nursed the nice little claw scratches on her shoulders from where Pancakes had dug in before leaping away.

Next time, she told herself, she'd have to remember to trim those claws before bringing her cat to a class with giant stomping space monsters in it.

It seemed a good idea at the time, okay??

Mod your rancors! Mod your weapons! Mod your gremlin! Mod mod moddy moddity mod! (Of course, if you'd like a rancor to fight or a gremlin to square off against, tap me in down here and I'll play it out, too!)

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Culture Shock, Thursday, Period 2

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Lecture!

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Animals!

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OOC!