fandomhigh | Civics - Art of Civil Disobedience Monday 4th Period

When the class filed in today, they caught Jack mid-harangue. Standing near Peebee in an obvious pose of annoyance, hands on hips, eyes narrowed and lips tight. "..can't believe you did that! Do you know how much trouble that'll cause? What the hell were you thinking?!" She looked over and saw the students and dropped it. "We'll deal with this after class. Go sit down."

Peebee had one hand on her hip and was visibly rolling her eyes throughout the entire lecture. "It was a perfectly innocent experiment. Purely in the name of science. So everything in that room turned out to be super combustible? Great! Now we know that, don't we?"

She sketched an exaggerated bow, complete with one hand twirling in the air, and sauntered off to her seat looking completely unrepentant and in fact quite pleased with herself.

Jack still looked annoyed when she took roll. "Alright, so. Today's class is going to be about how not to get caught." She threw a hard glance at Peebee. "Because that's generally a bad life choice. Plus, it's sloppy. Don't be sloppy if you can help it."

The class was interrupted by a bunch of armored Troopers filing in. Jack looked up and frowned. "The he..ck do you guys want?"

Liam looked around the classroom, his expression grim. His gaze lingered on Peebee just a smidgen longer than it did on any of the other students.

“I’m afraid you’re all going to have to come with me,” he said, signaling with one hand to the Troopers, who began to move throughout the classroom, standing next to each desk and holding out a pair of handcuffs expectantly.

"Are they under arrest?" Jack challenged.

"Not yet," Liam said evenly. "So long as everyone co-operates. I'm just bringing them in for questioning."

"Heh." Peebee glanced from Liam to Jack, then back to Liam. "Whoops?"

Jack gave Liam a hard look. "I'll go with until we can get an actual child advocate in the room." She gave Peebee a short glance at the word 'child' that hopefully conveyed 'for the love of all that is right in the universe do not tell the cop your actual age'. "Alright, class," Jack drawled sarcastically, "I guess today's a field trip instead."

Yeah, Liam's stern demeanor might have cracked a little bit had he found out that Peebee was roughly seven times his own age.

"Let's go." The Troopers were still holding out those cuffs; privately Liam hoped that at least some of the students would remember they shouldn't have to be cuffed if they weren't being arrested.

[Thanks to

onefootoutthedoor and

firstofitskind for the preplay! OCD is up, class is OPEN]

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"If I could remember where I hid my tattoo gun from last time," Astrid murmured, her hand feeling underneath the bench she was sitting on for about the fourth time, "and they didn't find it, we could space out and doodle here, too."

On...each other. Which was totally a normal thing people did, right?

Mae brightened up a little. "You have a tattoo gun? . . . Wait, when did you hide a tattoo gun in a jail cell?"

Astrid, you'd always been interesting, but you were reaching whole new levels.

"Oh, man," Astrid had to pause for a moment to think back, a little surprised that it had been long enough that she'd forget exactly how long ago it was, unconsciously rubbing her arm a little where her tattoo underneath her sleeve seemed to itch a little. She bit her lip, going back a little bit, a little bit further...and being slightly mystified by the passage of time.

"It...had to have been homecoming weekend, I think," she said, after a moment. I got busted for scratching up some art in the front window at Turtle & Canary. That's...kind of the only reason I work there, actually. Summer said she wouldn't press charges if I just worked off the damages, and then she offered to keep me on if I wanted because she liked the art I did for her signs."

As long as it stayed on the signs.

"Anyway, I was super bored and put a gun together with some parts and pieces I found when I asked to use the bathroom." It was still a little weird to think that they'd even been there in the first place, almost like they were waiting for her, like destiny wanted her to find them. "And this," she rolled up the long sleeve on her shirt to reveal the oleander tattoo on her upper left arm, "is the result."

She wondered if she should have mentioned Norman's part in this story, but he seemed a little embarrassed about the whole thing, really, and she wasn't no snitch.

"So . . . she said she wouldn't press charges, but she did have you arrested?"

Mae made a mental note to be careful with any further shoplifting done at the T&C. Apparently Summer was slightly more ruthless than anticipated.

"You have a for-real prison tattoo. That's so badass."

"Well," Astrid, awkward in this newfound badassery and completely unable to own it, was quick to roll down her sleeve and explain at least some of it away, "I was brought in by one of those guys," quirking a chin toward the nearest trooper, "who caught me, but she did let me sweat it out for longer than she probably had to. And it's not like this is, like, real prison or anything..."

Which she had been to...just...as a guest. But that counted for something, right? She didn't want to lose any footing she'd just gained, either, so she just added a vague, "This place is nothing compared to the real thing."

Which now made it sound like she'd been there as more than a guest, but....if she didn't need to clarify...she...wasn't going to.

Mae shrugged. "Okay. You have a baby-prison tattoo. Which you made yourself. Out of stuff you found in a bathroom." She gave Astrid a knowing look. "Bad. Ass."

She kicked her feet for a moment, looking away.

"Can I ask you a really weird question?"

Bad ass was a description Astrid would never be able to picture being applied to herself, but it was kind of hard to argue with Mae's logic, especially when a weird little flush of pride and pleasure came along with it.

It was bad ass, wasn't it?

She was actually capable of a bad ass thing. Imagine that.

She grinned a little faintly to herself and then shrugged. "Sure," she said, wondering exactly what the margin for a weird question even was in a place like this. "Shoot. It's not like we've got a whole lot else to do right now."

Mae nodded, kicking her feet around a little harder.

"Do I look like a cat to you?"

That...was a weird question. Astrid was pretty sure she couldn't have guessed that even if she tried. So she blinked a little, tilted her head thoughtfully as she looked a Mae as if to confirm it, then she nodded. "Like you have a cat's face," she said. "Or head, really, because of the ears. Kind of....like Sidon has a shark head. Although not really, because his whole head looks like a whole shark, have you noticed that?, while your head just looks like a cat's head."

She frowned a little.

"Should it not?"

Here, she was working so hard to get used to the whole cat's face thing, too, and doing pretty well with it, if she did say so herself.

Edited 2019-03-18 19:33 (UTC)

Mae shook her head and shrugged. "I just look like my family."

Her family, it should be noted, all also had cat heads.

Yeah. Astrid sort of had a feeling that would be the case. Her brow furrowed a little as she mulled this over, which wasn't very easy for her.

And, if it wasn't easy for her, it had to really be something else for Mae.

"You'll have to show me a picture," she decided. "If we ever get out of the slammer, anyway. But now...I kind of have to wonder...do I look like a cat to you?" Maybe cats where she was from looked like humans? "Or...some other animal, maybe?"

Mae let out a little sigh. "I'd have mentioned if you did."

How had it been months and no one bothered to mention this?

Because it was Fandom and they had shark people and blue people and Beaker, so it was generally considered impolite to bring it up?

Astrid offered up a sympathetic smile. "It's not a bad look," she offered, though she didn't feel it would be very helpful. It also made Mae easily one of the most interesting people on the island to draw, but that didn't seem helpful to mention, either. Just kind of...awkward. "And maybe it's not even you. Maybe it's just this place. It's a pretty weird place, Mae. Maybe it just...for some reason, makes you look like a cat to some people."

She shrugged. "Or maybe it's me. And...whoever else said something, because I'm guessing you wouldn't have mentioned it if someone else hadn't mentioned it to you first."

"The teacher," Mae said. "I didn't get why she wanted me to have a different look for my fake ID."

She supposed if other people thought she looked like a cat that kind of made sense. But wouldn't they then just be confused why Mae looked like a cat and her ID didn't?

Civics - Art of Civil Disobedience Monday 4th Period - FIELD TRIP

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