fandomhigh | School Assembly, Wednesday, September 2, 2020 [afternoon]

Anakin had opened up the auditorium for the first time in a while and was trying very hard to suppress memories of a holiday pageant gone horribly, horribly wrong. Remembering being a young, stupid high school student was made easier with his best friend back on the island for the first time in a while, but she, at least, had brought a smile to his face as he made final adjustments to the targets they'd set up on stage, and then glanced over to the elaborate obstacle course they'd made behind the area cleared behind the students, and extended to basically all of the space around the school that wasn't a building--while they waited as everyone arrived.

"It's a good thing we've checked out every paintball course on the East Coast over the last ten years." Anakin began when everyone was settled down. He had Aeryn had then gotten thrown out of every paintball course on the East Coast by making small children cry, but details! "It's helped to make this, the greatest paintball course, to properly teach weapons safety." He gestured to the obstacle course set up behind the students' chairs. "You, of course, also passed some of it in the grassy area on your way in."

Because everything doing was worth overdoing by an order of magnitude: the unofficial Skywalker motto.

"Now, most of you probably have some experience with weapons by now," said Aeryn, who still made those kinds of assumptions about Fandom, even the first week of school. "And hopefully you haven't shot a hole in anything you will need later. There's more to it than that."

Anakin nodded. "Now you've all checked your lethal weapons in so that you don't shoot people, no matter how annoying, in the dorms." He grinned at Aeryn. "Meet Aeryn Sun, the reason we have that rule."

"It was one time," Aeryn protested.

"It's how I knew we'd be friends," Anakin said. "But! Weapons should be used safely. You need to be able to aim and fire at the butt you are intending and not kill someone instead. There's paperwork."

Also, it was wrong.

"And it's wrong," he added belatedly.

"And, usually messy," Aeryn said. They were so helpful! "Avoid the face. Keep your weapon pointed down unless you are prepared to fire it. That will also keep the situation less stressful for everyone unless you intend to make it stressful..."

Then they proceeded to give an extremely detailed and competent (probably too competent for any high schoolers not used to being armed all the time) run-through of a series of gun-adjacent weapons.

"But you don't really learn by watching," Anakin admitted, picking up the last of their samples. "Let's get some volunteers up here for demonstrating."

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Get a bad feeling about this, if that's your thing. Students, find a cool person to sit next to! Teacher, find the problem kids and sit far away so they aren't your problem!

Rubberneck at the frankly insane course Anakin and Aeryn have spent the entire summer planning.

This had almost felt like a normal school for a moment, having to pile into a seat to be talked at like this.

And then Maeve got a hold of the course and there went that notion.

Adora's eyes sparkled when she saw the paintball course.

Obstacle courses made everything better!

Yeah, Ulysses was eyeing everything here with a pretty clear air of not being super into, like... whatever it was that was about to happen here.

But he was pretty sure he wasn't about to be bored. So, there was that.

Tahani sighed overdramatically as she slid into a chair. "This part they keep from regular school?" she complained.

"Oh, don't worry," Ulysses replied, with only a quick glance over at her before resuming his wary eyeing of everything in front of them right now. "It's like, bound to turn into some weird shit any minute now."

"My teacher yesterday dropped us into a hole to prove that we should look out for holes or something," Tahani griped.

"Yeah, well, and did you learn that lesson?"

That was good-natured sarcasm, he promised.

Oh look, one of the only people she liked enough to be upset about the fact she'd missed a year of school.

Illyana dropped her lanky frame down into a seat next to him, draping her legs over the chair in front of her. "So is this a new thing, or have I been missing out on more tragically boring nonsense?"

You know you'd missed her, Uly.

Ulysses had switched his wary eyeing of his surroundings to scrolling his phone and occasionally warily eyeing his surroundings. Someone sitting down next to him was enough to make him fully look up, though.

And then his eyebrows went way up.

"Illyana," he said, his surprise evident in his voice, too. "What the fuck, I thought you'd gotten, like -- eaten by something."

"To be fair, I did almost get eaten by something," she allowed. "Sorry, went home for the weekend, got caught up in interdimensional magical nonsense. It was two weeks for me, apparently a year for the rest of you."

"I have to repeat the grade."

"Well, you didn't miss much," Ulysses said, still kind of eyeing her with a mix of confusion and surprise. It'd abate in a moment. "'Cept maybe that whole volcano bullshit."

"Volcanoes are always bullshit," Illyana decided after thinking about it for a second. "Never seen a volcano that wasn't bullshit."

She'd never seen or met any, but that was beside the point.

And that was something Ulysses was more than willing to accept.

"Yeah, hard same, actually," he said, finally slouching back in his seat and out of the uncharacteristically alert posture he'd had for the last moment. "So welcome back. I'm sure we're about to get, like, some manner of bullshit or other thrown at us right now, too."

He gestured at the -- everything, in front of them.

"They look way too enthusiastic for this to end well for us," she decided, squinting at the teachers in question. "I know sadists when I see them."

Re: Arrive and Mingle

amitragic - 2020-09-02 20:47 (UTC) - Expand

Shuri was already taking notes on the room set-up. She knew a weapons obstacle course when she saw one and could come up with one or two improvements from where she was sitting.

Not that she'd mention that to either Dean Skywalker or his scary friend. They looked very serious about this.

Eleanor saw the obstacle course and let out a laugh-snort. "Someone is going to get some forking exercise today."

...

"Oh, fork. I hope it isn't me."

A school assembly? On a Wednesday?

Maaaan, this school was weird!

But Troy was down for it, and his interest was definitely piqued when he got there and realized that this might not exactly be Riverside High pep rally level of assembly, and he hoped wherever he chose to sit for this was a cool spot to sit.

Mae was super excited about that obstacle course. Look at all the things to jump and balance on!

She was wondering where the goop was, though. She'd met you, Anakin.

And look who it is!

"So. You taking bets on this?"

Oh. Eleanor. No.

Freya took a seat (towards the back, of course) with a curious look on her face at the obstacle course, which definitely seemed to confirm her suspicion that these assemblies might just happen to be just like the Wednesday activities had been but with an added layer of useful information.

Because she certainly didn't know much about paintball or guns, but she was definitely intrigued to know more.

Illyana did not know what a 'school assembly' even was, but she'd been told to go to the auditorium, and so here she was.

It did not take Astrid long at all to realize, as she settled into a seat with her sketchbook on her lap, that she probably didn't need to worry about getting bored enough to actually succumb to sketching, and she wondered why there was still part of her brain that had even thought, at this school, that would have been the case.

Arabella had been expecting a much more boring assembly than that obstacle course seemed to promise.

"This seems promising," she observed to no one.

Wayne didn't necessarily need all the lessons on paintball gun use and shootin', but he could understand and appreciate the reasonin' behind it, and, boy, he could fuck up some paintball right about now, that's what he was thinkin'.

Not quite shootin' coyotes in the ass back home on the farm, but he'll take it.