fandomhigh | School Assembly, Wednesday, September 15, 2020

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!event: assembly

School Assembly, Wednesday, September 15, 2020

The auditorium looked like a regular auditorium, the chairs were arranged in a normal way and Anakin was pretty sure that the chance of teddy bear maiming was extremely minimal this week! He climbed up onto the stage and strode to the rostrum. "Hello again, students, and welcome to our third week of extremely productive and life-enriching talks. This week's is brought to you by two of our esteemed business leaders from town--Beau Lionett & Yasha Nydoorin--and they are hear to discuss with you--"

He reached for the cue card the office had provided, "--Using Your Destructive Tendencies for Fun and Profit! Wait."

Too late, Anakin, here come the speakers now!

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Wei Wuxian waved hello at T-Bone.

Troy met that wave with a lift of his chin.

"S'up, Wei Wuxian," and man he hoped he got that right! It had been a hot minute!, "how's it going?"

He did!

"Things are going well. How about you? Did you get a good roommate?" Wei Wuxian asked.

"Arabella's pretty cool," Troy said with a grin, "plus a legit straight-up hottie, and our room is pretty much a blanket fort," well, not really quite yet, but it was so gonna be!, "soooo, yeah. I'd say so.

"What about you?" he asked. "Who'd you get?"

"Eleanor," Wei Wuxian said. "Also a ~~legit snack~~ 'hottie'." If he was using that word right. "She's pretty awesome. She's messy, but being messy is not so bad. I don't know what my brother was always complaining about. She introduced me to tequila, but that's not as good as the Emperor's Smile back home."

He definitely was.

"Man," Troy groaned a little. "I almost made out with her in class last week."

He went for ice cream instead.

There were regrets!

And that regret was showing on his face and the disappointed (in himself) wag of his head, and the sigh that might have been heavier if that whole three-minute-date with Alexis hadn't gone so well and for the fact that he was pretty sure those opportunities weren't entirely exhausted.

"Also, it's weird, right? That you can get a drink at the bar here, and, like, no one cares? But what's Emperor's Smile? Is that like No-No Juice?"

"In class?" he asked."Emperor's Smile is a wine. Pure, but not cold. Mellow, but not provocative." He sighed wistfully at the memory. "The only place I know that bans wine is Cloud Recesses." He gave a quick shake of his head. "They have 3000 rules there. 3000!"

"Yeah," Troy offered, "for Economics."

Which probably did not help clear things up, no.

"And that is a lot of rules. I mean, I'm Jehovah's Witness, and we have a lot of rules, too, but I'm not sure it's 3000 a lot."

His brow furrowed as he thought about it, though, lips moving a little as if counting.

"...but it's probably close," he concluded, figuring they'd be here for a while if he actually did try to count, and he'd probably miss a bunch anyway because it wasn't like he paid attention to most of them, anyway.

That didn't sound right, but he didn't know enough about Economics classes to dispute it.

"Doesn't it drive you nuts? I couldn't live with that many rules. When I was studying at Cloud Recesses, I was constantly getting into trouble," Wei Wuxian said.

"I feel it helps," Troy offered after some more thinking about it, "if you think of them more like suggestions than actual rules? At least that's what I've found, but, yeah, sometimes," he shifted a little uncomfortably where he sat, "it does not work out well at all. Nice thing about here, though, is no one's going to know when we break those rules, and there doesn't seem to be that many crazy rules here, either."

His head tilted thoughtfully at Wei Wuxian.

"So this Cloud Recesses is a school?"

"Oh, I treat all rules as suggestions," Wei Wuxian said. Look, he tried to obey! But sometimes they were stupid rules, like "don't run" or "don't drink alcohol" or "don't raise an army of the walking dead" and people got all cranky when you didn't do what they said.

"Cloud Recesses is the home of the Gusu Lan Sect. All the sects train their own disciples, but some sects open up lessons to guest disciples as well," Wei Wuxian said, spinning his pen in his fingers as he spoke. "My brother and sister and I went to study there for six months. It's very strict. But it was all right, really," he added, tapping the pen against his chin. "I met Lan Zhan there and we only got beaten a little."

Or things like 'don't celebrate birthdays' or 'don't take bribes' or 'don't have blood transfusions!'

Troy was nodding along with Wei Wuxian with a certain sense of definitely understanding each other on this one.

"Who's Lan Zhan?" he then asked, followed by, "Did you have to pick out your own switches, too? Man, that's always the worst."

Nana Barnes was very particular about you picking out a...'good' one, too...

"No, they had boards!" He held his hands about 6 inches apart and then held one hand over his head to show height. "And they had the rules carved on them! And Lan Zhan, oh, Lan Zhan." He had a soft, fond smile. "He's my friend. The most talented cultivator I know. And he loves those silly Lan rules."

"A board's got some weight to it," Troy allowed, "but a switch'll sting."

That was pretty hardcore that the rules were written on the board itself, though now Troy was wondering how they'd managed to fit all 3000 of them on there. With, like, maybe the tiniest writing ever.

But the smile Wei Wuxian had for his friend made Troy smile, too. "Do you miss it yet?" he wondered. "Home and your friends and stuff?"

"The discipline whips are worse, but those are for serious offenses," he said. His smile faded at the mention of home. "Yes, I miss them." But he pasted on a new smile. "I'm meeting lots of new people, though! What about you? Do you miss your home?"

"Sometimes," Troy admitted, his brow furrowed a little as he wondered if maybe he should be misisng them a little more. "But this is sort of my first time actually away from home, so it's mostly just exciting and different, you know?"

And most of his friendships were all pretty superficial and based around the football he decided to leave behind.

"What's your home like?" Wei Wuxian asked, curious to know about other worlds.

"There's...mountains," Troy offered, "...and ~~inexplicably palm trees~~ school. And my family. It's...pretty normal, especially compared to this place. Pretty good fro-yo, though! And there's a pretty good mall."

Okay, yeah, now that he was laying it all out in front of him, Troy did not feel all that bad about not missing it too much right now...

A whole other world, though! "What's a mall? What's fro-yo?" And, "what do you mean by 'normal'?"

Troy shrugged a little. "I don't know," he said. "I guess that there's really nothing special about Riverside, or even the greater Greendale area, except that we've got two community colleges when, really, do you even need one? And fro-yo is frozen yogurt. It's not really that good? But it's popular." So naturally he felt inclined to like it. "And a mall is, like...a big building with a lot of shops in it, but I don't think a whole lot of people actually go there to shop, just to sort of hang out for a while?"

And he wasn't really surprised to hear that Wei Wuxian might be from somewhere that didn't even have a mall, but there was still a little sympathy in his expression for it.

"A marketplace indoors? That's a clever idea! You could shop inside away from the rain and the sun," Wei Wuxian said. "What's a community college?"

"It's..." Troy took a moment to consider the best way to describe it. "...like a regular college, but worse? And more...community-y? I'll probably end up going to one, since I probably lost out on my football scholarship with that keg flip." Here, he shook his head, to make sure to convey the proper amount of sadness for such an ill-fated tragedy. "Definitely Greendale over City College, though. Greendale has that commercial with the student who gives a thumbs up in a cool way."

Which, of course, meant Troy would have to demonstrate that cool way, cheesy grin and all, for Wei Wuxian, and then he'd totally get it, too.

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School Assembly, Wednesday, September 15, 2020

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