fandomhigh | How to Be A Chocobro; Friday, First Period [09/10].

Good news, everybody! Your teachers weren't either tied up and shoved into closets or a small shouty child bent on world domination through chaos today! In fact, you would all be meeting in the Danger Shop that morning, where you would find a much larger-than-last-week Gladio, an Ignis, and a Prompto waiting for them, and it was Ignis who stepped forward to take the charge.

"And so it would seem," he began, in his cool, lofty voice, "that this class has, perhaps a bit unspurprisingly, considering the nature of this island and the unexpected subject of the class as a whole, got off on the wrong foot, but it appears that, this week, we have a chance to set it back on the right course."

Or at least try to.

"Welcome to what is, apparently, a class called How to Be a Chocobro," even just saying it made him feel absurd, "which was originally intended to be a sort of team building class, but I suppose the..." There was a small moment where Ignis closed his eyes as if he could not believe what was just about to leave his mouth in utter earnest, "moose felt that since there already was one of those, this course would take a different direction. But while we're figuring out exactly what that direction is, we'll stay the course with the teambuilding lesson plan. And since last week, things were thrown off a little by one of your teachers--"

Here, Gladio's face broke out into a big grin as he lifted his hand to signal that he was guilty as charged.

"--was temporarily a tiny tyrant, we would like to do Introductions."

"But not just any introductions!" Prompto chimed in, bouncing forward from where he'd clearly been anticipating the moment of delivering his line as planned, hitting the class with a goofy grin of his own. "We're going to do Icebreakers! Literally! Hit it, Specs!"

And, on cue, Ignis lifted the control device in his hand to push the button that would activate what they had planned for the Danger Shop, which was....

...apparently a massive flock of extremely large birds, in a variety of colors, but mostly yellow.

"Wark!" some of them called out, while others answered with a resounding "Kweh!" And all three of the teachers were clearly caught by surprise.

"What the f--uuuuudge," Prompto started, caught himself, remembered he was teaching, and boggled at the chocobos flooding into the space. "It was supposed to be, like, all this ice! Get it? Ice breakers? So, like, you were all going to be trapped in ice, and we had to use the icebreakers to actually get out of the ice, and it was going to be so cool!"

"Heh," Gladio couldn't help himself. "Cool. Nice one."

Prompto hadn't even meant that pun, so he had to grin a little, and really? Since the Danger Shop had given them chocobos, maybe this wasn't all that bad.

"Clearly," Ignis noted, "there was something wrong with the program."

"....on it!" Prompto said, after a moment, and, since he was the one who was modifying the stuff for this class, he danced over to the controls to figure out what had gone wrong.

A chocobro nudged Ignis with his shoulder. "Well," he said, "while Prompto is checking the system, I suppose there's no reason why we can't still do our Icebreakers even without the dramatics we had planned for it. So let us continue, and we will try our best not to mind the chocobos. They are typically rather harmless creatures, after all, though if you're so inclined, they do enjoy a good chin scratch or petting."

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And as if to emphasis his point about chin scratches and petting, Ignis was doing just that to the nearest chocobro as he spoke.

"What we would like to do, then," he said, "although we are firmly back onto the idea of breaking metaphorical ice rather than actual ice, is pursue a few games known to help break the ice, as it were, between new people to get them comfortable with each other and get to know each other. We have a few of them, and if you know of any others that you'd like to suggest, please do so and we'll try that one as well."

And thus, a few sub-threads were created, huzzah!

"For our first one," Gladio stepped forward, "we figured we'd do something called Two Truths and a Lie, so basically, you're going to tell everyone three details. Two of them are true, one of them is false, and everyone else has to guess which one is the lie.

"For example, I would be, 'Hey, my name's Gladio'--your name doesn't count toward one of the details, by the way--'I'm Gladio, and I'm twenty-two, I have a tattoo of an eagle, and I've never tried to amass an evil army of my students as a shouty ten year old before."

He grinned at them, unabashed and unashamed.

"Hopefully, you can make yours a little more challenging. Who wants to go first?"

Once Sakaki was able to finish gushing over over the pale pink chocobo that had come over to say hello and let her pet it and not attack, she considered the question thoughtfully while ruffling a hand through the bird's soft, downy feathers.

"I'm Sakaki," she offered, "and I would like to be a veterinarian one day. I grew up on a different planet than this one, and...if the veterinarian plans don't work out, I think I'd like to be a florist."

She was honestly pretty proud of her lie with this one, because she felt, around here, they could all be believable!

"Hello, I'm Kiem," he said smiling.

"Um. I've been on the front page of a news log more than once, I love staying in monasteries and... I don't have a dog."

He frowned a little at himself, realising bringing up a dog might be a bad idea.

Sakaki didn't know Kiem very well yet, but she did know that he seemed very kind and loved animals, which seemed to suit someone who might also like monasteries, and he did very well in taking care of Colonel Bahamutt, so, with that reasoning, she titled her head and guessed. "Is it the first one?"

Oh no. That would mean Sakaki thought he liked monasteries, and he must have given her completely the wrong impression, and since he had started to hope they could be friends that wasn't what he wanted.

"Nooo," he said slowly. "The news logs thing isn't really my fault though, they do that to all royalty."

If they did things that made good headlines.

"My name is Juillenne Milone," she introduced herself.

"I'm the Queen of an island nation called Fennbirn. I grew up in the capital city there. And when I was ten, I tried to help my foster-sister escape from Fennbirn."

"Our next one," Ignis offered once everyone had managed to get through Two Truths and a Lie, "is one called Would You Rather, and, as the name suggests, it's about asking a question to get to know what one might choose between two options. For example, I could ask my co-teachers right now, 'would you rather have had the Danger Shop work properly for this activity, or would you rather have been unexpectedly flooded with chocobos?' And I think I know, with confidence, that at least one of them would answer with chocobos."

"I swear!" Prompto's voice shouted over from where he was still working on the controls. "I didn't do this on purpose!"

It was just a happy mistake, really.

Ignis tried not to look too amused as he turned his attention back to the students.

"So feel free to propose a Would You Rather scenario and see how your classmates respond."

By the time they got to this one, most of Sakaki's attention was on trying to keep herself from just throwing her arms around the pink chocobo's neck and taking it back to her room with her (maybe Hedwig would like a friend!), so she wasn't thinking too much about the question.

"Would you rather..." she ventured, "be stuck in a deep, dark underground hole," not pulling for personal experience or anything over here!, "ooor...be stranded out at sea?"

Both were pretty terrible, though, if you asked her!

"Those are terrible options!" Kiem exclaimed. "I think I prefer being stranded at sea though. I've never been to a sea, so at least that might be interesting. Although I haven't been stuck in a deep, dark hole either, but that just sounds worse, seas are supposed to be beautiful. I've heard you can get sea sick though, that won't happen in a hole."

He frowned. "The sea still sounds better."

Kiem frowned, thinking.

"Would you rather go to a monastery or to military camp?"

Two terrible options.

"And this one was going to be Prompto's," Gladio said, quirking his head behind him toward where Prompto was still working on the controls and occasionally murmuring hastily censored curses, "but since he's got his hands full, I'll go ahead and get you started on Build a Story. Basically, we're going to go around and someone will say a line to a story, and then whoever's next will add the next line, and then someone adds a line after that, so on and so forth, just to see where we end up with. I'll start, and then whoever wants to can jump in with the next line. Got it?

"So...we'll start with this: 'It was a fairly normal Friday, if it wasn't for all the chocobos...'"

"But the chocobos were very in a very good mood and wanted company!"

It was a bit silly, yes, but at least it might open for a nice story about big birds being happy.

Got a favorite icebreaker game that you'd like to bring up, too? Here's the place to create your own subthread for it and get it going!

How to Be A Chocobro; Friday, First Period [09/10].

Icebreakers! - Chocobros, 09/10.

Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Two Truths and a Lie - Chocobros, 09/10.

Would You Rather - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Would You Rather - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Would You Rather - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Would You Rather - Chocobros, 09/10.

Build a Story - Chocobros, 09/10.

Re: Build a Story - Chocobros, 09/10.

Add Your Own Icebreaker! - Chocobros, 09/10.