fandomhigh | Flight and Flying [Friday morning, Flight Club shed]

The flight simulator had been reconfigured again--this time to something that should seem a bit more familiar to Earth-based students: The F-16 Flying Falcon.

Anakin clasped his hands behind his back and began speaking when the students had assembled in front of him. "This is one of the aircraft used by the militaries of this world," he began. "It's good in air-to-air combat as well as air-to-surface attack, can go more than 850 kilometers before it needs to be refueled and can withstand up to nine G's--pretty high tech for this world's standards."

He opened the simulator door and gestured to the controls. "As you can see, it's configured differently than the systems we've been using in the last few weeks, but the joystick and the trigger button are located in the same place. The F-16 just isn't as sensitive as the starfighter--you'll have to yank harder at the joystick to get the same reaction."

He was completely oblivious to any kind of innuendo that might've been found in that statement. "You'll also be dealing with the Earth's gravity, so turns won't be as fast, and if you make the plane go up too quickly, the machine's been equipped to simulate G forces, so you might pass out. Please make sure to keep any cute but clingy kittens--or frogs--out of the cockpit, just in case."

He smiled at Cedric and Draco. "And for something different, Cedric and Draco have generously agreed to let you all ride on their brooms--the traditional form of flying where they come from. Again, please make sure the animals don't join you as you zip around the island." He glanced at the sky. "We seem to be having ~~conveniently handwavey~~ some breaks in the pudding-ing, so we should be okay for visibility."

He snapped his fingers. "Oh. Veronica Mars--she's teaching the photography seminar--and I have arranged a field trip for our workshops to Washington, DC next Sunday. It's an all day thing, we'll be leaving the island early in the morning and returning late in the evening. You don't have to come, but there's a very cool Air & Space Museum that I thought you might be interested in seeing."

He walked over to the simulator and turned it on. "You can take a practice run on the F-16, then there are two different exercises: an air-to-surface that will test your accuracy and an air-to-air one that will test your reflexes." He smiled. "Have fun."

[OOC: If you could RSVP for the field trip here, that would make V-mun and I very, very happy. Thanks!]

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"Nice work," Anakin said. "Or did you prefer the lack of gravity?"

"Thanks, it was fun." Blair bounced a little. "But yeah, last weeks was cooler. Way, way cooler."

He leaned forward a little and whispered. "Might be because of the spinning. I think more planes should do that."

Anakin grinned. "I agree. That's all I did, practically, the first time I flew a real spaceship."

"Really?" Blair bounced a little bit and ~~totally renewed his hero worship of Anakin.~~ grinned. "Did you get sick?"

"I was a little dizzy, yeah. The droid with me was screaming its head off, too." He yanked at his braid. "Strictly speaking, I probably shouldn't have been in the ship at all, but, hey, flying." He smiled. "And spinning."

"Cool." Blair bounced excitedly. "I hear that. Sometimes you have to break the rules. Especially if there's spinning involved."

He watched Anakin's braid with the kind of attention one paid to things if they were going to emulate them later.

"Sometimes the rules are meant to be broken, really," Anakin agreed, then noticed the attention Blair was paying to his hair.

"It looks kind of strange," he said, blushing a bit, "but it's required for the Jedi. This," he waved the braid, "shows how long I've been training. I can't cut it until I'm knighted."

Blair blushed and shook his head. "Sorry for staring! I don't think it looks strange. I think it's cool. It's tradition for a lot of tribes to have physical modifications to denote rites of passage. The neck coils of the Burmese Padaung, the scarification of several African tribes, even modern American gangs use tattooed body modification to signify rank or importance in their structure."

Anakin nodded. "Like that, then. I got the braid when I was nine and I'm not allowed to cut it, well, ever." He smiled. "In the Temple you can see how smart a Padawan is by how long or short his or her braid is. The longer the braid, the longer they've been training."

"Yours doesn't seem that long. You must be pretty smart." Blair smiled.

Anakin's cheeks went pink. "I have the occasional moment, yeah," he said. "I still have another decade of training to go, probably. Most Padawans have braids, well, not quite as long as Pip's, but at least halfway down their chests, before they're considered fully trained."

"I wonder if Pip's braid has anything to do with his intelligence." Blair bit his lip and debated on the politeness of asking him that question later.

"A decade left? Your training is really thorough, isn't it? Will you take a padawan when you're through? When you finish do you keep the braid that's been cut off?"

Anakin snorted. "In my world? It wouldn't be saying good things, no."

He smiled at Blair's barrage of questions. "I'm not sure if I'll take a Padawan. I'm not exactly cut out for teaching, I don't think. And I do get to keep the braid." He paused. "It's actually the only thing a Jedi's really allowed to keep, in terms of possessions because it was ours already."

"I think you're a really good teacher!" Blair bounced. "It's cool that you get to keep it though, although if you were like 90 years old before you graduated and had a braid that you could wrap around your room, you'd probably try and misplace it pretty quickly."

Anakin blushed. "Thanks," he said quietly. He laughed at the image that Bridge had given him. "There have been stories about Padawans who took almost that long to learn, yeah," he said.

Flight and Flying [Friday morning, Flight Club shed]

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