Fandom High School

It was a lot quieter outside the flight shed today than it had been last Monday, and whether that was a good thing or a bad one, Tahiri was withholding judgment on the question.

"Hey, everyone," she said, fiddling with her comlink just for the sake of something to do with her hands. "So . . . end of the semester already, huh? After last night, and with more finals to go for a lot of us, it seems like today should be a pretty easygoing day. Like Warren said a couple of weeks ago, this point in the semester ought to be for fun. Of course, some of us --" she gave Ben an amused but pointed look -- "have different ideas of what counts as fun. So we've got a few different choices for you today, to blow off some of that finals stress steam."

Ben's eyes twinkled back at her. "For the space option, we're going to let you get back into a snubfighter--but this time it's the A-Wing, which is a lot zippier than the X-Wing. I know this makes me a traitor to the family and stuff, but it's totally astral for flying through asteroid fields."

Ben had a strange sense of fun. "So that's what you'll be doing. Try not to get smushed."

Tahiri was so not surprised about his strange sense of fun. "And for your atmospheric option today, have an XCOR EZ-Rocket experimental plane, and see how fast you can get those twin rocket engines to go."

Ben smiled at everyone. "And there's pizza and ice cream, as well. Don't take it too near the sims."

"So I guess we missed last week's meeting," Tahiri said apologetically once everyone had gathered near the flight shed. "Sorry about that. I was at home dealing with things. And crash landing a few times, so thanks for the lessons in that, Master Skywalker," she added.

Ben gave her a quick look--she'd not mentioned the crash landing a few times part before now--before turning his attention back to the rest of the club members. "Today's simulator runs are astral enough to make up for it. For the space option today, we're learning about X-Wings, which are the best ships ever. Period."

Not that Ben was biased in any way.

Or that Tahiri had one on the island. "Boy," she said, giving him an amused look, "I wonder why you've got those on your mind." Shh, she was trying to distract him from the crash landing thing. Besides, the second time hadn't been her fault. The first one hadn't been exactly her fault either.

"It just came to me," Ben said, grinning at her. "We'll be using the updated X-Wing that's set to the specs of Tahiri's time, which makes it slightly less astral than the ones I have at home, but better than Aunt Leia's. And for the land-based version today, we'll use an Earth jet called the F-35 Lightning II. It's not bad."

Which was a pretty high compliment coming from a self-professed space snob.

Said self-professed space snob got an affectionate eyeroll. "It's plenty astral. My X-Wing, I mean," Tahiri said before going into a quick overview of the Incom snubfighter's controls and weapons systems, making particular note of the stutter-fire setting. "Although you probably won't need that, since the sim program isn't going to make you deal with voids that eat laserfire. That setting isn't going to do any damage at all, really."

Ben ran through the controls of the F-35 and then grinned. "And both sims have been set up for you to be able to use the weapons if you'd like. No voids on Tahiri's, of course," because Ben didn't feel like spending a good chunk of his afternoon dying against Yuuzhan Vong ships, "but stationary targets to blow off some steam against."

Ben stood a little uncomfortably in front of the flight simulator. "Hey, everyone. Sorry for the delay getting the club started. I kind of had to head out on a mission...thing...a few weeks ago. Anyway, welcome to Flight Club, where we'll do the introduction thing to figure out where everyone's expertise lies. I'm Ben, I've been flying pretty much anything my parents would let me from the time I could see over the control panels."

"And I was a little busy," Tahiri added, looking sheepish. "I'm Tahiri, and I haven't been flying nearly as long as Ben has, but I've gotten a good bit of it in the past couple of years." She was being nice and not mentioning how. "Anyway, since we know all of you probably come from different worlds and all, we've got a couple of different options for you: space flight, if you think you're up to it, or something a little easier with the landspeeder scenario."

Why did she have the weirdest urge to steal a landspeeder?

Ben had no idea, but he wasn't going to let him near his red one at home, just in case. "And our advisor is Master Skywalker," he said, pointing, "who's here mostly to make sure you don't break his flight sim, so please be careful, okay?" He gave a brief run-through of how the controls on the landspeeder worked. "And the space flight option is in a light freighter, which is kind of like the family sedan back home." Only much bigger, of course.

Hey. Tahiri wasn't going to steal his speeder, okay? She did take a turn to go over the freighter's controls, and she was trying not to talk too quickly, but it was habit, so -- "If you need any extra help, feel free to ask either of us. Oh, and don't feel bad if you crash out a few times. Some of us," she said, grinning wryly, "have done that more times than we want to admit. That's why it's a sim."

"Better to be fake space dust than real space dust," Ben said with a nod. "Anyway, have fun! That's kind of the point of this."