Fandom High School

"Everyone here and not...engulfed in hot chocolate lava, what the frell?" Anakin asked. "No head wounds? No one in a snow bank assisted by a candy cane?" He let out a deep breath. "Well, fortunately for all of us, we have a local expert, Duke Crocker, here to lead us all through some yoga poses and guided meditation."

Which explained why there were no chairs today, only yoga mats, but didn't really explain the small crowd of gremlins, raccoons, squirrels and the Front Office Moose loitering in the back of the auditorium.

Maybe they were there for yoga too?

"Take it away, Duke."

Today's assembly was being held in the Danger Shop, which was mocked up to look suspiciously like downtown Fandom--including all of the tinsel that had invaded--but weirdly empty of any people aside from the students who'd found themselves there.

"Right," Anakin said. "This will hopefully not end up in another food fight. Today we have a guest from out of town," he said, pulling out the card from the front office from the pocket of his cloak. "Please welcome Lord Shaxx and his discussion on...The Crucible!! With two exclamation points."

Anakin had such a bad feeling about this.

Anakin paused when his normal rostrum wasn't set up on the stage today, and his eyes narrowed when he saw the drumkit, guitar, and bass.

"Well. This is clearly not going to be just an educational talk," he said dryly into one of the three microphones as he pulled his card from the pocket of his robes. "Today we have, um, The' My Dad's a Demon, But He's NOT a Deadbeat' Tour, starring Fig and the Cig Figs."

The moose had a lot to answer for.

"Enjoy."

Today's assembly was taking place in the Danger Room, which should've been the first clue something was going to get weird.

The snow was the second.

Anakin had put the stage in, though, so he had a place to stand and yell at them.

"Today's assembly is being run by our very own principal, Zoe Winchester!" he said. "And her topic is whatever she wants it to be because she is my boss and I wish for her to be happy. Take it away, Zoe!"

Welcome back from vacation, kids, have a giant, giant maze made of hay bales and pallet crates! You'll just have to stand by the walls while your speakers explain themselves.

Anakin wove his way up to the stage and gazed out a bit at the maze, smirked slightly, and then turned to the students. "Today we're going to hear from two more of our local townspeople. You might know of them from when they had a medium-speed rickshaw chase with a sentient fox. Do not follow that example, but welcome Steve McGarrett and Danny Williams anyway. They are here to tell you about," he pulled out his notecard, "Wilderness Survival Skills."

The auditorium was ready again today: folding chairs, check. Rostrum, check. Bored students, check.

Anakin walked up onto the stage. "Hello again, students. Today we have a special guest that is not going to pretend to kill teddy bears!"

He hoped.

"He's--" he pulled his notecard out, "--Nick Miller, and he's here to talk about Creativity and You, or Writing the Great American Novel."

So that should be nice and non-explosive!

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!

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."