Fandom High School

"You've had a whole day to recover from whatever trauma you might have encountered over the course of last week," Kanan said wryly. "So, welcome back to class."

A beat.

"One of the most important things to keep in mind about adaptability? Self-care. It's something I've been guilty of neglecting over the years myself. It's all too easy when your focus is going into survival to forget that you're a flesh-and-blood person with needs, both physical and emotional. So today, we're going to focus on that. Make a checklist of things to keep in mind about taking care of yourselves. And then run through it, each of you, to see if you've been doing those, yourself."

He turned around and wrote on the whiteboard - because yes, he was absolutely stealing Summer's 'danger shop classroom' program, in case he needed to conjure anything up today - Self-Care Checklist.

And then underlined it. Twice.

"We'll start with the basics for the survival of most living beings. Food. Water. Sleep. What else can you list off?"

A beat.

"And to help you with that first one, I've ordered pizza. Please, eat."

Kanan looked mildly perplexed by the time he made his way in to the classroom today. Still no obvious sign of what was strange about this week. Which didn't necessarily mean anything, granted, and he was hopeful that a bit of time spent meditating today would help clear that up a little, but he had gone directly from the radio station to Portalocity to attempt to shake down a few more gnomes and was now at that point where he was contemplating just what technology he actually needed in order to punch holes in the multiverse to get from here to a Jakku that the Gnomes insisted he had no business being on.

Rules of spacetime or something, they kept saying. Kriff spacetime.

"So," he said, once it seemed like everyone who was going to arrive here today had, "this is another one of those weeks where it looks like we've got a bit of downtime, at least for now, so we're going to go over escape plans, in case things get so bad that sticking around the island isn't actually an option. Now, Fandom's got two obvious means of leaving, which have been working to varied degrees since this whole summer thing started going on. The Causeway, generally, will take you to whatever is across from it, but it can also, at least for most people, serve as a convenient bridge to wherever you call home. I say most people because the island is tricky that way. For the longest time, I couldn't use it to get home, and I know of at least a few other people still who have or have had that same problem. I can get home again these days, but I haven't actually checked to see how the Causeway works for me, personally. But so long as the island is safe, now might not be a bad time for anybody to give it a spin, try to cross the bridge over to whatever's on the other side. Then come back and try to cross it over to home. If you feel safe doing so. If things are too much here, that should, theoretically, be the most simple means of leaving the island."

A beat. And then a faintly sour look crossed Kanan's face.

"The next would be portals." Kanan had very seldom in his life wanted to shake someone as badly as he wanted to shake the customer service representative from Portalocity that he'd been arguing with for the past three days. "Those, theoretically, can get you almost anywhere in the multiverse. I say almost, because sometimes they have restrictions on who can travel where for reasons they absolutely refuse to divulge. Or there'll be mynocks in the works and the connection will be broken. Still, if your goal is to get off-island, they can usually direct you to somewhere to go in order to wait out the crazy, and they'll even arrange for portals of various sizes in case, say, you need to get an entire light freighter through to go along with you. You'll have to be careful with this one, though. They're also notorious for stopovers, so be prepared to end up in, say, a world made entirely of shrimp."

He'd been there, had done that. It had been absolutely disgusting, and if he never saw another shrimp again...

...

"Now, it should be noted that neither one of these options is any sort of guarantee. Like I said, the portals are unreliable, and they haven't been working at all for people who haven't been themselves over the weeks this summer. The Causeway can be hit-or-miss too, and there have been times when things have been so bad around the island that everything's gone on lockdown and people haven't been able to go either way. If that happens, that's when you know things are serious. Arm up, squad up, bunker down if you need to do so to stay safe." He clapped his hands, once. "So, any questions? Anybody know any other ways to get out of this place if need be?"

A beat.

"Any tips for arguing with Portalocity gnomes?"

Look, it was worth asking.

[Open!]

Kanan had been planning, on his way to the classroom, to teach a lesson today about how to carry enough on your person when going into unfamiliar situations that students should potentially be covered for, at the very least, a violent encounter or an injury of some sort. Unfortunately, by the time he made his way into the black-and-white classroom, took a brush to the black-and-white chalkboard to clean off the day's previous lesson (whatever it might have been), straightened his necktie and tugged his tweed blazer into place, and set up the good ol' modern miracle that was the reel-to-reel projector, little things like first aid had completely managed to slip his mind.

"Good morning, class," he said, giving his students a wholesome 1950s smile. "Today we're going to be watching a film strip about what to do in the event of an atomic bomb, so settle in and make sure to pay attention!"

Yep. They were definitely watching that Duck and Cover film strip.

That was a thing they were doing.

And if Mr. Jarrus, mild-mannered high school teacher, had any idea that the whole thing was absolute - ahem - bullshit, well, he wasn't paid enough to disabuse his students of that notion.

He might have rolled his eyes from the back of the darkened classroom a bit, though.

[OOC: Open! Feel free to AU into 1950s schoolchildren or stay the same or come in as whatever other AU you want to be, today. Mmm, chaos.]

Kanan looked a little bit as though he'd been beaten upside the head with a brick this morning. A figurative one, not a literal one, though he had little doubt that would probably come later.

"The clinic, the dorms, and Caritas," he said, once it looked as though students had settled into the simulated Danger Shop classroom today. There was no way he was making them sit outside in the smoke, no. He was dropping a handful of cheap industrial respirator masks onto his desk and waving at them, gesturing for the students to help themselves. They had better back home, yes, but between waking up this morning and doing radio, he really hadn't had a chance to take a jaunt off to another galaxy and shake down some Imperials to steal them, so... "They're your safe spaces. If you get caught out and something too dangerous for you to handle goes on outside, make your way to whichever is closest as quickly as possible, if it's safe to do so. I don't know what's out there this week, but whatever it is, when it hits, I'm telling you now it's going to be ugly."

He was well aware that this summer was starting to make him sound like a paranoid maniac, but it probably didn't count when he was right, did it?

"These masks should at least help you breathe a little easier, if you're a person who needs to do that sort of thing and if you don't already have your own equipment. No, they aren't pretty, but they are functional. Help yourselves. Grab extras for your friends. I bought... a lot, this morning. There's a hardware store in Baltimore right now that I made very happy today. I know I had mentioned maybe talking about getting basic supplies like food, but it looks like the food's fine for the time being. This week, we're going to spend some time here in the Danger Shop making some use of improvised weapons. Or putting your running and hiding skills to the test."

Yes, he really did think it was going to be this bad.

"So far, and after last week I'm aware that this could change at any given moment, we have the benefit of knowing our way around town. This is a familiar space. So I'm not going to tear that rug out from underfoot. Not yet, anyway. What I am going to do is set you loose in a sim of the school, and something in here wants to grab you. You don't know what it is. You won't until it finds you. The exits have been locked."

He jerked a thumb toward the simulated door.

"Survive. Whether that means outrunning them, outthinking them, hiding, or coming up with makeshift weapons is up to you. Team up if you need to. Go at it alone if you'd rather. You just have to manage it for the next twenty minutes, and then we'll have a discussion about what worked for you and what didn't."

Space, his brain itched.