Fandom High School

"We train like we fight, and we fight like we train!"

Unlike the last couple weeks, the bootcamp was meeting outside today, by the gates to the school. While Travis had (finally) learned what the Danger Shop could actually do last week, the island itself worked perfectly well for today's class.

Travis stood at the front of the group, wearing the workout version of his station uniform -- a t-shirt with the station's shield on the breast, and a pair of sweatpants. The students, hopefully, had figured out to wear things they could move and sweat in when coming to class.

"That's something of an unofficial firefighter's motto. Fighting fires is hard work. It's physical work. You've learned that already, by running in your turnouts and working with hoses. Our equipment is heavy, and we have to be ready to move quickly with it at a moment's notice. We can't guarantee access to anything but what we bring ourselves on a job, and we have to be ready and willing to do anything in an emergency in order to save lives."

He looked from student to student, then nodded behind them.

"Which really really regularly means being able to run up and down stairs. Fortunately, if there's one thing that Fandom has in spades, it's stairs."

He clapped his hands together and pressed them outwards, stretching his palms and cracking his knuckles.

"Your assignment today is an easy one! I'm not going to make you carry anything you don't already have on you. All you have to do is run the entire town as fast as you can. I've mapped out a route that should have you hitting every single stair out there." He grinned. "Have fun!"

Oh hey! Travis was finally getting a chance to run his class. Having spent the last few days doing not much more than sleeping and sunbathing and procrastinating on putting the fire station back together, he was wholly unprepared.

But he was here. In uniform. In something called a "danger shop", which seemed entirely too appropriate for this godforsaken island.

"Right," he said. "So. Uh. Welcome to Fire & Rescue Bootcamp. Two weeks late. Which makes for a good first lesson for this sort of class: nothing ever, ever goes like you think it will. Ever."

He clapped his hands and pointed to a rack of turnouts he'd brought from the station (cleaned post-hole, thank you very much).

"One of the most important piece of equipment a firefighter has are his or her -- or their -- turnouts. That's what we call this lovely set of very heavy clothing I'm wearing." He tugged on his jacket. "Your turnouts include pants, usually held up by suspenders, boots, and a jacket. Now, these suckers weigh . . . a lot. And an average shift, at least back in Seattle where I trained and worked, is 24 hours long. Unless something has gone very very wrong, you're not going to be wearing your turnouts for the full shift. But when a call comes in, you need to be able to get into them quickly, or you will get left behind. So: that's what we're going to do today."

Travis pointed to a puddle of clothing on the floor, that looked a bit like someone had been raptured out of it. "Allow me to demonstrate. If someone wants to keep time?" He glanced around at the group, then nodded, assuming at least one of them would do it. Then he stepped into the puddle, sliding his legs into his boots and turnout pants all in one movement, and pulled them up, dragging the suspenders over his shoulders. He shrugged his jacket on a moment later, and his helmet followed, all in the matter of about two seconds.

He was a little rusty.

"Firefighting and rescue services are all about being prepared," he said. "So we train. We train hard. We train a lot. Most of the job is actually training, honestly. Even in regular towns that get fires on an ordinary basis." He shook his head. He was getting off on a tangent. "So today, each of you is going to find your own set of turnouts on this rack. It'll have your name on the back of the jacket, like this." He turned and showed them the bright yellow "MONTGOMERY" printed on the bottom hem of his jacket. "Locate your turnouts, put them on, and then run around the classroom. When you get back here, you're going to strip them back off and start all over again. First person to complete three rounds wins . . . something. TBD." He set his shoulders, stepped away from the rack, and yelled in his best drill sergeant voice: "On your marks! Get set! Go!"