Fandom High School

Rosa had actually gotten back oh-so-handwavily Wednesday night, but she'd spent all day yesterday simply enjoying the solitutde of her arpartment and the company of her dog, because the job they'd pulled her in for back home involved a stake-out. With Charles Boyle. For a whole week. And, sure, the guy had once taken a bullet to the butt for her and she actually did like him, for the most part, but being around Boyle for an hour was taking, much less a week, so, yeah, she was definitely going to revel in not having to deal with anyone except her stupid dog for a while.

And then head to her last class. Just in time for the mistletoe, too. Thankfully, it seemed to at least have some concept of decency and boundaries by avoiding the classroom...although maybe it might have something to do with the fact that Rosa, sitting at the desk up front, feet on the table, was also armed with her flamethrower today.

Overkill?

Maybe.

But it was the small flamethrower!

Either way, she was there, and she assumed her students would be there, too, and eventually she got started.

"Okay," she said, "it's the last class. It's that stupid mistletoe day, and I'm sure you guys don't want to be here any more than I do, so we'll make this quick and easy. All you gotta do is tell me why you think you deserve to pass this class as a bad ass bitch."

Especially if you actually cooperated with the substitute teacher these last few weeks. Who even does that?

"That's it. Who wants to go first?"

Even though Rosa had very strong feelings about live steel being much better for this kind of thing (what better way to learn a lesson about acting like an idiot than losing a hand, right?), she also understood that she had people like Nightmare and Danielle in her class, and it had worked out fine for her and Blackstone's summer class, so, okay, fine, fine, the class was meeting in the danger shop for this one.

And once there, the students would find a pretty sweet set-up with a variety of weapons laid out on a few racks and tables, and some practice dummies that could actually move and sort of fight you back, which was also a cool thing about the danger shop, shut up.

"Today we're talking about weapons," in case they hadn't figured that out. "Melee and hand combat weapons this week, firearms next week brain permitting. I figured you've all got some level of experience with some weapons, especially since some of you took one of my classes over the summer, but today might be a good chance to either pick up some more experience with things you're already familiar with or get the chance to....try something new. Hopefully, there's something new in there you haven't seen before that you can try out. If not...damn. Props. Maybe focus on something you're a little less familiar with than the others. Or, since it's the danger shop, maybe we can find something else for you, but there's a pretty good selection here, anyway. If you're really unsure how to best use a weapon, just ask. I can how to safely wield it. But if I see you using it like an idiot, I'd normally stop you, but it's the danger shop, so it's not like you'll actually get hurt. Get a feel for the weapons with the practice dummies there, or, if you're feeling really adventurous and since this is the danger shop, feel free to partner up and spar each other.

"So, go ahead, have a look at what we've got, let either of us know if you have questions or want to know anything more about any particular weapon, and see how you like them. But, most importantly, don't act like an idiot, because if you do, I swear, we're watching nothing but old and badly acted weapons safety and human resources videos from the NYPD's archives for the rest of the semester."

And nobody wanted that.

[[ please to wait for the OCD is up! ]]

"Next week is Halloween," Rosa informed the class by way of greeting from where she was perched on the top of the desk at the front of the classroom that morning, "which means a lot of dumb costumes, too much candy, and, apparently, on this island, fake blood coffee, clowns freaking everywhere, and not being able to move around today without tripping over a damn cat. But, for the past few years years, Halloween has also sort of meant something else back at my usual precinct, and that's a Heist. Since it's a little hard for me to participate when I'm all the way down here teaching you buttheats, I'm living vicariously through you guys by making you do one again like I did with this class last year. That's what all these last few lessons have been about: stealth, picking locks, so on and so forth. You'll probably need them all if you have any intention of winning.

"The goal?" Rosa hopped off the desk, started pacing like a captain giving orders to her troops before sending them out into battle. "A hatchet. I've planted a hatchet somewhere in one of the offices of your teachers. I'm not telling you where; I'm not giving you hints. The other teachers know you'll be riffling through their crap this week and some of them have taken steps to ensure that it's not too easy for you."

And it was almost heartwarming, really, how many of those other teachers not only sacrificed their offices for this whole thing, but that some of them had really gone above and beyond the call of duty. Rosa's tiny heart may have grown three times its size this week.

"Of course, once the hatchet is found, that's no guarantee that it might not then be taken from you by one of your fellow students. It doesn't end when the hatchet is found; it starts as soon as I dismiss you from this class, and it ends next week, in this classroom, with whoever has it in her possession at that time. Fair warning, there is only one true hatchet; you'll know it when you see it, and a few decoys.

"And that's all you get." Rosa shrugged her shoulders. "No lesson today, just get started on planning. Ask me questions if you want before you go, but there's no guarantee I'll have an answer for you. You're on your own. Or not, if you decide to team up, but just remember, if you do, there still can only be one winner."

She folded her arms in front of her and looked at them with a faint note of expectation. "So, any one got questions?"

[[ ocd incoming is up! have at! ]]

So the jello had just been a one-off thing, which was good, because dealing with it had been super annoying and if it did turn out to be anything more than that, she might have had to cancel her class, which would be bad because it was October now, which meant they had some work to do before Halloween.

There was a sign on the door to the classroom, simple and straight forward and to the point, and something the students should generally start expecting half the time for this class, anyway:

Gym.

At least this time it came without the threat of any punching, right? And when they arrived for the period, they'd find the gym all decked out for an obstacle course, with some very specific focuses.

"Stealth," Rosa said, maybe with a faint grin because this was one of her favorites. "Because there's a point in every girl's life where they're going to need to sneak into or out of something without being noticed. And unless you're some kind of magical ninja from who even knows where and I don't care anyway, that sort of thing takes time, practice, and patience. So take a few minutes, stretch out, get limber, and then we're going to see just how well you can do getting through the courses without making a sound. And yes," Rosa added, looking over at Lana assuming she was there, "I know some of you have done this before and that some of you," it was literally just the one, that she knew of, "have abilities that make it a whole lot easier than the average person, so do yourself a favor and try to do it without. And do your friends a favor by not helping them, because then they won't learn shit for when they have to do it without."

That said, she moved on.

"First step: laser course. Only instead of real lasers, we've got ropes, and each rope has bells on it, so if you hit it, we know, I blow the whistle, and you start over. If you manage to make it through that, then we've got platforms, made of nice creaky wood, so they're noisy, and if you're too noisy, back to the start. And then there's the window." Yes, she'd rigged up just a freestanding wall with a window in it. "Get this thing open and slip out without too much noise. Out of all this crap, this one's probably the most useful. Be careful, though, because there's some bells on the other side. Wouldn't want to set one off and have to start over again. And finally, if you think you're real bad ass, we have this rope climb. A rope. With a bell on it. See how far you can get to the top without rining the bell or, if you really want to challenge yourself, without special powers, and then you can be smug about it.

"A few tips: don't be afraid to take your time. Focus on your breathing and the balls of your feet and keeping low to the ground. Don't let something like clothing or hair trip you up: a buckle scraped at the wrong moment could give you up like that." She snapped her fingers. "And to give you all an idea and prove that I'm not just full of shit...I'll show you what I mean."

She shrugged off her jacket, tossed it aside, rolled her neck a little, and approached the first course. One deep breath, a pause, and then she swept through the tangle of cross-crossing ropes in a fluid motion that she hadn't spent all morning practicing to make sure it was still as perfect as last time or anything, shut up, but, yeah, flawless, and thank god, because that would have sucked to biff it like that right in front of the class.

"Any questions?" she asked. "Take five, warm up, then we'll get started. You," she quirked her chin at literally anyone, there was no way you could tell if she had a particular person in mind, "you'll go first."

[[ ocd is up! huzzah! ]]

Students coming to class that morning would find a sign posted on the classroom door:

Gym Today
Last one there is the punching bag.

And when they got to the gym, they'd find Rosa there with a practice dummy, mats covering the floor, and her convenient for modding favorite partner in crime Amaya Blackstone there beside her. She checked her watch and when it was time for class to start, she launched right into.

"Okay, so, today, we're doing the hand-to-hand combat and defense stuff we were gonna do last week," she informed them. "But now, if you screw it up too bad, you should know how to fix it from what we did last week. Hope you're wearing clothes you can move in, but, hey, look. If not, I dug up these super cool and stylish gym uniforms you can put on if you need to. They might even be clean."

And then that would hopefully be an unspoken lesson on how a Bad Ass Bitch is always going to be wearings something she can move in.

"Any Bad Ass Bitch should be able to defend herself against anything, and weapons are great, but you're not always going to have them or they might not always be the best choice for a situation. There are three things that you can usually have on you at all times that'll make a hand-to-hand situation swing further in your favor, and that's a knife," to which she pulled a switchblade out from behind her, let it flash open, then twirled it back in a smooth, steady movement, and when her hand came back around she displayed the next item, "brass knuckles," hand into her pocket and she pulled out a small container, "Mace. They're small, easy to get to, and can help out a lot in a difficult situation, especially knives. Good knives can go just about anywhere; five bucks to whoever manages to guess exactly how many knives I've got on me just now.

"Okay. Now. Raise your hand if you're already familiar with hand-to-hand combat."

She was...not at all surprised by the response there, and she had to grin a bit faintly. "Good. Those of you who aren't, pay attention, you're going to get the most out of this. Those of you who are, same thing. Never hurts to brush up on your basics.

"Hands are just as much weapons as knives or axes or guns, only not as much fun or as cool because nearly everyone has them. To attack, best places to hit on the body are..." And as she lifted them, she delivered a deft and precisely blow to each spot on the dummy, and, if it looked a little like a dance when she did it, well...rest assured, her ballet training was clearly going to good use now. "Eyes, nose, groin, knees, solar plexus, knees, fingers, and...my personal favorite...throat!"

"Let's say you can't get that first attack in, though, they've got the upper hand. First, protect anything they can use against you, and that's usually things they can grab onto. Long hair, baggy clothes, hoop earrings, extra appendages or weird things on you because you're not quite human,"--unfortunately, no good expamples to use in class that someone could get unreasonably upset about her pointing out like people weren't going to notice two long easily grabbable things sprouting from your head or something-- "can all be used against you, so don't even let them close. And then go in for a defensive move to subdue the attacker, and that's what we're learning today.

"And that's why Blackstone's here," Rosa hitched a thumb toward the shop teacher, who waved like the loveable nerd that she was. "She's here to take the brunt of this so I don't have to pick on one of you guys." Although she was definitely tempted to, just because. "I'm going to teach you all a few simple moves for getting out of some of the most basic attacks. Blackstone here's going to come at me, and I'll demonstrate. Alright, first one, grab for my arm..."

In addition to the arm grab, she had Amaya also exhibit a grab from behind, a choke hold, and a hair grab, explaining what she was doing as she went through the motions, with some bonus body throws. Hey, she didn't drag those mats out here for nothing.

And if she might have finished some of those with a little twist and kneel like she was about to handcuff Amaya, well...that was just habit. As was sort of forgetting that she'd just cuffed Amaya, leaving the other teacher to just sort of try and figure out how to get out of them herself while Rosa continued on with class.

"What I want you guys to do now is pair up and practice with each other. Those of you with experience, try to help those without. If any of you feel more comfortable having me going over it in a little more detail first, come see me, otherwise I'll be walking around and correcting all your terrible forms. Also, there's an uneven number of you, so if either of you want to work with me or Blackstone, that's an option to. Or work with several people; different body types, heights, and strength can make for solid pratice and experience. Please be careful, take your time, be aware, and try not to actually injure anyone. I really don't want to deal witht hat kind of paperwork. Got it? Any questions before we begin?"

[[ ocd on the way, of course! is up! Have at it! ]]

It felt like ages since Rosa had taught this class, which was weird, because the last time Rosa had taught this class, she didn't want anything to do with it, and now there was a part of her that was actually looking forward to it, and it was super weird and kind of gross and she didn't really like it, but also, like, her classes were totally bad ass, enough that it was almost cool?

Whatever. Either way, it made her feel too many things, and that was just lame, so she was definitely phoning it in today to avoid accepting or dealing with any of them.

So she came in late, chugging the last of her coffee, tossed the empty cup into the wastebin by the desk, and sighed, giving the class a lookover. "Okay," she said. "Bad Ass Bitch Survival Guide. The way I see it, you're probably in the class for one of three reasons: you thought it sounded cool, you're being forced to take it, or you know who I am and know I'm awesome. Either way, there are worse ways to spend your Friday morning. There are also a lot of better ways, too, and the first week is always the worst, so we're going to make this pretty qucik so we can all just get out of here. The first week is usually about introductions, so your teachers can get to know you and your classmates, but, honestly, I don't really care. I probably won't even remember. So we're not going to bother. We are going to bother, though, with being someone we aren't today."

Rosa turned to the board and wrote "SONIA RAMIREZ" in big letters.

"That," she said, turning to the students, "is the most recently added secret identity, and I don't mind using that here because I actually got it from one of those weekends where you wake up as someone else, so some people here have even met her. That's a thing, by the way, for all the new faces I'm seeing, weekends where you wake up as someone else. They're super fun, and, if you're lucky, won't screw you over when you turn back to normal. But Sonia here likes to use her meek and mild disposition to grift people, and she's the reason I've got to be careful if I'm ever out near Reno again. She's got papers, legal documents, which means I can go anywhere in the world as Sonia Ramirez and do practically anything without it coming back later and even touching Rosa Diaz. She's got a background, she's got goals, she's got real estate in Cancun. Having a solid alternate identity," or three...or a dozen.... "can come in handy, it's been crucial to my surival in a few instances, as well as the survival of others. And not just for throwing off creeps at picnics.

"So, here's the thing. Each of you has about five minutes. Gimme a good secret identity. Convince me you're someone you're not. If it's believable enough, you can go. Any questions? I mean, it's not that hard, and now you're just wasting time. So if you're ready, let's hear it, and let's get out of here. Literally none of us want to be here right now, especially me."

Rosa pulled out the chair of the desk, sat down, and kicked up her feet, arms folding, occasionally checking her watch and looking bored, like this was the longest five minutes of her life, although she knew these were always pretty great.

Oh, what a difference a year could make.

A whole. Goddamn. Year.

It would be pretty evident to nearly anyone walking into the classroom that day that Rosa's mood was not...the best, one of anger simmering just below the barely-held-together surface. Enough that she almost wanted to cancel class today, but, whatever, there were only two more classes left, she could pull two more classes out of her butt just to say that she did it, and it wasn't the class that was making her angry, anyway. It was this goddamn island.

"So we were going to do something awesome today," she informed the class through a tight jaw, "that involved a lot of daggers and knives. But, of course...."

She plopped a bulk of something in black cloth on the desk at the front of the classroom, which should have made a very satisfying clunk of metal, and did no such thing, as she rolled the cloth away to reveal an impressive collection of candy canes of all shapes and sizes and colors. Which she angrily gestured to and would let that speak for itself.

Only four days in, and Rosa was already tired of your shit, December.

"So instead we're doing knots." Where was she hiding all that rope that she now plopped on top of the candy canes? Who even knew? "Knots are important to know, because it's easier to get out of one if you know how it works." Because so many people spent enough of their lives needing to get out of being tied to something, obviously. "So we're going to go over some knots everyone should know and how to make them. And then I'm splitting you up into pairs, one of you will tie the other one up to a chair while the person tied up tries to figure out how to get out of it. If you have time, you can keep switching and trying different knots."

With a curled lip, she glared down at the candy canes. "Without the use of a blade. Obviously."

Who didn't want to walk into their classroom and find one of Fandom's Finest standing at the front of the room waiting for them? Because that was what the girls of the BABSG would find that Tuesday, in lieu of their usual teacher. Honestly, Ralph had been thinking he could just leave it as is, no one would probably mind a free period, but he was trying to score at least a few points that might be used for his survival when Rosa eventually did wake up from her medicine-induced coma in the evidence lock-up once he'd managed to get her in there. She'd been out since yesterday, talking in her sleep about stabbing her grandmother, so he might have been a little bit worried about the inevitable moment when she came to and sought out the person who'd locked her in there in the first place.

So he was going to help with her class today. It probably wouldn't do him a lick of good, but at least it was something?

"Detective Diaz is currently out of commission," he explained to the class, with no small amount of pride for having been the one to finally get her there. "So instead of her originally scheduled lesson," which he had actually been very surprised to find out she'd actually had one, "today, you'll be watching this holo about surviving in the wilderness."

And never look at bears the same way again.

It wasn't that Rosa was particularly fond of dramatic entrances; she just knew the value of a very good one. Of course, she'd never really had to deal with an occasion where her attempts to make a dramatic entrance were foiled by being relocated right back to the door she'd come through after only making it a few steps into the classroom. Not once. Not twice. But three times in a row.

Finally, she seemed to be able to circumnavigate it by walking slightly more to the left when she came in, and then she proceeded straight for whatever desk Sabine was sitting in (congrats, she now actually remembered your name), and stuck the hatchet into it with a very satisfying thunk sound.

(Don't worry, she'll pay for that).

"I think you dropped this."

And then she moved to the front of the classroom...tried to move, kept winding up back where she started, moved slightly to the left again, and now she made it. "So good job, you guys," she offered. "A few of you put up a pretty good show, and while I technically could claim no winner, since she didn't have it with her at the start of class, I'm willing to make an exception." Which was as close as you were going to get to Rosa admitting she'd been kind of impressed. "Enjoy the victory while it lasts, Wren.

"In the meantime," Rosa pulled down the projection screen at the front of the classroom, turned on the projector, went to kill the lights, "I've put together a nice highlight reel for you guys this morning from the security camera footage. Don't act surprised; that was, like, lesson three, kids. But, hey, I brought popcorn, too."

Class in the actual classroom today! Rosa kind of dug how it felt almost novel at this point, but she was sitting on the desk at the front of the class when everyone came in, and automatically assuming that anyone not there that morning was probably some sort of animal. Because that was a thing now. That she just straight up assumed, and, goddammit, she'd been here way too long.

"I'm sure everyone's had a real interesting week," Rosa snorted slightly, "so this week, we're just going to sort of....talk about stuff. Bounce ideas off each other. It's a pretty diverse class, today's topic is something that can really benefit from experience, and also pretty freaking important to survival, and that's diversions. Distractions. What to do if you actually get caught," maybe a little late for that one there, Diaz, "what to do to avoid getting caught, or sometimes even what to do when you have to work a distraction or diversion into your plans.

"Classic examples might include," she ticked off her examples on her fingers, "a creative use of weapons, well-timed explosions, smoke bombs, liberal use of packets of fake blood. Other people and/or animals can be helpful, butt they're also unpredictable and untrustworthy. Chaos is your friend. I know a guy who managed to snag someone's phone through a carefully orchestrated swarm of grown men dressed as giant Royal babies. It was ridiculous, but you can bet that guy didn't even realize his phone was gone in the few moments it took for him to get the information he needed and returned it."

...she should really just do a whole class on Peralta's Halloween heists. The material was gold, and she was sure half these kids would eat it right up.

"But I want to see what you guys come up with, especially once you start bouncing off each other. I'm going to give you a few scenarios, and we're going to figure out good ways to provide a distraction or diversion in those scenarios. And then I'll let you guys come up with some situations of your own, see what you can come up with."

By now, any of the students for Rosa's class would see a sign up on the door to the classroom and be able to take a pretty good guess as to what it meant. Well, there was a 50/50 chance that class was just straight up canceled, but in this instance, it was the other thing, said very distinctly in just a single word:

Gym.

At least this time it came without the threat of any punching, right? And when they arrived for the period, they'd find the gym all decked out for an obstacle course, with some very specific focuses.

"Stealth," Rosa said. "Because there's a point in every girl's life where they're going to need to sneak into or out of something without being noticed. And unless you're some kind of magical ninja from who even knows where and I don't care anyway, that sort of thing takes time, practice, and patience. So take a few minutes, stretch out, get limber, and then we're going to see just how well you can do getting through the courses without making a sound.

"First step: laser course. Only instead of real lasers, we've got ropes, and each rope has bells on it, so if you hit it, we know, I blow the whistle, and you start over. If you manage to make it through that, then we've got some obstacles, made of nice creaky wood contrary to the picture, so they're noisy, and if you're too noisy, back to the start. And then there's the window." Yes, she'd rigged up just a freestanding wall with a window in it. "Get this thing open and slip out without too much noise. Out of all this crap, this one's probably the most useful. Be careful, though, because there's some bells on the other side. Wouldn't want to set one off and have to start over again. And finally, if you think you're real bad ass, we have this rope climb. A rope. With a bell on it. If you can manage to get to the top without ringing the bell, what are you even doing in this class? There's probably nothing I can teach you. But if anyone wants to try, I'm all for it. Even minimal ringing on that one's good work.

"A few tips: don't be afraid to take your time. Focus on your breathing and the balls of your feet and keeping low to the ground. Don't let something like clothing or hair trip you up: a buckle scraped at the wrong moment could give you up like that." She snapped her fingers. "And to give you all an idea and prove that I'm not just full of shit...I'll show you what I mean."

She shrugged off her jacket, tossed it aside, rolled her neck a little, and approached the first course. One deep breath, a pause, and then she swept through the tangle of cross-crossing ropes in a fluid motion that she hadn't spent all morning practicing to make sure it was perfect or anything, shut up, but, yeah, flawless, and thank god, because that would have sucked to biff it like that right in front of the class.

"Any questions?" she asked. "Take five, warm up, then we'll get started. You," she quirked her chin at literally anyone, there was no way you could tell if she had a particular person in mind, "you'll go first."

Rosa was leaning on the front of the desk at the front of the classroom when everyone filed in, eyes on her watch, waiting for the exact second she could start this class because that would put her closer to the exact second she could end it. So as soon as the time hit, she got to work, whether the students were there and ready or not.

"Today's a two-fer," she said. "Two lessons for the price of one. First lesson is," and she lifted up the small survelience camera she'd hidden for last week's class, "no matter where you are and what you're doing, odds are, someone's probably watching you. Last week, it was me, and at least one of you," a nod to Gratuity assuming she's there, "knew that right off the bat. Don't know if it was smart giving yourself away that you knew, but at least you know that I know that you know. More of you picked up on the second lesson, though, or maybe you just didn't care or you're vegetarian or whatever, but the second lesson is that you probably shouldn't just take random food that's lying around from disreputable sources."

Rosa, you were the town detective. You were supposed to be the opposite of a disreputable source.

"So congrats, those of you who took sandwiches, you're now terribly sick because let's just pretend those sandwiches were actually poisoned. And now it's these chuckleheads who didn't take the sandwiches that have to heal you. Bet you're really wishing that sandwich killed you now, huh?

"Okay, so it's actually three lessons today, obviously no one's poisoned, and that doesn't even factor in to what we're doing today, which is going to be some basic first aid skills that any bad ass bitch should know to survive. Sandwich takers get to be the practice dummies; sandwich abstainers get to figure out how to dress theh sandwich takers' imaginary wounds."

Because they couldn't do fake victims. Rosa trying to figure out the Danger Shop would likely result in her trying to shoot the control panels and then no one would be having a good time.

"Three skills we're going to go over: cleaning and dressing a wound, how to make an emergency splint, and how to treat various degrees of burns. If you know how to do all of these already, good for you, help out your classmates, or whatever."

So she went through what to do with each instance, demonstrating on herself where applicable, and then shrugged. "All three of these things could perminently injure or disfigure a person if you don't do it right, but, you know, no pressure or anything. If you have any further questions, you can go bug Dr. Yang. She actually finished medical school."

The oh-so-sweet smile she tried there lasted a flash of a second. "Okay, sandwich takers, that side of the room. Sandwich abstainers, pick out a taker and get to work on one, two, or all three of the different procedures. I didn't bother checking if it all balances out or anything, though, so, I don't know, group up if you have to."

If you honestly thought Rosa actually cared, you clearly hadn't been paying attention.

And she could almost respect that.

Students coming to class that morning would find a sign posted on the classroom door:

Gym Today
Last one there is the punching bag.

And when they got to the gym, they'd find Rosa there with a practice dummy and mats covering the floor. She checked her watch and when it was time for class to start, she launched right into.

"Okay, so, today, we're doing hand-to-hand combat and defense," she informed them. "Hope you're wearing clothes you can move in, but, hey, look. If not, I dug up these super cool and stylish gym uniforms you can put on if you need to. They might even be clean.

"Any Bad Ass Bitch should be able to defend herself against anything, and weapons are great, but you're not always going to have them or they might not always be the best choice for a situation. There are three things that you can usually have on you at all times that'll make a hand-to-hand situation swing further in your favor, and that's a knife," to which she pulled a switchblade out from behind her, let it flash open, then twirled it back in a smooth, steady movement, and when her hand came back around she displayed the next item, "brass knuckles," hand into her pocket and she pulled out a small container, "Mace. They're small, easy to get to, and can help out a lot in a difficult situation, especially knives. Good knives can go just about anywhere; five bucks to whoever manages to guess exactly how many knives I've got on me just now.

"Raise your hand if you're already familiar with hand-to-hand combat."

She was...not at all surprised by the response there, and she had to grin a bit faintly. "Good. Those of you who aren't, pay attention, you're going to get the most out of this. Those of you who are, same thing. Never hurts to brush up on your basics.

"Hands are just as much weapons as knives or axes or guns, only not as much fun or as cool because nearly everyone has them. To attack, best places to hit on the body are..." And as she lifted them, she delivered a deft and precisely blow to each spot on the dummy, and, if it looked a little like a dance when she did it, well...rest assured, her ballet training was clearly going to good use now. "Eyes, nose, groin, knees, solar plexus, knees, fingers, and...my personal favorite...throat!"

"Let's say you can't get that first attack in, though, they've got the upper hand. First, protect anything they can use against you, and that's usually things they can grab onto. Long hair, baggy clothes, hoop earrings, whatever those things on Blue's head are,"--sorry, Vette--, "can all be used against you, so don't even let them close. And then go in for a defensive move to subdue the attacker, and that's what we're learning today.

"Okay, Braids," she gestured to Uma, who'd been the last person to walk through the gym door according to the RNG, "you're up. You think I was joking about the punching bag thing? Don't worry, it'll just be a demonstration, I'm a trained professional, you'll be fine, just go along with it, okay? I'm going to teach you all a few simple moves for getting out of some of the most basic attacks. Punching Bag here's going to come at me, and I'll demonstrate. Alright, first one, grab for my arm..."

In addition to the arm grab, she had Uma also exhibit a grab from behind, a choke hold, and a hair grab, explaining what she was doing as she went through the motions, with some bonus body throws. Hey, she didn't drag those mats out here for nothing.

And if she might have finished some of those with a little twist and kneel like she was about to handcuff Uma, well...that was just habit.

"Good job," she told her when they were finished, gesturing for her to rejoin her classmates. "What I want you guys to do now is pair up and practice with each other. Those of you with experience, try to help those without. If any of you feel more comfortable having me going over it in a little more detail first, come see me, otherwise I'll be walking around and correcting all your terrible forms. Please be careful, take your time, be aware, and try not to actually injure anyone. I'm sure Dr. Yang is bored as balls down at the clinic, but I sure as hell don't want to fill out that paperwork. Any questions before we begin?"