( march event ) mad skillz

[officialnotice]

EVENT: MAD SKILLZ

The flyers were everywhere. Slipped into mailboxes and taped to windows, these yellow sheets of paper are more than ready to catch a few eyes. That parking ticket you thought you got, tucked under your wiper blade? Nope, that's another flyer. (It goes without saying that each public trash can holds at least a few.)

Honestly, it's nearly impossible to live in the town of Wayward Pines and not know of the Skills Fair being hosted in a park north of where most of you live on this upcoming Saturday. Whether or not you choose to attend is entirely up to you.

Venture toward the park on 3rd and Alder anytime between 11 AM and 5 PM, and a colorful assortment of tents will greet you, from which drifts the buzz of conversation and a small assortment of downright delicious smells. The first few tents - the largest by a decent margin - are the food court and the sign-in desk for anyone looking to teach. It's far from mandatory, but a volunteer from the tent makes a lap every so often to make note of those who didn't sign up, for a full list of skills that newcomers can show up and learn. The food court hosts your typical limited variety of BBQ and pseudo-cultural foods, good for a quick bite and respite from a long day of sharing skills.

The rest of the park hosts a scattered grid of smaller tents and booths in varying colors. At first glance, they seem to be free for use - even since you've arrived, one or two people have strolled in off the street to set up one booth or another with relevant teaching supplies. Feel free to claim one for yourself, or maybe just stroll through the park and see what there is to be learned.

Taped to a tree or tent every so often is a request for those offering to teach any excessively loud or alarming skills (like firearm proficiency) to take their pupils to the makeshift shooting range set up two blocks north for the occasion. It's nothing special, a series of near-pristine targets in an unnecessarily large area taped off with bright yellow safety ribbon, but it's more of a shooting range than the town had before. Any other skill in need of some sort of target is also welcome to use the range, if they need it. In fact, it may be a wise alternative to trying to teach knife-throwing or archery in the park; below the request is a warning, stating that in the case of any injuries sustained at the Skills Fair, deliberate or accidental, the individual who caused the wound will be held responsible as if they committed assault. If that's not incentive to be a little more careful, what is?

Additionally, on the side of the sign-in tent and pinned to a tree facing each of the surrounding streets is a copy of the Official Notice, framed and enlarged at 1.5x, in case anyone might forget.

Might want to keep it in mind. You never know who might be listening.

MOD NOTES

This is a catch-all for any and all threads pertaining to the Skills Fair!

PLEASE INCLUDE IN SUBJECT LINE: Character Name, Skill Being Taught if applicable, and Open or Closed, to help keep things a bit more organized. (For example: "Joe Biden | Teaching: How to become a meme | Open!")

If you have any questions regarding this event, feel free to ask them here.

Comments

[smuttywitch]

[Rachel just beams. It's nice to be taken seriously; she's used to people who have just seen some of her more embaressing escapades splashed across the front page of the paper thinking she's a total flake, unless she's worked with them before]

Once in awhile. There's a reason I don't take my purse when I'm on a job.

[just amulets and a gun at her back. And damn, she wants her gun. She has empty splatballs, but nothing to do with them. She could have just filled them with water and showed off with that]

Cool. [she's totally serious when she says that] I know someone who can handle a sword really well. I'm okay, but I learned the hand to hand stuff first, and I'm way more confident with a gun. It's a lot easier for someone to take your weapon anyway, so I don't like trusting that I'll have one even if I bring it. [like how she doesn't like relying on having backup. Then why does she miss Jenks and Ivy so much?] Maybe we could swap pointers.

[comic_relief]

_{[He's still smiling--he's almost always smiling, like his face was built to hold one--but unmistakable curiosity shines through.]}

Jobs, huh. What do you do here?

<sub>[On the surface, a simple question for prying eyes and ears, one that gives her room to maneuver without coming up against the rules stamped on every paper on every telephone pole. Underneath it sits his real question. Does she belong in this Wayward Pines place, or is she like him? Elsewhere one minute, and here the next with no explanation why?

Her interest in weapons immediately puts them on common ground, and his smile kicks up on one side. Nine years of his life invested in combat makes this one of the few things Jack can talk about with any degree of honesty in town. It leaves him with an ache for his brothers and sisters and home as much as it serves to ground him a little. Eight would get a kick out of meeting a fellow martial artist. Cater would probably argue only chumps get disarmed. It feels like they're behind him, ready to pipe up at any second, and he almost leaves time for them to answer--but it's just him.]</sub>

"Someone" like the police, yeah. I'd show you how to be a katana master in no time at all if I had one to show. _{[The roll of his eyes is tolerant, on the verge of joking, but his tone betrays sarcasm. She's right on the money--it's easy for someone to take your weapon when you're wearing a paper gown and out of your head.]} Are you looking to keep your skills sharp?

[smuttywitch]

[oh, crap on toast. She's not used to having to have cover stories that cover her whole life for this long. She pushes her hair behind her ear with a bashful grin that could say a lot of things--that she's just a flake, or that she knows that she doesn't belong here, depending on how deep you look]

I, uh, bounced around a lot when I was younger. Running...the plant shop now.

[that comes to her suddenly, weirdly, like some of the memories have been. The not-real ones, that sometimes feel more solid than things she knows really happened, things she keeps trying to remember in detail. There has to be some heavy black magic involved here.

Thankfully, she's distracted from that worrying train of thought by his eyeroll, and she's looking michevious again] Yeah. I mean, you never know what trouble a girl might run into walking home by herself, you know? [or running into the woods, or...well, things she won't say out loud]

[comic_relief]

_{[Aha, that look could be taken a few ways. Jack smiles wider. They're just two people talking about their perfectly normal roles and responsibilities in this perfectly normal town, nothing someone listening would care to take notice of. Calm. Casual. 100% aboveboard.]}

So you don't remember growing up around here. _{[It's a throwaway remark along the lines of "so you're not from around here." He watches her face where he expects the real answer to be, less a verbal one.]} Were you in an accident, too? I'm just fresh out of one. Whatever fight I was in that time, I did not come out the winner.

_{[He laughs, both on account of his own joke and hers.]}

Remind me not to sneak up on you in a dark alley--I'd rather not end up back in the hospital. But hey, I'm game for learning off each other if you are!

_{[He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel a similar pull to stay fit, stay sharp. He's been too lax the last week already, it's left an itch between his shoulders. Jack, the laziest one in class, feeling the urge to train. The others would never have believed it.]}