Constant Vigilance #1: Friday the 14th, Morning. A Classroom.
The classroom was laid out much like your average classroom. The student desks had been placed in a circle, stemming from the larger wooden desk on the end near the dry erase board. The Doctor was sitting on the edge of that desk, a piece of fruit in each hand. One was obviously an orange, the other a pomegranate.
The Doctor smiled and gestured towards the desks whenever anyone walked in. Short greetings of "Hello" and "Don't be afraid to talk amongst yourselves" accompanied that. Once everyone had arrived and got themselves situated, the doctor set down his fruit, rolled his legs over as to end up standing behind the wooden desk, and grinned.
"Hello, in case you've not yet heard, I'm the Doctor. Not quite the fellow who was teaching here before, but in essentiality, one and the same. But let me get this straight right now. I'm the Doctor. Saying the 'the' is optional, but it's Doctor and nothing else. I'm not a professor, mister, master, or any other title. And I am not a number, I am a free Timelord. But more on that in a second." He grabbed a green dry-erase marker and wrote on the board. He finished the two words with a flourish, before turning back to the class.
"Constant Vigilance. The idea that no matter how hard it gets, no matter what the big bad is, you persevere. My only goal with this brief class is to educate you in dealing with some of the specifics. Daleks, Cybermen, Autons, Zombies, Vampire, Werewolves. Out there in the millions upon million of worlds and dimensions, you're bound to stumble across everything at some point." He put down the marker and smiled.
"But back to introductions. Because good boys and girls all bother to get to know each other. The exercise is simple. Tell your name, where you're from, and one fact about yourself you'd like everyone to know, and one fact you don't. To be fair, I'll start." He stepped around the desk and sat on the edge.
"I'm the Doctor, last Timelord from the planet Gallifrey. One thing I'd like you all to know is that I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan. Greatest author of his time, he was." He paused for a second. "One thing I don't want getting out is that I once dressed as a washer-woman to infiltrate an organization's base. Headscarf and all. Course, the face was a bit different then." He smiled. "See, painless random fact. Not asking you to pull your own teeth. Now go on, introduce yourselves."
After the introductions were over, the Doctor stood up again. "Only a few more things, and we'll be done with the day. First, the two most important rules of the universe." He picked up the marker and wrote on the board again.
"One. Always ask questions. It's fairly simple. Don't accept things as being what they are at face value, because usually that means you're treating people for who the seem to be, not who they actually are. This is always a mistake, possibly a fatal one." He scribbled on the board some more.
"Two. Violence is a last resort. If you plan on subscribing to the shoot first, ask questions later approach, I will be doing my damnedest to convince you otherwise. Very little in this universe is pure evil and doesn't deserve to live. Thwarting is infinitely betting than destroying. Especially if you have no idea what you're dealing with." He pulled out a bowl from the desk, and a small pocket knife. Picking up the orange, he spoke again.
"You're fairly certain you know what you're dealing with in certain situations, and it's like cutting into the orange. Sure, it gets the job done, but the juice gets everywhere and is lost." He proceeded to cut up the orange into quarters and placed them in the bowl. "With just a little bit of effort, you could've finessed it apart, without resorting to brutality. And then, you end up with the ability to enjoy all the orange offers."
He then picked up the pomegranate. "And if you don't know what you're dealing with, just stabbing it could cause untold damage and make it hard to enjoy it at all." He glanced at the fruit and put away the tiny knife. "But I'm not one to waste a perfectly good pomegranate." He smiled.
"So, that's our class for today. Come back next week with a short essay, one hundred words or so. Tell me your worst fear, and be honest. What scares you more than anything in this world. And if any of the boys come back with the word 'commitment' written over and over, I'll be quite cross with you. Questions, anyone? And would anyone like some fruit?"
[ooc: All ready to go. Note about the assignment: The Doctor will be adapting some of these worst fears into the very special final class, assuming they fit into the model I'm working on. If I -do- believe yours will fit (which I won't know until next week, when they are handed in), I'll contact you to make doubly sure you're okay with having a possible confrontation with that. And other than that... huzzah! The first class, yay! Up early in case I accidently sleep in. I'll be around a wee bit tonight, and almost all of tommorow!]
The Doctor smiled and gestured towards the desks whenever anyone walked in. Short greetings of "Hello" and "Don't be afraid to talk amongst yourselves" accompanied that. Once everyone had arrived and got themselves situated, the doctor set down his fruit, rolled his legs over as to end up standing behind the wooden desk, and grinned.
"Hello, in case you've not yet heard, I'm the Doctor. Not quite the fellow who was teaching here before, but in essentiality, one and the same. But let me get this straight right now. I'm the Doctor. Saying the 'the' is optional, but it's Doctor and nothing else. I'm not a professor, mister, master, or any other title. And I am not a number, I am a free Timelord. But more on that in a second." He grabbed a green dry-erase marker and wrote on the board. He finished the two words with a flourish, before turning back to the class.
"Constant Vigilance. The idea that no matter how hard it gets, no matter what the big bad is, you persevere. My only goal with this brief class is to educate you in dealing with some of the specifics. Daleks, Cybermen, Autons, Zombies, Vampire, Werewolves. Out there in the millions upon million of worlds and dimensions, you're bound to stumble across everything at some point." He put down the marker and smiled.
"But back to introductions. Because good boys and girls all bother to get to know each other. The exercise is simple. Tell your name, where you're from, and one fact about yourself you'd like everyone to know, and one fact you don't. To be fair, I'll start." He stepped around the desk and sat on the edge.
"I'm the Doctor, last Timelord from the planet Gallifrey. One thing I'd like you all to know is that I'm a huge Charles Dickens fan. Greatest author of his time, he was." He paused for a second. "One thing I don't want getting out is that I once dressed as a washer-woman to infiltrate an organization's base. Headscarf and all. Course, the face was a bit different then." He smiled. "See, painless random fact. Not asking you to pull your own teeth. Now go on, introduce yourselves."
After the introductions were over, the Doctor stood up again. "Only a few more things, and we'll be done with the day. First, the two most important rules of the universe." He picked up the marker and wrote on the board again.
"One. Always ask questions. It's fairly simple. Don't accept things as being what they are at face value, because usually that means you're treating people for who the seem to be, not who they actually are. This is always a mistake, possibly a fatal one." He scribbled on the board some more.
"Two. Violence is a last resort. If you plan on subscribing to the shoot first, ask questions later approach, I will be doing my damnedest to convince you otherwise. Very little in this universe is pure evil and doesn't deserve to live. Thwarting is infinitely betting than destroying. Especially if you have no idea what you're dealing with." He pulled out a bowl from the desk, and a small pocket knife. Picking up the orange, he spoke again.
"You're fairly certain you know what you're dealing with in certain situations, and it's like cutting into the orange. Sure, it gets the job done, but the juice gets everywhere and is lost." He proceeded to cut up the orange into quarters and placed them in the bowl. "With just a little bit of effort, you could've finessed it apart, without resorting to brutality. And then, you end up with the ability to enjoy all the orange offers."
He then picked up the pomegranate. "And if you don't know what you're dealing with, just stabbing it could cause untold damage and make it hard to enjoy it at all." He glanced at the fruit and put away the tiny knife. "But I'm not one to waste a perfectly good pomegranate." He smiled.
"So, that's our class for today. Come back next week with a short essay, one hundred words or so. Tell me your worst fear, and be honest. What scares you more than anything in this world. And if any of the boys come back with the word 'commitment' written over and over, I'll be quite cross with you. Questions, anyone? And would anyone like some fruit?"
[ooc: All ready to go. Note about the assignment: The Doctor will be adapting some of these worst fears into the very special final class, assuming they fit into the model I'm working on. If I -do- believe yours will fit (which I won't know until next week, when they are handed in), I'll contact you to make doubly sure you're okay with having a possible confrontation with that. And other than that... huzzah! The first class, yay! Up early in case I accidently sleep in. I'll be around a wee bit tonight, and almost all of tommorow!]