Welcome to Gaia! ::

The posters have been up on the noticeboards for days, and texts dispatched to newbie hunters especially. The rest relies on word of mouth.

There's an "Open House" vibe for this, the dress rehearsal of Camille Ryland and Obadiah Thompson's pet project: there's a table full of food that, despite the crescent moons on Taym's coat, looks to be mostly normal (Edith is present, and so there are some offerings that might be best sampled with caution), and it feels less like a lecture than a welcoming party.

The classroom is meticulously neat and carefully-restored, with fresh windows letting in air and sunlight and well-scrubbed floors. The chalkboard running along one wall bears a spiderweb crack, but other than that the room seems more new than like new, with freshly-laid linoleum tile floors and neat rows of matching, well-kept folding chairs, and extras arrayed along the walls for the more experienced Hunters who've been invited to attend and supply feedback. Someone (Cami) has seen fit to adorn the classroom with motivational posters. A HANG IN THERE kitten is strategically arranged to gaze past Taym's shoulder once he's up in front of everyone. And on every seat there is a folder, with more for the taking at the front of the room.

The first item in the folder is a brightly-colored pamphlet for newly-depodded Hunters compiled by Cami. The rest of the pages are print-outs: a loose map of the Island with particularly dangerous areas marked, as well as the location of major buildings, Town landmarks, and training courses; a sheet of contacts split up by division.

Wake-up Pamphlet


Contacts

The final sheet is a form for feedback after the meeting's over: things that were good, things that need work, suggestions for vital information to include in the welcoming materials and the lectures.

Also on each chair is an index card and a pencil, and a box marked "Questions" makes it obvious that it's for the benefit of those who have things to ask but don't have the stomach for speaking in front of a crowd.

Taym is not milling around in the cluster of new folks and curious onlookers. Instead he's twice excused himself for a cigarette and now he's on his third, standing in the doorway that leads out into the overgrown jungle courtyard and looking altogether too calm and incredibly pale. In contrast, Cami is in the thick of everything, making sure everyone has a folder, a pamphlet, and a doughnut. Every so often she looks back to make sure that Taym is still present.

Kostya believed in doing his due diligence. He'd never awoken any new hunters, but given the introduction he and Mimsy had received (Hello, good morning, you are now a woman with extremely large assets), an improvement to the current process could be nothing but helpful.

As such, he made sure to attend, and covertly snapped some cool-guy-in-action photos for a certain redhead that was off island.

Peyton was there, smiling brightly, and trying to look as helpful as possible.

"Not by myself." The tone was defensive, as though he'd been fielding insults for a while which, in truth, he had (deservedly: Taym was an a*****e and not the most welcoming person on the planet, to put it mildly). It took him a minute to find the name, but he did: "Inoke, right?"

He turned his head away to exhale, gazing grimly past Inoke's shoulder through the door to everyone arriving, mostly for the sake of shooting Leslie an unimpressed "I'm watching you" look.

"Thanks for showing up," he added, very belatedly. No wonder he'd been fielding insults. "The more people I have here telling me what we can do better, the more improved the first real one will be."

He bristled, just slightly, but managed to calm it down in the time it took him to take an agitated drag.

"We're only trying to cover absolutely essential ground here--everything else needs to come at the hands of division specialists and trainers who handle relevant work, and anyway there's only so much a person can absorb in one day. As to the rest of it: Edith's here or will be, she's my lead--" this still felt strange to say, and when Inoke had met Taym he'd still been under Caelius's thumb "--but we're trying to keep this as much in the hands of regular hunters as possible. It's just--" he hesitated "--easier for everyone," he settled on tactfully.

Edith sat on a windowsill in the back, lending both a certain weight of official approval as well as a stern air of no shenanigans. On the other side in a chair just a shade too small for his sturdy frame, the new Life assistant, Mary Worth, sat playing a hunter version of Angry Birds on his phone. Muttering to himself, the man wore ugly Hawaiian like a uniform (and not a bit of actual uniform present upon his person) and seemed entirely engrossed in the game. Head bent over his phone, most people wouldn't notice that his eyes were scanning the room and not focused on the screen at all.

Sherry was there, somewhere. Out of the way, waiting until she would be needed.

Which was fine.

She was taking these last few minutes to go over her talk again. Did she have everything? Would she forget anything?

No, no. She'd prepared. She had this. Of course. Probably.

"We're working on it," he said grimly. "A little at a time."

His eyes were wandering over Inoke's shoulder, and despite the fact that he was talking to the trainee, he nonetheless found time to shoot Bix an eyebrow-lifted expression of consternation at Cee's presence (Cee disregarded entirely), and then to look for, and find, Jordan. He fixed the Sun hunter with a flat, unreadable look, studying him, careful, as if vaguely surprised to see him there at all but too polite to indicate it.

"Thanks again for showing up," he said to Inoke, stepping out his cigarette, then stooping to retrieve the butt before he stepped back inside and made a beeline for Jordan.

"Glad you made it," he said lowly. It was less friendly than it could have been, but it didn't sound sarcastic, exactly.