Fandom Island and Town

Zoe had spent most of yesterday pacing in her living room, rereading the letter from the school board, and leaving angry phone messages in clipped five-minute sections. The limitations on voicemail were just ridiculous when one had a lot on their mind.

When the day had gone by and Zoe hadn't heard from Bo, she decided to prepare for the worst - namely, that this visit was going to happen whether she wanted it to or not. She might have been powerless to stop Fandom from bureaucratic invasion, but at least she could try to warn everyone for what they might have to do. Since it wasn't just the school that was going to have to pass muster, Zoe sent out handwavey emails, as well as a message with the squirrels, to call everyone for "an important town meeting." Thankfully, the squirrels seemed to have gotten her message to the radio station, and between the broadcast and the emails, she was hoping that students and townsfolk alike would make it to the town hall. She'd tried to find the balance between urgency and not worrying people in her message, and she aimed to maintain that tone once everyone got settled down.

"Good morning, and thank you all for coming to this meeting," she said. "I know you all have a weekend to be enjoying, so I'll attempt to keep this brief. We have a bit of a...situation happening tomorrow at the school, and unfortunately, it's going to involve the town as well. The school board is coming with some important visitors and, well, I'll just let this speak for itself." Zoe straightened up a bit as she pulled out the letter from Stephen Colbert and read it to everyone. She was tempted to leave off the last two bullets, because really, the rest of the list was ridiculous enough without making the Canadians and aliens rise up in nationalistic anger too, but it seemed important to get the full scope of insanity of the message across.

"I want you all to know that if the tone of this letter makes you angry, you're not alone. We've been trying to...reason with the school board--" which was one way to put 'threatening multiple forms of violence' "--so it's entirely possible that they won't come at all. But if they do, we wanted you all to be prepared for what tomorrow might be like. We just have to pretend for a day, and then things can go back to normal - the real normal that we have here."

Hopefully, the school would still be funded when that happened.

For as long as Zoe could remember, she'd always had to be the solid one in any given group. When Wash had died, she'd known instantly that she couldn't let her emotions show in front of anyone but the ghost in her quarters. It was Mal's job to fly off the handle, to swear and shoot people, and it was her job to be a rock, and to bring him back to stability.

In Fandom, the situation was very much the same every time something terrible happened. Zoe knew that no matter how bad things got, she had to be strong, because falling apart in front of the students, or even the teachers, just wasn't an option.

Which, she supposed, made Anakin her Mal here, if only because imagining Deadpool in tight pants made Zoe's brain do things it oughtn't.

Cameron was gone. Her family was gone. Only Grace was left, and that was because Zoe wasn't letting her more than an arms length away. Her handwavey radio call for an emergency town hall meeting wasn't just about gathering information and rallying everyone together, although it was certainly damn time for that. Hopefully, it would provide a good head count for who was still left on the island. However many people came, it wouldn't be enough to make Zoe feel better, but maybe it would be a start.

[OCD is up! Have at it!]