Show and Tell was a stressful day at the Arasaka Academy. It was, like all of the other lessons, a subtle game on multiple levels.
The first was the most obvious. Bring in something that your classmates would find interesting, so that they knew something about you and wanted to talk to you. Of course, you didn't want to bring in something that told them too much about you, because what sort of fool would hand out valuable psych profile data to rivals, even if said rivals were fifteen?
The second was also apparent to most of the students. What you brought in had to be impressive, as an indicator of your (or your family's) social status. It also had to be appropriate to your social status: the child of an Arasaka executive could get away with showing off a bespoke orbital crystal mono-katana, but if a peasant - excuse me, a scholarship student - brought one in, their social betters would extort it from them in short order. This gave the exercise a layer of self reflection; how much are you worth compared to your peers, and what is the appropriate level of confidence to display? Bring in something cheap and you were seen as not just poor but weak; bring in something too expensive and you were seen as foolish and overconfident.
Most students were too focused on struggling through these social complexities to remember the third layer, which undergirded all exercises at Arasaka Academy: impress the teachers. They were the ones who actually took notes and graded you on the exercise, after all.
Hiromi had thought long and hard (okay, about eight seconds) to come up with something that was uniquely hers, that was interesting, impressive, couldn't be taken from her, and demonstrated her skills in a way that a Corporation would find valuable.
She was beginning to regret it. Motoko had said she'd show up in a "super cool" way that would "totally wow" everyone, and Hiromi had been too busy focusing on her sexy voice to remember to ask questions. Letting Motoko plan anything unsupervised never ended well. So now she was standing in front of the class, alone. With a notable absence of a certain cheerful merc at her side. An absolute paucity of leotard-wearing, hip-revealing, muscled-abs flaunting... Hiromi briefly forgot where she was going with this. After a moment of warm thoughts, she remembered where she was, and cleared her throat.
She hoped she wasn't drooling.
She also hoped that Motoko was actually here and sticking to the plan, or she was going to look very stupid.
"For today's Show and Tell," she began, projecting her voice in the Domineering Corpo style her vocal tutors had taught her, "I have brought in something truly extraordinary. Or rather, someone."
That was the signal.
There was a long moment of silence where nothing happened. Hiromi could feel sweat beading on her forehad.
Then one of the paneled tiles in the ceiling was shoved aside, letting Motoko drop down and land dramatically in the middle of the class. The teenage merc had three dusty blackboard erasers in her hands. Hiromi had no idea where she'd found them; they hadn't used chalk in schools since before the DataKrash.
Before Hiromi could ask what was going on, Motoko threw all three erasers at students who were still flinching away from her sudden arrival. Two of them landed right in the face girls who'd tried to bully Hiromi over her grades before, coating them in a cloud of chalk dust. The third went for the boy whose inept BrainDance™️ operation she'd taken over. He at least managed to get his arms up in front of his face to block, though he still got a lungful of the chalk dust.
Motoko struck a strange pose, fingers interlocked in a gesture Hiromi didn't recognize. "Super Ninja Mercenary Motoko strikes again! Nin nin!"
Hiromi put her head in her hands. She knew letting Motoko come up with a plan had been a mistake.