fandomhigh | Off The Grid: Laying Low for Beginners, Tuesday, Period Two

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laying low

Off The Grid: Laying Low for Beginners, Tuesday, Period Two

Kanan stood at the front of the class today, wearing a thoughtful frown. He still couldn't remember all of the particulars from the weekend, but what he could remember, hazy as it all was, had him seriously contemplating just vanishing from the island and getting himself stuck in that village with all the furry little locals. They seemed nice enough, anyway. And he doubted any of them had ever heard of Jedi.

Which meant that his topic for today was... somewhat inspired.

"Sometimes," Kanan said, "you need to run. Not necessarily literally, even if sometimes it might come down to an actual chase on foot. I mean in that more figurative sense, where you pack up and leave and you don't look back, because what you'd be looking back at is no good for you and you don't completely know what's in front of you. Some of you might be familiar with that already. Maybe none of you are. I'm not going to ask which category you fall into. But I am going to say that, if you need to take off from somewhere on zero notice, you're going to need to prioritize. Most people can't exactly carry everything they've ever known in their arms when they skip town, and they sure as hell can't pack it all in an hour or less."

He gave a wry smile, one that spoke of experience that was all too personal.

"So, what you need to do is sort out those priorities. There are more reasons people might need to run than just to hide from somebody, after all. Evacuations happen all the time, people running from war or natural disaster, and what they grab in their last minute panic might not take into consideration their need for money or medication or clothing, or might leave behind some treasured item that they'd be tempted to go back to retrieve, however unsafe it might be to do so. So today, I want you guys to talk about one thing that you might reach for, if you need to drop everything and go. It might seem like an easy task right now, but in the heat of the moment I've seen people grab a melon and one half of a pair of boots, and leave anything of any use behind. It's not as simple when you're in a hurry as you might think."

Kanan didn't at all have this down to a science, himself. Honest.

[OOC: Open!]

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On the run!

Dante

Hyacinthe

Ada Miller

Ahsoka Tano

Eric Bittle

Merrill

Mara Jade

Kanan's not completely certain there aren't students in his class who are also thinking about getting as far from this messed-up place as possible, right now.

Name one thing that you think might be important to bring with you if you have to cut and run. It might be something useful, or it might be something dear to you. You don't have to share anything too personal if you don't feel comfortable doing so, but Kanan would at least like to hear a hypothetical item, if you can come up with one.

Dante shrugged.

"My guns," he said.

He wasn't much of a talker at the best of times, and the weekend had done him no favors there.

"Practical," Kanan replied, giving a small nod of approval before nodding down to the empty blaster holster at his side. "Me too. Unless I'm teaching here, apparently."

He sounded as though he took slight exception to that part, but rules were rules. And he needed the money. So.

"Yeah, the weapons locker rules are a pain in the ass," Dante said, giving a faint shrug.

Of course, he kinda carried his own sword, so he was never unarmed. Which was good, or he'd probably be a lot more paranoid than he already was.

"I'm sure they have some purpose," Kanan replied, in that tone of voice of a man who was still trying to figure out what, exactly, that purpose was.

The island apparently had regular invasions. In some places, he could see the point. But in a place that was supposed to actively be dangerous?

Kanan didn't follow that particular mindset well. It was going to be a work in progress.

Ada wasn't a big collector of stuff. All her precious things were in her trunk at the carnival, which was easy enough to grab when they had to roll out. Everything else was clothes or costumes, and those were easily enough replaced.

"My knives," she said finally, picking at the cuff of her hoodie. "Better safe than sorry."

You didn't have to be Force sensitive to be able to tell that something was bothering Ada. Kanan allowed himself a moment to almost frown, remembering... some kind of conversation with her on the weekend, though, again, specifics were frustratingly evasive.

He made a mental note to keep an eye on her, anyway. To make certain she was going to be okay.

"A good choice," he replied, offering her the faintest smile. "Good for self-defense, and a far more multipurpose tool than my blaster or Dante's guns."

Ada gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Stuff is replaceable," she said flatly. "People ain't."

"A lesson a lot of people never come to understand," Kanan noted. "Thank you, Ada."

For making the effort to participate. He'd half expected that she wouldn't speak up at all.

If Ahsoka hadn't been plagued by a lingering distraction she might have been able to massage some example from the war (even though she and Anakin had usually been too early or too late for evacuations), but the girl who'd walked away from the Order with nothing but the clothes on her back, and given up any claim on the few possessions that meant a damn in the process, was not the person to answer this question.

"Yeah, a weapon," she said, disinclined to be specific with Mara in the room. "Though you might have to choose to abandon that too."

That had been how she lost her shoto after all.

"Weapons can also be replaced," Kanan agreed, with all the authority of a guy who brought his lightsaber with him from world to world, but who swore by a blaster they never would have handed him while he was in the Order. "Not a bad priority to have, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to the urgency of the situation."

Fortunately, he'd never needed to go back to a world he'd fled to get his lightsaber and his holocron, but he was perfectly aware of the fact that someday, it might come down to making that choice.

The situation had involved clones and being framed, Kanan would probably appreciate the urgency.

Ahsoka gave a half-shrug. "A weapon isn't your life."

Kanan could definitely appreciate the urgency of any situation involving clones and a double-cross, yes.

"And so long as people understand that the most important asset anybody has is their life, they stand a much improved chance of making it out of difficult situations and getting on with theirs," he agreed.

"My staff," Merrill said immediately and glanced over her shoulder at said item, then ducked her head and fiddled with her sleeve. "I don't have a lot of things to begin with, but my magic -- that's too important in too many ways for me to leave it behind."

Kanan nodded a little at that. He could relate, though he'd more or less had a messy breakup with the Force years ago. It hadn't been easy. Or entirely effective, if he was being at all honest with himself.

"I guess something like that would be a bit like leaving a part of yourself behind?"

Merrill nodded in return. "A part of my heritage, too." And the Dalish didn't have much of that left, either. "Besides, I might need it if I end up in worse trouble."

A summary of at least six years of her future right there, in one sentence.

It said a fair bit about what she could use that staff for, if nothing else. Kanan contemplated mentioning that she probably shouldn't be bringing weapons to class, but decided against it. He was annoyed enough at being expected to leave his blaster at home as it was.

Kanan really didn't do 'Earth' well, yet.

"So it's a backup plan, on top of the rest of it. Not bad, keeping a tool like that so close at hand."

Oh, she shouldn't be, but . . . there were a lot of reasons she was in this class, really.

"Oh, and I can always tell people it's a walking stick, that works too!"

Only if you didn't explain what it really was first, Merrill.

"And I'm guessing that's how you've managed to get around the weapons locker rules so far?"

Yes, Kanan was smirking at you, Merrill. Look at him smirk.

"A weapon," Mara said. "If I'm running, the chances are good someone's chasing me, right?"

That seemed like an interesting answer for a dancer, Mara. Kanan tilted his head thoughtfully.

"You know your way around a weapon, then?"

Seriously, she was doing the weirdest things to his usual sense of healthy paranoia.

Mara nodded guilelessly. "I keep ending up in these really weird classes, so I'm okay with a knife now, and a blaster doesn't take much skill at all."

Kanan had run afoul of enough Stormtroopers to know that that second part was patently untrue. He even made a little scoffing sound that said about as much.

"If you don't have much skill with a blaster but you intend to rely on it to keep you safe, I strongly suggest you put some time in over at the shooting range," he noted, raising an eyebrow. "Relying on a weapon that you haven't had much experience with isn't much better than getting caught. Nobody wants to shoot themselves in the foot when they could be running away."

Mara nodded earnestly. "I'll be sure to do that. Better to be safe, right? Especially around here."

"Better to be safe," Kanan agreed. He really couldn't vouch for the 'especially around here' part yet, since the biggest problem on the island that he could remember clearly was having to beat his tunic into submission before pulling it on for a couple of days, but that much, at least, was true enough.

"My galb," Hyacinthe said, holding up his hand and showing a bracelet made of heavy gold coins. "The Tsingani travel a great deal and not every departure is a willing one. So we have galb, jewelry made of money or precious stones that are polished but not set. Weapons can be bought, food and clothing can be scavenged, but money greases many wheels, whether those of the kumpania or those who watch the roads we travel."

Oh, thank the Force at least one student in his class knew the value of money over immediately reaching for a weapon. Kanan grinned at Hyacinthe and nodded his approval.

"Bring what money you've earned with you, so that you can start your life more easily elsewhere. Never underestimate the power of a handful of credits... or whatever the equivalent is elsewhere. Either way, it's a smart choice. Especially since you don't necessarily know what you'll be running into when you go."

Kanan had learned a long time ago that the security of having a weapon in hand still didn't do him any good when he was starving to death and afraid to sleep for fear of being caught.

"Can't eat weapons," Hyacinthe said with a shrug, though he returned Kanan's grin with a crooked one of his own. "Nor drink keepsakes. If you are running, you don't want to draw attention to yourself, so stealing aught you need or demanding it at knifepoint won't work. Money can keep you anonymous while providing what you need."

He'd not stepped foot on the road ever, but his mother had drilled the lessons into him nonetheless. Whether she did it to give him an understanding of his people or because she'd seen something with the dromonde, he couldn't say.

"And anonymity is what this class is all about," Kanan agreed. "More or less. It's better to disappear than to kill somebody and give their friends a reason to hunt you down. And disappearing takes money."

"And you make it harder for anyone else who comes behind you," Hyacinthe said, conditioned as he was to thinking of running as a group. "You leave the dead behind you, whoever comes next will likely bear the brunt of their suspicions. And doing it that way ensures you can never come back to claim whatever may remain of the rest of your belongings if 'tis ever safe to do so."

"Exactly," Kanan agreed, "and if you keep burning bridges like that behind you, sooner or later you'll run out of places to run."

Though, in fairness, it would take Kanan a lot longer to run out of places. He had the run of an entire galaxy to fall back on. People who were limited to one planet and whatever their methods of transportation could access had to be a bit more cautious about that sort of thing.

Who is seriously contemplating how terrible a life choice it would be to move into a village that has talking squirrels in it that stand up to his waist.

If she's around!

Ada was around, although she wasn't even trying to put on a carnival smile; every line of her body language was screaming 'back off' today, and the hoodie pulled up over her head and the sleeves pulled down over her hands probably was a good clue that she didn't want to be bothered unless someone had an actual question.

I started thinking about the Fort Mac evacuees while I was writing this, and how they'd grab random things like a single watermelon or a can of WD40 but no clothes, because given less than an hour to evacuate a fire meant they weren't thinking straight. (The site has autoplay video on it that you can just click off, because I guess that's a thing news websites just do these days?)

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Off The Grid: Laying Low for Beginners, Tuesday, Period Two

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