fandomhigh | Laying Low for Beginners, Thursday, Period 1

The kid at the front of the room today, for better or for worse, was definitely the teacher of this class, yes. He was a bit on the short side, being only fifteen and not having quite hit a growth spurt just yet, with a brown robe over his too-practical-to-be-fashionable tunic and pants, all of which were in shades of white, black, or brown.

Oh, and he had the same stupid hair as Anakin. It was a whole thing.

He probably felt about as out of place as he looked, if that was any consolation.

"Uh, hi," he said, awkwardly. "I'm Caleb. And I guess I'm a teacher today." It would be good practice for when he was a Master himself, someday. Right? "I'm supposed to be teaching about laying low, but that's a little bit out of my area of expertise, but I think I've figured out a lesson that can benefit everyone in the room anyway. It's actually pretty simple. The whole lesson? Ask questions."

If Master Kenobi or Master Windu had been in the room to hear him tell that to a whole class full of students, they probably would have groaned and buried their faces in their hands. Caleb had a bit of a reputation at the Temple as the one who did entirely too much of that.

"The thing is, you can't really lay low unless you know what kind of situation you're in and what you can use to your advantage. And maybe you'll find yourself on a planet you don't know, or in a situation you haven't encountered before, and simply observing might not be enough. But maybe somebody else will know that one thing you need that can get you through." He ran a hand through his hair, embracing that awkward tell he'd mentioned he once had in a class he couldn't remember teaching, now. "You do need to be careful about who you're talking to and what questions you're asking, I think. I mean, if you ask the wrong person something that immediately identifies you as someone that should be in a lot of trouble, at best they'll try to distance themselves from you, and at worst they'll try to kill you. But if you ask the right questions, if you work your way toward the answer you're trying to get to maybe a little sideways, so that they answer it without even realizing that's what you were looking for, then that's even better, right?"

Yeah, he needed a lot of work before he could ever even think of teaching a Padawan of his own someday. This was way too awkward.

"So, today, we're going to ask questions. That's the whole assignment. There's this game that's entirely about doing that, where one person asks questions and the person answering them can only say yes or no. The one asking the question gets twenty attempts, and if they can't guess what the first person is thinking about in those twenty turns, they lose. So, everybody team up. One of you pick something on the island that your partner is likely to be at least sort of familiar with, and give that a try."

Yes, Caleb was assigning a game of Twenty Questions today. Which was probably at least slightly more fun than Kanan's planned lesson of self-evaluation and trying to figure out your own weaknesses, so enjoy this, guys. This, and snickering at his hair.

[OOC: Have at!]

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Well, it kind of was.

"Why?" Caleb balked a little. That was his job to ask! Constantly and annoyingly! "Because... it's what seems right. Protecting people, keeping the peace in the Galaxy. It's the future I feel the Force is guiding me to."

There it was.

"How does fighting droids keep the peace?" Tip asked, honestly wondering. She was a girl who'd fended off two invasions with one massive allergy attack. Her perspective on war itself was slightly skewed.

Caleb sighed a little.

"The Separatists that we're fighting are part of a violent uprising against the Republic and what we stand for," he said, quietly. "They go world to world, trying to convince them to join their cause and to leave the Republic, by any means necessary. A lot of innocent people are being hurt by their actions. The droids aren't the masterminds behind it, they don't have any choice, but they're still killing people." He sighed. "I think even a lot of the Separatists want peace, just want to leave the Republic and not go to war. But the ones who want to fight are making that impossible."

"Why do they want out of the republic?" Tip asked.

"Some of them want to leave because they believe it's corrupt," Caleb explained, because it was important to get that out of the way. "But some of them see it as an easy power grab. Or, at least, they used to, before they realized that we were capable of holding our own, too."

He frowned a little.

"It's war," he said, finally. "It's messy. But I joined after one of them tried to bomb my home. We have younglings in the temple. And the one who killed St--"

He swallowed.

He shook his head.

"Some of them aren't just fighting for justice," he amended, suddenly going very quiet. "Some of them enjoy causing people pain. I've seen them revel in it."

Tip bit her lip, then nodded. "There's a race of aliens where I'm from whose language is based on punching. Or -- there was, anyway."

She still wasn't sure what had ultimately happened to the gorg.

Caleb remained silent for a few moments, quietly running over the Code in his head, eyes closed, until he was sure he could trust himself to talk again.

"They're gone now?"

"I don't know," Tip said honestly. "They attacked my planet. We had to, um, make them sick. To make them go away. But I don't know if they recovered in space or not."

Caleb nodded a little, thinking on that.

What would he wish on them, if they'd attacked his entire world? He wasn't sure he had an answer. He'd thought after Sear has murdered Stance that he wanted to make him pay, but... that hadn't been the answer. And he was happy (as much as he could be) that he hadn't acted out of anger, even if the end result had been the same.

"I hope... if they survive," he ventured, "that they've learned not to hurt people that way again."

He looked down at the floor.

"I know that's a naive hope," he added. "But hopes don't have to be likely things all the time, I think."

"That's actually a really good point," Tip said. "I've mostly just tried not to think about it."

"That's always an option, too," Caleb agreed.

Compartmentalizing. Also the Jedi way.

"Got a lot of experience with that one, huh?"

"It's part of the Jedi Code," Caleb replied. And then paused. "Um. Sort of."

Master Billaba would totally thump him for interpreting it that way.

". . . The Jedi code says not to think about the bad things?"

"It says not to let emotions rule you," Caleb admitted. "And the best way I can think of to do that is to not think about the bad things."

It really was no wonder Kanan had gone to hide in the bottom of a bottle for a decade, there.

"Yeah, that doesn't sound healthy to me."

".... It doesn't?"

This possibility had not occurred to Caleb, no.

"No. Emotions exist for a reason. Sometimes you have to just sit down and feel stuff."

Sometimes you didn't have any other choice because what you were feeling was too big.

Caleb bit his lip at that, standing there awkwardly.

"I... guess," he said, carefully. "And feeling things is okay. It's just... just being careful to not let them control your actions, I guess."

Which was difficult to glean from 'there is no emotion,' but that did seem to be the lesson that his Master kept leaning into.

Laying Low for Beginners, Thursday, Period 1

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