fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

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!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

"Portalocity lounge," Mae read aloud, and heaved a sigh of relief. "Finally. First time I ever travel alone and I get lost in the stupid airport." She walked into the lounge, looked around, and hopped up onto the bench, her duffel bag tucked under her feet. There was plenty of room, since her legs were too short to reach the ground. "Of course, it's bigger than, like, all of Possum Springs put together, so I guess that can't be too surprising. Good thing Mom and Dad insisted I take the early bus."

She tapped her heels on her duffel bag and eyed the door. "And now I'm talking to myself. Good job, Mae. Perfect first impression." She made her eyes comically wide and waved to an imaginary audience. "HeY, I'M mAe, i'M TOtallY NOrmAl, niCE To MEeT yoU." She frowned and tapped her feet harder. "Good job, Killer."

Another glance around the lounge. There wasn't a lot to look at yet.

"I wish I had a video game."

[NEWBIE SHUTTLE TIME! Possibly slightly early, but I want a distraction]

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There was Jack, making the 'wa wa wa' sad trombone noise and a familiar hand gesture with an open fist pumping up and down right around crotch level.

The swear jar did not extend to gestures.

"Yeah, I warned him not to have plans," she smirked, "He needs some fun in his life." Her chin gestured at the bus. "You too, and I'm not the only one who thinks it if this is any measure."

Edited 2018-12-28 21:15 (UTC)

Kanan glanced back at the bus.

And then sighed. A lot.

"Some students who tried to take off with it at the start of last semester," he muttered. "You should see what they did to my warehouse."

It was terrifyingly festive. He didn't trust it.

She cackled at that. "How long have you been teaching? You haven't learned anything about teenagers in that time? If this is all they did, you got off light, buddy boy."

"Yeah, I keep waiting for something terrible to happen in there," Kanan sighed. "Maybe a hidden projector with an adult holo loaded on to it, or for one of them to assume control of the bus remotely. Those girls managed to fly off with my ship once, I won't put anything past them."

"They broke the biolock?" She was impressed, "That's some skills."

Jack smirked toward the bus. Hooking thumbs in her beltloops, she gave a lazy shrug. "They're teenagers. Porn's not going to kill them. He...ck, might even help some of the uptight ones."

Low key dig at Kaidan? Bet your skinny spaceboy ass it was.

Kanan snorted a little at that.

"We don't have biolocks on most ships from home," he explained. "They sliced into the security terminal and took her for a joyride around Saturn. And hey, I'm not opposed to a little porn either," because he was a terrible Jedi, "but there aren't a hell of a lot of situations where that would happen where I wouldn't immediately be the one blamed for it."

She snorted. "Talk to your resident combat engineer. Kaidan can hook you up."

Jack shook her head with a small tsk. "On an island where people turn into other sh .. crap.. and you've got hallucinogenic native fauna, some random porn would get you in the sh.. in trouble? Kanan, didn't you ever learn to lie?"

So help him, Kanan actually broke into a small bark of a laugh at that.

"Only all the time for the past ten years of my life," he pointed out. "But if I was set up in this case, a lie's only going to serve me about as well as the truth, I'm sure." A pause. "Well. Depending on the lie. And possibly on the scapegoat of choice."

She grinned at him. "Well that's a relief. You had me worried for a hot second there. Now I'm just going to pout if there isn't any porn. Maybe plot against you for some other time."

"Plot away," Kanan replied, well aware that he was sealing his own fate, here. "Just so long as it doesn't involve porn at a school function, it's all fair game."

"Always do," she answered easily because it was true. Then she laughed at him, "Fine, spoilsport. No porn on school functions."

She didn't promise to bombard him with porn at any other time. "I'll try to keep from getting you in trouble with .. what's the thing Kaidan calls him? The Dean?"

"He calls him 'the Sleemo,'" Kanan supplied. "Because the man is a sponge for words, apparently, and I opened my mouth about Skywalker all of once."

In fairness, the reason Kanan called Skywalker a sleemo was a reasonably legitimate complaint.

"That," Jack snapped her fingers in the air, "Sleemo. See what I mean about your words, man? That one sounds like a disease."

A beat.

"Not something I'm going to call my boss."

Another beat.

"At least not on the first day."

She knew something Kanan might not have learned yet. Kaidan didn't call people by epithets. Not unless they'd earned it. If he'd picked up the word from Kanan it was enough to tell her that something Skywalker had done - probably to Kanan because the other asshole was all forgiving and shit - had put him so deep on Kaidan's shitlist that he wouldn't even credit him with a name anymore.

Wondered, mildy, what it had been. Wasn't sure she truly wanted to know. He was her boss and if he was on Kaidan's shitlist it was a sure bet whatever it had been would put him on hers and she? Didn't bother calling people names.

"Really, that one's not far off, anyway."

Most Huttese insults had the funny way of sounding every bit as nasty as they were intended to. Because if it was bad by Hutt standards, it was probably awful.

"But yeah, he is the boss. Probably best to just tolerate him and then get your revenge at the dunk tank come the homecoming carnival later in the year."

That's what Kanan did, anyway.

When he wasn't a cat.

Jack looked at him and took that in. Nodded mostly to herself because she'd pinned that one down correct.

"Nah," she breezed, "Not really my style, dunk tanks. I mean, not if they're the kind people can get back up out of. I figure maybe the amount of paperwork I'm about to cause him might be plenty enough."

She was a good teacher. She was far from a model citizen, teacher or not.

She was also lying. Paperwork as penalty?

Bitch, please.

"This is going to be a really interesting semester, is what you're saying, huh?"

Kanan didn't seem to be complaining at all, nah.

Jack's head bobbed again. It wasn't though she lived a boring life or even allowed life around her to ever get that way.

"You teaching?"

"Culture shock, with Summer," Kanan confirmed. "I've only taken one semester off from teaching since I arrived on the island, and I regretted it, so odds are usually that I'll answer yes to that question."

He firmly believed that he was terrible at it, and yet he really couldn't picture himself not. Go figure.

She leaned forward and bumped against his shoulder armor. "Look at you, being all responsible for the young and impressionable!"

Yeah she really had a stone to throw there. Uh huh.

Kanan gave a soft snort in reply to that.

"Yeah, I have no idea what the hell the school administration was thinking, either."

"Probably that these kids got it worse where they're coming from and having people who've lived through some sh.. crap.. aren't the worst kind of teachers they could learn from," she drawled. It sounded like sarcasm.

Wasn't.

Looked over the crop of new fish again. She was having a truthful moment, sue her. "Maybe too that people who grew up in hell, without someone's got their back, who still want to be teachers are the exact kind of people who'd fight like rabid wolves to keep another kid growin' up that way."

'Hell' was not a swearword.

Kanan considered her words for a moment, and then glanced back toward the kids. And then he nodded.

"Yeah," he allowed, his voice dropping a little lower, his brow creasing a little, "that's probably exactly what they were thinking."

Maybe that was part of the reason he was so hell-bent these days on being the first member of the faculty to meet so many of these kids. He wanted to be able to give them a once-over, see if there were any that might need a little extra help. Try to figure out a way to provide it.

Try to be a friendly face. Force knew the odds that at least some of them hadn't seen one of those in quite some time.

Jack was terrible at being a friendly face. She more or less eclipsed the term 'resting bitch face' and that was when she was in a good mood.

Little children loved her, go figure. Even when she was in full fury they could somehow feel that it wasn't aimed at them and would run to hide behind her like she was somewhere safe.

Like they couldn't tell she'd killed more children than she wanted to think about before she was a teenager herself.

If she could stop even one other kid from being there, in that hellscape she had been in with nobody and nowhere to turn and only a homicidal need to escape - maybe. Maybe. There were no words past that. Only 'maybe'.

She didn't have to vocalize any of that. Kanan already got it. He'd come up through his own share of the shit after all.

Jack bumped his shoulder again. "Tell me about the picnic," she asked breezily, "If there's no pizza, I'm going to riot."

Might be kidding.

"There's usually a bit of everything, pizza included," Kanan replied, smiling crookedly. "Mostly it's a big mingling deal. People wear stupid stickers with their names on them, students meet their new roommates, there's a whole sibling and teaching buddy arrangement. You'll probably get someone assigned to show you the ropes around the island, and then you can wander around and meet people or stand around supervising with the rest of us idiot teachers as you see fit."

"Good," she smirked, "Except for that sticker part. Kriff that, I'll just write my name on my chest with a glitter pen or something."

You thought Kaidan was the only word sponge you knew. Buzzer noise.

"Maybe I'll get lucky and you'll get to be my buddy," she said while making the most ridiculous doe-eyes at him. "You can pretend to be the big brother," which she said un-ironically to the guy a good foot taller than she was, "and show me everything!"

Run, Kanan.

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