fandomhigh | BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

Entry tags:

!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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"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.

Kanan actually made an amused snort at that.

"Put my name in the hat to play buddy this semester," he admitted, "but I think someone else won that lottery. I guess you'll have to settle for me showing you the ropes in an unofficial capacity, instead. I hope you're not too disappointed."

... So sue him, he actually kind of was.

"You weren't to know," she consoled him, "If you had, you could've just asked, right? I thought it'd be a fun surprise."

Jack had a strange and not altogether very nice sense of fun sometimes. This probably counted.

Kaidan was going to faint. She smirked a little when she thought about it. "Speaking of big brothers. Kinda living for that moment. If you're there, record it."

She'd seen the tooka pictures. Kaidan deserved it.

"I'll keep my phone at the ready," Kanan chuckled. "One of these days I'll invest in a proper holorecorder. It'd be nice to be able to re-live that moment from every concievable angle."

Because, yeah, Kanan was absolutely holding a small grudge over the tooka pictures.

"I'll need to get one of those," Jack said and pulled a face. "Antique tech, yum yum."

Not really.

"Holorecorders do 360 video, huh?" That, she was interested in. "We have tech that can do something similar but it's expensive as he..ck." She pulled another face when remembering the last time she'd seen it in action. The Illusive Man was someone's bitch in hell and she couldn't be happier about it.

"It's standard tech back home," Kanan explained, nodding. "Not perfect, it's a rare piece of holo equipment that can broadcast something without a blue tint and the occasional flicker or grain, but it's good for working out things like building layouts, say. I didn't have one before because I didn't exactly have anybody I wanted to keep contact with who also had holo tech. But I can pick up a few next time I'm home without even breaking a sweat. The portable kind, I mean. Hera's got some of the bigger, more permanent fixtures on her ship."

Like the dejarik table. Because who didn't like dejarik?

"Yeah? Do that. I'd like to see your version," she encouraged, "Find out if EDI can pair it with an Omni Tool. Wouldn't that just be fun."

So help her if she wouldn't rig the Normandy to have little pop-up holos all over it just to bop out at Vega and make him scream from the startle.

Poor guy.

And yet? Beautiful.

"Alright, then," Kanan replied easily. "Next time Hera and I head back for a job and a grocery run," because they were nothing if not efficient, "I'll see what I can find. They might just be cheap ones, but even cheap is better than nothing."

Then again, maybe they'd just scramble the holofrequency after looting a downed Stormtrooper or two for theirs.

"I wouldn't know cheap from any other kind," Jack said easily, "Plus, I have a Quarian back home who'll wet her suit for any new tech she's never seen before."

Take it apart. Make it better. Complain the entire time about sloppy soldering.

Which reminded her. She gave Kanan a critical look and snorted. "I was going to ask if you needed more hot sauce from back my way but I guess that wasn't for you." Since you were not in evident gastric distress.

Kanan blinked, and then laughed and shook his head.

"Definitely not me, I'm not a spicy food person." Even a little bit. It was a work in progress. "Hera appreciates it, though. I'm pretty sure her mouth is a neutral territory where hot food pauses to look around and just sort of gives up on even trying."

Twi'leks were monsters when it came to what they could eat without a second thought. Kanan was occasionally impressed but horrified at the same time.

BWI Airport Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

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