Fandom High School

"I was hoping to do something big for the end of class," Kanan admitted, leaning back against his desk in the classroom again. "But last week kind of got away from me - sorry about that - and then this weekend... happened."

He shrugged. He didn't know if any of his students had been particularly hit by the trauma, but he was going to lean as far away from anything violent or even remotely woods-related as he could, today.

"So we're playing hide and seek this week. You've got full run of the school building, with the exception of the danger shop, the offices, and the 'freshers." A beat. "Bathrooms. You can move around if you feel like your hiding place is about to be compromised, but keep in mind that moving might expose you and make it easier for you to get caught. There are no real prizes for being the last one found except for the satisfaction this week, but..." He shrugged. "I brought cookies for everyone."

He wasn't quite ready to face Hernando again to get cupcakes, so he'd stopped by J,GoB instead.

"Sabine's it. Give your classmates hell."

Look, she was the TA. TAs got to be 'it.' That was the job.

Was he all that sorry for setting a Mandalorian loose on the rest of the class?

Naaaah.

[OOC: Open!]

"So," Kanan said, standing at the front of an actual classroom this morning to a musical backdrop of Sabotage. It was muffled somewhat, most likely because he'd sandwiched the fish between two pillows and strapped a couple of belts around them to make them stay. "Sometimes, when you're trying to lay low, it isn't possible to travel alone. And sometimes, sometimes your trael companion isn't exactly what you might call stealthy. Or subtle."

Check-ch-check-check-check-ch-check it out
What-wha-what-what-what's it all about?

Kanan grimaced a little.

"Let's say, hypothetically, that your travel companion is a screaming flying fish that stalks you around and shows up out of nowhere right when you think you've given it the slip, possibly because it's holding some kind of grudge for sticking it, say, into a freezer for a few days as a favor to a friend. Hypothetically. And maybe you hypothetically have plans to take it on a sightseeing tour to the moon. The moon's great. Excellent view of space, and of Earth. Nowhere within earshot..."

There was a tiny exploding sound, and a small puff of smoke drifted out from between the pillows. The fish had fired off another firework. Kanan was beyond the point of even noticing, anymore.

"Here's a pop quiz on laying low, class. Assuming the moon isn't far enough, how would you go about giving your travel companion the slip? And before you go there, no, killing it isn't an option."

He knew from experience. When it had showed up floating over his bed this morning screaming, he'd tried.

[OOC: Open!]

Kanan yawned as he walked into the Danger Shop today, which was set up like a movie theater. And then he waved his hand vaguely at the screen.

"Movie day," he shared. "There was a thing with a dog and a droid, my notes for this class have gone the way of the... some extinct thing you all would actually know about. We'll cover making sure your needs are met next week. This week just grab popcorn and enjoy this thing the Danger Shop provided that might or might not be accurate, I don't know, I've never seen it."

And then he kind of oozed into a seat at the back of the theater and closed his eyes. Totally not sleeping. Honest.

[OOC: Open!]

Today when students assembled for Kanan's class, they'd be directed to the Danger Shop, at least in part because it would be more fun to do this lesson in a simulated environment with more to work with than the classrooms had to offer, but also because he could crank the environmental controls down to be even colder than the classrooms, because screw this weather right up the--

"Morning, guys," he greeted with a grin and a wave of his hand. "I'm gonna skip right over introductions this week, since each and every one of you were in my class last semester, so I can just treat this term as a continuation of the last workshop I had you for."

Which was actually pretty convenient. He didn't have to do any recaps for those who weren't up to speed with the rest of the class, and that suited him just fine.

"This week we're going to cover improvisation; that is, being tossed into an unfamiliar environment and situation, with unfamiliar tools, and still having to figure your way out of an ugly situation." The sim kicked up and suddenly they were all standing in a large toy shop. "Your mission here today is going to be twofold. Your best friend has just invited you to their little cousin's birthday, but has neglected to tell you anything about their cousin. Interests, age, anything. So you need to find something that pretty much any kid can appreciate. That on its own is going to be a gamble. Go for the infant section and an older kid might complain that they aren't a baby. Go for the older kids' toys and you might have a choking hazard situation."

He shrugged.

"Part two of the mission," he said as a giant plush dragon roared to life, "is to not get eaten by that guy."

The dragon stretched its wings, roared, and then started to march a dragony patrol up and down the aisles of the store. In spite of it being a big stuffed toy, every step it took made the floor shake and the shelving rattle.

"You can fight it if you need to, but the only weapons you have at your disposal are whatever you can find in this store. You can avoid it, too, though it might herd you away from whatever toy it is you figure will work best for the party. So," Kanan held up a hand, ticking off two fingers as he spoke, "a gift, don't get eaten, by the end of the class. Your mission will be complete when you make it to the cash registers with a thoughtful gift. And go."

[OOC: Open!]

Kanan, who was back to normal with the minor exception of a streak of blue and a streak of pink left in his hair from the week before, had asked his students to gather in the danger shop today, where the place was set up to resemble the inside of a small cabin, with mostly trees visible through the window.

"Since class took a bit of an unexpected detour last week, I'm going to take two of the topics on my lesson plan and cover them here. They both fit neatly under 'running away,' anyway," he began. The less said about Caleb the better, apparently. "Sometimes, even if you've been careful to keep your head down and avoid notice, it might become necessary to bid a hasty retreat. Which, if you've played your cards right in the lead-up to that retreat, hopefully isn't a mad scramble. If it is... let's try to mitigate that for you some, today."

He leaned back against the cabin's only door, arms crossed over his chest, and nodded around the room.

"When you end up somewhere new, work out a game plan. Understand your surroundings. Caleb wasn't wrong entirely when he," still embracing that third person, thank you, "told you to ask questions. In this case, you're going to have to answer those questions for yourselves. Nobody is going to just hand you the answers. How long can you survive out there if you were to set out on foot? What supplies will you need? Are there predators out there? Enemies? Have you got a means of keeping contact with others in case something goes wrong? Is there anything, especially personal items, that you refuse to leave behind, no matter how impractical it might seem to take with you?"

He waved his hand around the cabin.

"Ask those questions among yourselves, and work out some answers. Figure out a game plan for escape, and then for continued survival, if you have to spend any amount of time in the woods. Plan for the possibility of communications blackouts. Plan for the impossibility of vehicles or mounts, leaving you navigating those woods on foot. Is there weather you'll have to survive? What will you do if you're being pursued. What do you refuse to leave behind? And then pull together the supplies you'll need. Band together if you believe in strength in numbers. Give the woods a try."

[Open!]

"Hey, guys," Kanan said, stepping into just a regular, ordinary classroom today, looking amused. "You know, I'm actually pretty happy with how you all did in last week's assignment. Even those of you who got caught," he wasn't looking at Sidon, but he was thinking about him all the same, "put forth a game effort."

No just flat-out antagonizing the Imps. Kanan was kind of thrilled.

"This week, we're going to talk a bit about what might have tripped a couple of you up last week. We're going to talk about tells. Little things that give you away as you to whoever might be keeping an eye open. It could be a facial feature, could be a nervous habit you don't even realize you have. Scars, clothing, the timbre of your voice, unfailing politeness..."

Sorry again, Sidon.

"Not everything is going to be something you can change. If it looks like a mynock and screeches like a mynock, nobody's going to mistake it for a kath hound. But it's still worth thinking about how to hide what's built-in if you need to. This week, though, we'll be focusing on tells that are easier to hide. Reflexes, like a quick dart of the eyes toward an exit when you're worried about being found out, or habits, like reaching for an item that you carry on you that you find to be a comfort. Hell, back in my smuggling days," had he mentioned he used to have smuggling days? Oh well, "a friend of mine pointed out that I had a habit of running my hand through my hair when I was nervous. I found a way to fix that."

By pulling his hair back into a ponytail. Simple fix, but it worked. It meant that he was always sort of at a loss for what to do with his hands, was prone to gesturing a lot while he spoke, working through a lot of pent-up nervous energy. But at least he couldn't run his fingers through his hair.

"By now, I think a few of you have been here long enough for your classmates to have picked up on some of your tells," he continued. "And odds are they aren't the ones you're trying to avoid. Take a few moments to talk among yourselves about habits or mannerisms you might have noticed in each other, or, if you're comfortable sharing with the class and want some advice, feel free. Otherwise... just keep this lecture in mind. Spend the next week trying to pick out little things you do when you're nervous, or angry, or relieved. Ask yourself why you're doing something when you find yourself reacting to your surroundings, and think about whether that's something you might want to figure out how to mask. For a lot of you, it probably isn't a life-or-death matter, but honing that sabacc face might still come in handy someday."

Kanan was looking far more at ease today in front of his class than he had the first time he had taught it. But then, the first time he'd taught it had been a complete surprise to him. This time, he'd actually chosen to. And so he grinned at the room before starting his lesson the exact same way he had once before.

Don't worry, he had to stray eventually.

( Let me tell you about my day yesterday. )

[OOC: Open! I've missed teaching with this nerd.]

"So," Kanan said, looking out over his class. "Strengths. We all have them. Whether those strengths are things that set us apart as exceptional, or if they simply give us an advantage in areas where others might rather they not, most of us are capable of something at least a little bit attention grabbing. It might not even be related to the reason you're trying to keep your head down. It is possible to be a member of a group of people that frequently falls victim to bigotry and also be an exceptional individual, after all. The fact remains that exceptional talents tend to attract attention."

A pause.

"Unless that ability is turning invisible without first having to get your hands on some kind of cloaking technology. Then, uh, good on you. And if that's a skill that can be taught, I'd love to learn the trick to it." Kanan gave the group a wry grin. "Then again, I can respect how important it is to keep a few tricks up your sleeve. That is the point of this lecture in the first place, after all."

He nodded toward the class.

"I'm not going to go asking any of you to announce what you're capable of in front of a room of people you might not necessarily know or trust," for reasons including but not limited to casual xenophobia, yes, "but I am going to ask you to think about those things and how you might go about disguising them. Hell, we can even discuss hypotheticals. Obviously you don't just go around announcing that you can do things that are easily concealed, like picking a lock or throwing a mean right hook. But if there are any tools of the trade that might give a person away, should they hide them? How about a physique that betrays exceptional physical strength? What do you do about those things that can't be hidden for whatever reason? Can they be used to try to intimidate people into giving you space? Should they? Discuss."

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!]

"Alright," Kanan clapped his hands together, looking out over his class. If there was an amused look on his face, well, he'd discovered the Danger Shop. And if it was programmed to look like a certain cantina he was well familiar with, full of sweaty, hungry clientele that was just as much alien as human, well... Maybe he was just sharing the love today. "Welcome to The Asteroid Belt. Not much to look at and too much to smell, this is where the miners and freighter pilots coming over from Cynda head to help them wind down after a long, hard day working the moon."

And Kanan, who was stepping behind the bar and casually reaching for a rag to lazily wipe at a glass, apparently tended the bar here.

"You've been told by the bartender, who incidentally happens to be your boss, that if you have one more brawl inside and break one more bottle of his favorite vintage, you'll be flying the broken down hoverbus out back for the foreseeable future." He quirked a little smile. "Trust me, that really is a fate worse than death."

Kanan didn't like the hoverbus. Kanan was pretty sure it was a miracle that the hoverbus hadn't exploded and killed everybody on it, yet.

"Unfortunately, there's this guy." A male Chagrian with a broken-off horn made his way into the bar, the simulation pausing him in place with an angry sneer on his face. "And these guys." A half-dozen other people, a healthy mix of human and non-human, followed behind. They didn't look nice, exactly. "And they don't like you. See, they're a little gang that likes to call themselves the Sarlaccs. If you don't know what a Sarlacc is, trust me, the name fits. These guys'll grab anybody walking through the industrial area at the wrong time, and then thoughtfully relieve them of their credits."

He grinned at the class.

"Last time Charko, that would be the big ugly blue guy, ran into you, you broke one of those horns off of his head. Maybe you meant to, maybe it was dumb luck, but you can imagine he's not too thrilled about it. He knows you're here, he'd like to settle the score by breaking something off of you, and he's got more blasters than you do. Assuming that today you've decided that you like breathing and you hate the hoverbus, you're not going to fight these guys. You're going to hide, or you're going to leave."

He clapped his hands again, and gave a grin to the class that was a little too bright.

"Have fun with that. Oh, and Ada? Congratulations, you'll be my TA for the rest of this term."

And then he turned his attention to the drinks as the Danger Shop sim came to life.

[OOC: Open!]