The Bar in the Matriarch Towers, Nos Astra, Saturday Night

[uncertain_dume]

Leave it to Kanan to wander into a bar empty-handed and still wind up getting fairly hammered.

It had been getting to him, sitting on the island, looking out on stone streets and buildings that were practically ancient. Especially since just off the Causeway there was a city that looked like a city he could feel right at home in. And he'd managed to talk himself out of leaving the island to investigate for most of two days, but then it had occurred to him that if he could find out where he was here, maybe home would be that much closer at hand.

The trouble was, once he made it out into the city that wasn't part of the island, there were plenty of things that should have been familiar, but weren't. At all. Blue-skinned aliens that looked near-human, a lumbering four-legged sentient who looked something like Kanan imagined a bantha would look like if you shaved it and took away its mouth and horns, a reptilian alien tending the bar...

Of course he'd wound up at the bar. A person could ask all kinds of questions at a bar and have nobody think anything of it. But nobody could point him to Gorse, couldn't even say they recognized any of the other planets he'd named, and even after he'd given up on asking for info and just started doing cheap balancing tricks and taking small, stupid bets in exchange for drinks, nothing he requested was on the menu.

In retrospect, he thought, staring into a glass of 'something with a kick that isn't likely to kill me,' maybe he shouldn't have just taken the bartender's word for that one, after all. This stuff could put even Okadiah's ferments to shame, and that was saying something.

He swayed a little in his seat, frowned a bit, and the contemplated whether he'd be making it home tonight if he just knocked the rest of the glass back and made a break for it.

[OOC: I'm somehow still awake and this is weird. Anyway, I'm expecting one, but open off-island bar is open, Kanan is not making super great life choices, and does Illium count as NFB for off-island or not?]

Comments

[uncertain_dume]

"Ooh yeah, plenty," Kanan replied, nodding and waving a dismissive hand. "Hard to think there're people who don't, like they're a rare find. But nobody wants to live in the Core if humans think they're the better than everything. Smart ones with the means to get out... do. Good for them."

[sharp_as_knives]

"There are intolerant people everywhere." It wasn't precisely a complaint; they kept Hannibal in meat, after all. "There are more of them in the Core?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Well, yeah," Kanan sighed. "The Core's where Imperial Center is. The Empire is more than a little hung up on the idea that humans are, uh, better. Best, even."

He frowned. And probably contrary to all good sense or logic, he lifted his glass for another mouthful of Ryncol while he was thinking.

"Had a girl from there in my class last week tellin' me, in front of two non-human students, that th'school's problems were 'cause of the non-humans in the office. Had to... to, you know. Tell her not. To do that."

[sharp_as_knives]

"That sounds unpleasant." Hannibal wore a disapproving look. "Still, if the girl were raised with that belief, it could take some time for her to learn otherwise."

He gave Kanan a mildly curious look. "Tell me about this Empire. You don't approve?"

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan gave a little huff into his glass.

"I don't have to approve of them. I'd just be happy if I never had to be anywhere near them. The kind of trouble that the Empire brings along with it isn't exactly to my taste."

What with the whole double-crossing and brutally killing everyone he ever cared about... thing.

[sharp_as_knives]

"It is expansionary, then? Difficult to avoid?" Hannibal asked.

[uncertain_dume]

"It's the Empire," Kanan replied, as if that explained it all. "When the Republic went away after the war, there was the Empire, stepping up and stepping in and taking over everything they left behind. There's no avoiding it, not really. Just... keeping your head down."

He snorted a little, and then knocked back the rest of the glass.

Just like the damn class. Go figure.

[sharp_as_knives]

"What happened to the Republic?" Hannibal asked. "You said that it won the war, but it still went badly?"

[uncertain_dume]

"There was a double-cross," Kanan muttered. "Right from the top. The Separatists were beaten, and the next thing anybody knew, the Republic was gone and the Empire was standing where it had been."

He shrugged.

"The whole thing was a setup. The clones belonged to the new Emperor, and they were put right to work cleansing the galaxy of anyone that might have gotten in his way."

Was the room getting a little... tilted sideways? Kanan was fairly certain he was sitting upright, but his perspective seemed to be lilting a little to the left all the same.

[sharp_as_knives]

"A military coup." How...gauche. "And here Mr. Skywalker had assured me that the government of your world was fair, upright, and even-handed."

It was both a prod for information and a tiny wedge between Skywalker and others. Never let it be said that Hannibal couldn't multitask.

[uncertain_dume]

"Galaxy," Kanan corrected, because somebody wasn't quite used to the workings of the multiverse yet. "Lots of worlds."

He wasn't technically wrong.

He was also kind of deflecting. Skywalker? Who knew a Skywalker?

"Guy could be... I don't know... from a different time," he reasoned, frowning a little more. "S'like I said. The Republic... it was, you know. That. M'ster Obi-Wan's from the past, too."

Just, not far enough back to be under the misapprehension that the Galaxy was a fair place.

Oh, hey. Now the room actually was tilting over. Kanan put a hand down heavily on the bar and scowled at his empty glass. Okay, so the big guy had served him up some starship fuel or something. Good to know.

[sharp_as_knives]

"Perhaps." Hannibal shrugged. Then put a hand out to steady Kanan. "But whatever military dictatorships lack in fairness, they make up in predictability."

They were so boring, really.

[uncertain_dume]

"Mmm. And scale," Kanan muttered, frowning at his glass again before looking up toward the bartender.

... The bartender was looking at him a little leerily. Maybe having seconds on the rocket fuel was a bad idea, then.

"Ooookay." He probably wouldn't be able to pull off another stunt in order to get himself another free drink anyway, at this point. "Anyway, doesn't matter if 's predictable. It just has to have bigger blasters and people who know how to use 'em."

[sharp_as_knives]

"The former may come more easily, but in my experience the latter can be more difficult. There's a difference between knowing how to point and shoot, and knowing who you ought to be shooting at."

[uncertain_dume]

"Shoot at enough people, and sooner or later a whole galaxy learns to stay out of your way," Kanan muttered, shaking his head. There was a mounting temptation to rest his forehead on the bar. Or to nap on the floor. "You don't need to worry 'bout aim if people are afraid enough."

[sharp_as_knives]

"Until you start shooting your own people," Hannibal pointed out. "It's easy to point in the wrong direction when you've been trained not to question."

It was easy to manipulate frightened people.

[uncertain_dume]

"Yeah, well," Kanan made a soft 'tch' sound under his breath, and then reached for his empty glass. Mostly just to have the satisfaction of having a glass in his hand.

The bartender looked distinctly unimpressed and reached to remove it from his hand, for the inevitable 'hitting the floor' part of drinking that particular drink.

Kanan swayed again.

"Jus' as long as they're not shootin' at me. Worked hard to get distance from 'em already."

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal kept an eye on Kanan and gave the bartender a nod that he hoped conveyed he'd catch the man when needed.

"You've put quite a bit of distance between them and yourself by coming here. You're in an entirely different world," he pointed out.

[uncertain_dume]

"Yeah, well, tell that to the bucketheads at the Trooper Station," Kanan said, spitting out that entire sentence like it was a curse. "And the kid from Corusc-- Imperial Center saying poodoo about non-humans like they aren't even sitting there. Or the damn Jedi."

The Jedi, it seemed, were almost the most offensive part of this whole situation. It was easy to keep hidden from troopers and dancers. But it was Caleb who kept reacting to the Jedi, and Caleb had been buried a long time ago.

"S'not all that far at all."

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal hadn't even realized the troopers had anything to do with Kanan's galaxy, so that was something new learned.

"But none of them are firing at you," Hannibal pointed out. He eyed Kanan. "What sort of place would you go to, given your choice?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Doesn't matter," Kanan said bitterly, slumping forward against the bar. The bar was a great place to be right then. Maybe he'd just... stay there. "That place doesn't exist anymore."

And then he was sliding off the barstool, on his way to the floor.

This was not his proudest moment.

[sharp_as_knives]

Hannibal caught him before he hit, and slung Kanan's arm over his shoulder. "If it exists only in your mind, I hope you may enjoy your time there."