uncertain_dume | Office Hours, Office #3, Wednesday

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Office Hours, Office #3, Wednesday

Some crazy person had given Kanan an office.

Okay, some crazy person had given Kanan a job, and with the job came an office, to better facilitate the whole 'doing the job' thing that was apparently a part of his life now. Still the fact remained, here was Kanan, and here was Kanan's office. So, no better time than the present to contemplate what lapse in judgment had led to this. Kanan had even brought a cup of coffee - he still hadn't figured out where to find the real caf on the island - and his notes for his lesson plans.

He would thank anybody walking by his office to not point out the fact that those notes were currently written on napkins. He'd been sort of forced to improvise, having found his way to the island with precisely nothing at all. But now he'd liberated a stack of paper from the main office and was transcribing his notes to the best of his ability. It probably would have been an easier task without the grease stains from the Mooby fries, granted.

Like most other aspects of Kanan's life these days, it was a work in progress.

[OOC: Office office office! Open!]

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Oo, he had a neighbour! Who had actually left the door open, meaning Bob could saunter in to ~~annoy~~ welcome him without having to walk through the wall.

"Hello there!" he greeted more or less cheerfully. "You're new, aren't you?"

It wasn't really a question; Bob knew everybody on the island at least by sight, whether they saw him or not.

"Very new," Kanan replied, glancing up from his pile of greasy napkins. "Is it that painfully clear?"

Kanan, you were transcribing Rorschach grease blots. It was probably somewhat apparent.

"Small island." Bob craned his head to look at the napkins. "Either that's an awful lot of phone numbers, or...no, I can't think of anything else. Please tell me you share."

"It'd be a bit of a feat to have collected that many numbers," Kanan noted, looking down at the napkins. "I don't even have a... Oh, wait, there's one."

Offices had the earth equivalent of comms in them. That was convenient.

Bob deflated a little. "What are you getting on napkins, then?" He walked around to see, then wrinkled his nose. "You know, it's terribly difficult to be a busybody with someone who doesn't write the local language."

And that right there? That got a chuckle out of Kanan.

"You don't read Aurebesh? I'd started to wonder. I've only seen High Galactic on the island since I got here, I was starting to worry I was way out of my league."

All these people writing on paper with their fancy alphabet. It was fortunate he could read and write it as well, but he'd wondered, for a bit.

"It's just notes for my next class. Trying to plan lessons that'll actually do any good for my particular group of students is... it's definitely something."

"That'd be English to the locals," Bob said. "The script's derived from Latin, mostly." He peered at the Aurebesh. "Looks a bit like a combination of Phoenician and Futhark. What's your class on?"

"I don't know what any of those are," Kanan admitted. "But then, I had a student in my class yesterday swearing up and down that the language we're speaking is called Cruithne, so I'm going to guess this is another one of those regional things."

It was the sanest course of action, really.

"And they've got me teaching a class about laying low and avoiding trouble to a group of students who thinks 'sneak out unnoticed' is the same thing as 'start a bar fight,' so I'm predicting the rest of my time here is going to involve a bit of fancy manipulation just so that they can't shoot themselves in the foot each class."

"The Cruithne were Irish. Who live in a place that mostly speaks English now, but Irish is nothing like it," Bob said dismissively.

He rolled his eyes at Kanan's class. "Were they able to sneak out unnoticed during the bar fight?" That counted, right?

"And I don't know what Irish is, so we're right back to square one," Kanan replied, shrugging. "And yes, most of the students managed to sneak out during the fight. With the exception of the one who started the fight. And good on them for taking advantage of it that way, though I would have preferred they get a chance to use some critical thinking skills before Dante... happened."

Dante was a force of nature. Dante just happened.

"Ah. Yes, well...he does that." It was Dante. "Maybe you could order him not to touch anything or anyone, see if that helps," Bob suggested.

Not that you couldn't get into loads of trouble without touching, but it took a bit more work. Bob knew.

"And you think he'd listen if I did?"

Kanan sounded skeptical. Dante seemed just a little bit too eager to argue for that to end well.

"Say it in such a way that he'll consider it a challenge."

Okay, now Kanan was smirking a little.

"You want me to try to appeal to his ego? The whole second class was meant to be a challenge, but he mostly just thought of it as a waste of time."

"He's got a bigger ego than that," Bob said wryly. "Why not make him come up with a challenge?"

"Make him come up with one? How do you mean?"

Kanan supposed Dante had to be in his class for a reason, though he was wondering if maybe that reason was 'picking up guys to have sex with later.' That seemed to be the most notable accomplishment he'd had since the start of the summer term, after all.

"Ask him for suggestions," Bob said, overly patient. "Why might he want to lay low? Who might he want to avoid?" He huffed. "If you're lucky, maybe he'll say 'teachers' and stop coming to class."

"Oh, he's already told me point-blank that my class is a waste of his time," Kanan snorted, shaking his head. "He was there yesterday all the same, though he didn't contribute to the conversation. I have no doubt that there's more going on there than he's letting on, but I'm not exactly holding my breath for cooperation."

He set his pen down and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Had he ever been like this? He knew he had been a handful for Master Billaba, but...

"I'm going to have to attempt to engage him again, I know that. But I honestly don't think he trusts me enough to answer questions like that. I know I wouldn't."

"You could always challenge him to a duel. Who can lay the lowest?" Bob said. "If he thinks he's better than you, make him prove it."

Well, that certainly got the corner of Kanan's mouth to twitch.

"He'll have his work cut out for him, there," he noted. "He doesn't strike me as the kind of kid who has a point to prove when it comes to authority figures, though. He just strikes me as angry about something he isn't willing to talk about. Still... it might be an interesting conversation. I really do want him to leave this workshop with more at his disposal than he started. I want that for all of them."

Mostly. Maybe. He still wasn't sure what to make of the Imperial girl. Her presence in the room made Kanan twitchy, just the slightest bit. Even if her story about being a dancer checked out, Imperial Center was a corner of the galaxy he wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

"Mm. Well," Bob said, "you can't teach anyone who refuses to be taught. All you can do is badger them till they leave or give in."

Okay, that got Kanan smirking faintly, right there.

"What, you don't believe in teaching people the hard way? Important lessons learned about how important it is to learn your lessons, that sort of thing?"

Kanan was really not the badgering sort. Seemed like too much effort.

"Oh, absolutely!" Bob shrugged, but looked just slightly grim. "They don't listen, hopefully they live to come back and listen the second time."

He only badgered the ones he cared about. Harry.

He sighed. "You really can't teach the ones that won't listen, unfortunately."

Well, that was insight that Kanan didn't necessarily want to hear from a guy whose name he didn't even know yet. He frowned a little, looking less grim than Bob, but definitely feeling it in some part of him that he didn't even want to admit existed. Damn that part of him that cared. It was safer to just not.

Hell, he'd been raised to not, in a sense. Mostly in ways that he ignored blatantly now, but those teachings were all in there somewhere, deep down, too.

"I suppose I can't," he settled on, finally. "But I can talk at them, and maybe they'll remember that I said something when it actually matters. That's going to have to be better than never having heard it at all, until I can figure out a way to get through to him."

Bob was a super-cheery ray of sunshine, really.

"Sometimes they remember more than you think," he said. "And sometimes less, but those are usually the idiots, and I don't think he's one. Dante was a lot of things, but if he were as stupid as he sometimes acted, Bob didn't think he would be here.

"You could simply try an ultimatum - if he doesn't want to be there, he can leave; if he stays, he's got to at least pretend to learn."

He smirked. "That way, he can actually learn while he's acting like it's all a pretense. It saves face."

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