fandomtownies | The Park, Friday Afternoon

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The Park, Friday Afternoon

Kanan wasn't entirely sure where November had gone. Time flew when you let yourself get comfortable with your current life and were amused by the fact that everyone had turned into children, perhaps? But now it was December. Which, given that his own galaxy ran on a different calendar entirely, had never really meant anything to him before, but now it was putting into perspective just how long he'd been here on the island.

He'd never really settled, before. Not since he was a kid, anyway. Five months on Gorse had been the longest he'd been in any one place since before he'd gone to war, and now here was Fandom, clocking in at a year and a half.

A year and a half. And instead of running and never looking back, he was sharing an apartment with the daughter of a Twi'lek revolutionary and contemplating whether he wanted to spend the next semester teaching, or just continue on working at the diner while running sabotage missions against the Empire on the side. And he was contemplating it with a lightsaber in his hand, doing Soresu forms in public, waiting for his Friday student with his training sword propped up against the nearby bench.

Honestly, he was kind of wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

But for now, this was nice.

[OOC: Open!]

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Mitsutada had intended to do exactly what he'd done the other day: practice his own forms in the park with his bokken. After all, not only had it been good practice but it had also gotten him a job offer.

Today was more of a casual day, though, as he was wearing his tracksuit instead of his armor. He still had his tachi sheathed at his hip, with his wooden training sword just rested over his shoulder.

When he came in and saw the man with his own glowing weapon of some sort, he paused. And he watched, quietly. He wouldn't interrupt, at least not yet. Not until he believed he had a good feel for what this man was up to. And, more importantly, what exactly his weapon was like.

It wasn't a weapon you wanted to use a sword you liked against, for starters. And it was in the hands of a man who definitely knew what he was doing with it, stepping into each stance of his forms the a long-practised ease that spoke of a lifetime with a weapon in his hand. He was aware that he wasn't alone, of course. He'd known that almost the moment the other man had arrived. But since he didn't sense any urgency from the man, he felt just fine about finishing what he was doing before lowering his lightsaber and turning to look his way.

"Afternoon."

Yes it absolutely seemed a weapon you didn't want to use yourself against, given that would end in one's death. Which was part of Mitsutada's hesitation.

"Afternoon," he said, smiling at the man. "I didn't want to interrupt. Your weapon is very... unique. Or at least, quite new to me."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Kanan replied, looking down at his lightsaber, and then guttering the blade. "It's not even what you'd call common back where I come from. Unique works."

He gave the hilt a twist in his hands, pulled it apart into two pieces, and then put it away on his belt.

"Usually, I stick to my blaster."

"You prefer the gun to the blade?" Mitsutada asked, tilting his head. Mutsu would appreciate that sort of attitude, he thought. "I suppose it matters what is common among your foes. A sword does little good against a ship blasting its cannons until you can get to its crew, after all."

He reached out and offered his hand for a shake. "I am Shokudaikiri Mitsutada."

Well, that, and a blaster got Kanan into far less trouble back home. He gave Mitsutada a friendly enough grin, though, and took his hand, giving him a firm shake.

"Kanan Jarrus," he replied, and nodded. "And I've been around enough to know not to pick fights with cannons unless I can fly better than they can shoot. Fight smart, not just good."

"And don't forget to do it with some panache," Mitsutada said with a little chuckle. "Though I prefer not to pick fights at all. Though they have a tendency to come my way all the same."

He was a soldier, it was basically his job to go to fights someone else found for him.

Hah, panache. There was something that Kanan hadn't picked up on until later in life, right there. He was still smirking a little as he let Mitsutada's hand go and settled back to cross his arms over his chest.

"They do, do they? Well, then you'll do just fine here."

Kanan hadn't been in many fights thanks to the island, but the ones he had been in had been serious. And a little bit nightmarish.

"I had thought I could be just a humble cook here," Mitsutada said. "Is it really so dangerous here?"

This was not something the Saniwa had mentioned in the special instructions.

"What, on this island?" Kanan gave his shoulders a shrug. "I don't think anybody is really 'just a humble' anything out here. It's usually quiet enough to bore a person silly, but when it acts up, it goes out of its way to keep people on their toes."

Now that was an interesting comment. "Are you saying that everyone here has some sort of secret?" He let out a little laugh. "I suppose you don't come to this sort of place for the fresh air."

Kanan didn't answer that directly so much as he just gave Mitsutada one of his crooked grins.

"You're not saying that you don't, are you?"

Didn't everybody have secrets? That was more or less the status quo where he was from.

Mitsutada's left hand fidgeted slightly at the hilt of his tachi, as his thumb pressed up against the tsuba, lifting the blade slightly out of its sheath and back again.

"Well I suppose I'd stick out in an unwanted way if I denied it," Mitsutada said. "But I assure you, it's nothing insidious. Just a little out of the ordinary."

Huh. Mitsutada had a tell. An interesting one, at that. Kanan had dealt with his own years ago by making it difficult to run his hand through his hair when he was nervous. He briefly considered pointing out to this guy that he might want to consider doing something about that fidget, himself.

He didn't. But he considered it.

"Honestly, I'd be pretty impressed if you could point at any one person on the island and call them 'ordinary,'" he said, instead. "But so long as you're not here to cause trouble, you'll be fine."

Welcome to Fandom, Mitsy. Where everybody was weird, and so nobody was.

"I'm usually the one trying to make sure trouble gets cut off before it gets started," Mitsutada said, feeling slick. "So we should get a long just fine."

He took his bokken into both hands and gave it an idle swing. "I would ask where you learned to fight, but I have a feeling I wouldn't know anything about it even if you told me."

"You didn't know the sword, you wouldn't know the Masters," Kanan agreed, feeling... less slick, anyway. That one was a touchy topic. "I'm not exactly from anywhere you could consider 'around here.'"

"And around here is the kind of place that is..." Mitsutada's sentence trailed off and he gestured around at the fine dusting of powdered sugar in the park. "Is this normal for here?"

It seemed more than a little odd.

"Only in December," Kanan replied with a shrug. "There'll probably be bears giving out sodas at some point this month, too. The island gets excited this time of year."

And then it generally went to hell somewhere in the middle of it. Kanan shifted his weight a little as he contemplated mentioning that part.

"You missed the weekend where everyone turned into kids," he added. "And there's this one thing where people just... turn into other people? I was a cat for that one, though."

Kanan was now playing a fun game of 'break the newbie's brain.'

Kanan was winning the game of 'break the newbie's brain'.

Mitsutada paused, thinking about all of that. "People just transform into other things? With no control over it?"

He was definitely debating whether it counted as insubordination to request his mission be canceled. What if he also turned into a cat? What would happen then?

This was his new favorite game! But really, he'd sort of wished somebody had played that game with him when he was new. He'd been more than a little surprised the first time he woke up with boobs.

"Generally, yes," Kanan replied. "Except for the people who do have control over it. I'm sure there's got to be someone like that."

Peter did! But Kanan wasn't going to just start dropping names, either.

"I hope I am not transformed into a cake with all this sugar falling everywhere," Mitsutada said, shaking his head a bit to try and dislodge some of the powder. "I feel like I was not told enough about this place before I was sent here."

He frowned. "I suppose that's why I was sent here, actually."

"If you knew anything about it, you wouldn't have agreed to come?" Yeah, Kanan knew how that went. He gave Mitsy a sympathetic smile. "At least you were sent here, instead of stumbling across this place by accident and ending up stuck. We get plenty of those, too."

"No, I still would have come," Mitsutada said, shaking his head. He'd been ordered, after all. "But I think I would feel a little less... off guard."

"I was not made for this sort of thing."

He meant that quite literally.

"You and everyone else," Kanan replied easily. And then he tilted his head at Mitsutada curiously. "So, what did you come here for, anyway? Or is that one of those out of the ordinary secrets?"

He wouldn't push if it was. He knew all about that kind of secret already.

"A strange island of seemingly immense power and opportunity," Mitsutada rattled off, the wording of his special expedition instructions emblazoned in his memory. He'd read them daily since arriving. "It needed exploring and scouting and somehow I was the one for the job."

He shrugged, not caring too much anymore about his facade. The rules of being on a mission in the past were clearly not meant for a place like this.

"Lucky you," Kanan replied, clearly faintly amused. "Opportunity, huh? Well, if you've got any questions about the place, I've been here... hell, a whole year and a half, now. I'm practically a local."

He'd been through some tough stuff around here. That counted.

"Well that's a year and a half longer than I," Mitsutada said with a pleasant smile. "So far my main lesson has been that this place is full of people who are friendly and helpful."

He wasn't going to push his luck right now and ask about available whetstone or steel resources.

"Other than apparently sudden body changes, should I know anything else about curious magics here?"

"Invasions," Kanan said, nodding. "Sometimes relatively harmless ones, like cute animals. Sometimes... less harmless ones. Like giant cute animals. Or sharks falling from the sky. Hell, last year there some some sort of... shift in reality that dragged everyone here to another version of Fandom Island, where monster versions of ourselves roamed around, picking people off as they slowly lost their memories."

He grimaced a bit.

Meeting his own twisted, monstrous future self hadn't been a highlight of his stay here. He still wasn't sure how to mention that one to Hera.

"So if you can use that sword of yours, good. Odds are if you stick around long enough, you'll probably need it."

Mitsutada looked down at his sword. "This sword and I are one," he said, though he wasn't going to elaborate on that unless pressed. "And I am not a stranger to using it against monsters." That was what the Revisionist Army was, after all.

"May I not need to do so any time soon."

"I couldn't agree more," Kanan replied. "I wouldn't mind if we could have a nice, quiet winter, for starters."

At least in part because Kanan was pretty sure Hera would kill him if something more serious than sharks hit the island while they were using the place as a safe haven where the Empire couldn't hunt them down.

"We can hope the sugar and the friendly bears are the worst," Mitsutada said, brushing some more of the powdered stuff out of his hair.

"Starting to think I should get indoors so I don't end up looking like a cake."

"You already look a bit like a cake," Kanan said, smirking. He was covered in the stuff, himself. He didn't necessarily think that was so terrible, just so long as it didn't get wet. He did not need to be a sugar-glazed Kanan, thank you, Fandom. "And you're hardly the only one, right?"

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The Park, Friday Afternoon

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