fandomtownies | The Park, Friday Afternoon

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The Park, Friday Afternoon

So, that was a hat stuck to Kanan's head today. And another one stuck to Stance's, at that. Because of course it was. He couldn't just be out doing swordwork in more sugar or anything, right?

Though, he supposed, he did prefer a stupid hat over the smell of burned caramel that had been prevalent last Friday while he had his lightsaber ignited. Today his game plan was a bit of the same, just running through lightsaber forms while he waited for his student to arrive, his dog making a game of trying to snatch more red hats off of the ducks.

"One of these days, they're all going to gang up on you, buddy," Kanan called after him, but continued doing his forms. Stance knew not to hurt them, and the ducks were, for the most part, getting used to him being a pain in their tailfeathers every week.

[OOC: Open!]

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"Please give me something to hit."

Tip hated December.

"Can do," Kanan said, shutting off his lightsaber and clipping it to his belt. "How do you feel about beating the snot out of some festive hats today?"

Since they had an unlimited number of them, and all.

"Thematic, if not as viscerally satisfying." Hats didn't have that good thunk to them that, say, a tree would. "Planning to throw some at me?"

"Mostly just winging it," Kanan replied, grinning and shrugging. "Your other option is taking swings at me. Or chasing them down. I could absolutely make you chase down hats."

It'd at least help her burn off some of that frustration, right?

Honestly, it'd probably only ramp it up.

"No chasing hats. Hitting them's just fine." Bill, wearing a tiny hat of his own, took off from her hair and zipped over to the bench, out of the way of hitting. He liked his hat, apparently. "Just don't be surprised if I end up wailing on one on the ground at some point."

"That's fair, too," Kanan replied, considering that frustration for a moment. "Not a big fan of the island shoving all this holiday cheer down your throat, huh?"

He could relate. There was an entire holiday dedicated to the people who had murdered everyone he had ever known, back home.

"Bah," Tip said, dry as a bone. "Humbug."

Not that he'd get that reference.

"I hate this whole time of year. It should at least let me pretend it's, like, January or something."

That January was mostly a giant hole of depression in her memory, so that was fine.

Kanan nodded a little. Yeah. He totally got that.

"So what you need is a distraction," he surmised, "or at least some way to vent. Ideally, both?"

"Definitely vent. If you manage to distract me enough to forget we both have these stupid hats on our heads I'll be pretty impressed, though."

Kanan looked thoughtful again. And then he nodded, making his way over to pick up his training sword.

"Hit me. As hard as you can. As many times as you can, until it feels like you can't hold that sword of yours. I'm going to block. I might swing back. You'll just have to be ready for it, won't you?"

Tip nodded, then swung hard at Kanan's hip. Maybe not actually as hard as she could yet, but still much harder than usual -- and a lot harder than she could have when they'd started training.

She didn't even let out a battle yell. Though that was really probably coming, once she got herself worked up into it.

Kanan nodded, gauging the force behind that swing as he blocked, using both hands to do so today. Not because he figured he needed to lift the personal restraints he put on himself, per se. But he'd just given her carte blanche to go nuts. A little extra control couldn't hurt. He shifted his weight a little, putting more on his back leg so that he could really plant himself in place, and nodded.

"Good. Again."

Tip hadn't even let her practice sword stop moving, taking the force of Kanan's block and redirecting it up and around to come in at his opposite shoulder, grunting softly.

This was the first time she'd done that in actual practice, making her swings continuous like that. She'd played around with it a little shadow-fencing at home, but with Kanan, she always tried to have more control than that. Really show she was focussing on getting the moves right.

She was a little startled to realize that she trusted Kanan enough to know he wouldn't yell at her for not getting it perfect. That she maybe really could let go, just a little.

Some days, you just needed to do the damn thing and worry about getting it right later. Kanan understood that just as well as anybody, and didn't so much as blink when she continued moving that way.

Hell, it reminded him a little of doing forms with his Master. Odd to be on this end of it, but familiar in a not unwelcome way. He blocked again, keeping his attention on her, on her sword, on what motion she might make next, and simply nodded his approval in reply.

Tip wouldn't admit it out loud, but that nod made her feel warmer inside.

She kept the swings coming, losing a little more control every time the power went up, and caring a little less about that each time. Swinging like this felt good in a way she didn't want to look at too closely.

And yeah, the grunts were turning more into yells each time, too.

Kanan, on the other hand, was the very picture of composure, blocking each swing she took with a deft accuracy that spoke of a lifetime of doing exactly this.

The grin on his face, though, that was something else. That was the Kanan who came after the Caleb, the man who had learned the importance of feeling, who understood that it couldn't all be peace instead of passion. It was the grin of a teacher who completely understood the need to hit something, and who wanted to give his student the safest possible opportunity to do exactly that.

If a few of her yells were eventually being met with brief exclamations to match, after a while, that was because he was starting to get into it, too.

It didn't come exactly the way it had at the Museum of Noises, but it was similar enough that Tip recognized it a moment before it happened.

It still felt like a yawn, an irresistable urge to open wide. Which wasn't wrong. It just wasn't her mouth that was opening.

Tip didn't break her stride, even when the world blurred out around her and the tears started actually falling. If anything, she just swung harder. She could trust Kanan to take it.

Which was an even weirder feeling than crying.

And Kanan did take it, though his grin eased off somewhat, and he couldn't completely keep the look of understanding out of his eyes. He wasn't sure if she wanted sympathy, but sympathy wasn't exactly what he had, anyway.

He had empathy to spare, though. She could be swinging blindly, and he'd still be there to block it, subtly shifting his own position so that she didn't follow him into a tripping hazard or anything.

Trust was hard.

He understood that, too.

Kanan had said to keep going until she couldn't hold the sword anymore, and Tip had fully intended to do that, but with the crying in the mix, it was her lungs that gave in first. She came to an abrupt stop, panting, her practice sword's tip cutting a tiny divot in the grass, then slowly straightened.

It was on the tip of her tongue to say "sorry", but she bit it back at the last minute, giving Kanan a little shrug and smile instead.

"Yeah," she said, once she had enough breath back to speak -- and could be reasonably certain that trying to do so wouldn't make her cry all over again. "I think that helped."

Kanan nodded, lowering his own sword as she did.

"Figured it might," he replied. "It's always worked for me."

Okay, it was actually healthier than Kanan's coping habits when he needed to hit things. Usually he was starting cantina fights. Or picking them with local gangs.

Damn Fandom Island for not having a local gang, really.

If Fandom ever had a local gang, it would be horrifying, let's be real.

". . . I still hate the hats though," Tip said, going for a lighter mood. "Fandom just doesn't have any taste."

Nobody needed a local gang with superpowers and at least one mad scientist, it was true.

"They're awful hats," Kanan chuckled. "I know we can't lose 'em for the day, but I still have half a mind to find a firepit and burn a few."

Or maybe he was just saying that in case Tip wanted to. Who knew?

"Never ending bonfire," Tip mused. "That is tempting. If we find a straw goat it might even be a little bit thematic."

She was pretty sure she'd read about burning straw goats for Yule. Or maybe it was that some place always had a straw goat that inevitably got burned. . . .

"I have no idea what goats have to do with anything," Kanan confessed, "but you could probably fake it with twigs and dental floss or something."

Really, where there was a will...

Tip laughed, swiping at her face with her arm in a move she hoped was casual -- but knew really wasn't. "I don't know either," she said. "Christmas is stupid."

"It seems a little bit like what happens when you take a whole lot of everything and smash it together without context," Kanan mused. "... And stupid."

Sorry, Earth. You continued to not make sense to Kanan.

"Hey, if the island gets too festive again, and you just want to work it off again, call me, okay? We have Empire Day at home. If the island was shoving it down my throat, I'd be in the same place you are right now, myself." He shrugged. "I get it."

Tip tilted her head. "Empire Day." She scowled at the idea. "Yeah, sounds about right." She looked back at him. "Christmas in my world got renamed 'Smekday'. After the leader of the alien colonization force."

"So, Smekday and Empire Day are basically the same holiday," Kanan noted, "but yours comes with the added bonus of being a bastardized re-hash of something that was supposed to be good."

Harsh.

"Karking hostile takeovers."

Understatement was fun, right?

"Yup." She waggled her sword. "Hence the desire to hit things. This is definitely way better than ending up yelling at baristas."

"Probably beats a bar fight, too," Kanan agreed, giving her a brief, wry smile. "I've gotten into more than a few of those on Empire Day, myself."

Nothing beat spending Empire Day in a jail cell for breaking a few skulls while exceptionally drunk. You got to miss all the festivities, that way.

"You get into bar fights?" But he was so disciplined! All ex-warrior monk!

Kanan, you were going to ruin your reputation with this girl.

Kanan laughed. Hell, he couldn't help it. The scandalized tone in her voice was amazing.

"All the time, back on a few worlds I've been to," he confirmed, shamelessly. "Less, here. But a different sort of crowd runs around here, too."

It was hard to refer to most of the population of the island as 'reputable,' but compared to, say, the miners on Gorse...

"You mean like how all the bar patrons around here probably have super powers?"

"Well, that, and the bar will drop you in the lake if you try," Kanan agreed.

He actually didn't know that one from experience. Miraculously.

". . . It will?" Tip definitely hadn't had that experience. "And how do you know this?"

"I spend every Monday morning in a room with alcoholic squirrels who see everything on the island," Kanan replied. "They're good for sharing important information like that if you stick around after to share the rum."

"See, and now not only are you a bar brawler, you're also a day drinker. With squirrels." Tip gave him a pointed look. "Be honest with me here, teach, are you a secret scoundrel?"

"... Honestly, I didn't think it was much of a secret," Kanan chuckled. "Remind me to tell you about the year I spent as a pirate sometime."

Kanan was an expert scoundrel, thank you.

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The Park, Friday Afternoon

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