fandomhighdorms | 2nd Floor Common Room [Friday, Evening]

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2nd Floor Common Room [Friday, Evening]

Some people were cut out to be parents. They were patient, and calm, and loved the whole idea of raising progeny. Kate... was not one of these people. Dave had deposited her with their droid baby earlier, and she'd done as little parenting as possible since. In the name of giving it something to do that wasn't spread everything she owned all over floor, she took it down to the common room to let it crawl freely.

Once the imaginatively named 'It' seemed happy enough, she sat down with a book (or tried to, rather) routinely having to get up to reroute him towards something other than the television, which she was sure wouldn’t do well with being chewed on.

After the first... several times, she was tempted to start throwing cushions at it rather than keep getting up. That was okay, wasn’t it?

Everyone should just be glad she hadn't left it with anything sharp.

[[ open common room! ]]

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Wesley took two steps into the common room, caught sight of the droid baby, and briefly closed his eyes. "Oh, it's that week, is it?"

He should probably start bracing himself for a lot of shrieking. Since, you know, his roommate had one.

Oh, Kate's roommate had one too. This week was going to be hell on them. She got little enough sleep as it was, without bawling mechanical infants.

"Mmhm," she intoned, unenthusiastically. "You've done it?"

"I've somehow managed to avoid that particular torment," Wesley replied. Not at aaaall smugly, nope. "Or -- discounting my overhearing all the crying, I suppose. Professor Skywalker seems to have devised the one assignment that can affect the entire student body rather than just his classes."

And they said he'd gotten over the whole 'evil' thing.

"Less about learning to raise a kid ethically, more about learning how to make it not drive everyone up a wall."

Kate sighed, and gave in to tossing the nearest pillow just near the grabby droid. "How about you play with that?" she suggested, with little hope it would pay attention.

"Precisely," Wes agreed. "You're not particularly fond of children, then, I take it?"

Said the guy who was going to grow up and kidnap his boss' baby. But he probably wouldn't be taking this one off your hands anytime soon, Kate. Sorry?

"I don't hate them," Kate clarified. "But this is basically an alarm clock I have to remember feed." She couldn't even choose when it went off, which put it a rung lower than the alarm clock.

It kept trying to lick the television.

Wesley watched the baby for a moment, then decided, "But slightly less intelligent." A pause. "No offense, of course."

Yes, Wesley, clearly she'd be hurt by the attack on her parenting strategy.

Kate shrugged, put her book down, and got up to wander over and pry it away from the technology.

"I like to think any kid that actually ended up with my genes would be smarter than an alarm clock." She hauled it over towards the couch and turned it away in the hope it would choose something else to break.

"I don't know how realistic this is."

"If you think about it," Wesley said after a moment, "they're almost easier to manage than the children that the island supplies every so often, since it's not as though they've bits of your personality to, er, disturb you with."

Kate slanted a look across at him. "I was one at one point," she allowed. "That doesn't sound like what you're talking about."

No one had decided to inform her about the other kind of child-filled weekends.

"Oh. No, it's, ah, it's a different sort of thing," Wesley explained. "When children show up claiming to be, well, our children." That 'our' sounded weird since he'd met her, like, twice, so he clarified, "The, ah, inhabitants of Fandom, that is."

"... And this happens often?" In the last six months, she'd apparently got lucky. Not that she expected any future offspring anyway.

"I'm told it's frequent enough," he admitted. "I've only been here for it the once, though. It was... a tad alarming."

"Way to promote the 'safe sex' message," Kate remarked, herding It idly with her foot in the hopes of distracting him. "But I think just a one of these things to everyone would've done it."

"Last year it was on Valentine's Day, if I recall," Wesley said wryly. "So..."

Yes, pretty much.

Toby gave the robot-baby something akin to a grimace as he recognized it on his way into the common room. "Ugh," he said to Kate. "That was my least favourite part of Ethics class."

It wasn't a highlight for Kate either. "Any parenting advice?" It was worth the asking. She was fairly sure they were programmed to be as annoying as possible, any loopholes were good.

"Ignoring it doesn't really work as a long-term strategy?" Toby offered.

"I was hoping maybe it would be really entertained by its own feet, and not go slobbering over everything." Wishful thinking, Kate. Wishful thinking.

"It's not like I have toys to give it."

"They're babies," Toby paused. "...Or close enough. You could totally give it a box to play with and it'd be entertained." Or was that cats?

"I gave it cushions," Kate pointed out. That was... near enough to a box, wasn't it? "All it wants is the TV."

"Tsk," Toby gave Kate a disappointed look. "That's what's wrong with kids today. Too much television."

"I'm going to blame my co-parent for training it." Since Dave had been playing parent to It all day yesterday. "Or Skywalker. I think he wired them wrong."

Or, maybe it sensed a distant cousin in anything electrical and wanted to show its love.

Toby snickered. "Are you gonna be the one to present that theory to the professor?" he had to ask.

Kate shrugged, slouching back into the couch while still keeping half an eye on what her droid toddler was doing. "Who elses fault is it, it goes for wiring?"

Anakin didn't scare her, particularly. She was one of the brave few, it seemed.

Toby just tended to prefer avoiding drawing any sort of attention when it came to authority figures. "Good point," he had to admit. "At least it's only for a week?"

Annnd Kate had a bad habit of driving authority figures up the wall. When she should probably also be avoiding them. Pure talent for doing what she shouldn't be.

"I think I guilted the guy I'm partnered with into taking it for a chunk of the time." Poor Dave, he should've kept his mouth shut.

"That's just... effective co-parenting," Toby decided, trying to put a spin on it.

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2nd Floor Common Room [Friday, Evening]

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