Office Hours, Thursday, 4/29

[tyler_gone]

Right, so the chatter online about Project Mayhem 2.0 had intensified instead of dying down. Wednesday night, Tyler had gotten into a three-hour IM war with one of the ringleaders that ended with the numskull proclaiming "We are all Tyler Durden," as if that settled things. But what Tyler had gotten out of the guy before he retreated behind a wall of cliché was not reassuring. They'd finally found somebody who could make paraffin bombs work. The list of targets was a couple screens long.

It was time for Tyler to have a little chat with them. The kind of chat that took place in person.

They sounded disorganized enough that he figured he had a few days -- long enough to make sure Tony was someplace relatively safe and stick around to see the last few people who had started at Fandom with him graduate. For now, though, he sent out an .

From: tyler.durden@fandomhigh.edu
To: [All staff]; ino.yamanaka@fandomhigh.edu; lindsay.boxer@stark.com
Subject:Office Clean-Out Time

Hi.

I'm leaving the island for a while to take care of some personal stuff. Probably I'll be back come July or September, but for now, anything in my office is up for grabs. Stop by today if you want to pick through the goods.

Sorry to be leaving the insanity. See you when I see you.

- Tyler

In Tyler-speak, that meant "I'll miss you all." He settled in to box things up, leaving the office door open.

[OOC: This is probably one of his last posts, at least for the time being. *clings* If you want to stop by and see him and weren't on the email, feel free to handwave other notification.]

Comments

[atreideslioness]

"Do you even have anything in here worth taking?" Which was Ghanima speak for 'I can't believe you're leaving me with the hellions' as she breezed into his office, coming in to sit on his desk and steal a nice pen. "Or is this some madcap scheme in the vain hopes that your office will be clean, tidy, and freshly painted when the fall semester arrives?"

[tyler_gone]

"I'm not sure I've ever had anything worth taking," Tyler admitted. "But if it gets me a nice clean office come fall, I'm sure as hell not going to complain."

[atreideslioness]

"Lazy," she chided. "Isn't this why we have teaching assistants? To organize things for us?"

[tyler_gone]

Tyler sat back on his heels and blinked up at her. "How is making my TAs clean up after me the non-lazy version?"

[atreideslioness]

"It's their job to assist their absent-minded professors," Ghanima laughed. "Whereas you're trying to pawn off the work on your coworkers. For shame, Tyler."

[tyler_gone]

Tyler quirked a grin. "Think I could have convinced Joan doing this was part of her duties as TA?"

[atreideslioness]

"Well, would she derive pleasure from a detail oriented task?" Ghanima asked. "I'm sure if I asked my TAs or other students to attempt to organize my bookshelves, they'd get too absorbed in reading things to finish the task, but they wouldn't complain."

[tyler_gone]

Tyler shrugged diffidently, not directly responding.

"What are you going to do with Fight Club while I'm gone?"

[atreideslioness]

"What are we going to do, considering your sabbatical," Ghanima corrected, eyes flickering over to him shrewdly. "I do not tend to make unilateral choices for people, Tyler, unless the universe is at stake."

[intraspective]

The beauty of getting your e-mail routed to your phone meant that while Ino had been out training... she still got to read it all without being anywhere near a computer.

Which meant that training got derailed as she absolutely had to go and find him. And pout.

(And be smug and pleased that she was the only student who'd gotten the e-mail, ha! Especially since he did say he'd be back which was--more--than she normally got when people left.)

So, all of a sudden, there was a blonde ninja standing in the doorway. Pouting. "Seriously?"

[tyler_gone]

"'Fraid so," Tyler said, shrugging. (And, all right, trying not to smirk at the pout.) "Your face is gonna freeze like that, you know."

[intraspective]

"It hasn't yet," she quipped, coming in and raising her eyebrows at him. "So it likely won't. Pouting is very useful, I'll have you know."

[tyler_gone]

"You could be the first," Tyler nodded wisely. "Scientific progress marches on, a face finally gets stuck in a pout."

What? It could happen.

"Thanks for stopping by," he added, glancing away. "I'm not sure how much I have that you'd want."

[intraspective]

"Did you really think I wouldn't?" she asked, ignoring his talk of her face getting stuck. Pffft. As if it would. "I don't miss 'see you laters' 'less I've got a good reason."

A beat.

"I don't suppose you've got another costume that needs taking care of?"

She was innocent. Really!

[tyler_gone]

"I do not," Tyler said firmly. "What, do you think I'm running a costume warehouse here?"

He was joking, mostly.

[intraspective]

"You never failed to provide before," she said, making herself smile. "Can't blame a girl for thinkin' that, yeah?"

[tyler_gone]

"Can't blame you at all," Tyler said, smiling back in a way that didn't touch his eyes. "I have to go home for a while, is all this is. People are taking stuff I said a long time ago way too seriously."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Professor Durden?" came a voice that the man hadn't heard for, oh, a month or so. It was, to be fair, slightly different than it'd been before: the strange accent that had been only a trace before was now more pronounced, almost swarthy if words could be, and a little less careful.

[if you'd rather not, I can just nix this!]

[tyler_gone]

"Yeah," Tyler said, face still in a box of books, before glancing up and blinking in not-unpleased surprise. "Liir. Welcome back."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

His smile was more than it's usual twitch; it lingered, though the curl relaxed after the first moment.

"Thank you. I was going to ask you about what I might have missed and how it had utterly ruined my grade, but you seem to be busy. Should I come back at another time?"

[tyler_gone]

"There aren't going to be a lot of other times," Tyler said ruefully. "I'm packing up to head out for the summer."

He considered Liir. "I put you in at the office as an incomplete, but we're allowed to change that if we have a reason. Is there a reason?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"I suppose I could claimed to have explored a certain amount of philosophy during my travels," he said with the beginnings of a frown, "though nothing like what we did in class. Would it serve to say that I was being hunted across the country side, unable to return through my portal on possible pain of death?"

He was sad to see the professor go. He'd liked him.

[tyler_gone]

Tyler was sad to go; he'd liked teaching, and Liir had been a good TA.

"I think being hunted on pain of death is a tiny bit more important than high school," he confirmed. "You had a decent grade before you left. Tell me one piece of philosophy that helped you in your travels and I'll average it out to a C."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"I watched Machiavelli's theories in action," he admitted with something that approached a smirk, "though I wouldn't say it helped."

But his hand rose and a finger lifted.

"Plato's forms. For I know the Oz in my mind, in the minds of many, and the Oz I traveled through, where so many friends and allies walk and breathe and live, are two very very different things, the latter a battered imitation of the former."

[tyler_gone]

"Real things never live up to the ideals," Tyler confirmed, with a tiny nod. "That's philosophy, all right. Also life. As far as I'm concerned, you passed the class."

Grading at Fandom was a little haphazard anyhow.