Grakk's Diner, Near The Jedi Temple, Coruscant, Tuesday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

It'd been a decent couple of days - training Sparkle, avoiding Brianna, finding new places to leave rude things scribbled on the walls of the Temple that Mical probably wouldn't find out about until he was fifty - but all decent things had to end. For one thing, most of Atton's stuff was on the island, and for the other, he didn't actually want to miss the couple of quiet days there before the next term.

Why squander a perfectly good place without people he hated?

"All right, portal leaves in two hours," Atton said, pushing open the door to a charming local diner that screamed GRAKK in offensively neon-and-glittery words from the rooftop. Inside, a plethora of people of various species were hovering or sitting in their seats, but there were still a couple of booths open, including one facing right across from the diner's four-armed cook, so hey, Atton would sit down right there.

"Stick to the blue part of the menu," he said, "The white part's living food. Yellow's not for humans, and red... let's just not talk about the red."

[[ for sparks! ]]

Comments

[myownface]

Sparkle was now putting forth a concentrated effort to not just sink down in his seat in order to hide under the table forever.

"I dunno. Soup and sandwich?" He chewed on the idea of leaving it at that, and then shook his head and added, "Like, it doesn't bug me that I don't know what these things are, you know. You go different places, stuff switches up on you. I've ordered mystery food from restaurants in Toronto in, like, Chinatown before, and it's usually pretty good. I get weird looks sometimes, but whatever, I'm going to eat it anyway."

But the realization that he couldn't read the menu at all on top of that had kind of snuck up on him. He'd kind of figured he'd run into that sort of thing from time to time. When they went out drinking, 'I'll have what he's having' served him just fine until he learned the drink names, and then he could usually fake it from there. And when he walked into a random restaurant in Chinatown, he was already braced for it. It wasn't like he could read Chinese, after all.

It was just... jarring, walking into a place that seemed fairly normal to him, aliens aside, and then staring blankly at a menu that didn't make sense.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton threw a glance at the big neon sign hanging just outside the window. "We work with two alphabets here," he offered. "The one you can read-- that's what the people with money and education use. This's it for everyone else, a lot of the time."

He looked back to Sparkle. "I know, it's weird," he said. "Different stuff, I mean. When I first went to Earth I couldn't even order a glass of milk without running into that."

[myownface]

Sparkle let out a bit of a snort at that. Weird, that his A-B-Cs were considered posh in this neck of the woods. He idly wondered if Coruscant had some sort of Sesame Street equivalent he could watch in his spare time or something.

"I bet," he replied, nodding a little. "It's like... whatever the hell is there, you know you can eat it unless you have allergies or something, fine, but even if it's similar to what you know, it's not the same."

...

"I mean, I really like nerf steak, though."

[suitably_heroic]

"It helps if you don't have some notion stuck in your head of what the same is," Atton said. "I don't have a Toronto the way you do. That helped."

Just a string of places he'd visited and then left.

"Anyway, hey, it could've been worse. You didn't go running at the first sign of an alien the first time I dragged you here, you actually ate the nerf steak, a little weirded-out about the menu isn't going to crack your stoic streak."

[myownface]

"Yeah?" Sparkle looked at the menu a moment more before setting it down on the table. It wasn't like it was doing him any good, anyway. "I might have to learn how to read Aurebesh or something, if I'm going to keep visiting like this."

If it was the one that people without the snob education learned around here, how difficult could it be? It wasn't like the language was any different. Just the letters.

[suitably_heroic]

"It's not actually that far off from the alphabet you know," Atton said. "Just some different symbols and a couple of extra characters."

He held up the menu and tapped two items. "Cheese soup," he said, "nerf sandwich. Sound like a good deal?"

[myownface]

Sparkle squinted at the menu for a moment as though maybe doing so would make the letters make more sense. If that word-- it was repeated down the menu on a few items, so it was probably 'sandwich' -- and that one, which he figured was soup, looked like...

Yeah, it was going to take more than a few moments spent staring at a menu to lean an entire alphabet, but he was pretty sure he'd figured out what S looked like, anyway, if it was that 'drunk minus sign poking a lazy V-shape in the ass' looking letter.

It was a start.

"It's hard to go wrong with cheese," he decreed, leaning back in his seat and giving Atton a crooked little grin. "And the sandwich sounds good, too. Thanks."

[suitably_heroic]

"You're welcome," Atton said, dropping his menu on the table and waving over a serving droid. He placed their orders rapid-fire style and the droid shot off again.

No time wasted. See, that's why he came here.

"So, you think you're going to remember the stuff we practiced on?" he said. "Because if we go back and you immediately get possessed by something again, I'm going to be annoyed."

[myownface]

"I'm going to try," Sparkle replied, shrugging his shoulders. "I mean, I'm pretty sure Boo won't be able to pull that stunt off again or anything. That stuff seemed pretty thorough."

Hard to be positive without an actual ghost floating around and trying, but it didn't feel to Sparkle as though Atton was just teaching him hokey Jedi superstitious bullshit or anything, and he was usually a pretty good judge of that, at least.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton had been an expert on keeping things out of his head long before he became a Jedi. It was just... keeping your mind occupied in weird ways, overfocusing on small details, making up details that weren't there, that kind of thing.

He'd figured Sparkle could work with that.

"It is," he said mildly. "You listening to the rain?"

[myownface]

"You're going to have me playing pazaak in the rain while trying to ride a jetski across a lava flow one of these days," Sparkle replied, only half-snarking, but he nodded all the same. "But yeah. I mean, I have to get used to doing it all the time or whatever, but..."

He could handle that. It wasn't like he wasn't already used to keeping one ear open anyway.

[suitably_heroic]

"Hey, if playing pazaak in the rain while trying to ride a jetski across a lava flow works for you, I say go with it," Atton said.

The droid put down two glasses of something purple in front of them. (It was better not to ask.)

"But it's probably easier to stick with something more... I don't know, Toronto."

[myownface]

"Nothing has ever tried to possess me in Toronto," Sparkle pointed out, shrugging his shoulders. "Toronto solutions are great for Toronto problems, but, you know, apparently pretty shitty for Fandom. Or Coruscant. Or wherever."

He reached for one of the purple... somethings... contemplated it for a moment, and then decided that if it was there to be drank, drink it he would do.

[suitably_heroic]

It was drinkable, and at least not alcoholic, and some kind of fruit. Honestly, Atton had just ordered whatever juice came up first on the menu.

"Toronto solutions are actually fantastic for this problem," Atton said. "Actually, hey, let's make this a teaching moment. Things here are different, right? Off-putting? The letters, just to start with? Think about that. And then think about what you'd be hearing if you were sitting in a place just like this back home. What's different? What's the same?"

[myownface]

Sparkle looked between the juice and Atton for a moment, and then grinned.

"Well, I'd expect this to be grape-flavoured, in Toronto," he decreed, before shaking his head and deciding to take this a little more seriously. "But, I mean, some of it's the same. Grease smells like grease no matter where you go, and there's the sound of people just... eating. Clanging dishes, food being cooked, background chatter that you'd have to focus on to pick anything out from."

He licked his lips and sat there quietly for a moment more.

"Some of the different stuff is obvious. I mean, everyone is human back home. Even if I don't speak every Earth language, at least I can make a stab in the dark about what language I'm listening to or looking at if I run into it. Some of the food looks similar to what I know, but I still wouldn't be able to identify any of the meat by looking at it, beyond, you know, 'that's probably meat.' And this time of year, there'd be Christmas carols blaring from some hidden speaker somewhere and everything would be decorated for the holiday and half the people in here would be dragging shopping bags in for something fast to eat before getting back to their last minute holiday prep. And... I dunno... some things are just tweaked a little sideways, aesthetically. A table's still a table and a chair's still a chair, and the function for both is still pretty clear, but there's something about the design to either that's different, and the clothes people wear, and even the textures on the walls."

It seemed more... industrial? Maybe that was it.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton listened to him go, and when he was finished, he just said, "See? Do that."

He shrugged. "Don't think of it as some weird thing you do," he said. "Just do it. Think about the differences when you're here, try to pick up the background chatter when you're back home..."

[myownface]

"Pay attention," Sparkle supplied, nodding. "Just... more than I used to."

It wasn't quite so simplistic as that, maybe, but it was the easiest way he had to put it into words. He looked around the room quietly, and tried to put a finger on just what that aesthetic difference was. Things were darker, maybe? Angles and curves went in different places than he'd expect them to be?

He tried to listen in on a nearby conversation, and didn't tune it out again even after he realized he had no idea what language was being spoken.

"Yeah, I can do this."

[suitably_heroic]

"Like I keep saying, the trick isn't to think on something real hard," Atton said, "Then they notice. But you keep your surface thoughts going like that, and they don't bother prying-- or they find it too irritating to poke their way in."

He pulled a face.

"Even Meetra did that from time to time," he said, "Mind tricks."

[myownface]

"Mind tricks," Sparkle echoed. "It's probably not a bad habit to get into anyway. Thinking more never hurt anyone, right? Even if ghosts or mind tricks or whatever were never a consideration, it's like... the more you notice, the more you can use."

[suitably_heroic]

"Exactly," Atton said, giving a little nod. "Though I don't doubt you've already got an eye for exits."

[myownface]

"My count in here is three, maybe four, but I can't see that far into the kitchen and that count doesn't include shit that needs to be broken first," Sparkle shared, his grin going a little wry. "That's one thing I was always good at, yeah. Don't walk into a place unless you've taken a moment to figure out a few ways to walk out again."

[suitably_heroic]

"Just for petty theft, or did you get up to a lot worse than that?" Atton asked, taking another sip of his juice-of-whatever-it-was.

[myownface]

"Oh, I killed a guy," Sparkle deadpanned, looking Atton in the eye. He didn't expect him to buy it for even a second, no. Honestly, who the hell would buy his tall tales, anyway?

Someday he'd meet somebody who did, and that poor sucker was going to get ragged on constantly.

"Just walked up to him and boom, blew his brains out. All over the floor."

He had killed people before, but nothing so irreverent as that. And did the psychos that had invaded the island a while back count, if they were threatening to turn you into sausage and eat your insides? He had a lot of horrifying experiences that he could chalk up to 'thanks, Fandom,' that he couldn't talk about back home.

He toyed with the rim of his glass for a moment, trying to see if he could get the cup to make that humming noise if he ran his finger over it just the right way.

"Would've, anyway. Wouldn't regret it if I did, either. I just don't like being locked up, okay? Not if the only way out is the one somebody else is holding the key to."

[suitably_heroic]

That humming noise thing alone-- yeah, Atton figured Sparkle would be a natural at the keeping his brain shut tight. As long as he put some effort into it, or rather a lack of it.

"You'd regret it," Atton said flatly.

[myownface]

"Not him."

Sparkle shook his head, and then shot Atton a grin that sat neatly somewhere between 'manic' and 'lazy.' Quite the combination, really.

"It's just survival of the fucking fittest, right? You survive. That's all it ever is, in the end. 'Right' and 'wrong' are all fucked up concepts anyway, and all it really comes down to is 'how do I stay alive until tomorrow?' And Lewis hates that, you know? That I'll break some guy's nose for going through my things or I drink too much or I break into people's homes just to run off with worthless shit, but it's all the same thing at the end of the day, just, the situation is different, or the scale."