MCA #4, Saturday Afternoon

[suitably_heroic]

There was music screaming across Atton's apartment again, for the first time in about a week. He was here much sooner than Mical would have liked, but he couldn't stand hanging around the Temple any longer, and the kolto had healed up the worst of his chest injuries. What was left now was the enduring-- bruised face, bruised insides, and moving hurt, but that wasn't new.

For the sake of not aggravating his injuries, he'd sat down on a pillow on the floor. That was the only concession he was making. He had a job to do, here: rebuild his lightsaber. Maybe build one that suited him better. He'd been running around with a loaner for too long.

Besides, if he had to stay in, he might as well work on his finer Force control.

He let the various segments levitate into the air, taking care to spend some time on each one. It was... more complicated than he'd planned. But that was good. Stretching his legs, so to speak.

He grabbed the bottle by his side and took a long gulp, letting the fizz settle in his stomach. No alcohol for him any time soon, it'd dull the senses. But a sugar rush? That would keep pushing him on.

Besides. It was harder to think when you had sugar screaming through your system and something physical to focus that energy on. It shut out most of whatever this past week had dredged up, except for one thing:

Her face. There is another war waiting, in the Unknown Regions.

Maybe Brianna was right. Maybe he was kidding himself out here, pretending to have a normal life.

[[ door shut, post open for messages or visits or what have you ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Yeah, but if you're going to eat it, it might as well taste good. Otherwise you wouldn't care so much about vegetables, would you?"

So there.

"What're you doing?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Building a new lightsaber," Atton said. "Old one got wrecked. That one was on loan anyway, though, so this was past time."

Or stolen from an ancient tomb, but whatever.

[myownface]

"Oh." Sparkle watched with interest for a moment. The whole 'making things move without touching them' trick was probably never going to fail to catch his interest. "How'd the old one get wrecked, anyway?"

Look, he said he wouldn't ask questions, but Sparkle and the truth had a pretty open relationship.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton let out a grunt, just to let Sparkle know how he felt about him breaking that promise. He added a little bit of solder between two parts - space, he missed Bao-Dur and his technical expertise right now - before looking up.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I mean, I think I lost it when I got hit by a terentatek and then a Dark Jedi finished the job, but I was hallucinating at the time."

It'd been that kind of trip.

[myownface]

Sparkle wasn't even going to pretend he knew what a 'tarentatek' was. He was going to give a low whistle anyway before stuffing the pizza into the oven.

"You don't do boring field trips, like, ever, do you?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Kind of comes with the territory," Atton said. He'd shrug, but, well, this was a delicate operation he was involved in here. "Though usually I try to avoid ancient Sith tombs these days."

His foot tapped idly along with the drums of the song spilling out from his iPad dock. Kept him from thinking about other, less pleasant drumming, which was good.

[myownface]

"Yeah, that seems like the best thing for you," Sparkle agreed, setting the timer on the oven, and then making his way over to sit down across from Atton, watching what he was doing intently. "And, like, most people?"

What with having the word 'Sith' right in the name.

[suitably_heroic]

Hey. Hey. Atton's job description used to have 'Sith' right in the name, okay?!

He was about halfway into the laborious process of constructing a new lightsaber. He'd probably be working on it for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the weekend. But it was largely pigheadedness that kept him tweaking while the food was on and Sparkle was here.

At least it kept him from rolling his eyes at Sparkle right now.

"I was tracking one of our own," he said. "Visas has been bouncing around the galaxy, tracking down artifacts from her home planet. She vanished off the map a few weeks ago, so I decided to do some digging, and oh look, Sith tomb on Korriban, what a fantastic holiday destination."

[myownface]

Yeah, and that job hadn't ended super well for him!

"You, uh, ever find her, at least?"

That part seemed important.

[suitably_heroic]

"I did."

Beat.

"Well, technically Brianna did. But we did find her. And her new Padawan."

He'd just spent a lot of time hallucinating, unconscious, or both. Not a great show, all in all.

[myownface]

"And that's a good thing, right? Like... for all the shit you just went through this week, it was worth it?"

Sparkle kind of wished it had been.

Sparkle wasn't generally the 'wishing out loud' sort, though. Which wasn't going to do him a hell of a lot of good today.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, of course," Atton said. "I mean, if we hadn't shown up, she might've been stuck in a tomb with a crazy Dark Jedi for, uh... I don't know how long."

He snagged his bottle of soda and took a quick sip. "This is just a little pain, that's nothing new, it'll go. Wouldn't recommend the Sith hallucinations, though."

At all. Nobody deserved to be stuck in Atton's head, not even... well, Atton. He'd have happily traded out that part for the pain.

[myownface]

"Yeah, I've never actually met a hallucination I liked," Sparkle noted. "Can't imagine the Sith ones would be any better."

He sat quietly for a moment, looking at the saber parts, and then at Atton, and then toward the timer in the kitchen that wasn't going to be going off for a while, yet. And then he shrugged his shoulders.

"Then, hey, good thing it wasn't all for nothing or anything like that? I mean, looks like you still got your ass kicked. But I guess you got your ass kicked for a good cause."

Or... something. Sparkle was bad at this.

[suitably_heroic]

If by 'got his ass kicked' you meant 'nearly died, again', sure. Not that Atton was going to correct Sparkle on that particular detail. Ever, ever, ever.

"Yeah," Atton said. He set the soda bottle back down on the floor. "Just have to take it easy for a while. Asshole broke my nose, probably a couple of my ribs..."

He was also going to avoid that whole exploding part.

[myownface]

Yeaaah, there was no way Sparkle was going to take 'exploding' well.

At all.

Ever.

"Jesus, man. You need those ribs. I don't care how much you think you don't. They do important things like keep your lungs inside."

[suitably_heroic]

At least it hadn't been an actual grenade? ... Then again, if it had been an actual grenade, the chances of Atton actually being able to sit in this room would be very small.

... There were reasons Atton tried to avoid sharing too many details about any of his missions with the Jedi.

He pulled a face. "Hey, it's not like I went up to the terentatek and said, 'hey, you mind breaking my ribs, I'm sick of them'."

[myownface]

Because Sparkle would freak the fuck out?

... That was probably a pretty good call.

"Yeah, well." Sparkle wrinkled his nose all the same. "Still sucks. No more getting mauled by terantatoes or whatever. New rule."

He was pretty sure it was a damn good rule, too.

[suitably_heroic]

Yeaaaaah. The others got into tough enough scrapes, but add up Atton's habit of, sigh, yes, Brianna, playing pazaak with his life-- maybe he should be doing the healing up back at the Temple from now on after all.

"If it helps, they tend to come out when the dark siders are strong," Atton offered. "So the population should be heading down soon enough."

[myownface]

That wrinkled nose wasn't going anywhere any time soon. Not really.

"Yeah? More you take out, the less tomatillos there are?"

Now he was getting the name wrong on purpose.

[suitably_heroic]

"Terentateks," Atton said, rolling his eyes. "And yeah. They're... think of them as giant rhinos, infused with the dark side of the Force. The Sith used them as Jedi hunters. But the less Dark Jedi there are, the less terentateks have a reason to be up and about. Apparently, they just go to sleep if the balance swings out too far into the Jedi direction."

'Giant rhinos' was the best he could come up with, because the actual thing would probably scare the hell out of Sparkle.

[myownface]

"Huh. So, get rid of the worst of the dark siders, and no more Tarantinos. That's kind of... weird. I mean, like, interesting, but these things, like, evolved specifically to work with people who are all... what, attuned to the dark side?"

Sparkle was actually kind of trying to understand, here. Much as he freaked out about it, he did actually care.

[suitably_heroic]

See, for Atton, part of the messed-up thing was looking at Sparkle, knowing he'd been the exact same way when he was 16, and trying to figure out how he'd gotten to the part where all of this seemed normal.

"I'm not the biggest Sith historian in the galaxy," he said. "But I figure the Terentateks are probably a product of Sith alchemy. The ancient Sith really liked to mess with the biology of everything around them. Tweak a few things here, suffuse a species with the dark side, and ta-da - slave species that'll be rabid against your enemies long after you're dead. Makes sure you can be a pain in the ass for centuries yet."

[myownface]

"But only if there are enough of the dark-siders around to warrant them being awake and functional, right? Like, they're not going to be after the Jedi if they're in hibernation?"

Now you were confusing the boy, Atton.

[suitably_heroic]

"No, they're fueled by the dark side," Atton said. "Which means they need dark side power to keep going. The fewer dark side users in the galaxy, the less power gets drummed up, the more the Terentateks are all, 'screw it, I'm going for naptime, wake me up when the next great Sith Lord stands up'. That's how I understand it, anyway."

[myownface]

"Oh. So. It's, like, a whole galaxy thing," Sparkle replied, scratching at his head and nodding a little. "It's still weird trying to think of things at that scale."

Toronto kid.

"But there's headway being made there anyway? Less dark side stuff all around, so you could, like, use the big stompy tarantulas as a gauge almost, if it didn't involve getting your ribs smashed up."