The Jedi Temple, Coruscant, Thousands Of Years Before *THAT* GFFA, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

So the whole 'teach Sparkle self-defense on Saturdays' was working out pretty well, schedule-wise, so far. He'd be in on Friday and talk through his next deployment with Mical, he'd get the training done with Sparks the next day and grab some food, and then he'd be off into the galaxy to do the job. Made a guy much happier than barricading himself in his apartment for three weeks.

"Anyway, the others know you're going to be stopping by more often," he said. "If you ever get here and I'm not here, they'll either help you out if they have the time, or they'll at least make sure you get some nerf in you before putting you on the next portal back home."

Beat.

"Try not to sass Brianna too hard if that happens, 'cause she knows more nerve strikes than I do."

[[ for the kid. ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Right. Right, okay. No pissing off the pale chick," Sparkle replied, actually taking a moment to make that mental note. "I'm pretty sure now that this is going to be a more regular thing, I'm going to learn fast enough who I can and can't get away with being an ass to, huh?"

Singing 'Waterfalls' at Mical would never not be funny, for example. Nerve strikes sounded like less fun.

Unless she could teach him how to do them, anyway.

[suitably_heroic]

"Pretty much, but I can give you the summary," Atton said, as he walked further up the stairs into the complex. "Mical won't do anything unless you literally have a neon sign over your head that reads 'Hi, I'm an evil Sith Lord', but don't let him invite you into the library for a cup of tea because it'll be four hours before he stops talking about Jedi history at you."

He shrugged.

"Mira will humor you, but she knows a lot about nonlethal grenades, so I'd say don't try pranking her unless you want to wake up upside down hanging from the Temple roof. Visas won't do anything but she's a little... her. I don't know her Padawan well yet, though. The Twi'lek, Deesra, he can take a joke, and if you see a woman with a double-bladed lightsaber and a face like she wants to set fire to the universe, run."

[myownface]

"Fire bad," Sparkle agreed, nodding. Though, you know, he actually sort of liked fire. Provided he was the one lighting it, anyway. "Good to know. Anyway, making Mical make that face of his is always fun."

Always. It was never not fun.

[suitably_heroic]

"You won't hear any argument from me there," Atton said. "Try judicious sarcasm on him sometime, it's hilarious."

Somehow that shot right past the guy.

[myownface]

"Oh man. He takes it at face-value, doesn't he? God, I can so picture that. Shit, I need to fuck with him now. Need to."

Well, maybe not right now. They had training to do and all. Though it was tempting to try to take the piss out of Mical at any given moment of the day...

[suitably_heroic]

"Maybe after lunch," Atton said. Beat. "If you can still move by lunch."

Sparkle needed to put on some muscle. Punching people was all well and good, but you needed strength as well as speed.

[myownface]

"... Why, what are we going to be doing until lunch?"

Sparkle was already wondering what he'd been thinking, and they hadn't even really started yet. That was probably a bad sign, right?

[suitably_heroic]

"Did you know the school has a pretty decent gym you should probably start getting a crack at?" Atton said casually. "After we get that set up, we're gonna cover real basic hand-to-hand..."

[myownface]

"A gym?"

Sparkle swallowed and looked maybe the tiniest bit intimidated at the idea.

"Oh, today's going to hurt."

It would be an easy food day, wouldn't it? Something soupy, maybe. Definitely something soupy. Chewing was going to be hard.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton shrugged, taking a turn down the hall towards the training facilities. "You're scrawny," he said. "I mean, it's going to suck the first couple of weeks, but I'm pretty sure you're going to start feeling stronger pretty damn quickly."

Considering where he was starting from.

[myownface]

Sparkle wrinkled his nose as he followed along, but he didn't exactly argue. After all, he really didn't have a leg to stand on in that regard.

He was pretty scrawny.

"Great. Good. Okay, I'm game for this, let's do it." A beat. "So, what am I going to be doing in the gym, exactly?"

He had no idea. It wasn't like Sparkle had ever been in a gym with 'get stronger' as a goal.

[suitably_heroic]

"Some dumbbell exercises, squats, curls, maybe hit the bikes when you're back in Fandom. Two times a week minimum, three times if you can swing it."

The thing about the Temple was that getting anywhere took a while, so he had the time to chew through this.

"Nothing crazy."

... Though his idea of 'crazy' might not quite align with most non-Jedi's idea of 'crazy'.

[myownface]

Sparkle's definition of 'crazy' even just a week ago mostly involved going to the gym three times within the same week, yes.

"Uh... okay, I think I can handle that." Except for all of that doubt that he could handle that, anyway. "So, like, you can set me up with a... routine or something, and I can just do that whenever I make it to the gym, even if I'm on my own?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, it's not too complicated," Atton said. "Just don't push it, you'll be fine."

Atton... hit the gym pretty frequently and had come up with an entire regime that kept people from realizing he did so, at least until he took his shirt off.

Which fell just short of his definition of crazy, too.

"I mean, don't go trying to start bar fights after this or anything."

[myownface]

"Yeah, it's not really like I tried to start the bar fights before this, either," Sparkle muttered. "They just sort of, you know... happened."

Stupid bar fights. Just happening like that.

[suitably_heroic]

"Oh, yeah," Atton said, rolling his eyes. "Those 'just happening' bar fights. Falling in your lap out of nowhere. Real pain in the ass."

[myownface]

Well, Sparkle hadn't asked Hot Chiss Guy to shoot at him!

"Okay, so, moral of the story is that Sparkle doesn't get to go into bars ever again," he sighed. "Fine, fine. Even if I would love to find some of those guys back in LA and knock their stupid teeth out."

But he wasn't going back to Nar Shaddaa if he could help it. He'd already shot one of those guys, and was pretty sure Atton hadn't been too kind to the hot Chiss guy. He figured they were even enough.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton was totally going back to Nar Shaddaa sometime. Maybe even sometime this year. He liked the place, if simply because he could pull something stupid there, vanish into the crowd, and show back here like nothing happened.

... but he probably wasn't taking Sparkle again, no.

"Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that's the stupidest idea you've ever come up with," Atton said. The training center was coming up now: he could see the door at the end of the hall. "And this is why you need strength training, so your mouth doesn't run off and get ahead of that scrawny ass."

[myownface]

"It's going to take a hell of a lot of strength training to keep my scrawny ass ahead of my mouth," Sparkle noted, looking at the door with a sense of impending doom. Minor doom. A small doom, that wasn't all that doomlike, really, when compared to the reason he was doing this in the first place. "Or, like, crazy contortionist training or something."

[suitably_heroic]

The door slid open, and Atton stepped inside. The equipment there didn't look that different from what Sparkle might know from Earth, but then how complicated could dumbbells and treadmills get, really?

"It's an impossible task, but it's better than watching soap operas while eating pizza," Atton said, shrugging with one shoulder as he walked inside. "You bring spare t-shirts?"

[myownface]

"You know, I actually did? And deodorant and all that stuff."

Shampoo. He'd brought shampoo. Look, Sparkle was nothing if not fastidious with how clean he was, despite all appearances.

"I'm, um, going to need them, huh?"

Ugh. Sparkle hated sweating.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yep," Atton said cheerfully. "There's some denseplast weights by that grav mill, should be about in your weight class."

[myownface]

"I'm going to pretend I know what any of those things you just said are," Sparkle replied, just as cheerfully, "and just head over that way that you were looking just now. Sound good?"

In fairness, Sparkle probably would've said the same thing in an Earth gym, too. And probably mostly just to be difficult. 'Weights,' at least, were generally pretty easy to figure out.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "The heavy things that look like they weigh a lot," he said. "What, did you hit your head on something on your way in?"

It was Atton. The complaining was basically just white noise.

[myownface]

"I might have! I'm accident prone," Sparkle declared, stepping over to the-- seriously, they were obviously weights. "You know this."

... Less 'accident' and more 'trouble,' generally. But Sparkle was willing to stretch the definition somewhat.