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. ]]

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[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.

[suitably_heroic]

"'Accident prone' is when you trip over your own feet," Atton said. "Which is not what I'd describe what tends to happen to you."

[myownface]

"I did step in a zebra once," Sparkle offered, crouching down to get a good look at the weights. Yep. Totally weighty. "I think that counts."

Also, it had been nasty. So fucking nasty.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "Take two of those weights and lay down on that bench over there," he said, picking up two of his own. "And don't get so queasy about the zebra. You eat dead animals all the time."

[myownface]

"Yeah, but they're not actually rotting and crawling with maggots when I put them in my mouth," Sparkle countered, taking two of the weights in hand and, giving them an experimental little lift, making his way to the bench in question. "So I just, what, lay down and then...?"

Lift the weights, Spark. You lay down and lift the weights.

[suitably_heroic]

"You lay down, hold your upper arms at a 90 degree angle, and then you push up the weights with the rest of your arms," Atton said. "This isn't rocket science, Sparks."

As you could see by how karking easily Atton did it.

... but then Atton could also do one-armed pushups.

[myownface]

"Yeah, well, you know how far behind my planet is when it comes to rocket science," Sparkle snarked, doing as he was told. Up went the weights! Shit, he was actually doing it!

... They were pushing the piddly side of puny, but look, he'd done it, and that was what counted here.

"And then, like, slowly bring them down again, right?"

Like they did in the movies. Presumably so they wouldn't smack themselves in the face, right?

[suitably_heroic]

"Well, you're accident prone, so that seems like a great idea!"

Stop snarking at the kid, Atton, god.

[myownface]

"Well, it's either that, or I just chill out here until my arms turn to spaghetti and I break my face," Sparkle snarked right back, lowering the weights again. "How many times do you want me to do this, anyway?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Ten times, then take a break, then ten times," Atton said, rolling his eyes.

[myownface]

To his credit, Sparkle didn't stick his tongue out at that. Mostly because he didn't trust himself to not drop a weight on his face and end up biting it off or something as he did so.

"Ten, okay. Should be easy enough."

Said the guy who had never had to hold his arms up with something in them that way. Repeatedly. Said that guy.

He was somewhere around seven when this fact started to dawn on him.

[suitably_heroic]

And see, here the problem was, Atton and his rudimentary shields couldn't fully block out what was going on with Sparkle over there, as much as he'd been working on those. (He didn't actually like infringing on people's privacy like that. Karking stupid Force sensitivity.)

"Keep going," he said, "Don't give up now, you're almost there."

... To the point where you could take a thirty-second break. That second set of reps was going to be fun.

[myownface]

Fuck soup. After he was done with this, whatever meal Sparkle asked for was going to have to be something he could drink with a straw.

"Nine... ten."

Oh god. Spark had so many regrets. He lowered the weights and tried to shake his arms out a bit, like maybe that would help somehow with the next set of reps. Maybe? Yes? Please?

[suitably_heroic]

Such a drama queen, Sparkle, god.

"All right, you get thirty seconds," Atton said easily. "Work on your breathing or something."

His weights had wound up on the floor like ten seconds ago already.

[myownface]

"Never breathing again. Probably dying. If my arms fall off before I can write one last letter, can you tell my cat I said goodbye?"

See, now he was being a drama queen. If he got thirty seconds to dick around, he was going to make the best of it.

[suitably_heroic]

"If this is how you die, your cat is getting nothing," Atton told him. "I'm going to tell that cat his owner died a pathetic puddle on the floor of the Jedi Temple and never thought of him."

[myownface]

"Aw, Velcro knows me better than that," Sparkle protested, reaching up to rub at one kind of gooey bicep, and then the other. "I mean, like, because I'd have to actually make it as far as the floor in order to die there, and I'm not leaving this spot until I have to."

[suitably_heroic]

"It'll be easier next time you do it," Atton said. Because he couldn't make fun of Sparkle forever. Sometimes you needed to take breathers from that, too. "Right now your muscles are all, 'aaaaaah, we can't do this!'. Then you give them a day or two to think about it, and they wind up coming up with solutions."