suitably_heroic | Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

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Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

Okay, if Atton could've chosen a way to spend the night before Sparkle Training Day, it wasn't exactly 'locked in a seemingly endless meeting about closing the net on pirates'. But he couldn't exactly skip out, either-- the Republic had sent a fair share of bigwigs to discuss the problem, and he had to play nice and be the model Jedi.

But eventually, the meeting wound down. People started to leave. And that meant this was now his opportunity to do the other thing he'd attended the meeting for. Or, well, talk to the guy he'd partly attended the meeting for, at any rate.

Admiral Carth Onasi. A hero of the Republic. Fought in the Mandalorian Wars, but didn't go with Revan-- instead, his mentor Saul Karath had betrayed him and bombed his home planet. Onasi had stuck with the Republic, and then joined Revan on his quest to put an end to Darth Malak and his Sith Empire.

If Bastila wouldn't answer his questions, maybe Onasi would.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" Atton asked, intercepting Onasi right on his way out.

Onasi blinked. "Uh, sure," he said, "Anything for the Jedi. What's up?"

"I did a run last week, out in the Mid Rim," Atton said conversationally. "Minor pirates, waste of my time, except they had a Mandalorian on board."

There was visible confusion on Onasi's face. "I don't think Mandalore is involved--"

"No, I know he isn't," Atton said, rolling his eyes. "The guy was bitching up a storm. Talking about how a Jedi called 'Avner' was really responsible for Canderous Ordo's meteoric rise up the Mandalorian food chain. You know anything about that?"

Onasi rubbed the back of his neck. "I know Revan went to Canderous right before he disappeared," he said. "But Bastila could've told you the same."

"Bastila doesn't really want to talk to me anymore," Atton said. "Something about old ghosts, yadda yadda."

"Old ghosts?" And oh, look. Something akin to understanding dawned on Onasi's face. "You're still looking for Revan. I thought your people said he was dead?"

"No, we know Meetra is dead," Atton said, ignoring the pang of pain in his chest. "Revan, we don't know anything about. I thought maybe if I retrace his steps, we'll find something. Somewhere. Maybe something that explains all of this." Nathema. The system that had swallowed two Jedi, and yet didn't turn up on any star maps.

Onasi looked about to protest, the same as Bastila had. But then his features relaxed. "That's all I know," he said, "Revan went to Rekkiad to see Canderous. Next thing I know, Canderous is Mandalore and Revan was gone. Didn't tell anyone anything, but I understand that's just a Jedi thing."

Atton let out a snort. "Yeah, let me tell you something ab--"

Suddenly his instincts flared and all the alarms in his head went off. He tackled Onasi to the floor, hitting it hard, but not as hard as the blaster bolts that buried themselves in the wall behind them. "Space!"

Whatever had just fired off those bolts was already running-- he could sense that. He crawled onto his feet and dashed for the window, putting his feet to the sill. Then he launched himself into incoming traffic. You're not getting away from me!

Onasi was left on the floor, blinking.

"...Jedi really don't change, do they."

---

There was a white girl sitting in the waiting room of the Portalocity station, waiting quietly and with just a hint of disapproval. 'White', in this case, didn't refer to the color of her skin, but the color of her everything: she had a white hood pulled up over her white hair, a white robe over her white tunic which led into her white boots.

You could say much for Brianna, but at least she was easy to pick out in a crowd.

She was also distinctly unamused about having to do this, but unfortunately Mira was out on a mission, and Rand was an idiot.

[[ for sparkle, la. ]]

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"Yeah, man. I don't know what it is with you and getting the shitty kind..." Sparkle pursed his lips a little, and then shook his head. "You know I worry less when you don't try to get your Jedi buddies to lie to me, right?"

Like, generally? He expected a few fibs from Atton, and some blatant avoiding the truth and all, but if he was up and walking about in more or less one piece, why try to get Brianna to lie at all? It wasn't like Sparkle didn't know Atton did dangerous shit on a regular basis these days.

The lying was partly compulsive these days. It was hard to unlearn years of being overly paranoid.

Plus, if Brianna had just done what he said, there wouldn't have been a problem.

"Hey, I didn't ask her to lie for me," Atton retorted. "I was in a meeting. The rest of it wasn't that important."

"Right," Sparkle replied, though he was willing to let it drop. "I guess so long as nobody tries to shoot at us while we're training, there's not really a problem, then. You're kind of like a cockroach that way."

Hard to kill and prone to bathing infrequently?

... Accurate.

"Oh, thanks," Atton said, pulling a face. "And what wonderful crap have you been up to lately?"

"We've finished moving in," Sparkle shared, shrugging. "I'm back to having the shitty kind of roommate who goes through your stuff when they think you're not paying attention. One of these days I'm going to knock his teeth out of his head."

Don't think for a second that he wouldn't.

"Besides that, stuff is okay, I guess? Busy. There's me and ten other kids living there, and we're expecting a new one in a few days, so that'll be interesting. It's always kind of weird when they show up, like, okay, you never know what kind of fucked-up they're gonna be. All you really know is they don't wanna be there. They never wanna be there."

Until it became home. If they weren't around long enough for that to happen, then hey, good for them.

"You remember how to punch a guy to leave a mark without putting him in the dentist's chair, right?" Atton asked.

Had he ever taught Sparks that? It may fall under that whole Torture for Babies thing. Anyway.

"So, twelve kids? That's a whole lot of dysfunction in one building."

At least the current Jedi Order kept the dysfunction total to four and a half. ... More, if you counted the kids, but otherwise, four and a half!

"Punch him in the eye instead?"

It seemed like a good way to avoid the dentist, anyhow.

"Yeah, well, collecting the dysfunctional ones is kind of literally Lewis' job," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "And it's not like there's a shortage of dysfunctional kids in the world."

Not by any stretch of the imagination, really.

"I know, I know," Atton said. "You don't have to tell me that. I'm just--" Mildly worried about Sparkle in a very low-key way he wasn't gonna bring up, "--saying. Anyone there you don't hate?"

"Lewis?"

... Pretty much Lewis.

"And, I dunno, the younger ones aren't too bad. We're, like, twelve to eighteen, you know? And some of the littler kids need someone around who's been there and done that."

Not as a positive role model, necessarily. But definitely a role model of some persuasion.

"What, so now you're a role model?" Atton asked, walking into the training room.

"Hey, if you can do it, so can I," Sparkle snarked, stepping into the room a second behind him. "Anyway, it's not like I'm there to put them on the path to the straight and narrow or anything. Just, like, make sure they're not shitting themselves scared or whatever. They're mostly good kids, they just don't know what fucking way is up right now, that's all."

"Hey, hey, I'm not a role model. Whatever the opposite of a role model is, that's me," Atton said. "Pop Tart?"

He held up his hand. LOOK AT HOW MUCH OF A ROLE MODEL HE WASN'T.

"You remember the first time you showed up to this Lewis guy's place?"

"Sure," Sparkle replied, shrugging as he rummaged through his bag for the Pop Tarts. "Not the same way I remember stepping into my first home, but, like, that kind of thing sticks. Lewis was, like... happy. Like actually nice, and there was this whole... stupid... singalong thing he did. I dunno. We do it for new kids now, even if it is dumb. It helps the little ones feel a little less scared, at least."

"Doesn't surprise me," Atton said. "The guy kind of radiates 'dopey and dumb'."

Not necessarily in a bad way!

... okay, so Atton thought the guy was nice, but painfully naive and straight out of another century. Kind of like Mical!

Sparkle glanced up from his bag, frowning a little at that. But he didn't say anything about it. Just surfaced with a box of Pop Tarts - blueberry ones - and held it out to Atton.

"Seems to work okay for the kids, anyway."

Atton took the tart and peeled it out of the wrapper. "That's what matters," he said easily, because he wasn't going to elaborate on his opinion anyway. "So, the first home?"

And man, was that wrapper interesting. Sparkle shrugged and started picking at his own.

"Sucked," he replied, "I dunno. It was the first place I wound up after they took me away from my family. Of course it sucked. Everything was upside-down and flat and it felt like weeks before I could breathe again, and I don't even care if it was a good home or not, I hate it."

There had been worse, but he had been stronger and older by the time he came around to them.

Atton thought about asking him exactly what had happened with his family anyway, but decided against it. He felt he was digging further than he really should as it was, so he shrugged and took a bite of his pop tart.

"In that case, yeah, the stupid singing introduction is probably a good idea," he said. "You know. Give the new kids something to either blame for all the hate they've got going on, or cling to."

"That's the idea, yeah. If they hate it, then hey... At least we tried. They can't say we didn't. And if it helps them relax, all the better. Sometimes it really works, you know?"

Sometimes it just got them weird looks, granted. And that was kind of sad, when it was the younger ones. They were already way too old, when that happened.

Atton snorted. "By the sounds of it, you're not just a role model, you're the deputy-karking-motivator," he said. He took another bite of that pop tart. "Putting your cheer squad and StuCo experience to work."

"Yeah, that's pretty much my life now," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "You missed my speech at grad, didn't you? I'm, like, official motivation guy or something. If you're not feeling motivated, I'm gonna damn well motivate you."

He was even mostly not crappy at it!

"Sorry I missed your big shining moment of glory," said Atton, who had kind of hoped Sparkle had missed-slash-forgotten that part. "But I bet it would've elected like, a fistpump, at least."

Pfff, as if Sparkle hadn't been looking over the audience for like the three people who might show up for him.

"Or at least some good, solid snark afterwards," he replied. "That's fine. That just means you can pretend it was kickass."

"I will always remember it as the speech of our collective times," Atton promised him, "Which I was stupid enough to miss, thus dooming me to a life of ignorance."

And pop tarts, apparently.

The Pop Tarts were the consolation prize.

"Damn right," Sparkle decided, satisfied with that answer. "And that's the real tragedy, here."

Yeah, on the scale that went from 'homeless kids' to 'missing Sparkle's speech...'

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