Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

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. ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

"How dare you offer me the one that pretends to have actual vitamins in it," Atton said, "Gimme the s'more."

[myownface]

"So we're boycotting pretend vitamins now too?" Sparkle pulled out the s'more box all the same. "Man, I haven't even been gone two weeks yet and already you're going mad with power or something."

Was Sparkle going to have to write and see if Kellogg's would find a way to work broccoli into their s'mores?

[suitably_heroic]

If he did, someone was going to find Sparkle dead in a ditch with a bloody tiara right by his head.

Atton reached for the box. It would come to him. Yes. "Yes," he said, "Look at me, exercising the terrible power of making my own decisions about what I eat. Like a grown-up. Which I am, I'll remind you."

... some of the time.

[myownface]

Sparkle considered this statement for a moment.

And then a moment more.

And then he just broke down cackling.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton grabbed the box of pop tarts from his evil clutches. "Oh, hilarious."

[myownface]

"Oh, c'mon, man," Sparkle replied, still grinning shamelessly. "I obviously don't care that much about your horrible eating habits. I didn't even bring like a can of spinach or anything."

Just pop tarts.

So many pop tarts.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton threw his empty packet of pop tarts at Sparkle. Just because he could.

"They have cans of just spinach? That's disgusting."

[myownface]

Sparkle wrinkled his nose as he batted the packet away.

"They have cans of like everything. Peas, corn, chicken, potatoes. And, like, it's gross sometimes. Canned peas are nasty. But it's affordable and it doesn't go bad right away, so..."

Sparkle used to more or less live on a lot of stolen canned food.

[suitably_heroic]

"Just stick with the cans of chicken," Atton said sagely, securing his s'more pop tart. "Or in your case, I guess, the pop tart full of filthy fake vitamin goop."

He took a bite of the pop tart. "You been cooking up a storm back at the house or what?"

[myownface]

"Not really, not yet," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "I mean, I'd love to, sure, but cooking for a dozen people while the kitchen is still mostly packed into boxes is a challenge."

Pause.

"I made tacos on Tuesday. They're easy, and you can make a crapload of them using like one dish."

[suitably_heroic]

"You want to grab some groceries on the Order's tab on your way out, you're welcome," Atton said, taking another bite of that pop tart. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we have some stores around here that sell food that's, you know, dead."

Maybe the Mapleview Lanes crowd could do up a taste for gizka! Who knew?

[myownface]

"And I'm actually getting to a point where I can recognize things! Ish."

Mostly he could identify it as 'that spicy orange thing that was floating in my soup that one time,' or 'I'm pretty sure that's some kind of root vegetable,' but at least the results wouldn't be completely catastrophic.

"The fun part would be trying to explain where it came from to Lewis. The government actually gives him an allowance to keep us fed, you know? And there's sort of a rotation between Lewis and the older kids to see who makes supper what night. My turn won't be coming around again for another week."

He idly folded his pop tart wrapper a few times, and smiled.

"But hey, thanks, though. I might try to sneak some nerf into my next meal anyway just to see if people try to figure out what kind of meat it is."

[suitably_heroic]

"Better than beef," Atton said immediately.

He finished up the pop tart at reasonable speed, then shrugd.

"Well, you know, Mical was stupid enough to trust me with an Order credit chip for food and other expenses," he said. "Just so you know I'm happy leveraging it for as much as I can get out of it."

He tugged the second pop tart free and tossed his own wrapper in the general direction of something that looked vaguely like a trash processor. "I mean, tacos aren't so bad, I'll give you that much."

[myownface]

"See, now I just want to know what tacos made with nerf would even taste like," Sparkle mused. "Never mind international cuisine. It'd be intergalactic."

Which was awesome, for the record.

[suitably_heroic]

"You could start selling them on the street," Atton mused. "I mean, 'intergalactic cuisine' is a hell of a party trick."