The Jedi Temple, Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

A week had come and gone. The Jedi and their allies had made good headway, clearing the Iridonic Horn out of the shipyards at Gyndine. And yet after that first sighting - both hopeful and troubling - there had been no sign of Atton. Having the man's friend here clearly wasn't doing much to convince Atton to come home, either, and Mical was beginning to wonder if asking Sparkle to come at all hadn't been a deeply futile act.

So it was that, exactly a week after Sparkle's arrival, that he was going to tell Sparkle to go back home. The rooms they'd provided Sparkle were rather spacious, for Jedi standards, but they were not far from Mical's office.

He had made his way over there, and now he was knocking.

[[ for sparkle. ]]

Comments

[myownface]

Sparkle... maybe answered that knock a little too quickly. Every time he'd been approached by somebody in the know this past week, he'd felt that little surge of maybe, a bit of hopefulness that somebody had figured out more about Atton's situation. Every time, that bit of hope got smashed into the dirt, but there was plenty where that came from, anyway.

So, there you go, Mical. One big-eyed Sparkle in the doorway, looking at you expectantly.

"Anything?"

God, he was like a puppy.

[suitably_heroic]

"...No," Mical said. "Unfortunately."

He always felt terrible bringing that very news here. "It has been a week," he started. "It's unfair of us to keep you here for much longer."

Yes.

He felt something strange - somewhat off-putting, itching at the back of his head. Perhaps it was guilt?

[myownface]

Sparkle's face went through a few different expressions, then. The immediate crestfallen look it usually took when Mical gave him that news. And then something else, confused as he parsed the rest of what Mical was saying.

And then a sort of wide-eyed worry.

"What? No! I mean, no, it's not unfair, it isn't like I have anything to go hurrying back to the island for or anything, like, Atton's it and it's only been a week. Is it-- I mean, I'm not being a drain or anything, am I? I can cook more. Or start cleaning. I could clean?"

Please, Mical, let him clean. Don't make him go now, back to the island, where the only news he heard about anything at all was silence.

[suitably_heroic]

Mical held up his hands, placating. "No, no, no! You are welcome to stay here for as long as you wish," he hurried to say, wide-eyed, himself. "I merely thought... if this is not working, we should hardly keep you from... whatever it is that you do on the island."

He hadn't actually thought to ask.

Perhaps he should have.

As a result, he missed the shadow that darted along the hall entirely.

[myownface]

"I sell clothes," Sparkle muttered, wrinkling his nose. His own focus was on Mical entirely. He wouldn't have stood a chance at spotting that shadow, just then. "And it's okay, like, I like my job, but my employees know what they're doing. They can handle things for a little longer. Maybe I'll go back to write their paycheques or something, but that only takes like ten minutes..."

Atton was way more important.

[suitably_heroic]

"If you're certain," Mical said. "Then--"

He went still. Very, very still. "--I need you to take cover," he said, hand darting for his belt.

Snap-hiss. Just in time: a blaster bolt sizzled as it struck Mical's lightsaber head-on.

[myownface]

Sparkle's eyes went wide and his breath caught, thoughts that had been stuck on 'Atton' now shifting with a jolt to the two flares of deadly light that had collided just a breath away. He didn't take cover so much as he gasped and stumbled backwards, instinct moving him when his mind had frozen up.

Cover? What cover? He could huddle behind his bed like a scared kid, a thought that hit him in the guts and made him want to retch even as he backed that way, not quite able to take his wide-eyes off of that opening into the hallway.

[suitably_heroic]

Mical let the Force guide him in catching the flurry of blaster bolts that kept coming at him, but his mind was racing: who was there? How had they even gotten into the Temple? How many of them were there, and what did they want?

He met each volley, approaching his assailant swiftly through the hall, putting Sparkle out of his mind; the man would be safe.

In theory.

In practice, there was an odd, off sizzling sound that cut through the air in Sparkle's rooms-- and then the figure of a woman in black, decloaking behind him.

[myownface]

Oh, Sparkle didn't like that sound. Like a crackle of fireworks and static and meat in a frying pan all crushed together and compressed into a hiss that was far too close to 'right there' for Sparkle's comfort. He froze again, torn between turning to face that sound or bolting, though there wasn't anywhere by that point for him to bolt to.

He spun on his heel instead, eyes looking in barely veiled horror at the dark figure standing before him. He felt his heart drop in his chest and bile rising somewhere deep in his throat.

At least the blaster bolts were being deflected. There was nothing between him and her. No convenient Jedi to keep him safe. And nowhere to run.

He took a step back. A step back was about all he had in him. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd be dead before his hand could land on anything dangerous, if he were to reach for his blaster or one of his knives.

[suitably_heroic]

Sizzle.

Behind him, another cloaked figure sprang into view. This one did more than look menacing: he reached for Sparkle, an arm slinking around his neck, vibroblade up and ready in the other hand.

"Let the Jedi know we've got this one," he growled.

[myownface]

Oh, that was totally a different matter entirely. Lurking figures and blaster bolts were one thing, actually grabbing him from behind? That move elicited a yelp from Sparkle, a variation of 'Fuck in D-minor,' and a hard stomp of his foot, downward, toward the foot of the one who had grabbed him.

There was an elbow flying back toward the second figure's ribs, too, for good measure, even while his other hand reached up to try to grab at the arm around his neck.

Scaring the shit out of him was one thing. Grabbing him was rude.

[suitably_heroic]

The man let out a cry of surprise, shifting his body away from that invading elbow, even if he didn't let go. He'd clearly not expected Sparkle to fight back.

The woman-- well, if she hadn't been wearing a mask, one might have been able to see her mouth curl up in a snarl. Since she was, though, Sparkle would have to make do with her advancing on him with her own vibroblade, as an indicator for her mood.

[myownface]

There was a startled gagging sound as the man shifted backwards, less because Sparkle hadn't been expecting him to react, and more because he'd been somewhere in the middle of an inhale when the grip on him had shifted.

Now the woman was stepping forward, and Sparkle, not best pleased about the situation and kind of hoping that maybe Mical would take care of what was going on in the hallway in the nick of time or something, didn't exactly have many options. Sure, girls weren't built quite the same way as guys were, but that didn't mean they couldn't feel pain in certain places that were within easy reach of his feet, so there he went, swinging his foot upward, hard, in hopes of...

What? He didn't know. Distracting her for a moment? Getting some sort of petty revenge before his inevitable demise? Maybe that was it. He was going to try to kick her in the pink bits because he was feeling spiteful.

[suitably_heroic]

They'd been silent until now; Sparkle's foot brought a change in that, as it connected and caused the woman to cry out - and lash out violently with her blade, stabbing forward.

"You'll pay for that!"

[myownface]

Sparks. Sparkle knew what sparks looked like very well. After all, he carried those little sparkler sticks around with him almost everywhere, making them a trademark of his. So his first thought when pain caught him in his shoulder, white-hot and sudden and severe, was that sparks had never, ever hurt him like this before.

His second thought, once coherent thought had come back to him vaguely, through the pain, was that somebody was making wounded animal noises, and maybe they could fucking stop doing that.

His third thought, of course, was that maybe he should fucking stop doing that. He bit his lip, hard, the hand he'd been scrabbling at the arm around his throat with somewhere down by his side. He was leaning back against the one who was holding him, now.

"Oh."

And then he laughed. Some sort of bubbling, visceral hysteria grabbing at that moment of clarity and pushing itself forward in desperate laughter that was more breathless sobbing than anything else. Right. Gonna die here. Good to know.

[suitably_heroic]

"Sparkle?"

That was, of course, the moment where Mical, freed from his assailant, made his way back to the room. "Are you all..."

Right.

"No," he said slowly, raising his lightsaber. "Clearly not."

"Lower your weapon," the woman hissed, as her companion got a tighter grip on poor, sobbing Sparkle. "Or we'll kill him. Jedi."

[myownface]

Braver people might have had something stupid to say, here. Some sort of 'don't let them win, fight back' bullshit that would end poorly for themselves, but at least it would look all noble and romantic in print, if anybody ever cared to write about it later. Probably in a eulogy.

Sparkle was not braver people. Sparkle was a shivering mess. He wanted his bed and a stiff drink and his cat and his sister, wanted that person who was holding him to be somebody else entirely, who would soothe him and tell him that he'd be okay. He wanted to be a little boy, like the little boys he saw on television and in books and movies, who had somebody there who would console him and wipe his tears and care. Hell, he'd take Lewis right now. Lewis was a rainy day that he could live to walk away from, compared to this.

Weapons and bravery were the last thing from his mind.

[suitably_heroic]

And Mical was... had been a soldier, yes, after he had been a Padawan, but he had been a spy. It had not been until Meetra found him in the bowels of the Jedi Enclave that he'd truly became someone who served on the front lines. It hadn't mattered: there had always been other people on their team whose reflexes were perfect, whose instincts were deadly and true.

Like Atton.

But Mical was not Atton. So he wavered, for just a second.

It was long enough. The woman threw something at the floor, and it explode into a plume of smoke right at Mical's feet. Before he had time to sink into Jedi breath control, she fired at him. He had to make a choice, and the choice was the one to preserve his life: catching that blaster bolt straight on his lightsaber.

Just in time to suck in a deep breath of poisonous smoke, and suddenly he was light-headed, sinking to his feet.

"That's what I thought," said the woman.

[myownface]

"Oh," said Sparkle again, vision blurring as he watched the scene unfolding. There was Mical. And there went Mical. And he wasn't sure if it was the smoke or the pain, but the world seemed to be blurring to white again, and staying awake was getting harder to do. "Okay."

This... this was probably somewhere in his top ten for 'worst days ever.'

[suitably_heroic]

There was a third, and final, sizzle. A third figure appeared in the doorway, his mask covering the lower half of his face, but not the rest of it. "Good, you got him," he said.

Theemin's eyes slid from the boy (Sparkle.) to the crumpled heap of Jedi on the floor. "Let's take the Jedi," he said. "That'll send a signal."

The woman shook her head. "No," she said. "Too much trouble."

[myownface]

There was a familiar voice on the edge of his consciousness, something about Jedi and signals. Sparkle licked his lips and opened his mouth a little, though he trailed off before he could say Atton's name. Something was wrong. He was talking to them. That wasn't how this was supposed to go. That voice was rescue, it had always been rescue. It wasn't pain and sparks in his eyes and smoke burning at his lungs and fogging his mind and making consciousness itself into a battle.

"... Oh."

Broken record.

[suitably_heroic]

Damn it.

There was no way At-- Theemin could get away with showing more concern, and arguing back wouldn't be in character. "Fine," he said. "But let the small one go before you choke him to death."

The man holding Sparkle let go of him. Abruptly.

[myownface]

And Sparkle... Sparkle tumbled to the ground, legs like butter underneath him, bonelessly.

He didn't try to get up. Whimpering on the floor seemed like a much better plan. Or maybe sleeping.

Sleeping was a better plan. He was just going... to.. go... to...

[suitably_heroic]

Theemin scooped him up off the floor. Okay, if he wasn't being watched, he might've been more careful with Sparkle instead of draping him over his shoulder, but there was only so much he could do.

At least he was the one handling Sparks, now. Best he could do.

"Let's leave," he said coolly, fixing his eyes on Nina's masked face. "There's usually at least one other Jedi in the building, and the rest of them aren't bleeding hearts. Come on."

"Fine," Nina said. "I think we've made our statement." She reached for her belt and switched her stealth field back on.