fandomtownies | Shooting Range Under Atlas Gym, Monday Afternoon

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Shooting Range Under Atlas Gym, Monday Afternoon

Mical had spewed some platitudes how 'recent events made it clear Atton might appreciate a break', which was as close as the guy could get to putting Atton in timeout. After all, while Mical had been handling mission control for a while, he wasn't officially in charge... and even if he was, well, Atton considered himself a free Jedi agent, not a member of the Jedi Order - increasingly fuzzy as the distnction between the two was starting to get - so whatever.

He'd been happy to take the week off. At least for the first day. Now, on Monday, he was starting to remember why he'd been so eager to glom on to these missions to begin with: having nothing to do was really bad for his head.

So, helping Sparkle out with figuring out the blaster was a relief. Enough of one that Atton actually showed up to the range about an hour early for some target practice of his own. He'd been relying more and more on his lightsaber lately, which was fine until he started running into people who knew how to handle lightsabers again. Blaster practice? Blaster practice was important.

[[ expecting one, but open before sparkle arrives! ]]

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Sparkle was actually more or less on time today for his shooting lessons with Atton. He was just maybe a little more glittery than strictly necessary, since he'd spent so much time out in the weather on Saturday. Still, he showed up with a lazy grin, fishing his blaster out of the weapons locker before making his way into the range.

"Hey! You weren't, like, waiting too long or anything, were you?"

It wasn't like he'd known Atton was going to be early! And besides, he had a class today and everything!

"Nah," Atton said.

He put his blaster down on the table in front of him. "I had to get some target practice of my own in, so it worked out fine. Hey."

"Fair enough," Sparkle replied, looking down at the blaster, and then grinning back up at Atton. "And how's that going for you?"

You know, with the shooting, and the... more shooting.

"I still know how to shoot someone in the face at twenty paces?" Atton offered.

He stepped away from his little booth. "You found the one I put aside for you?"

Sparkle nodded and held up the one that had been waiting in the locker that now had Sparkle's name on it.

"Yeah. Little weird, having my own storage in this place, but it's for the best, right? Like, I won't have to resort to swinging around a backpack full of canned cat food or something if the island gets invaded again."

Which, you know, he'd almost be tempted to try, if his bag wasn't currently full of glitter.

See, if Sparkle hadn't been Sparkle, Atton would've thought all the glitter would've been weird. But because Sparkle was Sparkle, he wasn't asking.

Which probably meant he'd have to go without knowledge of the glizzard he escaped. Ah, well.

He let out a snort. "You're going to be running around with a backpack full of whatever you can scrounge anyway," he said, "Packrat."

He motioned to one of the other booths.

Sparkle sparkled. As was only right and proper.

"There's nothing the matter with being a packrat," Sparkle announced as he wandered over to the booth Atton had gestured to. "I mean, I can still get from like one side of my room to the other, so it's not getting in the way or anything yet."

Granted, he had naked pillows now. But still.

Atton stepped in after him, eyeing the target across the way. Distance seemed about right for Sparkle, so far. "Sure, until something attacks the dorms and you trip over a can of cat food on your way to the window," he said. "Then you look like an idiot."

"Well, the cat's got to eat, so there are stupider things to trip over," Sparkle pointed out with a sniff. "See, it'd be weird if I was tripping over dog food."

He was going to ignore how he sometimes spent time as a really stupid-looking dog.

"Since you turn into a dog, isn't technically everything you eat dog food?" Atton pondered.

He nodded at the blaster. "You still remember how to fire one of those?"

"It's only dog food when I am a dog," Sparkle grumbled, before looking down at the blaster. And managing to not sulk too much. "And I think I do. I mean, unless it's really different from the ones you had us using during intro week?"

It was kind of dinky? But it still looked like it was made to shoot stuff, so.

"It's smaller, but the principle is the same," Atton said, shrugging lightly. "I mean, if I'd skimped out and gotten you the civilian variant, there'd been a lot more to explain, because those can barely put a hole in a paper towel. Give it a shot."

"Why would anyone get a blaster that doesn't, um, blast?"

Sparkle was pretty sure he knew the answer to that, anyway. People would do almost anything for peace of mind, even embrace a placebo. So he shrugged, and pointed the blaster at his target, and squeezed the trigger.

"It's still weird that they don't kick the same way guns do," he observed, lowering it to survey his handiwork. No bullseye, but he hadn't exactly missed by a mile, either. "I keep expecting something to buck back at me."

"Well, some beings get nervous when they run the risk of actually putting deadly holes in other beings."

Weirdly enough.

Atton looked over and judged the effect Sparkle had had on that target. Yeah, the kid needed work, but he wasn't unteachable. "Get that expectation out of your system. It's not helping your aim."

"Seems weird to get a blaster, then," he mused, and then shrugged, looking back at Atton. "Try again without, like, bracing myself, then?"

It made sense. Of course it would be different. He wasn't firing a bullet or shooting an arrow, here. It was still weird to wrap his head around, though. He'd logged far more time in the range with a bow and arrow under Alec's tutelage than anything else, and while some things were similar, others... were not.

He didn't have to account for little things like gravity when using a blaster, for one.

Atton leaned against the divider. (Gently. He didn't want to find out it was made of cardboard and tip it over.)

"Without bracing yourself," he agreed. "Remember, you're firing off energy here, not a bullet. Which is an ass-backwards system, by the way."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure once Earth figures out how to shoot energy at people without carrying a battery pack around with wires and pins, we'll get right on that too," Sparkle replied, wrinkling his nose a bit, but relaxing his stance somewhat. "Bullets are kind of the logical progression from throwing sharp rocks tied to sticks."

At least, he thought it was.

"You know when my ancestors were throwing sharp rocks tied to sticks around?" Atton said. "About a million years, probably."

See? Ass-backwards.

"Try it again."

Hey! They weren't ass-backwards! They were just late bloomers!

Still, Sparkle huffed a sigh and turned his attention back toward the target. This time, a little more relaxed and keeping in mind that his shot wasn't going to hit the ground if it didn't hit anything else, he did slightly better, clipping the target in the upper body mass.

"Well you have, like, interplanetary travel and artificial intelligence wandering around too," Sparkle groused. "We're working on that stuff. We aren't really teeming with, like, neighbours waving hi from other parts of our solar system either, though."

Or from anywhere, yet. The Milky Way was a lonely little galaxy thus far.

"Probably because you haven't managed to build spaceships yet that go faster than the Hawk drifts when she's on her parking brake," Atton said, but without heat.

Of course he got exactly why Earth wasn't ahead and that it might take a while; didn't mean he wasn't going to give Sparkle shit. It was bonding. Or something.

"Better," he added. "Maybe shift your shoulder into it a little more, give your arm some confidence."

Well, Sparkle wasn't taking it too personally, considering his most heated response was to stick out his tongue at Atton in retaliation.

That'd show him.

"Confident arm," he echoed, shifting his stance again. "Like this?"

... He sort of felt like he was posing for a fashion magazine, now. A fashion magazine with energy guns.

Well, if he wanted Atton to go in for the cliché UST posture adjustment instead, he was just going to have to be disappointed.

"Better," he said. "Remember, most times, if you need that thing, you probably won't get a shot at perfecting your posture. This has to get instinctive."

Hey, Sparkle's wants were one thing. His expectation was actually pretty close to the reality!

... Surprisingly.

"Yeah, I know," he agreed, and took another shot at the target, "and the last thing I'm going to be thinking about if I need this thing is how confident my shoulders look."

Atton nodded.

"All right," he said, "Take five shots. See if you get your balance down right. Bullseye it and I'll buy you a round later."

"Five shots, huh?" Sparkle pursed his lips a little, and then broke into a grin. "Yeah, I'm game. A round for a bullseye seems like a good deal to me."

Another moment taken to kind of loosen up, and then there he went, firing once, twice, three times. On his fourth try, he was actually pretty close to the bullseye. On his fifth he overcorrected, and was... pretty close to the target from the other side.

Well, crap.

"I don't suppose we could, like, just count the average of the last two?"

It was worth a shot, okay?

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