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The Park by the Duck Pond, Friday Morning

Kanan was out practising in the park again today. Sort of. He'd taken Stance for a walk, and just happened to bring his broomstick lightsaber stand-in along with him, in case the pup had decided to run off and torment the flamingos or something.

'In case,' as if that wasn't basically exactly what was going to happen.

So he was stealing a few minutes while Stance terrorized the birds to attempt to remember what he could about the Ataru form. Master Billaba had trained him well enough in the defensive form Soresu to keep him alive through the war, but that meant that any more aggressive forms had fallen to the wayside pretty hard. And after eight... going on nine years without wielding a lightsaber for any significant purpose, muscle memory from Master Yoda's training sessions with the younglings wasn't exactly going to cut it.

After a good fifteen, twenty minutes of waving a stick around and feeling like an idiot, Kanan said to hell with it and just slid back into Soresu forms again. He wasn't going to magically dredge up something he didn't know without help, and it wasn't like he could just look it up on the HoloNet or anything.

He was still mostly convinced that this was stupid and he'd be better off doing target practice with his blaster, instead.

[OOC: Open!]

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Oh hey, great minds and all that, Eliot was also out walking his dog in the park this morning!

He didn't have a practice sword with him, though.

"Nice form," he said, while patiently waiting for Val to finish investigating ever single inch of a nearby tree. "Though I'd hope your actual weapon's better balanced than that broomstick."

"I've used actual branches from trees that have better balance than this broomstick," Kanan replied, frowning a little as he lowered his improvised weapon and then glancing over at Eliot. "But yes. My lightsaber is kind of all about balance, really."

Force joke.

"Not that I'm planning on using it any time soon."

Ever.

Edited 2017-06-30 16:54 (UTC)

"Right, 'cause if you do the bad guys will immediately zero in on your location." Eliot wasn't as sarcastic as he could be on that, but he wasn't not sarcastic.

Kanan sighed, and barely refrained from pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Because I'm rusty after eight years of not using it, and I'd sooner pull out a blaster I'm familiar with than risk cutting off my own hand in a fight with a lightsaber I never touch, Eliot."

"Hence the broomstick. Which is definitely just as good as training with an actual weapon." Eliot shook his head and casually started to circle Kanan, checking out how he held the stick. "Don't get me wrong, this is definitely better'n nothing. But doesn't your giant, state-of-the-art galaxy at least have the concept of a bokken?"

Kanan sighed and watched Eliot as he circled. He recognized the word, at least, from a class trip to Japan while teaching with Hannibal. And he shrugged.

"Sure," he said. "We had training sabers when I was a kid. Hell, a lightsaber can be put onto a low output setting. It'll still cause minor burns, but it won't sear a person's arm off. Why? You know somewhere I can buy a training sword around here? Because I sure as hell can't find training sabers back home anymore."

Kanan was not exactly up to par on Earth.

"Pretty sure you can find an artist to mock you up something at least in a 'theoretical' laser sword style," Eliot said. "And — I mean, you're listenin' to yourself, right? It has a low power mode. Kinda wrecks your whole 'don't want to cut off my own head' argument."

And in reply to that, Kanan mostly just made a low, somewhat disgruntled sound in the back of his throat.

"Would it make you happy if I put it together and changed the output, Eliot?"

He sounded a little like he'd rather stab himself in the eye with his broomstick, mind.

Eliot nodded guilelessly. "I mean, probably."

If Kanan ever got his laser sword groove back, he could maybe train Eliot in how to defend against one! You never knew when you were going to have to fight an alien with a laser sword!

Kanan squinted for a moment, the squint of a man who was gonna do the thing anyway but who clearly was going to go through the motions of not wanting to, before sighing and tossing his broomstick to the side.

The flamingos were thankful, at least. Stance immediately stopped terrorizing them and went to savage the stick, instead.

"Fine," Kanan muttered, reaching to unclip something that seemed like a piece of random metal from his belt. From another pouch near his blaster, he pulled out a second one. "If it'll get you off my case about it."

As far as he was concerned, just going through Jedi forms in the park with a stick was already more than enough.

Not really if he actually wanted to end up using them.

Eliot stepped back a pace and folded his arms, watching the process with interest.

"So if you're so set against ever usin' it, why do you carry the pieces around with you?"

Kanan's jaw clenched at that, just a little bit.

"Because if I have to get up and leave on no notice, this way I don't have to take the time to go get the only thing I have left of what was essentially my family, first" he said, flatly.

He had his holocron as well, which was in the apartment at the moment. But it was slightly less convenient to just carry around inconspicuously than the disassembled pieces of what was once a Jedi weapon.

Eliot nodded. "I've met the occasional former soldier who carries around broken guns for pretty much the same reason."

Kanan frowned a little at that, and then pulled in a slow breath and exhaled it again in a sigh.

"I was never going to use this again," he said, finally. "It isn't just about avoiding the Empire. There's a lot of... baggage... that goes with this. Surviving is easier if you don't get tripped up on memories at the worst possible moments."

That wasn't stopping him from closing his eyes now, though, and holding out the pieces of his weapon, then using the Force to levitate them so that he could piece them back together.

"Surviving, sure," Eliot said softly. "But at a certain point you gotta start living again, too."

Then he went silent, not wanting to break Kanan's concentration. It still tripped him out a bit, even after all these years, to see something that simply wasn't physically possible on his world happen before his eyes. It did the little kid he used to be good to get a bit of wonder in now and again.

The entire process took only about a minute. Pieces twisting off and sliding into and out of other pieces of metal, nothing really seeming to belong anywhere, right up until the moment it did. An entire ten seconds were spent just quietly inspecting the crystal that went inside of the whole thing, floating freely between two mostly assembled pieces. And then, finally, it all fit back together again, and floated into Kanan's hand.

He frowned and opened his eyes, looking at the weapon he was holding. Not igniting it yet. Just... looking.

"And in order to start living, I have to claw at old scars?"

"Ignorin' 'em ain't exactly made 'em go away, has it." Eliot shook his head. "Take it from a guy with plenty of scars of his own he both is and ain't dealin' with properly."

Eliot refused to use guns because of some of his own scars. But he didn't go around carrying gun pieces and torturing himself with them, and he kept in practice taking them apart so he could deal with them when he had to.

Kanan wrinkled his nose a little, and then shook his head and reached to adjust the settings on his lightsaber.

"You sound like Master Kenobi," he muttered.

That was absolutely a complaint. But it wasn't exactly an insult.

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment," Eliot said. "And hey, if it lets me see this sucker in action. . . ."

"And now you sound significantly less like Master Kenobi," Kanan snorted. And then he pulled in a deep breath and ignited his lightsaber.

And tried to ignore just how much it always felt like greeting an old friend.

"You know I'm only going to be running through more forms," he said, raising an eyebrow. "I'm fresh out of training remotes."

And he wasn't going to tell Eliot to start shooting at him or throwing rocks or whatever.

Eliot shrugged. "That's most of what I do when I'm training with my swords, too."

"Fair enough."

Though now Kanan was tempted to see if he could find a remote out there somewhere that he could reprogram to suit his needs.

Not that he was going to train with his lightsaber ever again.

Yeah. Even he knew that was a load of nerf shit.

Another deep breath, then, and he was shrugging and slipping into the opening stance for his Soresu forms. Just like Master Billaba had taught him. Legs apart, weight on his back foot, face turned toward some imaginary opponent, lightsaber up.

Eliot stayed back and continued to watch, shifting his own weight a little to mimic the posture as he studied it.

What? Muscle memory was super useful.

And Kanan started working his way through his forms, moving with a sort of ease and grace with his lightsaber that hadn't entirely been present with the broomstick. He'd been good with the broomstick, sure, but as Eliot had pointed out, it was hardly a training weapon, and the balance was still off.

Forward, parry, back...

Soresu was deceptively simple in its forms, a great deal of control all wound up in a highly defensive form, meant to outlast one's opponent, to wear them down before disarming them or finishing them off. But the way that Kanan was holding himself made for ease of movement, in spite of how seemingly restrictive it was. A few of the lightning-quick motions he made with his lightsaber - fast enough to catch blaster fire on his blade - weren't something that one would dare try with a metal blade. Not without an assist from the Force.

There were no fancy acrobatics. Those were more prevalent among more aggressive forms like Ataru. There was just Kanan, and his lightsaber, and a steady patter of step, parry, step, attack, all looking far more simple to execute properly than they actually were.

A slow smile spread across Eliot's face as he continued to watch, circling again to see the forms from as many angles as possible. A lot of it was just the joy of watching a well-executed, well-structured, entirely new martial art in action, even if just in practice, noting its similarities and differences with forms he knew. And part of it was absolutely the fact that it was all being done with a glowing sword.

It even made noise! Maybe not the satisfying *swoosh* *clang* of metal on metal, but a whole *vvvsssszzzzhhhh* thing that was just . . . neat.

Alright, fine. Maybe he'd finally let Hardison talk him into watching Space Battles.

"Man, we have got to spar sometime."

Awww, Kanan! He was so impressed he didn't even call you "kid"!

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The Park by the Duck Pond, Friday Morning

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