fandomtownies | The Park, Friday Afternoon

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The Park, Friday Afternoon

Today was, if you asked Kanan, actually a pretty gorgeous one. Sure, there were a few clouds, but the weather was tolerable, there was even a nice little breeze. It wasn't pouring buckets of rain on his head or anything like that, though, if he was being entirely honest, he probably wouldn't have minded the rain so much. Anything to help get rid of the glitter that had exploded all over him when he went to investigate a strange box in his bathroom that morning while he was still damp from his morning shower.

Thanks for that, Fandom.

So he looked a little bit like he was ready for a Fandom dance today when he stepped outside and started glittering in the sunlight, but that wasn't going to stop him from heading to the park with his lightsaber to go through a few forms. Stance had accompanied him for the walk and was happily napping underneath one of the benches, and if he closed his eyes and just let the sun beat down on him, Kanan could fall into old patterns easily and ignore the fact that he looked like a walking light show, throwing off shades of blue whenever the light from his saber caught one of the rogue specks of glitter that he hadn't been able to wash away during his second, somewhat more cranky shower.

[OOC: Open!]

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Tip looked from her stick to the one he held and knew somewhere deep in her heart that this was going to at best be deeply embarrassing.

But, hey. If you avoided anything that embarrassed you you got nowhere super fast, so.

She even threw in a little roar as she swung her stick at his, overhand, like something out of ~~meta for~~ Braveheart.

Oh yeah, her body was real happy to get to move.

Kanan just grinned, trying not to look too amused at that roar, really. Hey, he'd seen Jedi do similar.

They were just, you know, good at it.

In any case, the swing was easily blocked, and then Kanan was stepping back in case her momentum kept her moving forward for a while.

"Points for enthusiasm," he offered. "Next time, remember what I said about keeping your guts covered, alright?"

Tip blinked, point of her stick on the ground as she stumbled to a stop. "Right," she said. "Guts." She lifted the stick and tried to find the stance again. "How do you attack and cover your guts at the same time? I thought that was what shields and, like, armor were for?"

"You keep your weapon in close enough that you can move it back if you need it," Kanan explained, holding his stick up again. "If it's up above your head, that's a long way for it to go, and you're wide open. Anyway, a shield isn't much good if you're using a two-handed weapon, and armor only goes so far."

Hell, he'd gone through the war without any. Which brought him back around to...

"You know, when life came at me? Wasn't just the end of the war. It was the start of another one."

Tip thought about that one for a moment, shifting the stick around in the stance with little experimental half-swings, trying to figure out what kept it pretty close to her middle. "That makes sense," she said, both about the sword moves and the wars. "Were you . . . were you in the first one?"

"Yeah," Kanan sighed. There wasn't much point in denying it, really. Not around here. "I was. For a couple of years, anyway."

He nodded toward her stick again. "Would you rather swing, or block? Keep an eye on my form and try to copy it again?"

"Block," Tip decided after a couple moments thinking. "If I'm learning for defense, then blocking is more important, right?" She nodded and started adjusting her arms and feet to try to match his again.

"My war only lasted a year. And I sort of ended up in it by accident. My side -- we didn't really have soldiers or anything. Not . . . not after the first attacks."

Kanan held his ready stance for a little longer, so that she could reference how he was standing until she was set again.

"By the time this new war came around, neither did ours," Kanan said, and he managed to keep that tired, tense tone out of his voice. The one that wanted to knock the breath out of him as he spoke. "It's still going. The hell of it is, half the galaxy doesn't realize it's a war, yet."

And the other half was willing to buy in to what the Empire was promising, because the other options would get them killed.

"Ready? I'll go slow so you can get a feel for the motion, first."

"Ready," Tip confirmed. She was starting to form a picture of what Kanan had had to deal with in her head. All the bad guys were giant hulking green-and-purple beasts with noses like oak leaves made out of steak.

The Gorg left a hell of an impression, okay?

"The second war," she said carefully. "It's against invaders, right? Or . . . conquerors? Something went bad way high up in the government and that's why people don't know?"

"Something went really bad way high up in the government," Kanan confirmed, and then stepped forward into a slow-motion swing from the side. "Block."

And then, because he figured he might as well just out with it instead of keeping her guessing, he added, "We were double-crossed by the head of the Republic that sent us into the war in the first place. He orchestrated it as a distraction, so that he could put himself in a position to take over when it ended. The Emperor who won the war."

Who needs to be invaded when your allies were already the worst?

"What a douche," Tip said, because she knew from experience that sometimes epic understatement was the best tension break. She followed his movement carefully, slowly enough to feel the tension in all her muscles as she tried to get it right. "Kinda sounds like it's all one really big war, though. You just didn't know which side you were really on until later."

"Yes and no," Kanan said, paying close attention to her block, nodding thoughtfully, and then pulling back to swing at her from the other side, just as slow. "The players aren't the same. Not anymore. The ones we thought were the enemy aren't, anymore. And we're... dead, mostly."

That was maybe a little too blunt. Kanan reeled it back a bit.

"It's been most of a decade, and plenty of people don't realize anything's gone wrong. They think it's peacetime now. How are your legs holding up? Weight on the back, but don't be afraid to move around a bit."

"Fine," Tip said, then admitted: "They're a little sore. But I wanted a work out, so. . . ." She was even sweating a little. And she'd hardly moved around at all! She shifted to follow him again, shifting her weight a little at the reminder and then rolling her shoulders. Loose but firm. Right.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "About your. . . ." Friends? People? "Everything. My world's probably really lucky we didn't get way worse."

What they'd gotten was bad enough.

"It can always get worse," Kanan allowed. And then he shrugged his shoulders as he pulled back again. "It's over, for you? Back in your world? Things are back to being as normal as they possibly can be in the wake of it all?"

This next swing was coming in from down below, aiming for her waist. She was going to get good at covering her center if it killed him.

Tip had a momentary idea about looping her stick around from above to block that swing -- then remembered the whole thing about keeping her hands low and just dropped them lower instead, crouching a little to make sure it was stick and not hands doing the block.

"Yeah. Seems almost silly now. We managed to get invaded by two different warring alien factions, and cleared them both out in just a year."

His war had gone on for a decade. Tip had only been around for one and a half of those, so far!

"Probably wasn't silly at the time," Kanan pointed out. "Hell, I'm sure there are a lot of people who felt that way about our war, before the Empire took over. The people on the planet I was on when we won had no use for the Republic or the Separatists. I'm sure they don't have much use for the Empire, either."

He smiled a bit as she blocked, and then nodded. No need for anything fancy just yet. That would come later. He brought his stick back again, and this time went in for that overhead swing, though he shifted his weight to do so, so that he wasn't baring his chest to her so much as an elbow and a hip.

"The damage a war causes isn't necessarily measured in the amount of time it takes to resolve it," he noted. "Some people get lucky. Some people have more than luck on their side. Doesn't mean you had it easier. Maybe it just means you're far enough removed from it now to be able to look at it differently."

So the overhand thing was a move! She'd just done it stupidly. Good to know. It took Tip an extra moment to work out the best way to block that without opening up her midsection to attack again, but she was starting to move a little more confidently already, even so. This really was kind of fun. And way more interesting than running.

"It sucks pretty hard being caught in the middle of someone else's war," Tip agreed. That was pretty much why the invasion of her world had happened at all. "But it changed my whole life. All of it. For the better, even though it was all really, really bad at the time. Mom and I don't have to worry about money anymore and I met J.Lo and got to come here."

"Then it worked out? Good," Kanan decided, going in for another swing from the side, a little faster than before, now. "Doesn't make what you went through mean any less. And neither should my experiences. Your experiences are yours, what I went through doesn't cheapen that. It's not a contest."

He offered her a little grin.

"Hell, my experiences might work out in your favor if you pick up enough from this, huh?"

"That is a crass and callous way of looking at things," Tip decided primly, moving to block that swing maybe a half second later than was ideal, but still managing to get there in time. "And things didn't work out at all. My friends and I worked them out. You know, once I got over the part where I moped around feeling sorry for myself."

"Hey, I can be crass and callous about my own life if it gets me through the day," Kanan said easily, bringing the stick back around to go for the other side at the new, slightly faster pace. "And I apologize if I made it sound like it worked itself out on its own. I know wars don't work that way, but I didn't know the particulars, either."

He lifted his chin a bit.

"The moping part is hard to get past. I'm glad you did it. I'm sure Earth is even more glad."

"Earth . . . doesn't actually know," Tip admitted, her block moving more smoothly now, though she was still far too tense. That would fade with practice, probably. "I don't want people to think I peaked at age 11."

She was still pretty sure she had, herself, but that didn't mean she wanted other people thinking that way.

Kanan nodded a little, smiling wryly as he brought the stick down low again, making a pattern out of this. Next would be high, and then to the first side again.

"I kind of always figured I had peaked at fifteen," he noted. "Then I pulled off this crazy thing with Hera and a few other people some months back that actually comes close. Doesn't mean the entire galaxy needs to know. And hell... you've got a lot of future left, with any luck. Maybe you'll find something that matters in a different way, and you just don't realize what that way could possibly be yet."

Though, admittedly, it was difficult to top 'saving the world.'

"Maybe," Tip agreed. She adjusted the low block a little this time, so her arms and legs worked a bit more in unison to get the stick down to it. She could see the pattern forming, and wondered when Kanan would break out of it to try to surprise her. "Learning a fun new skill will probably help a whole lot, too. Especially around here."

He'd probably try to surprise her once they started finding a good rhythm. And once her blocks seemed more natural. He wasn't aiming to actually take a swing at her that she couldn't catch, even a little belatedly. Not on the first lesson, anyway. He shifted, and brought the stick down overhead again.

"Especially around here," he agreed. "Hell, I've been surprised at how much the things I've picked up over the years have come in handy around here. Didn't figure I'd be replacing my apartment window due to shark, anyway."

"Does anyone ever expect a shark through their window?" Tip asked. Her block to the overhead was still a little awkward, but much faster, now that she could anticipate the hit a little. "I'll still take Fandom's hurricane over going through one while living in a car, though."

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