The Park, Friday Afternoon

[uncertain_dume]

Okay, Kanan knew that he'd promised Gratuity that they'd find somewhere warmer to practice when the weather was below the freezing point, but today it wasn't very far below that freezing point, and he'd made another promise to her last week, too.

There was no way he was letting anybody swing a lightsaber around indoors. Not a chance. Especially when the 'indoors' in question were either a gym he most certainly couldn't afford repairs on if anything got out of hand, or the Ghost. And really, if he let anything damage the Ghost, he'd stand still and let Hera utterly destroy him.

So in the park it was again today, which worked out just as well for Kanan, since he'd also brought along a bag of ground caf in case Rey stopped by again. Lightsaber forms in the park were starting to become quite the spectator sport, apparently. Not that it was stopping Kanan from running through some of the more advanced forms that he could remember, looking every bit the professional at it.

Well. Unless you actually knew those forms. Kanan's Soresu was impeccable, but it was possible that he was making up a little here and there with the rest as he went along. Eight, nine years was a long time to go without a lesson, even if he'd been studying the Ataru lesson on his holocron that Skywalker had recorded back during the Clone Wars.

He sighed, and slipped into the Ataru opening stance again. He was clumsily fumbling his way through this form, but that was all the more reason to try to get better, wasn't it?

[OOC: Open!]

Comments

[thatwaslucky]

Yep, Rey was back. It wasn't like she had a lot going on that would keep her from coming by.

And again, she was just watching from the side like an adorable creeper.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan, meanwhile, was making yet another misstep in his attempts at Ataru that he was ever so skillfully faking getting right by pretending that he was slipping into a similar movement from the Soresu form. As you do.

It was beauty, it was grace, he was still going to kick himself for that one later. He breathed out a little hiss between his teeth, finished running through the rest of that sequence mostly accurately, and then straightened up and gave his head a shake. Muscle memory was going to be the death of him someday, apparently. And that was about the point when he glanced up at Rey, and offered her another little smile and a wave.

"Hey," he greeted. "Pretend I didn't just do that."

That thing that she had no context to know he screwed up on, sure.

[thatwaslucky]

"I saw nothing," Rey assured him, and paused. "Seriously, I don't know what you didn't just do."

[uncertain_dume]

"I mixed up form three and fo-- you know what, it doesn't actually matter," Kanan replied, reaching up his empty hand to scratch at the back of his neck. "My Master wouldn't have let me live it down, anyway."

It would have been teasing for days.

[thatwaslucky]

"I didn't even know there were different forms," she said. "I thought you just swung until you hit the right thing."

It's basically what she did with her staff, anyway.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan blinked, and then kind of gave a crooked grin at that.

"There's a bit more to it than that," he replied, a bit wryly. "There are seven different forms, all putting focus on different aspects of lightsaber combat, from close-quarter and offensive, to defensive, to fighting in wide open spaces. And then different Masters would create their own variations on those forms from time to time, too. Just swinging a lightsaber and hoping it hits something is a good way to lose a hand."

[thatwaslucky]

"It sounds overly complicated." Though what she did probably wasn't going to end in anybody losing a hand.

[uncertain_dume]

"It can be a bit daunting," Kanan allowed. "I never claimed it was easy."

Which was why he was standing here in the park, confusing his forms and wondering why the hell he'd let Master Kenobi talk him into embracing the Force again.

"But once you get it, it's effective."

In most situations, anyway.

[thatwaslucky]

"Which one were you trying?" Rey asked.

She couldn't help it, it was just neat to see all this for real.

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan would argue that his execution of the form hardly warranted 'for real,' today.

"Form Four... Ataru. The way of the Hawk-Bat," he explained, shrugging his shoulders. "It's one of the more, ah, athletic of the lightsaber forms. It's also fast, aggressive, and pretty much the opposite of my usual Form Three in every possible way I can think of."

Which he had hoped would mean that he could pick it up without accidentally slipping into old patterns, but apparently not.

[thatwaslucky]

"So you're branching out?" she asked, and then paused. "I ask a lot of questions."

[uncertain_dume]

Kanan's mouth pulled into a little smile.

"Questions are good," he replied. "Keep asking questions."

They used to tease him back at the Temple for all the questions he'd asked. He missed that.

"I'm branching out... a little. Or trying to, anyway. I have a few old lectures that survived the-- that survived. I've been brushing up on them, some."

[thatwaslucky]

"I guess it must help to try new things," she said. "You can learn lightsaber techniques through lectures?"

[intotheout]

Hey, it wasn't like Tip could tell he was making it up as he went along! That was important, right?

She had her warm comfy frog hat on again, today, because if Kanan was going to make her work out outside in January, he was going to get stared at by googly eyes while she did it. Also, blah blah, losing most of your body heat through the top of your head, whatever.

"Hera said no to using the spaceship, huh?"

[uncertain_dume]

At least he wasn't making up his Soresu! He knew his Soresu just fine!

Kriffing Ataru.

"It was the Ghost or the lightsaber," Kanan replied, offering Tip a grin that was very nearly something bordering on apologetic. "Regardless of what Hera thinks, I don't want us swinging this thing around in there until you've got some close-quarters experience. Maybe a few sessions in the woods or something."

[intotheout]

"You're really going to let me try it again?" Yeah, he'd promised, but Tip was very used to being disappointed. "We can do woods! . . . Maybe on a day when being in the shade would be a little less 'insult to injury', though."

[uncertain_dume]

"We'll do the woods when it's a little less cold out," Kanan agreed, laughing a little and shaking his head as he shut off his lightsaber's blade and held the hilt out to her again. "I think I've brutalized my Ataru forms about as much as I possibly can for one day, anyway."

[intotheout]

"Atari are the really fancy ones?" Tip wasn't deliberately screwing up the vocabulary, this time, as indicated by the faint wince when she said it. She accepted the hilt with all the gravity it deserved, made sure she was aimed away from anything, and settled into her opening stance. With a quick glance to Kanan to see if he'd tell her to hold off, she switched it on and adjusted the power settings. "What's the stuff you're teaching me called?"

[uncertain_dume]

"Ataru are the more aggressive ones," Kanan replied, smiling faintly. He wouldn't rib her on the slip, this time around. "The one I'm teaching is a slightly altered take on Soresu, the way of the Mynock. It's more controlled, more defensive. Good for sustaining prolonged combat if need be, and more about surviving than winning. Wearing your opponent down so that you can retreat, if possible."

Incidentally, the only lightsaber form he was really good at, after all this time.

[intotheout]

Tip nodded, muttering "ataru, ataru" under her breath a few times. "Mynocks sound like good, sensible sorts of people."

Or, you know, horrifying pterodactyl beasts. One of those.

[uncertain_dume]

"Mynocks are nightmare suction-cup bat monsters that eat away at the guts of starships and leave pilots stranded to die without power in space," Kanan replied, his smile shifting to a grin. "But they're resilient. That's how the form got its name."

[intotheout]

Tip's mental image based on that description was very, very weird.

But then, so were mynocks.

"Okay, then. I'm learning how to drain metaphorical spaceships with my fighting style." She nodded. "I can dig it."

[uncertain_dume]

"You're learning how to be as resilient as a creature that can survive in the total vacuum of space," Kanan corrected, but he was grinning all the more, now. "But draining metaphorical starships is a close second, I guess."

It was about wearing your opponent out first, after all.

[intotheout]

"So like really big, winged water bears." Yeah, that description was probably just going to confuse Kanan.

[uncertain_dume]

"... Water bears? Are they anything like polar bears?"

They lived around the water, right?

Because he was picturing nothing like an actual tardigrade.