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The Preserve - Saturday

Kaidan still had misgivings about this whole sparring thing, but he'd agreed and there was no real good way to wriggle out of it. He had a half-hope that Kanan wouldn't show, but - he knew better. So Kaidan had thrown on his guard and some loose clothing, loaded some protective gear into a duffel and headed to the preserve.

A teal deer wandered by, incurious about the human and his bag of stuff. Kaidan snapped a picture of it and texted it to Kanan. "Aw look, it matches your eyes."

Then, to burn off nerves, he began doing a warm up set of stretches.

[OOC: expecting 1, open to others if you have reason to wander by. Kanan's thread to be chrono last.]

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Kaidan took a breath, and powered down. He cracked his neck to each side. In a voice far more normal, he said, "The recharge would help you only if it were a situation like now, where I'm sitting here throwing one thing at you. Normally, I'd be detonating every other hit. Reave doesn't stop just because it detonates. I'd also be shooting at you. This is also me, starting from nothing. If it were actual combat, I'd be angry, scared, whatever - and I'd be using it."

"Shooting," Kaidan added, remembering he hadn't explained it, "Biotics have a gift for accuracy. We hit what we aim for, almost always. We are trained for headshots. A biotic with a handgun and a decent supply of thermal clips can do catastrophic damage on a combat field."

"Remind me to head to the range with my blaster sometime," Kanan said, pulling in a breath and just kind of slumping forward, knees bent, hands on those knees the moment he let his shield fall. "If there's one thing I'm confident in my ability to do, it's shoot."

He was going to wear that damn blaster on his hip for the rest of his life, after all.

"Good plan," Kaidan said, watching Kanan, "Did that pull anything from you, or are you just tired from holding the shield?"

"Holding the shield," Kanan replied after a moment of considering it. "I can do a hell of a lot with it, but sustaining a shield like that, for that long, isn't something I've had to do very much of."

He had Skelly to thank for the last time.

"It's worth working on, I know that, but it's something I really only get an opportunity to train under certain circumstances."

"If we're sparring and I'm going full out, you're going to want it up at all times, or you're going to want to be able to get it up immediately."

He paused, then put his face in his palm and muttered something about Sparkle.

Then he continued, "Cryo takes a second to get to its target. Reave is instantaneous. Overload won't affect you, but if you have anything containing a battery and a chip, it'll affect that and blow it up. I likely wouldn't be throwing that at you, but at things on the ground around you."

He made a face, "You're going to have to show me more sword work. This'll go easier if I can match it to things you already know. Not that you don't know how to fight, but you don't know how to fight like I do, and bar brawling moves.. it wouldn't be a fair fight right now."

"I suppose it wouldn't," Kanan replied, straightening up and glancing over at the bamboo again. "I managed to slag part of my training remote, or I'd just let you watch me against an opponent I can program to push my upper limits."

"Slagged it?" Kaidan frowned, "Is it just the housing or the electronics? Because you kind of know someone who owns an electronics repair shop."

He also glanced at the bamboo, "Could you run through forms with that, without an opponent? It might help me to see them."

"The housing is made to take damage, since it was built specifically for lightsaber training," Kanan replied. "I deflected one of its own bolts back up the barrel it shot it from. Sent it spitting sparks and spinning in a circle, but I'm mostly lucky the damn thing didn't explode, for once."

He shrugged.

"I'll tinker with it a little myself first. It'll give me something to do at work tomorrow. But you'll probably be seeing it anyway." He paused and glanced at the bamboo. And then back at Kaidan. "And I can run through forms with that, but if I'm not going up against an opponent, I might as well pull out my lightsaber. I've been yelled at enough for training with broom handles and kitchen tools on this damn island I almost feel ashamed not to."

He was only mostly joking.

"And there's a weight to the lightsaber that I have to account for that wouldn't be an issue with the bamboo," he added, a little more helpfully. "If you're going for a more accurate idea of how I move with it."

"Didn't know you'd brought it," Kaidan shrugged. Finding a convenient oak tree, he wiped a spot on the ground free of debris and sat, leaning against it. "By all means, bust out your yawner."

"It's never far from where I'm at," Kanan explained, reaching for a piece of what looked almost to be scrap metal on his belt, and then crouching to dig the other half out of the bag he'd brought his gear in. "In case I end up needing it."

Or in case he needed to cut and run.

One of those.

He lifted both pieces, one in either hand, and screwed them together, then ignited the blade.

"Is there a button you push, or do you make it light up with your mind?" Kaidan asked, watching it come to life.

Kanan smiled faintly and turned the hilt around so that Kaidan could see it.

"A button, there," he explained, pointing. "And turning that knob adjusts the length of the blade."

Because he'd been a shorty when he'd built it, and hadn't given up on the possibility of getting taller. Which had been good, because he sure had ended up doing just that.

"But only Force-sensitive people can make them work, do I have that right? If I picked it up and pushed the button.. what happens?" he asked, tilting his head back against the trunk.

"If you picked it up and pushed the button, you'd turn on the lightsaber," Kanan replied. "Only Force-sensitive people can build them. But once it's made, it's still a piece of hardware."

He shut the blade off and held the hilt out to Kaidan.

Kaidan arched a brow and took the hilt. It weighed more than he expected, but less than he imagined. Aiming the about-to-be-burning end away from anything it could cut, he pushed the button and ignited it. He gave it a couple seconds, absorbing the feel of it, and then pushed the button again to turn it off. "I don't know how your hands don't go numb from that," he said, handing it back.

"What, the hum?" Kanan smirked faintly, and then shook his head, taking back his weapon. "That's nothing. If you'd actually tried to move it around, it probably would have resisted you."

Yes. The blade would have. They often had ideas of their own.

"Yes, the hum," Kaidan agreed, "And I wouldn't. I don't mess around with plasma unless it's very quickly moving in a direction away from me."

"The hum, you get used to," Kanan shrugged. "It isn't a vibroweapon, at least."

His galaxy really liked things that buzzed while they killed you.

"We have vibro weapons only as attachments," Kaidan noted, "I don't use them. Mass effect fields are deadly enough without adding a moving component to them." He made a 'roll on' gesture with a hand, "Less talking, more bzzbzzzzzbzzzzzz, please."

Kanan rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to give Kaidan a smack upside the head through the Force.

"You asked a question," he pointed out, but ignited the blade again. "And," he added, slipping into his Form III opening stance, "understanding the weapon is an important factor in understanding how it's wielded, too."

"You can answer and show me the forms, I'm sure," Kaidan noted, watching the opening stance with clinical interest, "I'm going to have more. This will take years if you have to stop moving every answer."

"Maybe I can, maybe I can't," Kanan replied, even as he slipped into the first few steps of his forms. "I might get really into this, you don't know."

He didn't get that into it.

Kaidan snorted, "If you couldn't, you'd have no business with a weapon in your hand. That kind of situational unawareness will get you dead, fast."

He tilted his chin, "But if you want to go into some sort of sword-wielding happy place, by all means. I'll just throw acorns at you if I need your attention."

Kanan rolled his eyes, but smirked faintly.

"You're welcome to do that anyway. Go on, try to interrupt me."

He pivoted on one foot and slid easily into the next movement, his blade swinging out wide, stopping just a centimeter away from the trunk of a nearby tree. He pulled it in again, in front of himself, and continued on with his forms.

Kaidan rolled his eyes. He was very well aware Kanan was doing his 'one with the universe' thing, but he had just invited acorns.

Kaidan picked a handful of acorns out of the detritus under the tree, popping off the scaly little caps to make them slightly more aerodynamic.

He lobbed one at the center of Kanan's back.

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