revivalproject | You Pick Yourself Up You Keep Going

Entry tags:

You Pick Yourself Up You Keep Going

WHO: Cal Kestis and you?
WHERE: His workshop, the museum/Jedi temple, or over in Sh'Ka
WHAT: Going through the motions/general-doing-stuff
WHEN: Mid-November
WARNINGS: N/A
NOTES: Will match pose pref

Even when you expected the inevitable didn't necessarily mean you were prepared for it. It hadn't been long and yet the absences were noticeable ones for the gravity some of them held in the Force. It would be too easy to be angry or grieved, but Cal would admit to feeling neither. He wasn't sure if it was still a lingering effect of everything from a few weeks prior or just a blanketing culmination of exhaustion. He felt like he was moving through a fog, but he knew that if he didn't keep doing things, he'd fall back into an all too familiar state of mind.

But he wasn't alone, and there were still others here whom he deeply cared about. It didn't mean he wouldn't miss those who had gone, but he was thankful for the chance to have spent some time and gotten to know those whom he knew he wouldn't have met outside of these unique circumstances. In time they'd all go back, and that would be a bittersweet moment, one that he didn't want to dwell upon.

In the meantime there are still things to be done. Sh'Ka still has plenty of work if he feels like throwing himself back into things there, so Cal casually splits his time between there and Temba as he works his way through whatever this funk is.

If found at his workshop, he'd be tinkering with salvage, fixing up some portable heaters in preparation for however cooler the weather might become. His place is always open to anyone who might want to poke around for some parts for anything, and he's amassed quite a bit of it for the time he's been in the city.

Some days he heads out to the museum grounds where the Jedi temple had been established, now mainly just in name, empty and still. He might be caught one of those days in the process of packing up what little things he had brought for his room there to bring back to the workshop, trailed by a playful Tooka cat. Otherwise he can be found in an open area of the grounds, going through some lightsaber forms.

Over in Sh'Ka the padawan decides to keep to a light workload, handling whatever maintenance needs to be done that he might come upon. For sure he'd have a look around the greenhouse as he'd promised Tommy.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dive right in? Yeah, he knows about that. Still, the way he talks about it makes Tommy smile. He can throw himself into it. It's all he wants. To get better at things and be useful.

With the transfer done Tommy happily opens the schematics. Yeah, that looks good.

"Thanks man," Tommy said with a smile, and he reaches for BD to offer his first for a bump. They were both awesome.

"Hey Cal? Thank you. It's... hard to get to learn new things. Even with Tony. Like, he's a fucking genius and I love it, but sometimes he talks SO far above my head that I get lost. ANd he doesn't do lots of repeat work so I can't learn the basics as fast. I need to keep learning the small things."

"I know it is," Cal said. "I didn't have much choice. I knew a little about engineering, but it wasn't a big focus for me while I was training as a Jedi. But then I ended up on a planet controlled by the Scrapper Guild, and I figured I'd better learn quick if I wanted to survive and blend in. Taking things apart sounds easy, but when you're dealing with starships, it can get dangerous pretty quick if you don't do it right."

He patted the heater. "Even with the engineering knowledge from the data point, it doesn't explain how things are put together, not for everything. Mostly how to identify specific parts and how they work together, which way to fasten things. If you think of these like giant puzzles, it helps. There's layers to it. Groups of certain parts that have to be set just right so that everything else will work. Once you get an idea of how those break down into groups, it gets easier."

"I try not to take the datapoint here. I want to really learn.

He'd wanted to learn before Billy's dream world, and that place had only made him want it more.

"Do you know why they work? Or is it just a 'I have faith that these work together'?"

Cal wiggled a hand from side to side, wrinkling his nose. "Not necessarily having faith that they work so much as I just know now that these strange alien parts go together. Some things are pretty familiar in terms of working with other machinery, but there are some parts and connections that are strictly specific to Agrii technology. Or Atroma."

Well Tommy snorted in amusement at that. So less a learning process and more high speed construction and repairs. Strangely, he's okay with that.

"You have plans on where these heaters are going?"

He'd still call it a learning process. There were still things you were figuring out as you put things together, after all.

"Not specifically. I thought it would be good to have available for anyone who might need them, and since they're portable they can be taken to Sh'Ka if anyone heads out that way as things get colder."

Yeah, okay, a learning process in a way, but not one that will apply to things other than Agrii tech. Which meant he wasn't learning how to make new things but whatever, he could live with that.

"You think it might be maybe cool for me to get one? Billy gets cold at night, and without Teddy to be a space heater for him, it's often been up to me, and people say that's weird."

Cal smiled, giving Tommy a nod at that. "Hey, that's what they're here for. Feel free to take as many as you need if you know anyone else who'd want it."

Tommy smiles and nods to him.

"We should get buy with only one. He'll be better with it. There's a lot of trouble we've been through over the years here, and being cold sucks."

"All right," Cal replied. "At least the cold's manageable here. It'd be a pretty different story if we were stuck on an ice planet."

An ice planet? Tommy's gaze turned slowly toward Cal with huge eyes. That was a thing? He looked horrified.

"No, no more ice planets. No more snow or christmas planets. Man, it's just too cold!"

Cal couldn't help but chuckle at Tommy's dismay. "Wait, you've been to one?" He imagined ice and speed did not get along.

"I was thinking of Ilum. It's where the Jedi took younglings who were ready for the next step- lightsaber construction. We'd have to face a trial to find our own kyber crystal, the heart of our lightsaber. The planet's covered in snow and ice, and our test took place in an ancient, icy cavern. The opening has to be thawed out, but it slowly starts to build back up, so we're also working under a time limit."

"Yeah, in the first few months we were here," Tommy answered. That first year, just after they received the ships, the Agrii had taken them to a very cold place. to 'celebrate'. "I hate a candy and was, like, eight or something for a while."

Still, all the rest of what he's hearing is truly interesting, and he pauses in reviewing the instructions to instead consider what Cal said. Yeah, that's interesting. Like, beyond interesting.

"That's sorta shit man."

"-hold on, you mean you...de-aged?" Just when Cal thought he was getting used to these weird curve balls.

"It...definitely wasn't fun," he laughed, dryly. "Wandering by yourself and trying not to focus on how cold it is, heh. But I guess weirdly enough that's what helps push you to look deeper within yourself so you can sense that resonance. Those crystals are tied in with the Force, so we had to 'listen' for it's call, I guess you could say."

"Yep," Tommy answered with a shrug, like it means nothing to him. It had been weird, being taken care of by his younger twin, who was suddenly his much older brother. It was so damn strange.

"I'm bad at the cold. Being a speedster of the kind I am means I'm all about going fast, which is really fast molecules. Cold is about going slow. It's, like, my opposite."

Still, he listens to all Cal has to say and yeah, he doesn't think he gets it.

"So you go into a frozen cave to try and get vibes from a rock to make a glowing sword?"

Edited (don't you send early thing!) 2021-12-04 07:45 (UTC)

That was definitely some strange stuff. Cal shook his head, unsure about whether it was something to worry about, but then Tommy had implied it hadn't lasted long at least.

"Guess that makes sense. I figured it was more for lack of friction." Ice had to be terrible to run on.

He had to snort at the summarization. Tommy got more of it than he allowed himself. "That's about the long and short of it," Cal admitted with a crooked grin.

Yeah, it hadn't been that long. But Tommy had totally bonded with Keith at the time, something that had been a lasting friendship for him.

"My shoes and super hero gear? Has to be designed specifically to reduce friction and drag, because otherwise I can set things on fire. There's enough for me to stop, but if I'm going high speed I take a bit to stop. It's just how it is. So ice makes life a lot worse."

But when he's told he gets the gist of what the Jedi did he snorted in amusement. Long and short of it indeed.

"And you can only make glowy swords there or something?"

Well that was interesting to learn. Cal hadn't given too much thought on how inertia and friction factor into the movement of someone who could go considerably faster than average speeds. Given his understanding of vehicles in similar conditions it made more sense once he looked at it in that light. But his thoughts on speed and ice weren't too off, it seemed.

"No, it's the only place we can find our kyber crystal. Or at least by tradition. I think kyber crystals only form in particular conditions, in places where the Force is strong. But once we found our crystal, we would begin the process of creating our lightsabers aboard the ship during the trip back home."

"Soooooo magical life energy powers gathers in crystals and crystals make the glowy swords that make noise, and having those glowy swords that make noise make you a Jedi."

Interesting. None of his Sith friends had explained that.

"So you're saying you're super resistant to the cold or something?"

Cal laughed. "Well, there's using the Force to connect all the pieces of that glowy sword together, not just knowing how the components are ordered. Everything has to flow."

He wouldn't be able to say if the way that Sith constructed lightsabers was the same. He didn't know very much about the ways of Sith in general, and Altair had been very careful not to reveal too much to avoid any influencing on his part.

"Resistant? Hardly!" Cal snorted, shaking his head. "I'll freeze just as easily as anyone. We didn't go unprepared for the cold, and the threat of possibly being stuck in a frozen cavern made it hard to focus."

Huh. Why couldn't they just use, like, all this electrical engineering stuff Cal did to make the sabers? That seemed smarter than dealing with magicky stuff. But Tommy wasn't a big magicky person.

"See, that just seems like a way to get your Jedi learners hurt, right? Because if you're worried about freezing to death you're going to mess something up."

"I think it was part of the test. By that point they wouldn't have taken us to seek our kyber crystals if they didn't think we were ready for the next step. Trying to keep a cool head and believe in ourselves while we trust in the Force is something we have to really learn as it's what we'd have to do consistently as a Jedi." Cal shook his head. "But even then, Jedi aren't perfect. They'll make mistakes, they'll fall and lose sight of things. Which is why we have to really remember the trials we first went through, to pick ourselves up again help us keep going."

That’s more faith in an authority figure than Tommy was even willing or able to offer someone. But it’s good that Cal had that. Or could have that.

“No one is perfect. Period. Anyone who claims such is selling you something and shouldn’t be trusted I think.”

Still, he’s thoughtful about it.

“You got one of those swords then?”

The Jedi had been practically wiped out, and any survivors had hidden themselves well. No, they were far from perfect. They hadn't even seen the true source of danger until it was too late.

"Yeah, I do. The one I'd been using didn't come with me when I was brought here, but I eventually made a new one with some help from Tony. He made me parts for the hilt. I used one of the crystals from the caves by the beach, but it does some weird things when it has power running through it." Things he'd learned to work around, and had learned to find use in at times. "But when we went to Coruscant Ezra and I had the chance to get new kyber crystals, rebuild lightsabers there. So I combined the ones I've made."

Jedi were a bit like mutants in some regards then. Which Tommy didn’t even know to observe.

“Wow, Tony can make weapons for other worlds? Well, not make make. Just helping you make. That’s pretty cool. And I didn’t know that hte crystals there would be useful.”

But he’s glad that Cal has something that matters to him.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject