Retreat

[out_of_order]

WHO: Cal Kestis and Tony Stark
WHERE: Woods outside of Temba
WHAT: Family bonding Nature hike..?!
WHEN: Now...ish
WARNINGS: N/A


It had been a while since Cal had gone out into the woods. There were plenty of things since their return from the Agrii ship to keep them busy within the city. But even with a mostly empty city, sometimes a change of scenery and a chance to take a breath apart from everything wasn't so bad. But even so, he didn't mind having company apart from BD-1.

What started out as a check-in turned into an invitation for the man to join him for a bit of a walk, maybe some light exploration, and perhaps even a chance to test out what they'd put together for that 'transmat' project. They'd met outside of Tony's forge, the padawan with a backpack slung over a shoulder, BD-1 dangling from a strap. His lightsaber hung at his hip, slightly different than the one Tony had fashioned, if only because Cal had incorporated it with other parts from their recent trip.

With no real clue as to if anything lay beyond the woods in any given direction, but no real intent to go too far anyway, they'd settled on a direction starting beyond the forge and directly into wilderness.

Comments

[out_of_order]

Cal laughed, at the look he was given, at the mock-indignation, either way it helped to release whatever lingering tension had built up in the past few minutes of their conversation. "Hey, you can still impress me," he suggested, before flashing his cockiest grin. He waited for BD-1 to hop aboard, as apparently swinging from vines was another familiar venture for the two.

Readjusting his grip on a higher portion of vine as he looped it around a hand, Cal tugged it along as he stepped back, keeping it tight before he started to sprint a few steps forward, throwing himself and his feet ahead. He let the loop loosen from his hand once momentum carried him closer to the opposite bank, letting the vine slide in his grip a bit until his feet touched ground. Well, it was Tony's turn now. Waving, Cal took a step to the side to give the man some space, and while he was still open to being impressed by him, Cal was ready to help pull him over if things didn't quite pan out the way either of them intended.

[in_extremis]

"That's not fair, you've got...a counterweight," Tony insisted to manage expectations, gesturing vaguely at BD-1 even before they made their jump and sure that made some kind of sense in easing the trajectory. Cal's cockiness was not unfounded and their practice at vine-traversal was obvious enough, leaving Tony at something of a disadvantage; he did most of his feats of daring in a flying, armored suit. In fact, he probably wouldn't have done that very smooth-looking sliding of his weight down the vine thing that Cal did, absolutely prepared to swing as close as possible just to launch himself the rest of the way across the river, so maybe it was trying to be less explosive for the first time that made it go wrong.

The run and jump was smooth enough, but as Tony reached the apex of his swing, he twisted more than he slid down the vine, turning his shoulder toward the water and leaving him kicking blindly for the riverbank with some panic, mostly knocking loose stones into the rushing depths.

[out_of_order]

Vine swinging was tricky- that was something Cal wouldn't argue. He wouldn't be able to say which was more difficult, starting from a stationary position or having to grab on for dear life and just go with it because the alternative was a very long drop, at least in his experience.

The vine seemed to go rigid as though someone had grasped its end to keep both it and Tony from flopping back the way they had come. Cal had a hand outstretched despite being several feet away from them, steadying the vine through the Force so Tony could find his footing while still having something to hang onto as he reasserted his balance.

[in_extremis]

Scrabbling up the splashing bank and away from the water, Tony stumbled between a few trees as he managed his footing and his very cool persona before he took a deep breath and gave Cal a loose salute of thanks for his service. Swinging back probably would have been way less alarming than the vine coming to a sudden stop in the air, and a much more damp experience. "I would have figured it out," he insisted, then gave a short laugh, energized enough by the adrenaline to take Cal by the shoulders and spin him around to urge him on impatiently through to the clearing.

[out_of_order]

The lift of the padawan's brow suggested he wasn't too sure about that, but his grin showed he was teasing as he allowed himself to be propelled onward to their original destination.

"It's nice out here. We get caught up so easily in being stuck in a ruined city that it seems most people forget there's a whole rest of the planet beyond," he said as they moved past the few trees that marked off their own sort of border to the clearing itself. BD-1 had hopped off again to speed ahead, hooting excitedly at bushes of brightly colored flowers that sprouted along their path.

what happened to this? idk

[in_extremis]

As relaxed as Tony was now with a little bit of excitement to sustain him, Cal did leave him pouting skeptically then arguing, "I think that's generous. No one's forgotten about the whole planet, but it's easy to assume the rest of the shop is just as wrecked without anything better to see. Or to be scared. It's not comfortable in the city, and everyone might be a literal alien, but at least you know that Tommy's going to be making a stew 'n there's your smiling face to look forward to when the sink breaks." That wasn't the point Cal was trying to make, Tony could tell, but he knew worrying about being paralyzed by some unknown insect bite kept him from wandering too far into the forest, and he wasn't the most thoughtful member of the community by far. If he had come out here alone and saw the flowers bending curiously toward the droid of their own volition, the breeze too light to bend them so much even if it could explain their irregular twisting, he would be deeply regretting not spending his time with Cal on some familiar slab of cracked concrete instead.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[out_of_order]

Cal inhaled in preparation of a sigh, huffing out a quiet laugh instead. "Fair enough. But it's not as...quiet, as in the city, which is a weird reverse, but out here you can hear the wind in the leaves and the sound of whatever creatures are out there, the water from the river..."

BD-1 tensed a little as he noted the moving flowers, offering a cautious beep as he began to step back. He'd seen some a similar trend with certain flowers on Kashyyyk. Those plants were not very nice.

Hearing the droid's concern, Cal glanced back over towards his buddy, frowning a little as he started over toward him. He maintained a careful eye on those plants.

[in_extremis]

The bushes seemed to realize that they had been noticed, and while some went back to idle, bushy rustling, others froze in place. Tony raised an uneasy lip, rocking back on his heels like he might find another way around, but snapped out of his hesitation to trot after Cal as he moved. "If this is going to turn into some hippie, communing with nature, life guru thing, I gotta say, I'm cool with nature as long as nature is cool with me," he said warily.

[out_of_order]

"I was just appreciating the atmosphere," Cal said, offering Tony a half-smile when he glanced in his direction again. It didn't take much coaxing to get BD-1 to come back and join them, the padawan looking pointedly at the suspicious plants as he picked the droid up. "But otherwise I'm pretty much with you on that one. I don't mind nature so long as it's not trying to attack or eat us." They'd had way too much experience on that end.

He started back in the direction of the clearing Tony had been making way for earlier, dotted by smaller flowers and patches of grass, and a large mound of mossy boulders lazily piled at its farthest corner. There was movement in the grass beyond that took form in the shape of a dozen or so tiny bird-like things that took flight at their arrival, flitting for the trees amidst a chorus of equally tiny peeps.

[in_extremis]

Small, chirping and flying things were much less alien than sentient plants, and Tony gladly watched the forms they swarmed in as they fluttered for safety and dispersed with curious precision throughout the branches. There must have been nothing else large enough coming through here to disturb them, which was reassuring, though what they might have been grazing on could have still been some treacherous ants, so Tony picked his way carefully through the grass.

"The cold is more predictable," he said after a slow nod at being attacked. "If you ask me, and thank you for asking, I am incredibly interesting, I'd tell you the only way to vacation is on a beach, palm trees, bikinis, you know. But if I'm going to do a hike, we've got a climb or a camp out or whatever, I'll climb Everest ten more times before I want to hang up a mosquito net. No spiders. Everything's really quiet in the snow, you can hear for miles."

[out_of_order]

Nothing was broadcasting itself as an impending threat through his Force senses, so Cal took it as a good sign as they made way further into the clearing. He grinned to himself as Tony began to relate his own preferences of a proper outing.

"No spiders is always nice." Especially of the giant, man-eating variety. "I've never really gone anywhere for...well, just to go for a hike or a vacation or anything," he realized. "Everywhere I've been has always been for a reason. Coldest place I've been to was Ilum- that's where we'd be taken to find a kyber crystal for our lightsabers so that we could become padawans. Was less hiking and more wandering through a maze of ice caverns before our way out got sealed off in ice."

[in_extremis]

It wasn't exactly a surprise that part of Cal's child soldier situation was some kind of labyrinth, but Tony still blinked at the extreme of 'getting trapped in an ice cave'. They whispered their way through the tall grass a few more feet before Tony was saying, "Don't take this the wrong way," which was always a terrible sign, "but you should probably hold off on the girlfriend thing until you know how your emotional breakdown is going to pan out. Or we get a real vacation. Was Coruscant a vacation?" It hadn't felt like it to Tony, but he wasn't sure how he would take being on a leash but back on Earth.

[out_of_order]

By now Cal was mastering that slight head-tilt paired with an arch of a brow in that although still managed to look vaguely amused, clearly asked 'really?' The question Tony ended off with was a good one however, drawing a thoughtful twist of the padawan's lips as he gave it consideration.

"I'm not sure that would count," he said, glancing at Tony for obvious input as the man probably had a better idea of what would count as a vacation than he would.

[in_extremis]

The challenge was taken as though it was some kind of philosophical conundrum, Tony squinting up at the sky thoughtfully as he collected his thoughts on the minimum expectations for something to count as a vacation. Most of his were brief, cut off by some crisis either at the company or the with ongoing integrity of the dimension, but the intention was always there as an outline.

With one hand up to count of his conditions, he started, "You have to have spent some time in a bath that wasn't at all hygienic. The options are broad here, this could be a hot spring situation or just all of that garbage you put in the water to turn it colours or whatever, you just can't be there to wash your hair." This mostly meant that there was time to do this kind of thing and hanging out in some water was the destination, not a step in the journey. "Ideally, you're not doing it alone, either, but that has some crossover with the 'get laid at least once' tenet."

[out_of_order]

Cal watched Tony as though to witness some physical manifestation of the man's thought processes before he resumed his own exploration of the clearing. He wandered closer to the mossy outcropping for a better look.

"So taking a vacation amounts to finding a place to soak and not bathe." He looked back over at Tony with a wry smile. The more he heard from him, the less he understood of where this man was coming from.

[in_extremis]

It sounded like Cal understood Tony exactly to him, because he thought on this response for a moment before dropping his tallying hand and accepting, "Yes," definitively. Good, vacationing sorted. "Any of the other bells and whistles, the luxury destination and the room service and the, you know, whatever, all to maximize the soak." Glad that they understood each other perfectly, Tony bounced up to the mossy rocks to be the one to step up onto a reliable looking one, that soft moss a plush carpet under his boots and sliding easily as he spun around on his toe to smile at Cal.

[out_of_order]

The quick confirmation earned Tony another laugh and a shake of his head. "Seems like a lot just for a fancy soak. But I guess location would lend to the experience." Cal really wasn't sure what he'd do on an actual vacation, but soaking in a fancy bath not for a bath certainly hadn't been a thing that had crossed his mind. Considering that the only times he'd been soaked was after diving and swimming around questionably safe waters on Zeffo and Kashyyyk, he supposed he didn't have much to compare against. He however refrained from mentioning such things to Tony, the man always tended to look at him like he'd grown another head whenever he recounted his experiences.

He looked up at Tony and then at the moss-covered boulders, sizing them up. Abruptly he gave a faint frown, brows knitting as though he'd noticed something, when the rock beneath Tony's feet began to shudder slightly before slowly rising.

[in_extremis]

That was the point, it took a lot, and both of Tony's hands came up emphatically to insist, "The location is just as much a destination as it is somewhere-nobody-will-bother you, because I guarantee you if you tried to get a good soak in here, I'd be kicking in your door before you got your pants--uh..." Standing on a rock was not supposed to be a dynamic experience. Tony's gesturing hands went out to balance and he tipped backward in his surprise, making him skip his way back off of that rock and further up the more stationary boulders, crouching warily down as he went and searching for the next strange move to start shuddering around him. "I don't mean just me, I'm not going to kick in your door," he insisted, not totally sure he was comfortable with Cal expressing his disapproval through rock-menacing--making nature behave strangely like he had with the vine was different and much less threatening. "It was an example, a vacation means getting away from annoying people."

[out_of_order]

It wasn't a point that Cal had planned on arguing, but the words that would have expressed as much had by that point been thoroughly chased away as the padawan began to step back. He glanced towards Tony even as the rest of the boulder pile began to rise.

"That's...not me," he found himself saying instead, looking a little uncertain at Tony's decision to go higher rather than lower. Behind him BD-1 gave a slight squeal of alarm.

Part of the ground beside the boulders had begun to split as the mound continued to lift itself. The smaller bounder that Tony had been stepping on a moment ago appeared to be- at least from Cal's perspective- the ridge of a thick brow as a big green eye blinked open.

"Uh, Tony? You might want to not be up there..."

[in_extremis]

It hadn't been a conscious decision, just a momentary, practical balance-based decision that was rapidly getting out of hand, and now Tony was a little higher off of the ground than he was entirely comfortable making the leap for. "You're right," he invited very graciously, "I don't want to be, it's great that we can talk so openly like this." He had to raise his voice slightly at that point, the rocks grinding and ground rumbling ominously and shaking the small, flying things from their perches in the trees, sending them back into the swirling patterns with chirps of alarm and retreat. The changeable creature that they had disturbed started to tip from side to side slowly to dislodge itself from the compact dirt, making Tony drop to his knees to try to find purchase on the moss.

[out_of_order]

The predicament was more and more clear, but necessity only lent to further complication, and Cal could only back up farther as the creature scattered dirt and rocks as it waggled about.

"Easy there," he said, but at least it didn't look like the thing was particularly aggravated. A bit annoyed, he could gather, but it didn't seem to move very fast. The padawan flicked a glance towards Tony again.

"Jump. I'll catch you," he said, holding a hand out as though he meant to help Tony daintily down from a flight of stairs than a hulking seven-foot mound of a rock-creature.

[in_extremis]

The creature probably wasn't going to respond with any interest to Tony's, "Hooo...," like he was trying to calm an antsy horse, either, but it didn't seem like either of them had better instincts for managing a disturbed rock-beast. This ride was still going up, and at this rate was definitely going to get worse before getting better as it seemed to have unearthed enough of its mouth to tip its head back and sigh, a great gust of wind that flattened the long grass in a wave. Tony still took his time to insist, "We're not making a pattern out of this," with a flick of a finger between himself and flinging himself around, and Cal and his magic powers. For all Tony knew, the non-system would just not work the same way this time, and there would be no catching happening, just like Billy's healing could fail at any moment unlike a predictable stitch. If he got any higher, the consequences of that failure might be rock-beast fertilizer.

Just as the creature wound up to flick Tony off of its head, Tony rocked back to throw himself over the edge, regretting the power behind the start instantly with a wail as he was tossed much further than he had calculated for.

[out_of_order]

Rather than roll his eyes, Cal looked at the man imploringly, however choosing not to just simply grab him and bring him down. He trusted Tony to know what he was doing, or at the very least, what he wanted to do.

"It's not about patterns," he said. "It's about me being here for you if you need me."

And then Tony went flying, and Cal brought both his hands up to 'catch' him before he could fall too far, easing him into a better position where he'd be able to land on his feet before releasing his hold through the Force.

[in_extremis]

That still felt incredibly weird, though somewhat less so when Tony was already quite out of control of his own body and wasn't expecting a certain pattern of behaviour from something like a vine--he'd been telepathically or otherwise thrown around more than enough times in his life to not be entirely out of his element. He hit the ground with a thud and was quickly steady on his feet and bounding back up behind Cal where he curled a tentative hand over his shoulder, ready to pull him back if the rock-monster got any friskier. "Thanks," Tony breathed, tight-jawed and awkward will a flush that wasn't entirely from tossing himself off of a cliff. He wouldn't call himself a trust fall kind of guy, but it was possible he could make an exception.

Without something irritating its crown, the very lively pile of rocks let out another sigh and seemed to sink down into the earth again, its one, big eye blinking curiously at the tiny disturbance in front of it. In this relative calm where the ground had stopped rumbling ominously, Tony raised his eyebrows and tried lifting his free hand in greeting.

[out_of_order]

With Tony safe on his feet, Cal let out a breath, looking back over at the rocky creature of sorts. "I think...we'll leave this guy alone," he suggested to BD-1 at the droid's borbled question.

Tony greeted the behemoth, while Cal held his hands out in placation. "Sorry about that?" He wasn't exclusively able to connect with creatures through the Force like Ezra, but he didn't sense any real hostility from this one at least.

After staring at them a little while longer, the big boulder beast seemed to determine they weren't a threat. Its visible eye closed, vanishing under the rocky ridge of its brow, once again resembling but a large heap of boulders, save for the suspicious amount of freshly disturbed dirt and clods of grass that sat just around it.

Cal glanced over his shoulder, giving Tony an awkward sort of smile and a shrug before he nodded back towards the farther end of the clearing in suggestion.