A.D.I.D.A.S. (Ariel Training)

[Zeke]

Zeke is in the cargo bay, listening to the music over the speakers, singing along quietly and changing words as he sees fit. Today, he will train Ariel as he promised. Of course, it took his dad and sister kicking him in the butt for a week to finally do it.

"All day I dream about...all day I dream about sense..."

He'll be teaching her to sense others through the Force, that is, if she can even use it like he said she could.

[Ariel Kendryck]

The music coming from the bay had woken Ariel up from her light-as-a-feather sleep a short while ago, and after a brief stint in the sonic shower, she found her way to where Zeke was. It brought a small smile onto her face to see him cheered up and looking a lot more animated than his box pushing days.

“What’re you listening to?” :D

[Zeke]

"I dunno."

Zeke shrugs half-heartedly, looking up at the towering rows of boxes with a wistful look. May promised to give his box back once he was done, so now that she's here, he may as well start.

"Find a memory...a thought...something that brings a peaceful or happy feeling."

[Ariel Kendryck]

o_O

“… Ok.”

Blinking, she furrowed her brow a bit as she tried to come up with a thought. One that popped into her mind was being young and playing in one of the only parks in Coruscant city with her uncle and their little dog Kip.

“Got one. Now what ?”

[Zeke]

"Emotions power Force. Darksiders draw on fear, anger, and hatred. Jedi will use the opposites of these...let that feeling of happiness and peace be your focus. From here, we will start your lesson."

Zeke snaps his fingers, plunging the room into darkness.

"This cargo hold is full of obstacles and walls. Your goal is to navigate them using the Force and find me. Reach with the emotion you have found to your surroundings, and you will see..."

[Ariel Kendryck]

In the suddenly black room, she felt a little nervous. She was being asked to do something she didn’t understand and had never done before, in total pitch black, on a ship she had never been on prior to this day.

So she tried thinking of her day in the park, and walking forward – but just ended up walking into a box and whimpering.

“I don’t understand.” :(

[Zeke]

"Project the emotion you found with your memory. Hold the memory close to your heart, and draw on it. You're near a stack of boxes; shut your eyes, and focus the emotion you've found on the box."

[Ariel Kendryck]

Sighing, she squeezed her eyes shut and felt at the box with the toe of her boot. In her mind she was trying to picture herself projecting an emotion at the box and somehow using it as sonar to reflect the boxes location, therefore sending back waves to her mind to guide her around the obstacles. For a while, nothing happened and she felt a little stupid doing it but after waiting she was beginning to get an image of her mind of where the box was, and managed to step successfully around it.

With her hands out in front of her to make sure she didn’t walk into a wall, she continued, feeling a similar reverb up ahead.

[Zeke]

"Don't doubt yourself, and don't feel stupid. That only gets in the way."

[Ariel Kendryck]

Her walk took her to a small wall of boxes, as it were, and she found herself ungracefully climbing over a few before dropping to an unsteady landing on the cargo ship floor.

“This is really cruel, you know that?”

In her head, she was still getting little flickers of reverberation, but could place where Zeke was – after all, everything was sending back an ‘echo’.

[Zeke]

Zeke shrugs in the dark, lounging atop a tower of crates with his usual idle air about him. Cruel? Perhaps. She's lucky she doesn't have a training partner; his methods for training multiple Padawans are somewhat worse.

[Ariel Kendryck]

Apparently, Zeke either had no empathy or wasn’t listening – she imagined it was the former. Still she stubbornly carried on, and found a not-so-box shaped object was sending waves back at her. It seemed as though the object was moving slightly, as though breathing and she rushed forward – stumbling her way in the darkness – towards it.

SQUEAK!

The stupidly large rat shot off across the room as Ariel stepped on its tail, and the girl shrieked. Taking a breath to calm herself, she found the object again and felt her way forward into a tall tower of boxes.

“… Zeke?”

[Jhony]

"Not quite, though close."

Jhony reaches down from where he's been sitting and ruffles her hair.

"Now that you've found me, I can let the cat out of the bag; Zeke's talked May and myself into helping with this. There's two more people out there. One's Zeke, and one's May. It ends when you find Zeke. Hop to!"

[Ariel Kendryck]

“Oh what?! You’ve got to be kidding me! Three of you!”

Whirling around angrily and starting herself off in another direction, Ariel sighed heavily. After a few steps she mentally tried to calm herself down and picture that happy scene in her mind again, as she searched for Zeke.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

One hand touched a box and she gave it a shake – there was no way anyone was sitting on that. By the time she found her next stack of possible locations her eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and it didn’t seem so difficult to navigate the room anymore.

[Zeke]

Three? No, just two.

Now that she's found Jhony, Zeke can't risk giving himself away too easily. It's good that he has a mediocre grasp of telepathy. It comes in handy for situations like these.

[Ariel Kendryck]

“While you’re teaching me to move boxes, you’ll have to show me how you speak into peoples minds too,” she called out, her voice adding to the sonar reverb that her mind was picking up on.

Something moved off to her left and she jumped upwards, grabbing a leg that was dangling from over a box.

[Zeke]

Zeke slips, falling onto Ariel with a clatter of boxes and thudding of bodies hitting the floor. The lights snap on to give Ariel her sight back. The first thing she sees is Zeke's eyes.

"Hi," he says with a flat tone.

[Ariel Kendryck]

The breath is knocked out of her as Zeke hits her, causing a loud groan to fill the room. When the lights turn on, she’s sprawled out under Zeke, looking pained.

“ow… Hi.”

[Zeke]

Zeke rolls aside, sitting up against the part of the stack that Ariel didn't take down when she grabbed his ankle.

"Practice it."

Now May owes him his box.

[Ariel Kendryck]

She blinked. :\

“… That’s all I’m going to do on this trip? Practice finding things in the dark?”

[Zeke]

"There'll be more. This is it for now."

[Ariel Kendryck]

She slumped down onto a box, once free from Zeke, and pouted.

“You’re no fun.”

[Zeke]

"What else should we do?" Zeke asks. He's taught her the basics of Force sense, and from here teaching further would be redundant. Most Force Techniques, once taught, simply require discipline and training to improve. Zeke can't think of anything else to teach her about it. "Do you want to try and sense a moving target?"