Bag Of New Tricks.(Open)

[Rognan Dar]

Since that one day, the day he got to spend with his master and trainer, Rognan had been working hard on some new ideas. At lest for him. The graple move was one he worked on the most.

In one of the bigger rooms in the Academy, there was a figure who was shooting from one wall to the other. From the ground to the roof and back to the wall. The strange thing about it was that there was nothing where he stopped that could hold him up. No rails or hand holds. Rognan was consintrating on moving himself to a object then to pull the object to himself. It was the opposit of a Force pull. The hardest part was keeping himself connected to the wall before launching off again.

He had been doing this for hours. Never giving up when things were going bad. Not when he fell on his face or back. Or when he could have broken some part of his body. Not even when he made dents in the wall because he could not stop himself. He persisted. And it paid off. He was now zooming back and forth will only falling now and then. His mind was like a wild fire. Fatigue was apon him. He would not be able to push his mind forever. But he wouldn't stop untill he could no longer do it.

[Kale]

Kale knew he needed to practice in the Force more. But he just didn't have much of an idea how to do it.

He'd done some basic teek work--moving rocks around, mainly. And he knew he had some sort of latent ability to hide from unwanted eyes. But that was it. He didn't know how to expand on the former, and he didn't even know how to classify the latter. What he needed was guidance, and even a decently trained Padawan could probably help him out--if he'd ever work up the nerve to ask one.

So he found himself wandering somewhat aimlessly through the academy halls. Glancing through door windows into the practice rooms, he could see Jedi brushing up their sparring skills, juggling various objects around the room, and doing the happy-floaty meditation thing.

But he'd never seen somebody leap into a wall and stick.

He lingered by the door to make sure he'd seen correctly. Squinting through the narrow window pane, he saw Rognan grapple onto another wall and launch himself off out of view. "Woah..."

Curious, the scrawny teen quietly pushed the door open and stepped inside to see what was going on.

[Rognan Dar]

It was becoming a little easyer now. But his consintration was waining. He would need to stop soon or his brain might explode. But he didn't want to stop. For once he was really working at something, as was doing it well. It wasn't until a door opened infront of him before he stopped. And stopped he did. With a thud one would add. And another as Rog hit the floor.

[Kale]

A flash of Force insight would've been lovely. Kale had never experienced any sort of true foresight, but he'd had a few split-second premonitions, at least one of which had saved his life.

No such luck now. He stood frozen as Rognan struck the wall above the open door and proceeded to drop down on top of him. The teenager made a clumsy attempt to dodge, but one of Rog's arms caught him in the back of the head, and both padawans went down in a tangled, bruised pile.

The impact chased the wind out of Kale's lungs, and he gasped for the breath to say, "Ow! Dangit..."

[Rognan Dar]

A noise came up from Rognan. One could only asume that it was the sound of pain. Though, it sounded mroe like a dieing cat.

"What did I hit?"

It took him a minute to recall what happened. Once he did, he looked around himself to see how might have opened the door. Tilting his head to the side, he saw someone on the ground.

"Shoot!"

He tried to stand up. But it was a sad attempt. It only lead to falling back on the floor. This time face down. He stretched his hand out and grabbed Kale's shoe.

"Are you alright?"

[Kale]

"Yow!" Kale yelped as he felt his foot tugged in an odd direction--not that it hurt, it was just a little disconcerting. With all the grace and agility he could muster, he wormed out from underneath the older Padawan and sat up a couple meters away to assess the damage. His head was ringing, and it felt like there was a collective bruise stretching from his shoulders to his thighs, and his right foot felt chilly in a sudden draft. Then he realized Rog was still holding his beaten, old sneaker.

The diminuitive fifteen-year-old leaned over and snatched his shoe back. It wasn't until he'd stuffed his foot back into it that he seemed to acknowledge Rognan's question.

"I'll live," he said, somewhat grudgingly as he rubbed his pounding forehead. "Just don't count on me to break your fall again."

For the first time, he took a look around the training room. It was strikingly spartan--more or less like a small gymnasium with the bleachers removed. And then Kale realized he'd better give an account for himself.

"I saw you through the window," he said, angling a thumb toward the door. "Mind if I ask what you're doin'?"

[Rognan Dar]

Once again Rognan tried to stand. This time using the door handle pull himself up. He tested his legs to see if they could stand on their own. They could. After all, he only feel a few feet. Landed on his back. Nothing big.

"I was...er..." he said as he looked from himself to the boy that he had landed on. "Well...you saw pretty much what I was doing. No, I dont mean running into open doors..."

He took a few testing steps. His legs didn't seem to be that bad. Might be a little bruising. But nothing that he couldn't walk away from. Or with.

"I was testing out something through the force that my master told me to do one day."

There was a gap of silence that Rognan felt he should fill.

"Names Rognan Dar, by the way."

[Kale]

Kale stood up as well--cautiously--and he planted his hands in the small of his back and rolled out his aching muscles. He was sore, but he was naturally limber. Good thing, too, because Rognan outweighed him by a good sixty or seventy pounds.

"Kale," he replied. "I figured it was some sorta Force thing. I'm not real good with it myself... I think the Force and I haven't been speaking much lately."

Approaching a wall circumspectly, the teen lifted his hands and set them flat against the smooth duracrete surface, then squinted as if trying to will them to stick there. They didn't.

"So, what were you doin'?" he asked again. "Climbing the walls?"

[Rognan Dar]

Rognan laughed. It wasn't a mean one, and it wasn't a happy one. It was just one that made him feel better.

"No, not really. Well, let me try and explain. You know about pushing things through the force, correct? How you use your mind to move about anything you want? Well, then...think about this one as being the opposite of that. You are not pushing a object away or bring it toward yourself. You are bringing yourself to the object. Its alot easier to do when you have something to land on. The tricky part is holding yourself on the wall. Its like levitating yourself instead of a chair, for example."

[Kale]

Kale stepped away from the wall, and his brow furrowed starkly as he considered the idea. He'd barely been able to wrap his mind around a pebble long enough to move it across the room. It seemed harder to get a handle on the concept of lifting yourself off the ground.

"That sounds a lot harder than anything I've done so far," he admitted. "How long have you been working on this?"

[Rognan Dar]

"Er...not that long I must admit' he said as he absentmindedly scratched the back of his head. "Its all a matter of the mind. I try and push my mind into focus and to learn. Because if I didn't, I might have been a splatter mark on the road."

Rognan looked around the room for something to sit on. Sweat was once again dripping down his face. Standing up can do that.

"What have you done?" he asked earnestly.

[Kale]

Kale shrugged and leaned against the wall--ow, sore shoulder, bad idea. So he shifted his weight to a spot on his back that wasn't so bruised and dug his hands into his pockets as he considered how to phrase his answer.

"Not much at all," he said. "I've been practicing my telekinesis, but I have to be close to have any real control. And I can do some sort of trick that... well... I don't know what exactly it is, but it helps me hide."

It really sounded pretty pathetic--to Kale's ears, at least, and he felt compelled to offer a little explanation. "My master--my old master, at least, 'cause I'm getting a new one..."

Bleah. Start that over. He closed his eyes and raised his hands in front of him as if physically rearranging the words.

"I had a master, but I haven't heard from him in months. So I've got a new one now."

[Rognan Dar]

Rognan listened and tried to decode the words that came from this kids mouth. It was confusing at first, but he finally got what he was trying to say.

"You say you can...'hide'...yourself? How do you mean? Like...you force others to not notice you or you kind of rap yourself in a kind of illusion?"

Rognan so no seating anywhere in here. It was barren. Compansating for this, he sat down slowly and leaned against the wall. He was already feeling much better; taking the strain of his musculs.

[Kale]

Kale rubbed at the back of his neck and looked up toward the florescent lights in the ceiling.

"That's the thing... I really don't know how it works. In fact, I don't even really know how I do it."

He gave another helpless shrug. "I've only done it four times... at least, as far as I can remember. Sometimes I try and it doesn't work. And when it does work, it feels like I'm not even tryin'. It's sorta confusing."

[Rognan Dar]

And it was. You'd think that someone would be able to find out what it wasn't, wouldn't they, he asked himself. Since this topic was not going very far, he changed it.

"So whos your mas... your new master?" Rog said, remembering the confusing sentence.

[Kale]

"Pierce Tondry," Kale replied. "Actually... he just took me on yesterday. I'm hopin' he'll be able to help me sort things out."

He gave another glance around the training room. "I'm not keepin' you from anything, am I? I mean, I really don't have anything to do at the moment. I was just... I dunno. Tryin' to get myself back in the whole Jedi mindset."

[Rognan Dar]

"No, not at all. I needed a break. If you didn't come I might still be working, which is would not have been good for me. I need to know when to call it quits.

So Pierce Tondry, you say... Dont recall his name. But that is not surprising. What mind set do you speak of? Did something happen that you lost it?"

[Kale]

Kale furrowed his brow thoughtfully. "Uh... sorta... If I ever really had it, that is."

He chewed on his lower lip as he stared off into a vacant corner of the room. He was thinking hard--the uncertainty was written on his face as plain as the dawn.

"Can you, uh... Can you keep a secret for me?"

[Rognan Dar]

Rognan was suprised at this request. He was not expecting to have to have something kept secret from his conversation. But the curiosity took over him. What was it that he didn't want others to know?

"Er...sure. Are you sure that you...uh...want to...er...yeah. I can keep a secret."

[Kale]

This was a very bad idea; Kale was sure of it. He barely knew Rog, even if he'd been friendly enough for the past eight minutes. But maybe that was what he needed--an objective, mostly anonymous opinion.

The kids shoulders tensed as he drummed up the resolve to actually say it.

"What do you know about... about the Dark Side? Have you ever touched it?"

[Rognan Dar]

Aw great, Rognan thought. This is going to be interesting.

It was clear that Rognan was uneasy about the topic. He went quiet for to long as he looked at the floor and the ceiling as if there was something truly interesting about it.

"You sure you want to talk abou this? Right now? About me?"

[Kale]

Kale was a little surprised at Rog's reaction--seemed he was just as nervous as Kale was about the whole thing.

"Uh... well... not really you... specifically. But if... someone... you know, a Jedi... touched the Dark Side, what would that mean? I mean, what does that do to you?"

[Rognan Dar]

"It messes with your head for one. And it also...makes you feel like something is wrong with you. Like there is something waiting for you to let your guard down andf then punce on you...

It doesn't mean much except to the person that has touched it. Sure, there might be some safety isuse to look at. And then they might need help in getting over the insident. Everyone is not perfect. Everyone canp stray from the path..."

Rognan then looked up from the floor and strait at Kale; realization dawned.

"Why are you wondering? Is there...something that you...want to tell me?"

[Kale]

Oh, frell. Without knowing it, Rognan had pretty much described the way Kale had been feeling the past four days. A feeling of inferiority... paranoia... isolation... check, check, check.

And if there was any hope of going on without confirming Rognan's suspicions, the look that crossed Kale's face blew it all away.

"Uh... yeah..." he said, slowly. "The someone I'm talking about is me. I got scared... I couldn't feel the Force responding, and I guess I started pushing the wrong buttons."

[Rognan Dar]

"What is it that you did that you think was touching the Dark Side? Was it just a sense of it or did you do something with it?"

[Kale]

"You know that trick I told you about--the hiding trick?"

Kale glanced back unhappily in Rognan's direction and slid down to a seat on the floor.

"I was trying to do that. See, I had just pulled a little prank in the Archives, and one of the knights came runnin' after me. So I ran out into the alley and tried to hide. It didn't work at first, so I tried harder and harder--then it worked. But it was different. I felt cold... and small... and scared. It didn't feel like I was usin' the Force... it felt more like somethin' else was usin' me."

The dark feeling was on the edge of his sensation as he recounted it, and he shivered.

[Rognan Dar]

Rognan noticed Kale shiver. And he could see something going on with him.

"Well, that might have been the Dark Side as you say. But...I dont think it is something to really worry about. Its not like you went out and killed a bunch of people...."

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. What he said was something he didn't want others to really know.

[Kale]

Kale looked up again with the same look of surprise etched on his face. He didn't know why Rognan would have gone with an example quite that severe.

"Yeah," he allowed. "The whole thing was really pretty pointless. The knight didn't see me, though. I never thought my trick was good enough to fool a knight."

He took a deep breath. "I haven't been able to focus on the Force since, though. I tried practicing my teek in my quarters, and it hasn't worked. I'm just... well... a little nervous, because my Master wants to start my training tomorrow."

[Rognan Dar]

"Well, thats good. Training may just be what you need." Rognan was happy to change the subject. "And that might just be it. You could have just pushed yourself to hard at that time. And maybe the fact of being found added to it. It could have just been a mixture of emotions and actions.

But you haven't been able to use it at all? You said that you couldn't do much, right? Maybe your just a little shaken up to be trying it again."

[Kale]

That sounded a little more optimistic... especially if these doubts and fears he'd been experiencing were all part of the aftershocks of the Dark Side.

"Maybe," Kale said with a shrug. "I hope so, at least. I mean, I was pretty freaked out about it at the time. Maybe I just need to get my mind off of it."

But Rhea, the only other person he'd told, had seemed a bit more worried about it. And then there were the dreams. But it was really his master's job to deal with it--if it came up tomorrow, that was. And anyway, Rognan seemed pretty interested in dropping the subject, and, frankly, so was Kale.

[Rognan Dar]

"I know what you mean. Its a scary thought to think that you might, once again, turn to or use the Dark Side of the Force. And its not always easy to get your mind off it. You think it will help; after all it was not something that big. But it tends to creep back to you...then there is nothing you can do..."

[Kale]

Kale nodded glumly. "Sort of like a bad habit... the more you try to stop thinking about it, the more you think about it."

Wait a minute--was there an echo in here?

He blinked and looked Rognan's way again. "You seem to know a lot about this sort of problem. Do you know how to fix it?"

[Rognan Dar]

"Huh. If it was only as easy as fixing it. Its not something that you just 'fix'. Its not like all you need is a part and switch it out with the bad one. You have to live with it for the rest of your life. Some day, you might be able to control it and over come it. But you will forever remember what it is like..."

[Kale]

Kale sighed heavily. "Well... maybe it's just one of those things you have to plow on through. I mean, if you just kept worryin' you're gonna screw up again, you'd never get anywhere. Sometimes you can't make it right... you just gotta work on what you can."

A strained look crossed his face. "Sorry, I don't know where that came from."

[Rognan Dar]

"I do. It comes from within. Like the Darkside. It feeds off your fears and worries and emotions. If you let it go on grazing, it will only make it stronger. And you cant just fight it like you would to another humanoid. Its much deeper within. I dont even know if there is a way to fight it....or at lest, I haven't found a way..."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Ack, wrong account. Please delete.

[Kale]

Crud. That didn't sound too hopeful.

"Well... if I find one, I'll let you know. In the meantime, I need to figure out what I'm gonna tell my master."

[Rognan Dar]

"Just tell him the truth. To me, it doesn't really sound all that bad. Not compared to my own... But if you keep it hidden and a secret, the Darkside will only grow stronger in you. You should tell him everything. Maybe he can find a way to help you..."

[Kale]

"Maybe..."

Kale thought about it. Pierce had certainly helped restore his hope in the Order--and good thing, or he probably would've split. As for the brush with the Dark Side, he wasn't sure whether the problem was getting better or getting worse. All he knew was that he had a very bad feeling about it.

"I guess it'll take some time either way. Honestly, even though I've been here a couple months, I still feel like I know barely anything about the Force. Frell... a couple months ago, I didn't even believe it existed. It's a weird universe."

The teen stood and rolled some of the stiffness out of his shoulders. He still felt like he had an imprint of the backside of Rognan's head in his own back.

"I'd probably better let you get back to training."

[Rognan Dar]

"Nah. I think after our little...incident, that I might call it a day. And I kind of have to think you too. If you didn't come in when you did, I might have hurt myself worse for not stopping. I might have cause serious brain damage or something. I dont know what happens when you over do it in the Force. So...thanks."

[Kale]

Kale ticked his head to the side. "Well, I'm not gonna say it was nothin'," he replied, rubbing his bruised shoulder. "No offense, but you ain't exactly a featherweight."

Then he smirked. "But, hey, glad I could help. And thanks for the advice. I really hope you can work out your, uh... yours... soon."

[Rognan Dar]

"Yeah, same for you. You take care of yourself. And I'll try not to wall on anyone else."

Rognan stood up, stretched his bruised muscles, and headed out the door. He was in great need of a shower, so thats where he headed off to.