Once a Teacher, always a Teacher [Dei's Training]

[Jiang Winters]

Sheng sighed and rolled his eyes. He was getting nowhere with his padawan; Dei firmly believed that he was being a 'sloth' and anything Weisheng said was an excuse. The feline wanted to just drop the argument altogether, but he just couldn't keep himself from making one final defensive claim. He folded his arms across his chest in an unamused manner and piped up. "For one, it wasn't exactly likely that you would be able to fabricate a complicated lightsaber and get it online in the time I was gone. Secondly, what I was doing was very, very important. There's a lot of whispers in the Order, a lot of people desiring a change of leadership; I was tending to that. Change is dangerous, but necessary, if the Order is going to survive to write the next chapter of its history."

The feline gestured at Dei's saber and moved to change the subject. "Why don't you take this time as a chance to use your blade a bit? The rock here isn't particularly strong or resistant to lightsabers; try carving a pattern into them, or crafting a statue if you're particularly artistic. It shouldn't put any real strain on your saber, and it'll give you something to pass the time."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"Because we all know that it's impossible for an accidental mis-wiring in the first hour of construction to blow off my hand, right? Yeah, whatever business you had, don't go acting like you cared so much for my personal safety when you know full well that I was just as likely to injure myself during the first hour of construction, as I was during the thirtieth. Hell, you almost went back to sleep even when you heard the lightsaber light for the first time, and even if something went horribly wrong, YOU WERE TOO KRIFFIN' GROGGY TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, UNTIL I PULLED YOUR KRIFFIN' TAIL."

Getting nowhere with his padawan, indeed.

Dei shook his head in disbelief at the slothful denial on the part of his master. "Small wonder Jedi desire a change of leadership, when Jedi such as you sleep through current events." The apprentice sighed, resigned to Sheng sleeping through the rest of his training. He realized, perhaps too late, that his fate was not to be abandoned as he had been before, but rather to be ignored in favor of Teh Nap.

Sheng did, however, have a point about the time passing by. Dei had no need for further destruction, nor did he feel any particular desire to create sculpture, but he always had need for scalpels. Given the results of his earlier fun with rocks, he figured that kunai might suit him as well. Adjusting his lightsaber to shorten and thin the blade, he dug his new contraption into one of the rocks. Sparks of molten rock flew as he began to cut out relatively thin sheets, for further refinement into scalpels and other assorted surgical instruments. The heat from the blade easily melted the rock into a bright orange glow that would nigh-instantly sterilize it; the exercise seemed good practice in telekinesis, as well, for the apprentice had to hold the "sheets" in place long enough to further carve blades and handles out of them, and to allow his handiwork to cool into obsidian-like surgical implements, like those relatively available on his rather primitive homeworld.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Sheng was only too eager to drop the previous conversation and simply watch Dei work. He was, admittedly, impressed with the steadiness of the human's hands. The feline knew all too well that carving such sheets and tools was beyond him... Although, after some minutes of watching Dei, he became tempted to see what he could do with molten stone and his preferred tool: Telekinesis.

The feline approached a waist-high stone and ignited his lightsaber. He gently swept the length of the blue blade across the surface of the rock, converting the entire upper face into a thin sheet of whitish-orange molten stone. With the Force, he swept the sheet up into the air and separated it into roughly two dozen thin strands, drawing out their length until they were perhaps a meter in length. He began to bind them together, twisting them around each other, one at a time. As their hellish orange glow began to dim, he finished up and applied a firm 'pinch' to the resulting rod of twisted black stone.

It was... Well, ugly. And useless. It did have potential for use as a exceptionally heavy walking stick or for clobbering people, or perhaps as a giant's toothpick, but aside from such fantastical uses it wasn't really worth much. Still, creating it had been fun. Still handling it through the Force, Sheng drove the stone staff into the sand and left it there. He returned to his rock and shaved another layer off, repeating the process of drawing and twisting to create a staff nearly identical to the first. He intended to create a dozen or so, then bind them together into a chair. Just because he could, and because it was good practice for his telekinesis skills.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Sheng might have been eager to drop the last conversation, but no further conversation replaced it. Sheng had by no means taken on a charismatic apprentice, and whatever changes he heralded, the apprentice obviously did not foresee any terribly relevant changes in his future. The master had trained successful padawans through tears, rejection, and teenage emotional instability...only to shut out his latest student because he had a far different circadian rhythm. Perhaps Dei could have prescribed exercises to increase the dexterity in Sheng's paws, to share some of his own experience in honing precision movements in his fingers as a surgeon. Perhaps a more precise dexterity than the usual feline clawing at stuff would have served Sheng well in attempting to carve out useful implements.

But Sheng had written off his apprentice as a clone of his father; so shall it be.

Dei took absolutely zero interest in Sheng's "walking sticks." Only with a fleeting glance did he know that his master was even attempting to make them. Instead, the apprentice's attention seemed consumed with burning off excess and impurities, tempering his own handiwork by holding the edge of his lightsaber blade less than half a millimeter away from the glowing, molten rock, slowly burning it off into steam so that the remainder would cool into a razor-sharp, durable blade that could scythe through tissue without snagging. Without introducing complications. Without resistance.

Any inquiries from the feline about whatever experience Dei might have had in crafting his own supplies on Onderon were met with cold silence. Even if the apprentice's attention hadn't been fully consumed with the precise requirements of his own work, the Defense of Slothfulness had still left the apprentice with little more than contempt for his master's laziness. The desire to drop the previous conversation, unfortunately, seemed extraordinarily mutual.

Dei's stomach rumbled and his throat remained parched, but he did not care. All the more reason to enjoy the feeling when he finally felt his lightsaber had been stressed enough that he could feel confident in his operation, and shut it off. Yet, that joyous feeling was hours away, hours the apprentice would have to spend trapped in a training room with a master who rather contemptuously believed that Dei had morphed into his probably-abusive father.

The apprentice sighed, but still made no overture towards initiating conversation. The molten scalpel he had been working on now seemed ready to cool and harden. Dei began the long process of carving out another, without comment of any kind.

Half a dozen scalpels, half a dozen kunai, and several hours later, Dei finally shut his lightsaber off, finally satisfied it could sustain continued operation without wire arcing, or overheating, or any other hidden issue that might cause the lightsaber to slowly destroy itself. He said nothing, merely leaving his handiwork to cool; he could come back and claim it later. He reached for his canteen, emptied it into his mouth, and then rummaged through his medical gear to find a protein bar to jam down his throat, that his hunger might be satiated. Yum yum. The kriffing surgeon made Jedi notions of austerity seem like a complete joke; Jedi cafeterias fed caviar compared to Dei's meals-in-a-minute. Fruits and veggies? On his homeworld of Onderon, Dei had plucked those from the jungle. On Ossus, the forest outside the Jedi compound. The guy scarcely seemed to know what a cafeteria was.

He wandered out of the training room, simply leaving Sheng to stare. By now, Dei had been up nearly fifty hours, pretty much the length of a standard shift back home on Onderon where nothing had gone so terribly long as to result in overtime. Even Dei was ready for some shut-eye by now, though he said nothing to Sheng, instead leaving him behind the training room and wandering about the Temple on his own, to find his quarters.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Dei left, and Sheng was left wondering just how many of his Padawan's toes he had stomped on. He was guessing five out of ten - he was, after all, still in possession of his tail. He sighed heavily and hitched his shoulders. The whole affair hadn't exactly gone as planned, and he hadn't gotten on Dei's good side. Then again, the man hadn't been terribly sociable either, so Sheng wasn't about to shoulder the blame there.

The feline's belly rumbled. He finished his work, weaving together a surprisingly solid chair from the stone before departing. He made a beeline to the Cafeteria and ate a large meal. Sheng usually ate a considerable amount of food in the morning, ate a light snack at lunch time and a snack bar of some kind around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, followed by a fairly decent dinner. He wasn't a lunch person; he simply forgot to eat around lunchtime.

After that, he retired to his quarters. He showered, healed up the base of his tail, changed clothes, did all the wonderful things that had to be done. After that, he sat at the desk in his quarters and completely disassembled both his lightsabers. They were brand new, less than a week old; his original lightsaber had been given to his first padawan when he had exiled himself from the Order.

He inspected them, cleaned the components, reassembled them, and polished their hulls to a brilliant sheen. Once that was done, he attached them to his sash and set up his laptop-sized datapad, booted it up, and started surfing through his messages. Spam, spam, and more spam; that's what his inbox consisted of. He became frustrated after a few minutes and purged the entire folder, then logged into the archives and began to aimlessly search through the entries of the archives. He loved learning, and at the moment, he had little better to do than enrich his own knowledge.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Ironically, the time Sheng spent cleaning his lightsaber and flipping through the archives probably was the safest time for him to nap without fear of tail-pulling.

Dei, for his part, found himself bereft of a map and wandering the Temple, looking for his living quarters, for the better part of an hour. For the most part, he only saw construction workers, and he assumed they probably didn't know where his specific dorm was, so ever the charismatic one, he saw no point in asking. At long last, as his circadian rhythm ticked over fifty hours without sleep, he deliriously stumbled into his quarters. Space would have been more like it, for the twelve-foot-by-twelve-foot room had yet to be furnished. It was a downgrade from living in the medical wing; apparently the Order intended to stack the padawans up high here, but Dei didn't care. Private space was private. The exhausted apprentice settled down on the floor, using his arms as a pillow, for his medical bag o'goodies had far too many sharp objects within to serve that purpose.

Nevertheless, the apprentice quickly entered a deep, dreamless sleep.

---------------​

In spite of his exhaustion from the previous day, Dei still managed to awaken just after three in the morning, partly because his right arm tingled from hours of pressure from his head reducing circulation thereto, and partly simply because he usually got up before sunrise and his body simply kept to its normal schedule. Almost immediately, Dei chowed on "breakfast," if water and cardboard protein bar could be called that. The apprentice realized, however begrudgingly, that he probably would not be able to forage the forest for fruits and vegetables here on Coruscant. If he wished to balance out his diet, he would have to *shudder* find out just what, exactly, this mystical thing others referred to as a "cafeteria" was.

Fortunately, the apprentice vaguely and foggily remembered seeing signs with directions thereto, when he had been searching for his quarters the evening before. He followed the signs, found the cafeteria, and quickly decided he didn't want to eat there. Even at half past three in the morning, construction workers and recently-transferred Jedi clumped together in groups, filling the chamber with noise, useless noise. Dei quickly purchased some greens and a pineapple and wasted no time getting back to his room to eat his vegetables. He wasn't in the mood for small talk; he decided he would much rather obtain his snacks in solitude, foraging for them in the forest. He felt closer to nature that way, but everything at Coruscant was built up, and artificial. Le sigh.

After finishing his breakfast, he figured he better get his workout done before Sheng found him...if Sheng bothered to find him. Sheng hadn't seemed too interested in Dei's workout before. However, Dei wasn't so sure his master would even make the attempt to locate him, though he wasn't making any particular effort to conceal himself. No, the apprentice only knew that his master did not like him, that he reminded master of dysfunctional family, and that there was absolutely zero point in attempting to communicate with master because master had written him off as just like crazy family or some such fate worse than death. Dei didn't see much point in trying to make amends; Sheng had already ignored him once when he had earlier tried to express that napping in front of someone who had not slept in more than a day, and did not expect to be able to sleep for an additional long period of time, was simply not a nice thing to do. Then again, the apprentice doubted his master had ever allowed himself to go for longer than eight hours without a nap of some kind...

After a three hour workout, and another "meal" immediately thereafter, Dei remembered he had left his lightsaber-crafted surgical instruments and throwing knives in one of the training rooms to cool overnight. Figuring they should be cool by now, Dei headed off to claim them, vaguely hoping that they hadn't been trashed by some janitor. Fortunately, they seemed undisturbed, and they had cooled enough for Dei to scoop them up and strap to loose notches on his utility belt.

Dei looked at his chronometer. It was still only seven in the morning, and he wondered what to do with the day, given he had not yet been assigned a medical shift, and the extreme likelihood he wouldn't be hearing from his master anytime soon. Maybe he could search the Archives for records of possible reasons for why he felt no special attachment to his lightsaber...

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

More hours passed as Dei followed up on the research project his master had suggested, though not surprisingly, the master remained nowhere to be found. Dei did not care; he simply buried his nose in the records, in an attempt to find other cases of a Jedi failing to recognize his lightsaber as an extension of his body. There seemed little to go on.

In spite of his research skills, the apprentice could find no previously recorded case that matched his apparent abnormality. The closest materials he could find consisted of guides on how to build a lightsaber, and historiographical articles on how lightsaber construction had evolved through the millennia.

The only 'clue,' highly indirect and circumstantial that it was, that he could find lay buried in the history of the lightsaber's evolution. The first Force users had had to scour the galaxy for crystals suitable for their proto-lightsabers. The first such expeditions had been incredibly dangerous, with many crystal-hunters dying of harsh conditions and exposure attempting to scale caves on such worlds as Ilum, in the search for the perfect crystal. As Force users became more organized and numerous, however, some organizations began taking advantage of labor specialization. Now, basic lightsaber crystals were harvested en masse...and Dei had pretty much been handed his lightsaber crystals in a metal box.

The realization brought the apprentice to a startling question. Did his lightsaber's unused capacity for a third focusing crystal hold the key to solving Dei's "lack of connection" with his weapon?

 

[Jiang Winters]

"Miss! Miss, excuse me! Miss!"

The frantic, but hushed, cries of one of the junior Archivists went largely unheard by the grease-and-soot smeared Cathar woman who went padding into the Archives of the Coruscant Temple. "Miiiisss!" The thin young man waved his arms and went chasing after her, as if flailing like a bird would help get her attention.

She glanced over her shoulder at him but didn't stop. "What?" she asked. The feline directed her gaze forward again and picked up her pace to a brisk walk. The Archivist huffed and dashed after her - she was taller than him by at least half a foot, and his flabby little legs were having a terribly difficult time keeping up with her.

"You really can't be in here like... Like this, miss!" he gasped. With great enthusiasm, he gestured at her with both hands, making an up-and-down motion with his fingertips to indicate that he was referring to her entire body. "Look at you! You're a mess! You're wearing armor, you're smeared with grease and soot and you smell like oil! You're covered head to toe in little scratches and nicks! Have you been in a war or something!? You're not even a Jedi! I mean, uh, erm... Are you?"

The Cathar laughed and rolled her eyes. "What, the lightsaber dangling from my hip wasn't a giveaway? Go back to your desk, Shrimpy; I'm just here to copy some schematics so I can get back to work."

The little man's feathers were instantly ruffled when he was called 'Shrimpy'. Short, out of shape, and pathetic though he may be, he certainly didn't like the moniker! The archivist darted right in front of her and held his arms out to either side as if to say 'you shall not pass!' Which, amusingly enough, he actually said. "You shall not pass until you've cleaned yourself up! I won't have you dirtying this place up!"

As soon as he was done tooting his horn, the Cathar smiled brightly. "Aw, don't worry Shrimpy, I won't dirty it up. Now-" she paused and latched onto his shoulders with both her hands. With relative ease, she picked him up, turned, and set him down where he was out of her way. She spun the man around, and poked him in his shoulders. "Go find someone actually worth bothering. Someone who isn't two or three times your weight and won't fold you into a circle and use you for a scarf if you keep irritating them."

The man went bright red in his cheeks and positively shook with barely constrained anger. However, he [wisely] took a deep breath, turned about, and stalked off. As bothersome as he found being whipped around like a ragdoll, he wasn't about to argue with a female who could very easily carry out her threat.

Left alone to her devices, the Cathar - none other than Samanya Mohatu, a pilot-turned-slave-turned-thug-turned-slave-turned-Jedi and the Chancellor's daughter - had soon meandered to the same general locale as where Dei was working so diligently at a desk furnished with a computer terminal. The desk nearest him was empty, and so it was most convenient for Sam to plop herself down in the wheeled seat provided with the desk. She removed her gauntlets and did her best to quietly set the heavy gloves down by her feet - she was mostly successful, though they still made a dull thump when they hid the floor.

She booted up the terminal built into her desk. As it oh so slowly warmed up, the Padawan cast a sidelong glance at the human sitting near her. Big man, from the looks of him. Well built, strong. In good shape. He looked to be in his late twenties or very early thirties. She leaned back in her seat and stole a peek at his terminal screen. He was studying lightsabers. Interesting; was he building one? After staring for a second, Sam decided to make her curiosity known. "Building a lightsaber?" she queried, her voice quiet but warm.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Unfortunately, this new Cathar had made quite the ruckus. Dei found himself mildly annoyed. He had been more than content to keep to himself, and refrain from bothering the archival staff. However, his ears perked up at the commotion that this new one made. Dei very nearly got up, especially after hearing the threats of physical violence. Jedi were charged with defending the weak, after all, and Dei failed to see how enforcing a minor regulation in any way warranted the threatened beating.

However, the new Cathar set her victim down and left him to scurry away, thus saving Dei the hassle of getting up. The whole episode had still managed to sour his otherwise neutral mood, however. To make matters worse, the newcomer decided to disturb his studies more directly.

Dei felt the Cathar padawan scrutinizing him, and he returned the favor, allowing his green eyes to bore into her, reflecting his disgust at her earlier, disturbance-generating conduct. The Cathar seemed well-built for a female, perhaps only a few kilos lighter than Dei himself. However, surely the feline had noticed that in addition to a couple of lightsabers, a small collection of hand-crafted, or lightsaber-crafted as the case may be, scalpels and kunai hung from the belt around his waist. Of further interest to the Cathar: Dei was still in his doctor's scrubs, which likely meant he knew where to thrust and/or throw all those sharp, pointy objects for the most effect.

The annoyed doctor willfully ignored the padawan's question about lightsabers, and instead chose to ask another, in a fairly icy tone of voice. "Do you always bully others weaker than yourself, just because you think you can?" Dei might have pulled his master's tail, but he still did not go around threatening to beat up random people...

 

[Jiang Winters]

Sam hitched her shoulders. "Hey, I didn't start that - Archivists are supposed to be helpful, not jump in front of you and flail. Besides-" she paused as her terminal beeped. It was on-line. The feline pulled the keyboard out and tapped in a quick search string; 'BMI NxV Pressurized Coolant System, MK XXI, #301-6A'. After striking the enter key, she returned her full attention to Dei. "And I'm stressed as hell because an entire coolant system just exploded in my face while I was working on my ship. Showered me with snap-frozen shrapnel; I'm just lucky that I was wearing goggles and that most of the coolant vaporized and dissipated before it hit my face, otherwise I'd be in the infirmary for frostbite right now. And now, once I have these schematics, I get to go and spend the next twelve hours or better rebuilding a coolant system, and that's if I'm not totally luckless and the thing's not salvageable, in which case I'm stuck building it from scratch."

The feline -boasting a magnetic accelerator rifle clipped to the back of her torso armor, with an assault rifle beside it and a handgun stuck to a magplate on her left thigh- sighed and hitched her shoulders. "But I guess that's not really much of an excuse. I'll apologize to him before I leave; that was dickish of me. Really dickish."

Sam's eyes, a dark shade of blue, flitted briefly over Dei again. Doctor's scrubs; lots of bladed implements. She surmised - correctly - that he had experience in the field of medicine, but she didn't comment on it. Her console chimed again. The feline glanced at the display; it showed one result for schematics. She plugged her personal datapad into the computer and began to download the device's blueprints.

Meanwhile, Sheng had finally wrapped up his studies at his private terminal and uprooted himself from his chair. The feline yawned and headed out; next stop, the Archives. He imagined Dei would be there.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"Most of the coolant dissipated, anyway. Looks like the rest of it decided to pay you a visit. Your face looks like I tossed a few scalpels in its general direction while blindfolded; you must have had a fairly sucky day."

The doctor hadn't been kidding; the Cathar's face looked pitted with soft-tissue injuries, most of them shallow but nonetheless probably painful. The injuries were not worth surgical intervention, as stitching together soft tissue was by far the easiest class of injuries to heal with the Force alone. The ice fragments had not been hard enough to damage the Cathar's bone, thankfully, and the Cathar seemed to have had sufficiently fast reflexes to close her eyes to prevent debris from injuring them as well. It took the healer only a few seconds of concentration to mend slightly-torn cheek and forehead muscles, reroute shredded capillaries, and other such things as Jedi healers were known to do, not always with asking. He still did not answer the original question about his lightsaber, though, but at least the Cathar's admission of wrongdoing and promise to apologize therefor had taken the edge off of Dei's hostility.

The bloom in the Force caused by the healing would also no doubt confirm Sheng's suspicions as to his apprentice's locations. Dei sensed his master approaching the Archives, but he didn't particularly care one way or the other. He hadn't been making any special efforts to avoid his master; he merely thought his master had lost interest in training him.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Dei's remark managed to elicit a chuckle and a small smile from Samanya. Her tail, poking through a slot cut in her armor, swished eagerly behind her as she felt the Force surge through him. A few moments later, she could feel the reconstructive power of the Force mending the tears and gouges marring her distinctly feline features. Within a few seconds, the irritatingly painful shrapnel injuries were completely healed, much to her delight.


"Hey, thanks! That feels a lot better," Samanya said, the moment he had finished patching her up. Tail e'er so slowly dancing about behind her, she leaned on the desk, resting her weight upon one elbow as she twisted her torso to better face Dei. She glanced at her free hand and, satisfied that the fur and pads of her hand weren't smeared with grease and barrel residue, she extended her hand to Dei. "I'm Samanya Mohatu, but everyone just calls me Sam."

As predicted, the bloom in Aidan's Force presence drew Sheng in like a moth to the flame. He began to move more quickly towards the Library, and upon arrival, slipped in and started a cursory search for his Padawan.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Swishing tails, ever the mark of happy felines. Dei smiled, glad he felt he had accomplished something, no matter how small for the time being, for once. He accepted the Cathar's paw, but shook it loosely, so as not to trigger the instinctual springing of claws he knew a tighter handshake would generate. It was probably a good thing the Cathar didn't know about Sheng's awakening...

"I'm Dei Aidan...technically a doctor, but that piece of paper doesn't seem to get recognized under the Temple walls. Nice to meet you, Sam..."

Dei's voice trailed off, as he suddenly appeared deep in thought. "And I somehow sense my master looking for me. Well, that's surprising."

 

[Jiang Winters]

"A doctor, huh?" Samanya's smile brightened. His handshake was gentle - either he was in control of his strength, or he was afraid that a firm shake would set off her claws. She was going to assume the latter. "I haven't met a doctor in... Gods, five years? It's nice to meet you, Dei."

Her ears perked as he mentioned his master. Weisheng? Wasn't he the guy who was running around getting everyone to go against the Council? Just as she opened her muzzle to speak, the object of their conversation walked up, in all his furry slothful glory. "Hey, Dei. Morning, Misses Mohatu. Dei, I had a thought on your lightsaber; do you think I somehow gave you bad crystals by mistake?" the Jedi queried as he moved to stand in front of his Padawan's desk.

Sam's ears perked up. So Dei was studying lightsabers! Explained why a handsome fellow like him was sitting around with his nose in an electronic book, rather than out saving lives, kicking ass, and sweeping damsels off their feet. Sam -who had not actually built a lightsaber of her own, and was using her brother's spare saber- perked her ears and listened in closely, half-hoping the duo would be traveling to Ilum so that she could tag along and get a crystal of her own for her own Lightsaber. She had the hull built, but her brother wanted her focusing crystals - like Dei, she was building an adjustable saber- to 'call' to her through the Force. He said it was important, and she believed him.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei flashed Sam a smile, but the smile quickly vanished as Sheng approached. He might not have been hiding from his master, and he might have been surprised his master actually bothered to seek him out, but he still wasn't thrilled about it. Only the day before, he had displayed the ability to completely shun his master for several hours while in the same room. Fortunately, interacting with Sam had lightened his mood somewhat, at least once he had addressed her pointless bullying.

"No, I think the problem is that you gave me crystals at all."

Sam would recognize that tone of voice. It was the same icy tone Dei had used to call Sam out on her bullying of the archivist. Dei hadn't told Sam of the tail-pulling, nor did he particularly want to. However, Sam would quite easily be able to tell that for whatever reason, Dei didn't get along with his master too well.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Sheng's fur bristled. He'd come to the archives, perfectly willing to let the events of the past lay buried, but apparently Dei was still less than pleased with him. It was rather obvious that his Padawan held absolutely no desire to deal with him - perhaps Sheng should've laid into him with a lengthy ear-grinding lecture about his attitude from day one. Addressing his trainer in such a tone was going to get him nowhere fast.

"Listen Dei, I don't know what in the name of the Force bit you on the ass the day you met me, but you'd best get over it and lose the attitude because it's not doing you any favors, and it's not going to get you out of having to deal with me. Now, allow me to rephrase my question, and this time, answer it civilly: Do you sense a problem with the crystals I gave you?"

The white-furred feline's tone was both calm and frigid. Whatever trace of a smile that had occupied Sheng's features was completely erased. In its place, a frown tugged his lips downwards and his ears were folded back. His tail flicked back and forth in short, sporadic arcs; a mark of irritation. Samanya winced and considered trying to slink away from the two, but her datapad wasn't quite done downloading; once it had the data she needed, she could flee for safety.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"Well, your interest in actually dealing with what in the Force bit me in the ass is duly noted." Dei's tone of voice did not change in the slightest, as he had attempted to communicate his displeasure yesterday. Instead of actually addressing it, Sheng had dismissed Dei as a clone of his father...so the apprentice honestly saw no point in further communications. The apprentice knew full well how irritated Sheng was; he saw the Cathar quietly backing away. The apprentice felt the same way towards Sheng as Sheng felt towards him, and he did not care whether or not his attitude dealt him any "favors."

"You really think that a mass-mined crystal handed to me in a box with seven minutes worth of effort is going to do much to form a connection between lightsaber and its user? What kind of connection does that kind of laziness create? Yes, I quite literally meant the problem exists because I was given the crystals. There, does it sound any better in the passive voice?"

 

[Jiang Winters]

"Perhaps I could deal with it if you'd lose the high-and-mighty act and tell me what your problem is, aside from the ludicrous thought that you're a clone of my father, which was a joke, which sailed over your head because you are so bái mù!" Sheng retorted sharply. He was very quickly tiring of his Padawan's little games, of his assumptions and his poor attitude. While he was adamant that he wouldn't abandon his padawan, he wasn't going to further his training until he'd drilled a measure of basic civil behavior into Dei's thick skull - and if the padawan didn't like that, then that was his problem, not Sheng's.

The Lightsaber forgotten, the feline focused entirely on 'dealing' with Dei's problem. Before the younger man could so much as formulate another word, Sheng lit into him, his good-natured demeanor completely gone and replaced with an attitude of absolute seriousness."I will make myself exceptionally clear and I will pull absolutely no punches with you: The only person being an ass here is you. You, for some god-forsaken reason, have been acting like a prick since the very moment I met you. The very first thing to slip past your lips was cynicism, a trend that you seem remarkably happy to follow. Ever since I met you, I have been nothing but supportive and helpful; you have rewarded that with snide remarks, cynicism, and a fit of completely undeserved tail-yanking that I would love to put behind us because I'd like to believe that you were just cranky from being awake far too long."

He didn't pay a single drop of attention to the female Cathar as she retrieved her datapad and fled the area - she hadn't even finished downloading the data. She was just going to come back and finish later. She managed to slip away without Sheng noticing. He was simply too focused on tearing Dei a new one.

"Unfortunately, my optimism about your attitude was just a bit too hopeful. You haven't gotten better. You're getting worse. I had been content to let you correct it yourself, but you just used up your last bit leeway with me." Sheng folded his arms across his chest and glowered down at his padawan. There was no mistaking the change in Sheng; the Horansi had done his best to let Dei's attitude slide in the hopes that it would correct itself, but his generosity had come back to bite him in the ass and as such, he was going to send the pain right back to Dei. In a way, at least.

"So here's what you will do before you move forward so much as an inch more on your training: You're going to drop everything you are doing, you're going to go back to the training room, and you're going to lock yourself in there for the next twenty-four hours. Then you're going to find the punching bag, cut it down, and carry it in your arms like a person. You're going to carry that bag around the outer rim of the room, and the whole time, you're going to vent to it. Every last little thing that's pissing you off or nagging at you, you're going to tell to that bag. Yell it if you want, scream it if it feels good, sob into it if you need to; just get everything off your chest. And then I want you to pretend that bag is me and try, for a change, to treat it like you'd want to be treated."

"If, by the time you're done with this, I feel your attitude has improved, I'll take you to Ilum myself and help you find a crystal for your lightsaber. If your attitude hasn't improved, you're going to eat, sleep, shower, and then go back and spend another thrilling twenty-four hours talking to a bag. So save whatever you're doing on that terminal and go."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei rolled his eyes. Sure, talking to a bag for twenty-four hours would really get his master to actually listen to him. Not. He may as well simply talk to Sheng for those twenty-four hours--Force knew that the feline would pay exactly as much attention as the bag in the training room.

But, as long as the feline had actually mentioned dealing with his apprentice's problem, the apprentice may as well try to get the point through his thick, sleep-addled skull. Dei had absolutely no expectation that his master would care, other than that he mentioned taking care of the problem. The tone of his voice continued to reflect such low expectations.

"Well, I tried to tell you what my problem was yesterday. Either you did not care to listen, or the point likewise went whoosh straight over your head. So, whilst I am in the training room, I would greatly appreciate it if you contemplated your state of mind when you have not had the chance to nap for forty hours. Now, I would like for you to envision that you know that various responsibilities will keep you from sleeping for another several hours. Now, were I to simply prance in and take a nap right in front of you, I might imagine you would be at least highly motivated to pull my tail--probably fortunate that I do not have one."

"Now, I attempted to convey this to you yesterday, but you were so kriffin' busy writing me off as your father, whatever pejorative insult that was meant to be, that I quickly saw there was no point in attempting to get that across. You seemed more than happy to ignore me after that point yesterday, so I simply returned the favor."

 

[Jiang Winters]

It was Weisheng's turn to roll his eyes - but for a reason entirely different then Dei's. The feline lifted his glasses off the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand while shaking his head, muttering softly under his breath. "Hold on a second here, Dei," the feline replied, his tone a little softer and less irritated now.

He removed his hand and replaced his glasses on his nose. He didn't really need them; he could easily correct his vision through the Force, but he saw no reason to do so. If he lost his glasses, he could use the Force to temporarily correct his vision. By wearing them, they reminded him that he had his flaws, both great and small.

"Let me get this straight: You think that I wrote you off as my father? Are you serious, Dei? I mutter, to myself, 'who replaced Dei with my father', and suddenly you think I'm writing you off as him? That's..." The feline sighed and shook his head, actually chuckling for the first time in several hours. "Pretty damn silly, Dei. I honestly can't wrap my head around why you'd think I'd write you off as my father."

The feline turned about and began to depart the area, but he paused to deliver one last bit of dialogue to his Padawan. "Also, next time you want to get a point across, try a tack other than shouting your lungs out; if you yell in my ear and yank on my tail so hard it nearly rips out it's not going to get me to listen, it's going to ensure that you're ignored. Anyways, see you in 24 hours Dei. And I've changed my mind; you don't have to spend the full time venting to the bag. You can vent to a person if you'd rather."

With a flick of his tail serving as a 'goodbye', the feline padded out of the archives and towards one of the temple's many sparring rooms, with the intent of practicing his saber skills in a duel with another master.