It's amazing...
Characters: Flynn and anyone who wants/needs to have a talk with him
Location: Park outside the Jedi temple
Planet: Coruscant
When: Post-event, which would make it... Week 21
What: Meditating in the park. Conversations. Catching up. What have you.
Rating: Should be G. Ish.
( ... how productive doing nothing can be. )
Location: Park outside the Jedi temple
Planet: Coruscant
When: Post-event, which would make it... Week 21
What: Meditating in the park. Conversations. Catching up. What have you.
Rating: Should be G. Ish.
( ... how productive doing nothing can be. )
And then Spike came. And then everything took a swift, agonizing downturn. The worst kind of downturn. And suddenly, she was back to feeling like somewhere along the way, wires had been crossed inside of her and nothing was the way it should be. Except there was no Giles to help her center herself, to tell her what she should be doing to fix that. She just had herself to rely on -- and she had to know that it was going to be like that a lot more from now on, realizing that in the future, her mother would die. Even if she could avert it, the acknowledgment of that mortality was sending ripples through her even still.
It's why she was walking. The park was a calming place, it was less occupied and it was something they had everywhere. No Coruscant-exclusive hover-y anything or spaceships or aliens. Just a park.
A park with a guy sitting around meditating.
She stopped short as she walked, no longer meandering, but more watching cautiously from a few yards behind him. Observing. Meditation was something she'd explored in her training regiment with Giles back home, a way to try and explore her Slayer roots and get to know them better. Here, she'd kind of abandoned it in favor of her old ways -- see monster, react, conquer.
It had worked so far, but seeing the old guy appreciating his quiet time in the park had her wondering if maybe she should have kept with the strictness and not defaulted to what she knew better. It had her thinking maybe she shouldn't have retreated into the security blanket when she realized how overwhelming another planet could be.
Which explained why she stopped mid-path to just stand and stare, arms crossed over her chest, thoroughly distracted by just watching him in silence.
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The young woman was... staring, but that somehow mattered less than the closed, unhappy pose she had taken.
"Greetings," he said, loud enough for her to hear, but not much more. "My name is Kevin Flynn and I'm... well, technically from the future, or a different reality. Or both, probably. Called in by the Force and all." He didn't exactly remember if he had seen a message from her about an arrival, or maybe she belonged here and now. Either way, he thought an introduction was appropriate.
Odd as it was.
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"You mean -- You're … not from around here?" Her eyebrows knitted together a little at that, confused, ands he looked left and then right, like she was seeing if anyone else was around. Then, she took a few steps forward to close the distance between them, unfolding her arms and lowering her hands to her sides.
"Me too. I just thought -- The whole meditatey, hanging out thing, I figured you were jedi central." After a beat, she added in a kind of rushed, flustered way. "I'm Buffy."
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Instead, he shook his head. "No, I'm just an old programmer from LA." Well, New Jersey, technically, but that had been a very, very long time ago. "Greetings, Bffy." His face softened into a smile. "I almost wish I had some gift with the Force. Except that would get me in a pretty complicated fix, at my age and untrained. Besides, wishing for things that are out of one's reach mostly just stops one from moving in the direction he can develop in."
He raised his arms, spreading his hands. "Enjoying the sunlight is universal, isn't it?" And a less humorous, "how's the transplantation into 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away', treated you so far?"
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Okay, less on the reassured by that thought, more on the resigned.
"Transitiony. Definitely transitiony." After all, she wasn't going to spill her guts on the honest answer of 'horrible' to Zen Park Guy. -- Right. Kevin. Had a name. Totally had a name, and she'd heard it. Distracted didn't suit Buffy. Not when her temporal lobe had a habit of making with the aching recently to begin with. Between her distraction and his philosophy, she was beginning to think the wide-eyed look wasn't going to budge anytime soon, because she spent a good, long, silent moment trying to decipher his Confusionisms.
"It's not so bad, I mean, the monsters are kind of like the welcome mat where I'm from, so they … you know, helped. Which is exactly as weird as it sounds." She shrugged. "Any chance your programming skills transferred over? I bet you'd make a killing in droid repair. You wouldn't believe how many people I've met whose first impulse was violent outburst in the general droidward direction."
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He wasn't trying to be confusing, really, it was just that his thoughts flowed faster and in different circles than most people's. Nor expecting a detailed answer, not from pretty much a stranger.
And he had raised his eyebrows at the welcoming mat comment, coming back to it in a moment. "There aren't... always monsters. Although I'm not sure that the explosions from the week before count as that much better. Monsters at least you can sometimes get the better of."
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If she hadn't been making with the grim already, the mention of explosions would have gotten her there. Lack of monsters, she could deal with, explosions were tough no matter how super-powered you were. Explosions were a people thing. Not just armies of hack-and-slashable undead.
"Explosions? What happened?"
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His head lowered, though, after, at the question. "Terrorists, it is assumed. A few residence appartments were blasted. Not strong enough for the adjacent apartments to be uninhabitable, and not strong enough to actually kill any of the residents, but it wasn't a pretty sight. Some had to spend a while in the medical facilities." His lips twitched. "Under the care of droids."
He hesitated a moment, then did ask. "Destructogirl?"
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Luckily the intense look on her face was tempered when he questioned the title destructogirl. A sheepish smile quirked the corners of her mouth and she ducked her head briefly. It was enough to shake off the appalled frustration with their treatment and move onto something lighter -- after all, first conversations weren't the place for getting righteous about that stuff. She'd just have to talk it over with Anya and Xand later.
"The story's kinda on the longish side. If the inferi I'd gone through weren't all dead-like, i'd say they could probably tell you all about it." She figured it was safer to just chalk it up to zombie-killing than explain the long-standing record she had with things just generally getting demolished by her violent streak and even more violent life. "I'm like a magnet for property damage."
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He shrugged, then tilted his head to one side. Lips twitching slightly. "I got my share of chatting up with the inferi, I'll pass up the honor, thanks. Although the suggestion that they're property is really interesting. You all right?"
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He looked up, then added, quietly, "they stopped coming. I'm not sure anybody reported that the person or persons controlling them was identified and stopped, though."
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"But, since they're cleaned up, I figure everyone else is ready to stop asking questions and is just grateful that they got off easy."
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About Revan... Flynn thought for a moment. "Maybe it was Revan. Or maybe things have slipped out of Revan's control. Back before... one of the odd things that happened, he seemed to know something was coming, but not specifically what. It was almost a warning. But it would be an easy answer, if that turns out to be the case."
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