Jedi Fugitive (The Bad Batch)

84:

Astera:

"One." The yellow blade moved obediently at my instruction, raising to block my own one coming down on it. I kept the strike slow and gentle, but Cleex's back foot still slipped, the Nautolan unprepared to properly block my lightsaber. It was a problem we'd been working on for several days now, but he was improving. Slowly. "Two."

He swung my lightsaber into the second defence position, this time holding strong and even sweeping my blade back out. "Good, Cleex! Three."

I kept calling out numbers, Cleex shifting the blade into position and dutifully blocking the strikes. But we'd been at this for hours now, and he was starting to tire - his breath was coming in hard pants and his arms were shaking with each block - and it meant he was messing up more. "Break."

He immediately bent over as I disengaged, bracing his hands on his knees and breathing hard, wiping away the sweat beading on his forehead. His stamina was excellent for any normal Nautolan his age, but without the training from infancy as most of the Jedi had had, he was woefully behind. At least he knew his forms now - I'd spent three months working on those before he'd been allowed to learn to spar.

"You need to keep your back foot planted. It's why you're nearly falling over. Like this, see?" I shifted into the basic defence stance, making a big show of twisting my back leg into position. "Try and hit me."

His eyes lit up at the prospect of actually attacking for once and he gripped the lightsaber in both hands, charging with the blade held high above his head. I met the downward strike easily, lightsaber holding strong against his own. "See? Your weight needs to be evenly distributed across both feet, otherwise this will happen..."

I swept around and hooked his front leg out from under him, the kid stumbling past me and falling to the ground. Another problem we'd been trying to work on. His balance was always off, and it was probably part of the reason why he kept slipping.

"Hey! That wasn't fair!" He pushed himself up onto his hands and twisted to glare at me. "I wasn't ready!"

"You can't always expect fair in a fight, kiddo. And your opponent won't be waiting for you to be ready." Words that both Obi-Wan and Bo-Katan had said to me on separate occasions. Though sweeping the kid's leg was definitely something only Bo-Katan would have done. "If you don't want that to happen, you need to shift your weight as the fight progresses. Keep it fluid."

I spied Narri approaching us from the edge and straightened again, powering off the yellow blade and offering him a hand up. Looked like our lesson was over. "But other than that, not bad, kiddo. You're getting better every time I see you."

"Does this mean I can learn to attack?" He asked excitedly, his earlier irritation forgotten as he obediently handed my other lightsaber back to me. "Ooh, when can I build my own lightsaber?!"

"Firstly, not until you can block without stumbling." Narri had been right - her son had definitely come out of his shell since I'd started teaching him. It had only been a few months, but he was no longer the quiet, soft-spoken child that had stared at me with wide eyes when I'd shown him I could use the Force too. That had been replaced with a boisterous, happy kid that loved to talk. Talk back, on several occasions. It reminded me very unfortunately of my early years as a Padawan, and I was finally beginning to understand how Master Kyala and Obi-Wan must have felt dealing with me. "And for the second question, I'll be honest. You might never get to. You can't exactly find lightsaber crystals on Pabu."

"What if I just get one of yours? You don't need two, do you?"

"Cleex!" Narri snapped, coming within earshot just in time to hear her son's demands. "You know that's a rude thing to ask!"