While Kaden was lying down to sleep off the last of his hangover, Drex ordered some groceries and a light lunch. It had been several hours since breakfast and he was hungry. He supposed Kaden was going to be hungry as well when he woke up.

… He was, although his thoughts were redirected when he rolled onto his back and was promptly reminded of the walloping he'd gotten earlier; that brush was going down. Yep, sometime between now and his knighting, Kaden was going to rid himself of that horrid thing. He was still muttering about how the Force Drex's previous padawans had survived long enough to reach knighthood when he entered their common room.

"What time is it?" he asked. His head no longer pounded, although he was still feeling decidedly seedy.

"Six pm," said Drex, taking off his earphones. "I thought I'd let you sleep."

"Oh," was all Kade said. He hadn't expected to sleep that long, but it had done him some good. His stomach growled, bringing his attention to the fact that he'd slept through lunch.

"Come eat," Drex told Kaden. "I have ordered noodle soup. It should help to rehydrate you and it will be easy on your stomach."

"Sounds good." Given that it was already six in the evening and he was grounded, Kaden didn't see any point in changing out of his sleep pants, so he followed Drex into the kitchen and helped with plates and cutlery. It smelled great! However, after a mouthful he realised that his stomach, and much to his misfortune, his bowels did not agree. He shot up like a spring and was gone in a flash.

Eventually, he managed to finish his food; because, the rest of his body be damned, he was starving! After dinner, the boy cleared the dishes and washed up. He remembered his pledge to repay Drex for having been allowed to keep the holo game and he meant it, aching ass notwithstanding. That said, he wasn't overly keen on starting his assignment. "Do you think I could start this tomorrow?" he asked. He still felt dreadful and just wanted to sleep, until next year!

"You may write it any time you like," Drex replied mildly. "You will simply be grounded, with no lightsaber practice, until it's complete. How long this state of affairs lasts is entirely up to you. Remember that there will be school and homework to take care of, too, tomorrow and the days after, though."

"Yeah, I know," Kade said, his face scrunched. "But today, I honestly can't face it. My ass hurts, my stomach is barely hanging on to the noodles and if that weren't bad enough, my head pounds for a minute here and there, just to keep it interesting," the boy said in a deadpan tone, although he had reached a stage now where this was starting to become funny, if only from an outside looking-in sort of perspective. "If I go and lie down, can you give me another hypospray, please?" he wanted to know. To his credit, the boy felt truly peaked and Drex would be able to sense as much.

"Yes, I will," Drex replied. "Start on your essay whenever you like. Just don't expect me to lift your restrictions until you're done, and 'done' means until I am completely satisfied with the result."

Kaden dropped his gaze. "Yes, Sir," he acquiesced, then without pausing to look at the man, made for his bedroom.

When Drex entered a few minutes later, he found the boy on his bed, his eyes closed.

"That bad?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of Kaden's bed. "This is what X'Atlix does to you. Has it affected your sense of the Force as well?"

"Yeah, it is." Kade's ashen pallor was lost on Drex and given that he was trying to tough this out as best he could, he hoped it wasn't easy for Drex to tell exactly how dreadful he felt. He rolled onto his side so he was facing the man. Losing his sense of the Force was something he had been reluctant to talk about as it had honestly unnerved him. He fell silent.

Drex did, in fact, have quite an accurate impression of how poorly Kaden was feeling. The fact that the boy had lost most of his ability to shield his Force signature probably helped with that. Besides, Drex remembered all too well how rotten he had felt after having consumed X'Atlix, decades ago. It had been a decidedly stupid idea, too; mostly he had been trying to impress a Zabrak friend by demonstrating what a Hrakian stomach could deal with. He had found that, while having the fortunate ability of being able to digest most everything, he was not as immune to consequences as he had thought, especially since nobody had thought to empty his stomach and by the time his master caught up with him, it had been too late for that to have any effect. He had ended up with a blinding headache, three days of severe nausea and a frightening inability to draw on the Force that had fortunately worn off after a day or so but was still vivid in his mind.

Resting his hand on Kaden's shoulder, he said gently: "Move a little closer so I can give you another hypospray. It won't help your sense of the Force, however. If you're lucky, it will have returned by tomorrow morning. Not a good feeling, is it?"

Kade rolled onto his back, shifted closer and turned his head to face the wall, giving Drex clear access to the base of his neck. Hyposprays didn't hurt, per se, but nor were they something anyone enjoyed having administered. In this instance, however, Kaden welcomed any and all intervention. No, this wasn't a good feeling and it wasn't just the hangover or his loss of Force sensitivity; Drex had tried to offer him an interesting learning experience and he had turned it into a complete clusterfuck. He rolled back onto his side – his ass still hurt – and faced his master once again. "Not a good feeling," he agreed, admitting aloud for the first time that losing his ability to access the Force was one of his symptoms. He didn't think it was permanent, but there was a touch of unease to his tone.

"Well, this was not how either of us expected this whole weekend to turn out, I suppose," Drex said, a hint of humour in his tone of voice. Kaden had misbehaved spectacularly, but such things happened. Drex was not angry with his padawan; he just hoped the boy would learn from this experience.

Kaden sighed as the hypo started to take effect and rolled into Drex a little; what? His weight was forcing his body to lull into his side!

Drex stayed with Kaden until he fell asleep which, predictably, did not take long. As it turned out, however, Kaden woke several hours later, in the middle of the night, still feeling rotten. He was forced to seek out his master for yet another hypospray and a sleep compulsion.

By the time Kaden woke the next morning, he had well and truly learned his lesson and would never, ever again drink a substance unless he knew exactly what it was. "I still don't feel right? Do you think I could be excused from classes today?" the boy asked as he spooned a mouthful of oats, bland oats being the only thing he could fathom stomaching at this point. Although his hangover was gone, he was still not one hundred percent.

Drex put a hand on Kaden's forehead and monitored his state through the Force for a moment. Then he shook his head. "No, you're going," he said firmly. "Since we'll have no lightsaber practice today, you may take a nap after lunch if you need it."

"You do know that no lightsaber practice is hardly punishment for me when all we do is Soresu?" Kade grumbled quietly, but did not argue about having his request to stay home denied; he felt bad, but even he had to admit it wasn't bad enough to warrant a day off classes.

"Be that as it may," Drex said calmly, refusing to rise to the provocation, "you'll devote your time to your essay, rather than sparring."

Oh joy for me, Kaden thought, but that was the extent of it. Arguing and being a smartass tended to end badly for him, and he didn't want to start his day off in the bad books.

Several days passed, each a painfully boring experience for Kaden as apparently, no lightsaber training did not mean no training at all! Their gym sessions focussed on muscle-building and stamina exercises instead.

He had finished the essay on day two only to have it returned slathered in corrections and told to do it over. The same happened again on day three, so by day four Kaden was really hoping that Drex would find it satisfactory because he missed his evenings at the padawans' lounge, not to mention the fact that his best friend Gannon had just returned from a mission on an Outer Rim planet where he had procured a large number of prank items, all of which Kaden was keen to see. He planned to ask if his friend could stay over this weekend. This was, of course, contingent on his ability to finish the essay, which was no easy task when the man marking it was so fastidious! He waited with baited breath as Drex listened to his essay for what felt like the hundredth time, but was actually only night four.

Drex did not want to encourage Kaden to do a sloppy job on any kind of work, least of all something that was meant to help him learn. He listened to the essay carefully twice over. Then, finally, he nodded. "Alright, padawan," he said. "Your style could still use some improvement, but I will accept this."

It was all the boy could do not to drop to his knees and kiss the man's feet. The idea of having to spend a fifth day writing about what he did and why it was wrong did not exactly appeal. Truth be told, having researched the archives for similar acts of recklessness committed by his ill-fated peers had proved more interesting than he would ever have imagined. "Thanks!" Kaden said with more exuberance than he had meant to use, then gratefully accepted his data pad.

"You're welcome," Drex said, grinning at his padawan's reaction.

"Does that mean I can go to the padawans' lounge tonight if I finish my homework in time?" Kaden asked. It wasn't likely to happen as he had a lot to do, but the boy wanted to know.

"Well, yes, you could go – provided you have finished not only your homework, but also your additional half hour of meditation," said Drex. Like Kaden, he considered this unlikely, but he assumed the real question was whether his padawan was still grounded. He was not.

As it turned out, Kade had barely finished his homework when Drex came to tell him it was time to meditate and get ready for bed. The boy frowned, let out a long sigh and slammed the lid shut on his datapad; he had really wanted to catch up with Gannon this evening but apparently, this would have to wait until tomorrow.

A short time later Kaden emerged from his room, showered and dressed in a pair of sleep pants. "Gannon is back from his mission," he said as he knelt on his mat in preparation to begin the additional meditation. "Would it be alright if he stayed over tomorrow or Saturday? He has a bunch of stuff to show me."

Drex considered this for a moment, then nodded. "If your chores and homework are done tomorrow night by dinnertime, he may come and stay over," he replied.

"I'll finish both," Kade promised. It was then that a thought occurred to him. "Do I still have to do this extra meditation if Gannon comes to stay?" Kaden had two reasons for wanting to know this, the first being that he'd rather get it over with before his friend arrived as an hour of meditation would seriously eat into their time, and the second, well, he hoped to get out of it! Half an hour spent meditating on arrogance and the dangers of overestimating your abilities was not exactly thrilling, and although he did not mind meditation, the topic left a bit to be desired; entirely the point, he knew.

"Of course you will do your meditations," Drex said matter-of-factly. "You can do them before Gannon arrives on Friday and after he has left on Saturday. If the worst comes to the worst, you may leave some of your homework until Sunday. It's a weekend, after all."

Okay, so Kaden hadn't expected to actually get out of the meditation, not really, but if he didn't try there would be no chance at all, and some chance was surely better than none. Right? "Thanks." The boy felt a wave of gratitude cross their bond briefly before he could stop it, not that he would have chosen to do so in any case. It would have been a hard slog to finish all of his homework by dinnertime tomorrow, but Kaden would have done his best. Being able to spread it out a little using Sunday would make that task much less of a rush.

Drex smiled at Kaden as he sensed the brief wave of gratitude through their bond and responded by conveying his affection to the boy.

Half an hour later Kaden got to his feet, scrubbed at his eyes and shook out his limbs, all the while quietly grumbling about still having to spend half an hour of his free time being punished for something he did ages ago. That said, he knew it could have been worse, a lot worse. Drex had chosen to spank himt twice for what he had come to refer to as 'that shit that he pulled at the Senate.' Force, he was never going to live that down. To top that off, apparently Raven had copped a paddling from Eeth for not ratting him out. Honestly, masters had no concept of comradely honour amongst padawans.

And speaking of masters, Kaden turned to find Drex still working on whatever it was he was doing with the data pad, and given that the man still had his headphones on the boy suddenly grinned impishly. Very, very carefully he crept up behind Drex, then, as he had seen his peers do to each other on many occasions, grabbed him in a bear hug and yelled "AHHHH!" at the top of his lungs, hoping to scare the crap out of him. Surely, with both senses of sight and hearing out of the picture, it had to work.

What the padawan did not know was how his master would react. He had seen a couple of boys thrown out of reflex, then there was one girl who actually wet her pants. That had been funny, but he doubted Drex would get that much of a fright. At least he hoped he wouldn't because the idea of having to clean that up as retribution did not appeal.

Drex did have an excellent sense of the Force so he had been aware of his padawan's approach on some level. He had also been extremely focussed on listening to a rather complex report which required a lot of concentration, and he had not exactly expected his padawan to do something this childish. Consequently, his first reflex, born out of years of field experience, was to act as if this was some kind of attack: He pushed his chair back forcefully, knocking Kaden onto his bottom quite hard. Then, realising that this had merely been a silly prank, he blew out an annoyed breath.

"Do this again, and I will give you fifty hours of community service in the junior crèche," he said sternly. "Maybe the four-year-olds will appreciate your sense of humour. I don't."

"Oof!" Kade was not expecting to be nailed in the stomach with a chair. Fortunately, his sense of the Force, while not nearly as experienced as Drex's, was just enough to give him time to cushion his fall. He still landed smack bang on his ass, though. He stared owlishly up at the stern face of his teacher, and despite knowing he was probably signing his own death sentence, he laughed. A hand slapped over his mouth as if it had acted without his consent. He was struggling to keep a straight face. "Yes, Sir. Sorry," he managed to get out. The expression on his face was clearly amused, not that Drex was able to see it.

"No, you aren't," said Drex pointedly. "But you will be if you ever try this again. Now, if you're that bored, you could do our laundry before going to bed. There are two baskets waiting to be folded in my room."

Drex was correct, Kade wasn't sorry. In fact he'd thought the entire thing was hilarious. That said, he did know when to leave well enough alone, and without fussing, he got to his feet and brushed himself off. "Alright, I'll go fold the clothing," he said, eager to stick to his pledge to be extra diligent with his chores, and was still smirking twenty minutes later as he finished the second basket of folding. "I'm done," he said.

"Thanks," Drex replied, giving him a smile. "I'll tuck you in in a moment. I'll just need to send my remarks on this report first; the Council requested my input on this a.s.a.p."

Kade lay in his bed that evening thinking about tomorrow. He couldn't wait to see the stuff Gannon had found, although he did have to wonder how he was going to keep this from Drex if they decided to test any of these items out. Would he dare do it? To be mischievous for the sake of his own entertainment didn't sound very Jedi-like. Besides, he really couldn't imagine being able to keep anything from Drex; blind or not, the man had a seventh and eighth sense when it came to detecting mischief. Ah, well, that problem could wait until tomorrow because for now, he needed to get some sleep.