"I want ten more. Ninety degree elbows or they don't count."
Teller breathed heavily as he pushed himself off of the stone floor. Sadly, no matter how hard he tried, he just didn't have enough energy for a witty remark.
"That's eight. That's nine. Ok, good job."
He collapsed on the ground, frustratedly watching Thayla pull herself up as if the push-ups had been trivial to her. Every time she made Teller exercise, whether strength training, running or anything else, she would always do it right beside him. It had seemed kind at first, an act of solidarity by a master toward their student. However, after three weeks of the full-fledged Jedi leaving the boy in her dust, he was starting to get annoyed.
"Can we take a break?" he managed to stammer out.
"Absolutely. Let's get hydrated, but be quick. Today we're examining Jedi relations and Senatorial governance in the High Republic period. Adrenaline really helps with long term memory, so keep your heart rate up."
"Yeah, sure," he said, slipping into the kitchen and then out the front door, as soon as her back was turned.
After being chased by the Blood Battalion up to the city limits, the gang had been given a place to stay. It was the mansion of the former richest mine owner on Centrallis, now one of thousands of average miners toiling under the hot sun. A lot of men and women just like him had been put in their place by the ragtag militia/government of Nordic, the Rabble.
They had welcomed the Jedi in with open arms. Any enemy of the Bloods was a friend of theirs, as far as they were concerned.
"I like these guys," Jon had said, as soon as they arrived.
Teller walked down the street, which looked a lot like the nicer neighborhoods in Davn. Plenty of massive houses lined every block, only now each one held multiple families. Some of them had seven people shoved into each bedroom, sleeping on bare and itchy cots.
Business was booming though and people were lining up to join. As Teller moved closer to the outskirts of the city, speeders, dollies and wheelbarrows filled with Centrallis's famous blue dust were being brought into the city to be processed and shipped offworld. The city was essentially surrounded by a moat, as people only stopped mining once the threat of sinking or being buried alive made it too dangerous to go any lower, and even then some still tried.
"Do you spy anything interesting?" Teller asked Jon. After climbing three flights of stairs, which was not easy after one of Thayla's workouts, he emerged on the roof of an apartment building to find Jon standing watch.
"I spy a padawan who is supposed to be learning, right now."
"I can only take so much of Thayla in one day."
"Be nice."
"Oh, come on. She's absolutely-"
"Be nice," Jon insisted, with more fire in his words than Teller had expected. "Some people would give their left arm for the chance to become a Jedi and you should be grateful to have someone as knowledgeable and talented as Thayla to teach you."
"Ok, I get it." He backed away slowly and let Jon go back to studying the horizon. "Have they come back?"
"They never left."
"What? You mean the Blood Battalion, right?"
"There are only so many ways in and out of this city. Those roads are pretty thin, now that everything has been stripped bare, which makes it easy to see how many speeders are coming in and out."
"You're joking, right? Did you seriously stand here and count-"
"For the last six days, exactly four heavy speeders have been moving back and forth across this side of the city, never coming back to refuel or dump their payloads."
"Well, you're very thorough. What do we do about it?"
"Nothing. They'll see us coming if we go out to confront them. We just have to wait and see."
"What do you think they're waiting on?"
Jon looked out one last time, scanning the landscape that was packed with miners and machinery as far as the eye could see. "I have absolutely no idea."