Lippy found CJ in the bar’s private training and exercise room. She had changed into her workout clothes and was busily beating a heavy punching bag into submission. Around her matted area of the floor, three other heavy bags were waiting in each corner.

“CJ?”

CJ responded by backing away from the bag and giving it three swift kicks. She spun then on her grounded foot and faced Lippy, giving her her best “not-the-frell-now” look. Lippy nodded and left the room.

CJ stood still for a second before launching herself into her Dance of Death drills. As seconds became minutes, the four punching bags around her were pummelled viciously amid a slew of punches, kicks, body rolls and violent grunts. Faster and faster she ranged among the padded victims of her wrath in an ever complex display of power and agility. Finally, at the breaking point, CJ stopped before her original opponent and proceeded to pound the bag a dozen times in quick succession before leaning on the bag and dropping her head.

Lippy, now dressed in her exercise clothes, stood quietly at the side admiring her friend’s martial prowess. “Was that last bit for the tralk out there?”

CJ raised her head and looked over at Lippy, a look of sweaty, grim determination on her face. “No. That was for Feld, that sonuvatralk frellwit.” Leaving the bag, CJ walked over to Lippy, who threw a towel to her. As she wiped the sweat off her face and neck, CJ quietly said to Lippy, “Earlier back there, you said that trouble follows us around like a shadow. I think you’re wrong. Sometimes, I think that WE are the shadow.”

Lippy’s face darkened considerably in response, her own battles with the dark side of the Force still fresh in her memory. “Be careful who you include in this ‘we’ of yours, peacekeeper. Some of us already fight those battles on a daily basis. If you need to find religion to sort things out, then I suggest you do so soon.”

Lippy turned away and walked to another exercise mat. After stretching the muscles in her wiry, dancer’s body, she stood in the center of the mat and said aloud, “Shockers Progression, Level 16.”

Within seconds, sixteen small, metallic orbs flew out of a hole in the wall and levitated around her expectantly. Lippy simply stood there with her eyes closed and let the power of the Force flow through her. She could feel everything. She was everything.

“Begin.”

Two of the orbs left the formation and flew around Lippy blasting the air around her with blue energy bolts. In response, Lippy danced and twirled and flipped her way around the mat avoiding the beams. After a minute, a third orb entered the fray, then a fourth, then a fifth. When the eighth orb joined in the attack, Lippy reached out with the Force and retrieved her light saber. Blue bolts met red beam in a shattering white-hot shower of super-heated air. By the time the twelfth orb attacked, Lippy was using the Force to push against the orbs’ in an effort to divert them. Finally, when all the orbs were committed to the struggle, Lippy was a whirling dervish amid a shower of light and flame with multiple orbs being knocked far afield.

CJ could only watch in awe. She’d seen Lippy go through these types of drills before, but never with this many orbs in flight.

“Enough!” came the cry and the battle stopped immediately with Lippy in a crouched stance on the balls of her feet, one arm stretched forward, the other overhead with the light saber. It was one of the most impressive and inspiring things CJ’d ever seen up to that point.

After “Exercise finished.”, the orbs returned to the their home in the wall.

As Lippy walked back, CJ threw her a towel in return.

CJ spoke first, “I’m sorry, Lipps. I shouldn’t have -”

“No, no. I overreacted. My battles are my own. On one level, I knew what you meant. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

CJ smiled then, and nodded. Motioning back toward Lippy’s mat, she said seriously, “Then you think this is going to be more difficult than anyone’s let on?”

Lippy frowned. “Yes. Yes I do.”

Budo’s voice interrupted them from the doorway. “You girls don’t know the half of it.”