The Force Always Says Yes [Star Wars]

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 20: You Might Say We're Encouraged To Love​

Arwain slapped the holocron onto the table in between Nerim and the Dug.

Tetha's eyes widened. "Be careful with that thing!"

The Jedi Master shrugged. "Please, it's lasted a thousand years, it's most certainly not fragile," she said, rubbing her hands together. "Now, you said this is Darth Machina?"

Nerim balked. "Master, don't tell me you're planning on turning it on."

"Why wouldn't I?" Arwain asked, confused.

"Why would you?"

"Because it's there."

Tetha and Nerim shared a concerned glance. "You're absolutely sure she's a Jedi?" Tetha cautiously whispered.

"Well, I...met her in the Temple," Nerim's brow furrowed. "Perhaps I should check a roster or something."

"I'm not going to activate it right now," Arwain chuckled, putting a hand on top of Nerim's head. "Fear not, I know what I'm doing."

"Well I don't know what you're doing," Nerim objected as she ruffled his hair, "In fact I have no idea what you've been doing for the past day! You seem to have gotten into a remarkably dangerous situation!"

"Oh, that hardly counts," she waved her hand, "You weren't even there!"

"Masterrr..." Nerim pouted.

"Young Nerim, I realize that you might be unaware, but I am something of an expert in Sith holocrons," Arwain chided, pushing the Dug over so she could take a seat. The Dug looked extremely uncomfortable sandwiched in the booth between Nerim and Arwain. "It's actually really exciting to find a new one."

"How many Sith Lords have you spoken to, exactly?"

Arwain gave him an enigmatic smile as Jianno filled a thermos with caf and started moving to the cockpit. "I'll set us for Coruscant," she called back.

Tetha watched as she left, and then stared aimlessly at the wall. "Coruscant..." She repeated breathlessly. After a moment, she turned to Arwain. "Is my father dead?"

The Master gave her a concerned look. "Not unless Jianno killed him while I wasn't looking. Jianno! Did you kill this girl's father?"

Jianno's voice echoed from the cockpit. "Who's that?"

"I don't know!"

Jianno did not verbally respond, but Nerim could sense a frustrated scowl.

"Tosh-Ran Rhissa," Tetha answered quietly.

"Oh. No, I don't believe he's dead," Arwain answered. "He's quite the duelist, though. It's been decades since someone came at me with a cortosis-weave vibroblade."

Nerim ran a hand through his hair to try and straighten it out. "Goodness, what is with you people..."

Tetha's eyes dropped to the floor. Arwain tilted her head, and spoke with concern. "You act like you would rather him be dead."

"I don't know," Tetha sighed, "Now I worry that he'll be looking for me."

"Oh," Arwain said, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. "You had an adversarial relationship, I take it?"

Tetha leaned on the wall and crossed her arms. "He has a...professional interest in me."

"How disturbingly vague!" Arwain said, straightening up. "But far be it from me to pry for details. I'll respect your privacy. By the way, have you been training to become a Sith Lord?"

Tetha stared at her for a few long moments, and then glanced to Nerim. "Disarmingly direct, huh?"

Nerim laughed, then immediately cringed in pain and clutched his stomach. "Master, she's not a Sith."

"Not what I asked," Arwain's eyes narrowed.

Tetha turned away and strode out of the room. "Assume what you want," she said bitterly as she disappeared from view.

With Tetha gone, Arwain's eyes focused on Nerim. He sighed and leaned back in his seat. "Go ahead. I can tell something's on your mind, Master."

"Why yes, actually," Arwain smiled. "Lots of things, really. But we can set that aside for right now. I wanted to congratulate you, apprentice."

He raised a wary eyebrow. "Um. Thank you?"

"I sense remarkably little conflict in you," she explained. "When we first met, you didn't want to be a Jedi. Up through our training, your trip to Ilum, and our venture on Raxus, you were wracked with doubts and anxieties. But you seem much more sure of yourself now, and I think it's paying off."

He pursed his lips in thought. Somehow he did feel...at ease. He couldn't believe how smoothly everything went. No—not smoothly. It was a disaster every step of the way, just like always. But somehow he just...went with it, and he handled every problem as it came.

Was a stronger, better person? Probably. But there was something more to it, a sort of inspiration that had taken hold. He was no better suited to resolve the complications that arose on Utapau than he had been on Raxus, but he had suddenly gone from fighting against the current to using it. He was tacking into the wind, just like Arwain had told him he would.

She nodded up to the clock on the wall. "You know what day it is?"

He thought for a moment, and then shook his head.

"This is the sixth month anniversary of me pressganging you into being my Padawan," Arwain smiled fondly. "I told you back then that you only had to give me a chance, I'd let you go if you got to this point and still didn't want to be a Jedi. I planned to keep up my end of the bargain. Honestly, I was hoping to positively influence your decision by making you interested in exploring Utapau and solving the mystery of the holocron," she chuckled, "But it seems that things never go as planned."

Nerim's mouth curled into a tight frown. "You're giving me a chance to quit?"

"Not just a chance," she leaned back, "You're free to quit the Jedi whenever you want. I'm not going to force you to stay as my apprentice. I tried my best to make sure you got to feel the Force, and I think you really have, beyond even my expectations. From now on, you're the master of your life."

She let the conversation grow silent, smiling fondly at him while he examined her for any hint of joking or implication. He couldn't find anything. She was really being as straightforward as she could be.

Nerim cast his eyes down and inhaled, his lungs filling with spiced air and the smell of ozone. There was a familiar lurch and snap as the ship slingshot into hyperspace, and then the smooth, gentle caress of the superluminal lanes. He thought about where he was going, and the word that came to mind startled him: He was going home, to the Temple. It was a home that he didn't particularly like. In fact, he had preferred quite literally everywhere he had ever been other than the Temple. The thought of returning to that building inspired within him with a sort of mild dread. But he had started thinking of it as home.

Perhaps he would find a better home elsewhere. Perhaps he was just the type of person who didn't like being home. But perhaps it was where he belonged for now. And perhaps Arwain was right; there really needed to be some sort of change from the inside of that big, cold, gray building.

He exhaled, and nodded to the passage Tetha had disappeared down. "What's going to happen to her when we get back?"

"Oh, hell if I know," Arwain shrugged. "I don't plan on arresting her, if that's what you're asking. But a Force Sensitive student training under a Sith holocron? Hasn't happened for a century or two at least. Honestly..." She trailed off, "Might just not tell the Council about her. What a teeth-pulling conversation that would be."

Nerim's jaw dropped. "You would keep secrets from the Council? About the Sith?"

She looked Nerim in the eye, dead serious. "Do you trust her?"

He considered the question for a moment. "Yes."

"Then I trust her," Arwain said as if it were as easy as confirming the sky was blue. "Listen, Nerim, I told you this six months ago as well; we must not live our lives jumping at shadows and preparing to go to war with the Sith every moment of our lives, or else winning the war had no purpose. Be honest with me, did you open the holocron?"

He shook his head, and then stopped. "Well, no. But Tetha did."

"Right. Not that scary, was he?"

"He was...terrifying," Nerim shuddered, remembering that inhuman crawling sensation, the pressure in his mind and the sludge in his soul. "He tried to convince Tetha to kill me."

"Precisely, Nerim!" She leaned forward. "But she didn't, and so he still sits in his pyramid, powerless. That is the nature of the Sith. They seek absolute victory with ravenous hunger. It's scary when you first encounter it. The power radiating off of them, the Darkness, that absolute nature, it seems insurmountable, that things could be no other way."

She pulled out a lighter and flicked it open, emitting a small flame. "But Sith always deal in absolutes. That is their weakness," she continued. "Their victory must be total and absolute, or else it is a failure. Total, absolute darkness seems powerful because it convinces you that it is the natural state of things, that it cannot be touched or combated, it surrounds and penetrates all things. But it is the most fragile and tenuous of all forces, because light—any amount of light—utterly overpowers any darkness. And everything in this universe emits light. The Sith cannot defeat a person who can say no."

Nerim sat and thought for a moment. "So I...shouldn't always say yes?"

"And how do you expect me to answer that?" Arwain winked. "With a yes-or-no?"

Nerim thought about how to respond, before settling with an unsure "...Maybe?"

Arwain turned to the Dug sat in the middle of the booth. "Will you get a load of this Padawan?"

"Ahh!" Nerim jumped in his seat, "By the Force, I forgot about him!"

The Dug whined pitifully.

Arwain laughed loudly, patting the Dug on the shoulder. "You know, Nerim," She sighed in contentment and spoke more quietly, "You should probably go check in on Tetha. I imagine she could use a friendly ear, but I don't think she likes me. I think she likes you, though."

Nerim was still for a second, and then nodded and stood up, moving towards the passage. Before he could get past the doorway, Arwain called after him.

"By the way! You still haven't answered my question!"

"Which one?" Nerim turned to her.

"About whether you'll stay as my Padawan or not."

"You didn't ask," he said, rounding the corner. His weary legs carried him down the corridor, towards the cargo bay. The smooth metal hallway twisted around the core of the ship and each footstep made a dull clung as he limped his way down it.

Eventually, he peeked his head into the cargo bay. Along with the numerous crates that were already there, there was a cart that had been filled with the numerous pieces of armor, weaponry, and slag he had seen in the curiosity room at Tetha's mansion. Tetha herself sat on a crate next to it, pensively holding a Mandalorian beskar gauntlet in her hands.

She looked up as Nerim entered. "Hey," he said.

Tetha didn't answer. Her face was as cryptically blank as ever.

Nerim decided to take the leap of faith and sat down next to her. "I'm sorry that things are...hectic for you now."

She shook her head. "They always have been, I guess. I'm not going to miss that hellish mansion, and perhaps it's for the best that the holocron gets locked in a vault somewhere," she sighed, gripping the gauntlet harder. "I just...think I will miss Crybaby and Tiny."

He nodded. "I think I'll miss them, too. I'm developing quite the gallery of people I'll miss, actually," he said, his mind drifting back to watching the Cathar ship depart.

She briefly met eyes with Nerim, and then looked back down. "It's cold and the air is thin in here," she said, fiddling with the gauntlet.

Nerim looked down at it. "Is that glove important to you? I could convince Jianno to part with it."

Tetha shook her head. "No. Not at all. It's just that...when I was very small—just out of the tube, I think, there was another clone. She used to hold my hand when I got upset." She glanced at him, all the ice and steel having melted from her expression. "Stars, I don't know why I told you that. That's so embarrassing."

He frowned. "It is not. What was her name?"

"Oh, I don't think she had a name," Tetha sighed.

"That's..." Nerim tried to search for a word other than 'horrifying', and couldn't find one.

Tetha sat in silence for a moment, and then tossed the gauntlet into the pile. She reached over and grabbed Nerim's hand and held it between hers. He offered no resistance, for his part, letting the moment stretch on. He wasn't sure there was anything he could say, so he just settled on being there.

"Where are you going to drop me off?" She finally asked.

"I don't wanna think about that," Nerim sighed. "I already have too many people to miss. Can we at least spend a couple more hours trying to kill each other?"

She giggled, just a little.

Nerim felt that fluttery sensation in his chest again. "You have a really nice laugh, you know."

Tetha smiled at him, small and reserved but genuine. "You have a nice sense of humor."

He thought for a moment. "My Master tells me that a sense of humor and a sense of the Force go hand in hand. Although sometimes I think she's just trying to get me to lighten up. I've been known to be a bit of a party killer."

"A Jedi? Party killer?" She asked sarcastically. "Hah...what was it like, growing up as a Jedi?"

He took a breath and shrugged, staring at the ceiling. "It wasn't like much of anything. Your first memories are meditation training. You're told your whole life you exist for a predetermined reason. You have no family, you're surrounded by people with no families—hell, you never even see a family. Practically have no idea what it is. You just live in these smooth white chambers, waiting for your next test, and the one after that, and the one after that, watching the people around you succeed more than you and get the privilege of continued status quo, or fail more than you and get washed out..."

She squeezed his hand tightly. He turned to look at her, and though her expression was still muted, tears ran down her cheeks. "I...I understand exactly how you feel, Nerim," she said softly.

He put on his best unimpressed face. "No you don't, you haven't been elbowed in the nose today."

She laughed, and then the laughter turned into crying, and then back into laughter again. She leaned into him, and he leaned back. They stayed there for some time, until Nerim felt her shift in position. He turned to her, and then felt her lips touch his. He began to question the event, and then decided not to, and gently pressed into the kiss himself.

It was somewhat awkward, being that they were both in pain, covered in dry sweat and bruises, sitting on a cargo crate in a hijacked alien's ship, but it only made it more important to return the kiss; where their lips touched was the most comfortable place he could imagine at the moment.

After a moment, they broke, and Tetha looked at him with a wide grin, her nose scrunched in that way he had somehow decided a long time ago he really liked. "Sorry about your face," she said.

"Don't worry, I have a good memory," he said breathlessly. "I'll get you back one of these days."

She giggled.

---------------

They spent some time together, before sleep threatened to take them. Tetha wandered off to the shower, and Nerim meandered back into the main room, to find Jianno and the Dug drinking and laughing together, trading what he assumed were either interesting stories or absurdly long insults with each other in Huttese.

He moved past the party towards the cockpit, where he hoped there was a comfortable seat in a relatively quiet spot. He was right, of course, and so was his master, who was sitting with the Sith holocron in her lap, thumbing through her datapad.

She looked up at him and gave him that coy expression which he knew meant that she was aware of something he wouldn't like. He sighed. No point in turning around now. He plopped in the seat next to hers and started double checking the nav computer and news feeds.

His eyes darted to her and back to the console. He broke first. "Master I get the strangest feeling you have another long lecture for me."

"Oh no," she chuckled, "Don't worry about that. Actually, I got the impression you wanted to tell me something."

Nerim thought for a moment, and sighed. That endless second-guessing and self-examination the Temple had taught him was catching up to him. "I'm somewhat concerned about my senses. I got this...feeling, which I presumed was within the Force. It was a light, fluttering feeling in my chest that I had never had before. I'm starting to worry that it's not a feeling in the Force. It may be..."

"Your concerns are correct, Nerim," she said, wistfully looking out the window into hyperspace, "And so were your original thoughts. It's both. How could it ever be just one or the other?"

He aimlessly tapped at the console, scrolling by traffic reports without actually reading them. "...You're not upset with me?"

"Oh please, don't have one intimate experience and go treating me like an innocent summer child," She huffed, "I've kissed my fair share of Dark Jedi also."

Nerim froze, and slowly turned to his master. "...Are we sure you're a Jedi?"

Arwain grinned slyly at him, her fingers drumming on the Sith holocron in her lap. "You're allowed to pick up anything you can let go, Nerim. No more, no less."


-----------

Spoiler: A/N

I swear I didn't plan to upload the big finale of the arc on May the 4th, but sometimes things just work out, eh? This is the end of my prepared material, and like last time, I have no idea at all when the next updates will come. Like I said, I don't seem to want to upload until I have a big batch. At the risk of sounding self absorbed, this is a very intricate story with lots of looping motifs, and so it's easier to make as big chunks than bit by bit. Any comments at all would be greatly appreciated. I'm already writing outlines for the next arc.

 

[chiefnewo]

I'm afraid I exhausted my small literary criticism ability earlier in the thread, so I'll just reiterate that I'm enjoying the story greatly.

I don't see Tetha joining the order but I'm looking forward to seeing her pop up in Nerim's life along the way.

 

[shargle]

so ready for the inevitable unboxing

 

[aedrik_doubletree]

This story is rapidly taking a spot on my top 10 SW stories, easily top 5 if you keep writing more

 

[sports-information]

That last line is a damn good one!

 

[Psyentific]

She huffed, "I've kissed my fair share of Dark Jedi also."

Nerim froze, and slowly turned to his master. "...Are we sure you're a Jedi?"

Arwain grinned slyly at him, her fingers drumming on the Sith holocron in her lap. "You're allowed to pick up anything you can let go, Nerim. No more, no less."

Click to shrink...

Is this what the kids call "pure rizz"?

 

[Hyenanon]

I'm afraid I exhausted my small literary criticism ability earlier in the thread, so I'll just reiterate that I'm enjoying the story greatly.

I don't see Tetha joining the order but I'm looking forward to seeing her pop up in Nerim's life along the way.

Click to shrink...

This story is rapidly taking a spot on my top 10 SW stories, easily top 5 if you keep writing more

Click to shrink...

That last line is a damn good one!

Click to shrink...

Thank you!

Is this what the kids call "pure rizz"?

Click to shrink...

Arwain has levels of rizz that some might consider...unbecoming. It's not a skill the Jedi would teach you.

so ready for the inevitable unboxing

Click to shrink...

I've never thought of opening a Sith Holocron as an "unboxing" but now that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Jesus Christ imagine hearing someone say that about your recorded soul. It might crush Machina's psyche entirely.

 

[gasparr]

God damn this arc was astonishingly excellent. I'm absolutely hooked now.

 

[Hyenanon]

Spoiler: A/N

Another 10 (or so? maybe more...) chapters, and sooner than expected. Guess my brain wasn't as finished with processing Star Wars as I had thought! I can pin a good portion of the blame on rewatching the Original Trilogy as well as being inspired by a couple recent manga I've read. When I originally started this fanfic, it was an experiment to see two things; how well I could write the looping motifs of Star Wars, and how well I could write a mentor/student dynamic. It's still mainly defined by that, but every arc has had its own 'sub-theme', persay.

The first arc (from chapter 1 to the vision quest on Ilum) dealt with themes of resentment and isolation, while the second arc (Raxus Secundus) dealt with insecurity and discovering a wider world, and the third arc (Utapau) dealt with finding your rhythm and becoming comfortable. In retrospect, it's a pretty classic Hero's Journey type thing, and it makes sense that I unconsciously replicated it, seeing as I'm trying so hard to do Star Wars, which is a distillation of that formula. I dunno why I'm telling you this in an author's note, I just think it's neat that Star Wars is so meticulously shaped that things fall into that rhythm naturally without actually planning that far ahead on my part. That said, enjoy taking your guesses at where this arc is going.

Oh, also as a minor note, I switched writing programs and have taken the opportunity to switch some of my grammar around. You very well might not even notice, but if you see me using different punctuation or something like that and wonder why, that's why.

Chapter 21: Similar In Almost Every Way​

The journey from Utapau on the Outer Rim to Coruscant in the Core was long, but not nearly long enough for Nerim's tastes. He had only just recovered from the worst of his bruises when they dropped out of hyperspace in the system of Corellia to refuel for the last stretch of the journey.

Those three days were spent staring at the ceiling, listening to Jianno and Arwain arguing, holding back his laughter every time Tetha snapped at his Master trying to be nice to her, cringing in pain every time he twisted his torso, and occasionally stealing away quiet moments of whispers, shared smiles, and brief shows of affection he wouldn't admit to under threat of torture.

He ate food far too spicy for his liking, slept in a tiny cot with torn sheets that he nearly fell out of each 'night', and involuntarily shuddered each time he walked past the holocron his Master was meticulously guarding. The facilities were dirty and each pit stop was a headache as they had to confirm the squirrely Dug's papers and go through the lengthy hair-pulling exercise of a Hutt Space ship docking on a Republic station. Arwain and Jianno bickered, Tetha stared daggers at Arwain, Jianno kept trying to coax stories of battle out of Tetha, and all the while the Dug teetered between great annoyance and great anxiety.

They were maybe the most fulfilling three days of his life.

Maybe not the best. No, he definitely felt a greater sense of elation on the fateful days on Raxus Secundus and Utapau, when he finished his lightsaber and had his first kiss. But these days bumbling into each other on the ship somehow felt—for lack of a better word—nutritious for his soul. It was like he had been starving, suffering some vitamin deficiency, and it was finally being fulfilled.

When he woke up on that fourth morning, and crawled out of bed, he expected it to be much the same. Somehow he managed to sleep later than everyone else—except the Dug, of course, who was snoring away on the cot below him. Nerim briefly went through his morning routine and then exited out into the main room of the ship, to find it empty. The voices of the others carried down from the cockpit, so he wandered into it, finding the other three tapping at various consoles.

The planet of Corellia hung proud and gleaming out the window. It was blue and tan, covered in clouds and dotted with occasional green splotches. The southern tip of the continent was lit up like Coruscant, all gunmetal gray and sparkling orange; the capital city of Coronet.

"This cannot be good," Arwain grumbled, flicking on the holo-projector.

"What's happening?" Nerim asked groggily, announcing his presence. Tetha turned to him and smiled slightly, while Jianno just raised up a hand in acknowledgment and kept buried in her work.

Arwain heaved a big performative sigh, drooping in her chair. "Beware, Padawan," she warned, "The Council is calling."

"The Jedi Council?" Nerim frowned.

Without answering, Arwain straightened up, flattened out her robe, and put her hands in her lap, posed with the utmost elegance. The projector flickered to life, and a ghost of the Master Gendi appeared. Nerim remembered the old man from the caves of Ilum. He was Human, although his thin white beard and strangely long eyebrows made him easy to recognize.

"Greetings, Master Gendi," Arwain said respectfully.

"And greetings to you, too, Arwain," he chuckled, apparently amused. "It's quite the surprise to see you so well conducted." Arwain gave a quizzical expression, and Gendi's smile dropped, his tone becoming much more serious. "The Council has received troubling news."

"And that would be?"

"According to reports, it appears the holocron you have received is of a Sith nature?"

She glanced to the black pyramid sat on the dash of the cockpit, something Nerim had almost not noticed. Every time Arwain was between him and it, it was almost like she eclipsed it, or perhaps more like it had been covered by a lampshade. It was almost as if she had some sort of gravitational distortion that displaced its malice. "Yes," she cautiously replied, "It certainly seems that way, by construction. I've yet to open it, but my Padawan witnessed it active, and has told me it claimed to be one 'Darth Machina'."

"Your Padawan?" Gendi asked incredulously. "It was...Nerim, wasn't it?"

Arwain then glanced to Nerim, who began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. Tetha pensively swiveled her chair, keeping her back to the hologram of Gendi. Even Jianno raised her head in curiosity. The hologram projector flashed over him with that almost imperceptible blue light as it added him to the call.

"Um...Yes?" Nerim answered uncertainly.

"Hmm..." Gendi stroked his beard in thought. "This is most worrisome. Are there any immediate threats the Council should be aware of?"

"Nothing immediate," Arwain shook her head. "The holocron was in the possession of a non-sensitive collector and geneticist. I imagine Utapau has already petitioned the Republic for redress, given our mission became somewhat...complicated."

"Indeed," Gendi nodded slowly, "But there are more troubling things afoot. There have been signs of...greater instability. You are requested to appear before the Council as soon as possible. And bring Nerim...and the Mandalorian you have been working with."

Arwain's lips pursed in frustration. Nerim could tell she didn't like that, but he didn't even have to look at Jianno to realize she disliked it far more. "I will be there as quickly as reasonably possible," Arwain spoke carefully.

"Good. Oh, and by the way," Gendi added softly, as if it were an afterthought, "Who's ship are you flying right now?"

"Oh, a friend," Arwain replied quickly, reaching forward to the projector, "I'll be requisitioning the proper compensation for his service to the Republic, also for his daughter, might be best to get started on the paperwork right now actually, I will report to the Council as soon as we get back to Coruscant, may the Force be with you!" She jabbed the End Call button with fervor and the hologram disappeared.

There was a short awkward silence until Jianno piped up. "Why the hell do they want me?"

Arwain sighed heavily. "Who can say?"

"Master," Nerim frowned, sitting at the last available chair, "You seem very...uncomfortable with the Council."

She crossed her arms. "Have you ever met a Master that wasn't uncomfortable with the Council?"

He thought for a moment. "Despite being a Jedi all my life, I don't know that I've met many Masters who weren't part of the Council. In fact...I can only really think of you, Master."

"Exactly," Arwain said, idly rapping a knuckle on the glass of the cockpit, "We don't tend to stick around the Temple much. As of today, though there are roughly 15,000 Jedi Knights, there are only 39 Masters, and 12 of them are on the High Council. Another 15 sit on the Councils of Reassignment, Reconciliation, and First Knowledge. That leaves 12 free roaming Masters."

Tetha turned to Arwain. "Why are they such a minority?"

"In order to raise a Jedi Knight to the rank of Master, you need the unanimous consensus of the High Council," Arwain explained, "And they don't tend to find a consensus unless they have to. As in, to fill an empty position on one of the Councils. To become a Master when there is no need for another Master requires you to be quite...Undeniable."

"Undeniable, you say...?" Nerim repeated as if the word were a synonym for 'stubborn.'

The Master smirked. "And forceful of personality. But, to finish the thought, those of us who achieve Mastery in the Force without achieving power in the Order tend to find ourselves in that awkward position for a reason. Or multiple. And those reasons have a large crossover with the list of reasons why one might be reticent to interact with the Council."

"Do you think they're aware of me?" Tetha asked, her face neutral and tone even, but the air around her tinged with some amount of nervousness.

"No," Arwain shook her head, "Although I will try as soon as possible to get you a new identity within the Republic. It's not that hard for me to access witness protection," she said softly, looking aimlessly out of the window, "Yet somehow I get the feeling the Council is feeling extra nosy. Hm...Perhaps that's why they want Jianno."

The Mandalorian exhaled through her nose. "They'll find me a tougher challenge to read than they expect."

"I don't doubt it," Arwain nodded.

Nerim sat and wondered and worried for several minutes as they continued the docking procedures for a Corellian refueling station in orbit. Eventually, Arwain picked up the Sith holocron and shuffled out wordlessly, and a few minutes later Tetha also left just as silently, although she briefly placed a hand on Nerim's should as she did.

Alone in the cockpit with Jianno, he finally realized something. He was afraid of the Council reading his mind, and not liking what they saw. Somehow, he had the courage to ask what he needed to ask. He moved to the seat next to hers, and leaned forward. "Jianno, I need your help."

"Mm?" She grunted in response, not looking at him, obviously not liking where this was going.

"I need you to teach me the Litany of Formlessness," he said, recalling the method by which she hid her presence from Arwain when they first met.

"Not going to happen," Jianno replied immediately.

"Please," Nerim pleaded, "I don't want the Council in my head any more than you want them in yours."

"Is there no Jedi trick to accomplish something similar?" Jianno asked rhetorically.

"I'm not a good Jedi," Nerim sighed, "And I know I'm not good Mandalorian material either. But I have to try something. There are things that are important to me, that I want to fight for, and I don't have anywhere else to turn right now."

"You're not a Mandalorian at all," she replied bluntly. "Our techniques are not for you to pick and choose from."

Somewhere, from a place that surprised even Nerim, he felt a spark of indignation at that. "I've been picking up things from you since we first started journeying together. There's no helping that. I've heard you brag before about how Mandalorians are special, how you are a culture without a race or homeworld, how you can adapt and adopt others into the fold." He raised his arms, "And it just stops here, the line is drawn right in front of Nerim?"

She glared at him. "There are rules to becoming a Mandalorian. The Six Actions are our binding principles, same as your Code is to the Jedi. It's not something you do because it's convenient or a passing interest."

"Six Actions?!" Nerim raised his voice in frustration. "I'm sorry, remind me again. Is it the one about me not raising my children to speak Mandalorian that I'm violating right now? I'm sorry, I'll get right on that as soon as I have any! Or is it the one about reporting to the Mand'alor? She's a little dead right now!"

Her glare turned into a full scowl, and she swiveled on her chair to lean forward at him. "Don't be a smartass. Our culture has existed for tens of thousands of years, we're well aware of these protests. Doesn't change the fact that you don't speak Mandalorian, you don't have a clan, you don't have a family—"

"I'm asking so I can protect the people close to me!" Nerim interrupted, that inexplicable rage continuing to well up in his chest. "I might not have a family or a clan right now, but isn't that the point of asking to be adopted?"

"Do not interrupt me again," Jianno said sternly, standing up. At her full height she was only a head taller than he was when he was standing, but she was far more intimidating. "Everyone in the Galaxy—except for you freaks—wants to protect their loved ones. Doesn't make them Mandalorians."

He suddenly realized the source of the rage. He jumped out of his chair and stood in front of her. "I hate how you talk about the Jedi like you're any different. All you're doing on this ship is carting around pieces of scrap metal from long-dead ancestors, berating and belittling me because I don't measure up to your exact standard!"

"You don't measure up to any standard!" Jianno pointed in his face, "You don't even meet the dress code!"

Nerim grabbed her hand and pulled it down and to the side, forcing her off balance. He grabbed the collar of her armor, and before realizing what he was saying, he shouted "Verd ori'shya beskar'gam!"

It took a moment before he even consciously realized what he had said. A warrior is more than his armor. He was pretty sure he heard Jianno mumble that once. He didn't know why it had stuck in mind, but upon hearing him say it, Jianno's eyes widened. She froze for a split second and then shoved him off of her. "I don't wanna hear you mangle my language again," she growled, turning away and beginning down the hallway.

"Fine then!" Nerim threw his hands up, "Walk away from the person you fought alongside and go polish the empty armor in the cargo hold!"

She stopped in her tracks, turned on her heel, and stared him in the eye. "You trying to start a fight?"

"You trying to do anything other than walk away?" Nerim retorted. Before he had time to say anything else Jianno marched up and let loose a right hook into his cheek. His world exploded in pain and a flash of stars in his vision, seeing the ship snap from left to right as his head turned with the blow.

He charged into her and tackled her to the floor. He punched her back. She kneed him in the ribs and then attempted to roll on top of him, but the hallway wasn't wide enough. He ended up in the corner, and used it to push her off, sending her sliding two feet across the ground with a couple sparks, then leaped back on top of her. She hooked her fist into his gut where remnants of his bruises still were, and he headbutt her in the nose. She responded in some way he didn't see; the fight lasted about six seconds before everything went black.


He came to with a start, immediately attempting to stand up and raise his fists. He banged his head on the low surface above his bunk, and groaned in pain. He felt a heavy hand push on his shoulder and press him back into the bed.

When his vision cleared, he saw Jianno's rather stern (and rather bruised) face staring down at him. "Cool it," she said firmly.

He made a guttural subvocalization of pain and wrapped his arms around his stomach. "Sithspit," he cursed weakly.

"Listen to me," Jianno said, readjusting the bandage on her nose, "And listen good. You only get this once."

 

[CILinkz]

hoping this is a "dont try again to steal my culture speech or i kill you" and not a " "i train you if you do X" speech.

Kinda sick of mandalorian MCs and getting a bit more resentment up sounds fun.

 

[Iridium Flare]

I happen to enjoy Mandalorians, and am interested in seeing where this is going.

 

[Simonbob]

hoping this is a "dont try again to steal my culture speech or i kill you" and not a " "i train you if you do X" speech.

Kinda sick of mandalorian MCs and getting a bit more resentment up sounds fun.

Click to shrink...

I'm kinda hoping the other way, but not both. More, he ends up giving up on being a Jedi totally, and goes off to have a family. Not even having to be a Mando, just being a person who wants to love.

 

[Ashborn]

hoping this is a "dont try again to steal my culture speech or i kill you" and not a " "i train you if you do X" speech.

Kinda sick of mandalorian MCs and getting a bit more resentment up sounds fun.

Click to shrink...

Eh, personally I'd like a "Stop being an ass, you're a Jedi Padawan, not a Mandalorian Foundling, and being Mando is a lot more involved then you're assuming, so the Litany wouldn't work for you anyway as it's designed explicitly for Mandalorians. That said, if you run me through your current methods, I might be able to give you some general advice to help you figure out a working method of your own."

Because really, being a Mandalorian is at least comparable in cultural complexity to being a Jedi, so assuming you can outright crib a technique that leans upon said cultural upbringing and psychological conditioning to even function in the first place? No real way to call that except conceited and dismissive as fuck, so Padawan-kun was cruising for more than a bruising with how he was acting, and it's a decent show of friendship that getting knocked out is all that said behavior earned him.

So yeah, while I can see her being an adult in this situation, maybe even giving him a lead on undergoing the rites to become a Mandalorian in the future if he's serious, the most I could really see her doing for him atm is helping him forge his own technique instead of going full Lung Mandalore I am a Dragon The Mandalore, you are now Asian Mandalorian. I mean, unless she leads her own, house, Clan (or Chapter, etc, etc,) then she probably lacks the authority to induct him in the first place unless she's currently knocking boots with his Master, since Nerim's his Master's Padawan/'Foundling' and therefore probably doesn't qualify to be claimed by Jianno unless he ends up inducted as an extension of a possible relationship between her and Arwain.

So yes, give him some tips to suck less and maybe figure out his own method? Sure.

Render him a Mandalorian without either the cultural upbringing or prerequisite education and training, like it's a license you can find in a cereal box? Fuck no.

Give him some tips on how to legitimately earn his induction to the ranks of the Mandalorian Creed and people, leading to him joining them as a teen/adult and hiding away from the Empire by posing as a Mandalorian bounty hunter who goes everywhere with his pet Ysalamiri lizard in order to fuck over any enemy Force User he's sent after or otherwise has to fight?

Beautiful, especially if his supposed speciality as a hunter of Force Adepts leads to him being hired to hunt his fellow surviving Jedi, which could branch off into all sorts of shenanigans.

But again, this arbitrary 'everyone's now a Princess Mandalorian' bullshit? Yeah, fuck that, either do it well, do it properly, or do it not.

 

[Hyenanon]

Spoiler: A/N

I had to do a fair amount of research for this chapter. Without giving any spoilers, this is the first time I'm using a character from external Star Wars sources, and it's a little silly, but as far as I can tell they are the clearest candidate for the position that they're in. It's surprising how little is written about them, or their position. If I somehow missed some tiny piece of EU that contradicts this, then I guess I have a conflict with canon, but I like how it turned out.

Having written all of these ahead of time, it's interesting seeing what the comments predict or hope for. I always meant to skip the scene that you guys have been speculating on, and it's for a specific theme of the story. But regardless, I sometimes worry that people don't understand the type of story this is supposed to be. I first and foremost made this to fit the mold of a George Lucas-y Star Wars, based on the original six movies and a few select properties from the EU--with fun references to other Star Wars content, like how I made Arwain and Jianno essentially go on the accursed Canto Bight B-plot offscreen during the Utapau arc. In truth, as hard as this may be to believe, I've never actually read a Star Wars fanfiction before, so it's kind of interesting to me that many of the comments I've received express their hopes and aversions in terms of how other fanfictions handle Star Wars. This is a whole side-canon of the property that I'm unaware of, and any motifs shared between them are accidental.

Chapter 22: Two There Are​

Nerim emerged from the quarters on unsteady feet, rubbing his sore jaw. He gathered he had trained through the refueling process, and they were well on their way to Coruscant now.

He glanced across the faces in the main room, seeing Jianno sniffle as a slight trickle of blood dripped down from her nose, Tetha sitting quietly on the floor reading a datapad, and the Dug noisily slurping up some sort of stew. Jianno grabbed her own bowl and moved towards the cockpit, so Nerim sat down next to Tetha.

She slightly jumped, surprised by his sudden appearance, and then frowned upon looking at his face. "Stars. You're more bruise than not."

He chuckled, gently rubbing his tender cheek. "Yeah."

"I would have helped," Tetha quickly said, "But—"

"I get the feeling my Master held you back?" He guessed. She nodded. "Yeah, she likes to leave me to my own battles," he sighed.

"She told me it was part of your training process," Tetha leaned over him to get a better look at his wounds. "This is the kind of thing Darth Machina told me he put his students through, when he was flesh and blood."

"Lucky you," Nerim tried to smile.

She sat back down at his side and took a deep breath. "We're just a few hours away from Coruscant. According to Arwain, she plans to hand me a citizenship card with a new name, give me a stipend, and send me on my way. I've been trying to think of where to go."

Nerim's valiant attempt at a smile became even more unconvincing. "If it helps, I've liked everywhere I've gone in the Galaxy. You shouldn't be too worried."

She took a deep breath and stared at nothing in particular. "Anywhere I go will take quite the adjustment. It's...intimidating, going from being constantly monitored to being completely alone."

Nerim grabbed her hand and gently squeezed it. "You'll never be completely alone," he said, hoping it sounded reassuring. "We'll meet again."

"Yeah..." She glanced sideways at him and smiled just a little. "Try not to mess up your face any more before then, Jedi Boy."


---------------------------------------------------


Nerim felt a familiar sense of dread as he watched out the window of the Temple, seeing the Lucky Worm fly away. The Dug decided to use his reward money to buy his own, newer, nicer ship, and Tetha received the hand-me-down. It only took a few seconds for the light freighter to disappear behind the clouds between the atmospheric recyclers. He could still smell the spices.

Arwain grabbed Nerim by the collar and pulled, dragging him along through the hallway. "Okay, Apprentice, enough gawking," she said.

He sighed and began to willingly move alongside her. "I know, Master. 'Anything you can let go,'" he repeated her words. She smiled at that.

"You still don't get it in your heart," she said gently, "But you're making good progress. Much better than I, when I was your age."

Nerim frowned. "When you were my age, you were probably already a Padawan for five years and throwing rocks around with your mind."

"Yes," she confirmed, "And I lost my temper a lot more. Absolutely tormented my Master."

They entered the elevator with Jianno and ascended towards the High Council room, and he took a deep breath. This would be the first time he ever stood in that hallowed, dreaded place. The place where Padawans became Knights and Knights became Masters, the place where wars were declared and schisms mended, the place where doctrines were quite literally set in stone. Above all, the place where, he was quite sure, he would never see the inside of except to receive scoldings. What made it all the worse was that he was pretty sure Arwain felt the same way.

The doors opened, and despite her hesitation, Arwain strode in as if she owned the place. Nerim meekly scampered in his Master's trail, and Jianno cautiously checked the corners as if expecting an ambush. It was a beautiful, large round room at the top of one of the towers, overlooking the vastness of the Temple and Coruscant as a whole. The sky was a vibrant, shimmering blue, while the city was an ever-tumbling skyline of silvers, reds, and golds, and no harsh glares confronted his eyes, the sun being straight up above the roof. It was a perfect noon.

As they made it to the center of the room, and Nerim quickly stopped to avoid walking directly into his Master's back, he felt twelve sets of eyes hone in on him. The Masters of the High Council were arrayed in a circle around them, and directly across from the elevator sat the Grand Master herself, a woman Nerim had known all his life.

Grand Master Fae Coven was a strange figure, hard to pin down—hard to see, even, as if constantly covered in the blur of a dream. She was a Jenet, a rat-like near-Human species, and her willowy figure sat in the minimalist throne of the Jedi as if it were made for her. It may well have been. She had been Grand Master of the Order since the Ruusan Reformation.

In truth, Nerim still had yet to read the Jedi Path, but he understood it to have been written by her, and to have contained a passage in which she jokingly remarked she did not plan to abdicate her position any time soon. She wrote that passage 800 years ago. She still looked exactly like the illustration.

So when Nerim stood in front of her, it was perhaps not all that odd that he was paralyzed with trepidation. On the other hand, he quite literally didn't remember a time without her appraising gaze. As the Grand Master, she taught the younglings the most basic lessons in the Force, every single day, and just as when he was a child, the whole room seemed to glow from around her.

The eyes of the other masters caused him some amount of anxiety, some worry that they would harm him in some way. But from some deep childhood instinct, he knew that Grand Master Fae could never hurt him on purpose. She could only be disappointed in him, and that was far, far worse.

The Council chamber was silent, as each of the Jedi took a moment to sense one another—except Nerim, who just stood as still and straight-backed as he could, reciting the Litany in his mind. Jianno, of course, spoke first.

"The hell do you want?" She said, her voice metallic and muffled from the helmet which she had insisted on donning before meeting them.

Fae's mousey nose twitched as she looked Jianno up and down, and she rested her chin on her hand, still smiling. Before any of the Councilors could respond, Arwain spoke up. "I think what my compatriot here is trying to say is, 'Hello, good to meet you, what seems to be the issue'?"

Gendi spoke next. "The holocron of Darth Machina...?"

Arwain nodded. "Has already been deposited in the forbidden vault."

"Good..." Gendi said cautiously, in a way that did not make it sound very good.

"Young Nerim," spoke up another Master, a Nautolan whom he was too nervous to remember the name of, "Arwain reported that you have spoken with this holocron?"

Nerim was quiet for a moment as if waiting for himself to reply, before blurting out "Yes, I—uh, I did."

"Nervous, are you?" asked a Councilor to Fae's side.

"Well, yes, but also a little relieved," Nerim laughed uncertainly, "I'm glad that you all seem to recognize Master Arwain. I was becoming somewhat worried she wasn't a Jedi and I had just been kidnapped or something."

There was a very awkward silence. Nobody laughed, not even Arwain, and nobody smiled. Except Fae, who maintained her eternal, enigmatic, beatific smile.

Nerim felt a bead of sweat begin to trail down his brow, and continued reciting the Litany in his head as loudly as he could. His forebrain was awash with rhythmic, primal syllables and utterances that flowed from one to the other with rhyme yet without reason, in fluent Mandalorian. Even to himself, his thoughts felt slippery, which was a positive in that it meant he couldn't coherently worry himself into a spiral, but was a negative in that he was now incoherently worrying.

That small Councilor next to Fae's side spoke again. "Trained in Mandalorian ways."

"And you wonder why we asked for Jianno's presence," Gendi said with upturned palms on the armrests of his chair.

Arwain crossed her arms. "Is heckling my Apprentice and my friend the entire purpose of this meeting?"

Fae softly chuckled, slowly shaking her head in amusement. As she spoke, the room fell in rapt attention. "Why are all of my best students such disasters? I must be doing something wrong."

"This entire room is comprised of your best students," Arwain reminded her. "And Jianno," she added.

"And Nerim," Nerim added sullenly.

Fae's eyes gently met his. "Oh, you are a far better student than you know," she said playfully. "Thus, why I am interested in your contact with the Sith artifact. You absorb everything you come across. It would not be without precedent that you learned a great deal from it in a short time."

Her presence had a strange effect on the room. It was like everything hinged on her, she was the support beam that was holding up the roof, and every Master in the room was leaning on her. And yet she remained perfectly relaxed, not a muscle in her body at strain, her heart not a beat faster than it needed to be at rest. She honestly looked almost...childish, slouched sideways on her rounded red foam and stainless steel throne which more resembled a chair from one of the diners he had visited than a proper seat for an eight-century old Grand Master.

"I...do not believe he attempted to teach me anything, Grand Master," Nerim said. "He seemed quite dismissive of me, and the holocron deactivated itself shortly thereafter. I'm not sure he would have anything useful to say to me, anyways."

"To you?" Gendi asked. "Why yourself in particular?"

Nerim thought for a moment. "I don't think I would be a good Sith."

"A good Sith?" Fae repeated, amused.

"I imagine the Sith Order must have had some kind of criteria," Nerim shrugged.

"No," Fae said, "I don't suppose you would make a good Sith."

"Th—...Thank you?" Nerim replied, unsure.

The Nautolan spoke up. "It remains unclear to me, then, why you are obfuscating your thoughts to us."

"Unnaturally hard to read, he is," the one to Fae's side concurred.

"Always has been," Arwain stated.

Another Councilor spoke up from somewhere behind Nerim, with a deep voice. "The Mandalorian is little easier."

Nerim fought the urge to turn around, and fall into that famed trap of constantly spinning around as the Council spoke to you, but was unable to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "Have you tried asking questions? You know, using your words?"

"The impudence—" One master began, only to be cut off by Fae snickering.

The Grand Master's nose twitched as she spoke, and she straightened out her whiskers. "Remember yourselves, Masters. When you're speaking to the young, you are speaking to your successors. Show some respect," she chided. "Truly wonderful, the mind of a child. Perhaps simplicity is the key. Tell me, Nerim, how did the holocron become active in the first place?"

He pursed his lips. Time for the big lie of the day. "I'm not sure. I may have accidentally activated it somehow, but I find that unlikely. Feats of telekinesis do not come naturally to me, and I have only accomplished minor acts by reflex, not intention. Or perhaps it was somehow designed to open itself on contact with a Force Sensitive."

"Ah," the Grand Master slowly nodded, "But that latter possibility is quite disturbing. If that were the case, it could have come into contact with dozens of Force Sensitives over just the past few years, possibly spreading its teachings?"

"No," Nerim reflexively responded, before internally kicking himself. "Or, um, well, I do not feel that it has been in contact with any Force Sensitives in quite some time."

Fae's eyes slightly narrowed, her implacable smile taking on a slightly more coy tone. "Oh? And why is that?"

He thought for a moment. "If it had been, would they have just given it away? Surely they would disagree with the teachings and destroy or hide it, or they would have been taken in and kept it as a prize of the Sith. I just don't see any method by which it changes hands between scientists and gamblers like this if anyone knew its full nature. I...don't know how it got in the hands of non-Sensitives in the first place, actually. If it's a thousand years old, how could it have spent so long in the black market?"

The Council shared a tense moment of silence, and Gendi spoke. "It seems it may be as we feared. An abandoned Sith Temple has been uncovered by private entities. There may be an entirely new trove of Sith artifacts traveling the Galaxy."

Fae nodded. "Very astute, Nerim. And very well redirected, I might add," she said in a strange tone. Nerim swallowed nervously.

Arwain grinned. "This sounds like fun. How many new artifacts do you suppose there could be?"

"Unlike the Jedi, Sith were self-centered, and did not often make holocrons for future generations," Gendi noted. "It is rare to find more than one in the same Dark Temple."

Another Master to Nerim's left spoke. "Books and manuscripts, on the other hand, are far more common. There could still be a good deal of dangerous information out there."

The Nautolan leaned forward and clasped his hands together. "This is of exceptional severity, Arwain. You may be the best among us at deciphering Sith artifacts, but this is not a mission of discovery. We must secure, or destroy, these traces of the Sith, first and foremost."

"Right, right," Arwain cast her eyes up in thought. "I will interrogate the Darth Machina holocron for the location of the Temple at which it was stored. If we're lucky, we'll be able to track down whoever raided it. They must have an inventory of everything they retrieved from the ruins. Then it'll be a simple process of recovery."

Fae turned her gaze to Arwain. "I have another question. Why was your Padawan exposed to the Sith holocron?"

"It wasn't my intention," his Master said ponderously, "Rather, he stumbled upon it while I was busy chasing a dead lead. It was quite fortuitous, all things considered."

"Fortuitous?" The small Councilor to Fae's right scoffed. "That word I would not have chosen!"

Arwain shrugged. "It all worked out as it should have."

"Did it?" That deep voice from behind responded. "Then why do I sense deception?"

Jianno turned to him. "That's not deception, it's hostility."

"From a Mandalorian, expected," the small Councilor said, "But not from a Jedi. Nerim, very poor form it is to wall your mind off from those in the Order. With this behavior, make Knighthood, you will not."

"Okay," Nerim responded flatly.

There was a brief silence. "'Excuse me?" The Councilor asked.

Nerim shrugged. "Okay," he repeated.

"'Okay', he says! For what? To never a Knight become?"

"I don't have to become a Knight," Nerim said firmly. "Just like you don't have to ascend in rank, either. Or are you really holding your breath to become Grand Master?"

"Hah!" The small Master barked out. "Crave my Master's position, I do not. An amazing chance to embarrass myself, that is!" He shared a brief moment of eye contact and snickering with Fae, and then turned back to Nerim. "But a grave difference there is, between ascending to honor, and ascending to adulthood. A Jedi craves not accolades, but maturity and capability he must pursue!"

Arwain placed a protective hand on Nerim's shoulder. "Then if you wish to get along with my apprentice, you should consider pursuing a broader set of capabilities, or the maturity to accept defeat, because I doubt very much you will make progress like this."

"Always a disaster," Fae repeated with a soft sigh, "Every last one. Quiet down, now, we all well enough know that it is taboo to scold another Master's Padawan. Thus, all scorn should be directed solely to Arwain, as usual."

There was no laughter, but the room noticeably got less tense. At least, for Nerim. Fae quickly scanned the other Councilors, then looked to Arwain again. "I am counting on you. It is imperative that we complete this mission quickly."

Arwain grinned. "Fear not. Sith artifacts are our specialty."

For the first time, Fae stopped smiling. "Young Arwain, do not take this mission lightly. I am the only person alive who has seen a Sith, and stars willing, I will be the last. It is our utmost priority, the core directive of the Jedi Order, to ensure the Sith never return."

Arwain sternly returned her gaze. "That is where we will always disagree, Master. War cannot be at the very center of the mind for a Jedi. It must be love."

Fae sighed and closed her eyes, waving them away with her hand. "Go on, proceed with your interrogation of the holocron. Try to be a more responsible Master to your Padawan, also."

They turned and exited the chamber. As the elevator door closed, Nerim could barely make out Fae's voice. "Goodness. Twos. Trouble always comes in twos..."

At the same time, Nerim both felt like he had learned an incredible amount about his Master, and that he had gained so many more questions.

 

[waffelmeister]

"You will never receive this carrot."

"Fuck your carrot."

Yeah. the whole Jedi Order is built on tradition and definitely not built for Nerim.

 

[grime]

So we're a good few centuries past the brotherhood of darkness larpers, and what? A few decades or a century away from Yoda ascending to GM?

 

[Hyenanon]

"You will never receive this carrot."

"Fuck your carrot."

Yeah. the whole Jedi Order is built on tradition and definitely not built for Nerim.

Click to shrink...

There's a certain theme in Star Wars that I think George Lucas might've gotten from studying Buddhism, maybe particularly chan or zen buddhism, which is that a certain level of heresy is integral to holiness. Throughout the movies we see that the Jedi Order are emphatically the good guys, and people like Yoda and Obi Wan are wise masters, and yet many of the good things that happen are directly a result of their bad advice being disobeyed. I reference this somewhat with the line "You're allowed to pick up anything you can let go," which is itself a reference to an old tale about two Buddhist monks walking down a mountain path. They come across a woman in front of a stream, who's desperate to cross it so she can attend a wedding, but the stream would ruin her dress. The young monk apologizes and says they cannot help, since their vows prevent them from touching a woman, but the old monk ignores him and picks up the lady and helps her across the stream, and she thanks them and they go their separate ways. A few hours later, the young monk is still steaming over this, and finally says "Why did you pick her up, when that is explicitly against our vows?", and the old monk says "I picked her up, but I put her back down at the other side of the stream. You are still carrying her."

imo one of the things this koan underlines is that there is a certain amount of unorthodoxy necessary to achieve a state of enlightenment, and that vows are meant to point towards something and not be that thing in itself. I think Star Wars also underlines this in a way, as Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin, Luke, and Obi-Wan all draw strength, moral righteousness, and success from breaking their vows in ways that orient them towards that something instead of towards the vow itself, whereas Yoda is steadfastly committed to the doctrine itself and fails at almost everything he does. His teachings help his students, but to be committed entirely to Yoda's teachings is to invite disaster. Yoda is still a good guy, the Jedi Order are still good guys, but they are an example of how good people can be lead astray by being committed moreso to the trappings of the Order than the pursuit of goodness. This is one of the core themes of The Force Always Says Yes that I want to explore.

So we're a good few centuries past the brotherhood of darkness larpers, and what? A few decades or a century away from Yoda ascending to GM?

Click to shrink...

We're around 200 B.B.Y., which to the best of my knowledge is slightly before Yoda becomes the Grand Master. Strangely enough, as far as the EU is concerned, Fae Coven became the Grand Master around 1000 B.B.Y., and Yoda was definitely already the Grand Master sometime around 82 B.B.Y., but there is very little indication of anything that happened in between these dates, when Fae Coven died, or when Yoda assumed the rank. I was in a weird position where I could either say it was Fae Coven at an absurd age (which is believable considering she was already supposed to have an absurdly long lifespan, and one of her only lines of dialogue is her joking that she won't abdicate any time soon), or I could come up with an OC Grand Master, or I could extend Yoda's time of holding the rank by around a century or so. I decided to go with Fae Coven because I like her, and I think it creates an interesting dynamic.

 

[ChickenZero]

"You will never receive this carrot."

"Fuck your carrot." "You know where you can stick that carrot?"

Yeah. the whole Jedi Order is built on tradition and definitely not built for Nerim.

Click to shrink...

FTFY. You're welcome.

 

[Dovahkiin]

Huh I just noticed that all the chapters are in the Index section instead of Threadmarks. Anyway thanks for the chapter.

 

[Hyenanon]

Huh I just noticed that all the chapters are in the Index section instead of Threadmarks. Anyway thanks for the chapter.

Click to shrink...

I have no recollection of why I did this lmao
I should probably change it sometime

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 23: Once Or Twice​

Each day, Arwain abandoned Nerim to go work in the forbidden vaults of the Archives, where the Sith holocrons were kept. She rarely made the effort to tell him, often he would just turn around and notice she was gone. He was torn between believing it was a training exercise for his senses, and thinking she was just unaccountably rude.

Six more months had passed since he returned to the Temple. He woke up, trained, meditated, and slept. It suddenly seemed so awful to him. He definitely had issues with the life of a Jedi beforehand, but after his adventures, every moment spent in the Jedi Temple was pure, unrelenting agony. Yet there were always bright spots, little bits of unexpected events and peaceful moments. An impromptu lesson in hand-to-hand combat with Jianno, a particularly nice breeze on his walk between the firing range and the meditation chambers.

From what he gathered, Darth Machina was less than cooperative, and other methods of search were just as slow going. After his mortifying experience in the High Council chamber, he developed a new interest in his Master's past in the Order. She had so rarely talked about her own time as a Padawan that he had been completely unaware her Master had been Fae Coven.

Rather than completely ignoring the other Jedi in the Temple, as he had previously done, he occasionally attempted to ask questions. The answers of older Jedi were often vague and unsatisfying, but the other Padawans and younger Knights occasionally shared bits of gossip. From that, he had learned occasional new, possibly pejorative terms for his Master.

As he sat down one lunch at a small table and ate the assortment of dull yet savory plants that constituted the salad he knew since childhood, it suddenly struck him how little she talked about herself. She spoke to him constantly, even told him stories with maddening frequency, and somehow throughout it all she almost never used the word "I."

He had once decided to actually check the Archives for records on her, to find a bizarre combination of an overflow of data and little of substance. It was a mere timeline, recognizing her birth, induction to the Order, graduation to Padawan under a Knight, transfer to studying as a Padawan under Grand Master Fae Coven, and then an endless, endless scroll through names of missions she had completed. It seemed almost as if every planet he had ever heard of was visited by her at some point or another.

The file also noted that she was identified as a Sentinel, an unorthodox form of Jedi who focused on extraneous skillsets rather than the core curriculum of the Order. It vaguely stated that she was a known expert in linguistics, anthropology, and 'the study of alternative Force Orders.' She was unanimously accepted as a Jedi Master at age 38, remarkably young. She was in her mid fifties now, which shocked Nerim. Perhaps she had learned some sort of technique of bodily health from Fae Coven.

But beyond that, there was precious little. He then checked Gendi's record for comparison, which was far more detailed. Then another Master, and another. No two files looked alike, except for Arwain's and Fae Coven's, both of which were bare of details as could be—only, Fae's was utterly inconceivable in length. He gave up on scrolling down the list before he ever reached the bottom, and had no idea how far it went.

He had asked the Librarian, then, why they were written as such, and she explained that the files were largely autobiographical. There was no dedicated scribe to write down everything that happened in the lives of particular Jedi, so it was up to the Knights and Masters themselves to record their own lives, and only the most important events would be handled by the Archivists.

For some reason, Fae never bothered, and so her life was largely unrecorded. Arwain seemed to have picked that up from her. They only cared to briefly write a single, dry paragraph for each mission they undertook, for archival purposes.

He slowly chewed on his wan meal as he neared the bottom of Arwain's file, which he had copied to his datapad. The last three entries stopped him in his tracks.

"Took on a Padawan, a young Mirialan boy named Nerim. Shows exceptional potential."

That was how it began, and then continued on, for page after page. Each of the three entries were exhausting in detail, complimentary in tone almost to the point of making him blush, and utterly embarrassing in the bluntness to which it described each of his failures. "Extremely stunted development of Alter powers," it would read, "uniquely unable to complete his own lightsaber," as if designed specifically to humiliate him in an eternal fashion, forever in the Archives. Then, followed by "High talent at interpersonal communication with non-Sensitives. Surprising ability to navigate unfamiliar environments. Precociousness indicates high intelligence."

Somehow she still retained the ability to tell all of these stories as if she weren't there at all. He ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed. Up to this point, he was still somewhat in denial of the circumstances of his life in the first place. Now he was grappling with an entire new dimension of how the outside world must have viewed him—there was a certain comfort in knowing you were seen as a total loser. There was a freedom in it. Now his Master had somehow turned him into an enigma. What a pain.

Nerim suddenly became aware that the humble wooden chair next to him was becoming occupied. T'zai, the Nautolan from his class as a youngling, landed in the chair like a feather on a pillow and smiled at him. "You seem frustrated," he said.

"I am so tired of this salad," Nerim replied flatly.

"Is that all?" T'zai tilted his head, the rings on his tentacles jingling slightly as he did so.

Nerim looked back to his datapad, and saw a new alert. He had received a message from Tetha, somewhat earlier than expected. They usually traded letters every week. "I wish," Nerim mumbled, checking the letter immediately as if he didn't care if T'zai saw. Which he didn't. That was probably how he got away with it, in fact.

T'zai laughed. "In a way I envy you. It sounds like a fun outing. More than two Jedi on a single mission is quite rare."

"A what now?" Nerim's head perked up.

T'zai stared at him silently for a moment. "The mission? The one you are about to embark on?"

Nerim stared back, silent for even longer. "How am I always the last person to know these things...?"


------------------------------------------


"Master, you need to tell me these things," Nerim grumbled, boarding the starship.

Arwain smirked. "And have you worry about them ahead of time? What's the point?"

"I don't like surprises, and I don't like not knowing where we're going."

"Hmm," Arwain turned to him and looked him over. "Take a guess?"

He looked down at the bag he was holding. "...Well, you told me I didn't need to pack any cold weather gear, so I presume we're going somewhere warm. This is another nice, diplomatic vessel, so I assume we're not going anywhere immediately dangerous or undercover. And T'zai told me he heard we were going to the Outer Rim. Why don't we ever go to the Mid Rim?"

Arwain's grin widened as Jianno pushed past them to put away her own possessions. "Take a guess."

Nerim sighed and closed his eyes. "Mmm...Because this is related to the Sith artifacts, and the likelihood of Sith artifacts existing in an undiscovered state decreases as you approach the Core."

"Correct! See, my Padawan, you need only calm your mind and all the answers you need will come to you."

He opened his eyes and scowled. "What planet are we going to?"

"You don't need that answer," she said, turning and throwing her bag of meager possessions into a closet.

Nerim grumbled and began to put away his own possessions in a separate compartment, when he felt a strange prickling at the back of his neck. He turned around again to see Arwain staring at him, a moment later noticing she was holding up a hand mirror. He saw his rather unamused expression glaring back at himself.

"You're nervous, my Apprentice," she said softly. "Fear leads to anger. I've noticed that you are remarkably quick at this transmutation of emotions, especially in your interactions with the Council, and your earlier spat with Jianno. You need to control this reaction. Anger flows quickly and easily, and carries you along in its current. For those strong in the Force, it can become a deadly whirlpool."

He blinked. Was he really that angry? After a moment of reflection, he realized that he was. Not only that he was, but it was odd that he didn't realize it. He lived quite a lot of his life in a state of frustration, and he knew this about himself, so the need to self-reflect to realize the depth of his dysregulation bothered him.

Arwain ruffled his hair. "Don't dwell too much on it. It's common for adolescents to experience unexpected bursts of emotion, and I well know that I'm a justly frustrating teacher. But you need to control it."

He looked down for a moment, and then went back to double-checking his luggage. Inside the rough burlap sack was his copy of the Jedi Path, recently returned to him after the Republic negotiated the return of their vessel after the Utapau Incident. He opened it, seeing the names scrawled on the first page of the book of each of its owners over the years.

Arwain looked over his shoulder and smiled. "I worried we would never get that back."

Nerim read her signature. It was ornate and beautiful, which somewhat surprised him, given her terse writing style. Then he read the name directly above hers. "Your first Master was Kos-Ran Gohda, right?"

"That's correct."

"Why did you change Masters?"

"He died," she said softly, but without great emphasis.

"What happened?"

She took a deep breath. "We were investigating a series of shipwrecks, under the impression there was some sort of hyperspace snare. We responded to a distress call, and found instead that it was the work of Mandalorian pirates. The battle went poorly," she said, staring aimlessly at the wall. Her tone and expression was somber, but not pained. "Eventually, Gohda died, but I survived."

Nerim glanced down at his book, and then towards Jianno, who had stopped stomping around and was silently listening. He looked back to Arwain. "I'm sorry, Master."

Arwain was quiet for a moment, her eyes cast up and to the side, as if deciding how to react. Then she gave him a disapproving glare and pinched his nose. "If you're sorry, read the book!"

"Wauh!" Nerim shook his head until he had escaped her grip. "Okay, okay!"

"The clan?" Jianno asked. "Of the Mandalorians."

Arwain turned to her. "Kreyn."

"Never heard of them."

"I don't suppose you would have," Arwain said, moving towards the front of the ship. "It was all a little before your time."

"You hold a grudge?" Jianno asked, tilting her head and scanning the Jedi Master.

Arwain's face was expressionless. "There is no one to hold a grudge against," she said, moving past her. "Come along, now. I want to get there before our compatriots can mess anything up."

Nerim quickly walked to catch up with her. "T'zai said we would be working with other Jedi. Who?"

"The Knight Haaka Mahn, and his Padawan," Arwain replied. "Recent discoveries indicate a dark nexus in the Force, which I believe is of some interest to our greater mission. We were also assigned because we have a preexisting tie to the region."

"A preexisting tie? We're not going back to Utapau, are we?" Nerim asked warily.

Arwain gave him another one of those coy smiles.

 

[Celer]

"A preexisting tie? We're not going back to Utapau, are we?" Nerim asked warily.

Arwain gave him another one of those coy smiles.

I am betting against Utapu. I think it's time to meet up with old friends.

 

[gasparr]

The file also noted that she was identified as a Sentinel, an unorthodox form of Jedi who focused on extraneous skillsets rather than the core curriculum of the Order.

Click to shrink...

It checks out that she would be a uniquely good fit for Nerim's master. Makes me wonder if there's an element of fate here. Like, was Nerim destined to have Arwain as his master, and was Arwain destined to have Nerim as her padawan? Or was their meeting just luck, and Arwain recognizing someone who reminded her of herself? Nerim says he's sure Tetha and him will meet again. Is that because there's something the force has already decided? Or is it just a fact of the matter that Nerim and Tetha will almost certainly seek each other out, or seek similar things and end up in the same places?

 

[ChickenZero]

Chapter 23: Once Or Twice​

"You hold a grudge?" Jianno asked, tilting her head and scanning the Jedi Master.

Arwain's face was expressionless. "There is no one to hold a grudge against," she said, moving past her. "Come along, now. I want to get there before our compatriots can mess anything up."

Click to shrink...

Translation: I slaughtered each and everyone on of them. Even the women and children.

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 24: Doubled Since The Last Time​

That night, when he was sure Arwain was asleep, Nerim crept out of his bed and quietly moved through the ship to the cockpit. After plenty of practice in the Lucky Worm, he had learned to walk lightly enough to make no noise in a creaky starship. The slight hiss of the doors opening and closing was thankfully more quiet on the diplomatic vessel than the screech of the Lucky Worm's gummed up hinges.

After reaching the cockpit, he gently sat down in the copilot chair and leaned over the navigation computer, reaching down and tapping at the keyboard to wake it up. It made a soft click, and then showed him the autopilot process. He followed the directions, from entering the Hydian Way hyperlane to break off into the Salin Corridor, and finally to its destination...Cathar.

Nerim felt a presence behind him and whipped around, to see Jianno leaning on the door frame, her arms crossed, looking down at him. She was wearing her sleep clothing, a plain red sleeveless tunic and simple drawstring pants. This was the first time he saw her without at least some amount of armor on. Her knuckles were calloused.

"N-no bata tu tu," Nerim quietly stuttered.

"You taking us off course?" Jianno asked. Nerim shook his head. "Fine then," she said, walking over and sitting next to him, "Welcome to the night shift."

He glanced between her and the control panel. Cathar. They were going to Cathar? He supposed it made sense. It was a symbolically important planet during the Second Sith War. If anyone was going to be sent, of course it would be the Jedi who already have good relations with local royalty.

He looked back at Jianno. "Are you even going to be allowed on Cathar?"

"I'm surprised I'm allowed on this ship," she said gruffly. There was a short silence, then she turned to meet his eyes. "I consulted the copy of the Mandalorian Records I keep. About Clan Kreyn."

Nerim's eyes widened. "The one my Master fought?"

"The one your Master wiped out," she replied. "The record refers to it as the Qon Drii Dark Jedi Incident. My clan was very distantly related to Kreyn, but closer clans still study it as an example in internal security protocols--"

"Excuse me, wiped out?" Nerim repeated.

Jianno looked out the cockpit window, into the superluminal distance. "At the time, Clan Kreyn were making their living as pirates in the Qon Drii system. It was in the middle of the Corellian Run, an uninhabited planet. It was perfect for piracy of large scale vessels; set up a hyperspace trap, force ships to drop out over the planet, and then use a tractor beam setup to drop them into atmosphere where they couldn't run away."

As she spoke, Jianno made no attempt to hide her admiration for the technique of predation the Kreyn used. She also made no attempt to hide her contempt, shaking her head. "Of course, the idiots stayed there long enough to ensure the Republic noticed. When they sent a Jedi cruiser in, well, they captured more than they could deal with." She turned back to Nerim. "Our records are sparse on this. We only came in to pick up the pieces afterwards, after the Republic did the same. But the base's reactor went critical, and the Kreyn were all dead. Including the ones that didn't die in the blast. Not just warriors, Nerim. All of them. Over 300 of them."

Nerim's blood ran colder with every word she spoke. He shook his head. "There's no way she would be capable of such a thing. She's a Master."

"She wasn't at the time," Jianno shrugged. "As I said, our records refer to it as a Dark Jedi incident. Our people are intimately familiar with Force Users in a way that few others are, and our Trackers are well aware that this is not the usual Jedi modus operandi."

Nerim's brow furrowed, his mind racing through every memory he had with her. "It's impossible. If she carried out a massacre, the Jedi would never take her back, let alone recognize her as a Master of the Force. Perhaps it was...The Knight who taught her? Kos-Ran Gohda?"

Jianno kept looking out into hyperspace. "Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, I don't really care. Clan Kreyn started the fight, and were stupid enough to start it in plain view of their home base. It is what it is," she sniffed. "Might be a shock to a new Jedi like yourself, but this kind of thing wasn't entirely uncommon during the days of the Army Of Light."

He remembered some of his earlier studies. During the New Sith Wars, prior to the Ruusan Reformation, the Jedi Order was far more militaristic – and more lenient in matters that it was very strict on, now. Some even took the title of "Jedi Lords," becoming military and political entities unto themselves. Fae Coven was a great Master even then, and after she became Grand Master, it was her iron will alone that disbanded the Army of Light and the Jedi Lords. If anyone could deal with a battle-scarred Padawan, it was her. Perhaps, he wondered, that's why she took Arwain in.

But still, such stories of redemption were rare – unthinkable, even, in the modern day. Fae was a beloved and generous figure, but she was not known to be a forgiving Grand Master.

"The main thing of interest to me," Jianno said, looking over to Nerim, "Is why she keeps me around. It was my people who killed Gohda."

Nerim considered it briefly. "I think she just likes you. Perhaps she's forgiven the Mandalorians."

"No. That can't be all of it," Jianno said, crossing her arms again. "It's not a simple forgiveness, she has studied us. Intensively. And now she keeps one of us – me – around."

"Do you think that's a problem?" Nerim asked nervously.

"I'm worried she studies us for the same reason she studies the Sith."

"...To destroy them?" Nerim wondered aloud in disbelief. That, he was sure to his core, couldn't be true. He never sensed hostility from Arwain to the Mandalorian culture, or to Jianno.

"That's the problem. I'm not sure," Jianno shrugged.


------------------------------------------


It didn't take long for the trio to reach Cathar. Jedi ships tended to have very good hyperdrives, especially compared to light freighters from Hutt Space. Jianno carefully watched over Nerim as he brought the ship in towards Cathar and descended through the atmosphere. He was learning to fly, albeit slowly. Whenever he was at the controls, he thought of Tetha; how easily she seemed to pilot anything that could move. Things would be much easier if she were around.

With a slightly clunky, off-center touchdown at the landing pad, Nerim switched off the engines and heaved a sigh of relief. He stood up and moved towards the back with Jianno, where Arwain was getting her things ready.

Arwain glanced at Jianno and frowned. "This would go far smoother if you didn't insist on wearing that," she mumbled.

Jianno scoffed, her full set of Mandalorian armor clinking as she moved to the locker she had stored her things in and retrieved her firearms. "Armor is part of my religion."

"Sometimes it seems as though the primary tenet of Resol'nare is to be a pain in the ass," Arwain pouted.

Jianno made a rude hand gesture and punched the button to lower the boarding ramp. Nerim slung his bag over his shoulder and marched down the ramp with them, ready for the worst. He was met with a blast of warm, dry air, and a light peppering of dead grass all over his body before his foot even touched the tarmac, which he squinted through with some difficulty. The sun was bright as could be, and the scent reminded him somewhat of Raxus Secundus, carrying hints of hardy savanna plants and dirt baked in sunshine.

In front of him was a path that lead up to one of the massive City-Trees, absolutely gargantuan gnarled things which stretched to the sky, that Cathar built their most beloved cities into. Nerim had never seen such a thing before, although having spent his life on Coruscant, he was more impressed by the mass of plant matter than the height of it.

Standing between him and the City-Tree were a rather chaotic gathering of figures, ranging from a half-dozen dockworkers, to a handful of dignitaries that immediately rushed to greet Arwain (and recoiled from Jianno), and two robed figures, hoods drawn, that stuck out to him like beacons in the night. One was a tall Selkath, an aquatic species with broad heads like stingrays and soft, whale-like flesh. The other...

His train of thought was interrupted, as someone shouted "Nerim!" from the crowd. He turned his head just in time to see a familiar Cathar bound up to him, and he resisted the instinct to leap out of the way. Aesha skid to a stop about five inches in front of him, and placed her hands on his shoulders, shaking him like you would if you had to wake someone up. "We meet again!"

"And sooner than expected," Nerim replied, his voice dropping in and out of its normal range as he let his body bend back and forth from the motion. She was even taller relative to him than when they had last met, and even if he tried, he probably couldn't stop her.

"I knew we would," She laughed, stepping back. "I am so glad to see you, friend!"

Nerim found himself breaking out into a smile. "Me too, Aesha. You look different."

"Stronger!" She said proudly, raising her arms up and flexing. Her clothing had changed, too, from the formal but demure outfits she wore on Raxus Secundus to a more regal, flowing white dress that suited her position in Cathar. It was certainly prim and proper in nature, but as he might have expected from the Cathar, it was well-suited to breaking out into a sprint at any time, not very similar to Core fashion. "I completed all of my trials as soon as we got back! I am a fully fledged warrior, now!"

"Congratulations, I can see you've earned it," Nerim praised her. "I think I still have another decade to go, myself," he joked.

"Pshhaa," she waved a hand, "You are no less than an equal to me, always."

Nerim chuckled as he enjoyed the warmth of the weather and the greeting, and then felt a tapping on his shoulder. He looked up to see Arwain smile at him and point her thumb to the two Jedi that had approached.

The Selkath lowered his hood and nodded deferentially. "Master Arwain, it is good to see you. We have just arrived, ourselves."

Aesha leaned in and whispered to Nerim. "Who are these Jedi? I have yet to meet them!"

Nerim pointed to the Selkath. "That's Haaka Mahn, Jedi Knight," he said, and then pointed towards the shorter one. "That's--..."

Haaka Mahn's Padawan lowered her hood, and met Nerim's eyes with a glare of her own. It was the same Human girl he had defeated in the Initiate Tournament. She stared at him like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop, just one more bad thing to pile onto this scenario.

"That's...?" She echoed.

An involuntary whine escaped his throat. He had completely forgotten her name. Again.

Arwain tried to contain her laughter, and then gave up, and burst into a cackling fit.

 

[waffelmeister]

Well, I suppose that's a good sign that he let go of his eternal rival's name. Wouldn't be very Jedi of him to have her stuck in his head on loop for months...

 

[Psyentific]

Oh stars, not just one but two more potential crushes here. Nerim, lad, try to remeber the Jedi Code, you will need its guidance for the coming trials...

 

[furiothecat]

Spoiler: for Andor S2

 

[Hyenanon]

Chapter 25: Difference Between The Two​

Nerim tried not to look at his Padawan counterpart as they were lead towards their stately rooms at the crest of the City-Tree. The tree was beautiful, intricately carved with murals the size of skyscrapers across it, apparently telling some mythical story. Nerim enjoyed the weather at first, but was swiftly disillusioned with the bright sunshine, and was thankful to enter the shade of the tree.

Haaka Mahn's moist skin sparkled in the light, and he spoke with a slight gurgling to Arwain as they walked. "Combining the information you've gleaned from the holocrons with our archaeological studies, we can be relatively certain that the vergence in the Force lies within the Vast Veldt."

Arwain nodded. "Then we should get to searching as soon as possible. Although, perhaps we should meditate on it first."

Nerim could feel a sense of sureness and clarity radiating from Haaka Mahn, like that which he often sensed from Knights. It was always a mixed feeling for him, one which said two things: On one hand, its said "I know where I'm going. I know what we're doing. I am in control. Follow me," and yet on the other, it said...well, that exact same thing, but in a less reassuring tone.

It was this innate sense of distrust that, among other things, caused him to shrink when his Padawan counterpart shot him a look. She—Nerim still didn't remember her name, damn it—seemed to be keeping an eye on him as if she expected trouble.

He slowed his pace so as to end up behind the group, where he couldn't be the recipient of this uncomfortable attention. Aesha slowed along side him, and bent over at the waist to lower her head down to his level and whisper to him. "Do you have problems with a lot of the women in your life?"

He clenched his jaw. "I like two or three of them. Not sure about the one right next to me," he grumbled.

Aesha bared her sharp teeth and snickered, standing back up to her full height. She turned her head to look at Jianno, who was marching behind the pack as if she expected to get jumped at any moment. "Why would you bring Mandalorian here?" She said, loud enough for Jianno to hear, but not nearly loud enough for Jianno to react.

"I'm at a loss," Nerim confessed. "I think my Master just likes playing pranks on us."

Arwain spoke loudly without turning to look at them. "We all have something valuable to contribute, and something valuable to learn, here!" She said. "Trust me, we'd be lost without her!"

"I can't entirely deny that..." Nerim replied, his anxieties suddenly dropping away as the entered the City-Tree.

The interior was a great hollow, with buildings grown organically into the walls and crisscrossing in branches all throughout. It was reminiscent of Utapau in that way, but where everything in Utapau was oriented downwards towards cool stone and calm waters, the City-Trees of Cathar were thrumming with life from the ground upwards, towards a peak of colorful illumination filtering down through brambles and thickets like disco lights. Utapau kept the center clear and orderly, while the City-Tree's walls were constantly bridged and meeting; the native Cathar scrambled across them in some sort of organized chaos, leaping from ledge to ledge and chattering among themselves.

Nerim found himself smiling, his head craning around to see everything he could. There was something about the atmosphere in this great hollow tree, as if it were buzzing – as if the entire city were in a constant state of celebration. His world was a smear of lights, colors, and sounds until suddenly he found himself in a stately room near the top of the tree, all of its circular furniture carved of the same wood as the structure itself, with a round silvery-green glass window spewing viridian sunlight across the room. The two beds were deep set into the wood, looking invitingly soft and safe.

He placed his bag on the ground and blinked, turning to Arwain. "Have you ever been to Cathar, before?" He asked, knowing the answer.

If Arwain knew that he knew, she didn't show it. She just nodded. "Yes. Never this high up, though. This is a nicer room than you might find in the roots, but they all have their charm," she said with a soft smile.

"So, what now?"

She stopped and let her bag slide off of her shoulder onto the bed, thinking for a moment. "Mm. The Vast Veldt is a grassland with no trees, of the gargantuan sort or otherwise. It's a little too big to search on our own. Come," she said, sitting cross-legged on the floor and gesturing for him to do the same.

He took an apprehensive breath and sat down, closing his eyes and preparing to pretend to meditate, as he always did.

He could hear the smile in Arwain's voice as she spoke. "Good, glad to see you're taking this seriously." He frowned, but she continued. "Listen. What I want you to do first is expand your awareness around your sense of touch and motion. What do you feel right now?"

The coarse fabric of his robes, the slightly more comfortable linen of his tunic and pants. The annoying hair that had landed on his nose in an itchy way. That electric pseudo-sensation of a leg that wants to bounce in impatience.

"Extend beyond the self, Padawan," she guided. He tried.

He could feel the slight swaying of the tree. The skyscrapers of Coruscant were slightly flexible, perceptible only in the most minute sense, but the City-Trees of Cathar were a little more noticeable, warping a smidge to the left and then to the right in the savanna wind. He felt the trunk of the tree, feeling the motion moving up, down, and across it, against it from the wind and supporting it from the ground, nourishing it from the sun and dispersing it in the dry air.

"We're getting to experience a unique position, Nerim. We're at the top right now, everything is thrumming up to us. Feel the vibrations, the wave forms of life below."

There was some sort of noticeable vibration, now that he thought of it. It was muffled, but rhythmic. He seemed to recognize it as...some form of resonating bass. In his mind's eye, he saw a wide open room with a raised stage in the center, a cadre of Cathar atop it performing their music as the crowds surrounding them swayed and danced to the movement.

"Feel each individual movement. Experience them simultaneously, but split them apart. Within the greater pattern, perceive smaller ones, still part of the whole, yet individually complete."

He tried to focus on particular figures in his mind. A single Cathar in the crowd, shuffling from foot to foot, pivoting at the hip and counterbalancing with their arms and tail. He felt the vitality of the being, the circulation of air through their lungs, the blood in their veins. He almost felt as though he could keep going, magnifying into a fractal infinity.

"See how each lifeform navigates this complex stream of life. They appear to flit aimlessly from a mid distance, but this is an illusion. From close up, every decision they make, makes sense. And as you take a wider view, the greater patterns become legible. To bridge this gap, from small to great, to make sense at the medium scale, is possible. But more important is to understand why it's not always necessary. It's like saying the drum is out of tune with the wind instruments because they do not hit the same notes. They do not have to."

He could feel Arwain open her eyes, and so he opened his. She smiled at him, and he thought for a moment. "If this is the case, how do we know when someone really is aimless? How do we know when we are aimless?"

"You will know when you are in the moment," she said. "When you are in tune. To be in touch with the Force is to dance with the world, until the world dances with you."

He glanced down and frowned in thought. "...I can't dance."

"You can learn," Arwain grinned. "In fact, you ought to."

Nerim looked back up at Arwain and narrowed his eyes. "What does this have to do with the Sith artifacts, exactly?"

"Oh, who cares," Arwain shrugged.

"Wh– but that's our mission! That's your specialty!" Nerim objected. "We were supposed to be meditating so we could find the dark vergence in the Force!"

She pat him on the head as she stood up. "No, Nerim. We are supposed to be furthering the cause of life, love, liberty, justice, and peace. That's always the mission. Finding the Sith Temple is just an objective. Remember that, Padawan. Always remember that the mission is not to find or slay evil, it is to further good."

She beckoned him to follow as they exited the room. The hallway they exited into contained the doors to the room for the other Jedi, and one for Jianno. As they moved out of their room, as if on cue, Haaka Mahn and his Padawan exited their room.

The Knight nodded to Arwain. "We have meditated on the location of the Force Nexus."

Arwain gave a playful look to Nerim, and then turned back to the Knight. "And your conclusions?"

"My hope is that we may find it by comparing local maps and historical records with our own," Haaka Mahn said, stroking one of the cephalic lobes of his wide mouth. "It will require some more...advanced academic activities than we are comfortable with, perhaps, but it will be faster and more reliable to triangulate some candidates than to simply fly over the entire Vast Veldt in a grid pattern."

Arwain heaved an exhausted sigh and tilted to her side as if about to topple over. "I suppose that is what I'm good at. Reasonable. Fine, let's do it."

Haaka Mahn began to lead the group towards the central Cathar archives, and his Padawan and Arwain walked behind. Nerim made to follow her, when Arwain turned and made a shooing motion to him. "Go on," she said.

Nerim stopped and tilted his head. The other two Jedi seemed just as, if not more confused. Haaka spoke. "Is something wrong?"

"My Padawan has other duties to attend to," she said confidently.

"Is there something that 'wants to be found' again, Master?" Nerim asked.

"Hm. From a certain point of view," she said with an enigmatic smile. "You have four hours to learn how to dance. Good luck!"

And with that, she walked away. Haaka Mahn considered the thought for a moment, and then stepped along with her. The Padawan gave him an evaluating look, but followed at Haaka's heel, leaving Nerim standing awkwardly in the hallway.

He realized he would be more upset if this didn't mean he had an excuse to not sit around in a library doing geometry. And...he was beginning to enjoy his time unsupervised on strange planets. The only thing that bothered him was the vagueness of the command. Learn to dance? How does one dance with the world?

Nerim turned around and walked in the opposite direction, towards the antechamber of the crown of the City-Tree. The grand room was paved in thin, colorful cobbled stones, and topped with a brilliant dome covered in murals of ancient myths and windows to the sky above. It was populated with dozens of Cathar of high standing, all of whom lit up upon seeing him and greeted him with respectful nods and salutes. The Cathar had an interesting manner of greeting, splaying their right hand out towards you, as if to emphasize that their claws weren't out.

He awkwardly waved at them as he passed by, and wandered towards the path where Aesha had split off from them on the way up. He went through a few twists and turns before entering a dining hall, where he noticed Aesha, with a rather depressed expression on her face as she attempted to traverse the room with a stately older woman. It seemed as though they were performing some kind of bizarre ritual, with a wooden stick held in the crook of her elbows behind her back, and a plate on her head. The woman held a cane and tapped her legs each time she took a step too wide.

Aesha caught sight of him and shot him a desperate glance, so he approached the two. "Excuse me," he said.

"Hm?" The older woman turned to him suspiciously, and then her eyes widened. "Oh! Master Jedi! It's an honor to meet you," she said with a curtsy.

"Likewise," he said, nodding to her. "I don't want to be a bother, but may I borrow Aesha for around four hours?"

Aesha lit up, and the woman blinked in surprise. "Well..." She said, considering. "For Jedi business, of course, we may delay posture training this once."

Aesha dropped the stick behind her back and quickly took the plate off of her head, her ears fluttering now that they were free. "Thank the Force!" She sighed in relief. The woman shot her a look, and she grinned apologetically. "I mean, uh, I am glad to be of use. What do you need, Nerim?"

"My Master wants me to learn more about Cathar culture...I think," he added. "I was hoping you could show me something or somewhere important to your people."

She practically bounced in place. "Oh! Oh! There are so many places! First thing's first, though!"

"What's that?" He asked, smiling.

"I want a rematch!"


---------------------------


Aesha had dragged Nerim down the tree to the fields along its roots, where the terrain was rough and unsure. She spent the first hour engaging him in races through the brambles, which she won more often than not. That got the attention of other Cathar, who spent another hour asking him a great litany of questions on what it was like to be a Jedi, to which he pretended to know the answer. They had a short break to eat lunch, which was comprised of many large round fruits that he had to be very careful not to make a mess of himself with, and charred meat on skewers that he struggled to chew.

After that, he spent another hour dragged by the tide of Cathar to the 'Bird Perch', a series of low-level branches where sparrow-like birds would often rest in between flights, and where the youths often spent their time waiting in ambush to leap out and catch them. He spent most of the time sitting on a branch, his legs kicking off the side and a smile on his face as he watched them hop from bough to bough, occasionally falling to the ground with a loud pamf into the dry grass, and having to make the climb of shame back up to the lighthearted jabs of their peers. Occasionally one of the birds would land on his shoulder or in his lap, if only to escape the annoyance of the young Cathar, although it amazed the cat-people to see the objects of their chase congregate around the young Jedi.

From there, Aesha dragged him back down to a sparring circle, where she insisted he show her some "Jedi moves." They wrestled and threw each other, sailing in the slightly-lower gravity of Cathar on the winds before rolling to a stop on the cracked dirt of the ground. He put into practice some of the Mandalorian fisticuffs he had learned, and she demonstrated her own traditional Cathar martial arts on him to surprising effect.

Eventually when they tired from the exercise, they sat on the benches of a plaza in the mid-levels, beneath a great window. By that time Aesha's white dress had already been stained by grass and dirt and scuffed with tree bark, and Nerim gave her a concerned glance. "Your teacher won't be mad at you?"

"Bah!" She said, leaning back and basking in the sun. "This is what laundry was made for!"

Nerim chuckled. He had taken a seat in the shade; his skin wasn't all that naturally sensitive, but Cathar's sun was strong and he was already a little worried he had been burnt. They heard a set of footsteps behind them, and turned around.

"The calculations are done, we leave for the Vast Veldt tomorrow morning!" Arwain smiled down at them, hands proudly on her hips. "How'd your mission go, my young Apprentice?"

Nerim shrugged. "I did my best to learn from the Cathar. I think I've picked up some of the language."

"Good! And the dancing?"

"Dancing?" Aesha asked, suddenly even more interested.

Nerim chuckled. "It's a metaphor."

Arwain stared down at them with an amused expression. "Nerim, I am proud you're beginning to learn to not take things so literally. But in this case, I meant it literally. Come, now, we still have an evening to prepare!" she said, grabbing his arm and heaving him up. She turned to Aesha, and pointed a thumb to a building across the plaza. "Does that seem like a good club?"

Aesha jumped up to her feet before Arwain even finished her sentence. "Follow me!" She said excitedly, running down the branch.

The Cathar lead his Master, who dragged Nerim through the tree across a bridge and into a nook, which he realized with a start was the same one he had visualized in their earlier meditation. The walls seemed to bounce with the sound, of yet another genre of music Nerim had never heard. It echoed and came and went in waves, with a beat perfectly suited to match the speed at which gravity pulled a body back down when it bounced up. The room was full of flashing lights and dancing forms.

"This isn't jatz, is it?" Nerim asked, feeling the music thrum in his ribcage.

Aesha pulled the group into a corner, and then turned around, already shimmying from side to side. "Of course not! Jatz is old news, this is electroglitz!"

Nerim looked from her to Arwain. "Isn't dancing like this against the Code?"

"Absolutely," Arwain said, rubbing her hands together, "That's why I'm only going to show you this once! Watch closely, Padawan, these are forbidden moves!" She said, as her feet began to move to the beat, pivoting and appearing almost to slide across the ground. Aesha raised her arms up and cheered.

 

[Goudeauboywade]

these are forbidden moves!

Click to shrink...

Our boy is going to end up specializing in forbidden moves at this rate