Jedi Padawan Quest (Star Wars)

XXXII: Cyclone

Nima was not okay. She'd never thought she was doing all that well, but she'd deluded herself. On Haruun Kal despite everything, by the end she had flowed through the darkness, let it drain through her and come out pure. She had faced monsters in human form and come out the other side exhausted, sad, but triumphant.

Yes, it hadn't even yet been two months since Anakin's betrayal. She'd been struggling for weeks against what felt like tides and waves of darkness. She'd never pretended to herself that she was entirely happy, that she was always improving. But she'd thought she was steady, thought she'd found somewhere to rest a while.

A fool had built a house atop a frozen lake in Winter, thinking it surely must be solid ground. The fool had had time to find a mortar and pestle to grind up their worries, they'd made an extra wing of the house for their baggage, they'd become comfortable with what they had, though the ground was cold and the air thin. It always was, this high up.

The spring sun had come, and suddenly even that brief moment of stable ground had begun to crack.

The first crack was feeling Eida's hollow-eyed despair after the announcement. Nima thought Bell was probably right, but if he was, what did that mean for the Green Jedi? Eida clearly wasn't sure either, and she walked out with shoulders held impossibly stiff.

They couldn't tell the Green Jedi about the plan, in case there was a leak, but they did pass on a message: stay indoors.

Another crack: Jix had stared at Nima, his mind creating a thousand terrible scenarios from those words. Nima wondered how many of them lived up to the truth.

Another crack: that night she felt it, as she tried to sleep. Her mind was opened wide by the connection to Eida, and so she could feel it, the stick-thin heart of the dying child. They were, what? A thousand feet? Two thousand? They were nearby, and Nima couldn't tell all of the details, not from their emotions, but she felt their tears. They were crying, not sobbing, because they didn't have the energy to sob. Every so often there was a spasm of pain that Nima knew had to be coughing. He was dying, and there was little they could do. If Nima took the few treatments they had that weren't fake, she could go out and perhaps help one or two others on top of him. But there'd be nothing left, and all of the good treatment was no doubt being mixed together with the bad as they spoke.

There was nothing they could do.

Three cracks led to more, faster and faster once it all began to fall apart.

And for a night, she gave up.

******

She listened to the plan, nodding at the appropriate places. They couldn't know when the enemy was going to strike, so they had to act as soon as they could. Secura suspected that the Diktat would announce the launch ahead of time, in order to make sure everyone knew that his glorious triumph was at hand. He'd probably even tell them to stand outside if they wanted to get a preventative treatment that would also send their conditions into remission. No doubt he hoped, once the trouble was contained it'd be easy to fix up a real cure. And he could probably repeat it again if it got out of hand.

Nima, her Master, Han, and a small group of kids he vouched for would be headed for the château. They'd be charged with stopping the ship from launching, retrieving the Jedi, and dealing with Zekka if he was present. (This was the first moment her drowning soul perked up.)

Secura, the agents, a few more of the kids, and one or two members of CorSec (if they agreed, they were not being told ahead of time) would release the information on CorSec and on the Diktat's plans via what was basically an electronic shunt into the main holovid system. They'd also be hunting down and capturing the Diktat.

Ekria and Lark would stay at the ship to coordinate the underground holo-comm network that would tie them all together. They'd also be there to defend the ship if it was discovered and attacked. The worst-case scenario was that they'd have to lift-off to avoid being overwhelmed. But if they did, they were to head towards the château. As a last resort, if they could make it, they'd be able to shoot down the 'medical' ship.

Master Secura had visited the outside of the château, and found it heavily guarded, with definite signs that its hangar-bay was in active use.

There was darkness there, Master Secura reported.

It was a Jedi's duty to purge darkness, Nima thought.

******

There were so many stories in the Jedi Temple. It seemed every life had some proverb, some saying, some lesson to be presented to the Younglings. Nima had listened to them eagerly, but had eventually figured out that the accuracy of them mattered less than their truth. They were often stripped of details, the unnecessary parts sacrificed for the lessons.

By those standards, the Tale of the Wandering One was different. It had details, it was set in a definite place, and seemed to fit into the world around it. Nima liked to hear the story, liked to hear any story, and so she'd heard bits and pieces from it from all sorts of Masters. Yoda was always the best storyteller, though when she was younger she thought that listening to him tell a story was a lot like standing on your head.

The Wandering One was born in the last half of the Republic Dark Age, roughly (stories said different years within a few years of each other) forty years before the final battle--or so they all thought--at Ruusan. They were the child of a Temple Jedi and a Jedi Lord, and were thus trapped between both worlds, inquisitive, thoughtful, rash, powerful, and on occasion as they grew, wise.

Their father was a Temple Jedi Knight, protecting the last remnants of the Republic in the Core. He was the sort of person the Zeltese would call Doblemin Avergitsi: Twice-Ashamed. He apologized to his child for not being there; he apologized to his child for being there too much. He apologized to his lover for not loving her enough; he apologized to her for loving her too much. He apologized to his Order for falling into the temptation that was love; he apologized to the Order for not falling far enough and abandoning the High Council to simplify things. Always he was sorry, always he was making amends, never was he resting in one place, never was he happy for more than a few weeks at a time.

The Wandering One's mother, on the other hand, was practicing lightsaber forms up to a week before their birth. She was thoughtful enough to stop fighting in battles after she was four months along, but this was the sort of person she was. Cold, grey Lifdor was prosperous under her hand, if often strict. It reflected her, and she reflected it, until it was a tough nut in the Middle Rim.

The Wandering One was a sentient not nearly as tied down as either of their parents, for all that they certainly had learned from both. They'd been to the Temple on Coruscant, and they'd grown up in the snowy fields of Lifdor. They'd grown strong, and at fourteen they were brave, righteous, and intelligent, if also very rash. They were just a child, but in those days childhood was fleeting. Like now. They were lucky not to have seen a war in the last two years. Their mother would have taken them along, then.

For in those days, all was war and chaos: the Jedi High Council disapproved of the hereditary rule of Jedi… and yet the Supreme Chancellor was, as often as not a Jedi. The Senate had devolved almost all of its powers to a bureaucratic quasi-King, and that King was often a Jedi. Half-alienated from their own Order, such Chancellors served as the thin bridge between the Jedi Lords who ruled parts of the Mid-Rim, and what little remained of the Republic.

Despite all this, there were differences between the two. In the realms of some Jedi Lords, there was already a division between commoners, nobles, and those who were force-sensitive, higher than both. On Coruscant, and in a few Core territories, the Jedi Order of the Temple, as it was called then, resisted such distinctions. In a different world, the fact that the High Council believed so much in Kaan would have been a double-disaster. Kaan, who conquered the Sith and turned them into a threat against the entire galaxy; Kaan, who had been born a commoner, poor and yet proud.

But the Jedi Lords were decimated one thousand years before Nima heard the story, and so it was all simply the… ghosts of old debates.

Nima listened to the politics as eagerly as the personal stakes, in its own way. When they were fourteen, their mother was off at a meeting of other Jedi when word came of a smuggling ring that stole children to harvest their organs for the use of noble children. She'd gasped at that, and hadn't been surprised at the fury the Wandering One felt. They had chased down the harvesters and killed several in a battle, saving the children they were trying to smuggle off-planet.

Then, fearing that the police must have been corrupt to have missed it, they dragged all of them into the central square of the planet's capital and shouted out their crimes for all to know. Only then did they turn them over to the guards.

When they brought this up and told the story to a Master on Coruscant, she had nodded thoughtfully and stated her approval.

Then she'd said, "But I do worry."

"Why?" the bold apprentice asked.

"You were driven by your anger at these sentients, and by your hatred of what they are and what they do."

"Yes?"

The Wandering One did not see a problem with this. Of course they were.

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. Hate to suffering," the Master repeated.

The Wandering One laughed at her and stood up.

Then they moved to leave, and at the last moment turned. "But Master, you are angry now, aren't you? That I dismissed your words so? And you've told me before that you hate munch-fungus. How close are you, then, to falling?"

(At the time Nima had been shocked and immediately trying to imagine what species' had taste buds that could justify it. Looking back, she'd wonder whether the exact food hated wasn't… tailored to the audience.)

The Master laughed, her anger melting away. "You think there's no difference between disliking a food and hating a person?"

"If I'd slaughtered them with fire and blood, perhaps. But being a little angry as you capture people and arrest them without unnecessary brutality? In such a case, a little anger can be a sort of spark, held close to my chest."

"A spark can become a flame."

"A flame can burn, but it can also warm."

When they told the stories, the Jedi always spoke fast, emphasizing the way that words had sped across the space.

"Perhaps, but anger can be hopelessness. It can be despair, in this galaxy. I have lived long enough to see what anger can be."

"Despair, what do you mean by that?"

The Master answered.

*****

Nima could give in to anger just like anyone else. But she knew that people had their own natures, shaped partially by heredity, but in large parts by their lives. Nima's anger wasn't the sort that could stand on its own. It would burn out, before too long. There were people who weren't like that.

She couldn't know, was it Anakin's nature, the way he carried anger like a burning torch, that made the Sith prey on him and destroy him? Or was he always halfway Sith deep down, and Nima had simply missed it. How could you trust anything, let alone frozen ground, when those you cared for most might betray you?

No, anger wasn't enough. But Nima was heartsick too. She'd always thought it was just a way to say sad. But no, it was more as if her heart was ill, as if its immune system was broken down. Being heartsick meant every stray breeze brought a chill and a risk of fever; being heartsick meant that every crisis seemed like the end. Nima was heartsick, and each plunge into darkness and sorrow shook her to her core.

But she didn't have time to let it rest. Not now.

No, her sorrow was like the twist in the cyclone, like the fuel that kept the fire going. Around and around she spun, tighter and tighter, sorrow and rage like fire and water. But in the center, keeping them from meeting, keeping it from becoming scalding steam, at least for a moment, at least for a heartbeat…

Was hope and love and trust.

*******

The sky was grey and overcast, though the sun threatened valiantly to peek out a few moments. Nima hurried through the city with weapons and equipment that would condemn her if she was caught. But her mind was sharper than before, even as it turned inwards, and she knew the patrol schedule of the CorSec guards.

She couldn't speak to the Diktat ones, but they were no doubt busy. The city itself was far from empty, but the streets were cluttered only with garbage. It felt like a corpse, rotted and old. Sentients were hiding away if they could, and the few people she saw were all dressed in rags, and stinking of filth. No doubt they had nowhere else to be but out in the streets. Nima was dressed only marginally better than all of them, all of her equipment carefully hidden beneath greasy rags.

Corellia had not been kind to any of the sentients she glimpsed, but at least it had not infested them with the plague.

The CorSec guards she passed were tall and proud, as much statue as sentient, and yet for all their flaws they'd never killed thousands for their own advantage. Not these guards, at least.

(Against the blackness of a moonless night, even the dim light of sunset seemed blinding.)

The Sith had ruined everything they touched, would ruin everything they touched. Their servants were no better, vile, broken things. No, not broken. Zekka Thyne hadn't been whole in a long time.

The sky looked like it might rain, but Nima ignored that, reaching out with her senses to feel for the rest of the team. Everyone was making their way safely towards the outskirts, the buildings starting to thin, the roads starting to stretch off into grass and rolling hills. But they skirted that area, looking at the patrols above. The last part of this was the most difficult, of course. There was nowhere to hide on the approach, and the only way to get through was subterfuge.

One of the CorSec guards on their side had a house in a suburb here. The buildings were single story, not small by any means, and with rather extravagant looking lawns. This far out, the mix of those with groundcars and speeders seemed about equal. Though the groundcars she saw were far nicer than the air speeders, trading the ability to fly for a more fashionable, streamlined look, a little like some animal gliding through the water.

Nima couldn't step too far into the community. Innocent though they may have been, their innocence would have extended to reporting someone dressed like Nima as a vagrant to CorSec, to be driven out. She could feel it, the judgement, the fear. But she held tight onto the sorrow and anger. They would suffer too, if Palpatine had his way.

A large groundcar, a beige van, drove up on the street, its mini-turbos making a sort of humming whine as it stopped. Behind the darkened glass, Nima could see an outline that, even without the Force, she'd recognize as Master Bell. She flung open the back door and slid in. The seats were nice, at least, soft and smooth as she buckled up. Then she unbuckled to shuck off some of the rags she was wearing in order to reveal her boots. She began to pull off the cloth she had as shoes, and put on her Rider's Boots.

"I really don't like groundcars. They handle oddly and you're never allowed to go fast enough," Bell said, conversationally, as if he wasn't in a very dangerous situation. Bell was dressed remarkably casually, though Nima could see the armorweave padding beneath his blue shirt. Of course, the lightsabers at his belt weren't really disguised. But the intent was merely to look vaguely as if he might be who he was pretending to be if someone saw him while driving. If anyone stopped them, the plan had gone wrong and there was no time for obfuscation.

Once her boots were on, she strapped her lightsabers and her knife to her belt.

"S and B, in position," Seluku muttered through their mental link. "It looks like all five of the kids made it alright."

"I have a name, you realize," Baqqanid said, his voice echoing in Nima's head.

"B fits you. Makes me think of calling you 'baby'--" the last word in Basic.

"If you persist in using any 'endearments' in some other languages, I will--"

"Aww, Sweetie."

It was a little annoying. She liked Seluku and Baqqanid, but they didn't seem to understand the gravity of the moment. Levity was a luxury in a moment like this. She carefully leashed her anger, trying not to let them see it as they stopped again and four bodies piled in. Han was in the front seat, and the other three in the back.

One of them was Lyle, looking even more angelic than before, even though he had a short stun-stick in the bag he set down and quickly unzipped. Another was a boy that Nima had only briefly seen, thickset and yet with hard, careful eyes. The third was Mandy Byrnes, the girl who had tried to stab Master Secura, and yet who Nima had convinced to work with Han. Finally, there was Kylie, the ex-farmgirl. So it seemed that two-thirds of the team that Nima had taken for the tracking of the drug-dealers was here as well. She knew Kylie was quick on her feet, and very clever, but what else did she have to contribute to this?

(The groundcar was on the approved list, no doubt a CorSec officer who'd been thoroughly checked for plague visiting someone on a day off. Now, this was paper thin… but it also had the advantage of being completely true.)

They began to drive, remarkably slowly, as everyone checked their gear. It was oddly quiet, as Jordyan Bell inserted the scrambler. It was Ekria's invention, and Nima had not paid much attention to the explanation for how it worked, just that it meant she should be able to safely and securely communicate with everyone in the field. At least, hopefully so.

Bell continued to drive.

"This is so slow," Kylie complained.

"We have to obey the laws," Bell pointed out, frowning at the road. "If we go too fast, someone will notice, and then we'll be in trouble."

"And if we go this slow, everyone will look at us anyways," Han said, squirming in his seat. "Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

"You're welcome to if you wish. I am not the boss of you, after all." Bell shook his head, a faint smile on his face. Nima could feel that his jests, unlike Seluku's, were only skin deep. No doubt if Lark was there he'd be quieter and Lark take up the burden of telling jokes.

Nima understood there was a reason, vaguely, in the same way one understood something about a planet by reading it in a book. Only it was different. She was sure she'd understood it better earlier, somewhere and sometime else. At that moment, though, there was something between her and them.

They drove along. Nima meditated, held tight onto the candle of her anger, felt her way through the darkness towards the darkness, watching each shadow in the Force as they moved. And it was all shadows, this direction. It was as if they were driving towards a thunderstorm. The skies blackened around them. Nima saw and didn't see it, saw the overcast greys and saw the darkening thunderclouds.

Each were true. If anything, the second was more true than the first, for all that almost nobody could see it. She stared out the window, thinking about Zekka, and her role in things. She was supposed to watch the entrance. If things got truly bad, she could leap into action when the hangar opened up to let the ship in.

Some minutes of meditation later.

"Base reporting in. Alpha has installed primary and secondary shunts, and is getting in place for the next step. Your status?"

Bell frowned. "We're on the road, driving towards the target. Any news?"

"The Diktat has announced that he has a speech in an hour and a half, so that has to be roughly the launch time. Perhaps some minutes earlier. Perhaps many minutes earlier. How far are you?"

"Thirty minutes, or so. Perhaps less if we speed up."

"Nobody suspects us yet, but once they do everything's going to be complicated. There is only a 33.778% chance that we will remain undetected for the next fifteen minutes. This plan--"

"Please, do not bother me with the odds. It is no good being told that now. We have the best plan we can, and we are executing it." Bell sounded, and even felt, remarkably calm, as if his mind was smooth glass in which all the storms could do nothing more than slide off while he watched them rage.

Nima was not like that. She always felt too much, always said too much, always worried. He'd worried too, he'd cared too, but when there was nothing more he could do he simply acted no matter the cost to achieve what he'd decided was worth his life.

Nima admired Master Bell more than she could say, perhaps even more than the Jedi Order would have allowed her to say. But there were times when he was frustrating. It was so petty she'd never say it, barely even dared to think it, but it could be exhausting to be doing so badly and him coping better than her. She knew she sounded like Minnui, and hated that too.

She'd never want him to be doing worse just to make her feel better about her incompetence and her weakness. She needed to be strong. There was a lot she had to do, but at the top of the list, written and rewritten, was a single important task.

She needed to murder Zekka Thyne.

*******

"Things have not been going well for my entire life," the Master said. The Wandering One snorted.

"Oh?"

"I might well live the rest of my life in a galaxy still plunging towards darkness. In times such as this, it is easy for anger to be hopelessness. It is easy for anger to be a reaction to being unable to do anything at all. If your anger is that, then it is no good to anyone. Your anger can be full of hope and be useless or useful, but if it is tainted with despair…"

"Mine isn't," The Wandering One insisted.

"Yet. It is not yet. You should be mindful of your anger, and what it can do."

Being dutiful, if skeptical, the Wandering One nodded, and kept it in mind through the four years of hard training that followed. At eighteen they were made a Jedi Knight. If they were not one of the leading lights of their generation--and they certainly were not as highly valued either among the Lords as Hoth would one day be, or the Temple Jedi as Skere Kaan was then--they were the type of Jedi that was always needed. They were competent, brave, and skilled. While the Wandering One was of course a product of their age, they were the sort of person who could have been a good Jedi in every age.

In a peaceful age, the boy Kaan had been might have become an honest, if argumentative man.

In a peaceful age, the hero that Lord Hoth had been would instead be a monster, too willing to abandon all standards in the face of danger.

(In a peaceful age, what would Anakin have become?)

Their mother, who knighted them said, "Now, child, will you be my heir? You have a head for mathematics, a heart for justice, and an arm for combat."

"I have a mind for justice as well, a head for tactics, and arms for holding tight what matters to me. I will not. There is a galaxy out there, and I shall be a Knight Errant."

Nima heard different stories of what was said after that, some harsher and some gentler, the worst exchange of all chilling Nima's blood and giving her a rather untimely nightmare of her mother saying something like that. But the end result was simple: The Wandering One was allowed to leave, and they went across the galaxy righting wrongs and helping others.

Every storyteller spent a long time telling of their fights against pirates and bandits, their investigations against murderers and slavers, and their journeys to the far reaches of the known galaxy. Except Yoda.

Yoda had gone straight to the end, straight to the story that made Nima think.

It began with a raid, and strange indications of Dark-Side monsters as part of it. It ended in fire, blood, and battle.

******

When they finally reached it, the château was nothing like the dream one that Nima had visited some time before.

It was huge and rambling, with its own hangars, its own stables, and a pond around back. Nima almost missed the security systems, but Lyle had a knack for avoiding them, and they made their way across the ground. Just outside the city meant different things when you had your own hangar. Speeders were allowed to go over twice as fast as groundcars, Nima vaguely remembered beneath the abyss of light and darkness.

This was a hateful place. People had died here, and been born, and all was fine. Now, though, it was swarmed with dozens of guards. In the hangar there were two-dozen people, scurrying around, more leaving than staying. There was enough darkness in this place that she couldn't quite locate Zekka. But she could feel that he was close.

"Alright. Han, stay here. I know you want to go with them, but you need to stay with Nima."

"What, why?" Han looked between Nima and Bell, with a blush on his face. Oh, right, the crush. Nima hadn't quite forgotten it, but there were a lot of things that Nima hadn't quite forgotten that she couldn't bring to mind without thinking.

"To make sure nothing gets out of hand. Nima, take this." He handed her a small comms disc. "You should be able to slip that into your mask's comms system." She wasn't wearing it, but she had it on her. "You can keep me updated, as well, if I go into any comms-blackout zones."

"What if the whole area becomes one?"

"Then you'll tell Eida about it. It's the one trick they can't counter, at least not easily." Bell nodded to himself. "So, stay here. Keep watch. Move if you feel them noticing you, retreat if you have to."

Han nodded, but Nima just stared at him. If he thought she wasn't going to strike if she had to, then what was he thinking?

The château itself was three stories, with a huge red roof and plenty of balconies, the sort of place that made Nima wonder at any Jedi whose family owned such a place. It was beautiful, she had to admit that, but in her mind's eye it was a rotting structure.

It was hard to pay attention to unimportant details when there was so much suffering, so many people to track, to feel. Their emotions were so predictable, boredom and tension and hate and fear and malice. Despite being predictable, they shone so bright with their darkness that Nima was almost blinded. "Jedi White is in a basement," Nima told Bell, with a nod. "I can feel him. He's afraid. He doesn't know we're going to save him. He's also… sick, but only a little. It's just begun."

"Very good, Nima. Is there anything else I need to watch out for?"

"The guards are moving around something, and they're nervous. Perhaps battle droids, again?"

"If so, I can handle them." Bell had the experience, after all. Nima was no good at it, too used to living emotions, but if Bell had been bad at sensing the threat behind battle droids he'd have died already, considering the war.

Nima's stomach churned with worry as five figures left, carefully moving to stay outside of the cameras they knew were there.

Han stood, watching them go. "Nima, are you okay?"

Nima nodded. It wasn't true, but he'd get over her lying to him, hopefully.

"Never play sabacc, Nima," Han muttered to himself, shaking his head. "You'd be pretty bad at it."

Nima shifted a little, watching the play of emotions across the guards. She'd know the moment they were spotted.

It was a miserable day, but at some other time she might have taken some comfort in the loamy smell of fresh earth, in the scent of distant flowers, in all the little signs of life the château had. Life before and without this madness.

Not now. She was focused, staring at the entrance. She would be there for an hour, quite possibly, before it opened. Unless they were missing something: that could certainly be possible.

Just ten minutes later, she got a message in.

"E to B, they've found us. We're resisting, and will be headed your way once we can lift off. Understood?"

"This is Nima," Nima said, frowning. "Will relay."

She sent the message to Master Bell, eyes still on the hangar door. She checked her chrono. The announcement wasn't due for another fifty minutes. But was the ship going to launch before, during, or after the announcement? It wouldn't make sense to do so before, would it? There'd be questions asked if a ship launched, and risks of news getting out. (At least according to CorSec contacts, nobody knew exactly what was going to happen in CorSec, at least.)

She licked her lips, wishing she'd brought water, and settled down for a long wait. A few minutes in, a CorSec guard on a green speeder-bike raced by, more excited to get to try out the bike than attentive of his surroundings. He missed them entirely, and Nima let out a breath she'd been holding.

When, less than ten minutes later, the hangar bay opened all at once, in a single smooth motion, Nima gaped. Then she girded herself and said, in a flinty voice, "Han, stay here. If this is a trap, you'll need to be able to use your version of the comms to tell everyone else. There might be jamming inside the hangar."

"Wait, what, are you really just going to leave me here?" Han asked, outraged.

"I'm sorry, but there's a world to save. I trust you to stay here," Nima said, and then before he could protest she jumped up, landing amid the heights of the tree they'd been hiding under. One of her feet kicked a fruit on the way up, which went sailing off in a red blur. Then she vaulted again, aimed like a missile straight at the hangar.

XXXII-2: Cyclone, Part 2

Nima didn't take killing lightly. She'd never intentionally ended a sentient's life by her own hand. She wouldn't enjoy killing Zekka, but she imagined there would be a good deal of satisfaction in it. She could imagine his sneer, imagine his arrogance, imagine the dark look in his twisted eyes as he killed and killed and killed--

He'd never stop unless someone made him.

Nima had skills that he wouldn't know how to counter. Nima was a Rider too, and any trap meant for a Jedi would miss her. She was not arrogant, she knew that she might die if this became a fight. But she also knew she might live, might triumph. Something in her heart, twisting and raging and yet under her control, told her that.


******

The hangar was huge, but the ship filled a startlingly large amount of it. The floors were black, the walls white but patterned, so that there were whorls of dark lines tracing patterns at first abstract, and clearly that of flowers, all over the walls. There were several doors out of there, and a walkway that took someone up to a door that perhaps led to a control booth.

The ship itself was a huge oblong hulk, all grey metal and smooth lines, though with a bulge towards the bottom that showed that it'd been equipped to carry something in its hold to be released. There was an obvious way in, with its cargo-hatch open, and Nima could feel five or six sentients in the ship, including one near where the controls were. Nima could have gone in the front, but that could be a trap.

She could feel the eddies and swirls of anger and malice coming off of the ship, and so she climbed up it, until she was near the transparisteel cockpit. Then she hacked her way through, as the pilot screamed and backed up.

He cringed, his shifty eyes looking for an escape as Nima leapt through. The cockpit was filthy, and had room for a co-pilot.

"Hull breach detected. Engage emergency coverage?" A grating robotic voice queried.

"Y-yes?" the pilot said as he stumbled back. Metal plates slid up, blocking out the entire cockpit, which of course also stopped the hole from… well, presumably venting out into space.

"Wrong answer," Nima said, looking at him. She wasn't going to kill him, unless he did something terrible. Even then, she'd try to disarm them. "Please, I do not wish to kill you," Nima said, she hoped reassuringly.

No, that was a lie.

Nima knew exactly why he grew more pale and started gibbering, babbling anything and everything. He was scared. She'd scared him, and meant to. The truth was: this wasn't a bad thing.

"Toss your blaster on the ground," Nima ordered, lightsabers still drawn. He slipped it out and set it down, and Nima deactivated her shoto, picked up the blaster, and fiddled with it until she was sure it was on stun. Then she shot him. He toppled over as she tossed it aside, and reactivated her lightsaber. These things were easy when you didn't think.

Nima could tear her way back out, but at the moment she needed to figure out who else was on the ship. So she turned to the control panel and considered the wisdom of smashing it. Then, very carefully, she looked at the handle of the controls. It was this complex combination of a ball-joint and sticks, and all she knew was that it was remarkably easy to just chop through the controls without hitting the system itself. If it was rigged to blow up or trigger some sort of trap, that'd be less likely than slamming it around against the computer bank, right?

So in a single motion, before she could second-guess herself, she did just that. It sparked, but did not explode, and Nima grinned. Gotcha.

Nima turned and strode off into the cramped hallways, which looked almost as if they were about to buckle inwards. As she rounded the corner, the Force commanded her to stop, and she did. A blaster bolt sizzled by her head, right where she would have been. Once it had passed, she continued to run, moving towards the target. Nima managed to bat the next shot aside as a masked villain stepped back. No, not just any mask, but a breather mask, which meant--

Indeed, even as she thought it, gas began to pour from the walls, in a thick green cloud. The good news was that her whole face was covered by her mask.

"You need to get out of here," Baqqanid whispered in Nima's ear-cone. "Zekka isn't here. But he is nearby. This has to be--"

A trap?! But then, were they really going to keep it this late? She retreated back around the corner, then turned and sprinted back towards the cockpit. The pilot was still stunned, and Nima's sabers made short work of the metal blocking her from leaping out of the ship, ahead of the gas.

The hangar bay door had been closed, though even with a reinforced blast door it wouldn't be hard to get through, really. Nima landed, turning to look and see if anyone was coming. There were presences moving closer, beyond the hangar bay, but their emotions ran together and Nima couldn't quite figure out how many of the monsters there were. "Nima, reporting in," she said, and then listened.

Static. Drat.

She really was being jammed. So, the only way to solve things was to escape now. She wanted to stay and kill Zekka, but she at least needed to open a way out so she could fight as a Rider--

Have you felt your emotions now? There is nothing Rider-like about them, and I fear for you if you attempt to fight as a Rider in this mindset.

Nima didn't have time to listen to Baqqanid. Even if she wasn't going to flow together perfectly, she could still jump around well enough to beat someone like Zekka. He was a monster of iniquity, but he wasn't a Jedi, or a Sith, or any sort of Force-user at all. She wouldn't underestimate him, but she wouldn't doubt herself, not now. So she turned, her shoto pointed in the direction of the approaching enemies, as she slashed the hangar bay door with her saber.

It went through the first of the two layers, if a little slowly, and then fizzled out. No, it shorted out.

Cortosis.

Nima almost screamed in frustration. A cortosis hangar-bay door!? Nima could always just cut through the walls and then around, but her saber was shorted out, and just as the doors at the end of the hangar opened. Four figures stepped in. One of them, at last, was Zekka Thyne.

The other two included two men and a woman. The woman was short, with dark hair and darker skin, wielding a blaster rifle. One of the men to her right, a blond behemoth, was carrying a huge gun with a huge barrel. The gun itself was blue and grey, and Nima didn't want to be in its path when the going got tough.

Finally, besides Zekka, there was a man wearing thick armorweave, and with a huge bandolier of various sizes and types of grenades. Before Nima could even take in what Zekka was wearing, besides a sort of webbing that held several weapons on his back, and a mask on his face, the second man tossed a grenade towards Nima.

She pushed it back with the Force, but the moment she got her grip on it to push it, it exploded in mid-air in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. She rolled clear of it, just barely, her shoto still drawn. She put her saber back on her belt, aware that she probably had at least a minute, if not more, before she could use it.

"I'd ask if you knew what you were doing, but I know you do. And for what, credits?" Nima called out, as they spread out slightly, to cover her. Nima didn't know if she could make it through all of the Cortosis with her Shuhudaku dagger, and she certainly couldn't do it fast enough to save her life if she stopped paying attention to these monsters, radiating malice and greed like the gas they'd tried to trap Nima with.

"You couldn't even believe the pay," the man with the grenades said, with a sickening smile that told Nima that he knew how furious it'd make her.

Nima didn't just charge forward in stupid anger. No, it was just more fuel.

For now, yet again, Nima was fighting to the death. But this time, it wasn't only her life on the line.

******

In those days, the Sith were powerful yet disorganized, their Empires and ways inevitably leading to their own collapse. But this meant many splinters, and when the tree was so large and twisted, the splinters were dangerous enough on their own.

The Wandering One's rage built up, week upon week, as they tracked a wandering band. A half-dozen Sith and all of their servants and warriors were on a spree of sorts, moving from planet to planet, raiding with all the efficiency and cruelty of a Mandalorian. In those days the Mandalorians were divided, many serving the Sith and others aiding the Republic or the Jedi Lords, always in search of credits and more credits. Some were even with these particular Sith, as they razed villages, and… Yoda trailed off, and shook his head. "Every cruelty, they inflicted. Upon men, upon women, upon children. None, they spared, no evil was too great not to be performed. Scoff, the Mandalorians did, at their Sith employers and stand to the side. Think, do you, that standing to the side as you aid such evil makes you honorable, hmm?"

Nima had shook her head, eyes wide as she tried to imagine the kinds of evil that would make Yoda quail from even describing it.

He'd continued, describing the hunt, until at last the Wandering One caught them in the act, as they were burning a village. All of the villagers on that forested planet were hauled out to the center of the town while the rest burned, and the Sith took turns thinking of novel tortures, humiliations, and things that Yoda wouldn't even mention to an eight year old Nima, one by one by one.

The Wandering One stepped in as lightning wracked a frail old man, their shining green lightsaber at the ready, their heart a bonfire.

They struck with fury and power that had been built up for a month, without mercy but without cruelty.

The Mandalorians fell before the Wandering One as if thousands of years of martial traditions were nothing.

Then the Wandering One faced a half-dozen Sith, saber still sizzling with the blood of the fallen. They smiled, faintly, and set to work.

******

The grenadier threw a grenade that exploded into a smoke cloud, and Nima frowned. Searing blaster bolts tore through the thick fog that clearly they could see past. Nima, on the other hand, struggled to sense their emotions as she dodged out of the way. She was faster than ever before, driven and powered by her emotions as she was, everything sharper, harder, more dangerous.

But even then, she almost took a hit, the bolt sizzling near her skin as it passed.

But the only way a smokescreen could possibly hide them in the Force--

Another grenade was thrown, and another, as the dark cloud grew and moved towards her. Nima raced back, always just out of the way, but not yet leaping for the walls. If they didn't know she was a Rider, she didn't want to tell them, and if they did, they had a plan to stop that too. The explosions sent shards impacting uselessly against her, too slow to do much more than sting.

She was running out of space to run. "I understand," Nima panted, loud enough for them to hear. "These weapons, these skills, these tricks. They are from the Sith. And that means, they were given to you by your owner, your Master--"

Nima was afraid of them. But even the fear was a dagger, if you knew how to wield it. Its sharp stab meant she was blinking back tears of righteous anger as she gathered the storm in her, thought of the flow of air, of the movement of life itself, and looked at the dark, creeping smoke, and the half-ruined floor.

The grenades would keep on coming, and so would they. She let them.

She thrust out her free hand, and the Force, the Bigness, responded with a massive, tearing gust of wind and power that blew away all the smoke, right in their faces. The darkness retreated, cringing, as she almost blew some of them off their feet. No matter how dark the night, even a candle could send it fleeing. And this wasn't a candle.

Two of them were coughing and trying to get their footing as Nima surged forward, running faster than she had any right to, lightsaber at the ready. "Your Master, Darth Sidious!"

"He is not my Master--" Zekka began coldly, drawing a vibro-blade that no doubt was able to stand up to a lightsaber. Because of course it would.

"The moment you accepted his 'gifts' he had you," Nima said, talking even as her lungs ached. She batted aside a blaster bolt that would have cratered her chest, and it splashed against the ground as she reached its owner.

The woman reeled back as the shoto sliced through the blaster rifle, which sparked and tumbled to the ground, along with Nima's angry tears as she darted past the group and turned. She was a blur, faster than a sentient could move. But the woman was fast too, and she drew a second blaster rifle, firing it in a single motion. Nima ducked, and the blaster bolt grazed her shoulder, sending sparks of pain she could only endure. She shifted forward, still low, and crouched as she cut off the markswoman at the knees. The woman began screaming and pleading, her shouts of agony and terror packing the air. Nima ignored the senseless, worthless words, but she knew she'd still have nightmares at the smell of the flesh as it burned clean. It was so dreadfully familiar, too close to meat she'd eaten for it to be comfortable. The sizzle, the screams, the pain she was causing, she regretted none of them. She couldn't find even an iota of remorse amid the swirling torrent of fury at what this woman was enabling, how many people had begged for deliverance from the plague in vain.

Then she pushed the woman backwards with the Force, using her free hand. The woman didn't go as far as she wanted, but it was enough. "All of you are evil," Nima said. "But you cannot defeat us. I am positive. Children have suffered because of you. Children have died--"

Even if he defeated her, even if he killed her, he was not escaping this planet alive.

"And one more, yourself, will soon join them," Zekka said. The huge man with the weapon Nima didn't understand laughed at that. The funny joke about child murder. "We have killed and captured Jedi with these techniques before. What will a thirteen year old girl do against us?" The mottled monster chuckled as his vibro-blade whirred, advancing on her without fear. Nima could feel that her saber wasn't recovered from the Cortosis yet.

It was fine. She needed a free hand, honestly. This was a style too, a form.

The truth was: Zekka was right. A thirteen year old Jedi, or even a thirteen year old Rider, stood no chance against them. She'd fight well and then she'd lose, not perhaps but with complete certainty. But both, and how she felt now?

The large bruiser fired his weapon, and Nima finally saw what it was. A tangled net, pulsing with electricity, shot out at her blindingly fast. It was weighted, and Nima didn't doubt that the metal mesh was lightsaber proof.

It was too fast for most Jedi to escape, and certainly any regular Jedi Padawan.

Nima leapt in the air, her boots grazing the top of the net before she cleared it entirely, almost floating for a single moment as she reached out into the Force, grabbed the downed woman-- who despite her pleas and tears was still aiming up with her second blaster--and threw her into the grenadier.

They both crashed together, thrown so hard that Nima felt a moment's guilt as they went tumbling onto they crashed into the wall. Then the guilt burned away, and she felt something halfway like satisfaction. She wasn't happy with the violence she was doing, but she knew it was necessary, and felt oddly glad that she was… succeeding at it.

Nima fell downwards, and of course Zekka could apparently follow her fall just from looking, because just about when she was going to land, he slashed up with his buzzing blade. Nima's shoto met it, but rebounded off, and she landed and retreated as he began to slash, using both arms for powerful blows that Nima's shoto could barely keep up with. He would have been toast against someone like Katarina, or Ayguin, but for someone without the Force his form was almost beautiful in its brutal efficiency. Not a single movement was wasted, and he was fighting to kill. He went for the most deadly move in every moment. A Sith with his sword-fighting instincts would have already killed Nima and been done with it.

Instead, though she was pressed back, she just barely managed to hold her own, though several times the vibroblade ripped through the fabric of her clothing. Several times her shoto grazed against the armorweave he was wearing.

Nima let herself be led, even as she was able to shift closer to the net-wielder. The other two were down, and the woman without knees wasn't waking up anytime soon. The grenadier, on the other hand, was desperately working to stand up. But from the pain he'd broken something. Hopefully it'd keep him out of the fight a little longer. This time, instead of jumping over the net as it shot out, Nima slid under, like she was trying to get under a closing blast door, and slashed up at the net gun. Her shoto couldn't quite tear through the entire thing, but Nima could hear the sparks as she rolled away and began to stand up, only to almost be clocked with what was left of the net gun, thrown right at her.

It grazed her head, and she bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood, backing up unsteadily.

Every Rider instinct in Nima's body was screaming that now was the moment to retreat to wait for a better chance. Instead she darted forward, her blade searing through the man's right arm at the shoulder. He shouted, but Nima didn't feel the pain she was expecting. It was as if he was numbed to it, or didn't feel it quite right.

More sizzling. More smell of cooking human. He'd shouted only once, in agony, and then backed up, still functioning despite the pain.

"Girl, I would have you know. I am a member of Black Sun. Palpatine is no more my Master than Arbor is my mistress. And, look at you. You're exhausted, and you're one slip from death." Zekka said it all with an arrogant smirk. He was breathing a little heavily, but Nima's breath was coming in desperate gasps. If it wasn't for the Force and her own dedication she wouldn't be moving at all. She'd been dodging for far too long, and then all of the uses of the Force, the physical contact, the pain, the fighting, the suffering. It hadn't even been that long since this all began. It had been long enough, though.

But Nima felt her second wind coming, and she was far from entirely spent, even as the man she'd crippled writhed and tried to stand.

Apparently, his efforts weren't enough for Zekka. "Oh, can you do something other than shout. You still have one arm, and you barely even feel pain." Zekka chided his comrade, as Nima shifted closer to Zekka, trying to figure out the best way to end him. She also could afford the few seconds' space. Her saber was almost ready to go back on, at which point this fight would change entirely. It was easier to think of that than the fact that she'd maimed two sentient beings.

It was for the best.

"And you're fighting a Jedi, which means they wouldn't care how many loved ones you have. Just cut away your life like it was nothing, that is the Jedi way." Zekka said it sounding bored, and Nima knew it was bait, a bunch of nonsense that Zekka didn't even believe in his twisted heart. But she still stepped forward.

"Please, do leave. You can't defeat me or even hurt me."

The one-armed man hesitated, and then lunged at her. Nima shifted to the side and moved her leg out to trip him. He fell, making a sickening crunch as his nose hit the ground.

"My nobe! You're gonna pay!" But he was out of the fight for a few moments. Long enough.

In those few seconds Zekka had closed the distance, and Nima barely blocked one of his strikes.

Behind her, she heard the sound of the hangar bay opening, with a grinding noise.

"One of you, go check on that!" Zekka called out. "I'll kill the Jedi."

"Kill me, huh?"

Nima felt the grenadier running for a door. She knew that it could be some signal to bring in even more enemies, but Nima knew if that happened she'd retreat from the hangar. She didn't want to, but if the way out was clear, it was the only thing that made sense, if the odds grew worse. But she was sure she could beat him first.

"Yes." Zekka continued his offensive, but in her head Nima was counting.

Five.

Zekka stabbed forward, and Nima danced around, slashing at his face and the mask on it. Her shoto went through the valve, and he grunted in annoyance, moving to--

Four.

Stop her but he couldn't, even without the shoto he was distracted, one hand shifting off of his vibroblade, which was buzzing even faster than before, reaching for another weapon.

Three

But Nima wasn't going to let him reach it, and she kept on pressing, thrusting her shoto at his free hand, a desperate scramble in the space of a heartbeat.

Two.

Then she felt it, earlier than she had expected. The lightsaber was working. In a gesture it flew to her hands, and she activated it, saber batting aside the vibroblade easily. He only had one hand to hold it, after all.. It flew through the air and hit the ground. She continued the attack, her shoto aimed at his throat, even though she knew it'd kill him. But--

One.

He'd drawn some sort of gun, red with a barrel the size of her fist, and dozens of knobs along the side. As her shoto moved to go straight through his neck, he fired it.

Nima's ears ached, and her stomach quaked in pain and agony as she doubled over, barely keeping from vomiting. Her shoto scarred his throat, instead of killing him, as he fired it again into her, point blank.

Her world dissolved into agony.

Zero.

******

Nima Tyruti had been conflicted about killing Zekka. Or rather, that morning she'd tried to imagine it but had not quite been able to. And the fighting she had just thought would happen, less a decision and more an inevitability. She wouldn't disarm him and cut him down, because she knew someone like him would never surrender. She wouldn't even be trying to stop the killing blow, so much as trying to stop him and willing to kill him to do that. If she met him.

But she'd known she would.

Now, the agony overwhelming, she couldn't see past her pain and her hatred. The anger she had thought was so controlled was now without center, and without sense.

It just stretched on and on and on, but, at the back of her mind, she could feel that it would end, one way or another.

So she endured the pain, and let the misery wash over her, tried to harness even that.

******

He fired again, and continued to talk, his cold voice yet more agony on aching ears. "You happen to be right, girl. This was a Sith weapon, thousands of years ago. Jedi-Killer. Worked pretty well, no easy counter, I was told by some yappy Chancellor. Course, after enough Jedi survived it, there were some specific tricks to stop it. Perhaps you could look it up in the Jedi Archives on Coruscant." He smirked at his jest, more amused at himself than perhaps anyone else in his life had ever been with him. "But now I have one of them, and it's probably been long enough. Now you will pay the ultimate price for your stupidity. I could make this fast, but your Master is no doubt dying right now. Perhaps I should torture you just to see what he does?" He spoke calmly and slowly, but he sounded a little like a rabid beast let off the leash that was still trying to make sure it wouldn't suddenly be pulled back.

Nima was half-listening, but honestly she didn't give a crud about a monstrous killer's self-satisfied ranting.

"You're worth a lot. Nima Tyruti alive is worth half a million credits. And dead, two-hundred thousand."

"H-h-he wants Anakin to…" Nima tried to gasp out, writhing.

He ignored her words, kept on speaking. "To explain how it works, this gun unsettles your inner ear and your stomach, but… it does rather more than that. Does it feel as if your entire body is falling apart? As if your stomach is twisting itself to pieces and your brain is screaming for death? I hope it does. You've made it very inconvenient, really."

The pain should have been too much for Nima to think, but the whole time she was waiting, writhing but not screaming, as her guts felt a little like the time she'd eaten food so bad even a Twi'lek stomach couldn't stand it, only a thousand times worse. Still she twitched her hands, moving down towards her knife.

Her lightsabers were kicked far off to the side, and she wasn't sure if she could get them when she was in so much pain. She almost tried several times, in the minute he'd spent torturing her before he started talking.

But she had to wait.

"So, now, good to see you back." Nima saw that the one-armed man and the grenadier had both stepped in. "What was it?"

"W-well, apparently they want to open the trap in case a Jedi comes in, so that they don't know what's going on," the one-armed man stuttered, eyeing him in fear.

"I suppose that makes sense. So, we have a Jedi here." He gestured to Nima, who glared at him and continued her slow and careful movements between spasms of pain. She could taste blood, rich and disgusting in her mouth, and her nerves just barely held together against the agony. "And we're splitting the reward four-ways." Before he'd even finished speaking, he'd drawn his blaster pistol and shot the one-armed man in the head, and then shifted in a heartbeat to shoot the unconscious, damaged woman in the head. The Grenadier reached for his remaining grenades, only to find that Zekka's blaster was pointed at his head. "You, on the other hand, might deserve to live. Go and check on the ambush on her Master, and keep out of my way."

"Y-yes sir."

He left in a terror, and Nima wasn't sad to see him go. "Two ways, then," Zekka commented to himself, with another of those little smirks.

Zekka turned a knob, and the pain got that much worse, until she had to let out a squeal of anguish.

"You failed me, you know. I hoped you'd kill the others, to make it easier to explain why they all died and cannot split the reward. But you were too weak to kill them."

"No," Nima said. She wasn't. If she'd needed to, she would have killed them. She needed to kill Zekka. She just… couldn't let someone like that kill her.

"Either way, I have you now, before me. Now, just a minute or two more, and you--"

The blaster bolt caught him in the back, and he stumbled forward as someone whooped and hollered at the top of his lungs. Han Solo, on a stolen green speeder bike, screamed into the hangar bay, driving it one-handed while the other held the blaster with which he'd made an absurd shot.

But the armorweave stopped the blast, and Zekka Thyne whirled around. The return shot hit the front of the speeder. It spun out of control, and one-handed Han couldn't stop it. He leapt away from the speeder, hitting the ground with a skid and rolling, as it crashed into the far wall, creating a fireball that dissipated without anything to catch alight.

Han groaned and tried to stand up.

Zekka hit Nima once more, and her sense of balance and direction fell apart. Still, her hand finally inched along to grab her Shuhudaku dagger, and she began to draw it. Slowly, inch by inch. Her body wasn't cooperating.

Nima, we're trying to possess you, or do… something, but we can't. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Seluku babbled.

She wasn't dead yet. She focused on her head, and tried to balance her inner ear, tried to make sense of balance and control work again. It wasn't as simple as just forcing her body to keep on working, and she wasn't the kind of genius who could recreate everything that had been learned in centuries past over a few minutes. But if she could just stand up, if she could still fight, then she'd be able to push through everything after that. She knew it.

"So, who are you?" Zekka asked. "I didn't expect another brat."

"Han Solo," Han muttered. "And we're going to kick your butt."

"You are? What, do you think she's going to stand up and use the Force to teleport me, or fly through the air? What do you think she can do? What can you do?" Zekka scoffed, and reached to lift Han up, stowing his blaster as he did, and firing the disrupter gun in her direction to keep her writhing.

"Even I know that's not how the Force works," Han mumbles. "You just… you're going to lose.."

"Very funny, brat," Zekka said. "Do you have anything to say, Miss Tyruti, before I choke this Solo to death? No, thought not."

Another blast.

But Nima… Nima was so bad she couldn't get worse. It wasn't that it wasn't working on her, so much as there was a limit to pain before the sentient body couldn't process it, couldn't understand it. Nima was as bad as she was going to get, and yet inch by inch she was drawing her Shuhudaku.

She had nothing left. She had a third wind. Both felt true at once.

She loved Han, she realized: he was a good kid, kind and funny and a little cynical. He always wanted the best for everyone. She loved Han, and Eida, and Jix. She'd met so many wonderful people in the few days she'd spent here, even as she had met monsters.

She hated Zekka, and there had been terrible people, but this planet… this planet had to be saved.

Zekka was choking Han, and she had to stop it. It wasn't a choice.

Her eyes were blinded with tears, but she could aim towards evil. She could aim towards greed and malice, and know--

With a scream of agony, she brought herself to her elbows and threw the Shuhudaku dagger, which sailed through the air, straight into Zekka's back, and out his stomach in a shower of blood as it tore apart arteries.

With another scream, "Haaaan!" she rose to her knees, and reached out in the Force, blind with pain, and found her sabers coming to her, into her hands and activating in a single move.

Zekka collapsed as she lit her sabers and pulled herself up, her body kept going by the Force and nothing else. But the pain was fading, just a little, already. Not enough, not nearly enough, but she was able to deactivate her shoto and press the comms button.

Zekka was dying, all but dead already, in a puddle of gore. Nima could feel blood trickling from her ears, and she'd bitten her tongue enough to have a wad of blood in her mouth. She was drooling as well, and snot had begun to run down her face, just as with the tears. She was a complete mess.

But she was alive. So was Han.

He stood up, gasping for breath.

"Nima, we've almost reached your location, but it seems like the ship is launching from somewhere else," Ekria cried out.

"Dummy ship," Nima rasped. "It's a trap."

"We'll arrive to take you out of the trap, but we have to turn around soon. It's only that we're already about there that we're continuing at all," Ekria said.

Indeed, Nima could just see the ship in the sky now, moving down towards them, visible from the open hangar doors.

Nima, sorry, I've been pinned down by Cortosis droids and some traps. I've found Knight White, and we're trying to fight our way back through. You feel terrible. Please, Nima, take care of yourself.

Are you okay, Master?

I'm in a difficult situation, but I know backup isn't forthcoming. I'll find a way to manage.

That's what she'd done too.

But was she done? There was still the ship out there… and she could walk, she could move. And Bell, caught by forces he was struggling to fight…

******

The Wandering One fought as they never had before and would never again. They raged, but rage did not touch them, they mourned by mourning with a gleam in their heart. They fought against impossible odds, and the Sith broke before them. They cut down the Sith that electrocuted the mother and child, they impaled the Sith that had dragged off several of the men and women with a cruel look in his eyes, they sliced through the Sith who had cut up limbs, inch by inch, with her lightsaber as she laughed. They drove into the ground those who had slaughtered thousands with their sabers, their armies, their malice.

And they did not fall. They did not laugh evilly as the bodies hit the ground, and though they had plenty of anger in their heart, they did not turn on the villagers to continue the slaughter. All of the warnings about anger were less about this than other stories indicated. No, Master Yoda had gravely told Nima a truth:

"If when lightly tapped, something falls, unstable it was."

The truly dangerous moment, the one that felled at least as many Jedi as going too far in a rage, as pushing beyond their limits, was the moment afterwards. It was the moment one reflected, understood, followed up. It wasn't about who slipped, for everyone slipped, and even a fall could be climbed back up from. But when one looked around and didn't see you'd fallen, couldn't imagine that there was even a need to reflect on your actions and understand whether they were right or wrong… that was where you ended.

There they stood, looking at the slaughter. Two of the Sith were fleeing, one of them badly injured, hurrying towards their craft. They would probably get away, and once they did, tracking them would be hard. Every moment's delay could mean disaster and future losses.

Yet they had seen the planet, poor as it was. The villagers here would receive little help from their neighbors. Those injured would die of untreated wounds.

Suddenly, as they never had before--for they were indeed the Wandering One--they understood the turmoil their mother and father must have felt.

Yet, was refusing to chase them cowardice? Despair? Was all a Jedi could do salve the wounds of terrible people? Or was it hope, that these people, or others, might be the start of something bigger than the Wandering One could imagine.

There were four endings to the tale, and Yoda told each.

In one, the Wandering One chased the Sith out of hope, that they could stop others from being hurt, and create a galaxy where such hurt never happened again. They chased them down, destroyed them, and continued their lonely vigil. But they did it with a smile, understanding just what they fought for. Each place they went, they carried with them a flame, and in those brief days they battled the darkness, they planted flames that would shine and flicker and glow long after their death. What sentient knows how many of those flames' impact echoed down a thousand years?

In another, the Wandering One chased the Sith out of a sort of angry despair. They never fell, but they did grow more brutal, more tired. They could change nothing, could only seek revenge on the evils others had done. The galaxy was better for them and their actions. Yet there was no happiness and no satisfaction, and one day they died on a hostile planet, alone. What sentient knew them well enough to mourn them?

In a third ending they stayed out of despair. What could they do but salve the wounds? They helped the villagers, and they helped others, and eventually they returned to their mother, to govern. Their heart was not in it, and they grew soft, yet still they benefited sentients, still they were good. They even found love, for a time, and lost love in just such a time. They died in a galaxy transformed by the Battles of Ruusan, and wondered if they shouldn't have been there, or shouldn't have done more. What sentient understood them enough to mourn what they might have been?

In a fourth, they stayed out of hope. And they were neither sedantary nor brief. They brought life back to the planet, spent a year fixing it. Then, instead of ruling, they moved on. They knew what a fire was for: it was for forging a new galaxy. Each place they saved, they stayed long enough to fix it, long enough that it could stand on its own, and then they departed. They built towards heaven a brick at a time, and did it with a smile on their face, and love in their hearts. They wandered, but were not lost. What sentient could deny the good they did?

Which was true? Nima always asked.

"All of them. None of them," Yoda answered. "What you do with it, it is. Moment after, be mindful of."


The Moment after Nima killed Zekka Thyne, she made a choice (Choose 1)


[] The ship carrying the poison, the plague, was a way's off. After getting Han onto Shrike's ship--apparently they could use the best gunner they had--Nima could simply… go ahead of them. She was a Rider, she could leap great distances, and she was the only one who could get onto the ship and stop the pilot. She had lightsabers, she'd killed before and she could do it again, if only it could stop this madness!
[] Master Bell was in danger. She was just one sentient, but she could save him. She had to find him, but even if all she did was distract everyone with another Jedi to chase after, it'd be better than nothing. She couldn't let him die. Not now. Not after all of this. She could do something about it. She could do it. She could!
[] No. No. She can't do this. She was falling apart at the seams. Worse, she was dissolving, so that she couldn't see the seams. She should get Han Solo seen off, and then hole off on the ship. She could lock the door to her room, and just… and just make sure she was alright and trust Han and the others to do the rest.


*******

A/N: Alright! Please like, comment, and vote! I really actually do want feedback, considering how much time and effort I went through. If there's little typos that take you out of the story, or bits that are awkward that could be easily improved...