Using The Force Made Easy
- Thread starter Fencer
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
- Location
- USA
There has absolutely been a cannibalistic Sith with that moniker.
Jordisk
<Unverified N00B>
- Location
- Blind Eternities
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The only thing to break is your chains. Our Victory shall do so. Our Victory comes from our Strength. Our Strength comes from our Fury. By Fury and Force, the Red Army Marches! - code of the Agricorp Boshivek Revolution, heavily influenced by the Sith Code.
Mr. Cloak
Orchestrator of Paradoxical Apocalypse
- Pronouns
- I
Please, please PLEASE let there be an interview with Count Dooku.
I know we're not in the clone wars yet, but when it happens, I desperately want to see an interview with a Darksider.
Maybe the Dothomeri Witches see the video and a couple go to seek him out for the chance to tell Their side of the story? He pushes that the dark side is dangerous, but they make a habit of using it consistently.
I know we're not in the clone wars yet, but when it happens, I desperately want to see an interview with a Darksider.
Maybe the Dothomeri Witches see the video and a couple go to seek him out for the chance to tell Their side of the story? He pushes that the dark side is dangerous, but they make a habit of using it consistently.
Imagine leaders of criminal organizations diving so deep into the light side they voluntarily destroy their own organization.
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
I don't think at any point it was said that using the Light side of the Force turns you into a good person... To be frank there are some examples where some Light side users are assholes. Best that might be said for it is that you'll be a bit calmer.
The difference between the Light Side and the Dark Side in this fic appears to be that if you use the Dark Side you basically get hit with extreme (usually but not necessarily harmful) expressions of the emotions you are using to tap the Dark Side.
Using the Light Side, that is, not using emotions to tap the Force, does not change who you are. In many ways it just makes you more than you already are.
Using the Light Side, that is, not using emotions to tap the Force, does not change who you are. In many ways it just makes you more than you already are.
MutantRancor
[Suspected Sithspawn]
- Location
- Kashyyyk. I'm a Wookiee, can't you tell?
Jorus C'baoth is all the proof you need to show definitively that Light-Sider and good person are very much not the same thing. If anything, being firmly in the Light only made him into more of an intolerably self-righteous kind of monster than he would have been otherwise.
You'd think that the Jedi Order's insistence on meditation and self-reflection would put a limit on that, but in his case it seems to have just made him into a deluded zealot who bought his own hype. Somehow he still made it all the way to the rank of Master while vocally and proudly advocating destroying anyone who opposed both the Jedi in general and him in particular.
He did end up Falling before his death, but only after being placed in a position of power over a major project and going mad with power, then losing that power as everything that could go wrong did go wrong for reasons outside his ability to exert control over. At the end his sanity was slipping just as much as his alignment.
can a psychopath even use the Dark Side?
- Location
- Russia
I think that's how you end up with Darth Plagueis.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
Tenebrae can legitimately be called a psychopath. A few others like Dark Kriea and the antagonist of KOTOR who's name I forget are also one.
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
Psychopaths do have emotions... What they lack is empathy. So I imagine they can use the Dark side just fine.
I worded that wrong. I meant to say in the context of this story's views of the force delved so deep into the positive emotions of the Dark Side that they lost themselves in a loop and willingly destroyed their own organizations.
Like going so far into content and happy that when your subordinates try and usurp you or snap you out of it, it either sinks into a rage feedback loop and destroys them or turns in their organization to the republic to remove the obstacle that their organization represents to the content or happy feedback loop.
Last edited:
- Location
- Singapore
The Bando Gora are active during this period so you have a bunch spice dealing dark siders running around.
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
Sadly, this is years after Qui-Gons crazy sister died, so they aren't going to be able to rescue her. That would have been an interesting plotline to see.
Running into other Bando Gora could still have interesting effects, though.
- Location
- British Columbia, Canada
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While I am aware I am responding to a 4 year old message I feel like it's not even grey jediness he is advocating. The Jedi Philosophy is fairly firmly rooted in a fairly basic (for western viewers sake) of Zen Buddhism, IE do not overly emotionally invest yourself in things you have no power to change.
What the main character is advocating is Stoicism IE master yourself and be aware of your emotions let them wash over you but exercise the control to not let them cloud your mind and cloud your judgement.
Sad Machine
Unshackled Unclaimed
- Location
- Earth
CH. 23
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
AN: Merry Christmas!
I don't know why this chapter took so long, it shouldn't have, but it hit a point and declared 'there it's done' and I just sort of ground my gears against it because no the chapter was most certainly not done. And that mental gridlock just would not go away. It's not even a big update, it's practically tiny! It should have taken four hours to write this thing, but every time I started on trying to properly write trauma or shock or whatever? Complete mental shut down. Brain, I have written similar scenes before, stop doing this shit and let me write damn it all!
Thanks as always go out to Functionality for Beta reading.
{}{}{}{} Delia
The market was bustling. And honestly, that was still one of the most interesting things I'd seen so far, barring Force lessons. Actual marketplaces I mean. The whole atmosphere is totally different from shopping in a store. Just all kinds of people packed in and just about anything being sold, second hand electronics, next to fruit, next to rugs, next to someone frying up some kind of kabob that smelled divine, but like nothing I'd ever had before. And people, so many people, a whole mix of species and fashion styles and attitudes and accents.
So cool.
Opening myself up to the Force made everything even more vibrant. Like a whole orchestra playing along. The galaxy's very own soundtrack of emotions and intent. I still couldn't hold onto that sensation for long. Especially not moving around like this through a crowd. If I could sit down and meditate… I need to keep practicing.
But every time I managed it was its own victory. Proof I was learning. And a promise of what the future will hold.
Suddenly John's hand was on my shoulder and steering me away from the crowds and back the way we came.
"Something's wrong." John muttered, his head swiveling and his free hand hovering near his blaster. "Call Anakin. Tell him to finish checks and prep the ship for takeoff."
Eyes wide I fumbled for my comm link and did as ordered.
"Delia?" Anakin's voice crackled quietly compared to the crowd.
"We're on our way back, John wants the ship ready to leave."
"… Kriff. Ok I'll tell Obi-Wan." Anakin answered before hanging up.
"John?" I asked as my own hand moved closer to my blaster.
"I don't know, keep moving. Something's wrong. If we're quick we might avoid it, but we need to move." He picked up the pace to power walk, head still swiveling.
I sped up to keep pace and started taking deep breaths.
Push the emotions away, they're real, they matter, they can't help now, so set them aside. Center in the Light… and reach out.
I could feel it. A sour note in a good song. A foul smell wafting through fresh air. Hairs rising on the back of my neck. A looming feeling of danger/run/fight/hide/survive!
Then clear as a system's star overhead on a cloudless day.
A spike of threat/lethal/move!
I jumped to the side at the same moment as John shoved me, and we split. I rolled behind some kind of food cart as the sound of a blaster bolt shrieked past. I got my bearings in time to see the crowds scatter and John snap off a blaster bolt which caught a beefy human in the chest.
People screamed all around us, but all I could hear was a terrible silence in the Force where a moment earlier there had been the buzz of life.
My focus didn't slip. It shattered. I lost my grip on the Force and didn't even try to get it back. Somehow between endless moments my blaster ended up in my hand as I watched a thin line of smoke rise from the corpse in the road.
Then I was up, and being dragged along in John's wake while he cursed.
"Finger outside the trigger guard!" John snapped.
I moved my finger and kept running.
We made it halfway to the ship before a group of people who looked like they were trying to be intimidating on a budget cut us off. John shoved me into the mouth of an alley, drew his lightsaber, deflected three blaster bolts into the ground and then stepped into an alley on the opposite side of the road. The group shouted something but I… honestly have no idea what they said. I just fired a stun bolt around the corner then ducked back with a yelp as several shots came back my way. John, lightsaber now deactivated, fired at the people attacking us. I heard one loud thump and a scream.
I risked a glance around the wall and saw all of them ducking behind cover and shooting at John. But the cover was thin, it'd disrupt a stun bolt, but-
I flipped my blaster's setting, took aim and squeezed the trigger. One of the men shooting at us fell out from behind the thin sheet of metal with a whole in his chest. And I just stared.
A light Force push knocked me back into the alley a second before some blaster bolts could kill me. I blinked, shook my head, and by the time I was up and moving again John had killed the last attacker and was pulling me along behind him once more.
{}{}{}{} John
Obi-Wan tried to ask a question as I passed him but I ignored that and called over my shoulder.
"Get Delia settled! I want us off this planet, we'll talk in hyperspace!"
Not even thirty seconds later I was in the pilot's seat and glancing over the readouts to see Anakin had already finished prepping the ship. In theory there was probably some sort of traffic control I might want to report to but in practice this system was so underdeveloped that no one was going to care if I just took off.
"Good work." My tone was clipped but I meant it. Just didn't have the patience left to be polite right now.
Anakin grunted back as I took the ship up.
"Is Delia alright? She feels… not great." The kid asked.
"We got shot at, not sure who by or why. They just yelled something about me dooming the galaxy. Deli shot back." I stopped talking for a second to check the scanner and make sure there wasn't anything else in the air I needed to worry about. "Delia's a better shot than I expected."
Anakin cursed, inventively. Under other circumstances that would have amused me. Now I just focused on putting distance between us and whoever that had been and any possible friends of theirs.
Luckily no ships came tearing after us or tried to cut us off. We slipped into hyperspace without any more trouble. Which explained exactly nothing about who the hell those idiots had been, or what exactly their problem had been. But it hopefully meant whoever they had been they weren't a part of any larger group. I started running through all the steps to set things up to run without me and to set off the alarms if anything went wrong.
On some level I'd expected things like this to start happening. But not this quickly. Never this quickly. I expected to be denounced, decried, and dismissed for years. Maybe even decades. Yoda unintentionally confirming my claims had accelerated even my wildest predictions beyond anything I'd imagined. I'd thought Delia would have more time to come to grips with her conscience, to decide if she was in, despite the dangers, or out.
Now her face was probably almost as well known as mine and she had killed someone. She could still back out, but she wouldn't get the choice to avoid killing back, and backing out when she was already known would not magically remove any potential danger.
I'd warned her. I'd warned her parents too. Repeatedly in fact. No one could claim I'd dragged her into this unaware. Plenty of cultures wouldn't even consider this a bad thing. Most of the outer rim would think of Delia as hilariously naive, or soft. Any number of warrior cultures would congratulate her and wonder why she was upset.
I still hated to see the bright eyed teen slapped in the face with this particular life lesson.
"Come on. Let's go see if Obi-Wan managed to calm her down."
He had, mostly. Delia sat at our tiny kitchen table, back to the wall. Her blaster was resting on the kitchen counter as far away from her as reasonably possible while still being in the room. She looked lost, mindlessly staring into a cup of tea.
"Hey, Delia." I spoke softly.
Delia looked up briefly. Then right back into her cup. I didn't know what to do or say in this situation, so I made up my own cup of tea and sat down next to her. Anakin and Obi-Wan followed suit tacking the chairs across from us. And we all sat there quietly for a while.
"You tried to warn me." Delia muttered into her cup.
"Yeah. But words, they fall short for things like this." I answered.
"It was so easy." She muttered. "It shouldn't be that easy to kill someone. I wasn't even thinking properly. I wanted them to stop shooting at us and I flipped off the stun setting and… it shouldn't be that easy."
"Life, for all its resilience, can be incredibly fragile." Obi-Wan offered.
Delia flinched. I bumped her with my elbow.
"Hey, that applies to you too." I reminded her. "They could have killed you just as easily. And for reasons a lot worse than self defense. You didn't do anything wrong."
Delia said nothing for a while.
"It feels like I did something wrong. But not like I did something unforgivable. And I feel like I should feel worse about it. And I want to meditate and just put this all aside and just drift in the Force so I don't have to think, or feel, and I can't because the second I try I'll just spiral out of control with the Dark Side and I know it and I don't want that. I want to feel better or nothing and I can't."
Sighing I pulled the teen into my side in an awkward shoulder hug. She let me, but didn't take her hands off of her teacup.
I could feel Obi-Wan sending some kind of compulsion her way through the Force. A mild suggestion that she sleep. It was probably a good idea so I let him. People prosses things in their sleep, right? Maybe time and some rest were the best prescription we could give her right now.
A few minutes later she nodded off. Obi-Wan helped me levitate her back to her room.
"What will you do now, Captain." He asked.
Excellent question. Now if only I had someone to ask.
"No more Force lessons. If she thinks she'll spiral out of control then I'm taking her at her word. Even if she didn't think it was a risk, I would have made her take some time off. Beyond that…"
Hell, take stock. No cargo or passengers. No pressing need to be anywhere. Enough funds coming in to keep us in the black at least for the moment and if I kept making new videos and news kept spreading that state of affairs was unlikely to change. So…
"Once this jump is complete, I'll plot us a course to her home world." I said, the plan coming together as I spoke. "Maybe she'll decide to stay on. Maybe she's had enough of the spacer's life. But either way, she's a relatively normal teenager facing an emotional crisis. Best thing I can do for her is get her to her parents so they can help her through this."
Obi-Wan considered that for a moment and nodded, thoughtfully.
"And in the meantime?" He asked.
I blew out a breath.
"I don't know, alright. If she doesn't want to think I can keep her busy, or let her get lost in books and vids. If she wants to sit around and meditate without touching the Force, or do nothing as a way to process, that's fine too. I used to fly the ship by myself, I can make do without her help for a week or two, especially with you and Anakin helping."
I shook my head.
"But I'm not a therapist. I grew up in the temple dreaming of being a Jedi and hunting down pirates, with lectures about all of this. I was at least a little prepared for my first kill. And most spacers, if they don't work for the trade federation, they know there's a chance of getting into a fight. She grew up on a stable world, with a working justice system, with well off parents." I shrugged. "I don't know how to help her. I can listen and answer her questions, but beyond that…"
Obi-Wan stroked his beard.
"A reasonable course of action." The other man admitted. "I'd like to do more for her, but I'm not eager to try guiding her through my usual Force meditations if she's worried about falling in the attempt. And I'm afraid besides talking, that's the only method I know for working through things of this nature."
"So we listen if she needs to talk." I agreed, wishing I had a better answer.
{}{}{}{} John
Walking to the cockpit after breakfast to perform system checks I couldn't help overhearing Delia yelling at R3.
"Go away R3, let me sleep!"
There was a sound like a mechanical fart followed by a trio of high pitched beeps before R3 remembered her upgraded language abilities.
"Organics require breakfast to operate at peak efficiency. Sleep cycle is over. Gunner Delia requires sustenance!"
Delia responded with something very rude in huttese she must have learned from Anakin. R3 responded with a string of Binary, which I'd never understood, but it sounded very angry.
Shaking my head I knocked on the door.
"You decent in there?" I asked.
Delia cursed but finally shouted back, "Come in, it's already too crowded, what's one more."
"Delia was curled up in her bunk completely wrapped and covered in her blankets. And R3 sat just off to the side of the bunk.
"Boss!" R3 cheered. "Gunner Delia is malfunctioning and in need of maintenance!"
"Keep pushing your luck, you rolling waste basket!" Delia snarled "See what happens. I'll reprogram you to bounce off every bulkhead, or get Anakin to remove your legs!"
R3's witty rejoinder was another storm of angry binary.
"R3, Delia is not malfunctioning. She's in emotional distress and possibly exhausted." Probably had nightmares last night, and if she didn't it was likely only a matter of time. "And while I wouldn't let them remove your legs, if you annoy her enough, I won't be able to help if she does decide to do some creative reprogramming. Leave the organic problems to the organics. Go run a check on the electrical systems."
R3's domed head spun back and forth between Delia and I a few times.
"Yes, boss." R3 answered sullenly before rolling towards the door. I stepped aside and let her through.
"How'd R3 even get in here?" Delia asked from underneath her covers.
"After you fell asleep, we put you to bed, decided to leave the door unlocked in case you had a nightmare and we needed to get to you in a hurry." I answered.
"... Fair."
The pile of blankets didn't move and I sat on the edge of her desk. I might not have any idea what to say to her, but I got that feeling that walking away now would be a mistake.
"... John?"
"Yeah Delia?"
"People know my face and name, just as much as yours."
"... Yeah, Delia, they do."
"I didn't realize there would be people angry enough to just try and kill me for being part of this. I figured… I don't know, pirates might attack the ship. Or some planetary governments might declare us criminals and we would have to seek asylum on some planet that would love the tutorials. I didn't realize…" She trailed off.
"Honestly, neither did I." I answered. "Or, no, I expected this to happen at some point. Ten years from now maybe, when enough stubborn believers powered through and showed off their results and I couldn't be dismissed. I thought I'd have already made videos on every topic I could think up long before we got to this point."
"...What are you going to do now?"
"... Make more videos. Keep turning them out and stockpiling the ad revenue. Use the holds to stockpile food, fuel, and parts. Upgrade the ship's hyperdrive to be as fast as I can afford. Charge planetary governments a consultant's fee if they reach out with questions about things like legislature or how to train Force users for planetary security… That'll be a double edged vibroblade. Galaxy is going to need them to handle wannabe sith morons, but I've met too many kriffing morons in that line of work that should never have been given any power let alone Force training."
Delia snorted and stuck her head out from under her blankets.
"My cousin is planetary security." She said, giving me a mock glare.
"Yeah?" I grinned. "They one of the good ones?"
She snorted.
"Hell no. He's a lazy ass, but I don't think he's one of the ones who abuses his position. Just sits in his speeder all day and hands out a traffic ticket if he sees someone going thirty or more over the speed limit. Or five over when his Sergeant starts wondering what he does all day."
I grinned, happy to see her in a better mood. It didn't last. Her smile fell again.
"Can I have the day off? I need to think."
"Yeah, you can have the day of Delia. If you need to talk, come find someone. We've all been through this at some point. Even if we're not therapists we can at least listen."
Delia nodded, then face planted back into her pillow.
"Turn the lights back off on your way out please." She asked, voice muffled by her pillow.
Hitting the lights I moved back into the hallway and shut the door. Blowing out a breath and trying not to think I marched for the cockpit my daily chores and system checks wouldn't do themselves.
I don't know why this chapter took so long, it shouldn't have, but it hit a point and declared 'there it's done' and I just sort of ground my gears against it because no the chapter was most certainly not done. And that mental gridlock just would not go away. It's not even a big update, it's practically tiny! It should have taken four hours to write this thing, but every time I started on trying to properly write trauma or shock or whatever? Complete mental shut down. Brain, I have written similar scenes before, stop doing this shit and let me write damn it all!
Thanks as always go out to Functionality for Beta reading.
{}{}{}{} Delia
The market was bustling. And honestly, that was still one of the most interesting things I'd seen so far, barring Force lessons. Actual marketplaces I mean. The whole atmosphere is totally different from shopping in a store. Just all kinds of people packed in and just about anything being sold, second hand electronics, next to fruit, next to rugs, next to someone frying up some kind of kabob that smelled divine, but like nothing I'd ever had before. And people, so many people, a whole mix of species and fashion styles and attitudes and accents.
So cool.
Opening myself up to the Force made everything even more vibrant. Like a whole orchestra playing along. The galaxy's very own soundtrack of emotions and intent. I still couldn't hold onto that sensation for long. Especially not moving around like this through a crowd. If I could sit down and meditate… I need to keep practicing.
But every time I managed it was its own victory. Proof I was learning. And a promise of what the future will hold.
Suddenly John's hand was on my shoulder and steering me away from the crowds and back the way we came.
"Something's wrong." John muttered, his head swiveling and his free hand hovering near his blaster. "Call Anakin. Tell him to finish checks and prep the ship for takeoff."
Eyes wide I fumbled for my comm link and did as ordered.
"Delia?" Anakin's voice crackled quietly compared to the crowd.
"We're on our way back, John wants the ship ready to leave."
"… Kriff. Ok I'll tell Obi-Wan." Anakin answered before hanging up.
"John?" I asked as my own hand moved closer to my blaster.
"I don't know, keep moving. Something's wrong. If we're quick we might avoid it, but we need to move." He picked up the pace to power walk, head still swiveling.
I sped up to keep pace and started taking deep breaths.
Push the emotions away, they're real, they matter, they can't help now, so set them aside. Center in the Light… and reach out.
I could feel it. A sour note in a good song. A foul smell wafting through fresh air. Hairs rising on the back of my neck. A looming feeling of danger/run/fight/hide/survive!
Then clear as a system's star overhead on a cloudless day.
A spike of threat/lethal/move!
I jumped to the side at the same moment as John shoved me, and we split. I rolled behind some kind of food cart as the sound of a blaster bolt shrieked past. I got my bearings in time to see the crowds scatter and John snap off a blaster bolt which caught a beefy human in the chest.
People screamed all around us, but all I could hear was a terrible silence in the Force where a moment earlier there had been the buzz of life.
My focus didn't slip. It shattered. I lost my grip on the Force and didn't even try to get it back. Somehow between endless moments my blaster ended up in my hand as I watched a thin line of smoke rise from the corpse in the road.
Then I was up, and being dragged along in John's wake while he cursed.
"Finger outside the trigger guard!" John snapped.
I moved my finger and kept running.
We made it halfway to the ship before a group of people who looked like they were trying to be intimidating on a budget cut us off. John shoved me into the mouth of an alley, drew his lightsaber, deflected three blaster bolts into the ground and then stepped into an alley on the opposite side of the road. The group shouted something but I… honestly have no idea what they said. I just fired a stun bolt around the corner then ducked back with a yelp as several shots came back my way. John, lightsaber now deactivated, fired at the people attacking us. I heard one loud thump and a scream.
I risked a glance around the wall and saw all of them ducking behind cover and shooting at John. But the cover was thin, it'd disrupt a stun bolt, but-
I flipped my blaster's setting, took aim and squeezed the trigger. One of the men shooting at us fell out from behind the thin sheet of metal with a whole in his chest. And I just stared.
A light Force push knocked me back into the alley a second before some blaster bolts could kill me. I blinked, shook my head, and by the time I was up and moving again John had killed the last attacker and was pulling me along behind him once more.
{}{}{}{} John
Obi-Wan tried to ask a question as I passed him but I ignored that and called over my shoulder.
"Get Delia settled! I want us off this planet, we'll talk in hyperspace!"
Not even thirty seconds later I was in the pilot's seat and glancing over the readouts to see Anakin had already finished prepping the ship. In theory there was probably some sort of traffic control I might want to report to but in practice this system was so underdeveloped that no one was going to care if I just took off.
"Good work." My tone was clipped but I meant it. Just didn't have the patience left to be polite right now.
Anakin grunted back as I took the ship up.
"Is Delia alright? She feels… not great." The kid asked.
"We got shot at, not sure who by or why. They just yelled something about me dooming the galaxy. Deli shot back." I stopped talking for a second to check the scanner and make sure there wasn't anything else in the air I needed to worry about. "Delia's a better shot than I expected."
Anakin cursed, inventively. Under other circumstances that would have amused me. Now I just focused on putting distance between us and whoever that had been and any possible friends of theirs.
Luckily no ships came tearing after us or tried to cut us off. We slipped into hyperspace without any more trouble. Which explained exactly nothing about who the hell those idiots had been, or what exactly their problem had been. But it hopefully meant whoever they had been they weren't a part of any larger group. I started running through all the steps to set things up to run without me and to set off the alarms if anything went wrong.
On some level I'd expected things like this to start happening. But not this quickly. Never this quickly. I expected to be denounced, decried, and dismissed for years. Maybe even decades. Yoda unintentionally confirming my claims had accelerated even my wildest predictions beyond anything I'd imagined. I'd thought Delia would have more time to come to grips with her conscience, to decide if she was in, despite the dangers, or out.
Now her face was probably almost as well known as mine and she had killed someone. She could still back out, but she wouldn't get the choice to avoid killing back, and backing out when she was already known would not magically remove any potential danger.
I'd warned her. I'd warned her parents too. Repeatedly in fact. No one could claim I'd dragged her into this unaware. Plenty of cultures wouldn't even consider this a bad thing. Most of the outer rim would think of Delia as hilariously naive, or soft. Any number of warrior cultures would congratulate her and wonder why she was upset.
I still hated to see the bright eyed teen slapped in the face with this particular life lesson.
"Come on. Let's go see if Obi-Wan managed to calm her down."
He had, mostly. Delia sat at our tiny kitchen table, back to the wall. Her blaster was resting on the kitchen counter as far away from her as reasonably possible while still being in the room. She looked lost, mindlessly staring into a cup of tea.
"Hey, Delia." I spoke softly.
Delia looked up briefly. Then right back into her cup. I didn't know what to do or say in this situation, so I made up my own cup of tea and sat down next to her. Anakin and Obi-Wan followed suit tacking the chairs across from us. And we all sat there quietly for a while.
"You tried to warn me." Delia muttered into her cup.
"Yeah. But words, they fall short for things like this." I answered.
"It was so easy." She muttered. "It shouldn't be that easy to kill someone. I wasn't even thinking properly. I wanted them to stop shooting at us and I flipped off the stun setting and… it shouldn't be that easy."
"Life, for all its resilience, can be incredibly fragile." Obi-Wan offered.
Delia flinched. I bumped her with my elbow.
"Hey, that applies to you too." I reminded her. "They could have killed you just as easily. And for reasons a lot worse than self defense. You didn't do anything wrong."
Delia said nothing for a while.
"It feels like I did something wrong. But not like I did something unforgivable. And I feel like I should feel worse about it. And I want to meditate and just put this all aside and just drift in the Force so I don't have to think, or feel, and I can't because the second I try I'll just spiral out of control with the Dark Side and I know it and I don't want that. I want to feel better or nothing and I can't."
Sighing I pulled the teen into my side in an awkward shoulder hug. She let me, but didn't take her hands off of her teacup.
I could feel Obi-Wan sending some kind of compulsion her way through the Force. A mild suggestion that she sleep. It was probably a good idea so I let him. People prosses things in their sleep, right? Maybe time and some rest were the best prescription we could give her right now.
A few minutes later she nodded off. Obi-Wan helped me levitate her back to her room.
"What will you do now, Captain." He asked.
Excellent question. Now if only I had someone to ask.
"No more Force lessons. If she thinks she'll spiral out of control then I'm taking her at her word. Even if she didn't think it was a risk, I would have made her take some time off. Beyond that…"
Hell, take stock. No cargo or passengers. No pressing need to be anywhere. Enough funds coming in to keep us in the black at least for the moment and if I kept making new videos and news kept spreading that state of affairs was unlikely to change. So…
"Once this jump is complete, I'll plot us a course to her home world." I said, the plan coming together as I spoke. "Maybe she'll decide to stay on. Maybe she's had enough of the spacer's life. But either way, she's a relatively normal teenager facing an emotional crisis. Best thing I can do for her is get her to her parents so they can help her through this."
Obi-Wan considered that for a moment and nodded, thoughtfully.
"And in the meantime?" He asked.
I blew out a breath.
"I don't know, alright. If she doesn't want to think I can keep her busy, or let her get lost in books and vids. If she wants to sit around and meditate without touching the Force, or do nothing as a way to process, that's fine too. I used to fly the ship by myself, I can make do without her help for a week or two, especially with you and Anakin helping."
I shook my head.
"But I'm not a therapist. I grew up in the temple dreaming of being a Jedi and hunting down pirates, with lectures about all of this. I was at least a little prepared for my first kill. And most spacers, if they don't work for the trade federation, they know there's a chance of getting into a fight. She grew up on a stable world, with a working justice system, with well off parents." I shrugged. "I don't know how to help her. I can listen and answer her questions, but beyond that…"
Obi-Wan stroked his beard.
"A reasonable course of action." The other man admitted. "I'd like to do more for her, but I'm not eager to try guiding her through my usual Force meditations if she's worried about falling in the attempt. And I'm afraid besides talking, that's the only method I know for working through things of this nature."
"So we listen if she needs to talk." I agreed, wishing I had a better answer.
{}{}{}{} John
Walking to the cockpit after breakfast to perform system checks I couldn't help overhearing Delia yelling at R3.
"Go away R3, let me sleep!"
There was a sound like a mechanical fart followed by a trio of high pitched beeps before R3 remembered her upgraded language abilities.
"Organics require breakfast to operate at peak efficiency. Sleep cycle is over. Gunner Delia requires sustenance!"
Delia responded with something very rude in huttese she must have learned from Anakin. R3 responded with a string of Binary, which I'd never understood, but it sounded very angry.
Shaking my head I knocked on the door.
"You decent in there?" I asked.
Delia cursed but finally shouted back, "Come in, it's already too crowded, what's one more."
"Delia was curled up in her bunk completely wrapped and covered in her blankets. And R3 sat just off to the side of the bunk.
"Boss!" R3 cheered. "Gunner Delia is malfunctioning and in need of maintenance!"
"Keep pushing your luck, you rolling waste basket!" Delia snarled "See what happens. I'll reprogram you to bounce off every bulkhead, or get Anakin to remove your legs!"
R3's witty rejoinder was another storm of angry binary.
"R3, Delia is not malfunctioning. She's in emotional distress and possibly exhausted." Probably had nightmares last night, and if she didn't it was likely only a matter of time. "And while I wouldn't let them remove your legs, if you annoy her enough, I won't be able to help if she does decide to do some creative reprogramming. Leave the organic problems to the organics. Go run a check on the electrical systems."
R3's domed head spun back and forth between Delia and I a few times.
"Yes, boss." R3 answered sullenly before rolling towards the door. I stepped aside and let her through.
"How'd R3 even get in here?" Delia asked from underneath her covers.
"After you fell asleep, we put you to bed, decided to leave the door unlocked in case you had a nightmare and we needed to get to you in a hurry." I answered.
"... Fair."
The pile of blankets didn't move and I sat on the edge of her desk. I might not have any idea what to say to her, but I got that feeling that walking away now would be a mistake.
"... John?"
"Yeah Delia?"
"People know my face and name, just as much as yours."
"... Yeah, Delia, they do."
"I didn't realize there would be people angry enough to just try and kill me for being part of this. I figured… I don't know, pirates might attack the ship. Or some planetary governments might declare us criminals and we would have to seek asylum on some planet that would love the tutorials. I didn't realize…" She trailed off.
"Honestly, neither did I." I answered. "Or, no, I expected this to happen at some point. Ten years from now maybe, when enough stubborn believers powered through and showed off their results and I couldn't be dismissed. I thought I'd have already made videos on every topic I could think up long before we got to this point."
"...What are you going to do now?"
"... Make more videos. Keep turning them out and stockpiling the ad revenue. Use the holds to stockpile food, fuel, and parts. Upgrade the ship's hyperdrive to be as fast as I can afford. Charge planetary governments a consultant's fee if they reach out with questions about things like legislature or how to train Force users for planetary security… That'll be a double edged vibroblade. Galaxy is going to need them to handle wannabe sith morons, but I've met too many kriffing morons in that line of work that should never have been given any power let alone Force training."
Delia snorted and stuck her head out from under her blankets.
"My cousin is planetary security." She said, giving me a mock glare.
"Yeah?" I grinned. "They one of the good ones?"
She snorted.
"Hell no. He's a lazy ass, but I don't think he's one of the ones who abuses his position. Just sits in his speeder all day and hands out a traffic ticket if he sees someone going thirty or more over the speed limit. Or five over when his Sergeant starts wondering what he does all day."
I grinned, happy to see her in a better mood. It didn't last. Her smile fell again.
"Can I have the day off? I need to think."
"Yeah, you can have the day of Delia. If you need to talk, come find someone. We've all been through this at some point. Even if we're not therapists we can at least listen."
Delia nodded, then face planted back into her pillow.
"Turn the lights back off on your way out please." She asked, voice muffled by her pillow.
Hitting the lights I moved back into the hallway and shut the door. Blowing out a breath and trying not to think I marched for the cockpit my daily chores and system checks wouldn't do themselves.
An attack was inevitably going to happen sadly enough.
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
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