Junior padawan Nandi heaved an exasperated sigh and pushed back her chair.
"I'm done studying for today," she announced.
Lakhri, who was just trying to formulate an elegant-sounding sentence on mutual peaceful relations in Bocce, rolled his eyes.
"No, you're not," he said without even looking up from his data pad.
"Yes, I am," said Nandi decisively, tossing back her chestnut curls. "I've been at this for ages. I can't even think straight any more. I'm taking a walk around the ship."
She got up from her chair, looking smug.
Lakhri pondered just letting her leave and watching the fireworks when Eeth found out, which could not take long. Of course, this wasn't the kind thing to do at all, insufferable as Nandi could be. At twenty years of age, Lakhri had gotten past the point where he would indulge in his enjoyment at watching others get their comeuppance.
"Assuming you value your ability to sit comfortably," he said neutrally, putting down his data pad and looking at the teenage girl, "I advise you to reconsider. As far as my master is concerned, your work is done when he says it's done. If he finds out you just left, he'll kick your ass into next week."
That was a fair warning, he thought. She could take it or leave it. Lakhri picked up his data pad again and looked for the place where he had left off.
Nandi just stood there, looking furious.
"He's nothing but a big bully!" she fumed.
Lakhri sighed and put his data pad down once again. Obviously, it was impossible to get some peace and quiet right now.
"He's a lot more than that, actually," he said mildly. "But, yes, he's a bully. And since he's both stronger than you and your superior, you are not in much of a position to refuse being bullied. Sorry. The sooner you accept it, the better for you. Why don't you sit down and get back to work? My master will check on you any moment now and you don't want to find out through first-hand experience how hard he spanks. Just in case you're curious, the answer is 'very'."
The expression on Nandi's face continued to be mutinous. Lakhri wondered whether he had been just as obnoxious at age fourteen. If yes, that might explain quite a lot about his master's rather intolerant behaviour, he thought.
Twenty-four hours earlier, one late Coruscant morning, Lakhri was running through a kata when his comlink beeped.
"Yes, master?" he asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Eeth had been called out of their workout to see the Council an hour earlier, and Lakhri had entirely expected this call.
"Padawan, go home, pack and meet me in hangar eleven in an hour," said Eeth crisply. "We are leaving on a mission. Diplomatic, moderate climate."
"Alright, master," replied Lakhri. He was a senior padawan now, and such things were standard procedure. Lakhri did not take regular classes any longer. He worked on projects and studied on his own, guided by Eeth or by experts in the field; he was also occasionally asked to act as a tutor or substitute teacher when at the Temple. These days, he was using his time to study Umbaran; Eeth was taking his Ataru skills to a higher level; and he was helping the archivists with a database project - in short, there were no pressing obligations that stood in the way of leaving at an hour's notice.
What he had not expected at all was Nandi: a tall human teenage padawan with a ponytail of glossy reddish-brown curls, a freckled nose, large blue-green eyes and a rather dissatisfied look on her face. She was standing next to Eeth and giving Lakhri an incredulous look as he came hurrying in one minute late (which he knew he could get away with; even Eeth would not punish him for one measly minute!)
"YOU are Eeth Koth's padawan?" she asked in disbelief.
Lakhri rolled his eyes.
"No, I'm his pet monkey," he replied, standing next to his master.
Eeth gave him a faintly reproving look, but did not comment; after all, he thought, Nandi had rather asked for it.
"Lakhri, this is Junior Padawan Nandi Tam," he said. "Nandi, this is my padawan, Lakhri Tumuel. He is six years your senior and has ample mission experience. Therefore, I expect you to consider him your superior. Lakhri, I will go into the details of this mission and the reasons for which Nandi will accompany us once we have taken off. We are scheduled to depart in six minutes and should really get aboard."
"Sure," said Lakhri, making his way towards the ramp with his master and Nandi. "Do we have a pilot?"
"No," said Eeth. "Show Nandi to the cabins and take my bag, please. I will go to the cockpit directly and prepare for takeoff."
Twenty minutes later, they were sitting next to Eeth in the cockpit and watching the stars turn into stripes; for Lakhri, at least, it was a familiar picture, but he noticed that Nandi was looking on in fascination.
As Eeth set the controls on autopilot, Lakhri felt legitimised to ask: "Master, could you now let me finally know where we're actually heading and what we're gonna do there?"
"I was going to, yes," said Eeth calmly. "Let's go to the galley."
They seated themselves around the table, and Eeth said: "We are going to Shaaban to negotiate a peace conference. Originally, Nandi and her master were scheduled to conduct this mission, but Nandi's master fell quite ill. By this morning, it was clear that he would not be able to go. The Council has thus been looking for alternative solutions. This was complicated by the fact that Nandi's master will unable to look after her for at least two weeks, her grandmaster is very old and frail and her best friend is currently gone on a mission with her master, so there was the question where to place her, in addition to the question of who to assign this mission to. After discussing this with Nandi and, as far as he was able to, her master, the Council decided to look for a team of Jedi that would take over this mission and take Nandi with them."
"Alright, so that's us," Lakhri said. "Are you okay with that, Nandi?"
"Huh?" Nandi asked in surprise. "I mean… does it even matter? Do I have the option not to be okay with it?"
"You did have options," Eeth pointed out quietly. "Several of them."
"Yeah, well, none of them were all that appealing," Nandi said a little defensively, then blushed at realising how that must have sounded. "I mean… I'm not exactly thrilled that my master is sick and I had to leave him behind, but under the circumstances, going on this mission with you is really the best I could do."
Lakhri shrugged.
"Fine, so what do I need to know about that mission?" he asked.
"Naturally, I have received a file with a mission briefing that all of us should study today," Eeth said. "One important piece of information is the fact that the negotiations will be conducted in Bocce. Lakhri and I are fluent in the language, and you, Nandi, have been studying it for six years, from what I understand. Besides mission preparation, assessing your language skills and helping you acquire the vocabulary you will need for the negotiations will be our most important task during the journey which, incidentally, will take five days. In the remaining time, you may work on the lessons your teachers have sent. Additionally, we will have daily workout sessions."
"I see we won't be idle, as usual," Lakhri said, amused at the horrified expression on Nandi's face.
"I hope you did not expect us to be," Eeth replied a tad sternly. "After all, we are on a mission. Lakhri, your Bocce is better than mine. I would like you to prepare and present the introductory statement."
"What, me?" Lakhri asked, astonished. He simply could not get used to the concept that he might be better than Eeth at some things. Admittedly, there were few of those, and Eeth seemed to have no qualms about pointing them out which took Lakhri by surprise every time it happened.
"Yes, you," said Eeth firmly. He handed a data chip to each of them. "Read the first section of the mission briefing," he instructed. "We will divide up the rest after that."
The day passed in a blur to Nandi who was not used to the pace set by Eeth at all.
After reading the executive summary of the mission briefing individually, they had a quick lunch, then discussed their findings. She had hoped to lean back and just listen to Eeth and Lakhri telling her what was important, but Eeth would have none of that. Since she was slightly wary of the stern-looking Zabrak master, she had gone along with this as best she could, only to be told that she would have to pay better attention to her task the next time.
When the interrogation was over, Eeth had taken them to the cargo hold for a workout that was rather more demanding than what Nandi was used to. She had asked for a break at some point, only to be informed by Eeth that she would get a break when he told her she could, not before. It turned out that her endurance was, in fact, higher than she had thought (or ever been forced to test). Nevertheless, by the time they were finished and allowed to take a shower, she felt ready to collapse on her bed and not get up until the next morning. Unfortunately, Eeth and Lakhri now wanted to review her Bocce skills. It had never felt all that important to Nandi to memorise tons of polite phrases or political vocabulary, but she regretted this assessment now because it seemed that she would spend a huge part of the trip catching up on what she had missed.
When, after dinner, Eeth asked her to start working on her lessons for an hour, she reached the point at which she was about ready to go into mutiny. Fortunately for her, Lakhri realised this before she had actually started refusing to obey Eeth.
"Master, didn't you want to check on that asteroid belt?" he asked, giving Eeth a pointed look. Eeth opened his mouth to deny this, but closed it again as Lakhri asked him through their bond: /Let me talk to her, master. Just a minute. Please./
"Alright," Eeth said after a moment's hesitation and rose from his chair. "I might as well do it now. I will be back in five minutes."
"Listen," Lakhri told Nandi as soon as Eeth had left. "You obviously have not heard of my master. He's the type of man who carries a paddle in his belt just so he has it handy in case one of his charges acts up. He usually doesn't take it on missions, but that doesn't mean he will hesitate even for a fraction of a second to put you across his knee if he thinks you deserve it. And he does not give a lot of warnings. But he does expect to be obeyed. When he tells you to study, you'd better not argue unless you have a really compelling reason. Because if you do, you will still have to study, only chances are you'll be doing it on a sore bottom. Trust me on that. I've been there."
Nandi gaped at him.
"But… I mean… I… I'm not his padawan!" she said hotly.
"No, but he's in charge of you," Lakhri replied. "And that means he'll punish you as he sees fit."
In fact, Eeth had told Nandi as much when he had picked her up from the Council chamber, and so had the Council members, but she had pretty much dismissed it - until now. The idea did not sit well with her at all, but she was not fed up enough to test Eeth - yet.
"Just out of curiosity," she said testily. "Will I get any free time at all during this flight?"
Lakhri shrugged.
"Not much," he said. "But he usually gives me some in the evenings unless he thinks I slacked off during the day. I daresay that if you get to work now, you will get the rest of the evening off after your hour's worth of schoolwork is done."
And that was what happened. When Eeth told Nandi she could have the rest of the evening to herself - until bedtime, at least - she just nodded curtly and stomped off to her tiny room where she lay on her bunk and sulked. Lakhri, who would have offered her to play a hologame or something if she hadn't run off in such a hurry, let her be. He had the feeling that sooner or later, despite all his warnings, she would end up throwing a tantrum at Eeth, and he knew the outcome of THAT. Well, better her than me, he thought.
Still, things went more or less smoothly throughout evening meditation and the next morning's routine. After breakfast, they put in an hour of mission preparation, with each of them reading up on details about the war they were trying to end. The effort that Nandi put in was just about passable.
"Sorry," she said sullenly when she couldn't answer a question Eeth had passed. "I'm rubbish at remembering dates. Anyway, who cares?"
Lakhri winced. He was sure that if he had said this, he would have found his nose touching the table and a paddle or Eeth's hand pounding his bottom just about now. Apparently, though, Eeth was more lenient with girls, or possibly with padawans other than his own, for he merely treated Nandi to a stern look and said: "I do. So do the people on the worlds who have been devastated by this war. You will spend your free time tonight memorising the information in your section of the mission file, and if I do not receive satisfactory answers by tomorrow morning, there will be consequences. Now, I will need to retreat to the cockpit for a while and take us out of hyperspace for communication with the Temple. Lakhri, you know what to do. Nandi, please continue your school work."
Nandi looked upset, but the expression on Eeth's face was quelling. Sulking, she fetched her data pads and got to work. And that was what she kept doing half-heartedly until, about ninety minutes later, she decided she had had enough.
She was still standing, trying to decide whether to follow Lakhri's advice despite the fact that she was sick and tired of being bossed around by a Zabrak tyrant and his dwarf, when Eeth came in. He took in Nandi's rigid posture and the mutinous look on her face and raised an eyebrow.
"I thought I told you to study," he said in that level tone of voice that Lakhri recognised as signifying that someone – and it was not him, for a change – was treading on thin ice here.
"Yeah, well, and I decided I need a break," Nandi said belligerently.
"That," said Eeth calmly, "was not your decision to make. Lakhri, could you leave us for a moment?"
"Well, it's not as if I'm getting any work done anyway," Lakhri said wryly, picked up his data pad and left, throwing Nandi a half-sympathetic look as he went. And indeed, the moment the door had swished shut behind him, Eeth had clamped his fingers around Nandi's ear, pulled her to a chair, sat down and thrown her across his lap.
"Hey, stop!" she protested and tried to twist away as a determined Jedi master started pulling her pants down, but it was futile. Less than five seconds later she discovered that Lakhri had not lied: Eeth spanked VERY hard and it hurt, even over her underwear. She yelped, kicked and wriggled her way through the first two dozen hard swats, all to no avail; and then she just cried. She cried in big, heaving sobs that made even Eeth realise that this was about more than being on the receiving end of a thorough spanking. Still, he gave her half a dozen more swats for good measure, then rested his hand on her back and let her cry it out.
It took Nandi unusually long to pull herself together and stop crying. When she did, she was unusually embarrassed.
"Sorry," she mumbled as she clambered off Eeth's lap and used the handkerchief he had offered to clean her face, thereby avoiding looking at him.
"You miss your master and you are worried about him," said Eeth surprisingly gently. "That is understandable. It is no reason to take it out on us, though. In fact, I had just come in to deliver a message from your master."
"You did?" Nandi asked, her face lighting up immediately.
She took the holocube to her room and listened to the message three times. She smiled as she heard her master tell her how much he loved her, how proud he was of her and how he was sure she would do well on her mission; she sighed in relief as he assured her that his condition was improving and the he would be back to health by the time she returned; and she bit her lip as he reminded her to obey Master Koth and his apprentice and to treat them with respect. She really owed them an apology, and she delivered it with fairly good grace.
Thankfully, the spanking she had received from Eeth, while certainly being impressive, had not been harsh or long enough to make her uncomfortable for an extended period of time. Over the next few days, Nandi realised that Eeth and Lakhri actually had a lot to teach her: about peace negotiations, lessons, lightsaber practice and Bocce. After her run-in with Eeth, she tried to apply herself to all these tasks. To her surprise, Eeth actually noticed; he commended her for her effort, and Lakhri gave her a cheerful grin and clapped her on the shoulder. For the first time, Nandi felt good about this mission.