Nylla is a togruta jedi youngling, (togruta's is the alien species Shaak Ti and Ashoka Tano were,) has white tattoos on her eyelids and around her eyes like Shaak Ti, and has a small stripe on the bottom of her lip.
Lightsaber Color: Blue
Age: 14(almost a padawan)
Fire. Fire covers the courtyard. Fire covers the archives. Fire covers the entrance. Fire covers the gardens. Fire covers the the Jedi Temple. Heat hits my face as I run out to face the twisting embers of hatred. Amongst them I see a shadowy figure, garbed in a black robe, and clone troopers. the figure twist and a indigo blade rises from the polished silver hilt. But the figure is not looking toward me, whoever it is, they are pointing the blade at a padawan. With a sizzle the glowing lightsaber blade severs the right arm and then head of the padawan off, twisting and obscured by the smoke for a brief moment before remerging, a shadow of horror and death. The body of the padawan lies in on the floor, strewn with bodies. Another jedi rushes forward, acid green lightsaber in hand. The two blades meet for a short second, before the cloaked figure twirls around and engages again. Another clash of the blades, and then cloaked figure reverses his attacks and begins to stab. The jedi does his best to defend, but the clone troopers open fire, releasing bolts of blue energy upon him, burning holes through the jedi before he falls. I forget the heat, the blisters on my hands, the fire flooding the hallways, burning the bodies of my friends, my allies. The hooded figure turns, and the light flickers upon his face. Yellow eyes, embers of horror, glory, victory, defeat, confusion and clarity. Eyes of a tormented being. The roaring of the flames block out his words, but I know my death has been ordered. The blaster is raised, the bolt is fire. A force of some kind pulls my lightsaber up and deflects the blow. I stumble back at the power before tripping and falling. I now see that I have tripped over the body of a jedi. The jedi's is maimed, missing two fingers on her left hand, and a glowing gash across her chest. I turn, horrified, and slowly stumble away, aware of the burning pain in my leg and the slowly pulse of blood rushing down my leg and drying. The world spins, and I have to focus on the force to gain stability. I tear a piece of my robe off wrap it around. Somewhere close jedi are fighting, fighting who we thought we allies. I hear cries from both sides and slowly sit up and stumble toward the place as fast as I can. A male Rodian slides into my view and I recognize my master, master Ulilivolve, deflecting the blaster bolts of two clone troopers back into their chests. My vision is blurry, but I see the Dark Robed Figure approaching, I rush forward to help my master. Together, we can take him down, make him pay for what he has done. My master shakes his head sadly as if he knows what just went through my head, and raises his hand. A force lifts me off the ground and gently pushes me back several hundred yards. In the distance I see a flash of blue...and red...and then...I see his eyes, lifeless, dead, gone, dead. I see my lightsaber, a few feet away, and lift my scraped and blistered arm to grab it. The cool metal soothes some of the pain in my hand, a small comfort to me. I turn and crawl away. Huge pillars, bearing the names of great jedi blocks my path now that they have been reduced to rubble. I drag myself up and run away. As I run, the fires catch on my cloak and I shed it, revealing a simple tunic I wear. My red skin seems to blend in with the fire, but the black and white stripes on the horn like montrols on my head provide little coverage. I stumble away through the rubble and smoke, I soon cough and my eyes water. I start to crawl again, slowly crying tears of all that I have lost, the pain in my chest, the stinging of my eyes. Let it end. Let it end. I keep crawling blindly through the smoke, until a wave of cold hits me. I open my eyes, the stars glow, celestial orbs of light upon the black cloth of the night. I cough and cough, and slowly crawl away into the welcoming arms of the windy night. I must be in the left side of the gardens. A cool breeze hits me again and I let it push back the tears in my eyes. I try to stand but collapse immediately. I fall over and lye on my back, starring at the stars, so beautifully simple, complete...pure. I start to here the noises before I react. Screams, blasters, heavy thuds. I try my feet, and shakily stand. Time seemed to have washed over me, because the very edge of the sun's golden light is lightly tickling the city. On the far side of the temple a plume of smoke rises, a black twirl of darkness and hopelessness, followed by the embers of hate that created it. My leg aches horribly, causing me pain ever time I put wait on it. I think a blaster bolt may have singed my leg. I don't want to look at the wound now, I'm not safe, my old home, is no longer safe for me. Smoke still fills the halls, so I look for another exit. Bellow me about sixty yards is a Hangar with about twelve jedi cruisers. Clone troopers are positioned everywhere around them. I need to get into one of those ships! I'm so desperate I think I might as well chuck myself off the edge of the temple when I hear the distant sounds of battle. A brown robed figure dashes by the guards of the hangar, killing two, then ducking behind a space shuttle. I immediately look for a way down. There's a ventilation system I can use, a jump down on top of it, before landing on another small shaft containing plants, I look into the jedi padawans room. A dark body lies inside, the hot embers of his or her flesh still glowing. I look for another way down, I'm about forty yards away from the hangar now. I see a balcony bellow, and jump. I land perfectly, knocking the breath out of myself. I swallow. The troopers are getting closer to the jedi I saw previously. I throw myself out of the balcony and down the hangar. I use the force to lighten by fall, since it's about twenty feet, but I still feel a sharp pain across my injured leg, and I keel over.
"Theres another one!" says one of the troops, turning. The jedi behind the ship jumps over it's hull and cuts the clone troopers head off. I spin away sliding on my stomach toward the other who's about to blast the jedi that just saved by life. I kick his legs out from under him and kick him again in the helmet. I limp toward the jedi. Now that I see him I realize that he has black hair that spikes out in the front and golden eyes.
"Zie," he says.
"Nylla," I reply. We get into the shuttle and gear the controls. About twelve troopers with a heavy gun approach. I start typing coordinates furiously. Booom! The blaster goes off, blowing one of our engines off. I grab the controls and activate the thrusters.
"I hope you know how to drive this thing," says Zie. In reply I smile and shake my head. The ship spirals off the hangar bay, leaving a trail of smoke behind. We're persuade, two speeders race through the busy Courscaunt traffic, a huge career blocks our path so we swerve towards a tunnel that leads into the darker parts of Courscaunt. The clones open fire, blasting civilians and setting buildings alight. I check if the cruiser has any weapons on the scanners.
"Zie! On my left there are the controls for the Blaster Turrets!" I shout. He spins around and seizes the controls. I here the sounds of a laser blaster as he attempts to take down the clones, one swerves and avoids, but the other is reduced to a large fireball. A large slim ship slips out of a hangar and I'm forced to pull up on the controls, causing the dursteal plates to dent. The metal from the damaged part of the engines begins to peele off, exposing the ship's wires and circuits. More blaster fire, I see the clone expertly duck the bolts and flip upside down on his speeder to avoid more before opening fire. The laser bolts melt the exposed wire like glass. All the lights go out and about half the scanners to. I no long have control over the ship, and Zie doesn't have control over the blaster either because he turns around, the gun still firing. Another volley of shots from the trooper, and molten holes appear behind me. I let out a sound between a yelp and a gasp, as freezing cold air suck me backward. I have to hold onto my seat so Im not sucked out of the small holes. Another volley of bolts, the entire back wall peels away, and I am sucked out, hanging onto a thick wire. Zie seems to be holding onto the controls for deer life, we're heading straight for the slim ship. I see a train beneath us.
"Zie! Let go!" I shout. He looks at me like I'm crazy, but then, he relaxes his muscles, and for a second he's just standing there, before the wind whisks him away. I here the tink of blaster ammo being loaded and hold my breath before letting go. I seem to be falling forever, I see the clone blast apart the ship until is smashes into the slim ship, causing a huge blue fireball to rise and the ship to crash into neighboring buildings. And then...impact. I fall onto a hard cold metal surface. I think I bruised my back pretty bad, but, I am alive. I search for Zie, and spot him five cars away.
"Nylla, we need to get off at the next station," he says. For a while I'm peaceful, left with nothing but my thoughts. I let the calm wash over me like the cool breeze. Eventually the train slows and we both jump off. Disguise, we need to hide so that no one can find us. Then after that, we need to hide. Zie doesn't strike me as the person who will just hide, but what choice do we have? Planets fly through my head, Dantooine, Tatooine, Felucia, Mon Cala, before I realize that the entire time I was fighting to occupy them with the republic I was fighting for the sith. Tatooine is the only safe place. We walk through the dark streets until we come upon an armor shop. The manager, an old Zabrack, leads us through the hallways. Most of it is dusty junk, but Zie finds a helmet that hides all of his face but gives him night vision. I search for a while, none of the masks or helmets can fit with my montrols. Eventually I find a hoodie that has purple lettering upon it. We pay the credits for them before departing. The streets become darker, and we see clone troopers in the distance. They run regular patrols around the area, around the entire planet for all I know. I can tell Zie wants to kill them, but I restrain him before he can.
"If you kill them, than more will come and we'll all be dead," I say as his hands tighten around his lightsaber again. He just nods and walks away. Food becomes and issue and we stop by a small pub to get a meal. We're running low on credits. The sun starts to set bellow the gigantic sky scrapers that pepper Courascaunts surface. By the time it has sunk completely from view we've found a small abandoned building to stay the night in. The stars I saw earlier now shine brighter than ever now that the radiant sun has left. I curl up on one side of the shack and fall asleep. I awake to the rays of silverly light slipping through the cracked stone walls. Zie is before me, fiddling with a hologram.
"Where did you get that?" I ask him.
"Sneaked out last night and grabbed it from a store," he says. I can't help but choke on saliva when I hear this.
"You stole from a civilian!?" I ask unbelieving.
"We need it more," he replies cooly. But his amber eyes are hostile and defensive. I slump back against a metal pillar and peer down at the hologram. It displays sector after sector of Courscaunt.
"Your like my master, always peaceful and calm, look what good that did him," continues Zie. He doesn't say anymore, all I have to do is look at the plume of smoke rising from the jedi temple. As he clicks by holograms, Zie stops and points out a hangar.
"We could use that," he says.
"Where is it," I ask.
"Three blocks away, easy for us," he replies. We get up and begin to walk. Planning different strategies of how we're going to get into one of the shuttles. When we finally arrive, we both jump up atop the large metal junk trucks and survey the area. Our plan is simple, cause a distraction, then get the heck out of there. I nod, and it begins. Zie jumps off of the junk trucks and swings his green lightsaber, slashing through the metal and allowing all of the past garbage to slide out. Then levitating the rubble, he begins to throw parts of it at the pilots, not to hurt them, but to just get them away. Now it's my turn. I leap down from the truck and sprint towards the nearest ship I can find. It's a K-Wing, I jump upon it's roof and use the force to control the walkway lever. As soon as the ramp slides down from the ship I jump down and dash into the cockpit. I hear some clatter, Zie must be getting creative. I seal the ramp and slowly set the ship into hover before gently stirring it to the left where I can face Zie. He nods and leaps up, higher than I have ever seen a padawan jump and leans atop the cockpit, I open the ramp and he summersaults sideways and lands upon it before strolling up and sitting down next to me. I close the ramp again, and pull the hyperdrive lever, just as I set the coordinates. I look at Zie, and he smiles, we're leaving. We did it, we escaped. The stars slowly seems to stretch as we zoom bye them, stretching until they are solid light. And then we remerge from the end of a long tunnel. The glowing ember in the darkness of space, the Orange planet Tatooine comes into view.
Chapter 2
The cold metal of the controls causes my muscles to freeze up when I make contact. Zie walked off to explore the ship while I maintained control. I ease the thrusters a little, so we gently float toward the planet. I switch several levers and it goes on auto pilot. I walk through the small bridge and down into the fork in the hallways of the ship. I don't know where I'm going so I just take the left path. I pass doors labeled Engines, Hyperdrive, Laser Turrets, but keep going. At the end of the hallway I find myself at a staircase. Walking upward hurts me injured leg, which I still haven't got the guts to look at, but I make it to the top anyway. A smooth silvery metal room, with one large window across the side. Through the window I can see hundreds of bright twirling vibrant multi colored stars. It's beautiful. I find that there are seats, and I sit down. Relaxing for just a moment. I close my white dyed eyelids and absorb the moment for a second. Before I can help myself I fall asleep. Darkness finds me…I see it over an over again from a hundred different eyes. A cloaked man killing my master. Until I see it from my masters eyes, a feel the pain and lightness of the blade slicing through his body, and then, the most horrifying thing, I see it through the killers eyes. Full of hatred and sorrow, confusion, shame, anger, fear, and it scares me.
"Nylla, wake up," says Zie, shaking me awake. I blink several times be remembering that it was all a dream.
"We're almost at Tatooine," he says again. I can tell he wants to say more, but I get up before he can, embarrassed. I really hope I wasn't muttering or anything, because that would creep me out too if I were him. I see Tatooine, we're much closer now, almost to the atmosphere. I don't seem to have gained any rest from the time I was sleeping, because I find myself drifting away before shaking myself awake. When we at last reach cloud cover, or the thin grayish polluted lines in the sky, I let finally let my eyes close. My dreams are stranger than the last. At first I think I wake up and begin to steer the ship downward, but we keep going up, I finally figure this out because Zie has been tampering with the controls. When I look into his eyes they are not golden, but the red and yellow I saw on the face of the Sith Lord who killed my master. I scream and wake up with the bit of sound on the end of my tongue. I wake with a sudden surge of fear, cold sweat slithers down my back, and I feel sick. I take large calming breaths and look to the chamber where Zie is, the doors are thick enough, he didn't here anything. I see the landscape now, the orange sun baked mountains, the scum city Boonta Eve, and the small black dots that represent all the life that lives on this decollate planet. We find a small valley in the mountains and land, spraying dust and sand everywhere. After it's cleared, we both jump out and land on the soft sand bellow. Boonta Eve is only about a twenty minute walk away, because we can see the people clearly now that we're from the mountains, but we decide to stay the night in the ship. I'm afraid to go asleep, fear of the hooded figure will come and haunt me. Fear. I shouldn't experience it, I'm almost a padawan, I was a padawan, for a day, I had a master. Before that I had known him. He had saved my life on the day of the bombing of the jedi tempe. Great sorrow had gone through the jedi a week after, and shame to, I never found out why. My eyelids droop but I force myself to stay awake. I try to recite the jedi code, but I fall asleep halfway through. My dreams are empty and hollow, and I remember none of them. The fiery suns rise, and I awake. I walk over to where Zie lies and shake him awake. He stirs before getting up, and I walk out of the ship. The dark purple fabric on my hoodie is bad for this kind of weather, and I fear the heat. We arrive in Boonta Eve with haste, slowly searching the places where we can settle down. After about five minutes we find a small pub and take a back seat. From here we plan. Zie speaks first.
"We need to make a stand, face off with the empire, kill as many-"
"And where, may I ask, is this group of skilled people going to appear from, thin air?" I interrupt.
"Look around you, there a hundreds of people who would go against the empire for a few credits." He says, smiling.
"We don't have a "couple of credits", certainly not enough to satisfy these people," I reply.
"What if we were to brake into a Imperial Cruiser factory, there has to be loads of credits in some storage unit," he says.
"And thousands of guards!" I sputter.
"You can stay, but I'm going," he says angrily. Well if he wants to go get himself killed in some mission, it's not my problem. To my disbelief he walks over to a group of Trandoshians, and begins talking to them without any fear at all. I can't here their conversation, but I see the Trandoshians smile and shake his hand. When he comes back I ask a question that even he must be wondering.
"How are you going to get off this planet," I ask.
"They have a few credits, we'll get something," he replies. With the last of our credits we buy two small meals and eat. I look out into the setting suns, if the force truly guides us, why would it take a turn like this.