"The separatists have been keeping a low profile in the Kadovo system, but we think they're involved with the Zygerrian slave trade,"
Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi was giving a systems report to the high-council.
"Unfortunately, our reconnaissance troops have been slow to respond due to enemy interference, so we're limited to what info we…"
Fellow Jedi Master Kit Fisto was slumped in his council chair three seats away from the source of the monotonous voice. Why couldn't Obi-Wan just cut to the relevant information already? It was as though the highly-praised Jedi Master always got his way with the council by boring its members to death rather than offering pragmatic solutions. Kit's ass ached from being seated for so long despite the orange foam padding of his council seat.
He looked across the chamber room to his closest friend, Agen Kolar, who also made no attempt to hide his boredom. One of his exposed brown arms, elbow resting on the chair's rest, kept his head propped up; his eyes pointed in Kenobi's direction. Sensing Kit's gaze, Kolar's dark pupils darted the other way towards his friend, under heavy eyelids. He flashed Kit a sheepish grin before returning what little attention he had back to Kenobi.
Kit Fisto couldn't help but allow a subtle smile of his own to inch across his face. Oh, how he wished to be alone with his fellow Jedi friend instead of wasting time here. Perhaps there would still be time left after the meeting, assuming Kenobi stopped talking soon, to take a break in one of the Jedi-temple's private meditation rooms down on the ground level together. That would be nice. The Nautolan allowed his body to slump deeper into his seat's thick padding, tilting his neck back ever so slightly so that his head tentacles could hang out over top the chair-back. "Ah, yes, that feels nice," thought Fisto.
"Master Fisto, are you alright?"
Kit was awoken from his thoughts by Obi-Wan. Quickly sitting back up, he returned his attention to the clearly annoyed Jedi, "Of course, Master Kenobi; forgive me I was distracted," he said in his signature Jamaican accent.
Obi-Wan only annoyingly shifted his eyes back to the rest of the council and resumed his report. Agen Kolar let out a silent chuckle and reached out to his clearly embarrassed comrade via telepathy, one of the first and most fundamental force abilities every Jedi learns.
"What's the matter? Can't take anymore of Kenobi?" Kolar teased.
"Tell me about it."
"Wanna grab a bite after this?"
"Sounds good to me. Let's meet at the usual spot downstairs."
"See you then."
CH 2
Kit Fisto was awoken from his meditation ritual by the sound of the sliding door of his modest-sized personal quarters opening. The Nautolan's eye-lids flickered open, his cross-legged form seated on the floor, to see Agen walk in carrying a ration-bar meal kit.
"Was that really the best you could do?", asked Kit, gesturing towards the uninteresting meal Kolar had brought for them to share.
"No, this was."
With a free hand Kolar reached into his Jedi robe and pulled out a small, brown-colored paper packet and tossed it to Fisto.
Kit caught the plastic packet with one webbed hand and brought it towards his face. He briefly examined the packaging before drawing it to his nose to take a whiff. His expression immediately turned to delight, a smile creeping across his cheeks, his eye-lids widening with excitement.
"Dude, no way! Is this what I think it is?" he exclaimed, unraveling his legs from the meditation position.
Kolar nodded. "Best in the galaxy. Got it from a Patrolian on level 1313," referring to Coruscant's underworld levels.
"Oh hell, I've got to take a hit of this!"
Fisto stood up and walked towards a small meditation chest on the far side of the room. Stooping down, he lifted the top portion of the chest to reveal a series of miniature drawers and compartments. Kolar watched his friend reach into the compartment with one hand, fumbling around until he found what he needed.
"Alright, here we go," Kit's hand emerged with a roll of what looked to be blank receipt paper and an electric lighter. He replaced the top of the meditation chest to create a table-top surface so he could do what he was about to.
"I have to warn you, Kit," Agen exclaimed, his arm extending out in his friend's direction, "this stuff is WAY stronger than anything we've done in the past; there's no saying what could happen."
"Oh quit acting like Obi-Wan," his friend replied as he began to unravel and tear the roll of paper into uniform pieces.
"Let's live a little."
The Nautolan Jedi master used his finger to poke a hole into the package of spice; just the right size such that he could shake the contents out onto the paper. The herb appeared in all its hallucinogenic glory, dark green with tints of brown and black interspersed among the fine, dry leaves. Quinlan made a quick effort to form the spice pile into a line on his joint paper before rolling it up.
"I still can't believe you managed to get your hands on this stuff!," exclaimed Fisto. "The underworld police have really started cracking down on the spice-trade ever since the Leethnuim incident," referring to where numerous citizens on Coruscant went maniacal due to tainted spice a couple weeks prior.
"It wasn't that hard," responded Kolar. "—you just need to know where to look."
"Ain't it always."
Fisto passed Agen his joint of spice before placing his own to his pale-green lips. Reaching for the electric lighter on the table, he was interrupted by his Jedi comrade:
"wait, let me lock the door."
Kit nodded in agreement.
He turned to face the small control panel next to the entrance of the meditation room. He pressed a few buttons and a light on the controls turned red, indicating that the door was now locked from the outside.
"Alright, let's do this!" exclaimed Kolar, stepping back to the table.
Fisto placed the electric lighter to tip of the roll at his lips and pressed the ignition button. A blue stream of electricity emitted between two electrodes on the lighter, incinerating the portion of joint-paper it was touching, igniting the drugs inside.
Agen took the lighter from his hand as he watched his friend inhale sharply on the makeshift cigar. Fisto quickly removed the joint from his lips and coughed a few times.
"WOOOHEEE THAT IS STRONG!" he wailed.
"I warned ya," Kolar chuckled.
Now it was the Zaback Jedi's turn. He lit his joint a similar manner as Fisto and took in the sweet mist.
Immediately the effects of the spice became apparent. The alveoli in his lungs took in the vapor, his capillaries absorbing the drug molecules into the bloodstream, where they would travel up into his brain and bind to the appropriate receptors, causing for an out-of-this-world experience.
Kolar's vision became distorted. The drugs and table below him, Kit Fisto next to him, all became blurred and hazy. The walls of the small meditation chamber appeared to expand outward ten-fold, the floor deepen into an abyss. His friend appeared to be standing a long distance away. The experienced Jedi master tried to call on the force to help him see, but it was as though a dark cloud of confusion blocked any attempts to do so.
He was falling, or was it flying? The disorientation only became worse. What in a sober state of mind would have been a case of light-headedness for the Zabrack was a passage into the surreal world of hallucinogens. The ability to differentiate between what happening in the space around him and in his mind was gone. Streaks of blue, yellow, orange, purple all filled his perception. The sound of Kit Fisto's equally confusing movements were both distant and intimate.
Fisto thought he wanted to call for his friend, thought he managed to open his mouth and pronounce the appropriate syllables comprising his name. Unknown to either of them, both were collapsed on the floor of meditation room, their arms and legs splayed apart. An unintelligible moan came out of Fisto's mouth, his Jedi companion unaware of the other calling for him.
Agen wasn't faring all that different. Not as frequent of a halucogen user as Fisto, Kolar's tolerance to the drug was essentially non-existent. A sweet buzz filled his body. His dark brown skin crawled with pinprick sensations. His sense of perception was enhanced to capture every detail in the small chamber—transforming even mundane points into colorful distortions which swirled in his mind.
His comrade Fisto's head lay directly near him; the Nautolan's head-tails enticing Kolar with their uniform, fluid appearance. The Zabrak Jedi master, now laying supine on the floor alongside Fisto, slowly extended his left arm out subconsciously, intending to touch, stroke, grab the Nautolan's biology.
As if in return, Kit Fisto swept his right arm along the floor, extending from his side, until one webbed hand rested on the Zabrak's forehead—searching for the bony appendage that was his head-horn. The Jedi master found what he was searching for and responded with a "mmmhh", muffled by his own tail-heads overlaying his face.
Agen had found his prize and was now pulling it towards him. A handful of Kit's tentacles in his closed fist, Kolar tugged hard on the Nautolan's appendages, yanking Fisto's head towards him. The Zabrak let out a disoriented yell in response to his friend.
"Nguuuyuuh!"
"Yueerrruoo"
Saliva pooled at the bases of their bodies as froth over-flowed at each's mouths. The spice's potency had been far underestimated by the two Jedi, and now they were experiencing partial paralysis of the involuntary muscle that controlled their swallowing. Agen's physical self continued to tug at Kit's head-tails until he managed to fit the end of one into his saliva filled mouth.
Fisto cried out incomprehensibly as his peer's teeth gnawed into his sensitive anatomy. His own hand slapped around Kolar's bony head, unsuccessfully trying to wrap thick fingers around the Zabrak's head-horns.
In response, Agen frustratingly bit clean down on the meat in his mouth, amputating nearly ten centimeters of his colleague's tail-head. As blood filled Kolar's mouth, Fisto screamed out, the spice unable to completely suppress his sense to pain. The Jedi's legs were now no longer paralyzed by the drug; they thrashed out, hitting the small table on which the still open packet of spice lay. It took only three thumps for the table to nearly tip over, sending the open packet toppling across the edge towards the two bodies writhing on the floor.
It was only a one meter drop, but this version of spice packaged by the Patrolian on level 1313 that Agen Kolar has purchased from was laced with depressants that made the herb extremely addicting, ensuring that the user would come back to purchase more. The depressant, appearing as a fine, dark-orange powder now exploded out of the brown plastic bag as it impacted the floor. The air in the meditation room was now filled with a translucent orange haze.
Now beginning to choke on Fisto's transparent blood as well as the chunk of tail-head at the back of his mouth, the small part of Agen's conscious self tried to sit-up, his hands lacking the coordinated muscle control to pull the obstruction out of his airway. The orange depressant powder was extremely potent in small quantities, but now hundreds of times the lethal dose floated in the room air.
Unlike his Jedi peer, Kit Fisto's airway was patent, as indicated by his screaming, and was now engulfing liters of contaminated air. It took less than a second for the receptors in his body to be completely overwhelmed by the depressant molecules. Immediately, Fisto's painful cries became silent, the completely black orbs that were his eyes rolled back into his head, revealing blood vessels, and his body became still. His heart rate and breathing slowed to dangerous levels. In several minutes, they would cease all together.
Agen Kolar was unaware of the danger in the air or how it was killing his friend. He was aspirating on Kit's blood and his airway was still partially obstructed by the amputated head-tentacle. His body's natural responses to save his life were all but in vain. His involuntary muscles were too weak to effectively cough to clear his airway. His body was being starved of oxygen—combined with the effects of the spice, it wouldn't be long until he blacked out. This danger pulled Agen out of his trip. Whether it was through the will of the force or something else altogether, he found the mental strength to gather up his strength in the force, allowing it to flow through body. This newfound strength allowed him to lash-out in a last ditch effort to save his life, creating force wave that cleared the air of the deadly chemicals while simultaneously providing his intercostal muscles the strength to cough out the obstructions in his airway.
Now breathing hard, Agen stood hunched over, his arms braced on his knees as he caught his breath. Able to see the lingering specks of spice still in the air, he only now realized what had happened to his friend Fisto. Reaching out with the force, he could sense that his friend's vital signs were dropping off. Without an antidote to clear his body of the effects from the spice, he would stop breathing soon.
Kolar staggered across the meditation room—ensuring he didn't trip over Fisto or the opened bag of spice still on the floor—to the door sealing off the rest of the Jedi temple from the mischief that had just occurred. The Zabrack Jedi master did not hesitate in exiting the room to find a medical droid.
CH 3
"He has suffered no long-term damage. I have applied a bacta-patch to his exterior injury, however, his natural biology will ensure that the head-tail grows back on its own."
A 2-1B medical droid was giving its synopsis on Fisto's condition to Agen Kolar, who thus far, was able to keep the situation secret from the rest of the Jedi council. During his escape from the meditation chamber, a few younger Jedi knights had given him suspicious looks as Kolar stumbled across the temple, but they knew better than to question a high-ranking council member. He was able to make it to the medical bay where several droids assisted him in discretely moving an injured Fisto out from the meditation room. He had also ordered a sweeper droid to thoroughly clean the room as an extra precaution: nobody could discover any trace of what had happened earlier that day. And of course, the remaining drug paraphernalia, along with spice, was carefully disposed of.
Agen anxiously stood next to Fisto, his comrade recovering in a private room separate from the rest of the medical bay. Being a council member, he was able to order all records from this visit to be wiped from the temple's computers. Now it was only a matter of time until Fisto woke up from his artificially induced sleep.
An all too familiar voice interrupted his thoughts:
"Well hello there Master Kolar!"
Agen froze in place at the sound of Obi-Wan Kenobi standing in the doorway. The esteemed Jedi Master entered the room, closed the door, and continued:
"Did you really think I wouldn't figure out what was happening between you two during the council meeting?", he said, gesturing towards Fisto's bed.
"Master, I—", Kolar managed to stammer, now awkwardly facing Kenobi. How did he figure it out? He and Fisto had engaged in telepathy during council meetings numerous times before to communicate their thoughts in private. Maybe this time Fisto's daydreaming had given it away?
"How is he?", asked Obi-Wan, now stepping towards the hospital bed.
"Fine, just a little under the weather."
Obi Wan turned away from Fisto's side to look Agen in the eyes.
"Master Kolar do not lie to me. I'm completely aware of what's been going on between you two for the past several months."
The Zabrack Jedi felt shivers flow down his thick spine. In the gut of his stomach, he knew this wasn't going to end well.
"How you've managed to go this long without harming yourselves is nothing short of miracle." He paused to turn back towards a supine Kit Fisto.
"How foolish could you have been to believe that no one would notice you partaking in drugs?!" exclaimed the Jedi master.
Sweat lined Kolar's forehead. "This is the end", he thought.
"Master Kenobi, I'm completely prepared to accept responsibility for my role in all of this", Agen said with a solemn tone, his head lowered down.
"Damn right you are!", Obi-Wan responded.
Master Kenobi was one of the most contained Jedi in the order. For him to use explicits, let alone raise his voice, was unheard of. Kolar was beginning to wish he had died back in the meditation room.
Suddenly, Obi-Wan dropped the act, breaking down in hysteria.
Agen's fear quickly turned to confusion as Obi-Wan let out several long-winded laughs. The bearded Jedi stepped towards Kolar and slapped a hand on his shoulder:
"I'm just messin with ya!", he laughed out.
Kenobi reached his other hand into his robes to pull out, what was to Kolar's amazement, a bundle of highly illicit death-sticks. He used his thumb to crack the top of several long capsules open and in one fluid motion poured the neon colored halucogens into his mouth.
Kolar was speechless.
Kenobi froze in place for a moment as his body absorbed the drug. Then he exploded, twisting his body in strange euphoric movements.
"WOOOOEEEE THAT SHIT IS TIGHT!", screamed Kenobi without concern for the other patients. "Nobody…in this temple…goes on any trips…without…this guy!", Kenobi slurred out, and then collapsed on top of Fisto's form.