Someone was yelling.
A Lot.
Mainly things like "this is so not my fault" and "never should have let her out of my sight"
It was clear there was someone else here, and whoever they were they were not having a good day.
Fortunately, the Force seemed to indicate that while mad, this being posed no threat to her of any sort.
Weird. The inherent nature of the Force felt very strange. Darker, colder, and somehow emptier. The place where she could normally sense the presence of the entire Order was empty. She couldn't feel any of her bonds either. Maybe this really was her Trial and that was why she felt so alone in the Force? She was probably going to have to investigate that. But first, time to make contact with the locals.
The source of the yelling was a pale Human, dressed like a spacer. She was assuming the spacer was male, but of course one could never tell those sort of things simply by appearance alone. He was not facing her, so she called over a "Hello there!"
"Finally! There you are you -" he stopped talking as he caught sight of her, and his mouth kind of just hung there as if he had been intending to say something and then forgot it. He'd be all kinds of handsome if he just closed that mouth of his.
She'd seen tons people react similarly before, especially on Outer Rim worlds like this one, places where Jedi were far less common.
There really was no mistaking what she was. Her no-nonsense short hairstyle emphasized her Padawan braid. Her robes were of a cut and style that only Jedi really wore, and well… the lightsaber was a dead give away.
She nodded at him with understanding. "Yes, I am a Jedi a-"
Now she was the one who wasn't finishing her sentences, although in her case it was because the man had decided to cut her off mid-word.
"I'm not being paid enough to deal with this nonsense!" He turned and stormed away. Which really was not good, because he was the only person Leia knew here. Well not that she knew him, but at the very least the Force had made it clear he was safe, and that was better than nothing. So she clipped her 'saber to her belt, and quickly followed after his longer strides. It seemed he was still ranting, something had clearly really ticked him off.
They were drawing closer to the sounds of a party. Music, voices, laughter. Of all the weird things she was preparing for when she set out through that tunnel, a hot guy taking her to a party was not one of them.
Just as they approached the edge of the party he spun around, jamming a finger in her face. "Look, sister, I have no idea what sort of nonsense you are trying to pull here, but I want no part in it. I was trying to be nice, helping you back to your quarters and all that, and first, you go and disappear on me, and now you pull… whatever this is. If you wanted me to leave you alone, you could have just said so."
She had to be missing something here. To make things worse, the man had managed to lose her in her confusion over his outburst.
She looked around the party and caught sight of a banner hung over a table with various cheap alcohols on it. "Happy Birthday Luke" it read, with a far less put together second banner pinned to it adding "And Princess Leia" What?
She looked around again, hoping to see something, anything, that could help her get her bearings. A lot of the party goers were giving her strange looks along the lines of the one the spacer had earlier. She sent out a silent plea to the Force to help her figure out what was going on. It seemed however that the Force really had a sense of humor that day because on her third glance around the room she saw something she really did not expect at all.
There, in one corner of the party dressed in a garish orange flight suit, somehow having arrived without her sensing his presence at all, was Luke.
She knew that tunnel had been a security breach.
It opened onto a wide clearing. As if to prove that it was indeed large enough for someone to land a ship and sneak up on them, there was a starship already waiting there.
By it was a small campsite, with bedrolls set up for two occupants. Only one was there at the moment.
An oddly familiar Togruta sat by the fire, seemingly meditating.
Leia was sure she had seen that person before, but where?
She drew closer, letting one of her hands fall closer to the defender sporting blaster pistol holstered by her side. She wished she had her modified E-11 blaster rifle, the one she had named Trooper Bane, with her but unfortunately she had left it in her bunk. She was still confident that the smaller blaster combined with her hand to hand combat training would suffice. Even if she was still dizzy.
Worst came to worse, she also had a holdout blaster tucked into one of her boots.
"Find anything interesting?"
The Togruta didn't even open their eyes, just sat there with legs folded as if meditating.
"Leia?"
Whoever this was knew who she was somehow. Had their eyes been open Leia would have understood that her face was after all well known throughout the galaxy. Thanks to a childhood spent in the public eye as both a member of the Elder Houses and a Senator and because she was now the face and voice of a great deal of the Alliance propaganda campaigns.
"What was inside the opening?"
Where had she seen those markings before? They were so familiar. She should know this. Those markings, they were a symbol a symbol of…
"Fulcrum!"
"Inside the crevice, you found…..a fulcrum?"
Yes! Yes, those markings were used by Fulcrum agents like Captain Andor or Captain Kallus when they sent their transmissions. In honor of the very first Fulcrum, a Togruta woman who the Rebellion had assumed was dead years ago. This had to be her! Her facial markings, they were identical to the Fulcrum call sign!
She must really be drunk if it took her this long to place those markings.
"Yes, yes it seems I have found a Fulcrum." she laughed then, at the absurdity of going through a tunnel to find one of the founders of the Rebellion calmly sitting in front of a campfire. "Have you been hiding from the Empire? Is that why you are here? The last anyone saw you had been on Malachor, where we were told you encountered Darth Vader. We didn't know you survived."
Fulcrum looked puzzled and finally opened her eyes, her confusion only increasing as she took in Leia's appearance.
"Leia, what are you talking about? The Empire? Darth Vader?" She laughed then, it sounded bitter and rueful "I am pretty sure I'd remember going to a place as cursed and forbidden as Malachor, and I'd definitely remember fighting with a Sith there." She cocked her head to the side and smirked "Actually fighting a Sith on Malachor sounds pretty incredible. I hope in this story of yours I kick the ass of this Darth… Vader was it?"
"How can you pretend you don't know who Vader is? Like you don't know about the evils of the Empire?"
Fulcrum laughed again and stood from her spot by the fire. "Ok Skygal, enough with the wild stories. Time to take off that… wig?" Her tone changed from amused to worried "Leia, where did you find that? I mean I may not be the galaxy's best expert on Human hair, but I am pretty sure it can't grow that fast. Did you bring it here with you? Is it your mom's?"
Leia shook her head, clearly, she was very very drunk and that was why nothing was making any sense.
Karabast, shaking her head was really not a good plan. Now everything was starting to spin. She should not have had that last glass of Lum.
At some point when she was trying to reorient herself Fulcrum had approached her. She now was standing far too close for someone Leia had just met, and even put a hand on Leia's shoulder without asking permission first. Leia flinched away from her hand on her shoulder, and Fulcrum frowned. She crouched down, so she would be eye level with the far shorter Human. "Hey, what's wrong?"
Leia started to respond, but before she even could Fulcrum interrupted. "Is… is that alcohol I smell on you? Are you drunk?"
Great. Just great. She was isolated from her camp, talking to a complete stranger (thankfully one she was sure was an old friend of her father's and even a founding member of the Rebellion), and not only was she tired and dizzy, but her head was starting to pound as well.
Han was never, ever, going to let her live this one down. He had told her to wait until morning to explore that tunnel and she just had to go barreling on into it just to spite him, didn't she?
Fulcrum let out a loud sigh and gave her the sort of exasperated look her tutors used to after she'd slipped their lessons. Or made it clear she hadn't been paying attention. Or they had caught her calling them one of the thousands of less than kind nicknames she'd spend her lessons making up. Leia knew that sort of expression really well.
"Ok, clearly talking to you isn't going to go anywhere as long as you are drunk, Force knows where you found alcohol on this rock or what possessed you to drink it, and honestly given how strange your presence in the Force is right now I'm thinking it'd be best if we spoke to the Council. So why don't we go back to the ship, and figure things out from there?"
The Council? Yes! Speaking with the rest of Alliance High Command really would be the best course of action. She knew that Fulcrum had been on the Council in its earlier years, long before Leia was, was she still able to contact them? If so why had she fallen out of communication four years ago?
Leia wasn't comfortable getting on that ship, but she also didn't want to lead Fulcrum to the base camp without more information about where she had been since her excursion to Malachor.
There had been a time when even knowing there was an agent called Fulcrum had been evidence that a being was loyal to the Rebellion. Doubting Fulcrum's dedication to the cause would have seemed outlandish then, but Leia believed there was no such thing as too much caution. Not when it came to preserving the existence of the Rebel Forces.
Fulcrum seemed to be taking her silence as permission to head back to her ship.
Wait a moment. Clipped to her belt, were those lightsabers?
"Are you a Jedi?"
Fulcrum stopped walking and spun around. Her brow furrowed, and she glanced down to Leia's blaster. Then her gaze snapped up again, and all the concern and humor vanished in an instant, replaced with a steely resolve. Two green lightsabers flared to life in her hands.
"You are not my Padawan."
