After our little meet and greet we decided that we better get out of the building. The droideka debris that littered the street outside, courtesy of Mars, was not helping to conceal our location. The force was still buzzing, but not loudly. However the sound was strong enough to catch my attention so I needed to learn more about it. I went to the middle of the room and swiped my half extended staff across the table, plates and glasses clattered and clinked until they hit the floor and the sharp sound of breaking glass filled the room. The eyes of my companions grew wide but I ignored them. I sit cross legged on the table and grab my braid with one hand while placing the other calmly on my knee.

"Gray?" First came Pinky's concerned voice.

"Umm… Gray? What are you doing?" Then there was Mars's much more logical tone.

Now that I have spent the last hour or so with these two I think I have finally made my general judgments about my companions. Pinky, as I have mentioned many times, is a little violent. She is quick to anger and always ready for a fight. She is a rough and tumble kind of person, but she also seems to be a little unpredictable. She killed a guy over cookies. Cookies, for goodness sakes. Her temper is unbridled, but at least her skill with the ax and her fighting style are always able to keep her alive. She doesn't seem to have any morals at all, but given the burning hatred she has for the empire and rebels alike I know she isn't entirely lenient on the rules. Now Mars is a completely different story. Mars has had a normal, and even somewhat profitable, life. As a blacksmiths daughter she always had at least some money, and her mother training her to fight was yet another thing in her favor. A perfect life minus the whole runaway twin thing, but even then it meant that she was the only child of a well-off couple, and that could never be a bad thing. Mars has no resentment towards anyone except maybe the empire, and that's only because she has probably seen the lesser horrors of what they have done on holograms. The true evil that the empire does isn't confined to simple slavery or murder of a few innocents, the genocide of entire star systems is more their speed. Not that they can build a working hyper drive or anything, they just destroy systems slowly.

Pinky's mission is of revenge, Mars's is in search of her twin and adventure. That is great to know, but why am I here? Sure my mother is missing, but I don't feel the need to go out and find her. This whole Jedi Order thing is to find the real heroes so they can fight the real battles. I don't blame anyone for anything and I am not in search of anyone, so why should I be here? I don't have either of my fellow Jedi's skill or ambition. I feel the force give me an unnatural jolt and my entire body shudders. At first I think it's a warning than I realize that the force is simply giving me a reminder that I do have a reason for travelling around. I may not be the strongest or the bravest or the toughest or anything remotely related to that, but I can be persuasive. I am so force sensitive that I can actually hear it, and not only hear, but have these really awkward conversations with it. Perhaps I don't get a choice. I have no delusions that I am going to become a hero, in fact I might actually be doing the opposite. I am trying to become a villain to the empire, nothing more than that. The only thing I ever wanted to do was help people out, like my mom does. Being smart and manipulative doesn't sound like helping, but in a way it can be. Wielding intellect is just like wielding a weapon. With a weapon you dish out blows hoping something will hit. With intelligence you spit out words hoping someone will be affected by them.

"HELLO GRAY XD" Pinky's voice booms within my skull. How the heck did she open a mindspeak channel? For that matter how does one send a freaking emoticon through mental correspondence?

"Hey is Mars out there?" I have to make sure everyone is here before I try something.

"What up?" I hear yet another voice enter the channel.

"Well now that everyone is tuned in to my personal radio station we should"- I am suddenly interrupted.

"We should call it Gradio."

"Pinky that has to be the stupidest"- I am interrupted by Mars this time.

"I like it."

"Are you serious?" I can't believe this.

"It sounds kinda cool." Mars's voice is way to calm.

"Ok so if we are done coming up with names"- cut off yet again.

"I came up with it!" Pinky's voice echoes proudly.

"Yes, thank you for that. Now I am going to test something on you, brace yourselves." I begin to push images into their minds.

"Wait, what are you… Woah," Pinky finally stopped talking as the pictures came into view.

I have never really tried to do this before, mainly because I have never had anyone I trusted this much. The basic concept is that I think of an image and I send it into someone else's head so they can see it. I figured that it can't be much different from when I put words into others heads, and these two I trust so why not give it a try? I hear two loud thumps and it takes me a minute to register what just happened. Having shared the image I let go of my braid to leave the deeper side of the force and opened my eyes. I look around and see both Mars and Pinky sprawled out on the floor just shy of the broken utensils I swept off the table earlier. I kind of forgot about that. When I had first recognized what the force for what it was I had a lot of issues controlling it. When it became too much I had a bad habit of crumpling to the floor. The incense on some planets may be able to make brains melt, that seems powerful but I have to say the force can be some pretty trippy stuff. A couple weeks ago when the force started its incessant humming I had stopped and simply dropped more than once. Actually it was two, two weeks, the exact amount of time since Mars left home… I would call it a coincidence, but the universe is rarely so lazy. I wait for my comrades to get back up, but they don't so I begin to panic.

"Hey. Hey, Pinky? You all right?" I begin to worriedly shake her, hoping she wakes up.

I hear a blade slide out of its scabbard and turn towards the other person in the room. Mars stands up a little shakily, but she looks all right. I think she is going to slide her sword back into its rightful place on her back when she turns it towards me.

"Die," she looks at me and I notice a shift in the color of her eyes, her usual brown changing into a deep scarlet that matches her hair.

"Mars?" I look at my comrade turned adversary and try to get through to her without messing with her mind.

"unhhhh" Pinky groans beneath me, I look at her neck and see a flash of silver beneath her pink curls.

I quickly brush aside her hair and, on closer examination, I see a small cut in the side of her neck. I look at it and see a blackish goop coming from the opening. I use what little levitation I can to extract the poison from her veins. I feel the force hum and I shift my whole body to the exact location it directed me too. I turn around to face Mars but she already is bringing her blade down in an arc. I quickly lift my partially extended staff to block it, but all it manages to do is deflect the shaft to the left. She quickly recovers and pulls out her other sword, she comes at me and I try to block again. This doesn't work as well as it did the last time, my staff breaks clean in half from the razor edges and falls to the ground. The very blades that I had looked upon with astonishment and wonder when I was saved by them were now coming at me with a lethality that was unimaginable. Without the staffs minor resistance to attack I am left completely open and my vulnerable skin is suddenly exposed.

"UGHHHH" A bestial cry comes from the ground and somehow a large ax sneaks into the place between the sharpened steel and my flesh.

Pinky's sudden save and the realization of my possible bodily harm give me both a new respect for my friend and the push I needed. I looked straight into the blood red eyes of the girl in front of me, friend or not she was going down. I saw right through her and searched frantically for the source of her sudden mood swing. There was no obvious physical difference and the change was seemingly mental. I found it, luckily the source was outside, and she didn't suddenly go mad on me. A simple toxin, she had been scratched by something during the fight. This makes it easier, it's probably the same thing that Pinky had in her, and that means all I have to do is levitate the stuff out of her. I just hope it hasn't spread too badly.

"DUCK!" Pinky is up and swinging, ready to go head to head with Mars. I rush over to the table and get ready to perform poison extraction again.

"Pinky, get her on the table." I say it calmly, but she understands the urgency.

Mars has had a lot of training and is probably a weapons mistress more capable than many fighters, but no one is capable of Pinky. She brings her ax down with a venomous rage more potent and lethal than anything that could be running through Mars's veins. Pinky makes an expert leap and pushes Mars on the table, she then quickly summersaults over Mars's form and pins her tightly to the table.

"NOW!"

I quickly go over to Mars and wrench her struggling head down onto the table. I didn't want to go into her mind from a distance, it would have been too risky in her altered state. When there was skin contact though, it made it extremely easy. I whispered through mindspeak into a private channel between me and her "Sleep." Simple phrases were always the most powerful. The effect was instantaneous. Mars breathing became even and her lids dropped, she was definitely out. I felt a force buzz and grabbed my braid. I looked at her body, but I wasn't seeing normally. I was looking directly through the epidermis, I could see through her skin. I saw the toxin as a deep black fluid that intermingled with other cells in her blood stream, it slowly made its way from a cut on her arm towards her brain. I only have one shot at this, I better not screw this up. I used my new found x-ray vision to pinpoint the poison and began to do the same thing I had done to Pinky before. I would have asked Pinky to help out, but I really don't think she would've been able to. As I worked I wondered exactly how x-vision has anything to do with the force. I got a light humming in response, something I somehow interpreted. Mars is a living being, the force is and controls all life, therefore it can control how I perceive things and how other things are perceived. The force is very enigmatic like that, all very confusing. Now back to the task at hand. As I finish ripping the filth from someone who is my now going on three hours long friend, she begins to tense. Apparently forced sleep isn't quite as restful, so I tap her gently of the shoulder after bandaging up the leg I had pulled the toxin out from. "Awake."

She looks at me blindly then at Pinky. She's a little tired and I watch as she tries to sit up.

"She's really slow" My plucky pink haired companion decides to comment.

"Yeah she is." I have to agree with her, I have never seen anyone recover that slowly from anything.

"Shut up!" The exclamation probably would've got us to quiet down, but when she slammed back into the table it kind of just ruined the moment.

"How long is this going to take Mars?" Pinky is trying not to crack a smile.

"It takes her forever just to sit-up" I whisper to Pinky co-conspiratorially.

"You are the worst kind of person!" Mars's desperate pleas aren't really helping her case though, so she just ends up laying back down on the table.

I get a force hum and feel peace for about twelve seconds, we will have twelve hours before any attacks come. Don't ask how I'm interpreting this stuff, just be glad I can. I tell them that we have some time to sleep and they both conk out faster than if I had used mindcontrol. How those two feel asleep so easily was a wonder. I think about the event of the last hour and wonder why I wasn't poisoned. Then I realized they must have got cut while fighting something, and I didn't really do any fighting. The mental image I had pushed into their minds was likely the last straw. When the sudden mental strain to feel images was on them their bodies gave out from the pressure and the toxin began to run rampant through their systems. I was useless once again in a fight, I couldn't face a droid and I couldn't even help restrain Mars. Pinky did all of that, I did nothing.

Mars was passed out on the table with the weirdest smile on her face, I probe her mind a bit and get a blast of some seriously loud rock music. I guess I can sense dreams, neat. My punk friend dreams about the Falling Star Boys and something about tree stumps that I don't really understand. Meanwhile I wander over to Pinky who is snoozing on a couch and I feel a tremendous amount of heat and see only a blazing fire. At first I think it's some dark, horrible nightmare about her family dying. Than the image clears and I see her in her dreams sitting at a bonfire serenely eating s'mores while a man's corpse that looks a lot like the baker's son serves as the fuel for the flames. Killing his father was evidently not enough, she wants to take out the whole family. She is one messed up individual. I gather myself in the clothes I have and curl up on the floor, my staff is broken so I don't even have that anymore. I go to sleep thinking of all I have gained during this day, and fearing all that I now have to loose.