Mission Briefing: The Academy has been transmissioned a distress call from a damaged Merchant Vessel. From what the message was stated, an Interdictor Cruiser opened fire after crossing paths with the ship. Imperials operating in that region of space apparently don't want any visitors. We triangulated the position of the beacon on Blenjeel, an uninhabited planet as far as we can tell. This should be an easy grab and take-off, but you never know with these rescue missions.
The hyperspace flight from Bakura to Blenjeel was a fair distance, going all the way from Wild Space into the Mid Rim. But so was her story. She regaled of her earliest memories of her childhood, of how she had faint hints that she once had a father and mother, but then was left alone in the Lower levels with the closest thing she could call a relative. She bore no physical indicator that she was blood related, but he cared for her enough and kept her clothed until he passed away when she was not much older. Then the community she was living with became her new family, even if she felt wary to trust and isolated herself often.
Her habits of taking things apart to see how they functioned was at first discouraged by her guardian, but soon she was encouraged after they discovered her hidden talents. Being a mechanical savant had began to earn her credits, even aided her in starting her own self promoted business that allowed her to help the community itself and travel all across the lower to higher levels of Coruscant. It wasn't always an easy task, neither was it wholly safe, but it was something she felt satisfied over.
But her description of the bombing of Coruscant brought a bit of disquiet from her. It was something she noticeably wanted to gloss over and not dwell upon, as it had bad memories she wished to move past. When she explained how the lightsaber was forged, Rosh finally broke his silence and looked at her incredulously.
"So let me get this straight," He spoke aloud, his brows knitted as he tried to look at her with seriousness, gesturing with his hands to emphasize his confusion. "You never questioned why you could take things apart and learn how it works without anybody explaining it to you?"
"Oh I did," Jaden nodded, leaning back on the pilot's seat as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I've just never got an answer that made sense. My guardian thought I was reading some books or manuals that taught me, and others simply thought I was a born genius. I kind of took it with a grain of salt and just decided to ignore how odd it was."
"So you never could move things with your mind, or any other weird things that aren't normal?" Rosh persisted, one brow raising as he asked this question.
"No, not at all. I had a good feeling on how people were going to react or when somebody was feeling foul or happy, but I thought that was basic perception," She dismissed, leaning over till her braided plait swung out to lightly touch one of Rosh's extended hands, her silver eyes looking intensely at his dark rings in his sockets. Despite the serious look she was making and the obvious tension of discomfort imbued into her fellow teammate, she asked with a wry grin in an almost chiding manner. "You know social cues? Awareness? Common etiquette about personal space?"
"Ah!" Rosh finally recoiled back, brushing the back of his head with a hand as his face flushed. "You mean...from before when I...uh," He bowed his head down, looking a little ashamed as his cheeks burned up. "I'm sorry, Jaden."
"I'm not mad by this point," She admitted, pursing her lips as she took a brief eye-full of the rushing blue stream of hyperspace that the Yavin Runner II was still traversing in. "But, it kind of shows that you're far more comfortable being physically intimate with people. In some ways, it shows how trustworthy and endearing you can be. I'm just...not like that," She turned to look at the wall of the cockpit to her left, her voice lowering in volume as she explained. "I've never got enjoyment from being physically close to people. The noise, the anxiety of being robbed or wronged, and the noxious presence of every living being squashed in a tight compress of space. I had to endure it by pitching up a tent to block out everything else while I lived in a block full of nearly a hundred people in one quarter of it. From that point on, the habit grew and I'm just reliant on isolating myself so I don't know how to handle this kind of interaction."
"Surely you made some friends, right?" Rosh insisted with his question, though she didn't turn to address him. That is, not until he pressed further with an unseen wave of his hand. "You couldn't have been all alone where you lived?"
"Well," Jaden bit her lower lip, turning to look back with a slight grin. "I knew this Rodian who was near my age. His name was Meelik and he was my only dear friend in that dark world I was crammed in. He was the one that told me that I should get out of my bubble and go become a Jedi. We shopped the whole night after we submitted a request at the local Republic office, helping me find new clothes, new gear and just spending one last memorable day together."
"He sounds like a stand-up guy, all things considering the place you lived in," Rosh complimented with a cheery grin.
"He is," She nodded, albeit sadly. "I wish he came with me. He would've loved seeing all the places I've been to."
"You're going to see him when your training is done, right?"
The question was expected, but it was something that had been mulling in her head. The danger she was experiencing on some of these assignments made her wonder what was the likelihood of her surviving long enough to come back? It wasn't as intense of a paranoia as it was when she resigned herself to an untimely demise within her old home, but it was still a lingering fear. Doubt was an ugly thing and she wished she could be assured that the future was nothing but a bright horizon worth arriving at.
"That's the plan," She finally coughed out, her voice having grown a bit choked as emotion was starting to clog her throat. "I'm supposed to bring back souvenirs when I come back."
"Why not bring me along?" Rosh asked with a cheeky grin.
"You're not a souvenir, Rosh," Jaden intoned with a snort.
"Nah, why can't I come meet your friend?"
A brief bit of hesitation hitched her breath before she looked plainly back at him, "I don't think you'll like the kind of place I lived in."
"So what, my farming community back home is lavish?" He asked indignantly. Turning his seat around to face her, he placed his hands on his knees, looking seriously at her though she could tell it wasn't for a jape like she had done earlier. "Jaden, just because you're in a less than desirable place to be, doesn't make it any less home. We don't get to choose what we call home. It's there and until we let it go, it'll never go away."
It was a surprising thing to hear Rosh speak so profoundly. Bringing a sense of clarity to her, she could only awkwardly nod her head and smile, but chose not to say more on the matter. At the moment, she didn't like anybody seeing her community...or the horrid scar left not a quarter mile away from where millions were ravaged in a level-by-level collapse. The scars of that month left an echo of sorrow and anxiousness; it was something that even kept her from wishing to return enthusiastically back to her dear friend's abode.
Silence returned as Rosh twisted back to look out front, tapping his hands against his thighs. The fidgeting seemed to be his new way of fighting the urge to speak and the Echani-blooded student chose to endure it. The sounds perpetuated through the thrumming of the ship's engine, the hull's subtle vibrations and the gentle whispers of the weaving energy rushing through coils of wires and circuit boards all throughout. She almost was lulled to sleep by basking in this metaphysical connection she was having with the vessel she was piloting.
"Hey, Jaden?"
Then, Rosh spoke up again.
"Mhm?" She murmured out, fully reclined and eyes closed.
"How did you build your lightsaber?"
It was the question that she knew everybody was going to ask at least once after getting to know her. Thankfully, Master Jade's students -the only real acquaintances she's gained that feel like actual comrades in the Academy- never bothered to ask. Kyle was polite enough to skip past the issue altogether and Luke was far too busy to be invested in one student's lightsaber creation.
But Rosh was Rosh, and he was going to ask in just a matter of time.
"Don't laugh," She dryly commanded.
"I promise I will try," Rosh stated with sincerity.
Sighing, she opened her platinum lashes and side-glanced with her right silver eye, "The Force."
"Huh?" He gawked.
"It's the only way I can explain without it sounding crazy. Or stupid. Or both," She iterated slowly, lying back and basking in the intimate awareness her senses had with the rest of the ship's functions and make-up. "One night I was called to a crystal. Once I found it I began having very vivid dreams. I tinkered, collected scrap and commenced to make something that'd use such a wonderful gem as its focus. Guided on a near unconscious way, I'm certain now that I was shown how to make the crystal work with the rest of the components and...then it just worked."
"Huh," He mouthed audibly, sounding more convinced than what her two worded answer had given him. "I thought there was something to it and I guess that's just it. You were a one in a million chance where that kind of thing can work. It's not like there's a history of Jedi that can build lightsabers without instruction, haha!"
His forced laugh made her think if this was something the Jedi Masters of the Academy had to experience firsthand. Building a lightsaber was a precarious task, and if it wasn't for her connection to the Force working in conjunction with her innate ability with machines, it'd likely incur failures. How many attempts would it have taken Master Skywalker, or Master Jade? How lucky was Kyle in creating his own lightsaber?
Without putting much thought into it, Jaden inquired, "Would you mind me teaching you how?"
"How...?" Rosh asked, as if forgetting the connotation that came with the question.
"How to build your own lightsaber, of course," She huffed, opening her eyes and leaning forward to turn in a hunched posture towards him. "I know it's only been a little over a week, and you're more than likely going to learn how to build one in the month. But, since you're going on missions where dealing with Imperials or those Cultists is a real possibility, I think it'd be wiser to start building one now rather than when you fully know how."
"Well, I'm game for it, if you are!" He said excitedly, getting a little exhilarated at the prospect of constructing one so soon.
"I will warn you," The platinum-haired teenager implored, sitting more upright as she kept an even gaze with him. "It took me almost a month to make my first lightsaber. Be prepared for some hiccups that may happen when you're trying your hand at this."
"It's fine. It's like you said," The spiky haired man replied, grinning with a wink at her. "It's better to get ahead of the game than learn it later and not have one when you need it."
"Well, let's at least finish this-"
As she spoke, the signal for their destination's impending arrival rang out across the board. Sliding her hands around with a practiced intuition, her Force enhanced reflexes quickly deceleration. Once it drifted out of the blue stream of fast-paced light, the Academy spacecraft suddenly got sight of Blenjeel. It was a dry, brown looking world and it gave her an uncomfortable reminder of what Tatooine appeared to be.
Rosh fastened his own seat's safety straps while she did the same, her brow furrowing with suspicion as they were heading towards the planet's atmosphere. The other steady blink came on for the Merchant ship's distress signal, allowing her to guide the Yavin Runner II in a straight line. What she expected from this uncharted world's atmosphere was some bumpy entry-
-but instead, it became a sudden torrential shaking that rocked the whole of the vessel. It wasn't even a normal atmosphere rush, it was as if a sudden storm had manifested through the vessel's own magnetic field had excited the particles in the air. The unnatural space-faring creation had caused negative ions to dance erratically, painting the HUD of the ship's blast shield with flashes of lightning that erupted from the layers of atmosphere as they jerked and twisted in the throes of its pressures.
Then, a bolt struck, and she felt her head reel as the whole system let a cascade of critical failures drift all over the Yavin Runner's parts, hull and console software. Non-essential lights bleeped off, the steering wheel crackling in hand as manual steering became a necessity. A defiant lurch upward was made right before the front of the ship impacted a slight slope of sand -that didn't entirely fit the term of a 'Dune'- before flopping on the rest of the sea of grains like a fish. Skidding forward, the whole of the ship finally jerked to a halt, just as the last bleep was heard from the console.
It seems they found their SOS signal.
"Sith spit!" Rosh cursed, kicking the side of the bulkhead as he began to pace across from Jaden.
"Calm down," She insisted, trying to be the one with the level head of the two.
"Oh yeah. I should stay calm as we just crash landed on an uncharted world with NO distress signal carrier to activate!"
"Stop being melodramatic," The Echani-blooded student turned with a roll of her eyes, hauling a smoking part to pile it with the others. Turning to catch him by the arm, she jerked him still and pointed at the parts gathered at her feet. "Okay, look. I know you're not the grease monkey lizard that I am, but I need you to focus. These are the only things I can't fix. Everything else seems to have only had minor malfunctions when the majority of that electromagnetic surge kicked our systems in the gonads.
"What we need is an energy cell for the cooling unit," She pointed to the charred piece of elliptical metallic framing with shorted out wiring protruding from its rims.
"A power converter," She gestured to an obtuse looking tankard looking equipment, also in a malformed state of discombobulation thanks to the power surge.
"A power coupling for the acceleration compensator," She booted a mangled, Y shaped piece of metal with a now non-blinking light bulb to display its inability to keep doing its assigned task.
"Finally, this dampener for the hyperdrive motivator," Jaden concluded to a nod at a nub-shaped disc resting on a metal plate, also mangled just as much as the rest of the parts.
"Alright, but," Rosh emphatically shook his arms, almost like noodles, as he asked an obvious question. "Where are we going to find those?!"
"These are basic parts for freighters, cruisers and transports," Jaden intoned with a tilt of her plait-braided head to the vacant spots where she tore out the now useless pieces of machinery. "I've salvaged things like this from broken down vessels littering across my home in Coruscant. I even fixed up ships not too dissimilar to this one."
"Just now flown many, right?" Rosh quipped.
"My point, Rosh," She raised her voice, earning a visible recoil from him as she visibly seethed at his glib remark. "The downed Merchant vessel should give us all of the parts we need; probably."
"That's a lot of faith on a probably," He snorted with a dubious stare aimed at her.
"Trust in the Force, Rosh," She half-joked, half-seriously implored him. "We've gotten this far doing that, why stop now?"
Patting him on the shoulder, he sighed with exasperation before following her out of the ship's rear emergency door.
Upon exiting, it was exactly the kind of space she imagined Blenjeel to be. A sprawling Dune Sea of brown-golden grains, with only the occasional ensemble of boulders, rocky earth and spires of stone protruding from the uneven earth. Even from a basic look from the back of their ship, the pair could tell they were in far better shape than the Merchant's vessel. A quick turn and they saw with an equally shared grimace at the dilapidated corpse of a spacecraft.
It was strewn in tatters and pieces, obviously the result of taking damage from the aforementioned Imperial Interdictor vessel that pulled them out of hyperspace. Jagged pieces of hull plating protruded at odd angles within the loose ground, with pieces of the ship's exterior thrusters half-buried in the sand. The forward half of the ship was far more intact, though was lying at a decline where the dune they had mutually crashed on dipped downward near some rocks and spires of sediment.
Rosh, being the first to cup his hands over his mouth, cried out with inquiry while Jaden's eyes twitched at an odd wrongness that began to fill her pores.
"Hello! Anyone out there?!" He cried out.
"Oh by the Force! Help has arrived!" An older man's voice rang out with near delirious joy. He wore a dirtied, grey-black flight suit and looked to have been sweating with a paled complexion. His grey hair cut short and eyes, even from this distance, widened with manic hope as he hobbled across the sand without any regard to himself.
Just as she felt the sudden throb of alarm fill her being, so did Rosh, at the last possible instant the man stumbled towards their ship's landing plate.
"This place is-!" He barely got out, before the whole of the sand shuddered with an intense vibration. Almost like a quake, it reached the back of their ship, though did little to move it from its secure placement in the loose grains. Instead, it made both Jaden and Rosh wobble on their footholds while it shook the delirious man off his feet onto his back.
In a blur, they'd see the reason why only one merchant rushed out to see them instead of more.
It bellowed out in a guttural roar, uncommon for the shape it came from. Ripped, hardened flesh with gallons of grains flowing off it from the immense momentum it propelled itself out of the ground. Eyeless, the head of the monstrous predator had four mandibles with jagged spikes aligned on them, and an unseen host of inverted teeth that angled down towards the back of its throat. It turned its face briefly in Jaden and Rosh's startled persons before howling at the scuffling man who cried out in terror.
It dove on top of it, burying itself back into the sand and assuredly devouring the man whole. The ground shifted slightly, a deep rumbling echoed across the sandy earth and both students took a few seconds to soak in the event. The last person who was here for them to save, was now worm food; giant worm food.
"Well, we tried-"
"Not so fast," Jaden stopped Rosh as he began to turn to go back inside, grabbing him by the collar. "We still need to go salvage those parts."
"Jaden, I'm not sure if you saw the same I did, but that freak of nature just ate the man!" He cried out in exasperation.
"Then we need to be careful," She pressured, her eyes staring seriously at him. "This ship has the parts here. I can feel it."
Rosh almost thought to question how, but then realized there was a more direct way of telling. Closing his eyes he took a few seconds to pull at the Force flowing through this sandy, abandoned world. Its isolation and dryness led a deceptively rich fuel of life deep beneath their feet. In exchange for sentience a far more savage and vibrant ecosystem existed, deep underneath the empty deserts where creatures born without eyes were able to evolve and adapt methods to sustain themselves in an eat-or-be-eaten world.
Opening his eyes, the pupils contracted and his irises widened, glowing with an effervescent blue over his normally hazel orbs. Turning to look at the Merchant vessel he saw the outlines of the parts that were described to him not long ago. Yes, they were scattered -in no small part thanks to these worms attacking and the ship's own crash landing- but all within not too large of a distance from each other.
"I see them," Rosh noted, getting a smile from Jaden that he could focus enough to tell. "Four of them. The parts you mentioned. Though some of them are in precarious places. How are we going to get to the ones on the sand?"
"Well," She trailed off, pulling out one thermal detonator -part of a bandoleer she never used during their mission on Bakura- and handed it to him. "If they're anything like actual, smaller worms, they rely on vibrations to sense their prey. Throw this on a timer away from you, and that should at least lure them away; if nothing else, it'd be a nice, nasty surprise for them if they try chomping on it."
"You say that like you're not going to get the parts," He pointed out with an accusing glare. "Jaden, you are helping, right?"
"Oh I will," She nodded with a teasing smile. "But you'll be hauling your own weight. I'm looking for the storage of this ship, to see if it has anything of value worth bringing back with us. Once we leave, after all, this will likely be abandoned here."
"Please tell me it'd be worth the effort," He groaned out, not liking the idea of her making him do the legwork.
"I have a hunch," The platinum haired girl sang as she bent her knees and leaped in a dexterous twirl in the air before landing on a nearby boulder. "That it'll help the both of us!~"
Begrudgingly, the pair split up, doing their best to find a proper way to navigate to the essential parts that'd help repair the Yavin Runner II. Rosh angled here and there, relying on his own tools and smarts to avoid being accidentally caught on the open sand without a means of distracting the voracious giant worms. Jaden herself used her innate dexterity in tune with the Force to hop from one jutting piece of metal to another scrapped part of detached flight craft partition.
In the deeper bowels of the ship, Jaden realized the manifesto she studied on the ship during the flight here definitely underestimated the lost cargo's worth. Overturned crates and boxes of hardened sorts were rattled but its contents maintained. Prying one of them open, she looked in and shuffled through the pieces, finding what she was looking for. Hauling the prize out, she looked at what was perhaps a beautiful handful of refined crystals of a deep emerald hue.
Placing it into a pack within her jacket pocket, she continued to peruse the valuables, and garnered enough pieces to meet her demands. Stuffing more into what pockets she could spare, she found a few more essential pieces before hauling them back to their ship. Briefly she heard distant explosions and muffled wails of the earthen beast suffering from burns from the thermal charge's detonation. Prancing back up out of the vessel's guts, she joined Rosh in a Force sprint back to the safety of their craft.
Once they returned, they began to place the pieces back into their designated positions, soon hearing satisfying clicks and thrums of powered activity. Grinning, they exchanged a few looks before they'd start up their ship, taking off out of the sky and past the weave of dangerous electrical currents manifesting in the planet's sky. Once free, they punched in the coordinates to the Academy after hailing Kyle once again.
"Sand Burrowers," Kyle answered their question they had to what the things were. "Nasty critters. Too bad about the merchants, but, these things can happen. We'll let the Republic know about the incident so they can mark Blenjeel as a hazard spot for travelers. Wish we found out where that Interdictor went..."
"You almost done with your mission?" Jaden asked, curious as to when she'd see her teacher again.
"Yeah, just wrapping a few loose ends up. I'll tell you about it next time we meet up," He promised with a grin.
"Sounds good," Rosh chimed in, sounding exuberant despite how obviously tired he was. "We'll be back at the Academy. See ya later, Kyle!"
As soon as the holo-message was disconnected, Jaden cleared her throat and got Rosh's immediate attention. Producing what looked like a deep emerald crystal, the spiky haired man's eyes widened as he took a hold of the gem. It hummed with a deep resonating pressure yet was obviously something that differed from what was an ordinary crystal. Turning to look at Jaden, he asked, "Is this-?"
"A cortosis lined crystal," She explained, pointing at the gem at the faint glittering that differed from the rest of the darker green fixtures. "I thought it was some useful quartz of some kind, possibly a good reflector or sorts, but among the rest of the refined cortosis crystals, I found that. A resonating gem that has the same qualities as one found in a lightsaber!"
"This is great!" He exclaimed excitedly, now looking renewed of vigor despite the very long journey the two of them had. "Is this all we need?"
"I grabbed some other parts lying around, but essentially, yes," She admitted, patting some bulging spots on her jacket she wore. "I have lots of spare scrap back at the Academy, so even if some pieces don't work, we can exchange parts for ones that'd work better. This will be an ongoing project so I hope you're prepared for some tedium."
"I admit, I may be a little impatient," Rosh expressed, palming the green crystal in hand before looking back at him with a broad smile. "But I know it'll take time, and in the end, it'll be worth it."
"That's the spirit," Jaden sang, turning to grab the hyperspace levers, slowly pushing them forward with an audible whir thrumming all around her. "Let's get back to the Academy."
And, in a single bluish streak, both students vanish into hyperspace.
A/N: I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out. Not the big action piece some of the others are, but still a character developing one. I can imagine some people are a little anxious to get to the good missions which are coming, trust me. I'm building that up as its own big event and I plan on delivering in a big way.
With Rosh given the materials to construct his own lightsaber, Jaden intends to teach her fellow student on how to construct his very own laser sword. As signs of Imperial activity begin to intensify along with Cultist actions of wrongdoing and illicit movements, it is only a matter of time till the Republic and New Jedi Order become fully entangled with their new enemies. Tune in the next update to see how a simple rumor of a Cultist presence can lead to an intense confrontation!
May the Force be with you!
