Wedge stopped off the shuttle deck into the warm Yavin air. He hadn't been in several months, since Luke was coming to Coruscant. He mentioned it and Tycho suggested they take a trip. Tycho had never been and he wanted to see it. Corran offered to come along too, and Iella decided to join them at the last minute. Normally when Wedge came, he stayed just a few hours then went right back. This time, they were staying for a few nights.
"Good afternoon, General Antilles. Good to see you."
Wedge turned to see one of the more senior students, Sir'ren Choth, approach. "Hi Sir'ren. Have you seen Luke or Brianna around?" Sir'ren, if Wedge remembered correctly, was a little older than Brianna, so he was someone Wedge had seen often on his trips here.
"I think Brianna is on her way over here," Sir'ren said. "I'm not sure where Master Skywalker is."
"When Brianna said jungle, she wasn't kidding," Tycho said, coming up next to Wedge. "It's a nice change of pace from Coruscant though."
"Yeah, try living here," Brianna said as she walked up. "This place doesn't exactly have a hot nightlife scene."
"I think we're all okay with that," Corran said.
"Sir'ren, I think you probably know Corran, right?" Wedge said.
"Indeed." Sir'ren nodded deeply to Corran. "Welcome back."
"Thanks."
"And this is Tycho Celchu, and my wife, Iella."
"Welcome, all of you," Sir'ren said. "If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. We don't get guests often, and I'm sure many of the students would be happy to answer questions."
"Thank you, we appreciate that," Iella said.
"Are you done with the formalities now?" Brianna asked.
Sir'ren nodded to her. "Yes, Master Skywalker."
Brianna scrunched up her face. "How many times I gotta tell you not to call me that garbage?"
"An infinite number," Sir'ren said with a hint of a grin. "Because it is infinitely amusing."
"Whatever. Go make yourself useful somewhere else."
"Yes, Mistress Brianna."
"Turd."
Sir'ren flashed them another grin and walked off.
"Where's your dad?" Wedge asked.
"Emerging from his hidey hole."
"His hidey hole?" Tycho asked.
"She means his meditation room," Wedge explained.
"He better get here quick, l have class," Brianna said. "Can't be babysitting."
"Lightsaber class?" Tycho asked. "Can we watch?"
"Yeah, sure," Brianna said. "I always love a good audience."
"Can I participate?" Corran asked.
Brianna slowly looked him up and down. "Well, it's my upper intermediate class. I guess you can handle that." She nodded in the direction of the temples and started walking.
"Is it stick day?" Iella asked as they followed her.
"It is not stick day," Brianna said. "Basic forms practice. Might throw some light sparring in at the end." She looked at Corran. "Do you know Soresu, Form III and sequences?"
"I do."
"Fabulous. You may participate."
As they passed the entrance to the main temple, Luke caught up with them. "Sorry," he said. "Hope you weren't waiting."
"No, we just got here," Wedge said. "Brianna is letting us watch one of her classes."
"Oh." Luke nodded. "Very good."
Brianna led them into one of the smaller temples where about two dozen students had gathered in a large open room. "Okay, listen up everyone," she called out, getting everyone's attention. "We have some guests observing today and one guest participating, so be on your best behavior."
"Is that just for us, or does that include you too?" someone called out. A ripple of laughter flowed through the group.
"I'm always on my best behavior," Brianna said.
"That's a low bar!" another one called out, to more laughter.
"And yet, some of you still don't manage it," Brianna said. "Get in your spot. Soresu, Form III sequence, moderate pace!" The students dutifully arranged themselves in offset lines, giving themselves about a meter and half of space between each other. Brianna pointed to the corner nearest the entrance and looked at Corran. "You can jump in right there."
Corran took his spot and looked around the room. "We're a bit close together for this, aren't we?"
Brianna turned around to smirk at him. "Not if you don't screw up. But, if you think you might hit someone, feel free to give yourself some extra space." Brianna turned back to the group as she moved to the front. "Sabers up! I'll count. And begin!"
The room came alive with the distinctive snap-hiss and hums of lightsabers blades, almost all light blue and neon green. As Brianna counted through a sequence of eight, everyone moved in unison, spinning their blades and moving within their space.
"She's brutal," Tycho.
"He should have known better," Iella pointed out.
Corran led Tycho up a flight of stairs. "Come on, I'll show you where my room was." Corran and Tycho stepped off onto the third floor of the main Massassi temple where the initial group of Jedi students had their rooms. Several meters down the hall, Corran stopped. "This was mine," he said as he opened the door. Corran gasped as he stepped into the room, and immediately jumped back out and closed the door.
"What?" Tycho asked.
Corran frowned. "I…I definitely didn't feel that the last time I was here."
"Something bad?" Tycho asked.
"I…let me think." Corran slowly opened the door again, and took one step inside. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He opened the door fully and stepped inside. "It's okay," he said. "There's nothing bad in here. I just…I never felt that before in here."
"Felt what?"
"It's, so, the people who built these temples, the Masassi, they were Force users," Corran said. "It's almost like…like the walls themselves absorb the emotional memories of people who were in these rooms." Corran and Tycho stood in the center of the small room. One set of bunk beds was opposite the door, another set to the right. One double wall locker stood in the far corner, another off to the left.
"When we first got here as new students, Luke's first group of students," Corran said, "he told us we could pick any room we wanted. He said to let the Force guide us. I wandered around for a bit and finally ended up in here, but didn't really know why. Luke found me in here a short time later and said he thought he'd find me in this room. I asked him why and he showed me this." Corran walked over to the wall locker to the left and pushed it away from the stone. Corran knelt and pointed to a small bit of writing scratched into a brick.
"'Biggs Darklighter, Jek Porkins, Wedge Antilles. Empire or us'," Tycho read. He looked at Corran. "This was Wedge's room, during the Battle of Yavin!" he said.
Corran nodded. "I know Wedge well, so that was what led me in here. I just didn't realize what I was feeling then."
"What are you feeling now?" Tycho asked.
Corran sighed and sat on the bed. "It's like a before and after," he said, looking around the room. "Before - before the battle - I can feel Wedge - not really the other two since I don't know them - and there's a lot of, you know, giddy excitement, nervousness, all the things you feel before a big mission." Corran paused.
"And after?" Tycho asked, sitting next to him.
Corran looked around the room again. "It's like…well, it's about what you'd expect, after losing your whole squadron," he said. "Having to come back to your room. Alone."
Tycho nodded. "He doesn't talk about it. I don't think I've ever really heard either of them talk about it. I know what's public record, and I know that Luke had to tell Wedge to get out after his fighter had been damaged. But I don't actually know any other details."
"Yeah, that's about all I know too," Corran said. Corran continued to gaze around the room, taking in all the emotional history. Corran frowned. "Hmm." Corran stood up. "Come on, let's go."
"Where are we going?"
Corran stepped into the hallway. "We're going - this is going to sound weird - we're following Wedge." Corran walked toward the stairwell and went up.
"Following Wedge?" Tycho repeated.
"Yeah," Corran said, turning up the stairs. "After the battle, after he was in that room by himself, he didn't stay there. We're following him." Corran and Tycho walked down the fourth floor hallway. Corran ran his hand along the wall. "I think I know where we're going," he said.
"Where?" Tycho asked.
"Luke told me that since he had just arrived on Yavin, he wasn't given a room with other Red Squadron pilots. He was given a room on the fourth floor. That has to be where Wedge went."
"I have heard Luke say before that he never really had a chance to meet or talk to anyone before the battle, what with briefings, and flight testing, and getting fitted for a flight suit, and all that," Tycho said.
Corran stopped in front of a door. "This is where Wedge stopped," he said.
"This isn't Luke's room now, is it?" Tycho asked.
"No, I don't think so," Corran said. Corran knocked lightly on the door and waited. Nothing happened. He looked at Tycho, who frowned. Corran took a deep breath and slowly opened the door. The two of them stepped into the doorway. Corran took in a large breath and leaned back against the wall. "Wow," he said.
"Same thing?" Tycho asked.
"Stronger," Corran said. This room was about the same size as the other one. There was only one set of bunk beds opposite the door, and one set of double wall lockers. There were several of what appeared to be meditation rugs layered across the floor. Some shelves had extinguished candles. In the far corner was a work table and chair with several small tools that appeared suited to working with complex mechanics with small, precision parts. "This looks like Luke's meditation room," Corran said.
"We probably shouldn't be in here," Tycho said.
"Yeah." They went back into the hall and Corran shut the door.
"But," Tycho said, "what did it feel like? The same before and after?"
"No," Corran said. "It's more like a continuum." Corran waved his hand from left to right in front of him. "Like the walls have absorbed the entire timeline of their friendship from day one." Corran looked at the door again. "That's odd."
"What?"
"We followed Wedge up here. I could feel Wedge inside the room. I could feel Luke inside the room. But outside, not Luke at all. If I hadn't followed Wedge up here, I would never have guessed from the outside that this room might be important to Luke." Corran scrunched his face up in thought. "Oh, this is where he must have been!" Corran turned to Tycho, cutting off the obvious question. "Mara used to complain sometimes that Luke would 'disappear' and she couldn't figure out where he went. She assumed he was meditating, but never really knew. Whenever Wedge would show up, when she didn't know where Luke was, she would just say that Luke was meditating. Wedge would walk off somewhere in this building, and a short time later, they would both came out. She was always a bit annoyed about it."
Tycho nodded. "Wedge always knew where to go look because this was the first place he went to look." Tycho shook his head. "Those two are something else, aren't they."
"Sure are," Corran said. "Come on, let's go back downstairs." Corran and Tycho walked back to the ground floor, and into the control room off the main hangar bay. Brianna was sitting at one of the consoles.
"How was your tour?" she asked.
"I think we found your dad's meditation room," Corran said.
"Oh yeah," Brianna said. "That's pretty wild, isn't it? I found that room a couple years ago. It's like a gut punch walking in there." She looked at Tycho. "Want to see my call searches?"
"Call searches?" Corran asked.
"I've lived here most of my life," Brianna said. "I know who calls here, I know who shows up here, and I know what all of those people want. If you don't call here and you don't show up here, I don't know who you are."
"This was the bit of shaming I got several months ago when you weren't around to be a target," Tycho explained to Corran.
"My apologies," Corran said.
"Check this out," Brianna. "I set the output to date, and input to - how do you spell your name? - C-E-L-C-H-U and click search." Brianna pointed at the results screen. "See? There's a handful here from the past couple of months, but literally nothing before that."
Tycho nodded sadly. "Right."
"And if I put this one in - H-O-R-N - oh I gotta use your first name here too - C-O-R-R-A-N - and search… See, I get this small set here, from when Wedge was in the hospital and I had to remind him that these comms things work in two directions."
"Uh huh," Corran said.
"But, you gotta go all the way back six or seven years to pick up the next one."
"What was six years ago?" Tycho asked.
"That's when Hal and Camie got picked up," Brianna said. "The calls before that were to talk to them." Brianna continued, "And if I put Leia in - O-R-G-A-N-A - I get a whole bunch, but she only calls when she wants something, she never calls just to say 'Hi'." She looked at Tycho. "I bet if you gave Winter these dates she could correlate every one of them with some diplomatic garbage Leia wanted my dad to do."
"I'm sure you're right," Tycho said.
"If I put Han in, I get a bunch of nothing," Brianna said. "But if I do THIS," Brianna started typing again, "A-N-T-I-L-L-E-S - check this out." Brianna clicked search and then moved over so they could see the screen. "Literally hundreds of records," Brianna said. "He's been calling here every WEEK for the last ten YEARS. There's a four year gap here, that's the Yuzong Vong war. And before that he was calling here maybe two or three times a month for that period of about ten years."
"Wow," Tycho said.
"I know who calls here, I know who shows up here, and I know what all of those people want." Brianna said again. "Wedge wants to say hi and hang out." Brianna half-turned back to the console. "You wanna see my favorite search?"
"I don't know," Tycho said, "do I?"
"Yeah, check this out." Brianna adjusted the output and input. "The output is incoming caller name and incoming pilot name - for people who show up - and the input is a date." Brianna typed in a galactic standard date and clicked search. "Look."
Corran and Tycho leaned over her shoulder to see. "That's all Wedge again," Corran said.
"What date is that?" Tycho asked.
"That," Brianna said, turning more fully to face them, "is my dad's birthday."
Tycho leaned in closer to look. "No it isn't," he said.
"Yes, it is," Brianna said.
"No, it isn't," Tycho insisted. "Winter and I used to go out with Leia every year on her birthday and it's a month before that. Winter, of all people, is not going to get Leia's birthday wrong. And they can't have different birthdays; that's not how twins work."
"And if Winter was given the wrong date in the first place?" Brianna asked.
"I - "
"What do you mean you used to?" Corran asked. "Why not anymore?"
"We stopped about, I don't know, nine, closer to ten years ago, maybe. Leia didn't seem to want to anymore. Never really did find out why."
"So, no one ever told you about the birthday discrepancy," Brianna said.
Tycho scowled at the floor. "No one ever tells me anything," he said.
Brianna leaned back in her chair. "Okay. Story time. I heard some of this story from my father, some of it from Wedge, and some of it from R2, since he knows, like, ninety-five percent of everything that goes on around here.
"Leia and my father grew up with different birthdays," she said. "My father grew up with this date," she pointed to the screen, "and Leia grew up with the date you're talking about. As you say, twins don't work that way. The first person to think of this was Wedge, because he's a weirdo and he thinks about these things. Maybe a couple of months after Endor, this occurred to him, so he brought it up to my dad. Of the long list of things the Darth Vader business had thrown into question about his childhood, this one hadn't occurred to him yet. They realized either his date was wrong, her date was wrong, or they were both wrong. But they had no one to ask, and no way to find out, so they let it go.
"A few weeks later, Leia's date rolls around. This is when the same discrepancy occurs to her. Allegedly, she was pretty pissed off about it. It reoccurs to my father, so he goes looking for her to have a conversation about it.
"In the meantime, Wedge is somewhere else reading some random news article about preparations for Empire Day, coming up in a month. You guys know Empire Day?"
"Oh yeah," Corran said. We had that all over Corellia."
"Yeah, my parents celebrated it too," Tycho said. "Not hugely population with most Alderaanians."
"Anyway, Wedge is reading this article, and notices that the date of Empire Day is the day before my dad's birthday. And because he's Wedge, and Wedge thinks about these things, and because he knows about the Darth Vader business, wonders, Well, what if everything happened all at once? What if the Empire got instantiated, Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, and these twins are born, all within the same galactic standard 24-48 hour time period? They couldn't have been born before Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, because Vader didn't know about it. He didn't even know there were twins until my dad accidentally let it slip on board the second Death Star. And it seems pointless to change one date to the day after Empire Day. But it makes a whole lot of sense to change the date of the kid who's going to have a lot of exposure as the royal princess of Alderaan."
Tycho nodded ruefully. "That definitely makes sense," he said.
"So, Wedge goes looking for my father. Can't find him. He goes to Han and Leia's room. She's in some side room having a conversation with my father. So, Wedge tells Han what he thinks. Han thinks it's solid logic, but also points out that Leia won't be happy about it. Leia and my dad come out into the main room, and without anyone mentioning Wedge's newly discovered logic, they all agree to use Leia's date as the official date. It's easier to change his records than hers, and if anyone were to ask, it would be easier to believe that a couple of moisture farmers on Tatooine got it wrong than the royal house of Alderaan."
"Fair," Corran says.
"Wedge and my father leave. Wedge explains his theory. My dad thinks he's probably right, but also thinks Han is probably right. And in any case, they already agreed to use her date. So they let it go. And that's it, until this date," she taps the earliest date in her search, "about twenty-five years ago. Wedge just happened to show up that day, probably no special reason, just a random day to show up and say hi. And he realizes, without my father having said anything, that my father has been quietly observing this date by himself. So Wedge takes it upon himself to show up every year, on that day."
Tycho shook his head. "He never said anything to the rest of us."
Brianna shrugged. "Of course not. He didn't want Leia to find out. She found out anyway, when all the treasure box stuff hit. You remember how the two of them were talking to that senate panel, and then there was a break, and they came back out and had R2 with them?"
"Yeah," Corran said. "We were all standing outside the auditorium, watching the testimony on the monitor, when R2 came up to us looking for Wedge. They disappeared and we didn't see them for the rest of the day."
"He needed help getting into the waiting room they were using, and he knew Wedge was a safe person to tell first," Brianna said. "R2 tells all of them - this is my father, Leia, Han, and Wedge in the room - the whole story. Or at least the ninety percent of it knew. Leia picks up on the birth date - because Wedge had, in fact, been right - and puts my father on the spot and asks if he knew about that. He says he thought that might have been the case, and uses Wedge's logic to explain. Now, she's pissed. Wedge doesn't want him to take the whole hit for something that was essentially his idea, so he jumps in and says he came up with it first. Now, she's mad at both of them. She asks Han if he knew. He admits he was told. Now, she's mad at all three of them."
Corran nudged Tycho. "This was nine or ten years ago," he said.
Tycho slumped his shoulders. "She didn't want to do anything on her birthday because it wasn't her birthday." He sighed. "But why not just tell us the right date?"
"So, apparently Leia was mad about a few different things," Brianna said. "She was mad that it was true. She was mad that they didn't tell her about it, trying to manage her feelings for her - personally, I think that's a legitimate complaint - and she was mad because it upended her childhood. Apparently one of the things she said while she raged about this was that she just wanted to keep one thing from her childhood intact."
"That's not a bad thing to want," Corran said.
"No, it isn't," Brianna agreed. "The thing is, she still does have Winter. The only thing my father has left of his childhood is his birthdate that he grew up with." Brianna shrugged. "It's not that she wants something bad. It's that she's kind of insensitive about it. Wedge's commentary was that the last of my father's childhood died behind him in the trench at Yavin. I don't think he said that to Leia's face though."
"Biggs Darklighter," Tycho said.
"My working theory," she continued, "is that this is also the reason why she never told Winter about any of this to begin with. She wanted to separate her childhood - which includes Winter - from any of this Darth Vader business."
Corran rubbed his hands over his face. "We keep talking about Luke needing therapy. Maybe Leia needs it too."
Brianna snorted. "She probably needs it more than he does," she said.
Tycho leaned in to look at the list of dates again. "I get all that. But even after that, Wedge didn't tell us what he was doing. He kept coming out here on the real date. Leia's already mad about it; what is she going to do, be more mad about it?"
Brianna laughed. "That's why I usually say."
Tycho leaned back again. "It's just… We would have come with him, if we'd known. Hobbie and Wes and I, I mean." He looked at Corran. "That's not meant to leave anyone out," he said. "But when Luke was in command of Rogue Squadron, he kind of made a big deal about birthdays."
"He did?" Corran asked. "But you don't celebrate your birthday," he said.
"Well, no, I don't, but I'm not opposed to anyone else's birthday."
"Why don't you celebrate your birthday?"
"So, I -," Tycho glanced at Corran and took a deep breath. "So, for background, fighter pilots don't generally celebrate birthdays anyway. It's a dangerous job and you never know if you'll make it to the next one. So most just ignore them."
"I see," Brianna said.
"The last time I celebrated my birthday, I was still in the Imperial Navy. I was on a call home to my family. Everyone was there - my parents, my siblings, a few cousins, aunts and uncles, my fiancé."
"You had a fiancé?" Brianna asked.
Tycho nodded. "Mm hmm. We were in the middle of the call when the connection went out. My father owned one of the largest telecommunications companies on Alderaan, so that happened sometimes. I was going to give him a hard about it the next time I spoke to him." Tycho shifted his gaze to the ground. "I found out about a week later why the connection went out."
"Oh," Brianna said. She paused. "Ohhhh," she said, her eyes getting wide. "Damn."
Tycho took another deep breath. "I was Two-Flight lead in the squadron, so next in charge after Wedge. I caught wind of what they wanted to do, posting a list of everyone's birthdays in the squadron area. I went to them and I, you know, explained." Tycho paused. "They were really kind about it. I had gotten a solid mixture of pity and contempt from most other people I'd met out outside the squadron, but those two were always really kind. All I asked for was for my name to be left off the list. They ended up changing the whole thing to only post birthdays the day they came up. To make it less obvious mine was being skipped."
"No one ever asked you about it?" Corran said.
"No," Tycho said, shaking his head. "It was kind of a weird thing for everyone, since we all came from other squadrons that ignored that stuff. But Luke was big on team building, which was actually a really good thing. But I think most people didn't want to know about birthdays ahead of time. Just in case. So no one asked me about it." The group fell silent for a moment. "But we would have come with Wedge if we'd known."
"No, this was her low intermediate class," Corran said. "Apparently they don't get lightsabers, so it was all practice sabers."
Luke listened to Corran describe another of Brianna's classes he participated in. They were all sitting at one of the tables in the dining area of the main temple. The visit overall was going well, though Luke felt a bit awkward playing host. He wasn't sure what he was really supposed to be doing, but everyone seemed to be able to keep themselves busy without too much input from him.
"Was it the same as yesterday?" Tycho asked. "The same - what are they, forms?"
"Forms, yes," Corran said. "This was Form IV, which I also know. But we were spaced much closer together this time and the pace was a lot faster, especially turning. It felt a bit awkward."
"That's because your footwork sucks." Brianna had snuck up behind them. She reached between Corran and Luke and pulled a snack off the table.
"Do you have to criticize everything?" Corran asked.
Brianna shrugged. "You mentioned a problem. That's why you have a problem. Now you can fix your problem."
"Really?"
"You're welcome."
"Aside from the obvious, how does footwork help with the - the forms?" Tycho asked.
"Ah, see that's a good question." Brianna poked Corran in the back. "See, he's a good question asker, you should be more like him." Corran scowled a bit as Brianna sat down on the other side of Tycho. "So all the forms," Brianna explained, "emphasize different things because they were developed for different purposes. Some are more defensive, some are more offensive. Form IV is more acrobatic, Form VI uses more Force-driven, non-blade work. Some forms use more sweeping movements. My preferred form is Form II -"
"It is?" Luke said.
Brianna ignored him. "- which is all about precision, in both blade work and footwork. Economy of effort. My contention is that precision footwork should be part of the training for every form, because it serves no one - except your opponent - for you to trip over yourself while you're trying to engage. Precision footwork allows you to place your feet where you want, how you want, and when you want, regardless of what else you are doing."
Tycho nodded and glanced at Corran. "That makes sense."
Corran let out an annoyed breath. "Fine. How do you train footwork?"
Brianna smiled as if she were hoping someone would ask. "I dance on the stairs."
"You what?"
"I dance," she repeated, "on the stairs."
Corran leaned forward to look around at her. "That's not training."
"Everything's good training if you're creative enough."
"Can we see?" Tycho asked.
"Absolutely yes you can!" Brianna Force-snagged another snack off the table as she stood up. "Come on, let's go."
Tycho got up to follow her, essentially forcing everyone else to join them. Luke caught a bit of grumbling from Corran. He glanced back and noticed that Iella in particular seemed rather amused by the whole thing. Luke suspected Brianna was not the first person she knew of who liked to give Corran a hard time.
They followed Brianna out past the temple where her classroom was toward another smaller temple. This one was only about two stories tall and had a staircase about a meter wide running up the side. On the side, near the base of the steps, there was a small device attached to the wall with an empty slot and what looked like a power pack and a small set of speakers. Brianna slid her communicator into the slot and started playing with some settings. "I do this about three or four times a week," she said, "for about thirty minutes at a time. It's a good workout."
The music started and Brianna ran up the stairs, skipping steps, each foot hitting in time to the hard, underlying beat. As the overlying syncopated rhythm started, she moved with the beat, going up and down, forward and backward, or sideways. Some steps were with the beat, others half the speed, or twice the speed. The movements were fluid and certain. Luke was reminded of watching her on Formuth, and thinking that had looked like dancing too.
"She looks like she's having fun," Tycho said.
And yet, it also looked like training. It was strength training and fast twitch muscle training, and Force training as she kept herself from slipping or missing a step. In fact, she was more open to the Force than she usually seemed. And Tycho was right. Luke could sense how much fun it was for her. I wonder if that's related…
"This isn't really training though, is it?" Corran asked.
"You used to go for runs every day when you were here," Luke pointed out.
"Yeah, but -"
"And when I was on Dagobah, Master Yoda made the entire swamp my obstacle course. This may not be traditional, but I think it serves a similar purpose."
"Yeah, I suppose that's true," Corran said.
"What form do you use?" Tycho asked.
Luke turned, realizing Tycho was talking to him. "Oh, mostly Form IV. That's the form Obi Wan started teaching me on the Falcon on the way to - well, that's what he started with. And we didn't do a lot of lightsaber work on Dagobah, but that was mostly Form IV. And I found out later that R2 was training remote droids for me using programs Anakin had uploaded to him during the Clone Wars. That was also Form IV."
"Wedge was telling us about that," Tycho said.
Luke glanced at Wedge, who shrugged. "It came up," he said.
"I know Form III and Form V, a bit," Luke said. "But I'm most comfortable with Form IV."
"Why were you surprised that Brianna uses Form II?" Iella asked.
Luke paused. "She was right that all the forms emphasize different things and were made for different purposes. But all the forms, at least Forms III through VII, are multipurpose, with greater or lesser degrees of effectiveness. You can use them for dueling or against blasters or other ranged weapons. But Form II, Makashi Form, is essentially exclusively a single opponent, lightsaber dueling form. It's not good for much else."
"Who's she dueling?" Tycho asked.
That's what I want to know. "She loved sparring as a kid," Luke said. "Some days I couldn't get her to do anything else. I'm sure she can always find someone around here to practice with. And now that I know she's been visiting Jacen and Anakin for the past few years… They were always her favorite sparring partners. I'm sure they still are…"
"You're concerned about who else she's dueling that you don't know about," Corran said.
"I don't know if I'd say concerned," Luke said slowly. "She's clearly quite capable."
"I'd be concerned," Corran said.
"What, concerned you can't keep up?" Brianna rejoined them, breathing a bit more heavily.
"I can do that," Corran said.
"Yeah, or you could fall flat on your face," Brianna said. "But, you're always welcome to go embarrass yourself."
"It can't be that hard."
"Be my guest." Brianna motioned toward the stairs, then followed him over. She started adjusting some settings on her communicator. "I'll find something slow for you."
"Gee, thanks."
"Stay on the bottom half of the stairs," Iella said.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Corran said. As the music started, Corran bounded his way up the stairs, trying to mimic what Brianna had done. She made her way back to the group.
"What's the catch?" Wedge asked.
"What? There's no catch." But Brianna had a hint of a grin.
"There's always a catch with you."
Brianna's grin got bigger. "The first time I did this, I went for about thirty minutes. Didn't think it'd be a big deal, since I'd been doing similar stuff on flat surfaces for ages. Woke up the next morning and couldn't move for a week."
"Great."
Brianna waved him off. "It'll be fine. You've got the entire ride back to Coruscant tomorrow to recover."
"And you weren't going to tell him about it?" Tycho asked.
"Of course not, this is way more fun." Brianna winked at him.
Luke heard Wedge sigh as Tycho chuckled. He still couldn't figure out why she seemed to so thoroughly enjoy giving Corran such a hard time. But at least she wasn't actively arguing with anyone.
Luke stood with Tycho, Wedge, and Iella as Tycho knocked gently on Corran's door. "Corran? Are you up?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm awake," came the muffled, annoyed reply.
Tycho threw a quick small grin at Luke then opened the door a crack to peek inside. After a moment, he opened the door further. "You don't look up to me."
"You asked me if I was awake, not up," Corran said, still lying on his bed.
"You know we're trying to leave soon, right?" Wedge asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
"You're not sore, are you?" Iella asked.
"Very funny. Why didn't someone warn me? Ow." Corran cringed as he sat up.
"I feel like you've dealt with Brianna enough that you could have warned yourself," Iella said.
"Thank you, you're a very supportive friend."
"Come on, hurry up," Wedge said. He tapped Tycho on the shoulder and Tycho shut the door. Wedge sighed and shook his head again as they walked back down the stairs. Luke reminded himself that it was better than an argument.
Later, standing by the shuttle, packed and ready to go, Wedge gave Luke a small hug. "Thanks for letting us come. This was a good visit."
"Yeah. I kind of wish we'd done it a long time ago," Luke said.
"I definitely wish we'd done it a long time ago," Tycho said.
"Ya'll off?"
Luke turned to see Brianna had appeared next to them. How did she keep sneaking up on people like that?
"Yes. And Corran was sore, by the way," Tycho said.
Brianna laughed. "Of course he was." She handed Tycho a small tin. "For the road."
"Are these more whiskey cookies?"
"Classic chocolate chip."
"Oh, those are good," Luke said.
Tycho opened the tin. "Mm, they smell good." He smiled at Brianna. "How many does Corran get this time?"
Brianna grinned back. "Consider them recovery cookies," she said. "He can have as many as he wants."
"Better eat one now, I guess." He took one out and offered the tin around to Wedge, Iella, and Luke. "They're good."
"I want my tins back, by the way."
"So you can refill it?" Tycho asked hopefully.
"Yeah, if you people behave."
"Huh?"
Brianna grinned and winked and turned around to walk away. "Ya'll stay out of trouble!" she called over her shoulder.
"I don't think they know what that means," Iella called back. Brianna laughed and continued to walk away.
Wedge sighed, for what felt like the hundredth time in three days, as he glanced at Iella. She smiled back. He looked at Luke. "See you in a couple weeks?"
"Definitely."