"Simon!" the woman behind the bar bellowed a greeting as I entered.
"Tesh," I nodded back, not making the mistake of returning her smile. I looked around the dingy room, a popular dive for menial laborers and petty criminals here on the lower levels of Coruscant. The poorly lit area was more than half-full, a roil of repressed desires and hostilities that could move to violence at any time.
Tesh set a local brew on the bar as I sat down, eyeing my appearance curiously. "The beard looks shite on you," she quipped, "but it's still good to see you. Looking to earn?"
I shook my head as I raised the beer to my lips. I was wearing metal-laced leather with a heavy jacket able to conceal weapons - an outfit appropriate to 'Simon,' a young tough that took jobs as a bouncer between mercenary hires off-planet. "Not just yet, although maybe soon. You hiring?"
Fear and excitement pulsed from the woman as she leaned in closer and lowered her voice. "Not here, but we need a bruiser for some of the back room stuff. You were always good for it," she added a wink that was meant to be flirty, but her mind held no hint of romantic interest.
"I could be persuaded," I assented, and she nodded as she went to attend other customers. Tesh was one of the good ones, and in my past dealings with her, I'd had more than one occasion to talk down (or take down) an irate or amorous customer.
Qui-Gon had asked me more than once where my time went as a Padawan that I wasn't able to keep up with my standard training. He knew half of it - my involvement in political and financial matters dealing with the future of the Republic. But while he had some inkling that I spent time down here (and lots of it), I'd never shared with him what it was I worked on. That would have largely defeated the purpose.
As I nursed my drink (I was effectively immune to alcohol at this point, although early on I had taken a pill to denature the alcohol before it could affect me), I immersed myself in the chaos of the large room. The flashpoint was immediately clear - aggressive hostility between two groups sitting at adjacent tables near the back of the area. The groups were mainly human, but each notably contained a single Aqualish companion that other members of the group were focusing their attentions on.
Aqualish are not universally churlish, as diplomats of the species have assured me, but the ones that choose to leave the homeworld tend to be aggressive and antisocial. They were each broadcasting their animosity toward the other quite loudly, and so I took a few moments to listen.
The issue was a mate. The same Aqualish female appeared prominently in both of their minds, and I could feel both the lust and aggression quite clearly. One of the two men, an Aquala named Dusnat, had a history with the woman, who from their mental images was clearly an attractive member of their species.
I went to work on the Aquala first. While much of his surface attention was on commiserating with his friends and complaining about the other guy (a Quara named Borni), the back of Dusnat's mind kept returning to the female and their shared history. A very small push from me led his mind to wander into thoughts of his homeworld, and memories of his turbulent departure, tinged in loss. Drawing out his grief and self-loathing led Dusnat to ignore the glares from his rival and mull over his own failures, pushing his whole drinking contingent into a similarly dark mood.
Borni was at first emboldened as he and his friends saw the tone of the other table change, but I stabbed out at him strong enough that he physically winced, as did the men immediately around him. I quickly enveloped his mind, pulling forward memories of him losing fights, being yelled at and having to back down. I fostered fear in him, a lack of confidence intense enough that it would be hours before he could make any sort of aggressive move.
The flashpoint was diffused, but now it was time to pay for it. My eyes never left my drink, and I retreated firmly into the recesses of my own mind as the backlash hit. Having fostered both sadness and fear in others, it was inevitable that I would contact both myself… a reason why such gross manipulations were not taught at the Temple. I detached myself from my emotions and experienced them from a distance.
Grief, particularly nostalgia-laced, usually brought me back to scenes from my old life. But today, I instead found myself thinking about Siri. Our missions together - particularly the one where we rescued Olanna - had raised the specter of romance between us. Although the original Obi-Wan had pursued the matter, I had not, my memories still too fresh and my connection to my previous life too strong. I occasionally wondered if my more… relaxed views on relationships and duty might have provoked a happier ending had I allowed it. A foolish fantasy to dwell on, particularly in light of my deepening relationship to Shmi - but a reminder that I needed to see how Siri was dealing with the untimely loss of her own master.
Fear, well - the fear was the same as it always was. High-definition images of an angry Anikan hurting and killing innocents, of Vader terrorizing the Galaxy. Flashes of Qui-Gon's injuries… of Maul's unambiguous demise… of the unknown, now that the timeline had been changed so much from what I knew. It chilled my core, and I sank deeper into myself, making certain not to reach out to the Force in this dark moment, even as it called to me.
You are not a Master, I told myself, and it was both a plea for control and a manifestation of my fears. You are barely a Knight. Your powers amount nothing if you cannot wield them with precision. Your plans mean nothing if you fail in your detachment. Your actions accomplish nothing if the Empire still rises.
The wave of emotion passed. Only two had noticed whatever expression had betrayed my face during the backlash: Tesh the bartender, and a young man sitting at the opposite end of the bar. They exchanged a glance. Tesh swapped my nearly-empty glass for a fresh beer.
"Somethin' eatin' at ya?" the other man tossed at me. He had the stained overalls and tool belt of a day laborer, and his tone was soft, friendly, concerned. I reached out to him emotionally - and only barely steeled my recoil as I felt his cold, predatory response. This was not a good man, as he initially appeared even in his surface thoughts. The clothes and demeanor were both part of a ruse to… I dug deeper… single out men with cash, mug or murder them, and strip them of their valuables. He was an opportunist; he didn't go after well-connected locals or larger groups. He had thug accomplices nearby to affect an ambush once he had identified a likely target.
To women, they did worse.
"Nothing a couple of beers can't fix." I gave the man - Rondil - a respectful nod, and moved down when he pointed to the stool next to his. Chatting him up was easy; he made it so. I made sure not to give any answers to his carefully probing questions that might reject me as a potential mark.
Inside, I worked hard to quell my excitement and stay properly collected, even as I thrilled at resuming the 'field training' that I had neglected for some time. Killing Rondil and his friends would be satisfying, but it was important that I not make the mistake of enjoying it.
I feigned a stagger as Rondil led me down the alleyway toward a lift that - to give the man credit - would have led to my apartment if I actually lived where I had said. It was unclear just exactly how his bigger, less congenial companions found us, as it was unlikely they would be waiting down one of the dozens of shifty corridors in the lower levels. But find us they did. Two more humans, like Rondil, and a Gamorrean male.
They hunched together in a recess at the side of the alley, seemingly lost in their own conversation as they waited for us to pass. In fact, their attention was wholly on us, apparently waiting for a signal from Rondil to make a move.
As I sized up the group, I realized that the Gamorrean threw a wrench into matters. He wasn't wearing the leather armor of a clansman, but rather the colorful synthetic clothing of Coruscant… and they fit poorly. But more importantly, unlike Rondil and his two human friends, Stubby (as he thought of himself) exuded not malice or anticipation but simple confused fear. He… didn't know what his companions were planning to do to me. They'd brought him along as muscle, but hadn't even explained to him the nature of the job. It wasn't unusual for the low-intelligence Gamorreans to be treated as little more than beasts, and Stubby's 'friends' had taken that approach with him.
I met his deep-set dull eyes above his pig-like snout, and felt his spark of pity and disgust. He'd go along with hurting me, I realized, not because he wanted to, but because he always went along with what his group did. He found the idea distasteful, but standing up to his companions never even occurred to him. He widened his mouth in a grimace, and only then did I see four points sticking up from his lower jaw. This boy was only starting to grow out his tusks, and his horns were similarly small nubs (likely the source of his nickname).
So now the matter was complicated. I wasn't going to kill this kid; but that left me in a situation where killing the other three was no longer a clean, zero-witness affair. I'd have to subdue him non-fatally, then hopefully get him to understand the situation he was in. Rehabilitating a rogue Gamorrean was hardly -
My thoughts were interrupted when Rondil gave the signal, bodily throwing me towards his companions. I began to reach out a hand to steady myself with the Force, but I pulled back, realizing that I could probably win this battle without breaking cover. None of these thugs were sensitives, and knowing where to move to avoid their Force-telegraphed blows made the battle easy. They weren't drawing blasters, having expected to carve me up with knives (not even vibra-knives, just the regular kind), and the humans yelped in surprise as I put one, two, and three of them on the ground with wrist grabs and disarming flips.
I cheated a bit with Stubby, putting enough Force behind my leather-clad punches to penetrate his thick hide and knock him down. The fear wafting off of him now mirrored that of his friends perfectly, but the outcome would be very different.
The experienced thugs made no attempt to rise, and I could sense them lining up their placating entreaties as they caught their breath. They never had the chance to say them; my hand blaster spoke six times in rapid succession and three human corpses returned to the alley floor.
My attention turned to the Gamorrean bull, who was grunting something that I sensed to be the equivalent of a plea for mercy. I knew nothing of his language, and couldn't have physically spoken it even if I did. I tried a reply in Galactic Standard. "Where is your matron?"
He snorted a response, and I caught whiffs of loneliness. Images of an armed conflict, Gamorrean against Gamorrean, and the clear impression that he and his clan had lost.
"So there's no one that you really answer to, then," I said, as much to myself as to Stubby. "If I tell you to run off, where will you go?"
No verbal response this time, but he recalled his recent past. Sleeping in unlit passages farther underground, scrounging for food. He had nowhere to go.
"The Gamorrean Consulate Office," said a voice behind me, "encourages the return of what they call 'maverick males.' I believe he'd qualify for their assistance program."
I rounded on my apprentice-to-be, not bothering to hide my deep surprise. "Your shielding is really quite good, Olana. How long have you been following me?"
"Long enough." She frowned darkly at the bodies surrounding us, clearly having many questions but wanting to focus on the issue at hand. "Do we need to cuff him?"
"I don't carry handcuffs. That's… not what I do down here." She made as though to press the point, but I quickly changed the subject. "Stubby," I ignored Olana's eyebrow raise at the name, "if we hire you a cab, will you go where we ask and talk to the people there?"
He was clearly confused, but he breathed out assent, and I sensed no intent to deceive us. He didn't know what a consulate was. I hoped he'd be happy back in the care of those who knew what he needed.
It was a very long lift ride up to where I could hire Stubby transport, and while I couldn't sense her mind telepathically, the hostile tension in the elevator was palpable.. Olana waited until the Gamorrean was safely in the automated flyer before she turned on me.
"Obi, what is going on?" She asked as we walked along another corridor with bad lighting.
"I was getting ready to ask you the same thing," I shot back. "How did you follow me? Qui-Gon never managed it."
"I suspect that Qui-Gon just never got caught," Olana pointed out. "You're easy to sense, even from a great distance, when you open your mind up to others. Particularly non-Jedi."
I nodded. "Perhaps that's something we can work on together? I'd rather be able to investigate others without broadcasting my own activities in return."
"Please don't change the subject," my student frowned. "You come down here to, what, slake bloodlust? Experiment on the helpless? Give me a foothold here."
"It's training," I shrugged, making an abrupt turn into a cross-corridor. "Listening, reading, and guiding the thoughts of others in an environment where my influence won't be noticed. Hand-to-hand and blaster combat, to lethal ends, against multiple enemies that don't have Force training."
"That wasn't combat," Olana replied. "It was carnage. You disabled those humans with ease, and then executed them coldly."
"You're… right," I begrudgingly admitted. "I was expecting them to put up a lot more of a fight. Detaching myself from the act of killing is still useful practice, but I certainly didn't learn anything new from the violent exchange itself."
Olana muttered something under her breath that I didn't catch. "How long have you been doing this?"
"Four years."
I felt more than saw her jaw drop at that. "Why?"
"That's… a complicated question." I finally arrived at one of the numerous low-cost, low-security storage walls that dotted the lower levels, and popped open my locker with a quick code sequence. Shucking my leathers, I saw Olana turn away blushing as I donned my Jedi garb. "I'm hungry. Let's grab a bite, and I'll explain."