The sad thing is my plot bunnies are all male.
Anyway, we left off with Yugi angry at Luke...
Yugi turned the corner, walking back towards the casino, until he heard a loud grating noise. Peeking back, he saw Luke pulling open the vent on the wall. What was he doing?
The vent was wide enough for a person to fit into, barely, and Luke did just that, sliding feet-first into the hole and disappearing. More secrets? Yugi was disappointed. What could his Sensei have to hide? He slowly crept forward to peek into the duct, and saw nothing but blackness.
Sensei had told him to go to the casino- but Luke didn't own Yugi. Yugi slipped into the vent quietly, climbing down and hiding his presence in the Force from Luke- one of the first skills he had picked up at the Academy.
A red glow shone below Yugi's feet as he crept silently through the metal duct, and he knew he was close. He sensed Luke was separated from him by a wall- an instinctive ability to navigate walled areas was something Yugi picked up from his days as a gamer, lost in mazes both literal and figurative. Dropping to the floor, Yugi snuck through piles of garbage.
Oh, what a wonderful smell Luke had discovered.
Poking his head around the corner of the wall, Yugi saw Luke engrossed in digging through the trash, feverishly trying to uncover... something, Yugi was completely unsure of what it could be.
Luke let out a loud sigh of relief, as he pulled a strangely shaped item out from the garbage. He handled it carefully, avoiding touching a large lump around the middle of the object. It appeared to be-
A lightsaber. With a hand attached to it. Yugi couldn't suppress a small gasp of horror.
Luke spun at the sound, and upon seeing Yugi, exhaled and shook his head. "I should have known you'd follow me."
"Well? You just sneak into the garbage without even letting me know what's happening? I don't want to be left out of your life, Sensei! You keep hiding things from me. If you don't trust me, say so. Don't go sneaking around thinking that your life isn't important to me. It is. It's affecting the way you treat me as a student... and as a friend."
Luke frowned, and nodded sadly. "You're right. I just- I wasn't ready for you to know this- this part of my life."
"What part? What is this 'terrible secret' that you can't even tell your Padawan?"
Luke gestured for Yugi to sit by him, and he cleared a relatively clean broken desk to sit on. Luke held the lightsaber- rotting hand still attached- and stared at it for a long while. When he spoke, it was low, almost ashamed.
"I didn't want to tell you this, but it was for my own selfish reasons. You deserve to know the truth, no matter how much I don't want to say it." He pushed back his sleeve, and pressed a spot on his wrist. It popped open, and Yugi gasped. It was an artificial hand.
"I wanted to keep the truth from you- to take advantage of the fact that you don't know this galaxy's history in order to hide my mistakes. I was ashamed of my past, and what happened between me and Vader."
"The Emperor's second-in-command."
Luke nodded, and continued. "Here, on Bespin, I lost this hand-" he gestured to the hand, still wrapped around the hilt of the lightsaber, flesh falling from it as it decayed, "- in a duel with Darth Vader. He tried to turn me to the Dark side of the Force, but I jumped off of a platform to what I thought was my death."
He pried the fingers open, and Yugi cringed to see the false hand gripping the flesh one. Luke shook his head, before tossing the hand behind his shoulder. Brushing off the handle of the lightsaber, he caressed its lines wistfully.
"This lightsaber had belonged to my father, before my first mentor gave it to me. My father had been a Jedi until Vader turned to the Dark side." There seemed to be more to what Luke was trying to say, but the older man fell silent. Yugi stared at the 'saber, eyes wide with sympathy, as Luke mused quietly.
Then, Luke shook his head as though just awakening, and stood. "We've got a mission to do- we can't waste our time talking about the dead in a trash-pit." He considered the lightsaber for a moment, then held it out to Yugi. "You might need a weapon- I hope it'll bring you better luck than it brought me. Take care of it, okay?"
Yugi gaped, reverently accepting the weapon. Hadn't he thought to himself it would be useful to have a lightsaber of his own? He held his breath, before carefully pressing the switch. It flared to life with a brilliant azure light, and Yugi nodded to Luke. "I won't let anything happen to it, Sensei." It wasn't his own lightsaber- he could feel that it wasn't the right fit- but it was an honorable weapon, and Yugi would wield it respectfully and gratefully.
Luke smiled, and clapped Yugi on the shoulder. "Let's get this mission over with."
They emerged from the garbage storage, Luke commenting on how lucky it was that the compactor hadn't worked in years, to enter the smuggler's compound once more. Unfortunately, they were surrounded. Six thugs formed a semicircle around them, holding up many forms of weaponry. One of them barked out, "Drop your weapons, Jedi!"
With a rueful shrug to each other, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker and Jedi Padawan Mutou Yugi dropped their lightsabers on the deck, before their wrists were bound behind their backs.
This wasn't going to be easy.