V

Around noon, the palace doors rattle. Incredible emotion beats toward all Naboo government. A female Arcona guard sees me wandering (Leia has left. I do not trust me, somehow, to be around 'normal people'.) and says, "They're dissatisfied with all the discrimination. The Queen is seeing some of them at the first front balcony, that's the one right of the great doorway, if you wish to join them, Master Jedi."

She is sharp and doesn't gloss things over. "Yes." I say.

There's a circle of Gungans, in a mix of traditional and popular dress, around Lorti's group, Queen Kelina, and her handmaidens and guards. Their leader, no warrior but a young male with bone earrings, practically spits in the Queen' s face. "Weesa demanden treating as citizens, not just in name but in what you common people be thinkin'!" His voice is deep and insufferable. I slip through the crowd.

The Queen speaks calmly, restraining surprisingly little anger. "It will take time to integrate two great cultures, my friend. I apologize for the monarchy that the law of peace is not always upheld as our populations move about."

He moves angrily, so swept up in ruin and hurt. "Yousa sorry doin nothin for the people!"

She has to take a few steps backwards as he moves, brandishing nothing but his integrity. Anarchy gives me a base anger. I snap my lightsaber up on, and point the terminal curve at the insurgent's face. I snarl, "Keep your place." Confusion overwhelms me; who an I working for, the Queen? And where--where'd this idea come from that I can end disputes with a lightsaber...

Kelina shouts, "Stop this!"

Some Gungan, a young one, slaps his wooden pike down on my hands. I move toward him, filled with my weapon-hum and screams--someone pulls at me from the other side and clumsily punches, almost slapping in his clumsiness. "Stop it! You said--" He retreats.

I follow, enraged at the audacity, and he runs--stairs. I nearly fall down them, hadn't seen the lay of the balcony--my lanky prey bursts running across the street below. I can't stop. He's in my sights now. The dark side fills my strength, but there's some control faltering my swiftest steps. The Gungan runs into a sidestreet, overshadowed with high trees. I catch up and sweep the feet out form under him. We go down together, he screams strangely, and now my lightsaber flashes down--but where I stab at his face there is nothing. For a human, he is too thin--my vision blurs. Who am I fighting? Not that Padawan whelp?

His long lets coil and kick into my stomach. A wave of sickness--but when he springs up I am after him. My body feels strange, like ill-fitting clothing--my quarry swerves through an open doorway into a blue-black stone building, and pulls the abnormal closure down. I slice his hands away from the door, just a sear, and roll inside, low--

As soon as my hands slap the floor cold marches up through them and I--I don't know where I've been. Fight instinct, instinct, not discipline, slicks my mind. I remember it took me. What did I do? Kill? "Leia!"

"Skywalker." Lorti tremblingly speaks from the wall by the door, where he sits curled up like a spider in his long legs and armored mottled skin.

I deactivate my lightsaber and drop it where it will fall. "I'm sorry."

"Keep yousa away from me!"

"Of course." I stand slowly, look around this cavernous place and barely see the catwalk-edged half-filled warehouse, occupied by boxes in all the floorspace except the center, where the rock tiles on the floor are carved and colored into the freight company's emblem, a couple basic letters over a shooting star.

My enemy stands there, formless, but if I close in combat with him we will become equally real--whatever that means right now.

"Don't move, Lorti." I beg, and I step into the circle. The spirit that has been goading me looks like a black-shrouded humanoid, too completely shrouded to look real, the bare bones or illustration of Sith as individual, intelligent beings. A long-handled red lightsaber appears live in its--his--hand. I am almost disappointed. Such a physical contest, as I tread into the realm of luminous existence? But that, I see, is how he thinks.

He cuts down and my saber is able to catch his, though it sounds like I am alone. His unspecified feet beat the ground. His attacks grow swift, less obvious, as I meet the first few, and then we are moving together, testing, hands flashing up, down, slice, turn, catch, split-second strategy, with the warring facets of the Force in the back of my mind, while still he is in the back of my mind--

I have time to feel sorry for Lorti. He remains curled on the floor, watching me duel with no one wearing some wild look I've never seen. he's thinking strangely, he thinks, but the words that come are,

"Why is dancing like dying?" He's so moved by the light, I know what that's like, taking up his eyes or the organ that produces mysticism. He whispers, "How is dancing like dying?"