20: Training Montage

"Baroness?" Lobot rapped on the chamber door. "Ms. Kasuga, you were supposed to meet with…" The surveillance on her room had been disabled the night before; it hadn't worried him at the time, but it was 4 pm and she hadn't stirred since. "Baroness, I'm coming in."

No response. With a thought, he bypassed the lock and strode in. "Ms. Kasu—oh." The lights were dimmed, soft piano music was playing and, most telling, the blinds were drawn. Ayumu was draped on an overstuffed chair, eyes half-lidded. An unsettling sight; it was easy to forget how small she was when she was the Baroness. Next to her dangling hand rested an empty bottle.

Ah, yes. She'd called that her "burgundy consolation."

"Ms. Kasuga! What--?"

"No' so loud…" she whined softly, raising one hand slowly to her temples.

"Of course," Lobot reasoned, taking up the bottle and recalling with a sinking feeling how full it'd been when he'd last seen it. "Only one thing could motivate you obliterate yourself like this…"

"I dun'wanna talk 'bout it."

"I'll… I'll inform the ministers that you aren't well." He started to leave, but she called him back weakly. "Lobot?" He stopped without turning. "We should… be expectin' more guests soon." Her tone was ominous.

"I'll take care of it," he assured her. "Just rest—and no more, er, consolation, okay?"


Chiyo hauled herself out of the clinging muck and flopped down on the shore, gasping on Dagobah's thick, sickly-sweet air. As soon as she came to rest, a swarm of biting insects descended on her, but she didn't have the energy to try and fight them off. Behind her, the Seraph's engine ticked and cooled as it sank slowly into a lake of slime.

"Well," she said into the ground. "That was good."

She hadn't expected the clouds to be much of a difficulty in landing, but as soon as she was fully enveloped in them, the fighter's sensors had suddenly died, the yoke had stopped responding and the engine started making an ominous banging sound. Chiyo had grown up refusing to believe in gremlins and things like that, but…

It had been a very, very long swim/slog. But as she lay there, not thinking anything in particular, a rummaging sound reached her ears. What the--? Her duffel's strap was wrapped still about her hand, but when she tried to pull it towards her, something resisted.

"Hmm… is this for me?" a voice asked. It was a very strange voice; to hear it, she never could have guessed what kind of a person would have it. Kind of high-pitched but resonant, and probably not a bad singer. "Somebody must have told you I liked cigars."

Chiyo lurched to her knees and turned towards the speaker. It was… what the heck was it? Standing next to her, it would have reached to mid-thigh, at least a fifth of its height accounted for by its large, perfectly round head topped by two triangular ears. Short gray fur covered its body, arms and legs ending in identical paws. Beady dark eyes regarded her with interest.

"Excuse me," she said politely, "But are you Master…?"

"Damn right! Master Bamidele, at your service! Though my cringing, terrified, whining students refer to me as Kamineko-sama, I think you should know. That is what you're here for, right?"

"Y-yes… er, you're the one that taught Master Kenobi?"

"You sound surprised."

"I was expecting someone a little more… intimidating?"

The catlike creature broke into a huge, diabolical grin, showing off an impressive battery of razor-sharp teeth. "And what about me isn't intimidating?" Chiyo decided it would be best not to answer. "Okay, since I don't have anything better to do at the moment, I'll take you on. I might as well tell you right now that you'll hate me before long. Your first two months here will be a living Hell, the next four will just really suck, but by month six you might find it in your heart to forgive me."

"How did you find me so fast?"

"I saw you coming in. Might I add that you totally flunked your first test with flying colors."

Chiyo glanced back at the sinking fighter. "…oh."

"So, what instruction have you had?"

"Mast—er, Ms. Sakaki showed me a little."

"I remember her… Kenobi's ward, right? Cute li'l nipper, last time I saw her. How'd she turn out?"

Kamineko either didn't notice or willfully ignored her sad look. "Magnificently."

"I don't doubt it. Kenobi was a good teacher. Lousy duelist, but a good teacher… unfortunately, this might make things a little harder on you. Unless she totally changed, Sakaki would've been way too soft-hearted to train you properly."

"She sicced a training remote on me on our second day."

"Just one?"

Chiyo swallowed.

"Okay, so we know you've played a little with the lightsaber… oh, here it is." He'd been going through her things throughout the conversation, of course. He tossed the weapon to her. "Second test; we'll see if you do better. Hit me with the lightsaber."

"What?"

"Hit… me… with… the lightsaber. Make me tell you one more time and I'll send you packing."

"Okay…" Chiyo ignited the azure blade and held it out towards him. After a few false starts, she drew it back, closed her eyes and said, "Ready?"

"Oh, yeah. Swing away."

VWOMM!

Chiyo opened her eyes to find that Kamineko was gone and there was a shallow gash across her cheek. "Oh, come on!" he called from behind her. She turned to see him clinging to the side of a tree with small barbed claws. "You can do better than that! Come on, hit me! I dare you!"

She shrugged and stepped back, swinging at him again. Fwikkt! He blurred past her once more, scoring her arm with his back claws. "What is this, ah? Afraid to hurt me? I'm the Jedi Master here, twerp. Put some backbone into it!"

She jumped after him before he finished the sentence, bringing the blade down, but all she got for her efforts was a slit knuckle and a, "Better, but still pathetic!"

This second test lasted quite a while, and Chiyo collected an impressive array of cuts and scratches. Kamineko's taunting never ceased as he effortlessly stayed three steps ahead of her. Now, Chiyo-chan's a fairly even-tempered young lady, but by the end of it, it's safe to say that she was seeing red.

"I can't believe you even bothered to come here! You can't even catch little old me? Man, that's weak!" He rolled under a diagonal cut and slashed at the inside of her arm along the way. "What'll you do if the Sith come for you, beguile them with those adorable pigtails of yours?"

He jumped from surface to surface around her faster than her eyes could follow; he paused on one and she struck, ignoring the metallic pa-tunk! Kamineko's weight had made on it. An instant before her saber came down on him, she suddenly, painfully stopped, held fast in the invisible grip of the Force.

"Hey!" she cried, "No fair!"

"No fair? Look what you almost did."

Chiyo took stock of her surroundings and noticed with chagrin that her blade hovered a quarter-inch over one of the sunken fighter's engines. Kamineko had hopped off of it and now stood on her back as she hung suspended over the muck. "That was a good jump, by the way."

"Oh… uh, thank you."

Then he let her fall. Splat! "Ack!"

"There's a lesson in that." Kamineko gave no indication that he would continue.

Chiyo slowly slogged back to shore, the tiny Jedi Master sitting on her head. "But, uh, I have to figure it out for myself?"

"Nah…" he yawned cavernously and started picking his teeth with a claw, "More like I just don't feel like explaining it right now. What's with the hair? You going for an Invincible One look?"

"What?" Chiyo had forgotten about the green dye. "No… part of a disguise; I'll have to wash it out. But who's this Invincible One?"

"Mm… old story. I'll tell you about it sometime… if I feel like it."


Fortunately, the Great Spirit Cat was out of practice in creating living hells, so Chiyo's first days in his tutelage were more of a warmed-over purgatory. In terms of food, he just gave her a brief course on what plants were safe to eat and which weren't. He was probably counting on having to treat some food-poisoning, but Chiyo caught on instantly.

Physical training, it seemed, was a big part of the Jedi way. Kamineko delivered his lectures from her backpack as she jogged through the murky landscape, and never let her sit still for more than a few minutes. Whenever the whim struck him, he ordered her down for push-ups and then sat on her back and enjoyed one of the cigars.

"Damn fine cigars," he would say, "Damn fine. Won't get you preferential treatment, mind, but you have good taste."

After some time on this track, they did a sharp reverse and he commanded she meditate. Used to the earlier routine, she had a hard time adjusting to sitting lotus-style and ignoring the insects for half a day. During that phase, it was almost a relief whenever Kamineko decided he wanted a cigar.

They worked with the lightsaber sporadically, but Kamineko made it clear that swordplay was secondary to disciplining herself and listening to the Force.

It took them a week to get to the actual Force manipulation; if Kamineko's reactions were any indication, this was a ridiculously short span of time. It didn't occur to Chiyo to get a big head, though.

"Everybody reaches the Force differently," Kamineko said. "This is something I can't really beat into you."

Chiyo nodded. She was sagging against a tree, gasping for breath after a particularly tortuous "run." Actually, they had started to turn more into "run, jump, climb, swim, and hop-on-one-foot"s of late. When they finally came to a stop, her teacher informed her that they would start throwing flips in the next day. He seemed to enjoy that thought, so it was an especially bad sign.

"Actually, it might be time for a lecture," he commented. Chiyo couldn't hold back a groan. "No, no, no. You've run enough for now. Sit down. Okay, now pay attention, because I'm too lazy to tell you all this twice."

The girl intentionally perked up.

"That's better. Now, you've probably heard about the Dark Side and the Light Side of the Force. I'm going to tell you right now that those are just easy, simplistic handles for something much messier… it's not even a matter of shades of gray. It's not even a rainbow."

Chiyo sat and waited patiently as he paused.

"What is it then, Kamineko-sama?" the Jedi Master said in falsetto, then continued as if she had spoken. "The Force is life itself, and anybody who knows anything knows that life isn't simple. It has a different shape and texture for everybody and everybody does different things with it. The Force is not divided so easily, and, what's worse, good and evil do not matter to it."

"But…" Chiyo looked troubled. "Are you saying that there's no moral standard for us?"

"Hey, I said that good and evil don't matter to the Force. I didn't say they didn't matter for us. On second thought, I shouldn't say that they don't matter, rather… good and evil are both equally parts of the Force. When somebody reaches for the Dark Side, they are not reaching to a different aspect of the Force, they are reaching to the Force with a different part of themselves, see?"

"I think I do."

"I'm telling you this because some students think that when they are in tune with the Force, it will never lead them astray. That's absolute crap. It is not an intelligence and it surely isn't benevolent. It can help you learn anything concrete about a situation, but when you're faced with a decision of right and wrong, the Force can't guide you. The only one who decides anything will be you."

"I… I see."

"No, you don't. Not yet."


"Get up."

Chiyo sprang to her feet, instantly fully awake. She didn't want to give her teacher the opportunity to start throwing rocks again, though she suspected that if he really wanted to, he wouldn't feel the need to find an excuse. "It's still the middle of the night, Master."

"It's the perfect time," Kamineko replied from the shadows with a Cheshire grin.

She followed the gray streak as it leapt from tree to tree, still a little clumsy at it but learning quickly. At nighttime, the swamp's smell was much softer, the creatures quieter, more demure and much, much deadlier.

Finally they came to a colossal tree, very obviously long dead. Nothing grew around its twisted gray roots, which formed the opening of a dark cavern. After being surrounded by nothing but life for quite a while now, Chiyo found this monolith of decay not a little disturbing.

"A center of negative energy," Kamineko said softly. "It was the abode of my evil brother, Kuroneko-sama before I killed him. I want you to head in there and see what's shakin'."

"What?"

"Go on in. There's nothing in there that can kill you, you have my word."

Chiyo looked back and forth between cat and tree, and, with forced casualness, started towards the bleak cavern. She hesitated in the entryway and glanced back at the cat, who, instead of egging her on, gestured encouragingly. This made her even more uneasy.

Into the dank, musty-smelling earth she descended. After a few steps, her rational side managed to convince her there was nothing to worry about and she started forth at a light jog. The tunnel opened into a wide chamber, utterly black. She ignited her lightsaber and examined it in the jittering blue light.

"Wonder what he wanted me to-?" Then she heard another lightsaber ignite.

Blocking the entrance was none other than the terrible Darth Nochichi, raising his crimson blade on high! Without a thought, anger surging in her breast, Chiyo plunged towards him, putting her newly acquired lightsaber skills to the test. Blue and red collided again and again, the sounds of their thunderous impacts sounding dead in the still, enclosed air.

Nochichi was formidable, but Chiyo saw her opening. Azure light hummed through the monster's dark armor and something gushed out of the rent. "What? Pink lemona--?"

BOOM!

She sprawled end over end, the lightsaber flying from her grasp and going out. After a few seconds of staring into the darkness in blank shock, she regained her feet. The entrance had been to her right, hadn't it? Unfortunately, she'd lost track of directions while fighting.

She tried to focus and find her way by Force. No good; she was too shaken.

Chiyo walked carefully in the direction she thought freedom lay, wincing at how loud her footsteps sounded. After a few yards, though, she tripped on something soft. A body?

She knelt next to it and felt an arm, cold and lifeless. Her hand passed over it, reaching up to the face, a marble cheek, a sharp nose, fine hair… "M-ms.Tomo?" Chiyo lurched back from the body and fell over another, much more substantial. "Ms. Yomi! No!"

Scrambling to her feet, she made a dash for where she desperately hoped freedom to be, only to thump heavily to the ground as another corpse blocked her path. Kagura! She put her hand to the soldier's neck. Heartbeat? Heartbeat? Nothing.

"I killed them! I… what happened? How…?"

And all at once, Kagura was gone and her hand was pressed to the cold dirt. Had it all been an illusion? No… she knew that whatever it was, it wasn't as simple as an illusion. A vision? A possibility? She was in no condition to figure it out, now.

Chiyo emerged into the dawn, immediately hailed by a somewhat-concerned Kamineko. "Hey, how'd it go?" He took a second look at her. "Never mind. I can see. Where's your lightsaber?"

She pointed back into the cavern.

"You're gonna have to go and get that back," he said pitilessly.


"Okay, sit your little ass down. Story time," Kamineko said, putting a sudden end to Chiyo's lightsaber drill. The quartet of remotes receded into their cases automatically. "Little?" the girl replied, raising an eyebrow at the tiny creature. Like everything else, she had quickly learned what she could get away with.

"What, would you rather I said you had a big ass? Siddown!"

His student complied, laughing softly.

"Okay, you wanted to know, so I'll tell you about the legendary Invincible One, Master Yotsuba. She started training when she was about your age, oh, fifteen-hundred years ago. Had green hair naturally, something you don't see often in humans, I guess."

"Why was she called the Invincible One?"

"Her boundless enthusiasm and optimism. Nothin' could get her down. They say nothing in the universe could have turned her to darkness, which I think is rubbish, personally, but it makes the story more fun. Another reason she was called the Invincible One was that she could bring whole armies to heel…"

The sun tracked across the sky as Kamineko spooled out the tale, the legendary exploits of the Invincible One. It almost made Chiyo want to dye her hair green again. He told her of the harrowing battles Yotsuba had survived in the Sith War, the discoveries she took part in and the allies she made for the Empire. (Back then, it wasn't so bad, he explained. Things had started to go sour when the Tanizakis took power.)

"Master Yotsuba stood before the Jedi Council," Kamineko orated, enjoying the way Chiyo was leaning into him, utterly rapt. "She knew that if she failed, the Jedi would unite their power and obliterate Yavin IV, destroying the evil Exar Kun but also wiping out its indigenous people…" He waited.

"And then?" Chiyo asked eagerly.

"And then…" Kamineko grinned. "And then the wise, lovable and exceptionally handsome Jedi Master made his student run twelve kilometers because he's a cold-hearted bastard."


This is frickin' ridiculous, Kamineko hissed inwardly. It had only been about three weeks and he was already running out of things to do with Chiyo. For a while, the remotes had figured out that they could get her by spinning around her at different speeds, shooting at complete random and singing "The Song That Never Ends" out of time with each other, but the prodigy was becoming immune to even that.

Now the girl stood before him, eyes closed in complacent concentration. Three rocks hovered before her, spinning in different directions. He had been so sure that she'd have at least a little trouble…

"Okay, now then! Rub your head and pat your stomach." She gave him a strange look, but complied. He watched, but the rocks didn't waver. "Now hop on one foot!" She did so. "Grr…! Now recite the alphabet!"

"A, B, C…"

"BACKWARDS!"

Chiyo paused. "Z… Y… X… uh…"

Kamineko leapt past her and just about slashed her hands open. The rocks pattered to the ground and Chiyo clutched at her hands with a pained yelp. "'Uh' isn't a letter!" the cat yowled. "START OVER!"

If she figured this one out, the Jedi Master decided, it would be time to bring in tongue-twisters…


Chiyo sat at the top of a towering willow-esque tree, absently chewing on a yellowish vegetable that she honestly couldn't remember if Kamineko had recommended or not. Fortunately, she'd figured out how to dilute drugs and poison in her system by the Force, though she hadn't told her teacher about it.

She was learning to harness the Force, disciplining her mind, strengthening (but unfortunately not heightening) her body. Kamineko was a selfish, capricious bastard but he seemed to care about her. Her friends were safe wherever it was they had hidden, Sakaki was evidently doing all right wherever she was…

Life was good. Everything was going swimmingly and… AND HER FRIENDS WERE IN DANGER! "Aaugh!" She stood bolt upright and dropped like a rock, beaten senseless by just about every branch along the way before leaving a deep imprint in Dagobah's soft, loamy ground.

"What's up?" Kamineko asked casually, "Had enough rest?"

"M-my friends!" she cried, rising awkwardly, "They're in danger!"

"So?"

"So? So? I have to do something about it!"

"Do you, now?"

"Well what am I supposed to do?"

"Finish your training, perhaps? Maybe so that you don't rush out there and get totally plowed? You won't do your friends any good dead, after all…"

"I can't do them any good if they're dead!"

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my paw down on this. And besides, you're fighter's still stuck."

Chiyo glanced up from her packing towards the fighter, then turned towards Kamineko. After giving him a long, somewhat eerie look, she whirled, making a dramatic grasping/flinging gesture with one hand. With an incredible sucking sound, the 40-ton fighter sailed from the muck and tumbled across the swamp as if it were a toy.

"Well, damn," Kamineko said, looking after it and scratching the back of his head.

Chiyo followed it purposefully. Without any dramatic fanfare, the apparition of Sakaki appeared directly in her path, shimmering beneath the dim sun. "I'm not talking to you either," the girl said, striding right through her… then pausing a few meters later as a massive shudder shot through her body. "Eeyaa-aah!"

"Chiyo-chan!" Sakaki called, looking pained. "Please don't go! Nochichi is waiting for you there… you're not ready!"

"I'll have to be," Chiyo replied simply. "I have to do this."

"Damn it, when your old master appears out of thin air and says something to you, you listen!" Kamineko yelled. "Get back here! Hey, I didn't tell you what happened to Yotsuba!" She stopped and turned. "She went and confronted Exar Kun alone, and he killed her, and the Jedi obliterated Yavin IV anyway! See the metaphor?"

The Super Seraph's engines started as Chiyo started towards it again. She leapt up onto the cockpit in one bound and turned around. "I can't just leave them. I don't know what that makes me. I'm sorry, Kamineko-sama, Ms. Sakaki…"

"Well screw you, too!" the tiny Jedi Master yelled, "And don't think you'll get any more help from me!" Chiyo hesitated. For a moment, it almost seemed like she would turn back… but then the cockpit closed, the engines roared, and she was gone.

"Well, that sucked," Kamineko said, watching the Seraph vanish up through the clouds.

"She's grown," Sakaki observed.

"Frighteningly. I don't know if I could have stopped her, honestly."

"Is she a match for Nochichi?"

"He'll mulch her, why do you ask?" Kamineko said bitterly. After a second of staring, he suddenly did a double-take. "HEY! Since when were you ever dead?"

"Oh, yeah… about that…"

They stood awkwardly for a few seconds, then Kamineko resumed looking at the sky. The apparition surreptitiously reached towards him, but when her ethereal hand had almost reached his head, he warned, "Don't even think about it. I'll still bite you."


(A/N: Kamineko's proper name, Bamidele, means "Follow Me Home" in Yoruda. Handy bit of trivia, eh? His official name is "The Biting Cat," but I misread it to be "Spirit Cat" and it works too well for the story to change back. Kuronekosama is a cameo from Trigun, but he's dead now, so he doesn't matter.)