9/19/1

With the legal wrangling marching full force toward the Order picking up nine new colonies, or, at least, 'offering protection and assistance' as said colonies 'declare their independence' in exchange for 'a considerable percentage of any and all goods and materials produced by said colony' and 'complete and total access of any people on said colony to the Order's recruiting centers' it's becoming immensely clear to Kylo that his commanders really, truly, honestly believe that this meeting with people, explaining why they want to work with the Order, how it will benefit them thing is going to work out well for them.

He's the one who makes the leap of deciding that if he's serious about people and not systems, that, well… He's got people coming out his ears here, and that he could, maybe… attempt to… possibly… meet some of them.

A bit more than two years after Holdo slammed her ship through the Supremacy they are finally back to their pre-attack numbers and are getting close to surpassing that number. The ship itself can hold a crew of twenty-five million, though Kylo thinks it'd be beyond insane to put that many people on a ship.

Eight million, tops. That's as many of his people as he wants stationed full time in one ship. And, in time he'll have the number on the Supremacydown to whatever the smallest number who can keep it running smoothly is, and then he'll use it for transport, cargo, and hopefully as a giant floating castle of neutral territory for other people to use.

For right now though, he's got a new class of sub-adults moving onboard to take a rotation through the flight training school, and, well… He's meeting people, and they're people, so he might as well meet them.

There's no possible way he's going to meet all 3.9 million people on this ship, but he can at least welcome his new troops and maybe come up with some way to at least allow himself to be seen by the older ones.

Technically speaking, sub-adults are any member of the Order to have settled into the far side of puberty, but not yet hit twenty years of age. (Twenty being what the Empire, and then the New Republic, and then the First Order, and now the Order consider full, legal, adulthood. Granted, every system and planet has their own variation on the theme of adulthood, as well. Also granted, 'adulthood' is a beyond nebulous concept in an organization where anyone who can do the job, is allowed to do the job. As of this point in time, if there's something in the Order only 'adults' are allowed to do, Kylo doesn't know what it might be.)

This particular group are all being trained as pilots, and have done well enough on their testing that, assuming they master their ships and continue to show competency in quick thinking and command decisions, will be shunted into the rising officer program. They're all somewhere in the sixteen to eighteen-year-old range, and looking nervous and excited in their training blues.

There are forty of them in the group, but he's barely aware of thirty-nine of them. There's a boy, and from everything he can feel, with the exception of him and Rey, he's the brightest, strongest Force signature he's felt in… since his knights died. He's brought four children to Rey now, but this one… He smirks a little. Of course. Rey got Critt recently, so… of course this new one would have to flow into his orbit.

He stutters through saying hello to them, wishing them well in their training, and how he's looking forward to seeing them do great things as they continue to train and gain useful skills.

He can't tear his eyes off the boy.

He's a ginger, like Hux, pale skin and bright orange hair. Tall and slender, too. In all the years and all the faces, he's the only other one Kylo's ever seen, but that's where the resemblance ends. Someone branded the boy, or maybe tattooed. He's too far away to tell for sure. An intricate twisty design trails from under his right eye to the middle of his cheek. Many of the former slaves they get have some sort of mark on them, but rarely is it one so visible and painful.

When he finishes his rather unfocused "Welcome to the Order" speech, he pulls their officer aside, and says, "The ginger, what's his name?"

"McGy, Jacen."

"Have him gather his things and come to my rooms. I have use for him."

Jacen stares at him, eyes mild, but unblinking. Kylo doesn't feel any fear from him, and that intrigues him.

In his office, Kylo reads Jacen's file. He doesn't usually take the time to do this, just talks to them for a moment or two and then takes them to Rey, but… He's almost an adult, and he's inches from starting atmo-free flight training and from there having his own squadron.

It's possible he might not want to lose, or postpone that.

And… though Kylo's loathe to admit this, he fucking needs pilots. He's scouring the damn galaxy for them, and giving one up hurts. Though… He's old enough, and Poe's there, so… he probably doesn't have to entirely give up getting this kid trained to fly. Maybe Padme'll steal a ship for the kid. Kylo rolls his eyes a little at that, wondering if he can get that lie to stick.

And, though he's even more loathe to admit it, a gangly, pale kid with a lot of raw Force talent, who might want to be a pilot is not a kid he's going to pull away from here if he doesn't want to go.

Like any person who's been in the Order for a little more than a year, his file is slim. He joined up in Cartuum, part of a group of eighteen slaves who all came in at once. He tested well at spatial perception, coordination, the ability to use both hands and feet independently of each other, lightning fast reflexes, Kylo looks at those numbers and knows that no one, on their own, has reflexes that fast, the kid has some level of Force prescience, and in the top 90% of the intelligence tests. Not too great at mechanical problem solving. No interest or desire to be an engineer. Phenomenal with single variable problems in multi-dimensional space. Not good with multi-variable problems in multi-dimensional space. Put those together and you've got officer-track fliers.

Top of his class in the first round of basic training.

Wherever this kid is going next, he'll be useful.

A moment later, as C8 ushers him in, Kylo knows why Jacen McGy isn't afraid of him. He waits for C8 to leave, and then quietly says, eyes wide and on Kylo's, "You don't want me. I'm not one of them."

And for almost a heartbeat, Kylo just doesn't. He's got no need for this kid and can't remember why he called him here.

Then he blinks, and for another heartbeat he feels swamped with just horrible because he realizes what Jacen is making sure he doesn't want him for. He's old enough to know the stories of the Jedi Killer, and this is, apparently, his best attempt at defending himself.

And for another moment he's really impressed that, on his own, untrained, with no hand gestures, Jacen has this level of voice control. Someone would have to be quite strong in the Force or extremely strong-willed to not bend to Jacen's voice.

Jacen, meanwhile, is still staring at him, and starting to get afraid, because the Jedi Killer has not repeated those words back to him.

Kylo says, "I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of this invitation." Kylo inclines his head, pulls a chair out with the Force. Jacen doesn't look impressed, because he's good at covering his reactions, but Kylo can feel his excitement. "Sit. Talk with me."

Jacen does, tentatively. There's some real fear prickling behind his calm face, but he's also aware that Kylo's done nothing threatening. He's re-evaluating the situation, fast. "You're the Jedi Killer."

"I was. I'm not now. And you aren't a Jedi, so we're all fine and dandy, aren't we?"

Jacen looks him up and down, and Kylo can feel him trying to worm his way into his mind. He doesn't let him, but he does make sure that his intentions, to give this kid a better chance than he ever dreamed of having, are clear.

"What do you want?" Jacen finally asks, unable to pull it out of Kylo's head.

"To give you an opportunity."

Jacen looks around the ship. "You already have."

"A better one. If you want to be a pilot and eventually an officer, you'll leave this room, find your bunk, and go from here. If you want to learn how to," Kylo levitates the table next to them, "then I've got a proposition for you."

Jacen stares at the table, hovering at his elbow. "Can I do both?"

Kylo settles the table again. "The training for that will take several years, but after that, you are more than welcome back here."

Jacen nods. "I'm interested."

"Good," Kylo begins to wave his fingers, subtly, he doesn't want to give away what he's doing, it's just barely a twitch of two fingers on his lap, and gets "Mast—" out before he stops.

Jacen's just looking up at him. His face is impassive, but Kylo can feel his amusement as he says, "Something not right?"

"You're blocking me."

"Duh."

Kylo eyes him. That's more impressive than his voice control. Kylo is not, by any stretch, a novice at this technique, and if this child can block him, he's got deep talent. "I don't have to let you do that."

"But you're going to. You don't want to fight me." Jacen's eyes are wide, and his eye contact is spectacular, and if he just knew the last little bit of the spell…

Kylo snorts a laugh. "Wrong. I'm not going to fight you. Want isn't part of this picture. And I know what you just did."

"Tried to do, you mean. I failed."

"Force! You're still doing it." Kylo stares at the child… subadult, in front of him. He doesn't think about how if Jacen McGy used his hands to go with what he's doing with his voice, he'd have much more success. "How long have you been able to do this?"

"Do what?"

Kylo gives him a cut the shit look. "Look, I know what you're doing. You use your voice to make people do things they wouldn't do otherwise." He sniggers. "Oh… That's… You've got the highest eval numbers in your class. Let me guess, you didn't have any trouble giving your trainer a selection of useful suggestions. And in a matter of days he thought you were the best thing he'd ever seen."

Jacen smirks. "Hours."

Kylo sighs. "Can you actually fly?"

Jacen looks mortally insulted at that. It's one thing to make his trainers like him, it's another to entirely fake a discipline that could get other people killed if you aren't as good at it as you say. "I can fly." Then he just watches Kylo.

Kylo can feel what he's thinking. It's right on the top of his head. "No. It won't take you days to bend me. It took Snoke more than a two decades, and he had more raw power in his toenail than you do in your whole body, and started when I was a baby. So, stop it."

Jacen blinks. Kylo put some Force into those words, just enough to make sure he knows that he's not dealing with some easily manipulated pawn.

"Maybe this amuses me," Jacen says, by way of explanation, and as a way to test what Kylo's going to do.

"I'm sure it does. But it doesn't amuse me, and I'm the one with the lightsaber."

"Please, you won't use that on me for being a smartass."

There was a time… Though he's fairly certain if he'd run into Jacen during his Jedi Killer days, he would have raised him to the Knights. Something about the ability to be a raging smartass in the face of peril has always appealed to Kylo. He also realizes that Jacen already read all of that off of him. He's been using the voice control stuff as a way to distract Kylo so he could read if he was in any real danger or not. "You're right. But if you quit trying to manipulate me with your voice, I might decide to take you somewhere you can learn to really use the Force and build one for yourself."

That and the fact he can feel Kylo's not lying has Jacen's attention.

"Take me somewhere… I thought you would train me yourself…"

"Eventually I will, but not yet. There's a place where you can learn the basics, first, and after that, I'll train you."

"There's nowhere like that."

Kylo smirks at him. Jacen's so certain about that. "You've scoured the entire galaxy, checked everywhere, talked to everyone?"

The epic know-it-all eye roll amuses Kylo. "Everyone knows the Jedi are dead." And he just looks at Kylo. "Or is that, what… Burnishing your reputation? You killed one or two and then claimed to get the whole lot of them? You don't feel like a liar."

Kylo's eyes are cold, and for a second Jacen sees some real danger there. He nods at it, almost pleased to see it's there. "You're right, I'm not a liar. The Jedi are dead, many of them by my hand. But the Maji aren't."

It's clear Jacen's never heard the term, but… Why would he have? "What's… a Maji?"

I am, among other things. Kylo lets his mind flow into Jacen's, lets him feel what someone who's been properly trained in this game can do with it. "And if you want to learn how to do that, you're going to come with me, and not be a smartass."

"That's probably like asking me not to breathe."

"Okay, try not to be a smartass. And quit it with the voice trick. One of these days I'll show you how to really use it, but until then, stop it. Half of the kids there don't have any Force skills, and if you turn them into your beasts of burden, I'll drop you on a moon in the middle of nowhere."

"I'll get whoever pilots the ship to put me somewhere useful."

Kylo flashes him a bright smile, grabs his hand, and teleports him to Rey's cottage. "Are you sure about that?"

Jacen blinks, looking around the tidy main room of their home on Lirium. "Where are we?"

"Not on the Supremacy. Now, here's the deal. You behave, keep your mouth shut about who brought you here, settle in, and learn, and you get to stay here."

"And if I don't?"

"How many moons do you think I've been to?" Kylo says, voice perfectly even, as he floods Jacen's mind with a collection of barren, rocky places barely capable of supporting single-celled organisms, let alone a human.

Jacen takes a moment to really ponder that question. "Why keep my mouth shut about how I got here?"

"Because Kylo Ren's not the most popular man in the universe. Master Padme brought you here, got it?"

Jacen half inclines his head, looking around Rey's living room, seeing the tool bench and the casing of a lightsaber she's working on.

"Do I still get to be a citizen when I'm done here?"

Kylo feels it, the desire to belong to something, to have status, to matter. And he knows he can use that. "Learn what Rey's got to teach you, what I've got to teach you, and you'll be a citizen when you're done. Then join me and learn to command. I'll have a place for you as an officer in the Order, command a flight squadron, get good enough at it, maybe your own fleet, and maybe a senator after that."

"Got plans for my voice?" And Kylo suddenly knows why Jacen's former master valued him. And wonders who, or what, he had to be to be able to keep someone like Jacen as a slave.

"No. If I wanted to do that, I have my own voice. Eventually, though, you'll have your own plans. So…"

"Lead me to your Rey, Master Padme."

"I will. Stay put, don't touch anything, this is my home, not yours, and let me get changed."

"A costume?" Jacen says when Kylo steps out of his room.

Kylo gives him a bit of the side eye. He appears to have obeyed orders, at least in the sense of 'not touching anything.' He is however, sprawled out over the chair, looking like he's made himself at home. He is watching Kylo with a decent amount of curiosity on his face.

"Not anymore," Kylo says. And these days, it's not. He's gotten to the point where he's fairly comfortable in his Padme clothing. And he supposes that, should he ever feel like he doesn't have to look like The Master of the Order when he's with the Order, he might attempt to actually look like this. Though, given what Jon's said about his colors, probably a black version of this.

"Uh huh. You're in a different outfit and using a different name."

"Maybe when I'm here I'm a different person."

"People don't work that way."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "Sixteen."

Jacen raises an eyebrow, insulted. "Mind reader. People don't change."

"Sure, kid. Come on."

"Oh… she's pretty," Jacen says as they walk between the buildings in Rey's town, getting closer to, but not right near, her chapel.

Kylo feels the jolt of… "I told you to stop doing that." They're way beyond too far for Jacen to see anything other than Rey having brown hair. All he was doing with that comment was trying to get Kylo to react.

"Just wanted to know the lay of the land. Your woman?"

"Don't forget it."

Jacen rolls his eyes. "Uh huh. I'm not stupid enough to get into a fight with an armed man who weighs twice as much as I do over a girl, especially one I'd have to fight."

"Not every sixteen-year-old boy is that smart."

"Well, I might do it over a boy, but…"

Kylo chuckles at that. "There's a few of them here, too."

That stops Jacen. "Really?" He sounds painfully excited by that idea. Kylo sighs, remembering what being sixteen was like.

"I don't know if any of them'll swing your way, and you damn well better not make them if they aren't already inclined in that direction, but there are boys here."

"Oh."

"You're the oldest of the bunch of them, too. Probably. We don't know how old all of them are, but… none of them are visibly older than you are."

Rey looks up at them, thirty or forty meters off, feeling them come near. "You keep your distance?"

"I do when the suns are out. She'll come to us."

"They really don't know who you are?"

"It's better that way."

"You want me to pretend not to know who you are?"

Kylo shakes his head. "I want you to not tell who I am. All of the adults know that Master Padme isn't my real name. At least, they know that's not the name I use when I'm with the Order. The children likely have an idea about that, too. They just don't need to know what the real one is."

"The adults don't know who you are?"

"Some of them do. You'll know who's who by feel, won't you?"

Jacen half inclines his head. Unless there's an adult here who's seriously better with the Force than he is, and he's doubtful of that, he'll know. "Yes."

"Good. Don't fuck it up."

Jacen pretends to be scandalized by Kylo's word choice. "Did you just actually say that, Master Padme?"

"Did you just hear it?"

"Yes."

"Then I must have said it."

He's looking up at Kylo, really looking at him this time, not trying to sort through his thoughts and motivations. "You're not what I was expecting."

"Nope." Rey joins them, and Kylo takes her hands, kissing her, then he turns his attention to Jacen. "Rey, this is Jacen McGy."

"Hello, Jacen."

"He's a stubborn little booger, with more power and information than is likely good for him, but I think we can do good things with him."

"Is that always how you introduce new people?" Jacen asks, eyebrow arched, looking at Kylo like he's being betrayed.

"It's how I introduce little smartasses who think testing me is amusing."

Rey watches this with a bit of a smile. "Hello, Jacen. Welcome to Lirium and the Maji."

"Hello… Mistress Ren or is it Padme?"

"Just Rey." She eyes him. "Knows more than you should… eh?"

Jacen rolls his eyes, a little. "Well, if people wouldn't just walk around with all of their thoughts and feelings out all the time…"

"You like him," Rey says that night, over dinner.

Kylo grins at that. "I do. I shouldn't but… I really do."

Rey smiles back at him, giving him a little shove with her shoulder. "You ever want a little brother?"

"No!" He had to fight hard enough to get time and attention from his parents, having to share it would have been unbearable. "And for a while it felt like I had half a dozen of them at Luke's."

"He's going to be challenging."

"Yes. But… Good challenge?" he asks, spooning up some of the rabbit stew he brought.

"I think so. He seems to be getting on with Critt."

That stops him with his spoon midway to his mouth. One afternoon is awfully fast. "What sort of getting on?"

"Friendly. Why?" Rey can see there's some alarm in his response, but doesn't know why there should be.

"He likes boys, or at least told me that to see how I'd react to it."

"How did you react?"

"I told him there were boys at the school and that if they didn't already like boys he better not make them start liking them."

"Fair enough. Still not sure why you're asking."

"You're getting enough of them, old enough, that sex is going to start coming into play, so…"

"So…" she actually knows what he's thinking, but she wants him to say it.

"So… is… are the Maji going to have… any opinions on 'physically communing together in mutual accord and affection?'"

Rey sighs. "I suppose we should, but… I don't feel like it's any of my business with whom or how they commune."

"Ducking the question?" The idea that they may not have any sort of formal set of teachings on the subject strikes Kylo as… he's not sure. It's… not fitting. Religions have things like opinions on sex. Or they should. Maybe… Granted, right now it's just them not some sort of… He sighs at that… The Jedi of old were just like he and Rey, once. A few people feeling their way through a set of things, trying to come up with the best advice they can.

She's following his thoughts, and gives him a little squeeze before saying, "Maybe I'd just prefer that they use the rest of the Maji teaching and apply that to their sex lives, as opposed to figuring out some extra set of rules to go with it."

He inclines his head a bit. "That's actually how it worked at Luke's, all he had to say about communing was in accord with light principals, but… Sometimes you need the lesson repeated, a lot."

"Sometimes the lesson doesn't fit the students... My guess is if you weren't trying to be passionless ascetics, you'd have had an easier time applying your philosophy to your actions." She thinks for another moment, and then adds, "I wonder how much of it was working backwards. We don't want to entirely cut ourselves off from sex, so, how do we shape the message so at least some of us can get some of it?"

Kylo snerks at that. "I have a feeling the Masters of old would be highly perturbed by your impertinence."

Rey smiles. "Good."

Kylo smiles a bit, and takes another bite of his supper, trying to imagine how sex and love and everything would have looked if his parents… his dad… who never tried to live as a passionless ascetic, had taught it. Less embarrassing and likely of more practical use. Beyond that, he just doesn't know. Not like the two of them ever sat down and had a chat about girls.

On a more concrete level, he says, "Keeping it in kind with your teachings is one thing, not ending up with pregnant fifteen-year-olds is another. How's your medbay stocked for preventatives?"

"I've never asked."

"Probably worth it, and stocking it if it isn't, and then having that chat with at least the older girls."

"Not the boys?"

Kylo tries to imagine how that conversation would have gone with a female teacher. It was embarrassing enough with Luke, who was doing his best to be calm and balanced and judgement free, while staying within the bounds of light side theology. If it'd been with a woman, he's fairly sure he would have spontaneously combusted from the embarrassment, and given exactly how volatile with the Force he was, it's possible he could have literally done it. "There may be some jobs Finn or Poe could handle more readily than you can."

She laughs at that. "Don't think I'm a natural when it comes to the care and handling of shafts?"

He smirks and says, "I'm just saying that sometimes it's better to talk to someone who's had a lifelong history of hands-on appreciation."

"Excuse me, sir, where'd McGy go?"

The training Lieutenant shrugs. "Special Training Ops, orders of the Master."

"What's Special Training Ops?" Carlie Sagan, McGy's flight mate asks.

"None of us know. But every few cycles he picks a kid for it."

"Where do they go?"

The Lt. shrugs at that, too. "Not here."

"How do you get into it?"

The Lt. shrugs at that, too. "You just do. If he wants you, he grabs you."

"What happens to them?"

One final shrug. "None of them have come back to tell us."

There are a lot of theories about Special Training Ops, ranging from the fantastic, to the bloody, to the mundane, to the perverted. The members of the Order old enough to remember Snoke's day tell tall tales of the Special Training Ops kids being murdered en masse. That Ren keeps an eye out for anyone who may one day challenge him, and weeds them out young.

The ones who saw what happened to the cruel trainer on the Supremacy don't believe those stories. Ren decapitated a trainer for going too hard on the kids, he's not about to be murdering them for kicks.

But… no one knows, so the stories grow.