The next morning, Eeth took Raven out in the speeder while the rest were put to work feeding the goyts in the cargo bay, cleaning up after them and finding ways to keep them as quiet and comfortable as possible.

"I am going to fly us across the swamp and you focus on finding stray goyts if there are any," Eeth told Raven. "I will do this for as long as you need me to."

Raven heaved a breath, drawing in a huge lungful of… stinky air, and blowing it out again; she forbore to wrinkle her nose out of futility. Raven was possibly the most taxed of their mission team thus far and was not looking forward to this final duty. Still, the teen knew what she had to do. "Yes, master," she replied. As they took off, she spared a glance for the cargo hold of their ship. The goyts were mostly diurnal; some leant towards crepuscular, though, which meant some rose very early and were into absolutely everything!

Three hours later, Eeth and Raven returned. Eeth managed to look dignified as was typical; Raven was attempting the same whilst once again slathered head to toe in mud. They had found another lone female and a family holed up on the northern edge of the swamp, right by the farmer's irrigation pipes and mere meters from the tilling machines used by the men. Raven and Eeth had not wasted any time in grabbing them but, unfortunately, Eeth's single female had fled up a tree whereas Raven's quarry had charged for their burrow, the month-old babies in tow. Yep. Fantastic.

Half an hour later, Raven was busy settling the babies with their family in the cargo hold when she caught Eeth's eye. "Master, ready to depart when you are," she told him, spreading out the final layer of washable bedding, while other goyts were nibbling playfully at her tunic and attempting to climb onto her shoulders.

"Alright," Eeth said. He had been waiting for her prompt and now immediately commed Lakhri who was going to coach Flynt through their take-off.

"Padawan, let's clean ourselves up and assemble the others," he then said. "We need to make plans for the rest of our trip."

Raven stood, brushed herself off and followed Eeth. They were halfway through their mission, and all that remained to do now was get the goyts to Lucia and hope that the environment turned out to be as suitable as she had predicted. The next three days were going to be something else, though; the smell was already pungent, and they were only on day one. Well, they had started this. No turning back now.

Raven sat on the floor of their cabin and pulled off a boot. She had gotten the majority of swamp mud off them before leaving Barslaa, but unfortunately, they would still need a clean. "You want to go first?" she asked Eeth, gesturing to their refresher with her chin as she pulled off her other boot.

"No, you go ahead," said Eeth, smiling at her. "You have done the bulk of the work on Barslaa. And you did well."

He did not say more than that. Eeth was not big on handing out praise. When he did so at all, it meant something, however perfunctory it might have been.

The praise garnered a modest smile from Raven, and she stood to meet his gaze. "Thank you, master." She had done a good job and it meant a lot to her that he'd said as much.

"You're welcome," Eeth said matter-of-factly. And beckoned for her to take a shower. They needed to get organised, after all!


"We should work in shifts of two," Eeth said when everyone was assembled around the table. "Else we will exhaust ourselves during this trip. I will draw up a plan. During the remaining time, you could resume your lessons with Raven, Kaden. The big cargo bay is out of the question, of course, but the smaller one next to it is nearly empty now with all the food the goyts have eaten."

At the mention of resuming his lessons with Raven, Kaden closed his eyes and exhaled. He had gotten more used to accepting her authority, but it was still something he was working on.

Raven noticed the slight look of weariness on Kaden's face. She could sympathise, but there was no point in wasting time whining about it; they each had their duty, and that was that. In fact, she had become more flippant and less patient with him since the incident with their meditation. It wasn't something Raven was doing deliberately, not entirely anyway. She was simply trying to do her job.

Kaden hadn't mentioned this slight change in her demeanour towards him to Drex as he figured he probably deserved a bit of a cold shoulder from her. Still, this was Kaden, and he would only take so much before he lashed out and fought back. Who would give first was probably the only unknown.

Eeth and Drex both noticed that their padawans were less than enthusiastic about this news, but that was not going to save them from going through with it.

When they had concluded their meeting, Eeth quickly drafted a schedule and then took Raven to the cargo bay for the first shift.

"Is there anything in particular that we need to look after?" he asked her, surveying the general chaos of hundreds of goyts climbing over each other in order to get at the food cribs and water troughs.

"Boredom is my main concern," she replied absent-mindedly while looking up at some exposed wiring in the cargo bay ceiling. "Other than that, and the constant cleaning up after them and keeping their food and water filled, they should coexist together easily enough." There were a few minor scraps between the odd goyts here and there, but thankfully, none had resulted in more than a nip or the removal of a small tuft of white fur.

In the meantime, Drex realised that Kaden needed a break. He had put in several days of hard work and the prospect of continuing his lessons with Raven, however inescapable, was not easy on him either. Thus, Drex decided to do something that he had not allowed in years.

"Let's have a round of sparring, padawan," he said as they left the galley. "Freestyle. No restrictions. Use all the Ataru you like. I'd like to see how you're faring with those lessons." He assumed that this was about the biggest reward he could offer to Kaden; and the boy really deserved one, given that he had been diligent and not complained once during their time on Barslaa - not even about his punishment.

Typically, Kaden was loathe to be seen giddy over anything; it just wasn't his M.O. However, Drex's words had him silent from the shock. Was he serious?, said his expression, not that Drex could see it. He wondered what he'd done to earn such a privilege. After all, he'd not exactly had a stellar run of behaviour so far this mission, or so he believed. "You mean it?" It was rhetorical, but the tone in which he had asked signified that he wasn't entirely sure he knew why. It also signified that he didn't want to question it; if Drex was letting him do Ataru, Kaden wasn't going to complain about it!

Drex chuckled. "Of course I do," he said. "Your little lapse of judgement in Tuppset's Red Light District aside, you really pulled your weight during our stay on Barslaa. You worked hard, and you deserve a break. Besides, you have made a lot of progress in your training during the past years, and you've become much better at keeping your temper in check. So, let's see what you've got."

Kaden's lip pulled into a lopsided grin as he followed Drex towards the mostly empty storage bay. His master's praise, and the reward of freestyle sparring, was making it very hard for him to appear humble and modest, but he was doing his best.

Drex kept this very simple. He took a ready stance, ignited his saber and waited for Kaden to begin. When he said 'freestyle', he meant freestyle.

Unfortunately for Kaden, in this instance freestyle sparring meant just that; Drex stuck to Soresu which left Kaden wearing himself into the ground trying to get a hit on him. The boy threw all that he had learned from both Drex and Raven at the man, but it was futile; if Drex was using Soresu, it was almost impossible to get a point. Still, Kaden had enjoyed the fight. It had been an opportunity for him to let himself go a little and vent. He fought with the controlled ferocity of one who had been forced to taper himself for so long that it had almost become effortless. Almost.

When Drex held up his hand to signal that their match was over, Kaden was pleasantly exhausted and slumped onto the floor. He had needed that. He had not lost control, nor had he let his anger rule him; he had simply used the fight to unwind.

Drex was very pleased with the degree of control Kaden had shown, and he told him as much. "If you continue like this," he said, "you will be both an excellent fighter and an excellent Jedi soon."

The praise had Kaden struggling to control his beaming smile, but he did. Just! "Thanks. Sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm getting much of anything right." It was more than Kaden would usually offer, at least without being prompted, but he honestly felt heartened by the confidence Drex had in him.

"I know," Drex said sympathetically. "Most padawans run through such stages, and I think your personal predisposition makes it harder for you than for many others. Still, rest assured that you do, in fact, get many things right. That just won't mean that I'll be any more tolerant with the ones you don't get right, I'm afraid."

He smiled at Kaden. "Just pull yourself together in your lessons with Raven," he said, "and focus on your duties. You've been doing fine with those so far."

Easier said than done, thought Kaden, but he kept that to himself; Drex had given him incentive enough to work on his control during Raven's lessons, and he would do his best.

"For the moment, though," continued Drex, "we need to apply ourselves to more mundane tasks. Raven said it might be a good idea to prevent the goyts from becoming bored. They like climbing. Let's see if we can provide them with some entertainment."

It was not surprising that, when they went to take over from Eeth and Raven next, Kaden was feeling pretty good about himself; he was making progress even if Raven didn't seem to notice it lately.

Drex took Kaden to a cargo hold that held crates in all sizes and they started moving them to the main cargo bay in order to build some kind of makeshift climbing hill for the goyts. They spent their time making platforms and runs, hiding handfuls of food in hard to reach crevices and generally attempting to keep the goyts busy.

Raven entered about half an hour later, a bottle of what she thought would work as some sort of cribbing deterrent in hand. She looked up at the platforms, then up at the ceiling; they had coiled and pinned the exposed wiring yesterday, and she hoped that would be enough to keep them out of it. "Spray this on anything you don't want them to eat, it might keep them from chewing on it," she said, looking at Drex but handed the bottle to Kaden. It contained some diluted version of a bitter herb that the goyts deliberately avoided in the swamps.

"Thanks," said Drex, "although there isn't much, I think. Unless they manage to pry the wall panels loose, we ought to be fine. But we should give the room another check-over, just to make sure. Kaden, why don't you do that while I fill up the water troughs." The goyts usually managed to spread the water across the floor quickly and the troughs had to be refilled every hour or so.

After Drex and Kaden had finished, it was Lakhri's and Flynt's shift, which was why Drex and Eeth sent off Kaden and Raven for their Ataru lesson after a quick snack.

"It's now or never," said Drex to Kaden. "And before you say it: never is not an option."

"The same goes for you, padawan," Eeth pointed out to Raven.

Kaden frowned, but that was the extent of his objections. "Alright," he replied, resignation written all over his face. Luckily for him, he kept it from his tone as he had no desire to repeat the lesson on the respect that he owed his superiors. In fact, he was pretty sure parts of his ass were still recovering from that lesson. Firstly, he had encountered Raven's wrath which had been unexpectedly harsh, and then his master had seen fit to add to it; the result was truly horrifying.

Raven noticed the expression for the second time that day, and again she responded with her own frown. Like Kaden had wisely done, she too forbore to do more than that, and her polite "yes, master" was the extent of it.

Making use of the room available to them, they began by running through different attack stances which Kade needed to work on. Raven nudged his lead foot forward with her boot, explaining that his stance was too short and why that was going to hinder him. A couple of moves later she shifted his elbow to raise his offhand guard and again offered an explanation. She was not being impatient with him, at least not yet. However, when she started to notice him become frustrated at the constant corrections, she paused the exercise. "Relax for a bit," she instructed, grabbing their water bottles and tossing over his.

Kaden caught it deftly and took a sip; he didn't want a bottle of water sloshing around in his gut if they were going to spar… Yeah, if they ever got past doing stances and to the good part!

Unfortunately for Kaden, Raven had planned to spend most of this lesson working on stances. "They really are a fundamental part of any form. If your balance is off…" She nudged him with her hip to prove a point.

He wobbled but did not overbalance. Had Kaden not had such a solid grounding in Soresu, he would have been forced to widen his stance or fall over, not that he was willing to admit this. Instead, he raised his chin, a triumphant look on his face at having won this small toss.

Raven ignored it and bade him to continue. The next correction she made was not a gentle nudge as it had been so far, but enough to force him into overcorrecting.

Kaden stumbled and if looks could kill, Raven's career as a Jedi would have ended then and there. He didn't appreciate being made to feel foolish, especially so when he had felt so smug at gaining the upper hand.

Ignoring his mutinous look, Raven continued teaching. "Like I said, small corrections can make all the difference. Meditate if you need to do so. We can start again when you're ready." It was spoken in a slightly impatient tone, but her intent was nothing to do with Kaden's dented pride; she had simply wanted to prove that her point was valid and that he needed to stop thinking that her efforts to correct him were nit-picking.

Given that he had performed the prerequisite ten-minute meditation before their lesson, Kaden was not as volatile as he might otherwise have been in this situation. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths and met Raven's gaze. "No need. Let's just get this over with."

Raven nodded, accepted his water bottle and tossed them back on the bag. He did not feel out of control to her so they continued.

The rest of that lesson was a little testy, but for the most part, Kaden kept a lid on his temper and Raven did her job, which was why they ended with freestyle sparring. It was cramped, yet the two weapon enthusiasts were in their element. They sprang from crates, leapt off walls and generally gave it their all; it was an enjoyable match and worked to quash a bit of the tension that had grown between them.

After their lesson, it was Eeth's and Raven's shift again while Drex and Kaden had some more free time.

"How did it go?" Drex asked Kaden as he emerged from the shower. "I thought I noticed this morning that you really have learned a lot of Ataru lately."

"Alright," Kaden replied a little too quickly. This garnered a moment of silence; Kade got the impression that the man did not believe him. So he looked over and added: "She keeps drilling me on the same things. Every tiny detail, the same stance over and over and over. It grates is all. I'm dealing with it." Of course, it also grated that she was bossing him around and was always half a step ahead of him, but he didn't mention that. Kaden was having enough trouble accepting Raven's authority without another lecture from Drex.

"Well, she is Eeth's student," Drex said with a smile. "I daresay you would not have fared better with Eeth as a teacher. Or with me, for that matter." Drex did pay a lot of attention to detail himself, and he had had several run-ins with Kaden over that. They had consistently ended with Kaden being paddled and spending the rest of the workout on push-ups and rope-skipping; he had eventually learned not to give in to his frustration. Raven might very well have to assert her authority more than once as well.

Drex's comment had the boy huff. He knew, but it was just something he struggled with.

When Eeth and Raven had been relieved from goyt duty, Raven made for their cabin to take another shower. She had not really needed one as she didn't tend to sweat much during the lessons with Kaden, and the goyts, although gross, didn't leave her slathered. She did, however, want another shot at washing her hair which had been matted with mud when they'd left Barslaa.

Raven was sitting on her bed combing out her hair when Eeth entered. She looked up at him with an expectant expression; either he would assign some task, or she would have free time until their next shift with the goyts. Naturally, the padawan was hoping for the latter but anticipated the former.

"We should have a workout of our own now," said Eeth. "I suspect your lesson with Kaden did not pose enough of a challenge to you. How did it go?"

"We've had better lessons. Then again, we've had a lot worse too," Raven admitted. She got to her feet and stretched, tossing her brush on the bed. "He's getting on my nerves," was added as she pulled long hair into a ponytail.

Eeth raised his eyebrows. The remark came unexpected. Eeth could simply not relate to the experience of anyone 'getting on his nerves'. Students giving him trouble, maybe; but that, he could easily deal with, and apparently, so could Raven (if not quite as easily). "How so?" he asked neutrally, deciding against voicing any of his thoughts.

"He's doing just enough not to push it too far, but that hardly makes what we're doing pleasant. Nor is it as effective as it could be if he put his full concentration into our lessons rather than looking for each and every opportunity to attempt catching me out." She summoned her saber from the desk and clipped it to her belt. "He's dying for me to make a mistake so he can correct it."

"You are letting him get to you," said Eeth, walking beside her towards the empty storage room. "Which is a mistake. Your nerves should not have anything to do with this. Maybe you should not tolerate anything but his best effort from him? I doubt that Drex does."

"Maybe. I didn't want to be constantly riding him. I know how that feels." Raven looked up and gave a slightly cheeky grin. "No offence meant, master." The truth was Raven had no problem with the way Eeth structured her training; she was at a stage now where she could see the forest for the trees and knew that had he not pushed her, she would not have gotten this far. "I don't know, the effort he's making now is a vast improvement on how he was behaving to begin with. I guess I thought that raising the bar again would be unfair. I should have started out how I planned to continue, with high expectations as I do with all my other classes." The teen folded her arms, allowing a bit of her frustration to show. "But he's my friend, and I found that hard."

"I can see how this complicates things," Eeth conceded. "Maybe you should talk to him about it, then. Letting him get on your nerves is not a good strategy. It will make you irritable and set him even more on edge. Think about it."

He opened the door to the cargo hold and beckoned her in. "Warm up for five minutes," he said. "Then freestyle sparring." Just like Drex, he felt that Raven had earned a reward.

"Yes, master." Raven's response covered both his comment and instructions.

Five minutes later they were making the most of the cramped space. Raven was loving this, her small size giving her an advantage over Eeth. Suffice it to say, the padawan felt like she had indeed worked out by the time they'd finished, and she was feeling far less bothered by the issues with Kaden; a workout tended to have that effect on her. "Thanks. I needed that," she admitted to Eeth as they left the makeshift training room, shortly after cooling down.

"You are more than welcome," Eeth said with a small smile. "You earned it for your good work on this mission, padawan. I am proud of you."

In her younger years, hearing praise like that from Eeth would have resulted in an uncontrollable, ear-to-ear smile. These days, it garnered the same feeling of pride and accomplishment in her achievements, but she was well able to accept it humbly. "Thank you, master." Raven could use to hear that at the moment, as she had been focusing on her failures with Kaden and forgetting that the rest of their mission was going well.

Dinner that evening was a delicious soup and some crusty bread rolls that Lakhri had procured from Barslaa. The meal was hearty and filling. Nevertheless, Kaden, Flynt and Lakhri all went back for seconds, which of course resulted in Raven teasing them about having hollow legs.

"If you ate a little more, you might not blow over in the next strong wind," Kaden snorted, taking a bite out of his third bread roll.

"And if you focused on what was important, you might not wind up losing your saber in our next sparring session," Raven shot back. The exchange had been jovial, but there was an undertone of tension between the two.

Lakhri rested his hand on Raven's briefly, warning her to go easy on Kaden, and gave her a quick smile. "We've all been fighting our way through heaps of goyt shit for the entire day," he said peacefully. "I think we are entitled to seconds."

Kaden bristled slightly at her remark, but after Lakhri's comment, he was not ticked off enough to have another go at her.

Raven, for her part, had simply been speaking the truth, however untactfully. She rose a brow at her Jedi brother's words, but was entirely unwilling to see things escalate to a point where any master thought it necessary to intervene. Thus, she fell silent.

"So, my robot. Who wants to see the latest improvements?" Flynt cut in, easily directing their conversation to a less sensitive topic. He was good like that.

The rest of the evening was spent fairly quietly and peacefully. The goyts seemed to have settled in and went to sleep when the lights were dimmed. Everyone went to bed early; the mission was exhausting them all.


The following morning, it was Lakhri's and Flynt's shift first; Eeth sent Raven and Kaden off to their lesson right after breakfast.

The lesson and the rest of that day passed without serious issue. However, the tension between Raven and Kaden remained and seemed to continue building after their morning lesson. Several small 'trials' between the two of them popped up throughout the day…

"Stop bossing me around or you're going to piss me off. And you like me a lot less when I'm pissed off, remember?" Kaden snapped that evening when she'd had a go at him for not scraping enough food off the plates before putting the dishes into the steriliser.

Kaden could have been a five-year-old initiate for all the effect that statement had on Raven. "Stop complaining and do it," she told him in the same snippy tone that she had favoured with him lately.

The boy rankled, tossing the dishcloth aside and slowly folded his arms. "Ask nicely," he challenged.

"I asked nicely the first time, yet you accused me of bossing you around. Again. You need to come up with new material as that one's getting old," Raven shot back and turned to face him, her gaze unwavering. Raven knew that this was not the way to handle Kaden, but she was getting frustrated herself, and perhaps she was being a tad bossy. Anyway, she was in charge to a large extent on this mission and deserved a little respect.

"You didn't ask, you ordered, there's a difference," Kaden retorted.

Raven narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. "Lord Lightbane," she intoned, making a low, mock bow. "Pretty please, with sugar on top, be more diligent at scraping the plates clean before you put them in the sterilizer!" By the time she'd finished that sentence her voice had risen; she was allowing him to get to her.

"That wasn't nice, that was sarcastic and patronising," Kaden informed her.

Okay, so Raven had had enough. She picked up a newly wiped plastic spoon and feigned reflection. She had no intention of using it on the boy, but he didn't know that.

Kaden was about to call her bluff – it was not like she could hurt him with that anyway – when Eeth entered the kitchenette.

Immediately, both padawans dropped the disagreement. "We're almost done," Kaden tried to cover, but the truth was, they'd been standing there for five minutes and still not made any progress.

"Done doing what?" Eeth asked coolly. "Arguing?" He had overheard some of what had been going on; more the tone of the talk than the actual words, but it had been enough to feel the tension between the two. It obviously prevented them from getting any work done, which was something that Eeth never particularly appreciated.

"No. Done with the dishes," Kaden supplied smartly.

Raven groaned; dumbass, she thought, but kept that to herself. "Yes, master, done arguing. We'll be done with the dishes soon." She meant it, too, and gave Kaden a quelling look.

"I should hope so," Eeth said, treating Kaden to a look of his own that was a good deal more quelling than Raven's.

Only when they were in their cabin later that night, getting ready for bed, did he ask: "What was your argument with Kaden about, by the way?"

"Nothing noteworthy, "she replied, then upon seeing the expression on his face, elaborated. "He insists on claiming that I'm being 'bossy' all the time," she told him simply, while running a brush through her hair.

"And are you being bossy?" asked Eeth matter-of-factly.

Raven made to answer that with a 'no!' but paused. Was she being bossy? Probably a little, but it was deserved. "I'm just trying to get him to do his job," she deflected, letting that comment linger for a moment before putting her brush down and meeting his gaze. "The things I've called him on are not unreasonable, and had I been doing the same you'd have certainly called me out at the very least."

"Possibly," said Eeth. "What did you call him on earlier in the kitchen, then?"

Raven recounted their latest disagreement over the steriliser to him, and then she frowned. "If I dared to be so antagonistic to a superior Jedi I'd have fully expected to be told off, or worse."

"Well, as you said, you are a fellow padawan and his friend," Eeth replied. "That puts you in a difficult position, but the same is true for Kaden. Just for the record, I do usually say 'please' instead of giving orders in such ordinary everyday situations."

Despite feeling that Eeth didn't know what she was talking about, Raven nodded her head in deference to his comment. "I know," she said simply and picked up the brush once again; her hair didn't need it but the teen was enjoying what would have usually been a mundane chore.

Eeth was silent for a moment. Then he said: "I might not be the best person to give advice on how to deal with others. On the other hand, when I was your age, I got into arguments over being perceived as 'bossy' any number of times. Usually, these were situations exactly like yours: I was the other person's senior and I was fully entitled to give the orders I did. And yet, I came to realise, with my master's help, that I tended to needlessly antagonise others and that this was not in anyone's best interest. This might not apply to your situation at all; I merely ask you to think about it." He gave Raven a small smile and rose. "Let us meditate, then sleep," he said. "It will be our turn to prepare breakfast tomorrow morning. At nine, Kaden's shift will be over, and there will be time for your lesson."

As Eeth spoke, Raven started to wonder if the same was true for her. Was she antagonistic towards Kaden? Bossy? Maybe; it was hard to recognise your own failings. Hearing that this was an issue Eeth had had as a padawan did not come as a surprise, but Force, was she like that? Surely not. The teen swallowed, then knelt where he bade. For reasons she couldn't explain, Raven didn't want to share that self-doubt with her master, so she shielded her feelings. This was not a usual occurrence, but neither was it entirely foreign; there were things that a teenage girl did not want her master to know after all, and he respected that for the most part.

Eeth vaguely suspected that Raven was more like he had been at her age than she would acknowledge. He hoped that she was reflecting on her behaviour and that this might be what motivated her to shield her emotions during their meditation; but he did not want to pry and therefore did not broach the issue again that night.