3. Saving a queen

The bongo proved to be a four-places sub-marine working with unknown power.

Fortunately for them, Irri was still smaller than an adult. She took a place between her master and Master Jinn on the back, while Jar-Jar, with his long legs, sat in front. Obi-Wan would take the commands, since he was the most qualified to pilot a foreign ship.

Once Gungancity was far behind and all lights apart from the cockpit one started to fade, Obi-Wan questioned their guide.

"Why were you banished, Jar-Jar?"

"It is a long thing. Short part of it would be...uh...missa...clumsy."

Irri's eyes widened. "You were banished because you are clumsy?"

"Uh...youssa might be saying that. Missa maybe causing one or two littlely accidenti. Youssa say bad things, then crush me, then banished."

Irri was about to answer it, when the ship was hauled by an enormous fish.

She swallowed back a cry of surprise. It would have passed for a cry of fear, which it wasn't.

Her master grunted. "I hate water."

"Big coba-fish! Huge teeth!"

Said fish started to take them away, until another, huge fish crushed it in his mouth.

Master Jinn found it rather entertaining. "There's always a bigger fish."

"Missa say we're going back, now."

Irri chuckled. "Jar-Jar, this is far too fun to go back."

"Irri Nabié, you behave." Her master was glaring a her then.

Master Jinn chuckled back though. "Let her be a child, Master Secura. She will grow up soon enough. Besides, I too find this rather entertaining."

Obi-Wan sighed. "Just what I feared. A mini Qui-Gon Jinn..."

At that all four Jedis laughed.

While Jar-Jar made a gesture meaning he found them all crazy...

!-!-!-!-!

The journey proved to be quite long, unlike Irri would have thought.

"Where are wessa going?"

"Don't worry, the Force will guide us."

"Oh, maxi big, the Force!"

Then the ship started to bleep.

Obi-Wan pulled a level, undeterred. "We're losing power."

The lights gave in, and the ship landed on the bottom of the ocean.

"Wessa dying here!"

"Relax, we're not in trouble yet." The lights came back on.

"What yet? Monsters are there, leaking in here. All sinking and no power? When youssa thinking wessa in trouble?"

Obi-Wan pulled a panel and made the engines run back on. "See? Power's back."

But there was a huge alligator-like thing just before their eyes.

Jar-Jar was seriously panicking.

So Master Jinn used the Force to calm him. "Relax!"

The Gungan fell into his seat, nearly knocked out.

Obi-Wan caustically noticed. "You overdid it."

Irri's eyes then turned to notice how her own master had dug herself deep into meditation to avoid any disturbance in their trip.

"Do not worry child, she is going to be alright."

She looked up into Master Jinn's blue eyes. "I know."

!-!-!-!-!

It took them another hour to erupt at the surface.

Jar-Jar seemed to be, bizarrely for an amphibian, better on land than in water.

Irri unclasped herself and put a hand to her master's forehead, joining mind with her.

"Master Secura, we have reached Theed."

Aayla's eyes opened, and she smiled faintly. "Finally. I thought this journey would have never ended."

Irri smiled at her.

Aayla then looked up at Master Jinn. "What are we to do?"

He seemed deep in thought. "Obi-Wan and I will retrieve the Queen and suite and bring them to the main hangar. You and Irri go there at once and secure the place."

The Twi-lek nodded. "Then we are to escape this planet together."

"I think it wiser. We are headed to Coruscant anyway."

She nodded again before gesturing Irri forward.

The group separated before the city's doors.

"Master, how are we securing the main hangar when I do not have a light-sabre?"

Aayla dismissed the question quite quickly. "You can use the Force to push them away strongly enough so that meeting a wall will disable them. I have faith in you, Irri. Besides, maybe this is the time to live some dangerous adventures."

Irri smirked before putting her hood over her face. "Careful now, I won't forget this."

!-!-!-!-!

When they reached the hangar, they soon assessed the situation.

It seemed all the remaining pilots in Naboo's army had been taken prisoner, as they were all sitting hands on their head, droids watching for them.

"There are many, Master."

"You'll be fine, Irri." Aayla took her light-sabre in hand. "You walk behind those ships," she gestured to the left and the fighters docked there, "while I distract them. Try and be quick, young one, I might not be as strong as you may think."

"I'll be quick as lightning." She put aside her cloak and hurried behind a ship, her feet silent on the marble floor.

She walked quickly yet carefully towards the group of prisoners, and heard as her master lit her sabre and walked straight to the ambush.

"In the name of the Senate, release those men, or you'll die."

Two droids, in front of Irri's hiding place, seemed to ponder. "She is a Jedi."

"But she is alone."

"You're right. Let's kill her."

Irri then jumped from behind her barrel, and Force pushed those two droids so far that when they landed, their piece flew in every corner of the hangar.

She clicked open the pilot's bounds. "Hurry!"

Behind her, her master's sabre buzzed, and droids fell.

Until she heard the characteristic sound of a blaster being charged.

"Stop. Turn around. Or you will be destroyed."

Irri put her hands up and turned around to face one tiny droid. She smirked. "As you say." She then Force-jumped above it and landed behind, putting her hand straight into its body, and pulling out the main reactor.

The droid fell to its knees, powerless.

"Don't mess with me, trash."

Then Aayla put her sabre off.

The fight was over.

!-!-!-!-!

Once Master Jinn, Obi-Wan, Jar-Jar and the Queen's suite arrived, the hangar was cleared and her shuttle ready to depart.

Obi-Wan, while sitting in the cockpit with the pilot...and Irri, smiled up at the child. "You are full of surprises, Padawan Nabié."

She chuckled. "Thank you, Padawan Kenobi."

He chuckled back, then turned to the main controls. "Let's get back home."

To that, Irri's blood froze in her veins.

Home.

She had no more home.

Slowly, she stood up, and dismissed Obi-Wan's questions by saying she needed sleep.

She headed right for the quarters she had been assigned with her master, and laid down.

Tears started cascading down her cheeks not soon after.

!-!-!-!-!

When Irri opened her eyes, she realised several things.

First, her master was not in her bed. When Irri had come in, she was repairing something on her light-sabre and had not asked one question.

Second, the door to their quarters was opened.

And third, her master was having a conversation in the corridor with no one else than Master Jinn. About her.

"...seems out of range."

"We were on Naboo to see her family. But once there, her mother rejected her."

"Ah, so she is in pain."

"Yes, she is. But I think she is trying to relocate her pain and anger towards another goal-"

"Saving her home-planet."

"Yes."

"It is hard, sometimes, to believe your padawan is only nine."

"And yet..."

"Yes, I know how hard it can be sometimes. Well... When we land on this Tatooine, I would advise you to try and find a ship as fast as possible to go back to Coruscant before we do. Irri might need Master Yoda's advice."

Irri's blood froze again.

Master Yoda.

He had chastised her so many times about her recklessness and inability to shut down her feelings that she feared what this might lead to.

So she stopped listening, and tried to shut her mind from reality.

!-!-!-!-!

"What's your name?"

"Tani. And yours?"

"Irri."

"Are you a Jedi like my father?"

"Yes, I am."

Irri was standing in the middle of a desert, with a speeder next to her, and a small child before her eyes.

She herself was an adult now, by the way her own body felt like.

The child was red-haired and blue eyed. And she felt like a padawan – strong willed, with a strong link to the Force – although she wasn't one.

"He is not home. He's gone to Mos Eisley to fetch me my birthday gift."

"Is it your birthday? Well, happy birthday then."

"Thank you. Do you want to wait for Dad here?"

Irri shook her head. "No, thank you Tani. Just tell him that I came, okay?"

"Yes. I will."

Irri nodded and turned around to leave.

But the child had one last question to ask.

"Why are you blue and translucent?"

!-!-!-!-!

This vision unsettled Irri. She didn't know what to make of it.

A Jedi had had a child. It was forbidden, and yet apparently possible. The child had seemed familiar, somehow, in a way she didn't understand.

And then herself. She had been an adult in body, but hadn't been there really. She had been..."blue and translucent". An hologram? In the middle of a desert?

She needed to think about that carefully.

!-!-!-!-!

"Hey, Irri! Come back to see if you could learn to pilot, have you?"

The young one rolled her eyes and sat straight on Obi-Wan's knees. "No. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I thought I'd come and bother you."

He chuckled.

The Naboo pilot gaze at them thoughtfully. "Are you brother and sister?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Not at all."

"It is strange, you look like you were."

Irri's eyes settled on Obi-Wan's. Then both erupted in laughs.

"Strange indeed."