Everything Will Be Right
Chapter Four
Once, people used to respect the Jedi just as much as they respected the Rancors. It wasn't unusual to see a person easily despise them; the battle between Jedi and Sith had been the central problem of the galaxy after all, and countless billions had died because of it.
Now there was peace, and the Jedi Order seemingly thrived in it.
Revan had to admit, Tatooine hadn't changed for the better. There was still a Hutt cartel, there were still bounty hunter eager to make a profit, and there were still desperate people needing help to survive.
Kreia would have had one of her usual hissy fits if she had seen him walk around, giving out donations to the beggars with the credit chip that wasn't his.
'The money that flows away the faster is the money you haven't earned' was an apt proverb for the situation at hand. Adding to it, he was amusingly keeping an eye out for the Padawan, who was trying to pursue him, and was unfortunately failing miserably at that.
He was too rash. He acted following impulses and wasn't really thinking; all in all, it reminded Revan of Meetra and Malak.
He always had bad luck when it came to apprentices. Why couldn't he have a calm, considerate, and remotely charismatic individual with a penchant for diplomacy? He always ended up with wild, free spirits.
Frankly, it was starting to get annoying.
He deposited another fifty chips into the hands of a surprised beggar, moved on past the alleyway the needy Twi'lek was in, and then came to a halt a few steps later when a pair of blasters' ends roughly appeared in front of his face.
"Really," Revan said flatly.
"See? I told ya there was a Jedi going around giving money!" one of the two humans said to the other. "We're going to get rich, Benny-Boy!"
The other looked hesitant.
Revan really didn't have the time. He shrugged, and threw the credit chip into the hands of the person on the right. The one on the left met the wall of the alley with a speed easily comparable to hitting a sand speeder going at full throttle.
The one on the right had barely the time to look shocked, before the mysteriously invisible sand speeder hit him in the stomach at the same time, and sent him against the opposite wall.
Both slumped on the ground, Revan sighed and calmly gestured the credit chip back into his hands.
"Ask and you shall receive. Demand and I shall deliver," he shrugged a moment later. "I'm pretty sure if Kreia was still around, she'd say something like 'I told you so'."
He spared a glance back. He shrugged and moved on. The Padawan was catching up; he wasn't fast, but he apparently was relentless.
Obi-Wan Kenobi
Master Revan was impossible. First, the people who had seen him and those who had talked to him both differed on where he had gone. The beggars pointed their fingers in different directions, or made their best show of acting dumb. It was starting to frustrate him, and that was probably the entire point of the trial.
He was a Jedi; he wasn't supposed to feel frustrated.
Even if he did catch up with him, there was still the matter of recovering his credit-chip, and past that, to find a way to make him repent.
Jedi didn't have much personal money, and the credit-chip wasn't Obi-Wan's as much as the order's. The fact he was wistfully spending it away through donations to beggars either appeared as an attempt at charity, or as part of his successful escape attempt.
Knowing the man, it was both.
Obi-Wan trekked past two unconscious men, and hurried out into the middle of a square. He could barely pick out a robe fluttering at the far end of the square, and as he rushed towards it at full speed, he was already preparing in his head the most scathing speech he could deliver —while still remaining within his respectful attitude as a Padawan.
He finally reached for the robed figure, and as his hand landed on the man's shoulder, the figure turned.
Obi-Wan blinked. It wasn't Master Revan.
"Master Giiett?"
"Padawan Kenobi," the portly man acknowledged him. "I am surprised you found me. I was trailing…" he blinked. "Oh, I see. I suppose that this is quite amusing from his point of view."
"I am afraid I do not understand," Obi-Wan said, frowning. "Master Revan is my observer, is there perhaps another Padawan taking the trials?"
"Not at all," Giiett replied. "I was asked to follow…Master Revan," he said with a thoughtful look at the road in front of him, "And ascertain how he would work towards his own goal. Apparently, he gave me the slip…and without using the Force. I think one could come to respect a man such as him; and I'm not speaking because of my personal predilections."
His twin lightsabers hung from his belt as the man looked at the sky. "So, Padawan, what trial awaits you?"
"I have to find him and make him repent using the Force on a man in the harbor," Obi-Wan dutifully replied.
"Oh?" Giiett smiled.
"Master Giiett?"
"Sometimes a trick is just a trick. Trust me, Padawan. You will grow in the Force, but in the meantime don't let your infatuation with its power dull your senses. Are you sure of what you have seen?"
Obi-Wan frowned. "He did wave his hand in front of the man, but if he didn't use the force, what then?"
"I assume that while you were looking at his hand moving, you failed to notice he showed the lightsaber at his belt. The guard could have reasonably assumed from the tone used that he was there on official business, and the transaction had happened already."
Obi-Wan turned thoughtful. "It meant he lied about it," he said in the end.
"Unless he called ahead, and paid the docking fee before even landing. That is quite different from using the force for his personal interests, wouldn't you agree?" Giiett asked.
"If you put it this way, Master," Obi-Wan bristled. That was more obvious than the Jedi simply using the force to wave off a docking fee. "But wait, Master Giiett…you've been following us since then?"
"I followed Master Revan, Padawan. The reasons are the Council's own, but know this: I will not interfere with your trials."
"You know, Master Giiett…Master Revan said something strange before," Obi-Wan said.
"Oh? And what was it?"
"Trials can't be easily failed as long as you act like a decent human being."
Master Giiett looked at him slowly, and then blinked even more slowly. "That is quite the novel way of describing the trials. Maybe back in his time they were that easy, but now—"
The ground quaked.
"Was that an explosion?" Obi-Wan asked.
"It came from that direction," Master Giiett said firmly, breaking into a rush through the crowded streets of Tatooine.
Kenobi followed him; somehow, he didn't doubt that where there were explosions, there also was Master Revan.
Revan
"All it takes is a few centuries and grenades get this strong?" he chuckled as he said that, gently juggling three plasma grenades in the air, much to the worried, and utterly afraid look of the black market vendor. Near them, a blast had torn to shreds a wall, and the fire still raged on.
"Now," Revan remarked kindly, "I think I'd really like it if you told me what I asked you, before my hands start to slip."
The vendor looked shaken.
"J-Jedi don't threaten peo—"
"I'm not threatening you," Revan replied with a smile. "I'm just, let's say, juggling and checking the merchandise? After all, you wouldn't sell faulty plasma grenades to people, right? They're top-notch, you said so yourself. Juggling them wouldn't prime them before, right?"
The man whitened considerably.
"T-The— I don't— I—"
Revan made the show of slipping his grasp on a grenade, much to the man's quite girly shriek, before he caught it with the Force and left it to float in mid-air.
"Ops, well, using the Force for this does appear to be cheating however," Revan remarked. "Next time I'll let it fall."
He grinned. "The force can shield me even from plasma blasts anyway; I don't think it will be much of a problem on the off-chance it—"
"Please! All right, all right! I'll set up a meeting!"
"That's a good man right there," Revan smiled, and stopped juggling the grenades before handing them back. "And know this…I can find you wherever you try to hide," the Jedi grinned. "Make sure the meeting with Dreddon happens…chop, chop, off you go."
The vendor departed with enough speed to put a landspeeder to shame; he even lifted a cloud of dust in his wake.
Revan hummed as he passed through a few more dirty streets, and finally reached the place he had meant to go at first. He always ended up side-tracked when it came to reaching his destination, but finally, Watto's Repair Shop was in front of him.
He stepped inside.
"Welcome," a woman said, her voice coming from behind a pile of rusted droids "Master Watto will be here shortly, if you'd kindly wait for a moment until I—" the woman rounded the corner, and gasped. "D-Did something happen?"
"Uh?" Revan frowned, both eyebrows raised.
"Ah, nothing, I don't know if Watto will make deals with you, you resemble a Jedi, sir," the woman said.
"Oh, I see," Revan acquiesced. "That will not pose a problem. Do call him out; I do have a deal to offer him."
The woman bowed her head softly, and walked out through the back.
As she did, Revan hummed and looked through the droids, his eyes narrow in concentration. He had already seen that familiar crimson chassis…no, really.
What were the odds?
"I swear," he muttered as he gripped the large metal torso of a HK-47 model. "I swear if this is what I think it is."
"You shouldn't touch the merchandise you're not going to buy!" a rough voice came from behind him, and Revan turned while still clutching the chassis in his grip.
"You're Watto?" Revan asked calmly. "I'm interested in this and the rest of the droid's parts, if you have them."
"Uh, I don't make deals with Jedi," Watto said.
"Then it's a good thing I'm not one," Revan replied calmly. "Or I wouldn't be asking you for the parts of this assassination droid."
Watto actually swallowed thickly, as if he had just choked on something. "What."
Revan drummed on the chest piece of the robot. "The other parts, you sold them?"
"Some," Watto acquiesced. "But what is it to you, uh?"
"I want them all," Revan remarked calmly, "all of them. Price isn't a problem. You get me all the parts, you put them together, you turn him on and I pay you whatever price you want, but," here Revan lifted his right hand. "Here's the catch. Right now, I have a few meetings to go to with both Dreddon and Jabba. By the time I'm done with them, I'll be back."
Watto couldn't pale, but made a good enough facial expression to make it clear he understood —if wrongly, because Revan wasn't going to talk with Dreddon and Jabba as a business associate.
But what the alien didn't know wasn't his problem.
It wasn't the first time he dealt with Hutts, and the good old rule of 'I didn't start it' was still a valuable tenant of the Jedi code.
The important thing after all wasn't to start fights.
It was to finish them.
Author's notes
Here we go. Another story updated.
*Keeps on going*