XANATOS: DETACHED
by ardavenport
~ ~ ~ PART 2
Alone in a small training room, unaware that he was being watched, Bruck Chun fiercely swung his green lightsaber blade in a controlled exercise.
Slash. Step. Spin. Step. Step. Jab. Slash up. Reverse Down. Spin. Slash - - -
His blade collided, locking solidly with a blue lightsaber with a jolt that he felt through his elbows all the way up in his shoulders.
Bruck hastily disengaged, shutting off his saber and jumping back, his pale blue eyes staring at the equally pale blue eyes of the Jedi Knight who had suddenly appeared.
"You've got enough power," the Knight said, twirling his saber casually before extinguishing the blade. "And you're fast enough. But your motions are almost mechanical. A routine like that will never teach you anything if you just memorize it."
The Knight clipped his lightsaber to his belt. He was tall, but not much more than a head taller than Bruck, who was large for his age. The Knight's skin was as pale as Bruck's, made more striking by his black hair, loose and untidy around his face with the rest of it tied back behind him. He wore a dusty brown robe over plain, dusty brown tunic and pants as well as the usual Jedi belt and tall boots.
Bruck eyed him warily, not liking the criticism. But this newcomer was a Jedi Knight.
And Bruck Chun was an Initiate in need of a Master.
Bruck bowed his pale head.
"I would be honored if you would instruct me," he said. "Master. . . .?"
"Xanatos. Xanatos Son-of-Crion."
Bruck stared back. He had heard the name. At least the Xanatos part of it.
As was common in the Republic, Bruck's home world, Telos, had gone for many generations without yielding a single Jedi candidate, but within the span of one generation, it had produced two. Bruck was one. Xanatos was the other.
As a youngling, he had been only vaguely aware of there being another Telosian Human Jedi, a Padawan over ten years his age, through the annual missives he received from his father. Though attachments were forbidden to Jedi, familial contacts were not. Only discouraged. Bruck hung on to this connection, the unswerving pride from his parents and the admiration of a little brother who looked so much like him.
The messages he annually exchanged with his distant family were his private strength to him, not an attachment. But the communications had almost ended more than three years ago when the planetary government of Telos had nearly succumbed to a coup. His father had been wrongly accused of complicity and corruption and only Bruck's position with the Jedi had gained sympathy and leniency for his family. Because a Jedi had struck down the would-be dictator.
Xanatos.
"You killed Crion," Bruck blurted out.
"Yes." Xanatos admitted, unconcerned. "And you know what the Jedi Council did for killing my own father?" He learned close, nose-to-nose with Bruck. "They knighted me. The perverts."
Bruck pulled back, suddenly very nervous about the glint he saw in Xanatos's pale blue eyes and not sure if he believed what he was hearing.
Crion, the dictator, was Xanatos's father?
Why wouldn't his own father have said anything about it? Had that been covered up? Or was Xanatos lying? Was he unstable? But why would he be knighted if he were? He looked suspiciously at the man before him, his plain brown Jedi clothes. And the lightsaber attached to his belt.
"I have to be going now." Bruck backed away.
"But you just begged for my instruction?" Xanatos noted, his tone rising, mocking.
Bruck only paused. "I don't have time," he mumbled. But Xanatos danced around him. Fast. Blocking his path.
"But I do," he finished.
Bruck grimaced. He knew when he was being played with. And this was not a game he could win.
"I don't need anything from you," Bruck snarled, pushing past him, speaking far more brusquely to a Knight than he otherwise might have. He just wanted to get away.
Xanatos let him pass. But outside in the hall, anger stirred in Bruck when he heard Xanatos laugh.
- ooOo%oOOo%oOOOOo%oOOo%oOoo -
Over the next few days, Bruck Chun found Xanatos conspicuously visible. In the eating hall, loitering in an entryway, speaking to an instructor, and worst of all, observing the Initiates in saber practice, along with three other Knights known to be ready to choose apprentices. None of the other Knights acted like they might be concerned with Xanatos's manner. He seemed almost normal with them. But when the others weren't looking, those pale eyes would lock on Bruck, almost predatory.
If any Initiate dared challenge him that way, Bruck would have gotten them alone, or maybe with some friends and taunted the upstart until they cried. Aside from the fun of watching them cower, the insult would be quickly repaid, fast and hard. Rivals had to be stomped on early before they became a threat. But what could Bruck do against a Knight?
And with each casual appearance of Son-of-Crion came the realization that he had been watching Bruck for some time. Xanatos had just decided to make his presence known.
In one late afternoon session Bruck fought hard, delivering sure and powerful blows to a smaller but more nimble fellow Initiate in the training circle. His opponent, Cheeztof, dodged and evaded, but Bruck did not allow time for him to recover and counter-attack. He swiftly pounded again and again, spurred on by Xanatos's grins and whispered comments to one of the Knights on the sidelines. Bruck knew he was being talked about. Criticized. Laughed at.
The instructor stopped the fight with no comment about either Bruck or Cheeztofs' performance. They bowed to each other and a new sparring pair stepped forward. Still breathing hard, Bruck sneered at Xanatos. He had clearly won the match.
The next morning, one of the Knights who had been watching their saber training selected Cheeztof to be her apprentice.
- ooOo%oOOo%oOOOOo%oOOo%oOoo -
"Do you know who that is?" Aalto asked over midday meal in the eating hall. Furious to be caught glaring back at Xanatos at a far table, Bruck shook his head.
"Not anybody important."
"He was watching us fight the other day. And I've seen him around, but none of the teachers have said anything about him choosing a Padawan." Aalto peered toward Xanatos, obviously sizing him up as a potential Master.
Bruck shrugged, faking indifference. "Guess he's not." Taking a sudden interest in his meal, he hid his anger and frustration by biting down hard on his food. The conversation moved on to other things, though Bruck knew that Xanatos still watched.
The next day, Aalto was chosen by Master Uridupe to be his apprentice.
- ooOo%oOOo%oOOOOo%oOOo%oOoo -
Three more Initiates were chosen over the following three weeks, all of them younger than Bruck. One of them, a close friend of Kenobi, Garen Muln, was chosen by Master Clee Rhara.
He trained for extra hours, working hard, honing his lightsaber skills, but Bruck remained only an Initiate, watching his clan mates pairing off with Masters, one by one.
The final insult came when he heard that Obi-Wan Kenobi, supposedly rejected and sent to Agri-Corps, had been taken by Qui-Gon Jinn to be his Padawan. Word of the appointment had only been late because they were away from the Temple. Already they were being sent out on missions.
He pounded his fist on a table in outrage when he heard this. The others around him drew back, but he didn't care. Why would Qui-Gon Jinn take a weakling like Kenobi? Oafy-Wan? Was Jinn as mentally defective as his new apprentice after all?
He glimpsed a blue-eyed smirk across the room and he glared back. He was now convinced that Xanatos was warning other Masters away, steering them toward choosing lesser students over him. Xanatos had tried to speak to him a few times but Bruck had never let him get in more than a few words before getting away.
He had finally looked up Son-of-Crion in the Archive and confirmed Xanatos's story. He was the dictator's son, identified as a Jedi candidate and brought to the Temple by none other than Qui-Gon Jinn, who had taken him later as his apprentice.
The motive behind Xanatos's games became clear. It was too much of a coincidence that the old Padawan of Kenobi's new Master was making sport with Bruck's chances of being chosen to be trained as a Jedi Knight.
Bruck seethed when he thought of how Kenobi must be enjoying his revenge from a safe and cowardly distance. But what could he do? As a Jedi Knight, Xanatos was untouchable to him. And his circle of comrades had become shockingly absent. Most of them were chosen now, gone to Padawan training. Aalto, Peevin, Jeeman, he hardly ever saw them now, even at meals; they spent their time with their new Masters. The few allies he had were only the younger hnagers-on, who wanted to stick around with someone bigger than they were, more likely to leech off of his strength than be any use. He could hardly stand to sit at meals with them.
Angry, he had even gone back to the Archive to look for any information that might help him, but the data available to an Initiate contained nothing useful.
Since being knighted, Xanatos had done nothing of any significance. Even worse, other than appearing only for ceremonial occasions for the Jedi Order, Xanatos was assigned to work with the Temple Custodians. The Temple Custodians! A post reserved only for old Masters too crippled and infirm to be of any other use to the Jedi, confirming to Bruck that he likely was unstable. But his lowly position meant that Xanatos had all the time and opportunity he needed to pick on Bruck.
Then a few days later, some news from one of the hangers-on, Xeemi who proved useful with his love of gossip, gave him a weapon with which he could confront Xanatos.
- ooOo%oOOo%oOOOOo%oOOo%oOoo -
"I wonder what they were doing," Xanatos commented of the soggy pair of boots, dripping with yellow goo, smelling strongly of pungent, spicy sap, and stiffly standing upright, stuffed with fat brown rags that looked like the remains of somebody's robe.
"Recycle," Master Craglar grumbled. "The droids don't need to waste their time trying to make those usable again. They'll never get the smell out anyway."
Xanatos sniffed. "It's not such a bad smell. I can think of quite a few Jedi who might be improved by it."
Craglar scrunched up his sagging face, the long white whiskers ruffling up. His minimal lower jaw gave his wrinkly skin plenty of room for fierce expression. "Just as long as you don't show up here smelling like that."
"You're not really in a position to complain about other people's smells, my fine friend. And I prefer more floral scents anyway. They're more masculine than you think," Xanatos countered before looking back at the sadly abused boots. "But I suppose we should destroy the evidence. If the garden custodians above haven't asked what's been going on under their bushes I suppose it's not our place to."
Craglar waved for the droid to take the boots away. Then he leaned close to Xanatos.
"You've got a visitor," he whispered in his gruff voice.
"I know."
Xanatos pasted a smile on his face before turning around to see Bruck Chun glaring suspiciously after the departing droid.
"We think it might have been a plant massacre, but we haven't gotten the analysis back yet," Xanatos announced, leaning back against a work table. Craglar huffed a short laugh and moved away, his large sluggish feet dragging, scraping the floor as he went. Xanatos scowled after him.
"Welcome to my prison of penance," he said cheerily, "otherwise known as Solid Materials Recycling. Everything in this Temple ends up here. Eventually." But Bruck Chun was humorless this morning.
"You can stop following me," Bruck said with determination.
"Really?" Xanatos put his hand to his chest. "I would have called it harassment."
"You don't have to warn all the other Knights away from me anymore."
Son-of-Crion's brows rose, wondering what the boy had been imagining. "Is that what I'm doing? I suppose one can look at it that way."
"Well, you don't have to do it anymore. Because Kenobi's left the Order. So, you don't have to warn all the other Knights away from me for him."
Xanatos's mouth opened, but nothing came out, a rare instance of speechlessness for him. Bruck sneered back, an admirably evil expression for a twelve-year-old.
"Qui-Gon Jinn's come back to the Temple without him. And he might be looking to choose another Padawan. So, you can stay out of my way."
Then Bruck Chun demonstrated a good sense of dramatic timing, turned and left. Xanatos mutely watched him go as his stunned brain tried to absorb what he'd heard. He shook his head.
Kenobi leaving the Jedi. He was a lot smarter than he looked.
~ ~ ~ END PART 2