Fallout
Chapter 5
Yoda sat placidly in his accustomed spot, bars of light and dark falling across his face, his robe, the meditation cushion, the floor between them.
Obi Wan paced. His footfalls traversed the pattern: shadow, luminance. Mystery, revelation. Intuition, reason. Denial, permission. Discipline, compassion. Contemplation, action. Body, spirit. Unity, individuality. The Force, the Force. All of it, the whole, balanced from all eternity. He was aware of Yoda's gimlet gaze following his perturbed wanderings, of the ancient master's expectant silence.
"I don't know, master."
"Hmmph. Know you do." Yoda's ears quirked, and his chin tilted upward imperiously. He now looked at his younger counterpart down the length of his very stunted nose. "Too early in the morning is it to pester me with I know not, master."
Obi Wan stopped and stared, and then hid his dismay behind one hand, brushing the short hairs of his beard into place. "Forgive, me. I…I do have a hypothesis."
The old one waved a clawed hand. "Tell me, you will."
He gathered his thoughts. "The Force is indeed speaking to me. But in a way I am not accustomed to - and so I haven't mastered my own innate mental response. I fail to acheive a calm center, and thus when I contemplate the will of the living Force, I color it with my own memory and imagination. I am simply seeing the truth through a lens of my own desire and ...well, attachments."
Yoda nodded. "Clever you are, Obi Wan. Always a possibility you find."
"I think it's the truth, master. What else could explain it?"
"Truth," Yoda mused. "Hmmmmm." He rested his hands on his worn trousers' knees. "Truth. Too much for Master Yoda is that. Too early do you come, Obi Wan."
He knelt. "Master, what should I do?"
The old Jedi made a horrible face at him. "The Force: it tells you to go to Rhellis Massa. And you ask me what it is you should do?"
"No. I simply mean – how can I trust these perceptions when I may be half-incubating them myself? Where does the Force begin and my own delusions end? Isn't that playing a dangerous game? Clearly I have muddled up some true perception with my own fancies. Oughtn't I to try to purge those first?"
Yoda groaned and slipped off the cushion. "Tea I require. Brood so early, do you always? Not healthy is it." He grumbled and snuffed his way to his inner chamber. Soon enough the clink of ceramic could be heard, and the aroma of dried tea leaves scented the warm air.
Obi Wan waited for him to return. Did he brood too much? He turned the question over in his mind carefully, examining its various implications – and then stopped himself with a wry smile. Ah. Yes.
Yoda shuffled back in, gracefully floating a small tea bowl into his guest's hands without spilling a single drop. The surface of the dark liquid wasn't even ruffled. Specks of dried herb spun lazily in its depths,and steam rose from the amber pool in a leisurely coil. "Hm. Truth, Obi Wan. Drink. Ask not what kind this is, whether tainted it is, whether poison I have put in it, whether a trick this is."
He held the cup, and blinked. "I would never think those things, master! I trust you."
Yoda's eyes widened in triumph. "Then trust also the Force, you should. Ask not so many questions."
It took him a moment to regain his wits. Yoda's eyes gleamed in satisfaction. After a moment, Obi Wan dipped his head in acknowledgment and drank.
The ancient master chuckled throatily. "Meditate on this, I will," he promised. "For now, rest and recover you should."
"Of course, master. Thank you."
Anakin had promised Yoda to stick close to Obi Wan. And the latter had promised Yoda that he would rest. So naturally they decided to indulge in some restorative down-time together.
In the dojo.
Anakin busily unpacked the high-accuracy training droids from their protective cases. "How many?" he asked. "Half a dozen?"
"Against two?" Obi Wan raised his eyebrows. "Those are horrible odds. A dozen at least. Poor things should have a fighting chance."
"Good point." He released every last one of the remotes into the air and fiddled with the control. "Hm. Full power, master. Hopefully you'll get hit. In the backside."
"And why would you wish additional injuries upon me? I was a pathetic cripple not so long ago."
Anakin unclipped his saber and flipped it over in his hand, relishing the heft of it, the perfect weight and shape of the hilt. "'Cause maybe you'll see the wisdom of wearing armor on the battlefield. See? This is gonna be like a major ambush. A little protection could go a long way."
Obi Wan dismissed this with a wave. "Nonsense. That," he decided, unclipping his own weapon, "Is the sophomoric perspective of one who relies on power and aggression rather than accuracy."
"Oh no," the younger Jedi groaned. "Not another lecture on the virtues of Soresu."
"I wouldn't presume to bore you with something so far outside the limited scope of your sophistication," Obi Wan drawled, flicking his blade into life. The brilliant blue saber hummed low and sonorously. He flourished it in a jaunty circle.
Anakin followed suit. The room was filled with a harmonic duo of low tones. The droids at the ceiling began to circle warily, targeting lights locking on. The Jedi moved into a back-to-back stance, weapons held lightly in guard position.
"I'll limit your scope, Master Eye-of-the-Kriffing-Storm."
The first shot rebounded off Anakin's blade. The remotes moved closer, fanned out into an advanced attack pattern.
"I see your vocabulary is as crude as your defensive skills." Two more shots arced toward them; Obi Wan deflected them neatly into a third droid which had been making a stealth approach on Anakin's right.
"Hey! That one was mine!" Anakin's saber blurred as he parried the next dozen shots. He felt Obi Wan moving in effortless synchrony with him. One of the remotes took a direct hit and careened into the wall, dead. The others withdrew, regrouped.
"You wouldn't stand a chance without me covering your back, master."
"Is that a challenge?"
"Take it how you like."
Another concerted assault interrupted their exchange. The droids broke into four groups, zoomed forward, randomly changed direction and speed, and let loose with everything they had. A hailstorm of red bolts closed around the Jedi. Two blue blades swept and howled in a perfectly united dance; hot projectiles slammed into floorboards, walls, ceiling, their originators. A few more remotes clattered to the floor. The sabers thrummed to a cautious standstill.
"I'll take it as an opportunity to prove my point. A Jedi does not require armor to avoid injury. "
"You're on." Anakin abruptly rolled beneath the next onslaught, leaving Obi Wan to single-handedly block a flurry of shots. Somehow he managed it, though, picking up the last three with an over-the-shoulder parry followed by a brilliant sweeping defensive arc that sent another droid spiraling into a wall, deactivated.
Two or three remotes went after Anakin, but he Force-pushed them across the wide room and then called the control device into his hand. A few quick adjustments, and the whole posse was back on Obi Wan. He even reactivated the fallen members of the attack force. Just to be fair. This was supposed to be a battle simulation, after all.
"In the name of -!" Obi Wan snarled, realizing that his treacherous former Padawan had stranded him in the middle of the salon with fifteen separately programmed foes.
"Accuracy, master! Not power and aggression!" Anakin called out merrily.
It was a good show. Anakin wasn't much of a Soresu fan, himself. He was a practitioner of the less defensive, more forward-thinking saber forms. But Obi Wan was a master of his art, and had even developed a personalized variant on the pure form. His style had echoes of Ataru in it – his favored fighting style before old age set in, Anakin supposed – and a flashy edge to the basic moves, a kind of sass-a-brass showmanship.
Twelve of the droids went down in quick succession, all victims of their own blasts. Obi Wan moved fast, minimally, saber angling, shifting, staying close to his body, repelling every attempt to breach his defensive sphere. The last three droids got smart and spread out, firing on him simultaneously in three directions. He jumped over one attack, executing a tight backflip in midair as his opponents blasted each other squarely.
"Cheating!" Anakin yelled, in his role as referee. "That was Ataru!"
"Really." Obi Wan circled, the last droid circled. Anakin shifted his weight, waited for the grand finale. The droid let off a dizzying series of blasts, which Obi Wan batted away, retreating steadily toward a wall, grunting with the effort. The droid advanced, spitting fire in a continuous stream. It whizzed backward, repulsor growling. Obi Wan turned his back on it, smirking – and it fired.
The shot ricocheted off the Jedi's suddenly inverted saber blade, hit the near wall, and bounced straight into Anakin's backside.
Obi Wan spun and slammed the next three bolts directly into the droid, sending it smashing to the floor.
"OW!" Anakin spat out, clutching his scorched posterior with one hand.
"Soresu," Obi Wan told him blithely, with a tiny shrug of the shoulders. He looped his blade in an oh-so-smug flourish and deactivated it, clipping it at his belt with actinic precision.
"Kriff your kriffing uppity Soresu attitude," Anakin snarled, rubbing at his left buttock with one hand and trying not to laugh.
Master Obi Wan was losing the same battle. "And that, Master Skywalker, is why we do not require armor on the battlefield. The Force is a powerful ally, and we need no other."
"Stow it," his friend gritted out between his teeth. "Boshoodah.. I'm gonna have to see the healers, you barve."
"You don't stand a chance without me to cover your backside, Anakin."
"You know what you are, master, right? You're a –"
His rant was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Master Yoda. The diminutive Jedi thumped his way through the open archway and across the polished floor, cane tapping an irregular rhythm against the hard wood. His eyes slid this way and that, taking in the cybernetic carnage, the powered-down remotes littering the dojo's confines.
"Hm," he remarked, coming to a halt before them and peering upward with slatted green-gold eyes. "Master Kenobi. Skywalker. Entertaining yourselves, I see."
"Improving our defensive techniques, master," Obi Wan bowed. "Anakin was pointing out some small deficiencies in my form, which I hope have now been corrected to his satisfaction."
Yoda's gaze plunged straight through Anakin and out the other side. His ears twitched. "Sit," he commanded, both hands curled about the top of his stick.
The tiny smile compressing the corners of Obi Wan's mouth was as provoking as a fiendish grin in anyone else, but Anakin was a Jedi Knight, and the Chosen One to boot. He sat right alongside his former mentor, and he didn't betray a flicker of discomfort, either. "You need to speak with us, master?"
"Meditated on your question, I have. Mission, there is for you," the ancient Jedi rasped.
Anakin glanced sideways. A mission, so soon after the last engagement? Obi Wan was barely healed…. But war waited for no man. "Another campaign?" he inquired.
Nearly on eye level with Yoda, he could see the old teacher's subtly striated eyes clearly. They were lit with a warm radiance. "Not a campaign. No. Master Kenobi. Obey the prompting of the Force, you should. To Rhellis Massa go, and discover what it is that you must do."
Obi Wan's face was grave. Anakin suppresed another shudder. Why did he have such a bad feeling about a place he'd never been?
"Take Skywalker with you, you wil. And squadron of clones."
"I thought I was to trust in the Force, master," Obi Wan objected mildly.
Yoda grunted. "Trust the Force, I do. Trust Dooku - I do not." He tapped his stick against the floor. "Return safely," he commanded. He pinned each of them with his cryptic gaze for another moment and then hobbled away, leaving them kneeling side by side and wondering what lay in store ahead.
And now, dear patient readers, a short intermission while the muse is out of town for a long weekend. The adventure will commence - and the bickering continue unabated - on Tuesday morning, 4/10/12.