YOU WANT TO GO HOME AND RETHINK YOUR LIFE. (Title was too long to fit on the title bar.)
A surface-level walk on Coruscant lost one in a maze of concrete and steel, the glare of garish, blinking advertisements and storefronts, blaring snippets of music, and most of all the constant movement. Beings of all heights and shapes draped in every color, all of them walking. Hurrying to and fro, rushing for the ground transport rails, ambling along gazing into shop windows, stumbling drunk or stoned outside restaurants and bars.
The patter of many forms of feet, voices raised in every Republic language, snatches of laughter and talk faded in and out as Jedi Master Yan Dooku walked, walked, aimlessly along the streets outside the Senatorial district. Delicious aromas assailed him, promising savory meats, sweets, and perfumes from two hundred systems.
All of it blurred, a beating tattoo of sound and light and movement, muted impressions on his mind as he walked.
He had had to get out of the Temple. After the Alderaan debacle, the Council had seen fit to place him on sabbatical and reassign his temporary Padawan to someone else. Dooku highly suspected this had something to do with his visit to Senator Bail Organa's office the day it became clear to him that little was to be done regarding the incident, and the entire issue of trafficking and slavery in the Republic in total. Again. After almost as many years as he had served as master.
Not that he was likely to ever effectively get off sabbatical, anyway. The Jedi Temple had no mandatory retirement ages for field service, but most Humans retired voluntarily around his age. Yoda had been dropping hints for months now, which Dooku pretended to ignore.
Since the Alderaan incident, he had been feeling much older, anyway. Around him he witnessed younger beings, and he saw again all the places in his life he had been at those ages.
He saw himself sparring with friends as a boy, ever mindful of the need to impress someone enough to be chosen as Padawan. He saw himself impatient to sever the braid. He saw himself and Jocasta, painfully parting when he accepted his own first Padawan so many years ago. Always so anxious to please the Order; everything for the Order.
He turned a corner and found himself in a residential area and stopped. Ahead of him, two young boys, a Human and a Duro, ran in circles on the walk and kept jumping up, trying to touch the awning that extended over a door, apparently to a private residence, that had been damaged and replaced with a square of durable, gray opaque plastic cut to fit. The adjacent windows had been replaced with the same; dark singes dyed the steel around both, as if there had been a fire.
The boys appeared to be about twelve; Dooku registered the slenderness of their young bodies and had a sudden, physical memory of that. That energy, that ease of jumping and running, the carefree calling out to one's friends.
When one wasn't minding one's manners in an attempt to impress a potential master, that is. He found himself wondering whether a childhood sacrificed to that was worth it now, or even natural. Although … his own earlier childhood was problematic at best, and the Jedi most certainly saved him from that.
He had been grateful for that most of his life.
Distracted, he felt a rush of energy behind him and two more boys rushed past him, nearly knocking him down. One was a rare Ayrou, and the other, a Human boy in a red jacket, open in the front, which flew behind him as he ran.
Dooku closed his eyes, seeing another boy in a red jacket—on the monitor on Eventide as he watched forty bodies instantaneously freeze in the vacuum of space.
He shook his head, struggling to clear the vision from his mind. Ahead of him, the four boys shouted and ran, taking turns jumping up at the awning. The Duro reached the supporting bar and hung for a moment, curling his body in an attempt to plant his feet and climb up. He didn't make it and fell. The other Human boy, dark haired, in dirty togs suitable for play, couldn't even touch the bar, nor could the Ayrou; but the boy in the red jacket leaped high enough to put his palms on the actual awning. He kept sliding off, his blond hair waving in the breeze.
It didn't take Dooku long to realize he was looking at a boy with Jedi reflexes. Another one we missed, he thought.
"Maybe if you stand on my shoulders!" shouted the Ayrou boy.
"I've got to reach it before Mom gets home!" This from the boy in the red jacket.
Dooku drew a little closer and stepped into the shadows next to the entrance of another residential building. A little further and the boy would make it up there. He had every confidence the child would not get hurt. He wondered what they were trying to reach; some toy, some bit of contraband, no doubt.
The boy in red crouched low, and Dooku took the moment to touch the child's mind. Qui-Gon hadn't been the most confident Padawan at times, and Dooku had found this way of reaching his mind, blowing the fires of the Force just high enough.
The boy in red made a mighty leap; enough to get his hands around the bar that supported the awning and to hang on. The other boys cheered and shouted.
"Joven! Way to go, man!"
"Whoaa, you got it!"
"Hang on, hang on, hang on!"
Joven Veritine clung to the bar as hard as he could, hoping sweaty palms didn't lose it for him. He swung back and forth, the fancy edge of the awning in his face so he couldn't even see.
Some power had simply lifted him there. He wondered if he could ever do it again. For a second it had felt like he was going to lose his stomach, and then he was gripping the bar.
He hung there, and then he tried chinning himself up. He got his face over the awning and looked around and there it was; a canister like the one from last night.
He had to get that off the roof.
He tried working one elbow up over the bar. Once he had that, it was easier to get the other one, and then swing one knee up. He hoped this canopy thing was strong and not rotted or something. He imagined himself falling through it and Mom coming home and finding him splattered on the sidewalk.
Sello, Rahr, and Kir all lost their minds below him.
"Go! Go!"
"Get your knee up there! Get your knee up there!"
"Roll! Roll up there, Joven, roll!"
That sounded like a good idea. He pressed his weight into the knee he had up and the tarp made a little pouch, secure so he didn't roll out. He pulled up his other leg and simply rolled up.
He stuck his head over the side. Rahr's green hair waved like the top of a tree and there was no mistaking his light-purple face; the top of Kir's green head looked like a big light fixture. Sello jumped up and down.
"Is it up there?"
"Yeah, it is!"
"Throw it down!"
"Then you guys better move! I mean really move!"
Joven's knees slipped on the tarp, but he found he could climb up using his palms and the toes of his shoes. He crawled up on the diagonal until he reached the place where the firebomb sat, wedged between the top support of the awning and the building.
He'd better be careful touching this thing. The other one practically burnt down the living room last night. He didn't want it going off in his hand. He reached … reached …
He had it. He turned his face away and eased his fingers around it. When nothing happened, he closed his hand around it.
"OK, I'm coming back down! I'm going to throw it! Move, you guys!" Halfway down the awning, he slid.
He screamed his way down to the low bar, where he caught himself with his heels on the bar just before he slid off the awning and into the sidewalk.
Kir, Rahr, and Sello were all screaming, too. When he looked down, he saw them hopping around, and passers-by trying to walk around them.
"Move!" he yelled. He waited until the walk was relatively clear, and then threw the canister.
It wasn't a dud. It exploded with a flash and a bang that blew in the windows next door. Joven pulled his head back; when the noise stopped, he leaned over and looked, squinting in the dust. Little pebbles rained on his head.
Everyone was okay. Sello, Kir, and Rahr slow-footed back over, staring at the small crater left in the walk. For once, none of them had anything to say.
They looked up. "Joven? You okay?"
Joven turned backwards, gripped the bar, and let his feet down. He dangled from his hands and let himself fall to the walk.
Sello said, "We should have done that someplace else."
"Where?" said Joven, wiping his palms on his pants. "I wasn't going to carry it anywhere. I don't know why it didn't explode last night. If it exploded in my hand or something …"
Rahr's white eyes looked even huger than they usually did. "Yeah. Why are they trying to blow up your apartment, anyway?"
"Because of my dad, I guess. I don't know why they won't just leave us alone." Joven put the heel of his hand over one ear and made pushing motions, pushing the air in and suctioning it back out again. "Are your ears ringing?"
"You guys were too close," said Kir. "You can't stand next to an explosion, you dummy."
Sello put his hand over his ear. "It's just my right one."
A constabulary siren sounded, far off. "Clubhouse!" yelled Kir. "We're going to get arrested!"
The four of them turned and ran. Two blocks over, they pulled up their storm drain and climbed in, letting themselves down to the ledge below, where they sat every day after school, eating snacks, playing games, and passing around any bit of spice any of them had.
Rahr pulled out a pack of nerfsticks, but nobody felt like eating anything. Joven sure didn't. His ears still rang and he felt a little sick in his stomach.
Sello shook him by the shoulder. "Hey. Eructodite. Wake up."
At that cue, everyone leaned close and belched in Joven's ears, except for Rahr, who could not learn how to belch on cue no matter how many lessons everyone else gave him. He leaned over, heaving his stomach in and out and gaping like a fish, and everyone else laughed.
Joven could only manage a watery smile.
"Hey, c',mon, Eructohead. I got some candy."
"Want some candy?"
"Yeah, sure." Joven accepted a piece from Kir and rolled the sweet around in his mouth. His ears weren't ringing so loud now.
"Is that what happened when you guys lived on Naboo?" Rahr said. In here, his eyes actually glowed a little.
"It wasn't this bad," said Joven. He had this weak, shaky feeling in his arms and legs and he wondered if anybody had any spice. "My dad just got threatening notes and these comm messages nobody could trace. So, he transfers and we move here and somebody throws these things in our house."
And with that, tears broke loose without warning, and he wiped them away and hoped the guys wouldn't laugh. "Why won't they leave us alone?"
"We're going to stake out your house," said Kir. "Nobody else can catch 'em, we're going to catch them!"
"Nobody'll see us!" said Sello. "We're superheroes!"
"You guys!" Rahr snorted. "Even the constable droid couldn't do anything."
"If I could stop them, I would stop them," said Joven.
"So, let's do it! Every night, one of us sneaks out, and we watch," said Kir.
"I'm not doing that by myself," said Rahr.
"Rahr, you laserbrain," said Kir.
"No, come on, really," said Joven. "You guys might get hurt. I live there. I can stay up and watch."
"Then we're staying up with you," said Sello.
*All the Midnight stories, and a bit of the merge with Wife of Deceit, have a playlist on YouTube at playlist?list=PLyXt6P7d1IjUO-m8nsVSPZivqdDfn6S9_