Private All By Myself

[Raphael Gallustrade]

The middle of space. Raphael floated in his ship in the middle of nowhere space. Coruscant wasn't too far away, but he couldn't bring himself to return; something was bothering him. A nagging feeling that was pulling him in the direction that he'd originally run into the Brotherhood of the Maw when he travelled the last time. But there were things bothering him and, for some reason, he just couldn't bring himself to punch the hyperspace button. What, exactly, was it? It was like...something fundamental had changed.

Something fundamental, to himself and the person that he was, had changed: NOI his little alter ego that he'd had, had died on Denon. He was still processing that. In a small way, he knew that he couldn't continue to be that kind of thing forever, knew that at some point he'd have to set it aside. But this just felt far too soon. Perhaps he wasn't fully ready to give up that part of himself? Largely there was the sensation of if he didn't have that, if he wasn't that man anymore, then who was he? Would he have to change who he was?

The short answer was yes, he did need to change, but the longer part of that answer was far more complex. He needed to change, but he didn't know how to go about it. He'd thrown his lot in with the Galactic Alliance, that much was already clear. But what now?

Slowly he ran a hand through his hair, for some reason not wanting to go through his options. So many times in his life he'd gone through his options when confronted with difficult choices, but those choices were always life or death choices... They weren't...what this was. This was something worse, something he'd never dealt with before. This was an existential crisis and a sudden questioning of who he was. He'd never before questioned who he was or what he was doing or what he was going to do, but the last so many weeks had thrown his entire life into question. It all started... with that kriffing battle for Sedri. He was happy to join in, had been more than happy to keep the people from suffering a fate of a life of slavery...

Then there was his little run in with the Brotherhood of the Maw, interrogation chamber, sure. Torture chamber, was more accurate. But even now, he couldn't blame the man, entirely, for his actions. From what he'd learned there was a war with the Maw and Raphael being a spy for the Galactic Alliance, despite how idiotic he still found it, is something that could have been possible. Unfortunately, that thing had been smart enough to order his men to delete Raphael's blackbox, so that information had been lost. How wonderful that would've been to give to Alliance command...

Then there was the Denon incident so recently... He sighed. That'd been a mess... He checked his shirt, the two blasters were still connected to the new holsters on his shirt and sighed in relief. His pistols were probably a lot stronger than he needed them to be, realistically, but he preferred them being the level that they were but...

His head snapped off in a random direction of space.

"...what in the world? That... That's the same call..." He frowned, thinking. Unlike many he didn't have anyone that he could really reach out to, at least, no one that he didn't feel like he'd be bothering if he did... Jedi Master Valery Noble ... He could try to reach out to her. He shook his head. "No. She's got recovery and her other things to deal with. I've gotta do this on my own..." He closed his eyes, concentrating and just immersing himself in the Force. This was the only thing that he was used to... Thankfully, he wasn't beholden to the Galactic Alliance or even the New Jedi Order, and so, as he blasted into hyperspace, he didn't think about reaching out to anyone. Everyone else had their own problems, and now he had his own.

 

[Raphael Gallustrade]

He was still going through hyperspace, the light of this alternate space passing by his cockpit rapidly. How...long had it been? Several hours, probably. He'd been using the Force to concentrate on where he was going, but... it was...much farther than he'd thought and... he'd never concentrated this long before... It was starting to hurt... A few more minutes and Raphael suddenly pulled the lever dropping suddenly out of hyperspace, in the middle of nowhere space. Far out in the middle of nowhere... He took a deep breath before suddenly he lost consciousness.

Slowly he awoke, ship completely powered down and just drifting. "...this is just a perfect representation of my life right now. Lost...in the middle of nowhere and temporarily out of power..." He sighed and thunked his head against his powered down ship. "...sorry...I didn't mean to push you so hard..." There was a second of waiting and suddenly the ship seemed to spark and jump back to life. "Nah. You don't need to worry about it, right now. We're not going anywhere." The ship sparked once more and then shut off for a second time.

"I'm sorry... I've been selfish about so many things, haven't I? I haven't been fair to jedi or the Galactic Alliance... I've been pretty horrible." He chuckled. "...Jedi Master Valery Noble, the nautolan jedi, the big jedi and even the woman from Sedri..." He sighed and then took a deep breath, refocusing. "Alright... Here we go again... This..." He looked down at the ship as it started to turn back on. Red lights and alerts were flashing everywhere. "...hyperdrive alert... One more time... Please, hang on..."

Once more he focused, and activated the hyperdrive, the entire ship lurched, shuddered and kicked into hyperspace once more. Still utilizing the force he moved through hyperspace and around mass shadows, avoiding danger as he travelled the last little bit of time to this planet. He looked down at the diagnostics on his ship as it continued to blink, to flash... The front of the ship sparked. "C'mon baby... Hang on just a little bit longer!! We're... We're almost there!!"

Finally he felt that he was in the right place and immediately pull the ship out of hyperspace. There it was... whatever it was that was calling to him. A beautiful blue orb, though there was very little landmass, from the way it looked. He looked around and directed his ship towards a specific part of the landmass, extremely mountainous... But in mid reentry his ship suddenly started to shake more. One of the wing thrusters suddenly ripped free and the whole ship went into a spinning free fall and Raphael gripped the controls harder, pulling back with one while control lever, and pushing the other forwards.

Managing to get a handle on the ship for just a few minutes, Raphael tried pulling the ship out of its nosedive and scrape it along the ground, stopping in front of an enormous rock. The cockpit opened and Raphael pushed himself out of the ship and took a look around, then quickly hopped out of his ship. The Solar Lance, his pride and joy...was now resting against a rock, it's undercarriage completely torn out, all the landing gear destroyed, one of the wing thrusters torn free and probably burned up in the atmosphere... Then there was a loud pop, a slight sparking and bang and then the hyperdrive exploded, the ship catching fire.

"...you've... You've got to be kidding me... Now...I'm stranded here..." He turned around to the enormous mountains and caves. "Great. Now what do I do?"

 

[Raphael Gallustrade]

Raphael stoked a fire, a very small one, with what little kindling that he'd managed to find across the landscape. There was something wrong with this world. Not that it was necessarily evil, it wasn't like passing through the Maw's territory, no. In this case it was that the planet was simply dead, little to nothing was growing where it should've. What little kindling he'd managed to find... was from a few plants that had tried growing and then had died. Everything was dry. It was like it hadn't rained in forever. He sighed, pulling his knees up to keep warm, as a cold wind blew across the mountain. "...man this probably wasn't a good idea... Random planet, edge of the Unknown Regions of the galaxy and...I crash land."

He leaned back and stared at the wreck of his ship. It had stopped burning a while ago, but that meant that parts of the hyperdrive were melted. At least he'd been able to get his survival rations out of the cargo hold. Still... that was only about a month's worth. What to do now? He couldn't lift his ship out of the hole it had landed in and even if he could, there was nothing to use to machine parts. "Great... Never thought I'd die this way..." He looked up at the sky. "Hmm... I hope that Valery takes care of herself. She seems the type to kinda let that fall by the wayside... Then there's that other jedi from Sedri and Denon, she who sees colors... I hope that she--" He stopped and turned.

A man, or perhaps, a thing stood not too far from him, pale of skin and eyes of sapphire blue with a black cloak draped around him. The man was simply staring at him, eyes wide as if in shock. Then, slowly, a hand raised, palm outstretched in greeting. Raphael, mouth twitching into a facsimile of a smile. Then it lowered the hand and Raphael nodded, before turning back to the fire. He looked back over and the man was gone, then as he looked up, there he was, right beside Raphael. "Whoa! Hey, don't scare people like that. How'd...you get from over there to right beside me?"

The being stared at him, as though it didn't understand what he was saying. "...do...you live on this planet? And, if you do, is there a different place with plants and animals?" Again the stare. "Or...maybe you just cannot understand me..." He sighed, head dropping and eyes returning to the fire, but a smile persisted on his face. Even just having someone else around was kind of nice. The person, or whatever he was, walked around Raphael and sat down across the fire, staring at Raph. "So...have you lived here long?" The man's head bobbed up and down. Understanding! Raphael's eyes lit up a bit. "O-Oh! Great! So...can you tell me what happened to this planet? It..." He paused a moment and looked around. "It...almost feels dead."

The man grabbed some dirt from nearby and threw it onto the fire. There was a pop, a crack and then the fire erupted with visions of a bird-like people. The vision started with groups of them gathering and then building, then meditating. Some could move stones and see the future. Some became angry and attacked. The two sides fought. The two sides died. Then the fire died and was silent again... Silent like the world. "...these...creatures could use the Force couldn't they?" It nodded. "Right... and they used it to kill each other." Again a nod. "How long ago?" Whatever was in front of him, for he was quite certain that it wasn't a man by this point, held one hand out and moved it from one hand to the other. "Super long, I take it?" It nodded again, head drooping and mimicking his balled up form. "...did you call me here?" It nodded. "Ok...why, though?" Still staring into the fire, a hand rose and pointed at a cave. Raphael followed the point and then looked to the man for a few minutes before rising.

As he did so, however, the whatever grabbed his hand and gestured to his weapons, before shaking his head. Looking at his guns, Raphael nodded in understanding, and unclipped the holsters, setting both his blaster pistol and mag pistol down before heading to the cave and going inside. The cave, however, felt incredibly rich in the energies of the Force, unlike the land outside; the juxtaposition between outside and inside... It was almost like the planet was slowly bleeding to death...

His ears pricked a bit, as he looked ahead into the cave. The riv-- the Force seemed to be rushing in... It was like a stream moving inwards. He slowly, and very gingerly, bent down and slightly brushed his hand across the stream. "Come." He pulled back a bit, eyes wide. He'd never heard a voice by doing that before... He tried it again, much less cautious and delved his hand fully into the feeling. "Come. Find me. Follow your instincts. Follow..." Raphael stepped fully into the stream that flowed deep into the cave. It didn't even coax him, at this point, it was practically dragging him along, like someone had taken him by the hand and was pulling him. The voice came again. "You hold back. You do not be yourself. You deny parts of who you are because you're afraid of where it might take you, Raphael. Stop being afraid. Let go of that fear, and your paranoia."

He walked quickly, stumbling over stones, tripping now and then, but that same feeling persisted, he was being dragged along. Each time he tripped, he force himself back up. "What are you afraid of? You've limitless possibilities in front of you, and yet you refuse to acknowledge any of them." Raphael stumbled around a corner, and saw the end of the stream. Where the movement of the Force seemed to end there was... a small crystal? He looked at it confused. "Uhm... its a crystal? It looks...fairly stuck in there..." Slowly he placed his hand on it, and tried to gently pry it out, but found that it simply popped out. It wasn't much bigger than his finger. "What is...?"

"Can you hear me now?" A voice came from behind him and as he turned, he saw the man that had appeared to him outside of the cave. "I can see that you found one." Raphael stared at the creature in shock. "Yes. I can speak. But you refused to open yourself to my voice. What changed? Was it finding your crystal?"

Raphael sputtered and took a step back. "My cry-!"

"Yes. Your crystal. Surely you knew why you were coming in here, did you not?"

"Uh, no. I felt something so--!" The entity approached and stood near him. "Uhm..."

"Stop denying what you feel, just by holding it. Take into mind what your options are. Understand who you are and stop denying yourself." Then with a touch to his forehead Raphael found himself dropping to the ground. He awoke back outside of the cave, in front of a roaring fire and slowly he pushed himself up to a sitting position.

"Man that was a crazy dr--" He looked down at his hand and opened it, with a milky white crystal in his palm. "...not a dream..." Still the crystal felt warm in his hand and he smiled at holding it. "...but...not altogether unwanted."