Private Crazy Rich Jedi

[Xian Xiao]

Xian blinked at Noriko, the comment about shirtless muscular men catching her sufficiently off guard that she decided there were some things about her master's life she simply did not need explained. The wagging finger only made it worse. She stared at it for a moment before looking up at Noriko with the long-suffering patience of a thirteen-year-old who was rapidly discovering that Jedi training involved considerably stranger things than she had ever imagined.

"Yes, Master," she answered meekly, making absolutely no attempt to defend herself against the accusation of being a very bad Xian. She reached for another balloon and carefully turned herself back toward the edge. "I'll throw it the right way this time."

She settled the balloon into her hand, took a moment to feel the currents moving around the palace, and then twisted into the throw Noriko had shown her. The balloon sailed outward, and Xian reached after it with the Force, guiding the air around it to keep its arc steady as it traveled farther from them. Her concentration narrowed until everything else faded into the background and only the balloon, the wind, and the distant targets below remained.

"I don't know if we need to announce it to the worlds, though," she murmured without breaking her concentration. A tiny smile appeared as she nudged the balloon slightly to one side. "Maybe we can start with the palace and see how they take the news first."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"We could or we could pay some credits for broadcast time on the holonet and announce it. Get the information out to trillions across the galaxies. Imagine tens of thousands of worlds, billions to trillions of people seeing your face, knowing your name and in one voice, one breath saying "Xian is adorable... and you then say... Like, comment and subscribe to my monthly events for three hundred credits a month." Noriko said it as she looked at her. "I am trying to make sure you have the means to do what it is that you want and we will be able to afford all of the exotic training or ships.... and outfits and food. We can do a lot of food content just imagine binge eating with jedi metabolism... we will never gain weight and you are a growing girl."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian stared at Noriko for several seconds, trying to determine exactly when their training exercise had transformed into a plan to turn her into some kind of HoloNet personality. Three hundred credits a month sounded like an impressive amount until she imagined herself having to regularly entertain billions of strangers to earn it. Somehow, being hit by moving walls and dropped into three miles of water had suddenly become the less frightening part of today's training.

"I don't think I want trillions of people knowing who I am, Master," she said mildly, reaching for another balloon. The thought alone made her uncomfortable. Xian had spent most of her life learning how to disappear into crowds when she wanted to, and Noriko apparently wanted to undo all of that with a single broadcast. She wasn't going to argue, though. She had promised herself she would try harder to listen instead of immediately objecting to everything Noriko suggested, even when those suggestions involved announcing her adorableness to the galaxy.

The food part, unfortunately, weakened her resolve. Xian paused with the balloon held between both hands and glanced toward Noriko. "Although..." She hesitated, clearly reconsidering at least one portion of the proposal. "How much food are we talking about?" If there was one thing years of growing up without enough had left behind, it was an appreciation for the promise of a meal she didn't have to worry about finding. "Because I might be willing to consider some food content. I'm not saying yes to the outfits."

She turned back toward the edge and prepared another throw, concentrating on the wind while deliberately refusing to imagine her face being broadcast across thousands of worlds. "And I'm definitely not telling people to like, comment, and subscribe." Xian launched the balloon and extended her hand after it, carefully guiding its flight as it sailed away from the palace. A tiny smile finally betrayed her. "Unless three hundred credits gets me really good food. Then I might say it once."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

Got her. Noriko was looking at her and gave a nod of her head. "Well think of it like this if at three hundred a month you have a trillions, lets be conservative and low ball it there that is three hundred trillion, minus what is taken out for taxes and the station. Even then you'd have about one hundred and fifty trillion a month.... that is more then enough food for a lifetime and you would be making this monthly for years. Eventually padawan you could end up with so many credits you don't know what to do with all of it."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian's concentration on the next balloon disappeared somewhere around the words three hundred trillion. She slowly lowered it and turned her head toward Noriko, her brow furrowing as she attempted to retrace the mathematics that had somehow transformed throwing water balloons from the palace into possessing enough credits to buy practically anything she could imagine.

"Where did the trillion people come from?"

She looked genuinely confused rather than argumentative, trying to remember whether she had missed an important part of Noriko's plan.

"You said trillions of people might see it. You didn't say a trillion of them were going to give me three hundred credits every month."

Xian glanced down at the balloon in her hands and then back at her master.

"Wouldn't most of them just watch me throw a water balloon and then go do something else?"

A moment passed before she added cautiously, "And if a trillion people actually wanted to give me credits every month, I think I'd be more worried about what they wanted from me than what food I could buy."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"That was a low ball guess, even at the lowest sales our families monthly food boxes we ship across the galaxies are 400 credits a month and we have three hundred tillions subscriptions that renew monthly. I was giving you a best guess purely because you are doing something they can see the curated boxes of snacks, food and a shirt. Something that costs us ten orr so credits to put together and sell at four hundred. With all of the rest being pure profit." Noriko said it while she was going. "And that is just going with the renewals... new customers are welcomed and there arre lifetime subscribers who are always looking for extra packages. So even with something repetitive like throwing a single water balloon with the right marketing and merchandising you can sell anything to anyone."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian stared at Noriko as the numbers somehow became even more absurd. Three hundred trillion subscriptions. Four hundred credits each. Her mind attempted the arithmetic for several seconds before deciding there were simply too many zeroes involved for her to care anymore. She had grown up stealing food because sometimes there hadn't been enough to go around, and now Noriko was casually describing a family business that apparently moved enough snack boxes every month to feed entire sectors.

"Our family sells three hundred trillion food boxes every month?" she asked, her disbelief finally winning out over her determination not to question everything Noriko told her. She looked down at the water balloon in her hands, then back at her master. "How do you even make three hundred trillion shirts? Where do you put them all?" The logistics bothered her almost more than the money did.

She shook her head and returned her attention to the edge of the palace, deciding this was probably another one of those subjects where asking questions would only result in discovering that the Atrisian Commonwealth secretly owned twelve planets dedicated entirely to making shirts. "Alright, Master. I believe you." Xian drew her arm back, preparing to throw. "But I'm still not charging people three hundred credits a month to watch me throw water balloons."

She paused just before releasing it, glancing sideways at Noriko with a small smile. "Maybe ten credits." Then she launched the balloon out over the edge and reached after it with the Force, guiding the air around it as it began its long journey toward some unfortunate cousin below.

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"We fabricate them, the frontline of molecular conversion and fabrication it useful. We don't need a warehouse of it we just need the raw ambient matter and energy to be produced and we are able to use that. it keeps our cost low, profits high and the specifications means that each one is of the same quality. THis builds trust and ensures that it is known what we are doing." She said it with a shrug while she was moving. "And you don't have to. You could charge as much as you want or don't want.. I only recommend it because sometimes it is fun to monotize your life and see a nest egg for yourself."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian listened to the explanation of molecular conversion and fabrication with an expression that suggested Noriko might as well have started speaking another language. She understood the important part. They didn't actually have warehouses somewhere containing three hundred trillion shirts, which answered at least one of her questions. The rest sounded suspiciously like the sort of technology she was perfectly happy to let other people understand.

"I think I'll leave the fabricating and converting ambient matter into shirts to you," she decided, reaching for another balloon. That seemed considerably safer. She could manipulate air, throw fire around, fly, and was slowly learning how to convince the other elements to cooperate with her. Somehow all of that made more sense than the economics Noriko was describing. "Besides, I don't think I need that many credits. What would I even do with them?"

She paused at the mention of a nest egg, though, turning the balloon slowly between her hands. That part she understood considerably better. Having enough credits that she never had to worry about where her next meal came from or whether she could afford somewhere to sleep was appealing in a way Xian suspected Noriko might not entirely understand. Growing up on Coruscant had taught her how quickly having nothing could become dangerous. "A nest egg doesn't sound bad," she conceded. "Enough that I don't have to worry about things someday. Maybe my own ship." Her expression brightened slightly at that thought. "A really good ship."

Xian stepped toward the edge and drew her arm back, preparing another throw. "But I think I'd rather earn it doing something besides letting strangers watch everything I do." She launched the balloon outward, immediately reaching into the surrounding air to guide its flight. "They can pay ten credits to watch the water balloons. My entire life costs extra."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"Okay." NOriko looked at her and she pulled one of the balloons with the force as she held it in the air and positioned herself with the energies wrapped aaround it for a moment as it was suspended between her hands... and then she was launching it up in the air without her hand shaping it so it went strighter and without a turn but she lifted it a second time with the force to get distance as it bounced in the air and hopped higher and higher. SHe was focusing on the force and then looked at Xian. "You keep doing that, talking so divorced from any otherr thing. We have ships, you have family, you have the means to lean and grow however you want which is more then many in the galaxies will get. It is okay to actually have progress in your life. IOf all you do it struggle then you don't know when a struggle is real."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian's hand stopped halfway toward the next balloon.

For several seconds, she simply stood there, watching Noriko send hers farther into the open air. The lesson suddenly seemed much less important. Something hot had begun building in her chest, and for once it had nothing to do with the element that came so naturally to her. She knew Noriko was telling her that things were different now. There were ships here. Food. A family she was apparently supposed to think of as her own. Opportunities she had never possessed before coming to Atrisia. Xian understood all of that, or at least she was trying to.

What she couldn't understand was how any of it meant she didn't know when a struggle was real.

Her fingers curled slowly around the balloon she had already picked up. She remembered being hungry. She remembered learning which vendors would look the other way and which ones would chase her. She remembered worrying about younger children when there wasn't enough to go around. She remembered the sky over Coruscant changing when the Alliance fell and running because everyone else was running, frightened and powerless to do anything else. Then a Jedi had taken her away from everything she'd ever known, and since then, it seemed as though every time she started believing something might finally be permanent, it disappeared.

Noriko couldn't know all of that. Not really.

"I know what real struggle feels like."

The words came out before Xian could stop them. They weren't loud, but there was an unfamiliar sharpness beneath them. She looked down almost immediately, anger colliding with the ingrained instinct that told her she shouldn't speak to her Master that way.

"I know things are different here," she continued, quieter now. "I know you've given me things I didn't have before, and I'm grateful. I am." Her grip on the balloon loosened slightly. "But I've only been here a little while. I don't know how I'm supposed to suddenly act like everything before this doesn't matter just because I have food and ships and..." She faltered, struggling to put something much larger than herself into words. "Family now."

Xian finally looked at Noriko again, hurt showing more clearly than anger.

"I don't know how to trust that it's all going to stay."

She swallowed, then turned her attention back toward the balloon in her hands rather than saying anything else. For once, she didn't throw it.

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"Oh I know." SHe said it and looked at her for a moment. "And I know what it is like to be trapped for years in a hutt cartel, made to work in their spice dens and dance for them under threat of death padawan. I know what it is like to enjoy the sweet release of taking enough spice that you lose entire months of your life to oblivion. The struggle is no less for one then the other but it is always something that everyone works to rise above." She said it with a look for herself though when she held it and remained there. "Yes, my struggle is not your but just because I wasn't on the street padawan doesn't mean I don't know what it is like to deal with horrible things."

 

[Xian Xiao]

The anger went out of Xian almost as quickly as it had appeared.

She hadn't known. There was no way she could have known, and hearing Noriko speak about it so plainly left Xian staring at her Master with the water balloon forgotten between her hands. Hutts were hardly unfamiliar to someone who had grown up on Coruscant. Neither were spice dens or the sorts of stories whispered about what happened to people unfortunate enough to belong to a cartel. Xian understood enough at thirteen that Noriko had just told her something terrible, even if she didn't understand every part of what those years must have been like.

"I'm sorry."

Her voice had lost all of its earlier sharpness. Xian lowered her eyes, suddenly feeling guilty for assuming Noriko couldn't understand simply because her life now looked so different from Xian's. Maybe that was part of what Noriko had been trying to tell her. What someone had now didn't necessarily say anything about what it had taken for them to get there.

"I didn't mean that you haven't had horrible things happen to you," she said quietly. "I just..." Xian struggled for the right words before giving up on finding anything particularly clever. "I thought you were saying that because I have all of this now, what happened before wasn't a real struggle anymore."

The balloon was carefully set aside. Xian hesitated afterward, looking at Noriko with an uncertainty that had nothing to do with the Force or their lesson. She wasn't sure whether Masters and Padawans were supposed to hug each other. There seemed to be rules for nearly everything else about being a Jedi, but nobody had ever explained that one.

Noriko also wasn't exactly like anyone else she'd ever met.

Xian stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her.

It was a little awkward and tentative at first, as though she wasn't entirely certain Noriko would let her stay there, but the thirteen-year-old held on anyway. "You shouldn't have had to go through that either," she murmured. After a moment, she added more softly, "And... I guess maybe we're both still trying to rise above things."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"NO I would never say you shouldn't think about it orr acknowledge it. What you have gone through is what made you... but right now, here to only dwell on the past is to keep giving it power. It isn't going to erase it but being able to live despite what is happening to you, despite what has happened." She said it while she was there and moved with a water balloon for a moment as she launched it up and focused on it with the force to twist it uinto a small loop and adjusting its course of flight.

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian remained quiet as Noriko explained, some of the tension gradually leaving her shoulders. She still didn't entirely know what to do with everything her Master had just told her. The Noriko she'd come to know on Atrisia didn't fit easily beside years spent trapped by a Hutt cartel, but perhaps that was part of the point. Looking at Noriko now couldn't tell Xian everything that had happened before they met, any more than someone looking at Xian would know what her life on Coruscant had been like. "I'm sorry that happened to you," she said softly. "And I'm sorry I thought you wouldn't understand. I didn't know."

Her attention dropped to the balloon in her hands as she considered what Noriko actually meant. Xian didn't think she deliberately dwelled on the past, but it had shaped habits she barely noticed anymore. Saving what she could, expecting things to disappear, wondering whether somewhere new would really remain home, and having trouble believing people would stay were simply normal to her. "I don't think I'm trying to dwell on it. Sometimes I don't even know I'm doing it until somebody points it out." She turned the balloon slowly between her palms. "I'm used to thinking about what happens if something goes away because things usually did. So when you tell me I have all of this now, part of me still thinks I shouldn't depend on it too much."

Xian watched the loop Noriko made with her balloon before stepping closer to the edge with her own. "Maybe I just need time to learn that having something good doesn't mean I have to wait for it to disappear." She wasn't certain she believed that yet, but she wanted to. "I can try, Master." With that, she launched the balloon outward and reached for the air surrounding it, attempting to imitate Noriko's loop by guiding the currents around the water rather than trying to control the water itself.

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"Padawan, things are always going to go wrong. You can try and plan around it and try to stop it but it is going to go wrong the trick is to have the next thing that you can do. The best leaders are able to do a dozen plans not because they are super smart but because they expect to fail and try to plan for that failure and how to move from there... though some of them are really smart or say they are." She said it with a look and put a hand on her shoulder. "But that is enough dwelling, come we are having fun and people are hearing now how you are throwing water balloons on their heads... it is perfect."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian glanced at the hand on her shoulder and gave a small nod. She understood what Noriko meant, even if planning for a dozen different ways something could go wrong sounded exhausting. Still, there was something reassuring about the idea that failure didn't necessarily mean the end of anything. Sometimes it simply meant changing what she did next. "So expect things to go wrong, but don't assume everything is over when they do." Her expression turned thoughtful for a moment. "I think I can do that."

The announcement that people were now hearing about her throwing water balloons on their heads earned Noriko a look. Xian's earlier seriousness gave way to mild indignation as she pointed toward the balloon her Master had just sent looping through the air. "You're throwing them on people's heads too, Master," she reminded her. "Why are they only hearing about me?"

She reached for another balloon anyway, apparently willing to accept that Noriko intended to make her infamous whether she cooperated or not. Air curled around the balloon as Xian sent it over the edge, trying again to give its flight the same controlled turn she'd seen Noriko perform. "If somebody comes up here angry and soaking wet, I'm telling them this was your idea."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

"Because I am a figment of your imagination and the reflection of your inner childs conscious here to be your guide but everytime you stop to talk you are just talking to the air." She said it and removed her hand with a grin while walking away with a nod of her head before she checked on a few things. "This is only a dream. You've been sleeping all day and night and into the next day because you were super tired." She skipped around and tossed one of the balloons with a laugh to herself. "Also because I am very good at being the same size as my padawan it lets us body double and they think I am you."

 

[Xian Xiao]

Xian stared after Noriko for several seconds, trying to decide which part of that explanation she was supposed to take seriously. The possibility that she'd somehow slept through an entire day earned a brief flicker of concern, but it disappeared almost immediately when Noriko started skipping around and throwing balloons again. If this was a dream, it was apparently an unusually detailed one devoted to being confused by her Master.

"But we don't even look alike..." Xian pointed out, glancing down at herself before looking toward Noriko again. Being roughly the same size seemed like a particularly poor disguise when everything else about them was different. "How would anyone think you're me just because we're the same height?"

Then the rest of what Noriko had said caught up with her, and Xian narrowed her eyes slightly. "And if you're a figment of my imagination, why is my imagination this confusing?" She reached for another balloon and held it up as though that somehow proved her point. "I think I'd make you explain things better."

A small smile finally betrayed her as she followed after Noriko. "Also, if this really is my dream, then I can't get in trouble for throwing these at people." Xian paused, considering that particular advantage before nodding to herself. "I like that part."

Noriko Ike

 

[Noriko Ike]

Xian Xiao

We look alike because Noriko we are petite, cute and atrisian it is a thing in the galaxy. We do not fight it and everyone else in the galaxy thinks we all look the same. Since most have black hair and either tanned or pale skin also helps." She said it while looking at her but she had a moment longer before finishing. "Besides Xian, think about it. There is a tactical aadvantage to looking similar to your master aside from the benefit that I am awesome and pretty and cool and there fore by looking like me you get to bask in the praise that I normally get for yourself. That is like a win, win, win, win but more then that if someone tries to come after you. I am right there to send em to the moon Xian."