Forest Fires

[Acaadi]

[member="Kyra Perl"]

Despite living on the planet for months the Wroshyr Trees of Kashyyyk would never stop being impressive. Those that the wookie village of Graarnuulaagha - a name Acaadi had made no attempt to pronounce - were nearly a kilometer tall.

He stood on a wooden walkway between branches, daring himself to look down. Even in broad daylight the world was shrouded in darkness far below them. It was said that the predators that lived in those depths could terrify even a mighty wookie.

"So how long have you been at the academy?" he asked Kyra, the other padawan who had come on this trip. They were supposed to be soaking up the local culture and observing how strong the family bonds of the wookie people were. Acaadi hadn't said much at all to Kyra yet. This was mostly because he was a skightly awkward teenager and he had never met an actual zeltrons before. Their reputation was perhaps more intimidating to him than the wookie warriors themselves.

Meanwhile a single freighter with valid credentials dipped into the atmosphere. All seemed calm on the outside of the vehicle. Inside, a cadre of trandoshan extremists were preparing to mount the most bold slaving operation in years.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra let out a heavy sigh, bent over the coarse rope railing to watch a wookie child and its.... mother? Father? ...Parent play with some contraption beneath them. "Hmmm?" She hummed, her partner finally getting over his trepidation to speak to her. She usually would have tried to pull him out of his shell far earlier in an encounter, but today she was feeling the blues. Compliments of homesickness, a damn disease she had yet to overcome.

"The academy? Three years," she lied, a touch bitter at that. She had become a padawan as soon as her mother had allowed her too. But following in her siblings' footsteps hadn't turned out to be all it had been cracked up to be. She had been in and out of academy’s for years, trying to stick it through before growing incredibly homesick and calling it quits. But this time was different. This time she wasn’t gonna go soft.

She kicked a leaf off the plank and watched it float down to the family below.

"You done being scared of me yet?" She peeled her face up, her hair parting to reveal a subdued smirk.

 

[Acaadi]

"Well I wasn't exactly scared I just..."

Having started the sentence Acaadi found that he had no idea how to complete it. The true reason was of course that he was seventeen and she was a half-zeltrons which made him feel seven kinds of awkward. He had been a very calm and collected youth but over the last year he had been stumbling over his own words and his own feet - which had decided to move much further away from him recently.

His parents, being constantly and sickeningly supportive had given him far too much advice about the teenage years and told him that it would be just a phase. When you thought about it everything was 'just a phase' really.

"My parents kept me at home longer for school and had a visiting master start to teach me. Though I suspect they did that to make sure I wasn't a danger to anyone. You had any kind of epiphany about what we're supposed to learn here? I figure if we go back without something to say Master Jil'to is gonna give us the dissapointed face."

Everyone knew her disappointed face. It was when her wrinkled visage crumbled in on itself until you could no longer see her eyes.

 

[Kyra Perl]

The unfinished sentence made her smile further, a good natured twinkle hitting her eyes. “Uhuh,” she teased, letting it go once he changed topic.

“Actually, sorta.” She responded, looking back down to the family below. She had been observing them for near fifteen minutes, and while a good portion of that had been spent dwelling over her longing for her own home, she had indeed come to a realization.

She pointed downwards, opening her mouth to speak before pausing and looking up at him. “On second thought.” The slight pulse of his queasiness finally reached her. She plopped down onto the planks instead, threading her legs through two holes in the netting and letting the sturdy rope support her weight. She patted the spot besides her, encouraging him to do the same.

“You know even if we do fall... we can use the force to catch us,” she reminded him gently.

 

[Acaadi]

"Eventually," he replied. He was quite good at using the Force to move objects. Acaadi was far better using the Force in that way than he had been with his lightsaber training recently.

"But where would we land?" he mused, following the trail of logic. He sat down beside Krya and waved towards the depths. "They say there are all kinds of monsters down there. Think we could climb back up like them?"

He pointed across Kyra's body towards a wookie using his claws to climb a wall of bark. He had a young wookie clinging tight to his back.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra looked down to dull finger nails and frowned. “Probably not,” she concluding, tucking her hands away. “But we could jump from tree to tree? Push off it maybe. Zing our way up.” Mobility exercises had been an easy thing for her to practice. What with multiple older siblings that knew how to get into scrapes? One could say Kyra had been practicing that for years.


She hummed to herself, leaning her full body weight into the ropes until she was practically swigging by them, upsetting the walkway’s composition.

“Do you think that’s a male, or a female?” She gestured to the Wookiee climbing up with the child on it’s back. “I can’t tell. At any rate, I think ‘I want to pet them’ is not the answer Master Jil’to is looking for.” She reached out, fingers scraping the air as if she was caressing it.

 

[Acaadi]

"Whilst they look cuddly I'd be worried they'd crush my ribs, whether a boy or a girl," he replied. "Bet it would be warm to be carried up the trees like that," he laughed, watching the wookie continue upwards. With the academy on their world Acaadi had taken a few lesson in their language. He could almost understand a few basics now. It was almost impossible to speak though.

Acaadi started to pull himself back to his feet. The first start of a grin appeared at the corner of his lips. He would not mind the chance to show off at all.

"You think we could leap between those two?" he asked, pointing to two trees. He knew he could make that jump. It was, after all, a very long drop.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra looked up, slow and pointed between the trees and him. "If you don't, I'm taking those robes back. You don't deserve them, padawan." She grinned back in turn, quickly distracted from sadder things. That was the good thing about her training. Now that they were well past all that damn meditating, Kyra had a lot activity to distract herself with.

She didn't do well with quiet. Or tame, for that matter.

She shimmied her way through the ropes, until she hanging outside of the walkway all together, kept up by only her feet and hands entangled in it like a monkey. She chilled like that, at an angle and relaxed as she watched him.

"Slip, you mustn't." She teased, her voice ringing out. "Nude, you will be."

 

[Acaadi]

Acaadi raised a hand as if he had some kind of witty reply. He did not. Let loose the teenagers were hardly going to back down from a bet like this, but something about the way she delivered it had him a little off-kilter.

"No problem," he said defiantly. He grinned at her, golden eyes blazing in challenge. The hanging walkway wasn't solid enough to jump from so he made his way to the platform at one end.

A wookie strode past him and growled a polite greeting. Acaadi bowed back and stood with his arms crossed over his chest until he had some room. Then he was away.

He dropped his weight, one foot ahead of the other. He immersed himself in the Force, drawing it around him. Three quick strides and he leapt. The Force gathered itself behind him, buoying him through the air. The cool air whipped around him, his robes flapping. As he reached the apex of his leap he flicked a salute in her direction.

If the leap and rise had been pure concentration, the glide back down was elation. He whooped a moment before pressing down on the platform with the Force to touch down lightly. Unfortunately he stumbled a few steps and had to throw out his arms to avoid slamming into the tree trunk but he had made the jump.

 

[Kyra Perl]

She laughed in delight, the noise cut short as the wookie in question walked right on by her. Hanging unnaturally off the sides. Messing up the rope railings to keep herself afloat. She blinked, bashful until he was back off and onto another platform. And then she was laughing again.

"Ah, come on, that one was easy." A few deft moves had her limbs untangled. She flipped herself over, the movement unnatural and force driven as she landed easily back on the planks. She sensed his need to meet a challenge, and her own competitive edge was rising in turn. "What about from there to there." In a unusual twist of forest design, two trees stood an unnatural distance away from each other, with nothing, not even rope walkways, in between them. The paths moved around them in a triangle, the dead space simply that.

Dead space. And darkness below it.

"Whatcha say, padawan. Another year in basics? Or this."

 

[Acaadi]

"Easy!" he called out.

Feth! He went inside his own head. It was definitely at the limit of what he could do. That was only confirmed as he walked to the edge of the walkway and weighed up the jump. He turned to see her laughing as she waited for his jump. Or his cowardice.

There was no turning back down.

Once more he drew the Force around him, lowering his head and closing his eyes in concentration. He spring forwards, accelerating towards the edge of the platform and picking up speed impressively.

Acaadi didn't back out. He jumped, the Force driving him high into the air. He was just past the apex of his jump when he realised he would fall short. Time seemed to slow as panic tried to take him in its hold.

Acaadi closed his eyes. His colony didn't practise the full faith of his people but he had always been curious about their spirituality. He believed in fate and in the guidance of the Force. He called on it now. Reaching out in his moment of desperate need.

He felt his senses draw below as he fell. The platform seemed to rise past him on slow motion. Reaching out he felt the huge branch a distance below him. Acaadi pushed off the tree with the Force, beginning to plummet straight down. The branch rushed up to meet him. It was twice as wide as he was tall, more than strong enough to take his weight.

Its surface cracked and splintered an instant before he landed, the power of the Force cushioning his landing. He fell hard, going into a roll and nearly tumbling from the branch to the depths below.

Acaadi ended up on his belly, holding the rough bark with all his strength. He took a deep breath and pulled himself to his feet.

"I'm okay!" he shouted up. "Just in case you might have been worried I was dead!"

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra held back her mirth behind her hands, equally concerned and all together thrilled. "Nooooope," she called back. "Always kneeeeew you had it in you!" She chortled and learned forward, trying to catch sight of him. A quick job and a few jumps and she herself was on the platform he had missed. She had taken the long way, of course. And she knelt down to face him with no shame. "You're totally stuck down there, huh?" There wasn't much to bounce off of here. Not unless he went all the way down and picked a new tree to start from.

"Try to climb up like they do?" She offered, kneeling down and bracing herself as she lowered her hand down an arms length more. Hell they could even team work with him jumping and her catching up with the force and propelling him further, but for now, she wanted to hold this over him.

 

[Acaadi]

Acaadi went as far as stepping up to the trunk of the tree. All the way down to the ground could have been half a kilometer straight down. The bark was rough but he couldn't even see a first handhold to start on.

He turned around and tried to look for more trees or branches he could use to bring the wookie platforms and walkways within reach. He could see no route back up.

"Erm...might have to ask the wookies for help!" he called up, feeling a heat creep up his neck.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra's humor stopped short, then exploded again. "You want to piggyback ride a wookie? Pfffft. Okay. You wait here. I'll go get one to carry you up like a babe." She sat up, her face disappearing out of his sight. But she didn't move far, sitting back on her haunches with a mischievous grin on her face. Her ears remained perked, waiting for it in three...


Two...

One...

 

[Acaadi]

"Well they don't have to carry me," he called up to Kyra. "That have those ships that fly around the trees. Couldn't they send one of those down?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra poked her head back over. "Without Master Scrunchy-face finding out? Unlikely." She beamed down at him, clearly enjoying herself. "It's wookie piggyback ride, orrrr... you jump and I help you up." She kneeled back over, offering down her hand.

"What's it gonna be, tadpole." Despite her words there was zero true malice in them. Just some padawan games and someone getting the butt end of it. Without a doubt, Kyra had found herself on the other end numerous times before.

 

[Acaadi]

"What do you..." Acaadi's voice trailed off when he realised the direction Kyra was going in. He paced back and forth on the branch giving both options some genuine thought. In the end facing up to her bet seemed as if it would be some short ter embarrassment for less long term pain.

"Fine!" he shouted up.



"Come on laugh it up," he grumbled. Finally back up at the height of the city she was enjoying her victory. He straightened out his robes and sighed. "Just remember it's going to be the same deal again at...some point!" he warned, knowing the threat would bear little weight right now.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra grinned unabashed up at him. "Maybe. But I never miss." She rocked up on her toes, giving him looooong up and down before giggling to herself and pushing past him.

"Come on now, before word of a flying, hairless wookie gets back to Master Jil'to." She brushed past him, smelling ever so faintly ...appealing. She walked with a pep in her step along the platform, her mood blustered back to it's usual spirits. "So if she asks, the lesson we learned is that family bonds are vital amongst all species. And they shouldn't be discredited just because they may not make sense to the uninformed eye, in fact-..."

The airship of slavers creaked open it's doors, roped slightly unfurling down into the limbs that made up the wookie encampment.

Kyra faltered for a moment, something feeling off... She stopped Acaadi with a hand on his chest, her expression twisting in confusion.

"Do you feel that?"

 

[Acaadi]

It was the first time he caught even a hint of what many Zeltron did subconsciously. However, despite all the emotion control taught in the Jedi academy he was seventeen. A hint of Zeltron pheromones was essentially lost in background noise.

She could have dared him to do almost anything right then and he probably would have given it a go. It was better to catch students before their teenage years. Even better to then keep them a few parsecs from the nearest of the Perl siblings.

Panic crossed his face briefly as she started to reel out what sounded to be a perfectly good answer. He hadn't been concentrating. It turned to a mask of concentration when she stopped.

He did feel it. A slight ripple that disturbed the Force. He had never felt one so obvious before.

From the distance came a cry of shock from a wookie. It as followed by the high pitched sounds of stun weapons.

"What?" he went, but he immediately turned on his heel and stared running towards the sound down the walkway.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra didn't follow him. She stood rooted in place, her eyes flickering closed as she reached out for signs of ill intent all around them. It jumped to life, pin pricks of life forms raining down from above her. She startled, her eyes snapping open.

"Acaadi! Above you!" She shouted out, pointing to a body that was dropping quickly from a rope. As she spoke, a body dropped from above her, landing on top of her with a swift kick to her head in an attempt to keep things quite. Kyra cried out in a bout of shock, crumbling under the weight and pain. But through that all was the startling realization that this was her first real moment.

She couldn't go down this easily! She fumbled for her training saber as the man struggled to keep her limbs pinned and raise a stun gun towards her.