Private You’re Gonna Go Far, Jedi

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Kashyyyk, The Silver Rest

His eyes looked out the huge glass windows of the training room for one final time. After this group had been made with Coren Starchaser , he more than likely would never be welcomed back to Silver Jedi Concord territory ever again. But that was fine with him. The government was becoming corrupt, and he would have no part in it. A bird flew by through the trees. Hopefully his student for today would be here soon.

The cold metal of his robotic hand rubbed against the back of his new robe. This was another thing that had changed. His robe, his lightsaber (again), and now his view of the Jedi. Everything happened so fast.

With threats of attack on the rise he needed to help prepare as many people as possible. One of his new friends was going to meet him today for simple combat lessons. The man didn’t even have a lightsaber yet, but it wouldn’t matter.

A warrior would be made out of him yet.

Takui

 

[Takui]

Since the meeting aboard Peace, things had moved so quickly. People had drawn lines in the sand. Brothers were ideologically clashing with brothers: what did it mean to be Jedi? How far was too far? Where was the breaking point?

Okkeus Dainlei was a Knight among the Silver Jedi, but his voice mirrored Taku's own in support of the Grandmaster's decision to withdraw from politics. That was something Taku had felt vehement about. His calling was that of a Jedi, not a government shill. So, when asked about how capable he was, the young man had to be brutally honest.

He wasn't.

Knight Dainlei had offered to change that. Before they could run, they had to walk. Before they did anything, Taku had to at least be capable enough to stand on his own two feet. When he approached the robed man, he called out. "I'm here," he greeted evenly.

Okkeus was the same age as Takui. Under other circumstances, they might even have been equals, learned at the same pace, at the same time. But Okkeus had come to the Jedi sooner in life than Taku, and this is where they were.

"And I'm ready."

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

The sound of Takui’s voice brought a smile to his face. Something about training the next generation of Jedi always made him happy. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he knew that it was the right thing to do.

As he turned around he saw the man’s face, a determined look spreading across it. A smile stayed on his own as he spoke.

“Good. The path of the Jedi is one that many try to follow, and many succeed, but some fall to the dark. I am here with you today to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Looking down at his hip he found his lightsaber, then grabbing it in his metal hand. He pointed it downward and towards his side. With a flip it sprung to life, a blue circle illuminating around him.

“The Lightsaber. A tool for the Jedi of the galaxy. We just it to keep peace and order throughout the galaxy. But sometimes we need to do the dirty work, and get blood on our hands.”

With the lightsaber still on he twisted the center, splitting it into the two blades. He turned on the lightsaber, holding it in his right hand. It shined a beautiful white light around him, mixing with the blue. Now he turned off the blue lightsaber and tossed it to Taku.

He waited before the lightsaber entered the man’s hands. As soon as it touched his hands he rushed forward, the white blade pointing behind him.

Besides, the best way to teach someone to swim was throwing them in Kamino’s ocean.

Takui

 

[Takui]

As Okkeus spoke, Taku heard him speak about the darkness, and how Jedi were prone to fall. He had joined the Jedi with the full recognition of his father's decision to side with the Sith, and to leave his family behind. Taku had seen what it meant to be consumed by the dark, even if he hadn't been exposed to it himself.

Takui Mihzu rejected the darkness.

That was why they were here. That was everything to him. Whether or not he wanted to work hard, or to put forth the effort, none of that was significant anymore. There was only to do, or not.

"That can't happen," he said, determined. "I won't let it."

It was the only thing in his life Taku had ever been unwaveringly confident about.

Taku heard Okkeus describe the lightsaber and its significance. He mentioned getting their hands dirty, and for only an instant, he felt himself shudder. Killing, even for the right reasons... was it okay?

Irrelevant. A Jedi does his duty.

That was the message he had received. Life was precious. It had to be defended. At any cost. When the lightsaber hilt went winging through the air, Taku became immediately and acutely aware of it.

Unlike anything he had felt before, everything around him started to tremble. His body had gone perfectly still. The fragile balance shifted. When the hilt touched his hand, it shattered.

Okkeus exploded forward. Instinct took hold. Taku's expression of surprise was bathed in blue light as his finger absently thumbed the activation switch. The blade snapped to life with a hiss, and within an inch of his face, the two lightsabers screamed.

Their heat bathed both men as Taku looked frantically between his weapon and his opponent. How had he done that?

He staggered backward under the weight of Okkeus' advance, dropping to a knee and wavering. Physically, Takui was weak. He wasn't trained. Something had moved in him for an instant, as though generations of understanding took hold of his hand and guided it.

But that had passed. He felt something slip away, something he didn't understand, and that he hadn't realized was ever there to begin with. "What the feth...?"

In his distraction, Taku turned his bewildered gaze away from the Jedi.

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

As Taku dropped to one knee he felt a feeling he tried to get rid of so long ago.

Fear.

When he fell to the dark side of the force he had hurt so many people. So many innocent people. Like Caden Evesa , his old padawan. This was why he was so passionate about making sure the Jedi don’t work with the Sith, because even more will fall.

But the Jedi wouldn’t learn any other way. On the battlefield the Sith won’t go easy on him. They will cut him into pieces and feed them to their padawans. Sith were vicious and evil. So, he pressed onward withe his attack.

“Get up! Imagine that I am a Sith on the battlefield. I will not stop until you are dead. So you must fight for your life, or let them take yours!”

The man turned his face away. He could see the blue blade reflecting off of the side of his face. Taku was struggling, but he couldn’t stop. War was ugly, and he had to be ready.

So in order to let the man learn he ever so slightly let off of his attack. The blades were still very much interlocked, heating up off of each other. But maybe, just maybe, Taku would sense weakness in him, and counter off of it.

Takui

 

[Takui]

Everything around him was chaotic.

It felt like he might burn to ash under the heat of the two blades, mere inches from his face. Sweat poured down his forehead now and he had to blink it away like tears. The strain of combat was a foreign world for him, and the very idea of fighting for his life had gone from something he only read secondhand to up close and personal in an instant.

He wanted to do his best, but this method was not geared to his strong suit. Taku was a thinker first, someone who strayed from hard labor at every opportunity. Shouldn’t they have started with non-lethal weaponry?

The words that Okkeus spoke next made the color drain from his face. Imagine I am a Sith. Taku didn't need to try hard for that. He had personal experience with a Sith sympathizer. The image he saw actually twisted his mind and filled him with rage.

His eyes blazed deep with fury as he suddenly caught a second wind, albeit the wind he felt was pure anger. How dare his father leave them that way? How dare he drive leave their mother to die? "No!" he howled as his body moved with unnatural vigor. Unbeknownst to Taku, something had filled him up, pumped the adrenaline, and robbed him entirely of rational thought. "How could you!?" he screamed.

But he wasn't speaking to Okkeus. The Jedi had simply made himself a conduit for a much darker force, and spoken the words that broke the spell that contained Taku's fury. He pushed back, staring across the gap at his teacher, but the face he saw was...

The light bathing the two men was warm. Compared to the heat that spread rampant through Taku's body now, it was gentle. His breaths came ragged, and his inexperience showed. But he held, even tried to advance by pulling his blade backward and bashing down toward Okkeus repeatedly, attempting to bludgeon him with the blade.

Sweat had intermingled with real tears.

"You let her die," he rasped over the hum of the lightsabers, "you let mom die."

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Maybe throwing the man into Kamino’s ocean wasn’t the best of ideas.

Taku had obviously seen something that he didn’t. Now he was accusing him of killing his mother? He had only met Taku a few weeks ago, let alone ever hearing about his mother.

But maybe he could use this. It would be very dangerous, but it could speed up the training process. With a last second of doubt he pulled away from Taku, taking a few steps back. He stared down the enraged man.

Please let this work.

“Yes, I did let mom die. You know why? Because I didn’t care about her. And if you do you would have saved her!”

Well, this more than likely wouldn’t go well, but he hoped that it helped unlock Taku’s inner fighter. Grabbing his lightsaber with both hands he stood in a defensive position, ready for any incoming attack.

He prayed to force that this will work.

Takui

 

[Takui]

He had lost some touch with himself completely. To be more accurate, his senses had sharpened so acutely, so quickly that he hadn't learned how to properly separate sensations. The emotions he felt from himself twisted with the fear and uncertainty that radiated off of the other man and now they were holding the Padawan under.

As he drowned in a maelstrom of turmoil, confusion, and rage, the prolific words that he already attributed to his father after abandonment fell from the senior Jedi's mouth. It didn't matter who voiced them anymore. They were beyond sound, to the point where they had become metaphysical. He could feel them in his flesh, sinking deeper until they rent his bones like jagged fangs. The pain in his heart sharpened, and he did the only thing he could.

He cried out, a mangled plea to the heavens of agony mixed with rage. His body had lost control, and his spirit had been torn away, replaced by the same kind of phenomenon that drove him before. Baser, animal instinct.

But this was bleaker than that, and far more wicked, even cruel. For Taku, he was hearing and seeing things that he had compartmentalized and determined that he would deal with at a later time. He had hoped that with time and training, he would understand how to cope with loss, and with the rage that he kept carefully hidden away from others.

That was not in his wheelhouse anymore.

If instinct was what Okkeus wanted for Taku to learn, he had certainly opened the boy up to it; but the jury was out on whether or not he would be lucid enough to recall any of it. If he was able, he might not even want to. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach spread rapidly as the rage, even hatred he felt toward his father hollowed him out.

The face of his father was gone now. There were only two light sources, two sabers juxtaposed at odds with one another. Everything else had been consumed by the darkness.

Taku's body moved on its own, absent any presence of mind.

He swung the weapon wildly toward the blade of plasma and beyond. Parries, defense- no basic concepts of combat ran through his thoughts. Nothing did.

The Padawan was rife with nihilistic rage.

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Training was going great.

He had finally gotten Taku to open up his inner fighter, even if it was through painful methods. You couldn’t teach someone to be a fighter overnight. But maybe in a few nights, because that was all they had.

As the man swung wildly at his lightsaber he deflected it with a little-to-much ease. They both struck back and forth, engaged in simple combat. Then a thought entered his mind. Taku didn’t have a lightsaber yet, so had he even been introduced to lightsaber combat? That could explain the wild movements.

If this was his first ever training with a live lightsaber then he was surprised at how much Taku had picked up on it. Sure, it was a little sloppy, but he was getting the basics. But basics didn’t win battles.

Time seemed to slow down. As Taku came forward for another attack he watched the blue blade wave through the air. Lots of his wave was pressed forward in an offensive stance. Lowering himself he was trying to avoid the next strike, getting under the blade.

If this was successful he would spin around using his right leg to sweep Taku’s left, knocking him to the ground. But this was only if Taku didn’t react first, which he honestly hoped he didn’t.

No need for singed hair.

Takui

 

[Takui]

There was no rhyme or reason to any of his movements. Erratic like a man possessed, simply trying to hit anything and everything in the way. If be were more aware, more skilled at all or more experienced his strokes may have been brutally efficient. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for Okkeus) there was no such imminent lethality in them. Not unless he was grossly incompetent, at any rate.

Nonetheless, there was a feral Vigor behind them. Unyielding, as though he didn't need to breathe. Paradoxically, he choked in air desperately, crying, screaming as he struggled in vain to destroy the darkness in front of him. The darkness all around him.

The darkness inside of him.

It wasn't that Taku was learning, or that he would retain anything at all. With each second that passed, the shadow that loomed over him grow longer until it threatened to eclipse him entirely. Rage like this left a bitter, black stain on the souls of those who manifested it.

The prolonged exposure put Taku at ever greater risk.

Because the blade moved, Taku was aware of it. His blade twisted downward, batting the lightsaber violently away. It followed through sloppily, a testament to the fact that the Padawan knew nothing about following through or capitalizing on an opening.

The spinning sweep aimed at his legs, Taku did not see. He didn't feel it. The only thing that he could sense now was the vast emptiness that was dragging him under. When his back hit the ground, followed by his head, it bounced. The weapon fell out of his hand and the light flickered out. It clattered across the floor.

Dazed, Taku started to pick himself up. The lightsaber didn't matter. Nothing else mattered. Behind the white light, the object of his enmity waited.

Killing intent radiated off of him in the Force.

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Thankfully he still had all of his burn-free hair.

Sweeping the leg had worked. Taku had fell to the ground, his head bouncing on it slightly. Even though this was a training session to get the man better, he still felt a little happy that he one. Who could blame him. He was competitive after all.

The blue blade hit the ground, leaving a small scorch mark before shutting off. He gazed upon it for a few seconds. The first lightsaber he made. It was the thing that made him a Jedi. But the term Jedi was needing to be redefined, especially with what is happening in the galaxy.

Shutting off his lightsaber he clicked it to his belt. He watched as Taku started to prop himself up off of the ground.

“You will get there. Your form was good, but now we need to start working on some better techniques. Just putting together moves for battle.”

With a small smile on his face he reached out a hand, ready to help the man up. They will get there. Just more practice was needed.

But they will make a Knight out of him yet.

Takui

 

[Takui]

He barely managed to push himself off the ground before the man praised him. Taku may have heard the words, but in his ears they must have sounded distant and muffled. It was like he was under water, and any sound that was made got distorted, twisted, and mutilated beyond comprehension. There was no more beacon of light to show him the way as the beam of energy trickled out of existence, and as the sole bridge between him and reality scattered like ashes to the wind his eyes went wide.

Manic, the young man felt his heart beat out of his chest. Rage turned to confusion, then to terror. He was hopelessly lost, violently aware of the cold that now gripped him. The senses that had culminated on Deneba and beyond now comprehended the darkness in its truest form.

It wasn't just out ahead in the unknown. It was everywhere, all around him. The darkness was consuming him. Ice floes in his veins slowed the flow of blood as the sensation trickled through his entire being. He had been exposed to a power that few ever knowingly tapped.

Those who did paid the blood price.

Taku was breathing heavily, looking around wildly. Alone, surrounded by the void, his despair won. His thoughts of his mother fading away and going where he could not follow, and those of his Father leaving him behind. He had to leave his sisters behind to follow the path of the Jedi.

Alone, he was weak. Defenseless. That was when the hand reached through, and Taku recognized it. It penetrated the darkness, but because it came from nowhere, his fear abolished reason.

"Get away!" he howled, his hand flailing wildly between him and the Jedi Knight.

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Confused was an understatement.

Had he offended the man? His hand retracted back, because obviously something wasn’t right. He couldn’t tell if it was his own doing or not.

Now taking an extra step back he reached out with the force, picking up the lightsaber on the ground. Once it reached his left hand he clicked it back to the other one. Whatever was happening he didn’t want anyone to get hurt. He had hurt enough people already.

“Hey Taku, man, talk to me. What is going on? Was it something I said?”

That was when he realized it. A faint feeling of the dark side filled the room. The source? Taku. But it couldn’t be. It was their first lesson! Something else had to be going on.

Cautiously he let the man get up on his own. He wanted to help, but he wasn’t sure how.

Takui

 

[Takui]

His vision was less blacked out now, but still a blur. The world was slowly bleeding back into perspective, but everything felt cold. It was all wrong. He was hyperventilating. Taku clutched his head in both hands for a moment as he tried to contain the dull ache on either side of his brain. It had gone from an isolated sensation to manifested pain. Emotional feedback coupled with sensory overload.

What Okkeus felt was the explosive response of a very underprepared Padawan who had been fully doused in his own hatred and anger. These were feelings Taku never knew or understood he should have been forthcoming about- and no one had ever asked.

He was looking from left to right, trying to see anything or anyone that he could take hold of. The young man needed something to tether him to reality, before he sank deeper into the abyss in his own mind.

Suddenly, Okkeus was there. The Jedi Knight who had disappeared, yet now he was the only thing that made sense. He was a beacon shining faintly in the dead of night. Taku fought to push everything else but the Knight away.

"I... I... everything..." his voice, his body shivered. His frame of reference was destroyed. "...its so cold."

Okkeus Dainlei

 

[Okkeus Dainlei]

Well, this was bad.

When he trained Caden, the boy had never done anything like this. He must have triggered something in Taku’s last that made him become this way. Hopefully it wasn’t anything too harmful.

Slowly walking over to the man he lowered himself to the ground. Turning around he plopped onto the ground, sitting right next to Taku. He rested his hands in his lap, unsure it resting a hand on the man’s shoulder would help.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for pushing you too hard. You have lots of potential, and I was trying to help you unlock it. I just went too far.”

Looking over he saw the man still shivering. Now he unfolded his hands, placing his metal left one on Taku’s right shoulder. Focusing some energy he emitted a small electrical current using force lighting. It wouldn’t be enough to harm the man, but enough to help warm him up.

Maybe they should have walked before they ran.

Takui

 

[Takui]

His eyes were dilated still, like light had suddenly broken through intense, thick darkness to reach him. Taku managed to catch his breath finally, after being aware of the Jedi Knight next to him for more than a few seconds. He remained quiet and shivering, even as the man spoke.

You have lots of potential.

He had heard that before, but not in the same context. It jolted his memory and brought back scenes he had tried to repress. With the thoughts of his father gripping his psyche so recently, he was like a body with no immunity. The images seeped in and spread like venom.

"What a waste." His father wore a disgusted expression as he turned away from him and looked to his brothers. "Kenichi," his voice was almost sing-song, "Shisui! Oh my boys, I'm so proud of you. That was an absolutely magnificent performance."

No matter what he did, they always did it better. He was never enough.

Taku let out a ragged, tired breath. He was weary already of the inadequacy that always followed those thoughts. Okkeus' words were kinder than the ones he was used to, by far.

I just went too far.

That was the disconnect. The point where his mind found separation was the kindness and empathy that the Knight showed. It was a compassion that was foreign to his experiences, and frankly the sort of grace that Takui needed to shake the dark thoughts.

A warmth radiated through him, and his nerves buzzed like he was being shocked. It was a light sensation, not enough to harm him but more than enough that he recognized it. Awareness lit up his eyes as he turned to regard the other man.

"...nah, I'm probably a lost cause," he said weakly, but the smile was at least genuine. "But thanks for not giving up on me, anyway."

At this point, the time for backing down and being lazy was over. He had experienced something awful just now, and he was unsure of himself. More than anything though, his decision was made.

He frowned a bit, gravely serious. "What I felt..." he started to say it, but his voice trailed off. Taku didn't have the words to describe that sensation. Not yet.

Okkeus Dainlei