A Lot to Unlearn -For naughtypadawan

[Chriekel]

There were many words that could be used to describe the planet Nubis.

Wet would certainly be one of them, drizzle became rain, rain became deluge, deluge became storm and storm became a sort of vertical ocean with holes in it on a depressingly regular basis.

Grim would be another suitable description. The ground was mud, the sky was perpetually grey. Its most striking features were clusters of strange coral like growths that covered most of the planet's surface. The tallest of these coral spires stood like mountains, while all around them a forest of smaller growths rose up like broken teeth, the same washed out yellow as old bone.

Where plants grew they grew dense and tangled, masses of vines wrapped themselves around the coral spires and dangled down to the ground again to snare their prey. Other plants struggled for survival at ground level, living fast and dying young as their environment was regularly torn apart by flash floods. When the waters began to fall again their husks would crack open and huge flotilla of seed pods would float their way to new and -hopefully- more stable ground to flower once again.

It was almost always cold, it was almost always dangerous and it was, for want of a better word. Home.

Lintava considered all of this as he took in the landscape outside his cave. Perhaps it was inevitable that such a bleak environment would eventually leave its mark on him, or perhaps he was simply growing old. His face was narrow and sharp, his grey eyes deep set and narrow, viewing the world around him with caution and scepticism. Under his hood an unkempt torrent of grey hair merged seamlessly with a slightly -but only slightly- better maintained beard. Even by his own estimation, he looked like the sort of man you'd expect to find living in a cave.

Not that it had mattered much for years.

Reaching out with the force Lintava could sense the life around him, Nubis may have been harsh, but where life did flourish it did so with a ferocity he had never seen anywhere else. The coral spires pulsed with energy, living batteries that could discharge at any time, spitting out bolts of lightning that had more in common with the dark energies of the Sith than anything in nature. Around these cores of power he could feel the dim, animal like intelligence of the vines. Lintava had never bothered to name or distinguish all of the different varieties that existed, there were only so many variations on: “Carnivorous quasi-sentient and very good at strangling” that his brain could comfortably stand.

And beyond them, at the edge of is perception, something else. Anger, frustration. A sense of something struggling and lashing out with the force.

Another force user.

Lintava sighed. He had known that this would happen eventually. Jedi or Sith, hunter or “redeemer” somebody would find him and try to drag him back into the endless, pointless conflict between darkness and light.

For a second he considered simply ignoring whoever it was. Through the ambient haze of energy thrown up by the coral spires it was difficult to be certain but he got the distinct impression that all that struggling wasn't achieving very much. Leaving his “guest” to be eaten by the vines would be so simple...

...But not fair.

Cursing himself as he did it, Lintava reached out a hand and called his lightsabre to him. The feel of it in his palm was at once familiar and strange, welcome and repellent. For all he knew it didn't even work any more.

Lintava took a deep breath, steadying himself and then ignited the blade, its cool silver light banishing the darkness around him in an instant.

No more excuses then. Well, it wasn't as if he'd had any other plans today.

Pulling his patched and tattered robes tighter around him Lintava stepped out into the icy rain and began to walk, following the frantic exertions of force energy back to their source.

[naughtypadawan]

Kemi cursed and struggled in the grip of the vines that held her upside-down, five feet off the ground. This was just another terrible day in a string of terrible days, starting when her Master had been killed on a mission, and only getting worse as she'd tried to program her ship's navicomputer on her own, and failed spectacularly. Instead of back on Coruscant, she'd found herself on this godforsaken world, being menaced by what she was reasonably certain were enormous, semi-sentient carnivorous pea plants. At least the leaves and tendrils looked like they belonged to peas, and Kemi was very good at identifying plants, as she would tell anybody who'd listen.

Her lightsaber was maddeningly beyond her grip, lying on the ground at the base of one of the monster peas. It should have been nothing to reach out with the Force and pull it into her hand, but for some reason all she could get it to to was tremble on the ground. It was inconceivable to her that her technique might have failed; instead, she assumed that something about this wild planet was blocking her access to the Force.

The more she struggled, the tighter the pea plants held her in their grip, finally causing to lose her temper and throw a tantrum worthy of a child much younger than her sixteen years. Unfortunately, when she exhausted herself she was in just the same position that she'd started in--head down, bottom up, unable to reach her lightsaber, no matter what she did.

Great.

[Chriekel]

Of all the things Lintava had been expecting, this had not even made the top thousand.

As he reached the top of the hill and looked down he could see a figure, dressed in the robes of a Jedi Padawan dangling and thrashing in a tangle of vines. With each step closer more details emerged. Not a hardened warrior or a wise philosopher sent to drag or persuade him back to the order, this was a youth, practically a child.

He could sense panic, just kept in check by her anger but rapidly growing. And rightly so, once the vines grip was a little stronger she would be completely immobile, and after that it was just a question of how quickly their acidic secretions could liquefy her.

So what in the galaxy was a barely trained child doing on this death world?

Lintava stopped when he was a few feet away from the girl. She ought to have felt him approaching even through the dampening influence of the spires but her struggles had devolved into a tantrum that seemed to be taking up all of her attention.

There was something undeniably amusing about the sight of her frantically wriggling bottom, and he paused to watch the show until she finally settled down. Then he spoke, practically shouting to ensure he was heard over noise of the storm.

"There are safer places to study child. Practically everywhere in the galaxy in fact."

[naughtypadawan]

"Thank you--I might never have noticed!" Kemi snapped, looking between her legs at the figure who had appeared. He was a grizzled looking fellow, unkempt and wild-seeming. She hoped he wasn't a murderer of some kind.

"Maybe you could stop stating the obvious and go find some help somewhere." She hesitated about asking the man himself if he would help her, partly because she wasn't sure he wasn't a murderer, and partly because she did not like to ask for help.

[Chriekel]

"Certainly. I'll just stroll along to the nearest cantina." Lintava replied, unable to keep his amusement out of his tone. "Or perhaps you'd like me to contact the council themselves and arrange for a more suitable rescue party?"

He circled the dangling girl slowly, still wary.

"Where is your master child?"

[naughtypadawan]

Kemi didn't like talking about what happened to Master Torval. She had been close to him, for all that they'd frustrated each other, and she was still half in denial that he was dead.

"Gone," she said curtly, though she couldn't keep tears of grief and anger out of her eyes.

"Now are you going to do something, or what?"

[Chriekel]

Pain, loss, more barely contained fear. Her face said as much but for a Jedi, even one so young, this girl seemed remarkably unskilled at controlling her emotions.

Lintava smiled slightly. That was one thing they had in common at least.

"Jedi courtesy at its finest. But yes, I will do something. Try to roll when you hit the ground."

In one movement Lintava drew his lightsabre, ignited it and threw it. Through the force he could feel the weapon as if it were an extension of his own body, control it with no more effort than it took to lift an arm or blink. The blade of silver light began to spin as it leapt through the air, easily severing the thick knots of vines just above where they gripped the padawan's ankles.

For a moment she seemed to hang, suspended in mid air by nothing in particular and then she fell, plunging face down into the mud.

"I said to roll."

[naughtypadawan]

"That's what I did!" Kemi protested, fighting her way up from the mud with her long, dark hair plastered against her face in places, her big blue eyes making two shining spots amid the filth.

She wiped her face on the arm of her tunic, and just ended up smearing everything around. She made an exasperated noise, and then looked up at her rescuer, including his lit, silver blade.

"You're a Jedi," she said, wonderingly. Then she wrinkled her nose. Something about the man felt off . . . his presence was somehow different from the cool, muted energies given off by her former masters. "No you're not," she contradicted herself. She looked up at the man and asked with puzzlement, "Who are you?"

[Chriekel]

Lintava deactivated his saber and slipped it back into an inside pocket of his robe. That had come so easily, it had felt...natural.

But then of course it had. How many battles had he been in? How many times had he sent that blade spinning through the air to slice a fellow being in two?

His nature.....but not the one that he had chosen. There was no choice, there was the order, there was no self, only duty.

"Lintava." He said, meeting her gaze "And as you say, I'm no Jedi."

[naughtypadawan]

"But you know how to use a lightsaber . . ." Kemi asked, puzzled. Then a surprising thought hit her. "You quit!" she exclaimed, as she climbed a bit painfully to her feet. "Or were you thrown out?"

She hoped Lintava hadn't been thrown out. As far as she knew, they only threw out people who were absolutely terrible . . . like murderers.