Abarai Loki
Mar 26th, 2013, 09:39:56 PM
It was a new day. Abarai Loki woke, not with a start, but with a long death-rattle wheeze that came from the back of his throat. That was the first hint that something was amiss, but it was a hint that went blissfully unnoticed. Limbs shifted like tectonic plates beneath the covers, slowly, heavily; a rigor mortis crawl towards wakefulness. All was silent save for the whisper of warm sheets. All was silent. Even in his semi-conscious stupor, Loki found that strange. His eyes crept open, and he winced at the bright chrono digits stabbing out at him from the dark:
6:30
Automatically, an arm unfolded, and hovered in the air, while numb fingers fumbled for the cherished little button that allowed another ten minutes' sleep. But wait, it was silent, and there was no obnoxious alarm. Loki tore his head from the pillow with a band-aid rip. He blinked his vision clear and the numbers seemed to reshape themselves before his eyes:
8:30
Such was the elevation with which Loki evacuated his bed that he could very well have been fired from it. There was a mad scuffle of feet as he dressed in the dark, until it was brought to an abrupt end with a thud and a hiss. Moments later, Loki stepped bare-footed from his quarters, and hobbled with intent to the end of the narrow corridor where there was a queue of men, women, and children. The wait for the sonic shower was a time-honoured tradition of the morning drudgery, evaded habitually by Loki as a result of his early start, an early start which, while once itself another time-honoured tradition, was becoming alarmingly sporadic. Upon reaching the front of the queue, he turned to inspect the long listless congregation. It was a disheartening sight: the Jedi of tomorrow had faces as bleak and grey as their surroundings, as if they had been somehow infected by the dreariness of the Whaladon itself. To the left of him, the door opened with a hiss, and the person next in line, an aging human with a fantastic bulb of black hair, stepped forward.
"Adept Mordecai," said Loki, his morning voice scratched, "You are in my first class today. I trust you are as prompt for your lessons as you are your morning shower. We shall be revisiting target zones and I may need a volunteer to-"
"Why don't you take my place, Mister Abarai, sir? I insist!"
"A generous offer, Adept Mordecai. I will see you in class."
The class in question wasn't scheduled until the following day. It wasn't his proudest moment, Loki conceded privately, as he undressed in the refresher, but it had been a neccessary deception. Indeed, a deception neccessary for the benefit of the Jedi Order itself, his being a position of considerable importance compared to that of Adept Mordecai or his pale-faced peers. His conscience clear, Loki stepped into the booth, eager to escape the sour stench of vinegar and cheese that pervaded the room. The small booth turned a deep shade of blue and issued a low thrumming sound which reverberated in his chest. Every inch of his skin started to tingle and all over his body he could feel the minute hairs standing on end, as if electrified. It was over within a minute, and, on top of having clean skin and silken hair, Loki left feeling increadibly relaxed. There were worse ways to start a day, he thought. And he discovered, to his surprise, that the foul odour had been eradicated from the refresher in its entirety - evidently, the sonic shower's influence extended beyond its humble booth.
Once he had made himself presentable, a process which involved no fewer than five minutes of poking and plucking and sculpting his hair into shape, Loki emerged from the refresher to a relieved chorus of sighs. He wore his traditional combination of a black tunic over a white undertunic, and had sacrified his beloved haori until he could have a replacement tailored to fit. But, given the present situation, he wasn't, as the old saying goes, holding his breath. Upon the hard floor, his boots made a tinny click, which carried far throughout the labyrinthian bowels of the ship, and was at odds with the deathly silence that haunted its halls. The pulse of the engines was gone, as was the ceaseless inhale and exhale of a thousand busy doors. The Whaladon was a ghost ship. He shared a turbolift with a handful of padawans, they descended through the lower decks in silence, as was his wont, and filed out into a long gloomy passageway lit at irregular intervals by weak flickering sodium tubes. At the end of the passage they reached an impressive pair of interlocking blast doors. The youngest of the padawans fumbled eagerly along the wall for the release mechanism, there was a click and the blast doors parted with a gasp.
A blast of hot dry air rushed to greet them, it was breath-taking like the backdraft of an open oven, and a warm amber haze chased the indoor gloom to its darkest recesses. Before them, a broad landscape of scorched orange earth unfurled beneath a serene blue sky. It was an inviting sight, beckoning the Jedi from their sterile dungeon into the sweet air. They stepped outside, substituting durasteel for soil, it was firm underfoot, but in places it appeared quite red and had the consistency of clay. Further still, and the ground rose up like a tide, shifting dramatically through the colours; orange, yellow, and then the richest brown; the hillside glistened like water in the sun. It was crowned with a thick forest of kingwoods which, in places, flowed in verdant rivers down the slopes.
There was an assortment of makeshift residences which nested about the foot of the hill; of shuttles, tents, and rickety prefabricated cubes, people made their homes, and like a spider's web, wove them together with a convoluted network of criss-crossing clothes lines. And hanging out to dry, a variegated assemblage of professions; doctor's coats, combat fatigues, Jedi tunics, and upturned flightsuits, all flapping in the breeze. It was an eccentric little community they had building up around them. For example, one of the first buildings to go up, a modest medical facility with space enough for only two consultation rooms and one operating theatre. Consequently, there was always a queue outside, mercifully shorter than the queue for the sonic shower, and the wait was sweetened by a kindly droid that dispensed weak tea to the most patient patients.
Rising up beside the medical facility was a small mountain, it was assembled of crates of eye-watering colour, and like a living, breathing monstrosity, it shrunk and grew on a daily basis. And there it would remain, looking like something the Whaladon had vomitted up on the hillside, until the community could at last become self-sustaining. And in the shadow of the crate mountain stood a queer little establishment, run by a ghoulish Besalisk who delighted in the dismemberment of protocol droids - they called it a droid workshop. Fenced off from the rest of civilisation he cultivated a small wasteland of rusted torsos and limbs. Even Loki found it difficult not to sympathise with the astromechs that shuddered as they rolled by, but it was a neccessary evil, for droids accounted for more than half the manual labour on the site.
He called it a site. Military types called it a camp. He'd even overheard younglings affectionately refer to it as a village, perhaps out of some need to lend their new home an extra sense of community, in any case, it was a rather grizzly interpretation of the word. Whatever it was, it was most certainly a community, comprised for the most part of military men and women boasting a broad spectrum of expertise, from prospecting to cooking, and they were each sworn to absolute secrecy. Next came the droids, if they could be counted as part of a community - they were at least indispensible. The Jedi were the minority group, for the time being, and they earned their keep by applying themselves as best they could; some offered help in the kitchens, others got dirty in maintenance, there were those with experience in construction, or medicine, or engineering, or agriculture, and there was one particular Jedi armed with a baffling arsenal of qualifications: computer programming, mixology, and childcare. When he first came to the Wheel and encountered his Jedi peers, Loki despaired at the ramshackle state of their ranks. But, in time, even he conceded variety had its advantages. If there was one silver lining to be gleaned from Jedi hailing from a thousand different walks of life, it was this: their ability to pick the farthest flung rock in the galaxy, call it home, and there forge for themselves a future.
His thoughts were interrupted as a speeder, packed to overflowing with passengers, zipped by with a spiral of dust trailing in its wake. He shielded his eyes and followed the vehicle to its destination. It stopped outside an expansive marquee stitched together from military-grade canvas. From inside there came a clamour; the drone of a hundred or more voices raised in conversation, interspersed by the familiar clatter of the kitchen. A glimpse, as the latest arrivals peeled back the canvas flap to reveal row upon row of benches and chairs, all gutted, or perhaps liberated, from the Whaladon's claustrophobic mess hall. It was one of the two canteens located at either end of the camp, and due to its proximity to the Action IX transport, it was frequented mainly by Jedi. Out of courtesy, most military personnel kept their distance and ate closer to the barracks.
Blast doors sighed shut behind him as Loki set off at speed towards the canteen. But it was not the canteen, nor the promise of food, that arrested his attention in that moment. His gaze lifted beyond the marquee peaks to the great domed towers that dominated the horizon to the north. He walked along the edge of the road in order to get a better view. It wasn't strictly speaking a road, rather it was a stretch of land where the soil had been ironed into smooth straight lines by the frequent passage of vehicles; it was broad like a river, with banks on either side marbled from pedestrian footprints. The strip intersected the entire camp straight down the middle and led directly to the object of Loki's fascination: the Great Jedi Library. It stood at odds with the empty panorama from which it arose, monolithic, and blazing like gold in the sunlight. Distance wrapped it in a strange ethereal haze, but in no way could it diminish the impact of such a colossus upon the landscape. The Great Jedi Library, or the Library of Ossus, was the reason the Jedi now called this world their home. Deep within its vaults were harbored secrets thought lost to the ages, secrets waiting to be found, and all it took was the will for adventure.
It was a new day. Indeed, it was the start of a new year, and a time which surely marked the start of a new age of prosperity for the Jedi Order. But all that could wait, for the smell of fried eggs was in the air, and Loki was so hungry he could eat a bantha.
6:30
Automatically, an arm unfolded, and hovered in the air, while numb fingers fumbled for the cherished little button that allowed another ten minutes' sleep. But wait, it was silent, and there was no obnoxious alarm. Loki tore his head from the pillow with a band-aid rip. He blinked his vision clear and the numbers seemed to reshape themselves before his eyes:
8:30
Such was the elevation with which Loki evacuated his bed that he could very well have been fired from it. There was a mad scuffle of feet as he dressed in the dark, until it was brought to an abrupt end with a thud and a hiss. Moments later, Loki stepped bare-footed from his quarters, and hobbled with intent to the end of the narrow corridor where there was a queue of men, women, and children. The wait for the sonic shower was a time-honoured tradition of the morning drudgery, evaded habitually by Loki as a result of his early start, an early start which, while once itself another time-honoured tradition, was becoming alarmingly sporadic. Upon reaching the front of the queue, he turned to inspect the long listless congregation. It was a disheartening sight: the Jedi of tomorrow had faces as bleak and grey as their surroundings, as if they had been somehow infected by the dreariness of the Whaladon itself. To the left of him, the door opened with a hiss, and the person next in line, an aging human with a fantastic bulb of black hair, stepped forward.
"Adept Mordecai," said Loki, his morning voice scratched, "You are in my first class today. I trust you are as prompt for your lessons as you are your morning shower. We shall be revisiting target zones and I may need a volunteer to-"
"Why don't you take my place, Mister Abarai, sir? I insist!"
"A generous offer, Adept Mordecai. I will see you in class."
The class in question wasn't scheduled until the following day. It wasn't his proudest moment, Loki conceded privately, as he undressed in the refresher, but it had been a neccessary deception. Indeed, a deception neccessary for the benefit of the Jedi Order itself, his being a position of considerable importance compared to that of Adept Mordecai or his pale-faced peers. His conscience clear, Loki stepped into the booth, eager to escape the sour stench of vinegar and cheese that pervaded the room. The small booth turned a deep shade of blue and issued a low thrumming sound which reverberated in his chest. Every inch of his skin started to tingle and all over his body he could feel the minute hairs standing on end, as if electrified. It was over within a minute, and, on top of having clean skin and silken hair, Loki left feeling increadibly relaxed. There were worse ways to start a day, he thought. And he discovered, to his surprise, that the foul odour had been eradicated from the refresher in its entirety - evidently, the sonic shower's influence extended beyond its humble booth.
Once he had made himself presentable, a process which involved no fewer than five minutes of poking and plucking and sculpting his hair into shape, Loki emerged from the refresher to a relieved chorus of sighs. He wore his traditional combination of a black tunic over a white undertunic, and had sacrified his beloved haori until he could have a replacement tailored to fit. But, given the present situation, he wasn't, as the old saying goes, holding his breath. Upon the hard floor, his boots made a tinny click, which carried far throughout the labyrinthian bowels of the ship, and was at odds with the deathly silence that haunted its halls. The pulse of the engines was gone, as was the ceaseless inhale and exhale of a thousand busy doors. The Whaladon was a ghost ship. He shared a turbolift with a handful of padawans, they descended through the lower decks in silence, as was his wont, and filed out into a long gloomy passageway lit at irregular intervals by weak flickering sodium tubes. At the end of the passage they reached an impressive pair of interlocking blast doors. The youngest of the padawans fumbled eagerly along the wall for the release mechanism, there was a click and the blast doors parted with a gasp.
A blast of hot dry air rushed to greet them, it was breath-taking like the backdraft of an open oven, and a warm amber haze chased the indoor gloom to its darkest recesses. Before them, a broad landscape of scorched orange earth unfurled beneath a serene blue sky. It was an inviting sight, beckoning the Jedi from their sterile dungeon into the sweet air. They stepped outside, substituting durasteel for soil, it was firm underfoot, but in places it appeared quite red and had the consistency of clay. Further still, and the ground rose up like a tide, shifting dramatically through the colours; orange, yellow, and then the richest brown; the hillside glistened like water in the sun. It was crowned with a thick forest of kingwoods which, in places, flowed in verdant rivers down the slopes.
There was an assortment of makeshift residences which nested about the foot of the hill; of shuttles, tents, and rickety prefabricated cubes, people made their homes, and like a spider's web, wove them together with a convoluted network of criss-crossing clothes lines. And hanging out to dry, a variegated assemblage of professions; doctor's coats, combat fatigues, Jedi tunics, and upturned flightsuits, all flapping in the breeze. It was an eccentric little community they had building up around them. For example, one of the first buildings to go up, a modest medical facility with space enough for only two consultation rooms and one operating theatre. Consequently, there was always a queue outside, mercifully shorter than the queue for the sonic shower, and the wait was sweetened by a kindly droid that dispensed weak tea to the most patient patients.
Rising up beside the medical facility was a small mountain, it was assembled of crates of eye-watering colour, and like a living, breathing monstrosity, it shrunk and grew on a daily basis. And there it would remain, looking like something the Whaladon had vomitted up on the hillside, until the community could at last become self-sustaining. And in the shadow of the crate mountain stood a queer little establishment, run by a ghoulish Besalisk who delighted in the dismemberment of protocol droids - they called it a droid workshop. Fenced off from the rest of civilisation he cultivated a small wasteland of rusted torsos and limbs. Even Loki found it difficult not to sympathise with the astromechs that shuddered as they rolled by, but it was a neccessary evil, for droids accounted for more than half the manual labour on the site.
He called it a site. Military types called it a camp. He'd even overheard younglings affectionately refer to it as a village, perhaps out of some need to lend their new home an extra sense of community, in any case, it was a rather grizzly interpretation of the word. Whatever it was, it was most certainly a community, comprised for the most part of military men and women boasting a broad spectrum of expertise, from prospecting to cooking, and they were each sworn to absolute secrecy. Next came the droids, if they could be counted as part of a community - they were at least indispensible. The Jedi were the minority group, for the time being, and they earned their keep by applying themselves as best they could; some offered help in the kitchens, others got dirty in maintenance, there were those with experience in construction, or medicine, or engineering, or agriculture, and there was one particular Jedi armed with a baffling arsenal of qualifications: computer programming, mixology, and childcare. When he first came to the Wheel and encountered his Jedi peers, Loki despaired at the ramshackle state of their ranks. But, in time, even he conceded variety had its advantages. If there was one silver lining to be gleaned from Jedi hailing from a thousand different walks of life, it was this: their ability to pick the farthest flung rock in the galaxy, call it home, and there forge for themselves a future.
His thoughts were interrupted as a speeder, packed to overflowing with passengers, zipped by with a spiral of dust trailing in its wake. He shielded his eyes and followed the vehicle to its destination. It stopped outside an expansive marquee stitched together from military-grade canvas. From inside there came a clamour; the drone of a hundred or more voices raised in conversation, interspersed by the familiar clatter of the kitchen. A glimpse, as the latest arrivals peeled back the canvas flap to reveal row upon row of benches and chairs, all gutted, or perhaps liberated, from the Whaladon's claustrophobic mess hall. It was one of the two canteens located at either end of the camp, and due to its proximity to the Action IX transport, it was frequented mainly by Jedi. Out of courtesy, most military personnel kept their distance and ate closer to the barracks.
Blast doors sighed shut behind him as Loki set off at speed towards the canteen. But it was not the canteen, nor the promise of food, that arrested his attention in that moment. His gaze lifted beyond the marquee peaks to the great domed towers that dominated the horizon to the north. He walked along the edge of the road in order to get a better view. It wasn't strictly speaking a road, rather it was a stretch of land where the soil had been ironed into smooth straight lines by the frequent passage of vehicles; it was broad like a river, with banks on either side marbled from pedestrian footprints. The strip intersected the entire camp straight down the middle and led directly to the object of Loki's fascination: the Great Jedi Library. It stood at odds with the empty panorama from which it arose, monolithic, and blazing like gold in the sunlight. Distance wrapped it in a strange ethereal haze, but in no way could it diminish the impact of such a colossus upon the landscape. The Great Jedi Library, or the Library of Ossus, was the reason the Jedi now called this world their home. Deep within its vaults were harbored secrets thought lost to the ages, secrets waiting to be found, and all it took was the will for adventure.
It was a new day. Indeed, it was the start of a new year, and a time which surely marked the start of a new age of prosperity for the Jedi Order. But all that could wait, for the smell of fried eggs was in the air, and Loki was so hungry he could eat a bantha.