The Flow of the Force

[James Prent]

a single light filled the room
bathing the table with illumination
parts
lay strewn across
components needed for a weapon
a weapon worthy of a Jedi.

James pondered the desk behind her as she locked her door, and then turned about to face it. It didn't look daunting, in fact it looked...poetic. As if metal bits and crystal housings could be called romantic.

She sat down at the desk, took off her shoes, and stretched out her toes as she picked up the gem. It was blue, a clear stone that reflected the bright light brilliantly. The poem she'd been making up came to mind, and she frowned. If only she could be sure she would become a Jedi worthy of such a weapon! There was only one way to find out. She had to try with all of her heart, just as she'd been doing this past year through all of her padawan training sessions.

The trip with Master D'an to the treaty signing had come off remarkably well, in spite of all the difficulties. Her first adventure with the Knight Belargic in the underbelly of Coruscant had been...interesting. But she'd survived. And through it all her master, Salemn, was teaching her calmness, serenity, and control of the Force.

And now, a test.

She'd taken it upon herself to construct her own lightsaber. No one had told her to, possibly because she was not deemed skillful enough yet. The final connection between the crystal lens unit and the rest of the weapon was one only the Force could make, and there were no instructions about that.

The schematics she'd researched were laid out on top of the desk, under all the parts. James replaced the topaz gem on the surface, and cracked her knuckles. All that was left now was...to start.

[James Prent]

It had been...ten minutes? James lightly bit the end of her tongue as her small fingers placed all the components in a row on top of the schematics. The little light she was using was hot, and she already felt a glisten of sweat on her brow.

The tiny padawan snapped together the powercell and cooling unit, sautering the connections carefully.

[James Prent]

James rubbed her eyes, the glare of the desk light reflecting off of the metallic hilt and shining in her eyes. The only thing left to do was the final connection, and she still wasn't sure what was expected of her.

First things first, to meditate. James closed her eyes gratefully, and slipped into a Force assisted meditative state. It was one of the first things she'd learned upon being accepted to the Jedi Order, to calm and collect her mind. To become one with the Force. To know nothing but it's flow around her and through her.

Now...to sense the lightsaber hilt...the pliable grip and the smooth metallic sheath. And inside, the power cell, and the activation plate, the crystal, housing and focusing lens. Discplined, James kept her mind from wandering onto how hard it had been so far, and focused at the site of the final connection. She could see the part that needed to be together, but how to do it? There was no apparent way.

No, that's the wrong way to go about this. Of course I can't see a way, it's not in my knowledge. She took a deep breath, and grasped the hilt with both hands, still meditating and her eyes still closed. To get frustrated at this point would be easy, but she refused, instead sinking deeper into the Force than she'd ever gone before.

Minutes passed, and then -

Inside the pommel of the lightsaber, things began to move. Slightly, hardly noticeably, but nearly everything shifted by a micron or two. James's forehead was dripping with sweat, the task nearly undoing her. The last connections heated and melded together in an unexplainable fashion. The saber was completed.

But James was deep in a Jedi Trance. Visions of the future danced in front of her eyes. She was dying in a shopping mall, she was surviving and killing her opponent, she was growing old with grandchildren... Possible futures terrorized and tantalized her, and with a sigh her body fell out of her chair and to the floor.

[Aaron Belargic]

Walking around the grounds of the Jedi Order, it was possible to feel so much. People, creatures, plants; everything left its mark within the Force. Everything emitted a signature, a mark that could be traced with enough skill. In his most recent training exercises, Aaron Belargic had become enthralled with the idea of being able to track anyone or anything at anytime, even going of self-imposed blindness. Currently, however, he was not training, simply wandering and admiring the world. In spite of this, his mind was always alert to the presence of others. It was becoming second nature since his training with the blindfold.

What he noticed today was something quite out of the ordinary.

A microcosm of Force energy, that seemed wild yet also controlled, focused into a single area. Where it lead him was not towards the Academy as he expected, but instead towards the living quarters. Slowly but surely, it brought him to a place he realized he had not visited in far too long. Standing at the door to James Prents quarters, he could almost feel the tangible surge of the Force, as the wave ebbed in and out of the room. Yet, in spite of this verve, this apparent cornucopia of energy, something seemed wrong. A few knocks on the door, and there was no reply. He tried shouting, but still he could hear – and feel – nothing.

The building had a security system in place that gave only the dweller and the Council access to each room within it. Aaron was neither at this time, though did know the codes, thanks in no small park to his brother – who had given them should a situation of emergency arise where he was not present. This being one of them, the Hallaeran tapped into the access panel with no hesitation. The door slid aside and inside lay James and, mere feet away from her hands, a light saber hilt. Quite clearly, she was not just sleeping.

Pocketing the blade, Aaron quickly – but carefully – picked James up; she was petite and carrying her would be quicker and easier than calling a medical team to the room. The Padawan knocked the door closed behind him as he made his way out into the halls, receiving a number of odd looks from passersby. Within no time, he was pacing into the almost entirely empty medical wing. The resident doctor and healer approached, slightly wide-eyed. No matter how many oddities and injuries they had to deal with, they always had a sense of urgency about them. They set the Padawan down on a bed and began to look her over.

“What’s wrong with her?” Aaron rose onto his toes, looking over the doctors shoulder.

“I… don’t know,” he began scanning across her body with some manner of handheld device as another doctor linked her in to a machine that stood by the bed, “It would appear she is unconscious, however neural activity scans show that her mind is … well, working in over-drive. Whatever state she is in, I believe she will have to come out of her own free-will.”

Aaron frowned and, after some protest, sat down at the bedside and watched the Padawan as she was tended to. She was receiving suggested sustenance through one of the machines she was now hooked up to; the doctor suggested that it was best just to allow natural to run its course in this instance, whilst keeping her body stable. Belargic wasn’t convinced.

[James Prent]

James sighed, and opened her eyes. Looking around she found herself in bed, and Aaron was sitting by her side, apparently asleep. "Aaron..." He opened his eyes, and smiled at her, concern in his eyes.

The padawan looked back at him, and then asked, "Aaron, where are the children?"

[Aaron Belargic]

"The children?" Aaron arched a brow. Did she mean the youngling Padawans? She might have hit her head, he thought. That seemed like a likely explanation. Though she was still a little out of it, by the looks of things, he didn't know why she would be asking about children...

"Which children?"

[James Prent]

"Ours, o' course." At the look of amazement on his face, she frowned, and then flushed scarlet as memory flooded back, putting her hands in front of her face. "Oh!"

In the Force trance her abilities in pre-cognition had been working overtime, and she'd seen many possible futures. Some hadn't even been hers, one had to do with Master D'an and had made her sorrowful. One stood out clearly...a happy future for her that involved Aaron in a specific way.

Now, however, she was mortified, and had no idea how to explain herself. She remembered meditating, but how had she ended up here, in the med bay? "Where...where am I? I don't remember comin' here." James was still hiding her eyes behind her hand, but finally uncovered them, looking resolutely at the tube that was hooked to her arm.

[Aaron Belargic]

Aaron fought back the urge to grin like a chesire cat, instead addressing her question directly, with only a small smile, "You're in the med bay... I brought you here. I think you were busy meditating and got sort of drawn into it all... Oh!" He then remembered what he been beside James when he had found her, and lifted the saber hilt up for her to see. "This was on the floor beside you."

[James Prent]

"Ahh..." She reached for it, and he placed it in her open palm. "I finished it, I think. I ....yes, I did." James looked nervous, and bit her lip. "D'ya think I should risk turning it on? I am in the med ward already, so it's the best place for it, isn't it?"

[Aaron Belargic]

"Perhaps you should wait until you're out of bed?" he replied, with a slight laugh, imagining James flailing the saber about whilst still laying where she was. "... Is that what you were doing, then? Making this? You must have been putting some effort into it. I could feel you from a mile away."

[James Prent]

Still staring at the saber hilt, which looked as though it had been constructed out of spare parts (which it had), James said, "Well, I feel fine, why can't I get out of bed now?"

Her ears caught up with her brain, and she looked back at Aaron, and smiled. "I was making this, yes. It hasn't been tested though. I was tryin' to make the final connection, and I must have slipped into a deeper meditation than usual..."

[Aaron Belargic]

"I see," he nodded, understanding how arduous the task of constructing a saber was, having done it in his first bout as a Padawan long ago. He smiled then, "And if you feel fine, then I don't see any reason for you to stay here. If I was you, I'd be dying to try the blade out."

[James Prent]

She wiggled her eyebrows in glee, and threw back the covers, ready to swing her legs out of the bed. "Augh! Where're my clothes?!" Even as she looked in dismay at the hospital gown she'd been sheathed in, James caught sight of her robes folded on another chair on the opposite side of her bed. Swinging her legs off the other side, she yanked on her pants, but got tangled in the sugar water drip that was in her arm.

Aaron reached over the bed and helped her pull the needle out of her arm, laughing quietly as she continued to try to get dressed before she was ready. As he draped the line over the now empty bed, she turned her back and pulled her tunic on over the gown. With a bit of wriggling she managed to pull the gown out of one of the sleeves, and shrugged into her outer robe.

Running her hands through her hair, fluffing it up a bit, James grinned at Aaron. "I think I'm ready to check m'self out."

[Aaron Belargic]

Motioning for James to lead the way, they approached a desk behind which the doctor sat. He looked up, slightly confused yet pleased. Evidently, he was not expecting such a quick recovery. "Hello, James. I'm glad to see you up and about. Ready to go?"

The Padawan gave a nod. "Alright, then. Be careful in future if you decided to try anything like that," the doctor said, a tone of uncertainty in his voice, as he was still unclear as to how she had ended up in that state in the first place. At least she was alright now.

"Come on then," Aaron smiled as they departed into the halls. He looked sidelong at her James, who looked a little transfixed by the saber, "Did you ... you know, go find the crystals yourself? From caves?"

[James Prent]

"Ah, well...no." She blushed a little, "I tried to get m'self off planet, but I never learned how to pilot anything bigger than a speeder. There aren't any native crystals on planet, obviously. So I was pokin' around the spare parts room, and ..Ka'el? One of the other padawans helped me find where the crystals were. Some were flawed, but we were both fairly sure this one was fine."

She looked suspiciously at the lightsaber pommel, and then made a nervous face at Aaron. "Mebbe you should turn it on." She winked.

[Aaron Belargic]

"Fairly sure? And you want me to test it?" he arched a brow, laughing, "I see how much life is worth now." He smiled, just to let her know he was joking, before adding, "I think you should give it its first test though... as a measure of good faith towards yourself, don't you think?"

[James Prent]

They'd reached a training room, and Aaron carefully closed the door behind them. James pretended to grumble as he refused to test it, but there was real excitement in her eyes as she held the saber out in front of her. "Well, good faith towards myself is all well an' good, but maybe you should get behind something, just in case this all goes kablooie."

Aaron nodded, but only moved to just out of her eyeline. The much shorter padawan put her thumb over the activation plate, and carefully...switched it on.

...She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until she let it out in a big sigh of relief. The blade snap-hissed into life, a topaz glow illuminating the room.

[Aaron Belargic]

The Padawan brought his hands together, applauding quietly, “Very nice… but I wonder…” Aaron dipped his hand to his waist and removed his own blade, flickering the hilt downwards and sending the green beam to life, “whether it is to combat?” With a smile, he slowly motioned his saber towards James’, testing the reaction of the two blades meeting.

[James Prent]

She grinned, not worried now, and brought her newly constructed blade against Aaron's, the sabers crackling and filling the air with the smell of burnt ozone. "So far, so good. But..."

James brought her saber away from Aaron, and then smacked it into his green bladed saber.

[Aaron Belargic]

Gripping the hilt firmly as the two beams met, Aaron watched the reaction with a smile. Once again, there was a hiss and a couple of sparks leapt up into the air from the point of connection. “Looks like it’s working perfectly to me,” he said, stepping back and lowering his saber. “Congratulations.”

[James Prent]

She saluted him smartly with the blade before her face, and then switched it off. "Why, thank you Padawan Belargic." James pointed to his saber, and added, "Of course, you completed yours much prior to mine, but congratulations on your achievement as well. I know now how hard it is."

After her intense meditation, James felt strangely refreshed. She grinned at Aaron, hardly able to contain herself.

[Aaron Belargic]

Aaron turned the disengaged saber over in his hands, “I had help with mine, though. You made yours alone. I don’t think I could do that,” he looked up once more, smiling proudly. “What do you want to do now then? Celebrate? Or have you done enough for one day?”

[James Prent]

"I'd rather not bring too much attention to it, I don't want to seem proud to the Masters. But a quiet celebration, as long as we don't tell anyone why we're celebrating.." James grinned, testing out the belt clip and hanging the saber off her hip.

[Aaron Belargic]

She was right – pride was against everything they stood for, but sometimes he thought a little satisfaction couldn’t hurt, “There’s nothing wrong with being happy with what you’ve accomplished.” Aaron paused to think a while, before continuing, somewhat anxious, “How about… well, I don’t know if you’d be interested or not, but I have some tickets for the Tallera Open on Nubia next week…”

[James Prent]

James grinned again as Aaron invited her to...wait, Nubia? "Well, it'd be only the third time I've ever been off planet. I'd love to go."

Then, as an afterthought, "What's the Tallera Open?"

[Aaron Belargic]

“Only the third time?” Aaron shook his head, thinking he’d have to do something to change that. “The Open is festival. They have a big race and a gala. I went one year ... waaay back, ages ago. It's great. Lots to do.”

[James Prent]

James nodded, "It sounds great. I'd love to go, but I don't know if I'd get permission...with my studies and all."

Going off planet with a man? My mother would faint. I can't wait to go. Her smiled turned into a grin.

[Aaron Belargic]

“It’s just a couple of days… you can catch up when you get back, I’ll help. Come on,” In an attempt to convince James, Aaron put on the most pity worthy expression he could muster. “Please?”

[James Prent]

She laughed out loud at his face, and put up her hands in surrender. "Okay okay! I'll go! But you're coming with me to talk to Master Salemn about this." James grabbed his arm just above the elbow, and steered him out of the training room.