Running from shadows (Pierce)

[Kale]

Kale trudged out into the alley just behind the Temple archives. There was nothing there--a cul-de-sac framed by the massive temple wall and two concrete fences and populated by a couple of industrial-sized dumpsters. It was one of the few places where the Temple's grandiose aesthetic gave way to modern necessities. Only the trash collecting droids ever saw it.

Them and fleeing Padawans.

After an hour of sweaty indecision, Kale finally had hit the "send" key that sped a tersely worded message through the electronic pipelines to his master, Jedi Knight Pierce Tondry, telling him to meet him in the alley east of the library. It was an odd request, but he thought maybe his mind would be sharper if he returned to the scene of the crime. The Temple interior was so close, so sterile, so... Jedi. Kale was used to the dirty open. It was time to be honest with himself. He had a weight to get off his chest.

Heaving a sigh, Kale leaned back against a dumpster and shoved his hands into his jean pockets to wait for his master.

[Pierce Tondry]

The message read like the first half of a confession- short and nervous, trying to reveal there was something hidden without yet telling what it was.

Anyone confessing could be prodded into talking one of two ways. The first was to ease them into it gently, as a swimmer wading into cold water adjusts to the temperature. This allowed a kind of cathartic healing to take place. The burden dissipated, the suffering relieved, and the person could then become a more balanced individual.

The other was to make them suffer so much that the thought of more pain was inconsequential next to their fear at divulging what information they held.

Five years ago, that would have been Pierce's preferred method of information extraction. Today, the thought entered his mind as a practical lesson in what not to do, according to the Jedi Code.

Time to put the lesson to use.

"Unique meeting place," he commented as he approached Kale. "Not the sort I'd really expect a Jedi Padawan to be in, unless the Padawan was you. What's up?"

[Kale]

Kale greeted his master with a sheepish smile and an illustrative glance at their surroundings. "Well... I've been tryin' to retrace somethin' that happened two weeks back. You know, when I, uh... when I stole the saber."

He paced over toward the opposite dumpster, looked up the alley at the library fire escape, and back at a narrow nook between dumpsters.

"See, it's like this. Ever since the night I stole the saber, I've had trouble connecting with the Force. I mean, I was never great at it, but it was startin' to come easier. Now... no matter how many times I try clearin' my mind, or focusing my thoughts..."

He fell silent, staring at the dark corner between the trash bins.

[Pierce Tondry]

One of Pierce's eyes squinted in puzzlement. "That's a curious phenomenon."

"I'd have to guess, though, that you have some kind of idea on what it is or you wouldn't have asked me to come out here."

Pierce paused. "Although," he added with a small smile. "The smells coming from that dumpster there are enough to disturb anyone's Force connection."

[Kale]

"I hadn't noti--what? Oh, right."

Kale shook his head. He was entirely too perturbed by this whole thing.

"Yeah, I do have an idea. An' it has to do with the last time I used the Force. See, this is the alley I ran into when Master Belargic was chasin' me. I saw it was a dead end, but he was almost around the corner, so I squeezed back between those dumpsters over there. Then..."

He paused and looked over his shoulder at Pierce. "Er--I don't think I told you about my disappearin' trick. Nothin' too special, I can never really tell if it's workin' or not, but it has gotten me out of a couple jams. Anyway, I showed it to Oriadin, and he seemed surprised I could do it, so I guess it's not all that normal for a Padawan..."

Suddenly Kale was a lot more talkative than usual.

[Pierce Tondry]

"Stop dancing around the subject, boy. Tell me what I'm here for."

[Kale]

Kale nodded. "Right. See, I tried doin' that trick of mine. I didn't think it'd even work against a knight, but I was desperate. I kept tryin', and he was comin' closer..."

He took a deep breath, then took the plunge.

"Well, the long and the short of it is, I used the Dark Side. I didn't mean to--it just came over me, this sorta... cold, black feelin'. I wanted to stop it, but I was just too scared. Anyway, Master Belargic never found me, and that's how I got away."

He chewed his lower lip furiously.

"You think, uh... you think that might have somethin' to do with it?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Anger, aggression, and fear: those were the paths to the Dark Side. While concentrating on the Force, Kale lost control of his emotions and began fueling them with terror. And since that time, it seemed he'd been plagued by guilt and other fears enough that he couldn't fully attune himself to the Light.

"Yes, I do, Kale," Pierce said after some consideration. "And I think you owe the Light Side a reckoning."

[Kale]

Kale pressed his lips together and hung his head like a penitent. "Yeah. I kinda figured. So what do I have to do?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce arched an eyebrow. "What do you think you should do?"

[Kale]

The sixteen-year-old Padawan sighed and leaned back against the corrugated metallic belly of the dumpster, staring up at the sky. "I don't know!" he said, banging his palms on the dumpster wall. "That's why I came to you!"

[Pierce Tondry]

"And you thought I'd come up with a magical task you could do that would nix your guilt and make it all better? This is the real world kid." Pierce snorted lightly. "You used the greatest power in the universe out of fear. For a poor reason besides. There is no easy answer, no quick fix, to resolve what you did. Every time you find yourself in a similar spot in the future, you'll face the temptation to hide and let things blow over again. To remain with the Jedi you have to break yourself of that."

[Kale]

Hit him like a blunt instrument. Kale felt a pang that ran through his throat all the way to his gut. It was his conscience, that little thing Kale was used to ignoring, and it was telling him his Master was right on the money.

His fingernails gripped the flaking paint on the dumpster behind him, and he hung his head again. "Okay," he said. "I'm sorry. I know there's no quick fix. I know I can't just ignore what I did. That's why I'm bringin' it out into the open now. I'm just sick an' tired of tryin' to keep it inside. I wanna face my fear if that's what it'll take, but I don't think I can do it alone."

[Pierce Tondry]

"You want to face your fears?"

Pierce looked Kale up and down for a long moment.

"I don't think you're ready for that."

[Kale]

Kale blankly returned Pierce's look.

"Well, I didn't say I expected it to be easy. Maybe I could start small. Face a couple... insecurities... or somethin'."

That didn't seem to be the right answer.

"I'm sorry, but I feel kinda lost here. I don't know that much about the Force other than, y'know, the basics."

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce's eyes flashed, slightly. "If you start small, you will finish small. The only way to beat your fears is to tackle them head-on."

"When you get back to your quarters after dinner tonight, you will find a package with a note," Pierce began. "You will follow the note's instructions exactly, understand?"

Kale could barely get off a confirming nod before Pierce had turned away.

"Exactly as the note says, Padawan."

Sure enough, when Kale arrived at his quarters following dinner, he found a case with a thumbprint lock.

Inside the case were several tools, a few power cells-

-and a blaster.

[Kale]

Kale's scanty dinner was doing somersaults in his stomach as he carefully thumbed the access panel on the package. He'd been too nervous to swallow more than a soda and a grilled cheese sandwich at the food court. After only two weeks of training, Pierce Tondry was as transparent to Kale's eyes as the box on his carpet.

Well, at least he knew he could do something about the box.

Click! Kale pulled the lid open and immediately saw the polished black glint of gunmetal. He swallowed a sailor's knot and rifled through the box's contents until he found the note. It was on paper, neatly folded. The Padawan spread it out flat against the angled lid of the case to read it...

[Pierce Tondry]

Kale:

This is a Blastech DL-43 blaster weapon kit, complete with maintenance tools and spare power packs. Tonight, before you go to sleep, you will follow the instructions on the inside case and disassemble the weapon. You will then follow the instructions in reverse to reassemble it, and you will repeat the entire procedure five times. You will then practice loading the weapon with power packs for ten minutes. Do not aim the weapon when it is loaded. Do not fire the weapon when it is loaded. Further, read the instructions on how to properly hold the weapon Tomorrow, you will bring your case with you to our morning training session, which will be extended by an hour. We will be branching out into something new.

~Pierce

[Kale]

Kale read over it again in mounting disbelief. How did tinkering with a blaster's innards have anything to do with connecting to the Force? Sure, maybe it'd give him something to focus on, but... six times? It was busywork. It was overkill. It was...

Seven o'clock.

With a shoulder-heaving sigh, Kale pulled the blaster and the assorted tools out of the kit and laid the instructions flat on the floor. The first thing he did was to look for the magazine slot--right there, in a slot on the underside just in front of the trigger guard. The aperture was covered by a springback lid to keep the contacts clean. He glanced over the finely printed diagram of the gun on the instruction sheet, found the ejection lever, and gave it a pull on its corporeal counterpart. Right then, wasn't loaded.

"So... step one..."

1. Loosen body screws in even increments to remove right faceplate.

Simple enough... He located a small Phillips-head screwdriver and began twisting. The screws went into a neat pile on his right, and fiberplast faceplate sat next to them. The control knobs on the side remained on top of a lubricated metal shell that covered the insides.

2. Loosen interior screws to remove control plate.

These screws were tiny--Kale had to find a smaller head to work its way into the miniscule metalic creases. The plate was tethered underneath. He gently lifted--there were the rubber-coated wires that married the control knobs to the their appropriate functions within the blaster. Of course, Kale didn't know what they did--one varied the power of the blast, he thought. Wasn't that bad so far--it was only 7:07.

He set the control plate, dial-down, on the floor beside the naked blaster and was confronted with a miniature jungle of coils, valves, chambers, conductors, and wires.

"Oh, boy..."

3. Disconnect electron accelerator assembly from power source.

Step three had a dozen sub-steps, many of them involving tiny copper wires that liked to splay out of control. Kale vaguely understood that the electron accelerator was the spark that started the whole reaction, but the power pack wasn't even in. Why go to the trouble of pulling the plug when there wasn't any juice on the other side?

Caution: Power pack contacts may carry enough residual charge to ionize the exterior of the electron accelerator if trigger is pulled. Beware of static shock.

Ohhhhh.

By seven-thirty, Kale was surrounded by small piles of components, and he had to keep leaning over them to search the blaster specs for whatever the frell the next step was talking about, and the reaction track from the electron accelerator to the emitter lens was still mostly intact. The only part of the firing sequence he'd removed was the barrel, which housed magnetic phase coils to focus the trajectory of the blaster bolt. He'd never known why blasters had to have extended barrels like slugthrowers did. But if a bullet could use an extra length of metal tubing to keep it flying steady, a discharge of ionized gas needed something to keep it from dissipating. The rifled magnetic strips in the barrel's interior were one method of doing just that.

Between the aggravating mechanical wrestling matches, Kale was learning the ins and the outs of the blaster. The next fourteen steps took him through the genesis and exodus of a blaster bolt from its humble beginnings as a blast of excited electrons into a vapor medium through a series of reflective prefire chambers and out the emitter as a plasma projectile as hot as the surface of a sun. And oddly enough... it was interesting.

Sorta. A little.

At last, the entire blaster lay dissected on the floor. It was 8:03. With a groan, Kale planted his hands in the small of his back and cracked a few vertebrae, then rubbed his eyes and stood up to duck into the lav. After his business, he wiped a lick of sweat off his forehead, drank a tall glass of water, and returned to his pile of BlasTech intestines.

Holy frell--how had all those parts fit in there? Kale gaped at the gruesome scene and sat back on his bed. "Great... I'm never gonna get this thing back together! What's the point?"

He stared incredulously into empty space for several moments, then sank back in front of the disembowled blaster and started at step seventy-eight.

It was predictably harder putting it back together than it had been taking it apart, but at least he had an idea of what he was getting into. He mixed up a few parts and had to start the vapor intake system from square one again, but by the time he was up to the trigger assembly, he'd picked up his pace. Getting the control plate to fit over the reassembled innards was an aggravation. On his fourth try, it finally tightened down snugly onto its housing. Then the faceplate went on, the body screws went in, and the BlasTech DL-43 was once more a functional and highly stylish sidearm.

"Finished," Kale breathed, smiling in triumph. He looked the pistol over--it was just the way he'd found it, aside from a few extra fingerprints. His eyes darted to the clock. 8:58. Just in time to...

do it.... five... more... times.

Kale heaved a colossal sigh and set the blaster back on the floor.

"Okay... step one."

[Kale]

Fortunately, by the third attempt, his time had improved dramatically--just over an hour to disassemble and reassemble. But it was past eleven now, and he had three more cycles to do--or two; it depended on the correct interpretation of "repeat five times." Kale was strongly beginning to favor the less literal but more amenable meaning.

At the end of his fifth, he turned his bleary eyes toward the digital clock on his end table--1:15. He had to get up in four and a quarter hours to make his six o'clock practice session with Pierce. At this point, he felt he could argue convincingly that Pierce had meant five times total. That meant he could go straight to bed.

Oh, wait. Power pack practice.

He found the power packs in molded foam slots inside the kit--four of them. He pulled one out, turned the blaster over, and easily shoved the power pack into the slot.

What needed practicing?

He ejected the pack and repeated the procedure with the others. Then he decided to get a little fancier--ejecting one-handed and slapping in the next power pack with his free hand. The cartridge slid in about two centimeters and stopped. Kale turned the weapon over again and tapped the underside. Oh, he had it turned around. He pulled it back out, felt for the groove that marked the front edge of the power pack, and tried again. And again. And again.

1:25.

The last thing to do was to read the instructions on how to hold the blaster. Goodness, he knew that already--he'd lived in the Plaza Cueva de Luce, for Force's sake. But he glanced over them, just in case. He aimed the gun--woah, oops, ejected the last power pack and aimed the gun two-handed, arms straight but not locked, left hand steadying his right.

Two imaginary blaster bolts, sound effects provided by Kale, speared the empty root beer can on his dresser. Kale looked the blaster over approvingly, then set it carefully in its foam-cushioned cubby and flung himself onto his bed.

[Pierce Tondry]

6:00.

Rap, rap, rap! "Time to get up, Padawan."

[Kale]

Crud, not again.

He must've forgotten to set his alarm--or he'd just been so wiped he'd slept through it. But Pierce's voice snapped him into full alert mode. Still dressed in the same tunic and trousers he'd worn the previous day, he rolled off his bed and lunged for the dresser drawers.

Bang! "Ow!" THUD!

Dang it, who'd left that blaster case in the middle of his floor?

Oh, yeah.

Rubbing his shin, Kale stepped over the case and pulled a fresh change of clothes from his dresser. Yesterday's outfit went into the catchall laundry pile in the corner, and he hopped into today's sweatpants on his way to the lav.

A minute later, he emerged from his room, still foggy-eyed and rumpled, carrying the blaster case in his right arm.

"Uh... good mornin', Master."

[Pierce Tondry]

"You look tired, Padawan," Pierce eyed Kale critically. "You should get more sleep. It's important to functionality."

Pierce led Kale to the rooftop where the two of them usually practiced. As they exited on to the main roof, Pierce allowed Kale to pass him under the guise of closing the door. When he turned to face his Padawan, however, he held in his hand a blaster of the same type he'd given to Kale.

Except that it wasn't loaded?

[Kale]

Kale actually bit his tongue to keep himself from saying something regrettable. The pain helped him wake up a bit.

The rooftop of the LQ had become a familiar training venue for Kale. He wasn't, however, used to seeing his master carrying a sidearm during training sessions. He knew the weapon, of course--he knew how many rivets held it together and how much of a frelling pain it was to get them all to fit. But he hadn't the foggiest idea what Pierce was planning to do with the thing.

"Um... what's next?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce eyed Kale's face for a moment. "You don't look afraid, Padawan."

[Kale]

Kale furrowed his brow and glanced down at the empty gun with an unintentional yawn.

"Should I be?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce's expression fluctuated, seemingly picking up a trace of amusement. "You tell me," he said, casually tossing the weapon towards the tousle-headed Padawan.

[Kale]

Kale caught it--fortunately, he was awake enough to do that. He flipped the blaster over in his hand. The magazine slot was empty, the ejection lever was tripped, and the LED power desplay was black.

"Well, it ain't loaded, if that's what you mean," he hazarded.

[Pierce Tondry]

"So you weren't afraid because you knew the weapon couldn't hurt you." The way Pierce said this was more of a statement than a question.

[Kale]

Kale hesitated. He wasn't sure how literally to take the quest--er, statement.

"Well, not unless you smacked me across the face with it, no."

Not that he meant to give Pierce any ideas...

[Pierce Tondry]

"Not yet I won't," Pierce smiled briefly, then retreated into mild amusement again. "So would you say then that knowledge can defeat fear?"

[Kale]

Kale gave the blaster another look.

"Well, I guess--"

Wait a minute... That's what this whole thing was about? Dissecting and rebuilding a blaster down to the last wire just so he could tell his master couldn't gun him down on the rooftop with an empty weapon? What a load of--

Deep breath. Settle down.

"Uh... what exactly do you mean?"

[Pierce Tondry]

"If I had pulled a blaster on you when you were ten, you'd probably have wet yourself," Pierce began. "Whether or not it was loaded. Maybe a year ago, you'd have recognized it was loaded, but you wouldn't have known whether I was the type to keep a trick up my sleeve or have a hidden agenda. This morning, you knew enough about that weapon there to know it couldn't hurt you. And you knew enough about me to know I wouldn't try to hurt you without good reason."

"On the same note, you also know that Master Belargic wouldn't punish you unjustly, you just didn't let yourself believe it."

[Kale]

Kale slowly assimilated his Master's line of reasoning. He followed it up until the last sentence.

"I really wasn't thinkin' that far at the time," he admitted. "I was runnin' on instinct. Doin' whatever I could to keep from gettin' caught. I guess... well, I should've known better. But it's my instincts that kept me alive on Kuwaruk Re, and the Southern Underground, and the Santiago District. I'm tryin' to be more Jedi-like, but old habits die hard. Is it really just a matter of knowin' the right stuff?"

[Pierce Tondry]

"No, but it helps."

Pierce turned to look out over the vast expanse of Coruscant cityscape. In the glow from the morning speeder traffic Kale could see his Master's face looking tired and lost. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge," he quoted the Jedi Code sadly. "See Kale, the galaxy is governed by laws and economies and diplomacies not to bind us all together in one great family, although it does do that and most people think being bound together is the purpose those things are designed for. What those things really do is help sentient beings communicate with each other, help explain what our neighbors expect of one another. When you understand how things work, you can always make do even if you don't understand why they work that way."

A slight smile shone through Pierce's sad expression. "Sort of like with you and me. I tell you things to do and you do them even though you don't always get why right away. But in the end, you do get that 'why' figured out and it helps you grow a little bit."

[Kale]

There was something strange in Pierce's eyes--a sort of heaviness, or weariness. Kale couldn't quite place it, but it looked like his Master was seeing more than clouds and streaks of airborne metal in the city skyline.

It was sorta creeping him out.

Kale glanced the same direction, then back at his Master. "I've had to live by rules like that all my life," he said. "The kind of rules that ain't written in a book. Rules of the street. An' they all boil down to what you can do, and what you can't do, and what you have to do to get by. There was never any why. That's just the way it is."

He stepped away from the rail with his arms swinging at his sides. "So, what I know is this. I can't go back to the streets. I can't figure out the Force on my own, not without risking it blowin' up in my face again. So if I'm gonna get by, I'm gonna have to learn to be a Jedi. I'm gonna have to follow your lead. Maybe that's selfish. But you gotta know I'll do whatever I can. The only question left is... whether I can do it."

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce half-laughed. "I think I rambled a too much and you missed my point a little bit. Funny- that never used to happen before I became a Jedi. Life was easier back then; maybe for all the violence it was cleaner too."

"All right, here it is, short and simple: the more you know the less you have to be afraid of. Being able to identify that my blaster had no clip meant you knew you had nothing to be afraid of."

"That's why I want you to start a studying regimen, Kale. You need to learn about the world around you, and the knowledge you pick up will give you something to get you through the rough times."

[Kale]

Kale's mouth came open.

"Studyin'?" he repeated. "You mean like... school?"

And that made him sound smart... Kale had never had any sort of formal schooling; he'd learned what he knew by necessity. The prospect of spending hours in a sterile classroom, or a dusty library, didn't particularly thrill him.

"What I mean is... er... what did you have in mind?"

[Pierce Tondry]

"Smooth recovery," Pierce chuckled at his Padawan's slip. "Yes, like school. All the Padawans who come here receive teaching. You just need more than most. With your background, you probably picked up things like which streets to avoid and where you can get good deals on death sticks. Those will get you through life as a pickpocket, not life as a Jedi."

Pierce withdrew a small datapad from his back pocket and extended it to Kale wh began skimming it. "That contains a list of texts I want you to read and some topics to write reports on. There are a few official courses you need to take, too. They're technical learning; mostly they'll teach you the finer points of using the Academy computer system or how to use a starship's comm station to send a message back to Coruscant. And you'll have to learn how to drive, but I'll teach you that personally. But we need to fill that head of yours with knowledge before your real training can begin."

[Kale]

As Kale perused the titles, his face slowly changed from uncertainty to apprehension. For a teen who'd never read so much as a daily newspaper from cover to cover, the prospect of writing reports on a list of academic books was a daunting one--and it was a long list, at least, to his eyes.

The Padawan swallowed his consternation and looked back up at his Master. "You, uh... have any kind of time you want these done?"

[Pierce Tondry]

Pierce's eyebrows lifted. "One a week. Unless you don't think you can."

[Kale]

Kale took a deep breath and looked down at the list again.

"Do I get to pick the order?" he asked.

[Pierce Tondry]

"Is that really gonna matter? Look, Kale," Pierce began. "If you think it'll help you to have some choice in the matter, then yeah, go ahead and choose what comes first. But it doesn't matter whether do 'em first to last or last to first. They've gotta be done."

[Kale]

Er... right. There really was no way to get around it; that's sort of what the whole Master-Padawan thing was all about. Truth be told, he didn't have any idea where to start except the top of the list.

The Phantom Menace: How the Empire Came to Power and Why by Shan Aku-Shan.

A Shorter Compendium of Galactic Literature, edited by Emiren Pareil.

Meditations, 94th Edition by Yoda.

Might not be so bad. In fact, he didn't want to admit it, but he was curious.

"I'll do my best," he said gamely. "Long as the librarian'll still let me in the Archives," he added with a wry smirk.