Chương 5: Outside Excursion

62 BBY – 938 ARR – Coruscant The light blinds as surely as the dark. Walk where neither reaches, and you will be unseen. – Teaching of the Shadows ~*~*~*~ In spite of lessons with Dooku and the extra hours he put into bladework, life did not pause. In all the excitement of dealing with Dooku, he had forgotten to tell Mace about him being bumped up to the third level Diplomacy and Politics course.

So instead of easing him into it, he casually dropped that the new course's assignments were difficult three weeks after the incident with Master Dooku. This caused exactly what Rann feared; a jealous Mace Windu. Mace at age ten did not like being shown up. He was the best initiate in the clan, and he knew it. At this age, much of his self-worth was drawn up in this fact. So Rann outshining him in any way was unconscionable.

Of course, much of this was drawn from another, much more basic source: Mace feared not being selected as a Padawan. His way of managing that fear was by using his natural talent and monstrous work ethic to be the absolute best initiate in the Order. Rann had therefore poked both Mace's ego and deepest fear, quite by accident, by being better than him at something. Over what was supposed to be a quick lunch before Rann returned to the Archives. Wonderful. Now, they were sitting in the Refectory in silence.

Normally, Rann spent his lunchtime people-watching, as the Refectory was one of the best places to do it inside temple walls. Most Jedi in the Order who were on Coruscant came here for their meals, at least those who couldn't cook. It was filled with hundreds of sentients during mealtimes, presenting a riot of color and shapes as a human walked past a Wookie standing next to a Twi'lek.

And in the Force, it was an even more riotous patchwork of signatures, coming together to form a unique, living quilt of emotion and being. This came with downsides, however. The food itself was miserably bland to accommodate all the species who called the Order home. Rann was normally quite good at ignoring the lack of taste. He couldn't today. He pushed the plate of… something away and turned to look at his best friend.

"Mace, you can't just ignore me." Mace ignored him. Rann, on an intellectual level, could understand that this was his friend trying to restrain himself. He could even feel it in the Force, the roiling emotions that drew them to each other had reached a pique and were being poorly contained by Mace's shielding. All the other Initiates had sensed this disquiet and left the table. Rann, as a ten-year-old, could not quite handle having his best friend ignoring him.

"Mace, I'll tell Master Zucul that you smell funny." That drew a look. Mace pushed at him in the Force, a clear GoAway. Rann just sent back LoveConcernCompassion. Mace looked away. Rann gave him time.

"It's not fair."

"What's not fair?"

"That you're so good at it!" Mace swung around to him, arms crossed. Rann knew that in forty years, the look would be one of an imperious Jedi Master on the High Councilor. That stormy look would make Knights and Masters alike quail in their boots. Currently, it was the face of a pouty Initiate.

"Mace, you're good at like a hundred other things. Better than me," said Rann calmly.

"You beat me almost every time we spar."

"Yeah, but…" Mace couldn't finish the sentence.

"But what?"

"It's different!"

"How?"

"Because…" Mace still wasn't willing to finish the thought.

"Because it wasn't you," finished Rann. Mace doesn't reply, but it's confirmation enough. He took a deep breath.

"I think, Mace, that you need to talk to a Master about this. See you later." He's already walking away before Mace can protest. Rann doesn't like it when Mace is mad at him, even when it's not his fault. Normally, he would find a quiet space where he could be alone and hopefully have his precognition calmed down by tranquility. It used to be the Archives, but ever since Master Nu yelled at Dooku after getting involved in his business, he's felt less at ease there.

He considered the Room of a Thousand Fountains, but something about that didn't suit his mood. So, he decided to try his luck against the Temple guards. It had been a while since he'd made a crack at leaving. Unlike moving inside the Temple, where confidence bluffs were almost universally the best option for getting around, the Temple guards didn't accept Younglings just walking out of the temple.

He'd heard from a junior Padawan who'd just gotten a master that there were secret passages beneath the temple, something he could have inferred from his past life. This had sparked an interest in him, so he'd decided to do some digging around. Eventually, he had reached the source of the rumors, a Senior Padawan named Soont. Despite his best wheedling, the Senior Padawan had refused to lead him to one of the passageways.

The padawan told him where one was, though: 43 levels below the ziggurat, past a series of statues of Jedi Knights. The base of the ziggurat was considered floor 0, with every floor beneath it being counted in reverse order. He knew the first steps already: dampen one's presence in the Force. When he was little more than a whisper, he moved to the next.

Rann was sure he wasn't the only one who knew about the secret passages into and out of the Temple, but he also knew that the Temple Guards at least pretended not to know where they were. As he began making his way to one in the deeper levels, he shifted how he walked, distributing his weight evenly across his feel and landing heel-to-toe slowly. Then, he focused on his senses, straining his hearing and stretching out gossamer-thin over the Force, thinking of a spider's web.

Normally when he tried to do this, he got overwhelmed with Precognitive visions, as the high-traffic areas of the Force meant he sometimes saw thousands of potentials. Here, deeper and deeper into the Temple's bowels, he Saw very little. Creeping is an odd mixture of nerve-wracking and deeply boring. It requires full attention to execute but doesn't mean moving fast. In fact, Rann was moving at a lightning pace for trying to be stealthy, largely relying on his Force senses to alert him.

So he was simultaneously trying to rush through the lower levels while making sure he wasn't caught. He passed through silent halls, where his footsteps felt glaringly loud. Every few levels he went down, the architectural style changed as he reached a different era of the Order, representing a bygone era's interpretation of the Code. This deep there was essentially no foot traffic, just the Guards patrolling and the Shadows returning from missions.

Rann was pretty sure that it was in fact a Shadow that had caught him last time and alerted a Guard, since the Guard had simply zeroed in on his location without seeming like he was on patrol. He hadn't sensed a Shadow, though, so maybe he was wrong. Just as he was getting lost in his own thoughts, he Sensed something. It felt something like seeing a flickering lantern's light before seeing the bearer; just enough time to feel panicked.

Rann assessed his options and quickly decided to scale up one of the gothic-looking rippling arches that were spaced throughout the halls of this level of the temple. He managed it without making much noise due to his soft leather boots but had to use the Force to strengthen his grip. He did his best to suppress himself and let go of his hold on the Force as he clung to the arch with his strength alone, wedging his feet and hands into the ripples as best he could.

He felt the other Force presence draw closer at a hurried pace. Then he saw the guard, just barely. This level was not very well-lit, everything cast in shadows. Instead of carrying lanterns, Temple Guards tended to rely on the Force to guide them and to strengthen their eyesight, like he was doing. With the white robes covering their features and blank white mask, it was incredibly hard to get a read on them. Not to mention how intimidating it made them. Rann stilled. The guard looked around.

His muscles were burning. The guard hadn't moved on. Rann could feel the guard's presence ranging in the Force and dimmed his own presence further. He felt like he was slipping already, but the guard had probably only been there for a minute or less. The guard took slow steps away, still searching. Rann's sides hurt. After what felt like an eternity, the guard disappeared from all his sense and Rann took a gasping breath. He fell to the floor as silently as he could.

Rann reckoned that being as light as he was at ten years old was the only thing that let him hold onto the archway for almost ten minutes, that and the constant training. He stood up, flexing his sore hands as he began making his way to the secret passage. The incident had him on guard, but he eventually made it to the hall of statues. The statues were… interesting. Each of them had a distinct presence in the Force but they were muted like they were asleep or dormant.

Rann was tempted to poke at them both physically and in the Force to see what would happen, but he had seen enough movies and played enough videogames to know that mysterious statues with weapons could mean trouble. He left well enough alone. He instead began to look around for the passage. The senior padawan hadn't told him exactly where entrance was, or how to access it, instead just passing along a rumor.

After a brief circuit of the room where he looked for oddities in the wall which produced no results, he closed his eyes again, letting himself focus on his other senses. Rann crept around outside edge of the room, feeling for a change in the air. Nothing. Maybe it's not here, he thought. But something told him it was. He decided on another circuit, more thorough this time. He put his hand on the wall again but focused entirely on the Force. This text was taken from Royal Road.

Help the author by reading the original version there. Half a circuit later, behind a stature of a Jedi Temple Guard, he felt it. Here. Opening his eyes, he looked for clues. After a minute, nothing. Considering his options, the first thing that sprung to mind was a passcode of some sort. He had no chance of figuring out what it was, so he discarded it as not something available. The next was that it somehow involved the statues, specifically the statue behind him.

While that was a potential option, he really felt like poking the mysterious statues with weapons should be a last resort. Next, he considered blind intuition, leaning heavily in the Force. While it was unorthodox, it did tend to help. He stilled himself, trying to fall into that same state he reached when making a mandala. One where the Force's whispers grew louder but not overwhelming, and they guided his every motion.

He lifted his hand, flexing all five fingers as far outwards as they would go, visualizing a net to catch the Force's intent. There. He pressed gently on the wall. Then harder. Suddenly, the wall gave, swinging inwards on a hinge. He yelped, then listened to make sure he hadn't been caught. Nothing. That went better than expected, he thought. He looked at the door before deciding he could probably close it and still get back in later.

Moving gingerly, he closed the door, which was a several hundred pound slab of the wall. With the door closed, the tunnel was entirely dark. Rann went for the light he'd placed in his belt and turned it on, revealing a passageway that was mostly bare besides the dust on the floor. There was a clear track through the center of the hallway, though, indicating that it was still being used by someone. Confirms the Shadow theory, he thought.

He figured it was likely that they would use this tunnel to get in and out of the Temple. This left him with a problem. Currently he was dressed in an Initiate's garb. It would clearly mark him as a Jedi. He dumped the top layer of his robe, untucked his pants from his boots, and slung his belt over his shoulder. To anyone who knew what they were looking for, it was still fairly obvious that he was wearing a Jedi youngling's clothes in an untraditional manner, but it broke up the silhouette.

Besides, Jedi were most associated with the brown robes that came after one had become a Padawan. Seeing as it was the best he could do, he shrugged and moved on through the tunnel. A short jaunt later, up some stairs, a ladder, and some more walking, he found himself deposited on the streets of Coruscant. Rann looked up at the durasteel canyon that surrounded him – no sky, no sun above – just metal. This was the cityplanet's midlevel, not quite lawless but certainly rougher.

Hawkers fought to be heard over the hum of speeders, passers-by, and the low din produced by the rattling above and below. Duracrete and puddles were painted in reds and blues and greens by neon signs in every script. He felt like throwing up. It wasn't like the Temple, where the Knights and Masters had good control over themselves and Crèchemasters helped guard their minds. Everyone spilled into the Force.

A CSF officer's wary alertness pressed against a shopkeeper's anger and the child's joy and the grandmother's aches and– he was soon caught in their currents, dragged beneath by the undertow. He closed his eyes and kept walking, pushed along by the eddies and currents of the crowd. A hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Where are you going, boy?" He looked up into a scowling face of a man garbed in rough, stained clothes. His first real greeting into the Midlevels.

"Just walking," he tried to push the hand off him. It didn't budge. Rann felt a lump rising in his throat, each breath more harried than the last.

"Let go."

"I don't think so. You're on our level, topdecker." The slang threw him off. As he was trying to parse it, a new voice called out.

"Leave off, Mils. He's just a kid." He glanced over quickly and saw what looked like a shopkeeper.

"He don't belong here, Tina."

"Mils," she said in a warning tone.

"Alright, alright. Don't know what you want with a topper," muttered the man – boy really, Rann realized. He must be a teenager, early twenties at most. Mils shoved him roughly toward the shopkeeper, Tina. She caught his arm before he could stumble and steered him inside. The moment the door closed behind them, the roar of the street ebbed. Her shop smelled faintly of dust and warm cloth, its shelves stacked with gutted electronics and patched machinery.

In the back corner, colorful fabrics hung like sails, stitched with birds and dragons in bright thread. To Rann, it felt like stepping into a tidepool after being battered by waves – still, contained, alive in its own way but no longer overwhelming. The pounding surf of minds outside softened to a distant murmur, and he could finally breathe. Finally, they passed through bead curtains separating the front of the shop from the back. She sat him down on a bench and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead.

"Are you sick, boy?" Rann shook his head. The infinite possibilities and myriad emotions of the crowd in the street faded away. Faint buzzing that had been building inside of him faded away, and he could suddenly see again, no longer taken by Sights. Tina's shop also had a certain… stillness to it, like a tidepool slowing the crashing waves in the Force.

"Answer me with words." She dropped the hand but didn't look convinced.

"No, ma'am," he answered obediently.

"What is your name," she asked. Her voice had a musical lilt to it. He noticed what she was wearing. It was typical Coruscanti clothing, but there were little figures stitched into it. Birds and dragons and others, in reds and yellows and purples.

"Rann. What's yours?"

"I am called Tina. Who are your people? Will you be okay?" Rann couldn't quite place it, but it sounded like she had an Outer Rim accent, with Basic not being her first language. It was only at this moment that he realized just how sheltered his life in the Order had been.

Almost everyone he had ever interacted with in the Temple had a very specific accent which was sometimes called High Coruscanti, but according to older Jedi it was particular to the Temple and that others on the planet just mimicked it to seem closer to the Force. The only exceptions were the exceptionally old lifeforms like Yoda and T'raa Saa, whose accents were sometimes unplaceable due to the passage of time.

He had of course seen holovids and holodramas that featured a variety of accents and even languages, but there was a world of difference between watching an actor on a screen and talking to a living, breathing person who was asking him a question and now staring at him because he had spaced off again.

"I'm okay, thank you. No need to worry." She seemed to notice his deflection, but let it pass.

"You will stay here until you are not sick."

"I'm not sick."

"You will stay," she said in a tone that brooked no arguing. He nodded, suddenly feeling bashful. Tina had opened up her… store? Maybe home? There was a curtain separating the area he was currently in from another area further back. Looking at it, he sensed someone else. A hand crept to the edge of the curtain, and soon an eye was peeking out. Tina noticed as well and sighed, gesturing for the person behind the curtain to come out.

A burnt orange Twi-lek girl who looked to be around his age, if not a bit older, shyly stepped into the back of the shop. Rann waved and smiled. She continued staring, lekku twitching. Rann did his best to project calm.

"Hello." Her eyes darted between him and Tina."'alloo," she mumbled back. Then she turned to Tina." Jinqa so ish? ta'brila ish sei plee sha, Tena," in what Rann could guess was Ryl." Koa, keella. Ish se," Tena made some gesture like she was throwing something over his shoulder he also didn't understand." Ozanta."" Zala basic, keella." The twi-lek focused on him again.

"kaa…

'alloo, me call… koa … I are Ryuni." She, Ryuni, said as she pointed at herself.

"Ryuni," she repeated.

"Hello, Ryuni. I'm Rann."

"Rahn?" Close enough. Rann nodded and smiled.

"Yes."

"Good to meet." Conversation died out after that, as Ryuni's Basic was exhausted and Rann's Ryl non-existent. Tina stepped in and addressed him.

"You feel better, Rann?"

"Yes, thank you." Rann did his best to convey his gratefulness.

"Do you have people to go to?" Rann nodded.

"Yes." She followed his face closely.

"Good. Then you will stay for tea, at least." Rann was then shuffled back to the furthest area, which was as he suspected, a living quarters. Rann hadn't realized that even being able to see the world outside was a privilege the Temple afforded him until seeing Tina and Ryuni's home, which felt more like a spacer's quarters aboard a ship. It was pretty bare bones, a living room/dining room/kitchenette and one bedroom. Ryuni was sleeping on a futon, an invention great enough to exist in space, apparently.

The biggest oddity was the lack of windows, which necessitated dull, orange lights. There were little doodads everywhere and it was clearly very lived-in. Artwork, some of which appeared masterful and others that seemed to have been drawn by children, was on every wall and in every medium. Watercolors, pastels, oil paintings, and some directly onto the durasteel walls, each was drawn by a different hand.

"Do you like art?" he asked, trying to make conversation.

"Art is good," Tina said as she prepared the tea.

"Some of those who come through like to leave pieces of their stories with me."

"Oh," Rann said, in the noise many sentients made when they didn't quite understand what was being said.

"It looks beautiful." She smiled then.

"Yes. Many hands." Tina then brought him and Ryuni warm mugs as they sat at the small table. The next twenty minutes were tedious, as Tena was clearly using his presence to force Ryuni to practice her Basic. He didn't really mind, and the tea was actually quite good. Unlike the conversation. There were plenty of gaps and slow moments, and Tina had to frequently step in to help them. Rann also very quickly noticed how Ryuni dodged some topics of conversation altogether, with Tina assisting her.

He did learn that she was from Ryloth and that her favorite color was blue. After a while, their stilted dialogue became a bit too much and he decided to make his exit.

"Ryuni, it was nice to talk to you."

"Rahn, it was nice to talk to you," she parroted back, lekku twitching. Tina, who had been watching their last several minutes with an inscrutable smile, stood and took his mug. As she ushered him towards the front of the shop, she said, "Thank you for talking to Ryuni. The other children around here have not been kind." Rann didn't know how to reply, so he just smiled and waved her off awkwardly. She stopped them just before the threshold of the shop.

"You will be okay?"

"Yes, miss Tina," Rann assured her.

"Good. You will come back?" Come back? Rann hadn't really considered it. He wasn't sure if or when he would be able to get out of the Temple. He'd spent a lot of the last twenty minutes working on reinforcing his shields and centering himself to try and face Coruscant again. What he would do after that hadn't even crossed his mind, his problems too immediate.

"Okay." Rann nodded his head, decision made.

"Yes ma'am, I'll be back."

"Good. Maybe I can finally get that girl to practice her Basic." With that and a quick hug, he was sent back out into the streets. ~*~*~ Despite the pressure behind his eyes, Rann made it back to the secret passage without issue. He felt odd, like there was wool wrapped around his brain with the way he had shielded himself.

He'd eventually decided to use the technique that had been taught to him by the Masters when they discovered his connection to the Unifying Force, which worked by actively separating himself from the Force. It made his every sense feel dull and left him nervy, but he made it. The Crèchemasters clucked at him for spending too much time in the Archives again, but they didn't really raise a fuss. Rann's oddities were well-known, and he was a trusted pupil.

This actually made him feel bad, as he knew he was abusing their trust, but figured it couldn't be helped. Mace gave him a look but didn't comment.