Chapter 75: You're A Jedi Knight, Aren't You?
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Hyenanon
stims neurodivergently into oncoming pedestrians
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Chapter 75: You're A Jedi Knight, Aren't You?
Nerim could feel the pipes rumbling and rattling in the walls as the building ever-so-slightly swayed in the strong wind. He approached the restrooms, and Haaka gave him a cautious look. When Nerim went to reach for the door, Haaka held up a hand. "Hold on, Chey-Linn is—"
Nerim ignored him and pushed open the door, slightly, so his voice could carry inside. "Chey-Linn? Can we please talk?"
There was silence for a few moments. Eventually, when he didn't leave, a choked voice, muffled from inside one of the stalls. "What do you want from me?"
"I'm sorry, but we need your help."
Silence, again. The wind howled outside, and the pipes rattled. Haaka seemed unsure what to say, either to Nerim or his Padawan.
"Is this some sort of joke?" He heard her voice, just barely, unsure if he was meant to.
"I know you've been through a lot. And we don't have a good history. And we both have good reasons to hate one another," Nerim said somberly. "But I trust you—"
A pipe suddenly burst in the ceiling. A high pressure jet of some sort of gaseous mixture, probably meant to make a habitable atmosphere condition in a room for some species or another, began spewing down and burst a panel out of the ceiling above the entrance to the bathrooms. "Whoa!" Nerim dodged aside somewhat unnecessarily, half-stepping into the doorway, shoving the restrooms door mostly open and placing himself at the corner next to the hinges.
The gas rapidly began to fill the room. It was cold and opaque, a silvery dark cyan, forming a pillar from the ceiling that began billowing into a cloud that immediately obscured everything in his vicinity. He couldn't see an inch in front of his face. The conversation among the crowd stopped, but nobody jumped to extremes, as none of the Force Users sensed danger. More bursts occurred in the pipe, lowering the pressure around Nerim, but spreading the gas further around the room. It didn't seem particularly toxic, in that it didn't burn his eyes much, although he began holding his breath reflexively, and felt fairly certain it was displacing the air he needed to breathe. And it was very cold.
A blazing blue lightsaber blade stabbed through the door Nerim had huddled against, between his arm and his torso, burning his coat and spewing bits of liquid metal from the door against his skin. He yelped in pain and threw himself away and to the side, and as he did so, the blade slashed down and through the door. Nerim landed wrong on his heel, twisting his ankle and falling to his back on the floor. Suddenly, there was an overwhelming aura of rage bellowing through the room, that Dark feeling manifest.
He scrambled backwards in the opaque nothingness unable to stand up, nothing visible in the dull cyan cloud but the white godrays of the ceiling lights and the cold blue blade in front of him. It swung down and he dodged to the side, unable to see the floor, but seeing the blade's light transition into orange liquid metal glow and disappear beneath a plane invisible to him. It was almost too disorientating to even know what direction was up or down, where physical objects started or ended. The blade was all there was.
He felt his Master's presence, and the pressure increase around him. In a sphere centered just above and to his right, the gasses were pushed away, creating a brief moment of visibility. The figure holding the blade remained cloaked in the gas, humanoid in stature with what may have been a flowing robe or just cloudy wisps. The sphere of clarity continued to expand, but struggled around the figure. That overwhelming sensation of the Dark, of intent to kill, saturated the room and lashed out randomly in every direction. Ceiling panels bent and floor tiles cracked. A connection began to appear before him, the Dark Side attempting to act through him, telling him to kill Chey-Linn.
This time, his inner animal was not impressed, and it stood with his inner voice. He thrust his hand forward and then clawed into the Dark Side and pulled it back, and a cloud of Emerald Lightning exploded from his arm, transforming the cloudy room to a viridian nimbus. There was a definite change in tone, a portion of the rage turning to shock, as figured raised its blade and blocked the bulk of the tamed Dark Side energy. Unlike Sith Lightning, it was relatively easy to maintain a defense against it, so long as one raised their defenses before it hit.
The figure seemed to figure out what he was doing, and all of the rage disappeared, as if a faucet was simply shut off. The Emerald Lightning sputtered to nothing along with it, and Nerim had very little in the realm of internal reserves to maintain any defense through the Force. The figure rushed towards him, dragging the wall of fog with it in a hazy indistinct mass, and began to swing down.
A gauntlet intercepted the blade before it could hit Nerim, and Jianno emerged from the fog behind him. She held the blade in her hand, and clenched her fist. "I don't think so," her metallic voice came through her helmet coldly. The blade's containment field began to crack as the beskar crushgaunt exerted an immense force against it. The figure deactivated their blade before it could break, and then shot back into the fog wall, towards where he thought the restrooms were. The entire exchange lasted only a few seconds. Jianno grabbed Nerim and hauled him up, supporting him as he stood on one foot.
Arwain almost finished buffeting the atmospheric contamination back up towards the ceiling, holding it up like an angry storm cloud above them, covering the ceiling lights and leaving them in a dim haze. Still, Nerim could only see a few feet around himself in the frigid cold. The doors to the courtroom had opened at some point and the Commandos emerged blasters raised. Now able to take stock of his surroundings, he saw Haaka's form begin to emerge, pressed against the wall, searching for the door. "Chey-Linn!" He screamed. "Chey-Linn, no!"
Nerim tried to shout, but as he took in breath, he sputtered on the taste of ice and a scent somewhere between crab and sulfur. "It's not Chey-Linn!" He managed to croak out.
If anyone heard him, they didn't have time to question it before the second restrooms door burst open, and another wall of fog began to escape from it. Aesha emerged, dragging Pappino by the shoulders out. She collapsed to the floor and took a gasp of breath, and then shouted "Kiseti is still in there!" and ran back in.
Nerim caught sight of Tetha, who gave him one last nervous glance and ran in after Aesha. Haaka Mahn had rushed into the other restrooms while he wasn't looking. One of the Commandos approached Nerim. "Injured!" He called out. The camera droids began floating in the doorway of the court room.
"It's not Chey-Linn!" He repeated through coughs. The Commandos grabbed him and began ushering the group out of the room and back into the court. He resisted, trying to limp forward, but the soldier was strong and pulled him hard. Aesha and Tetha emerged with Kiseti, who was covered in frost. The other restroom had its atmosphere cleared in a similar way to how Arwain had done, and through the flapping door he could barely make out Vocta and Haaka Mahn standing over Chey-Linn, who was on her hands and knees on the floor, hyperventilating and eyes unfocused.
Then, he was pulled around the corner and separated from the group, while a bailiff held him down and insisted on asking about his injuries.
___________________________________________________________________________________
The security forces had separated everyone, unsure at first who the offending party was. There were no major injuries beyond some early signs of hypothermia and Nerim's twisted ankle and burns. Nerim was kept in a small windowless room with a round featureless white couch and a holoprojector table, while one of the Commandos stood next to the door, and an officer sat across from him.
The officer questioned him on what he saw, and he replied as best as he could recall. He hadn't been tracking the positions of everyone prior to the event happening, trying instead to keep his focus on that Dark presence. Through the questioning, he realized that he didn't have a solid idea of where anyone was prior to the gas leak, beyond Haaka Mahn and Chey-Linn. Once it occurred, he had no accounting for anyone's exact whereabouts until Jianno saved him.
"And you're sure the one who attacked you wasn't Chey-Linn?" The officer asked. "How, if you couldn't see or identify them otherwise?"
"I could sense through the Force that it wasn't her," he answered reluctantly. "I know it's not something I can explain to a non-User, but—"
The door slid open. With the tapping of his cane, Yoda shuffled in. "Believe him, I do."
The officer stood up and saluted as Yoda entered. Yoda nodded to him and walked over to the couch, climbing up onto it and taking his place. Once he settled in on crossed legs, he looked across the table to Nerim, silent for a few moments.
"Lightning," the old Master said as if commenting on the weather.
"Emerald lightning!" Nerim responded defensively.
"Yes..." Yoda nodded slowly. "But to use it, a connection is required. A firm grasp of the Dark."
Nerim raised his hands. "I know it looks—"
"The wrong impression, I have given," Yoda interrupted, gesturing for him to stop. "Questioning your usage, I am not. To underline your knowledge, I am trying."
Nerim lowered his arms and furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"To utilize the Dark in such a manner, one must sense it clearly," Yoda pointed with his walking stick. "Bothered, I am, that no one saw this coming. That none could navigate the room without their eyes. Better than that, a Jedi's senses are. Clouded, their senses in the Force must have been."
He didn't respond immediately, sensing something else was on Yoda's mind. His silence prompted Yoda to speak.
"Or lying, someone is."
Nerim looked down at the table. "I've been persistently sensing a Dark presence since we arrived on Coruscant. Since I first entered the room with Chey-Linn and the others, specifically. No one else from our group can sense it clearly. Tetha has described a sense of deja vu, which I share. Arwain has gotten whiffs of something bad, which I share. But I feel a presence and emotions, specifically."
Yoda closed his eyes and focused. Then he shook his head. "Vocta, Mahn, Ya-Ban, Lohwan, Chey-Linn. Reported a vague sense of Darkness, they all have. From your table, or so they assume. Suspicions I share."
"It wasn't one of us," Nerim replied confidently.
"Mm. When 'us' you say, to whom do you refer?" Yoda challenged.
"Well, to all of us. None of our Force Users could have done that," he replied awkwardly. He didn't want to admit Aesha was training in the Force, even though Yoda could likely tell.
And as if he were trying to read Nerim's thoughts, Yoda stared at him. Then Yoda ran a hand through his sparse hair and sighed. "Difficult to read, I always thought you were. Closed, your thoughts seem. Diversionary, your expressions. Deeply unsettled was I by your lack of comment when we exiled you. To that moment my mind kept returning. 'How could he have nothing to say', I asked myself. 'Make clear your thoughts to me', I wanted. Hmm."
"Big talk coming from the guy who speaks backwards."
"Hm. Hmhm." Yoda laughed through his nose. "I kept my broken manner of speech on purpose, to force people to actively listen to me. In decoding the order of my words they would have to actually think about each one and how they fit together. I refused to perfect my Basic because I was tired of working harder to communicate in a new language and seeing my words receive less attention for the effort. Fae was right about you. You're actually an open book. We just did not actively engage with how you communicated. Impatient, we were, to get to the matter that interested us. Like a Padawan just nodding along through a lecture until he can get to the lightsaber lessons. Missing why the blade mattered in the first place, we arrived to a place where we held it, and knew not what to do but swing."
Nerim's eyes narrowed as he took in the words. "Are you admitting my exile was...wrong?"
"Rethink the concept of exile, I feel we must. Yours? Not sure," he chuckled. "A great pain, it would have been, had you performed that stunt on Boonta while under our colors. Worried, I was, that you would defy the Code, that you would lead other Jedi astray, that you would take actions which endanger yourself and others and tarnish the reputation of the Order and undermine the trust the Republic puts in us. And these things all, you have done. Although I am not so old and dotty to not see that we have contributed greatly to your efforts in all of these areas in our own way. Overestimate, you, the amount Fae would approve of your actions. And roping Saarkane into it, of all systems. Hm. A 'Do as I say, not as I do' type person, was she."
Yoda looked him in the eye. "My point being, see through you now, I can. Transparent your intentions are. And the stain of the Dark I do not sense. So I trust you. But flawless your judgment is not. So I ask, who can you rule out, and why?"
Well, when you can't think of a good lie...
Nerim crossed his arms and leaned back. "It can't be me, because I'm me. It can't be Arwain, Tetha, or Aesha, because I have an intimate understanding of their presence in the Force after training together for so long, and I feel them distinct from the Darkness. It can't be our lawyers or Jarroa, because they're not Force Users. It can't be Chey-Linn, because I have felt separation between the Dark and her. That leaves Ya-Ban, Lohwan, Haaka, and Vocta that I'm unsure of, but all seem unlikely to me. I also wasn't keeping track of the media or Commandos, who could have snuck by without my notice. Or the Justices, as far-fetched as that sounds. Theoretically, it could have even been someone I don't know about at all, who was hiding in the ceiling and following me around the city during the entire trial. Honestly, that's where I'm leaning."
Yoda nodded along and hummed in thought. "Impossible to tell which lightsaber was used against you. Vocta, Chey-Linn, and Haaka all used blue blades. Chey-Linn suffered from hypoxia and hypothermia. Little memory of the event, she has. When she awoke, a nightmare, she thought it was."
The two were silent for a time, and then Yoda spoke. "Agree with you that it was not Chey-Linn, I do."
"Glad to see the Order's inability to see her doing any wrong is working out in favor of the truth for once," Nerim grumbled.
Yoda paused at that, and then readjusted in his seat. "Changes, the trial will undergo. Our Servicemen and Vocta, we will cycle out. Haaka Mahn will be kept in the Temple. Tell this not, to your friends. If the Dark presence persists, information, we will gain."
"What? No." Nerim frowned. "Changing out Chey-Linn's lawyers this late in the trial would be unfair. It would disadvantage her. And you can't rob her of her Master's support!"
"Heh!" Yoda laughed, standing up. "Like a coin you flip in the name of justice. Widdimur, you remind me of. Still, it must be done."
"You can't just throw her under the streetcar!" He protested.
"Keeping a potential Dark Jedi on her legal team is no better for her," Yoda reasoned, hopping off the couch. "If so sure you are that your friends are not to blame, then great is the chance it is one of her team. Mm?"
"I don't like what you're implying about my friends..." Nerim warned as Yoda stretched his legs out and began to walk away. "Has it escaped you that the Order just lost a case trying to persecute us under these same circumstances?"
Yoda stopped, without turning back to face him. "No. But think a layer deeper of what that means. Trouble you, it should. True Darkness did lurk, then. Darkness lurking again is the last thing we need. Your duty it is to remain vigilant against such threats, as a 'Jedi Knight'."
Yoda walked out the door, and Nerim blinked. "Wait, did I just get a promotion?"
He paused again in the doorway. "Backwards, I was speaking. Knight Jedi, I meant."
