TaciturnBadger
Well-Known Member
~BHM, ~BBW, ~Sex, Adventure, ~XWG - A super-sized version of Star Wars!
[Author's Note: This was an idea I've had plodding its way through my mind for a week or two now. I jotted it down at work during a few slow days. Also, apologies in advance about the paragraphing -- I can't for the life of me get the indent to work. So, without further ado..
For the purists and just plain curious out there, this tale takes place during the first collapse of the Old Republic, approximately five years after the events of the Mandalorian Wars and one year after the end of the Jedi Civil War – the gamers amongst you will notice that places the setting at roughly six months prior to Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and is quite strongly rooted in the politics and public perception of that era. For everyone else – the story picks up right after the scene is painted.. Legal Disclaimer at the end.]
Part I
In the words of the famous green Jedi Master – size matters not. And in a time long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a simple coincidence leads to a great hunt, a great recovery, and a budding FA’s realization of true peace in the galaxy begins with peace in her own desires...
Kyrren Mak ambled out of the parts shop, mildly disgruntled at the establishment’s mediocre selection. The utility droid he had picked up two weeks ago had broken down – again! – with the same problematic burnt-out motivator. And, of course, the shop didn’t have the model he needed. He just had to hope he could rewire the one he now carried to work. Hopefully, he could even rig it up enough to last longer than the two replacements he’d already tried.
This, he realized, was one of the prices of anonymity. He had come to stay on Citadel Station, the enormous orbital recovery project of the Republic designed to help revitalized the surface of the war-ravaged planet, Telos. The promise of no-questions-asked security was enough to keep him inclined to deal with the less glamorous aspects of the station, such as the seemingly impossible-to-find T3 series droid motivator and the occasional rowdy mercenary cantina fight.
Kyrren stopped to peer out a viewport down to the planet below. Nestled between a complex web of shield generators dividing the planet into a series of grids were oases of faint- to dark-green foliage amidst the surrounding tan and grey of a dead planet. During the Jedi Civil War little more than a year ago, the Sith had taken it under their wings to bomb the planet into complete and unwavering submission, wiping out all native life that was still on the surface. The only indigenous species to Telos now were those that escaped on refugee transports, most of whom had reconvened with the assistance of the Republic in a massive restoration effort – Citadel Station.
Unfortunately, Citadel didn’t have the means to truly police itself, and there was a bit of a, shall we say, seedier element that had grown in as the station had grown itself. For the most part, the no-questions-asked policy applied to everybody; as long as one continued to apply efforts towards the restoration of the planet, honestly, it was a rebuilding place for hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees from the Jedi Civil War, all trying to put the distasteful things necessary for refugee survival behind them and start over.
There were a few criminals looking for an honest start, as well. And more than a few criminals looking to make a dishonest start.
Kyrren Mak, himself, was looking to make a clean start, but not due to any crimes of his past. The only crime that he had committed, according to the Sith, was that he had, at one point, been an active Jedi in the Council. He had been the strongest in the Force when it came to telekinesis – the utilization of the Force to move objects without touching them – and had been marked for death by the Sith along with every other Jedi in the galaxy. After years of ridiculous bounties being placed on the heads of any known Jedi, their numbers had been wound disturbingly thin. Only a handful of Jedi remained, and they had all scattered, none of them with the knowledge of where the others were. This was a security measure, as none could betray the others if they were caught.
And so, here he had ended up, all his former glory behind him, simply living day-to-day on a planetary restoration project. He grunted to himself, turning away from the viewport to board the shuttle that had just arrived to take passengers from Entertainment Module 276 to Residential Modules 281-283.
He stood by, watching as the arriving passengers disembarked and headed on their own individual ways. One woman in particular caught his eye, looking quite distraught as she tried to obviously shake herself from two rough-looking men following her. They all-but herded her away from the shuttle station, making it impossible for her to get away without causing a scene.
Something tickled on the back of Kyrren’s neck, a forgotten danger sense arising within him and circumventing the grumbling in his rather large stomach. He sighed, turning and following the trio, wishing that he had taken the risk of carrying his lightsaber out of his apartment.
The two goons – Kyrren had named them Scruffy and Greasy, from their respective hairstyles – did a remarkable job of quietly herding the woman all the way from the shuttle bay to Entertainment Module 276’s warehousing district. The normally clean walls and walkways of the Entertainment Module gave way to dull and grimy paths, dotted with pieces of shipping crates and abandoned broken droid parts. The tingling on the back of Kyrren’s neck grew stronger.
Scruffy and Greasy swung a hard left, effectively pinning the woman in an alley against a refuse compactor and their own unkempt bodies. Her eyes grew wide as they grumbled at her, the volume too low to carry across to where he approached.
“..sure we can find some way to get a few credits for her!” he heard Greasy growl when he arrived behind them.
Kyrren stood, feet planted shoulder width apart and arms defiantly crossed in front of him resting on his paunch, and cleared his throat.
The woman cocked her head to the side in confusion. Scruffy turned around and chuckled. Greasy turned and laughed outright.
“What do we have here? A fat Jedi?”
Kyrren realized that he didn’t look quite as intimidating as he liked. His hair, once long and black as night, was now streaked almost completely with grey. His dark beard had long-since turned salt-and-pepper. And then, there was his weight. In the terms of Republic trade agreements, he weighed in at a hair over one hundred and seventy kilos – 375 pounds, in Telosian terms – which placed him in the extremely overweight category, and the almost-uncontested heaviest human on Citadel Station.
On the other hand, the Force does not worry about things such as obesity. People do. He’d long since learned that the typical mercenary writes a fat man off as space slag. And he’d long since used that to his advantage.
Turning his attention to the refuse compactor behind Greasy and Scruffy, he smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Their mocking laughter was replaced with confusion, and the two thugs glanced at each other. In that brief instant, Kyrren unfolded his arms, pointing his outstretched hands at each of the thug’s chests. Gathering the Force around and through him, he pushed, watching as they were lifted off their feet and flung harshly into the thick durasteel side of the refuse compactor. A loud gong-ing sound echoed through the alley, Greasy and Scruffy falling limp to the ground beside the woman.
“Sith slime!” the woman swore, unnecessarily protecting her head from the falling bodies. “You are a Jedi!”
Kyrren shrugged. “Glad to see you’re okay.”
“What are you talking about, bantha brains? Now we’re both going to be marked for death!”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What am I talking about? I’m not the one worried about a death mark! What are you talking about?”
“Those were Exchange thugs, trying to get me to pay back a loan I had to take out a few standard months ago. Now they know you’re a Jedi, and you helped me, so they’ll come after me – for my loan – and you, for the bounty on Jedi heads.”
He blinked, realization dawning on him. Kyrren wasn’t one to kill in cold blood, which would solve the situation quite nicely, at least on his part. But that would just cause the Exchange to come down even harder on her head, since they would assume she had murdered their loan collectors. And the Exchange, one of the largest, notorious, and most violent organized crime syndicates in the known galaxy, was not one to cross.
Sighing, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. “Well, I suppose I do have to accept the responsibilities of my actions. Do you have anyplace to go, that the Exchange doesn’t know about?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Come with me, for the moment, then. We’ll find someplace safe for you. My name is Kyrren Mak.”
She eyed him up, doubtfully. “Aren’t you a little, eh, big for a Jedi?”
Kyrren humpfed. “And what does a person’s weight have to do with anything? With the Force, size matters not.”
Seemingly for lack of a better response, she shrugged. “I’m Farrah. I guess it’s nice to meet you.”
He rolled his eyes and started off, walking in the opposite direction of the shuttle bay. “Let’s get going, then. No time to waste, waiting for them to wake up. Plus, I was on my way to lunch, unless you have better plans.”
Farrah followed behind him, her slender form easily catching up and keeping pace with his more lumbering one. “What is your plan, anyway? The shuttle bay is that way!” She gestured with her thumb, over her shoulder.
“And don’t you think that’s exactly the way they’d be coming back for you? Or if there are any reinforcements, wouldn’t they, too, be coming from the shuttle bay?”
Farrah shut her mouth somewhat sheepishly. That possibility had not, in fact, crossed her mind. The idea of her having broken free from the thugs and ran for the shuttle bay, only to be caught up by reinforcements, did little to settle her already-jangled nerves.
He lead her through the back alleys of Entertainment Module 276, through areas with questionable odors and finally down a nearly unused lift. Emerging from the dark alley at the bottom of the lift, he heard Farrah cry out in surprise.
“We’re – we’re nearly on the other side of the module!”
Kyrren turned and grinned. “Yup.”
She stared at his back, open-mouthed, as he led her to a large promenade filled with street vendors, tables, and mindless cleaning droids picking up after lazy customers. Stopping at one of the vendors, he waved the attendant over.
“I need a meter-long chili sausage, a large order of fried root chips, and one of the blue fizzy pops. Oh, and whatever she’s having.” Kyrren dug into the pockets of his robe for some credit chips.
“How can you think of eating at a time like this?” she hissed into his ear.
He shrugged. “I was on my way to lunch before I started following you. No sense in skipping it, now.”
“But there are Exchange people on our tail!”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. They’re probably not even awake yet, and like you said – we’re on the opposite side of the module.” He turned to the attendant, handing over the credits. “Make that two fizzy pops.”
Kyrren was halfway through his chili sausage when Farrah broke the silence. “So what are you doing here, of all places?”
“You mean Citadel?”
She nodded.
“Well, Jedi aren’t exactly the most loved people in space at the moment. This seemed as good a place as any to lay low for a while, until the dissent blew over.”
“Throwing two goons into a refuse compactor isn’t exactly what I’d call laying low.”
Kyrren shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on doing it. I’ve seen a number of distasteful things that I’d have rather stopped since I’ve been here. The Force didn’t want me to ignore this one.”
Farrah rolled her eyes. “Always babbling on about what the Force wants to do. Typical Jedi.”
“You’d understand if you could feel it. We’re not meant to understand everything at once.”
Nothing else was said for the remainder of the meal.
* * *
They had disembarked, quite unnoticed, from the shuttle docking bay in Residential Module 283, which housed Kyrren Mak’s apartment. Farrah followed him, almost silently, as he led the way through the twisting walkways and ill-kept courtyards leading to the plain grey durasteel building which he called home.
“They don’t keep the courtyards up very well here, do they?” she muttered, under her breath.
Kyrren ignored her comment, instead focusing on the three toughs gathered around his apartment door. He held a hand up, gesturing for her to stop, then whispered over his shoulder for her to stay right where she was.
Fishing the replacement droid part out of his robes, he strode up to the toughs as purposefully as he could, confidently smiling at one of them as he went to the palm-print locking mechanism.
“This your place?” one of them asked.
He held up the motivator, using it as cover for the gesture so commonly identified by onlookers as the use of the classic Jedi mind trick.
“I don’t live here. I’m just delivering this motivator.”
The thug’s eyes turned faintly glassy – only noticeable if you were looking specifically for it – and he repeated, to the other two, “He doesn’t live here. Just let him deliver the motivator.” His vision returning to normal, and his voice going gruff again, he added, “and keep an eye out for that Jedi!”
Having only barely resisted the urge to chuckle, Kyrren entered his apartment, dropped the droid motivator off on his table, and went for his bed. Dropping to his hands and knees, he pried a loose panel open, reached in, and extracted his lightsaber. He clipped it onto his wide belt, hidden underneath the oversized robe he wore, and left.
“Thanks, guys. Too bad he wasn’t there to leave a tip.”
One of the toughs grunted a monosyllabic acknowledgment, and Kyrren returned to where he left Farrah.
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
She looked at him expectantly, hands on her hips.
“The bad news is the Exchange is staking out my apartment.”
Her eyes rolled back into her head.
“The good news is I managed to get my lightsaber out of it.”
Farrah stared at him. “And just how did you do that?”
Kyrren grinned. “I walked in. Nobody expects a Jedi to be fat.”
She shrugged, being forced to concede the point from her own personal opinions.
“Let’s go. We need to get off Citadel as soon – and as quietly – as possible.”
Three Entertainment Modules, one Residential Module, and ridiculously long shuttle ride later, Farrah was ready to be done with moving walkways and random crowds. She was also quite convinced that her rotund rescuer was out of his mind.
“Okay!” she sputtered, exasperated. “Where exactly in Sith-laden space are you going?”
Kyrren stopped suddenly and turned, and Farrah found herself waist-to-waist with his ample front. “I’m covering our tracks, if you must know. I’m sure the Exchange would be smart enough to watch any of the adjoining spaceports to where you were jumped and where I live. So, we have to take a more indirect approach to leaving.”
She stepped back, still a little uncomfortable at being quite so close to a man she just met and didn’t know. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder. “That’s quite alright. If you’ve never done this sort of thing before, it doesn’t come naturally. We should keep moving, though, before the last transport leaves for the night.”
Forty minutes later found them in line for the next available passenger line to.. she didn’t know where, honestly. Kyrren had handled the purchasing of the tickets so smoothly, there wasn’t even time for her to realize where it was they were leaving towards. The attendant droids scanned their boarding passes and allowed them entry onto the liner, while protocol droids onboard shuffled along in front of passengers and instructed them where their rooms were in a variety of languages.
“I didn’t know there were so many different species on Citadel,” Farrah mused under her breath.
“Not all the modules are as ‘nice’ as mine,” Kyrren chuckled. “Some of the Residential Modules on the lower levels, closer to the atmosphere, don’t have any plant life at all. That’s where the non-biased Station Administration has placed many of the more.. exotic species.” The notes of sarcasm in his voice were impossible to miss.
“I thought Jedi were supposed to be above the use of sarcasm?”
“So I’m human. And there aren’t many other Jedi around to chastise me.”
The protocol droid showed them into their room, and Kyrren settled onto one of the two beds immediately. “Here’s the deal – just because we’re on a ship doesn’t mean that we’re in the clear. The Exchange could have people on the boat. Even if they didn’t follow us, you can be sure they’ll be contacted, once they realize we’ve given them the slip. So we sleep in shifts, one person awake at all times. Got it?”
She nodded. “I’ll take first shift. There’s no way I can sleep right now.”
Kyrren shrugged and stretched out on the bed, adjusting the pillow under his head. “Suit yourself. Wake me if you feel yourself getting sleepy.”
And with that, his eyes closed, and Farrah was alone.
She looked around the room, taking inventory of what their accommodations were. Even though hyperspace travel could zip around the galaxy at well past the speed of light, it still took time for large trips to be made, and the pilot had already announced while boarding that the trip from Telos to Corellia would take, at the least, four standard days.
Four days, she thought. Four days with this overgrown has-been on the run for my life. Her eyes settled, finally, on Kyrren’s sleeping form, the large slope of his belly rising and falling almost imperceptibly with his slowed breathing. The more she dragged the murky waters of what she knew of the Jedi before the Jedi Civil War ripped them apart, the more she found less and less to support her initial prejudice about his size. Nothing about a Jedi was truly reliant upon the physical body; that had been proven time and again in battle. It was nothing more than a physical shell for the constantly growing consciousness it housed, a receptacle for the flowing waters of the Force that wound its way through everything.
So he was big. He didn’t seem the slightest bit unconfident, or bothered by it. In fact, he seemed to embrace it fully – the meter-long chili sausage immediately following flinging two thugs into a refuse receptacle spoke volumes – much the same way the Jedi embraced all things, with a wholeness and peaceful understanding, using every possible aspect to their advantage. And the more she thought about it, the more his larger-than-life physical stature would convey a number of advantages to the unsuspecting eye, much as it already had.
Plus, his eyes were really blue. She was a sucker for blue eyes. And his smile was quite charming. And, she had felt.. what?.. when she bumped into him.
* * *
[Author's Note: This was an idea I've had plodding its way through my mind for a week or two now. I jotted it down at work during a few slow days. Also, apologies in advance about the paragraphing -- I can't for the life of me get the indent to work. So, without further ado..
For the purists and just plain curious out there, this tale takes place during the first collapse of the Old Republic, approximately five years after the events of the Mandalorian Wars and one year after the end of the Jedi Civil War – the gamers amongst you will notice that places the setting at roughly six months prior to Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and is quite strongly rooted in the politics and public perception of that era. For everyone else – the story picks up right after the scene is painted.. Legal Disclaimer at the end.]
The Hunt of the Fat Jedi
Parts I - IV
by Taciturn Badger
Parts I - IV
by Taciturn Badger
Part I
In the words of the famous green Jedi Master – size matters not. And in a time long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a simple coincidence leads to a great hunt, a great recovery, and a budding FA’s realization of true peace in the galaxy begins with peace in her own desires...
Kyrren Mak ambled out of the parts shop, mildly disgruntled at the establishment’s mediocre selection. The utility droid he had picked up two weeks ago had broken down – again! – with the same problematic burnt-out motivator. And, of course, the shop didn’t have the model he needed. He just had to hope he could rewire the one he now carried to work. Hopefully, he could even rig it up enough to last longer than the two replacements he’d already tried.
This, he realized, was one of the prices of anonymity. He had come to stay on Citadel Station, the enormous orbital recovery project of the Republic designed to help revitalized the surface of the war-ravaged planet, Telos. The promise of no-questions-asked security was enough to keep him inclined to deal with the less glamorous aspects of the station, such as the seemingly impossible-to-find T3 series droid motivator and the occasional rowdy mercenary cantina fight.
Kyrren stopped to peer out a viewport down to the planet below. Nestled between a complex web of shield generators dividing the planet into a series of grids were oases of faint- to dark-green foliage amidst the surrounding tan and grey of a dead planet. During the Jedi Civil War little more than a year ago, the Sith had taken it under their wings to bomb the planet into complete and unwavering submission, wiping out all native life that was still on the surface. The only indigenous species to Telos now were those that escaped on refugee transports, most of whom had reconvened with the assistance of the Republic in a massive restoration effort – Citadel Station.
Unfortunately, Citadel didn’t have the means to truly police itself, and there was a bit of a, shall we say, seedier element that had grown in as the station had grown itself. For the most part, the no-questions-asked policy applied to everybody; as long as one continued to apply efforts towards the restoration of the planet, honestly, it was a rebuilding place for hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees from the Jedi Civil War, all trying to put the distasteful things necessary for refugee survival behind them and start over.
There were a few criminals looking for an honest start, as well. And more than a few criminals looking to make a dishonest start.
Kyrren Mak, himself, was looking to make a clean start, but not due to any crimes of his past. The only crime that he had committed, according to the Sith, was that he had, at one point, been an active Jedi in the Council. He had been the strongest in the Force when it came to telekinesis – the utilization of the Force to move objects without touching them – and had been marked for death by the Sith along with every other Jedi in the galaxy. After years of ridiculous bounties being placed on the heads of any known Jedi, their numbers had been wound disturbingly thin. Only a handful of Jedi remained, and they had all scattered, none of them with the knowledge of where the others were. This was a security measure, as none could betray the others if they were caught.
And so, here he had ended up, all his former glory behind him, simply living day-to-day on a planetary restoration project. He grunted to himself, turning away from the viewport to board the shuttle that had just arrived to take passengers from Entertainment Module 276 to Residential Modules 281-283.
He stood by, watching as the arriving passengers disembarked and headed on their own individual ways. One woman in particular caught his eye, looking quite distraught as she tried to obviously shake herself from two rough-looking men following her. They all-but herded her away from the shuttle station, making it impossible for her to get away without causing a scene.
Something tickled on the back of Kyrren’s neck, a forgotten danger sense arising within him and circumventing the grumbling in his rather large stomach. He sighed, turning and following the trio, wishing that he had taken the risk of carrying his lightsaber out of his apartment.
The two goons – Kyrren had named them Scruffy and Greasy, from their respective hairstyles – did a remarkable job of quietly herding the woman all the way from the shuttle bay to Entertainment Module 276’s warehousing district. The normally clean walls and walkways of the Entertainment Module gave way to dull and grimy paths, dotted with pieces of shipping crates and abandoned broken droid parts. The tingling on the back of Kyrren’s neck grew stronger.
Scruffy and Greasy swung a hard left, effectively pinning the woman in an alley against a refuse compactor and their own unkempt bodies. Her eyes grew wide as they grumbled at her, the volume too low to carry across to where he approached.
“..sure we can find some way to get a few credits for her!” he heard Greasy growl when he arrived behind them.
Kyrren stood, feet planted shoulder width apart and arms defiantly crossed in front of him resting on his paunch, and cleared his throat.
The woman cocked her head to the side in confusion. Scruffy turned around and chuckled. Greasy turned and laughed outright.
“What do we have here? A fat Jedi?”
Kyrren realized that he didn’t look quite as intimidating as he liked. His hair, once long and black as night, was now streaked almost completely with grey. His dark beard had long-since turned salt-and-pepper. And then, there was his weight. In the terms of Republic trade agreements, he weighed in at a hair over one hundred and seventy kilos – 375 pounds, in Telosian terms – which placed him in the extremely overweight category, and the almost-uncontested heaviest human on Citadel Station.
On the other hand, the Force does not worry about things such as obesity. People do. He’d long since learned that the typical mercenary writes a fat man off as space slag. And he’d long since used that to his advantage.
Turning his attention to the refuse compactor behind Greasy and Scruffy, he smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
Their mocking laughter was replaced with confusion, and the two thugs glanced at each other. In that brief instant, Kyrren unfolded his arms, pointing his outstretched hands at each of the thug’s chests. Gathering the Force around and through him, he pushed, watching as they were lifted off their feet and flung harshly into the thick durasteel side of the refuse compactor. A loud gong-ing sound echoed through the alley, Greasy and Scruffy falling limp to the ground beside the woman.
“Sith slime!” the woman swore, unnecessarily protecting her head from the falling bodies. “You are a Jedi!”
Kyrren shrugged. “Glad to see you’re okay.”
“What are you talking about, bantha brains? Now we’re both going to be marked for death!”
He quirked an eyebrow. “What am I talking about? I’m not the one worried about a death mark! What are you talking about?”
“Those were Exchange thugs, trying to get me to pay back a loan I had to take out a few standard months ago. Now they know you’re a Jedi, and you helped me, so they’ll come after me – for my loan – and you, for the bounty on Jedi heads.”
He blinked, realization dawning on him. Kyrren wasn’t one to kill in cold blood, which would solve the situation quite nicely, at least on his part. But that would just cause the Exchange to come down even harder on her head, since they would assume she had murdered their loan collectors. And the Exchange, one of the largest, notorious, and most violent organized crime syndicates in the known galaxy, was not one to cross.
Sighing, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. “Well, I suppose I do have to accept the responsibilities of my actions. Do you have anyplace to go, that the Exchange doesn’t know about?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Come with me, for the moment, then. We’ll find someplace safe for you. My name is Kyrren Mak.”
She eyed him up, doubtfully. “Aren’t you a little, eh, big for a Jedi?”
Kyrren humpfed. “And what does a person’s weight have to do with anything? With the Force, size matters not.”
Seemingly for lack of a better response, she shrugged. “I’m Farrah. I guess it’s nice to meet you.”
He rolled his eyes and started off, walking in the opposite direction of the shuttle bay. “Let’s get going, then. No time to waste, waiting for them to wake up. Plus, I was on my way to lunch, unless you have better plans.”
Farrah followed behind him, her slender form easily catching up and keeping pace with his more lumbering one. “What is your plan, anyway? The shuttle bay is that way!” She gestured with her thumb, over her shoulder.
“And don’t you think that’s exactly the way they’d be coming back for you? Or if there are any reinforcements, wouldn’t they, too, be coming from the shuttle bay?”
Farrah shut her mouth somewhat sheepishly. That possibility had not, in fact, crossed her mind. The idea of her having broken free from the thugs and ran for the shuttle bay, only to be caught up by reinforcements, did little to settle her already-jangled nerves.
He lead her through the back alleys of Entertainment Module 276, through areas with questionable odors and finally down a nearly unused lift. Emerging from the dark alley at the bottom of the lift, he heard Farrah cry out in surprise.
“We’re – we’re nearly on the other side of the module!”
Kyrren turned and grinned. “Yup.”
She stared at his back, open-mouthed, as he led her to a large promenade filled with street vendors, tables, and mindless cleaning droids picking up after lazy customers. Stopping at one of the vendors, he waved the attendant over.
“I need a meter-long chili sausage, a large order of fried root chips, and one of the blue fizzy pops. Oh, and whatever she’s having.” Kyrren dug into the pockets of his robe for some credit chips.
“How can you think of eating at a time like this?” she hissed into his ear.
He shrugged. “I was on my way to lunch before I started following you. No sense in skipping it, now.”
“But there are Exchange people on our tail!”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. They’re probably not even awake yet, and like you said – we’re on the opposite side of the module.” He turned to the attendant, handing over the credits. “Make that two fizzy pops.”
Kyrren was halfway through his chili sausage when Farrah broke the silence. “So what are you doing here, of all places?”
“You mean Citadel?”
She nodded.
“Well, Jedi aren’t exactly the most loved people in space at the moment. This seemed as good a place as any to lay low for a while, until the dissent blew over.”
“Throwing two goons into a refuse compactor isn’t exactly what I’d call laying low.”
Kyrren shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on doing it. I’ve seen a number of distasteful things that I’d have rather stopped since I’ve been here. The Force didn’t want me to ignore this one.”
Farrah rolled her eyes. “Always babbling on about what the Force wants to do. Typical Jedi.”
“You’d understand if you could feel it. We’re not meant to understand everything at once.”
Nothing else was said for the remainder of the meal.
* * *
They had disembarked, quite unnoticed, from the shuttle docking bay in Residential Module 283, which housed Kyrren Mak’s apartment. Farrah followed him, almost silently, as he led the way through the twisting walkways and ill-kept courtyards leading to the plain grey durasteel building which he called home.
“They don’t keep the courtyards up very well here, do they?” she muttered, under her breath.
Kyrren ignored her comment, instead focusing on the three toughs gathered around his apartment door. He held a hand up, gesturing for her to stop, then whispered over his shoulder for her to stay right where she was.
Fishing the replacement droid part out of his robes, he strode up to the toughs as purposefully as he could, confidently smiling at one of them as he went to the palm-print locking mechanism.
“This your place?” one of them asked.
He held up the motivator, using it as cover for the gesture so commonly identified by onlookers as the use of the classic Jedi mind trick.
“I don’t live here. I’m just delivering this motivator.”
The thug’s eyes turned faintly glassy – only noticeable if you were looking specifically for it – and he repeated, to the other two, “He doesn’t live here. Just let him deliver the motivator.” His vision returning to normal, and his voice going gruff again, he added, “and keep an eye out for that Jedi!”
Having only barely resisted the urge to chuckle, Kyrren entered his apartment, dropped the droid motivator off on his table, and went for his bed. Dropping to his hands and knees, he pried a loose panel open, reached in, and extracted his lightsaber. He clipped it onto his wide belt, hidden underneath the oversized robe he wore, and left.
“Thanks, guys. Too bad he wasn’t there to leave a tip.”
One of the toughs grunted a monosyllabic acknowledgment, and Kyrren returned to where he left Farrah.
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
She looked at him expectantly, hands on her hips.
“The bad news is the Exchange is staking out my apartment.”
Her eyes rolled back into her head.
“The good news is I managed to get my lightsaber out of it.”
Farrah stared at him. “And just how did you do that?”
Kyrren grinned. “I walked in. Nobody expects a Jedi to be fat.”
She shrugged, being forced to concede the point from her own personal opinions.
“Let’s go. We need to get off Citadel as soon – and as quietly – as possible.”
Three Entertainment Modules, one Residential Module, and ridiculously long shuttle ride later, Farrah was ready to be done with moving walkways and random crowds. She was also quite convinced that her rotund rescuer was out of his mind.
“Okay!” she sputtered, exasperated. “Where exactly in Sith-laden space are you going?”
Kyrren stopped suddenly and turned, and Farrah found herself waist-to-waist with his ample front. “I’m covering our tracks, if you must know. I’m sure the Exchange would be smart enough to watch any of the adjoining spaceports to where you were jumped and where I live. So, we have to take a more indirect approach to leaving.”
She stepped back, still a little uncomfortable at being quite so close to a man she just met and didn’t know. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
He smiled and laid a hand on her shoulder. “That’s quite alright. If you’ve never done this sort of thing before, it doesn’t come naturally. We should keep moving, though, before the last transport leaves for the night.”
Forty minutes later found them in line for the next available passenger line to.. she didn’t know where, honestly. Kyrren had handled the purchasing of the tickets so smoothly, there wasn’t even time for her to realize where it was they were leaving towards. The attendant droids scanned their boarding passes and allowed them entry onto the liner, while protocol droids onboard shuffled along in front of passengers and instructed them where their rooms were in a variety of languages.
“I didn’t know there were so many different species on Citadel,” Farrah mused under her breath.
“Not all the modules are as ‘nice’ as mine,” Kyrren chuckled. “Some of the Residential Modules on the lower levels, closer to the atmosphere, don’t have any plant life at all. That’s where the non-biased Station Administration has placed many of the more.. exotic species.” The notes of sarcasm in his voice were impossible to miss.
“I thought Jedi were supposed to be above the use of sarcasm?”
“So I’m human. And there aren’t many other Jedi around to chastise me.”
The protocol droid showed them into their room, and Kyrren settled onto one of the two beds immediately. “Here’s the deal – just because we’re on a ship doesn’t mean that we’re in the clear. The Exchange could have people on the boat. Even if they didn’t follow us, you can be sure they’ll be contacted, once they realize we’ve given them the slip. So we sleep in shifts, one person awake at all times. Got it?”
She nodded. “I’ll take first shift. There’s no way I can sleep right now.”
Kyrren shrugged and stretched out on the bed, adjusting the pillow under his head. “Suit yourself. Wake me if you feel yourself getting sleepy.”
And with that, his eyes closed, and Farrah was alone.
She looked around the room, taking inventory of what their accommodations were. Even though hyperspace travel could zip around the galaxy at well past the speed of light, it still took time for large trips to be made, and the pilot had already announced while boarding that the trip from Telos to Corellia would take, at the least, four standard days.
Four days, she thought. Four days with this overgrown has-been on the run for my life. Her eyes settled, finally, on Kyrren’s sleeping form, the large slope of his belly rising and falling almost imperceptibly with his slowed breathing. The more she dragged the murky waters of what she knew of the Jedi before the Jedi Civil War ripped them apart, the more she found less and less to support her initial prejudice about his size. Nothing about a Jedi was truly reliant upon the physical body; that had been proven time and again in battle. It was nothing more than a physical shell for the constantly growing consciousness it housed, a receptacle for the flowing waters of the Force that wound its way through everything.
So he was big. He didn’t seem the slightest bit unconfident, or bothered by it. In fact, he seemed to embrace it fully – the meter-long chili sausage immediately following flinging two thugs into a refuse receptacle spoke volumes – much the same way the Jedi embraced all things, with a wholeness and peaceful understanding, using every possible aspect to their advantage. And the more she thought about it, the more his larger-than-life physical stature would convey a number of advantages to the unsuspecting eye, much as it already had.
Plus, his eyes were really blue. She was a sucker for blue eyes. And his smile was quite charming. And, she had felt.. what?.. when she bumped into him.
* * *
