The Prodigal

[Rev Solomon]

"The Order has always had those roles," Solomon replied. "We called them Investigators. Men and women who walked close to the darkness, who sought out hidden threats to the peace and security of the Republic. A thankless and often solitary task. That didn't make it any less important."

The preacher considered the Nehantite in the light of this information. "It seems to me like you're accustomed to being isolated from your fellow Jedi. Even in your own time. Is that what you want?"

He asked it plainly, without censure. He didn't mean to lead Hal, or to rebuke him. He simply wanted to know.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Hal considered the question, as he often had in the past. To those who had known him, it was no secret that he never really got along with the others, and he was always considered on the fringes of their Order. It was a lonely place where he had learned it was better to simply focus on himself and his own development rather than working as part of a larger unit. Doing so had allowed him to learn great and terrible skills, but it also left him feeling empty and left out.

"It's not what I want, but... it's all I really know," Hal answered. "I never fit in. I wasn't ever part of the group, you could say. So, I focused on myself. It isn't that different here, to be honest. You all do your thing, I hang around at the edges, study what I want, and I take my down time as I please."

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon nodded. He didn't like it, but he understood. Back then, with the Order in its prime, and thousands of Jedi spread across the galaxy, it might have seemed a small thing to push a handful of misfits to the margins, to fritter them away on inconsequential assignments, or, in Hal's case, to send them to the seamy underside of the mission rota so the masters could keep their hands clean. But there were scarcely two dozen knights now, and most of them either holdovers from the last generation or brand-new promotions from the next. Misfit or no, Halajiin Rabeak was one of the very few experienced knights left under the age of fifty. That made him far too valuable to allow him to waste away on the frontier.

"What about when you were training?" the preacher asked. "You obviously had a master. Did he, or she, ever try to get you more involved with the other Jedi?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

The question sent Hal's eyebrows skyward in an expression of dubious recollection. "Ooooh, yes, I had a master. Ha, boy did I ever," he laughed. It was not a laugh of fond memory, but instead full of derision. "Master Trevarius. I was his first pupil, and, as I told Loki, I'm pretty sure they stuck me with him in order to punish him. He was wild, reckless and above all, arrogant. I was the kid nobody wanted. So, while he didn't really want me as his student, and I didn't like him much, either, we were stuck together, and he was determined to show he could turn me around."

A sip of beer gave pause before he continued, "Totally didn't work. We never saw eye to eye, and when he realized that instead of being seen as friends on a learning journey together, we were the laughing stocks, he changed. Honor, discipline, discipline, and more discipline became the flavor of the day, and it didn't work for either of us. He didn't want me to be my best for me, he wanted me to be my best to show me off as his successful project. By the end, we could barely tolerate each other for more than a few minutes at a a time, and we hardly spoke at all once I was knighted. He moved on to a new student, training them to be hard and diligent. Turns out Trevarius taught Loki's master, too, which seems about right. That's what he turned into. So, to answer your question, no, getting involved with other Jedi wasn't really big in his training regimen."

[Rev Solomon]

Again, Solomon listened. From the volume that Hal was pouring out, he hadn't had the benefit of a listening ear in quite some time.

"I'm sorry, Hal," he said at last. "No padawan should be made the puppet of a Council, or a trophy for his master. I know this comes over a century too late, but they did you a grave disservice, and themselves as well."

He shook his head in disbelief. "And in a very real way, Abarai Loki has paid for those mistakes just as you have. Earlier you spoke of him like he's the ideal we're holding up for all the padawans to strive for, but that's not true. Knight Loki was trained with a very militant perspective on Jedi life. Good for survival, perhaps, but woefully inadequate for actually living. We assigned him the initiate lightsaber courses because his form is textbook, yes, but also because we had hoped it would help to soften some of his rough edges. Maybe we're making the same mistake your Council did all those years ago, thinking that students and teachers can just sort each other out. But we haven't given up on Loki. I don't intend to give up on any knight in this Order."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

A lazy smile decorated Hal's pale muzzle, and he stared up at the corner where the ceiling met wall. "Puppet. Trophy," he said. "You really have no idea how accurate those words are, but perhaps not in relation to the Order."

Oh, no. Don't tell him. You're making really good progress, you really shouldn't go there!

I have to. If they want me back, they need to know what I am.

"In my day, children were sent to the Order at a very young age, if they tested positive for Force aptitude. Four, maybe five years old, they came, and they were raised in the Jedi way, not in the way of their own culture. That's how the Order could survive, and keep an understanding across all the races in its fold - you grew up not as one of your own culture, but in the culture of the Jedi. But I was different. Shucks howdy, was I different.

"See, Nehantish never had a Jedi. Ever. Force sensitivity among us is incredibly, incredibly rare, exponentially more rare than in most races. But that didn't stop our Sultan from wanting a Jedi. A Jedi was seen as a great and powerful thing, worthy of the galaxy's respect and admiration. The Sultan thought that if Nehantish could produce a Jedi, we would be held in greater stead with other races. Specifically, he wanted a Nehantite from my kingdom. So, scouts went out, and a few adepts were found. Me, and then a seven year old and two three year olds. I was probably the weakest among them, but the Sultan was impatient, so he told the Jedi I was the only one, and made them take me on. I was fifteen. Really, there was a Munjan girl who was ten who probably would have been amazing, but because she was Munjan, the Sultan made sure no one off the planet ever heard of her. I didn't have the luxury of growing up with training. I didn't have the benefit of learning all about the Jedi from a very young age. I came into the order when most padawans were already very skilled, and I new jack shit. Not only that, I was foreign and weird, to them, so making friends wasn't exactly easy. I had to play catch-up my whole time there."

More beer, more staring at the wall.

"I don't blame Loki for being like he is. He was trained like the others at the Order were, knowing only one way. An outside viewpoint can seem threatening, and wrong. In order to even get through to people like him, you have to beat them and show you possess skills that rival their own. I know the type well. And it's a pity, because he's my only actual friend, here, and he hates me and looks down on me. How sad is that?"

[Rev Solomon]

It was another sad story, but the cluster of impulses and contradictions that made up Halajiin Rabeak was slowly beginning to crystalize. Incongruously, once the Nehantite had finished, Solomon smiled.

"So you consider Loki a friend. Good. He needs those."

Another pull from his bottle, and he was close to hitting the bottom. But there were four more bottles in the carton, and much more to talk about.

"There are enough burdens to go around without forcing yourself to carry other people's misdeeds," he said. "The Sultan was wrong to hide the others from the Jedi. That doesn't mean that you were undeserving. One way or another, the Force has seen fit to preserve you for this time. I know there's nothing easy about finding yourself at the wrong end of history. But maybe the reason you couldn't find your place among the Jedi back then was because you were meant to find it now."

One last sip, and he set his empty bottle aside. "In a lot of ways, you have more in common with our padawans today than you did with your own classmates. Most of our initiates aren't much younger than you were when you arrived at the Temple. Those of us who were born into the old Order - we don't know what it's like to step out of another life and into the robes of a Jedi. We had to learn it the other way around. There were so many questions I didn't even know to ask until I saw how the rest of the galaxy lived. Our students are asking those questions now. We can't afford to be locked into tradition for tradition's sake anymore."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Oh, but if Trevarius could see me now," Hal found himself rumbling with a light chuckle as he said it. "Does this mean I'll be getting a padawan of my own, then?" The height at which one of his eyebrows cocked was enough to suggest that the Nehantite was less than fully serious.

"But, yeah, you're right. These kids came here from full lives. And it's a lot harder to change a page once there's writing on it. That said..." He reached a paw out and across the room a stack of books lifted with ease, the lowest in their part falling away to shoot into his grasp, then the stack gently lowered once more. "The best way to change the direction of a written page is simple. You just have to add more pages."

With that, he smiled, letting the book fall open in his paws, a wave of his hand sending the pages fanning until at last the settled in a gentle spread, his fingers never having touched even one of the fragile leaves of parchment.

[Rev Solomon]

The preacher watched in fascination as Hal manipulated the pages of the book. It wasn't so much the skill involved that interested him as it was the ease with which the mongoose did it, finessing each and every page without even giving it a thought.

"The last chapter hasn't been written for any of us yet," Solomon replied. "Present company included."

He engaged in a somewhat less artful display of telekinesis himself and floated another bottle out of the carton.

"That's a neat trick there, with the pages. Trevarius teach you that?"

The twinkle in the preacher's eye suggested he already knew the answer.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

Hal's beer still had a third of a bottle left, though he was in no hurry to finish it. A brew that good needed to be savored, not swilled. Though, he certainly wasn't going to argue with the master having another. In fact, Hal decided to help.

Smirking, Hal snapped his fingers, and the bottlecap sprung from Solomon's fresh bottle into his paw, which then tossed it aside onto one of the desks. "Trev wasn't all that great at telekenesis, actually. Great on mental stuff, though, and applying the Force to battle tactics. But... calling the holovision remote over to the couch was about the limit of his TK," he explained. "He did, however, constantly hound me to clean my room."

With that, Hal shut his book and set it aside, before lifting his right paw in a fist. All around them, every book, tablet, flimsi, datapad, scroll, and scrap of electronics raised into the air. By rubbing his thumb against his index fingers, Hal proceeded to manipulate what had to be well over a hundred objects, the books whizzing around each other, pads coming together, and everything sorting before he spun his paw around, palm toward Solomon, and popped his paw open. In less time than it took for his fingers to go from balled to extended, everything he had raised shot into place exactly where it was supposed to go, instantly converting the room from a mess, into a perfectly orderly study.

"Some people like to sort alphabetically," he mused, looking unconcerned as he reached for his beer. "I prefer chronological by publication date."

[Rev Solomon]

"Perhaps you missed your calling," Solomon said. "You could hang up your saber and take the post of master librarian."

He took a sip of his freshly opened beer and rolled it thoughtfully across his tongue before he swallowed.

"Have you ever thought about teaching initiates?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Ha," Hal snorted. "Like y'all'd let me." His face rounded out with a skeptical smile. "Besides, it's hard to teach some of the stuff I know, and I don't want to hurt a kid by accident while doing it."

He lifted his beer to finish it off, giving himself time to think. When the empty bottle came to rest on the desk beside his bed, the Nehantite's humor faded. "I dunno. Maybe I could. I've just never really... taught... before. It was made pretty clear to me by the Order I came from that that would never be a role I was going to fill, so I never thought about it."

Running a paw through his headfur, despite its nature to flop right back to where it had just been, he considered the look he was getting from the Jedi preacher. "It's really ramping up, again, isn't it?" Hal asked. "The Order, I mean. We're not on the run, we've got our feet planted, and you lot are finally seeing we what we can be, now, huh?"

[Rev Solomon]

"We've never forgotten," Solomon said. "For all its failings, the Jedi Order was still a powerful force for good, right up until the end. Even during the Clone Wars, one of the darkest periods of our history, Jedi were freeing slaves, curing diseases, saving whole populations from destruction, negotiating peace between neighbors at war. All the evil in the galaxy can't extinguish the good.

"Make no mistake, we're still rebuilding. But so is the rest of the galaxy. It needs more healers and teachers now than warriors. And even though we'll never be past our need for warriors, we need to teach our students to be so much more." He balanced his bottle on one knee again and took another look at the library around them, now impeccably organized. There was a lot of knowledge gathered here.

"If you had a choice, Hal, and could teach our new Order anything you liked, what would it be?"

[Halajiin Rabeak]

The question caught Hal off guard. Finger toying with the rim of his empty bottle, the Nehantite pondered it, wondering what he could offer that would truly be useful to modern Jedi in such a setting. Biting his lip, he then weighed his skills against those already instructing at the Order.

"You've already got a few excellent saber instructors. I'm rubbish at healing, and... my telepathy sounds like a cheap drive-through speaker, but... I don't think any of you know what I do about telekenesis," he finally replied. Eyes turning back to Solomon, Hal smiled.

"Heh, see, the living Force has been around a lot longer than lightsabers, blasters, or even shell guns or normal swords. The earliest uses of the Force were in limited forms of TK, and if you go back a long, long.... long way, you start to find some research and technique that you never would have heard about, in your instruction. Even at the old Order, it was barely known. I spent a good deal of time looking for aces to put up my sleeve, back in those days, and now, here too." He pointed at the rows of books. "But... what I learned isn't for beginners. Not by a long shot. I'm talking really, really advanced theory, and some of it can be downright dangerous. And... some of it you'd say comes from the Dark Side, though I don't see it that way. But I really don't know how I'd put that in a class. Especially for the younglings and padawans. They'd just get frustrated seeing something impossible for them to do right off the bat."

[Rev Solomon]

"Younglings aren't the only ones who need to learn."

As much time as Hal had spent mining the relics of the Great Jedi Temple, it wasn't surprising he'd come across some forgotten knowledge, especially with his innate talents for telekinesis. Still, Solomon was troubled that Hal had mentioned the Dark Side, even as a point of comparison.

"Why don't you show me what you're talking about?" he said. "My own TK could use a workout."

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Sure," Hal shrugged. "Don't really have anything better to do. Already cleaned my room," he chuckled.

Rocking back, Hal then kicked forward to launch himself off of his bed, and dropped his empty beer bottle into the recycling bin. "Just gonna need, a couple things."

From his now-sorted shelves, Hal selected a pair of black, military style boots with high laces, a backpack with chest and belt straps, and ring of black cloth that some had seen him use as an eyepatch, in the past. "Okay, well, gonna need an open space, so... I've got a spot about fifteen minutes hike from here that we can use. Follow me."

It was a relatively short walk down a narrow path still being formed through the jungle, until at last they came to a clearing in the trees. Rocky soil, and a few large boulders were the clear reason why larger trees had not overtaken this patch, but scrub brush still popped up where it could cling to life. Hal dumped his stuff by the edge of the clearing, then scampered - even falling to all fours to do so - up onto a flat-topped rock about eight feet above ground level.

"Probably best to stay down there for right now. I'll be able to help you up in a moment so you can try it for yourself, but... Did anyone tell you about the Hellfire Trick that I used on Ilum?" Hal called down.

[Rev Solomon]

"Only in passing," Solomon answered. Which wasn't entirely true, but such feats had a way of growing in the telling, and he wanted to see it for himself on Hal's terms.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

In films, and in great epics, the master of an art would begin by calming themselves, breathing deeply and meditating. Then would come an ancient stance, followed by slow and deliberate hand movements, fingers locked into curious positions as if summoning some spirit, or unlocking a secret known only to the gods. Then they would turn, their stance becoming a spinning kata of intricate movements, each precise, each with meaning, until at last they unleashed the power they supposedly alone possessed.

Hal did none of those things. Instead he stood with his paws in his pockets, tail swaying, and he looked out into the distance beyond. Several seconds passed, a gentle breeze washing over Solomon's back, and the Nehantite's own, the air becoming thin in its wake. At last he pulled his right hand from his pocket, raised it casually in front of his chest, and snapped his fingers. The tiniest spark of electricity popped from his fingers, shooting forward, and for a moment, that seemed to be all there was to it.

Without warning, the sky in front of Halajiin Rabeak exploded with a massive, surging ball of brilliant red and yellow flame, and it shot forward at an alarming rate, growing ever larger as it went. The mushroom burst curled in upon itself, propelling the blast forward ever faster, and ever larger, the heat washing off of it noticeable even as it shot away, before dissipating as if it had hit a wall nearly two hundred feet away from where Hal stood, merely turning into a rising line of smoke which drifted lazily up toward the heavens.

Stuffing his paw back in his pocket, Hall turned back to Solomon and shrugged. "There we go, one quick Hellfire," he announced as if it had been but a simple card trick.

[Rev Solomon]

As Hal prepared, Solomon watched keenly with more than just his eyes. He could sense the leylines of the Force shifting around the Nehantite Jedi and causing a change in the air, a molecular dance he couldn't quite make sense of, except that it left the space in front of him rarefied and volatile. And then came the spark, and the explosion, which rolled forward like an avalanche, gathering both size and speed until it just... stopped.

Well. At least he didn't have to ask how it got its name.

Unbidden, Solomon vaulted up the rocky bluff in two Force-assisted bounds to stand net to the mongoose, his eyes wide.

"Those who study energy manipulation can create fire from the Force," he said. "But this was something different, wasn't it? The air..."

Finding himself out of words, the preacher turned to stare down the path the fireball had taken. Most of the oily, brown smoke was already wisping away on the breeze.

[Halajiin Rabeak]

"Simple physics," Hal said with a smile. "Locate oxygen and hydrogen in the surrounding atmosphere, and concentrate it in one area. Contain those gasses and compress them with nitrogen, and a barrier of carbon dioxide. Shape your charge path, and supply a spark. Use the nitrogen to shape and push your charge, and stop it with a wall of carbon dioxide. Gasses are easy, very little resistance. Spark though," he laughed. "Static electricity buildup in my pelt, localized and directed. Can also be ignited with a lightsaber, for those without the luxury of fur. The Hellfire Trick. Not recommended to be used indoors, and pretty useless in a windy area, but sure makes your enemies think twice, once they see it."