Echo

Chapter 2


A/N: So… spooky presences, angry underworld brats, stuck up jedi… what more could you want? Oh… an annoying droid… maybe later… -_-;;

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“Vera, come on” he yelled after her, “Don’t run away!” he called after the retreating figure of his Master’s neice. “I didn’t mean it!” he groaned and started to hurry after her. He never realized how fast she could walk when she was angry, she must have jedi abilities. The thought was disturbing on more than one level, “Vera!” he called again, only to be given an obscene gesture and a barked curse. He broke to a trot after her, “I know he’s not your father” he said as he turned a corner

“Yeah, you’re a genius” came a voice from a shadow even darker than the rest of this place. His eyes, more used to the lighter upper levels weren’t adjusted and she seemed to have developed the innate talent for avoiding Jedi. He tried to disguise his start by giving her a disapproving glance, his icy eyes boring into her, trying to figure out why she wanted to run away.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“I grew up around Jedi, I know what you’re doing. I’ll punch you” and she shot him a glare that told him that she wasn’t kidding, and that would be hard to explain to his Master… him with a black eye and her bound up with the force… though he wasn’t sure how he was going to get her back without having to resort to overpowering her.

“I’ll say goodbye. That’s it, I’m going.” She said abruptly and snorted. She then folded her arms and started walking towards a lift to the upper levels

“That’s all I ask”

He frowned slightly to himself and followed a little bit behind her noticing that her stance was a little more guarded than usual, even if they were just arguing… he’d never seen her this on edge in all the years he had known her. She was usually to self-assured to show caution, but he sensed her fear and for the first time wondered if maybe her attempts to get off Coruscant wasn’t just a childish rebellion. He pulled his hood up and quickened his step to walk beside her.


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“Did you take care of her?” a voice rasped from a crackling communicator.

“no.” a menacing voice responded

“You’d better, because if you don’t----“ the voice was cut short as a beep from the communicator signaled that it had been turned off.

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Vera walked casually back to the place that she’d called her home off and on for the past eleven or twelve years. Before that she lived with her parents on their ship Taneda; she was born on a ship and before her parents sent her here had never even set foot on a real planet. They were smugglers, not especially good smugglers but smugglers nonetheless and she was brought up to be the same. She was piloting a ship before most children would start their first lessons, this innate ability made her parents think that she had jedi skills, like her uncle. When she was five, they sent her here, to Coruscant. The council didn’t let her train because she was far too old.

They told her to go back to her family, mingming that the family was waiting for her to give them word. They were rather wrong, her parents had left her, abandoned her. She never knew what became of them, though she guessed they may be dead, or maybe they’d gotten an assignment that they couldn’t refuse, but the most likely reason for her abandonment was that they didn’t want the burden of a child anymore.

The thought hurt her more deeply than anyone knew. Since then, she’d lived with her uncle whom the council let have an extra allotment of credits to pay for her. Though he had been able to get money to feed her and even a droid to look after her, he wasn’t her father. He was gone most of the time on missions which lead her an easy way to escape into the galaxy. Mostly she worked as a freelance pilot, learning how to fly everything from a stolen jedi glider to the bigger yachts. Its how she earned enough money to keep her at the sabbac tables.

Now, she was ready to start off on her own, no more working for other people, she would be captain of her own ship and she would choose the missions and how much she’d get paid. The only problem being her uncle, who obviously had found out about her little habits down in the lower levels, he wanted to keep her safe. Though she had no idea how he could do such a thing when he never even saw her.

She turned and glanced at the apprentice standing next to her, she’d been 7 when the nine year old Grey Thesises had entered her life. Two years older and her uncle’s padawan, she thought he was the coolest kid she’d ever met. Now after years of having a crush on him she’d become less and less enamored of him because of his increasing coolness towards her, she doubted that he would ever come around, so she’d simply moved on.

And now she was moving out, whether either of her force users liked it or not. She was going. They walked along one of the upper levels of Coruscant now, where it was infact the middle of the day. As they neared the apartments that she knew held her uncle, probably with his most disapproving, disappointed frown on, and the thought of telling him filled her with dread. She wanted to go… she didn’t want to break the news to him.

“Come on, Grey, don’t make me do this” she said abruptly, stopping dead in the middle of the busy street.

“Vera, come on. He knows something’s up by now.” He did a good impression of that disapproving frown “You at least owe him a goodbye”

“Do I?” she looked down the street envisioning her uncle’s shift in posture that would indicate that he was upset… it took a long time to learn to read the emotions of a Jedi but it could be done, and at that moment she wished she never learned how.

“Yes, you do.”

Her shoulders slumped and she started to walk again, knowing that he was right. Her green eyes kept glancing over at Grey as he walked quietly beside her. “So, you’re taking the trials?” she asked, trying to break the tension. He nodded a little bit and then folded his arms over his chest, “Then you’ll be a Jedi Knight?” he nodded again. She sighed and then turned her eyes strait ahead.

As they walked she wondered if the soon to be Jedi could sense the presence that had followed them up from the scummier levels of the city planet. She hoped he had, just to prove she wasn’t crazy.