Ask Ajan Kloss Beautiful, is it not?

[Maxims Tionson]

The ship touched down on one of the exterior landing pads that the Jedi had set up on Ajan Kloss.

The exterior landing pads were away from the main temple itself purely so that Jedi would have the chance to walk through the majesty of nature in the form of the dense jungle. Teeming with life, it was awash with the Force in a way that few other planets could ever hope to be. Even just setting down on the landing pad, Max smiled a little bit as a thousand little pin pricks of light made themselves visible to him in the Force.

It was beautiful in it's way.

"Warned you about the jungle kid."

Disengaging the engines of the ship, he gestured towards a vibroblade he had strapped to a wall for this exact journey. As much as he could enjoy the jungle, they were going to need to hack their way through some of the worst of it to get to the temple itself.

"Grab the blade and let's make a move."

Stepping out onto the landing pad itself, he glanced at Ori.

"First impressions kid?"

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

Ajan Kloss was a fascinating sight. Ori had only ever walked on one planet before and he didn't quite have fond memories of Nar Shaddaa. As they landed on the planet, Ori felt something he had never felt before, something akin to butterflies in his stomach.

The tension melted out of his body and he felt immediately more relaxed than he had been.

"No jungles back home," Ori said as he grabbed the vibroblade on Max's command. He gave it a swing through the air and smiled to himself.

Ori followed Max out onto the landing pad and took in the full view of the jungle before him. There was innumerable sounds and it appeared to be teeming with life.

"Never seen anything like it," Ori replied, taking in a deep breath of fresh air, "Never heard anything like it either. How many animals are in there?"

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Yeah his own homeworld hadn't had any jungles either so Ajan Kloss had been kind of like that to him as well. It was a massive change of pace but it was a welcome one to Max at the time and it had become only more so since then. Doubtless Ori would have his own positive memories of this place before his training was done.

Or he'd remember why he enjoyed air conditioning, Max wasn't going to ask for a miracle at the end of Ori's primary training after all, that would just be too much.

"You know, I don't think anyone's ever counted." he joked back in a manner reminiscent of his father back when he was younger, "Feel free to try and count, just don't expect to leave before you've got more grey hairs than me."

Leading the way towards the Temple, Max wasn't planning on taking the direct route. Instead he had a little bit of a lesson planned that he hoped that Ori would take to heart.

"Before we arrive at the Temple we're going to visit the nest of a few creatures actually."

He grinned at the young man.

"They say it's grown aggressive so we're going to take a look and you are going to calm the situation. Ever heard of Kinraths?"

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

"Well, I don't have seventy years spare so I'll pass then," Ori teased. He started to follow Max through jungle, unaware that they would be taking a detour. Hacking away at any vegetation in his way, Ori tried found himself getting distracted often, there was so much to see, so much he had never seen.

"Creatures?" He asked, confusedly. Ori had no clue why they weren't going to the temple straight away but in his attempt to improve his ability to put trust in someone besides himself, he decided not to ask.

"Never heard of it, what's a Kinrath? Wait, what do you mean, I'm going to calm the situation?"

Suddenly, Ori felt quite nervous. He had no experience dealing with animals and specifically he had no experience with whatever the hell a Kinrath was. A part of him wanted to suggest to Max that maybe he should deal with the situation and Ori could just observe. But he didn't.

"I'm sure it'll be a piece of cake, let's go." Ori said self-assuredly, trying to trick himself into feeling confident.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Maybe there was something to this teaching-lark because it was rather amusing to lead Ori towards the Kinraths now that he knew that the young man didn't know what they were. Of course he wasn't enough of a terrible person to just lead Ori into the hornets' nest blind. Instead he just wanted to enjoy the moment... of course he immediately felt the need to 'ruin' it for himself.

"They're insects, basically like three-foot high spiders." he admitted to Ori, "They're instinctive rather than intelligent and they usually group in clusters of between three to five adults to each egg clutch."

They were also very poisonous and rather ill-tempered when riled up by predators or the Dark Side. So it was time for a bit of on the spot training.

"Like most animals, they are sensitive to the Force and how you project yourself in the Force." he smiled a little bit and patted Ori on the shoulder, "I'm going to keep them mostly calm. All you need to do is keep yourself calm - do that and take the foreign egg from their clutch. Reports say it's a predator's egg but the Kinraths' instincts to protect eggs are too ingrained for them to crush it themselves. So you will walk through their ranks, pick up the egg that doesn't belong and we'll walk it to the Temple."

He grinned.

"So - you scared?"

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

"Three-foot high spiders? Okay..." Ori replied. The nerves were starting to creep in a little more now. Thugs trying to crack his skull with metal batons he could handle, he wasn't so sure about giant spiders. He listened keenly to Max's instructions, despite his nerves, he still wanted to do well, whatever doing well meant in this case. Ori wasn't going to question Max's motives, he'd shown himself to be trustworthy up until now and he no reason to doubt him.

Eventually, the two reached a small clearing in the vast jungle, at the centre of which were the creatures which Max had described. They did not look friendly. The Kinrath stood around an egg, again, as Max said they would be. The egg relatively large, but certainly not heavy enough that Ori would have trouble carrying it.

"Scared?" Ori answered, glancing at Max, "Of course not. Piece of cake, like I said." With that, Ori stepped out from the coverage that the thick jungle foliage provided him and into the clearing, out in the open. After taking several more steps, the Kinrath became aware of Ori's presence.

They immediately become more anxious in their behaviour as a result, pacing around the egg quicker than they had been, but they did not attack straight away. Ori presumed that was Max's influence and he was thankful for it.

Just breathe, just breathe...

Ori was trying to keep himself calm, but he wasn't doing a very good job. Even knowing Max was keeping the Kinrath at least partially soothed, his heart was pounding in his chest. The Kinrath were responding to Ori's fear and were venturing away from the egg to investigate him. As several of them came towards him, Ori closed his eyes and stopped dead in his tracks, trying to stay as still as he possibly could.

Okay, just use the Force... come on Force... stupid Force, I don't wanna get eaten, work with me here...

He could hear they were around him now and his breathing got faster. Even though every fibre of his being told him not to, Ori opened his eyes. He almost fell backwards when he found himself looking up into the face of one of the Kinrath, which had made it's way directly in front of him. Ori stared at the Kinrath, whose many eyes were locked onto him.

In that moment, Ori felt a wave of anxiety and fear wash over him, but it wasn't his. It was the Kinrath's. Ori didn't understand what was going on at first, but it was as Max said. The Kinrath were sensitive to the Force and so was he, they were connected. Closing his eyes again, Ori inhaled and exhaled slowly until his heart returned to normal rhythm. As he calmed himself, he felt the agitation that the Kinrath felt fade away.

When he opened his eyes again, the Kinrath that was in front of him had wandered off, no longer interested in him. Ori walked to the centre of the clearing, careful to keep his breathing in check as he went and collected the egg, with it, he returned to the treeline.

"Off to the Temple then?" Ori said with a crack in his voice upon seeing Max again.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

The kid was a natural.

Sure, Max held out his hand and reached into the Force for aid in calming the Kinraths but it was Ori, managing to keep his cool, that meant that his plan worked. Had Ori panicked there had been a very real chance that something would have gone wrong and Max would have had to save the padawan-hopeful from being eaten alive by the bugs.

He knew not to rush.

He knew to calm himself before he continued.

It seemed to Max that Ori was already turning out to be quite the find for the Jedi Order. He grinned a little bit as Ori returned to him and the Kinraths began to calm down as the egg was removed from their presence. Max nodded in agreement as he clapped the kid lightly on the back.

"You did well Ori." he assured the young man, "Many young men and women before you would have panicked but you held it together there with real determination. I respect that and others here will as well."

As they continued, the trees began to thin out and the Temple became something of a fixture in that it seemed to just suddenly be there despite being a rather impressively sized structure. Max took the egg from Ori and put it away in a bag he had brought. He would see it sent away to be examined.

In the mean time?

"Do you feel it in the Force Ori? Like a tingling behind your eyes, in the base of your skull... almost everywhere really?" He described the sensation of being in such a place of the Light in the Force, "This is what your life will be like if you're still interested."

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

After collecting the egg, Ori felt a sense of pride in his achievement. It wasn't something he had ever really felt before, it was a peculiar feeling to feel proud of himself, but he liked it. But deep down, he couldn't help but feeling that in some way he didn't deserve all of this. Why him? Out of all the orphans that he knew back on Baraan-Fa, why did he get to escape and come here, he wondered.

He was immediately distracted by these thoughts however, by the sight of the Temple. It was beautiful, but not because it was ostentatious, it was more subtle than that. There was something about the Temple that Ori couldn't quite put his finger on, the way it made him feel, like watching waves crashing against the beach. Peaceful.

"..if you're still interested." That was the key question. The answer was yes, of course he was. The little he had experienced of the Force was enough to demonstrate to him that he was dealing with something almost beyond comprehension, certainly his comprehension anyway. The Force was clearly something powerful, something which if Ori was to walk into the Temple, had the potential to change his life forever.

Ori, without speaking, took a seat on a rock which was near him and Max, contemplating things further. He hadn't really given much thought as to why he was coming here, to the Jedi Order. After what happened on Baraan-Fa, it just seemed like a convenient place to go. He wasn't even really sure what a Jedi actually did, he had heard the rumours of course, but so had everyone back home and almost nobody believed them.

Now he was here, on the doorstep of this mysterious Order, a companion of one of its Knights.

"I need to tell you something Max," Ori said, sighing as he did, "The reason I'm here, the reason we met on Nar Shaddaa. Before I left my home world I was just an orphan. My mother died giving birth to me, my father died not long after. Gambling, alcohol, you know. I don't really remember much about them. They were farmers, but, all their land got taken away," Ori paused for a moment before continuing, "The place I got put in was a dump, no clean water, not enough food to go around. Me and the other kids used to steal, pick-pocket, worked well enough for a while. Then I turned eighteen and I was turfed out of there as well."

Ori smiled weakly, "Guess you could say it made me a little angry... resentful. Long story short, I thought I'd rob some rich guy, hit the big time and live out my days in peace," he laughed at the notion, "...stupid. Anyway, an officer walked in on me, caught me right in the act and I threw him across the room without touching him. That's how I found out. After that, I pawned some stuff and got on a transport shift, ended up on Nar Shaddaa and..." he gestured to Max, "you know the rest." Ori stood up from the rock.

"Look, I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I guess it's just... you've helped me out, a lot more than most people in my life and I don't want to cause you any more trouble than I have... for all I know I'm wanted for assault." Ori looked down at the ground, signalling he'd finally finished talked and awaited Max's response.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

Max wasn't a big believer in sales pitches when it came to the Jedi Order.

In his opinion, the benefits of the Order far outweighed it's negatives but the way the Order expected you to work required you to be self-motivated. Certainly people within the Order would support you but not one of the Jedi there would command you to feel or think a certain way or to have a certain dream.

It would be wrong of him to convince Ori to join if Ori was not going to be able to actually become part of the Order through his own determination. So he didn't rush the kid and he didn't visibly react to what he was told about Ori's history. Instead he sat down on a rock not too far from him and he did something that the Jedi did rather well; he listened.

He didn't shy away from something he was 'supposed' to feel negatively about, he just listened and he kept his gaze on Ori so that the kid knew he had his undivided attention. Humming a little bit, Max thought for a moment as he picked up a small stone and held it in his hand for a moment.

"I was a cop before I was a Jedi and I have always held a very low opinion of criminals." he admitted before smiling a little bit, "But it means I can tell when someone is a criminal and when someone was forced into a bad spot by circumstances. You're not a criminal, Ori. You had it rough and you made mistakes your circumstances pushed you towards."

Max held out his hand to show the little pebble in his hand.

"But we are not our mistakes or our past. We are what we choose to be and what we work to become. This stone, under pressure and fire, becomes a diamond and you, Ori, have come through the first trials of life and you want to be better." he smiled a little wider as he gently tossed the stone to the kid, "You can't beat yourself up for your past, Ori. All you can do is accept it. If you can do that? Then the Order will accept you with open arms."

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

"...you're not a criminal, Ori." Relief came with those words. Ori was always self-doubting and second guessing his decisions. Recently, he had made some pretty stupid ones.

What Max was saying wasn't a vindication of those decisions, but a type of forgiveness that Ori was looking for. It was a recognition that Ori could be something more than what he was, something more than what he had defined himself as these past few years.

He could be a Jedi, whatever that mean, he still wasn't sure. But Max was a good person, Ori was confident of that now, and if he thought being a Jedi was a good thing, it was enough to convince Ori to take a leap of faith. Ori caught the stone that Max threw and let it roll around his palm, then he slipped it into one of his pockets.

"I can do that, or try to I think... work towards it is what I mean." Ori answered. He glanced at the Temple and thought about what was ahead, thinking about the possibilities, the unknowns and the challenges which lay ahead of him, "I'm ready," he said, turning back to Max.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

He was a teenager and he had been through the wringer so the amount of self-doubt and shame that hung around Ori in the Force was neither surprising nor something unknown to Max. Though he would never dare demean his experiences by saying it to the kid or anyone else, the truth of the matter was that stories like Ori's were so very common amongst the Jedi Order. For every one Jedi with the relatively peaceful discovery that he had enjoyed, there were at least two with backgrounds similar to Ori's own.

Hells, Max himself was teaching Thalia and Nashyr and they had very similar backgrounds.

But he hoped to instill in them, just as he did in Ori, a sense of forgiveness. Not so much that Max or the Jedi Order forgave him but more in the sense of self-forgiveness. Ori was hanging onto all of that doubt and shame and he didn't need to, he just needed to learn that it was okay to not be perfect.

"Try hard enough and you'll learn something here kid; there is no such thing as try. When you do something, you'll get it done. Believe in that." he joked, quoting some half-forgotten little joke of wisdom given by some Master long dead, "Or something like that. I can't honestly remember the quote. Point is..."

Standing up himself, Max patted Ori on the shoulder once.

"You're ready kiddo. So when you step through those doors you'll do so as a youngling. And when you step out of them after your initial training?" he grinned, "You'll be a padawan. My padawan if you want."

Max was still somewhat uneasy about being a Master but... he wasn't going to be static. He wanted to be better as well and being able to give back to people in his life? Well that sounded good to him.

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

"There is no try," Ori nodded. He wasn't sure if he totally appreciated the full meaning, but he sort of understood what Max was saying and that was enough for now. Ori had only been with Max a short time, hell, he wasn't even an actual Jedi yet, but he already felt different. It was a tiny thing. It was something Max had said previously, about the feeling behind the eyes. The feeling left Ori with a sensation of weightlessness, there was a calmness in his mind which he had never really felt before.

The Force was a mysterious thing and he was excited to learn more about it.

There was a time in Ori's life, actually, throughout most of his life, when he would never have accepted help from anyone. He quickly learned that self-sufficeny was the key. Only rely on yourself and you're never let down. But maybe things could be different now.

Ori wanted to be better and the Jedi Order seemed like a good way to put that desire into practice. Maybe one day he could help out another lost kid like himself. But that was all a long way off yet.

He had to get through training first. Ori would have been lying if he said he wasn't nervous about 'initial training' and what it entailed, but as the phrase goes, nothing worth having comes easy. Especially when the something worth having is the ability to move boulders with your mind and wield a laser sword, or so the stories said.

"Your Padawan?" Ori said with a surprised expression. Expressing his feelings had always been a weak point for Ori, and he got the feeling that Max was slightly out of his comfort zone too. "Yeah, I'd like that," he answered, hoping he hadn't come across as too awkward. But he got the sense that Max would know how he truly felt.

@Nefieslab

 

[Maxims Tionson]

There is no try.

A paradoxical statement and one that people seemed divided over; was it real wisdom or was it a cop out? Arguments could be made for both in Max's opinion but it seemed like the kind of thing that Ori needed to hear at the time. It wasn't a lie or anything, of course, just something that would only resonate with Ori in this moment.

Initial training was something that was encouraged if at all possible when taking on a Padawan. Formerly known as a youngling stage, it gave a Padawan a grounding in the Jedi arts before they were released out into the Galaxy to make their own way with or without Masters to guide them.

But he had already 'laid his claim' to Ori as it were.

Placing a hand on Ori's shoulder, Max looked at the Temple rather than at the young man. He wasn't as good as he could be at these kinds of speeches but he felt the need to try.

"Then right here and now I'll swear this to you Ori; I will do everything in my power to make you the best Jedi you can be." he vowed before giving him a gentle nudge towards the Temple, "Go on Ori. I'll be waiting for you when you're ready."

@Roentgenium

 

[Ori Ardell]

"Thank you Max, I appreciate everything you're doing for me," Ori said, "I'll be seeing you soon then I guess," he added before he started to walk away towards the Temple. As he walked, Ori thought about the past few days and the circumstances that had led him here.

When Max had agreed to bring him to Ajan Kloss, Ori had thought that was all there was to it, his journey to find the Jedi was over. But now, as he approached the Temple, it dawned on him that he was starting an even bigger journey.

Whether he was ready for that journey would soon be tested and Ori would find out what this 'initial training' phase involved.

Ori was now almost at the entrance and he paused for a moment. Glancing back, he saw Max in the distance. His old life was behind him and his new life was ahead of him, literally, in this case. He had a feeling that in the years to come, he would look back on this moment as a turning point in his life and so he took a second to take some deep breaths, trying to centre himself as he had when he was collecting the egg.

Finally, he walked up the steps of the Temple and through the entrance.

/end

@Nefieslab