Ask The Apprentice

[Hal Mikko]

TARIS:

The plan had been simple.

Hal was supposed to have met up with his new apprentice - he wasn't privy to the identity of who the Council had assigned him - several hours ago and have briefed them on his ongoing assignment. It should've been a routine undercover operation. Disguised as smugglers, Hal and the Padawan were to meet up with a local crew at a seedy undercity cantina in regards to a job opportunity. The outlaws, after vetting their credibility, would in turn get them in touch with the Syndicate lieutenant known as Kressh - a Trandoshan trafficker and slaver, and the true target of the mission. Worst case scenario, should their cover have been blown, a wayward band of outlaws were no match for a Jedi Knight and their Padawan. Otherwise, it could've served as a valuable, low-risk first test for his new trainee.

Hal resisted the urge to shoot a glance towards the doorway. Sure, he'd expected his apprentice to have actually been at the cantina on time. Had everything else gone according to plan, their absence was merely a slight inconvenience. But he hadn't expected that Kressh himself would show up, flanked by three massive Nikito bodyguards carrying heavy repeating blasters. That represented significantly more than just an inconvenience. Should the Trandoshan give the word, Hal had no doubt that they'd light him up in the middle of the cantina without hesitation. He couldn't afford to slip up.

"The name's Hal... Hal Solo. No relation to the Solo mind you, but I'd like to think I take after him a bit." The Jedi leaned back into the Cantina booth and spread his arms out, in an attempt to maintain a sense of comfort and composure despite his pathetic cover story. With a lackadaisical glance towards Kressh, who was conversing with his enforcers at the back of the bar, he returned his pale-blue gaze towards the scoundrels sitting across from him. "I wasn't expecting company so soon." Hal said calmly, nodding his chin in the direction of Kressh and his men. "What changed?"

Their leader - a bald man with a cybernetic implant on the right side of his skull - answered coldly. "An' here I thought you were s'pposed to come here with a partner Solo." The man leaned forward, and Hal could hear the unmistakable sound of holsters being unlatched under the table. "What changed?..." Before Hal could reply, he saw the leader looking towards the entryway at something, and as he followed the man's line of vision, the Knight felt his heart plummet. In the background, Kressh's enforcers stopped their conversation and stared openly at the newcomer, though they didn't make any hostile movements.

There, in the doorway, stood Hal's apprentice.

@Stick

 

[Rishe Vakren]

The droid-driven taxi shuttle shot along the aerial highways, adhering strictly to the lanes and infuriatingly following speed limits. Rishe was chilled to the bone with the windspeed and bleary-eyed. Between the longer-than-expected charter to Taris and the taxi getting caught in an aerial traffic knot earlier and refusing to move even a METER outside the lines to get to the cantina on time, she was frustrated and exhausted.

It wasn't like her to be late. She usually accounted for her public transit habits, but the Council had sent her on such short notice, and so many things had gone wrong. She felt the taxi start to lurch as it decelerated, descending down into the gloom generated by the massive, sun-blocking skyscrapers to the lower and undercities. Tiered streets and plazas passed her by as each one blocked more sunlight, and her vision filled with the older, neon-blazing trappings of a city's underbelly. It came to a stop near a public street, but she was already halfway over the Taxi, pulling out a translucent card from a device near the seat as she did.

The cabbie droid chimed in, "Fifty Four Alliance Credits have been deducted from your chit! Have a pleasant day, and please consider a ti-"

"No." She replied, flipping up the hood on her dark brown robes, keeping them wrapped tightly around a padawan's attire. She didn't like droids, and the debacle hadn't softened her view at all. She rechecked the datapad she kept tucked under an arm as she set a brisk pace along the walkway. Hal Mikko. A human man not much older than her. She didn't know much about him, but one Knight had been a man that seemed cut directly out of true crime holo-serials. Another had pinched her cheek more than once, and that's all the information she needed to judge the woman. The third was probably likely to be a Mandalorian or something.

But since the advertisement and the name for the cantina was as grungy and hedonistic as every other den of vice down here, she was cautious about her new supposed Master. This wasn't a typical place to meet your new Padawan, and if she weren't a Jedi - no, if she wasn't required to come here for the meeting, she'd have never come.

"Who're you?" A rodian posted outside the door asked, probably taking note of the hesitation that identified her as a fish firmly out of water.

"Rishe. I'm here to meet a man by the name of Hal. Hal Mikko?" She replied, summoning her usual veneer of confidence. She obviously knew better than to say either of them were Jedi down here. Obviously. But the sudden alert spike of emotion she felt from the rodian's mind concerned her, but just for a moment. Then he motioned aside, letting her pass. Crisis averted.

She walks into the cantina, squinting into the dark, smoky atmosphere. Emotions settling into every corner with a sickly, muddled air. Carefree fun, careful focus at the Pazaak tables, unchecked desire and greed, probably aimed towards a dancer off in some corner unseen to her. And... dangerous, deadly intent.

Those eyes settled on her. Three large Nikto, with similarly large blasters. A Trandoshan, his hand hidden under the table. And a human man, by the name of -

"Hal. Mikko. Anyone happen to know the human this lovely lady is looking for?" The bouncer said loudly, their reedy rodian voice cutting through the cantina and the door closing tightly behind him as he stepped in. The insinuation was clear in his tone if him staring towards Hal and Kressh wasn't evident enough.

Pazaak players swore, gathering their decks and hastily pushing aside chairs to get out of the general vicinity. They were sharper than most, even if other partygoers noticed how taut the tension in the air was starting to grow and followed suite later. Blasters openly displayed unsettled the stomach, but a loud declaration like that was all but an announcement of fodder hitting the fan.

Rishe's heart started to pound in her ears, and the lightsaber she kept holstered in her left sleeve felt very, very heavy all of a sudden.

@Ginger

 

[Hal Mikko]

Despite all of his Jedi training, it took every ounce of Hal's resolve to stifle the groan that threatened to escape his lips as the bouncer announced his name to the entire cantina. He suppressed a laugh - a coping mechanism in the face of imminent danger - and instead took a moment to center himself. As the partygoers hastily gathered their belongings and rushed towards the exit, Hal reached out through the Force, sifting through the chaotic emotions and energies of the bar until he found the Padawan's presence, like a beacon in a storm.

As his pale blue eyes locked with her's, he shot out a tiny ping through the Force to let her know what was coming. They didn't know each other, and neither of them really knew what they were getting into, but in a moment they'd both be fighting for their lives. The message behind was simple: Kriff was about to go down. Get ready.

Hal turned his attention back towards the outlaws sitting across from him with a sly grin. He gave their leader the slightest of shoulder shrugs, as if to say, "What a coincidence..." before - without any hesitation - he kicked the table over, and slammed it into the group with a telekinetic blast before they could fire. The table collided with them like a thunder-crack, and blaster bolts began flying through the air as the men were flung backwards, rendered unconscious by the impact of the table.

Without breaking stride, the Knight's lightsaber flew from his waist into his outstretched hand, igniting just in time to deflect a volley of crimson bolts fired by the Vulkars' repeating blasters. Overwhelmed by the sheer firepower, Hal backpedalled and made his way towards Rishe, the cobalt blade twirling faster than the untrained eye could see to absorb the volley of blaster-fire that came his way. He gritted his teeth in concentration. With a deft flick of the wrist, he was able to reflect one of the bolts back towards its Nikito origin, and one Enforcer fell with a burning hole in their chest.

While one of the other Vulkars continued to lay down fire towards Hal, the Knight took a quick glance around the room. The few civilians who hadn't fled in time were cowering on the floor - Hal made sure that he was deflecting the blaster bolts away from them. However, he was alarmed to realize Kressh and the third Enforcer were nowhere to be seen. Rishe, however, might've noticed the Trandoshan fleeing towards an exit on the opposite side of the room... and the Enforcer taking aim at Hal's undefended flank.

@Stick

 

[Rishe Vakren]

Hal's intent was very clear, a spike of purpose telegraphed through the Force. The bouncer behind her activated some sort of weapon, the electric hum reverberating through the air. Safeties clicked on repeating blasters. Ba-dump. Her heart thudded. She wasn't ready for this.

"What a coincidence..." Badump. Badump.

A twist of her wrist, and her lightsaber fell to her hand, warm metal. The Knight kicked the table, the Bouncer made to swing, the table connected with a nikito with a sickening crack, her lightsaber ignited with a shriek, casting pale, yellow illumination across the room. She jumped backwards, colliding with the rodian and sending him flying as she twisted her torso cutting a desperate sunlit arc into the air -

Flesh sizzled, the bouncer shrieked, and the nauseating smell of a lightsaber wound overwhelmed her. She hadn't smelled anything quite so terrible before. The baton he had was cut in two, a deep, angry-red groove carved up his right forearm, across his chest. Armor had saved him, but not much else. Her heart beat like a drum. Her strike had been wild, lightsaber forms were never her forte.

Terror, murderous intent. Pain.. There was a lot of pain. Mostly around her. Terror, she didn't know if it belonged to her, or the bystanders caught in the middle of this business. The Force screamed even as blaster bolts shrieked. But her mind shut down, looking only at manageable chunks. She couldn't focus on the panic, on the fact she'd been surprised at how easily her saber cut through someone. Keep track of the actors. The bouncer was down. Nikito one was out. Nikito two, shooting at Master Mikko. Track the Trandoshan and Nikito three.

The third nikito was taking aim at Mikko. The trandoshan was running for it. Her saber sang out as she pursued, cutting through a standing table's supports. Her hand motioned, and the severed furniture rolled into place seconds before a fusillade of repeater bolts clattered against the thick material, showering sparks and molten metal past Hal. She couldn't launch it towards the shooter - the weight of it was beyond her, but splitting her mind between two tasks definitely was not.

She pointed two of her fingers from her saber hand to the door the trandoshan was trying to get to. She locked eyes with the mechanism. The Force surged within the complex circuitry of the device, sending sparks flying as a loud crunch was heard within the door. She didn't know how these things worked, but breaking things was simple. The door's lights flashed red, then cut out, as did several nearby lights. For the moment, the Trandoshan's escape was cut off. He'd be another problem in a matter of seconds when his cowardice left him.

"To your right! Launch the table!" She tried to shout over the din. It might have seemed obvious there was a second shooter, and where the shots were coming from, if the improvised cover was any indication, but, with it perfectly set up for another kick, it could take care of one more enforcer.

@Ginger

 

[Hal Mikko]

To Rishe, it seemed as if the Force screamed as the battle raged on, but to Hal... it sang. His lightsaber moved to intercept the incoming blasterfire before his conscious mind could even register that they were fired, and even through his intense focus, he could feel the ebb and flow of the cantina as chaos continued to erupt. Though he couldn't see Rishe's saber pass through the Bouncer's light armor, he saw the unmistakable flash of yellow, heard the sound of plasma cutting through flesh, and sensed the momentary terror that flashed in his apprentice's mind following the violence.

Hal himself felt a twinge of regret that his first meeting with her had ended up like this. His introduction to Xalkaia - his former padawan - had been violent too, but there had at least been time for them to connect beforehand. He quickly reminded himself that there'd be time for proper introductions later, yet that momentary hesitation - that brief lapse in his guard, was all it took for him to be caught unaware by the second Nikito. The Knight was startled by the sudden movement of a nearby table, narrowly intercepting a hail of blaster bolts that would've otherwise caught him square in the torso. If Rishe hadn't acted so swiftly...

"To your right! Launch the table!"

Hal barely heard Rishe's voice over the incessant thumping of repeater bolts, but her voice reminded him to stay in the present. As the Nikito in front of him continued to rain down fire, Hal deftly switched from a defensive stance to a more offensive position, switching his lightsaber to his right hand so that he could free his left. He reached out with his free hand, and the first Nikito's repeater slammed up out of his hands and into his face, the weight of the heavy blaster knocking him out cold. Without skipping a beat, the hand swung over to grab the table-shield from off of the ground. "Catch this sleemo!" Hal grunted as he sent the table flying towards the last gunner, who went down like a rock after the molten table impacted his face, leaving Kressh all by himself.

As the last echoes of blasterfire faded away, the only noises that remained were that of the Trandoshan yelling into a wrist-mounted commlink in his native tongue, and that of Hal's footsteps and he briskly strode towards him, blade drawn. The Knight swung his blade in a precise arc, slicing off the protruding commlink without harming the slaver, before slamming him into the sealed doorway with a telekinetic blast - which definitely harmed the slaver, and more importantly kept him pinned down yet still conscious for the immediate future.

The moment of relief finally gave Hal a moment to turn his attention towards Rishe, whom he greeted with a warm grin - which always looked more like a smirk when he did it. "Those were some quick reactions." He said as he sheathed his blade, hanging it discretely on his waist. "Sealing the doorway and managing to get the table in the way of those bolts? Not bad at all. Probably cancels out blowing my cover." He couldn't help but add sarcastically. "I'll try to thank you later but we'll need to keep introductions brief for now. We've only got a minute or so before Scaly here comes to, so let's cut to the chase."

Judging by Hal's calm, irreverent attitude, it was almost as if he hadn't just been involved in an intense firefight moments earlier. The youthful Knight wasn't quite the stoic sage that Master Tionson was, nor did he have the condescending attitude of Knight Vaen. From a first impression, the word that most people would use to describe him would be reckless. Even his smirk, which was the same one he'd used for his lackluster smuggler impression earlier, spoke to his daredevil tendencies.

In other words... he was Rishe's worst nightmare.

"I'm Hal, Hal Mikko - but I guess you knew that already. And who might you be?"

@Stick

Spoiler

If Rishe can understand Trandoshan (Hal can't), Kressh was calling for backup.

 

[Rishe Vakren]

She waited for a long moment before switching her saber off, the comforting vibration and hum leaving the thin metal handle, the sense of weight and inertia disappearing. It disappeared into her sleeve.

Just pain. She could feel it from the bouncer, knew out of her mind's eye that he was wriggling towards the doorway. The Knight had been more accurate in comparison. The nikto guards that shot at him were either completely out of commission... or dead. One had their bolt redirected towards them.

She approached the bouncer, the rodian only realizing she was coming when the padawan already loomed over him, hand outstretched. The armor and her own inability to follow through with the cut kept him from suffering worse than a painful slash. His mind was a mix of terror and hatred and pain and shock - and she slipped through it, dulling his senses with the Force. She didn't know anything of medicine, that was the most she could do. But why did she do anything for the bouncer? What if his baton had landed, if both the Jedi were defeated? What would have happened? She didn't think about it as much as the question deserved.

Rishe emerged from the entrance hallway to see Hal pressing the slaver against the broken door, a flick of his saber having cleanly destroyed the commlink. Compared to the Knight who seemed to thrive on the battle, she was already looking disheveled, sweaty, her brows knit together in concern.

"I'm Rishe. Rishe Vakren. The council suggested - no - you knew I was coming." She said, watching some of the huddled non-participants gather the courage to run for their lives towards the door she just vacated. "I wasn't even aware there was a cover to be blown... Master. Maybe patience should have been considered and you could have waited for your apprentice before this?"

She tried to speak evenly, but the Knight's careless attitude definitely did grate on her. On top of the accusation that she only succeeded in spite of blowing his cover. "Why are we here, and what do you need with him?" Rishe asks, biting that irritation down as she nods towards the Force-restrained Trandoshan. She did at least recognize when someone was a ringleader. Even if the fact he was the only Trandoshan in a group of Nikto bodyguards didn't make it obvious enough.

@Ginger

 

[Hal Mikko]

Hal looked at her evenly. While his smirk remained unchanged, his pale blue eyes seemed far more parsing than they had been moments before - almost as if he was reevaluating his first impression of her. His conclusion, whatever conclusion he came to, was utterly unreadable.

"You're right Rishe. I should've waited." Hal responded, his tone carrying a hint of sarcasm. "Oh wait, I did. For three hours. I don't know how many dealings you've had with the Syndicates before, but if I showed up late, they would've figured I was cooperating with the authorities and gone to ground. It was worth the risk of coming here solo." Maybe patience should've been considered before he'd taken on a Padawan.

"In any case, I wasn't expecting our friend to be here so soon - but the Force tends to works in mysterious ways." He gestured towards the immobile Trandoshan, who was still struggling against his invisible restraints. "His name is Kressh: he's a Syndicate lieutenant, one with direct ties to the slave trade. We know from rescued trafficking victims that he's been operating in this sector for months now, but we don't know where exactly the operation is being staged from - and we do know that it's centralized somewhere."

Hal knelt down beside his captive and looked the reptilian slaver in the eyes. Though Kressh was unaware of it, they'd encountered each other years ago, in a dismal spice mine deep in Wild Space, where Hal had spent almost two years as a Syndicate slave. It had been years and many lifetimes since then, but the Knight hadn't forgotten a single face of his captors. He felt his heart hammer against his rib cage as red threatened to overwhelm his vision, and it took every ounce of his training to not Force-choke the slaver within an ounce of his pitiful life. Taking a deep breath, Hal tried his best to suppress such dark feelings from reaching his apprentice through the Force, but Kressh could see the look of rage in his eyes, and the reptilian lieutenant hissed a challenge in his native tongue.

"Our job," Hal continued as he stood up, maintaining the same aura of effortless composure he'd carried himself with earlier, "is to figure out where that somewhere is. And we're gonna do that by making our friend here cooperate with us." He returned his gaze to Rishe, and gestured for his apprentice to come closer. "So, Rishe, what do you propose we do first?"

@Stick

 

[Rishe Vakren]

Stared back. Her lip twitched. But it was the sarcasm that caused her to reply, "From Y-" She stops. The Yavin IV Temple was meant to be a secret. She was going to detail just how long the journey would have taken in order to frame why three hours was a terribly low window for a trip that could take a day and a half. But saying that in here, with prying ears? Between the trandoshan and the other civilians in this seedy dive cantina, the information would be bad for them to overhear. Some might be smart enough to think the information was valuable. And several were very curious. She could feel the wonder, the apprehension, and the anticipation.

So she bit her tongue, and ate the Knight's disappointment and sarcasm. "I will be more punctual in the future, Master." She said in a clipped manner, keeping some of her attention on the room around her. Occasionally looking around. She didn't need to, but anyone with a blaster in their pocket would hesitate for a few more seconds if they saw her look at them.

"I'd hate to imagine the Force has any hand in the affairs of slavers, or forces a shootout in the middle of a cantina." Rishe says with distaste. She had no love for slavers. She'd just dealt with some not even a week ago. But back then, she didn't have the luxury of pinning one against the wall. And while Rishe had very few true talents, she had a strong empathetic presence in the Force. While it was suppressed, she could tell that Hal held even less love for them, though she assumed the source of his rage to be Jedi righteousness rather than what it truly was.

"We should get him out of the cantina. People don't need to overhear this any more than they have... and we're liable to be shot in the back." She says, replacing Hal's place as the one kneeling and looking eye-level at the Trandoshan. "You'd probably know where we could rent a room nearby? You seem comfortable with this type of environment." Rishe quips softly, not looking at her master, but the question obviously pointed at him and assuredly his morals. While she talked, she tried to pat the trandoshan down, something made harder by the fact she'd never done it before, and the slaver was squirming even under the effects of the Force. She purloined some sort of blaster she couldn't possibly ever identify and a knife hidden in his wai-

THUD

The slaver's head collided with hers, the man yelling something in trandoshan as his body twisted to strike at her. She staggered backwards, falling onto her ass in an un-Jedi-like fashion with her senses ringing. The knife clattered near the ground, and with struggling, scrabbling hands fighting that invisible push, he clutched it, moving in slow, jittery, excruciating motion to try and leap off the wall to lunge against the Knight.

Behind the bar, the sound of a metallic chunk. The crolute bartender had leveled something that looked like a scatter-slugthrower, but was loaded with blaster packs at the sprawling Padawan. "Leave the trandoshan and get out of my bar, Jedi." The corpulent man said, a finger on the lever.

@Ginger

 

[Hal Mikko]

Hal didn't need to be a Jedi to sense that Rishe wasn't exactly pleased with their current arrangement. He doubted that what bothered her was only the sloppy execution of the mission - if one could even call this PR nightmare a mission - but by listening to the curt, dry tone of her responses, it seemed as if she was bothered by his own presence. Hal hardly blamed her for that. Despite his facade of confidence, he'd been rendered socially abrasive in his years of working alone. If Hal Solo wasn't proof enough that he'd lost his edge...

In any case, he was faced with a decision: to either get Rishe acquainted to his way of doing things, or to admit his own fault. Hal recalled his own days as an apprentice. Master Stark had been a very different Jedi than Hal was - in almost every sense, their philosophies differed. But at the end of the day, he'd never forced Hal to conform to his own ways. He'd warned him against recklessness, but also helped cultivate his unorthodox methods. He'd told Hal to never let his emotions control him, but encouraged him to utilize his passion into his Form V techniques. At the end of the day, Rishe had a different way of doing things than he did... but that didn't make her wrong.

"No, you're... you're right, Rishe." Hal finally admitted after his moment of self-reflection. "It wasn't fair that I dumped you into this, and it wasn't fair for me to blame you for any of this. You've been doing great so far. I guess it's just gonna take me some time to realize that I'm not... Hal Solo anymore." Hal felt a wave of disgust wash over him following his attempt at a dad joke, and so he carried on as if he'd never attempted it.

Her analysis of their current situation was entirely apt - they couldn't keep Kressh at the cantina. In addition to the damage they'd wrought on the property, which would be doubtlessly be drawing the attention local law enforcement, it was possible that the Trandoshan had reinforcements positioned nearby as a contingency. The last thing the locals needed was another firefight. "Yeah, I've got a place in mind." Hal replied to Rishe's query, forcing himself to ignore the obvious implication of her words, "it's jus-"

THUD

As Rishe reeled back from the head-butt, Kressh suddenly scrambled forward and grabbed the knife. Hal only had a moment to weigh his options. If he drew his lightsaber, there was a chance that the Trandoshan would impale itself rather than submit to captivity. He could Force-choke the slaver until he dropped his knife, but how would that look to Rishe? In the end, he decided to use the slaver's momentum against him. Hal ripped Kressh from the wall with a Force pull, simultaneously dodging the slaver's trajectory. The Trandoshan was sent flying across the room, far enough to create space between him and the two Jedi, and it was only then that Hal became aware of the bartender.

"Wait!" Hal said, lifting his hands up slowly in the universal signal of peace. As he did so, he stepped in between the scatter-blaster's aim and his apprentice's body, putting himself directly in front on her. "We'll leave. I'm just going to grab my apprentice here, and we're going to walk right out that door, alright? I'm going to help her up now..." He glanced behind at Rishe and offered her a hand up, if she needed it. Under his breath, he murmured a barely perceptible "We'll talk outside" before returning his attention to the Crolute. "And now we're leaving. C'mon Rishe, let's get outta here."

Assuming nothing else went wrong, Hal made his way towards the doorway, keeping an eye on both the Bartender and the slaver. Perhaps he was formulating a plan, but for now, it seemed like he was genuinely willing to leave his target in return for Rishe's safety.

@Stick

Spoiler

I'm sorry it took so long for me to reply, and I know a lot's changed in-universe since this. Totally up to you whether you wanna continue this or not - no harm either way, just let me know!