When you have a gun, everyone looks like a Sith

[Drop Shock]

If Roo had eyes to roll they would be halfway to the next city by now. The droid had been anticipating some difficulty trying to enter Jedha's Holy City, but had underestimated how much the ordeal would try even his mechanistic patience. Finding transport, a week long trip in a cargo hold, a trek on foot across the desert, and now... this guy.

"I told you before'n I'll tell you again: I ain't lettin' no demented droid what thinks it's a person into the city." Drawled the Guardian, a human who dressed like a gunslinger from an old holovid and seemed to have learned to talk from one too. His colleague, a weequay, was the most humorless individual that Roo had ever met. That included other droids.

"Just put a restraining bolt on him and sell him at the market," the weequay said, "a droid shouldn't be left on its own."

Roo heard this threat almost daily. He had taken precautions. As one would-be kidnapper had discovered, the thick clothing he wore made attaching a restraining bolt against his will effectively impossible. Still, he would rather avoid the possibility altogether.

Though he'd initially considered simply trying one of the other gates, Roo had discovered that there weren't other gates he could use. Citing 'security concerns', entrance into the city had been restricted to the most easily fortified gate. And Roo was holding up traffic.

"Noble Guardians," said Roo, "I understand your concerns. You guard a sacred place and war threatens it. But I am not a part of that threat. I knew and traveled with a Jedi for a decade, and as I explained before, I am a pilgrim. Whatever your personal prejudices are, you must be able to respect my spiritual goals."

"Oh shut up and get out of the way, you bucket of bolts!" Said a traveler from the throng behind Roo. A chorus of voices echoed their agreement.

Another voice shouted, "At least it smells better than you!" This drew laughter from most, but not the weequay of course.

As the crowd became restless, Roo began to chant quietly to himself. "In the Force I find shelter. Though the storm rages around me. I shall not break. In the Force I find shelter..."

The gunslinger shot his colleague a sideways glance, squinting against the sun. "Maybe he's a Sith droid."

"Maybe." Said the weequay.

If Roo weren't a droid, he probably would have starting swearing at this point.

 

[Black Noise]

"Maybe indeed."

Jedi Knight Piper, better known as the 'Corellian Devil' among her colleagues and enemies, slipped by the two men at the door, patting the weequay on the shoulder as she did so. She wore old black and red robes over a combat vest and rested her hands on her weapons, a sunspear pistol and a combat knife, that hung from holsters at her hips. Non-aggressively, but forcefully, she pushed the two guards aside and continued speaking.

"But I'll be the judge of that. Come in, droid, let's see what you're made of."

The guards would not argue with a Jedi Knight, and Devil, a master of Force Sense, saw no explosives on the machine's person. Nodding at him to follow her, the Echani lead the droid through the gates. Soon enough, the two found themselves melding into the pushing and shoving crowd. Keeping a sharp eye on the droid with the force, Devil introduced herself.

"I am Jedi Knight Piper, my friends call me Devil. It's nice to meet you, droid. You know, I heard some interesting whispers comin' from you while I was walkin' towards the gates. Care to explain?"

 

[Drop Shock]

Roo was startled from his prayer by the sound of a woman's voice quieting the crowd. He reengaged the sensors and processes he had sidelined for the prayer (a mechanical cheat to imitate calming the mind) and watched silently.

The woman took charge of the situation effortlessly, and though she had not identified herself, he had a suspicion as to her station. Roo noted the deference of the Guardians. Neither one challenged her decree, and Roo didn't either, striding past the guards without hesitation. He said nothing, content merely to be rid of them, and followed the woman into the Holy City.

The crowds inside the city were nearly suffocating; a confused and congested mass of life. The occasional vehicle slowly inched through the streets, the beings inside probably regretting their decision to drive. Roo stuck close so as not to get separated from his deliverer. The woman seemed to pay him nearly no mind as they navigated the streets, though if his suspicions were correct she likely had other methods of keeping an eye on him. These suspicions were confirmed once she identified herself.

"Knight Piper, thank you for helping me when not many would have been eager to." Roo's vocabulator strained to be heard over the bustle of the city. "Devil is an unusual nickname, but I will remember in the event we become friends. What you heard was a prayer to the Force. I'm sure you've heard many similar in this city."

Roo paused.

"Excuse me Knight Piper, but where are you leading me?"

@Black Noise

 

[Black Noise]

Ducking into a nearby, secluded alleyway, Devil relished the time away from the crowds and waited til her new friend followed her. She could certainly have yelled over the din of the crowd to answer the droid's question, but frankly she didn't feel like raising her voice. Sighing, she turned to Roo and responded with a grin.

"You know, it's rude to not answer someone's question. That aside, I'm taking you to the temple. Is that not where you wish to go? Now follow me, I want to get a good look of where we're headed."

Taking off her cloak, exposing her tattoo covered arms, Devil folded and tied the useless thing around her waist. Feeling the alley walls, she began scaling the nearest building, climbing up the rough face of the sandstone and past the singular balcony looking down. Devil did not stop until she arrived at the roof of the house, where she could clearly see for nearly a mile in every direction. Looking in the direction of the temple, she began plotting out a route in her head and asked the Droid another question.

"What's your designation droid, and why are you here? Someone put you up to it?"

 

[Drop Shock]

As Devil set off up the wall, Roo was taken aback; of the three Jedi he'd now known, she was definitely an outlier. Everything from her attitude to her dress seemed unorthodox, but frankly the droid wasn't even sure about that. After all, he'd only known two other Jedi, maybe THEY were the weird ones...

Dismissing such thoughts until he had more information, Roo followed her up the wall. As he reached the top, the sound of her voice greeted him.

She said, "What's your designation droid, and why are you here? Someone put you up to it?"

Roo considered the question.

"I am an XT-02S Saberguard droid, originally built for sparring and property of the Jedi Order." He paused, still trying to gauge her intentions, then continued. "I am not Jedi property anymore. The Jedi who owned me allowed me to become independent. No one 'put me up' to this, I am here of my own choice."

He turned from her and looked out over the city, scanning for the Jedi Temple in the direction he had seen her analyzing but also simply enjoying the view.

"You were right that I want to go to the temple, but I did not expect access to be offered so freely." He turned back to her. "I will be straightforward. I consider myself a student of the Force. I would... study there. My late Jedi friend, the owner I mentioned, enlightened me about the Force, and I learned more than enough to know I am excluded from it. That's not good enough for me." Roo held out his hand for her to shake. "Will you still help me?"

 

[Beta12]

A chill in the air woke Adan Caal from his nap, far before the footsteps echoing along the walls of the alley way. The Jedi himself had been seated around the corner, his back pressed firmly against the wall and his thin brown robes wrapped tightly around his form. From what he had been told, at least Ilum had the appearance of being cold, before one actually landed on the planet. Jedha was a completely different matter. It's original description as a world encompassing desert had conjured up sensations of heat: sand that burned like hot glass, an oppressive sun threatening to crisp your skin, and an oppressive thirst that hung in dry throats. Though Jedha was similar in certain ways, Adan had never expected it to be quite so chilly. A steady, cool breeze had been buffeting NiJedha for the majority of the day, slipping past the great walls far more easily than those who had to take the gate.

Without looking down, Adan reached for the book that had been lazily strewn across his lap. Thankfully, he had managed to thumb one of the pages before he succumbed to his exhaustion. He wasn't worried of a potential mugging, like one might face in the alleys of other cities, on other planets. In the past five years, the Jedi had earned their respect from the inhabitants, and the citizens of NiJedha treated the Jedi as well as any would-be senator. The great temple, towering somewhere at the other end of the city, might have very well been the original home of his order. The Jedi belonged here as much as the citizenry of Jedha, and their reliance on one another was without parallel, considering the current state of the galaxy.

The book itself was heavy, with weathered pages and a rough leather binding. It was a favorite of his original masters, an authors musings on the force, and rarer still due to its non-holographic nature. He didn't have to focus, gain an impression from the message through the force, when it was physically before him. The ink on the pages left impressions that bent light simply could not, and they were far easier to discern.

It wasn't the book that had his attention, though, not anymore. The footsteps he had heard rounded closer, and those who made them became clear as they approached. "A woman. Perhaps a citizen..? No.." He did not even have to focus to witness the power roiling off of the woman's form. If she was as confident in her ability as she was in her walk, than there could be no doubt that a fellow Knight had entered his perception. A small, confused smile broached his lips as he focused on the second set of steps. A droid, that much was obvious right away, especially when set in contrast to the sheer force of will traveling with it.

Traveling with a droid through NiJedha was by no means odd, but scaling a building with one, inside the walls of the city, forced Adan to reconsider his original assumption about the woman. "Might as well..." Adan let out a small huff as he stood from his seated position, tucking his book into a tunic pocket. By the time he rounded the corner, the woman and droid were already planted firmly atop the roof of the building, likely gazing toward a horizon Adan would never see. Adan himself was no stranger to climbing, but he has not yet attempted to scale the rough, pocketed sandstone that comprised a majority of NiJedha's structures.

It took a couple of moments, rubbing the open face of his right palm along the surface of the wall, before Adan found a proper purchase to begin his climb. Sandstone, like anywhere else in the galaxy, had been formed by the tiny bodies of thousands of creatures, pressed and turned to stone in the beds of an ancient sea. For that very reason, Jedha radiated life far more clearly than the metal metropolises of Coruscation or Anoat. Though dead, life still interacted with life as his palms scrapped against the roughly set blocks, guiding him up toward the roof of the building itself.

Adan's blonde hair blew about in the breeze, and the brown robe he had not discarded flapped as obnoxiously as a bird taking flight. He had not considered that when he began his climb, and if the two on the top of the building were up to no good, they had well of enough warning before his head popped up along the edge of the roof. "A student of the force...?" The same, confused smile he had picked up in the alley returned as he carefully hoisted himself up onto the edge, choosing to find a spot to sit on it, rather than stand with is new company. He was much more prepared for a quick descent that way anyway. "What would you like to know?" Adan faced away from the two, but tilted his head slightly toward the robot's general direction. "Surely not how to use it..."

 

[Drop Shock]

"What would you like to know?"

The voice startled Roo. His auditory sensors, distracted by the flapping of his own clothing and hood, had not registered the stranger's approach up the wall. His head snapped in the direction of the stranger, sensors and processor kicking into threat assessment mode and his hand reaching for his sword. Simulations began to play in his mind. His weight shifted.

A heartbeat later and the droid's threat assessment was done. His sword still hung at his side and he eased back to his conversational posture. The new arrival posed no danger, sitting as he was at the edge of the roof, his back to Roo and Devil. In fact, from his words - and the fact that he scaled the roof like them - Roo judged the man to be some kind of mystic himself. Most likely a Jedi. He wasn't sure if this was a good or bad sign, but chose to believe it was the former.

"Surely not how to use it..." the stranger added. Roo's circuits buzzed with indignation.

"Yes, how to use it," the droid replied, his mechanical voice perfect in cadence and inflection, betraying none of his surprise a moment earlier. "Why, is that so unimaginable?" Roo took a step towards the stranger, his indignation growing to anger. His vocabulator strained as its volume rose. "I am alive, and yet the very essence of life is denied me because I was built from metal instead of cells. When my mentor died he became one with the Force, when I die I'll be scrapped for parts."

He stopped, embarrassed by his show of emotion.

"I apologize, I should not raise my voice."

 

[Black Noise]

Devil listened carefully. Listening was, to her, a strange skill. She preferred actions over words and violence as a first resort rather than the last. But over the past five years, she had calmed down. It had been a gradual change, but not necessarily one for the better. Instead of becoming closer to the Force itself in order to calm her troubled mind, Devil had simply developed a more pessimistic outlook on life. Thankfully, it had not yet completely taken over her mindset, but it did show in her speech.

Ignoring the newcomer for the moment, Devil responded to the droid's last statement, then his first question.

"We're all gonna die, and when we do, for most of us Jedi, we do not fade away like magicians. No, our bodies are burned if they're ever recovered and if they aren't found then they're left to rot on backwater worlds beneath the feet of thousands of insects. Wormfood is not a term used kindly, but it is one with a basis in reality. Bodies are vessels to the Force, nothing more, what happens to your body once you die is for the comfort or discomfort of those still living.

"You will never be able to use the Force, you are a machine. But the Force still flows through you. You could learn about it, maybe even become one with it when you die, the hell if I know if droids can become one with the Force or not. I'll help you though, yes, because I'd love to see if it's possible."

Looking over to the newcomer, a Miraluka probably, Devil crossed her arms and continued speaking.

"And good afternoon to you, my name is Devil. See what I did there? I introduced myself, that's the polite thing to do when you want to enter a conversation. How about you try?"

Her annoyance easily shone through her false cheery tone, frankly the Jedi had enough of rudeness for the one day. Though with Devil, her tolerance for nonsense and things she disagreed with was, admittedly, very low. While she was a Jedi, the teachings of the order had done little to affect her demeanor. People don't tend to change when they seek solitude and alienate themselves from others, as Devil often did.

 

[Beta12]

A small laugh escaped Adan's lips, only to be replaced with a broad grin. The woman did have a point, he had interrupted, but the acrobats themselves were simply at fault for catching his attention. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, I didn't mean to offend." The smile was obvious in his voice, though he continued to face away from the two, his head pointed toward some random point in the horizon. "I was just admiring the sunset." With that the Miralukan spun around and truly faced the two. His blind folded head tilted toward the woman, though it didn't directly face her. "The name's Adan. Adan Caal. It's nice to meet you, Devil." While others might question such a name, Adan simply held out a hand in the same direction he stared, extending it as far as he could in his still seated position. Handshakes were always something Adan enjoyed, as he always thought he could get a better sense of a person that way.

Whether she was actually going to shake the hand or not, Adan carried on. "You seem a few shades more blunt than I could ever be, at least now. However, what she said is true, Droid." Adan's head stilted toward the robot standing beside the woman, his grin fading into a sympathetic smile. "A life like yours can only be spent studying the force, that is all there is too it. I'm sorry. There have been tales of inanimate objects, like you, becoming imbued with the force. Though I am not sure if even that would allow you to commune with it directly, like a living being." A cool breeze flowed along the roof, which caused Adan's thin brown robes to flap once more and his messy blonde hair to fly about.

"There is a beautiful sunset to admire, right?" Adan's smile broke back into a grin, as he stood to give the woman a better position to shake his hand. He had to ask the question, of course, because he himself could not see the sunset. The robot still had qualities not shared by all, and the possibility to see something he never could was one of them.

 

[Drop Shock]

Roo stood quietly as Devil spoke, still embarrassed by his outburst a moment earlier. What she said was, for the most part, what he'd heard before and expected, though she was certainly more candid than he'd been anticipating. What he was not expecting was the readiness with which she agreed to help him, 'nor that she would love to see if it were possible. He wasn't sure he'd heard such a strong statement of support in his goal. Ever.

The droid did not interrupt the two as they exchanged pleasantries - if they could be called that - though he was genuinely surprised that the man was blind. Roo had data stored on Miraluka but he'd never encountered one. The man was charming, and though his words were also not what the droid wished to hear, they were not unkind or without hope. And they were probably true. The Miralukan was charming, and Roo did not begrudge him his interruption in the slightest. Still...

"There is a beautiful sunset to admire, right?" Adan said.

Roo's processes got stuck, and for one and a half seconds he stood there motionless like a statue until his systems managed to reset themselves. The blind man's comment held such an obvious message, but he had not considered such a point of view.

"Yes." Roo replied. "I think it can be considered beautiful." He was very grateful in that moment for his two new friends. "What would you two recommend for our first steps?"

 

[Beta12]

"Well. I would recommend that we get back on solid ground!" The roof was fine, and the building seemed of sound construction. Yet, despite that fact, the Miralukan stood rather uneasily on his feet. While he could hear the throngs of people that moved below them, they were far less defined than when he had been on the ground. Had the building been taller, he would not have been able to "see" the ground at all. "Got a name, Droid?" Adan began to take off his thin, brown robe as he waited for an answer. The thing had flapped around him all the way up, and it would be much more tame if he followed Devil's example. It took him only a few moments to wrap the material in a tight band around his waste, in a fashion similar to the piece of cloth wrapped around his eyes.

"Bet it's interesting." While the woman peered out toward the Horizon, Adan made his way toward the mechanical creation. It stood slightly shorter than him, and lacked any defining feature on its head. In fact, it was this specific "lack" that brought its origin to Adan's mind rather quickly. When he was a padawan, he remembered training with such things, their smooth faces about as emotionally devoid as their voices. This was one obviously different, likely something that had not undergone a memory wipe in an extremely long time. If such personality could result simply from that, the idea of a "mind wipe" brought a small drop to Adan's otherwise beaming smile.

"My name's Adan. If you couldn't tell." The Miralukan extended a hand toward the machine, just as he had done for the Knight. "It is a pleasure to meet ya!"

 

[Bastilo Marshall]

Bastilo in his Jedi robes on reflecting the solar rays with it's iron weave made it look like a translucent rainbow, along with his polished stone mask also reflecting the rays making it look shiny. He sat on a rooftop near the conversation, watching the beautiful sunset amazingly as well as eavesdropping on the conversation since he couldn't help it but mostly watches the sunset. He stood up and prepared to approach, and begins to turn around but takes one last look at the sunset as it slowly fell behind a mountain in the blurry distance. As the sun fell lower his shadow grew over the droid and mirakulan and Bastilo then began to approach the conversation. He dropped off the roof and made a clicking sound as he landed and as he grew closer he could sense girl and the miralukan both being a fore sensitive but nothing from the droid which made him feel a small amount of sadness for the droid.

"I'm actually interested in your name as well droid. Following as you said fellow Jedi it'd be rude if I didn't introduce myself so I might as well, hello my names Bastilo, Bastilo Marshall I over heard your conversation and I'm sorry to barge in but the corruption of a good conversation got to me." He said energetically with a bit of enthusiasm and humor with a echoing voice due to his stone mask.

 

[Drop Shock]

The Miralukan extended a hand, and the droid shook it, just as another stranger was joining them. This was apparently a popular rooftop, and it was quickly becoming the most popular one in the city. "I am Roo," he replied, addressing the both of them. "It's derived from my serial number. I like having a name instead." He looked around the group. "I am pleased meet you all. But perhaps Adan is correct and we should descend from this roof."

Roo hesitated for a moment, then took the initiative and began climbing back down, his route down the exact same as it was going up. He wasn't sure how miralukan senses worked but he trusted if the Jedi had climbed up perfectly well then he could also climb down. Still, Roo's motors were ready in case he needed to act. He wasn't sure about the other newcomer, the man who wore a mask. It almost reminded Roo of his own face, though the droid could not fathom why an organic would want to imitate him.