Bonk On The Head

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Oh." Talk about getting the wind knocked out of you.

For some odd reason it had never occurred to her that Maleah wouldn't have a lightsaber, but then again it made sense. Kaili, Micah, and herself had all clamored for the weapon, wanting it as soon as possible so they could begin their training. Maleah? She hadn't cared.

She was a free spirit, a wandered, why would she want a lightsaber? It made a lot of sense, and Aela frowned for half a moment as she considered her ignorance in the idea of that. Her eyes lulled for half a moment, then she let out a small sigh. The Lightsaber extinguished in one quick snap, and then she stiffened slightly. Perhaps she had gotten a tad over excited in the idea of showing off her skills to her little sister, but who could blame her? Everyone liked to show off now and again.

"Alright." Aela said suddenly. "New plan!"

She entirely sure that her parents would have the parts they need, at least a few of them. Perhaps they would have to go out and find a crystal somewhere but with Felix around that wouldn't be too much of a problem, the piloting droid could take them wherever they needed to go.

"We build you a lightsaber!" Aela declared.

 

[Louise]

She almost felt bad for not having a lightsaber, seeing Aela get deflated when she was enjoying their time together was not what she had in mind. It was no real cause for concern however, as it was only a matter of time before her older sister would get to flex her lighstaber muscles.

Sooner rather than later.

With the announcement of the new plan Maleah's grin spread into a large toothy smile, her excitement at this prospect not exactly hidden.

At times she felt a certain amount of shame for not following the paths of her siblings, they had all come so far from since they were children, well, with what felt like the exception of herself. Sure, she had travelled, more than a lot of people ever would in their entire lives but there was always something self-centred about those pursuits.

Especially when compared to the selfless paths of Kaili, Micah and Aela.

“Right now? We're gonna do it right now?” Maleah finally said, starting up the excitement express once again.

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Yeah!" Aela said with perhaps a bit too much excitement.

"Mom and Dad should have all the parts around the house." She assumed they would, except that crystal, but then again perhaps they could make one for Maleah. Aela had never made a synthetic crystal, but from what she understood the process was actually rather simple. All one needed was some pressure and some silica, which being on Borleias they had plenty of. They would just need a coloring agent, and if they made it synthetic...well maybe something of Maleah would go into it. Aela mused slightly, tapping her chin and realizing that she actually had no idea what that would do. "Probably."

She added finally.

"Come on lets go look." She waved for her sister to follow her. The house was big, and they would have to search all of it in order to find what they needed. More than likely most everything was located in their fathers workshop, but it was the little parts that Aela was more worried about. The lens was easy, the emitter was easy, heck everything was pretty easy. Even the hil-oh. She was suddenly reminded that Maleah was again rather different from her and the others. While they had been taught by their uncles, father, and mother, Maleah had learned things from Oma.

"Maleah." Aela said as they stepped into the house. "What kind of lightsaber do you want? One like mine? A double bladed one? Something more...unique."

Aela stretched out her arms signalling something longer.

 

[Louise]

Oh man, they were actually gonna build a lightsaber...for her?

There was no denying it, they were totally cool. I mean, they were iconic weapons of the Jedi and the Sith. Okay, you still couldn't skin an animal with them but they were lightweight, deadly and perhaps this was some of the animal inside of her talking, but they were shiny.

It didn't take much prodding for her to follow Aela inside the house, just as her sibling posed a new question.

Possibilities flourished within her mind, ones that hadn't even existed before. In a moment of imagination Maleah pretended that she was holding a lightsaber, making a few fake swings and trying to picture what would be comfortable for her. One-handed, two, the possibilities seemed endless.

Then it came to her as she looked to Aela and saw her sister with her arms outstretched.

“Yeah, yeah, long, handle like a spear...” she said, cogs of her brain grinding harder, “...like could I put my weight on it?”

There was a very exact image she had in mind, it involved a lot of acrobatics and using the lightsaber for more than just its beam. One question remained, however, was it possible?”

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

Aela blinked.

A spear?

She hadn't thought of that, had never seen it before actually, but she supposed it was entirely possible. The blade would have to be shorter of course, and they would have to do something about adding weight to it, but it should be entirely possible, especially if they made it of a stronger metal. She thought for a moment, her eyes going slightly off in the distance as she became lost within her own mind. The assembly would have to be changed slightly, and they would...they would have to find a handle.

Maybe something wood?

No wood wouldn't be able to hold Maleah up as good as metal. "Okay. Let's search Dad's workshop. We need..."

Aela trailed off for a moment as she thought again.

"A lens, an emitter, a stabilization matrix." Aela began to prattle of a list of all the things a lightsaber required. "And the handle."

For now she left out the crystal. She knew that her parents wouldn't have any lightsaber crystals sitting around, so instead she would surprise Maleah by making her own crystal later. It would work out better that way and her sister would get to have a bit more joy in creating her Lightsaber.

 

[Louise]

The components of a lightsaber was completely lost on Maleah, maybe with the exception of the handle, well, hopefully with the exception of the handle, she had fallen out of a lot of trees in her time but not enough that she would forget what a hilt was.

She was vaguely aware of lightsaber crystals, they were usually found in caves and more often than not had large beasts protecting them (although, in actual fact the creatures were likely just protecting their nests, that just so happened to be right next to large crystal clusters).

Although, given that the crystal wasn't one of the items listed by Aela, she assumed that would be something for them to fathom out later.

Dad's workshop was a literal cave of wonders, and without Maleah knowing what a lens or a stabilisation matrix looked like, the young woman just kinda ended up standing there, mildly lost with some eyebrow waggling to accompany such a feeling.

“I'm not sure what anything looks like,” she admitted sheepishly.

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Oh...Right." She should have thought of that. Maleah wouldn't know what the inside of a lightsaber would look like, why would she? She'd never seen it's contents or even a hint of them. A frown pulled at her lips as she quickly thought of a solution. "Okay. Find the handle. Something that we can use as a hilt. It just has to be...vaguely tube shaped."

That would be her sisters job.

Their fathers workshop contained a thousand things. Most of it was electronics and technology, things that related to dad's use of technomancy, however there were also signs of life that still floated around the workshop as well. Ancient tree bark, runic stones, and half a dozen other mystical artifacts that Aela didn't even have a hope in identifying. They could poke around in there all day and still not find everything. It would be very likely that their father would disapprove of them rummaging around in his garage, but he wasn't here at the moment so it was okay.

"I'll find everything else." Well, not everything else.

The crystal would still be a nice surprise.

Aela nodded to herself, stepping into the garage and beginning to search through drawers, cabinets, and small alcoves within the wall to see where her father had hidden everything. Quickly she began to assemble all of the parts onto one of the nearby workbenches.

 

[Louise]

“Tube-shaped, got it,” she said with a nod, happy to leave Aela to look for the other components, she could have imagined herself picking up everything in sight and asking, 'is this it?' over and over again until her older sister broke.

Her own rummaging adventure began.

Which was actually quite difficult, their dad had a lot of...well...miscellaneous stuff in his workshop. There was a lot of gingerly poking around, the girl using her sleeves to pick various metal objects up just in case they were made of phrik or cortosis. She didn't exactly want her skin breaking out into nasty hives mid-rummaging.

“Are you having much luck?” Maleah asked her sister, picking up some kind of electronics board, and squinting at it before setting it back down in the drawer.

“I'm not having much luck.”

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Hmmm." Aela made an audible noise of thoughts.

Her hand went scooping into a large bucket of what appeared to mostly be screws, nuts, and bolts, picking a few of the tiny, almost miniscule parts out until she began to assemble them on the workshop bench alongside the other parts that she had already picked out. It had actually been rather easy to find what she needed, as it turned out dad had a lot of junk for extra lightsaber laying around. That seemed rather odd to her, given that their father didn't use a lightsaber at all.

Perhaps he had been tinkering with designs?

Who knew.

"I think I almost have everything." Aela said as she began to look around for a lens. "I just need the lens that the beam goes through, and then I'm done."

Minus the crystal of course, but that would be a surprise.

 

[Louise]

So the great rummaging continued.

She supposed if one was interested in this kind of field then this might have been a jolly good time, but given her nature of...well...nature it wasn't at all Maleah's forte. Although Kaili would have totally loved it...and probably could have found a tube with ease.

As Aela made swift progress with the rest of the lightsaber components, the twin finally found something that might have been useful.

A pipe!

Both a tube, and metal it seemed to check off most of the requirements needed. Cautiously, she sniffed at metal pipe, hoping it wasn't an allergen and then realising how stupid she looked actually physically smelling the metal. She laid a cautious hand upon it, and then a second. It seemed to be fine, but she would find out later if it was not.

That or it was gonna be an oatmeal bath later.

The pipe felt sturdy enough, and as she tried to bend it with just a normal amount of force, she thankfully couldn't. Another check off the list. Just one more really to go.

She backed off to the other side of the workshop and with a small run up, planted the base of the pipe into the floor, vaulting herself across the room with about as much pleasure as one could get from indoor pole-vaulting.

“Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Which for Maleah, was quite a lot.

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

It seemed that her sister had found her handle.

"Alright, come over here." She waved for Maleah to join her at the table. Aela had managed to assemble all of the pieces that they needed. She had the lens, emitter, diathium power cell, all the bits and bobs that they would need to create the lightsaber. He laid them all out as though they were already placed together within the handle, as though they just required assembly. She also placed two longer emitter pieces into the other end, just in case.

Maleah came over and placed the long metal tube onto the work table.

"Okay." Aela said, biting her lower lip. "We have all the pieces, all but one. Some people say that it's the most important piece, the thing that gives the lightsaber it's...kick, the thing that really makes it your own. The Crystal."

"The Crystal is what focuses the beam, and depending on what kind of crystal it is it has different effects. My lightsaber, dad's old lightsaber has an Angraal Crystal. It makes me more attuned to the lightside of the force and dad says it can cut through cortosis, though I've never tried that. We could go to Ilum and get you a crystal, a natural one, but, we could also make one just for you." Her lips slowly turned into a smile. It was clear that either option excited Aela quite a bit.

 

[Louise]

After having her moment of fun, Maleah made her way over to the work bench and gave her sister the pipe, hoping that it would be suitable to use.

Then came the matter of the crystal.

For a brief moment she was mildly downtrodden, thinking that they would have to travel out to Ilum to get a crystal, putting a mild dent of delay in her training adventure with Aela. Of course, that was until her sister offered up the possibility of making a crystal.

Maleah's eyes became as wide with excitement, like giant garish orange saucers.

“We can do that?!”

She leaned closer to her sister, almost placing her chin upon her shoulder. She clearly had second-hand excitement from Aela, well, that and excitement of her own at the thought of having a lightsaber, her own lightsaber and a personalised one at that.

“How can we do that?!”

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Well." Aela said turning to her sister and resting her arm on the workbench. "We need Silica, and some other stuff, then a lot of force."

That last part wasn't really an issue.

They didn't have a machine press or an industrial oven or anything of the sort, but what they did have was the force, and plenty of it. Between Maleah and Aela the two Talith girls had enough raw strength to pick up half an island, creating enough pressure to form the crystal? Easy. In theory anyway. A smile pulled at her lips and she grabbed onto her sisters sleeve. With a sudden jerk she pulled her sister towards the garage door and out towards the beach patio.

"You'll have to think." Aela began. "What do you want your crystal to be? What color? What kind? What do you want it to do and look like? What do you want at it's core?"

There were a lot of questions. "You have to know exactly, or it won't work."

It was a lot to ask, but the crystal at the heart of a lightsaber had to be absolutely flawless, or else the blade that it would produce simply wouldn't work properly. She had seen it before, and the results were hardly ever pretty, but Aela had enough confidence in her and her sister so that wouldn't happen.

 

[Louise]

She was dragged along outside by Aela, who was also consumed in eagerness and well, perhaps mad science but it wasn't evil mad science, so they were all good in that respect.

Suddenly there were a lot questions being asked of her, questions that had to have an exact answer, on a subject she knew practically nothing about. Well, she did at least know one of the answers immediately, so there was a plus.

“Green,” she said with the ultimate self-assuredness. It was the colour of nature, and there would be none more fitting for her, “...the rest I'm not so sure...”

She held up her fingers and began to strike off the things that she needed more elaboration on.

“What can crystals be?” One finger down, “What kinds are there?” Two, “What can they do?” Three, “What can they look like?” Four, “What can they have in their core?”

A lot more elaboration.

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"Green huh?" Aela wasn't sure how they would produce that color, though she wasn't entirely positive how they could produce that color, maybe if they added some of the stronger jungle vines into the silica mixture? Yeah she thought that might have worked. Her head nodded slightly as the thought to herself, smiling and dragging Maleah onto the beach where they would be able to gather up some of the finer sands.

"The Crystals can be almost anything, there are synthetic and natural crystals, they have varying effects, they can be...well crystals of all different colors, and the core can almost be anything for a synthetic lightsaber crystal." That was short answers, but the truth. "More often then not the effects of the crystals are dependent on who made them and whose strength in the force went into forging them. The Angraal Crystal, the one that I have is natural and only grows on Exocron. Different crystals do different things, and there's a lot of different crystals."

A lot a lot.

Like a lot.

She wasn't quite sure that even she knew all of them. "Come on, get a bucket. We need to get the softest sand we can!"

Luckily, Borleias was already famed for its fine grained sand so their quest would not be all that difficult.

 

[Louise]

Still being dragged by her larger and stronger sister, Maleah simply let herself be towed onto the beach by Aela as she tried to get some idea of what she wanted. It seemed like the possibilities were limitless.

No pressure then.

At least they had the task of sand searching ahead of them, which could take her mind off of thinking, although, then again she was sure that Aela was expecting her to be thinking exactly what she wanted the crystal to be. That or it wouldn't work, that's what she had said.

Double no pressure.

She made sure to kick off her boots before grabbing a bucket, not wanting to miss out on the opportunity to feel the soft sand between her toes while they went along the moonlit beaches just outside their house.

“So what does your crystal do, Aels?”

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

"The Angraal crystal is special, one of the rarest in the galaxy." Mom's necklace and Aunt Amorella's bracelet also had Angraal crystals in them. They were extremely hard to find and even dangerous to hunt down, their effect being somewhat valued. As far as she knew, Talith's and Shamalains were the only people in the entire galaxy that had them.

"The crystal itself has a calming effect in the force. Touching it, and the lightsaber it's contained it gives you...well." She pulled her own lightsaber from her belt and offered it to Maleah. "A certain feeling of peace."

It was unique that way, the Angraal. No other crystal had quite the same effect as this one, the lightside of the force flowing more freely to those who held such crystals. It had a calming effect, forcing peace onto oneself, pushing away anger, fear, and all negative emotion. For Aela it was the perfect thing, having had slight anger issues due to her siblings as a child, the Angraal crystal helped keep her calm, not to mention it helped against those Sith who would attack her mentally.

"Not to mention it can also cut through Cortosis." That was even more sought after.

Cortosis was one of the few lightsaber resistant materials in the galaxy, being able to slice through it was invaluable.

 

[Louise]

Maleah nodded as her Aela told her about the Angraal crystal, hardly surprised that something so rare in this realm would be in the hands of her older sister. Their family held a certain privilege in terms of the Force, alchemy and artefacts.

Not that they didn't put them to good use, given what they all did, or had done in the past.

Taking her sister's lightsaber, she clasped her fingers around the hilt and observed the certain feeling of peace that her sister had informed her of. She wasn't wrong either. It was like a spa for the mind, instantly quieting her doubts about being a let down in her family and her worries about possibly future encounters with the Sith.

“Wow,” she said slowly, staring down at the hilt of the lightsaber and then back up at her sister, “I mean, cutting through cortosis is neat too...but, this," she gestured, as if trying to describe the calming aura with her hands, "this is cool.”

She handed Aela's lightsaber back to her before she became too fond of it, you know what little sisters are like for borrowing stuff. At least if she couldn't borrow it, her sibling's weapon would at least give her an idea of what she wanted.

Not inner-peace though…well...

...maybe not for herself.

---

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Maleah Talith"]

Aela took the Saber back and immediately clipped it to her belt, not wanting to lose it out here in the dark. The light from the house was substantial, but still, accidents did happen. She shifted slightly then scooped up one of the buckets that had been sitting on the patio, then with a soft jump she leaped onto the sandy beach.

There was a slight spatter of sand, scattering all over the place as Aela waved for her sister.

"Come on." She waved to Maleah. "We need soft sand, so we have to go to one of the dunes down beach."

That would work out best, sand that hadn't been wet since the last rain. They were luckily that Borleias was known for it's almost white sandy beaches, the grains of the sand being so fine and tiny that one could practically swim in them. It would help with the crystal, and would allow them to gather whatever else Maleah wanted to put into the crystal itself. This was after all her project, she had to be the one to decide what went into the crystal, what felt right.

That would be determined after they got to the sand though.

Maleah would have to meditate on it, concentrate and feel what had to go into it.

 

[Louise]

Already holding her bucket underneath her arm, Maleah joined her sister upon the sand, leaping with that careless abandon that she was known for, causing a considerable splash of sand herself.

There was still some residual heat from the sun within the sand and the young woman savoured the feeling of it between her toes for a brief moment (having kicked off her boots for this express reason prior). Mum and dad had really picked a fine place to settle down upon. Borleias was a natural wonder of a planet.

Suddenly a cheeky grin came across the Talith twin's features.

“I'll race ya!” Maleah suddenly shouted, before taking off down the beach in full sprint. Sure, maybe it was unfair to give herself a running start, but Aela was fast, faster than fast and so she would very likely need it, even with the advantage of being shoeless.

“Last one there has to bathe Toofless!”

---

[member="Aela Talith"]