I'm a man whos got very specific tastes

[Coren Starchaser]

There was a lot of work to be done in the galaxy. And Coren was going to need all the tricks he could find to make it work. Sure, he was designing a new craft, he was always designing something new. But he was going to have to reach out to whoever was in charge of Incom for assistance on this one. It was a stealth interceptor inspired in no small part from a legendary starfighter used during the mythical Clone Wars and the Stealth X, or the ShortFin, the latter back at the Dawn Treader as it needed some repairs. This trip was a bit of a solo adventure for him. Some would call it development, some would call it hunting, others would say it’s a bit of training. He supposed all were right.

What he was doing was getting off the grid for a bit. Maybe a really long thread, maybe a series of threads. He had a war to get back to, against the Sith, after all, but right now? There was a need to wander about. And that meant he to get some distance between him and the galaxy.

His target? The Kathol Rift.

His craft? The Tachyon Rising.

His target? Whatever he could find.

There was a lot of space ahead of him, a lot of space behind him, and only places in between to explore. He knew what this area was, and even to Coren it was one of those sacred places in the galaxy. He was off book, semester break from the LAA, not on assignment for the Frontiers Corps, and just being him. Seeing what he can find.

He had some goals, but who knew what, if anything he’d find.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Flight, this was something that he was born for. What he was bred for. (Yeah, his father might have worked for the ExplorCorps, but there was a reason he was chased down and killed. Yes. Starcahsers were an old Imperial family, and there was a lot of eugenics involved to breed pilots into this family. Sometimes, it affected their Force powers, but that was a risk the glorious Empire was willing to take.) And instinctive astrogation was developed by being a pilot family that were Force sensitive and spent so much time behind the controls of a ship. It came as naturally to Coren as most anything did. Walking, controlling the fighter, getting where he needed to go was just another thing he did. It was why he had a hard time picking up apprentices or teaching piloting.

It was natural, you had to feel it, be one with your ship. Should he ever take someone under his Wing and train them from apprentice to knight, he’d be making them either tear a ship apart and rebuild it from the ground up, or he’d be making them construct something completely new. The Tachyon Rising was making good time. Sure, he should probably take the ShortFin out to help develop her better, but he, and the writer, missed his old Muscle-Car-Jeep-Spaceship.

The pilot sighed as he looked out the viewport. Hyperspace. Such a great concept.

A quiet place. A place to think.

And sometimes, yes, even Coren would reach out to the Force to listen to it.

Knock on the sky, and listen to the sound.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The ship was pulling from hyperspace. He was taking mostly standard hyperspace routes to get to the Kathol Rift, and without the joys of having Lexi aboard the ship, as she was unique to the ShortFin, Coren had R9, which was really an upgraded and retrofitted R6, but with the retrofits and upgrade the designation of the droid changed, even if its ‘do it all attitude’ remained, which was good, he preferred that. He slowly pulled himself out of his communing with the Force deal. He was a master, sure, but Coren Starchaser was no where near the religious of the Sith or the Jedi. A gray paladin? Maybe. Definitely a Warden of the Sky. His skills would be considered that of a Jedi Sentinel or even a Counselor to some in the Jedi, and maybe that was what was on his official Silver Sanctum Coalition Force Member Card. Something about being very skilled outside the Force, but for combat, if there wasn’t a way around it, or a vehicle (yes, he was the one who would play Halo by driving the Warthog around) he relied on the Force.

Stunning, absorbing, slowing the enemy down and being a bother to them that they would need to eliminate.

Half the reason his former callsign was Hornet was because that was his style. He was the one who would get swatted away, but he would use speed (always choosing fast starfighters, from TIE/Ints to Advanced to the Exalt and Rassilon) and agility of a vessel to his advantage. A bit of a Master of some made up power of Force piloting, which was just the use of Sense and danger sense to avoid dying and getting hit, Coren couldn’t always hit hard, but he would hit where it mattered and he’d hit a lot.

A swarm of hornets coming from one ship. And that was what he went down in the annals of the Warbird Wing as – Coren “Hornet” Starchaser. He should get back into a fighter soon. The Underground had a few good things, and he might try to work a way to getting his Exalt involved. His Rassilon was a personal transport more than anything, a glorified and-faster-than-his-shuttles courier of the most important thing he could think of, himself.

“Alright Arnie…” And no, this wasn’t his ‘Hey Cortana’ or ‘Okay Google.’ “Looks like we’re stepping into Kathol Rift. I hear some horror stories about this place, so it should be a blast. Just… if I start complaining about anything on this ship without sensors showing… Just, get us out of here before it gets too bad?” He was trained to have a bit more of a mental wall, well, at one point he did. But hi recent time battles against Sage Bane proved it needed to be developed.

And he had been working at it. Setting the ship for manual control, he was going to get a feel for the Rift before skipping all around it. He knew what he was looking for, but would he be finding them? Only time would tell.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Work to be done in the Rift, right. Coren was steering his ship into the nebula. This was going to be tricky, wasn’t it? Sure, he could have contacted Baobab Astro and probably hijacked a map from Jorus Merrill, but Coren Starchaser wasn’t a slouch as an explorer. And he’d be making this trip worth it for him. That was why it was happening. He was hoping to contact the Aing-Tii, but if that didn’t happen? Surviving a few weeks in the Rift would definitely be something to write home about.

Tachyon Rising had all the gear he needed for mapping this sector of space, but he wasn’t sure it was going to work that way. But the research would be good. Plus he needed a shake down from the Blood Trail. After this? Yeah, he’d get back there and run the Rising around those worlds, make the trail work. And get his pay out from AEI. It wasn’t that he was milking it, but a project like that? It took a lot. This trip, this was more a sabbatical for and from the Frontiers Corps.

He heard the purring of the Corellian Sand Cat, the one he was calling Concrete. He lived kind of on the Rising and the Horizon but was taking to following Coren all around. Sure, he didn’t let him come aboard the Underground missions, but this? It was fine, and at least he’d have someone to talk to. Concrete knew not to get on the controls, but he was a fan of the navigator’s seat and curled himself up there. Coren smiled.

These were the types of moments people seemed to forgo, enjoying life as it came. Smiling, the pilot started to feel his way into the nebula. He wasn’t sure how long it’d take to find whatever it was that he didn’t know how to find, but he assumed it would happen.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Flying in this type of situation was going to take a lot of work. And that was part of this thread, the flight, the training, the learning a new skill, the returning to the known galaxy with something new to kick Sage Bane’s teeth in with. Sure, Starchaser would so much rather take him down in ship-to-ship combat, but it wasn’t always in the cards. Not when the Vong-hybrid always went to ground. Maybe next time he’d just take a pot shot with missiles at them. Especially ones who were having a snowball fight. How strange was that, right? Right. If he had done that, maybe Spark wouldn’t have been captured, maybe he’d not have lost two fingers on his hand (lucky for him, they were his pinky and ring, not as useful as the others) and he’d have been through this section of the galaxy already.

The darkness of space allowed him time to think. Time to consider the galaxy. Yes, they were under a Sith stranglehold, and he needed to do something about that, he needed a team though. Coren’s Angels probably couldn’t solo the whole nation, but if he could connect a few of the smaller outfits out there, the Omegas, the Underground, he might be able to pull some of the Sanctum’s activists into his cause. Then they’d have a decent sized team to get working against the Sith.

Then there was the Rogue Circle. They’d join as well, which would be smart.

He wasn’t going to sacrifice those groups. But the Rebel Alliance? They could keep being loud and doing their destructive strikes while the Underground worked hard to set up resistance cells, to learn from the enemy as they worked to keep subjugating the galaxy. Coren had a plan, and it wasn’t his original idea, but he could implement it.

Time for the matter at hand, though. “Log the time, entering the nebula.” Hopefully it wouldn’t wreck hell with his ship.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The Warden of the Sky turned the ship through a few maneuvers, it was exploration, and the next few hours would be getting acquainted with the Nebula. Music would be turned on and he began wishing he had the slurpee machine. Though reinforced nutrient bars in a variety of flavors (mint chocolate being the man in question’s favorite) weren’t that bad. He never understood why people complained so much. Sure, maybe the biowaste recycling processes on certain ships were bad, but these bars? Two or three and you were fine all day long. Nothing that would bother Coren too much.

Probably due to his soldiering past. It didn’t bother him, he knew what he was. He was a pilot, an explorer, an Imperial Captain, and a leader in the Underground. He was something along the lines of a Jedi sentinel with a focus in Force skills and knowledge, the innate powers and some very unique skills. Hence why he was in the Kathol Rift anyway.

He had ideas he was chasing down and he wanted to see what he could learn, just what he could use for the upcoming wars in the galaxy. The one thing that was nice abuot this galaxy was that no matter how hard people tried, there were always a need for people like Coren Starchaser. Pilots, men who could lead, even if it was more by example and improvisation. The galaxy didn’t need to make clones, and they needed to name them even less.

Droids could be mass produced, as much as the pilot had a disdain for droids, they were useful. And his disdain only really reached to assassination droids that the Empires of the past had taken to using. Astromechs, and hell, even VIs that were installed in ships were fine. Lexi wasn’t like the stories he’d heard in holoflicks of a droid brain reaching sentience and taking over its ship and killing the crew.

I can’t let you do that, Dave.

This is all Joker’s fault. What a tool he was! I have to spend all day computing pi because he plugged in the Overlord.

The Tachyon Rising used a system that linked in to upload data, but very rarely downloaded data. An older ship, she didn’t have the networking interfaces that most ships had. ShortFin and his Rassilon were ones that would network, but as the Rising was a smuggling vessel at her heart, she didn’t have the need for such. As a result, the ship had a piece-meal navigation system updated by hand by Coren, and a targeting and IFF transponder that was done the same way. The only way any form of AI could take over the ship would be if they took over his astromech.

Like that’d happen.

The Forcer was realizing that hours had started to fold into days. He was searching for many things, but the way the Rift was? It was hard to tell if you were coming and going. He had his ship logging data on an updating map to show his flight path, and that was his trail of breadcrumbs. With his astromech’s advanced navigation system, and the ship’s own system being more advanced, he knew he didn’t have much to worry about. It was a matter of the damned spiders crawling on his skin.

How many days?

He wasn’t monitoring it off his sleep schedule. He had no where to be until this mission was done, or complete, or he was satisfied. It didn’t matter what time it was on the outside galaxy. Yes, he had a clock, but it didn’t mean he was using it when he was in mission mode. No, Coren would fly, explore, log data until he started to fall asleep. Then he’d feel his way to a planetary body, something where he could land the ship inside, so nothing would detect him, or, Force forbid, collide with him. It was very simple, wasn’t it?

He’d land, sleep, wake, take off, and get back out there.

A few things of interest that he did find, were gas anomalies in the nebula, differing concentrations depending on where one was, but also a remote trace of tibanna gas, at least two locations he was dubbing a relic site. The data was pointing to the Monks and to a station that no one should set foot on, and one derelict ship. No life signs aboard, but the probes he did send out were able to find some credits, not much else, but hey, he could buy the next round when he got home.

Today, this period of waking though, that felt a bit… different. Something good, he was hoping.

And not something to handwave over to make this not a ‘he flew in, he learned, he flew out’ thread. There was something on the horizon for today.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Searching, the galaxy was a huge place, but it was the areas like this Rift, nebula that made Coren feel trapped. Trapped in space. He couldn’t get the feel of the space around him, he wasn’t in a good place. He couldn’t jump to safety. He was going to have to spend time in a place like this, learning to navigate, feel the lanes, feel the bends in the galaxy. He couldn’t exactly explain the way his astrogation worked, he got feelings, but he also could sense the world. And here? It wasn’t giving him a good sense. The ship was jumping, micro jumps, very micro, but he was linking a few together and hopping, it just was wrecking hell on the ship.

Lucky that it was reinforced in the hull’s skeleton. Or at least, she would be now. Coren nodded as he made another jump, and another.

Closing his mind from the waking world, he was falling into the Force, looking for a signal, looking for anything that would provide him a direction to go.

A safe port in this journey.

But what was that ahead?

After the next jump.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Next jump, the next page, the next trip. He knew he was getting close, he could feel it. Did he know quite what he was getting close to? No, not really. But that was the joy in the hunt, in exploration. All my life I’ve been searching for something, something never comes, never leads to nothing. The song was coming across, a song from somewhere, some when else? He wasn’t sure where he had heard that song before, and no, it wasn’t in the frakking ship. That was a completely different song. But imagine if the crew of the Galactica had a Starchaser or a Merrill aboard? They’d lead the Cylons through a sun and then land on Earth in about three days. Probably before they could swear the school teacher in.

Still, right now? He was hopping around the Kathol Rift, he remembered where he was. There was chit going on around him, he could feel the Force creeping around him. Crawling on his skin. Blame a bit of training from a Sith Lord once upon a bye to combat that which came at him in the most unexpected ways. Spiders. He could see them, but he was concentrating, he was riding the waves of the Force, he didn’t know if he was actually moving, or jumping, but Arnine didn’t seem to be having an issue with him.

The next jump, that was what he was prepping right now, if the spiders would stop burrowing into his hand. He called the Force to him, that light side aspect of it, the one that was able to relaxing him, relax everyone. Right.

Jumping!

 

[Coren Starchaser]

And back to real space. That was what he was looking for. Ahead of him. He could see it. What was it? A station? No… it wasn’t a world. He knew he wasn’t quite in the location of the world known as Aing-Tii. Not yet. But… was it a spider? He shook his head. “Arr, what are we finding here?” He couldn’t trust his eyes, he could trust his droid though. And without having Lexi on board, he knew he had some work to do. Maybe he could integrate her system into this ship, or his implant, to follow him around. Would that be too much work?

He shook his head and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. There was something here. Some… ships.

Maybe it was a station? Yes. It had to be. He closed his eyes and could feel ships arriving. That was going to be troublesome. He hit the switch, starting to broadcast the true label of his ship Tachyon Rising, Frontiers Corps. He was so far away from everything, and the way those ships… They didn’t even come out of hyperspace… They were just… here.

What the feth was going on?

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Ships. Of course. But where did they come from? How did they get here? Why were there spiders crawling on his dash? The Master of the Force shook his head. He was working on clearing the Force from his mind, putting up walls, a defense, barriers. He knew where his powers were. He was the type to stay defensive, to make things work for him. They were moving from the intrusive drain powers into the absorb skill from the so called light side. Stunning still worked, but he was hoping to learn something a bit more… exotic. Something he could use to turn the tables against the Sith.

That was why he was here, in the Kathol. And he was able to block the spiders, and when the ship’s comm came online, the man looked to it. “Tachyon Rising you are in restricted space. Power down your engines.” Came the order. Coren looked at the ship and slowly turned the engines off.

“Rising to unidentified ship. Roger that. Looking for coordinates, searching for a world…”

“Yes, we know. You are known to us, Starchaser.”

Oh, now that was comforting…

"Known to you? When was I here last?"

"Over twenty years now."

Great.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The hell was all this. Coren had something to focus on, the mind fraking bit of the Rift was starting to fade. And if Jorus could make it through here, or whoever, was it Alec? To set up the Underground base… Then he could do this. And with the Aing-Tii here? This was exactly where he wants to be. “Arsix… log the time and date. We’ve made contact.” The ship was coming to a standstill, assisted by her maneuvering jets. Coren looked out and saw the ships. They were foreign yet… familiar.

Something familiar about this place.

What was familiar about it? He wasn’t sure. Apparently, he was known to these monks, did he study their arts before? The Corellian saw the notes, the datacrons, the data about him. He was a journeyman in the Force. Learning from the galaxy long before the concept of Darth Caedus had been in the writers’ minds. Sure, when his first iteration was written, it was learning the dark side, and witch spells. And then came EU immersion, and Wardens showed up.

And the Aing-Tii.

“Engines down, commander. Waiting for your orders.” Coren nodded. He was going with these people, that much he could tell. When you knew what you were looking for in the Force, it was easy to feel it out. And he was looking for their intention.

Next step? Get to their world, and prove that he was worth their time.

Or still worth.

“Hang on, Starchaser.” The Aing-Tii spoke as the Force folded.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

He shook his head. That was an odd, yet familiar feeling. The man in the ship straightened his back and looked around. Now he knew where he was. He had found the Aing-Tii. They were the only ones with the skill made to bend the fabric of reality like that. Flow walking? Not his thing, but teleporting? Bending the fabric of the Force, changing the way it worked around him? That he could do. Mix in a dash of his instinctive astrogation? And you had a force to be reckoned with. “Arsix, log location change, Aing-Tii orbit.”

Looking out among the ships, he took a breath.

Organic ships. Not Vong, something else. Something friendlier. Well, sometimes. They used the Force, they were native to this galaxy, they didn’t have issues coming from Coren. He wasn’t going to be using hteir ships anytime soon, but he was a Starchaser, he came from a whole different direction. Still, he was at home in the sky, like they were.

He liked the Aing-Tii, from his recent research. Maybe he didn’t like them before, but anti-slavers, the Force not being black-and-white, and using violence to get rid of their enemies. Did anyone else see a similarity? We all know [member="Sage Bane"] does. So much for being the perfect candidate for the Wardens, right?

Still, he did that job with superlative efficiency.

The group out here, the Aing-Tii, they didn’t attack, that meant he wasn’t an enemy of them. Still wasn’t, but he also wasn’t in the past. Looking around, he could feel the Force here. He needed to be here. This was where he belonged for now.

“Follow your escort, and we will meet you at the landing platform.”

Lovely.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Right, time to land. Coren was not nervous here. He needed to get himself some new tricks to bring to the rest of the galaxy. And being a Starchaser, and a friend of Merrill, he knew and had learned a bit of ways to get from point A to B without dragging too much attention to himself. If he had taken ShortFin out here, that’d have been a much more dangerous than a ship without stealth systems. He had a few things to work on with that vessel, and perhaps securing a load of Stygium. That’d be dangerous, but of course, he’d have to fight against the Sith, and he has just as much a chance of winning that as Old Yeller did at surviving.

Remember everyone, spaw, neuter and euthanize everyone.

Feth, even the Jedi in the galaxy are avoiding the Sith, turning a blind eye and not declaring a war against them. Looked like no one cared. Why should Coren Starchaser?

Because he was someone who lived in this trash galaxy where Force gods reigned free, that was why. Nudging his vessel forward, he was curious as to what would happen down on the world, where would it take him, somewhere he wanted to go? Somewhere else?

Would he be able to learn? There would only be one way to find out, and needless mental monologues that no one read were not part of that bargain. Maybe it wasn’t time to prevent the Sith from taking a world, as that didn’t work for anyone, but maybe it was a time to set up and strike them hard. He entered the atmosphere and slowly brought the Rising to a landing.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

They were teetering on the edge. And he needed to help this fall. He needed to push the galaxy into the spot they needed to be. He was going to go to war with groups he didn’t care for, groups that needed to be culled so something better rose from their ashes. Was he going to be the agent for change? Probably not. No one knew who he was. He was part of the Silver Sanctum, part of its Frontiers Corps with a not-so-secret hate-on for the Sith. And sure, some of those inbreds knew his name, because he was there to attempt to counter them at every turn, but it never worked. What he needed was a way to get onto Coruscant and do some actual damage, but the way the rules were written, the way the meta flowed with so many of the writers, he’d not get anything done.

So he had to get on with his own story, and that meant rounding out one more skill for his build, and probably dying, because the galaxy wouldn’t notice.

Stepping from the ship, he was in his standard spacer gear, utility vest, denim pants, long sleeved shirt, gunbelt. No lightsaber, no armor. He was a Forcer, but he wasn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi, and even less was he Obi-Wan Kenobi in a dress. The Aing-Tii were arriving and he nodded to them. Good, time to get this show on the road.

“Starchaser. Welcome back to Aing-Tii… You look… different.” Was that through the Force?

“Things have changed. I apologize, I do not recall your name.”

“It is of no consequence. You have come to us for a reason, the Force has brought you back, and we will assist you, with your memories, and your skills. Please, join us.” The Monk motioned towards the buildings and the Starchaser followed.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The meeting was nothing unexpected, minor talks about the Aing-Tii, how early on in the career of Coren Starchaser that he had arrived here. One of the most frustrating things was being told about your exploits and having no recollection of the events. When you thought you knew what you were, but even the data recollection you had aboard your home didn’t fill in the parts of the trips here. He knew that the Treader had sent people here, into the Kathol Rift to locate a safe haven. This was before the Unknown Regions became home.

The story went on that as Coren was here, he had been selected, one of nearly two dozen, to understand the Monks and how they use the Force. They had offered, now, to assist him with flow-walking, a skill that he hadn’t been able to fully grasp, but the soldier shook his head. “I’m not that Coren anymore. Life has… changed me.” The monks accepted this with a nod as they looked back to him.

They continued on, he was selected because unlike the rest, he didn’t have the religious knowledge of the Sith, or the Krath. He was, for their intentions, pure, and didn’t accept the Force being light or dark. This wasn’t backgammon. The way the Aing-Tii looked at being active and doing what needed to be done was very similar to how Coren and the Wardens of the Sky did. You protected freedom.

Sometimes at a cost to yourself. The conversation at dinner, following the explanation of why they hadn’t shot Coren out of the sky continued to the desire where they wanted to expose him once more to a power that they had instructed him in the art of previously. Folding Space.

It wasn’t the art of moving oneself from one place to another, but the art of moving an object from one place to another. The other bit? That of teleporting? Coren had once been able to do that, a combination power, something used very rarely, but he could also fold space around him, to cause some devastating effects when he was moving.

Otherwise? It’d be used for piloting.

Aggressively.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The Aing-Tii turned out to have a very movement centric form of using the Force, folding space, and untangling one from the world around them. This bit of learning, combined with the way Coren Starchaser became an energy sink, the power would be there, and he needed ways to use it. Ways that were unexpected from the rest of the galaxy. And that was going to be something he couldn’t teach, something he couldn’t share. These skills, the ones he was learning from the monks were sacred and only used in dire circumstances. Finishing moves and ‘oh chit’ buttons. But lets be serious, the writer wasn’t a bag of gentials.

Stepping from the reception into the training hall, this was the important part of the thread. Training, learning, expanding, and having proof to back it up when he was screamed at for eventually messing up someone’s concepts of how the thread should go. They had granted him robes, similar to those god awful Jedi threads. But it allowed ease of motion. Moving objects, moving themselves through the Force. Open up an ease of movement, and go. Moving ships without hyperdrives, items without telekinesis.

The Monk who was going to be instructing him stepped in. The first few days lessons were going to be on mental blocking. Moving the mind. And that was going to be something to bolster his own defenses. Something to prevent the Aing-Tii from being found. Keep them secret, and safe.

The mental attacks were coming at him, and the Starchaser was using the Force, reaching into it to pull up an absorbing wall, to pull the Force tension away, but this wasn’t how the Aing-Tii were working, no, this was… different, not similar to a mind shard, this was a complete shot past a shield and to the hull, to the systems. And Coren collapsed.

The next few days went along this path, him doing his best to block, but the Monk getting past his walls.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

How many days had he been here? Being tossed around mentally? Throwing the Force against the six-tongued Aing-Tii only to have it dodged and have his mind assaulted. Deep and hard. He started to reach out to the Force, all its aspects, the bits the Silver Jedi on their high holy horse avoided and the places even the Sith wouldn’t touch. That deep, stormy desire and wrath in the Force. The need to protect those that he cared about. The visions in his dreams, of life before, of Lily and Scall, the life now with Spark and Rekha, the Underground, and his personal war against the Sith.

He had a ghost town in his head of people who were important to him, people who existed, people who were no long with them, people that needed protecting and people that mattered. There were the targets in his mind, but to throw this shield up? He wasn’t needing that. His eyes were glistening, a dark stormy gray.

When the next attacks started, he was getting better, grabbing the train, grabbing the flow, the current of the way the Aing-Tii was using the Force, and pulling, redirecting and absorbing it. His mind was setting up break waters, they weren’t the flawless seawalls most people in the galaxy would be able to throw, btu they were enough to stall. And that was all Coren needed. To stall the enemy until he could get in close and end them.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

Pushing the Aing-Tii back, he could feel it working. He could feel that his defenses were holding. And the next few days would be following the same process. Coren Starchaser reaching to the Force, reaching to his attacker, and reaching into himself. Into those parts of him he wanted to protect, to [member="Spark Finn"] and the memories associated with her, the parts in this galaxy that mattered to him. He was terrible at showing how much he did care for her, but still… She was what made this galaxy worth saving, one of the people who needed to inherit something better than the lifeless husk the galaxy would become should the Sith succeed.

The war was not going well, and that was starting to dishearten him. Maybe he could just go to ground, take the girl and run, leave the galaxy to defend the Sith horde as they would.

It didn’t matter right now, what mattered was keeping her safe, keeping those that he could keep safe in the galaxy safe.

How long had this step been going on? A few weeks. Training. Throwing up defenses. Blocking the monks out. The Monk who was leading this training had finally settled that Coren could adapt to a few different barrages to at least slow someone out, but with his personality, it was all he needed. If he could stun an enemy with a mental wall, it was all he needed to finish the mission.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

His head was ready, he looked to the Aing-Tii. “The next lesson group will be moving from moving smaller objects, to larger objects. Remember, everything you learn from us, you must not teach to others. Working our abilities until you have an understanding without one of the experts? And do not take this poorly, but you were never an expert – you were… sufficient – is not recommended.” Coren nodded to the Monk. The Aing-Tii were a strange alien race, but they had a few tricks up their sleeve that he needed. And that they wanted to impart on the proper people. Was he a Watchman of the Kathol Rift now? Perhaps. Keep everyone away from this world.

That was his goal. That and hold to the tenets they concern themselves with. Fighting for freedom, ending slavery. Adding in the fact that should Coren Starchaser ever take a class as a ranger, his favored enemy would be the Sith. It was just how this galaxy was making him work. And now? He’d have some new sets of skills to display to them.

It’d make him a bit more easy to recognize when he came ripping through their lines, but that wasn’t a bother to him. It didn’t concern him at the moment, all that concerned him was making sure he could fight them back.

A seven nation army wouldn’t hold him back.

The next few days would begin with the ideas behind the ability, pulling something by not pulling it. Letting it fall into the flow and appear where you intended it to go. Sure, for Coren, it was one of those things that got nerfed and went where he needed it, and only with either an external power source (Read: [member="Sage Bane"] and his lackeys) to fuel his Force reserves. Yeah, Coren worked like a video game character. He would need to pull that, to charge his emotions and then it would work.

Especially if he was going after hurling his body at an enemy and greeting them with a blast of pure energy.

 

[Coren Starchaser]

The discussion aspect, which was going through a whole new realm of metaphysics, related and not related to the Force, was interesting to Coren, to say the least. Maybe this was where he discovered the ideas of the Force as an ocean, with currents. He knew he wasn’t a Fallanassi, not by any extent of the world. And he might not be just some character in a child’s snowglobe, because what child would allow the Sith to continue their stranglehold? His thoughts exactly.

What he was was a warrior, he had no place in a peace time world. No galaxy ever titled to be the Star Wars galaxy had boring cold wars going on. No, they were wars where blood was shed, people, good and bad, or bad and good, depending on your standing, were lost. Worlds fell, worlds were rescued, and the light side was used for more than just thinking about Jedi stuff. It was used to defend, to actively oppose the Sith when they were there.

And guess what, ladies and gentlebeings? The Sith were out in full force.

That was why Coren continued on, why he did what he must. Why he was learning these tricks, why he was working, and failing on pulling a blaster from a table to his hand. He was working on it, but the Starchasers were dreadfully handicapped in the Force, and very specific. Coren knew his skills, working energy around, pulling it in, absorbing it, using it to injure, using it to stop.

And he was going to make it work to pull this item to him, and straight through the barriers. From the table to his hand.

How many weeks had he spent meditating, a concept he hated, on this thought alone? On making this move? He wasn’t sure. But it was a good chunk of time, and he was making it work, soon enough.

Soon enough the weapon would hop, bend from where it was to his hand. There was no good way for it to be described, it wasn’t really blinking, it wasn’t moving in a pattern similar to a blue tailed super hero. No, it was just there, then it came to him. Maybe a flash, but he knew what he had done, what had taken him his time and energy.

It was taking a lot of energy. He was going to need to reserve this for dire circumstances.