Why Must We Fight?

[Jamie Pyne]

"Three hundred people can work for us and against us at the same time." She clicked her tongue a couple of times. "For us because it means less scrutiny directly on us for what we're doing. Against us because that means more potential competition to win Tommus' favor and attention. We'll have to be both early and approachable." What exactly did she mean by approachable?

Jamie's arms straightened out just beside her chest, squeezing her upper arms inwards to...display herself.

It wasn't incredibly exactly a marvel of a display, she had a rather modest figure when it came to that sort of thing.

"You know what I mean. We need attractive dresses that would make him want to talk to us in the first place."

Being new to Bastion would help for sure, but it couldn't hurt to appear easy pickings for a rich and powerful idiot of a man, especially if there were two sisters to pick from. "I think our odds are pretty good all the same."

Not that she was eager to meet or indulge this man's perversions in either conversation or flattery.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

"We also have the advantage of being new." Jamie would know that already, but she wanted to emphasize it. "Remember these people aren't really used to outsiders. Their society is insular. The Moff Council pretty much had a set number, and that number hasn't really grown very much. Sure there have been a few injections of life every now and again...but 'we' are a rarity. Not only are we of noble bearing, but we also come from another former Imperial world."

That meant quite a bit to these people. "Yaga Minor has a history of being a fortress world as well."

Not to the same degree as Bastion of course, Bastion was utterly unique in that aspect, but Yaga Minor had served the Imperials world as both a shipyard and a nice hide out away from everyone else. It also helped that the planets were relatively close to together, at least compared to other worlds that laid claim to being part of the old Empire's heritage.

"As far as you and I are concerned, these people are our equals, and some of them our inferiors. Our 'heritage' is from the Grand Moff who controlled all of Yaga Minor." Just how The Alliance had managed to pull off that ruse Aela didn't know, but she did know that the identities were more then solid, holding up to pretty much any scrutinity aside from someone walking right up to the Yaga Minor manor they supposedly hailed from and checking their bedrooms.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

"Do you think whoever is outside on that speeder is going to be following us everywhere we go while we're here?" That would add to the pressure of not screwing up, but would also sort of creep her out. That would be the equivalent of someone sitting outside her bedroom window in a tree trying to look through the blinds every night. Not that she could necessarily do anything about said person on said speeder, but it would help her sleep a bit more soundly if whoever they were, presumably an employ of the family, weren't hanging around while she was asleep.

A bit of a wild tangent from their discussion, but sometimes things just pop into her head with a need to be said.
"Anyway, we might run into some trouble if the other two sisters take interest in talking with us. I imagine our boy isn't looking to hang around with his sisters all night when he's got a bit of his own agenda to see to."

Hopefully they could manage to navigate through the three hundred people gathering and pluck Tommus away out of sight and out of mind just long enough to get what they'd need from him without much trouble.

"I guess one of us could always just pretend to be intoxicated and play off his inhibitions." It may be the oldest trick in the galaxy, but there was certainly a reason why it wasn't a lost art.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

"No doubt they will. I don't know if it's our target that's having us followed or one of the other families. We won't just be an interest to them after all, but everyone." That was something else they would have to be careful about, drawing the right kind of attention and drawing it from the right sources.

No one had said this would be easy.

"Perhaps one of us will have to run interference. One takes his attention, the other the sisters." That would make things at least somewhat easier. "At least for a time. They'll play dumb at the party, have been doing so for years apparently. Most of the other high ranking families know its lies...but others aren't so well informed. To us they'll play stupid, and if we can keep their attention and act just as inane as they are...we'll be able to have them lose interest pretty quickly."

That was what she assumed anyway, though assumptions were dangerous. "We have to be careful."

Aela couldn't stress that enough.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

"Are the guys taking shifts watching them watch us?"

Jamie felt like the answer was an obvious yes, but she wanted to hear the answer for her own sanity. Sleeping in a strange place on a strange planet with some strange person sitting outside literally looking at them while they sleep was not going to sit well with her if they didn't have their own eyes on those responsible for surveying them.

There was a bit of a confidence flare in Jamie. She was adept at talking to boring nobles who had ulterior motives and tongue-in-cheek comments. That was a common enough game back home. People spoke in tongues, riddles, and rhymes to say things without actually saying them. To make assertions or requests using literary code words and phrases. Most of the time they were pretty obvious, though once in a while she could tell there was some kind of cloak and daggers situation going on but not what was actually being implied.

Some were just better at hiding their intentions than others. Jamie assumed much of the same was true on Bastion as it were on Naboo.

"I guess we'll just have to play the hand we're dealt when it comes."

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

Aela nodded. The soldiers of the 5th Legion were rather adept at this kind of work by now, and they were slowly cycling about the manor doing things that normal servants would do. Tending to the gardens, smoking, moving around certain things for Aela and Jamie. Everything they could to remain active and watch the watchers. It was an odd sort of game, but if done right then the people watching for any signs of dependencies would find nothing noteworthy.

"Aye." She said quietly.

"We'll do fine." Aela said with a small smile. "Tomorrow we go get the dresses, play the parts as best we can, then the day after it'll be time for the ball. Until then we practice, and you and I train. We may be stuck in this manor, but there's enough room to spar a few times, learn a few tricks."

She smiled slightly. "No need to stagnate."

They had two full days before they had to attend the ball. That was enough time to get use to their roles, but also enough to get to know one another a little better. It was time that they would have to be careful not to waste.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

"A few tricks? Like using the Force to pull my legs from under me and then slap me with your saber again? Those tricks?"

Her tone was half sarcastic, half genuinely curious.

"I think I learned that lesson. It was something along the lines of people cheat, deal with it." She poked her tongue out.

Jamie yawned, stretching arms and legs from where she sat before shifting her eyes back to Aela. "But by spar you mean give me a few fresh bruises right?"

One day Jamie hoped to manage a score on Aela, but it certainly wasn't going to be any time in the near future. Aela was simply light years out of Jamie's league with the Force, handling a lightsaber, and combining the two into a fighting style. All Jamie really had to go on was instinct, reflexes, and a very narrowly focused style of fighting.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

"Basically." She said with a small smile. "Though I know a few more tricks then simply beating you upside the head and using the force to trick you."

Her mother had taught her more than a few things, her father too.

"I'm not exactly as powerful as my father, and nowhere near as knowledgeable, but both of my parents taught me a few things. Force powers that most Jedi Know, ones that most don't, I'm going to try and teach you some of them. If you want to learn them that is." Aela was happy to teach, though she wasn't sure just what Jamie could learn and if she even wanted to. Her own style of fighting was all about staying on the defensive, Jamie obviously wouldn't emulate that completely.

"We'd start off with the easy ones." She continued on. "Blinding someone with the force, making yourself faster, guarding your mind. Easy stuff."
From there they would expand out, like stasis and protection bubble, the two techniques that Aela had mastered to the utmost.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

Having parents to teach you the Force certainly made the process simpler than trying to learn it as an adult with already developed senses. For that Jamie was envious of Aela. She had grown up with the Force, whilst Jamie had never been cognizant of it until very recently. Most of the time her applications of the Force were accidental and borderline dangerous. She wanted to reign in the unpredictability of it and gain control of herself, not just for her own safety but everyone elses as well.

"I wouldn't think anything less." Although she was hardly eager to be on the receiving end of anything else Aela had to offer.

"As long as you don't demonstrate being blinded to me. I don't think I need to feel that simulation if it's all the same to you."

Though perhaps if she learned to use the Force to make herself faster she might actually have a better chance of landing a blow on Aela when they sparred.

"Guarding my mind? From what exactly?" She was more than afraid to ask. It was just going to be one more thing for her to worry about. Her thoughts were the only place she felt truly safe from the galaxy. If people could just listen to her thinking then she was truly screwed.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

She smiled. "We'll demonstrate on someone else."

Or not at all probably.

Blinding someone with the force wasn't actually all that difficult. It was one of the tricks that her mother had taught her, that and force stasis. She had enjoyed those lessons, they had been far more simple and...well fun then being taught by her father or pretty much anyone else that she had learned from. Her mother had always been good at teaching lessons in a way that made it seem like it wasn't a lesson at all. Aela reminded herself that she would have to do that for Jamie as well.

"The force of course." Aela said giving Jamie a quizzical look. "Sith, even other Jedi, can get into your mind. Twist it, dig through your memories and do horrific things. Protecting your thoughts is one of the most crucial things you can do."

That had been an early lesson from her father.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

Oh, great. She looked at Aela blankly for a moment. Can you hear what I'm thinking right now?

Jamie figured it best to know now whether or not other Force users could just will their way into her mind without her knowing. That was a terrifying thought, that at any point someone could just listen to your thoughts.

"Can you be made to do things you wouldn't otherwise do? And do you know when it has happened?"

There was so much she needed to learn, and everything felt urgent. If only she had learned things as a child, this wouldn't be so terribly difficult now.

"I think I am starting to believe that knowing and understanding the Force and what can be done with it is more important than being able to outmatch someone with a lightsaber."

Sure, both were important, but the more she learned about the practical uses of the Force, the more she feared other people's uses and intentions behind it.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

"That's difficult, extremely so, but yes." The thought was a scary one, but Aela knew that it was possible. Her father had twisted peoples minds before, when he had been...more inclined towards the dark. He had said that it was harder with people who were trained, but not impossible even then. There were few protections that were full-proof, and a few could even be dangerous, but apparently The best defense was simply being alert and aware, stopping someone before they could dig too deep.

"It depends." Aela began with a smile. "The person digging into your mind likely won't be very good with a lightsaber."

She gave her padawan a smile. "Using the force like that...to go into someones mind, it takes time, concentration, and power. Usually with the defensive you've built up you have enough time to stop them from digging too deep."

The Jedi Marshall had experienced that more then once.

Sith tended towards those techniques more than Jedi. They tried to instill fear, make you see things, do things, it was a common tactic among them. Of course Aela had long ago built up her own protections against someone entering her mind, and the small trinkets she wore helped in the defense as well. Being prepared always helped.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

She nodded. That made her feel a bit better to know that not everyone was out there sifting through the thoughts of others, and it appeared that Aela hadn't been listening to hers either.

"I'm hungry." She finally said after a minute or so of silence. "I can make us something to eat and you can quiz me while I cook if you'd like."

The blonde wiggled off the couch and began to wander back towards the kitchen. "I promise I'm better at that than Force stuff."

She'd learned how to cook at a very early age, despite having servants to do that kind of thing for her. It was something that her mother felt every lady deserved to know how to do. Her mundane activities also included a slew of other things such as sewing and knitting, but she hardly ever found such a need to use those talents, if one could call them talents. It seemed as though the soldiers, or 'servants' had been busying themselves with setting up their own equipment for the mission while Aela and Jamie had been discussing their part of the mission.

Jamie smiled to the one she'd ordered about to open the door for her, offering a small waive as she passed by.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

Aela didn't say anything, half lost in thought. She gave Jamie a small not of affirmation then focused herself back on the mission.

She found it...oddly comforting to have the padawan along with her.

Before the mission would have entirely relied upon her and her alone. She had been the crucial component in everything, getting close to the Son, figuring everything out about the head of the family...all of it had relied on her. She'd accepted the mission with that knowledge of course, and she'd been willing to bear the responsibility, but it would have been a lie to say that she hadn't been nervous about the idea of it. Now she wouldn't have to go at it alone.

At least...this small portion.

Aela finally shrugged. There was no need to worry about it anymore, now there was a new set of worries. She would have to make sure that Jamie stayed safe. The young woman could fight a little bit, but this wasn't fencing practice, this was something else. If these people found out the truth there would be no moral questions about killing both her and Jamie.

Aela couldn't allow that.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

One by one Jamie pulled open the cabinets and inspected what they had available to them. The refrigerator was chock full of various fresh foods. Everything from meat, to fresh vegetables and fruit. Jamie had to actually remove some items to see all the way to the back and get an idea of what there was for her to use. The blonde stood there looking in for a long minute, before turning her head towards the living room where Aela was still sitting.

"Do you have anything against meat? There's some really nice cuts of Nerf!" The meat was perfectly marbled, thick too, and looked to be full of flavor.

Her tongue flicked over her lips, removing the meat and setting it to the counter on the side before diving back into the fridge. Her hands sifted through the various vegetables. When she finally collected everything Jamie set the ingredients down atop the center island, to the right of the large butchers block that housed a dozen or so incredibly sharp knives. She'd gathered a few potatoes, corn, Kibla greens, Bellassan peppers, and Tekka nuts.

Barbecue Tekka Nerf with potatoes and corn atop a bed of Kibla greens and peppers.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

"No that's fine." In truth, Aela wasn't really much of a connoisseur of food. Both her mother and father cooked, and she'd never really been one to go mad for any sort of meal, it just wasn't one of her expertise. Oh she had favorite of course, but out of all the Talith kids Aela had always been the one that had been most agreeable when it came to food.

She ate whatever was put in front of her, no arguments or complaint.

It helped greatly to have that quality when dealing with the Jedi, especially over the last few years. The unseen part of battles and war was the food, and well...other things that most people simply took for granted in their day to day lives. Some of the food that she'd eaten over the last few years had been truly terrible. From expired canned foods to military rations she'd tasted a range of truly awful meals, there wasn't really any issue with her eating meat like nerf.

She certainly wasn't a vegetarian.

A slight frown and she scooped up one of the datapads on the table, flicking her finger across the screen to reveal some more information on the hall where the Ball would be held.

At this point it should have been more than clear to Jamie that Aela was a bit of a workaholic.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

The girl wiggled here nose and got to work on the food. She didn't mind working through the evening, but on an empty stomach she was going to find focusing on much else difficult. Carefully she removed the two slabs of meat from the packaging and set it atop the table side by side, turning each one over to ensure there was nothing that required separating.

Drawing a knife from the block Jamie set to work on cutting the pieces into thick strips, thereby making the time to cook drastically shorter, as well as easier to manage when it came time to actually eating. Her eyes shifted for a moment to the corner of the room where a GalX-E Radio was built into the wall.

Music! She looked down at her hand to see that her fingers were a bit messy. Practical Force usage here! Her eyes focused on the device for a second, before her head made a quick twitch. The power button fell into place and on came The Sithspawn by Martian Matters. A combination of humming and quiet singing followed while she continued cutting the meat and rinsing the vegetables.

"I'm friends with the Sithspawn that's under my bed; Get along with the Force inside of my head. You're tryin' to save me stop holding your breath. And you think I'm crazy, yeah, you think I'm crazy...Well that's nothin'"

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

Aela didn't pay much attention to Jamie. It wasn't that she had an aversion to having fun or anything, but...well her attention was caught by the work that they still needed to do. Everything had to be just right, and although there was a time for relaxation, for Aela that time was not now.

Everything needed to be set.

Needed to be perfect.

Bastion itself was a death trap for them. If they got caught, there was no chance of making it out alive. The Government here wouldn't recognize that they were from the Alliance, the Alliance would deny all connection to them, and the only real hope they would have of getting out would be escape, which was a slim chance on a planet like this. Aela wanted to be prepared, she wanted to know every way in, she wanted to know every way out, she wanted to know every name and face they would be dealing with.

Some might have called her paranoid, but they were walking deaths edge here plain and simple.

She frowned slightly, swiping another page on the datapad.

 

[Jamie Pyne]

It helped that there was quite a bit of room to maneuver in the kitchen, with plenty of space. Once the meat was cut, into a bowl it went to sit. A small variety of spices, when mixed with water, vinegar, and a few drops of oil would make for a sweet, flavorful sauce that she then poured over the meat, leaving it in the bowl to marinade while she set to preparing the rest of the food. The peppers would be cut and split, corn shucked and separated from the cobs, and potatoes peeled and cut. It wouldn't be anything over the top extravagant, but it was surely better than canned meals and rations!

In a pan with a bit of oil and cooking wine Jamie took to bringing it to temperature before setting the potatoes in first, giving time to soften them a bit before adding the Nerf meat and peppers.

While they settled Jamie set a small timer before wandering back to the living room where Aela sat still reading the files.

"Ten minutes or so before I have to go back." She said, sitting back down in the same spot she'd left minutes prior.

[member="Aela Talith"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Jamie Pyne"]

Aela nodded. "How are you feeling?"

It was an important question, one that needed to be asked. This was all very new to Jamie, and she didn't want the girl to be stressed and freaking out about it. Of course, she seemed to be doing incredibly well with all of it, singing, dancing, cooking. Aela probably wouldn't have exactly been taking it in stride. Then again Perhaps Jamie was just made of sterner stuff, capable of taking more in stride, or maybe it just hadn't hit just yet. Either way, Aela wanted to make sure she was okay.

"I know this is a lot." The Jedi Marshall continued on. "Especially since you weren't really expecting it."

She gave Jamie a warm smile.

Part of being a Master was being supportive, and Aela wanted to start that aspect of their relationship as well. It wouldn't do to just be harsh all the time.