by Aer-ki Jyr
“And now those who put the Vorch’nas on you are leaving. The only chance to get it off going away. You are relieved by the finality of it. Glad to see them gone. Glad to have that path denied you for a sense of certainty, because now you don’t have the option of flying up to their faces and demanding they take it off or else. But they’re also the only ones who know how much cheating was done and how much you earned on your own. And that knowledge is leaving never to return.”
“If I…can’t do anything about it…what option do I have other than numbing it away? Throwing random tantrums won’t get me anywhere. I’ll be right back…at the same place when I’m finished.”
“I’m working on something that can help with that. It’s not ready yet, but it’s something Tennisonne and I…well, plus some other Mastertechs to be fair…but it’s something we need going forward. It’ll be a way for you to measure up, and for me, and for others, on a level playing field. It should give you the answers you seek, but it all comes down to the same damn reason I was hurt so badly when Riona died. And that was because a piece of me was linked to her in my own mind. And when I lost her, I lost it…or that’s the way I thought of it.”
“So she was your girlfriend?” Kara said, feeling a stab in her own heart that she tried to block out, but was open for Paul to see.
The Furyan knew trying to explain in words wouldn’t work, so he shared some of his memories fighting the lizards with Riona. How the gore they forced on him made him lose his way, become numb, disoriented, and turned him into a walking zombie that couldn’t feel no matter how hard he tried to wake himself up. Then he shared how Riona and he had helped each other figure it out, face the horrors, and how they’d come out of it with a bond that linked that weak spot in each of them to each other…and how her death had ripped the strength away from him for a while.
Until he’d completed his lesson and saw the truth in a way he couldn’t before. When that happened, the weakness and vulnerability in him vanished, but the longing for that bond remained an open wound that still existed to this day, and Paul showed her it, along with others from his past. His parents, other Archons now dead, Jason from a dream he’d had that was so real he thought he was dreaming when he woke up only to realize he was still alive, and a few other real losses.
“When you form a good bond, it’s an advantage. And when it’s gone, you’re weaker without it,” Paul explained, not tearing up but Kara could hear the strain his voice as he shut off his own memories from her. “If you relied upon it, then you will be hobbled. So the trick of it is to gain from it, but not rely on it. You doubt your own merit, and are relying on others for any calibration you can get. That leaves you vulnerable when it gets pulled out from under you.”
“Will you let go now?” she asked, still emotionally exposed with his Ikrid foot jammed in her mental door.
“In a moment, but first you need some perspective.”
“About what?” she asked a moment before he pulled her down lower and kissed her hard.
He held it for what seemed like forever, and Kara’s emotions suddenly went back to when she was a wobbly kneed freshman gawking at the seniors she’d never have a chance with…and now one had just kissed her.
The part of her mind that went into Archon analysis mode got shut down by Paul, forcing her to feel only in the moment, then he finally let her go, physically, mentally, and emotionally…but slowly so she could see the transition play out.
The crying that resulted in rivers running down her face slowed to a trickle, the blushing receded, and the out of control facial expressions smoothed out into her normal calm, controlled Archon badass by nature façade.
“There you are,” Paul said as she came out of the transition, feeling as if a giant weight had been lifted off her chest.
“How…what did you just do?” she demanded, propping her arms on his chest in a tripod as she starred down into his smirking face.
“Let’s just say I have given you my stamp of approval in a way that you couldn’t veto…for a moment. But the memory of that moment will linger, and whenever you’re in analysis mode you’re going to have to consider it as a counterweight to any criticism. And by the way, I do prefer your small nubs,” he said, pushing her arm tripod lower so he could replace it with his own that had his palms upward and cupping each of her breasts.
“You can be a flirt when you try,” she said, leaning into the prop up rather than shying away, but with neither getting flustered by the irrelevant contact between palm and mammary glands…though both also realized that back in the day when they were young and stupid it would have meant something. And by doing something that didn’t matter now, but was thought to then, it had a symbolic gesture now that both could appreciate if they closed one eye and squinted real hard.
“When there’s a need,” Paul admitted.
“What’s this new thing you’re working on?”
“A surprise, even to Davis. So don’t mention it to anyone.”
“Training?”
“Of a sort. But the sort where you can’t know it before it happens or it won’t work.”
“Ah,” she said, feeling a little off balance. “A little to the left.”
Paul adjusted his hands a half inch. “Better?”
“Perfect. Your hands are the right size now.”
“But you can’t watch the ships from this angle.”
“I can let a few go without my permission,” she said, reaching down into the container of chips and pulling a few out, which she then fed to him on her fingers one at a time. “So does this legitimately make me your girlfriend now?”
“Until Azoro comes back.”
Kara cringed. “Yes, please, not when he’s here.”
“And don’t tell the others.”
“Why does that bother you? I’ve heard them teasing about it.”
“Archons don’t date. It’s a violation of the Jedi Code. And it…”
“Requires you to be stupid?”
“Quite.”
“So why now, even temporarily?”
“Because you need it.”
“Ouch,” she said passively as she reached for more chips.
“And because you need it, it becomes a mission and therefore not stupid.”
“Our current…configuration…is somewhat stupid.”
“Is it really? Or just inefficient?”
“I thought inefficient was stupid?”
“So is weighted training clothes.”
“Ah, so this is training somehow?”
“Consider it calibration. We know each other well, but we rarely touch each other aside from sparring. And I rarely touch anyone aside from sparring. Someone getting this close violates perimeter protocols…and its kinda nice to have someone you can let inside without any doubts of them backstabbing you.”
“Or front stabbing,” she said, moving her right leg slightly for emphasis. “Kind of like being in battlemeld?”
“No, because I can’t sense your thoughts and know what you’re going to do before you do it. I’m vulnerable, but I have no doubts about you so I can stupidly relax…except it isn’t stupid, it’s a luxury.”
“So why aren’t we mating in full view of the Zak’de’ron?” she said, flipping his lower lip teasingly.
“I’ve been answer man today, so you answer that question yourself.”
Kara slid another chip in his mouth as she squinted at him. “Mating is usually offensive for males, supplication for females. You don’t see me as a target, don’t want to access those stupid mental circuits, and even if you did you wouldn’t use them very well because you’d fight them unless you were in a dream state. How close am I?”
“You left out how putting you in supplication might proc your subconscious defenses and have me on the receiving end of either a Jumat blast or something worse.”
“True, if I really did get out of control…and that’s when it feels the most exhilarating…I couldn’t guarantee your safety. But there’s
the catch. Only a newb can get out of control, and we’re too advanced for that. So we could go through the motions, but nothing too intense would happen.”
“And if it did?”
“And if it did,” she echoed, “we’d see the overload as a threat and something we’d have to train into oblivion, else it could be a weakness an enemy could use against us or could manifest in a very unfortuitous time.”
“Sounds like we’re just anti-fun, doesn’t it?”
“Until I moment ago I would agree. But you really put the works on me for a couple seconds.”
“And?”
“It’s the binary equation of it. I can’t give myself that sort of approval, or physical contact. And because the binary is usually flawed, we have to grow beyond it and deactivate it.”
“But since a piece of it is connected to reality, we can’t just shut it off completely.”
“Is that why Archons never did? I know some Commandos have.”
“Those were special cases. In general it was seen as a test of one’s merit. Overcoming pain is one thing, but overcoming the lure of pleasure requires a different skillset. And many don’t want to fight that one.”
“I wonder why I never heard about that.”
“You weren’t involved in the decision-making.”
“And you guys were since you started basically everything?”
“Yep. Pretty much.”
Kara ran her fingers through his short neon-colored hair. “Why did you choose green?”
“My natural is still black. That didn’t change. And we were wearing Clan colors too much. We’ve been at war too long against the Hadarak, and in a seemingly never-ending war we can’t be in ultra focused mode…which the hair color is meant to represent.”
“But why green?”
“Color of Luke’s lightsaber when he actually becomes a Jedi and stops using someone else’s.”
Kara’s eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”
“Sound stupid?”
“Only the part about you finally becoming a Jedi. You were before the Saiolum.”
“How so?”
“How so?” she scoffed, bouncing on his hand props a bit as a laugh came out. “Oh let’s see, beyond the telekinesis, mind reading…”
“Jedi can’t read minds, only emotions. Don’t cite that fanfic trash.”
“And the fact you still care about that now, despite it happening long before you were born…”
“A betrayal is a betrayal in any age.”
Kara clammed up abruptly, then her face suddenly squirmed a bit. “Now I see it.”
“What?”
“You’ve always been chasing fiction, knowing that it’s not real, but something in it felt real and you couldn’t let it go. Then bit by bit it actually became real, but never fully. You’ve been a fake your entire life. Cheating yourself out of a real life in pursuit of a dream. Yet the dream was more true to you than the life you left behind on Earth when you joined Star Force. Am I getting warm?”
“You’ve been getting warm ever since you sat on top of me,” Paul deflected.
“No, no. My turn. Open up big guy. Trust goes both ways.”
“Not always,” he said, but he never the less opened his passive Furyan defenses. “You know you can’t overpower me now if I shut the door…or stop holding it open.”
“Won’t need to. Sorry, but I can’t kiss you like that and you know it. And…there it is. Plain as day, but ancient. You’ve always found more connection to scifi than real life, and then you made most of it real when you got the chance…meaning it wasn’t really fiction at all, except the Force. No, more than that. You’ve wanted to just be real, not having to create it. You actually resent all that you’ve done for Star Force. You don’t actually want to be the first class inventing everything. You want to be one of the latter ones who gets to learn everything as fast as they can and still not be able to absorb it all.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Very much so. I know you like tinkering.”
“Sometimes you get tired of shoveling snow off the path for everyone else to walk on, and just want to follow a cleared path while your limbs rest up.”
“So instead of learning to be a Jedi you had to create the Jedi?”
“In retrospect, yes, though I never actually tried to do that.”
“And you banned the creation of an actual lightsaber, or as close as we could get to it, to avoid that level of fakery?”
“You’re digging into my mind more efficiently than I thought.”
“I know you better than you think, boyfriend,” she said, poking around a little more. “And now Azoro comes for you, and only you, to teach you the ways of the Saiolum. Something you don’t have to create on the fly. You’ve got a whole curriculum to follow, and outdo those who came before you. So now you feel like a real Jedi rather than a kid pretending to be one that actually ended up one by accident?”
“This is why the Jedi Code forbade relationships.”
“Anakin would have been fine if the Jedi Council hadn’t been stubborn dumbasses that couldn’t see the Sith Lord under their own noses.”
Paul opened his mouth to counter that, but suddenly found he couldn’t. “Mace was a jerk.”
“And Yoda?”
“Guess I kind of mentally delete those parts so they don’t sully the good lines.”
“Make sure you don’t do the same with Azoro.”
“You’ve seen his race now. Do you really think I can associate them with Yoda?”
“Good point. Stop thinking about that.”
“You’re in my head, you get what you get sweetheart.”
“So after all this time you really felt like a cheater until recently?”
“A faker would be more accurate. I got used to chasing dreams that were better than what was around me. I didn’t know it then, but that’s part of what makes an Archon and Archon.”
“Then how did I become an Archon?”
“You’re chasing the same thing in different fashion. We always want to rise, even when a pathway to rising doesn’t exist and we’re told that ‘rising’ is a figment of our imagination and we are immature, irresponsible losers for even thinking about such non-normal things.”
“I sadly can remember a few times my parents said something similar. I was never on the same wavelength as them.”
“I tried to be, but when it came to learning self-sufficiency…they just didn’t care to listen. Even when they were growing old and seeing it in the mirror and I told them the way to counter it, they wouldn’t try.”
“Did they give a reason?”
“I was their kid, and they thought that meant I could never know as much as they did. So anything I said was just fanciful thinking.”
“Despite the fact others weren’t growing old?”
“It was too early for that to be public knowledge. They had to take my word for it, and they simply would not. I never gave up on them. But they wouldn’t accept my help.”
“We were all orphaned that way, more or less?”
“No, a few of us still have parents who are alive.”
“Really? Who?”
“Liam, Sara, Morgan, and Rio all have at least one surviving parent the last I know of. They learned, while my parents refused to.”
“None in my class did, at least I don’t think so. We had a couple decades in there where they were dropping like flies and it hit some of us really hard. We all felt like orphans.”
“And then you got orphaned a second time…”
“With benefits,” she admitted, glancing at the clear jewel on her wrist that she could change into any color she wanted…or shape.
“It does look pretty good, I’ll admit. As does your body shape…honestly. You can confirm that now, and I recommend you do.”
Kara did poke around for that tidbit, finding her shape was much more pleasing to Paul than it had been for Han Tyver.
“Ok, I gotta ask, because I’ve never u
nderstood this and I’m not seeing a clear answer in your mind. Why are guys so obsessed with boobs? You have nipples too…or at least you did when you were Human. What’s so damn fascinating about them?”
“I could ask you the same thing about girls and dicks.”
“That’s a reproductive organ and designed to pleasure us. Boobs are designed as milk jugs for younglings to feed off of. So what’s the sexual fetish with them? I never understood that.”
“In hindsight it’s rather obvious, though guys don’t really understand it when they’re young either. It’s not so much a thing now, but was in our generation because it was illegal…mostly…for girls to go around topless. Used to be for guys if you went back further in certain time periods, but when girls get to see guys’ nipples in public and not the reverse, it suggests there is something special about the girls’ version. If not why should it be hidden? And why should girls react to fiercely when they are accidentally seen? There must be something special about it. The same way a person reacts to a locked door or sealed box that everyone is making a fuss over.”
“It’s all an illusion?” Kara said disappointedly.
“Only part. But when you conceal something your imagination fills in the rest, much like a crush on a stranger you know almost nothing about. So guys, in their imagination when they didn’t have actual breasts to see, saw them with their sex drive fantasy…until they saw the actual version and the dream was busted. It’s all downhill after the Christmas present is unwrapped or the locked door is opened.”
“What’s the other part?”
“Movement. Your breasts dangle, more so if they’re bigger, and the motion attracts the eye. They also stick out from your chest into the airspace beyond, and anything that sticks out, doesn’t matter from a body, building, or hologram, catches the eye. And since your breasts are smooth and not covered in hair, plus soft and squishy, they resemble toys designed to be touched…because in fact they are designed to be touched by infants. Wrap all that together and you have a partial illusion based in physical fact that warps the minds of the young and inexperienced know-nothings.”
“So like deep sea fish with the glowing lure to bait in prey?”