Maitell base- Kashyyyk- Wednesday Fandom time
Not too long ago Jaina might have been amused at the irony of her training to kill Sith at what had once been a base of Palpatine's. Unfortunately for everyone involved, her sense of humor had been replaced by a terrifying amount of focus and no one was safe.
Especially not poor Zekk, who ended up getting dragged into training with her more often than not. She'd been sparring with him almost all day, and while she was only just now breaking a sweat, he was bordering on exhausted. When he'd say he wanted to stop, Jaina would force him to keep going. And then when she got his weapon away from him again in under a minute and then complained at him for it, he finally said, "We're switching to training sabers."
"I'm not going to learn anything from facing a shock weapon," she protested, looking disdainfully on the one he was offering her. "Come on, pick up your lightsaber."
Zekk shook his head, holding out the training saber again. "You're not going to learn anything from practicing with me unless you switch to shock weapons," he insisted, much more strongly than he had before. She'd been hearing this all day, that she was going too hard, that she needed to be facing off against Masters instead... She was over it. "Because otherwise I'm not going to be part of it. Jaina, you're playing too rough. You're a danger to yourself and others."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Zekk, you know you can trust me."
"I know I used to be able to. Before you turned into..."
She glared, just daring him to finish that sentence, but he was looking off somewhere towards the Falcon in the hangar. At first she thought he was just trying to distract her, but then she saw the look on his face and found herself turning, too.
Immediately Jaina could see why it might freak him out. Heading toward them was someone dressed in the black GAG uniform, complete with the heavy boots and gloves and a helmet that obscured his face. Upon first glance, it put her in mind of Vader. On second glance, she thought it was Jacen.
It wasn't him, though. She knew it. "Too short," she said, her voice low.
"Yeah, Vader was much taller."
"Too short even for my brother, idiot," she said, and raised her voice to speak to the black-clad figure. "Whoever you are, that's not funny."
When he reached their practice area, Jag pushed up the visor to reveal his face. "I wasn't trying to be funny," he said. "But Zekk, you should have seen your face."
Zekk stared. "Trying to get a date with an Alliance loyalist? Because you're not going to find many on Kashyyyk." Since Jacen had burned it and all.
"I came to spar with her," Jag said, gesturing to Jaina. "You know, lightsabers."
Oh, she did not have time for this. "Jag, do you even know how to use a lightsaber?" she asked. She'd known him half her life and he'd never even held her lightsaber. Come to think of it, before the Alema task force, she didn't think he'd even seen her seriously use it outside of practice.
"I know Lesson One. Don't grab the glowy end."
Despite that comment, she was getting the impression that he was serious. He really wanted to fight against her. She walked up at him, her voice surprisingly neutral. "Jag, I don't want to hurt your feelings. I have every respect for you as a pilot, a tactician, as a soldier. But in hand-to-hand combat, you're nowhere near my equal. And you can't begin to simulate Jacen's abilities. I won't get anything out of a practice session, and you might get hurt."
"I might indeed," he agreed, and looked around anyway. "Which are the real lightsabers, and which are the fakes?"
While Jaina might be worried about all of this, Zekk definitely wasn't. Maybe he was relieved to be shoving some of the punishment he'd been receiving onto Jag. He handed a practice saber to each of them and said, "Show him what you're talking about, Jaina. I could use the rest."
It was not a happy Jaina who handed over her real lightsaber to him. "He knows exactly what I'm talking about. He's studied Alema Rar for years. He knows what's she's capable of. I'm worse."
"Well, then this won't take too much of your time or energy." Jag slapped his thigh, saying, "Here, give me a jolt. So I know what I'm in for."
It was still not a happy Jaina who ignited the practice lightsaber. The blade was the same violet as hers, but the snap-hiss wasn't the same, and it wouldn't do the same damage. She didn't want to hurt him, but he'd asked for it, so she lightly tapped the blade against Jag's thigh. A second later, his leg almost buckled.
He took a moment to collect himself and make sure he could put weight on his leg after that sting, and Jaina wasn't unsympathetic. Everyone took a hit from one of these sooner or later, and it hurt like hell. "Ah. Got it," Jag said. "I bet that teaches the young Jedi the virtues of not getting hit. All right, let's do it. Zekk, you call it."
Jag flipped the faceplate on his helmet down again, and it was a little distubing to be Jaina all of a sudden. She'd had a recurring nightmare since she was fourteen, ever since she'd had to battle a hologram of Vader that had turned out to be a very real Jacen. If she didn't know better, it would look like that was exactly what she was doing. Jag turned on his lightsaber and held it pretty decently actually, and then Zekk said go.
If Jag wanted to see what she could do, Jaina would show him. She moved immediately, lunging at him, and he tried to sweep her blade away. Instead of letting him do that, she disengaged and ended up slapping her blade against the side of his neck.
In all these years, Jaina had done some pretty good damage to Jag in sparring hand-to-hand, but nothing had gotten him to yell like that. "Wow," he said, patting the spot where she'd hit.
"Necks aren't so bad," Zekk said, rubbing his own unthinkingly. "Wait until you catch one across your eyelid. Or your groin."
Jag was more ready the next time, but as soon as Zekk gave the word, Jag tried to attack first and Jaina was still too quick for him, getting him across the arm this time. "Technically, this bout isn't over, because all I did was take your arm off, in theory," she told him, sighing. "A Jedi might be able to continue for a while with a wound like that. But let's call that one a win for me."
"Sounds reasonable," he said, rubbing his upper arm. "Jaina, you're fast."
"I'm going to keep going until I think I'm fast enough." She'd never think she was fast enough. "Are we done?"
"Oh, I'm not bright enough to be done yet," Jag said, getting back into a ready position. "Again."
Zekk snorted. "Would it be wrong of me to admit that I'm really starting to enjoy this?"
"Yes."
"Go."
Jag tried the same maneuver he had last time, which Jaina thought was dumb, and she stepped aside again, going for his arm-
She hit his forearm this time, and he not only took the blow, but it bounced. He didn't react at all to the hit. And then he used that same arm to strike out fast, grabbing the hilt of Jaina's practice weapon just above her hand. When he squeezed, the hilt crumbled. The beam cut off.
For as shocked as she was at that, Jaina let it bother her for less than a second. She stepped back, cocked her leg, and kicked him squarely in the solar plexus. Which made a metallic sound.
Jag took his fully operational practice weapon and knocked it against Jaina's supporting leg. The muscle spasmed and her leg gave out beneath her. She rolled out of the fall, something she was very well-practiced at, but he managed to get the blade across the back of her neck before she was able to get very far. She ended up flat on her back, stinging from a couple places and completely surprised. "What was that?"
He shrugged, pushing up his visor. "I won."
It was part anger, on Jaina's part. All right, mostly anger. She reacted without thinking. "Flying's what you're best at. So fly." And then her hand shot out and she Force pushed him away.
She hadn't exactly been judging for distance, but she should have taken that into account. He flew five meters, smacking hard into a tree bole. To Jaina's continued surprise, Zekk rushed to him, making sure he was okay. "Jaina! What do you think you're doing?"
"Punishing me," Jag said with a groan. "For embarrassing her."
Jaina flipped to her feet and stalked forward. "I am not embarrassed," she said, more loudly than she'd intended. "You tricked me."
"What part of tricking you would be impossible for Alema Rar or Jacen Solo to do?" Jag asked, letting Zekk help him up. He was moving stiffly, so obviously she'd hurt him, though Jaina couldn't care about that yet. Give her a second for the anger to dissipate and logic to come back.
And when Jag was standing, Zekk rapped his knuckles on Jag's chestplate. "What have you got on under there?"
"The crushgaunts and beskar breastplate from the other day." Han had received a "gift" from Boba Fett then, Mandalorian armor that should be used against Jacen. There were a lot of reasons Han hadn't wanted it, but apparently Jag had. And he'd used it against her.
That thought only made her madder. "What are you trying to prove?" she demanded, standing directly in front of him now.
"That you're training yourself to lose," Jag replied calmly. "To die."
Jaina stopped. All he had to do was say that and it was like all the rage vanished right out of her. The thing was... he wasn't wrong.
She'd known since she was eighteen years old what might happen. She'd learned that in one reality Jacen had turned dark, became Sith, and that she was the one that had had to kill him there. Since then, she'd seen him come back from the supposed dead, seen him end a war by turning Onimi into goo, seen the kind of powers he'd discovered in all his time away, seen him draw farther and farther away... and the Jacen from Nemesis had kicked her ass. It had always been in her head that if she had to face him she would probably die, but if he fought Luke Skywalker to a draw, she figured her odds slipped to about zero. It didn't matter that Ben's Jaina had survived; whatever she had going for her, this Jaina didn't think she had it. She'd never spoken of it, and it didn't change what she had to do, but that thought that was always there. And it terrified her.
It terrified her even more that Jag had honed right in on that. She didn't know if it was because she was more transparent than she thought or if he just knew her that well.
"Jaina, I've watched you for a long time now," he said, "preparing yourself for a confrontation with Alema and- and you're not kidding anyone here- your brother. You've trained and trained and sweated and persevered, and as far as I can tell you've done a brilliant job at the wrong task."
"Explain that," she said, but it wasn't demanding. She wished it was.
"Sword of the Jedi. That's what you are, even though nobody's sure what it means. But I'm sure of this. There are two important words there. Sword and Jedi. You've been sharpening yourself into an amazing sword, but you've forgotten what it means to be a Jedi."
"You're not qualified to say that-"
"Answer me this. What Jedi do you know who would have thrown me into that tree that hard for winning a practice bout?" Jag went on. "You didn't know my armor protected my back. You could have broken my spine. The helmet didn't protect my neck. You could have broken that. What Jedi would have done that to a friend?"
Now that the anger had gone, she knew he was right, and she felt worse than horrible. Adding to that was the fact that he was still hitting every single point she'd been trying all this time to ignore, and she was trying very hard not to freak out internally for a myriad of reasons. All she could do was shake her head like that was serve as some sort of denial.
"So. You're a good Sword and a rotten Jedi. But even if you get back to being a good Jedi, you're going to die. You know why? Because you're training in Jedi skills as though you're going to have a straight-up Jedi duel with your enemies, all lightsabers and light-side Force tricks. But you need to be thinking like someone who hunts Jedi. Someone like me." He stepped almost uncomfortably close, which forced her to look up at him. "That's what I did. And I beat you."
"Once," she said quietly. "The third time."
"Are you absolutely sure that if I'd tried that tactic on our first bout, it wouldn't have worked?"
Jaina could have denied it. But he hadn't been trying to embarrass her. He'd just been trying to get through to her, to show her where she was going wrong, and that really was the only way to do it so she'd listen. If she looked at his question logically... She shook her head.
Jag removed his helmet, holding it at his side. "Jaina, as your commanding officer, I'm ordering you to take today off. No training, no strategizing, nothing. Report to me first thing in the morning. At that time, if you think you need another day off, I require you to tell me so. You'll get it."
"Yes... Colonel."
He nodded at Jaina- and at Zekk, who she'd forgotten was even there- and headed back to the hangar.
Jaina didn't say anything, and found she couldn't really look at Zekk right now. Jag had managed to do something no one ever even tried: humble her. She wanted to apologize for what she'd been putting him through lately, but the words just weren't there.
"You heard the man," Zekk told her, and gently squeezed her shoulder, and she knew they were okay.
She nodded, wordlessly leaving the practice area for her room.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue taken from Fury by Aaron Allston. This scene, btw, was when I did a total 180 and decided we could keep Jag always.]
Especially not poor Zekk, who ended up getting dragged into training with her more often than not. She'd been sparring with him almost all day, and while she was only just now breaking a sweat, he was bordering on exhausted. When he'd say he wanted to stop, Jaina would force him to keep going. And then when she got his weapon away from him again in under a minute and then complained at him for it, he finally said, "We're switching to training sabers."
"I'm not going to learn anything from facing a shock weapon," she protested, looking disdainfully on the one he was offering her. "Come on, pick up your lightsaber."
Zekk shook his head, holding out the training saber again. "You're not going to learn anything from practicing with me unless you switch to shock weapons," he insisted, much more strongly than he had before. She'd been hearing this all day, that she was going too hard, that she needed to be facing off against Masters instead... She was over it. "Because otherwise I'm not going to be part of it. Jaina, you're playing too rough. You're a danger to yourself and others."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Zekk, you know you can trust me."
"I know I used to be able to. Before you turned into..."
She glared, just daring him to finish that sentence, but he was looking off somewhere towards the Falcon in the hangar. At first she thought he was just trying to distract her, but then she saw the look on his face and found herself turning, too.
Immediately Jaina could see why it might freak him out. Heading toward them was someone dressed in the black GAG uniform, complete with the heavy boots and gloves and a helmet that obscured his face. Upon first glance, it put her in mind of Vader. On second glance, she thought it was Jacen.
It wasn't him, though. She knew it. "Too short," she said, her voice low.
"Yeah, Vader was much taller."
"Too short even for my brother, idiot," she said, and raised her voice to speak to the black-clad figure. "Whoever you are, that's not funny."
When he reached their practice area, Jag pushed up the visor to reveal his face. "I wasn't trying to be funny," he said. "But Zekk, you should have seen your face."
Zekk stared. "Trying to get a date with an Alliance loyalist? Because you're not going to find many on Kashyyyk." Since Jacen had burned it and all.
"I came to spar with her," Jag said, gesturing to Jaina. "You know, lightsabers."
Oh, she did not have time for this. "Jag, do you even know how to use a lightsaber?" she asked. She'd known him half her life and he'd never even held her lightsaber. Come to think of it, before the Alema task force, she didn't think he'd even seen her seriously use it outside of practice.
"I know Lesson One. Don't grab the glowy end."
Despite that comment, she was getting the impression that he was serious. He really wanted to fight against her. She walked up at him, her voice surprisingly neutral. "Jag, I don't want to hurt your feelings. I have every respect for you as a pilot, a tactician, as a soldier. But in hand-to-hand combat, you're nowhere near my equal. And you can't begin to simulate Jacen's abilities. I won't get anything out of a practice session, and you might get hurt."
"I might indeed," he agreed, and looked around anyway. "Which are the real lightsabers, and which are the fakes?"
While Jaina might be worried about all of this, Zekk definitely wasn't. Maybe he was relieved to be shoving some of the punishment he'd been receiving onto Jag. He handed a practice saber to each of them and said, "Show him what you're talking about, Jaina. I could use the rest."
It was not a happy Jaina who handed over her real lightsaber to him. "He knows exactly what I'm talking about. He's studied Alema Rar for years. He knows what's she's capable of. I'm worse."
"Well, then this won't take too much of your time or energy." Jag slapped his thigh, saying, "Here, give me a jolt. So I know what I'm in for."
It was still not a happy Jaina who ignited the practice lightsaber. The blade was the same violet as hers, but the snap-hiss wasn't the same, and it wouldn't do the same damage. She didn't want to hurt him, but he'd asked for it, so she lightly tapped the blade against Jag's thigh. A second later, his leg almost buckled.
He took a moment to collect himself and make sure he could put weight on his leg after that sting, and Jaina wasn't unsympathetic. Everyone took a hit from one of these sooner or later, and it hurt like hell. "Ah. Got it," Jag said. "I bet that teaches the young Jedi the virtues of not getting hit. All right, let's do it. Zekk, you call it."
Jag flipped the faceplate on his helmet down again, and it was a little distubing to be Jaina all of a sudden. She'd had a recurring nightmare since she was fourteen, ever since she'd had to battle a hologram of Vader that had turned out to be a very real Jacen. If she didn't know better, it would look like that was exactly what she was doing. Jag turned on his lightsaber and held it pretty decently actually, and then Zekk said go.
If Jag wanted to see what she could do, Jaina would show him. She moved immediately, lunging at him, and he tried to sweep her blade away. Instead of letting him do that, she disengaged and ended up slapping her blade against the side of his neck.
In all these years, Jaina had done some pretty good damage to Jag in sparring hand-to-hand, but nothing had gotten him to yell like that. "Wow," he said, patting the spot where she'd hit.
"Necks aren't so bad," Zekk said, rubbing his own unthinkingly. "Wait until you catch one across your eyelid. Or your groin."
Jag was more ready the next time, but as soon as Zekk gave the word, Jag tried to attack first and Jaina was still too quick for him, getting him across the arm this time. "Technically, this bout isn't over, because all I did was take your arm off, in theory," she told him, sighing. "A Jedi might be able to continue for a while with a wound like that. But let's call that one a win for me."
"Sounds reasonable," he said, rubbing his upper arm. "Jaina, you're fast."
"I'm going to keep going until I think I'm fast enough." She'd never think she was fast enough. "Are we done?"
"Oh, I'm not bright enough to be done yet," Jag said, getting back into a ready position. "Again."
Zekk snorted. "Would it be wrong of me to admit that I'm really starting to enjoy this?"
"Yes."
"Go."
Jag tried the same maneuver he had last time, which Jaina thought was dumb, and she stepped aside again, going for his arm-
She hit his forearm this time, and he not only took the blow, but it bounced. He didn't react at all to the hit. And then he used that same arm to strike out fast, grabbing the hilt of Jaina's practice weapon just above her hand. When he squeezed, the hilt crumbled. The beam cut off.
For as shocked as she was at that, Jaina let it bother her for less than a second. She stepped back, cocked her leg, and kicked him squarely in the solar plexus. Which made a metallic sound.
Jag took his fully operational practice weapon and knocked it against Jaina's supporting leg. The muscle spasmed and her leg gave out beneath her. She rolled out of the fall, something she was very well-practiced at, but he managed to get the blade across the back of her neck before she was able to get very far. She ended up flat on her back, stinging from a couple places and completely surprised. "What was that?"
He shrugged, pushing up his visor. "I won."
It was part anger, on Jaina's part. All right, mostly anger. She reacted without thinking. "Flying's what you're best at. So fly." And then her hand shot out and she Force pushed him away.
She hadn't exactly been judging for distance, but she should have taken that into account. He flew five meters, smacking hard into a tree bole. To Jaina's continued surprise, Zekk rushed to him, making sure he was okay. "Jaina! What do you think you're doing?"
"Punishing me," Jag said with a groan. "For embarrassing her."
Jaina flipped to her feet and stalked forward. "I am not embarrassed," she said, more loudly than she'd intended. "You tricked me."
"What part of tricking you would be impossible for Alema Rar or Jacen Solo to do?" Jag asked, letting Zekk help him up. He was moving stiffly, so obviously she'd hurt him, though Jaina couldn't care about that yet. Give her a second for the anger to dissipate and logic to come back.
And when Jag was standing, Zekk rapped his knuckles on Jag's chestplate. "What have you got on under there?"
"The crushgaunts and beskar breastplate from the other day." Han had received a "gift" from Boba Fett then, Mandalorian armor that should be used against Jacen. There were a lot of reasons Han hadn't wanted it, but apparently Jag had. And he'd used it against her.
That thought only made her madder. "What are you trying to prove?" she demanded, standing directly in front of him now.
"That you're training yourself to lose," Jag replied calmly. "To die."
Jaina stopped. All he had to do was say that and it was like all the rage vanished right out of her. The thing was... he wasn't wrong.
She'd known since she was eighteen years old what might happen. She'd learned that in one reality Jacen had turned dark, became Sith, and that she was the one that had had to kill him there. Since then, she'd seen him come back from the supposed dead, seen him end a war by turning Onimi into goo, seen the kind of powers he'd discovered in all his time away, seen him draw farther and farther away... and the Jacen from Nemesis had kicked her ass. It had always been in her head that if she had to face him she would probably die, but if he fought Luke Skywalker to a draw, she figured her odds slipped to about zero. It didn't matter that Ben's Jaina had survived; whatever she had going for her, this Jaina didn't think she had it. She'd never spoken of it, and it didn't change what she had to do, but that thought that was always there. And it terrified her.
It terrified her even more that Jag had honed right in on that. She didn't know if it was because she was more transparent than she thought or if he just knew her that well.
"Jaina, I've watched you for a long time now," he said, "preparing yourself for a confrontation with Alema and- and you're not kidding anyone here- your brother. You've trained and trained and sweated and persevered, and as far as I can tell you've done a brilliant job at the wrong task."
"Explain that," she said, but it wasn't demanding. She wished it was.
"Sword of the Jedi. That's what you are, even though nobody's sure what it means. But I'm sure of this. There are two important words there. Sword and Jedi. You've been sharpening yourself into an amazing sword, but you've forgotten what it means to be a Jedi."
"You're not qualified to say that-"
"Answer me this. What Jedi do you know who would have thrown me into that tree that hard for winning a practice bout?" Jag went on. "You didn't know my armor protected my back. You could have broken my spine. The helmet didn't protect my neck. You could have broken that. What Jedi would have done that to a friend?"
Now that the anger had gone, she knew he was right, and she felt worse than horrible. Adding to that was the fact that he was still hitting every single point she'd been trying all this time to ignore, and she was trying very hard not to freak out internally for a myriad of reasons. All she could do was shake her head like that was serve as some sort of denial.
"So. You're a good Sword and a rotten Jedi. But even if you get back to being a good Jedi, you're going to die. You know why? Because you're training in Jedi skills as though you're going to have a straight-up Jedi duel with your enemies, all lightsabers and light-side Force tricks. But you need to be thinking like someone who hunts Jedi. Someone like me." He stepped almost uncomfortably close, which forced her to look up at him. "That's what I did. And I beat you."
"Once," she said quietly. "The third time."
"Are you absolutely sure that if I'd tried that tactic on our first bout, it wouldn't have worked?"
Jaina could have denied it. But he hadn't been trying to embarrass her. He'd just been trying to get through to her, to show her where she was going wrong, and that really was the only way to do it so she'd listen. If she looked at his question logically... She shook her head.
Jag removed his helmet, holding it at his side. "Jaina, as your commanding officer, I'm ordering you to take today off. No training, no strategizing, nothing. Report to me first thing in the morning. At that time, if you think you need another day off, I require you to tell me so. You'll get it."
"Yes... Colonel."
He nodded at Jaina- and at Zekk, who she'd forgotten was even there- and headed back to the hangar.
Jaina didn't say anything, and found she couldn't really look at Zekk right now. Jag had managed to do something no one ever even tried: humble her. She wanted to apologize for what she'd been putting him through lately, but the words just weren't there.
"You heard the man," Zekk told her, and gently squeezed her shoulder, and she knew they were okay.
She nodded, wordlessly leaving the practice area for her room.
[NFB, NFI, OOC okay. Dialogue taken from Fury by Aaron Allston. This scene, btw, was when I did a total 180 and decided we could keep Jag always.]