Once a Teacher, always a Teacher [Dei's Training]

[Jiang Winters]

Five years had passed since Weisheng had formally trained a Padawan. The feline wasn't that nervous, though. He'd trained several students while in exile, but none had been Jedi. This would be far more difficult. The hybrid Horansi strode back and forth in the garden, his long sable-striped white tail dancing back and forth behind him. Both his ears were perked, and his hands were folded together at the small of his back. His usual handgun was still at his hip, but his physical blades were gone; in their stead, two lightsabers hung from his belt.

He wore little more than a gray vest and trousers, with a white sash and black boots. The garments were simple and fully in the style of the Jedi, but still light enough for him to move comfortably and have sufficient ventilation as so not to overheat - Coruscant wasn't exactly a cold world, and his pelt was thick, meant more for frigid weather than sweltering heat.

Sheng checked the watch adorning his right wrist. It was twenty to noon; he was early. He smiled at himself, chuckling. He always showed up early when he was nervous. Maybe taking on a new padawan had him more on edge than he had originally thought. The feline rolled his broad shoulders and planted his hands on his hips; nervous or not, he would train this new padawan of his to the best of his ability.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"Now, make sure you drink plenty of fluids, and take one teaspoon of your medicine twice a day for the next three days."

Food poisoning. Dei strained to restrain himself from rolling his eyes; nay, the eleven-year-old youngling before him had not a clue of what lack of access to medical care was like. Dei wasn't sure he would wish Onderon's health system, or more properly, lack thereof, upon anyone, but here at the Jedi Temple at Ossus, it seemed pampered padawans rushed and demanded immediate treatment for the tiniest of sniffles or panicked at the sight of a single pimple. The doctor, though only a Padawan himself, admitted that vomiting was jarring for the uninitiated, those who had the luxury of growing up in sanitized environments, but in many cases, drinking plenty of fluids by itself would be enough. The youngling would be over the food poisoning within a day or two without his intervention. Dei had given him antibiotics, which would have the net effect of shaving about six hours off the infection.

The boy had whined that Dei didn't just use the Force to wave the ailment away. That would have been too easy. You need to develop something called an IMMUNE SYSTEM, Dei had thought to himself, but he had bit his tongue before he could say it. The Jedi looked to the Force as a wide-spectrum panacea, not a care in the world about the potential long-term consequences of using it too liberally. The boy could have the infection purged from his system with the Force to be sure, but then his immune system would be that much weaker for the next one that came along. Dei, unlike most Jedi healers, preferred more traditional, scientifically-based medicine, using the Force to supplement only as necessary. Such was heresy. Dr. Aidan's medical expertise could not be tolerated; it upended the relationship between master and student. Masters didn't like students who knew more than they did, even if that knowledge was confined to a relatively narrow specialty, like medicine.

Dei Aidan had seen many masters. Many initiated training; none completed it. No master had cared to supervise the building of a lightsaber; Dei still used a stock lightsaber from the Jedi contingency stockpiles. The doctor was important enough to tend to the medical needs of the Order, which occasionally included a bona fide injury. He was not important enough to be trained.

At least his shift was almost over for the day...a mere eight-hour shift. How...indulgent. For all the austerity the Jedi claimed to live by, Dei still enjoyed some pretty luxurious working conditions--clean facilities, sufficient food, water, and supplies, a shift length that was only a sixth of what his ER shift had been back home at Onderon. Sure, for long surgeries, he held over. He had held over at Onderon, too. At Iziz Hospital, his longest shift had been seventy-five hours; at the Jedi Temple, sixteen.

Another Padawan came in to hand him a message; Dei glared down at the printout in the other youngling's hand. Apparently, some purported Master Weisheng Winters wished to train him. Dei rolled his eyes; how many Masters had he gone through before? Fifteen? Sixteen? Between them, he had cobbled together a fair enough amount of training, but none seemed to give a care. He had learned more reading the Jedi Archives on his own time than he had from Masters actively training him. The Jedi Order was atrophying, its members exceedingly ignorant of galactic concerns, or even the Order's own needs. Yet, as hypocritical as the Order could be, it was still the least evil in a galaxy saturated with it.

Dei let out a sigh. "Thanks." His tone of voice, of course, indicated anything but. He pawed a spare lightsaber from the communal bin, packed his medical gear, and made his way to the spaceport.

-----------------------​

Of course Coruscant Center had held Dei's commercial transport in a holding pattern for two and a half hours, due to a combination of roving thunderstorms over the spaceport where he was to dock, and the general heavy traffic and hustle and bustle of the planet city in the first place. The doctor was late to his "appointment," if he could call it that, and he had trouble deciding which was worse, the thought of having another master to recycle, or being late therefor. The doctor--padawan--had long been disabused of any notion or expectation the Jedi actually intended to train him to Knighthood. Instead, he made a convenient door ornament for the Temple's medical wing.

He strongly suspected someone had summoned him all the way out to Coruscant for little more than a practical joke. He was never summoned. Never was he important enough for the attention of the Masters; even the Knights ignored him until such time as they needed stitches.

Dei, for his part, had never bothered to change out of his doctor's coat, and he, unlike the one who had allegedly called for him, did not mind the muggy atmosphere at all. He scarcely sweated, and he certainly had no intentions of changing into the formal Jedi robes or similar attire for something he expected was little more than some Master's daily laugh and chortle. In spite of his cynicism, Dei followed the directions given to him earlier, eager to get the joke over with.

As he approached Weisheng, he said nothing, not even an introduction. Presumably, the Master already knew whom he was summoning. However, he made no attempt to conceal his feelings--on the infinitesimally small chance the Master really was serious, it was better such feelings be addressed than buried and left to fester.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Weisheng could sense the unmasked cynicism long before he could see or hear his new Padawan, Dei. He had been warned that the Padawan - a doctor, as he had been told- had slipped through the fingers of teacher after teacher, and as a result had become convinced that he would never receive proper training. The feline had occasionally wondered what it was like to be bounced from one master to the other, never to settle long enough to learn anything of import. Thankfully, he had never been given a chance to endure such a frustrating experience firsthand.

As his student drew near, the feline drew himself up to his full height. With an extra inch added to his height by his footwear, he stood at an imposing six feet and ten inches, ears not included. Both sensitive ears flicked as he heard the tell-tale click of feet upon tile flooring behind him. The hybrid turned about as he reached up with one hand, adjusting the spectacles perched on the arch of his nose. He glanced over the human; he was tall for his kind, neither thin nor heavily built. He wore the clothes of a doctor, rather than a Padawan; not surprising, given the circumstances of Dei Aidan's time within the Order.

The Horansi's tail flicked about behind him as he ever so slightly pursed his lips in thought. After only a moment, Sheng spoke. "My understanding, Dei, is that you've been bounced from one Master to another, and the timing has always been just inconvenient enough for you to be unable to complete your trials and advance to Knighthood." The cat turned on his heel as he spoke, gesturing for Dei to follow him as he began to make his way down the freshly rebuilt halls of the Coruscant Temple.

The steady drone and rhythmic thuds of power tools echoed through the halls; a ceaseless reminder that contractors were still hard at work patching the place up. Fortunately, most of the training rooms and living quarters were fully operational. "So what we're going to do is this: I want you to tell me everything you've been taught by the Jedi. No details, just brief summaries. Once I have a solid idea of where you're at with your training, we can get you moving on your training. Also, if you haven't built a lightsaber yet, you'll be doing so today."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei rolled his eyes as Weisheng stood up to his full height, seemingly making a big deal about it. Weisheng wasn't that much taller, and not even that much heavier, at least as the Horansi species went. The doctor had seen more than enough non-humanoid species to not be intimidated by those larger, or physically stronger, than he. With few exceptions, tranquilizer darts worked all the same.

So, that was the practical joke. "You dragged me all the way out to Coruscant so you could receive a physical examination?" The doctor was not amused. If the gesture was meant as some instinctual or tribal mark of superiority, of establishing just who was the master here, it failed miserably, only reinforcing the padawan's cynicism. Only Weisheng's subsequent words stayed Dei from turning around and returning to Ossus on the spot.

"Alright, so you claim you do wish to train me." Dei's voice ran deep with disbelief. "Assuming this isn't one of those Nar Shaddaa lottery scams, no fewer than fifteen masters have cobbled together passable lessons in healing, telekinesis, telepathy, accelerated movement, augmented jumping, extrasensory perception, and something they called 'Valor' between them. A couple of them actually took the time to instruct me in the form of Djem So, of course right before they decided another Padawan was more attractive, more malleable, whatever...so what makes you any different from the aristocrats who would rather I just slink back into the jungle from whence I came?"

 

[Jiang Winters]

Weisheng actually managed to find it within himself to loose off a soft laugh. "They were right, you are a cynical one, Dei Aidan," he remarked with a chuckle. The feline slowly shook his head as he arrived at the door to the training room he intended to use. He pushed it open and used the toe of his boot to nudge a doorstop into place, to give the room some airflow.

"What makes me different is this: I have never, not once, given up on a padawan. I have trained two children, a teenager, and an adult, and help an emotionally unstable 16 year old Cathar boy overcome his insecurities and move on to become a productive and important member of this Order. If I can't train you, Dei, then I am very much so in the wrong line of work!"

The feline didn't seem fazed in the least by Dei's attitude. It was as if he'd seen and heard it a dozen times before - and indeed, he had. From Valena Cross to Jamall Mohatu Junior to Tanna Oolava, he'd been subjected to everything from tears to name-calling to flat rejection. Nothing his previous students had thrown at him had dissuaded the white-furred feline, and no amount of pessimism from Dei would stop him now. If anything, the younger man would only keep himself down with his attitude.

He moved into the training room. It was appreciably large, about fifteen yards by fifteen yards. The center was lined with a three-foot deep layer of sand, while a three-yard wide sandstone walkway encircled the nine yard by nine yard block of sand. Various boulders were strewn through the sandy region, along with a handful of wooden obstacles; it was as much a physical training course as it was a area for training with the Force.

"You've been here so long that I won't bother with all the philosophical jibber-jabber you're undoubtedly sick of hearing, so we'll skip the usual 'what are the Tenets' quiz and go right to a demonstration of your abilities. The rocks scattered through here weigh anywhere from a few ounces to five or six thousand pounds. Using Telekinesis, pick up as many of the smaller ones at once as you can, then drop them and pick up the biggest one that you can. This is just a quick gauge of your abilities; after this, we'll just check your agility and telepathy, then go right to Lightsabers - starting by building yours."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei followed the large feline Jedi into the "training room." He had heard the same "I don't give up on my padawans" speech at least thrice before, but at least those three masters had trained him a little more thoroughly than the other dozen or so. That, and Weishang had uttered something about building a lightsaber today. None of his previous masters had remotely cared that much. Maybe he could actually pay a little heed to this one. He still estimated the percentage chance of successful training in the single digits; however, that still appeared more promising than a percentage expressed in scientific notation with a very large negative exponent.

He heard the Horansi's instructions, saw the obstacle course before him, and despite his mental admission that this would-be Master might actually Give A Damn, concluded the Master's instructions constituted a waste of a perfectly good obstacle course. Sure, evaluation of ability was all well and good, but Dei had chucked plenty enough rocks back on Ossus. Did the Jedi have no other way of instructing telekinesis? Naw, he was a doctor, and a self-avowed fitness freak...give him an obstacle course, he would run it.

Weisheng would get his evaluation, if he was willing to wait a few moments.

Dei started jogging around the perimeter of the room, to loosen up his muscles after a couple of hours of sitting in a seat designed for someone half his size, if nothing else. Though Dei refrained from using the Force to accelerate his movements (it had no benefit to cardio that the doctor was aware of), he still moved at a fast clip. It barely took him a little longer than five minutes to run thirty laps, a little more than a mile. His blood flowing, his muscles primed for further workouts, his master kept waiting, he now turned his attention to the master's instruction. Finally.

One of the smaller rocks, weighing about eight ounces, shot across the room before spending the last couple feet of its flightpath braking...and landing comfortably in Dei's right hand. Though the master had requested Dei lift as many as he could simultaneously, that little detail had elicited a general reaction of 'meh' and rolled eyes from the padawan. After all, rocks were so basic that even the least attentive masters had gotten around to utilizing them in lesson plans.

However, Dei seemed comfortable enough, especially as an aura of determination washed over him. Weisheng might have wondered why his new apprentice found it necessary to use Force Valor to manipulate rocks that weighed less than a pound. However, the answer would be clear soon enough...Dei was testing himself just as much as Weisheng was testing him.

Dei pulled the rock back behind his head, in a pitcher's position, before launching the ball of rock in a blurred fastball motion that must have been aided, and quite well, by the Force. The room filled with the sharp sound of air whooshing by the rock as it left Dei's hand at roughly three hundred feet per second--well beyond any human's physical capabilities alone, but well within the parameters of combined Force Speed and Force Valor. The rock sharded into nearly a hundred tiny pieces as it smacked into the three-ton rock; it also left a miniature impact crater.

At which point Dei, apparently satisfied, lifted a bunch of the smaller rocks simultaneously, telekinetically summoned a rock weighing a bit more than a hundred pounds and started doing overhead presses with it, blasted a five hundred-pounder into the wall...and then strained to move the biggest rock so much as an inch, pretty much ignoring the rocks in between. Well, at least master knew apprentice packed enough punch for a decent Force push, given that most sentients didn't weigh more than five hundred pounds.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Weisheng didn't mind a bit of a wait. The cat's tail swished and flicked as he watched Dei for a few seconds. He quickly lost interest in watching the human run and took a seat at the edge of the sandstone, his boots resting in the sand as his tail curled once around himself, laying in-line with his left leg. He produced his datapad and checked his messages as Dei ran around like a hyperactive cub who had overdosed on sugary cereal. No unusual messages were present in his inbox, save for one from Aevis Santoro - it read, simply, "We're ready."

The feline smiled and tucked the pad away in the interior pocket of his vest. Just as he did so, it seemed his Padawan was ready; he could feel a spike in the Force emanating from Dei. The feline rose to his feet and padded along the sandstone to a spot where he could observe from a distance, both of Sheng's ears perked attentively. He had to admit, the string of Force Moves that he bore witness to were rather impressive. From the shattered stone and the crater it left to the rumbling and rocking of the giant boulder, Sheng was thoroughly satisfied with his Padawan's grasp over the Force.

"Alright, that's good. Nice work; clever combo with that rock. That'd do any normal sentient in. Now, part two; time to see what you can do with Force Sense. Hidden somewhere in this room is a metal box. A cube, a single foot on each side. Inside that box are the components to your lightsaber. I left enough of an imprint on the box through the Force for you to be able to find it easily enough, so long as you know the basics."

The cliche was to bury such an item in the sand, or hide it under a floor panel or in a hollowed-out rock. Weisheng, however, didn't always stick to cliches. The hybrid Gorvon/Kasa Horansi had climbed a twenty foot tall wooden wall on one end of the training room, removed a ceiling panel, and hid the box within the ceiling. It wouldn't be impossible to find, not in the slightest; he'd left just enough marks in the Force for Dei to be able to puzzle out where the box was. Assuming he started from the outside of the room and worked his way in, he figured it would take Dei thirty minutes to find it. If he stared from the center, perhaps fifteen. Either way, it wouldn't be long - and his Padawan could very well surprise him and find it even sooner.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Weisheng should not have been surprised to figure out that Dei, as a doctor, felt much more comfortable sensing the living than blundering about looking for inanimate objects. However, the apprentice knew that unless Weisheng had taken the precaution of wearing gloves (which he very much doubted), the feline would have left dead skin cells, or shed a few strands of fur as the case may be, along the path to the lightsaber components and right on the box. Dei ignored what his master had said about him leaving enough of a Force imprint on the box for him to find it. Under his methodology, he should not be dependent upon it, for the master would have left traces whether he intended to or not.

Unless he had taken the necessary precautions to prevent shedding of fur, the same kinds of precautions a criminal would take to avoid leaving DNA evidence. Given the object of the exercise was to find something master had left, Dei considered that possibility unlikely.

Dei stood there, not making any effort whatsoever to actually search. However, his physical inaction in no way correlated with disinterest. He gave his master a piercing glare that under ordinary circumstances might be considered disrespectful, but the Force told a very different story. Dei stared down Weisheng, as he analyzed his master's Force signature. Weisheng would recognize the feeling of someone picking up his scent so as to retrieve a lost object of his. As Weisheng was of a feline species, that recognition should have been fairly visceral on his part.

Dei did nothing but examine his master's Force signature for a full five minutes, gathering every possible detail he could glean therefrom. After Dei was satisfied he knew what to look for, he started around the perimeter of the room, at a normal walking pace instead of an extraordinarily slow pace that would indicate he was actually looking for something. Dei believed this procedure made sense, owing to the old cliche of hidden wall compartments. He came to the wooden wall only forty-five seconds after he had started his search, and stopped. The Force nudged him that all that time he had spent keeping Weisheng waiting had paid off.

The doctor ran his finger along the wall, and sure enough, a couple of strands of fur stuck to it. He could also see claw marks going up the wall, sunken into the wood, suggesting that Weisheng had climbed it. However, he could identify no evidence that Weisheng, or anyone else, had cut a hidden compartment into the wall.

The evidence seemed to point to the ceiling near the wall as the most likely location. Dei used telekinesis to push one of the ceiling panels up, and slide it away, across another. He did not care at all whether he had the "right" panel; that was irrelevant. Between his vertical leap, honed by much of the same exercise master would not care to watch, the Force, and his reach, he could simply jump high enough to grab onto the ledge he had made for himself. Mindful that because of his weight he probably could not stay hanging from the ceiling for long, Dei wasted no time performing an overhanded pull-up to get his head above the ceiling panels where he could identify the box visually.

Only a little bit of light filtered through from below, but it was enough. Dei quickly glanced around, and made out the outline of a cube about six feet away. The box slid across the ceiling panels as Dei let go of his grip and landed back on the floor. A metal box of the same dimensions followed only a few seconds later.

The apprentice inspected it in the light. Yep, it had Weisheng's fingerprints, or more appropriately, furprints, all over it.

(OOC: Yes, I'm assuming you didn't do anything like wear gloves, because you didn't say. If you would rather say you had been more careful about what evidence you did and did not leave, I'll be more than happy to edit.)

 

[Jiang Winters]

Again, Weisheng was impressed with Dei. A more forensic approach to the problem had been unexpected. The feline's tail swished as he watched his Padawan work, the feline once again sitting down to wait. There was no need to watch over Dei; he was a grown man, not a child. Babysitting him would only irritate Dei and bore Weisheng.

Sheng was pleased to see that it took Dei next to no time to find the box. His forensic approach to the little treasure hunt had served him remarkably well. From his seated position, the hybrid was able to watch as the Padawan leaped up, clung to the ledge of the opening in the ceiling, and retrieved the box from its hiding place within the ceiling, before heading back down to the ground. The box soon followed. As Dei gave the prints left by the pads on Sheng's palms and the underside of his fingers, the feline called out to him.

"When you're ready, take a seat on the sandstone and open the box, see what you've got to work with. There's a white cloth you can lay down as a work surface. You're going to start with the hull of the saber first; I placed enough components in there to build several different hilts, and I included several different crystals for when you reach that stage. Still, if something isn't to your liking, we can fetch a more suitable part from the storerooms. This blade will be with you for a long, long time; it needs to be absolutely perfect for you, so make sure to voice any concerns you have so that they can be fixed."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei dutifully unpacked the box, but as he did, he realized that not a one of his instructors before Weisheng had so much as mentioned the thought of him building his own lightsaber. No one had cared; instead he spent his time rebuilding the injured because that seemed the only thing he was important enough to do. Not that there was anything wrong with being a doctor, of course, but it had left him with little idea of how to actually build even a basic lightsaber, much less one that would truly suit his needs.

Supposedly, the knowledge of how to build a lightsaber was supposed to come more or less directly from one's connection to the Force, and Dei realized that disassembling the lightsaber he had brought with him would serve him well to that end. By so doing, he could see how the various components within were put together and how they interacted, much like medical school dissections allowed him to learn anatomy and how to perform surgery. Even then, a problem remained; the lightsaber currently in his possession was a simple one, lacking an adjustable blade. For him, the ability to change blade length was required, unless he wished to feel like he wielded a shoto for the rest of his life. However, that required at least two crystals, and made for a much more complicated assembly. He could not learn how to assemble the much more difficult lightsaber, from such a simple example. The thought felt somewhat akin to learning how to perform open-heart surgery, from a middle school science class earthworm dissection.

"I believe I will need an adjustable-length lightsaber with at least two crystal mounts to work from," Dei requested. "I suspect I will need that functionality of my own; yet, as you can imagine, no one cared enough to even mention the most basic of lightsaber engineering before. Specifically, I have no clue how to assemble the control to adjust blade length, and absolutely zero chance of reverse-engineering it from my current specimen." The apprentice pawed through the parts available to him, before adding "I'm not even sure I have all the necessary parts for it here."

 

[Jiang Winters]

Weisheng produced his datapad and tossed it underhand towards Dei. Using the Force, he slowed the pad and directed it to land screen-up on the lid of the box. "I downloaded blueprints for several different lightsaber styles to that datapad. I pulled up a browser with each blueprint in an individual tab; thumb through them, a diagram of an adjustable blade assembly is in there. As for the parts, I may not have included the components for an adjustable lightsaber."

The feline pushed himself to his feet. His lengthy tail, as always, danced about behind him. "Check for the parts you need. If they're not there, tell me what's missing and then do whatever work you can with what you have while I run down to the storeroom."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei thumbed through the blueprints given him, as he steeled himself for something that would take a long time to build.

Even standard lightsabers took around two hours to assemble, and that just to throw a most basic one together under emergency conditions. Such a rushed lightsaber would not function well long-term at all, nor would it suit the apprentice's needs. No, Dei's build was more accustomed to wielding a weapon of one and a half meters instead of the traditional one to one-and-a-quarter, but even that would leave him at a disadvantage against extremely short opponents who could get inside the swing of his blade. Therefore, Dei needed a lightsaber that could adjust the length of the blade with minimum fuss; he needed a dual-phase lightsaber, which was notoriously difficult to build.

He would be here for a while; he estimated sixteen hours at best. Then again, surgeries were a bit more predictable than this. The apprentice quickly assumed that Sheng would soon lose interest, just as he had when he took five minutes to exercise before taking Sheng's lesson plan seriously in the first place. Dei popped a stimpill, for even sixteen hours seemed wildly optimistic.

While the blueprints Sheng had most generously provided included a dual-phase saber blueprint, the box of components had not included any kind of blade-width switch that Dei could readily identify. He might be able to rig together something out of spare components, but he did not wish to create undue opportunities for short circuits. The adequacy of the available power supply and cooling and containment systems also concerned him. Lightsabers were meant to burn hot, but they weren't meant to burn through their own hilt, and a dual-phase saber was capable of generating much more heat than the standard, mass-produced model that Dei now carried. He sent for upgraded versions of those components as well, as he sat down and began to assemble the basic framework for a slightly elongated hilt, one large enough to accommodate two separate crystals.

He would be here a while...

(OOC: Doing the assembly in two or more parts, cuz I'm tired, and canon does say it's a long and drawn out process...)

 

[Jiang Winters]

Weisheng didn't dally in retrieving the needed parts for Dei. The jog to the storeroom took little time, but the trip back lasted significantly longer, for the Horansi bumped into an old friend: Jamall Kamua Mohatu, Junior. The padawan of one of Sheng's best friends, the now-deceased Kira, Kamua was the son of the Chancellor and one of few people Sheng invested any real trust in.

Kamua ended up accompanying Sheng back to the training room. The two bantered idly, first in Catharese, then in Sheng's native Horansi tongue. The reason for the use of a language that was obscure by galactic standards was simple: They were discussing nothing more and nothing less than the upcoming vote that was to be cast many Knights and Masters within the Order. A vote that was certain to cause a bit of an uproar with the council.

The Cathar shut the door as he entered the room behind Sheng. Being a short-furred being who was adapted to hot environments, Kamua didn't feel warm in the slightest. Sheng, on the other hand, shot him a quick look.

"What?" Kamua asked, quirking an eyebrow. He spoke in basic now - there was no reason to keep speaking in a foreign tongue.

"You're going to roast me alive if you shut this room up, Kamua. Training rooms equal pressure cookers on days like this."

"Then you should get your fur trimmed, ya stupid hippy. You're not in Corellia's mountain ranges anymore, or wherever you've been hiding the last five years."

Weisheng chuckled and shook his head, then lowered his voice and spoke. "Wait here a moment, Kamua. I'd rather not disturb Dei as he works."

The black-maned Cathar nodded and leaned against the stone walls of the room, leaving Weisheng to make his way towards Dei. The feline crouched and placed a box of saber components down in front of the doctor. "That should be everything you sent for. If you need anything, holler; I'll be by the entrance."

He turned and headed off, tail swishing as he returned to the entrance and immediately struck up a conversation with Kamua, talking in hushed basic with the Knight - again, the conversation was of the impending vote and the two felines' plans for getting through it.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei heard some kind of discussion in a foreign tongue through the wall. Dei wasn't making much noise of his own; without distractions, it became all the easier for him to sense outside disturbances. The whispers seemed hurried, hushed, and quiet-like; whatever it was, it involved political intrigue...the stuff of all those spy novels Dei had never bothered to read. If Weisheng had intended Dei not to be disturbed, he had failed in his task, for now the apprentice found himself working under the shadow of holding up whatever, good or bad, his master had planned. Or, Weisheng would just leave him to go attend to his more important business, like the fifteen or sixteen masters before him.

Microcomponents, battery packs, laser diodes, wiring, focusing lenses, and casings lay scattered before the apprentice. Dei selected a cylindrical casing about thirty centimeters long; he would be able to carve slots for three focusing crystals into it. Only two crystals were strictly needed for the functionality Dei desired, but as of yet, he felt no special attachment to any of the rather plain crystals that had come in the box. The apprentice hoped that he may be destined to find more worthwhile gems during his time as a Jedi; he would leave a slot open so he could utilize any such opportunities in the future.

He studied the blueprint for the dual-phase variant once more, committing it to memory in the unlikely event he lost access to it. Dei thumbed the spot-laser welder and began making his incisions into the hilt, carving out notches for all manner of control switches with the mechanical precision of, well, a surgeon.

Hours passed, as Dei wired his contraption. Much like his more intricate surgeries on live patients, he did not care to stop for food or drink. For the first time since joining the rather opulent Jedi, he felt almost like he was back working the forty-eight hour ER shift, though even these conditions were downright posh compared to Onderon. Nevertheless, his fingers worked ceaselessly, assembling hundreds of components, most of them quite tiny, and arranging at least a kilometer of wiring. Hours passed, hours during which his master no doubt had more important things to do. Dei fully expected to be masterless once again by the time he finished.

Eight hours. Only by the chronometer on Dei's own datapad did he know how much time had passed.

Sixteen hours.

Twenty-three hours. The light overhead burned out, plunging the room into darkness--not that philosophical darkness that lecturers prattled on about, but the actual, physical absence of photons. Still, Dei pressed on, guided by touch and the Force. The callous on one of his fingers had cracked; Dei quickly used the Force to stop the couple of drops from bleeding into his lightsaber and pressed on. By now, his throat was parched, but he did not care. If Sheng came in with a glass of water, he would have been shooed away. The Jedi should endure; if they could not deal with a little deprivation when building their lightsabers of all things, they stood exactly zero chance of standing against the Bogan.

Another few hours passed. Two crystals, one a faint green and the other a translucent blue, glowed weakly in the dark, just barely enough for Dei to identify them visually instead of by touch. By now, only Dei's healing ability with the Force prevented his fingers, which should have been cut open several times by sharp edges and razor wires by now, from bleeding. Carefully, he snapped the two crystals into place; an empty compartment existed to add a third in the future as it became available (or not). At last finished with the assembly, or so it seemed, he snapped the cover back into its place.

Dei stood up for the first time in nearly thirty hours, willing the inevitable cramps away. He did not send for his master.

Everything, of course, had to be perfect. The slightest imperfection could result in a gradually-melting lightsaber, or Dei blowing his hand off, or any number of unpleasant surprises. The apprentice thumbed the power switch for the first time. A bluish-green hue emerged, filling the room with a throbbing hum and bathing it in faint light. Still, the ignition felt...cold. Dei summoned one of the smaller rocks in the training area to him; a flick of his wrist sent his lightsaber to intercept it and easily slag it into a few microscopic ingots of molten ore and mostly semi-metallic steam. No, the blade burned hot enough. Dei tested the blade length and blade width controls; seeing that both worked perfectly, he set his auto-length function to a hundred forty-five centimeters. Everything seemed in order, except the feeling of coldness emanating from the lightsaber.

He left it on, as a form of stress-test for electrical arcing in the wires, from any overheating that may or may not be occurring inside the hilt. He stood there, staring at his blade in the darkness, not bothering to send for his master because he figured that whatever had cropped up at the beginning of the construction process was important enough for his master to abandon him, as had all other masters before.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Sheng had been busy. He and Kamua left Dei to his business. There was much to be done in preparation for the upcoming Council meeting. A wave of change was rushing through the Order. Signatures were being gathered, a list assembled; Sheng, like Kamua, worked constantly through the next day and night to speak to curious Jedi and rally them to their cause. Within fifteen hours, the scratching of a fountain pen upon ancient parchment began to ceaselessly echo in Weisheng's ears. In twenty hours, his mind tuned out the sound. At the twenty-one hour mark, the Jedi became weary and decided to lived up to his feline heritage.

With the list of names safely in Kamua's custody, he returned to the training room in which his Padawan was working. The room was dark and still. Sheng was cautious not to make any sound that would disrupt his Padawan as he walked into the room, his footwear carried in his hand rather than worn on his feet. The pads of his feet were silent upon the stone. With a measure of aid from the Force, he navigated through the utter darkness to the pit of sand. He clambered up a boulder not terribly far from Dei. The stone's top was flat and smooth, a bit cool to the touch.

He promptly curled up into a tight little ball atop the boulder, tucked his boots under his cheek, and closed his eyes. Weisheng was fast asleep within a minute. Deep and dreamless - just as Sheng always slept. So exhausted was he from the previous few days that the cat was only too happy to sleep for each and every hour that passed until Dei had completed his lightaber. When the blade snapped on, casting its glow through the room and filling the air with the siren song that was the hum of a lightsaber.

Sheng's eyes wearily blinked open. Eerie blue-green light was cast softly across his form, radiating out from the lightsaber. At first, he was about to roll his eyes, tuck his paw-like hand over his face, and attempt to return to sleep. However, the hiss and flash of a rock impacting the blade of energy jolted him to alertness. He yawned silently, his jaw opening wide and his tongue lolling out past his lips, his eyes sliding shut and ears pinning back - stereotypical cat.

He shrugged off his weariness after a moment and staggered to his feet. "I see your blade is working," Sheng called down, his tail lazily swaying behind him. All the fur on one side of his face was matted down; he looked just a bit ridiculous as a result. He plopped down on his rump on the edge of the boulder, legs hanging off as he seized his boots and pulled them on once again. "Any problems with it?" he queried. As he awaited a response, he took the chance to rub his eyes to try to knock the sleepiness out of them.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

It had probably been quite fortuitous for Sheng indeed that Dei had so thoroughly preoccupied himself with lightsaber construction that he missed the giant furball's entrance. Unfortunately, as Dei made enough noise to awaken him, and as he announced his presence, such good fortune came to an end, for the lazy furball now found himself in the same room with someone who had not slept for approximately thirty-nine hours.

The feline still appeared quite sluggish and groggy, and Dei wasted no time in waking the lazy kriffer up more fully. In fact, the padawan even switched his new lightsaber from right hand to left, for the express purpose of freeing his dominant hand for the task. The padawan was quick about it too; the lightsaber construction had brought forth a flood of memories concerning blood-splattered, sixty-hour shifts. Master's sheer, unbridled laziness did not endear him well to his new padawan.

Dei's right hand shot out, blindingly quick, to grab hold of Sheng's tail while he was still wiping the sleep-induced grime from his eyes. Of course, Dei believed that Sheng deserved a better wakeup call, and thus went to pull as hard as he could. Earlier, Sheng had seemed quite disinterested in the evidence before him that his apprentice was a bit of a fitness buff. Dei had every intention of dispensing with such willful ignorance in the near future.

"WAKE UP, YA LAZY BUM!" Dei roared, his voice plenty deep for a human. "No wonder the Jedi fall apart, and become the galaxy's laughingstock, when their Masters think of nothing but their catnaps!" The last word in particular, hurled from his mouth. "You could be doing something productive yaknow, instead of making a nice, soft, squishy target for enemies of the Republic!"

By now, flashbacks of Dei's Top Ten Worst ER Shifts flashed through his mind, the shifts with vomiting patient after intoxicated patient after drunk patient that rolled into the ER ceaselessly, when he was the only doctor on duty, thus keeping him stuck working without breaks exceeding two minutes here and there for up to seventy hours at a time. To underscore his master's own detestable slothfulness, the apprentice decided to use his nascent telepathic training to blast such unpleasant memories into his master's thick skull as hard as he could. Assuming Sheng didn't just block the telepathic 'assault' outright, he would see flashes where the four seconds he spent rubbing his eyes literally meant the difference between whether his apprentice's patient lived or died; he would see the bloody mess that was the Four Second Cartoid Artery Suture, and other assorted unpleasantries that Dei most certainly had not simply chosen to nap through.

 

[Jiang Winters]

Sheng didn't mind a bit of good-natured tail pulling. He could even endure a rough yank from an overly playful child who thought the long and poofy appendage was just a toy that needed to be grabbed, wrung, squeezed, and otherwise tortured with whatever methods could be dreamed up by the aforementioned sadistic child. However, Dei was considerably stronger than Sheng had originally estimated. The sharp tug had him yelping in pain in no time at all and it pulled him off balance.

The feline's arms flailed wildly as he toppled off the rock. His feline grace was utterly nonexistent for the moment; it would seem that he was one of the least nimble beings in the galaxy after he had just woken up. Or maybe the blinding pain of his tail being yanked out had something to do with it. Regardless of the cause, he was laying face-first in the sand inside of five seconds. He sprawled out; sand half-buried his snout. A sharp sneeze blew away most of the sand surrounding his nose and upper lip.

Dei's little lecture went in one ear, beat the living daylights out of his brain with an imaginary sledgehammer, then flew right out the other ear, looped back, and went right in ear number one for round two. The feline's ears flattened and he rolled his eyes. "Who the hell replaced Dei with my dad?" Sheng wondered. The human was very strongly reminding Weisheng of his father, Sheifeng Winters. By contrast, the tail pulling reminded him of his little brother, Jiang... Who had once grabbed his tail and then leaped off the second floor balcony of their home while still holding on. By some miracle, Sheng was caught on the railing... And promptly had to go to the emergency room to repair the damage to the base of his tail.

The feline started to push himself up to his feet, a grimace stretched across his muzzle. He felt something telepathically prodding at his mind; out of curiosity, he lowered his barriers for a split second. Just long enough to get a glimpse. Perhaps understandably, the feline didn't like what he saw and instantly shut it out. He did, however, swiftly retaliate by sending a blurb of that lovely little incident where his brother leaped over the railing, tail in hand. That would, with luck, teach Dei to avoid pulling his tail in the future. Then again, Dei would probably block the thoughts instantly.

Sheng grabbed his own tail and tugged it away from Dei. "Yes, obviously I am weak for not being a superhero-esque doctor who can stay awake for sixty hour plus shifts," he replied, more than a bit of sarcasm dripping into the feline's voice. He liked sleeping. He wasn't going to lie; he really liked it. Besides, if he went more than thirty hours without sleep, his thinking got fuzzy, and he became more than a little cranky.

The feline yawned again and stretched, his joints popping and waves of sand falling off of his clothes and pelt. He really didn't get why Dei had a bad reaction to catching him asleep; maybe the human just got super cranky after a few hours without sleep? He didn't know. He really didn't care to know. Sheng slapped the back of his own head, shook his 'noggin back and forth a few times, then adjusted his spectacles and looked up at Dei. "Anyways. You didn't answer my question."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"No, you slothful slug, if I was your father, I would've tested my lightsaber against your tail, and surgically reattached it later!" Dei flicked his lightsaber harmlessly about with his left hand, as if to emphasize his point that as painful as the wake up call might have been, he was still more merciful than the feline's father. Well, probably. If Sheng hated his father that much, there were probably good reasons why. Dei wasn't sure he wanted to know.

The images of the little incident regarding Sheng's tail mixing with little brother flashed through Dei's mind; the apprentice wasn't sure he could block them even if he had wanted to. "It is probably unwise to share ideas for more alarm clocks," the apprentice quipped, indicating that he saw tail-pulling as a perfectly viable way to spur his master to action quickly. Oh, dear. Well, at least Sheng could have a hope, however faint, that Dei would at least be more sensitive to the issue of injury, on account of his profession as a doctor.

"In all honesty..." Dei did not deny the health benefits of an amount of sleep appropriate to the species; to do so would have been comparable to denying the use of antibiotics. "...You want a catnap, that's what private quarters are for. Did you really have any reasonable expectation that casually napping right next to someone who by now hasn't slept in nearly forty hours would go over well? That's just callously rubbing it in, like I would be if I pulled your tail again. Insensitive kriffer, now wake up, you slothful lazy bum. If you're worried I tore something, I can have a look at it. Your brother probably didn't care that much."

The apprentice still held his lightsaber in his left hand; he wanted to set it down, but he did not want to shut it off, because he still wanted to detect any latent overheating issues that might come back to bite him later. There really were not a whole lot of places to safely set down an ignited lightsaber, however, so he held onto it for now. "Well, it seems to work fine," the apprentice explained, finally addressing the feline master's question. "But I read that a Jedi is supposed to feel a connection to his lightsaber. This one feels...cold and detached. Hard to explain really, but it feels like just another weapon, not part of me."

 

[Jiang Winters]

"You stay away from my tail, you demented saber-wielding tail-yanking furless wonder. I don't want you lopping it off and using it for a scarf," the feline quipped dryly. He flicked the lengthy appendage away from Dei and glared daggers at him for a moment. The base of his tail was pretty sore; something had probably torn or what have you. It'd have to be tended to. Whatever had happened, it would be minor. Sheng could repair it himself with a bit of aid from the Force.

The feline's gaze softened after a moment, and he attempted to explain himself. "I opted to sleep here in case anything went wrong. I usually wake up when I hear something odd, and I figured it'd be good for me to be around in case you, you know..." Sheng's voice trailed off and he pursed his lips for a moment. He built a mental list of all the possible mishaps Dei could have be subjected to, and then cheerily began to rattle them off. "Had your hand blown off, impaled yourself, cut a giant hole in the floor, created a mystical planet-killing superlaser that automatically seeks out the hippies on Alderaan, or unintentionally trap the soul of a Dark Jedi in your blade which leads it to try to chop you into very thin slices."

With his list of largely imaginary and fantastical problems stated, Sheng was only too happy to shift his focus towards Dei's lightsaber. While his padawan noted an unusual disconnection between himself and his blade, at least the weapon was working properly. At least, it was working properly so far. The feline's ear twitched and his brow furrowed. "That's kind of odd... I haven't heard of that happening before." While some masters would attempt to rattle off some theory as to why the blade was disconnected, even if they knew nothing, Sheng felt no need to do so. He stated only what he knew.

"Perhaps a little digging in the archives for a precedent would be in order. After you're done testing your blade, that is. I'm assuming that's what you're doing, anyways."

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Dei's cynicism returned with a vengeance, and the apprentice glared at his master with such severity that master might actually come to see his 'quip' about Dei's sadism as completely true. The apprentice in no way believed the furball's desperate, retroactive rationalizations, and rolled his eyes in disgust and contempt of such excuses. "And yet you were perfectly happy to leave me to hands getting blown off and Dark Lords slicing me into tiny pieces for at least the first several hours. You're reaching, in a desperate bid to justify your sloth so I don't feel the need to yank your tail again."

However, Dei had no reasonable expectation that the feline would actually listen. Just like most of the other Jedi he came across, and all of his previous masters...

Dei still held his lightsaber, however, and realized that he probably did look demented just holding it there, ignited for no readily apparent reason. "Yes, I am keeping my lightsaber on for the purpose of making sure it doesn't explode, or cause a fire, or other such nasty things when it is under prolonged operation. Hell, I'd like a nice, safe, non-flammable place that won't be disturbed, where I could just set it down and any problems with it would be self-contained. However, I see no such safespots at the moment, so I have to stand here looking like a kriffing idiot for the next four to six hours to ensure my lightsaber can handle prolonged events without shorting out or other nasty things. Doesn't look like I'll be going to the archives anytime soon..."