A Little Bit of Sunshine (Aiden Lightell)

[Green Ranger]

Aiden Lightell sat on the floor of a training chamber, deep within the bowels of the Dark Jedi Temple on Ando Prime. He'd been silently summoned to the chamber with little explanation, and that wasn't unusual. Most of the members of the former Ospion Guardians tended to operate differently when on official business, speaking only when necessary, giving only as much information as one was required to know. It was pretty standard, but the boy brought along his lightsaber, just in case.

Part of him was more than a little concerned, however. Rumours had arisen that he was going to be asked to leave, due to his unsatisfactory comprehension of the Force. Being asked to leave the only home that he knew...the idea scared him. He swallowed his fear...he wasn't one to dwell on idle paranoia. It was wasted energy. No doubt someone would see him shortly. His superiors were always on time.

 

[Ols]

"A real live Lightell," the voice rang out of the shadows, mysteriously resounding in the echoey chamber. Nescius Caedo had been hiding deep in the shadows as the boy entered and sat, waiting for Nescius to arrive, unknowing that the assassin was lurking in wait. Nescius stepped forward, right in front of the boy, to where he could be seen. He was wearing a simple black tunic, over black trousers and boots, with his lightsaber hanging on his belt. He wore no cloak. He continued, "I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother myself, but I believe my father encountered her on occasion, upon his own short lived tenure with the Jedi." Unlike most of his kin on Ando Prime, Nescius was more than able to say the word 'Jedi' in conversation without spitting venom.

From the corner of the room, he pulled a lock-box and clicked it open, "Deposit your personal effects, clothes and whatever else you have in there, and then follow me."

 

[Green Ranger]

'Heh, well, I suppose that makes two people in this whole place who didn't know my mother,' Aiden said, smiling cheerfully as he looked up at the man.

'Clothes? You mean, like...strip naked?' he said thickly. 'Um, oh...can I keep my glasses? I kind of need them...' His green eyes glimmered in the low light behind the frames. The boy could have had surgery years ago to fix his poor eyesight, but had declined time and again. Truth be told, he kind of liked having something that took attention away from his vibrant eyes.

 

[Ols]

"Yes I mean naked, Lightell, otherwise I wouldn't have said it," he said, leaning down and taking what looked like a pair of lycra sports shorts from the open locker, "and if you're that worried about being seen without anything covering your modesty, you can put these on. As for your glasses, well it really depends if you're into broken noses," nescius finished scathingly. He did not like his orders being questioned.

 

[Green Ranger]

'Oh, okay. Sorry, I just wasn't sure is all!' the boy said sunnily, and proceeded to strip down naked without a second thought. He thought about keeping his glasses on his person, but decided against it, throwing them into the lockbox along with his clothing, lightsaber, and a few other assorted things he had found in his pockets. If need be, he could always fix his eyesight himself, at least temporarily...though that was draining, and if he was caught...he didn't want to think about it.

Stark naked, the boy looked at his superior, smiling. 'Lead on, sir!' He said, again his disposition so...cheerful. Most of the students would have learned to maintain a grim disposition by now, but happiness seemed to emanate from every pore of the boy, and despite their best attempts, none had ever been able to suppress that.

 

[Ols]

Turning on his heel and striding from the chamber Nescius led the youth through winding corridors and catacombs beneath the temple. Dungeons, cells, torture chambers and a variety of other less than savoury types of room lined the walls. He paused finally at the end of one in which there was a large well carved into the floor. It was deep, and it's diameter was more than a grown man with his arms raised, from finger-tip to toes. Nescius gestured the well, "Look down into there and tell me what you see."

 

[Green Ranger]

Aiden approached the well, the lip just high enough so that he couldn't look into it properly. He scrabbled up the side, sitting down on the cold, hard stones, peering in. The boy wasn't exactly fully grown yet, but there was some sort of childishness about his behavior that didn't seem to fit. He squinted his eyes, looking down into the darkness, and silently wished he had brought his glasses.

'Um...I don't see anything, sir,' he said with more than a hint of confusion. 'It's too dark to see anything down there. Um...is this meant to be some kind of symbolic thing?'

He looked over his shoulder to see the man's reaction, a mixed look of equal parts confusion and excitement on his face. He had to admit, this was pretty strange as far as lessons went...but it was kind of cool.

 

[Ols]

Nescius had not intended him to see anything down there. There was nothing down there other than murky water. He simply kicked the boy, hard in the back as he peered downwards, sending him tumbling into the well with a loud splash. The boy would be trapped down there, unable to stand up, unable to scramble up the sheer walls. And that was the point. Nescius wasn't going to sit in a room and discuss the motives of the Dark Jedi along with the code, line by line, until he claimed to understand it. Nescius would make the boy live the code. Or die in the attempt.

Nescius himself sat down, a couple of meters from the edge of the well, and breathed deeply, in an almost meditative state.

"Your training begins with this. We'll see how long you last. But don't simply switch off, I don't just want to watch you suffer."

 

[Green Ranger]

With a squeak, Aiden plummeted into the wall, smashing his head against the far side and tumblng into the cold water with a loud slap that knocked the wind from his lungs. He involuntarily gasped for air, and water flooded into his lungs. His vision blurred, and the struggled to reach the surface, gasping and coughing for air. Thankfully, he managed to not hit the bottom of the well, and once his thrashing came to a stop, the water calmed enough for him to to regain his breath. The water was shockingly cold, however, and Aiden found himself beginning to shiver quickly.

Rather than spout abuse at his master from below, however, he groped around the cobbled walls, searching desperately for a handhold of sorts. A crack between the bricks, caused by the eroding mortar, proved sufficient enough. Aiden's small features proved useful - while he didn't have the armspan, he found he could find footing in cracks others would have difficulty with. He slowly made his way up the side of the well, stumbling several times, scraping elbows and knees in the process. With one final burst of energy, the boy sprung upwards in a Force-enhanced leap, grabbing a hold of the lip of the well and dragging himself up, exhausted, sore and cold. Still, he flashed a grin at his mentor.

'Did I do good, sir?' he asked innocently, as he proceeded to sit down on the edge of the well once more, licking the cuts and scrapes he could reach to clean them.

 

[Ols]

"No," Nescius replied flatly, handing the boy a towel, "I don't care if you can climb up a wall, so you'd best figure out why I decided to throw you into a well before my patience runs out. If you were trapped down there, if it was actually as inescapable as it was designed to be, what might be going through your mind?"

 

[Green Ranger]

'If it was designed to be inescapable, maybe they should have built it better?' Aiden said brightly, then paused for a moment. 'No, I suppose you wouldn't find that funny, would you...? Hm...if it was inescapable, though...well I suppose I'd be afraid of dying. I'd probably panic. In desperation, I'd probably lose all rational though in an attempt to escape, and I'd probably exhaust myself faster. As the exhaustion took hold, I'd probably become more and more fearful as I slowly drowned, alone, helpless and weak...'

A shadow seemed to pass across the boy's face, and it were as if all of the positivity and cheer the boy maintained faltered momentarily, revealing a much darker person within. But the moment passed, and the boy flashed a grin again.

'But, I suppose it's a good thing they didn't build it that good, huh? I wouldn't be much use to anyone if I was dead!'

 

[Ols]

"Careful." Nescius' reply to the boy's joke was accompanied with a wry, even warning, smile.

"No, you'd be no use dead, but as it is you're not being much use alive. You wouldn't have panicked and drowned, because if you actually had it would have been the force's way of telling me you're not worth training, hence why your neck is still connecting your head to your body. So if you didn't die down there, floundering around in the freezing cold water, how might you feel, cold, wet, tired, perhaps thinking death would come? Would you enjoy that, or would it be a kind of suffering?"

He physically could not spell out what he was driving at any more.

 

[Green Ranger]

The boy had taken the towel by this point, and was busying himself by drying off, a corner in his hand as he scrubbed at his dark hair. The shadow passed across the boy's features once more, however, and he turned away from his mentor. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it seemed, for the briefest moment at least, that the boy's eyes turned a blood red. His spine stiffened as a barrage of unspoken feelings and memories rained down upon his consciousness. He spoke slowly, quietly.

'Enjoy the prospect of dying...? Suffer? I...don't...' he said, trailing off into silence. He sighed, and the tension passed once more. He glanced over his shoulder again, his green eyes sparkling as he flashed a grin.

'I suppose it would be a bit of both? I mean, sure, you'd be suffering...but I suppose you'd get to a point where you'd just...want to die. Get it over with, y'know?'

 

[Ols]

Nescius smiled: although the boy had not quite latched onto the specific point Nescius was driving at, this was certainly good progress.

"And being in a position where one wants to die is surely the most suffering any person can endure? Would you agree to that? And, I presume, you would agree with those that believe to really feel suffering or understand it, you must endure such experiences as drowning, for example?"

 

[Green Ranger]

Aiden went quiet for a bit, his face scrunching up slightly with thought slightly. He seemed to have finally taken the question seriously, and it took him some time to come up with an answer. 'I think...if you really want someone to suffer, you would put them at the brink of their tolerance, so close that they wanted to die...but still deny them that release. Hold them in that state for as long as possible, to maximise the agony.

'But at some point they'll lose hope in finally being released, and succumb to the torture with a sense of hopelessness. At that point, you would need to change your tactics to place them back in that mentality. I...I think that'd probably be suffering to its fullest extent. Being denied hope of release would make any kind of suffering that bit more unbearable.

'I think if you really wanted to understand suffering, you'd have to go through that. Near death doesn't come close to that.'

This time, the boy didn't brighten up afterwards. His usual cheer seemed to have been sapped from him, and he simply sat there in silence, staring down into the well unblinkingly.

 

[Ols]

"Well that's the difference between suffering and torture," Nescius replied, "it's more than possible to suffer without being tortured. Suffering can occur for no real reason, other than the fact that it does. Suffering occurs in all life, it can happen to anyone, yet if everyone gave into it that easily then half the galaxy would be committing suicide. But as you said the easiest was for you to understand is to experience it."

With that, Nescius stood and walked over to a metal grate in the corner of the room, bent over and lifted it from the floor. The small square hole below was barely large enough for a man to stand across in, and it was pitch black, deep, the only sound that of a distant dripping.

"This is a drainage grate from that well," he pointed to the well Aiden had just escaped, before pointing down into the drain, and saying, very pointedly, making it clear that refusal was not an option: "get in."

 

[Green Ranger]

Aiden pretty much understood where this was going to lead, but he still hopped down without second thought into the darkness. He had never been the ideal student of the Dark Jedi, but he did at least take his lessons seriously, and he lacked the attitude of superiority of some other students, which had always been a good quality to have.

Cold and naked in the dark, he tried to look around the dranage passage, but he could see little beyond what the filtered light from the grate above would let him see. His hands groped at the walls - less smooth here, it the rock was left bare and roughly cut. The drop from the grate to the floor pretty much meant even if a student were to escape to this point, they would find it of little use. He looked up expectantly at his mentor, wondering what would happen next.

 

[Ols]

Nescius hefted the grate back over the top of the drain, shadowing over the apprentice's face. He flicked the locks on the sides of the grate to secure it in place. He then pushed a large stone panel on the wall, which released a mechanism in the well that made it start to drain it's water level. Consequently, the drainage chamber that Aiden was in, began to fill with water. Escape was impossible, but that did not matter. Aiden was not meant to escape. If he succeeded before drowning, Nescius would release him.

"You don't have long before that grate fills up. Remember the mantra, remember suffering. And for goodness sake learn quick, you said yourself you'd start panicking."

 

[Green Ranger]

Aiden didn't understand, and he knew it. He had always struggled to wrap his mind around the first line of the code of the Bogan. He had had suffering in his life, as had any student, but he never understood the importance of it. In fact, because he never understood the concept he had probably suffered more than his peers as a result of the...disciplining his mentors had employed in order to try and make him understand. But it had never stuck.

And now, as the water level rose all around him, he stiill didn't understand the point his master was trying to get across. Realistically, he saw only two possible outcomes from this - either he would drown and die, or he would do that thing with the Force his masters hated, and if that happened, he probably would be better off dead. He didn't like to admit it, but he was still aching all over from the last time he was...disciplined for using it.

So he just stood there as the water rose around him, to his knees, his waist, his shoulders...and as it rose up to his chin, he opened his mouth ever so slightly, and with a calm sort of resignation, let the water go down his throat and airways, stubbornly repressing the urge to choke and cough. His vision blurred for a moment, and then he felt it. Pins and needles all over his body, a pressure behind his temples. He tried to stop it, but it had a mind of its own, an instinct to survive he could not control.

He saw red, and then there was a flash of light. Suddenly he was able to breath again, and there was no water freezing his body. His eyes refocused, and he looked around. He was completely surrounded by water, but none of it touched him. A flickering crimson flame surrounded his body, holding the water back all around him in a column up to the grate...giving his master a a clear view of what was happening. Aiden's heart sank. He'd surely be...disciplined again for this.

 

[Ols]

Nescius was angry, without doubt. The boy could not learn from this. He was not capable of adapting himself. And Nescius had little time for students who were not prepared to learn for themelves. He wasn't spoon-feeding school kids with pointless, irrelevant, curricular knowledge, he was teaching someone how to use the force. But the master was reluctant to dispense with the boy. Usually a student who took this long to understand what should have been a simple lesson would be dead before leaving the grate. In fact, Nescius would not have removed them, he would have waited for them to tire and then drown. But this boy's failings were not those of the average student. They were from his power, his body wouldn't let him become close enough to death to understand what Nescius was driving home.

He sighed loudly and wrenched the grate off, grabbing the boy roughly and dropping him to the floor, again handing him a towel.

"You need to stop using the force like that. Relying on it like that, it breeds complacency. I doubt you'd have noticed in the short time I've been teaching you, but unlike most of the morons cavorting around for the Bogan, i don't use the force to turn off light switches and open doors. Yes it's easy, yes it looks cool, but the moment you become reliant on the force, the moment you're at its complete and utter mercy," he paused, and added, "and don't believe the fools who tell you that you already are. The force is the pathway to great power, but it's not omnipotent and omniscient. It's not even sentient in the way we know sentience, and if you don't let yourself be controlled by it, then you might just be successful. Might."

"The point of this task, that you have been unable to see, is that life is suffering. To succeed all you needed to do was to give up. You need to understand just how true the first line of the code is. There is no peace in life, there is only suffering. I mean, yeah it's relative, but even the best feeling in the world, is fleeting and finite. And unless it's your last, you'll spend the rest of you're life trying to feel that good and better. The only way you can begin to forget such trivial things is to accept your suffering. Once you've done that, real life is that much easier to live," he paused, and added with a friendly smile, "If your reply isn't bloody intelligent, I will make you know what actual suffering is."