“Seek to understand why you're doing everything you do, and if it conflicts with the Jedi Code, or is fundamentally repulsive to your conscience, do not hesitate to question."
“I will…try, Vera.” It was easy to obey. Even when it felt like a violation of body and mind, she revealed her Mark and allowed Alsuna’s goons to place her on a table to dance. And she even called the Vratix “Master” until she was given Vera as an alternative. To do as Izel instructed, Yulie would require a confidence in herself as well as a confidence in her understanding of the Jedi Code, otherwise she might rationalize blind obedience as necessary. For how could she understand the Code better than her superiors, and how could her conscience be as pure as a true Jedi’s? At least now she had something else to guide her, a set of instructions to speak up if something really didn’t feel right. It would still take a greater effort, though.
When asked how many suffered needlessly under the Empire's reign, M-4PO had several ways it could answer the question, clinically reciting the lists of wounded, dead, Missing In Action, even accounting with chilling precision how many had been forced into camps. It looked at Yulie, however, before reciting the astronomical numbers that quantified decades of Galactic horror. Its eyes flickered and dimmed while processing the ruthless calculus of war.
"...Incalculable, Ma'am. There are those who yet still suffer..." It could have easily been speaking of those languishing in worlds still ravaged by the Empire's strip-mining, descendants of those displaced by Operation Cinder, but it spoke specifically of the Yulie. The mind of a droid was constructed entirely by code and numerical sequences, but there were times when they could put faces to their index and quantify things differently. One Dathomirian humanized an entire portfolio of Prisoners Of War. "...and my data is incomplete." It would need more information to even say with certainty how many present-day Yulies lived in servitude thanks to the Empire; how could it even begin to account for the sum total of misery that war had wrought?
Still, it was a military protocol droid. Some things it could understand, and others it could not. It saw the world not through the lens of its photoreceptors, but through a set of algorithms. The Jedi were warriors, once, and they could be once again.
"Very good. I see you like to touch whatever you're working with. It helps you get a sense of the object."
“Might have picked that up from working on engines.” Yulie thought out loud. Diving barehanded into machinery could partially explain her imperfect way of connecting with the Force. In the absence of proper tools, the tips of her fingers and the edge of her nails nimbly dissected entire motors, sometimes leaving traces of blood from overworked hands when reassembling them. Just as grease dyed her ashen hair, so too did she dye the constructs that she labored over. That did indeed contribute to the feeling that she and the Gray Phoenix were part of each other, but there was a spiritual aspect to it as well.
In some way or another, every component is connected to all the others, no matter how distant or insignificant. To a mechanic, machines were like organisms that way, and anyone who did repairs was all the wiser to remember the symbiotic relationship they had with one another. Whenever Yulie changed the air filters, she was also helping heat flow more naturally, which in turn relieved stress from tertiary systems, and so on. To touch a single part was to be in contact with the whole, and she was always mindful about how she was affecting other systems while she worked.
Even without any knowledge of the Force, she still did find her own way to gravitate towards making connections with her environment. Becoming reliant on tactile sensation was just a bad habit she’d picked up when she withdrew from other people. Thinking of herself as nothing kept her in a state of mind where she felt severed from everything and everyone, that the worlds outside her senses were kept entire apart from herself.
“I’ve been working with my hands as long as I can remember.” To her, working with her hands meant that she was better working with her hands. It required a wisdom deeper than her own to understand that her relationship with the Force was sculpted by her perceptions, that withdrawing from others made it more difficult for her to connect with them, and how retreating into herself also distanced her mind from her surroundings. Working with machines made her part of something in a way that she could understand, and it did more to free her soul than imprison her.
She tried puzzling it out the way a mechanic would, deciding to try “proper” levitation techniques with her tools to rise above relying on her hands.
The lightsabers were still an exciting prospect. When Vera’Thral mentioned them, Yulie immediately imagined herself building one by assembling it telekinetically, levitating several tools in the process. Even though she still don’t know how lightsabers functioned, she must have built a hundred of them in her head. Despite that excitement, she had something else on her mind for whenever they first arrived: mostly to find out where the mess hall and the hunting grounds were.
Daydreaming of lightsabers and eating, Yulie was snapped back to Reality when Vera’Thral suddenly pointed in her direction. The stone launched at the gesture, too high for the girl to flinch or instinctively duck, and since it followed the path of the Vratix’s finger it stood to reason that Vera’Thral wasn’t trying to direct her attention. So Yulie just stuck her arm up to catch it without having any time to give it any thought.
Yulie felt it thwack against the upper tip of her middle finger, even though she didn’t even touch it at all. The stone, several inches higher than furthest the girl could reach even if she jumped, suddenly jerked upwards as if bouncing off an invisible wall, and it froze in midair when the Dathomirian clenched her hand shut, thinking she could grab it.
When she lowered her hand, so too did the stone descend, but it felt like it was in her palm. She could feel the smoothness of the stone clearly, it was still cool and just a little bit damp in its rocky crevasses. Opening her hand to look at it, Yulie was momentarily confused to see that it wasn’t there, and only when she looked upward did she see it suspended above. It was not in her hand, yet it felt like it was.
The stone rolled and tumbled as she repositioned her hand in different ways. Turning her palm sideways allowed it to fall into the dirt, and with a flick of her wrist it skipped into the water. Thoughts, feelings and matter itself. The Force saw no difference between them, for they were all echoes from the same voice. It was a wisdom that she didn’t completely understand, so she just looked at Vera'Thral with a baffled expression.
“But I thought you said I had to touch things to get a good sense of them?”
@Reyn
“I will…try, Vera.” It was easy to obey. Even when it felt like a violation of body and mind, she revealed her Mark and allowed Alsuna’s goons to place her on a table to dance. And she even called the Vratix “Master” until she was given Vera as an alternative. To do as Izel instructed, Yulie would require a confidence in herself as well as a confidence in her understanding of the Jedi Code, otherwise she might rationalize blind obedience as necessary. For how could she understand the Code better than her superiors, and how could her conscience be as pure as a true Jedi’s? At least now she had something else to guide her, a set of instructions to speak up if something really didn’t feel right. It would still take a greater effort, though.
When asked how many suffered needlessly under the Empire's reign, M-4PO had several ways it could answer the question, clinically reciting the lists of wounded, dead, Missing In Action, even accounting with chilling precision how many had been forced into camps. It looked at Yulie, however, before reciting the astronomical numbers that quantified decades of Galactic horror. Its eyes flickered and dimmed while processing the ruthless calculus of war.
"...Incalculable, Ma'am. There are those who yet still suffer..." It could have easily been speaking of those languishing in worlds still ravaged by the Empire's strip-mining, descendants of those displaced by Operation Cinder, but it spoke specifically of the Yulie. The mind of a droid was constructed entirely by code and numerical sequences, but there were times when they could put faces to their index and quantify things differently. One Dathomirian humanized an entire portfolio of Prisoners Of War. "...and my data is incomplete." It would need more information to even say with certainty how many present-day Yulies lived in servitude thanks to the Empire; how could it even begin to account for the sum total of misery that war had wrought?
Still, it was a military protocol droid. Some things it could understand, and others it could not. It saw the world not through the lens of its photoreceptors, but through a set of algorithms. The Jedi were warriors, once, and they could be once again.
"Very good. I see you like to touch whatever you're working with. It helps you get a sense of the object."
“Might have picked that up from working on engines.” Yulie thought out loud. Diving barehanded into machinery could partially explain her imperfect way of connecting with the Force. In the absence of proper tools, the tips of her fingers and the edge of her nails nimbly dissected entire motors, sometimes leaving traces of blood from overworked hands when reassembling them. Just as grease dyed her ashen hair, so too did she dye the constructs that she labored over. That did indeed contribute to the feeling that she and the Gray Phoenix were part of each other, but there was a spiritual aspect to it as well.
In some way or another, every component is connected to all the others, no matter how distant or insignificant. To a mechanic, machines were like organisms that way, and anyone who did repairs was all the wiser to remember the symbiotic relationship they had with one another. Whenever Yulie changed the air filters, she was also helping heat flow more naturally, which in turn relieved stress from tertiary systems, and so on. To touch a single part was to be in contact with the whole, and she was always mindful about how she was affecting other systems while she worked.
Even without any knowledge of the Force, she still did find her own way to gravitate towards making connections with her environment. Becoming reliant on tactile sensation was just a bad habit she’d picked up when she withdrew from other people. Thinking of herself as nothing kept her in a state of mind where she felt severed from everything and everyone, that the worlds outside her senses were kept entire apart from herself.
“I’ve been working with my hands as long as I can remember.” To her, working with her hands meant that she was better working with her hands. It required a wisdom deeper than her own to understand that her relationship with the Force was sculpted by her perceptions, that withdrawing from others made it more difficult for her to connect with them, and how retreating into herself also distanced her mind from her surroundings. Working with machines made her part of something in a way that she could understand, and it did more to free her soul than imprison her.
She tried puzzling it out the way a mechanic would, deciding to try “proper” levitation techniques with her tools to rise above relying on her hands.
The lightsabers were still an exciting prospect. When Vera’Thral mentioned them, Yulie immediately imagined herself building one by assembling it telekinetically, levitating several tools in the process. Even though she still don’t know how lightsabers functioned, she must have built a hundred of them in her head. Despite that excitement, she had something else on her mind for whenever they first arrived: mostly to find out where the mess hall and the hunting grounds were.
Daydreaming of lightsabers and eating, Yulie was snapped back to Reality when Vera’Thral suddenly pointed in her direction. The stone launched at the gesture, too high for the girl to flinch or instinctively duck, and since it followed the path of the Vratix’s finger it stood to reason that Vera’Thral wasn’t trying to direct her attention. So Yulie just stuck her arm up to catch it without having any time to give it any thought.
Yulie felt it thwack against the upper tip of her middle finger, even though she didn’t even touch it at all. The stone, several inches higher than furthest the girl could reach even if she jumped, suddenly jerked upwards as if bouncing off an invisible wall, and it froze in midair when the Dathomirian clenched her hand shut, thinking she could grab it.
When she lowered her hand, so too did the stone descend, but it felt like it was in her palm. She could feel the smoothness of the stone clearly, it was still cool and just a little bit damp in its rocky crevasses. Opening her hand to look at it, Yulie was momentarily confused to see that it wasn’t there, and only when she looked upward did she see it suspended above. It was not in her hand, yet it felt like it was.
The stone rolled and tumbled as she repositioned her hand in different ways. Turning her palm sideways allowed it to fall into the dirt, and with a flick of her wrist it skipped into the water. Thoughts, feelings and matter itself. The Force saw no difference between them, for they were all echoes from the same voice. It was a wisdom that she didn’t completely understand, so she just looked at Vera'Thral with a baffled expression.
“But I thought you said I had to touch things to get a good sense of them?”
@Reyn