I Want To Be Your Knight: Chapter One

I had been sitting in that cafe on lower-mid level Coruscant for nearly four hours before I saw her.

During those four hours, I had seen seventeen muggings, three fistfights, an incalculable number of prostitutes, ninety-seven instances of some teenager or twenty-something knocking an elderly citizen over as they had walked past and seven different gangs wandering through the small bit of the massive city-planet that I could see. Don't forget I also had to suffer the glares and stares due to my too-new clothes and my freshly laundered scent. Probably the only thing keeping these people away from me was the less-than-new blaster shoved into the holster on my thigh.

Why was I doing this? Why was I sitting in this dingy, dirty cafe, drinking horrid tasting tea, eating a sandwich on stale bread and watching the scum of society as they preyed upon one another?

Ethics.

Not my own, personnel ethics, but Ethics the university course.

It's part of the pre-curriculum for the Defense Fleet's Officer's Training School, those fun courses you have to have before they will consider allowing you into the training school. You would think that nearly completing my Jedi training, and then working with GAG for years would have given me enough education and experience. Yet if I had learned anything over the years it is that the government loves its processes, and the process that I was currently stuck in, dictated that I needed so many hours of certain advanced university courses prior to being able to officially join the Defense Fleet as an officer in Intelligence.

No amount of throwing my last name around the Defense Fleet HQ changed that. Sometimes when people ignore the fact that I'm the son of Galactic Heroes, it makes me happy. That wasn't really one of those times.

Anyways, during my last Ethics class, there was a discussion on the destruction of civilizations and societies, and the Professor had asked us how we could tell when a society was beginning to unravel. What indicator worked best as a symbol of society beginning to destroy itself. There were a lot of suggestions, most of which he pushed away as overall symptoms rather than a thermometer of the problem. In the end, he told us it was "manners."

How politely a society treats other members of that society is what best shows the health or sickness of said society. Then he proceeded to give us a hundred different examples, from nearly as many species.

It bothered me, and when I woke up that morning, I had felt the sudden need to go down-level and see just how the average citizens treated one another. I wanted to see just how sick-or healthy-our society was.

So I spent four hours watching the dregs of society, and was just about to give up on my unreceived commission, hang up my Jedi robes permanently, and then go hide out on Tatooine as a hermit for the rest of my life when I saw her.

It was that ninety-seventh instance of a group of teenagers, all four of them about my own age, walking down the center of the walkway, and knocking down an elderly human male.

This particular group turned on the old man, and started yelling at him for being in the way.

I had just placed a credit chit large enough to cover my tab and a substantial tip for the waitress who let me hang out in this cafe all morning, when I first heard her voice.

It was clear and strong, carrying a hint of a Corellian accent, "Stop."

All heads in the area, including my own, turned towards the sound of the voice, and saw a slight teen-aged girl walking forward with purpose and determination. She couldn't have been much older than me, and in the back of my mind, I knew that I had seen her somewhere before, but I just couldn't place it. She was dressed in the simple, comfortable style of most Corellians: dark cotton slacks, tailored shirt, Imperial-style boots, that stopped just beneath the knees, and a light jacket completing the outfit. Of particular interest were the bloodstripes which ran up the sides of her slacks, and for a moment I wondered what this young girl had done to deserve them. I also noticed that the top three or so buttons on her tailored shirt were undone, not really displaying her breasts, but rather teasing us with them.

Regardless, as I watched, she walked up to the group of teens and got into the leader's face and told him that he should apologize to the old man.

If the situation hadn't been so serious, I would probably have found it funny. Here was this girl, who was at most 1.5 meters, glaring up at this mountain of muscle, who had to top a good 2 meters, and outweighed her by at least 30 kilograms.

Of course, seeing this little slip of a girl standing up for that old man, I had never before felt so much shame in my life.

How could I, an almost trained Jedi, a former member of GAG and someone supposedly in training to become an Intelligence Officer for the Defense Fleet, have ignored all the crime and abuses that I had calmly watched while eating my stale sandwich and drinking my piss-poor tea. I was ashamed at my justification that they could have, should have, protected themselves. That I did not have a responsibility to protect them if they cared so little about their own selves.

I really was as much of a failure as a Jedi, as I had always thought I was.

I slipped out of the cafe, and walked closer to the angry, shouting teens. With a trick of the Force, I enhanced my eyesight, so I could get a closer look at the girl. That closer look only increased my confusion, as I knew I had seen her somewhere before, but still could not place it. It also showed me the black eye, the bruise on her cheek, and the split lip that she sported.

It looked as if she had already gotten into at least one fight this morning, and part of me wondered if it was because she had been protecting people down here in these lower levels.

I'm still not sure what caused me to move when I did. Why I rushed forward. Maybe it was the determination in the set of her jaw. Maybe it was the clear sea-blue color of her eyes. Or maybe it was just that unsettling feeling that I knew her.

But the leader had cocked his arm back and thrown out a punch. At the same instant, the girl had jumped backwards, opening a gap between herself and the leader of the gang.

It was into that gap that I had inserted myself, that I had used the Force to propel myself forward at speeds faster than the eye could see. I dropped into that gap, and had already lifted my arm, pointing my elbow towards the oncoming fist.

The leader's fist connected with my elbow, and pain flared up and down my arm, but I wasn't worried about it. Little known fact about the elbow-it doesn't break. You can abuse it as much as you want, and it keeps coming back for more. So I took the pain and shunted it aside as the leader howled, clutching at his hand. I estimated that he had broken at least two fingers hitting my elbow. I was kind of ashamed that I was amused by the guy's pain.

I dropped into a more traditional fighting pose, one I had picked up during my GAG days, and smirked at the leader, saying, "Now, didn't the lady tell you to apologize?"

"Get him," the leader growled. In response, the other three charged forward, their arms outstretched in a mad rush to tackle with me. My eyes flickered across the three, picking out distinguishing features. The one on the right was the only one wearing a blue shirt, and only human, the other two were Bothans dressed in red. One had a really pretty pelt, it was a deep brown color, something between brandy and chestnuts, the other's pelt was hideous. An eye-hurting, brilliant emerald green. For a second, I wondered just what chemicals he had ingested to get his body chemistry to do that, but quickly pushed the thought away, focusing instead on the oncoming attack.

I knew that if they got a hold of my arms and legs that I would probably be in for a world of hurt. That acknowledged, I decided to not let them get a hold of my arms and legs. I rushed forward, and almost laughed at the expression of startlement that flickered across the green Bothan's Force presence. Planting my fist into the stomach of the brown Bothan, I twisted around and kicked the human in the knee. I brought my leg back in before I snapped the knee, and then dropped into my default fighting stance.

Glancing towards the green Bothan, I noticed that the girl was giving him a sound thrashing.

I turned back towards my two, and grinned at them, using the Force to flood their minds with fear. "Well, c'mon. I don't have all day. Are you going to 'get me' or not?"

I guess those two chose not, because with that bit of Force enhanced fear, they took off, running. I turned towards the leader and grinned at him at about the same time that the green Bothan dropped to the ground unconscious.

The leader slowly backed away, as if he was afraid that we'd jump him and beat him too. I shrugged my shoulders and looked around for the old man, not seeing him anywhere. I guess he had just run off once the fighting had started. Not that I was really that surprised.

Then I heard her voice again, still with that same annoying, almost recognized attribute, yet this time she sounded a bit angry. I guess she didn't like to be helped. "What are you doing? Trying to be some sort of hero? I didn't need your help!"

Then I turned to face her.

She was scowling, and I noticed a thin slice at her temple, slowly oozing blood. Her diatribe against me stopped in mid-rant and she leaned in forward, towards me for a moment, her eyes tracking down, then snapping back to my face. Recognition seemed to dawn in her eyes, a fraction of a second before disgust took over her face.

I took an instinctive step backwards, as she hissed out my name between clenched teeth, "Ben. Ben Skywalker."

Then to my surprise, her fist was slamming into my nose. Stars blossomed in my vision as pain erupted in my face. I dropped backwards onto my butt, as she stood over my, her Force presence seething.

My hand flew to my nose, gingerly pressing against it, checking to see if it had been broken again. The Force was with me and all I had was just a bit of a nose bleed.

I looked up, looking closer at the girl, trying to figure out where she knew me from. Then recognition dawned. My mouth opened, and then shut.

She's sure turned out cute, was the thought that raced through my head, even as my mouth uttered, "Jys?"

She continued to glare down at me with disdain and disgust. In truth, I deserved it. I hadn't always been the nicest person to her family.

"So glad to see that you remember me, Skywalker."

I saw her leg tense, as if she was warring with the desire to kick me while I sat there on the grimy street.

I grimaced, and looked up from her leg into her eyes, and said, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, it's not worth that much," she shot back. Then she turned away from me, and walked away.

I sighed, and watched her walk away, thinking I might just have to go back and visit the Jedi Temple soon. Maybe put my education on hold, put off that Intelligence commission for a bit, finish my Jedi Training.

And get her to forgive me.

I stood up, and glanced down the walkway where I could still make her out, and sighed, wondering just how I was going to accomplish that, my next impossible feat.