Jedi Council Forums - Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) *completed* 6/15

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Author	Topic: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) completed 6/15
Lilith Demodae Registered: Oct '99	Date Posted: 3/15/04 10:14am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/12
	Crash and I have the same views about other people using our computers. They can look over my shoulder all they want, but they'd better not sit in my chair and touch my keyboard. Maybe it's because -all- my writing is on here.... ____________________________________ Our picnic was pleasant and lazy. We lay on a small blanket and fed each other finger foods and tried to ignore the sounds of traffic over our heads. The ambient light of the city, from apartments, offices, navigation beacons and the rest, produced a pervasive glowing haze across the sky that hid any hint of the stars, but we didn't mind. Running lights from passing vehicles worked just fine for us. Shael lay on his back, fingers laced behind his head, and I was cuddled up by his side, my head pillowed on his shoulder. The night was clear and cool, but not cold enough to be uncomfortable. Everything was perfect. Unfortunately, now that we were laying quietly, just enjoying each other's company, my thoughts kept turning back to Mason and those blue dots. What did they mean? Now I know he wasn't obligated to tell me everything, he was supposed to be undercover after all, but still ... how could I be reasonably expected to help him figure all this out if he didn't keep me clued in? //At least with Shael things are back to normal.// I had only barely completed the thought and was about to sigh in contentment when my tall, handsome, insecure man shifted and spoke. "So, how's Cade doing?" On the surface the question was totally innocent. His voice was casual, but something in his tone and the very question itself set off all my jealousy alarms. Shael was Roble's first lieutenant and the jealous type to boot, but he should have known exactly how Mason was doing. The Jedi didn't ask awkward questions like the cops did, he didn't try and worm his way into high level meetings, he was unobtrusive and everyone liked him. In short, he was perfect. Shael jolly well knew all that and was still asking me. The reasons for asking me, and at a time like this, was a very short list. It meant that he wanted to know how I felt about Mason as a person. He wanted to know why Mason was spending so much time with me, more than usual for the sponsor of a very successful new member to spend. And I couldn't tell him why. It added up to frustration and anger. Not the best of emotional mixes for me. "Not bad," I answered in as bored a tone as I could manage. My temper was starting a slow boil. //I thought we already took care of this!// "Bulldog and Trapper keep him out of trouble." I forced a chuckle I didn't feel. "They're almost being better sponsors than I am." There was no immediate response and I began to relax again. It could have been a perfectly honest, innocent question, something to spark conversation. Maybe I was making a battle cruiser out of a skyhopper. That brief, happy thought was shot to flaming wreckage. "Chenowyth, if you're trying to let me down easy, don't. Just tell me and get it over with. Ripping my heart out slowly doesn't make it hurt any less." Whatever I had been expecting, that wasn't it. Rising to my knees and sitting back on my heels, I looked down at him, my expression puzzled. "What the kriff are you talking about?" I demanded. Shael pushed himself up on his elbows, his dark eyes glittering in the city's glow. "Everyone raves about Cade. They talk like he's the Force's gift to swoop gangs. He's got a decent ride, knows what he's talking about when anyone asks him anything. He hides it nearly as well as you do, but it's obvious he's had a better than average education, and he doesn't flaunt it. Everyone loves him." Those haunted eyes met mine, a burning certainty shining out from them. "Do you?" My mouth dropped open in surprise. Shael wasn't usually this direct about anything but riding. In a ruthless, lightning fast self-evaluation, I examined my feelings for Mason Cade. No, easy as it would have been, I didn't love the Jedi. My heart had belonged solely to Shael for so long that it was impossible for another to claim it. I simply couldn't begin to think of what my life would be like without him. "No." "I've seen the respect and admiration in your eyes, Chen, whenever you look at him." "I said, no!" My voice was rising along with my temper. //Why doesn't he listen to me?// "I do respect him, and I do admire him, but I don't love him, Shael." "You don't look at anyone else the way you look at him. If you don't love him, then why?" I sighed in frustration. There wasn't much else I could do. "I can't tell you that, I promised." "Tell me anyway," he insisted. "Shael! I promised." "Chen, have I done something to make you mad or drive you away? I already apologized for before." With an inarticulate noise, I lunged to my feet, rather deliberately booting him in the ribs in the process. "Of course I'm mad, bantha-brain," I shouted at him. "I brought you up here for a picnic and some alone time and you want to talk about other men!" I turned on my boot heel and stalked away to the lift before my amusement at the look on his face could affect my own expression. My anger had drained away like it had never been when I saw the astonishment, distaste, and dawning realization in his eyes, and as soon as the lift doors closed on me I collapsed against the wall in gut-busting laughter. Hopefully it wouldn't take him long to put it all together and figure out what I meant. After all, I wanted to be married before I turned thirty. ******* Sloan saw me come out of the lift alone, and his brow creased with a worried frown, but I waved at him and flashed him a thumbs up. As long as his brother had a gram of common sense, things were going to be just fine. Nearly an hour later, Shael stepped out of the lift. I was crouched next to his swoop, checking on his fuel mixer, and turned to raise a questioning eyebrow at him. He knew I wasn't mad anymore. I don't fix rides for people I'm mad at or don't like, but my mood could change quickly enough if he hadn't learned his lesson. He offered me a half apologetic, half smug smile, then went to put away the picnic stuff. A dark grey, fuzzy form appeared at my shoulder. "You cuffed him?" Nash asked me. "Yup." "You told him how it is?" "Yup." "Good. He appears to have learned." "Yup." I smiled up at her happily and the feline's whiskers twitched at me in amusement. "I told you so." -----signature----- This post is brought to you by: This space for rent
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Shaindl Registered: Jun '02	Date Posted: 3/15/04 1:13pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/15
	I love Nash! She's quickly becoming one of my favourite OCs on the boards. I hope we see more of her as the story goes on. As for Shael, isn't it just like a man to see trouble where there is none? What a doofus. Great post, Lilith! Can't wait for more! Shaindl -----signature----- Halfway Moment - Qui, Obi, Anakin AU - http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/20110461/?0 - UPDATED JULY 3!
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PadawanKitara Registered: Dec '01	Date Posted: 3/15/04 8:40pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/15
	Nash is great! -----signature----- Courtier of the Royal Order of Shambling Dufi We are Dufi...Resistance is Futile! UCLA BRUINS
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Healer_Leona Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 3/16/04 4:34am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/15
	Awww, just the way Shael tells Crash not to try and let him down easy melts my heart for him Can't help but love Nash's no nonsense approach to men. LOL!! -----signature----- Feel so good, but I'm old 2000 years of chasing's taking it's toll
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Lilith Demodae Registered: Oct '99	Date Posted: 3/20/04 10:00am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/15
	Sorry guys, RL bit down hard this week. But here's the next bit for you. _____________________________ The lockdown was indeed lifted, but Roble and his merry men kept me too busy to enjoy it for the first couple of days. When I wasn't making more illegal forays into other people's computer systems, I was writing reports and helping my machines project route suggestions, escort strengths, necessary weapons minimums and other things that I didn't understand nearly so well, but that Roble insisted he needed to have. I shrugged and typed in commands. My computers shrugged and did what I told them. Roble told me what to do and went away happy at the end of the day, having all the graphs, charts, maps, and recommendations my babies could spew forth. In the brief moments of spare time I had, I opened up my key stroke file and recreated the map and the little blue dots, though I used green instead. Not the most clever deception I've ever come up with, but it served my purpose. When Death walked away for the day, muttering to himself about what he saw on the hard copies he was carrying, I brought the map back up and began to study it. I wasn't worried about Mason seeing it since he was out on patrol with a group of others. The dots didn't seem to make a lot of sense. They were grouped along territory borders, but other than that, there was nothing about them that jumped out at me as a possible connection. "You've got a good memory for the skirmishes, Crash." I jolted slightly at Trapper's voice behind me. He was leaning over my shoulder slightly, his finger tracing a few of the dots. "Skirmishes?" "I'm very impressed. You've even got the two that happened just after lockdown was called," he continued. Going into overdrive, my mind spun with the implications. These dots were the locations of the various skirmishes? That made a whole lot more sense than any theories I'd come up with over the last day and a half. "Yeah, but I'm having trouble remembering when they happened," I lied through my teeth to him. "Do you remember enough of them to at least give me a good start?" He shrugged nonchalantly and dropped into a chair as if he had suddenly been de-boned. "Sure." I pulled up the locations and he either told me when they happened or told me that he didn't know. As soon as I had gone through the whole list, Trapper rose and slouched away to find something a little more interesting to do and I hunched forward to give the computers a few last commands. I erased all the previous dots and told my babies to put them all back up again, but color coded for when they happened, moving slowly through the rainbow of colors over the last few months that the gang hostilities had been escalating. The picture showed me something I had halfway expected. There was really no pattern to it. First here, then there, with no rhyme or reason. Then I looked closer. A few of them I could see where one skirmish had happened, then several had been retaliations back and forth for the original fight. But there were others that made no sense, even the one that had wounded Shael. They looked random. Then I looked again. Mason had to have been looking for something among all this, I needed to look too. It made perfect sense that the only territory border relatively free of dots was our own. After all, when the skirmish went down Roble declared a lockdown. We weren't out there to be fighting with, so of course we hadn't had any others. As I recalled, we still hadn't decided which of the other gangs had hit us that time, either. It had sure made us mad though. //If Death weren't so worried about keeping every member of this strange family alive and kicking we'd have gone out and bloodied the nose of whoever did that.// I sat up straighter suddenly. Maybe that was it? I looked again. Sure enough, whenever the fighting in an area would die down a bit another first strike would show up and start things off again. Someone was prodding at us all, trying to keep us fighting, or make the fighting hotter and nastier. Up in the northeast corner of the sector where the little gangs were battling to the death, several warehouses, factories, commercial transports, and perfectly innocent civilian traffic had become casualties. //What if that's the point? But who would want to hurt people? That's just sick.// There had to be some kind of purpose behind all this, even if it was beyond me to guess at what it was. That was Mason's job. Mine was only to help as best I could. "What'cha got there, Crash?" Mason's voice coming from nowhere right behind me jolted me enough to rattle the keyboard. I couldn't keep a flush of guilt from running through my system, but I just prayed that in the burst of surprise it would be lost. After a bare second I knew the futility of that and decided just to come clean. Lying to Jedi isn't something that anyone does very well. "Mason, I thought you were out on patrol?" "I was. We got back in about fifteen minutes ago." I glanced at my chrono. I'd been sitting there staring at the map for much longer than I had thought. A rueful smile tugged at my lips and I shrugged. "Slicers are famous for losing track of time when plying their trade," I explained. "So I see." He straddled a chair, looking much more natural this time. "This looks familiar." "Should, it's your work, with a bit of modification." "Photographic memory? I didn't know you saw it." "I did. I'm paranoid about my babies." I patted the monitor lovingly before continuing. "I have a program that keeps track of all the keystrokes made. I used that to put all the dots back up. Trapper helped me with the rest." "I take it the colors have to do with ..." he trailed off and stared hard at the seemingly random nature of the color assignments. "I give up, what's the color about?" "Time. The color indicates when the skirmish happened. Take a look and tell me what you see," I requested. "I've got a theory, but I want a second opinion." His blue-grey eyes scanned the whole map and for just a moment, when all his concentration was focused on seeing everything there was to see, he stopped looking like just another gang-banger. He looked like a formidable foe and an able protector, everything a Jedi Knight should be. "Someone is starting these fights?" -----signature----- This post is brought to you by: This space for rent
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HaiGan Registered: Nov '00	Date Posted: 3/21/04 9:49am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	I enjoyed this the first time around, and I'm enjoying it this time too. -----signature----- "You Can Run But You Can't Hide" A tale of friendship, healing, and Corellian fast food http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=17272301
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Jemmiah Registered: Mar '00	Date Posted: 3/21/04 12:02pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Yup! Me too! -----signature----- The new improved Hell's Chance Cantina! Home for many assorted JA fanfic stories!: http://www.hellschancecantina.com/index.html Open to all: have a go at Star Wars Caption Contest no.7: http://www.hellschancecantina.com/Caption_comp.html
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Healer_Leona Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 3/22/04 7:25am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20 - Date Edited: 3/22/04 7:26am (1 edits total) Edited By: Healer_Leona
	Ahh, see. You never know when the Force will lend a hand. Crash opens Mason's file and just who should happen by but perhaps the one person who knows what all the little dots imply. Wonderful writing Lilith! I hope RL lets up on you soon. -----signature----- Feel so good, but I'm old 2000 years of chasing's taking it's toll
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Shaindl Registered: Jun '02	Date Posted: 3/22/04 10:40am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Ooh, now what do they do with the new information? Great job, Lilith! Shaindl -----signature----- Halfway Moment - Qui, Obi, Anakin AU - http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/20110461/?0 - UPDATED JULY 3!
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Lilith Demodae Registered: Oct '99	Date Posted: 3/22/04 11:45am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	My dad has gone on a cruise around the caribbean with my mom, [heavy sarcasm]poor man[/hs], so I'm subbing for him at work, since I haven't got anything better to do. Anyway, I'm going to bed and getting up much earlier than I'm used to and staying pretty dang busy. As long as I remember to post when I get home we'll be okay. -----signature----- This post is brought to you by: This space for rent
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Ty-gon Jinn Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 3/22/04 11:49am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Okay, you know what? You need a guy for a reader. Once I got past rolling my eyes at all the girls swooning over Qui-gon, I looked over the story again. Nice job, Lilith. I like Crash's perspective... most first-person fics here on the board are not that well-written; not so here. Very nice job, Lilith. -----signature----- I'm alive! And I'm back!! Who'd have thought it, eh? Assassination: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=14787030 The Cost of Honor: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=13443744
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Shaindl Registered: Jun '02	Date Posted: 3/22/04 11:56am Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Please, Ty. We girls had to deal with guys ogling Padme's "insta-croptop" at the end of AOTC. 'Course, I guess you guys won't have much to look at in Ep.III since she's going to be preggers. So you had to get it all in AOTC. Shaindl -----signature----- Halfway Moment - Qui, Obi, Anakin AU - http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/20110461/?0 - UPDATED JULY 3!
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Ty-gon Jinn Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 3/22/04 12:43pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Ah, I just enjoy remembering the little conversation I had with Dad watching AOTC in the theater. The "insta-croptop" had just appeared, and Dad leaned over to me... "She's too old for you." I raised an eyebrow at him, and he said "and too young for me." Forget the fact that she's a few years older than I am; within a week of seeing AOTC, my dad was exactly twice Natalie Portman's age. -----signature----- I'm alive! And I'm back!! Who'd have thought it, eh? Assassination: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=14787030 The Cost of Honor: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=13443744
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Healer_Leona Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Jul '00	Date Posted: 3/22/04 12:56pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Hey Ty-gon... I suggest you don't read replies to future posts... we ooglers will be getting even worse. But please stay to enjoy the story, it's really great. -----signature----- Feel so good, but I'm old 2000 years of chasing's taking it's toll
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Ty-gon Jinn Registered: Jan '00	Date Posted: 3/22/04 8:28pm Subject: RE: Crash Course- Repost (Action/Adventure Non-JA OC) Updated 3/20
	Now, is it just me, or did the Triplets remind anyboady else of Muppets? Now I just have to figure out WHY they would... -----signature----- I'm alive! And I'm back!! Who'd have thought it, eh? Assassination: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=14787030 The Cost of Honor: http://boards.theforce.net/message.asp?topic=13443744
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