Before - Legends New post 8/8--WAYWARD BEINGS--Qui-Gon's first apprentice

Your drunk t-shirt is a purple radio?

 

Feh. That said 'Have a nice day.' I guess it lost something in the babelfish translation from English to French to Arabic to Chinese to Huttese to Basic to Ewok to German to Spanish... or something.

Sorry. There was sleep deprivation involved in that post.

 

Lol, I could tell.

 

Sorry I missed the first post! (I was visiting my grandma this week). I liked the time line thing. It was very interesting idea.

Anyway as always wonderful post!

 

Thanx, Traxxas!

 

Will post, hopefully, tonight. If not, tomorrow morning.

 

Yay!!!

 

Okay, definitely not tonight. Sorry

 

WILL POST THIS AFTERNOON/EVENING.

 

YOU MEAN PERSON!!!! Lol.

 

It's still evening.

 

Very sorry. I'm way too picky about this post and will not post tonight.

 

Feeling ill, will post tonight if health permits.

 

It was slow-going at first, with a friend of Ler's painstakingly presenting evidence and the defense trying to refute it or declare it inadmissable. Most of the evidence was accepted, but their opponent seemed dead-set on arguing this into a seven-year battle.

And until they had made it past the preliminaries, they were unwilling to let Waqkeme Noori off of Melkork.

So, the presiding judge decided to demand corroborative witnesses. The defense called in Nenka Durble and Mamera Ret, Ler's friend, decided to get her own defense through the voice of Isara.

Which meant that Keme would be on Coruscant within five days.

Three days before her scheduled, arrival, however, Qui-Gon was called to the Security desk near midnight with solemn news.

"The case has been dismissed," Mamera pronounced.

It took every ounce of Jedi training he had not to kick something, but it didn't stop him from yelling.

"What do you mean?" he bellowed. "They can't dismiss a six-year-old girl with that much evidence."

"Lower your voice," she admonished sharply. "It's a disappointment, but not a disaster."

"She's not here with us," Qui-Gon countered. "That is every bit a disaster as I make it out to be."

Mamera's hand raised to her head, rubbing absently at her temples. "There's an appeal, of course, and I intend to pursue it, but we have to maintain the state of things and we need more evidence."

"We have evidence," he hissed. "We've got page after page of holos of her bruises, the whip marks, her malnutrition, her medical records..."

"Circumstantial evidence," she corrected. "The judge has deemed that, while the conditions are not ideal, she is out of danger for the time being."

"She is not out of danger unless she's in a different sector than that Burble woman," he snorted. "I doubt they'll let her out of strangling range at this point."

She was too much like her friend--stubborn and patient--so she simply watched him with the diligence of a Jedi Master until he calmed himself.

"What's the next step?" he finlly sighed.

Her mouth stretched slightly into a patient smile. "There's an inspection team heading to Melkork tomorrow night. Undoubtedly, the opposition will have everything spic and span by the time they get there, so our contacts are under strict orders to keep things well-documented. Surveillance tapes, holos, medical records, everything will be backed up so they can't cover their tracks. Hopefully, until the appeal happens, that will be enough to get Keme some protection."

"And how fast will the appeal be processed?"

"I'll file for an appeals hearing tomorrow," she assured him, "but it could take anywhere from five days to months to put it through."

Qui-Gon's eyes narrowed. "That's not what I want to hear, Mamera," he reminded her.

"But it's the best I can do for now," she insisted. "Once the appeal moves through, we'll be able to push for the trial quickly and get this sorted out."

"I'm sorry," he said genuinely.

"You're as frustrated as any of us," she dismissed the apology. "And there's more bad news. Isara has been dismissed from the Melkork administration. Unless Durble fouls up the inspection, Keme has been returned to her residence."

 

Oh no! That is horrible news! Gonna give her back to them??? Ack... Poor Qui! Poor Keme! She doesn't realize how hard that they are working to get her free!

Great post! Hope you feel better!

 

I've been very dizzy, stuffed up, sneezing, nauseous all day and eating and cold meds don't seem to work. I think I'm having sinus problems again, especially since I've been having those kinds of headaches again.

I was already to do a great big court sequence, had it figured out, then went back to check myself in ophelia's notes and it said "He pursued the case in the courts for ______ before they granted the Jedi Order custody..." So, OOPS!

 

Hmmm, rest...not possible. I've got a chatty husband who doesn't listen when he's under stress and finals coming up. So, yeah, no rest.

Liquids, lots of them I've got because it's too darn hot here!

 

Upping. Not feeling much better and I have a bad wrist right now.

 

Okay, no replies, but it'll be UPdated someday.

 

I'll reply. Sorry I've been in out of town again.

Bad courts!!!! Bad people!!!!!! I hope they get her out soon.

I'm so sorry you're feeling bad!

 

Thanks. I'm trying to finish a post for the story with the insane group of readers--under my skin. They're chasing each other with knives and mobbing readers for birthday cake and going...nuts.

 

Err . . . I feel like an utter loser for not posting on this thread before, but I didn't know it was here. I mean, I knew that it was *going* to be, I'd talked to Ish about that some time ago, but I didn't know that it, you know, was. Here, that is. Or the last version, either, actually. It was the nomination on the Angst awards that tipped me off . . . I was reading down the list and thought, "Huh, someone else has a character named "Keme" too . . . D'oh!"

Loong backlog of responses:

DarthIshtar wrote:
Ophelia sent me a huge tome of new information that she never really discussed before and I spent a few hours hashing out what goes where and who ends up how with her and felt that a rewrite was a better idea than screwing up continuity because she's so great.

Awwww! You're making me hide my face from my computer in embarrassment. Actually, Ish saw something in an OC from a fic I wrote a long time ago, and which I wouldn't call my best work. I'm enormously flattered that she would want to use Kemé at all, much less bother with the random background information that was languishing on my hard drive. (FWIW, I put an "é" at the end of Waqkemé's name for pronunciation reasons, Ish doesn't. Either way is fine. Also, I would have sent said tome of info earlier if I had known it was wanted or needed. Sorry!)

Suzuki_Akira wrote:
Good viggie. But I thought Xanatos was Qui-Gon's first apprentice. Or is this AU

Well . . . at least for me, I don't think the EU is "U," so non-EU can't be AU. I hadn't imagined a Xanatos between Kemé and Obi-Wan. I already told Ish that it's fine with me if she takes the story in different directions, though. On a board with 30,000 different versions of canon characters' backgrounds, there's room for 2 different versions of an OC's background.

Actual story-related comments:

I mentioned earlier that I liked the letter at the beginning as an opener--it presents the ugliness of the situation while keeping a certain understated, dry distance that gives the emotional impact a keener edge, I think. I was also struck by the phrase in the letter and the title: "wayward beings." I actually used that exact phrase in my current fanfic novel, in a scene when Obi-Wan is thinking (reather crabbily, actually) of Qui-Gon's habit of trying to turn the Jedi Order into a "home for wayward beings." Of course, in my stories, Obi-Wan was a "found child" too, so it's not very nice of him to complain. Unfortunately, the scene in question got re-written, though, and I had to drop the line.

When younger, she had filled the hours in the pitch-black tunnels by singing to herself
or weaving tales. She would let her mind take her far away from this place to a world filled with noble-spirited princesses and kind Knights, to a realm where love and justice conquered all in even the darkest situation.

Nice job foreshadowing Qui-Gon's arrival and her special relationship to him: "noble-spirited princesses and kind Knights," as well as establishing that her personality is a fertile ground for the seeds of Jedi ideals, which is remarkable given her situation. I can also imagine her doing this--even as an adult woman (in my sick and twisted little universe, anyway), she has a tendency to slip into her own idealized world.

He expected things to go wrong.

Nice introduction to poor, patient, long-suffering Qui-Gon. It also sets an interesting emotional tone for him--he's often represented as a kind of deranged optimist, but there is something very grave and almost sad about him. All Jedi have their emotional weaknesses here and there, and I've wondered whether Qui-Gon wasn't a touch depressive at times. Maybe it's just that Liam Neeson's eyes turn down at the corners, which makes him look sad.

Though danger was no unfamiliar thing, he was even more accustomed to severe chastisement from Master Dooku if he let his personal foibles get in the way of success. He had schooled himself, therefore, in the ways of medi

 

That is the longest post I have ever seen that wasn't a story! How long did that take?