Saga Intersections - Kessel Run Challenge, OCs through the films

Title: Intersections
Author: Thumper09
Characters: OCs
Timeframe: TPM through TROS
Notes: This is my thread for the 12-week Kessel Run Challenge for 2023.

My goal is to write each week's entry about a different background character (all OCs) witnessing or experiencing a scene from each of the 11 movies. I'm aiming for something along the lines of the FACPOV books but I'll be sticking with on-screen scenes.

Constructive criticism is welcome. Star Wars is owned by Disney, etc. etc.

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Index:
Week 1 Entry: TPM
Week 2 Entry: AOTC
Week 3 Entry: ROTS
Week 4 Entry: Solo
Week 5 Entry: Rogue One
Week 6 Entry: ANH
Week 7 Entry: ESB
Week 8 Entry: ROTJ
Week 9 Entry: TFA
Week 10 Entry: TLJ
Week 11/12 Entry: TROS

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Prompt #1: Write a story between 100 and 1,000 words that
* starts with this sentence: “He had not been courageous.”
* uses this picture as inspiration:

Spoiler

* Word limit = 100-1,000 words
Word count: 679

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He had not been courageous. Not like she was.

He realized now that he had had the opportunity to be but had squandered it. Not too long ago, Senator Naj Vilhedstrom had tried to get aid for the people on his homeworld who were dying of a famine brought about by an alien insect that had accidentally been introduced to the world’s primary crop and decimated it. Vilhedstrom had promised his people help, and he had tried, but the Republic bureaucracy on Coruscant moved so slowly it might as well have been going backwards.

He hadn’t known what else to do, so he’d kept trying to play the give-and-take game of politics and painstakingly plug away within the system for aid. Make an introduction. Make an acquaintance. Make an ally. Ask for support. Trade favors. Make another introduction.

And while Vilhedstrom had worked and wheedled and rubbed elbows within the accepted lines of political maneuvering, more and more of his people starved to death. He hadn’t tried to make noise or buck the system. Doing so would get him ostracized from the other Senators, and then he’d be completely powerless to do anything. He’d convinced himself of that risk and had declined to take it. It was better for everyone if he kept his head down and tried to make progress without making waves. Late help was better than no help at all.

Though as he watched her, he wondered now if he’d been wrong.

The huge Republic Senate chamber echoed with Queen Amidala’s strong words as she refused to back down in the face of the red tape the Senate was trying to throw at her and bind her with. Senator Vilhedstrom’s pod was far from the open central area where the speakers’ pods hovered, but he could see and hear everything clearly on his pod’s small viewscreen.

The Naboo queen was young but mature and composed, more so than many senators three times her age that Vilhedstrom knew. She wore an ornate red dress that was so intricate he hoped it was purely ceremonial or nothing would ever get done-- there was a need for some comfort during the day-to-day running of governmental affairs. Amidala wore stark white makeup over her entire face, and the contrast between the cool white and the warm red reminded Vilhedstrom of snow clinging to burgundy leaves during the early spring months back home. Though the Senate’s lighting was poor, some light caught the gold she wore over her ceremonial red dress, and it sparkled as her pod moved through the air, like golden sunshine reflecting through the ice crystals in the snow.

Cold and warmth. Ice and fire. She was both at once. Cool composure and a hot passion to fight for her peoples’ lives and not take no for an answer.

The Senate erupted into chaos as she unexpectedly called for a Vote of No Confidence in Supreme Chancellor Valorum. Vilhedstrom blinked in surprise. That just wasn’t done. Even for passionate speakers with a noble cause, that was political suicide. That wasn’t how the game was played. Doing the political equivalent of trying to kill an insect with a turbolaser cannon would only get her ejected from the Senate floor and--

Choruses of “Vote now!” from his fellow senators stymied Vilhedstrom more than the Queen’s words had. They were going along with this madness just like that? With no procedure? No speeches? No checks and balances? What was going on?

Why had everyone suddenly stopped playing the game he’d thought was mandatory?

Vilhedstrom sat back heavily in his pod’s seat. A young queen with courage had just rammed a log through the wall of bureaucracy and was getting applauded for it.

If he’d had even a fraction of that courage to make his own rules for the game, he wondered how many of his own people he could have saved.

He didn’t like that realization. Something told him a lot of sleepless nights were ahead for him.

...And this morning he’d thought today’s Senate session was going to be boring.

*****

 

I like your character Vilhedstrom and how he sees Amidala and her actions to call for a vote of no confidence that had Valorum going

 

Quite an apt interpretation of Padme. Very well thought out and written response to this challenge!

 

Men cower when they see the Trade Federation, Padme Amidala calls their bluff, holds people accountable (or tries to), and fights alongside her troops. I feel sorry for Vilhedstrom, playing by the rules got him nowhere.

 

That's a really clever theme, I like it!

You can see why he'd think this, yet the Senate is so large and trying to cover so much territory and so many concerns that even if every single person there was sincerely dedicated to trying to care for the people rather than their own authority, power, or wealth, it would be nearly impossible to truly accomplish much. Obviously the Empire wasn't a better option, but a galactic government is quite something to try to implement at all, let alone effectively, and I do like how the saga has shown us how various people within that government, like Padmé, Bail, and Mon Mothma were so frustrated in trying to make a real difference within those constraints.

Right? I love Padmé's wardrobe as much as the next person, but my goodness, how do you go about life in clothes like that

I like this unique spin on the prompt!

"So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause." But I'm getting ahead of myself It really would have been a shocking development for most people in that chamber, wouldn't it? Palpatine really was a master manipulator This was a great way to use this prompt for your theme

 

First of all let me say that this is a great thread concept for the Kessel Run Challenge. I loved the FACPOV books and this here has the added bonus of watching you insert your OCs in the saga films.

Second, I want to echo Gabri's comment above about your use of the picture prompt. I've been reading your stories for long enough to know that you often think outside the box, but I'm always pleasantly surprised every time I see more proof of it.

As for the story itself: what a fantastic look into the inner workings of politics in the waning years of the Republic! Vilhedstrom comes across as a likable person and senator, but indeed, not courageous. His being so conventional, which he thought of as a strength – what could politics be if not navigating conventionality? – turned out to be not his weakness, but his failure. I find that the last few lines encapsulate his personality perfectly:

In particular, I'm interpreting the "a lot of sleepless nights ahead" comment as not only a kick in the shebs that will force him to do something for his people, but also as a latent worry that his position as a senator might be in jeopardy given that he failed where Amidala succeeded. (And no, don't tell me if this wasn't your intention when writing this – I want to keep my head-fanon )

I'll be hanging around for the rest of the entries!

 

Thanks to everyone for reading!

Thanks! I can only imagine what something like that would do in a modern-day Earth scenario, and it was probably even more unexpected in the Republic Senate setting. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you! I'm happy that it rang true for Padme - writing canon characters is still out of my comfort zone. Thank you for reading and commenting!

I'm not sure the Senate was really prepared for Padme to arrive that day. She was definitely more effective than many of the other senators bogged down in the system were. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you! I'm not honestly sure what the best answer would be for a government in that setting-- there are challenges no matter which way you look at it. It's definitely a good attempt at a fair system, but the sheer size and number of affected beings make many things difficult. I can totally see how Padme, Bail, and Mon were frustrated in the system, and Andor showed a bit more of that too during the Imperial era.

Heh, I can see how the intricate wardrobe serves a function, especially with the handmaiden disguises, but the practical and comfort-loving side of me cannot compute.

Thanks! I'd been planning on a completely different background character/scene for TPM until the picture came up, which totally did not work for that first idea and altered things.
Yeah, can you imagine going to your senate job that morning expecting more droning-on speeches about taxes, and then that bombshell hits? Thanks very much for reading and commenting!

Thank you! Glad to see another fan of the FACPOV books, which, IMHO, are one of the best ideas ever to grace SW Lit. But I'm a bit biased as that kind of stuff is totally up my alley. Heh, that picture actually threw me for a loop until I realized I could try to run with its colors instead. Not much snow on-screen on Tatooine, Naboo, or Coruscant if I wanted to go in numerical order.

Thanks! It always sounded to me like the bureaucracy was pretty broken by the time TPM came along, which allowed Palpatine to do what he did, and that had to have been a rough time to be a politician. I wanted Vilhedstrom to be a good guy trying to do the right thing, it's just that he fell short in the way the system was set up. Now that he's seen Padme's example, maybe things will change for him. Better, worse, who knows. Thanks very much for reading and commenting! (Though fair warning that I did the 2nd-person narrator on Week 2. )

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Week Two will be posted momentarily. I really, really wanted to do the "Obi-Wan has lost a planet" approach with the lost prompt, but that particular planet probably can't be counted as a "character," so alas...

 

Prompt #2: Write a story between 400 and 800 words using second-person POV in which a character is lost.
* Word limit = 400-800 words
Word count: 797

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You’re cold. Refugee transports aren’t built for luxury, and Jendirian Valley is no exception. Retrofitted cargo haulers like this AA-9 Freighter-Liner were probably never designed for efficient interior heating. Why would cargo care if it’s cold?

That’s exactly what you feel like some days: cargo. Something shuffled around and moved. Just another one of hundreds, if not thousands, on this ship, let alone mired in the bureaucracy of the Refugee Relief Movement.

You think with all that bureaucracy that they’d be able to locate him, but you’re wrong.

Your kid brother. Well, he’s not a kid anymore, but you’ll never think of him as anything else. The last time you talked he was complaining about an upcoming university test he hadn’t studied for. You have no idea if he passed. You have no idea where he is or if he’s even okay.

You’ve asked. You’ve tried so hard to find him, even through the RRM, but they claim to know no one by that name. Leaving your homeworld made you feel nauseous-- what if he was still there and needed help and you were leaving him behind? But things had gotten desperate, and you were told in no uncertain terms that if you weren’t on that last speeder out of your hometown, you’d be on your own as everything continued falling apart around you.

You certainly never expected it. You had a normal life. You had bills and a routine. You had plans in the upcoming weeks and months. Hell, you were supposed to see your brother when he came home for semester break.

Then your homeworld seceded from the Republic and joined the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Whatever, you don’t care about politics.

Except this was different.

Almost literally overnight, your homeworld’s economy went berserk. Imports and exports your world relied on with Republic systems were instantly no longer available. Food. Materials. Medicine.

The CIS is setting up supply routes to your homeworld, but by that time it’ll be too late for your town. Anyone who didn’t leave was facing starvation or violence by desperate people who suddenly had nothing.

Even the communication system went haywire. The Republic worlds that supported its software and infrastructure stopped doing business with your world.

You heard rumors that the university closed down weeks ago, but then why hadn’t your brother come home? Where was he?

You didn’t want to leave the processing center on Coruscant until you had some information about him, but the bureaucracy didn’t give you a choice. So now you’re here, on a cold ship heading to somewhere on Naboo. You don’t know what will happen to you there. Will you have to move again? Will you be able to find work? Will you ever have another credit to your name? Most importantly, will you be able to find anything about him? If you can’t, you might never see him again. There’s no way he’ll know to look for you on some random planet like Naboo if you can’t tell him where you are.

It’s a long, boring trip, and you don’t know why you went to the closest eating area because you’re definitely not hungry. Not after your thoughts spiraled again, wondering if you’ll ever know what happened to him or if you’ll spend the rest of your life with the horrible uncertainty. But it’s a tiny bit warmer near the cookers, so you get a small bowl of soup and wander through the cots toward a seat by the wall. You pass an astromech that at first you thought was part of the ship’s crew, but as you sit and sip at your bland soup, you begin to suspect it belongs to a couple of passengers, a pair of humans. The woman is wearing much nicer clothing than the other refugees, so you’re not sure what her story is. You’re frankly jealous that someone like her who’s fallen on hard times like you was able to keep some nice clothes and haul around an astromech. It’s a lot more than what you have stuffed in your bag. The RRM made it very clear to you that they weren’t a moving service.

You sigh wistfully as you turn back to your soup. Those two didn’t even realize the fortune they had sitting right under their noses. Selling that astromech would give them a halfway decent start in their new lives. Though who knows, maybe they’re planning on doing exactly that when they get to Naboo.

You follow that train of thought as you despondently swirl the spoon around in your soup. If that astromech, that fortune, was yours... you imagine handing the credits to a private investigator who promises to find him.

You have to know how he did on that test, after all.

*****

 

Well done, and now I'm curious to find out how the brother did on that test.

 

How did he do on the test? High school is hard enough already!

 

War does that to beings. Loosing your brother and becoming a refugee and meeting that couple. A great response to the challenge

 

Well, this is just heartbreaking

One of the great things about this theme is that when you're watching the movies and following the main characters, it can be easy to forget how all these momentous events must be affecting ordinary people. This fits in perfectly.

Yeah, war and huge political shifts like that can upend your whole life in the blink of an eye

This is really vivid, and actually kind of makes me feel sick, to think of not knowing where your closest family members are during a time like this

And that almost mundane final line really underscores the tragedy of all of this. Beautifully done, but so sad

 

Oh wow. I've been working with refugees for years, and this story was a little too realistic to be comfortable. You got it all right: how the world comes upside-down on people, how they have to flee with very little, if even that, how they lose track of loved ones and have to jump through bureaucratic hurdles to find them again (and that takes time, it takes a long, long time, often years), and so on and so forth.

One tiny element that is extremely real is that the universe goes to shavit when people are in the middle of small, mundane concerns, like how the little brother did on that test. Another one is people feeling like cargo.

And of course, in the middle of all this, we have Padmé with her fancy travel gown and headdress pretending to be a refugee. This is something that makes me cringe every time I watch AotC, and I want to scream at the screen, "Lady, who do you think you're fooling?" It's reassuring to know that I'm not alone!

 

Ah, finally catching up, and your stories are fantastic! I love the name "Intersections" and the concept for the whole run.

Week #1 Fic:
I enjoyed this one very much; Vilhedstrom is a great OC, and you do such a great job of illustrating democracy when it works and when it doesn't.

Poor Vilhedstrom is like so many people who are elected and have the best of intentions, but can't get anything done because they're not politicking effectively. I really get the sense that he's being used for others' goals without getting anything in return, and that he doesn't realize that he's not just hitting walls, he's being eaten alive.

This would be a great strategy if were a skilled enough politician to work the system to his advantage, but he just isn't, not by a long shot. He looks to me like a sincere and hardworking advocate for his people who unfortunately lacks the talent and skill set to be effective in this role.

TFW a teenager has better political instincts than you. Ouch.

Here Vilhedstrom is remarking that it would be hard to get anything done in that getup, but that getup is how she's getting things done right now! She's representing her nation and its royal history and culture; providing some great pictures for the journalists (holophotojournalists?) to get attention and thereby public sympathy galaxy-wide; and commanding an authoritative presence by looking like an ageless queen and not like a teenager. I think it's great that his first thought isn't that this outfit is to make a spectacle on this particular day, but that it must be really uncomfortable to wear around the office or something.

This is why I like this character so much. He's watching a master at work and taking note for his own self-improvement, but he's also got a big blind spot that is totally believable and yet pretty funny. And I love how you're using that gorgeous imagery (excellent use of the prompt!) to illustrate how Amidala's composure and costume dazzles and inspires him and sparks his imagination, the way that the whole galaxy would be as they watch this on the news.

Another reason why I like this character: he thinks Amidala doesn't know how things work when in fact she just doesn't care how they work. He's so mystified by this that it seems he never gave bucking the system any serious thought, not even to rule it out. It says so much about his personality without having to state it.

It also shows that he doesn't get that political suicide is a fine option if you're just there to represent your people and someone else will take your place. It suggests that he might have started thinking about what he's doing as his own career instead of being entirely about representing his people.

I like this a lot.

I like that he's humble enough for constructive self-criticism and courageous enough to face it; a lot of people aren't.




Week #2:
Another great story, this time about the consequences of bad democratic decisions.

Wonderful job with second person POV; it reads very naturally. And the opening paragraph is a wonderful introduction to this fic, showing how this character feels, and how society makes this an ongoing problem by dehumanizing and forgetting people like them.

I like how you show this subtle dehumanization succinctly: the realization that you were part of a system that served and protected you, and now you aren't. Your problem is not enough of a priority for collective society to solve, because your nation as you know it is gone, and you're not part of any other nation's club.

It's hard to fathom all the people who have had to make this kind of heart-breaking decision on the spot.

It's such an unfortunately common mindset, that somehow politics don't matter if you're not paying attention to them. Perhaps if there were more civic engagement from people like this, their government couldn't be swayed by bad actors or plain foolishness to make such a disastrous decision.

I like how you're showing that, even if there were no war, separating from the Republic is a foreseeable disaster. It makes me curious about what exactly happened on this planet to bring them to this point.

This might be a galaxy with hyperspace travel and space wizards, but none of that's going to help you if you have nothing and everyone decides that you're not their responsibility.

What I like about this is that the protagonist doesn't know for sure whose astromech this is, and isn't thinking about the fact that, although this woman is wearing nice clothes, she only has one or two pairs of clothes just like the rest of them, and the money she used to pay for them is gone; she is literally in the same boat(ship) as them.

Such an effective way to show how a person's judgement becomes impaired by fatigue and desperation, and a microcosm of what has happened to their planet when their economy collapsed.

A very thoughtful, heartbreaking story. I look forward to reading more of your stuff!

 

Thanks to everyone for following along!

Thanks! I'm actually not sure how he did on the test either. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Hopefully he passed. Dealing with tests in school is no fun. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you! This person definitely never expected to be in that situation. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you! Intellectually I know the PT is showing the downfall of the Republic, but amid all the swashbuckling lightsaber antics I never really realized how bad of a time it could be for many regular civilians until now. Plus my brain's been going to somber places with these prompts for some reason.

I agree, that situation of not-knowing is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. I can only imagine what a helpless-feeling place that would be. Thank you for reading and commenting!

Thank you, and thank you for helping people who are in bad real-world situations. I'm glad to hear the fiction sounded realistic but also wish it would stay fiction and not non-fiction.

Something that seems to pop up in movies and books, and I'm definitely guilty of doing this myself, is looking at the characters and their reaction to big events from the POV of an outsider that knows "this is a story, therefore something Big is going to happen in The Story, and you're a Character who's about to have to deal with the Big thing." So the characters sometimes react as if they know it's coming, and plans for next Tuesday were conveniently not made so they'd be free to deal with it. But that's not how I hurtle through my life, and when something Big happens to me, a lot of mundane stuff for next Tuesday gets thrown off-kilter. This seemed like an appropriate situation to explore how a character might react when their mundane world suddenly gets overwhelmed by something Big, and I needed to remind myself to be more cognizant of this for all my characters too.

And heh, I agree, Padme's clothing in that scene never made sense to me, since I thought they were trying to blend in and that outfit... doesn't. It's not like she's inherently opposed to dressing in simpler clothes, so I just never understood it. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far.

Thank you! I think Vilhedstrom is truly trying to do what he thinks is the right thing. With as broken and bogged-down as the Republic bureaucracy seems to be in its waning years, he's definitely fighting an uphill battle, if not a losing one. And since he's not from a more powerful system like Corellia or the like, he likely doesn't have much clout and loses more than he gains with the other senators.

I agree, Amidala's ornate outfit is definitely a plus for her authoritative presence and the news holos. She knows how to make a statement, whether it's an oral one or visual one.

Yup, it's interesting that Palpatine wanted Amidala as a Senate "outsider" to knock down the house of cards, when he as a senator could have proposed the Vote of No Confidence himself (I think... I fully admit that I'm not politically-savvy and might very well be wrong here). And yeah, I don't think Amidala cared one whit about how she was "supposed" to act when her people were in trouble.

Thank you! In AOTC even the Jedi don't seem too concerned about the refugees. They're treated more as a means to an end. Maybe that's just storytelling brevity for a limited-run-time movie, but in that case there might have been a better narrative option as well.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about the different ways a planetary government could have come to a decision like that. Was something going on that truly made it an enticing decision to leave the Republic in favor of the CIS? Was it a Space Brexit? Something else?

Yeah, the protagonist has been through a lot by the time we reach this point on the transport, and it's definitely taking its toll both physically and psychologically. Hopefully things will turn around for them on Naboo. Thank you very much for reading and for the extensive comments!

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Week Three will be up momentarily. This was actually a hard one for me to figure out how to do with the prompt requirements and my own self-imposed restrictions of the approach I'm going for-- most of the characters interacting on-screen with ECs in ROTS were other ECs, and I couldn't figure out how to fit an OC in there and stick with my own theme. But for better or for worse, here's what I came up with. And when I started the challenge I really wasn't trying to make all my entries so bleak, sorry about that. Maybe the upcoming Galactic Civil War will provide some lighthearted moments for those no-name background characters.

 

Prompt #3: Write a story between 500 and 1,000 words in which you make up a new OC (original character). Your OC must interact with at least one EC (established character), and your story must include the following line of dialogue: “Something was bound to go right sometime today.”
* Word limit = 500-1,000 words
Word count: 994

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It was raining ships. Light streaked across the sky as pieces of warships and starfighters burned up in Coruscant’s atmosphere. Padawan Jerel Mettin suspected he’d never be able to look at a shooting star the same way again.

The moment the gangly sixteen-year-old stepped onto the huge skyscraper’s landing platform, the entire building shuddered. Jerel froze and held his breath. The sound came several heartbeats later: a muffled thud indicating another piece of falling ship had been too large to burn up and had hit somewhere below. But the relative quiet meant it had hit farther away, and the building he was standing on wasn’t about to collapse. Instinctively he hoped that the building it hit had been evacuated prior, but his frazzled mind and frayed nerves had experienced too much already that day to put any faith in that hope. Deep down he knew there was more death, more pain that he needed to attend to.

Jerel resumed his jog toward the Jedi shuttle on the landing pad. Once he restocked his medical supplies, he could head back into the building to assist the injured and panicking civilians. He hoped his master was having better luck than he was; the number of beings needing help as a result of the space battle above was just too overwhelming, and he felt woefully inadequate.

He didn’t expect the shuttle’s pilot to meet him at the boarding ramp. “Good, you’re back,” the pilot said. “Get in, we’re taking off.” She hurried to the cockpit.

“Wait, what are you talking about?” Jerel asked as he stepped onboard. “I need to get more supplies and head back out.”

“New orders,” the pilot called. “They need a shuttle and the closest Healer. That’s us.” She gunned the engines and abruptly lifted off, causing Jerel to stagger, off-balance.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Jerel asked, flustered.

“Master Windu. Did you feel that hit a little bit ago? He said Kenobi and Skywalker just rescued the Chancellor. They had a rough landing. We’re part of the emergency support going in to help.”

“What? That’s--” Jerel sat down hard in the nearest seat. “That’s way beyond me. Let me comm Master Nivola. Maybe she’s nearby.” He reached for the comm in his belt pouch, even though the non-military comms had been scrambled and useless all day.

The pilot shook her head. “Later. We’re closest, so we’re going.”

Gulping, Jerel let his empty hand drop and wheezed out a strangled breath. This was happening whether he liked it or not. Just like the rest of the day. He made a mental note to never again let Master Nivola talk him into “splitting up to cover more ground.” Tending to the Chancellor was something for a Master Healer to do, not her lowly padawan.

The shuttle twisted through the tattered Coruscanti skyscape. Waves of other beings’ pain and fear crashed against Jerel through the Force as they flew past buildings that were twisted and mangled.

The flight only lasted a couple of minutes, but it was the first time all day Jerel had been able to stop moving for a moment, and he hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until then. He wanted to curl up and sleep right then and there as his adrenaline bled out, but he forced himself up and grabbed the supplies he needed.

The shuttle landed next to a piece of a capital ship on a long landing skid. Wreckage was strewn everywhere in its wake, and fire suppression ships doused the hull with foam. Master Kenobi, Jedi Skywalker, and Chancellor Palpatine were already evacuated from the ship, and they walked toward the shuttle. Jerel fidgeted nervously. What was the protocol in this situation?

The trio boarded and sat, and Master Kenobi offered Jerel a weary smile. Jerel steeled himself and approached. He felt the shuttle’s engines powering up and vowed to keep his balance on take-off. Thankfully, he succeeded.

“Ch-- Chancellor,” Jerel stammered as they flew. “I’m a Healer. Well, I’m learning to-- Are you injured?”

Chancellor Palpatine gave a tired smile of his own. “No, no, I’m quite all right, thanks to these two,” he said.

“Are-- Is there anything you’d like me to do to help? I can perform a quick medical scan.”

“Oh, no need, but thank you, young Healer. I appreciate your concern.”

“Well... yes, Chancellor,” Jerel relented. It felt wrong to not help when he’d been brought here to do just that, but who was he to go against the Chancellor’s wishes? He turned to Kenobi. “Master Kenobi? I can tend to your head injury.”

Kenobi held up a forestalling hand, and his voice was gentle. “Thank you, Padawan, but I’m fine. Those medical supplies will be best used elsewhere.”

“Yes, Master.”

Jerel glanced at the third person, but Skywalker didn’t appear hurt or even tired. He knew he should have asked anyway, but he awkwardly turned away and moved to the back of the shuttle. Skywalker always intimidated him, and they didn’t run in the same circles at the Temple. Jerel left those three alone.

Soon the shuttle landed on a platform at the Senate building beside a gaggle of politicians and Jedi, including Master Windu. The Chancellor disembarked, and Skywalker followed, though Kenobi stayed onboard. Those two had a brief conversation about heroics and holonews and politicians before Skywalker joined the crowd. Kenobi retook his seat at the front of the shuttle and closed his eyes. From his seat at the aft, once again Jerel felt the engine power increasing before the ship launched.

Through his window, Jerel watched the group on the platform as they receded. In all the excitement, it was only now sinking in that the Chancellor was truly safe. No one had expected such a good outcome. The Republic’s leader, their rock, their steady hand, was back with them, miraculously alive and well.

Jerel sighed in relief and whispered to himself, “Thank the Force. Something was bound to go right sometime today.”

*****

 

I like Jerel and his thoughts about Skywalker and the rest. And I hope he will survive order 66

 

Oh, I love this. I think this was a perfect place to slide an OC into this movie; of course there'd be people running around all over the place during this scene.

Haha YES this is how I would react too, I feel for you, Jerel

Again, I really like the way this theme showcases how people other than the main characters experienced all these momentous events. A world as overstuffed as Coruscant has civilians in harm's way on pretty much every square foot of ground.

I may never have been in a battle, but this is still a highly relatable moment

"Not to worry, we are still flying half a ship." Honestly one of my favorite lines in SW

Their appearances may be brief, but you capture their voices perfectly

I can completely see some people feeling this way about Anakin. I can also easily imagine that there were many who found him personable and outgoing, but - yeah, I can see this too, especially for someone younger and who didn't really have any mutual friends with him.

And up until this moment, I'd forgotten the dialogue requirement. Which seems fitting, since I kept forgetting it while coming up with ideas for my own response But it fits perfectly here. I think this is a fantastic entry to meet the prompt requirement while staying with your theme

 

A happy fandom relaxation day, so I'm reading!

Very good character study of someone hide-bound whose world gets shaken when all he's learned goes *snap!* out the window.

I'm glad you included this - I believe Padmé worked in it as a youth, or maybe still did in AOTC. The sick sense of instability pervades this whole piece, well done.

That's what everyone would think - and some would continue to think, even after the establishment of the Empire.

 

Like Gabri said above, this was a great scene to insert an OC because there would obviously be so much going on throughout Coruscant, but I particularly loved the fact that your OC is this insecure padawan. He's there feeling inadequate while caring for civilians, and suddenly he gets thrust into providing first aid to the Supreme Chancellor and two of the most prominent Jedi, gasp! And as his sense of exhaustion grows, so grows his sense of inadequacy, so that by the end of the story, he doesn't even feel up to offering assistance to Anakin – who you'd expect to be the least intimidating of the lot, but no, Jerel got something right here – and at the same time he finds consolation in the idea that "the Republic’s leader, their rock, their steady hand" is safe. Oh the irony, oh the irony!

 

Knight Skywalker made the young padawan nervous? With a Sith Lord sitting next to him?

Glad to see Palpatine can mask his true self from anyone.

 

Thank you! Jerel was fun to get to know a bit. Poor kid had a rough day. Fingers crossed for him that he made it through Order 66. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thanks! The Battle of Coruscant seemed to be the best place I could find. My other option was Order 66, but Coruscant provided more choices.

Poor Jerel got thrown into the deep end. Basically a high-schooler is suddenly responsible for the galactic leader's health after a crisis. No pressure there.

Thanks! I imagine there was quite a bit of damage on the surface of Coruscant from that battle, and with such a high population density, even a small area affected would be catastrophic. It's too bad the movie didn't address this, but I guess it had enough other things to cover.

As long as it's the correct half, it's all good, LOL.

Thank you! That's the first time I've written any of those three characters. Brief was definitely the name of the game, LOL.

Very true, Anakin at that point seems like he'd be something like the Jedi poster child, household name, the go-to guy, and he definitely has charisma and is personable. For someone who doesn't know him well personally, that reputation alone might be a bit scary to interact with.

I feel ya, the dialogue requirement added an extra bit of challenge to this prompt, a "something bad to something good" aspect. Thanks very much for reading and commenting!

Thanks! I don't think most Earthly political systems are bogged down in bureaucracy quite as much as the TPM-era Republic, and I think it would even cause quite a tizzy in our real world, so the Republic would be even more shaken up.

Thanks! Yes, I think I saw on the Wook that Padme volunteered with the Refugee Relief Movement when she was younger. "Instability" is a good word for what I imagine many of the refugees there must have been feeling.

And yup, I agree-- Palpatine's loyal followers were what allowed him to create the Empire. Thanks for reading and commenting!

Thanks! I almost made the OC a regular Jedi healer, but insecure padawans thrust into uncomfortable situations are much more enjoyable to write about. Jerel had a rough day, and he's definitely feeling the exhaustion. Since he'll probably have gone back to treating civilians after finishing with Palpatine et. al, he'll be even more tired by the end of the day, though at least he'll have an interesting story to tell his master. If Jerel survives Order 66, he'll be revising his opinion of the Republic's leader, I suspect. Thanks very much for reading and commenting!

LOL, you mean that kindly old politician might have some skeletons in the closet we don't know about? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Though who knows, Jerel might have been just as intimidated by anyone else he didn't know with a high profile. Thanks for reading and commenting!

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Week Four will be posted shortly. Since I'm going chronologically IU, Solo is the next one up. And while I really wanted to do something with the actual Kessel Run for the Kessel Run Challenge, there's a distinct lack of non-participating background characters for it that I could have used. So here's the next best thing I could do...

 

Prompt #4: Write a story between 100 and 1,000 words that is predominantly action. You can have as many characters interacting as you want, and you can include introspection as long as it doesn't outweigh the action.
* Word limit = 100-1,000 words
Word count: 621

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Deep within the spice mines of Kessel, Riis Par’atl walked lethargically in line with the other bound prisoners in his group as they followed their guard to their next assigned mining location. Riis let his mind zone out as he always did while he put one foot in front of the other. Time was meaningless here and had been for-- he didn’t know how long. He doubted it would matter much longer anyway. No one lasted long on this wretched, hopeless world.

Without warning, Riis’s wrist and ankle cuffs disengaged and fell to the ground. The clattering sounds all around told him that the same had just happened for the rest of the prisoners in his line. The Twi’lek stared dumbfounded at his newly freed hands.

For only a second.

Several prisoners yelled, and suddenly all of them were moving, Riis included. Desperation overtook them as they grabbed onto this unexpected chance, this miracle, consequences be damned.

Three prisoners tackled the Pyke Syndicate guard and wrestled the shock staff away from him before starting to beat him. Riis skirted around them and pushed past his lack of energy and aching hunger as he ran down the tunnel toward the surface. The other tunnels erupted with shouts from prisoners and guards alike, and a few seconds later the energy crackle of shock staffs and sounds of blaster bolts were echoing crazily from the tunnel walls.

A guard stepped out from a tunnel intersection, and Riis punched him as hard as he could. The guard went down, groggy. Riis kept running.

As Riis twisted through the tunnels he was intimately familiar with, he dodged masses of other running beings, mostly prisoners but some guards as well. One time as he rounded a blind corner he got hit by another prisoner who thought Riis’s footsteps were those of a guard, but the two quickly disengaged, and Riis continued his break toward freedom.

At last he emerged onto the surface into the middle of a firefight. He tried to slow down, but the rush of prisoners behind him pushed him forward into the ships’ landing area. A freighter sat there, and Riis started making his way toward it: a ship meant salvation. However, he quickly stopped when several Humans around it started shooting into the crowd and some Wookiees took an interest in the ship as well. Riis couldn’t fight his way past those groups.

More prisoners spilled out of the tunnels and into the chaos of the landing area. The pandemonium in the rocky bowl area was incredible, and Riis winced. He wasn’t sure when he’d last heard something so loud. He ducked behind a storage crate for cover from the blaster bolts ionizing the air all around.

One of the prisoners nearby yelled, “This way!” and waved the other prisoners with him. Riis wondered if there were ships over there or a defensible place the prisoners were securing. For lack of any better options, Riis followed the man.

He was glad he had when a few moments later, the area where he’d just been was consumed in the massive, deafening explosions of several thermal detonators. The shockwaves threw Riis forward a couple stumbling steps, and the incredible heat singed his sensitive lekku from behind. His ears rang as the cacophony around him abruptly became muffled. He got his feet under him and forced himself forward as fast as he could after the other fleeing prisoners.

Riis didn’t know what was happening, what had caused the prisoner rebellion, what the next hour would bring, or even if he would survive this. All he knew was that he was finally free, and he was going to do whatever it took to keep it that way.

*****

 

You go, baby! Excellent action as a dazed prisoner gravitates towards a better life. I especially liked the run in with the other prisoner, who was also scrambling to safety.