Lucky Break, Hyperspace | 19 BBY
The ship hummed its mechanical lullaby and I sat in the passenger hold staring at my hands.
They looked the same as they had this morning. Same calluses from years of lightsaber drills. Same scar across my left knuckle where a training accident had split the skin when I was twelve. Same fingers that had ignited a blade and fought an Inquisitor in a flooded sub-level while water turned to steam around us.
But they felt different. Heavier. Like they belonged to someone else.
The system had been silent since the level-up notification. I could feel it there, waiting in the peripheral spaces of my consciousness, but it wasn't pushing. Wasn't demanding attention. Just existing alongside me like a passenger I hadn't invited but couldn't evict.
I pulled up the notification again, studied the options I'd been too exhausted to process immediately.
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CHARACTER STATUS
Name: Zett Jukassa
Level: 14
Class: Jedi Padawan
Title: Survivor of the Purge, Shadow Operative
Available Attribute Points: 3
Available Perk Points: 1
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Current Attributes:
STR: 18 | VIT: 22 | AGI: 24
INT: 16 | WIS: 16 | CHA: 13
LUK: 9
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Three points to distribute however I wanted. The system didn't offer guidance, didn't suggest optimal builds or efficient paths. Just presented the choice and waited for me to decide who I wanted to become.
Strength would make me hit harder. Vitality would let me take more punishment. Agility would make me faster, harder to pin down. Intelligence and Wisdom affected Force abilities, though I still wasn't entirely clear on the distinction between them. Charisma influenced social interactions. And Luck was the wild card, affecting everything from critical strikes to random chance encounters.
Master Drallig used to say that a Jedi's greatest weapon was adaptability. That rigid specialization created weaknesses an opponent could exploit. He'd trained me across multiple forms for exactly that reason, believing that versatility trumped mastery in a single discipline.
I allocated one point to Wisdom. My Force abilities had kept me alive against the Inquisitor, and strengthening that connection felt right. One to Agility, because speed had been the difference between escape and capture multiple times already. The last point I held in reserve, unwilling to commit without understanding what I might need next.
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Attributes Updated:
WIS: 16 → 17
AGI: 24 → 25
Unallocated Points: 1
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The changes weren't dramatic. Not like suddenly growing stronger or faster in ways the naked eye could see. But I felt something shift, a subtle recalibration in how the Force moved through me. The currents that had felt like swimming through mud became fractionally clearer, easier to navigate.
The Perk Point was more complicated. The system offered a list of options, each one representing a fundamental shift in capability.
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AVAILABLE PERKS
Quick Learner:Skill gain increased by 15%
Force Adept:Force Point regeneration increased by 20%
Survivor's Instinct:Chance to avoid fatal damage once per day
Battle Meditation:Recover stamina 30% faster during combat
Silver Tongue:Persuasion and Deception checks gain +2 bonus
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Each option pulled me in a different direction. Quick Learner meant faster growth across everything, but growth without focus. Force Adept would make me more dangerous with the abilities I already had. Survivor's Instinct was pure insurance, a safety net for when things went catastrophically wrong. Battle Meditation would let me fight longer without exhausting myself. Silver Tongue would make me better at the kind of social maneuvering that life in the underworld required.
I thought about the Inquisitor. About how close I'd come to dying in that chamber. About the fact that there were more of them out there, hunting Jedi with the Empire's full resources behind them.
I selected Survivor's Instinct.
The system registered the choice without comment. No congratulations, no judgment. Just acknowledgment that I'd chosen survival over optimization, insurance over efficiency.
Maybe that said something about who I was becoming.
The problem was, I wasn't entirely sure anymore what that meant. Six days ago I'd been Padawan Zett Jukassa, student of Cin Drallig, training to become a Jedi Knight. The path had been clear then. Train harder. Master the forms. Eventually take the trials and earn knighthood. Serve the Order and the Republic with honor.
Now the Order was ashes. The Republic had become an Empire. And I was sitting in a smuggler's ship wearing civilian clothes and carrying forged credentials, having just completed a criminal contract that involved breaking into a warehouse and extracting a fugitive.
Master Drallig would have understood the necessity. He'd always been pragmatic beneath the traditional exterior, willing to bend rules when the situation demanded it. But there was a difference between bending and breaking, between tactical flexibility and fundamental transformation.
I was changing. Could feel it happening in real-time, like watching a familiar landscape slowly erode under persistent weather. Each choice I made, each contract I accepted, each time I prioritized survival over principle, I moved further from the Padawan who'd fled the Temple.
The question was whether that movement constituted growth or corruption.
Footsteps approached from the cockpit. The Duros pilot emerged, his expression unreadable in the way non-humans' often were to me. "We'll be dropping out of hyperspace in twenty minutes. Need to know where you want me to take you after I offload your friend."
The question pulled me back to immediate concerns. I'd been so focused on the philosophical weight of my choices that I'd neglected the practical consideration of what came next.
"Where are you taking her?" I asked.
"Ryloth. Got contacts there who can move her further into free space." The Duros checked something on a datapad. "After that, I'm headed back to Nar Shaddaa unless you've got a better offer."
Ryloth. The name triggered memory. During the Clone Wars I'd served there briefly, fighting Separatist occupation alongside local resistance fighters. Cham Syndulla had been the rebellion leader then, a Twi'lek freedom fighter who'd refused to let his world fall without bleeding the enemy for every meter of ground.
Bail Organa had mentioned Syndulla during our conversations on Alderaan. Suggested he might be someone worth knowing, someone who was already building networks to resist Imperial occupation.
The Force whispered possibilities. Not visions, exactly. More like intuitions, subtle pressures that suggested certain paths over others. Ryloth felt right in a way I couldn't fully articulate. As if the currents of fate or destiny or whatever metaphysical framework governed these things were nudging me in that direction.
"I'll ride to Ryloth," I said. "See what opportunities exist there."
The Duros shrugged, clearly unconcerned with my reasoning. "Your credits. Just don't bring Imperial attention down on me. I run a clean operation."
He disappeared back into the cockpit. I sat alone with my thoughts and the gentle vibration of hyperspace, feeling the weight of choices I'd made and those still coming.
Across the hold, Venn stirred from whatever exhausted half-sleep she'd fallen into. Her eyes found me and something like gratitude flickered there, vulnerable in a way that made me uncomfortable. I'd saved her life. That created a debt in her mind, a connection I hadn't asked for and didn't particularly want.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "For what you did. I know it wasn't easy."
"It's what I was paid for." The response came automatically, a deflection born from the need to maintain distance. Getting attached to people in this new reality felt like inviting pain.
"Still." She sat up straighter, wincing at stiff muscles. "That thing in the warehouse. The man with the spinning blades. What was he?"
The question hung between us, weighted with implications. How much did she know? How much should I tell her? The Empire was broadcasting propaganda about Jedi being traitors, but the specific details about Inquisitors probably weren't common knowledge yet.
"An Inquisitor," I said finally. "Force-sensitive agents working for the Empire to hunt down surviving Jedi."
Her face went pale in a way that suggested the implications were sinking in. "So the rumors are true. They're not just executing Jedi. They're turning them."
"Some of them. The ones who survive initial contact and can be broken." I didn't know if that was true, but it felt right. The Inquisitor had moved like someone trained in the Temple, his techniques twisted but fundamentally rooted in forms I recognized. That kind of training didn't come from nowhere.
The thought made something twist in my chest. Former Jedi, brothers and sisters I might have known, twisted into weapons pointed at their own kind. What kind of torture or manipulation would it take to break someone that completely? What darkness would they have to embrace to become willing participants in the Order's extinction?
"How many of you are left?" Venn's question came quietly, almost afraid of the answer.
"I don't know. Not many." The admission tasted like failure, like confessing to some fundamental inadequacy. "The Order is gone. Whatever survived is scattered, hiding, trying not to die."
The words should have felt cathartic. Some kind of release in acknowledging the truth out loud. Instead they just settled into my chest like stones, adding to the weight I'd been carrying since I'd watched the Temple burn.
Venn was quiet for a long moment, processing. Then... "The intelligence I have. About Imperial military buildups, fleet movements, construction projects. It's not much, but it's something. Proof that they're planning something massive." She met my eyes with sudden intensity. "Someone needs to fight them. Someone needs to stand up and say this isn't right."
"That's what the rebels are for," I said, but even as the words left my mouth they felt hollow. Abstract. The rebels were an idea, not a reality. Scattered cells with limited resources fighting an Empire that controlled the entire galaxy.
"And who are the rebels without people willing to do the actual standing?" Venn leaned forward, exhaustion momentarily forgotten in the face of conviction. "You saved my life. You fought that thing and got me out when you could have just run. That's not nothing."
I wanted to tell her she was wrong. That I'd done it for credits and completion of a contract, not because of some noble commitment to fighting tyranny. But the deflection stuck in my throat because it wasn't entirely true.
I'd fought the Inquisitor to protect her. Had risked exposure and death to complete the mission when the smart choice would have been to abort and save myself. Somewhere in the chaos and violence, I'd made a choice that went beyond simple self-interest.
Master Drallig had called it the Jedi way. Protecting the innocent even at cost to yourself. Putting mission success above personal survival. The principle was sound, had been drilled into me since childhood.
But the Jedi way had gotten the Order killed. Had left thousands of peacekeepers vulnerable to a purge they never saw coming because they'd been too committed to their principles to recognize the threat.
Maybe there was something between blind adherence to principle and pure self-interest. Some middle path that honored the training without being bound by dogma that had proven catastrophically flawed.
The thought felt like heresy. Like the first step toward the kind of corruption that created Inquisitors.
Or maybe it was just pragmatism. Adaptation to changed circumstances. The galaxy had fundamentally shifted and clinging to old frameworks might be as dangerous as abandoning them completely.
I didn't have answers. Just questions that multiplied with every choice I made.
The ship shuddered as it dropped out of hyperspace, pulling me from philosophical speculation back to immediate reality. Through the viewport, Ryloth appeared, a world of brown and red where the Twi'lek people had carved civilization from harsh terrain.
The sight triggered memory. Fighting through those canyons during the war, the way the sun had beat down mercilessly while we'd pushed Separatist forces back sector by sector. I'd been younger then. More certain. The enemy had been clear and the mission had been simple.
Nothing about this new reality was simple.
The pilot's voice crackled over the intercom. "Approach vector secured. We'll be landing in fifteen minutes. Imperial presence is heavy planetside so keep your heads down."
I stood and moved to the viewport, watched Ryloth grow larger as we descended. Somewhere down there, Cham Syndulla was building a resistance. Gathering people who believed the Empire was wrong and were willing to do something about it.
The Force moved around me in currents that felt almost like guidance. Not the clear visions some Jedi experienced but something more subtle, more ambiguous. A sense of rightness mixed with apprehension, as if the path ahead contained both purpose and peril in equal measure.
Part of me wanted to tell the pilot to change course. To take me somewhere the Empire would never look, some forgotten world in the Unknown Regions where I could disappear completely. Live out whatever life remained to me in anonymity and safety.
But Master Drallig hadn't trained a coward. And whatever I was becoming, that core remained. The part of me that had charged the clones on the Temple landing pad instead of running. The part that had fought through a flooded sub-level to extract a fugitive analyst. The part that chose action over paralysis even when action carried terrible risk.
"What will you do now?" Venn asked, standing beside me at the viewport.
"Find the rebels. See if they need someone with my particular skill set." I adjusted my cloak, made sure my lightsaber was hidden beneath the fabric. "What about you?"
"Disappear. Find somewhere the Empire won't look and try to pretend the last few weeks were a bad dream." She offered a tired smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Though I suspect that's harder than it sounds."
"It is." Personal experience confirmed that particular truth. You couldn't outrun memory or guilt or the weight of choices made under impossible circumstances.
The landing struts engaged with a metallic thunk. Ryloth's gravity pulled at me, fractionally heavier than Coruscant's standard. The boarding ramp cycled open and hot air flooded the hold, carrying the scent of dust and hardy vegetation and something indefinable that marked this world as fundamentally alien to someone raised in the Temple's climate-controlled corridors.
Venn shouldered her pack and moved toward the ramp. At the threshold she paused, looked back. "Be careful out there. The galaxy needs more people like you."
I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know if the galaxy needed people like me or if people like me were just adding complications to an already impossible situation. So I just nodded and let her leave without offering platitudes I didn't believe.
The spaceport was smaller than Nar Shaddaa's, more organized but with the same underlying tension. Imperial patrols moved through the crowds, stormtroopers checking IDs and scanning faces against wanted lists. I pulled my hood up and let the Force blur the edges of my presence, became just another traveler among thousands.
Venn's contact was waiting near the entrance. A Twi'lek woman with green skin and the kind of hard eyes that came from seeing too much violence. She nodded to Venn, ignored me completely, and led her away into the crowds.
I stood alone in the spaceport and felt the weight of solitude settle across my shoulders like a familiar cloak. This was my reality now. No Order. No Master. No brothers or sisters in the Force. Just me...