Star Wars: A Thing Of Beauty

Free Bird

As if in a dream, Jinang found himself in the jungles of Felucia again, but its quite different than he remembers... It is unusually quiet besides a gentle breeze blowing through the colorful plantlife, and when he looked around, Jinang noticed he's wearing the Jedi knight garb he had on right before he died all those years ago. Despite the incredibly dire situation he's in beyond the dream, Jinang doesn't feel rushed or tense to keep moving, but oddly calm... And ge looks around the jungle, seeing that Jedi temple not far, but covered in plantlife like it was when he first arrived on Felucia. And then, shocking him to his core, Jinang sees his master, Riyarra Agdol. Several meters away. After a second, Jinang rushes over and hugs her, and she places her hands on his shoulders and gently pushes him away. When he looks up at the Jedi, he sees a look of disappointment on his old master's face that makes him feel sick to his stomach...
"Master, I..." Jinang says, not even knowing what he should say.

"It hurts me to see what you've become..." Riyarra spoke with pain in her tone. Words that broke Jinang's heart to hear. "You've slipped so far... You've killed so many people... All for what?"

"... I don't know..." Jinang says, stepping backwards... "I don't know why I fought so hard... It was all for nothing... I was just Takemura's pawn, doing exactly what he wanted! ... I don't even know who I am..."

"You've truly lost your way." Riyarra says, sighing deeply, pained to see tears streaming down Jinang's cheeks. "But... It's not too late, Jinang. You can still come back."

"It is too late!" Jinang said angrily, sadly, holding back tears. "I could never be a Jedi again after what I've done - even if I wanted to!"

And there is still a part of Jinang that does want to be a Jedi again. There always will be...
"That isn't what I meant." Riyarra says, placing a hand on his cheek. "I've been watching you this whole time... And I remember that when you were with doctor Tanner Shae, you wanted to help people. When Onyudo butchered those pirates you were disgusted. And when you helped the Utai, danced under the stars on Dromund Kaas, when you were at peace and saw just how beautiful life could be - that's who you are, Jinang. Who you've always been. Who you can still be."

"But... Tanner's gone..."

"Look at me." Riyarra says, lifting Jinang's head, wiping his tears away with her thumbs. "You don't need anyone to be who you are. No one can change your heart. Not Tanner. Not Izanami. Not me. No one. Sure, people can help you, mislead you, push you - but now it's time for you to decide who you are. Don't slip into the shadows. Rise up out of them. Save Zorsia. And find your way back home."

Jinang is back in the spaceport atrium, down on one knee with his hand on the floor. He lifts his head, looking up at the hallway door as the Raptors finally started to get it open. He's still sweating, bleeding and panting, but a fire like no other is burning in his heart, and he looks up at Zorsia, as Padme and Sharpy help her over. Zorsia's all that matters right now. He looks at the hallway door that is about to be opened, and rises up to fight one last time. He injects the other adrenaline booster into his neck, and then rushes over right before the door was pried open and immediately starts dodging heavy blaster fire and dashes through the hallway in a rapid, zig-zagging pattern to destroy the Raptors' hand cannons. That is much easier said than done, however. Jumping off of the walls, floor and ceiling to avoid getting blasted, trying to trick the enemies into hitting each other. Jinang finds that their blasters actually disrupt their electromagnetic shielding, and the lightning fast warrior exploited that whenever they accidentally hit each other and killed a few of them quickly that way. But the Raptors adapt to this strategy almost immediately, making it becomes impossible to force friendly fire. However, Jinang grabs a hand cannon he didn't just destroy off of a dead clone and starts using it against other Raptors. The hand cannon's recoil is insane, especially for Jinang's tiny body, but he gets it to work and he disrupts the shields to kill the troopers with his lightsaber until the weapon ran out of ammo.
Flying through the air in a powerful jump over the Raptors' heads, Jinang throws his hand cannon at a blaster bolt coming for him, it explodes in a clone's face - and he bursts through the explosive screen, and makes a dozen spirit ichor kunai and kills the stunned trooper with them, lands on his chest, knocks him to the floor and makes a huge flip through the air to avoid more blaster fire and lands perfectly on his feet several meters away from the rest of the troopers. Jinang growls ferociously, and builds up a spirit ichor aura around his body before bursting forth, shaking the floor, hits the wall - bounces off of it, making a crater in the wall with a loud thoom and hits some of the Raptors, breaking the sound barrier with his lightsabers - hitting them so hard disrupts their shields and cuts right through the troopers.
Jinang fights through the elite Raptor commandos with everything he's got left, killing dozens of them on his way to the hangar. He cut down a few dozen more of the senate guards and finally reached a landing platform where a medical shuttle is always set for emergencies in the spaceport, and Sharpy gets Zorsia and Padme safely inside. Jinang wastes no time and immediately hurries to the cockpit and gets the ship started. However, as it starts lifting off, an LAAT-2 flies right in front of the ship. Jinang was fast enough to focus all of the shuttle's shields directly in front, before the gunship started firing at them. The ship immediately starts taking heavy damage, shaking violently as it is not a battle ship, and suddenly, Zorsia was there in the cockpit beside Jinang, her arm stretched out in front of her - she screams as she unleashes the biggest wave of Sith lightning Jinang's ever seen - it bursts through the cockpit's windshield in gigantic pillars of electricity, heating up the room and hitting the LAAT-2, taking it out of the air. Jinang doesn't waste one more second and flies off at top speed as the Republic gunship explodes in the spaceport. Zorsia fell backwards but Sharpy and Padme were there to catch her. Very heavy wind floods into the ship, and Jinang blocked it as best as he could with the force, until an emergency glass shield goes up to replace it and then Jinang finally collapses from exhaustion, falling flat on his back. Sharpy immediately gets back to the controls and starts kicking the ship into hypergear as the last Republic operatives chase them. However, with senator Amidala on board, they don't want to damage the ship anymore than they already did, and they blasts off in one long hyperjump into Wildspace, leaving Orsho behind and the senate guards empty-handed.

After a few minutes, they stop at an uncolonized, super massive, snowy forest world. Sharpy quickly finds a spot to land in the woods and immediately goes back into the ship to tend to Zorsia's wounds, seeing that Padme got her laying on a stretcher. While they were flying, they set Jinang on a bench, but he woke up and stood, aching all over, he still finds the energy to go help Zorsia as best as he can. She was very badly injured with lots of deep wounds, and closing them all up took a while, but she had fainted from that blast of lightning she unleashed, so she was spared of the painful procedure. And after 40 minutes, Zorsia was patched up, but she lost a lot of blood... Zorsia's gone pale, her skin cold and her heart rate is slowing down rapidly, causing Jinang to panic... He tears the ship apart trying to find blood, but there isn't any. Not even synthetic blood.
"Give her some of mine!" Jinang said, going over to Sharpy, shaking the droid. "Give her mine now!"

"According to your database," Sharpy says. "You do not have a compatible equivalent blood type."

"No!" Jinang said, about to cry. He turns to Zorsia, crushed by the realization that, after all they've been through, she might die anyway... "No... I can't lose her... She's all I have left..."

Her heart continues to slow down, and Jinang tries waking her up, to no avail...
"Zorsia please..." He pleads desperately, a look of great terror contorting his sweating face. "Zorsia don't go... Please don't go..."

"Its going to be alright." Padme says from the other side of the stretcher. "She can have some of mine."

"What?" Jinang asked, looking up, his face wet with tears.

"She and I have compatible equivalent blood types." Padme answered, remembering the slave profile Orn Free Taa made that included Zorsia's blood type. "Give her some of mine."

"Right away." Sharpy says, rounding up the necessary equipment as fast as it can.

Jinang is shocked, stunned. He just terrorized Padme Amidala, threatened to kill the woman and orphan her children. He killed who knows how many men that were trying to save her, and now the senator will save this dark striding terrorist's life by giving up her own blood. And she demonstrated this act of charity without a second thought. Without hesitation. Without needing to be threatened or persuaded. Jinang had heard lots of that "peace-loving rhetoric" from senator Amidala over the years, and never actually bought any of it. But it appears as though this politician truly has a value for life. And it is inspiring to Jinang to see it. So Sharpy quickly gets everything in order, attaching Zorsia and Padme to an IV, so the senator's blood goes through a tube, up into an IV bag, through the drip chamber, down another tube and into Zorsia's arm.

A dark cloud is cast over the Galaxy, as the Sith were close to supreme domination, waging a war against light itself. Greed and violence consumes the hearts of those in power, who use that power to kill and to conquer. With every shot fired and every man, woman or child killed, that dark cloud gets even darker, denser. Like an oppressive boot imposing the formless authorities of conflicting ideals upon the stars, dimming their light... But that isn't how it ends. It can't be.
On a muddy battlefield on one of countless planets involved with the war, there are those of this world who sided with the Republic and those who sided with the Confederacy of independent systems. Brother against brother in civil conflict, firing at each other in a seemingly endless storm. Two men on opposing sides have each other in the sights of their blaster rifles, ready to fire. Nothing but an invisible border between them. But they hesitated. They didn't pull that trigger. They didn't kill each other. The battle was slowing down, as was the storm, and rays of light pierced that dark cloud. The soldiers stopped fighting then, lowering their weapons and seeing others on their sides of the border doing the same. And that was the beginning of something small, that would eventually grow into something big on a planet called Dofom. Because two men looked down the sights of their rifles and they saw in each other just that, a man. A life.

All across the Galaxy, small moments like that begin to shine through that dark cloud, where instead of raising a hand in violence, they offer that hand in peace. To help each other stand. On the medical shuttle on an uncharted planet in Wildspace, Padme Amidala's light pierced that dark cloud too. Spilling her blood not for war, but for peace. She gave her own blood in service to her idea that life is precious. All life.