2019.03.08 - A Brush with the Dark Side
Galen, at some length, managed to pull Luke away from the starfighters. They needed to clear more of the place out, and Galen preferred that no one explore a new area alone. With the others tending to Dylan and other affairs, at least for the moment, Galen chose Luke to lead off to explore the dojo, once the entrance was uncovered. Now, Galen steps inside, Luke with him, as he casts out his senses through the Force, the air hazy with the stirring of millennia of dust. "Nothing much alive in here," Galen remarks. "A few insects. Nothing dangerous--so far. But I still feel a bit... edgy." Like there could be danger, even if there isn't yet. It doesn't feel serious, just... there's something to it.
Luke, covered in dust and grime from fooling around with the fighters all day, grumbles under his breath as he follows Galen. Doesn't Galen understand how important having a set of working starfighters to defend their new base is? Ah well, Luke needed a break anyway. For the fifth time since leaving the hangar, he lets out a loud sneeze, giving his head a good shake afterward. "The only danger in here is the dust," he says, flashing his glowrod beam around. "What is this place? A gym? Hey, are those lightsabers?" Suddenly excited again, he rushes to the racks to investigate.
Galen sticks close to Luke, frowning a bit, and says, "You'll only kick up more dust if you run in like--!" But he gives up on that. Luke's irrepressible. It's even charming, mostly. Glancing over the sabers, he says, "They look like training sabers. If they're like the ones I've seen, they don't actually have any plasma, just a containment field and some glowing gas. They won't actually damage anything, but they probably tingle when they make contact." Galen's familiar with training sabers, though honestly, he's most frequently had to work with the real thing, even when doing dangerous training.
Then, from the far side of the room, there's a sudden series of quiet beeps. Dozens of them.
Luke is busy examining one of the sabers, though he doesn't switch it on. "These'll come in handy then. We won't have to worry about hurting each other when we practice." And then he hears the beeps. Frowning, he slowly turns in that direction, using his glowrod to try illuminating the area.
Galen starts to answer, but then they hear the beeps, and he too turns to face the sound. That's when the lights--again, dozens of them--flicker on in the darkness, accompanied by a low humming noise of repulsors. They hover in place for a moment, then they suddenly begin hurtling toward Galen and Luke. When the light catches them, they prove to be practice droids, somehow active after so long in standby mode, and as they draw near, they open fire with volleys of miniaturized blaster fire. The bolts won't cause serious harm if they impact, but they sure sting like hell!
Galen, moving instinctively, lifts his lightsaber, igniting it and casting a purple glow around him as he begins parrying the tiny blaster bolts. "You can't be serious!" he growls in surprise. "Why are these things even active!?"
Luke Skywalker drops his glowrod and reaches for his blaster...only to realize he took the holster off his belt when working on the starfighter. He still has his lightsaber, however, and it happens to be in his other hand, so he quickly ignites it. Oh wait, this is the practice saber. Well, it's better than nothing...he hopes! "What are they?" he shouts, pulling a rack down from the wall and diving behind it for cover. "Assassin droids?"
"Training drones," Galen answers, parrying micro-bolts left and right. "Normally they're not dangerous at all, but this many at once--well, it'll really hurt at least, and it might even get dangerous if we're hit enough--hit the bolts back at them!" Galen shifts his stance, starting to move, and rapidly starts to snap bolts back at the drones. There are too many to do so neatly and easy, but when he does hit one with one of the bolts, it deactivates and sinks back to the ground. "See? If we can hit them all, they'll shut down!"
Luke peeks from behind cover, as he switches the practice saber for his real one and flicks it on with a snap-hiss. "You can deflect blaster bolts?" he says, clearly impressed. He decides to try this himself, standing up and swinging his blade. These training drones are larger than the small remote he's been practicing with, and he just assumed their bolts would be more deadly. Size matters, right? Still, he reaches out with the Force, as he's been taught, and lets it guide his hands, as the low-power bolts come flying at him. He deflects two or three in a row, but none shoot back at the drones.
Galen's assuming the bolts won't be deadly, but he's not honestly sure. The Jedi wouldn't use something that dangerous, would they? It doesn't seem to fit their reputation--but the bolts, for all they're small, do look more intense than a standard remote. If nothing else, they'll almost surely hurt much worse, and if they start taking multiple shots at once, it could definitely be bad. Fortunately, Galen's training has prepared him extensively for something like this. If it were just himself, he might almost make this look effortless, but he's also trying to take some of the heat off of Luke, which is making it all rather more challenging. He deflects bolt after bolt, but only another drone or two goes down. At this pace, it will take quite a while to disarm them all--if they can hold out that long! "Just feel them coming toward you," he explains. "It's no different than anything else. Just feel where they are, and let the Force guide you to counter them. You'll get a feel for 'em after a while, and you can start to direct where they go on the way back."
Luke deflects bolts left and right, but a few zip past really close, and it isn't long before one hits him in the shoulder. Letting out a yelp of pain, he grits his teeth and raises a hand, adding a strong Force -push-, which knocks three drones back against the far wall. Eyes lighting with encouragement, Luke tries that again, but the push doesn't work this time. Growling in anger, the Dark Side begins to gather around him, and he lets out a loud shout of, "HA!" Half the drones fly across the room and clank against the wall.
Sensing this, Galen feels a shock of something cold go through him, as if his insides had been suddenly plunged into ice cold water. "No!" he roars, and then steps steps in front of Luke, nudging him back with a wave of telekinesis, then flinging his hand up toward the drones and, letting out a wrenching cry, reaches deep into himself, finding the power of the Dark Side that he's resisted so carefully lately, and just... lets it go. A she does so, energy crackles from the fingers of his outstretched left hand and Force lightning leaping out, jumping from one drone to the next, until the entire room is lit with brilliant arcs of dazzling energy... that just thrums with the malicious power of the Dark Side.
A moment later, the drones lie smoking on the floor... and Galen's staggering away from Luke, closing down his lightsaber and choking on deep, dusty breaths of air as he fights to regain his center, like trying to claw his way back out of a frigid, inky pool of darkness.
Luke stumbles backward, his connection to the Force faltering. "What was that?" he asks breathlessly, eyes wide with amazement. "You can shoot lightning out of your hands! Can you teach me to do that? And why'd you stop me? I was finally getting it right!"
"No!" Galen's reply is half shout, half snarl, as he whirls to face Luke, eyes wide with what, if Luke is especially observant, he may realize is much more fear than anger. He catches hold of himself, then, drawing a shaky breath, before answering in a more careful tone, steady but still a bit coarse, "No. That power... that was the Dark Side of the Force. It's powerful, but it's... extremely dangerous. Using it... it's dangerous." He thinks of where Luke's from. Tatooine. "It's like... riding a sandstorm. It'll move you faster, but... you could lose control, get sucked into it. I don't want you to fear it, but... it's not safe to use the Dark Side without enough control. Otherwise... you could end up like Darth Vader. And, Luke, trust me... you do not want to end up like that." He shivers visibly, then says in a quieter, hoarser tone, "Let's get back to the others."
Luke switches off his lightsaber then, sobered by Galen's words. "I didn't know," he says softly. "It just felt so...powerful. Like I could do anything I wanted." He picks up his fallen glowrod and one of the practice sabers, the follows Galen. "Thank you for warning me, Master."
Galen feels a pang of unease at being called "master." After what just happens, he feels especially wary of accepting that role, but... Luke needed to be trained, and unless Kentr turned out to be a secret Jedi Master or Obi-Wan Kenobi resurfaced, it would seem that Galen was the only option. But the term bothers him. He can't help hear his own voice speaking the word, can't help seeing the mask of Darth Vader in his mind's eye... but he doesn't speak of these things. He just gives a nod, gesturing vaguely back toward the others, and leads Luke away. They will no doubt have to speak more of such things later, but not yet.
For now, Galen's too busy trying to pull his own control back together.