Bolook

"In here," I said, jerking my chin at the left-hand door.

"No," Bolook said, drawing out the word in that irritatingly superior way he had, half-accent, half-air. "We should go right."

"Why?" I retorted. "They're both empty."

"Not quite true," the Twi'lek said, looking down his angular nose. I longed to remove that ever-so-smug expression from his face. When I'd first come to Dantooine, Bolook had been the star student, a Master's pet for the way his talents strongly and continuously increased in power. About a year later he'd "plateaued" or leveled off, increasing in skill but not in strength, but he'd still had all of the Force capabilities of one of the lower-powered adult Jedi at an age where most of us couldn't do much more than lift a plate or two. I, and some of my friends, had eventually outstripped him, but he didn't seem to be aware of that. "That room, your left-hand room, recently housed a patient suffering from blasteonecrosis. The droids are still cleaning up."

"How do you know that?"

"Pah. Revan, I've been on this medcruiser for four weeks, ever since my Master's ankle got that compound fracture. He's developed a resistance to treatments, you know, so it's taking him a while, and I've had some time to watch what happens on this ship. Besides, it says so right on the door. What, did you get knocked on the head and forget how to read?"

Just the way he said it made me want to choose the left-hand room, and damn all the things I knew about blasteonecrosis. But I had a little more sense than that. Instead, I thumbed the right-hand room's panel. Nothing happened. I scowled at the door.

Bolook sidled around me and hit the panel. The door opened smoothly for him.

"Well, go in then," I told him sullenly. I felt like red-hot myrmins were racing around under my skin, making it tingle and twinge, puckering up and becoming sensitive. Only using Bolook to mop the deck would make it settle.

"Oh, no. After you," he said, bowing with a mocking flourish. I sneered as elegantly as I could and went in, throttling the urge to start now. It pleased me to note that his orange headtails, thick and long as they were, were twitching and quivering with anticipation.

He followed me in, closing the door behind us. The room was dark, lit only by a few status lights on the inert machinery. It was, as promised, without occupants of either organic or mechanical make.

"You're sure nobody's going to come in?" I asked. "No new patients? You're sure your Master isn't going to save your hide by calling for you?" I shrugged out of my long overrobe, folding it neatly and setting it aside with my lightsaber unclipped and set atop it, then limbering up.

Bolook followed suit. "Perfectly sure, unless something totally unexpected happens. What about you? Is Kae going to come in and stop us? Are any of your friends going to help you cheat by ganging up on me?"

"The only old friend on this ship is Laury," I told him. "And she's tending Kae. Her teacher's been looking for a patient with gallbladder problems for half a year; I don't think anything will tear him away until the examination is done, and he's sure to keep her close."

"Good." The Twi'lek rolled his shoulders, his headtails drawing up to drape over his shoulders in a deliberate show of confidence, spoiled slightly by the way they shivered. "Remember. No weapons, not even improvised, no screaming, keep it above the belt, leave the lekku alone, no Force trickery, and no biting."

I grinned, looking at the half-circle of white scars on one headtail. "You just remember the same. And no groping, no picking at the implants, no more than two successive headbutts, and no scratching." I looked pointedly at his talonlike Twi'lek fingernails. "Just straight rikishi grappling." We both spread bent legs wide, lowering our centers of gravity.

Rikishi was a form of somewhat ritualized wrestling practiced on a relatively insignificant world around Mid-Rim. The natives all appeared to be morbidly obese by human standards; their wrestling, rather than making shows of strength, was largely a matter of balance and staying on one's feet. Out of the five other Younglings who had taken that class, only Bolook would practice with me. Much as I disliked him, I did want to stay in practice. I lost a little less often with ritualized rikishi than with the tooth-and-nail squabbles I'd indulged in before, anyway.

And yet absolutely everyone seemed scandalized whenever they saw us at it. Perhaps because rikishi, like most of the grappling martial styles, looked like a combination of blind fury and passionate embrace, although there were plenty of other, similar styles that they had no such problems with. Everyone would have been even more shocked and appalled had we chosen to wear the appropriate attire; mostly naked but for a small black one-piece. Which would have been funny, really, but neither of us really wanted to do it.

So we grappled in secret, usually in the dark so no hypersensitive fogies would see a need to investigate.

About five minutes in, when we were both drenched in sweat and stalemated - Bolook had more height, weight, and reach than me, but I was the one with the leverage, and neither of us was willing to give up - we both heard a voice outside of the door and froze.

"No... not that one. The last patient had blasteonecrosis, see?"

Exchanging a terrified glance, we released each other and split off, Bolook to dive under the cot, me to hide in a tall locker that thankfully had little in the way of shelves. Or tools; it was mostly empty but for a few patient's gowns. I couldn't quite close it all the way, so I peered carefully out of the open crack.

The door opened and two figures, one smaller and slimmer than the other, stood silhouetted outside by the hallway's light. Standing at a very careful distance from each other, they both came in, closing the door behind them. I reached out very cautiously, 'tasting' their emanations, their heat signatures and the imprint both of them made in the Force. This was a medical ship, and the background tang of pain and misery made it hard to determine anything, but while they weren't friends, I didn't think either of them were perfect strangers.

"Should I switch on the lights?" It was a male human's voice, vaguely familiar in that I've-heard-it-a-time-or-two-before sort of way. I frowned, remembering the voice's owner; a few years older than me, we'd never traded more than a hello. He'd transferred over to the Service Corps, hadn't he? I couldn't seem to remember his name, but I was pretty sure that the last time I'd heard it it hadn't been nearly as husky. Or hesitant.

"No... we don't need a light. Oh, Liedar... why did you want to see me? Alone?" That voice I knew a little better. It was a girl, also a few years older than me, named Hopin. I'd seen her feeling unhappy for several days before I found her crying in a closet. I hadn't been able to make much sense out of the "I never get to keep anything for me!" that she'd half-wailed between sobs, but I'd still managed to be properly soothing. She'd resolved whatever problem she'd had by volunteering for the Service Corps too. Agriculture, I thought. Her voice now held some of that quavery desperation that I'd heard while consoling her.

Why are they sneaking into a supposedly-empty room? They must not want to be seen. It can't be because of a fighting style, or they'd have said something about it already. Are they plotting? I really hope they won't see my overrobe. Or Bolook's. My sense of curiosity intensified, as it always did when faced with something that was obviously Not My Business.

"I, I haven't been able to stop thinking of you! Not since I saw you today, Hopin, stepping off that shuttle. You were radiant."

"Oh, Liedar, I saw you too. And I... I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. You looked so strong, so wonderful!" They're starting to sound a lot like some of the idiot headblind teenagers back on Dantooine...

"How could I never have seen this before? Oh, Hopin, you're the wonderful one! Even your name is beautiful... Hopin, Hopin, Hope in... I think you've stolen my heart. I-I can't begrudge you that. I can only hope that I can someday earn some, some small token of your affection..." Oh. I see. I've somehow become trapped in a romance holo.

"Liedar... oh, Liedar, I think you've stolen my heart, too! I've never felt like this before." A bad romance holo, I thought with considerable, growing dismay.

"Neither have I! I wonder how I could have ever missed such perfection. You are so... marvelous." I could not see well through the crack, but I heard Hopin gasp, a soft breathy sort of sound. What's more, both of them probably think they're being so unique, so original... we shouldn't have hid. Now it's far too late to come out, too.

There was a great deal of "Mmm! Mmm..."-ing and some rustling of cloth, as well as a few more gasps. I rolled my eyes in that disrespectful way that Kae'd told me to avoid. Now they're probably locking mouths, trying to simultaneously steal each other's breath and trade saliva samples, like those idiot headblind do whenever they think they aren't being spied on... Ugh. I always thought Jedi were immune to this madness. Otherwise we'd mess up the galaxy with illicit passions and squabbles. Maybe these two are defective. They have to be. Why else would anyone be in the Service Corps?

I pitied Bolook, trapped under the cot. He would not be happy if the two defective Sensitives progressed to rutting on top of him. On the other hand, it might take care of some of his attitude...

I caught a wisp of sensation from either Liedar or Hopin, just a touch of frenzied heat, and immediately pulled my senses back with a shudder. I'd never been trapped close to a couple of mating sentients before, but I'd been nearby, and both times it had made my blood flush out unpleasantly into the capillaries in my skin. Meditation, I decided, is just what the physician advised. I hoped I could reach the trance before either of them could get too worked up, or I might get distracted.

The defective Sensitives were so deeply involved in whatever they were doing - I honestly couldn't tell if this was still courting or it had already moved on to pre-coitus- when the door shot open and the lights came on, disrupting the trance that I was trying to enter. I couldn't help my automatic reflex, reaching out through the Force to try and find out who it was.

Ah. Looks like Kae's gallbladder wasn't as bad as she implied. Not even a medical ship's background input could disguise Laury. I grinned even as I heard her voice, raised in the righteous wrath that she had so much of.

"There you are! Do you know what you're doing? Do you?! Answer me!"

Liedar's startled response wasn't too clear, but he was very taken aback, and I didn't need the Force to pick up on that. I grinned wider, covering my mouth with one hand. Laury's wrath, directed on someone I didn't feel close to, could be extremely entertaining. She could get very wordy when outraged, for one thing.

"You are disrupting the Force energies on this ship," she hissed, and I could imagine flickers of light forming in her eyebrows and her hair. "There is a reason the Order builds medical cruisers instead of relying on planetbound facilities, geniuses! We are attempting to escape the subtle influences of gravitational, atmospheric, and biological- oh, why do I bother. Clearly neither of you have the intellectual capacity to so much as remember the reasons, let alone understand them."

Huh. I hadn't thought about the "influences" that a planet might have, although plenty of Healers worked on the different worlds. I'd always thought that Jedi used cruisers because they were so mobile. I'm sure mobility's still part of that. Interesting.

One of the "geniuses" ventured a reply that sounded like "But we haven't heard anything about a Jedi with mind damages..." I couldn't hear the whole weak protest, but Laury overrode it anyway, her voice losing a hint of its edge.

"No, but that doesn't mean there won't be one, you karking chuffsucker. You're both here delivering supplies - did you even stop to see the rules before you boarded?" She didn't wait for the answer. "Of course not! That would require some degree of competence! You're Service Corps too, so I really don't care what you do otherwise, so long as you keep your emotional contagions off of this ship. It's already hard enough to clean up the usual residues without adding lust and desire to the mix. It doesn't matter now, no, because we're just working on routine injuries. You're lucky, you know that? You're very lucky."

Her voice changed, becoming much silkier, and I could imagine the sparks fading as her expression became wicked. "So I don't believe that I need to report you doing anything but fighting. I'm assigned to part of an autopsy team. Today, and for most of the week, we'll be working on a very old, very fat Hutt. I am allowed two assistants. I think you two will do."

Cowed by the unspoken threat, Liedar and Hopin agreed meekly. In my locker, I felt my eyebrows rise. So how would these two be punished if she reported them? They're already in the Service Corps. You just can't get much lower than that. Kick them completely out of the Order? Dock their pay? When it came down to it, I knew almost nothing about what Service Corpsmen did.

Laury shooed her new assistants out the door. I sensed her turning, presumably looking the room over. I winced. Hopin and Liedar might have missed the overrobes in the dark, but Laury wouldn't. They were out in the open, after all. In the future, I resolved, we'll be a bit more careful with the rikishi sessions.

My embryotic plans were disrupted by Laury's announcement. "I was going to ask my yearmate and a friend instead. They would have sniped at each other and made a mess, but I know, at least, that they are reasonably competent. But it looks like they're lucky. This time."

The lights shut off, the door hissed shut, and the three presences receded, but it still took a few more minutes before I ventured out of the locker.

Bolook sighed as he slid out from under the bed and brushed himself off. "Wow. I should try sparring with her sometime." I tried not to stare; he was, for once, without the arrogance that was his signature. Even the high-bred accent faded. "On second thought, maybe not. She'd eat me alive."

"Nah," I replied in kind. 'She'd just cut off your braintails and feed them to you,' I would have said, but changed my mind. "If she so much as stepped on your foot she'd have to stop. It's not worth the effort to fight her."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he allowed, again to my surprise. I should try to put Bolook and Laury together more often, if exposure to her makes him turn into a normal humanoid. He met my gaze boldly again. "If it's that important, I guess we shouldn't fight outside of the ring. Not on this ship." Unspoken, the word still... crossed my mind.

"Arm wrestling, then?" I asked, raising my left arm, challenging him.

"Sure."