Spike-off [Day 9 LE]

[Zanja]

Zanja wanted to talk to the new kid. Right now, when she was tired, out of sorts, and vaguely headachy from hours of peering at lightsaber components, probably was not the best time for such a conversation, but on the other hand, a distraction would be nice. Munching on a snack bar, she went to look for the second-spikiest youngling in the temple...

[Kerren Sek]

Kerren had waited until most of the Jedi students had finished their crafting for the day. Most of the time, he had observed how they approached the creation of a lightsaber hilt, to see the differences in how it was done for Jedi and Sith. And now that he had finished observing, he was working.

On one of the tables set up for those working on this part of their trials, Kerren had dismantled his old lightsaber. Its crystal was gone, taken by the masters, but it had given him a fresh start with the old hilt.

Noticing one of the students walking and eating, which seemed to be a trend among these kids, he looked up from his work.

[Zanja]

Zanja slouched over toward Kerren's work-station, arching her eyebrows at the disassembled parts. She swallowed the second-to-last bite of her snack (growing Zabraks need fuel!) and commented "They made you do it over, huh?"

[Kerren Sek]

The ridges of his eyebrow arched as he did not quite glare at her. "Yes," he said curtly.

[Zanja]

"So you're going down there with us tomorrow," she guessed. "Hope the masters found you some warm clothes." It wasn't Zanja's fault that her default smile looked halfway between a smirk and a scowl.

[Kerren Sek]

"That is their final decision tomorrow," he said with a returning scowl himself. "Does that bother you?"

[Zanja]

"No." Zanja frowned, but she leaned in to look at Kerren's half-assembled lightsaber as she did so--so it wasn't entirely clear if the expression was meant for him, or if she was just trying to figure out his construction technique. "Why, should it? You decided to be here. Knight Farissa is smart enough to it figure out if you were actually a mole or whatever, and you're still here, so." She shrugged.

[Kerren Sek]

"You say that as if the Sith have not fooled Jedi before," his words were cautious, and he was neither smirking nor haughty. "Though I suppose we could say that both sides have done such to eachother before. Jedi are not innocent either."

The lightsaber seemed to be well constructed so far, in a way a testament to Kerren having done this before.

[Zanja]

"So are you saying you are a mole?" Zanja raised a skeptical eyebrow. "One kid versus six Jedi, on a tiny ship for a week in hyperspace. You'd have to be damn good."

Hell, of course his saber is better than mine...

[Kerren Sek]

"You have faith in your masters that I'm not," he gave a half-dry smile in return. "And my word that I'm not, though you decide how much faith you put in that."

[Zanja]

"I dunno." Zanja planted a hand on the edge of the table and leaned a bit of her weight onto it. "I do trust them, and I don't like it too much when people get judged on where they came from instead of what they do with themselves. So that's enough for now." She didn't really have much sense of what a person's word was worth in the Sith Empire--the meaning of it varied an awful lot even among Republic worlds, for that matter--so it was hard to tell how serious he was about that part.

"Anyway, I didn't come to give you crap. I just, uh, was wondering how you're getting on."

[Kerren Sek]

He smirked dryly for a few moments. "Could've fooled me, but good to know," he seemed to be as prickly as her. "FIne enough, I guess. It's... well, it's a lot more welcoming than I thought it would be. No holding cells, or rough interrogations. So that's good. Not quite what I expected, I think, but now I'm not so sure anymore what I expected."

[Zanja]

"You thought you were going to get tossed in a holding cell, and you still came over? Destrus must be a pretty crap master." Zanja's eyebrows arched in wry surprise.

[Kerren Sek]

"Yes, and no," he grumbled. "... He is powerful, and has a great deal of knowledge. I could probably have grown strong and reached far by learning from him."

Kerren paused with some tension. "But it also would've meant my death. And the Force showed me a vision that offered me a different future I had not ever considered..."

[Zanja]

"Really?" Zanja tilted her head, intrigued (and probably slightly alarmingly intense about it). "Did you go down in those caves?" Kerren might be able to guess she was thinking about her own vision at the vergence on Auratera, though he couldn't possibly know the details. So he had a vision about leaving the Sith, and I had a vision about getting kicked out of the Jedi. Only one of us followed through, though. Huh. "How'd you know he was going to kill you? He had a pretty good supply of civilians for whatever the hell he was doing," she added with a reflective scowl.