Three Days Ago...

Day. An endless day in a peaceful garden. The scene almost screams pastoral setting, if screaming had ever been heard in that place at all. There are no birds here; but if there had been one, perched on one of the tall, green trees, it would have been a very satisfied fowl indeed. In the background, the muted roar of a small waterfall which feeds the quiet stream calms the heart. Beneath the bird’s feet, tall green grass that waves peacefully in the spring air. Several trees dot the landscape, but not too many to ruin the simplistic mood. A very pleasant home to build a nest in. Only one other object of note to our hypothetical friend: a strange, squat tree (for, with birds, there are only trees, and things that might be trees) that shines yellow in the sun, topped with a small torch. Some larger bird has made scratches on one side, though they do not seem to resemble any bird language that it ever learned. And just beneath our feathered friend, a man, meditating peacefully. This other being frightens the imaginary hawk (or was it a vulture?) away, but paranoid birds aside, the story zooms in on this quiet young knight. For a Jedi knight is what he is, and life is about to get a little more complicated.

A cool breeze ran through the trees and trickled through the grass like water, sending a swift chill across the lone Jedi’s back. Sitting just to the left of Vladarion’s memorial, a tree shaded him from the brunt of the sun’s rays, and his skin pebbled out into goose bumps. But though his friend’s tomb lay just in front of him, his thoughts did not dwell there at the moment. Well, not completely anyway.

Tomorrow he would start sessions with several new padawans, and he wanted to be prepared for anything. The new pads seemed to be promising students, so he would have to be extra hard on them. They wouldn’t grow if he didn’t push them to be better. Vlad would have...And then it happened again, before he even knew it. He was thinking of Vladarion. The young knight closed his eyes, and gently but firmly pushed Vlad out of his mind. Nostalgia could come later. Right now he needed to focus. Perhaps he would start the lesson wi- Hell, someone was coming. He could hear muffled footsteps shuffling through the grass.

“Still with us, mate?” A decidedly British voice asked. The young knight smiled softly to himself. Was he still with them? But that wasn’t what his friend was asking.

“Yes, yes, still with you. I was thinking about my session tomorrow. You broke my concentration.” This time his smile was genuine, and he stood up to face the speaker. “Good morning, Adam.”

“Good Morning? Don’t you mean Afternoon? It’s 2:00, for Christ’s sake! How long have you been sitting there Hardwired?”

“Ah....well....if it’s two now, then I guess about 3 hours. I think I slept through part of it though. Sometimes I think of things while I’m dozing that I can’t while I’m awake. Subconscious exercise, you know.” Of course, he himself didn’t know what he was talking about. Three Hours?! Had it been that long?

Adam, known to most people at the Academy as Virtue, gave Hardwired a sidelong glance. “If you say so, mate. I know you’re anxious about that session tomorrow. Don’t let it bother you. You’ll do fine. You’re a great teacher.”

Something inside Hardwired breathed a gentle sigh of relief. “You’re probably right ... So, how are things going with you?”

“I’m about to go out of my damn mind, that’s how things are. I swear, if one more person tries to get me to map something for them, or requests their own knighthood, or tells me how this place should be run, I’ll scream bloody murder!” He gave an exasperated sigh as he plopped to the ground, laying stretched out in the sun.

Hardwired chuckled, and sat down beside Virtue. “I know how you feel, it’s getting to the point that I almost wish that we had something else to worry about, other than this petty babysitting service. It doesn’t help that so many old guys have started retiring. Work is really starting to pile up.”

Virtue ran a hand through his hair, nodding slowly to himself, and found his eyes drawn to his most hated creation. The gold seemed to mock him, shining brightly when his thoughts were so dark. And when he spoke, he felt like he was answering the monument’s monument, instead of agreeing with Hardwired. “ Yeah, Real Life is a bitch, isn’t it?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Now both of their eyes were irresistibly pulled to the golden image looming over their conversation. A virtual testament to a reality almost too real to bear. Hardwired tore his gaze away from the monstrous reminder and tried to look at something else. Anything, everything. The grass seemed pretty interesting today. His voice took on a more somber tone, and his head hung down a little lower. “I wish to God you never had to build that thing.”

“So do I, mate . . . So do I.”

An awkward silence fell in between them like a cold frost on the soul, and still, the sun grew hotter.
**********************************

“Now you must DIE!” Screamed a tall image of Darth Vader. This Vader, however, bore twin red light sabers, and didn’t have near as deep of a voice. The black caped figure ran at his opponent, calculating which direction he would counter into. When the enemy feinted left, the back blur slipped into a roll, barring the exit route, and brought about an upward stab that sank deep into the rib cage.

Carda Jowel fell across the floor in two pieces while Motrec stood up from his crouch. Behind his dark mask he was wearing a broad grin. “Gets ‘em every time.” He thought to himself. Outwardly, he was a little more polite. “Good Fight, Carda,” he said, as the man who had been cut in half walked back into the room.

“Bah, good fight, Motrec. I hate roll stab! Mostly because I can’t pull it off myself.” Carda grinned at his big friend, and then sat down on one of the small circular seats, waiting for his turn to come up again. One would have thought that he had just lost a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, instead of being disemboweled. His shirt wasn’t even singed.

Motrec chuckled, “You’re not funkeh enough, that’s why.” He slid across the floor of the matrix room, swinging and jigging like Darth Vader on crack cocain. If his mask had allowed it, his next opponent would have seen a toothy, Cheshire cat grin.

But Moridin didn’t need to see it, he already knew it was there. “Come on, old man, let’s see if you can pull that trick off on me. Your arthritis will probably slow you down after the first few swings anyway.” These two had obviously dueled before, proved further by the wink the young man gave Motrec as he bowed, and ignited his orange saber.

“Oh you’re really gonna die now, whippersnapper! I may have two kids and a mortgage, but I’ve still got the funk to bring you down.” Now the red sabers were up, and the duelers circled each other warily, but not for too long. Some duels in the Academy have been known to last up to twenty minutes due to the defensive techniques of some of the students. Lots of students tried to duplicate this style, but Motrec just did not have the patience for it. He charged. Quickly.

Moridin only had time to mutter a low curse before the whirling red blur fell into him. Then his training kicked in, and everything outside the duel faded away. Hardwired had tried to emphasize the importance of focusing before a duel, instead of during it, but Moridin hadn’t really got the hang of that yet. He found it easier to focus when you were about to be sliced open at the groin than any other time in the world. Two red bodies of light, and one dark silhouette, were the only objects that existed to him now. He tried to find a clear connection to the Force, to let it “flow through him” (whatever the hell that meant), but it proved to be difficult. Sure, it was easy to focus on red blades of death, but dealing with them seemed harder than it looked.

And there, out of the corner of his eye . . . or, no, not his eye. Just out of the corner of thought, skittering on the edges of consciousness . . . a something ran through his mind that was not his own. Joy sparked in his mind. Perhaps this was it! The physical realm slipped away a bit more, and the alien force in his mind glimmered just that much clearer. Even though he could not see it, he knew the tool he had been searching for lay right outside his mental reach. Just a little deeper thought, and the- a sharp tingling ran through his elbow like electric fire. A red flash of echoing light flew in just above the area its twin had just sliced, and only a stumbling backward step and awkward parry kept Motrec’s saber out of his chest.

He quickly retreated a few steps back and assessed the damage. Luck was with him today, only a scratch, but the sting still lingered; a reminder not to lose that precious focus again. Fine. He might not find that link today, but he wasn’t going to lose this duel to daydreaming. If the force would not help him, he would just have to win on his own power. His pain was already subsiding now. The Academy blades seared a bit, but only to show that a hit had been scored. Besides, once a duel was over, and one of the participants dead, he just respawned anyway. The only real thing here was the fun that you had with friends. That and the satisfaction of learning more. But nothing too real.

Red blurs again. He could not stay focused today. He stretched his mind over the fight at hand, and would not let his mind drift anymore. He grew frustrated with himself, and moved to the offensive. Now the orange blade leapt forth in answer to the duel strikes.

Back and forth, the three blades crackled and hissed against each other, and Moridin found himself fighting a losing battle. He couldn’t penetrate Motrec’s defenses. Whenever he attacked, one saber parried, while the other came in from behind. It was all he could do to defend against the quick riposte, and several times he failed to do even that. Strike, parry, strike, parry. They were caught in a stalemate; the first to tire out would lose. Moridin didn’t like those odds. Motrec may have been fifteen years older than him, but he was certainly not in bad shape. Finally, both contestants backed away and circled each other. Moridin decided to switch tactics.

Which he never got a chance to try. Before he could swing or even move towards his opponent, Motrec agilely moved in and tucked into his trusty roll, preparing to gut his young friend.

But he never brought his saber up to the kill position. A hideous scream stopped him short. Everyone looked out towards the courtyard, and suddenly the intense room lost all of it’s action. The noise threw both fighters off balance, with Motrec losing control of his roll and crashing head first into Moridin. They went down in a heap that would have been comical, if the scream had not been so disquieting. The observers of the match stood stock still, as if a screen-shot had taken the place of actual events. And then everything broke into a frenzy of motion. Motrec and Moridin severed the duel, and everyone pressed in together trying to get outside.

Once they managed to squeeze out, however, they quickly wanted back in again.
**********************************

Both knights’ ears perked up at the horrendous scream, which penetrated through even the thick stone walls of the garden. The hairs on the back of Hardwired’s neck stood straight up, and he quickly looked over at Virtue. “What the Hell was that?!” He stood up quickly, and began running towards the courtyard. He had made it halfway there when he realized that Virtue wasn’t with him. In fact, Virtue had disappeared from the garden completely. A wave of panic washed over his body. Where was Adam?!

A creepy sensation tiptoed down his spine, and he suddenly felt like an old horror movie had enveloped him. He almost looked over his shoulder for some type of Freddy Kruegar monster to jump out. The restful nature of the once peaceful garden transformed into an unknown terror that choked the throat and froze the heart. He almost screamed himself. Then he smacked himself in the forehead.

“You’re a Knight, jackass. You can teleport.” These admin powers were almost too troublesome to be beneficial. He hit his bind for the courtyard, and instantly appeared there. Adam stood over to his right, hovering over something very, very red. A large crowd circled around the knight, and none of them looked too happy. Some looked like they had just thrown up. They were all too green for Hardwired’s liking, anyway.

Adam was motioning him over.

Hardwired didn’t want to go. He went.

The young knight had pride though. He refused to drag his feet. He just....walked a little slower than normal. When he finally did reach the spectacle that had caused so much disturbance, he almost hit the bind to teleport out of there, but he did not. He was a knight, dammit, and he could take this. At least he hoped so. On the ground lay . . . no sprawled a dead man. Definitely dead. Irrepressibly dead. Really dead. This was no game death; this man (or woman?) would never get up to fight again. Hardwired glanced over at Virtue, and saw . . . tears? Then he saw why. Couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it before . . . maybe he had not wanted to see it. The blood in his veins stopped flowing. He felt like he might throw up.

The body was Monty’s, and his heart had been ripped right out of his chest. Bits of bone that used to be ribs lay next to his corpse like so many white pebbles across the soft grass of the courtyard. And there lay Monty . . . his friend. Dead. Monty. His vision blurred and spun a little; his stomach churned as the nausea set in. Bile slowly began to creep up his throat, forcing a gag out of him to the point where he started to dry heave. And then someone was steadying his arm, trying to show him something. Hardwired’s head swung downwards, following the finger and saw something written in blood. Monty’s blood. A crimson horror message viciously inscribed across the gray stone pavement.

And in red lifeblood, the stricken Jedi read : “Retired”

He closed his eyes as soon as he read the gruesome message, but the image followed him into the inside of his eyelids. There lay Monty, or rather, what used to be Monty, lying just as dead in his imagination as the real one at his feet. His mind reeled, and a wave of dizziness washed over his body. While he tottered over the edge of consciousness, one lucid thought passed through all the confusion.

He wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight. Hell, he wouldn’t be getting much sleep this month.

Then the dark wave overcame him, and he passed out.