Chapter 25: Training and Planning

Summary: Izuku starts to get some training, and the group begins to take action...

Warning! Chapters 24-28 were all released back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!

Chapter 25: Training and Planning

Izuku hissed as the blast from the cobbled-together training remote came close enough to graze the skin of his left hip. Pushing through the mild sting, he managed to dodge the next three shots, before half-collapsing as the remote powered down. He caught his breath easily, and turned his focus to healing the graze with the lessons Master Fay had been imparting to him.

"Not bad! Still a long way to go before we can call it good enough. But impressive improvement for just two weeks."

Well, at least Celeste didn't skimp on praise as much as Miruko had. Though, thinking on his old mentor, Izuku had never been more grateful about his choice to do his work-study with someone as fitness and battle-crazy as her. He had ended up impressing Celeste in their initial tests by besting not just Aayla, but her as well, in unarmed spars. Only one out of three in Celeste's case. But that was still enough to impress the Jedi Shadow. Of course, a lot of that had to do with the fact that neither of the Jedi specialized in unarmed combat, where Izuku was heavily trained in it. Even so, she had at least pronounced his abilities with physical reinforcement to be 'exceptional.' The same had held true for his telekinesis, as well. Though there Celeste had been able to match him well enough to call it a draw, despite it not being her own specialization. Which was a little bit depressing.

Unfortunately, those were the best results he'd gotten. He'd never trained with a sword. Or a staff. Or basically any sort of weapon at all. Which made the follow up crash course over the last two weeks on basic lightsaber forms just as painful as the more numerous precognition trainings. While Izuku could hold his own in unarmed combat against either of his sparring partners, that was due entirely to battle experience and a difference in training. Both of them, even Aayla who was far less battle-hardened than Morne, could push him hard. And the brutal truth of why was that they could both use battle precognition and he couldn't. That, more than anything, was what Celeste had instantly zeroed in on. Learning to use a lightsaber adequately took years of dedicated training. But adding battle precognition to Izuku's existing style would put him on the same general playing field as most Jedi, at least. Standing, he nodded back to Morne, indicating he was ready to move on.

"Good. Twenty repetitions through Form 1, while I run Aayla through a telekinetic deflection drill. Then the two of you will spar again. Lightsabers first, then unarmed."

Izuku sighed, but acknowledged the order. There had been numerous sabers among the things Ood Bnar had been protecting, and one of them had been restored to working condition for him to practice with. It was powered down into training mode, of course, since he was still far more likely to hurt himself than his opponent. Nor would it be a permanent blade for him, as he felt no connection to it. It would do for training, however, and he fell half-awkwardly into the starting stance for Form 1. Thankfully, there were enough similarities in footwork to other styles he was familiar with that he wasn't learning completely from scratch. But the movements of the lightsaber itself were like nothing he'd used before. Still, in the long run it would be a useful tool. Probably. In truth, he wasn't completely convinced.

If the situation had been different, he might well have protested being half-unwillingly thrown back into training. He wasn't nearly as sold on the whole 'listen to the Force' thing as the Jedi, after all. He wanted to be out helping people. Even if these Sith, who admittedly sounded pretty horrible, were out there…so were tens or hundreds of thousands of more ordinary evils. The sort of things he'd become a Hero to fight in the first place. This galaxy had no shortage of slavers, pirates, and other villains that needed to be dealt with, and his companions wiliness to just wait for the Force to speak to them was irritating to Izuku.

As it was, however, they both didn't have a next destination immediately in mind and he needed to help Mei get her footing in this new reality. He'd forcefully carved out time from whatever Morne wanted to continue copying over Galactic Basic to his friend, as well taking time to force some basic understanding of the galaxy on her. Left alone, she'd have stuck only to the shiny new toys she'd found to play with, rather than getting an understanding of the Republic and the types of dangers they were likely to face. Thankfully, unlike with languages, all he had to do to get her to focus on additional details about the Republic was to point out her need to understand the purpose of any new gear or tech she made. As a support engineer, the need to understand the sorts of environments and threats the inventions she made would be use in and against was something she fully understood.

Even so, after two weeks, Izuku was restless and ready to press the point. He'd managed to get at least the basics of Battle Precognition down under Celeste's merciless training, Mei had reached a level of fluency with Basic, and he had to admit that he was growing irritated at not having time alone with Aayla to continue exploring their relationship. He'd therefore gotten all his arguments in a row and was planning to launch into them over lunch. For now, however, he had morning training with Master Morne to deal with…

... ...

"I think we need to start taking action. We still have little idea what we are needed for, but there are a lot of things we can do. General preparations to make. Including getting Celeste the ship that she felt she was going to need. While Aayla had I have a decent number of credits, probably enough to cover a ship, we still need to actually find one. Not to mention getting both her and Mei new identities. I somehow doubt any identification Celeste had is still valid, and Mei never had one to start with."

He'd been fully prepared to argue…and was thus a little nonplussed when Master Fay spoke up in immediate agreement.

"I believe that might be for the best. I have been absent from galactic affairs for over a month now, without any obvious reason. I can feel several problems tugging at me that could do with solving, and I can also use the time to feel out the situation with the Jedi Order by contacting the few people there who I remember. I may even be able to discover if there is a hunt ongoing for our wayward Padawan. Which will be an issue long-term, if it's not dealt with in some fashion."

Aayla and Izuku both winced at that, but nodded. As much as Aayla was currently of a mind to disagree with some of what the Jedi Order had taught her…it was still her home. She had friends there, and still hoped she might somehow be able to become a Knight. If she could do that, she could choose to become a wandering Jedi like Fay, so long as she produced results. Master Quinlin had been halfway to something like that, and she thought he might well have gone that route entirely if not for her. Both she and Izuku were simply concerned about what it would mean for them, if the Order found her again. They might well try to separate them and assign her a new Master who was too traditional to even allow contact. Finding out what the Order knew about what had happened to her would be at least a step in figuring out what to do about that particular mess.

Master Bnar nodded his own head, though his two credits a moment later came with a caveat.

"I believe getting some details settled would be wise. Including a few other things, like the retrieval of the remaining two Infinite Engine Seeds. However, it would also be wise to determine if everyone will be returning here afterward. I do not believe we have yet accomplished what we were brought together for. We must not lose sight of the long-term while worrying over the short."

Izuku nodded. His thinking arguments through wouldn't be in vain it seemed. He'd already considered a few bits of long-term planning.

"One thing we need to consider is resources. While I said Aayla and I have a decent amount of credits, that will largely be depleted by acquiring another ship and some new IDs. If you truly believe we might be facing a large scale war, or even just a large scale hunt for these Sith before they can start a war in the first place, we'll need a lot more. More credits, more supplies, more ships, more people. More everything, really. I mean, I assume that's why we were lead to the Infinite Engine seeds…but even finding a way to use those without drawing attention is going to be something we need to think hard o-"

Izuku jumped as Mei appeared right next to his place at the table and thunked a crate down. While everyone else had seen or felt her coming, they were all looking at her with interest, not sure what she was up to.

"Way ahead of you, muscles! The Infinite Engine baby is awesome! But critically flawed!"

While the Jedi around all simply blinked at that seemingly random statement, Izuku was used to Mei's…Meiness.

"In what way?"

Mei rolled her eyes, as if expecting it should be obvious, but she explained anyway.

"It's supppperr out of date! The machine itself is super-awesome, and we can totally use it to do lots of awesome stuff. But all the blueprints in it are complete shit by modern standards! Not as much as they should be, given how much time has passed, but still out of date. Smaller ships, weaker hyperdrives, poorer miniaturization. Soooo…we need to feed it new stuff! And for that, we need money! Thankfully, that's super easy!"

Mei popped open the crate and pulled out…a thing. Izuku had no idea what it was, and almost everyone else seemed equally clueless. Almost everyone. Aayla clearly recognized it…and wasn't happy for some reason.

"Mei? Is that the main hyperdrive coil from the Wandering Fate?"

Oh. That's why.

"Nope! It's a copy! The original was destroyed! Don't worry, I replaced it with another copy! Oh, and double don't worry! The cute little droids did all the work since I'm not fully conversant in how hyperdrives work yet!"

Aayla closed her eyes in a mix of consternation and relief. Izuku was familiar with that mix. Aayla would get used to it eventually, with Mei around.

"I tested the Infinite Engine on a bunch of little stuff, first. Spare parts that you had extras of and stuff. Turns out that, so long as it has a sample to break down, the Engine can replicate it perfectly! So, this whole crate is full of Class 2 hyperdrive coils in pristine condition! Market value is about 3,000 credits each and there are twenty of them in this crate alone. 60,000 credits profit for the lot…and I've already made five crates of them! Plus more crates of other parts that are worth a bit less, but will still sell well."

Izuku did the mental math and boggled a bit. That was 300,000 credits just from the coils she'd already made. He knew Mei had been fiddling with the Engine, having promised not to build anything with it that the astromechs didn't understand. But he hadn't realized this is what she had been planning. There was something that made him frown a moment later, though.

"Doesn't the Engine work best when you feed it most of the raw materials?"

Mei nodded, then gestured at…Ood Bnar?

"Yep! But it can make things from scratch too. I fed it debris from the ruins that tree-man said were okay to use! That provided pretty much all the common materials, which make up 90 plus percent of everything I've had the Engine make. It only had to summon the rare bits from mystical magic land! I haven't come even close to straining its output, actually. We can remove it from the cargo bay, place it in one of the ruined cities maybe for easy material, and fill the entire cargo bay with several million credits worth of trade goods. Parts like hypercoils are valuable, but common to trade. No one will question you popping up with a single cargo load of them."

The Jedi were all looking a bit baffled that Mei had just…run off and made them a get-rich-quick scheme before they even thought of the need for credits. Izuku, however, suspected he knew what Mei was actually after.

"Uh-huh. And what are you wanting to spend it all on?"

Mei grinned at him, shooting him a thumbs up.

"That's the right question, muscles! Ships! Modern parts for ships! Modern datapads and droids. Modern…everything! Once I have them, I can feed them to the engine and replicate them…and also use the data from the modern parts to overhaul the old designs, too! Some of the designs were actually pretty good, they just need updates!"

Izuku's lips twitched. Yep. Mei just wanted more toys to play with and had done whatever she needed to in order to get them. Still, in this case it had worked out perfectly. He had some thoughts about how to make a bigger impact in the long run, but they would need money and materials. This was a good place to start. He looked toward Aayla.

"What do you think about going back to Esseles? It's a bit of a risk, I suppose. But not much of one, and I'm betting Anash can get us another ship that will be good for Celeste…after feeding it to the Infinite Engine, maybe. Though I'm not sure about sorting out ID's for Mei and Celeste?"

Master Fay spoke up before Aayla could do more than cock her head in consideration.

"I can take Master Morne and Miss Hatsume to get IDs made with the Lantillies government. I have some past connections with them that I suspect would make them happy to help. Once that's done, we can head farther down the Perlemian and meet you at Esseles. I'll move on from there to wherever I'm feeling needed, while they join you to help get whatever ship you acquire back here. I think we can still use Ossus as a place to meet, for now. It is off the beaten track and I believe Master Bnar wishes to continue trying to salvage from the library."

Ood Bnar nodded at that.

"Some heavy lifting droids to speed that up would be useful, while you are picking things up. As well as general materials for a camp here."

Mei shook her head.

"One of everything! Then print more with the Engine. No point wasting money or space."

They all nodded at that and began to discuss exactly what sort of things they should make a priority…