Recordings from the Holocron of Kira Keldav – Session 26

   Aboard the Lingsrymu (the Sith Super Star Destroyer), Ben, Lazlo, Alys, Shipwreck, and Khadim were becoming increasingly nervous – although 10-CH didn’t care… It wasn’t that they were being relentlessly hunted or some such. It was the sheer indifference. The Varen Sith simply didn’t seem to CARE that they were aboard! There were casual checks, but they seemed to be nothing more than a way of saying “don’t try anything too serious, or we can and will come down on you like an asteroid impact”. They were even willing to let them have personal weapons!

   Well, OK, you kind of HAD to have those for effective training – but even for the Sith, “arm and train your enemies!” sounded like an insane strategy! Were they THAT confident in their training? Or was it that the Sith foresaw some advantage in their freedom? That was why the Jedi had sent them on their way after all… But what possible future could be advantageous to BOTH the Jedi and to at least this faction of the Sith?

   At least that made some sort of sense of the wildly-disparate apprentices. There more than a few of them probably thought that they WERE infiltrating the Sith.

   They considered trying to sort out some of the unwilling or infiltrating apprentices to recruit, but (in the end) decided that they couldn’t be sure enough and opted to simply keep most of the party hidden in with the colonists and bide their time. Leaving with the colonists was the only sure escape they could come up with – even if it WOULD take at least another month and perhaps two.

   There wasn’t much choice except to continue to go along with the Sith who were pushing their training program – although Ben continued his campaign to fall to the light side…

   Technically, “falling to the light side” also made you a Sith; allowing emotion-driven use of the Force to burn the response-paths of ANY emotion into your mind was insanity – but a Sith fallen to love or compassion was a lot easier to live with than one fallen to hatred, anger, vengeance, or destruction. In fact, those few who did fall that way generally never attracted any attention. There were always a few really nice people around who were just too benevolent to deal with reality.

   Meanwhile, back at the base with A-Kira and company…

   Before I could do much of any research on hyperspace specialists, a call came in for me. Well, it probably was meant for my alternate self, but I wasn’t about to try and explain that one. Answering the call, I saw a gentleman the others whispered to me as the producer of the “Kira the Kat” show. It was easy to see he was very stressed about something.

   The producer then proceeded to introduce a man in his thirties dressed in mud and leaves and scaly leather (?!). This guy, calling himself “Jacob Schule”, was hunting Xiang. Not recalling that name at all, it took some more whispering from the others to remind me that Xiang was the scantily armored woman running around the base. Asking why Jacob was hunting Xiang received the response of it being “good sport”. Putting Xiang the the call started an argument between them with Xiang claiming interest only in Sith while eyeing me while Jacob repeated his demand to fight Xiang in a duel.

   The producer then asked if we were going to pick Jacob up, or if he needed to get the police involved. I offered to have one of the ships go collect Jacob Schule and apologized for the inconvenience as the producer asked if this was going to be a regular event. I seriously hope not. I mean, the Sith hunter wearing less clothing than most strippers was one thing, but now this bunch is attracting nuts straight from the forest? I want to go home.

   While we waited for the ship with Jacob to return, I returned to the forums to try and work out methods of helping the others escape with Ben. We all provided numerous suggestions on how they might effect an escape only for Ben and the others to declare that they would wait until the colony was dropped and sneak among the colonists. Once planetside, they would construct a transmitter and signal us for pickup. I had to admit the plan was reasonable and likely to succeed, if a bit time consuming. We were looking at several months before we could retrieve them.

   With that decided, I spent some time learning more about the Force from Telera. I found the mysticism more than a bit hard to swallow, but I did make some progress on the basic techniques. She made suggestions about beginning construction of my own lightsaber, but I felt it best to wait a while until I had a better grasp of the main techniques. Besides, what exactly was I going to do with a melee weapon anyway?

   Jacob Schule arrived a couple of days later. I met him at the airlock where he repeated his demand to duel Xiang. Summoning Xiang, she repeated her disinterest in dueling anyone not Sith. This led to an interesting argument where Xiang refused to acknowledge him as a worthy opponent, Jacob accused her of not being Xiang, and I requested that he wear pants while aboard our base. Needless to say, none of us got very far. Hell, I would settle for him taking a bath to help with the smell.

   Jacob actually wasn’t that bad – but Kira had grown up on Alderaan, and wasn’t very tolerant of less formal lifestyles… Jacob’s collection of personally-cured leathers and clothing made by hand from giant leaves and such was mildly weird – but there were odder modes of dress out in the galaxy. Of course, his having spent nearly two decades – starting as a kid – living as a hermit in the forest fighting predators and trading their skins for more lightsaber parts instead of letting the Wookies send him back to civilization pretty much screamed “Crazy!” in giant marquee letters to anyone who heard the story. Normal kids of social species did NOT spend decades in isolation. His obsession with finding greater challenges didn’t help either.

   Jacob finally resigned himself to the fact that Xiang refused to fight him and began to look for someone else to fight. Turning immediately to me, he proceeded to ask if I was a powerful fighter or not. Not that I have seen many of the others in action, but I did feel that I was one of the more powerful fighters on the base. Upon hearing that, Jacob immediately challenged me to a duel and allowed me to choose the weapons and the location.

   I didn’t like the look of those lightsabers strapped to his body, and anyone crazy enough to wear those like that into combat either had to be pretty good or pretty crazy. Very well then, he was allowing me to choose the weapons and location, so I chose a situation that favored myself. I selected blasters (set to stun of course, can’t have fatalities over something so silly) and one of the larger cargo holds. He agreed to my terms and so we headed to the cargo hold.

   We took positions appropriately and faced off against each other. He fired first and the shot went wild to my right. It was a simple matter to return fire and hit him repeatedly until he finally succumbed to the stun and fell. As he laid there unconsious, we had some of the droids wash him. I wanted the droids to dress him in some real clothes, but got outvoted by the others. Jacob awoke about an hour later and seemed quite impressed with my skill and asked for some basic training. I agreed to give him some basic training whenever we had some free time. I did advise him that next time he should pick the weapons and let his opponent chose the location. Allowing your enemies to pick all the advantages was a sure way to get yourself killed.

   With that over with and Jacob joining our little group for the time being, it was time to find a hyperspace specialist. Despite my fiancee’s alternate, finding a hyperspace expert was a fairly simple matter. After all, the galaxy had a lot of them. It did make me wonder exactly what she was trying to accomplish, but there wasn’t enough data to speculate. After agreeing to a payment, we brought the specialist to the base. We gave him copies of Ben and Shipwreck’s notes and asked what sort of modifications to the hyperdrive would be required in order for it to use those coordinates.

   Our specialist easily recognized the modifications required as one of the more suicidal modifications. Apparently that configuration almost always made ships disappear without a trace. I then tried to explain that we had good reason to believe that the reason was that those modifications allowed a hyperdrive to journey to other timelines. At first the specialist seemed skeptical to the idea, and showing him that I didn’t match Kira’s medical records was dismissed as a clone.

   We finally remembered that I was partially phased all the time. Using that, we were able to convince the specialist that I was indeed from an alternate timeline – or at least that I wasn’t fully a part of this universe. He did get a bit excited at that, and started talking about writing a paper on the topic. I asked him to hold off on naming me directly since that information was likely to be valuable to the Sith at the moment. He was greatly disappointed over the lack of evidence for him to show in his paper, but I promised him he could use the name freely once word finally broke on what had happened to me to our enemies. He seemed reluctant over the idea, but finally gave in.

   Then began the wait for a signal from Ben. We found out that the bounty placed on Kira by the Sith skyrocketed immensely. I wasn’t sure why exactly, either I pissed them off enough that the Sith now had a major vendetta against Kira, or they really wanted to know how I did those things. Another significant bounty was placed through a Hutt proxy, not nearly as big as the Sith’s but still rather large. At this point I began to get concerned for my alternate’s family.

   Making some inquiries found that they had all been taken into protective custody. The Republic had made moves along those lines only to find that apparently the local Jedi had beaten them to the punch by a couple weeks. It figured. It must have been that precognition of theirs at work. Trying to track them down was likely to blow whatever cover the Jedi had set up, and besides I really didn’t want to have to interact with them. They would quickly pick up on me not being their Kira and some very difficult questions would begin to be asked. I’d rather avoid that if I could.

   I continued training some more with Telera while we waited for the others. She finally convinced me to construct my own lightsaber. That was one of the more boring and tedious exercises I’ve been involved in, although I put a patient face on my participation to placate Telera. She was going out of her way to train me after all. The basic hilt was easy enough for the base to fabricate based on what was known of Kira’s design. We ended up growing the crystal however, it took three tries before I finally made a crystal that didn’t burn out on me. That slightly violet glow it gave off didn’t seem like much to me, but the others informed me that it was glowing ultraviolet.

   At least with blasters I didn’t need to wear sunscreen. Oh well, something to put into my bags in case I needed to cut through a door or something. Even then, I could just walk right through said door.

   The others continued their own projects… A-Alys mostly focused on Khadim; explaining galactic civilization to him – and getting him reasonably well-socialized – was a project that called for months. Besides… after a lengthy period on her own, it was an interesting project. Attempting to explain people to an energy-being was giving her new insights into her own species.

   Meanwhile, in the “Destroyed Galaxy”, Alys was gathering supplies from the navigation-beacon and subspace-relay emergency caches – as well as from a few ancient, strangely-designed, and long-deserted space installations around the fringes of the core – and was continuing to gather the survivors. It had taken some time to use the relay systems to find them – but, given the scale of the galaxy, it should have been no real surprise that several hundred starships had been jumping into hyperspace when Ben had done – well, whatever he had done.

   Shipwreck mostly fumed… nothing to salvage, nothing to blow up, couldn’t go on a bender since he might give himself away… He wound up passing a good deal of time in stasis. Why should he waste his life when there was nothing to do?

   Jarik, of course, continued with his betting schemes – and sank further and further. There were things that a force-sensitive simply should not do.

   Handell simply amused himself with cards, alcohol, and games. As a freighter pilot, he was well-used to long dry spells.

   I also gave blaster lessons to Jacob during our wait. He made some progress on that front, but still insisted on wearing leaves and leather as opposed to real clothing. Bounty hunters started showing up enmasse around Jerondal looking for Kira around this timeframe and we started having to move the base repeatedly to avoid pursuit. It was beginning to look like half the bounty hunters in the galaxy were after me. The Sith must really dislike having someone toy with them by running around one of their ships. We also started experiencing turnover in the producers of the “Kira the Kat” show. They even began to include messages in the credits announcing that the studio didn’t know where I was, only that they received shows from us via secure untraceable connections.

   Life was becoming rather unpleasant to say the least.

   Finally, Ben and Lazlo – simply informing their Sith instructors that they now felt that it would be best to continue their training out in the galaxy and that they were leaving with the colony – departed with the colony, and their hidden friends.

   The Varen Sith did not care. The seeds had been well planted – and if Ben and Lazlo lost control and destroyed themselves, they would be well away from anything all that valuable. If not, they might well return as stable Sith – and might possibly even bring Kira along. There was no further profit to be had in keeping them. Still, arrangements were made.

   Ben grew more and more nervous… This was FAR too easy! They’d dropped with the new colony – and with Shipwreck, Alys, Khadim, and 10-CH – and started improvising a communications system… As they should have expected, planting a secret colony meant putting it somewhere that wasn’t on the communications and navigation grids. Still, they’d gotten the attention of a tramp freighter soon enough, and the tramp had dropped them off on one of the known border worlds even if it had taken most of their money. From there, it was easy enough to tap into Alys’s accounts and call in…

   And to arrange to dispose of his latest superweapon notes very very carefully.

   Eventually though we got our signal from Ben. Handell went to retrieve them in the Asrai while we waited at our latest hiding place deep in the atmosphere of a gas giant. Introductions went around as Alys and I met Ben and Lazlo. We shared information and Ben started looking into ways of ensuring safe two way passage between their timeline and mine. We could probably get me back to my timeline, but getting their Kira back to theirs was probably going to take a bit more work. Ben also gave the technicians on the base a computer memory chip he had swiped that I can only assume had important information from the Sith ship on it.

   At which point news updates started coming in again. The war against the Sith was going poorly. In my estimates it looked like the Sith were throwing pretty much everything they had at the Republic. If the Republic managed to hold out, then it was only a matter of time before the Sith war effort collapsed from exhaustion. The sheer resources of the Republic pretty much assured that eventuality. There was still going to be a great deal of death and destruction before it was all said and done though.

   The “Kira the Kat” show was almost caught up to our current timeframe and we apparently needed to start producing new material soon if we wanted the income from the show to continue to roll in. Speaking of which, the latest batch of payments from the show came in at nearly a million credits. That money did end up split a lot of ways, but it still ended up nearly 50,000 added to my pocket. I have to admit, while I think I have the happier life, the other Kira certainly seems to have the wealthier life. That irritates me to some extent that an ass like him could be bringing in this kind of money.

   Oh well.

   There were more assassinations while we had been hiding. That was bad enough, but in the last month our assassin twice showed extraordinary speed in front of large numbers of people. There were even holos of the attacks. Looking at those, I had to say the assassin had to be using Codifier techniques as opposed to the Force speed techniques Telera had demonstrated. But if this version of Valerie is a Force user like Telera, then how is she able to do that? Maybe our assassin wasn’t Valerie but someone else. Regardless, a Sith assassin using Codifier techniques like that was definitely a major danger to the Republic war effort.

   I really wanted to head home, but I was also convinced I had a better chance of facing such an assassin than my counterpart did. After all, I can move at those speeds and snipe through walls, the other Kira can’t.

   We were beginning to discuss whether to rescue their Kira or to go after the assassin when someone mentioned noticing that Jarik was behaving oddly. Further inquiries on the matter revealed Jarik to be in possession of far more money than he should – and inquiries into how he was doing were rebuffed in a most paranoid fashion. The others got really concerned and decided to talk to Jarik before doing anything else.

   Sadly, said talk involved Xiang and Jacob smashing their feet into Jarik’s door and tearing it out of the frame. Jarik demanded to know what was going on and then proceeded to spray Xiang with some mist – which he somehow sent after everyone else, despite their various attempts to block or repel it. I immediately phased myself as Xiang, Jacob, and Lazlo moved in to attack. Ben ran off down the halls muttering something about not bringing his armor. I saw Xiang fall to the ground and stay there as Lazlo threw himself at the doctor and stuck to him. Jacob managed to get in a slash along the doctor’s arm before succumbing to paralysis – which damaged some sort of holder he’d had up there, which began to release all sorts of ominous looking gases and oozes.

   Lazlo was clearly sinking into paralysis too – and I was beginning to feel strange. Whatever the doctor was using, it had to be hellishly potent for the few molecules that would leak through the interface so quickly to start affecting me… Had the doctor gone insane? Even if he’d taken an antidote in advance, antidotes were never perfectly efficient!

   Lazlo managed to distract the doctor with a few final jerks before succumbing to paralysis – and then, as the doctor started to turn his weird powers on me, suddenly seemed to short them into himself somehow in a display of lightning that left him smoking – but left the doctor wide open and defenseless for A-Kira.

   Lazlo, in fact, had spent a force point on the first purely heroic use of a dark side technique to have come up so far; he’d used the Sith dark-side-power-pyramid technique to simply ground the doctors powers into himself – allowing the energy to expend itself doing damage instead of using it to make himself more powerful and accepting the dark side.

   I circled around behind them all so that the doctor’s back was facing me. Entering hypertime, I set the blaster to stun and unloaded three power cells into him as he collapsed unconscious. I was starting to feel SERIOUSLY unwell by this time as whatever gas he had sprayed was beginning to filter through the phase interface. Ben arrived shortly thereafter with the Arethi doctor. The Arethi treated us each in turn although we all needed to stay in the medical bay for a couple days.

   Ben had, in fact, been busy – isolating the area, sealing off the contagion, getting the Arethi doctor into the loop, and making sure that they didn’t lose the entire base to some hideous plague. By the time he was done with that, armored up, and on his way back, the fight was long over. On the other hand, everyone else was VERY glad to see him turn up in condition to offer assistance.

   Apparently the doctor had been stocked with incredibly gluey paralyzing stuff, several plagues, and a wide variety of drugs – and we’d all been exposed to pretty much the entire arsenal. That was just great.

   While we recovered in the medical bay, the others went through all of Jarik’s records – and determined that he had been involved in organizing and running a variety of involuntary racing death matches for his own betting. I was rather disgusted at the whole scheme and the others agreed something needed to be done. I was all for turning him over to the Republic authorities, but got outvoted by the others who merely kept him sedated. They talked about the Arethi injecting Jarik with some sort of symbiote designed to prevent him from doing this sort of thing again. I wasn’t entirely clear on what they were talking about, other than the fact that Jarik had apparently fallen to the Dark Side.

   That was disturbing to say the least. It was one thing to see it in the holos they showed me, but to see it happen to someone I knew was quite another. Is this what my counterpart fighting against? It was certainly hard to imagine worse fates then becoming a nigh unstoppable monster merely because you felt angry one day. It also looks like learning about the Force isn’t the catch-all solution I was believing it to be. This probably means there is some skills required to keep the Codex and the Force in balance with each other to keep from going Faded or Sith. Perhaps in time Valerie and I could learn how to do that, but right now I really needed to get home and away from all these disturbing people.

   Which finally led back to the discussion of whether to go after the assassin first or to rescue the other Kira and Alys and send me home. The final vote was split almost evenly with Lazlo being the tie breaker in favor of going after the assassin. Ben then proceeded to use his divination to scry for where our assassin was likely to attack next. I figured that was a bust given the sheer scale of the galaxy, but was most surprised when Ben was able to narrow it down to a single sector. He announced he was unable to narrow it down any further, but that did give me enough of a lead that I could use probability assessment to try and pick the most likely location for us meeting the assassin.

   I figured an attack on the Hohenheim Research team of Glasknecht was the most likely probability. Ben announced he was going to try and blur the precognition of assassinations in the sector, whatever that means. We then looked into setting up shop on the planet nearby the research group. We decided to split into three teams. Handell and Shipwreck would remain in orbit on the Asrai looking for any stealthed ships. Should they find one, they would fire the antimatter missiles at it in an attempt to cripple it. Jacob, Xiang, and I would enter the facility as security guards to form the first line of defense at intercepting the assassin while the others would hover nearby to provide assistance or to intercept should our assassin try to escape.

   I used some of the hair dye and melanin treatments my counterpart had stashed in his quarters and assumed the ID of a entertainment and competition gunslinger from the Outer Rim of the galaxy. The disguise was thin, but on the other hand it is a large galaxy far more densely populated than my own. Most annoying though was the fact that the melanin treatments coloring my eyes, plus the amber contact lenses I wore now gave my eyes a bright blood red color. I thought about removing them for the duration of the mission but eventually decided the HUD functionality was too valuable to give up merely because of a disturbing eye coloration.

   Jacob, Xiang, Lazlo and I then proceeded to apply for the security positions opened. Jacob went first, and while I was unable to see the interview, I can only imagine how strange and silly it must have been. I went second, I portrayed myself as an expert gunslinger out to earn some more money to purchase transport to the next competition as my funds were drying up from the last one. I presented a few (slightly doctored) accounts of fights and jobs I’ve been involved with and offered to do some demonstrations if necessary. The interviewer was interested in seeing some demonstrations and so we both went to the roof where I proceeded to shoot cans from a vending machine in a variety of trick shots. I didn’t even bother tapping into my talents to avoid showing off too much.

   Xiang interviewed third and apparently did something to really annoy the interviewer as Jacob and I were both asked back into his office for questioning. The interviewer proceeded to unload a tirade upon us asking who was setting him up for some sort of practical joke. As much as I wanted to deny anything untoward, Jacob and Xiang had completely blown the cover off our infiltration in less than an hour – unless it was just the fact that three absurdly unlikely candidates has applied for the same security job in less than an hour and the security director was no fool. I took the guy aside and proceeded to try to explain what we knew, how we knew it, and why the Sith were attacking hyperspace researchers.

   The security chief hadn’t taken the scientists demands for more security too seriously. They were supposedly trying to improve hyperdrive efficiencies – but there hadn’t been any breakthroughs on that front for millennia. The place was a tax write-off, an excuse for applying for grants, and a place for researchers to pot around with stuff that everyone knew was hopelessly impractical. The odds of something coming up were minuscule; what they mostly actually DID was blow up hyperdrive components. He’d hired Jacob – who was obviously more than a bit nuts, but not apparently dangerous to the company – mostly to pay the scientists back for harassing him. An expert marksman was possible, if unlikely; security work was pretty dull. A crazy huntress in far-too-revealing armor who claimed to be a holovid character was just too much. His daughter had some of the Xiang action figures for goodness sake!

   At first the guy was hesitant to believe that anything this research group was doing warranted the Sith trying to assassinate them. Trying to explain the teleportation trick got nowhere fast as I lacked the knowledge to explain the technology well. Eventually I had to settle for calling Ben in and having him explain to the researchers about the technology. That led to a great deal of technical discussion that went completely over my head, but together they announced they had figured out why the Sith were not using the system to teleport nukes onto targets.

   I can’t say the idea had even occurred to me to think of trying that, but the explanation that it was nigh-impossible to target the thing within a few thousand miles unless there was a special beacon to anchor the far end. Even then, if you wanted stuff to survive, you wanted a precognitive to be controlling it. The fact that the system would only work really well if used with a Force user also fit given what we knew of the assassin. Ben proceeded to start working with the researchers on some sort of hyperdrive resonance effect I didn’t really understand as he decided to try and blend in with the researchers during the stake-out.

   I started my work as a security guard and began patrolling the place. I had to admit, the thought of facing a Valerie trying to kill me was more than a bit disturbing. There was a part of me wishing it wouldn’t be her that showed up and just some nameless Sith instead.

   In another galaxy:

   The lightsaber came swinging at my head from the side, which I was easily able to duck under as I rammed my shield into her chest. That sent Valerie sprawling onto the ground before she flipped herself back onto her feet. She looked annoyed at her failure to block the attack but suppressed that urge to vent her annoyance nicely. I had to say she was coming along rapidly as she hadn’t even used the suppression drugs in weeks. Of course, it helped matters that she was still utterly wiping the floor with me during the Codex training sessions.

   And so our back and forth continued again. I would knock her around during Force and lightsaber training, and she would return the favor during Codex and blaster training. We even started trying out sessions where we combined using Force and Codex powers in tandem in an attempt to build a combined combat style. Unfortunately we were too unskilled with either the Codex or the Force to really get a good handle on the idea. It looked like we would have to even out our skills before we could really get anywhere on that front.

(Valerie) That shield is really beginning to bug me.

(Kira) Well that is the point of the thing really. If I wasn’t making things difficult for my opponent, then I would be dead.

(Valerie) Yeah, cute, that doesn’t mean you have to keep knocking me around with it during practice.

(Kira) This coming from the woman actively trying to kill me during her training sessions?

(Valerie) That’s different.

(Kira) How?

(Valerie) I’m trying to force your breakthrough.

(Kira) Ah, should I then try to skewer you with the lightsaber in an attempt to force your own?

   That resulted in a blaster appearing out of nowhere aimed at my head as she moved faster than I could perceive, but not faster than I could foresee. Knocking that bolt aside with the lightsaber, I accelerated myself as well and we continued our little dance of give and take. She still had the overall power advantage with greater skill in the Codex than I did with the Force, but the gap in power was narrower than when I was at Trayus.

   That still didn’t stop her from wiping the floor with me when she really wanted to. That happened frequently, so I took the opportunity to knock her on her ass when I could. Although I usually paid for that later.

   I could also tell the practice sessions were dredging up memories for her. I could only guess those memories where of her and my counterpart practicing together. Every so often I would say or do something and I could see that for a moment she forgot I wasn’t her fiancee. Those moments were both intensely awkward and weird on a lot of levels.

   Also awkward was the family calls. Valerie finally got to the point where she couldn’t stonewall my counterpart’s family any longer. At first she wanted to give me a script to read off of until I told her that there was no way I’d be able to pull that off. Finally it came down to learning certain key questions and topics to bring up during the call and me trying to keep my mouth from running without me. At first we tried to limit the call to just Mother, but it quickly grew out of hand as all the family got involved in the call.

   There were a couple of tense moments when I lost control of my mouth and received some quizzical looks. At least I was able to deflect those by insinuating that Valerie was doing distracting things outside their field of view. That annoyed her to no end. When the call finally ended she stormed up in front of me and began arguing with me.

(Valerie) Insinuating those things about me to your own mother?!

(Kira) Hey, technically, she isn’t my mother.

(Valerie) Don’t change the subject!

(Kira) Well sorry if I can’t remember one of my great childhood friends I’ve never met.

(Valerie) We’ve been through this several times.

(Kira) Yeah, and until I actually meet and get to know these people, memorizing names and faces isn’t doing squat.

(Valerie) Look, at some point you may have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re stuck here!

(Kira) And what, keep up this chirade indefinitely? No matter how much you try to teach me, I am never truly going to be him. He and I are just too different.

(Valerie) So what, tell the galaxy that Kira Keldav has been replaced with a snarky ass that happens to look like him?

(Kira) The galaxy is a big place, Valerie. I think they can get over the fact I am not the guy who killed Nihilus.

   That seemed to frustrate her immensely as she took a moment to calm herself down again using the Jedi meditation techniques I taught her. When she spoke again, it was with a tone of voice I had never heard out of her: disappointment.

(Valerie) Remember what you told me, about how there are eerie similarities between myself and the princess?

(Kira) Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?

(Valerie) That same statement works both ways, you’d do well to remember that fact.