Chapter Twenty Five

Lily continued to shudder in agony, her hands in pain her mind throbbing as she slowly drifted through the air of the engine room, her ethereal body spasming from the exertion she'd just put it through. Looking down at her hands, she noticed that they were noticeably more translucent now, and she sighed faintly. I hope this isn't a permanent thing. I really don't want to see how Harry would react to the idea of me fading away like this. Still, it worked.

With that she moved over to the Jedi Master, who had slumped against one of the walls of the engine room, and she frowned. She could still see his chest moving slightly, but it was obvious he was in a bad way. Sighing, she moved through the ship once more towards where she knew the children and the Jedi who had arrived to help them were.

Moving through one of the walls she said without preamble, "There is another Jedi badly injured in the engine room. There was a fight there, and one of the knight's bodies is there as well. Is the danger over now?"

Yoda looked up from where he was coming out of his trance, while nearby Quinlan sank to his knees, gasping lightly from the mental exertion. Fay didn't even seem as if it had bothered her at all, coming out of her trance quickly before effortlessly soothing the children all around her, gathering up those who had exhausted themselves making them hover in the air above her even as she took the ones that Yoda had been caring for.

"Danger past it is for now, reasoning behind it, a question for another time." Yoda replied, not noticing at first how much dimmer Lily looked now, gesturing to Quinlan. "Move ahead to the medical center you will, gather what you can for the Master in the engineering room."

"He looked as if he had a concussion, a damage to the brain," Lily he said, not having run into the word 'concussion' in Basic yet and having just used the English word for it. "He also looked as if he was having trouble breathing, and he had some damage to his mask."

Without even questioning it Quinlan nodded seriously at her, bowed formally to the two Masters, and raced off as quickly as he could through the hallways.

The few conscious children had by this point recovered from their second scare of the day, and more than one of them looked at Lily in horror. One of them even raced over to her, trying to grab at her, his hands passing through her lower legs. "Are you all right Mistress Lily!?"

At that several of the other children, even those who had exhausted themselves and were slipping into unconsciousness looked at her. Many of them started to move toward her, trying to touch her, whimpering as they saw how dim she was, knowing it was wrong.

"I'm all right, I'm all right!" Lily said several times, trying to be heard over the sudden clamor of young voices while Yoda looked on, his head cocked to one side and a faint smile on his wrinkled face. "I exerted myself that is all. Unlike you flesh and blood folk, using the Force takes it out of one in this state."

That caused Yoda's eyes to widen slightly despite his habitual self-control. Force Ghosts could not exert the Force outside retaining their non-corporeal forms, their whole being concentrated on simply retaining their forms extant from the Unifying Force. If Lily could do more than that, she must have been an incredibly strong Force user.

Or, a simple Force Ghosts she is not, he thought to himself before moving into the throng around her, adding his voice to that of Fay as they tried to calm the children down once more. As they did, he noticed the children trying to push some Force power into the Ghost's body. But none of them seemed to have enough control or power left to do it. Still, the fact they had even tried, perhaps consciously or perhaps unconsciously, was again telling that 'Mistress Lily' had most definitely made an impression on the initiates.

Soon Fay's presence and the aura she and Yoda of them could generate of peace calmed the children down. As soon as that was done, they once again began to move the wounded and the children to toward the medical center.

They were met there by Masters Micah, Tholme, and Saa. The three Masters were accompanied by the two knights who made up the crew of the Consular class ship, and the one knight of the five that had been assigned to the Explorer who was still alive. Knight Laitha was an Echani, who Yoda remembered as being remarkably good, as all Echani tended to be, with her lightsaber work, but lacking in certain areas of Force use. Despite that Yoda had felt her join the gestalt, and she was still standing and alive which said a lot about her skills.

Tholme nodded to Yoda as the six of them moved to help the children along, all of them taking up portions of the burden of a few of the floating children or simply carrying them in their arms. Yoda noticed Tholme glance at Lily then at Harry and the young Rutian Twi'lek that had been at the forefront of the fight.

"Report," Yoda said quietly to the taller human Master pulling his attention away from the three of them.

"Master Saa and I have scoured the rest of the ship Master," Tholme said softly, shaking his head. "Master Illuvael is dead, as are four of the five knights assigned to the Explorer. I have also spoken with my apprentice, who says that the master assigned to engineering will live, but will still be out of it for a while. Oxygen poisoning on top of a shattered elbow apparently. And on your end?"

Yoda glanced back the way they had come, then at the others as they continued forward. "Seven younglings dead, others injured, in shock, or Force exhausted." he said sorrowfully, shaking his head.

His face hardened noticeably. "Scour the ship you will with Knight Laitha, alive prisoners we must have."

"I have questions for them myself Master," Tholme replied with a nod.

With a gesture he gathered his padawan and the young knight, who moved towards him briskly, grateful to get away from the healing process going on all around them. Laitha knew where her strengthswere and they did not lie in this area. Leading the two out of the medical center Tholme glanced behind him, bowing once to Lily. She didn't even look up from where she was moving around the room helping to soothe the younglings, trying to help those who were still conscious recover from the shock of the battle and the deaths they had felt in the Force, though she didn't understand that last bit.

Fay and Lily both drew Micah's eye even while he too began to help with the children. He could feel Fay's power work even on himself, calming and taking away the aches and pains of the children as she moved around the room. It was an awe-inspiring show of Force power and ability, but the Force Ghost and her appearance grabbed his attention just as much. What the Force is she wearing? It looks like something I would see in the high-end brothels.

Despite that inattention however Micah quickly went to work on the children in his own way. Micah knelt down in front of the oldest students still awake, smiling slightly. "So young ones, how are you all feeling?"

He raised a hand when a boy made to open his mouth quickly. "Think it through initiate I want the truth, not a rote response. Your training thus far is good, but it certainly hasn't covered the feelings and shock of a battle like this. No one will question your mental abilities or toughness, nor will you be censured for it."

The boy, Alecto, nodded and looked towards the doorway. "I am a little in shock Master. I, I do not know what I felt through the Force during that battle, but I do know I killed people in it and I'm not certain what to think about that."

"I mean up here," he said gesturing towards his head, "I know it was us or them, but that doesn't really matter here," he said gesturing towards his heart. In the Duros, that was sharply to the right of his chest and lower down than it was in humans. There were some evolutionary reasons for that, but Micah didn't care about that right now.

"It is good that you already know that it was us or them young one," he said formally, resting his hand on the young shoulder. As he spoke others began to move towards him, the few boys and girls who had taken up weapons in that final moment to support the Force apparition and the Masters as they arrived.

"Sometimes it does come down to us or them, and it says much about you that you were able to take up a weapon at so young an age to defend your friends here. Think about it that way young ones," he said gesturing towards the others. "If not for your actions, Quinlan would have been overcome, and more of your friends would have joined the dead. It is harsh, it is hard, but sometimes the universe does come down to that simple a fact, us or them."

"The question going forward," he went on his hand moving from the initiate's shoulder to his chin raising his face up to meet his eyes. "Is whether or not you think you would be able to do this again in the future, if you can see yourself becoming the shield, the voice of reason, or the hidden eyes."

His words were gathering some more attention from the youngsters all around, and several more broke off from around Master Fay while others were falling asleep, lulled into that state of being at Fay's gentle presence on top of their own exhaustion. Those who had already succumbed to sleep because of Force exhaustion had been placed in beds.

"What do you mean Master?" the Duros boy asked, meeting Micah's eyes levelly.

"Have you been told about the three Orders among the Jedi?"

"We've been told their names," said another youngling, whose arm was being stitched together by Master Yoda, having been hit by several pieces of shrapnel. Though he was not known as a Healer, he was Grand Master of the Jedi Order, and even in that esoteric field Yoda's abilities far outstripped Micah's or even Fay's. He couldn't take away the pain as well as Fay could, but Yoda could heal the wounds better.

Yoda chuckled, looking at the boy and patting the arm he had just finished healing. "Sentinel, Guardian, Consular. Consular I am," he said gesturing towards himself. "Speaking, learning, teaching, diplomats we are. The path of peace through discourse do we follow."

"Whereas I am a Sentinel," Micah said with a faint smile. "We use the tools around us to get the job done, ships, disguises, blasters." he said gesturing towards the blaster Alecto's side, which he had hung on his belt while the masters were dealing with the younglings. He also noticed that the youngster had set himself up near the blue skinned Twi'lek girl and the young human boy with the odd scar on his forehead, almost as if he was guarding them. It was definitely an unconscious move on his part, but it was still telling.

"We are able to slip into the general populace, overhear things that other Jedi would not discover things other Jedi could not. We help the local police or governments unseen by most. We are also called upon to fight more often than Consulars. Though not nearly as much as Guardians."

"Guardians," Yoda said, still smiling faintly as he even more younglings began to gather around. He noticed that only the ten or so oldest were still awake now. Well the oldest except for the young boy named Harry and the Twi'lek girl whose Force presences were so strange at the moment, as if a connection was forming between them or had already formed.

He would have to look at that closer later, for now he went on with his discussion. "Warriors they are, sent into combat situations. Few in number but telling on a battlefield they can be. Lightsaber and combat skills they concentrate on. My apprentice, Guardian he is, one of the finest duelists in the Order he has become."

Micah nodded his head, and then gestured at the boy and the younger Falleen, who had moved closer to them, staring from one Master to another, her face firming as their words sunk into their minds. "Should think about this now you should, help put into perspective what occurred here it will. Remember, the right thing you did. Fought for your friends and for yourselves you did when attacked, never wrong that is."

"Now sleep." With that Yoda gestured with one hand, and the quartet nearly collapsed where they were, falling into a deep healing slumber.

Fay grabbed them all with the Force, lifting them up and gesturing them into beds all around her other patients as she looked at Yoda with a shake of her head. "That was a little abrupt Master Yoda." She was not however censorious about it, in sleep those four would do more healing both mentally and physically than they would awake and worrying at the memories of what had occurred here.

"I suppose I should take this moment to introduce myself formally, since I don't know how much Tholme has told you" Lily said, moving toward Yoda and Micah while Fay dealt with the few more injured younglings still awake thanks to the pain of their wounds. "I am Lily Potter, and that is my son over there, Harry. Tholme found us on Ryloth, and we've been here ever since. I've even been training the youngsters."

Micah nodded, smiling as he noticed that a few of the sleeping initiates had heard Lily's voice even in their sleep and had smiled at it. "How often has one of my fellows mistaken you for one of the Sunrider clan?" He asked offhandedly, hoping to break the ice somewhat.

"Many times since I arrived on this ship, and I think Master Tholme even mentioned he thought I might be from that family too. I think I need to read more of your history to get the importance of the comparison though." Lily laughed.

Now that the children were all asleep Micah let his curiosity get the better of him and he turned once again to Lily. "And, not to be too blunt but might I ask why you are dressed like that?"

Lily laughed again shaking her head. "I'm afraid ghosts can't do anything about their clothing, we simply wear what we were killed in. And I was killed after preparing for an 'evening in' with my husband."

Laughing in turn Micah bowed grandly, his hand scraping the ground in front of him. "Your husband was a lucky man then, milady."

Fay chuckled shaking her head, somewhat amused at the other Master's actions and yet also looking rather wistful as Lily mentioned her husband. Lily for her part simply laughed once more, looking between the two normally sized Masters and the short house-elf creature that they seemed to hold in such regard.

She was still trying to figure out these Jedi frankly. As individuals she had met many who were amazingly good people, but she had also met a few here on this ship that weren't as emotionally aware as they should have been. And as an institution, she had a lot of questions about them, about how they saw magic, or the Force whatever they called it, and about their training. It was obvious Jedi really didn't abstain from emotions, but it was just as obvious that they didn't make as much out of them.

They also didn't allow for attachments or relationships. She had also talked to several of the children, and had discovered things about how the Jedi recruited that appalled her. The way they thought about darker emotions and the Dark Side in general also worried her, and the questions were still piling up in her mind. But now, looking at Yoda as he turned to regard her in return, Lily realized that the time to give those questions voice was fast approaching.