Vireen – outer colonies, dusk over an active ore platform repurposed as a Republic outpost.
The gunship cut through the fading orange clouds like a scalpel, its engines screaming briefly before dropping into silence as it touched down on the cracked ferrocrete landing pad. Dust curled into the air like ghosts disturbed from their sleep.
Windu stepped down first—face unreadable, robes snapping lightly in the dry wind. Kaelen followed, his armor marked by travel, helmet tucked under his arm, cloak brushing the scuffed floor. He didn't look at the welcoming party. He was already scanning the perimeter.
The Republic officer waiting for them was young, sharp-jawed, too eager to impress. His armor bore the grime of field duty, but no visible wounds.
"General Windu. Master Vizsla. We weren't expecting direct oversight," he said, offering a tight salute.
"You weren't meant to," Windu replied, his tone flat but not unkind. "But the Council had concerns. We're here to assess conditions, nothing more."
The officer forced a smile. "Conditions are... stable. The last major fire exchange was over forty hours ago. We've pushed sympathizers back to the lower mines. Just a few agitators left—probably mercenaries."
Kaelen tilted his head. "Agitators? Mercenaries don't die for a cause. They die for credits. These aren't mercs."
The officer hesitated, momentarily thrown off by the Padawan's direct tone. "They've been digging in, planting false signals, intercepting supply runs—"
Kaelen turned away mid-sentence, already walking.
Windu gestured forward. "Walk us through the perimeter."
They moved through the outpost, which sat like a foreign implant on Vireen's fractured skin. It was all temporary durasteel walls and re-purposed mining scaffolds. Above them, the ridgelines were jagged with exposed ore veins, perfect for a hidden sniper nest or a charge emplacement.
Civilians moved in between the structures, but they didn't look like grateful survivors. They looked afraid. Some glanced at the Jedi and quickly looked away. Others didn't look at all.
Windu slowed beside a comms station. "Why is your outer motion grid offline?"
"Interference from the mines. We're compensating with patrols," the officer answered, a little too fast.
Kaelen knelt beside a half-collapsed crate. A child's toy sat abandoned on the ground—unscorched, pristine. He looked left—there was no shelter nearby. No reason for a child to have played here.
He scanned the rooftops. The wind was wrong.
Too clean.
He closed his eyes, filtering the breeze through his senses like combing through threads. No birds. No dust in the air. Stillness that didn't belong.
And then… bootprints in the gravel. Deep, heavy, spaced with trained discipline. Not just a soldier. A team.
Kaelen stood slowly, brushing his fingers against the hilt of a vibroblade sheathed along his thigh.
"Master," he said softly.
Windu turned to him.
Kaelen's voice was barely above a whisper, but it struck like flint:
"This isn't a perimeter. It's a kill box."
Windu's hand dropped slightly toward his belt.
The captain frowned. "What are you saying?"
Kaelen's eyes were fixed on the civilian by the broken water tank—wearing military-grade boots and carrying no gear. Just standing. Watching. Waiting.
The dusk deepened. The silence grew heavier.
Somewhere behind the ridgeline… something clicked.
The first explosion didn't sound like. It sounded like the planet itself exhaling—a deep, guttural whump that rolled through the colony square and sent birds screaming from distant cliffs.
The Republic's communications array went up in flames. Shockwaves tore through the open-air platform. Screams followed like smoke—panicked, layered, messy.
Kaelen didn't wait.
He moved before the dust could rise, before the first sniper bolt could split the air.
One shot grazed a civilian's shoulder—another screamed and collapsed. But Kaelen was already diving—he slammed into a young girl standing paralyzed in the open, pulling her behind a stack of metal drums as plasma scorched the stone where she'd just stood.
Then the street erupted.
Three civilians dropped their cloaks and drew pistols. One shouted, "For Vireen's freedom!" before a red bolt fired wildly into the crowd.
Kaelen was on him instantly—no lightsaber, no words. Just motion. A twist, a side-step. One gauntleted arm caught the wrist, bent it until the blaster dropped. A sharp elbow to the solar plexus. A vibroblade hissed out from under Kaelen's vambrace—he slashed the attacker's belt, disarming the grenades, and kicked him unconscious into a wall.
Only then did his saber ignite.
The violet blade screamed to life with a deep, vibrating thrum—its light cutting through the smoke like a warning.
Above, more bolts rained down from the rooftops—spaced evenly, disciplined fire. Not rebels. Trained killers.
Windu moved into the chaos like thunder guided by will.
He was already in motion, blade deflecting precision shots back at their origin, eyes flicking with perfect control. He redirected a sniper bolt into a grenade on one attacker's belt—it detonated, taking three with it.
But there were too many angles. Too many shadows.
Kaelen flipped over a supply crate, landed beside Windu in a crouch.
They didn't speak.
Windu rotated to cover high arcs—blades flashing like lightning. Kaelen flowed beneath, striking low and fast. Mandalorian sweeps, targeted joint destruction. He shattered one attacker's knee with a reverse spinning heel, then stabbed through the forearm of another trying to flank.
Windu moved into Vaapad—his strikes faster, drawing fire. Kaelen adapted instantly, his footwork shifting to match Windu's rhythm but never mirroring it. Their forms were unspoken math—aggressive, reactive, interlocked.
Kaelen slammed a boot into an enemy's chest, flipped his saber in a reverse grip, and threw a smoke charge into the air.
Windu followed the beat, cutting down a final attacker who tried to break the ring. The field began to clear. But then—
"Above!" Windu snapped, eyes flashing toward a collapsed watchtower.
Kaelen didn't hesitate.
One motion.
He grabbed a stacked ore crate the size of a speeder, let the Force guide the arc, and hurled it like a boulder.
It tore through the air, smashing through the upper window of the tower just as the sniper inside prepared a final shot.
The impact shook the building. Glass and stone rained down.
Silence followed.
Smoke drifted like ghosts across the broken square. The girl Kaelen saved was curled behind a wall. Civilians emerged slowly from cover, stunned but alive.
The storm had passed.
The heat from the upper blast hadn't reached the tunnels yet, but Kaelen could feel the pressure shift—the way air carried tremors before sound. He moved fast but silently, shadowing down a broken stairwell lit only by red emergency strips that flickered like dying veins.
He drew in a breath.
Damp. Mold. Sweat. Plasma residue. Blood.
He was close.
Above, Windu still fought in the square, but Kaelen didn't look back. There was no room for hesitation—not here. Not when lives were being used as bargaining chips by people who'd already decided to die.
A burst of static came over the comm:
"One group fleeing east—multiple hostiles, possible civilians."
Kaelen didn't respond.
He was already there.
The tunnel narrowed to a crooked corridor barely wide enough to walk through sideways. At the far end, illuminated by a single failing floodlamp, were seven forms—three armed insurgents, four hostages. Two children huddled close to an older miner. A woman whimpered behind them, eyes wild.
The lead attacker held a trigger, rigged to a primitive explosives vest strapped around the woman's torso. The wires snaked between all of them, twisted into a closed loop. Their captor paced erratically, muttering a mantra in a language Kaelen recognized: Vireen will rise from our bones.
Kaelen's gaze sharpened.
The children were rigged too.
The second man held a blaster. The third stood farther back—trembling, eyes darting, trigger discipline already unraveling.
Kaelen stepped into view slowly. No saber drawn.
One of the hostiles raised his weapon in panic—
"Stay back! One move and they all go!"
Kaelen's voice came low and steady, like stone cracking under pressure:
"You're scared."
The lead attacker flinched.
Kaelen took another step.
"That's good. It means you're not too far gone."
The blaster-wielder shouted:
"Drop your weapon! Drop it now!"
Kaelen didn't move.
Instead, in a fluid motion, he sheathed his saber back onto his hip—and drew his vibro-daggers from the crossed sheath beneath his cloak.
No sound.
No shine.
Just steel and certainty.
In the flickering red dark, Kaelen tilted his head.
His stance was loose, his feet wide—Mandalorian footing. Jedi breathing. Predator stillness.
The first feint came like a whisper—a left dagger twitched just an inch—just enough to draw the eye.
The man holding the trigger turned—
—and that's when Kaelen moved.
Silence cracked.
He was in the middle of them in a second.
The butt of one dagger slammed into the jaw of the panicked insurgent—his body folded before the detonator slipped from his hand. Kaelen's knee drove into the other's chest—a sickening crunch of cartilage as the man collapsed without breath to scream.
The third tried to fire.
Kaelen didn't dodge. He caught the barrel under one forearm, redirected the shot into the ceiling, and slammed his dagger into the man's thigh—not deep. Not fatal.
But finally.
Then stillness.
Kaelen stood, shoulders rising and falling with practiced rhythm. The red light gleamed faintly off the edges of his blades.
He crouched, speaking gently now—voice a tone the hostages hadn't heard yet.
"You're alright. It's over."
He moved to the woman first. The wires trembled in his fingers as he traced them—feeling the current, the tension. Not mechanical. Emotional.
The fear had weight.
Snip. Click. Release.
He worked fast but reverently. Every loop dismantled with exacting calm. Not just for safety—but for their sanity.
When the last wire fell to the ground, the woman collapsed into a sob. The children clung to her.
Kaelen didn't smile. He didn't reassure.
He simply stood and nodded once.
"Come."
They followed him out of the tunnel like survivors following the ghost of something ancient.
At the top of the corridor, a sergeant stood in awe as Kaelen emerged, silent footsteps first, children in tow.
The sergeant removed his helmet and whispered to his brother:
"He's not a Jedi."
His brother:
"He's what happens when he learns restraint."
Kaelen didn't speak. Just walked forward—barely winded. Blades wiped clean. Eyes unreadable.
Behind him, not a single life lost.
Ahead of him, a still raging.
But in this tunnel? They had already ended.
Kaelen stands alone at the edge of the roof, his silhouette carved in firelight. Beneath him, the once-hostile mining colony is now quiet — not peaceful, but calm in defeat. Smoke still rises in columns. Distant screams have faded into orders barked by officers. The Republic is in control again.
But there is no celebration.
Ash clings to Kaelen's darkened robes. His armor is scorched and pitted from close-quarters combat. His skin is streaked with carbon scoring and sweat. Blood — not all his — has dried on his gauntlets.
He's not resting.
He's listening.
The roof creaks softly as Windu joins him. The Master says nothing at first, just steps up beside his Padawan and takes in the view — the fractured skyline, the burning ore silos, the Republic medics below lifting wounded children onto stretchers.
For a long moment, both Jedi remain silent.
Finally, Windu speaks — low, even:
"You moved like fire."
Kaelen's voice is steady, but roughened by smoke:
"I moved because no one else did."
He doesn't look at Windu. His gaze is fixed forward — at the edge of the colony where the last bodies are still being counted.
Windu studies him. The set of his shoulders. The absence of tremble. The stillness that doesn't come from peace — but from control.
"That wasn't the Jedi way," Windu says carefully.
Kaelen answers without flinching:
"No. It was mine."
A breeze blows through the ruined beams above them, carrying the scent of melted wiring, charred stone, and ozone. From below, a 's voice crackles over comms — distant, unintelligible.
Windu lets themomenth.
He remembers the corridor Kaelen cleared. The hostages were saved. The precision strikes. The refusal to hesitate.
He'd once feared this boy would become a weapon without restraint.
But now…
There is restraint.
Just not the kind the Order teaches.
"You didn't ignite your saber until they made you."
Kaelen finally turns his head, just enough to meet Windu's eyes.
"A weapon is loud. I needed silence."
They hold each other's gaze for a breath longer.
Then Windu nods once — slow, deliberate.
"Next time," he says, "we plan for an ambush."
Kaelen raises a brow.
"You're assuming there'll be one."
Windu offers the faintest trace of a smirk — not amusement, but recognition.
"There always is."
He turns to go, then pauses.
One last line, not as a Master, but as a general — and perhaps something more:
"You'll lead."
Kaelen watches him descend into the dark below. Alone again, he turns back to the firelit skyline.
No pride.
No peace.
Only purpose.
The fire dies — but the storm inside him does not.