Competition: First Encounter: The Force

Finished
First Encounter: The Force

We all have our first times experiencing things. Our first time wielding a blaster, our first time piloting a starship, our first date, and so forth. But seeing as we are a Brotherhood of Force-users, I am curious, my friends, what happened when you first touched the Force? Was it intoxicating? Terrifying?

And for the non-Force users among us, tell me, what was your impression upon encountering a Force-user for the first time? Did the Elder’s power awe and terrify you? Or were you not impressed at the Novice’s first stumbling attempts to use their power? Regale us with your first encounter!

Minimum of 500 words, max word count 5000 words Grading will be according to the Fiction Rubric so the opportunity for Clusters of Ice will also be available.

Competition Information
Organized by
Archpriestess Aay'han Agrona Beviin, Larrik Dul'vak
Running time
2015-11-16 until 2015-12-15 (about 1 month)
Target Unit
Clan Arcona
Competition Type
Fiction
Awards
Third Level Crescents
Participants
14 subscribers, of which 6 have participated.
Results
Member
General Stres'tron'garmis
File submission
FirstEncounterwiththeForce.pdf
Placement
1st place
2nd place
Braecen Kaeth
Member
Braecen Kaeth
File submission
FirstEncounter.TheForce.Braecen.4520.docx
Textual submission

Very moving moment in my character's past. Thank you for helping me discover it.

Placement
2nd place
Member
Battlelord Mateus Kelborn
Textual submission

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C3JDPh_iLTNMevkBCihTjQZXbOw9Irv6tmB8ASE9XBE/edit?usp=sharing

Placement
3rd place
Member
Occultan Iacul
File submission
FirstEncounterTheForce.pdf
Placement
No placement
Member
Larrik Dul'vak
File submission
Riseoftwomen.pdf
Textual submission

Will not count for placement.

Placement
No placement
Member
Adem Bol'era
Textual submission

Adem could scarcely believe his eyes watching the shards of glass tumble in the air, along with the man they were following eighty stories down to the ground. Beven was this Umbaran man’s name, and he was just shoved from his office window to his gruesome end by the invisible hands of a pair of fourteen year old boys. His head struck a speeder in traffic on the way down, instantly killing Beven and sending his corpse into a spin, as if it were a macabre pinwheel. The body struck a building corner before finally coming to rest in an alleyway. A rather humiliating end for a man three castes away from being within grasping distance of the Rootai council. One of the boys, Solis, turned his face back to his twin, Adem. The odd sensation akin to looking into a mirror had been all but forgotten by the brothers years ago, but in this moment the feeling was resurgent and powerful. The expression they mutually wore was somewhere between horrified and exhilarated. In this sense, the brothers were of one mind, half their thoughts rooted in the grim reality that they had killed a man, and the other half dreaming that the winds of change may finally have shifted in favor of the twins.
These events had started innocently enough. Lowborn Umbarans within the bottom twenty castes were a hopeless lot, and the Bol’era parents had fallen there from the fifty-seventh caste after a legal dispute over whether or not their company employed a smuggler (and were unfortunate enough to get caught doing so) ended in results that were decidedly unfavorable to their family. The minor detail that the couple was carrying a child somehow managed to be relevant during the legal process, and it was supposed that was what had prevented the Bol’eras from being executed for their crimes. As is so ubiquitously the case, the technological opulence of the upper castes, the small world that the rest of the galaxy was allowed to see, typically came at the expense of the lower half of castes. The work was industrial, and the living conditions squalid. At the bottom rung of Umbaran society lived the true Shadow People.
It was a true addition of insult to injury that the child was conceived in paradise, and was doomed to be born in perdition. That the Bol’eras happened to birth twins seemed a further twist of the knife. There is a certain poetry in that something beautiful can grow out of something ugly, in this case brilliant Force sensitive children born from mediocre Force deaf merchants-turned-mill-workers. Solis was the eldest child by seven-minutes-and-twenty-nine-seconds-and-don’t-you-forget-it and styled himself as the dominant half of the two boys with his exceptional talent and intelligence. Adem was a decidedly passive second son, and while likely every bit as prodigious (for a street urchin, anyway) as his brother, he was content to let Solis make most decisions and take responsibility for both their successes and failures.
As they grew up, the boys saw less and less of their mother and father, who had taken up a full time residence at their workplace by the time the twins were eight years old. The children had the better living quarters however, situated in the rafters of an abandoned warehouse that the business district of town had built up around. They lived off of an infrequent stipend of supplies and rudimentary education materials their parents would deliver personally. These supplies would later be brought on their mother’s behalf, since she had to pick up her husband’s slack after his untimely death in a workplace accident when the boys were twelve.
Solis and Adem supplemented their livelihood as poor children tend to do; by embracing early years of petty crime. Solis had a pair of very deft hands and fast legs, while Adem proved an excellent distraction as an accomplished climber and a wit as quick as his brother. Their exploits were the source of some notoriety, though most people were slow to work out how the same boy could be in two different places at once. It also helped that the Bol’era twins were blessed with unusually good fortune, as is so often a misattribution of those who are strong in the Force at an early age. It was always something; subtle intuition that something was about to go wrong, a mark completely believing a rather slipshod and hasty sob story, one brother frequently guessing what the other was thinking, and so on.
It did come as a surprise to both boys when one morning Solis found his eating utensils making slight movements of their own accord. Adem was in the habit of leaving his water glass just out of reach when he fell asleep and hated getting up to retrieve it, but he was alarmed to find that it had slid across the floor into his hand when he woke up thirsty for a drink. Fear turned to morbid curiosity, and the twins refined this talent with long days of practice over the late months of their thirteenth year. With focus, they could manipulate objects of various size, as well as quickly draw things towards themselves and push them away. Solis learned how to emit a dazzling flash of light from his hand, (nearly blinding the light sensitive Umbarans several times in the process) while Adem found he could surround objects with darkness. It wasn’t long before Solis began to formulate ideas of how the twins could improve their lot in life with their new bag of tricks.
“Did you catch the business holos this week?” he asked Adem during a morning of mentally bending utensils.
“No, the billboard they usually play them on in Deechi Square was acting up again.”
“Did you bother to look anywhere else?” Solis asked. Couldn’t his brother take the initiative for once in his life?
“It’s the safest place. Anywhere else I’m not touching. News isn’t worth getting stabbed over by some glit biter.” Adem shrugged. Solis seemed intent on rocking their boat more vigorously all the time. Sure, life wasn’t as great as it could be, but at least things were easy. With change always came pain.
“It seems dear mother’s branch has some new management coming in. A fellow named Beven, strikes me as the yes-man type shooting for a chance as a Rootai lapdog. Guess who got their hands on a rumored set of holos depicting said lapdog’s history with the sale of death sticks?” Solis smiled, a small tape suddenly between his fingers with the help of some sleight of hand, while Adem listened to the sound of the gears turning in his brother’s head.
“You want to strong-arm this guy into giving mom a lift out of the mill, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Bump her up a few castes, maybe the forties or so. She might have to work accounts for a while, but at least it’s close to what she used to do before we were born. She could work to retirement doing something she kind of likes and it won’t kill her one day like dad. Maybe even better than that! We could cheat our way into a fortune!” Solis pitched the idea with an excited look, while Adem’s face was troubled.
“I don’t know, she’s in a foreman position now. Thirties aren’t bad castes.”
“Don’t give me that! She deserves better, so do we, and you know it.” Solis rose to his feet and Adem knew that there was no debate to be had here. “Come on, Adem. I just want to make her happy, to make our lives what they should have been.” He extended a hand to his brother, as part of their pre-scheme ritual.
Adem took a deep breath and stood up to take Solis’s hand. “I can’t let you get killed by yourself.”
Solis smiled. “Misery loves company.”

The plan was foolproof, by a teenager’s definition of the term. Beven had a cushy office a couple blocks away from Deechi Square, where most of the buildings approached one hundred fifty stories. His office sat on the eightieth floor of the Cellic Millworks Administration building, which had embarrassingly poor security. Solis and Adem had broken in several times before to make adjustments to their mother’s salary and hours in her favor. The guards who couldn’t be tricked could be bought, the exterior of the building was covered with old disused piping and easy to climb architecture, and it sat close to several buildings that were even less secure. The idea was to slip into an old elevator shaft to reach the eightieth floor, where Solis suggested that they could disguise themselves from the security cameras with some of their light tricks. Solis had also been practicing his hand at slicing computers; once inside Beven’s office, uploading a copy of the incriminating holos and setting them to release to the public and the Cellic board of directors on a timer (unless Beven acquiesced to their demands, of course) would be child’s play.
The early parts of Solis’s plan went perfectly, and scaling the elevator shaft came as naturally to the twins as breathing. Breaking into the hallway, however, wasn’t terribly subtle, as both boys came crashing to the floor after breaking through the ceiling.
Apparently unhurt, Solis moved to his brother who lay in the debris, coughing up dust. “You okay? We have to keep moving!”
Adem clutched his shoulder. “I think I hurt my arm.” Specifically, he had dislocated it, though neither brother had any idea how to treat such an injury.
“Can you still do the. . . uh,” Solis wiggled his fingers, “darkness thing?”
Adem tried to move his arm to no avail. Solis’s face tightened and he cursed, then he pulled his brother to his feet by his good arm. The dust cloud from the old ceiling actually worked to their benefit, hiding them from the view of the hallway cameras while they fumbled along the walls looking for Beven’s office. Upon finally finding (maybe) the right door, Solis produced a battered datapad and took a few moments to slice the lock open. Adem nervously looked down both directions of the hall, very aware that the cameras could probably make out their figures through the dust as it began to settle. There would be no question that there was a break-in at this point, someone would be certain to come investigate soon. At least the door opened smoothly. The brothers shuffled inside, and noticed too late the orb on the ceiling which held a camera inside. Panicked, Solis tried to blind the camera. He extended a hand and released a flash without warning his brother or hiding his own eyes, and the bright flash left both brothers stunned on the floor for some time.
“Just what do you think you’re doing in here?” the weaselly voice of a man came from the door. His figure was blurry, but Adem guessed it was Beven. “The nerve! I have grounds to shoot both of you here and now!” There was a possibility that he was serious; Adem watched the official reach across his body for something while he approached. Beven grabbed Adem’s dislocated arm, wracking the boy’s body with pain. Adem felt something cold press against his temple for a moment, before he heard Solis grunt and tackle Beven to the floor. Beven stood up first, and Adem reached out with his good arm and let fly a column of air, sending the man tumbling backward into and over his desk. Solis recovered and sent a wave of his own, pushing Beven into the window. Before realizing what they were doing, both brothers made one more telekinetic push, which was enough to shatter the window and unfortunately took Beven with it.
There was a long silence that Adem finally broke. “Ooohhh frakfrakfrakfrakfrak *frak*! What did we just do?” If someone was going to panic, it might as well have been him.
Solis wasn’t altogether relaxed himself, but tried to calm his brother. “Adem, stop. Calm down, everything is going to be okay! You can do this.” The brothers tried to catch their breath, but their situation was certainly less than optimal. They looked down from the ledge where the window once was to find two things; one being Beven’s crumpled body far below them, the other being a ledge they could slip down to. They managed to clamber down and leap across a gap to an adjacent building, though much beyond that was out of the question. The legs of both boys had taken a beating in the process.
“At least the cameras didn’t get us, right?” Adem breathed, the question asked hopefully.
Solis half-smiled and nodded quickly. “Right, right. Of course not.” Their hopes were dashed immediately after they looked out the window to see the image of their entry into the office plastered all over the billboards.
“Fraaak.”
The boys sought familiar ground near Deechi Square. Already they had given up any hope of returning home and recovering their things. Getting offworld was the only hope they had of escaping their fate, but that was a difficult prospect for any Umbaran. Generally, only the Rootai and those close to them were free to come and go as they please, and visitors of the legal variety were exceedingly rare. On the other hand, at least the brothers did live close to a hub of illegal transportation. The bad news on that matter was that they couldn’t pay.
“Anywhere’s better than here, right?” Solis suggested, his smile tainted with worry. Adem nodded limply, but his feet were dragging. Solis was pulling him more than he was walking for himself. How much more wrong could things have gone? Getting out alive was barely worth considering as a possibility.
A massive storm drain was a leftover from an abandoned civic project to improve the sewage system, but there was still a gigantic metal hole in the ground hundreds of meters across, and someone needed to find a use for it. As it so happened, the drains were large enough to fly most freighters down, where they could dock just out of sight should the authorities ever bother to come looking. Would-be passengers like Solis and Adem would come and go by riding crane loads down, though in their particular case they made sure to hide under a tarpaulin on the way. When they at last hit the bottom, Adem noted that the place smelled remarkably like a sewer despite never getting the opportunity to become one officially. The boys limped off of the lift and did their best to look inconspicuous. Odd lights and faint music came from inside one of the freighters, and Adem couldn’t shake the feeling that particular ship was watching him.
“This was a mistake,” Adem said quietly, scanning the room surreptitiously and rubbing his shoulder, “we don’t know anything about ships.”
“You are no fun when you’re right, you know that?” Solis replied sharply.
“There are probably slavers down here.”
“Cut that out. Seriously, you are not helping.”
“We can probably spot them by deals that are too good to be true, maybe?” Do note that despite Adem’s lack of insight on the slave trade, he wasn’t far off the mark, though slavers more often make offers that cannot be refused.
“Doesn’t matter, we have to go back for mom first.” Solis said, his voice more hopeful than it was resolute. Adem, on the other hand, tended to lapse into cold pragmatism while in a dark mood.
“Solis, you and I both know we’re not going to have another chance.”
“What did you just say to me?” The boys stopped dead in their tracks. Adem feared for a moment that his brother might excuse himself as his crutch. More and more eyes in the makeshift hangar began to fall on them.
“They’ll catch us like rats before we get halfway to the mill. Even if we did reach her, we’d never make it back here.” Adem watched his brother’s eyes fill with horror.
“How can you say that? They’ll kill her! They always punish *someone*!” Solis’s voice rose. Any hope of going unnoticed was disappearing.
“That’s why we have to go, or we die with her! You think she’d want us to make a sacrifice when we had the chance to do what she never could?” Adem raised his voice as well, though his words surprised and somewhat appalled even himself. Instinct, fear and the will to live ruled him in that moment.
Solis grit his teeth and swallowed cutting words. His brother was right, so horribly correct. Unfortunately, the boys were in company only polite enough to let the fraternal spat die down before the vultures watching them finally decided to approach. A look into the nearest smuggler’s eyes suggested that he had seen the billboards and realized who they were.
“You lost, boys?” he asked, putting on his best concerned paternal voice. The wariness of the twins made the smuggler’s words impossible to believe. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Price on your heads is too high to pass up,” another man said, “you understand.” Within moments the boys were surrounded. The first smuggler reached for them. Adem and Solis gripped each other tightly; as much as they reluctantly agreed to leave behind, they would not abandon each other. When a streak of green light suddenly separated the first smuggler’s arm from his elbow, the boys were uncertain of how to react. The streak belonged to a column of light attached to a brown shroud moving almost too fast to see. The second smuggler flew back several meters and slid across the floor, a third had his legs clipped out from underneath him, then the shroud leapt over the boys to land upon a fourth man. The Jedi unceremoniously pulled his blade from the smuggler’s chest while the remainder dispersed. He turned to the boys, who hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Now look what you made me do.” the Jedi groaned in the voice of an older man. His blade lit the inside of his hood, bathing his Bothan features in a bright green glow. He turned his head to the freighter with the odd lights and music, motioning his hand towards the cockpit. “We’re leaving.”
The twins looked at each other, nodded, and followed the Jedi into his ship.
“What are you called, sir?” Adem asked, fumbling for Basic and slumped against the wall after a long silence.
“Bo. You probably can’t pronounce the rest, and when your shoulder is dislocated,” he said gruffly before grabbing Adem’s shoulder and snapping it back into place despite the boy’s protests, “you fix it. It’s like you’re trying to be in pain.”
The boys figured that was all they were going to get out of him, but they didn’t dare look at each other. There, a rift had begun to open between the brothers, but it would not become apparent until some time later. Adem began to wrestle with his guilt over his decisions, while Solis questioned his brother’s loyalty to his family. Meeting Bo marked the next chapter of their lives, when they finally began to learn of the Force and its place in their lives.

Placement
No placement