com·pul·sion n. 1. An irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation

She stared into the eyes of her aggressors, who all had some primitive, but very dangerous, looking weapons pointed at her.

A brown-haired one said something to her in a language that she didn’t understand, so she just looked nervously around. He repeated himself, though a little more firmly this time. Adai shook her head and attempted to shrug. It probably looked more like a muscle spasm.

If she could only reach for her lightsaber without them filling her face full of those sharp projectiles, she could maybe disarm them and have an escape. Slowly, slowly her hand crept to her side, and slowly, slowly, she took it off it’s clip.

It was then or never...

With a sudden movement she turned on her weapon and did a sort of twirl, and before any of them could react, she had cut off the tips of their weapons, and had broken into a sprint through the trees.

...cursing herself the entire way.

There were shouts behind her, and despite her best efforts to get out of harm’s reach, their sharp, scary weapons kept grazing her by less than an inch. Force, this had to be the hardest and fastest she’d run in her life. And then it came to a sad, abrupt halt when her entire body was thrown to the ground by a very thin and strategically placed cord of sorts. Her saber was thrown from her hands and before she could jump up and retrieve it, a heavy foot planted itself on her back and made damned sure she was pushed into the dirt as far as she would go.

The young padawan groaned as her wrists were tightly bound and she was yanked up from the ground and forced to walk, her incentive to stay under their control being a knife poking her in the back.

As they walked through the forest, she thought she might try and read their minds to see what exactly they had in store for her fiery little self. It took quite a bit of focus and concentration, but when she finally broke the hymen of their minds, a rush of emotions and thoughts poured into hers. She felt so many different things, but the two that caught her attention was the overwhelming feeling of fear and curiosity. Were those thoughts concerning her for the most part? That would be slightly awkward if that were the case. But what she cared about finding was feelings or intentions of ill will towards her. She didn’t find any, which was a relief, but she did feel that she was going to get presented to someone important for approval when they got to their destination.

Her captors had taken to conversing in hushed whispers, but their voices were ignored as Adai’s mind was filled with concern about R4 and the ship. What if someone were to stumble across it? Or stumble across R4 sticking out of the snow? Would they follow her footprints down the mountain and her markings on the trees?

No... if anyone was following her, I’m sure other folks such as these will give them the same hard time as they were giving her.

As they continued walking, she noted that the single sun had made it’s way far beyond the looming mountains, and the forest was growing dark But Adai was jerked to a sudden halt as her bonds were held firmly by a strong hand. One of the captors stepped to the base of a very, very large tree and shouted a single word up into the canopy. A rope ladder was dropped and the others began to climb up. How was she going to climb up a ladder with her hands bound behind her back? That question was soon answered as she was lifted from the ground by a strong arm around her waist, and hoisted up as one of the men climbed up onto a platform high above the ground.

She was set on the floor, as the group that caught and hogtied her gathered together on the far side of the platform and spoke in hushed voices. She looked at them for a moment, but turned and looked at the surrounding trees. Adai was surprised to see a handful of other platforms in different trees, and she counted three or four other people like her captors with their weapons on each of the platforms.

But there was one platform that caught her eye; it was directly across the way, and it had eight other folk sitting on it. Each of them a different size, color, shape, you name it...

There it was again!

It was that same feeling of grief and utter hopelessness and loss that she had felt before, near to that monolithic gate in the side of the mountain. And it was emanating from the group like the reek of Bantha fodder in midday summer heat. (She had been told it was an all-too overpowering and none-too pleasant odor. Never left Coruscant, remember?)

Their heads were hung, that is, except one, who stood up and began talking with waht Adai assumed to be the leader of this entire group. She watched them carefully as the conversation grew into a quiet, yet heated, debate.

She let her eyes fall on each and every one of that company, trying to read their minds and thoughts, but the same feeling of distress and grief was what she found in all of them.

But suddenly she saw the leader point at her, and the other man look her way. He looked at her for a moment with an expression of confusion then turned back and shook his head. But the other one did not seem convinced. He kept gesturing in her direction, and speaking furiously.

Adai just wished she knew what they were talking about!

Her eyes drifted over the now seven companions still sitting down, but to her suprise, one of them lifted his head and met her gaze. This one was very small in comparison to the others, and younger, but he still was older than her, she could tell. He kept looking at her questioningly, and when she just looked back and shrugged in confusion, he tapped the one sitting next to him, who looked up and proceeded to illustrate the same facial expressions as his friend. They looked at each other and exchanged a few words before turning to her again, and they somehow managed to communicate through basic body language. The second friend proceeded to tap his neighbor’s shoulder, who was not in fact his size, but far larger, but in human scale, about right.

He turned to his smaller companion and he, in turn, pointed over at Adai. He looked up and she met his gaze, but she found that she couldn’t hold it for long. Something was there that made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Adai turned back to look at the smaller ones, but still all three of them were still looking at her and talking. The first small one mouthed something to her, but without being fluent in their tongue, it was useless. She shook her head. But no, he tried again, letting the shape of the words exaggerate his articulation.

By now, she was getting a little miffed at the fact that she didn’t know the language of these people, and without thinking, sent him a solid, I can’t understand you, through the Force. She glanced at him to see if he got the message, and to her surprise, his eyes widened, and looked directly at her in question. He lightly smacked his neighbor and started talking to him. The one she had sent the message to was looking for confirmation that it was her.

Adai had to admit, she was surprised herself. Most of the messages she tried to send to strangers ended up being a stream a garbled nonsense that no one could translate, regardless of a common tongue. The padawan nodded slowly, and the small one looked down, deep in thought. After a moment of two he turned to his friend again and they began to talk.

But something in the Force nagged at her... something was coming, and she wasn’t going to like it. But for now, she just had to wait, and see what was going to happen. Where was she going to be taken? When? When would she be able to have her hands back at her sides? And why didn’t any of the eight on the other platform have their hands tied?

But Adai just sat there, frustrated, worried, scared, tired, and impatient. She never should have left Coruscant.

But suddenly she felt something behind her, and turned around as far as she could to see one of her captors with a knife, cutting the rope that bound her wrists tightly. When he was done he said something to her and walked over to the others again.

She moved her wrists around in circles, and felt where the cord bit into the tender skin. But the man appeared at her side again, with something in his hand. She looked up from where she sat, and saw he was returning her Jedi weapon of choice.

“My lightsaber!” she squealed, thinking that it had been left on the ground where it flew from her hands. And without thinking of the consequences, she turned it on, waving it around a little, and turned it back off. Just to make sure it still worked.

After putting it back on its clip, she noticed that everyone was looking at her. The two small friends that had been trying to talk to her just ten minutes before had their mouths open, and the larger one gazed at her with piqued curiosity and wonder.

“Idiot,” she mumbled to herself.

Adai wished she could just hide and disappear in her brown Jedi robes. She hung her head low so she didn’t have to meet everyone’s gaze at once. There was no way now that she could have someone escort her back to her ship without completely destroying their sense of intimacy they had with their little planet, completely unaware of the galaxy around them or the war raging only a short distance from their star system. It would ruin them. To expose them to such technology while their culture was still in it’s infancy would simply be cruel.

What was she going to do? These people haven’t even discovered electricity yet, let alone advanced machinery.

Adai sighed.

The darkness of night had enveloped them, the only light being that of a single silver lantern on each platform. She suddenly noticed that everyone was hushed, and a few of the company across the way had drifted asleep. That was good. They weren’t all looking at her anymore. But the Force tugged at her mind again, and she began to hear something... like, the sound of hundreds of feet pounding the ground.

The other people, the guard-types, were at alert, and standing near the edge of the platforms, gazing below; their long, elegantly deadly weapons poised. The thundering feet grew louder below them, and hideous noises came with it. Adai peered over the edge to see black figures running on the ground. There had to be at least a hundred of them. But the guards didn’t shoot; everyone held their breath, waiting for them to pass beneath them. And eventually they did.

Adai sat back as the noise and danger subsided, and the Force let her be for the time being. She was extremely tired after walking several miles that day, after going through the trouble to steal a ship and go into battle with it...

The young Padawan yawned. It had to be way past her curfew at the Temple.

She let gravity take her to the floor of the platform where she curled into a ball and thought about if her Mistress and if any other Jedi had started wondering where she was...

...before falling fast alseep.