Chapter Text
Everything was fine, until she sneezed.
Everything was fine, as she delicately lifted two extremely angry lightsabers and a book from the altar, careful to not disturb the inches of dust that coated the surface of the table and everything surrounding her— until a single particle weaseled its way past her defenses and struck an inconvenient blow.
Everything was fine, as her eyes watered and her nose burned while hazy motes wafted in through the open windows of the tower, settling all about her like a slowly growing menace as she decrypted the warnings carved into the altar before attempting the removal, until the need to breathe betrayed her.
Everything on this Force-forsaken venture to recover the texts and sabers of Sith Lord Qimir and his Acolyte Osha Aniseya had been fine, until Brendok’s allergens exacted their final revenge.
Everything was fine, until karking glowing green skeletons began chasing her.
Green. Skeletons.
And she thought the Temple theatre club was dramatic.
It began after the second disabled trap in the vestibule. A twitch at the nose had grown steadily into a burn within her nostrils as she carefully picked her way through the moldering castle. And at first she ignored it. Jocasta Nu was a Jedi Master, Chief Librarian of the Temple Archives on Coruscant. This was not her first relic hunt; she could handle dust.
In hindsight, that would have been an opportune time to apply a rebreather. Or at least a mask.
Instead, Jo now found herself sprinting through the ominously rumbling castle, screeching green skeletons lit in a ghostly glow hot on her tail, firing very real arrows that pinged all about her.
“Collateral duty, my Force-blessed ass,” she muttered breathlessly, dodging rotted arms that lunged suddenly from the hall walls. The roaches from earlier were back too, and the floor writhed with thousands of ominously large and crunchy insects that scuttled before her, slicking up her boots with bug guts as she tried to outstrip them. Jo shuddered.
It just had to be bugs.
A quick rifle through her pack mid-leap over a crumbling chasm that suddenly opened in the hallway confirmed that yes, the texts and sabers were still intact and yes, there was the comm she needed.
“Su! Start the ship!” Jocasta shouted into her comm, nearly tripping on a stone that sprang up suddenly in front of her. She missed the droid’s response, as an unholy screech erupted behind her, swiftly followed by a volley of arrows. “The ship, Su! Start the ship!”
Ahead, more skeletons rose up in the grand vestibule, blocking her path. Jo had to hand it to the Sith couple; they had pulled out all the stops to prevent a theft. Without breaking pace, she pocketed the comm, switched her saber from her right hand to her left, and pulled the light-whip off her belt. With a practice flick, she snapped the whip ahead of her, bisecting the skeletons who leered with grasping arms and tongueless jaws. The remaining skeletons howled in outrage at the sight of the lightwhip— and perhaps Su’s misgivings about bringing Master Vernestra Rwoh’s lightwhip had been valid. But it generally attended these types of retrievals, and it was too late for such reflections, anyway. She snapped the whip out once more, then leapt over collapsed bodies with a boost from the Force, whirling the whip to clear her path as she landed. A plume of dust rose like a mushroom cloud as she landed, and she sneezed again, cursing her rotten luck as she began sprinting again.
Dust, of all things. At least it wasn’t Force Horrors like the last retrieval.
The entrance doors ahead had begun to close of their own accord, digging into the boulder she had set in their path with an unnatural determination. The boulder crunched ominously, and Jo put on an extra burst of speed. A skeleton hand grabbed at her from the wall, tearing loose her bun. With one last push, she dove through the shrinking gap between the doors and rolled to a stand, then looked back.
A hair stick, abandoned on the hall floor.
Oh, hell no.
She stretched out a hand, willing the Force to move through her. The hairstick bolted through the air, slipping past the threshold as the boulder finally gave way and the doors slammed shut. Jo sighed, pocketing the hair sticks, and began the trudge down the mountain, back to the ship.
Or, she meant to, when the ground began to tremble ominously. With another sigh, and a pat to her pack holding the texts and sabers, she began the sprint down the hill towards the ship, as as the sharp report of cracks and thundering rumbles grew louder behind her.
“Su, we need to leave!” she shouted into her comm, ducking as the Force went bright with warning and a rock flew directly overhead, shot out of the crumbling castle like a cannon. It slammed into a tree ahead, sending splinters flying like shrapnel from a slug-thrower. Ahead, she could see the engines of her ship flaring bright in the flat clearing beyond the tree-line, and she put on one last burst of speed as she erupted from the small woods, outstripping the debris line.
“I heard you the first time,” came the snippy response over her comm, barely audible over the roar of rock rubble behind her. Skidding to a halt before the ramp, Jo bounded up, and looked back in time to see the castle disappear in a plume of rock and dust, sending a wall of green-tinged rubble high into the air that mushroomed and arced in the direction of the ship, somehow Sith-bent on one last-ditch effort to vanquish a foe. She shook her head, and slammed the button for the hatch, making for the cockpit.
All things considered, Jo could appreciate the late Sith couple’s dedication to security for their information. Not the most dangerous she’d ever encountered, but fairly thorough— and inventive. Glowing, vengeful skeletons patrolling the Archives would likely not go over well with the Temple Guard, but it would certainly come in handy with keeping the light-fingered— and frisky— padawans in check.
Still, to lose the entire castle and all of its history in the process of recovering the texts and the sabers frustrated her in a flavor that tasted like the Republic Senate. One of the sub-committees had commissioned and funded this expedition, and written instructions had included the edict ‘to retrieve, at all cost.’
So long as that cost never returned back to the Senate in the form of a reimbursement request, of course.
Relic retrieval was supposed to be a collateral duty, as time allowed— and as Chief Librarian, time did not allow for much gallivanting off after artifacts, as it happened. But this was the third such demand from the Senate this year alone.
‘We are concerned, about rumors of a dangerous historical weapon…’
Jo rolled her eyes as she dropped into the co-pilot seat, burying another sneeze in her sleeve as a plume of dust rose from all about her.
Collateral duty, my Force-blessed ass.
“Another successful foray?” the protocol droid didn’t even bother to glance at her, ocular units fixed straight ahead on their trajectory.
“Yes,” Jo sighed, tugging the dusty cloak off and throwing it far behind her. She pulled a fresh from the small compartment beside the seat, and shrugged it on before turning her attention to the pack and its contents. “Make for Coruscant.” Yep, texts and sabers still there and intact.
“Should I bother marking this location as one to return to for future exploration?”
“Not anytime soon— castle self-destructed,” Jo replied, wiping a layer of dust from her brow. That had been a little closer than usual. Relic retrieval was not a young person’s game, and fifty was still reasonably prime time for a human— especially a Jedi— but the missions were beginning to take their toll.
Collateral. Duty.
“Ah. So your usual brand of success, I see.”
Jo scoffed. “I’m sorry— would you like to turn around and give diplomacy a go with the glowing skeletons? I’m sure the Dark Side incantation won’t scramble your programming too mu—” A sneeze cut short her retort, somewhat undercutting its effect.
The protocol droid glanced over, and for a droid with a static face, it looked remarkably unimpressed. “My programming has encountered Dark Side incantations seventeen times in my three hundred and fifty four years of service, and has required a complete reboot only five times, the most recent of which—”
“I got the sabers, all right?” Jo interrupted, too exhausted to do this right now. “And the texts. Mission accomplished. Brendok had allergens I didn’t plan for. I’m unhappy that the castle self-destructed, no need to pile on right now.”
Su was quiet for a moment. “I shall analyze the sample collected from Brendok and determine whether an inoculation would be suitable for future retrieval missions.”
“Knock yourself out,” Jo leaned forward to examine a blinking light on the console. A comm from the Jedi Council. “I am assuming you have already reviewed this message.”
“Of course,” came the brisk response. “Your retrieval took two hours and fourteen minutes longer than my calculations predicted, which left me with ample time to preview the message. Would you like to hear a summary?”
“No,” Jo let the snide comment about her timeliness slide, too tired to fight. “If I don’t hear it yet, then I’m not obligated to act on it.”
“That is not how messages work—“
“Anything else?”
“Glowing reviews in the academic distros for your latest article on analyzing tile patterns in post-Ruusan Reformation funeral sites.”
Jo glanced over, hoping dimming. “All of them were glowing? Not a single dissent?”
“Beautiful expressions of sycophantic praise, every last one of them.”
Jo sighed, thunking her head against the seat. She suddenly felt exhausted. “I almost miss him. At least there was discussion then.”
“Jaster Mereel was the only person who could formulate a solid rebuttal to your theses,” Su noted, tapping at the panel. “He was also the only one whose responses could get you to throw a data pad out the window.”
“Which is why I almost miss him,” Jo stressed, gathering her loose hair into a neat ponytail before initiating the roll of a bun. She did feel slightly bad that she’d never relented and accepted his many, many requests to research in the Archives before his untimely death five years ago. He was just so infuriating.
Dragon Lady. The nerve.
Now, there was no one to spar with academically, barring some upstart who was clearly using an alias, posting a great deal about the iconography in Sith War-era architecture on Telos, and another from the Quelli sector, posting about symbolism of Mand’alor the Indomitable and the last days of Canderous Ordo. The Mandalorian poster gave her the most academic pushback, well-reasoned and thoroughly researched, which almost felt like a relief-- when he wasn't infuriating her with his snarky replies.
Jo sighed, taking the two hair sticks and sliding them with practiced ease through the bun, before deftly tapping out a few responses and directives to various requests from skittish library assistants and padawans, queued for sending once they dropped out of hyperspace for their lane transfer. Fatigue had never held her back from diligently executing her role, and she wouldn’t start now.
Tasks completed, she pulled her hood deeper over her head until the blinding miasma of hyperspace was a dim glow, and settled further into her seat, letting the weight of exhaustion settle about her like a blanket.
Jo desperately needed a shower. And a meditation. She had a message from the Council to respond to.
She closed her eyes.
“Sleeping in the cockpit is completely unnecessary when there are bunks in the private quarters—”
But Jo did not hear Su, as the dark, itchy warmth of her hooded robe swiftly pulled her into the oblivion of sleep.
Council messages and stiff necks were a problem for Future Jo.