I Know Something About Pain You Don't

The girl who came back to room 529 and rested her head against the doorway for a moment before putting her key into the lock and heading inside was the same one who'd left a week ago, but looked like she'd been gone for a lot longer. Because she had. (And had, as of yet, no idea how long -- or relatively not -- she'd been gone.)

It wasn't just the hair, which had been even shorter than the almost-shoulder-length it was now; there was a subtle difference in the way she walked -- spending more time wearing shoes than you normally did would do that -- and she looked a little older. Definitely tired.

Sometime on the shuttle trip back it finally hit Tahiri, the reality of the pilots she'd lost in that gigantic kriffing battle. As first experiences went, it was not near the top of the "Fun" list. She'd kept that locked down so far but, as she dropped her backpack beside her bed and curled up on it quietly, she figured she'd have to talk to someone about it eventually. As far as people with experience in that sort of thing went, Fandom wasn't without its options.

For now, though, she was just going to be glad to be back.

[OOC: Hahaha up super early because I am heading to Disneyland for the morning, but back in the afternoon, so open but SP for the next few hours and don't think I wouldn't tag from the ride lines because I have so done that. *is dork*]

Tahiri had never been a fan of waiting, but she'd been doing just that for so long now it might have been days, and as she sat in the cockpit of her X-Wing (really, these boots could come off any time now), half listening to the comm chatter, she wondered how much time had passed in Fandom. She and her pilots -- who'd dubbed themselves Barefoot Squadron, much to her self-conscious amusement -- had trained and drilled for weeks on end both as a squadron and as part of the fleetwide Jedi Force-meld strategy. The past three months had been spent in a series of diversionary attacks against Yuuzhan Vong-held Core worlds, per Admiral Kre'fey's plan.

The concept was fairly simple: they'd hit a poorly defended planet and win by virtue of numbers, and in the process the novice pilots would gain experience, the fleet would build morale, and most importantly they'd cover up their ultimate destination of Ebaq 9. Jaina and Twin Suns Squadron had been on that hellish little asteroid for a while; although Admiral Ackbar hadn't outright said so, Tahiri knew the Yuuzhan Vong would do anything to capture one or both of the Solo twins and thus Jaina was bait in a trap. Tahiri was curious as to how she was doing. She worried about Jaina, maybe more so than she did about the one in Fandom, since her Jaina didn't have the same kind of support structure. She suspected the other Tahiri was in the same position.

( She was just extending her senses toward Ebaq 9 when a shockwave of horror lanced through the Force, and she knew where it was coming from. )

[OOC: NFB, NFI, OOC okay, pi to the fifteenth decimal point. Plot points of the Battle of Ebaq 9 taken from Destiny's Way by Walter Jon Williams, but guess who disappeared from this part of the narrative, forcing me to make stuff up? I shouldn't be allowed to make things up. One more later today and that's it.]

This, Tahiri reflected as she adjusted her uniform for the fifth time, could be considered absolutely ridiculous. There was a lot that was absurd, actually: that she was in a New Republic military uniform (though insignia-free, since she wasn't actually part of the military) to begin with, that they let her get away without wearing regulation boots, that she was at this meeting in her new capacity as a squadron commander.

The cherry topping on the ice cream sundae of absurdity here was the fact that here she was, sitting in one of the leather armchairs in the Ralroost's conference room waiting for the strategic planning meeting to start, and her feet didn't touch the floor.

Seriously. Under less strict circumstances this would be hilarious.

( Tahiri had to revise that opinion fairly quickly, though, when Jacen took the seat next to her and gave her a smile, and she had to remind herself not to freeze up or move away. )

[OOC: NFB, NFI, OOC okay, insert gratuitous acronyms here. Adapted from (and dialogue taken from) the short story Ylesia by Walter Jon Williams, and WTF canon, WHY DO YOU HAVE A SEPARATE SHORT STORY SET BETWEEN TWO CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK?!?]

The good thing about being home, so far, was that Tahiri had been far too busy to speculate herself worried about what had gone on in the week before she'd left Fandom. After the Knighting ceremony on Mon Calamari, she'd gotten into her newly-issued X-Wing (her X-Wing, how weird was that?) and headed to Kashyyyk.

That had been over . . . she didn't know how many weeks ago, maybe three or four; nearly all her time since arriving here had been spent getting to know the eleven new pilots that had been assigned to her. That were, and this was the part that had been blowing her mind since she'd first learned this was the plan, under her command. Luckily, thanks to Admiral Kre'fey, she'd been assigned a competent executive officer, since Force knew she certainly didn't have the experience necessary to deal with the headache of military red tape, but most of her pilots were rookies, and the couple who weren't didn't exactly have their names near the top of the Flight Hours Logged lists. The time she wasn't spending in drills with her squadron was spent working with the other Jedi to develop the fleet-wide Force meld that they hoped would accomplish the same thing for them that the yammosk battle coordinators did for the Yuuzhan Vong forces. She wasn't a crack pilot, and she knew it; the only reason she was in this role at all was because she was a Jedi.

Which pretty much meant she'd do the best she could. It was all she really knew how to do.

Down time didn't come very often, so when it did she made the most of it, and with a couple of standard hours free Tahiri took the opportunity to wander off by herself, away from the constant crush of people and ubiquitous machinery that made Riina so twitchy. (Okay, maybe she was avoiding Alema Rar a little bit; she still hadn't forgotten all those times Alema'd tried to hang all over Anakin when Tahiri was right there and also Alema was crazycakes.) Running a hand through her hair -- cut short now for the sake of her pilot's helmet -- she fiddled with her comlink and debated whether she ought to check in with people back in Fandom.

. . . might be better not to.

[OOC: NFB, NFI, OOC okay, etc. Spacer post, la la la. You have to make stuff up to advance the narrative sometimes -- ah, the perils of a secondary character. Framing adapted from Destiny's Way by Walter Jon Williams with some details taken from the short story Ylesia by the same.]

Tahiri had been expecting this call for a while now; she just hadn't expected it to come now, and she supposed the timing could've been worse. It could've been better, granted, but she'd sort of given up on hoping for these things to ever happen at a good time.

Times like this, she wished packing involved more than just making sure she had her comlink, blaster, and lightsaber and throwing a couple of spare sets of clothing (including a certain too-big-for-her shirt) into a bag along with her datapad and oh yeah, those stupid boots. Which she'd need more than usual on this trip, she knew. She wasn't sure how ready she'd be for all this, although out of everything she was expecting, it was the prospect of seeing Jacen that had her the most worried, so it would've been nice to have to concentrate more on packing. Traveling light had its downsides.

It wasn't just for the sake of keeping herself busy between now and the time her shuttle arrived that she left messages for a few people, of course, although she felt bad about giving people more to worry about on the heels of the past week.

So. Packing as slowly as possible, and trying to stay calm. Force, she hoped she was ready for this, but seriously, she was sixteen years old and needed boots just to reach the foot yokes in an X-Wing, and who'd thought it was a good idea to give her a kriffing squadron, anyway?

[OOC: Establishy, but open -- it's canon catchup tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime again.]