“What do you mean train us?” Finn asked Leia.
“I may be old, but I’ve still got it in me,” Leia said with a slight chuckle. “Besides, Finn, you and Ben are the only ones who can free Rey from Palpatine."
A question mark seemed to appear above Finn’s head.
Before he could ask another question, Leia answered it for him. “You’re strong with the Force. I feel it.”
“But I know nothing of the Force!” Finn argued.
“That’s why I’m going to teach you.” Leia shifted her attention away from Ben and Finn and focused on Temiri. “As for you, Temiri, Ben and Finn may need you.”
“If training will help us save Rey, then I’m down for it,” Temiri said.
Leia gave him a gentle smile. “You have the spirit of a Jedi. Well then, let’s get started, shall we?”
Leia started with a basic exercise—lifting rocks. She gathered some stones on the beach and put them together in a pile. Then, she pulled the three Force-sensitive youths behind her arm so she could demonstrate.
Leia held her hand before her. The rocks lifted into the air and created a ring one by one. The sight was breathtaking.
Finn couldn’t help but say, “Wow.”
Temiri was the first to try the exercise. He passed it with flying colors. The rocks created their ring and seemed to stare at him. Like Leia, they, too, were impressed.
Ben Solo had a little trouble. That was because he was used to using Dark side energy, not Light. Unfortunately for him, the rocks did not create a ring. Instead, they flew all over the place.
Leia, Temiri, Finn, and Ben ducked under them. The least they wanted was to wind up in a bacta tub so close to the final battle.
Nervous, Ben glanced at Leia. He knew she was disappointed in him.
Finally, Finn tried the exercise but felt nothing. No power surged through his body. He still felt like the same old Finn.
“You need to have confidence,” Leia told him. “You know you can do this.”
Inhaling a breath of air, Finn tried again. He cleared his head, thinking about nothing but the rocks. He tried to feel the Force, yet nothing happened. What a waste of time. How could he expect to save Rey if he couldn’t lift one rock? Finn was sure that Palpatine had already won. Without Rey, there was no hope that the Resistance would beat him.
***
“‘Rey, be brave.’” The voice of Rey’s mother woke her. Due to Palpatine’s punishment, she was highly weakened and slightly disoriented, but she stayed strong. To be part of the Dark side was not the end of the world. There was still hope. She knew there was.
The young woman ignored her grandfather’s angry yells in her head and struggled to her hands and knees. She barely used her injured arm. Rey thought it was getting better, but it wasn’t. Palpatine wasn’t the only one stripping her of her life energy. So was her injury.
Rey was still in the Sith Tunnel. Surrounding her and hidden in the shadows were the gates and cages she caught a glimpse of before she fell unconscious. Inside them were members of the First Order and prisoners they picked up from different planets in the galaxy. Palpatine captured the generals, mechanics, clones, stormtroopers, etc. Thank goodness Finn wasn’t on The Limpton when that happened.
Rey noticed the First Order prisoners looked frightened for the first time. They did not want to join Palpatine, yet he tried to force them. Rey wanted to help, but simultaneously, the Dark side of the Force told her not to. She fought her feelings and stared into her enemies’ faces. She could feel it—the Light side of the Force—interfering with her Dark side self.
Frustrated, the young woman gripped either side of her head and yelled. She had no idea what to do. What could she do?
***
Temiri, Ben, and Finn felt Rey’s struggle. Ben and Finn were most affected by it. Rey’s aura was getting weaker, meaning that she was dying faster than they thought. It turned out that the injury the Beacerika gave her on Dark Side Island was fatal. That realization caused them to collapse to their knees. Both Ben and Finn gasped. It looked like they were having trouble breathing.
“What do you feel?” Leia wanted to know.
“Rey. Her injury...” Finn could not bring himself to finish his sentence. Therefore, Kylo Ren helped him.
“... It’s fatal.”
“We need to go to her.” Finn struggled to his feet. He started to make his way back in the direction of the Resistance Base, but Leia whacked his chest with her cane.
“We can’t. You’re not ready.”
“But—!” Finn argued.
“For now, she is perfectly fine,” Leia said. “As long as we keep training, you can save her.”
“She wants to return to the Light side,” Ben explained.
“And she will do just that,” said Leia. “After all, Rey is neither good nor bad. She walks the line between the Light and Dark sides of the Force.”
Temiri mumbled under his breath off to the side, “I thought so.” He noticed that the whole time he was with Rey on Phonolukamy. Rey was no ordinary Jedi. She was a Gray Jedi. Both the Jedi and the Sith lived within her.
“Rey’s powers are unbalanced, but that’s just because she is special,” Leia explained to Ben and Finn. “She does not know the true extent of it.”
Finn took a deep breath. If that was the case, he had to train extra hard. He furrowed his brows and focused on the pile of rocks. “Please, Rey, you need to fight it,” he begged. “Hang on just a little bit longer. I’m not going to let you die.”
Amazingly, Rey received his message and told him, “It’s okay, Finn. I knew I was flying to my death even before I left Supher.”
“You can’t give up!” Finn shouted in his head. “We’re going to save you!” His desperation to help his friend triggered his Force abilities. Suddenly, Finn felt a surge of energy in his body. “I feel it,” he whispered to himself. He cleared his mind from Rey and just thought about the rocks.
Ben, Leia, and Temiri watched him. Their mouths dropped when the rocks floated from the pile one by one. Instead of making one circle, they broke and created two.
A grin stretched across Leia’s face. “Finn! You’re doing it!” She clapped.
“Incredible,” Ben added. He always felt that Finn was Force-sensitive but never realized how Force-sensitive he was.
Finn rose to his feet. Like Leia, he held his hand out to the rocks. They danced on the nighttime air currents and kept creating circles. It looked like the stars had fallen and landed on Palm Tree Beach. The sight was marvelous. If only Rey could see what was happening.
She couldn’t. She was still contemplating whether or not she should free the First Order.
Rey fought Palpatine to the best of her abilities. He punished and punished her, but she pulled through. Light and Dark memories flew through her brain: meeting Finn, learning under Luke, and Han Solo’s death. It was like what happened on Supher when the Beacerika pulled her into Light and Dark situations. There was a reason why it snuffed her out on Dark Side Island. Rey just had to figure out what that reason was. Why did the Beacerika give her a fatal injury? Did it want to hurt her, or was it all part of its plan to have Rey find her place in the galaxy? There were so many questions, but many were unanswered.
Rey paced back and forth before the cages. She rubbed sweat from her forehead as she tried to decide.
A young First Order stormtrooper begged for her to help. “Please. We want Palpatine dead just as much as you.”
Even though she couldn’t see his face, Rey knew he was serious. Yelping, she clutched her head. She may have been Palpatine’s granddaughter, but she wasn’t like him. Palpatine was Palpatine. Rey was Rey. She was never an official part of the Dark side. That’s why she felt so conflicted about being there.
***
Leia tried a lightsaber exercise with Temiri, Ben, and Finn. She grabbed two more lightsabers from the Resistance Base and gave them to Finn and Temiri, while Rey’s lightsaber went to Ben. By then, Supher’s moons were high in the sky. They were full tonight. The best place to try the exercise was Palm Tree Beach, closest to the base.
Ben, Finn, and Temiri stood in a line.
Leia asked Rose to help her. They both brought out a blaster and shot them at the Force-sensitive youths. The blasters were dumbed down, so they wouldn’t hurt if Ben, Finn, or Temiri missed a parry. It would just be a little pinch. The Resistance used blasters like those when training their soldiers.
Temiri succeeded in parrying a bolt and knocking down a tree.
Ben momentarily gave in to his hate and anger. With each blaster bolt, he yelled and knocked it back.
Leia shouted at him, “Feel the Light coursing through you, Ben! If I can feel it, so can you!"
Since Finn had never really handled a lightsaber, he initially struggled with the exercise. The sight of the blaster bolts scared him, and he dodged them.
Leia threw a tip at him. “Don’t give in to fear. Fear is a path to the Dark side.”
How could Finn not be scared? His best friend was dying as he was doing this.
Rey’s aura continued to flush through his and Ben’s bodies. It was still weak, but it hadn’t gotten weaker. She was holding on the best she could.
“Please, Rey,” Ben begged. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. That allowed him to parry a few blaster bolts without losing himself to his anger.
Finn could hear Ben’s message in his own head. It was strange. Both he and the ex-Sith were working together to communicate with Rey. That helped him realize something. If there was any hope to win the war, the Resistance had to use teamwork. They needed to turn their greatest foes into allies.
***
Just as Ben was now an ally of the Resistance, so were the imprisoned First Order members.
“Stop it! Stop it!” Rey shouted. She couldn’t take all the stress. She wanted to listen to her friends, but at the same time, she didn’t want to disobey her grandfather.
It didn’t get any better when the First Order prisoners stuck their hands through the bars of their cages and gates and begged her to help them.
“Teamwork. Teamwork,” Rey heard Ben say in her head. “We need to use teamwork.”
“Teamwork,” Rey repeated in a groggy voice. She felt the Light side of the Force overlapping with the Dark side. Her Gray Jedi instincts kicked in, and she made up her mind.
Rey ignited her red lightsaber, buzz, and ran it through the cages and gates. She freed the First Order but was getting weaker by the second. Her arm. It was starting to take its toll on her.
By the time she finished slashing the last cages and gates, she was so out of breath that she fell against the prison’s wall. Her clothes were drenched in sweat. Her life was fading before her eyes.
“Rey!” yelled the young First Order stormtrooper who said he wanted Palpatine dead just as much as her. He picked her up in his arms, causing her lightsaber to shut off and fall from her hand.
Palpatine, or better said, Palpatine’s spirit, was not impressed. His own granddaughter turned against him. She was both a Sith and a Jedi. He was not going to let her win. If he could possess General Hux, then there was no way he could use that same method on the young stormtrooper. He intended to do just that. The Resistance could try all they wanted, but they would not win. The final battle was just around the corner, and Palpatine could not wait to get started.
***
Finn, Temiri, and Ben trained for the rest of the night. Leia taught them a few fighting moves, and they mimicked her. Finn and Temiri improved at using a lightsaber, and Ben was getting used to the Light side again.
By the night's end, they were in perfect sync. They lunged at the same time, jumped simultaneously, and dodged the blaster bolts. Leia also taught them how to use the Force to pass one lightsaber off to another person in case something happened and two lightsabers went missing or were destroyed.
Rose fell asleep with her back propped against a coconut palm.
Leia borrowed her blaster, so now she carried two. For the last exercise, she shot both blasters at the same time.
Finn and Ben kept their eyes glued to the bolts.
Ben nodded at Finn, telling him now was the time to parry. Together, they lifted their lightsabers, and the blaster bolts crashed into them.
“Well done! That was excellent!” said Leia.
Ben and Finn thanked her. They shut off their lightsabers.
Temiri was the last guinea pig of the lesson.
Leia fired her blasters.
Temiri waited until the bolts were an inch away before blocking them. Ben communicated with him through the Force and told him that was the best time for the parry.
Laughing, Leia said, “Excellent! You three used teamwork, and that’s why you won. I think it’s safe to say you’re finally ready for battle.”
Temiri also shut off his lightsaber. He smiled at Ben and Finn, and they returned it.
A very anxious Poe sprinted out just before the youths could head inside the base and grab something to eat. “General!” he yelled. He hurried to Leia. His boots kicked up sand, and it flew into Rose’s mouth.
Snapping awake, she shouted, “Yuck!” She moved her head back and forth at a quick pace. “What happened?”
“What’s wrong, Poe?” Leia asked the pilot.
Poe stopped before her, out of breath. He placed his hands on his knees. “Bad news! The Limpton has entered Supher’s atmosphere! We’re under attack!”
Ben, Temiri, Finn, Rose, and Leia looked up at the newborn day. Sure enough, there was The Limpton. It had not yet reached Supher’s surface but was getting close.
At the sight of it, Leia nodded. “Then it is time.” She glanced at Ben, Temiri, and Finn from the corners of her eyes. “The final battle has begun.”
40Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu4mljCQkyC
End of Part II: Rey vs. the Supernova
End of Episode II!
Final Word Count: 25,732
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