trans_9 | Basics

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There was a time to get sick. There was a time to bemoan the things that seemed like empty spots in her head. and there was time to sleep and dream of times that were better (or have nightmares of worse times too). But when these times passed, and eventually that was the case, there was nothing left to do but go back to what you were best at, and refine it to make it your own. Going to the podpop had been a start, and Katara capitalized on it the next day. A visit to the Sensorium and the scenery changed: she was at the desert lands they'd been left to brave after the library sunk and Appa had been captured. There was no gang here though, just miles and miles of sand and heat bearing down on her. To Toph and Aang, she was sure these circumstances were unpleasant, but to her and Sokka specifically, it had been alien and frustrating (it had helped Sokka that he was strung out on Cactus juice and she was fixated on keeping the group together at the time). She had also made sure there would be no water nearby, and so her pouch was also gone.

The morning was spent in quiet meditation on the sands. Her mind was full of questions and brimming with thoughts, but she momentarily displaced them from her mind. She was uncomfortable, sweaty and hot, but stayed in deep meditation, moving from time to time so she wouldn't cramp up. Once she'd seen the sun position itself to indicate noontime, Katara rose, and her attire was that of her firebending disguise: she would need it.

The exercising in the Weirding way, however, required targets, so the desert was now strewn with several dummies. Here Katara incorporated her Bene Gesserit martial art with that of the training she'd practiced in Will's gym: she catapulted herself upward, struck with deadly precision and then rolled into a new defensive stance, ready for the next attack. It had been awhile since Katara incorporated her waterbending flexibility with the Weirding way, and truthfully it was seldom Katara practiced the art, fully aware (thanks to deadly robots) how damaging it could be. She bent her legs a bit and brought her arms up again, using her force against the dummy and knocking it backward with what looked like minimal effort. She knew it would be awhile before she was an expert in the Weirding Way, but that was more than reason to practice, with all they had encountered.

When she had worked up a definite sweat, she went back to the flexibility part: she flipped, jumped, turned several times in the air and, on her back, curled her legs upward and leapt back to position. She was stinky and definitely perspiring, but that was easily taken care of if she decided to turn the Sensorium into a spa, not that she was in a big hurry to do so.

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Katara noticed it, of course. It was hard for to ever keep quiet when it came to that sort of thing.

"Did he bother you somehow?"

"He left," said Ben, "while I was still asking why the super-powerful, angry Ohm don't attack this ship."

"Yeah, he does that," Katara said, wrinkling her nose. "I think its because whatever he might know, he thinks the only way we'll truly understand is by finding the answers on our own. As for why we haven't been attacked...I'm not a hundred percent on it myself. It's possible they don't want to underestimate the power we possess. They might know that our banding together defeated the Nightmare King. It's also possible Stacy is hiding us from them, because they might TRY to kill us if it knows we exist."

"Or," he said firmly, "because Stacy isn't some innocent refugee ship."

Katara gave him an appraising look. "And you have another theory? I'd definitely like to hear it."

Ben thought back to one painfully annoying conversation with Vestara. You shouldn't tell people you consider your enemies what you're thinking. Didn't your parents teach you anything? But were the people dragged in from other multiverses really enemies? It seemed like most of them were only trying to take care of themselves, even if they had bought into the "refugee" ship slant.

"There's a couple things wrong with the story," he said, dropping into full-blown investigator mode. "First, the fighting. If the Ohm are so bloodthirsty and powerful, why has barely anyone met them? Why don't they attack more, and why haven't they attacked the ship, if it's the only thing that can stop them? If the Daligig are strong enough to resist them and we were useless when the Ohm wrecked our universes, why are the Daligig using us at all? There's no way of telling that the Daligig and Stacy aren't the aggressors in this fight -- or if they're just using everyone here for their own purposes. Isn't it convenient that no one can check to see if their universe is gone? For all know, they could be swinging us around the multi-verse using us like living batteries." He took a deep breath, and continued more quietly. "And even if none of it's a lie, we're going about this all wrong. Cargyn said they were hateful, but nothing pops into the universe angry. There should be a reason, a root for it – but it doesn’t sound like anyone’s bothered to find out what it is. Trying to fight an enemy without knowing why you’re angry at each other is like making a blind hyperspace jump… and it could turn out that no one here has to fight them.”

Those were a lot of good questions, and Katara could see that Ben had put a lot of thought into them. If he'd talked to the Seer and barely got answers to these questions, that meant that Cargyn had specifically not answered them...and that meant that it was possible he was hiding something too. The more Katara thought about it, the more unsettled she got. Ben was introducing a train of thought that was scary: it was possible that everything they'd fought for was in question now.

"I trust the Seer," Katara said, "But you're right about a few things. We HAVE never seen the Ohm, and though its possible we might be getting shielded from them by the ship in the first place, its possible we are getting used as 'living batteries.' The thing is, that doesn't explain a lot of other things too, like the types of people Stacy's pulled in the first place. Superheroes, aliens, that's one thing, but there are children here with no powers too, and I'd like to think Stacy and the Daligig aren't using them for that purpose. Then begs the next question: why the Sensoriums and the ship, and the political structure here on the ship other than to prevent chaos? While its possible that the Daligig are manipulating us, we have telepaths that can sense whether Stacy means ill toward us, or actual good intent. We are sure about Stacy in some circumstances: she prevents infighting, she intercedes when we are close to falling apart. But that doesn't mean all of our questions have gotten answered either."

But as for standing up for the Ohm, Katara's face hardened a little. "I'd like to believe the anger on the end of the Ohm is misunderstood Ben, I would. The last thing I want to do is jump into a fight when it isn't needed. The thing is, I've seen and fought things on the ship and off that tried to kill us for no other reason other than malicious intent. It's possible they want something from us, its possible that they just have an inferiority complex, I'm not sure. But I'm not willing to die to find that out either. I'll hold off killing anything if I can, its not in my nature. But if it tries to hurt the people I care about, I'm not going to ask it questions, I'm going to fight back. Sometimes...people fight and attack and try to kill you because they can and want to. I've seen that happen in my world enough times to tell you its possible."

Ben shook his head. "Telepathy, Force-sensitivity, whatever anyone has -- it's not perfect. If you've got a powerful ability to pick up on someone's emotions, someone else knows enough to block you or confuse you. I don't know how much you've talked to my dad, but our history is packed with powerful Dark Siders who slipped under the radar. Before he was born, there was a politician -- the leader of the Old Republic -- who met with powerful Jedi Masters all the time. He made himself Emperor of the Galaxy before anyone realized he was a Sith Lord, and then he wiped out the Jedi Order. And two years ago... Two years ago, it happened again, and I was there. There was another hidden Sith, and she corrupted one of the greatest heroes the Order had. He hid what he'd become from everyone, and it tore the galaxy apart before anyone understood that we had to stop him." What he couldn't say, not yet, was and he's here, now, and only dad remembers what he did. "So maybe the ship wants everyone to train hard work together. That doesn't mean it wants to work in our interest. And it doesn't mean that the best way to stop the Ohm from killing us is to kill all of them. That has a nasty record of just making an opponent angrier," he noted, thinking back to his own experience as a member of the Killik hive mind, "especially with a hive."

"So I've heard, but all of them are from different universes too, Ben. It might be possible that even if one of them are wrong, or even several are, but all? I mean, its possible, sure, I don't know a lot about telepathy, to be honest."

Which was scary, thinking they might be lied to.

"As for what the ship wants us to do, and what we're meant to do, if you have a suggestion, I'd like to hear it. Right now, I think the only sure thing IS working together, but as to the ends, well, you're going to have to do a lot of convincing to get the people on the ship just to get them to do that. Don't underestimate all of the differences that we have here: people and non-people from different worlds are going to have a big problem with trust in general. If you try to get them to distrust the ship AND the Daligig, they're going to need something else to unify them. The Ohm destroying their world is doing that, of only a little. What are you going to give them, if not that?"

He thought about it. "It's safe to say that everyone here wants to go home, right?"

"Mostly," Katara said. "But there are also some people here who technically died in their worlds, or were facing situations where their world was so bad coming here is actually a good thing. Not everyone here hates being on the ship or the people on it, but most of them do want to get back to their own worlds again."

"If they're alive here," he mused, "they should be able to come back with us, right?" Mom. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin Skywalker...

"I don't see why they shouldn't," Katara said. "Why? Have you met some people that you want to come back with you if we can find a way to save our worlds?"

"Yeah. A few."

"Did something happen to them in your world?"

"They died," he said simply.

"Oh," Katara said, quietly. "I guess that would be pretty good. If my mother were on the ship, I guess I'd be overjoyed too."

He nodded. "Something like that."

He seemed to be very quiet now. "What are you thinking about?"

"About how the ship chooses the crew," he lied casually.

Katara, though she could not remember the name of her teacher, had learned from her the notice ques from people, especially when they were lying or scared. When he answered, she made a face.

"Who can tell. But is that really the truth?"

He smiled. "To dust off a cliche -- sure, from a certain point of view."

Katara looked at him warily. He was a really...strange kid, and not a straightforward talker as much as his father.

"Why wouldn't you just say what you mean?"

The full answer would have been something along the lines of because my dead mother is here, but for some reason the ship pulled her from back when she didn't get along with my father, so the Force knows how she'll think about me, and also have I mentioned that there's a lump in my throat because I've spent the last two years missing her more than anything else? But he wasn't lying when he offered a simple: "We just met."

"I see," Katara said. That would make sense: it wasn't like he was going ton go confide all of his secrets to her upon their first meeting or anything. Whatever he was going through and what he was thinking about, it was probably his own private thoughts.

So how would she proceed to make things less awkward?

"Hey...do you ever go to the beach where you're from?"

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