iprotectyou | OOM: First Meeting, part I

"I want to go back." Chirrut growls in his childish timber, baring his teeth like a cornered lothcat. His attempts to kick his captors fall short of the goal, but only because his legs just aren't long enough.

"Back?" Master Cabaril questions as he closes the distance, sounding deeply incredulous. "The city guard was ready to clip your ears for thievery, do you really want to go back to that?"

Chirrut grumbles, clearly not entirely sold on the idea that being ~~kidnapped~~ rescued by a Guardian is an improvement in his fortunes.

Baze steps our of the way of Master Cabaril, trying to remain unobtrusive despite the eight-year-old's curiosity about the younger boy. "The temple's not all that bad," Baze pipes up, defending his home of the last two years. "The food is good, and the Guardians train you to fight. You can always go back to thievery after you learn something."

Master Cabaril laughs, and Baze flushes from his neck to his black, short-cropped hair. "Very good, acolyte," the master says. "Now, don't you have a lesson to attend?"

"No, sir. Master Sheotar pulled me out of lessons today because..." Baze's grief hits him full force in the stomach, and a strangled sob escapes his throat.

Chirrut's expression goes from disgruntlement to outright alarm. He renews his efforts to escape, catching his captors by surprise and earning him a short flight down to the ground. He lands... inelegantly, in a tangle of scrawny limbs. With a quick scramble he's on his feet, thrusting his way between Cabaril and Baze.

"You made him cry." He snarls at the adult who towers over him, clearly incensed. "He didn't do anything to you!"

Master Carabil stares at the boy, and opens his mouth to say something when Baze speaks up.

"N-No, he didn't," Baze says, scrubbing at his face with the heels of his hands. Tears keep leaking out of his eyes despite his efforts to stop them. "My parents are d-dead. There was an accident. I just found out."

Chirrut clearly doesn't think that this lets the adult in front of him off the hook, if his sightless glare is any indication. Still, it redirects him from a direct attack on the supposed aggressor.

Thank the Force.

"You should eat." He declares, firmly, the street rat as imperious as a lord. "Or some tea. Or both." If this place can afford guards and smooth clean floors, it can surely afford food and tea.

The suggestion--no, command--startles Baze, and while he doesn't stop crying, the tears slow. "Why don't you eat with me?" he asks the other boy. "You must be hungry."

Master Cabaril smiles. "Acolyte Baze, will you show your new friend to the kitchens?"

"Yes, sir, if he's willing to come."

Chirrut throws a companionable arm over Baze's shoulders and tugs Baze into motion, not sure where he's going but sure that now is the time to be leaving.

"Yeah Acolyte Baze, let's get away from these..." The word that comes after casts doubts on the three adults' parentage, morals, and sexual preferences. Chirrut likes that word, it's very economical.

Baze flushes at the other boy's language. The eight-year-old steers his new friend towards the kitchen, down a broad, cool hallway of stone. "What's your name?" Baze asks, taking his hand. "Are you really blind? How old are you? Do you really live on the streets?"

The street eat is a great distraction, and Baze needs one now more than ever.

"I'm Chirrut Imwe," He replies, as if this were a point of pride (which it is, in fact), "And I'm seven. And of course I don't live on the street, speeders go down the streets." His head picks up when he catches the scent of cooking food, tugging Baze forward in his eagerness to go explore this wonderful land of unwatched food.

"And I think you all are telling some ridiculous story about this 'sight' thing, it sounds pretty crazy." Chirrut has never been able to see, has no framework to hang such an idea on - as far as he can tell, it's a story older people tell younger to seem important.

"Chirrut Imwe," Baze says, testing the name on his tongue. "Of course we have sight. If we didn't, we'd bump into walls and each other all the time. How do you walk without bumping into things?"

Baze allows himself to led to the kitchen, his stomach growling. He's a bottomless pit at the best of times, who will never turn down food. An older acolyte who's preparing the current meal turns to the boys and smiles at them. "Hello Baze," she says. "Ready for a snack?"

"Yes, please," he says, guiding Chirrut to a stool at the counter. In short order, the acolyte sets them up with cheese and crackers and Gor apples.

Chirrut eats as ravenously as hyenax, and with about as many good table manners.

"Oh sure, you just know the shape and texture of things because you 'see' them." Chirrut scoffs, as certain as a seven-year-old can be about the universe. "Next you'll be telling me you're a Jedi."

Baze starts passing some of his food over to his new friend, amazed at how quickly and sloppily he eats. The eight-year-old nibbles on his own dried fruits and soft cheeses, pausing every so often to wipe his mouth.

"I'm no Jedi, but they think I might be sensitive to the Force. That's why my parents--" Baze stops, napkin falling to the floor. Tears dampen his crackers and salt his cheeses. "Oh, no, I'll never see my mama again!"

Chirrut scrambles off his stool and back up one closer to Baze, baring his teeth fiercely in the direction of the nearest acolyte when her movements slow.

"Don't cry, don't cry... look, you'll be sick and you don't want to waste all this food." Chirrut chides gently, the prattle all-too-familiar in his mouth. "We'll take care of each other, alright?"

Baze dashes away at his eyes with the back of his hand. "It's not fair," he says, lip quivering. His eyes are hard, and his voice is tight. "They shouldn't have died. They shouldn't have left me like this."

He takes Chirrut's hand, seeking what comfort the other boy can provide. "Thank you," Baze says, sniffling.

"No. They're not supposed to leave." Chirrut agrees, but his tone registers only disapproval for adults in general. "But I won't, and..."

He pauses, his head cocked.

"Uh oh." He ducks behind Baze, as if the stares of curious acolytes were inconsequential. Masters Cabaril and Sheotar walk in, one looking highly amused by the situation, the other highly exasperated.

Master Cabaril expected a little more gratitude for being rescued from a life of poverty.

"We're going to have to take your friend away for a little bit, Acolyte Baze." Master Sheotar explains, pulling her sleeves up. She's heard... quite a lot about their newest member. "We'll send him back to you once he's clean."

Baze is beyond curious as to how Chirrut knew the masters were coming, but knows that now is not the time to ask. The eight-year-old bows his head, assenting even though he doesn't want to let his new friend go. "Yes," Baze says, squeezing Chirrut's hand. "You really could use the 'fresher. Go with them, but come back soon. I'll wait for you."

Tears dry into dusty trails on his cheeks, and his eyes are already red and puffy from crying.

Chirrut freezes in his (evidently, completely ineffectual, drat) shelter behind Baze's body, and considers his options. He can go, maybe get another chance to make a run for it...

But he just promised to stay. Chirrut Imwe might be a lot of things, but he isn't a liar. He squeezes Baze's hand back, then slips off his stool ungracefully.

With all of the stiff-necked pride of a man being marched to his death, Chirrut stomps out of the kitchens, head held high.

"... And he can't...?" Master Sheotar asks after a long moment, staring at the doorway Chirrut just left through.

"Not even a bit. As far as I can tell, no one has known him to be able to see." Master Cabaril replies. "You see why I had to bring him."

"As the Force wills." Master Sheotar agrees, and heads off to recapture her charge.

"Now then young Baze," Master Cabaril is much cheered now that Chirrut isn't his immediate responsibility. "What lessons have you been working on this week?"

The masters don't often pay attention to Baze, so it's only now that he considers it odd that Master Cabaril knows his name. The boy stands from his stool, at attention, his posture stiff and his hands at his sides.

"Well, sir, I've been learning to practice my breathing," he says, trying to recall which lessons have been drummed into him this week by the other Guardians. "And which seeds grow best in the winter time, and how to take care of a wound."

Then a horrible sound coming from the 'fresher room, interrupts Baze, startling him. He cocks his head, listening to something like the howls of the damned.

"What on Jedha is that?" he says, now worried about his new friend.

Master Sheotar is a warrior of renown. She has spawned more legends of peternatural skill than anyone her age has any right to.

She's having a hell of a time dealing with one wiry boy who started screaming as if he were being skinned the second the sonic cleaner was turned on. It takes two of her students fifteen minutes of frantic work to keep him contained and get him scrubbed, and cost them a fair amount of pride, two black eyes, and a bloodied nose.

For a blind kid, he has remarkable aim.

When the sonic is finally turned off, he stops howling, but he's well and truly riled at that point. His clothes have been stolen, so he drags on the robes he finds under his hands, haphazard and sloppy. He bats away their hands and stomps on their toes when they try to straighten the mess he created, and ducks away when the shears come out.

Chirrut comes back into the kitchens at a dead run, trailing robes and leaving chaos in his wake.

"Baze? Baze!" He yalps, intent on grabbing his new friend and getting out of this hideous place where they force kids into chambers that scream.

He doesn't see the box of apples in his way (of course). Chirrut... Chirrut hasn't ever been very good with temporary, small objects in his path. The results of him slamming into it are... predictable. At least the poor monks he left in the 'fresher have been avenged.

"Chirrut!" Baze says, leaping over to where his new friend sprawls inelegantly on the kitchen floor. The larger boy lifts the smaller one, helping him to his feet. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

Baze notes that Chirrut sure smells a lot better than he did, and Baze can now see what color his skin is now that all the grime has been scrubbed off.

Master Sheotar charges into the room, hustling as if her life depended on it. Baze subtly shifts positions until he stands in front of the younger boy.

"You still need a haircut," she says breathlessly, placing her hands on her hips and glaring at Chirrut.

Baze glances over his shoulder at his friend's tangled mane. "She's right, Chirrut. Can you sit still long enough for them to cut your hair?"

Chirrut, refusing to cry over the bruises he's earned, has one hand hooked into the back of Baze's robes, his head turning this way and that as he tries to find another way out.

(This adult is one sly lady, Chirrut will admit it - he doesn't intend to get back within arm's reach)

"I do not." He huffs - his hair is just fine, other than now being more clean than he's used to. "I can still get us out of here, I just... I just need to think." This isn't like his marketplace adventures, where there are more bolt-holes than he might ever need.

Baze turns to his friend, slowly, disengaging his hand from the older boy's robes to take it into his own. "Chirrut," he says, with all the weight of his eight years of life. "I don't want to leave. Do you? The Guardians... They can't keep you hers. But if you stay, they'll feed you and take care of you and teach you things. And we... We can be friends. Stay with me. Please."

He wants to leave. He wants to leave so much he could cry from longing. But...

But he promised.

He promised, and he keeps his promises. If Baze won't leave... then he'll stay.

(It doesn't hurt that something feels right about this, as right as knowing exactly when guards would be looking the other way, when food was free for the taking.)

"Fine." It's a bit disgruntled, and it ends with a snarl and a show of teeth when one of the acolytes doing the cooking giggles at the boy's reluctant acquiescence. "But I'm not going back in the screaming box."

Baze releases a breath he didn't know he was holding in. Relief floods him, and it's so sweet, he could cry. He smiles, instead, a boyish, happy smile that lights up his whole face. Baze didn't know how much he needed a friend until one fell in his lap.

But something Chirrut says catches Baze's attention. "Screaming box? You mean the sonic cleaner?" he says, erupting into giggles. He can't help it; screaming box is the best description he's ever heard for that. "Have you never been clean, Chirrut? How did you not get sick?"

Chirrut shoves him, disgruntled.

"It's too loud." He huffs as he sulks, and the strength of his ire is strong enough to cause him to miss Master Sheotar sneaking up on him.

A flurry of movements later he's pinned, held still by strong hands as the students he abused before keep him from lashing out again.
"Now, hold still and this will look decent. Flail like the mynock you are and you'll have bald spots." She warns an irate Chirrut, curtly. Potential Force-sensitive or no, she has figured out that she's going to have to put a lot of work into this one to bring him up to par.

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