Chapter One: A Fine How Do You Do
#2 of Calls of the Force
Author's Note: Really really sorry for the incredibly long wait. The chapter got lost and then I lost interest in favor of my actual novel(now in chapter 8) and various real life issues. But here you go!
@~*~@
It was a gorgeous autumn day, finally cold enough to send pleasant shivers down the spine, but not so cold as to make Ethan hate the world and everything in it while outside. Ethan's head bobbed back and forth to a gentle rhythm as he walked, or at least it seemed to. He was actually head banging very gently to Apocolyptica's 'Path'. The reason he was doing it gently was because it gave him a headache if he gave it all the effort it deserved. As he walked up the lonely, two-lane road that led to his hill-top home, a wind blew through, scattering bright gold and brown leaves all over the place, making those still attached to the trees that covered the will move, the sun shining through them seeming to sparkle along the road. The sight brought back memories of the previous year, Ethan's final foray in high school. He chuckled, just thinking about it making him so very very glad to not be there anymore. Oh, the staff was nice enough, and he was never bullied, he even had plenty of good friends that still kept in touch, but what made him glad to be out was dangling off the back of his head, also fluttering in the breeze along with the leaves and his plaid scarf.
Ethan liked long hair. He liked it on the girls he fantasized, and he loved it on himself. When he was finally free of the high school dress code, he'd been able to just let it grow and grow, and now the long brown mane was pulled back into a ponytail that reached the middle of his back. Sure, it was a bitch to wash, but he felt it was worth it.
When the Finnish cellists played their final note, he reached into his jacket pocket and turned off his mp3 player without bothering to pull it out, unplugging his headphones and wrapping them around his fingers before slipping them into the same pocket. With a sigh, Ethan looked up to the sky, still walking forward, leaves crunching under his shoes with every step as he watched the clouds go by, pushing and pulling each other into different shapes.
Even as he watched, the clouds suddenly vanished, replaced by a rapidly widening circle of empty sky. But this phenomena was just a prelude to a much stranger view. In the center of the circle, the sky itself seemed to pull back, deepening into a cone with a point that was very far away, and very dark indeed. Until it snapped back like a rubber band, hurling a blue fireball form it's depths that pulled the trailing edges of the clouds after it, making them close up again in a spiraling pattern as the ball of screaming fire rapidly changed from blue to red, smoke pouring off of it until it was consumed by it, the fire vanishing entirely before it crashed.
Right out of view. Right about where Ethan's house was.
"What the fuck!?" He called out before breaking into a sprint, praying to God that it hadn't crashed into his house. Sure, the little book store he'd set up with money that would've gone to some college or other was making a nice amount of cash, but he couldn't afford to rebuild his house after just one year of saving, and he certainly wasn't about to move! About ten minutes later, he reached the summit of the winding road to see his lovely little cottage was perfectly intact, though there was a massive plume of smoke and dust rising from the crater next to it.
He ran to the house and quickly unraveled the garden hose, turning the squeaky faucet like mad to get the water flowing as fast as possible before turning it on whatever had crashed, wanting to put out any remaining fires before it could spread to his unkempt lawn or the woods around the property. No less than twenty seconds later, he heard a distinctly pneumatic hiss and saw a shadow in the smoke rise up, quickly followed by a loud thump of something hitting the ground, a groan, and a nasty coughing fit. Throwing the hose away, water still flowing from the end, Ethan selflessly ran into the miasma and felt around, his gloved hands coming into contact with something soft and yielding. Squinting, he saw that it was on the rather ample chest of someone in the clashing outfit of brown robes and a fighter pilot helmet. He wasted no time being embarrassed, instead just putting his arms around her and lifting her up in a bridal carry, ignoring her weak struggles and running out of the smoke so they could breath.
By the time he got out, Ethan had been coughing pretty badly too, needing to set her down on the grass and hold himself up. Breathing heavily, he watched as she rolled over and pulled her helmet off, tossing it away and coughing, spitting into the grass before rolling over again and giving Ethan quite the shock.
Now, he had been expecting maybe a government pilot flying an experimental craft, or a normal, odd-colored-but-still-basically-human kind of alien. What he had not been expecting was a grey rabbit with a dark patch over one eye and a pair of long, floppy ears, each with it's own dark patch on the rounded tips. And to be perfectly honest, he hadn't been expecting such a fantastic bust, or what appeared to be a stellar set of hips under her robe.
"Thank you," she said, though it took a while for him to process it.
"Uh, n-no problem," he replied, blinking a few times and sitting down before he remembered what he had been doing before the daring do and jumping up. He grabbed the hose again and aimed it at what was clearly a wrecked spacecraft, doing his best to put out any parts that were glowing. "Are you alright?"
"Yes, I think so," she replied, rubbing her head through her short, neck-length raven hair. "What system are we in?"
"Uh..." It took Ethan a bit to figure out what she meant. He almost said democratic, or imperial, or even point before he realized she meant planetary. "The Solar system?"
"Never heard of it," she answered shortly, looking up at him before looking around and seeing only trees. "What planet?"
"The third one, Earth," he said, wondering why she would want to know that if she'd never heard of the system they were in. He dropped the hose and went back to the outer wall of the house, turning the knob and stopping the flow before rolling the hose back up and then jogging over to his impromtu guest and kneeling down next to her just as she sat up. "It's probably best if you lay down," he instructed, gently pushing her back onto the grass. "You might have broken bones."
"I don't," she said with certainty, but allowing him to probe her limbs and her ribcage anyway. "But thank you for checking."
Ethan sat back on his haunches and watched as she pushed her self into a sitting position, her robe falling open to reveal a beige tunic over a white shirt and brown leggings did the familiarity of her outfit click into place. It was almost identical to that worn by most of the Jedi characters from the Star Wars franchise.
"What is it?" She asked, seeing the concerned look on his face and glancing down at herself. "Am I bleeding?"
"No, no," he said, looking back up to her face before standing and offering her a hand, helping her stand as well. "It's just... You're wearing very odd clothes."
"What's so odd about them?" She asked, looking down at her self again, her ears falling forward before she swept them back and looked at him again, her blue eyes slightly confused. "They're perfectly ordinary."
"Not really," Ethan said, recalling how often Jedi robes were described as being common-looking for blending in the books he had read. "Not here anyway." He was quiet for a few moments, watching her and realizing that she was actually very cute. Remembering himself before he got carried away, he smiled and gave a nervous laugh. "Would you, uh, like to come inside?" he offered, motioning to his modest house.
"I'd rather stay out here for a bit," she said, looking back to her ship, or what remained of it.
"Alright," Ethan said, looking at the smoky area as well. "I'll be back out soon." With that, he turned and left her to her thoughts.
And think she did, sitting down in the grass and watching the wind play with the smoke, blowing it away and bunching it up. Her ship was gone, she could see the twisted wreck of melted metal through the smoke now, some of it still glowing red from the heat. She wasn't quite sure how the cockpit had survived, but she was grateful to the Force that it had. And of course, there was the matter of what had happened to the other ship. Had it escaped? Had it too been pulled into the Black Hole? Was it's pilot already on this world, hunting for her?
"Here." Her train of thought was interrupted when Ethan returned carrying two glasses of water with bits of ice floating in them. She took one of them with yet another thank you and drank it all down at once, the heat from entering the atmosphere having dried her throat considerably. Ethan drank his marginally slower, his eyes still on her, the water cold enough to hurt his teeth a little. His arrival had reminded her that he had saved her life, and an idea popped into her mind. She would never be sure just what caused her to think of it as she looked at him, whether it was the sunset behind him, or something odd had happened temporally speaking when she passed through the Black Hole, but the thought that had filled her mind was of a sacred tradition that almost every society that evolved on it's own had developed separately from each other. Turning, she set down her glass, accidentally knocking it over with the hem of her robe and not caring. She put both hands on Ethan's shoulders as he turned to face her as well, a look of surprise on his face when she did. She looked him in the eye and took a deep breath.
"I swear a Life-Debt to you."
@~*~@
Well, there it is. The product of a few hours work, a back ache, and very little food. I apologize if you don't like it, but I don't really care right now. Sorry for the continuing lack of 'doing it', but it will be coming, don't you worry.
And yes, I am a very big Star Wars fan.