Fixing Our Broken Pieces || The Bad Batch

Chapter 18: The Living Force

Zelda shook her head, and Hunter's clear disappointment couldn't be more obvious so Zelda had to give him hope that maybe she was wrong.

"But I've also never seen her look at someone the way she looks at you." Zelda left Hunter with the thought and he was left at the table by himself. To avoid losing focus again, Hunter stood to leave the cantina and take a walk.

Still talking with Echo, in her provisional vision Orla could see Hunter's blurry figure exiting through the doors but she took no notice of it. It was only a few minutes later she felt something was off. That's when she noticed Hunter wasn't in the cantina.

"Sorry Echo, I think I have to check something."

She threw over her Jedi robe and pushed open the doors. She took two glances to her right and her left, nothing was telling her where to go. She took a few steps forward until a large gust of wind brushed past her to a small alleyway between the cantina and another building. Poking her head inside she could see Hunter kneeling in the distance.

"Hunter?"

When he didn't respond or look up, Orla walked to the end of the stretched-out alleyway until she reached him, taking her time. Hunter was curled in a ball completely motionless and not blinking. Orla touched his shoulder with caution and some of his consciousness came back to him.

"Mmh?" he hummed.

"You good?" She showed concern.

He shook his head no, rubbing his hands over his face, Orla could see Hunter's tired eyes as clear as day. She sat down on the opposite wall facing him and mirroring how he sat, curled up her legs and head as close to the top of her knees as possible.

"So why don't you tell me what's wrong with you?" she says, tipping her head so the right side of her face rests on top of her knee.

"I'm fine," he turns his head away to avoid her seeing him close to tears. Instead of arguing Orla sits and waits for Hunter to tell her. He doesn't enjoy the silence so he waits to calm down and his senses return to normal before he can even think of what to say.

"It's nothing, sometimes being able to feel every frequency on the planet is overwhelming."

Orla lifted her head, a lightbulb going off in her head. If he was having trouble with his mutation she knew a perfect way to handle the stress. Without saying a word, she grabbed Hunter's hand and pulled him up. Confused, Hunter followed her lead, hand in hand as she led him away from the cantina. After a few twisting and turns, they end up in a part of the city that might as well have been a ghost town. The buildings that surrounded them were all abandoned, taken over by nature covered in thick moss. Orla lifted a trap door from the ground and jumped to a solid concrete floor with moss and long uneven grass that squeezed out from the cracks. Hunter looked down and thankfully there was a ladder hanging from the door that led down to the bottom.

"How did you find this?" he asked once both his feet were safely on the ground.

"Oh I fell, I was the one to make that door, it used to be a hole in the ground until I came along."

"I can see that, then why are we here?" He took another look around at the underground jungle. Vines hung from the ceiling that dragged down to the floor, and moss and overgrown grass could be seen for miles. Weeds and plants ruled over the tunnel and it smelt like no one had touched the ground in years, except Orla.

"So I can help you control your mutation," she took out her Holocron and it opened up by hovering above her palm. A blue light floods around them leaving no trace of darkness, "with this."

"Your magic cube? That's not going to do anything, I'm not a Jedi remember?"

"Maybe not but your mutation is like the force, the living force, a physical feeling of your surroundings. A Jedi can feel what is around them through the force and the force resonates in everything. While what you feel can seem a little extreme you just need to train yourself to relax, focus and pay attention to your surroundings instead of fighting them. So my plan is, you're going to use your bandana as a blindfold and I want you to tell me what you see. You're going to learn how to control it using the force."