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The people of Canto Bight would remember this day as the Kicking-In. It mostly stood for the kicking in of gilded doors. Mostly.
The new Galactic Commonwealth had sent several companies of what had been the Resistance, now its military, with a long list of arrest warrants for those who had funded and supplied the First Order. They had arrived in the sky over Canto Bight one day, and politely but firmly broadcast those warrants – and then things had become more than a little chaotic.
The majority of people in Canto Bight were quite happy to help things along, chasing arms dealers and industrialists onto their gleaming yachts or quietly locking their doors, so as not to get in the way. The trouble, however, was the Enforcers, who’d always been in the pocket of the rich and powerful and had no doubt that the Commonwealth would treat them just like their wealthy patrons.
And as always in Canto Bight, they weren’t fussy about who they used to get their way.
In the stables, a young boy called Temiri was staying very, very quiet.
Bargwill, the lumpen and brutish stablemaster, had already run off, leaving Temiri and the other children to fend for themselves. Arashell had crept out when it started, and came back telling Temiri and Oniho that they had to hide.
The guards had turned on their own people, to save their own skins. Arashell said she’d heard about groups of them taking hostages, either to stall the Resistance or to bargain for a way offworld. No one was really surprised about it, and when Temiri and Oniho heard the news, they hadn’t hesitated.
All three children had sealed the stable doors and hunkered down, each in a different enclosure. Temiri had hung onto his broom out of pure instinct, and was now clutching it. Right now, he was always wishing that he’d picked a stall with a Fathir in it; it would be something to hide behind, and might just kick an intruder hard enough to deter them.
“What if some guards try and get in?” Oniho whispered from another stall.
“They won’t,” Arashell said. “Even if they did want to ride Fathirs out of town, they couldn’t get through those doors. And anyway, even if that might happen, where else would we go?”
But Temiri wasn’t entirely listening now – or rather, he was listening to something else. He liked to think of it as a voice, though it didn’t really speak to him. It was more like the sense that he’d just been told something, usually something important.
It was only through stories that he’d realised what his gift was. The Force, the thing that gave the Jedi their power, spoke to him.
But what mattered was that in this instance, he suddenly knew that someone was coming towards them, and not along a street, but underneath it.
Before he could say anything, they could hear them too. Heavy footfalls and grunting, suggesting large men in a confined space. They were coming from below.
Then there was a scraping noise, metal on stone, as a drain cover was pushed to one side.
“I told you,” came a gruff voice, sounding smug. “If those two perps back then could use the pipes, they’d work for us. So now we’re under the stables, and ain’t no one gonna think to follow.”
“You want to take a Fathir out of here too?” another man asked, snidely. “Gonna work really well , with the kriffing Resistance after us.”
“Shut up.” Then there was a pause. “Scanner says we’ve got something more useful in here anyway. There’s someone in here with us – get those doors open! That stall first!”
The little voice inside Temiri told him that the guards were coming for him first. It also told him to get the first swing in.
So he did exactly that. As the door opened he sprang out, cracking the man across the face with the broom handle, just below the visor of his helmet. If he could make them angry enough, maybe they wouldn’t notice his friends.
Big as he was, the man flinched, clapping a hand to his cheek. “ Argh! You karking little-”
The guard hit him, backhanded. The impact knocked Temiri off his feet. Other doors opened. There was a sudden whining of blasters powering up, and Arashell screamed.
“Stay back, brats!” someone was shouting. “Boss, do we grab them too?”
“No need,” came another man’s voice. “More trouble than they’re worth.”
Temiri tried to get up, but too late. A rough hand grabbed him, and he was hauled up. “This one’ll do,” the guard said, looking at him in a grimly satisfied way. “Resistance are so soft on tykes like this, it’ll be like we had a switch to blow up the whole city.”
“And when we get on a ship?” another guard asked.
“What, with him?” Temiri was jostled by his captor’s shrug. “Hnh. Sell him to a Hutt, throw him out the airlock. Like I care. Now get those doors open!”
One of the guards moved over to the doors, raising a hand – but before he could even touch the controls, the console flashed green and the door hissed open.
For a moment, it seemed to Temiri like a star had decided to step through the doorway. Blinding bright, blazing hot. Then he realised that it wasn’t his eyes telling him this, but the Force. So he did that thing which wasn’t really closing his eyes but felt like it, and the star’s light folded in on itself and it became… a woman.
A young woman with dark hair and tanned skin. She was built like a fighter and stood like one, clad in green and white armour. The Resistance raptor stood proud on her chestplate, and Temiri felt his heart skip at the mere sight. And in her hands, she held a blaster and a long, dark metal cylinder.
There was no mistaking her. This was Rey of the Resistance, the Jedi Knight. Nor was there any mistaking the fire in her brown eyes.
“Release him,” she said. “Or you’re really going to regret it.”
“Screw you!” the leader yelled. “Like you can do anything while I’ve got a blaster to his head!”
Temiri suddenly felt something hard and cold, angled up against his cheek.
“Yeah, bet you hate that,” the guard said, advancing on the Jedi. “You kill Stormtroopers, Knights of Ren, even the Supreme Leader, but I get a kid on the wrong end of a gun and suddenly you’ve got nothi-”
Except that was when Temiri bit his hand. There was a yowl, and the man dropped him.
Just like that, Rey was in motion. A blade of yellow light suddenly snapped into being and she was whirling, deflecting the shots that the guards immediately fired.
She also drew a blaster pistol with her free hand and fired back, blue waves of light which dropped guards to the floor, out cold.
The enforcers, who weren’t shooting to stun, paid for their ruthlessness. One took a bolt to the shin and collapsed in a writhing heap, while the other went to the floor with a yowl when Rey put an orange-edged hole in his foot.
That left two on their feet. One man threw all caution to the wind and threw himself into range, grabbing his shock-baton. It didn’t get him very far – Rey swayed to the side and whacked him hard on the nose with the hilt of her saber. That put him on the ground, clutching his face.
The remaining guard had decided to go for the hostage again, and lunged at Temiri. In other circumstances, that might've worked.
The trouble was these particular circumstances: Rey was not the only Force-wielder in the room, Temiri had just called his broom into his hand, and being small was a genuine advantage when you wanted to land your blow at crotch-height.
The guard compounded all this with the force of his lunge. For a moment he swayed silently. Then, with a deflating sort of noise, he dropped to his knees and keeled over.
Rey strode over and prodded the man with her boot. “Staying down?”
A wordless whimper was all she got, but it was a pretty clear answer all the same.
“Good.” She stunned him all the same, him and the other guards who were still moving. Then she tilted her head down, and spoke into a commlink at her collar. “Finn, I’ve knocked out a few reprobates in the stables. Can you send some soldiers to cuff them? I’ve also got some… are these the Fathirs you and Rose talk about? I think I spooked them.” There was a pause. “Thanks.”
The three children watched her in mute awe. This couldn’t be real. Rey the Jedi, the Resistance hero, Luke Skywalker’s own apprentice, was stood in front of them. None of them dared move, for fear of breaking what had to be the most incredible dream.
So the first person to move was Rey. “Now you ,” she said much more softly, turning to Temiri. “Must be exactly the person I was looking for. What's your name?”
It took a moment to overcome his shock and reply. “Temiri.”
Her smile was like the sun. “A lovely name. I'm-”
Temiri couldn’t stop himself. “Master Rey!”
Rey pulled back a little, chortling. “Well, no one really calls me a master yet. But looking at you here, I suppose you could do with a teacher, hmm?”
Then her eyes darted elsewhere. Temiri followed her gaze, and saw his friends, peeking out from behind a doorway.
Rey smiled at them too, gently but a little sadly as her eyes took in the stables. “Have you three got anywhere to go?”
They shook their heads, and Temiri did so too when Rey looked back at him, apparently thinking hard.
She seemed to reach a decision quickly, and stood up. “Well then, I think we'd better get that sorted out. Come with me, everyone,” she beckoned.
“Where are we going?” asked Oniho.
“Ach-To,” Rey told him.
Arashell spoke up. “What’s it like?”
“Peaceful, and kind.” Rey beckoned. “I think you’ll like it much better than here.”
No one could argue with that, and the children ran to catch her up.
“Master Rey,” Temiri blurted out. Rey looked at him, startled, and then seemed to decide that this was something she’d just have to get used to. “Yes, Temiri?”
“Your lightsaber.” He pointed to the weapon, holstered over her shoulder. “Does it match the Jedi lightning from your eyes?” he asked, thinking of the stories he’d heard about the Jedi and their powers.
“Does it…” Rey looked truly perplexed now, but then she grinned and let out a low chuckle. “Clearly you’ve got a lot to learn. But don’t worry,” she said, putting a hand on Temiri's shoulder as they all walked to the exit. “We’re going to exactly the right place for that.”