Chapter 83 Building a Partnership
After finishing breakfast, Rayleigh returned to his living quarters to peruse the planet's version of the internet from the room's built-in data terminal while Vash and Mechanic double-checked the fallout of Rayleigh's little one-night adventure.
The reason that the two gangs had been allowed to screw around with impunity was that each had the backing of a sizeable corporation. There was a good reason that one of the very first things Mechanic stated when introducing Correlia to Rayleigh was that a sizable chunk of the planet's population was comprised of spies. These spies were not employed by governments, races, or tribes, but by the true rulers of the Galaxy, the ones who directed where all the money went, the Corporations.
Corellia has thousands of historic Universities that annually produce excellent engineers, scientists, and researchers. Many of which have no desire to ever leave the planet, so there are hundreds of Research and Development departments built right on the planet's surface cities for those fresh graduates to acquire gainful employment.
But rather than spend hundreds of billions of credits every year to invest in theoretical research, experimentation, testing, and design, many Corporations would rather spend a fraction of that hiring spies to acquire the valuable research produced by other companies. If the stolen product was mass-produced in territories outside Republic Senatorial Jurisdictions, the original designers would have no legal recourse.
These spies, however, need something to work with, an existing infrastructure, locals in the know. Companies handle this by putting local gangs on the payroll. They are quick, cheap, and can take the fall if something goes wrong.
The corporations that back these gangs don't care if they do something stupid as long as they can deliver on the jobs and intel required of them. If a third party targets these gangs, the corporations will invest a sizable amount of credits to investigate what happened and make sure it does not happen again. Because of this, the lethal option when dealing with these gangs is more expensive than the peaceful option, which is why Vash hadn't told Rayleigh to kill the gang members causing the problems and internally hoped that Rayleigh would 'act like a Jedi.'
Luckily for them all, the overlaying complexities of this matter were an ordinary Tuesday for HK-47. Gangs, Corporations, Politicians, Armies, and Droids. HK-47 had extensive experience dealing with everything and anything.
Mechanic confirmed through her own channels that there had been no mention of Rayleigh in the CorSec reports or the intercepted transmissions off the planet. The mid-level gang members that Rayleigh sold the intel to were convinced with a simple use of Mind Trick to take credit for the research themselves, cutting out the possibility that it could be traced back to a third party.
As long as it was just inter-gang violence, the corporations wouldn't care. If the rival gangs took out their employees, that usually meant that the corporation would make a new deal or sometimes even a better deal with the new gang, bringing in more money to the victorious gang as long as they didn't already have a backer. The corporations only cared if it looked like another corporate entity made a move, but there was no evidence left by Rayleigh's actions, making it a cleaner job than many that Mechanic had seen in the past.
If nothing else, this confirmed that Rayleigh was more than a brute with a sword and definitely worth keeping around.
Rayleigh himself was going through multiple pages of documents and news articles simultaneously. One strange aspect of having multiple Wills that he could rarely use properly was the ability to read multiple things at the same time, as long as they were all within his line of sight. There were four separate window pages open on his monitor. One was the local news. One was news about the Merr-Sonn corporation. One contained internal documents he was allowed access. And the final one was for HK-47, a list of blueprints, parts, weapons, and modifications that could be added into a service droid for his new body.
The internal documents he was privy to also contained details about the other products created by Mechanic. In addition to the Scarab Droid with a turret on its back, there appeared to be a few other models. One was a scarab model that did not have a turret, but instead had laser-equipped pincer-jaws that could slice through just about anything. They could move very fast and could even be remotely detonated if required. If the Turret-mounted Scarabs were for Anti-Infantry Combat, these Laser Scarabs were for taking apart vehicles and turning siege engines into scrap.
His interest in her creations stemmed primarily from the offer she made the previous day. Before he decided to work for her, he had to know what resources she had and what kind of person she was.
HK-47 was mostly complaining. He was built over four thousand years ago, and at least, according to him, droids had gotten far worse in that time. None of the body frames available, not even the BX Commando Unit, had any appeal to him and he was already designing his own using his understanding of the limits of the fabrication systems, based on the degree of customization he could see was available. He was already requesting to look into Merr-Sonn's vehicle database so that he could request his new body be made with higher-quality vehicle parts and load-bearing servos than the limited actuators and pistons available to these obsolete modern droids.
Hearing his complaints, Rayleigh figured out the likely reason why Mechanic made robo bugs. It was impossible for her not to know everything HK-47 knew about how to make a better droid since the technology obviously existed elsewhere. The absence of anything that met HK's standard implied that his standard was likely illegal to produce. Since she couldn't legally produce a perfect bipedal droid, she went in another direction. Rayleigh highly suspected that the laws for bug-type droids were far more lenient, allowing her freedom to produce something that had far greater battlefield supremacy without being legally reprehensible.
After a few hours of browsing, the Merr-Sonn service droid opened the door, stating in an electronic voice, "The Lab has been finished, please follow me."
Rayleigh picked up HK's head and followed the robo-butler down the hall. The Lab was something Mechanic put together to properly test the applications of Divine Script in a controlled environment. When he first returned to his room, his terminal had a pending message asking what materials he needed to produce Divine Script. He answered it and received a reply a few minutes later that his lab would be ready in a few hours.
The lab was empty on arrival. It was a large rectangular room separated by a thick glass wall into the observation side and the experimentation side. The droid showed Rayleigh to the data terminal on the observation side, which had a message ready for him to open. Within was a simple experimental design. On the other side of the room was a table with twenty small square plates of metal, and the experiment was to put them together using Divine Script into two separate five-sided cubes, one sealed six-sided cube with a transmitter placed inside it, and the remaining four plates were to be connected length-wise. The finished products would then be presented to another droid that would take them to another lab to be heavily tested in a variety of environments, and a new experiment would be generated based on the results.
Other than Rayleigh's input, there was no human interaction. The entire thing was essentially automated. Rayleigh wasn't surprised. Mechanic was probably a very busy person.
The table included the ink and brush set that Rayleigh had requested. Rayleigh prepped the ink by putting in a drop of his blood and saturating it with his Aura. This wasn't a secret or anything, so he didn't care that the process was being filmed on camera by the lab's equipment.
After saturation, he used Shū on the brush, used it to mix the ink, and then started writing. Divine Script didn't really have a set form. When you knew how to use it, you'd naturally understand the shape of the characters required, and as long as your intention and Nen were strong enough, the tiny imperfections in the lines of ink would naturally correct themselves before drying.
Divine Script set a purpose with a parameter and a weakness. This experiment's parameter was to set the position of the five square plates into positions that formed an open box, and that the pieces' relative position would stay constant unless the pieces were exposed to any aura.
Some other minor conditions could remove the effect. Life sustained life, so if left in a place without any life for a long time, the effect could be lost. Sealing it in a box and leaving the box in a trunk for 20 years was not enough. It would have to be on a completely dead world or the vacuum of space for a while. He didn't know how long, though, so many of these experimental pieces would likely be launched into space soon.
After the first set of pieces was placed together, Rayleigh extended his Shū beyond the brush to the entire box to enforce a finalization of the effect while solidifying and drying out the ink. This was the last step, and further changes could not be made afterward.
Once the effect ended, the box was done. Rayleigh used Zetsu and gave it a few experimental squeezes to confirm that he couldn't tear it apart using his physical strength. He then proceeded to make two more boxes using the remaining plates and transmitter.
The final four plates had sharp edges with varying degrees of sharpness. One of which, according to the data he read earlier, was nearly Mono-Molecular in sharpness.
Surprisingly, he could not simply line them up and write Divine Script on them to keep them like that. He intuitively felt that it could not be done. So he arranged them with two lined up and then the other two stacked above and below it, giving it a more stable structure. Rayleigh proceeded with this arrangement and penned the Divine Script.
After setting the finished products on the desk, Rayleigh returned to the room's observation side and wrote up a detailed report of the various steps, what each meant, and what was required to change them, along with the limitations he discovered and the possible workarounds.
If Mechanic were as smart as he thought she was, she would not be limiting his contribution to just the shell of their future spaceship. There was an excellent chance that Divine Script could be used in other parts of the ship as well.
Mechanic had likely already designed automated experiments for the boxes to be tested under that did not require external input, so they all just had to wait for the testing results to be available, which would likely take a full day.
Rayleigh had his assigned service droid take him back to the mess hall for more food and then had it take him to a place that he could use to exercise. His Hatsus were designed with limit-breaking exercise in mind, giving him a path forward to always get stronger so as long as he had the time, he would exercise every single day.
The training room he was escorted to was clearly designed for Vash to practice his marksmanship. It was about five times larger than a gymnasium, filled with obstacles and targets, and every wall was lined with turrets that Vash likely used to practice shooting bullets with bullets. Nothing within could withstand Rayleigh's sword, so he couldn't release his flying slashes over and over to empty his reserves of aura, but the walls of turrets did give Rayleigh another idea.
Thankfully, the training room's command terminal was easy enough to program, and within a few minutes, Rayleigh had a new exercise routine. 120 separate turrets took aim at Rayleigh and started firing. Over-charging Overdrive with Aura to boost his speed and further multiplying that boost by using Babylon and the Sword of Babylon, granted Rayleigh the speed necessary to slash each and every shot fired, though only because he programmed them not to fire all at once.
Because the shape of Rayleigh's sword was not round, he could not swat energy shots in another direction like a Jedi, but he never intended to do so. He was a swordsman. If he wanted to defeat an opponent, he would not swat their bullets back at them; he would cut them.
The split energy shots would impact around him, so as the training went on, a burning circle formed around Rayleigh from the continuous fire.
Of course, not every type of ammo could be resolved using a sword. He could split solid bullets and energy shots, but something like a shotgun that fired a wall of pellets could not be blocked in this manner. Thankfully, shotgun pellets had far less momentum than bigger bullets, and even a half-decent Jedi Knight could use the Force to block them as long as they saw it coming and braced themselves before the trigger was pulled. Rayleigh, too, was fully capable of this.
Although Rayleigh did not specifically train most Jedi powers, he did train to continually improve his mastery of the basics, and the strength he gained from doing so allowed him to use most Jedi powers at the level of a Jedi Knight without needing further training.
All roads lead to Mastery, so despite his specialization in pure swordsmanship, his mastery trickled down to all unrelated skills as well, leading to an overall improvement. This was why he never bothered to waste time training those skills individually. He knew that once his swordsmanship reached a certain level, all other skills would improve as well.
The skill that received the greatest secondary improvement from just training his Swordsmanship was Tutaminis. Swordsmanship required an immaculate understanding of internal force transformation, so mastering Swordsmanship also required mastering this aspect of Tutaminis. With his current mastery of Tutaminis, Rayleigh could survive low-end explosions like grenades by using the Force to divert energy entering the body safely out of the body. This means that as long as he can deal with the shrapnel using his sword, he could survive point-blank explosions from minor yield explosives like grenades or landmines. As his mastery level increased, one day he could perhaps survive a nuclear explosion just using Tutaminis.
This wasn't impossible thanks to how his Sword of Babylon worked. It removed physical defenses, but it heavily, heavily amplified internal Force powers like Tutaminis. This meant that when Rayleigh was using Sword of Babylon, he could be cut with a knife, but could not be hurt with a flamethrower. This was intentional. It meant that to defeat him, you needed to fight him using a physical weapon. Rayleigh intended to keep training his internal energy control through his swordsmanship until things like Magic Spells, Ninja Jutsus, Warrior Ki Attacks, and Hunter Hatsus had no effect on him. Only physical attacks. To defeat him, you must face his sword.
The reason Rayleigh set up this training was that none of his current mortal sword styles accounted for the inhuman ability to slice bullets, so he had to flex and twist them to accommodate this necessity. Once he adjusted the numerous aspects of his World Sword Style to be able to accomplish this, he could then start incorporating various Laws into his swordsmanship that were useful in countering gunfire.
This was surprisingly easy since he had a point of reference. Although the Jedi Lightsaber forms were not truly sword styles, they could be used to gain insight into the Laws that granted them the ability to reliably deflect blaster fire.
Each Lightsaber Form corresponded to a Law that Rayleigh could incorporate into his swordsmanship to acquire all the Form's benefits.
Form One had the law of Waves, constantly cycling between receding and advancing in the most direct manner.
Form Two had the law of Weakness, granting insight into the opponent's weak points to directly target them.
Form Three contained the law of Circles while Form Four possessed the Law of Spirals. They were similar, but very different. Circles were masters of externally redirecting force to negate it, while Spirals were masters of internally redirecting force to amplify it.
Form Five was most closely related to some of the minor laws of water. When calm, water can form a mirror that reflects, and when aggressive, water can become a waterfall or flood. These Laws allowed for a Form Five master to switch from deflecting blaster bolts back at their shooter to aggressively striking the opponent with the full might of the Force.
Form Six could not be properly expressed by a single Law; it was more of an interwoven Law system that connected minor aspects of several Laws into a single, specialized, personalized Law. Rayleigh once explained it as Calligraphy. This was because the work of no two Calligraphists would ever be identical.
Rayleigh spent the next seven hours in the training room, pausing only to occasionally change the settings on the turret fire-rate to increase the difficulty as his swordsmanship gradually acclimated to this form of combat.
From his estimates, it should take a couple of weeks to make the necessary adjustments and upgrades to allow him to defend against all the turrets firing all at once while using the minimum amount of energy.
Once he could do so using minimal energy, he could place some dummies around and restart his practice by defending them as well.
Of course, even if this training improved his swordsmanship, there was still a hard limit to how much it would help him.
Rayleigh still needed to consider how to further enhance his swordsmanship, and no matter how he thought about it, there was only one way to do so.
In order to master his World Sword Style, he needed to imbue every Law in the world into his sword. If he had the time, he could do that eventually, anywhere, but time was not something he had in infinite amounts. The Final Mission that granted the Reincarnator's Tavern's Grand Prize would not wait for him, so he needed a faster way to gain insight into the various Laws that made up the World.
Thankfully, he already had an idea of what to do. All Worlds carried all the Laws of every World, but some were stronger than others. Rayleigh's goal was to visit the different environments of various planets and use the strongest, most obvious Laws in those places to quickly incorporate them into his swordsmanship.
So basically, use a ship to fly to some intense, likely hostile alien environment, stay there for a few days while swinging a sword, then depart on the ship somewhere else, over and over.
It was quite unreasonable for him to ask for a ship to do this kind of thing from Mechanic, which was why he had not yet answered her question of recruitment. That being said, if she did agree to allow him to travel and train as such, he would certainly be willing to help her with whatever she needed.
Rayleigh's training ended not because he was tired, but because the turrets needed time to cool down, so he returned to the mess hall for dinner. After dinner, he didn't return to his room, but asked to leave the building.
The turret bombardment helped train his reflexes, but not his max speed. In order to do so, he needed somewhere more open. Back in the Pirate World, Rayleigh would sprint along the ocean's surface for tens of kilometers, past the calm belt, through horrendous storms, whirlpools, sea king nests, and hurricanes, before turning around and returning to the little island Mihawk dropped him off at.
Once outside, he picked a direction and started sprinting. Not on the surface, but on the walls and roofs of various buildings.
In the Pirate World, in order to train his Tutaminis and the internal ability to control forces while moving, Rayleigh learned how to run on water without making a splash. This required a bit of Law manipulation to increase the surface tension of the water and perfectly balance the force of each step to only cause a ripple instead of a massive splash. Compared to this, running on a horizontal wall of glass without breaking the glass with each step was easy.
Of course, he was not technically in violation of gravity. Even a skilled Jedi could run a dozen or so steps along a vertical wall. It was only when attempting to elevate his height while running sideways on a wall that would cause him to jump off, so he could only do so near the end of each building. He would start running on the building's side on what was likely the 46th or 47th floor. By the end of the building, he'd be running on the 43rd floor, then he would leap diagonally to a building across the street while gaining height, and start on a higher floor again while running.
Without the Speed Force, he couldn't ignore how his rapidly moving body affected the materials around him, but by using Tutaminis, he could somewhat balance it out. His goal of becoming the Flash with a sword was another step closer.
This method of training Tutaminis was something few traditional Jedi could emulate. Even when they ran along walls, it was on stone or metal that could handle the force of their steps, never smooth, fragile glass.
At the higher levels, most practitioners of Tutaminis only ever train to circulate thermal or electrical energy in and out of the body. Tutaminis was the Art of Redirecting or Dissipating Concentrated Energies. A skilled user could catch a blaster bolt or a lightsaber with their bare hand. A master could catch a blaster bolt in one hand and fire it out of their other hand, or completely snuff out a lightsaber blade in their grip. But to Rayleigh, these were merely flashy Jedi parlor tricks.
To Rayleigh, the true worth of high-level Tutaminis lay in the act of dispersing and redirecting concentrated kinetic energies. This would grant him resistance to blunt impacts, shockwaves, concussive impacts, and sound attacks. He would be able to leap from any altitude and store the force of the landing impact to survive falls from any height and redirect that force back to the ground to propel himself forward at the same speed he impacted the ground.
Of course, there was a reason that most Jedi never trained in such a useful aspect of Tutaminis. They had nowhere to store the energy. For Thermal or Electrical energy, it could be stored in the body somewhat safely using Tutaminis to balance out the forces. But for physical forces to be stored in the body, the body had to be capable of withstanding those physical forces. Someone who has never trained their body could never use this method to store and redirect kinetic forces in the body. But Rayleigh could.
Because Rayleigh didn't rely on Aura or Haki to defend himself when he was being attacked during combat, he had to fully train his base, physical body to the absolute limit and then beyond. This foundation gave him options other Force users would never dream of having.
Rayleigh sped along the city, using one Will to map everything out while another paid attention to the Jedi Chat room. Rayleigh didn't have a communicator yet, so if Mechanic needed him back, she could just call him back in the chat room, and he'd see the message right away. As the sun set and rose again, this didn't happen, though, so once the sun was back in the sky, Rayleigh returned for breakfast. One benefit of 24/7 meditation was that he really didn't need to sleep that much, giving him more time for training.
Rayleigh returned and was taken back to the mess hall for breakfast. After finishing, he returned to his quarters once more. When he was gone, someone had come in and plugged a cord into one of the data ports. This cord could let HK-47 connect directly to the computer interface and keep him charged, so Rayleigh could leave the head in the room. His terminal also had a new message for a new experiment.
For six weeks, this was Rayleigh's routine. Eat breakfast, browse the internet, do an experiment, eat lunch, train with the turrets, eat dinner, run through the city, return for breakfast. Occasionally, he'd sleep, but he only needed it when he truly pushed his training to the limit, something that rarely occurred.
During this time, Rayleigh would also come to the Tavern at night and chat with friends and do a mission once a week. Gone were the days when he could only finish a fifty or sixty-point mission once a week. With his current strength, each week's mission granted him 150~200 points, and he was almost overqualified for these. The only reason he was not completing higher-grade missions was that there was a limit to the number of those available, and while some of them could be reserved, others had a first-come, first-served limit, and you were lucky if you found a decent, well-paying one.
Still, Rayleigh confirmed from the frequency of others doing such missions that he should be in the top 10 of Player Point accumulation speed. The only ones really getting points faster than he was were the ones who had minions staying in the Tavern at all times and kept track of when the highest paying missions would post so they could tell their boss to come grab it.
In any case, he was accumulating points at a healthy speed and was not blowing them on Arena fights at the moment. Perhaps in two years, he'd have enough points saved up to make a spaceship an Inventory Item.
Although they had not met face-to-face often, Mechanic had been keeping Rayleigh up-to-date on the results of the testing on Divine Script.
Divine Script kept every molecule in place, which could actually be used to replicate the functions of a superconductor. It also allowed for monomolecular blades to retain their sharpness when cutting inorganic materials, but for some reason, the Divine Script enhanced Monomolecular blades dulled after cutting too many times into living flesh. Still useful on any number of droids and up to a dozen or so organics.
Hearing this, HK-47 requested several Monomolecular blades to be installed on his new frame.
Once the limits of Divine Script were approximated, HK-47 submitted his request for a body. The materials were extremely light, extremely thin, and extremely fragile. It was practically tin foil. All of that changed when Rayleigh applied Divine Script. However, instead of being indestructible while being weak to aura, he requested it to be made as hard as possible, with the weakness of becoming heavier. This was the same restriction Rayleigh placed on his weights. They would not be quite indestructible, but still stronger and lighter than any known material without the weakness of falling apart with one attack from a Player with Aura. HK-47 was already planning how to fight other Players and since Rayleigh informed him that Jedi might be able to imbue their Lightsabers with aura, having such a weakness meant he'd be sliced up like tissue paper unless he chose an alternative weakness. The current Divine Script was not impossible to overpower with an aura-infused Lightsaber, but it would take a few seconds of direct contact.
The weight increase and hidden add-ons made him weigh about twice what a normal droid weighed, but thanks to the physics shenanigans of Divine Script, he could move as swiftly as a lighter droid while still carrying the momentum and force of a heavier one. This was the effect that HK desired.
Every section was hollow and could open to fold out a hidden weapon. Each weapon was custom-made using Divine Script with an aura weakness so that they could be overused without melting. Both wrists hid blaster pistols and fold-out monomolecular blades. The upper arms hid single-shot missile launchers. The shoulders hid heavy blaster rifles. The legs did not hide any weapons, but did hide specialized servos to increase running speed and small jet boosters to increase jumping height, and could let him fly when needed. Most of these were for emergencies only and could not be discovered through scans. HK's primary means of combat would still be the held weapons.
Mechanic personally machined the fingers, hands, actuators, and joints to the best of her abilities. She also had Rayleigh use Divine Script on a dozen tiny pieces she used as a circuit board for a targeting system that could be overclocked a thousand-fold during combat without melting the computer itself.
With perfectly engineered hands for aiming and the best targeting system in the world for locking on, HK-47 would once more become the most terrifying assassin droid in the galaxy.
Once all the parts were in place, Rayleigh got out his Lightsaber customization kit and Mechanic used it to assemble the body and head, which Rayleigh Saved using the Kit.
The results were better than expected. Perfect. As for the reason that Mechanic was willing to build Rayleigh a perfect Droid but not make a few for herself? She said it was because she could not legally own a perfect killing droid, but this one was never owned by her, so even if it was discovered, she would not be implicated. She even inscribed false serial numbers on the parts to make them look as if they were made by other corporations in case anyone took a close look.
The rules for Inventory Items acquired during Character creation using Talent Points and Items acquired during Gameplay using Mission Points were completely different.
If the former broke, you could turn it off and turn it back on the following day; it would be back to normal. For the latter, if you broke it, turned it off, and turned it back on, it would still be broken.
But what defines broken? One of Rayleigh's Talent Point Acquired Inventory Items was a Melee Shield. Every time he turned it off and on, the number of uses would reset.
For HK-47 who was considered the same type of Inventory Item as the Melee Shield, with the exception of his memory, everything else that changed would be changed back. This meant that if he exploded, ran out of ammo, or was captured, the Item's projection could be turned off and turned back on the next day and he would be back in the same state as when he was initially deployed.
Considering the possible implications for espionage, Mechanic quickly had some tests done, but they were less than promising.
It was still a mystery how HK-47 was storing his memories as a head. Mechanic had him download a large amount of data, then asked Rayleigh to disable the projection and re-enable it the following day. But when doing so, the downloaded data was nowhere to be found. HK-47 could be questioned about it, but he could not give precise details.
So there was no way to send him to another company, download everything, then recall him to gain the stolen data.
Of course, this only applied to him. Since he could 'die' and come back to 'life,' this did give Mechanic the idea of using her own or Vash's Mission Points to turn a data storage terminal into an Inventory Item and give it to HK-47 to use on a Data retrieval suicide mission. They could set a specific time that she would disable the data storage terminal, and as long as HK-47 or someone else downloaded all the useful data into it before that happened, the data would be on the drive when she re-enabled the Item back in her possession.
In any case, HK-47 would make a valuable member of the team. Mechanic said when the ship was ready, she'd include a way that HK-47 could directly link up with the ship's weapons to aim and fire at enemy ships in the future. This pleased HK-47 greatly.
As the days passed, Rayleigh's training eventually hit a wall. The ship was nearly done, and it was time to give an answer to the question of whether he would be joining them.
Rayleigh sent a message to Mechanic and Vash requesting a meeting, and they gathered for lunch.
Not one to beat around the bush, Rayleigh directly explained his training needs, and if they could be met, he'd help her with whatever she needed.
Mechanic did not reject the request immediately. Rather, she remained silent for a few minutes.
Eventually, she answered, "I can let you use the ship to go around and train and get stronger, but there is something I need from you in return."
Rayleigh replied, "And what would that be?"
Mechanic answered, "You've heard me mention Tails, right? She died last year and has been busy retraining. If you want time off to train, I can not only provide it, but also fund it with whatever you need. In return, I want you to take the time to train her. Tail's primary class is Jedi, and in order for her to catch up, she needs a teacher who has a strong enough connection to the Force."
Rayleigh raised an eyebrow, "So.. You want me to take a padawan?"
Mechanic replied, "You were already going to go out for training. You'd basically just be training together while she leeched your powerful connection to the Force to boost her connection back to what it used to be."
Rayleigh considered it for a few moments before answering, "Tell me about her."
Mechanic smiled back and stated, "I can do one better. She'll be here tomorrow."
*Author's Note*
This chapter was obviously quite bland, but necessary to get out of the way for what he is doing, what he wants to do, and how he is going to do it. The idea of him going around from planet to planet to learn the laws of each to strengthen his swordsmanship was the idea I had to further the plot in the most interesting way. It took a while to come up with that which was one of the reasons for the long break.