The Unchosen One

Posted on Sun Mar 2nd, 2025 @ 9:27pm by Rebel Braylon Kucera

1,295 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Prologue: An Empire Overnight
Location: Scarif & Coruscant
Timeline: 33BBY

When people in hooded robes make a sudden appearance on the backwards dimly illuminated worlds of the outer rim insisting on speaking to you when you’ve barely grasped self-awareness, it probably would have been prudent to swiftly run in any direction opposite them. One would think that parents would be a blockade firmly in the way erecting a physical barrier from the threshold of their homestead to their only child, but that was not the case for Braylon Kucera. In fact, his parents had stepped aside practically parting the spackled seas of Scarif permitting these hooded figures to enter their home and not just simply speak with their only child but profess to him the way of the force. Of course, speaking was just the beginning of the separation. They pressed a device to his flesh and the small prick that changed his life forever was something Braylon had never forgotten even as the young memories of his parents turned to mirages in a not too distant past, the pain of the separation that began with the prick and prodding continued to follow him and cause an ever lasting change in the trajectory of his life.

Midi-chlorians were not the microscopic bacteria their name sounded like, but a word that had been tossed around by the hooded figured even when they dropped their hoods and looked less intimidating were it not for the cylindrical light sword, the lightsaber as Braylon would come to better comprehend in due time. These were the weapons of the Jedi and the figured who had eventually taken him from his parents were Jedi, but they used no lightsabers to convince his parents to take Braylon with them. They used a much more dangerous set of weapons: rhetoric and spiritualism guised as science. Bacteria midi-chlorians were not, but microscopic they were. Tiny harmless organisms that lived in the cells of all living things in the galaxy and were essential to life, but to the Jedi they were more than that. Some people as they explained to Braylon’s parents were born with an irregular number of midi-chlorian levels, abnormally high and with untapped abilities that with proper training and discipline would allow them to become part of the Jedi Order.

For Braylon’s family, the decision to let the Jedi take him was not one they left for Braylon even though the Jedi had insisted they would not take Braylon unless he chose to go with them. His parents though had not given him the choice. They lived a simple and faltering life, trying to raise Braylon and keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Something a young Braylon did not understand at the time. His parents told him that he needed to go with Jedi, that it was the only way. So, he did. He did as his parents instructed and followed the Jedi to their ship after packing some of his belongings. “Material things you will no longer have need for at the temple my boy” Braylon would always remember the voice of Jedi Master [Name Insert] who had been the one to take him from his home on Scarif.

When they had finally taken him back to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, his first few years were not easy yet they were nothing compared to what was ahead of him. Twelve years. The Jedi had wasted twelve years on Braylon’s proclaimed potential only for his training to ultimately go nowhere and he himself had all the guidance the Jedi at the temple could offer and provide, but no direction. He had been a youngling, a Jedi initiate that spent a handful of years learning about the force and about the Jedi, the symbiosis of the two, the delicate intricacies, and the importance of letting go of attachments in life. No matter how many hours he spent studying or trying to meditate, there were aspects of the Jedi philosophy that never touched upon him the same way it did with other initiates.

The backdrop of a galactic-wide war between the Galactic Republic that the Jedi protected, and the droid armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems offered no shield nor shelter from being a disappointment to himself and though no one would say as such, the Jedi Order. When he became of age, Jedi Initiate Braylon Kucera underwent the vigorous Initiate Trials which were a sacred ordeal in which the Jedi who reached knighthood were spectators in search of a young initiate that would be chosen by the knight to be an apprentice to them and they, their master. Braylon’s friend, if you could have such was a youngling with bronzed skin, dark hair, and a commitment to discipline that set him well ahead of others. Jin-Lo Rayce analyzed everything with such precision, and he was skillful with a lightsaber, undoubtedly a future master of the makashi lightsaber combat form. Rayce had done well during his trials and was chosen by Jedi librarian Master Jocasta Nu who was in need of a new apprentice with her own having recently ascended to the ranks of master in their own right.

Several months had turned into a couple of years and Braylon Kucera was not selected to become a Jedi Padawan. There were no masters who sought to take him as their apprentice nor was he assigned to one. Shii-Cho, the most basic form of lightsaber combat. That was all Braylon Kucera had managed to learn with some assemblance of skill. As disciplined as he tried to be, he was not suited for combat and the Galactic Republic that the Jedi swore to protect was in the middle of a galactic war. If the murmuring about a ancient Jedi prophecy about a chosen one was true, Braylon knew without a single fiber of doubt that he was not it. If anything, he fulfilled a fantastical prophecy of the one forgotten.

A new breath of hope was breathed down his back when he was informed that he was requested to have an audience with the council. When Braylon was escorted to the council chambers, he was expecting to see all the great Jedi Masters of the council though he was not escorted to those council chambers. He had found himself brought to much smaller chambers to meet with the Council of Reassignment housed in the northeast tower of the Coruscant Jedi temple. There, Braylon was asked questions about his time as a Jedi initiate regarding what he had learned, his understanding of the force, and a self-reflection of his initiate trials in front of a council of five Jedi masters. Braylon was informed that it “Is not the will of the force to walk the path of a Jedi.”

For once in his relatively short-lived lifetime he was given the power of free will and with it a choice. Braylon could leave the temple with the training he had and contribute to the galaxy with the principles he had been taught, abandoning any further learning of the force and the Jedi or be reassigned to a branch of the Jedi Service Corps. He knew that he could not return to Scarif, not back to his family who had wanted so much for him by giving him over to the Jedi. So, he took a more reasonable route and opted to remain at the Jedi temple committing himself to the Jedi Service Corps where he was reassigned and sorted into the subsidiary Educational Corps that was overseen by the Jedi Chief Librarian and worked out of the Jedi Archives. By doing this, he would still be able to reside at the temple and learn some of the Jedi ways and remain in contact with Jin-Lo Rayce.

 

RSS Feed