This incident revealed Komari's powers to her mother, but the latter, after the initial surprise, gave her a good spanking to Komari's great misfortune. Understanding that it was she who was devouring their precious cereal bars.
This humiliating and degrading act reminded Komari that if she did not know her mental age, she was a child physically unable to escape the reactions of a child despite her maturity and that there was nothing more terrifying than her angry mother. She had to promise not to use her powers to hurt others, unless her life or that of her loved ones was in danger.
On the other hand, she could train in their house, which would avoid attracting attention and Mila had decided to teach her to read Basic without realizing that Komari already knew it without knowing how.
Unlike the other children in the family, Komari did not like to mess around or play, preferring instead to meditate on mastering the force. A particularly difficult exercise was to assemble and disassemble objects of all types using only the force. At times, she occupied her brothers and sisters by making toys fly around them.
Time passed quickly, she was five years old and had spent the last five years training to master the force. She had decided to ignore her visions and flashes of knowledge, preferring to simply live her family life. Komari preferred the relative comfort of her home to the terrible omens that her dreams showed her if she decided to follow this little path that encouraged her to explore the galaxy.
Life in the slums of Nar Shadda was extremely hard for the family which included Mila, Farique and Bilas as adults and a dozen children like Komari that they had decided to adopt. This kind of thing was not uncommon in the slums, groups of children formed to protect themselves and survive.
Mila was forced to prostitute herself to provide for their needs, as did many of the girls her age in the area, while Farique and Bilas were forced to engage in theft and trafficking of all kinds. Very quickly, Komari had to do the same. She skillfully slipped between passers-by to relieve them of their wallets or infiltrated warehouses to steal equipment.
She had no choice, she had to survive, the galaxy was merciless with the weak.
When she was six, Mila gave her a vibro-blade that she had obtained from one of her clients.
It was the first and last gift she received from Mila who was killed a few months later by a client who belonged to a gang.
Komari had never felt such a sense of loss.
She had gone to pick up her mother as usual after work. In the pouring rain, Komari had waited several hours for Mila to come out. Her delay didn't worry her, because in this profession, working overtime was common.
A bad feeling began to germinate in her when after 3 hours there was no sign of life. Mila had never let her wait so long. Then, she felt this strange icy sensation rise from the back of her neck to her skull.
Komari advanced in the rain, guided only by this faint echo in the strength she felt, at the turn of an alley, she saw her.
Her mother was lying on the ground, her arms scattered like a doll whose strings had been cut. Mila's always smiling face was swollen as if she had been hit again and again. On her bare chest had been engraved with a knife the symbol of one of the branches of a major gang.
Komari fell to her knees next to her mother, she struggled not to give in to the distress that tore her apart, but even her rational mind could not overcome the pain she felt.
With delicacy, she arranged her mother's limbs, with a gentle hand, she smoothed her hair, ignoring the trash that littered the street.
The one who had raised her like her own daughter, who had fed her with her meager reserves, had suddenly disappeared. With her died a part of Komari, that childish joy she felt at the idea of seeing her mother again, of snuggling against her in search of comfort!
Her mind was struck by visions, if she had already had visions of her possible futures, this was the first time she saw a vision of the past. Komari clearly saw the bar where her mother worked, then she saw the satisfied smile of the person responsible for her mother's death as he hit her.
A whisper began to germinate in her mind, her fingers curled into a fist and her cries turned into an animalistic growl.
The whispers only grew louder, becoming angry screams "Kill them!! Kill them!".
Her mind buzzed and suddenly, she silently rushed towards the club where her mother.
Her hand gripped her vibro-blade which was huge in her child's hands. She could no longer reason, she no longer wanted to think, her actions were guided by her instinct.
The galaxy was dangerous, she had known it since birth even before the visions struck her, her mother had always protected her as best she could from this reality.
The brutality of this world forced those who were exposed to it to mature quickly or die. Her mother had had to sell herself to survive, her uncles had to steal to survive.
The weight of this life pushed many people to seek anything that could allow them to escape this reality, Farique drank while Bilas took drugs, her mother had always escaped it for the good of Komari and her brothers.
At that moment, Komari was no longer a child, she had just lost her last vestiges of innocence.
The loud music in the club couldn’t override the voices in her head, the blinding light effects illuminating the club couldn’t distract her from her target. He was there in the VIP area with a new hooker on his arm, a shoddy suit, but already much more expensive than anything the others were wearing.
Tasteless bracelets on his wrists jingled, strangely, Komari could hear their metallic jingle through the music and the screams.
She advanced through the crowd of dancers who circled around her, oblivious to the six-year-old who was slowly walking towards the VIP area.
Komari took a breath, pushing back the voices and her most primal urges for a moment. Yes, she was going to kill him, but she wanted to be in control of herself at that moment and not prey to her urges.
The force flowed around her like a fresh breeze, a breeze that could become a storm.
The voices became more and more incomprehensible, blending into a whisper like a moan.
A waiter at the bar frowned as he saw the glass in his hands suddenly crack, then the bottles of alcohol behind him began to explode one after the other. Then the neon lights exploded, sending impressive sparks all around, plunging the club into chaos.
"Fuck, what the hell is going on!!" roared one of the VIPs, sending the girl on his lap flying, he didn't know why, but his instincts warned him of danger.
He had been around enough to know how to listen to him. He signaled to his men to prepare for trouble while taking out his blaster. He scanned the crowd but couldn't identify the threat. Two of his men moved forward to observe the crowd.
Suddenly they were thrown, not swept brutally against the tables, the sound of their spines breaking was clearly audible.
Komari after sweeping the two men, turned his attention to the other three who remained without stopping walking towards them. They raised their weapons, but his hand closed, interrupting their gesture, freezing them in the moment.
They saw a child with white hair and fluorescent green eyes come out of the crowd. She advanced slowly with a sad face, one could guess that she had recently cried.
Each of her steps seemed to add more pressure on what was holding them still. No matter how hard they pushed, they couldn't move.
Komari stopped a meter away from them, her strangely disturbing eyes passed over them for a long time, then slowly, she turned her fist.
Panicked, the two subordinates saw something firmly push their own weapons towards their heads, they screamed and put all their energy into trying to control their bodies, throwing panicked glances at their leader.
A blaster shot to the head had the gift of exploding the entire back of the skull.
The lifeless bodies of his subordinates fell with a dull thud to the ground after having sprayed it with their blood. His previously white suit was slowly stained with their fluid.
Komari raised his vibro-blade which glowed despite the dim light.
"Wait please, you don't have to do THAT!!!" he yelled, struggling unsuccessfully as Komari approached him. "I'll give you money all you want!!! " he pleaded as the blade was about to sink into his stomach.
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The movement suddenly stopped and he let out a reliable sigh of relief as she put her blade away.
Komari moved away from him to pick up a bottle from the ground to read the label.
"My mother, I want my mother," she said before pouring the bottle over him.
"What, your mother? What are you talking about? What are you doing here? Stop."
Komari pulled a lighter out of the pockets of one of the corpses, "that's better," she growled, not wanting to stain her mother's only gift with her killer's blood.
"I want my mother and you kill her," the alcohol ignited, devouring the man who screamed at the top of his lungs without being able to move.
She watched him burn until the end, only deciding to leave after the entire club had caught fire.
The death of her mother was a huge blow to her family. Mila was the most stable of the three adults in the family.
Farique and Bilas were deeply saddened by her disappearance, she was the soul of their group and on a more material level, the one who brought food.
For her part, Komari, once her anger had subsided, had to swallow her tears and get more involved with her uncles to feed her family.
A kind of pimp had approached them to offer his services, but her uncles had thrown him into a waste pipe.
"Komari, don't worry, we'll manage to feed you and your brothers, on your side, watch over them okay." Bilas asked her as he watched the pimp try to hold on to the drain pipe while screaming as Farique pushed him.
"Uncle, you two won't earn half of what Mom earned." she replied before adding "and your addictions are very real." referring to their drug and alcohol problem.
"I threw my products away." she gave him an incredulous look, but he wasn't joking. "and Farique did the same thing.".
The latter, after throwing the pimp away, comes towards her. He had always been the taciturn one of the gang but also the most dangerous from what Komari had learned.
He bent down to her level to pat her on the head "I don't know what you did with your strange magic, but thank you." he took a breath then continued.
"Alone we can't protect the family, so I'm sorry to have to hand this burden over to you. Komari use all the means you deem fit to protect your brothers, use your magic, use your fists.".
"Farique stop!!" Bilas exclaimed "what?! you want to preserve her? look at her eyes! You know she'll kill again to protect her brothers!" Farique yelled, looking at her friend.
"I blame myself for not having been able to protect your innocence, Komari. But now, we must protect your brothers and sisters."
Komari nodded agreeing to her uncle's words, she would do anything for her family but she had also noticed that her current strength was far from enough for that. If she paid attention to her visions the galaxy was filled with people with abilities far superior to hers. Until now she had mostly relied on strength to neutralize threats but that was not enough.
"Uncle I want to learn to fight." She asked him in a soft voice while playing with her fingers with her vibro-blade.
Farique observed Komari thoughtfully before launching herself "I know people at higher levels who really know how to fight they run a weapons room. You will go see them.".
To effectively protect her family Komari had to learn to fight whether bare-handed, with a baster or with a blade, it was the least difficult of what Farique had taught her because there were plenty of weapons rooms and practitioners of various martial arts.
On Nar Shadda, the city of crime par excellence, there were bounty hunters, mercenaries, hitmen and other scum of the galaxy. While waiting for contras or to pass the time, some of them made their knowledge available to those who were willing to pay to learn.
There were therefore weapons rooms at almost every level of the city except in the lowest levels.
On the other hand, Komari was aware that her mastery of the force was at best imperfect, in fact chaotic. In the absence of an individual capable of showing her how to do it, she had decided this time whether to follow her visions and dreams.
Some of the fragments of her visions concerned the training or initiation of what the Jedi'i called initiated to the force. She even dreamed of their ancestral rival the Sith teaching their apprentices how to use the force in the same way.
Ironically, the two had the same training method, meditation. Except that the Jedi'i seemed to seek inner peace by purging themselves of their emotions. The Sith, on the contrary, sought to rekindle the flames of their passion by remembering their raw emotions.
At this point Komari was caught in a dilemma which methods to apply? She had no attachment to the two philosophies that were clashing. In the finals she decided to practice both of their methods in turn.
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The upper levels were certainly richer than hers but she could still observe the poverty in the alleys.
The weapons room indicated by Farique stood before her, its walls were decrepit, there was no external indication that the place was a weapons room. It was the regular flow of individuals of all kinds who entered and left that had guided her.
Inside the air was filled with screams and grunts followed by noises of impact, there was a smell of sweat mixed with blood. Sitting in a corner were two people who stood out from the crowd training, instinctively Komari felt that they were among all the people gathered here the most dangerous and by far.
The tallest was a Trandoshan she couldn't tell, next to him stood a woman dressed in armor. She was a Mandalorian there was no doubt about it.
Both were representatives of the two most dangerous peoples in the galaxy according to what Komari knew from her dreams and visions. Specialists in hunting, war and death.
"Get lost kid!" the Mandalorian growled after Komari introduced herself. Usually that was enough to scare off the curious but she didn't flinch, taking a step forward instead.
"I said train me!" Komari repeated.
"No now get lost." the Mandalorian waved her hand away.
The Trandoshan tilted his head to the side curiously "why do you want to train here?" he asked her with a strange forked whistle.
Komari spread her arms as if to indicate something obvious "to survive. To protect my family." she stared at the Trandoshan "the weak are devoured by the strong!".
The reptile had a chuckle, he understood the child's mentality because his people advocated strength. He had devoured his brothers once he had hatched as their culture wanted.
"Arrogant words coming from a child." he pointed to the weapons room where men and women trained as if their lives depended on it. "They know that the price of weakness would be their death but I doubt you really know that. Now go home to your mother little one.".
Komari advanced again "train me! I have no money, no property but in exchange I would clean the weapons room every night. And if you refuse I will go see another weapons room, and if they refuse another one until someone accepts! ".
His strange fluorescent green eyes shone with a determination bordering on madness, kissing their eyes the Mandalorian could see Komari's bare feet as well as her patched pants covered in what was drying blood.
"Okay, you will wash the weapons room every evening and maintain the weapons, in return you can train here for 2 hours." The Mandalorian declared.
The exchange was absolutely not fair but Komari agreed to that. "Well what you're doing is cleaning the weapons on the rack!" the Trandoshan growled.
Komari was not restricted to Rogna and Balk's weapons room to train and learn, people were generally surprised to see a young child of 6-7 years old ask them to teach her their art and secret but she had a certain talent or stubbornness and was able to take several courses in exchange she cleaned the place.
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"Never stay still, kid, never!" Balk, her trainer of Sojo, a Trandoshan martial art using a force staff, shouted at her. "If you stay static then you're dead! And keep that fucking stick at your fucking solar plexus go!".
Komari applied what the trainer asked her to do while paying attention to her balance, the secret of any martial art was the stability and balance of her body. But that was fine talk when you had to run for 1 hour alternating several intense biomechanics exercises. She was out of breath, exhausted and had vomited the little of what her stomach contained at the end of the 15th round. She had trouble lifting the stick because her arms were heavy.
The trainer sent her several blows that she parried as best she could but some passed her guard and came to bite her violently. Komari did not react to this pain, preferring to concentrate on the essentials: her opponent and also the perception of her environment.
The coach nodded at her lack of reaction, pain was a good thing in the city base, he could secretly admit that he was impressed by the girl's concentration.
Since Komari had arrived, she had been participating in general training at the same stage as the adults. If at first many had laughed at the 6-year-old child that she was, their mockery calmed down when it was obvious that she could keep up with their pace.
Her hands were bleeding from hitting sandbags, her palms had remained more than once on the handles of training weapons from practicing the exercises.
Komari could be thrown to the ground, knocked out, fainted from exhaustion, she always ended up at one point or another getting up... only to end up on the ground again. It could be said that the kid she was had bled so often on the floors of the rooms she visited that we could talk about kinship between them.
The others had come to respect her in silence for her determination but also for her strange talent to be a real sponge. It was enough to show her a movement for her to master it in a few sessions by dint of practice.
Komari perceived the loss of concentration of her opponent and took advantage of it to hit him in the left flank which the latter parried in extremis.
"And sneaky with that it is very good to continue." but she could not hit him again the stick was very heavy for a child exhausting her quickly.
She spent the week training with the stick or the Teräs-Käsi with another trainer who shared the room but when she was not training she went to the next level to steal what she could or to recover abandoned objects.
It was amazing what people threw away a lot of what is considered good for the trash is in reality totally functional or reusable with a little elbow grease. Her greatest treasure was a small jet bike, probably a toy of a son of good family, with the help of Bilas she had installed on it a large cylinder engine that she had stolen from a warehouse.
As a result, her jet bike sped at full speed through the alleys of the city base, avoiding trash cans and people and passing through extremely narrow passages where most often the sides of her jet bike scraped the walls. More than once she had crashed into a wall or hit an old rusty pipe.
But thanks to her bike she could make deliveries for the various gangs, which greatly helped her little family. Komari had met many gang members in the weapons rooms who took advantage of the neutrality of the place to chat. One day she had been asked to help out by transmitting a package, and gradually she had become the neutral transporter of the gangs. Komari had quickly gained a reputation for being very reliable, even going so far as to retrieve the cargo if it was stolen, something carriers generally did not do.