The Kenobi Saga Book Two: The Dark Times

Chapter 5

Lore-Val and Solitaire borrowed a speeder to get to the armorer's shop on the far side of the city. Bo-Katan was waiting outside of the building, she glared when she saw Solitaire getting out of the speeder but didn't make any comments.

She brought the two inside and down to a dark basement workshop where an older white haired man was preparing his forge. Set out on a table were the pieces of Satine's armor, scrubbed of their paint and waiting to be melted down and reworked.

"Hemi, this is my niece Lore-Val and her...friend, Solitaire," Bo-Katan introduced.

"Strip down to your kute (undersuit)," Hemi told Lore-Val, not looking away from the forge, "I need your measurements."

"My measurements are on the datapad with my designs."

Hemi scoffed, "Were you measured in your kute (undersuit)? No, I didn't think so. Besides," he walked over to a workbench and pulled a clunky looking rectangular scanner out of a drawer, "I need to figure how much you're still going to grow."

She looked between Hemi and her aunt, "You can do that?"

"Yes. Do as you're told. Bo-Katan, take her in the back."

Lore-Val frowned, but followed her aunt to a small room with a curtain over the open doorway. She didn't think she'd ever seen anyone give her aunt orders like that. She had certainly never seen Bo-Katan respond to someone giving her orders.

"He's a little rough isn't he?" She asked, stepping into the room and changing out of her sweater and pants into the plain black kute (undersuit).

"Hemi's old fashioned," Bo-Katan conceded, "But he's right, you may still grow, it's best if your armor lasts beyond your next growth spurt."

"Is there anything else I should be expecting from this?"

Bo-Katan shrugged, "Just do as you're told, and try not to speak too much."

Lore-Val pressed her lips tightly and nodded, following her aunt back to the main workshop. She was surprised to find Hemi showing Solitaire his different tools and answering the clone's questions. Any opinions she'd had forming in her mind were immediately softened by how he treated Solitaire.

When the man saw Lore-Val come back he motioned for her to stand on a low pedestal in the center of the room. Once she was where he wanted her, he took slow, deliberate steps around her, scanning her with his specialized datapad. After several minutes of quiet Hemi stepped back, telling her she was done.

He tapped away at the datapad for another minute. "Come here," he waved Lore-Val over. She came to stand beside him and he turned the datapad towards her, "Is this what you wanted?"

Lore-Val reached out, spinning the model on the screen a few times. He had taken her drawing and measurements to create a 3D model, dressed in the armor. "It's perfect."

"Then let's begin."

. . .

At the end of the first session Hemi had made the helmet and shoulder pauldrons. Lore-Val sat at a table upstairs in Hemi's kitchen, Solitaire at her side helping her sketch out and paint clean lines on her armor.

The pauldrons were easy. She left the silver of the beskar with 3 stripes of color. A blue stripe, to mark her as a part of clan Kryze. A gray stripe of mourning and an orange stripe that served a double purpose. Orange traditionally stood for a lust for life, but in her mind it would always represent the clones of the 212th. The biggest difficulty was making sure the stripes were identical on both pieces.

The helmet was more complicated. Solitaire helped draw a thick orange line that was even with the 'T' visor and went from the brow line all the way back to the nape of the neck. At the back, on either side of the stripe were written 212 and 501 in gray.

What Lore-Val had jokingly called the 'cheekbones' of her helmet were painted blue on the bottom and white on top. More orange was painted on the sides of the helmet where the inner electronics would be added. When the rangefinder was eventually connected it would be painted blue.

"Solitaire?"

He looked up from where he was mixing another batch of orange paint, "Yeah?"

"Can you make an outline?" Lore-Val asked, passing over the helmet and pot of blue paint. She traced a finger along the visor and on either side of the orange stripe.

Solitaire took the paint and a small square paintbrush. He made his lines as smooth as possible, cutting in with practiced precision. Lore-Val gave him space, barely breathing so he could keep his lines neat. When he finished Solitaire leaned back from the helmet, letting her see the finished product.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Are we done?"

She nodded, gently sliding the finished pieces to one side of the table, "Do you want to go get dinner?"

"Sure," he tipped a jar of paint towards her as he stood, "Do you think this will be enough orange for tomorrow?"

"It should be. I only want to paint the knee and elbow padding. Everything else is going to stay silver," she paused, thinking it over as she put a lid on the paint, "I'm going to keep my mother's iron heart, it's blue, but everything else is going to be silver."

"Iron heart?"

Lore-Val pulled a small blue piece from her pocket. She held it for Solitaire to see, "It sits in the center of the chestplate," She explained, "It'll just be a way to keep her with me." She wrapped her fingers around the piece before placing it on the table gently, "So, do you want tiingilar? There's a place not too far away that has spicy and mild tiingilar, you might actually like it."

"Yeah, that sounds great."