ExtraPenguin

There was no dawn or dusk in hyperspace, no day or night, nothing to indicate whether one had woken early or late. Shen Wei stared at the ceiling in darkness, thoughts a restless tangle after Atton's confession and plea. He moved minutely and found himself still worn and weary, in need of rest. Early, then.

Nothing changed in the room. The tiny sliver of a crack under the medbay door blared with blinding light now the room itself was in darkness. The only sound was the hyperdrive. The others must be asleep as well.

Shen Wei sighed. He should calm himself.

Perhaps meditation would help? The bed was already comfortable enough – or as comfortable as a bed could be without Zhao Yunlan in it-

No. He'd think of nothing at all and let sleep come to him when it would.

With a slow and infinite care, Shen Wei slowed his breaths and quietened his mind. He started by breathing against a count, inhalation, hold, exhalation, repeat. He let himself sink down into it, sink beneath the surface of his immediate surroundings, down into the Force. The hyperdrive hummed, the ship's denizens slumbered, and he heard the universe

talking

to itself.

ficinabox

An indeterminate time later, he woke up with a blaring headache and a mouth that felt like something had died in it. Water fixed both of his problems, and he felt humanity return to him as he cleaned up.

*Humanity*. How odd that he'd call sanity and sentience *humanity*. They called him a traitor to his race, back home – had called him that in his prior home in years gone by, albeit with more open vitriol and in fewer numbers – and here he was, proving them right.

Fate afforded no country for him. Whenever he felt safe, he would be ripped from his home into the mists of time.

He clenched his hand, recalling the Sundial's burn. Was that why he was here? The Hallows could induce temporal dislocation – but only in humans. Not Dixingians.

He'd spent his entire life on the surface. Perhaps he counted as one.

The bargain he'd struck with the Sundial had been to take the dark energy that had struck Zhao Yunlan blind into his own body. But he was a fool, and had not realized the dark energy of the Hallows was slightly different to his own, and mingled with the light energy of Zhao Yunlan besides.

The Force was a mixed blessing. It drowned out his dark energy – but also the light energy that tainted it.

With conflicted thoughts, he sought out Kreia. She would if nothing else prove a distraction.

He attempted to reach out with dark energy, but couldn't sense it. Was this some sort of new invention of the Haixing Department of Supervision? Shielded rooms that cut off his access to dark energy and Dixing powers?

There was an echo, though. It could not be grasped, and it felt alien, but it was there, despite their efforts.

The single door opened at a touch. To the left was some sort of command room.

Again, no occupants, save for a blue and grey thingy that looked like a lectern with aspirations. Shen Wei touched it.

A hologram popped into existence. "...still examining the survivors of the damaged freighter – looks like it goes by the name of the Ebon Hawk," the blue-tinged translucent image of a woman said. "Only one survivor, placed in the kolto tank for recovery. The carbon scoring on the vessel suggests it was in a battle, but no indication of who fired on it... Aside from the lone survivor, we recovered an old woman, no life signs. There was also a protocol droid and a utility droid on board – sent both down to maintenance while security sorts through the other items on the ship."

So he'd been unconscious for long enough to be spirited out of the decidedly inland Dragon City all the way to the coast, after which the ship he'd been on had been fired upon and he'd ended on this no doubt top secret offshore installation. No wonder the facility looked nautical.

"...could be a Jedi, but we won't know for sure until we get the transmission back from the Republic. If the survivor is a Jedi, that would account for the recovery rate..."

While Shen Wei wondered about whether these "Jedi" she mentioned were a divergent group of Dixingians in some republic – he really should've paid more attention to Haixing's politics – the hologram talked about detonations in fuel vents, then finished with a warning about a fuel detonation in the mining tunnels, upon which the recording ended with the detonation products ending up in the medical bay and poisoning everyone. That would explain the lack of fellow sentients.

• I'm relatively sure that there was a timeskip between the doom sounds/identity reveal case and the visit to Dixing, beyond the canon minimum of 2-3 days, since Zhu Jiu needs time to heal up a bit and the doom sounds seems to flow straight from the Hanga stuff, which flows straight from the 1-month marker. So the identity reveal would be under 2 months in?


• The time travel segment in the past was probably about a month, since that's the amount of time it takes to make baijiu, but they were excised from the present for 2 days.


• The endgame showdown with Ye Zun is probably on the same day as the Yashou branch thing, and the entire stretch from the Merit Brush endgame to the end is one segment without significant timeskips.