When Qui-Gon Jinn had died, he hadn't faded into the Force. Oh, he'd died and become one with it, but not the way that his padawan and his master would do in the not to far off future.
He'd stuck around to make sure that Obi-Wan was doing alright with Anakin, and made himself into something of a nosy spirit. Now that he was dead and a part of the Force, he didn't have to keep to the stricter parts of being a Jedi, and felt free to indulge in his... less accepted emotions.
Like the time he'd been so upset with Anakin that his anger had sent a ripple through the Force enough that the boy could hear his words. Qui-Gon hated to admit it, but he thought that that itself might have contributed to the boy falling to the dark side. After all, if the master Anakin had cared so much for was using the dark side, then it was okay, right? Never mind the fact that he was dead, and had been for years.
He'd looked out for Padme too, especially after she'd married Anakin. That had been a disaster in the making, but again-- he was dead. There wasn't much he could do to stop it, and he didn't think anything would stop them anyways. They loved each other too much.
When Anakin went dark, it was hard for Qui-Gon to accept that he might have had a hand in it. It was painful to see Anakin go that route, even with the experience of Xanatos, who had been his padawan, as opposed to Anakin, who had just been a boy he'd known. He'd still kept an eye on Anakin, but had shifted his consciousness within the Force to watching over the boy's wife-- his wife and two children.
He wondered, from time to time, if Obi-Wan could sense him when he'd look in on Luke. The little boy looked so much like his father that it was uncanny. This was the son of the Chosen One... and so very powerful...
He'd barely caught it, when Padme left Leia at Alderaan and took off for the Unknown Region. He was well aware of her, however, when she died on that little nameless rock that hadn't reached the level of interplanetary travel yet.
He couldn't just let her die! She was Anakin's rock, and even if they hadn't seen each other in almost five years, if she died, he'd feel her Force presence get snuffed out. Then what little hope he had of finding her again would be gone. That hope had been the only thing anchoring Anakin to the light side, even if he didn't realize it.
So Qui-Gon meddled; as part of the Force, he could do things he could never do as a Jedi, and he manipulated the Spring to capture Padme's mind along with her personality. He didn't know if there was any term for what he was doing, but for the most part, he was 'wrapping' Padme's essence in the Force, and anchoring it to the Spring until someone could set her free.
When the boy arrived, Qui-Gon Jinn had almost let him go without taking Padme's mind with him. In another timeline, he had. But the boy had, instinctively, reached out with the Force in an attempt to stop his fall when his father had attacked him. This, Jinn decided, was the body he'd needed for the former Queen. So he'd 'twitched' the Force, so to speak, and sent the boy falling into the pool.
His bubble around Padme's mind was removed, and before she knew what was happening, she was inside that new body, and rising to the surface, coughing and sputtering. For a moment, she'd been free.
Qui-Gon, however, didn't know anything about the boy he'd chosen. Didn't know that he'd already had a 'second personality' in his head, and that he had Force-enhanced mental defenses to keep another 'personality' from being the one in charge. Ranma's mind, so used to the feral mind of the nekoken, forced Padme to the back of the head, where she could see but not move, nor communicate, and the martial artist was the one to respond to being in a female body.
As previously stated, it would not be until Akane whacked them over the head that the Senator got a chance to see the world she'd only briefly been on before her death. And when Akane whacked her again... well, she didn't go all the way back. Ranma knew she was there now; and now she could talk to him.
Qui-Gon, despite the slight set back of his plan by Ranma's mental defenses, was proud. He knew everything would turn out fine, if he just waited until the right time.
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(Posted Sat, 15 Jan 2005 16:20)
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