Chapter I – Uneasy Beginnings
Location: Jedi Temple, apparently the one on Coruscant
Date: Still no damn idea
Well, as any reasonable person in my position would do, the first thing I did was trying to find out WHEN exactly am I. It was not particularly easy to do so and has taken me few years, I will take this little fact to my grave – if I actually do manage to die someday. The problem was not in the unavailability of said piece of information, rather it was in my inability to come into its possession.
The first problem was the fact that I was essentially confined to the creche and there was no other way of getting out than growing up, which proved to be rather major pain in the arse. Second was that while I did have already mental faculties of someone much, understatement, much more mature, I have hit a bit of hurdle in the fact that I could not properly read or write in aurebesh. What is wrong with good old Latin or Cyrillic based alphabet?
That being said, I did not sit idly by for those five years. I can proudly claim that I have laid down the first parts of my glorious plan-in-the-making. Yes, I will go with that and will not say that I spent those years trying to overhear any conversation I could find, Warp being highly useful here, sleeping and trying to get other inhabitants of crèche to like me, I need allies after all.
Fortunately, as any soldier will tell you, THE most important skill a soldier must have is the ability to fall asleep at any moment and at any place. I have used this particular skill great many times during those years and I believe that the hours put together by my sleeping could amount to shoving off at least a year off, especially in those early stages.
What information I managed to gather was of little use to me. Only particularly interesting pieces were concerning my presence in the temple itself. As it seems a lone young Jedi Knight has been stopped by a tall slender stranger clothed in a very effectively concealing cloak on one of the markets of Brentaal IV. Said stranger asked the Knight for assistance and when the Knight offered it, I was unceremoniously dumped onto said Knight, who was apparently highly bewildered by that turn of events, along with card containing my name, blood type etc. Before the Knight could come back to his senses the stranger was no longer to be found. From there the story is straightforward. The Knight figured out I was force-sensitive and, after a brief discussion with the temple, brought me in.
Yeah, dead end there. Nothing much gained there. I was apparently classified as Near-Human, "I mean really? NEAR-human? I am was classified back THERE as a baseline human, even more so than those born on modern Terra. But I get it, different evolution and all that." and a name. That, as it seems, did not change from the last one: Calen Volkov, pretty fitting for someone who was supposed to originate from Valhalla, while it was tropical planet mind you, not frozen ball of ice with drunken space Russians. No one really knew who that stranger was and although I had few of my own assumptions, I was certain that those I held in suspicion wouldn't do that, if only because it brought with itself another questions.
Figuring out temporal placement was in the end quite easy to do. The commonly displayed date was useless to me, unfortunately they were using one of the dating systems I was not familiar with and I couldn't just walk into someone, press them to the wall and bombard them with questions like "How long till the Battle of Yavin?", since that battle was yet to take place, or "How long ago was the Treaty of Coruscant?", or even better " How many years precisely has it been since the Tho Yor arrival?" because those were the only events I could place in BBY dating with utmost precision.
That course of action would raise too many questions. Luckily, I had already formulated a cunning plan. One with which Baldric, how I was currently calling my AI because it was currently as smart as its namesake, fully agreed.
The first step was to wait for the history classes. Thank the heavens, or should I say Force, that the Jedi do not postpone the education of their younglings too far. I had suffered though first year of classes where I learned absolutely nothing. Apart from being able to read and write in aurebesh. Second year was far more fruitful to me, because at that year we began the history classes amongst others.
History classes themselves were mostly useless, since we studied only post-ruusan reformations galactic history. Damn the dating system, I still did not know when they happened.
As it was, I have found myself sitting in the archives on a calm evening. The Archives were mostly empty, only few iniates here, a padawan or two there and a single knight scowling at his terminal on the other end of the table. With that I have set out looking for one particular event that I knew where exactly to place it in the Galactic Standard Calendar with the Batte of Yavin as the centre.
Murmuring to myself, I carefully tapped into the search bar, "The Treaty of Coruscant". Only a scant few milliseconds later, I could see the results of my search. Few historical papers, some political studies, other useless entries and then I found something that looked remarkably like Wikipedia article. Said article was originating from the official pages of the Galactic Museum here on Coruscant, so I was reasonably certain they got the dating correct.
"Treaty of Coruscant, singular defining moment of the …. Blah blah blah, … Sith Empire masterstrike… blah, blah, … Jedi, blah blah." I am aware of what it was, now give me date. There, "… occurred 3578 years ago." Good old automatically updated information systems.
I immediately began my mental calculations, "3578 years ago, Treaty occurred at 3653 BBY. That means, I am currently at 75BBY. Given the fact that I am six years old, my date of birth is… "My Baldrick helpfully chose to finish my line of thought, "81BBY, sir"
I closed the search engine, shut off the terminal and slowly started walking back to my, shared, quarters. Enough juicy bits to feed me for a while. No need to attract unneeded attention to my little me.
Four years later
71BBY
10 years old
Few more years passed by even faster than the first ones. Perhaps it was so because I could actually do something and not just idly sit on my arse twirling my thumb. The classes weren't that bad, most of the time. History class was a bit entertaining but unfortunately few times my enjoyment has been shattered by blatant twisting of history and propaganda. To be fair to my teachers, I wouldn't have noticed it, and perhaps they did not know it themselves, if not for my cheating with fourth-wall meta-knowledge. Case and point being the republic pre-emptive strike on Mandalorians.
Other classes ranged from I-want-to-kill-myself to mild interest. Learning once again that 1+1=2 was one of the worst days of my, admittedly long, life. On the other hand, studying anatomies of the warying species of this galaxy has been welcome change. Damper on that was the depth of said study, I understand that you just can't show bunch of ten-year-olds the autopsies, but I would have killed for something more. Mechanics were one of the few good ones too. I already knew a thing or two about engineering, but I always appreciated seeing new schools of thought.
Oh, and yeah, I have made the first step on the road to knighthood. I have been officially granted the rank of grunt, … I mean Initiate. On that same day, the caretakers spit us into clans, they dumped me into the so-called Bear clan, whilst sputtering something about foreseen courage, bravery and tenacity. I did not have the heart, or any will to tell them that those predicted attributes were more likely to have been the genetic terran obstinacy and gross lack of basic self-preservation instincts. Lack of those particular instincts was, by me, attributed to the fact that for the last five millennia or so I have been practically immortal, and while it would hurt, there was almost no way for me to die, permanently. I would need to watch for that, given the fact that I was not sure of my continuing immortality, after all, it was achieved through the Warp and I had no idea how that would clash with my connection to the Force. As for the obstinacy, well I am afraid that that particular attribute is deeply ingrained into psyche of every single son and daughter of Terra as far as I know. Its strength warries, from simple "Impossible is not in my vocabulary." and "What do you mean, Unsuitable for living? No such planet exists, watch me." to "Tis but a flesh wound! I have had worse." A trait that will no doubt come highly useful in the years to come and problematic as well.
I was not alone in this clan. There were even some people that would make name for themselves in the future, to my everlasting surprise, I do not know why I was surprised. Those were the likes of: Arligan Zey, Ilena Xan, Adi Galia and Kast Fulier. There were also few others whom I was fairly certain I have never known of before. One of those stood out, a young female Togruta called Nareen, who had crush on me. At least I think that is what goes though her head when she watches me. That or she wants to eat me, not sure, could be both.
I would welcome it, if only were we a bit older. She had quite striking complexion. Mostly orange-reddish skin with purple-blue gently curving markings and purplish/white montrals. And so far, she proved to be quite skilful in our studies, especially the combat-oriented tasks. I think her whole deal with me was that I was the only one in our clan who could match her predatorial strength and reflexes during our spars. The lightsabre classes were relaxing, and I have found myself looking toward them more than once.
Lightsabre is a strange weapon and my muscle memory couldn't quite grasp it. It is completely different to fight with it than with power sword. Speaking of which, who the hell gives ten or eleven-year-olds fully functional PLASMA swords. They are indeed dialled down, but I was fairly sure that I could still kill someone with it, or just poke an eye out. Even the gene-modded Federation Solar Guard started training with not-so-pointy-sticks for crying out loud, and they were accomplished soldiers beforehand.
All in all, everything was going smooth so far. I managed to survive crèche without committing suicide, if only because I wasn't really sure I wouldn't have to go through all that again. My Iniate years were progressing smoothly and I had good bonds with my clan-mates, who had gained the first aspects of their maturity, thank the Force. And last but not least, I had a lot of time to prepare for Darth Syphilis, I mean Sidious. From what I remembered, and found in official Naboo records, I was only two years younger than him. Enough time for me to wreck his carefully prepared plans and sip tea by the fireplace while stating "Just as planned."
AN: There goes the first chapter. Mainly the boring time when the main protagonist is left with little to no options. The next chapter will be longer and we will finaly get to see some actions. I will try to balance the fine line between enjoyment and Mary Sue. That being said, I am afraid that the new chapters will come irregularily. But some time may be saved if I were to find a reliable and helpful beta reader/editor for myself who is native speaker of English and proficiently skilled in using it. Until next time.
Please leave a review or send me a PM, about anything be it the grammar, my battle with english language or the story itself. I will try to reply if able. Until next time.
