Consequences of Our Choices

Part One: A Beautiful Friendship or Two

Chapter One: A Helper

Author's Note: Chapter One is finally kicking off for this story. Thanks to all who have viewed and all who will view. Now, enjoy!

"You ready to explore the bowels?" Barriss asked, leaning against the wall. Her smile was a little too sneaky and the twinkle in hers said that she didn't play by the rules. Her hood was pulled a little lower than normal.

I shrugged and said, "Sure. Just lead the way."

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. "You sure? There's quite a bit of rubble to jump over down there." I gave her a look and she raised her hands defensively. "Okay, okay. We're going. Sheesh, you need to lighten up, Acey."

"Acey?"

She didn't reply, just led me to a turbolift and we both stepped in. She hit the first floor button and we started to descend. Suddenly, soft yet annoying music started to play. I looked around and asked, "Music?"

"Some of the old turbo-lifts have it," she said, staring straight ahead with her hands clasped behind her back. "It's very bothersome and it gets stuck in your head."

Sure enough, when I got off the lift, I was humming along to the high-pitched tune. Barriss laughed at me and said, "Come on. Tutso said that we need to get there by two o'clock."

We walked toward an old flight of stairs and hurriedly walked down them. "So, what needs to be done in these bowels of yours?"

She shot me a smile and said, "We need to clear away the rubble and get the mold off the walls. We can do most of that with the Force, but then comes the hard part. Decorations. None of us are party planning experts, so we need creative minds to help us map out the whole shindig."

"Shindig?"

"Just go with it. Anyway, we're almost there. Prepare yourself, by the way," she added, voice full of sincerity. "Some of the older Padawans down here can be a little rough around younglings."

I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by 'rough?'"

The ear-splitting cry of a child entered the air and before I knew it, Barriss and I were at a sprint, jumping over rubble and evading piles of rock.

We finally arrived at what looked to be an old foyer and a group of people were surrounding a crying, young boy. He was a green skinned Togruta with very small montrals and short lekku. Seeing him in pain reminded me of Ahsoka and filled with a surge of pity and concern, I pushed away the people circling him.

I examined the knee that he was holding and grimaced. It was cut up and torn in several places with blood flowing out of it like the lava rivers of Mustafar.

Standing up with a face twisted enough to scare a Sith Lord, I growled, "Who did this?" No one answered. "I'll ask only once more: who in the kriff did this?"

"Oh, calm down, Ace," a proud voice said. The circle of people parted, revealing a thirteen year old boy with spiky blonde hair and blue eyes. A lightsaber hung from his belt and his Padawan braid fell from behind his right ear. "Don't go all Sith on us, like your grandfather did."

I glowered at him. "You have no right to speak of my family that way, Raigan."

Raigan was the son of Governor Cadarrian Odorian- the leader of Telos IV. Don't ask me how he found out about his lineage, by the way. He just knows. Anyway, we'd had harsh feelings toward each other for a while now, since my great-grandfather used to be the governor of Telos IV. But when he was killed by a Jedi, the Odorian family took control of the government and well, we didn't like each other.

"Oh, but don't I? After all, you are a hybrid of a human and a Epicanthix: an abnormality." Forgot to mention this; Raigan is racist.

A few laughs from humans sounded through the room, but most of us glared at him and scoffed at his prejudice. I looked back down at the young Togruta, then back to the young Padawan. "Did you do this?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, I didn't. The brat was climbing on the rubble and he slipped, though I don't blame him. I hear those head-tails are the reason for Togrutas' stupidity across the galaxy."

"Shut up," I growled and took a step forward. He approached, as well. We were separated by inches and I glared down at him. "Get out of here right now."

He laughed and said, "What makes you think that I would actually take orders from you?"

"If you don't, I'll send you to a bacta tank," I responded, sending him a cold stare. I had four more inches and much more muscle than Raigan, even though I was only eleven. If we were to get into a fight, there was a colossal chance that he would end up eating out of a tube for the rest of his life.

But two hands pushed us back. "Let's try and be rational here," Barriss said calmly. "Fighting will do us no good."

"Stay out of this, Offee," Raigan replied, his cold eyes never leaving mine.

A blue hand suddenly pushed Raigan back and a male Twi'lek stepped before us. I recognized him as Tutso Mara, the same padawan that Barriss had eaten lunch with yesterday. "If I were you, I would leave before someone else gets hurt, Raigan." Tutso's violet eyes had tempered anger in them. "If you don't leave voluntarily, then I'll 'escort' you out." He put quotations around "escort."

"Is that a threat?" Raigan's eyes were filled with harshness and rage.

"That's a promise," Tutso replied, his voice becoming raspy and hollow, and he took a threatening step toward the target.

Raigan's emotions flared through the Force, but he gestured to his Human friends. "Come on. We're out of here, boys."

He gestured to his posse and they hurried out of the area, but not before flipping me a dirty finger sign. I rolled my eyes and said, "I hate that guy!"

I was expecting some kind of reprimand from Tutso, but he nodded and said, "I've had to tolerate him since I was three. He's a complete jerk to my friends and I." With a glare at the exit, he added, "I'd like to see him in the sparring ring sometime soon, and teach him a lesson."

"That was unwise, guys." Barriss' eyebrows were scrunched together in worry. "If you had gotten into a fight, there would've been no one to stop him and his group from hurting you."

I laughed without humor. "If I know one thing about Raigan, it's that he's a coward. He wouldn't have dared fight us, especially with all these witnesses." I crossed my arms my chest with a hmph. "Besides, we could have taken him."

"I'm with ya on that, Omega," Tutso said with a colossal grin.

Barriss sighed and face-palmed. "I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do with you two." Tutso laughed and I smiled humorously.

"Ace, what are we going to do with Arro?" a youngling interjected. The small boy had come up next to me with big brown eyes and looked to be very worried about something. I suddenly realized that Arro was the injured Togruta.

I looked over at the still-crying youngling and frowned in sadness. Barriss said, "Don't worry, Ace. We'll take care of decorations here. Take him to the Halls of Healing."

"Really?"

"We can handle it for today," Tutso replied. "Just come back tomorrow."

I nodded to them and walked over to the Togruta. I knelt down and asked, "Do want me to take you to the healers, Arro?"

He nodded through his tears and completely lost it. He sobbed into my cream colored tunic and screamed in a hoarse voice, "It hurts!" I picked him up gently and nodded to Barriss once more. She didn't give any indication that she noticed me, just stared sadly at the youngling with her cobalt eyes.

"How did the child injure himself?" Master Che asked me, though impatience was clear across her expression.

I shrugged, trying to find a way to not lie, but not tell the truth. "I was just there when I heard a shriek of pain." Master Vokara Che was a blue-skinned Twi'lek and the Chief Healer of the Jedi Order; she also took the award for the most strict person I knew. Once, I came into the Halls of Healing when I was nine and she yelled at me for interrupting a healing session. I hadn't even known that one was going on. I had just needed some headache medicine.

Master Che glared at me like I had just said that I was the spawn of a Sith; then again, my grandfather was a Dark Jedi. "Where is 'there?'"

"I honestly don't know." It was kind of true; I didn't remember the way to get back to the bowels. "I had just been walking to my room after classes and when I sensed someone in pain, I rushed to the source. Some of the other initiates and padawans say that he had been climbing on something when he fell and injured his leg." Master Che raised an eye tattoo. (A/N: Most Twi'leks get eyebrows tattooed above their eyes. I really don't why, but it's their customs, so I'm just going with it.)

I added, "I swear! That's all I know!"

"I believe you, Initiate Omega," she said, after several minutes, or at least that's what it felt like. She looked down at the datapad in her hands and cleared her throat. "The initiate you brought, Arro, will heal in time, yet he will be here for quite some time. Due to you bringing him as speedily as you did, however, you've saved him from much more... permanent damage."

I nodded to her and said, "I'm happy to help those in need."

"And I'm happy to hear you say that," she responded, not looking up from the datapad. I stood there uncomfortably until our eyes met and she cleared her throat. "Speaking of help, we're in need of new healers."

"Why?"

Master Che made a low sound in her throat. It sounded like a cross between pain and regret. But those two thing go hand-in hand, don't they? "A relief mission in the Outer Rim went wrong and we lost a good number of healers to bounty hunters and pirates." She shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts, and asked, "Are you proficient in the art of healing, Initiate Omega? I'm in desperate need of helpers."

I scratched the back of my head and frowned. "Sorry, Master Che. I'm better at academics than I am healing, and if you've heard anything about me in the classroom, you know that's saying a lot."

She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I suppose that I'll have to keep looking. Inform your friends of this opportunity, however. You are dismissed."

This'll never come out! I thought, rubbing at the blood on my robes. Arro's feet had been level with my abdomen when I was carrying him to the Halls of Healing and like I've already said, blood wouldn't stop oozing out of the cuts. In the end, I came out with even more gore on me than the younger boy.

"Argh!" I growled as I scrubbed at my clothes in a stream in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

Suddenly, a sob from a row of bushes behind me interrupted my thoughts and I turned toward the offending plants. An audible gasp could be heard as I walked toward the vegetation and pushed away the leaves. Sitting there, curled into a ball with tears and snot covering her entire face was Ahsoka Tano.

I wiped away some of her tears that threatened to spill over. "What's wrong, Ahsoka?"

"My friends said that they wanted to play hide-and-seek tag again, but when I said no, they started pushing me around and calling me names." She wiped snot away from her nose. "They called me a dim-witted Sith and said that I would be lucky to even last one more year in the Order. They said that I would let Master Plo down."

"You mean Master Plo Koon?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

She nodded. "He was the one that brought me here. I told him that I would the most powerful Jedi ever, even stronger than Master Yoda or Anakin Skywalker... or you."

"Me?"

"Well, you and Padawan Skywalker are the Chosen Ones!"

Again, I have another story from when I was younger. According to the tests they did when I was four, I had a count of at least twenty-thousand midi-chlorians so that kind of got rumors started about the Chosen One Prophecy coming to fruition. Of course, when Anakin Skywalker showed up when I was eight, people started getting worried. "We can't have two Chosen Ones, can we?" they said.

Well, when people figured out who my grandfather was, any convictions people had about me being the One were dashed against a barricade of electro-staffs. I mean, who would ever think that the grandchild of a Dark Jedi would save the galaxy from the people from which he was conceived?

Ahsoka, apparently...

"Just Skywalker, Ahsoka. I'm no Chosen One," I replied, taking a seat in front of her.

She sniffled and asked, "Why not?"

"I'm the grandchild of a Dark Jedi," I said, giving her a look of disbelief.

She scowled at me and wiped her nose. "What's that supposed to mean, Ace? That you're going to become a Dark Jedi, too? That you have evil living inside of you? No one is born mean or dark. I would expect you to know that, Chosen One."

Her words rang true and it hurt like hell. Ahsoka was right. I was smart and wise enough to realize that even though my grandfather had been twisted didn't mean that I would turn out like him. I was just letting other people's whispers and insults eat away at me. I frowned and took a seat next to her. "You're wise for an eight year-old."

"I'm seven."

The corners of my mouth lifted upwards. "Good to know."

She looked at me sheepishly and said, "I'm sorry for complaining about the other younglings." She scratched at her lekku. "It's not a Jedi's place to whine like a child."

"You've forgotten two things. Number one, you're not a Jedi yet. Two, you're still a child. We're both still children."

Ahsoka sighed and wiped at her eyes and nose again. "You're right, Ace. But it doesn't feel like we're kids."

"Why not?"

Sighing again, she answered, "Well, I hear that children not in the Order actually have a fun, happy childhood, filled with parents and siblings and the ability to express emotions. But our lives are filled with lightsabers, meditation, and Sith."

Her statement sounded a lot like what went through my mind whenever I went on field trips with my classes. I always managed to catch glimpses of kids with their parents and teenagers laughing and having a better time than the rest of us. "If you don't like being a Jedi, why don't you leave the Order? They'll send you back to your parents."

She shrugged. "The Order is all I've known. The only thing I remember from my short childhood is busy markets. It would be little hard to get used to living like... well, someone who isn't a Jedi." Smiling brightly, Ahsoka added, "Besides, being in the Order will be worth in the end. I like the idea of helping people around the galaxy. I only wish that life here at the Temple would be more exciting or fun."

"It was exciting for me this afternoon," I mumbled, shaking my head in disbelief at what I had been witness to for the past day.

"What happened?"

I chuckled and looked down at the young girl with a slight grin. "I'll tell you after we get some lunch."

Author's Note: A little bit of bonding on both sides. Anyway, review!