Disclaimer: I am not George Lucas or J.K. Rowling.

Enter Luke Skywalker, on Tatooine.

Luke cleans out his trunk, leaving behind the things he will not be needing this season: his texts, styluses, potions supplies, and other Temple supplies. He keeps with him the necessary supplies: his lightsaber, Gormel Kenobi's amulet, his cloaking device, the Star Map, his mundane clothing, certain texts, Chewbacca's holograph album, and stacks of hololetters. Reaching into the trunk, Luke cuts his hand.

Luke curses.

Luke shoulders open the door, breaking a cup of tea outside the bedroom.

Luke. What the . . . ?

Luke scoops up the transparisteel into the trash, then returns to his trunk, where he examines what had cut him. He immediately recognizes it as a broken transparisteel shard from the shard Obi-Wan Kenobi gave him before his death.

Luke finally finishes clearing out the trunk. He leaves his Temple supplies in the corner, but places his cloaking device, Chewbacca's album, his mundane clothing, certain texts, and stacks of hololetters in his rucksack. He places the Star Map and Gormel Kenobi's amulet in his front pocket.

Luke's droid, R2-D2, ignores him as he rises, angry for being locked up.

Finished packing, Luke searches through the HoloNet, looking for a particular article.

Enter Ikrit, a holographic image of the lagomorph Jedi Master.

Ikrit. I met Yoda at the age of eleven, on my first day at the Jedi Temple. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders. I had contracted Knowt's Disease shortly before arriving at the Temple, and while I was no longer contagious, my pockmarked visage and greenish hue did not encourage many to approach me. For his part, Yoda had arrived at the Jedi Temple under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year previously, his father N'Kata Del Gormo had been convicted of a savage and well-publicized attack upon three young mundanes. Yoda never attempted to deny that his father, who was to die on Kessel, had committed this crime. On the contrary, when I plucked up the courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be guilty. Beyond that, Yoda refused to speak of the sad business, though many attempted to make him due so. Some, indeed, were disposed to praise his father's actions and assumed that Yoda too was a mundane-hater. They could not have been more mistaken: As anybody who knew Yoda could attest, he never revealed the remotest anti-mundane tendency. Indeed, his determined support for mundane rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years. In a matter of months, however, Yoda's own fame had begun to eclipse that of his father. By the end of his first year, he would never again be known as the son of a mundane-hater, but as nothing more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the Temple. Those of us who were privileged to be his friends benefited from his example, not to mention his help and encouragement, with which he was always generous. He confessed to me in later life that he knew even then that his greatest pleasure lay in teaching. He not only won every prize of note that the Temple offered, he was soon in regular correspondence with the most notable Jedi names of the day, including Zonama Sekot, the celebrated alchemist; Voren Na'al, the noted historian; and Arhul Hextrophon, the Jedi theoretician. Several of his papers found their way into learned publications such as Heroes of the Republic, Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force, and The Power of the Jedi. Yoda's future career seemed likely to meteoric, and the only question remained was when he would become Chief of State. Though it was often predicted in later years that he was on the point of taking the job, however, he never had Republican ambitions. Three years after we had started at the Jedi Temple, Yoda's brother Talon Karrde arrived at the Temple. They were not alike. Karrde was never bookish and, unlike Yoda, preferred to settle arguments by dueling rather through reasoned discussion. However, it is wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brothers were not friends. They rubbed along so comfortably as two such different boys could do. In fairness to Karrde, it must be admitted that living in Yoda's shadow cannot have been an altogether comfortable experience. Being continually outshone was an occupational hazard of being his friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable as a brother. When Yoda and I left Tython, we intended to take the then-traditional tour of the galaxy together, visiting and observing alien Jedi, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedy intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Yoda's mother Ashla died, leaving Yoda the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I postponed my departure long enough to pay my respects at Ashla's funeral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a younger brother and sister to care for, and little credits left to them, there could no longer be any question of Yoda's accompanying me. That was the periods of our lives when we had least contact. I wrote to Yoda, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my journey, from narrow escapes from tuk'atas on Korriban to the experiments of the Yuuzhan Vong shapers. His hololetters told me little of his day-to-day life, which I guessed to be frustratingly dull for such a brilliant Jedi. Immersed in my own experience, it was with horror that I heard, toward the end of my year's travels, that yet another tragedy had struck the Del Gormos: the death of his sister Ahsoka. Though Ahsoka had been in poor health for a long time, the blow, coming so soon after the loss of their mother, had a profound effect on both of her brothers. All those closest to Yoda, and I count myself among that lucky number, agree that Ahsoka's death, and Yoda's feeling of personal responsibility for it (though, of course, he was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore. I returned home to find a youth who had experienced a much older being's suffering. Yoda was more reserved than before, and much less light-hearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ahsoka had led, not to a renewed closeness between Yoda and Karrde, but to an estrangement. In time, this would lift. In later years, they reestablished, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial one. However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ahsoka from then on, and his friends learned not to mention them. Other historians will describe the triumphs of the following years. Yoda's innumerable contribution to the store of Jedi knowledge, including the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom be displayed he displayed in the many judgments he made while head of the Justice Council. They say, still, that no lightsaber duel ever matched that between Yoda and Darth Plagueis in 1,945 BBY. Those who witnessed it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they watched these two extraordinary Force wielders do battle. Yoda's triumph, and its consequences for the Galactic Republic, are considered a turning point in galactic history to match the introduction of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances' Secrecy Act or the downfall of Darth Sidious. Yoda was never proud nor vain. He could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched. And I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say. But my loss is as nothing compared to the galaxy's. That he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Jedi Grand Masters cannot be in question. He died as he lived: working always for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a hand to a small Kushiban with Knowt's Disease as he was on the day I met him.

Exit Ikrit.

Luke tears out the obituary to keep, and throws the rest of the HoloNet articles in the trash. He flips to a new HoloNet channel.

Enter Hallis Saper, a holographic image of the holojournalist.

Hallis. Yoda: the truth at last? Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest Jedi Master of his generation. Stripping away the popular image of serene green-skinned wisdom, Javis Tyrr reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the lifelong feuds, and the guilty secrets that Yoda carried to his grave. Why was the Jedi tipped to be Chief of State content to remain a mere Grand Master? What was the real purpose of the secret organization known as the Jedi Order? How did Yoda really meet his end? The answers to these and many more questions are explored in the explosive new biography, The Jedi Among Us by Javis Tyrr.

Enter Javis Tyrr, a holographic image of the journalist.

Tyrr. Well, of course, Yoda is a biographer's dream. Such a long, full life. I'm sure my holobook will be the first of very, very many.

Hallis. You certainly were quick. Your nine-hundred-page book was released just four weeks after Yoda's death. How is it you imagined such a feat?

Tyrr. Oh, when you've been a journalist as long as I have, working to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the galaxy was clamoring for the full story, and I wanted to be the first to meet the need.

Hallis. What about Master Ikrit's claims that your book, and I quote, "contains less fact than a chocolate frog card?"

Tyrr. [laughs] Darling Ikrit? I remember interviewing him a few years back about Mon Cal rights. Bless him. Completely senile. He seemed to think we were sitting in a Malastarian forest, kept telling me to watch out for Dugs.

Hallis. And yet Master Ikrit's accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed all across Republic space. Do you really feel that four short weeks have been enough to gain a full holograph of Yoda's long and extraordinary life?

Tyrr. Oh, my dear, you know as well as I do how much information can be generated by a fat bag of credits, a refusal to hear the word "no," and a nice sharp data crystal. Beings were lining to dish the dirt on Yoda, anyway. Not everyone thought he was so wonderful, you know. He trod on an awful lot of important toes. But old Ikrit can get off his high bantha, because I've had access to a source most journalists would swap their lightsabers for, one who has never spoken in public before and who was close to Yoda during the most turbulent and disturbing phase of his youth.

Hallis. The advance publicity for Yoda's biography has certainly suggested that there will be shocks in store for those who believe Yoda to have led a blameless life. What were the biggest surprises you've uncovered?

Tyrr. [laughs] Now, come on, Hallis, I'm not giving away all the highlights before anybody's bought the book. But I can promise that anybody who still thinks Yoda was white as his hair is in for a rude awakening. Let's just say that nobody hearing him rage against the Emperor would have dreamed that he dabbled in the dark side himself in his youth. And for a Jedi who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he wasn't exactly broad-minded when he was younger. Yes, Master Yoda had an extremely murky past, not to mention that very fishy family, which he worked so hard to keep hushed up.

Hallis. Are you referring to Talon Karrde?

Tyrr. Oh, Karrde is just the tip of the Dreadnaught. No, no, I'm talking about much worse than a brother working on the fringe of society, worse even than that mundane-maiming father. Yoda couldn't keep either of them quiet, anyway. They were both charged by the Justice Council. No, it's the mother and sister that intrigued me. And a little digging uncovered a positive nest of nastiness. But, as I say, you'll have to wait for chapters nine to twelve for full details. All I can say now is, it's no wonder Yoda never talked about how his nose got broken.

Hallis. Family skeletons notwithstanding, do you deny the brilliance that led to Yoda's many discoveries?

Tyrr. He had brains, although many now question whether he could really take full credit for all of his supposed achievements. As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Vondare Tokare claims he had already discovered eight uses of dragon's blood when Yoda "borrowed" his papers.

Hallis. But the importance of some of Yoda's achievements cannot be denied. What of his famous defeat of Darth Plagueis?

Tyrr. Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Plagueis. I'm afraid those who go dewy-eyed over Yoda's spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell, or perhaps a stink capsule. Very dirty business indeed. All I'll say is, don't be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend. After they've read my book, sentients may be forced to conclude that Plagueis simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his lightsaber and came quietly.

Hallis. What about the relationship that will undoubtedly fascinate your readers more than any other? What about Luke Skywalker?

Tyrr. [nods] Oh, yes. I devote an entire chapter to the whole Skywalker-Yoda relationship. It's been called unhealthy, even sinister. Again, your readers will have to buy my holobook for the whole story. But there is no question that Yoda took an unnatural interest in Skywalker from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy's best interests . . . well, we'll see. It's certainly an open secret that Skywalker has had a most troubled adolescence.

Hallis. Are you still in touch with Luke Skywalker?

Tyrr. Oh, yes. Poor Skywalker has few real friends, and we met at one of the most testing moments of his life, the Galactic Games. I am probably one of the only beings alive who can say that they know the real Luke Skywalker.

Hallis. Do you believe Skywalker was there when Yoda died?

Tyrr. Well, I don't want to say too much. It's all in the book. But eyewitnesses inside the Jedi Temple saw Skywalker running away from the scene moments after Yoda fell, jumped, or was pushed. Skywalker later gave evidence against Darth Vader, a being against whom he has a notorious grudge. Is everything as it seems? That is for the galactic community to decide, once they've read my book.

Exit Tyrr.

Hallis. There can be no doubt that Tyrr has written an instant bestseller. Yoda's legions of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to emerge about their hero.

Exit Hallis.

Luke. [angry] Lies.

As Luke tosses the HoloNet article in the corner angrily, he catches a glimpse of Talon Karrde's light blue eye in the broken shard of Obi-Wan's wrist link. Staring at it curiously for a few minutes, Luke decides to take the shard with him.

I imagined it. It's the only explanation. If one thing is certain, it is that Yoda's brown eyes will never pierce me again.

Exit Luke.