Chapter Four: Rock Climbing
A/N: Just a little peek inside the workings of the Jedi Temple
The rock wall in the Jedi Temple was one of the foremost training pieces in the instruction of teamwork and coordination of trainees and apprentices. Every Jedi, whether youngling, apprentice, knight or Master, had to climb it at some point, though many never climbed it again.
That day, three young apprentices were arguing over who should go first. Each was trying to dare another to go first, but each time they were met with rebuttal and derision.
"Why don't we go at the same time?" one suggested. The other two shrugged in agreement and started climbing. At about the half-way mark, the youngest one, a female Mon Calamari by the name of Dakka, slipped from her handhold and was left hanging by one hand. The other two were too far up to reach her in time and she had yet to learn how to cushion one's fall with the Force.
"Help!" she called out, feeling her fingers slipping. Suddenly a blur to her right made her gasp: it was the man who fell out of the sky. Just as her other hand slipped, he reached out and grabbed her by the arm, slowly pulling her onto his back.
"Are you all right?" he asked. She nodded, whimpering into his back as she curled her arms around his torso. "Do you want me to take you back down?" he asked, holding onto the wall as if her weight meant nothing.
"No," she said after a few seconds. "I want to be at the top with my friends, but I don't think I can climb the rest of the way."
"Then I'll carry you," Cole said gently before scrambling up the side of the wall like a spider. The Mon Calamari couldn't help but be amazed at his movements: so fluid and precise, but with a strength that belied greater power under the surface. Within seconds he had passed Dakka's clearly-shocked friends and pulled them both over the top.
Gently dropping off him, the young Mon Calamari looked into Cole's eyes as he sat down, swinging his legs over the ledge. "How can you move like that when you have no connection to the Force?" she asked, sitting down next to him.
He smirked and looked down at her friends. "Just as much practice makes a Jedi excel at a task, so the same goes for me: I have been doing this for a while now. It almost comes naturally."
After a few seconds of silence her friends pulled themselves over the ledge, out of breathe and clearly tired. "I'll be seeing you around, I bet," Cole said, standing up. With a short hop he leapt off the ledge and soared through the air until he lightly touched the ground below.
"That was Cole MacGrath?" one of the apprentices asked. The Mon Calamari smiled, her eyes conveying pride.
"Yes," she said, helping them up. "Yes it was."