"Anakin!" Han came knocking by my door. In a rush, I jumped off the bed. My wounds were all but gone, and I was bored out of my mind. "Luke wants to use your piloting skills for a demonstration for the pilot trainees at the academy. You interested?"
"Hell, yeah!" Reaching for a new shirt, I ran down to the hangar bay. Luke was waiting patiently for me; he was thoughtful enough to leave my own ship out for me to use.
"This is one of our more advanced pilots, Anakin, Jaren." Luke pointed out a lad of about seventeen years, with a rather muscular build. "This is your test: you have to beat Jaren in a race around the Academy, while consistently doing barrel rolls and somersaults. You wanna try?"
"Let's do this." Without a word from Jaren, we started up our ships, and began the race. It was effortless; I had been flying since I was six years old. The barrel rolls and the somersaults were a nice twist, but I had easily beaten a senior of the New Pilot Academy. I was now worthy of Luke's approval, not that I even asked for it.
The very next day after the test, I had to pack: Han was leaving in an hour to the paradise satellite planet of Senali, and he wanted me to come along with him. Once we had landed, the skills that I had engrained into my mind kicked into full gear. At that point, I made it my practice to begin lip reading the dealers and the buyers of my foster father's goods, proposing good deals and counter deals with Han, and making sure that we escaped the planets with swift speed and precision whenever something aroused from the illegal goods that we sold.
After the first trip, Han gave me permission to outfit my ship to my eclectic tastes. Mom had done a good job, but most of the equipment in the fighter class craft was outdated and barely working as it was. Over the next two weeks, I spent scouring the rooms in the Academy for spare navigation equipment. Most of the machines I acquired easily; my ultimate goal was met when I acquired a hyperdrive generator and cloaking device, both in mint condition. Finally, journeys that would have taken me days would be done in hours; the power of stealth could be mine to master. In the end, my ship was a thing of beauty; from now on, I would travel with Han in my own ship. In honour of its completion, I christened it the Tatooine Trickster.
Mara Jade Skywalker took an interest in me; she began to help me out with my martial arts skills. Being a former Emperor's Hand, she was well-versed in the arts of self-defence. Everyday, just like Master Joesh helped my mother out, Mara would teach me to hone my skills to perfection, and to practice them everyday to enhance them and keep them sharp. She was a strict teacher; only perfection and unyielding adhesion to the rules she set would suffice at all times. When I came home after getting into more-than-occasional fights at the cantina, she would make me practice with my injuries still fresh, in order to toughen me up. I enjoyed these sessions; it was a way for me to vent my frustration of the day's events.
The second time that Luke took interest in me was when I was mediating in my room. He approached my side just as I was waking up. In his hand was the knife that he first had when I was adopted.
"Anakin," he sat down at the edge of my bed. "This was given to me by your mother right before she had you. She told me that I would know when to pass it on to the person who needed it down the road of time. I think she meant that you were to have it." Just like that, he proffered the knife over to me.
As he was leaving, he noticed my mom's old lightsaber; I always kept it on my bedside table, a constant reminder of her. "This yours?" He picked it up, testing its heft. Pressing his thumb to the button, both blades zoomed out. Twirling it in his hand, I could see that Luke was impressed.
"Your mother made this? Amazing!" Turning it off, Luke sat back down on my bed. "Anakin, I can't teach you to defend yourself with this, but I can teach your blade dances that you can perform with them. Interested?" With a nod from my head, my lessons began. Reading further into my mother's memoirs, I learned how this lightsaber came into her possession…