I made sure to make my pride and approval easy to read as I traced the circuits in the open lightsaber hilt. Olana had followed a simple design schematic for a straightforward and somewhat tenuous connection, and I suppressed my impulse to offer half a dozen suggestions for improvement, and just confirmed that it would run without shorting out.

"Annie helped with this?" I asked.

"Not this one," she flushed with pride. "We worked together on two others, but I assembled this one entirely on my own."

"Well done," I offered simply, handing it back to her and gesturing for her to activate it.

The blade was a vibrant light green, a Consular color to be sure. Not a hint of dark energy to my senses; the humming plasma felt every bit a part of my student. She had fully re-attuned the crystal that had once belonged to Darth Maul, and that was surely something to be proud of.

"Are you ready for your test?" I asked, and in response, Olana nodded for me to draw my own blade.

I took two steps back in the small practice area; I sensed no one else nearby and we should have plenty of room. Upon thumbing my hilt contact, my deep blue blade contrasted with her much paler green. I took an open guard position and waited as the girl in front of me carefully entered a basic Form I stance. She steeled herself, then stepped forward with a cut attack.

I stood my ground, deflecting her blade and waiting for her to attack again. "Your form is solid, but there's no power behind it," I offered. She cut again, harder this time, but she never fully extended her offense. I encouraged a few more repetitions before calling a halt; none of her strikes even required me to move.

"You're very tentative," I took a seat in the training area and borrowed her hilt again, opening it up to check its integrity. Nothing had knocked loose or out of alignment. "Even defense requires commitment to your moves. Who have you been working with?"

"Just the regular group training," Olana blushed. "Yokarrin says I'm getting better."

I studied her downturned expression. "You don't agree, though."

She sighed. "I… don't mean to doubt my teacher. But…"

"You lack confidence," I offered, "because you compare unfavorably to other students."

"There are plenty of Jedi who can swing a sword. My interests and talents lie elsewhere."

"That's fair." I handed the hilt back to her, and she hung it carefully at her side. We left the training area, walking leisurely side-by-side as I led her deeper into the Temple. After confirming that no one was in earshot, I asked, "Anything interesting from your… other teacher?'

"Oh, lots. I guess holocrons are just the tip of the wedge; there are whole planets' worth of lost technology out there connected to the Force. It's incredible that we've lost so much of it."

I shrugged. "Technology grows in far more directions than even a Galaxy's worth of sentients can actively pursue. Jedi are pretty disconnected from modernity, preferring whatever traditional devices they pass on as part of the Order's traditions."

"You don't agree with that." It wasn't a question.

I held a hand out to her in concession. "I still see an awful lot of recurring problems with researchable solutions. If there were enough interest among the Jedi, I'd happily invest my time and resources in advancing lightsaber tech, or control systems capable of harnessing our extraordinary senses and reflexes." I could see Olana imagining the possibilities as I continued, "But there's a deepset suspicion of such things, likely originating from stories of the Sith. It's much easier to work with BlasTech, BCA, and the like."

"Which raises the same suspicions in the Order," Olana pointed out.

"Indeed, but it also produces benefits."

"Political contacts, access to powerful weapons," she supplied.

I nodded. "And money. Which isn't everything, but can get you surprisingly far in an economy as vast as the Republic."

"I wasn't aware you were that wealthy."

I shrugged. "It's a matter of scale. I don't have the wealth to fund a warfleet or influence Senate elections, so my resources are irrelevant on the Galactic stage unless I leverage them in unconventional ways."

"Like assassination," she supplied softly.

"Right, or personal persuasion." If she was looking for me to bristle her example, she was firing at the wrong target. "Here we are."

"The Archives?" She reflexively presented her handprint for scan as we entered the main entrance.

"Your other teacher has been telling stories, right? Things that fit into Galactic history?" I nodded to a librarian as we passed into the main stacks and down a winding set of stairs.

"Oh, yes. But nothing recent… things about the early Jedi, the wars that defined the Republic." She stopped talking as we descended a second level, and then two more. We stepped out into an area walled with shelves, as were all of the Archives, but with progressively more irregular data tapes and manuscripts. We passed down a half dozen rows before reaching another door, this one small and unassuming.

"Check the lock," I nodded to the palm reader beside the door. Olana tenuously pressed her hand to it, and poorly concealed her surprise when it opened.

"These are restricted," Olana said as she followed me through. "You got us cleared to be back here?"

I nodded. "My Visions merit access to some of the prophetic texts. I'll get to see more if I complete training with the Seers."

"And me?" She paused apprehensively in a narrow corridor. The area was almost exclusively physical manuscripts - crumbling and faded materials from many eras and worlds.

I moved us towards a small reading room. "Artoo and I made some adjustments to the Archives' security systems..."

"Obi-wan." Her tone was exasperated, resigned.

I ignored her admonition and continued. "You should be able to read anything stored here, without triggering automated alerts. Obviously figure it out yourself; don't ask the librarians for help."

The room door used a physical lock rather than an electronic one, and I concentrated for a second getting it open. Inside, Olana looked at the desk comm and the physical manuscripts littering the table. "And when someone checks this room, and sees these… is this a Sith journal?"

I pulled out a small device, a thin metal cylinder the length of my hand. "The transponder rewrites each document tag to match an unrestricted manuscript kept in this section just due to age. And, yes, that journal is the main thing I wanted to show you. It was written by Larad Noon, the Dark Jedi who discovered cortosis armor."

She carefully turned the pages, noting that I had inserted printed flimsies in several places. "You've been studying this?"

"Started to, yes. But I realize you were much better suited to complete my task here."

"Which is?" She met my gaze, and I could see the resolve war with her latent criticism of my methods.

"The same thing I want you to do with the stories that Sidious tells you: clarify the truth."

Olana shook her head. "These accounts are thousands of years old. How am I supposed to verify anything?"

I spread my arms. "The Archives are almost as old, and some of the records in here are older. Not to mention histories written mere centuries later, before these subjects became taboo."

Olana nodded, looking at my written notes. "A thorough effort could easily take years," she offered.

"Then we'll take years. There needs to be a report, kept alongside this journal, that details where it accurately depicts the Old Sith Wars and where it deviates from fact. A balanced, perspective, not the skewed Sith view but not a sanitized Order polemic either."

Olanna frowned. "Why this particular document?"

"Because in the years to come, a Jedi Knight will read it, believing it to be the full-throated truth rather than a distortion."

My student thought for a minute. "Nikkos Tyris? The Jensaarai?"

"You've been reading the timeline," I agreed.

"In detail. If you had a map of the future - or at least a possible future you wished to avoid - wouldn't you study it thoroughly?" When I nodded, she added, "I'll admit, this plan is a lot less…" she swallowed.

"Direct? Thorough?" I offered.

"... bloodthirsty. Less bloodthirsty than I was expecting."

I glared at my now grinning apprentice. "Violence isn't always the answer, Olana."

"Oh, I know, Obi-wan. And I'm thrilled that you do, too." She ignored my glare as she picked up a pencil and started her own notes, but I could feel the hidden smugness underneath.