Chapter 6: Departure From Naboo

I had to explain to Bail Kenobi that I had made my decision to join the Jedi. He wasn't quite as disappointed as some of the Krelli would be, but he was still committed to staying in the village with his people, as he could not handle any other lifestyle.

On Coruscant it was quite easy to get in contact with the Jedi Temple. I advised I was the Krelli who had successfully fought off the Black Sun invasion and they invited me round straight away. On arrival a woman in her mid-thirties called Nari Gallia came to greet me. She showed me around all the various training programs, which included children attempting to deflect bots from floating droids whilst blindfolded, and various interesting acts of levitation. There were also many practicing with imitation lightsabres in their combat techniques. But the one to top it all was one taking place in this larger arena, where we watched through a window that was small enough so as not to distract them too much. One of the combatants was someone slightly older than myself with swept-back hair and a stubbly beard, who was using sabre with a modified handle with a pistol-like grip to give him more manoeuvrability. But the opponent was a strange-looking green creature only about a third of the other man's height, and yet he was running rings round the taller man.

After they finished up I was introduce to them. The taller man was called Dooku and the short green man turned out to be Master Yoda, who was almost the unofficial head of the Jedi council and regarded as the most formidable Jedi alive. I would find out in time that that lake on Naboo was indeed named after him.

Yoda seemed to regard me with a bit of apprehension at first, and seemed to be assessing me somehow.

"From the Krelli order on Naboo you learned your skills, hmm. Begin learning Jedi skills at your age good idea normally not, but skills good perhaps you have learned on Naboo."

I was fortunate that he seemed to know as little about the Krelli order as he did about how to arrange his vocabulary. I should be able to convince him that everything I had learned from the Krelli, which I had in fact learned from Darth Hadrol, would prepare me to quickly join their ranks.

"A newly graduated Jedi Master I have assigned you," Yoda continued, "Your Master, Naria Gallia, will be".

Over the next few weeks Naria seemed to realise that I needed less training than they would realise, and the Master would quickly surpass the Master.

I also became one of the few to develop a good strategy using one lightsabre in each hand. This came about mainly because I was forced to have to build myself an extra blue lightsabre so they wouldn't associate me with the Sith in any way. This started me off practising in front of a mirror, until I eventually built another extra blue lightsabre and another extra red one, so as to suit every occasion.

The impression I had of the Jedi was not as bad as I first thought before I got to know them, but I knew things had to be changed with them. They were simply too set in their ways – the way they were obsessed that one Master would take on one apprentice, the way the Jedi had to relinquish much in the way of possessions and even avoid relationships.

The man Dooku I had met when I first came to the Jedi Temple – he also shared a lot of my views, and could help us reshape the inadequacies of the Republic and the Jedi Order.

Over the following Palpatine and I kept our plans mainly dormant and pursued our own "legitimate" careers. I soon gained the title of Jedi Master and even took on a Jedi apprentice called Jorus C'Baoth. Dooku chose a teenage apprentice who had just graduated from the "Younglings" called Qui-Gon Jinn. The four of us all had varying degrees of dissatisfaction in the Jedi order but I would have to be careful about who and how many allies I would choose. I was finding increasingly less time in training Palpatine in his use of the Force but he seemed to be coming on in leaps and bounds even when I was not around.

Palpatine also chose to take on the Darth title, which I had originally turned down – Sidious. This would perhaps suit his sometimes very INsidious personality.