Long after the last of the Sith lived

In a galaxy far, far away …

The Padawan

---

"She insisted that the Third is destined to die. I guarantee, it's neither of us. Our part in this conflict is not yet over."

"You really think it could be Yarde?"

"There's great strength in Padawan Tofa, certainly, but weakness in her inexperience. To let her run free on the battlefield is to jeopardise all she touches. Is that not why she is still a pupil?"

The younger Master paused unsurely for a moment, impatiently sighing. Old Yarwi still tested him from time to time. "The Grey Order hasn't been on a battlefield in years, Master. Not a conventional one anyway – and I'm not letting her onto one yet. Yarde turns 23 in a month. How many Masters do we have that are so young? And if we did, how many would be safe in that position?"

"None. But that's not why I bring this up, Tostre." Master Yarwi, draped in thin, black silk and fabric, a grey felt band over each wrist, glanced back at his former student. Tostre dawdled slower than him – rare for anyone, considering how easily and calmly he'd totter along. Yarwi was taller than most and the Grey Order's best-built, hair gradually tipped from midnight black to the Grand Master Seals' exact shade. He looked incredible for 70, and showed it in battle. No doubt his perfect calm and skill at meditation, though no man could naturally look that young. The Order begged him so often to teach the Force technique that gave him youth, that it became a joke in their walls. Still, he insisted it was neither meditation nor the Force, and stubbornly refused to pass it on.

"Then why?" Tostre had stopped – no real difference from the pace he was already going at. His own shoulder-length locks lightened with age at the roots, though Master Yarwi had been training him since his infancy, 40 or so years back. He was the last one to grasp the Unified Force's concept, and remained neither light nor dark. He encouraged his own apprentices thusly. Yarwi stared him down. The younger Master uncomfortably threw back his shoulders, ruffling the Knight robe and grey Order Undercoat hung over him.

"She could fall easily. There's no greater risk of losing good Jedi to the Dark Side than here. She wouldn't be the first of our students to take Sith teachings to heart, now, would she?" He smiled meekly.

"In the past." Tostre quickly moved on through the hall, a sweet, curious scent breezing behind him as he passed Yarwi. The old man caught up.

"Was the last battle not proof enough? Yarde is too precious for us to lose – we need a way to alter the path she walks. I sense the danger that was described ahead, but it's not unavoidable."

The battle. Tostre wanted to slap him for bringing it up, after he'd strained all day to stop thinking of it.

Effortlessly bouncing away the lasers, Yarde closed in on their target with a scream, pale blue head-tails streaming behind her. When the two gunners' heads turned, Tostre hurled his blue lightsaber at the nearest, soaring down from the overhead watch tower after it. The gunner fell without a moment to stumble or fire blindly – a perfect hit. He thudded silently against the ground, padded armour muffling his fall the moment Tostre landed on him, tore out his saber and leapt at the other. Yarde lunged, managing to cleave an already severed head in two before it fell. A shame – he was handsome for a man, though having a clean trail of muscle and congealed blood scaling each piece of his face tended to ruin his looks. They stood rigid suddenly and glanced at each other. They could feel it - this was definately him. The Jedi pivoted and parried a thrust each. Two metal staffs' ends clattered against the ground before them. A mirror image, they slashed at each side of the cloaked man's ribs, pulling their sabers back just close enough for them not to touch clumsily. Then gawked incredulously. He batted them away with the broken staff in each hand.

"Those staffs short-circuted our lightsabers," Tostre called to his apprentice (wherever she'd landed), standing shakily, right hand clutched hard over his side. He'd dropped his weapon, but left it, room-temperature blue blade turned off. Gaze blurred but his mind untouched, Tostre waved his free hand. The cloak flew back, seeming to flutter emptily. Before he thumped the ground, Yarde surged in and bashed the crown of the cloaked man's head with her lightsaber butt. Though she seemed to hit air inside the garment, the cloaked man didn't stand. Tostre noted to stop calling it 'man', which it probably wasn't.

"And we didn't even have to kill him," Yarde smiled. She noticed the cloak crumpled over her feet, empty.

Behind him, Tostre's saber buzzed to life again. Yarde's followed, much quicker, just as the hilt's round base brushed her stomach. A blue glow pierced the edge of her gut, melted hilt fragments splattered over the cloak. She fell with a startled cry. Tostre ran at her, then felt his own legs buckle, pain burning through his knee. The familiar pain he'd learned to ignore, which only came from a blaster. A barrage of red hammered at her, occasionally hitting the ground, but managing most of the hits on Yarde's prone form. Tostre noticed her flawless body was accentuated in a sick way by the lasers tearing into her tight leather armour. Then shook the thought; to a neutral Jedi, feelings were natural, but were an inconvenience when directed at a pupil. Though he'd never thought this way. The Dark Side was near.

He woke from the mind-trick daydream, throwing his head where the lasers had streaked from. Something leapt over the landing platform's edge, though he didn't notice their features. The cloaked man, he assumed, after throwing off the garment and drawing a rifle. But how did he keep it standing, with a staff buried in each sleeve? No matter. He crawled toward Yarde, now pouring with steam, her body slightly eroded of its perfect curves.

"Tostre, you always believed that, for a Jedi to be defeated by laser fire, was one of the most embarrassing things that could happen to them."

"I still think that. But it wasn't shame I felt. It was fear, that the Seer was right. That she'd die in battle sooner than we hoped."

"Then we shall meditate on Yarde's future. It's fortunate, that she chose to pursue the light side of the Force. Or she'd have trouble accepting her new body."

"Perhaps." Hastily, Tostre pushed open the door to her room. He saw, with a brief glimpse, that Yarde was still convered in bandages.

"Before we part, Master Tostre ..."

He leaned out of the doorway at the Grand Master.

"… It wasn't just fear of losing a student that you felt. This was a very powerful mind trick, and you should be wary of such things. Or this isn't the first time it'll happen."

He turned and continued slowly down the hall.

---

So ends the first chapter. This is basically a test for my commission work's plots (in a Star Wars setting, for something different), so review and give your opinion, good or bad – especially on the storyline. But it'll probably end up being an entire novella. Hope you enjoy.

Oh, and I don't own Star Wars. I do own the non-Star Wars concepts here, so don't steal them, you cheeky bugger you.