Chapter 12

When I awoke the next morning my ribs were still hurting enough to be a serious annoyance. Seeing as I wouldn't be able to train at my best anyway, I decided that this was the day I would spend selecting my apprentice. A brief moment of focus revealed that all but a couple of the children were still in their chambers sleeping. After making note of which ones woke up early for extra training time, I headed to see Master Donnavin. I figured I should ask for his permission before taking an apprentice, as a formality if nothing else. I reached his room and found that he wasn't there as I had expected. As I headed outside, assuming he would be at his alchemy table, I cursed his undetectable presence. I was actually thinking about teaching myself to sense him when I opened the central chamber doors and was struck dumb.

Master Donnavin was training, I had seen him train before of course, but not like this. Before all I had ever seen was him demonstrating simple exercises for us to perform. This was something else entirely, he was pushing himself, measuring his power. And that power was immense. He had about a dozen boulders rotating with the sway of his arms, each at least a thousand pounds and few hundred feet in the air. It was so incredible that for a moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me in the dark of the early morning. After a few more moments he heaved them a little higher and released his grip on them, as they began falling he put his arms together and shot a massive pillar of red tinted lightening up. It's structure looked as if it were comprised of several thick, vines coiled around something. I didn't realize that each vine was an individual bolt until the blast got high enough and branched out so that one bolt hit each boulder, blasting them to pieces with a rumble so loud it made the ground shake.

I just stood there awestruck and completely motionless, staring at the might my master possessed. He was unbelievable, he was like... a God? I thought to myself with slight amusement. My heart began pounding as Master Donnavin began walking back towards tomb and me. As the sun came up and he came closer I got a better look at him; he wasn't wearing his robe, for the first time ever I got a good look at his body. His skin had a light grey tint to it, and the amount of muscle on his body was predictably impressive. But it was his face that was really impressive, or rather terrifying. He didn't have any hair or much of a chin but his eyes looked like black voids, they were like the perfect darkness of the catacombs where we meditated. Now that I thought about it he was a lot younger than I thought too...

"Marcus!" He said louder, making me jump.

"Y-Yes Master?" Great, now I sound like one of those sniveling little brats. I thought, cursing the tone I just spoke in. At a normal time he probably would have mocked me, maybe even punished me for showing fear like that; but it seemed he was too tired to care.

"What do you want?" He said in a tone of mild exasperation. Suddenly I remembered why I had come outside, I quickly cleared my throat and spoke.

"I would like your permission to take an apprentice from one of the new recruits." I said, relieved that my voice had returned to normal. He gave a short nod.

"Yeah sure, go ahead." He said simply, grabbing his robe off his alchemy table. I was so off put by his tone that I almost forgot to respond.

"Um, thank you, Master." I said after a few seconds.

"No problem, I'm giving the kids a free day to train as they please anyway." Master Donnavin seemed so, out of it? As he pulled the doors to the building open I couldn't help one more question.

"Master Donnavin?"

"What?" He said, sounding annoyed but not particularly angry. I took a moment to think of how to word my question.

"Was that the full force of your power I just witnessed?" He let out a short laugh.

"No Marcus, that was me wrapping up a two-hour training session." He said, his voice filled with well deserved pride. As he walked through the door I was filled with envy and, though I hate to admit this, fear; this man really could crush me like an insect. You should have that power! you need that power! if you had that power you could...I took a deep breath and tried to push away the energy radiating off my body. I could what? I am grateful to Master Donnavin, I have no need of his position, and I certainly have no need to destroy him or rule this academy. As I pointed these things out to myself I calmed down. It seemed with all the negative emotions running through me that dark side had slipped into my mind. I felt a little pride myself at how easily I controlled it.

After a few more moments composing myself I walked back into the tomb and headed to the training room, deciding to take a look at the early birds. As I walked through the door I saw the rodian and some pale twi'lek sparring. I decided to stay in the shadows while I observed their fight, wanting to get a look at their form. They were both clumsy and pathetic but the rodian was marginally more so. Everytime he tried to make a swing he seemed to turn his arm wrong, or step in the wrong place, or, in his most recent attempt, accidentally let go of the sword. Looking into his mind I could see that he been putting extra hours with this weapon since he got here; that kind of persistence was impressive but not enough for me to overlook his blatant lack of ability. I was just about to stop watching when the fight got interesting, the rodian was quick, for his age at least, and now that the sword was gone he was focusing on dodging the twi'leks swings. And he was good at it. His opponent just couldn't get a blow on him, after a few moments of uncertainty the rodian punched the twi'lek hard in the face after a wide swing left him open. He was knocked clean off his feet and landed on his back with a thud.

"Your supposed to use the sword! That's not fair!" He squealed out.

"Master Donnavin says that there are no rules in a fight, it only matters if you win." The rodian said.

"That's right." I added, making my presence known. The children jumped and turned to face me. "Fight again." I said assertively. They stared for a moment before they both nodded and reached for their swords. "What the hell are you doing?" I asked the rodian with genuine curiosity, he jumped at my statement and shook a little as he replied.

"I-uh, don't I need my sword?" He asked weakly, as if he didn't know what I meant. What a dense child, can't he take a hint? I thought to myself as I spoke with an annoyed tone.

"I don't know, was it helping you at all?" I asked rhetorically.

"...No?" He said unsure, I nodded slowly.

"Then I guess not." For another moment he stood, looking confused before he simply raised his fists and stood opposite the twi'lek. After a moment of silence they attacked each other. As I expected the twi'lek had no idea what he was doing, he continued making long, slow swings, which of course would have been fine against another swordsmen, but not against this rodian. He was able to dodge almost all the blows and more importantly the twi'lek was leaving himself open. It took less then three minutes for that rodian to beat his opponent down, and the twi'lek never changed his style, he just kept making those long, wide swings like a little dumbass until he was knocked flat on his back again. The rodian huffed out a few breaths before turning to me, his face was scrunched up and his eyes were squinted, I'm not overly familiar with the species facial expressions but it looked to me like he was excited. I stared for a moment, beginning to form an idea, before speaking.

"What's your name boy?" I asked, somewhat impressed.

"...Um, Qui?" He said, like he was frightened of why I was asking.

"Well Qui, I'd be in you debt if you helped me." His eyes went back to normal and his head tilted a little, when he didn't say anything I went on. "Nobody in this academy would have any instruction or experience on this fighting style of yours, and I want to know which kids can innovate." He stared at me blankly. "I'm taking an apprentice, and I want to know which kids are capable of adapting their fighting style in order to beat an opponent they aren't familiar with." He continued staring at me blankly, for a moment I wondered if I was just misreading his expression. "I want you to spar with a bunch of the other children so I can see who fights well against you, even though they haven't been taught explicitly how to fight against someone like you yet. Then I'm going to select one of those kids to be my apprentice." I finished, speaking slowly and clearly. He let out a small 'ah' and began nodding, much to my relief, I was about one more sentence from knocking this idiot out.

"Wait!" He said suddenly. "Does that mean your definitely not gonna pick me?" He said in a shocked tone.

"Probably not." I corrected. "Your gonna have to teach yourself to use your fists anyway, it'd be bit of a waste if I took an apprentice who I couldn't help with such a big part of their training. But if you do this for me I'll help you when you work on things I do know how to do." He stared down silently and rubbed his head for a moment.

"Okay" He replied. I grinned as I heard footsteps approaching us.

"I believe that's your first opponent Qui, lets get started." I said with the faintest hint of excitement.

All things said the children were disappointing, most of Qui's duels were just repeats of the one with the Twi'lek. He didn't always win but nobody did any significant change in their fighting style. They just endured his blows long enough to beat him into submission. A couple of them were smart enough to do short, quick swings; and while that was a decent way to fight the rodian figuring that out didn't impress me too much. I watched without much interest as Qui clobbered the bug eyed boy Master Donnavin once asked me to kill. Azera, who had been working with the auto blaster, paused to watch.

"You know, you could pick me." She said indifferently as she rested against the wall. I let out a grunt, a little surprised that she had said anything. I had considered choosing Azera of course. After all she had more talent and a head start in her training on most of these recruits, but I kept reminding myself of the reason I was taking an apprentice in the first place.

"Azera I'm taking an apprentice because I need allies, you're already my ally." I explained.

"I never agreed to that." She said with a small smile.

"Of course your my ally, I've wasted my time and energy helping you with Mazer a thousand times." I countered.

"Never asked you to, besides I've wasted my time and energy healing you a thousand times." She said snidely, a light grin forced itself on my face.

"You're my ally whether you want to admit it or not."

"Whatever" She chuckled out as she resumed her training.

"Marcus?" Qui panted out, I turned my attention back to him. I saw the bug eyed boy groaning on the floor with Qui, hunched and breathing heavy, standing over him. "Are we done yet?" He said as he caught his breath.

"No, if I counted right there's one more kid."

"You counted right." A female voice said, I turned to see a blue twi'lek standing in the doorway. Qui let out a little groan and went back into his fighting stance, the girl went to stand opposite of him and did the same. They both looked to me and I gave a small nod, with that Qui attacked. I was shocked by what I saw. This twi'lek watched almost all the fights, she knew exactly what Qui was capable of, why did she even bother fighting if she was this bad? Almost as soon as Qui attacked she dropped her sword and her hands flew up to protect her face from his blows.

This was such a waste of time I wanted to puke, not a single child had managed anything impressive, maybe I should just choose Qui after all. As I was thinking this over the twi'lek made her move, Qui was making upper cuts into her unprotected body when suddenly her hands shot to his exposed head. I barely had time to register what was happening before the familiar crackle of lightning filled the room followed by Qui letting out a short shriek and falling limply to the ground.

My eyes were wide as the young girl walked over to me, she said nothing, she just stood there staring at me, waiting for acknowledgment. I looked down at her face, it was busted and bloody but she gave no indication it bothered her, her eyes looked calm, cold, and calculating. I knelt down and looked into them, grinning to show I was impressed. The lightening attack she had done wasn't particularly impressive, almost any child here would have been able to do that. What was impressive was that she had planned out that entire fight, predicting exactly what Qui would do and thinking of a way to effectively counter him while playing on her strengths. My smile grew wider, I had found my disciple.

A/N: Hey, sorry time skip is after this chapter. I haven't forgotten about this story, it's just hard to find time to write, though that should be better know that schools out. As always I'd appreciate reviews, makes me want to write more.