Hi again everyone! By everyone, I mean the current total of 5 visitors to this story... and anyone else who happens to read this later. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the wonderful works mentioned in this story. I only claim Ace, Justin, Maria, and Ana. They are mine!

Chapter 4: Ace

I lay in my temple bed trying to clear my mind and sleep. Somehow, I just couldn't. I felt like I was already in a dream. My best friend Maria was the elf princess? Seriously, I needed to wake up. After much tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep.

Maria/Adelaide had come to visit me in my temple room, except her eyes were silver instead of brown. She told me that she saw good things ahead of us if I could just help her out. I tried to ask her what she meant, but my mouth wouldn't move. Then I realized she wasn't talking to me, but someone behind me. I turned around and felt my eyes widen. I was in her room and she was looking at a woman's reflection inside a bowl of water. "You mean good things ahead of you if I go along with this!" the woman snapped. "There's nothing in it for me!"

"I don't understand what you want. I've been trying to please you, but nothing has yet. You won't even see me in person!" Maria looked calm, showing no outward sign of intimidation, but I could hear the tears slowly creeping into her voice.

"You know what I want! I want a capable ruler after me. Certainly not you. I want you to find me a replacement." With that the woman angrily sliced her hand through the water and ended the connection.

Maria sat back, knees pulled to her chest and sobbed, shaking hard. I tried to reach out and give her some comfort, but I was pulled farther and farther away from her by an invisible force.

My eyes opened, and it was morning.

I found Maria already in the kitchen, just saying goodbye to Ana. She looked much more human now, but there was something different about her. It was as if Ana's great skill had somehow failed to block a piece of Adelaide, and it was shining through Maria's disguise like a beacon of light.

I walked toward Maria. "Hey, how was your first night here?"

"It was great! I even started training with Ana this morning. I kind of got bored of looking at the inside of my room, so I started wandering around and ran into her. At the end of training, she put the enchantment on me again, so I should be good to go."

"How far did you get?" I asked curiously. I honestly couldn't see how she was going to learn a year's worth of training in two weeks.

"I don't know, but the last thing Ana taught me today was how to push and pull things using the Force."

Okay, that had been in my second month of basic training. "You can do that already?"

"Yeah!" she said, so happily, I could almost forget my dream. She put a pen and a piece of paper down on the table. The pen jumped up, seemingly with a will of its own, and began to write. After a couple of minutes, during which she glanced up at me several times, the pen dropped. She smiled, without even seeming to feel the effort of using the Force. I turned the paper around so I could see it and gasped. She'd started out with her name, then moved on to my name, then did both in cursive. I faintly remembered stressing over that on one of my Jedi exams because it had been (and still remained) so difficult for me. Yet she hadn't even stopped there. Below our names was an amazing picture of me, like a black-and-white photograph. I'd had an extra year of training than most other Jedi our age, but I doubted I could do something similar now.

"How did you do that?" I asked, probably sounding extremely jealous, but I didn't care.

She giggled. "I just looked at you and asked the pen to draw you through the Force."

She made it sound so simple. I knew it was complicated, and I'd never completely figured it out. If she weren't my friend, Maria would be intimidating.

"That's- "

BANG!

Maria and I both jumped and turned in the direction of the noise. Then we looked at each other and cracked up laughing. Somehow, Justin had managed to come out of his room all right, then had run straight into the kitchen door.

"You okay?" Maria asked, assuming a straight face much quicker than I'd ever be able to.

"Other than a pounding head because I just ran into a door? Fine." Justin said as he massaged his head and sat down with us. "What's that?" he asked as his attention came to the piece of paper I was still holding. "Are you practicing already?"

"No, I wasn't." I gave him the paper and his eyes widened. "Maria was."

He looked at her, then back at the paper. "You've learned this much already? Sheesh, don't you get any sleep at night?"

"Um… Yeah I do. I only need to sleep for a couple of hours, remember?" she replied, glancing around furtively for eavesdroppers.

The bell rang, startling all of us. "What does that mean?" Maria asked, eyes wide.

"It means it's time to go to school and protect the people there. Usually you won't have to do anything, but we're there just in case the Sith attack."

Thanks for reading everyone! Please review, because I really need to know what I can do better and what I'm doing good on so far, so I can make the coming chapters better!