Lord Darth Yoda - Well someone has to keep the younglings egos in check. I think Anakin was the best at it though :p. Nara's genuine - and you'll get to see that while Sascha has had limited time with Nara, that time has meant a lot to her, so she's trying to pay him back. She's already pretty good at getting Sascha to break out of his shell - and as you said, reverse psychology seemed to be effective!

thejoker122- Good point about Sascha learning from his past - he might be slightly depressed but he's not stupid! And Nara's certainly a different character to spend time with, a bit more rambunctious and enthusiastic than most. She's a fun character to write and she gets quite a bit of depth over the course of this book.

SpeechBubbleMe - Sascha will come to peace and get over Tyra. I'm not going to spoil anything, but I'll say by the time that this fic is over, he'll have dealt with it. And yeah, Nara's definitely helping Sascha - its always nice to have one slightly obnoxious friend that drags you out to do things when you'd rather sit in your room and be depressed.

A/N - New PoV for this chapter - I don't think it'll take a genius to figure out who it is. I play around a lot more with PoVs in this fic and for the better I think.

Anyways, please enjoy the next chapter!

Chapter 8: Tests, Part Two

"I've been running this drill for years now, but never have I seen such a putrid performance from a group of Initiates," remarked Master Drallig. Despite the harshness of the words uttered by the Jedi Master, Cin Drallig did not raise the tone of his voice. He simply didn't need to. "Jedi work together. How do you expect to beat two Padawans as four individuals?" The grouped Initiates looked downcast, some of them rubbing where their defences had been pierced by the blades of the two Padawans, "I'll give you a minute to discuss amongst yourselves. Perhaps you can come up with an actual strategy to use."

Nara Nalto found herself grinning, a couple of years ago she had been on the other side of a similar tongue-lashing from Master Drallig, one that she had fully deserved. She had been thirteen and thought that she would be chosen to be a Padawan very soon. Certainly, she'd had many Masters and Knights come and talk to her to try and evaluate her skills. Looking back she had been so…arrogant, even going so far as to intentionally perform poorly when being evaluated by 'lesser' Jedi Knights. She had figured with her talents that she deserved at least a Jedi Master to be her mentor or at least a Knight with potential to make the rank of Jedi Master one day. She had been so arrogant and petty, it annoyed her to even think about the person that she had been.

Back then, she had been a part of the team of four Initiates, sparring against two Padawans. And she knew she was the strongest of the four Initiates, so she figured that she wouldn't need their help at all, for she was Nara Nalto, a Togruta destined to be one of the most powerful Jedi of her generation. That idea was laughable now to fifteen year old Nara Nalto, but it was how she had thought back then.

During the drill, she had squared off against one of the two Padawans. She had attacked in a basic pattern, but one that she had mastered totally and usually could overwhelm anyone she sparred with. She got halfway through the pattern when the Padawan counterattacked. One moment she had been preparing a diagonal slice, with her lightsaber, the next thing she remembered was being on the ground moaning incoherently and being asked by Master Drallig if she was okay. Her opponent had hit her with a simple, basic kick, an attack meant to disrupt her pattern, not to injure her or end the fight as it did. But she had been so overconfident that she hadn't bothered to defend his kick. Stupidly, she had moved directly into the path of his leg, and his boot caught her square in the temple, knocking her unconscious for a brief moment. She had ended up in the Halls of Healing for three days afterwards nursing her wounded pride (and a minor concussion.)

So a chance to be on the other side of this drill was a privilege, and a good performance meant that she could erase her embarrassing past and hopefully show some of these Initiates they were not as ready to be Padawans as they thought. Certainly, she saw little bits of her old, arrogant self in all of her opponents.

Her only concern was that Sascha seemed to be really out of shape. She had no idea what was really going on with him, only whispered rumors that she had chosen to ignore, but clearly his training had slipped significantly. Sascha had never been the most gifted of fighters, but today he was slower than usual and seemed to lack that usual little extra spark that he usually had, the one that made him better than his below-average talent with the Force. There was something hesitant about him, he was usually so open and free with his emotions, now he seemed to be slightly closed off, even reserved. She'd talk to him afterwards she decided, Sascha was probably her closest friend, not that they were all that close, but she didn't have many friends, and if she could help him, she would.

All that mattered for the moment is that they had a strong connection through the Force and a solid understanding of how the other fought, they knew how to fight together, something that the Initiates clearly did not.

At the moment, the young Jedi were grouped together to discuss what they did wrong, but Nara sensed that they still had not come to an accord as to how they should fight together. Despite their quick loss, they seemed to still want to be individuals. That wasn't a problem with her and Sascha – as Padawans they knew how to work with others, specifically their Masters. She tapped Sascha on the shoulder, "Round two," she said, grinning at him, "I think this might be a bit harder than the last time."

"I'll follow your lead," he said deferentially. Sascha Whitestar was the best type of teammate, one that would simply follow her orders. While some would see that as arrogance, she would have had no problem following Sascha's lead in something that he was better than her at. Nara knew that she probably overestimated her own abilities, but she wasn't arrogant enough (anymore) to think that she was automatically better than her peers. She was just better at combat than Sascha. Sascha would probably even agree if she brought it up.

Master Drallig indicated that the drill was to begin again, this time the Initiates quickly stepped forward, hoping to surround the two of them. Sascha immediately started backing off, playing for space to manoeuver in, but sheheld an arm out, indicating that he should hold his ground. Sascha cast a surprised glance in her direction, but she knew that while being surrounded seemed bad, there were opportunities to be found as well. Sascha followed her lead took up a position slightly off of her left shoulder, protecting her flank.

The Initiates surrounded them, and she and Sascha moved into a back-to-back position, each literally protecting the others back. Even though they were surrounded, Nara still wasn't worried in the slightest. The Initiates had no leader, and each of them was looking at the other to see who would make the first move. The obvious play was to attack together, but for that to happen they had to trust in each other, and they clearly did not.

Analyzing their formation, Nara noticed that the Devarionian, Miriam, held herself a little too far from the Initiates she was beside. She clearly didn't have any faith in her fellow compatriots to protect her flanks. That was something she could take advantage of. The only question left was who to attack. Miriam? While attacking the teammate that seemed to be the most ill at ease in working with the others seemed to make sense, they were probably better off keeping her around as long as possible. Why eliminate the weak link so early?

Nara instead chose to attack the Elomin, Lassiter, who was off to Miriam's left. Her quick, probing attack was easily parried, but the response from Miriam, to whom she had left her flank open to, was too late in arriving. To cover her advance, Sascha swatted away a pair of lightsaber blades, while she tried to take advantage of the lack of teamwork between Initiates. Seconds later she was rewarded, as Lassiter attempted a risky ploy, attempting to leap over her with a Force-imbued jump. It would have been a good plan, if Miriam had understood what the Elomin wanted to do and kept her busy, but the two were out of sync and she easily used the Force to yank downward on the leaping Elomin, putting him in range of her lightsaber, which smacked into his flank with a satisfying sizzle. Miriam realized far too late that there had been an opening and had merely whiffed it.

Nara then had to turn her attention to the increasing desperation she sensed from Sascha. With her attention focused on Miriam and Lassiter, Sascha had been fending off Kerk and Quane. Kerk was using his height and general ranginess well, keeping out of Sascha's range while the bulldog-esque Quane was pressuring Sascha relentlessly with powerful attacks from his compact frame. Sascha was holding on, but just barely.

Grimly, she realized that she had perhaps overestimated the current ability of her friend. Usually the very least you could count on from Sascha was a solid, tenacious, if not always technically adept defence. Today he displayed none of that ability, despite his preference for the most defensive form of lightsaber combat, Soresu.

Nara's arrival evened up the odds for a brief second before Miriam also followed her into the developing fracas. Simply put, in a fray that was as complicated as this one, there was no time for thinking, you could only really let the years of training take over. Sascha and Nara put themselves in the middle storm of blades and each moved to defend the other, attacking where they spotted openings and moved where they saw space. If the Initiates had been a little more coordinated, would have focused their efforts on one of them, but instead they attacked haphazardly, always allowing the Padawans to protect themselves from being overwhelmed, despite their numerical disadvantage.

Even though she and Sascha were currently working with an 'advantage,' they were not making much headway against the Initiates. But something had to give. Finally, Miriam stepped back from the impromptu circle of blades and she and Sascha instinctively went on the attack, separating the two Initiates so they could each fight an Initiate other one-on-one for a brief moment. Nara tangled with the Trusk, Quane, who while he was not fast, she was finding that he was surprisingly strong. Deciding that she didn't want to combat strength with strength, she instead decided to use her quickness, kicking out at her opponent's knee. Gamely, the Trunsk absorbed the blow with a grunt and continued to use his strength to keep her at bay.

Behind her, the Devaronian had stepped back to prepare to send a Force push towards one of the Padawans, and she chose her target well. The Devaronian's Force push surprised Sascha, and instead of backpedalling away from his opponent like he had been, he was shoved towards Kerk, and the two collided awkwardly. In the collision, she saw Sascha take an inadvertent elbow to the head from the taller human, and the Initiate's blue blade spark against Sascha's chest, leaving behind a painful burn. Sascha dropped like a stone, and Nara wasn't sure if he was going to be getting up any time soon.

She had no time to think about what that would mean, she could only control what was going on in front of her, so she quickly took advantage of Kerk still being entangled with her friend and slashed her blue blade across his ankle, eliminating him for fourty-five seconds. Kerk shot the Devaronian a baleful look, "Clumsy oaf!" spat Kerk, clearly unhappy at the Devaronian's intervention.

Nara re-calibrated herself, she still had two opponents facing her, Lassiter would be allowed to re-enter soon, much before Sascha would get to re-enter. She knew she'd have to fend off a two-on-one and then a brief three-on-one. As much faith as she had in herself and even knowing that the Initiates were not the greatest of combatants, she wasn't quite sure she could overcome those odds.

As the Initiates regrouped, she spared a quick glance towards Sascha, expecting to see him in a heap, but instead he had pulled himself to a sitting position, looking more determined than he had at any point during the entire exercise. She felt him send her reassurance through the Force, supplying her with the confidence to overcome this challenge. "Go get them," said Sascha.

Grinning like the predator she was, she once again entered the fray. Quickly stepping forward, she entangled her blades with Miriam before breaking the bind, and stepping back to land another kick on Quane. She felt the Force move freely within her, guiding her every action; unconsciously she slipped into her preferred form of lightsaber combat, form four, Ataru.

Only true masters of form four were supposed to use it to fight more than one opponent, it was a form of combat that relied on chaotic attacking, and scant, if any, defensive manoeuvres. This was something that was obviously dangerous when confronting numerous enemies. In the archives, she had once watched a Holocron with a video of Master Yoda using Ataru to hold off three Jedi Masters at once, it had been the most singularly impressive thing she had ever seen. Not that she could ever hope to match his level of power in the Force, she nonetheless used it as inspiration.

Nara became a whirling blade, propelling herself in a blur of leaps and lunges. She cartwheeled towards Miriam, landing a glancing kick before spinning toward Quane and forcing him into an untidy parry. Using that momentum from the parry she boosted herself into the air and twirled back towards Miriam, surprising the Devaronian and almost catching her across the waist with an unorthodox thrust.

The two Initiates stepped back, taken aback by her aggressiveness. Neither had been taught any advanced lightsaber techniques yet, just form one, Shii-cho the form that all Initiates learned. While the two Initiates glanced at each other, Nara darted between them, continuing to attack relentlessly. She felt that her pressure was beginning to dishearten the Initiates. If she could just keep the pressure on them, she might be able to win this thing all on her own...

But, she knew that she could not keep this up forever, and she felt little spikes of fatigue slow her down as she continued her acrobatic assault. So instead of gambling that she might have been able to defeat both Mariam and Quane in the next few seconds, she abandoned her offensive posture and decided that she would back off and play defensively.

And just in time too, she felt the confidence of the Initiates lift just as she thought that she might have an opening to defeat Quane, so instead of following through on her attack, she landed a weak kick to his arm, causing the Trusk to drop his lightsaber. Knowing that the Elomin, Lassiter was coming from behind her, she gathered the Force around her confidently and lept high into the air and away from the fray, giving her time and space to prepare herself for enduring a brief three-versus-one.

The Initiates gathered themselves together and began to advance on her and she felt he confidence start to evaporate. Three versus one was not good odds, and she was no Master Yoda...

Hang on Nara, I'll be there to help you soon.

Hearing Sascha's voice so clearly in her head almost stunned her into missing an easy parry. That sort of easy communication only came with Jedi that had strong connections between each other. She didn't think she had one with Sascha…but maybe she did? Maybe it was a fluke? Or maybe she was hallucinating. There wasn't time to figure any of that out right now though.

Despite the mental plea from her friend, she was being pushed to the brink. The three Initiates were at last coordinating between themselves, and they were varying their attacks well. It was only through dropping deeply into the Force that she was able to keep their blades away from her. The Force was still humming around her with power, but her body was beginning to protest and resist her. She was basically using all of her power in the Force up just to survive, and she suspected that soon she'd have nothing left.

Three blades twirled around her, threatening her with their ultraviolet light, she abandoned her form four acrobatics and tried to adopt Sascha's form three style, but she had not practiced it very much and it showed in her form. She kept backing up and backing up, her defences becoming more and more compromised by the second, she knew that one moment soon she'd have lost.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Miriam step back from the fray and preparation for unleashing another Force push. At that moment she considered surrendering, she had no way to interrupt Miriam and no ability to counter her. The Force push, if delivered with any power would send her into the nearby wall and that would either end things right there or make her easy prey for Lassiter and Quane. But before she could compose the words to vocalize her surrender, she felt reassurance come from Sascha. Putting faith in her friend over common sense, she did not surrender and prepared herself to be flung into the wall.

Suddenly, Miriam's Force push was disrupted by one coming from Sascha. Mariam was sent spinning and Sascha was quickly on hand to follow up, dispatching the fallen Devaronian with a quick slice across the wrist, which caused Miriam to yell loudly in pain. Quane and Lassiter shared a quick look and decided to retreat and wait for Kerk to re-join the fight.

Sascha ambled over to her and put a hand on her shoulder, "You okay, Nara?"

"Just a little winded," she said, putting her hands on her knees for a quick moment. That thirty seconds when Sascha had been out had drained her power significantly.

"Let's finish this, little Togruta."

Too tired to object to the use of the nickname that she so hated, she merely nodded and said, "I'm with you, though I'm not at my best."

"No, I screwed up earlier, I'll make up for it." He looked down, then up at her again, and twirled his index finger in a short circular motion, "Dance with me, Padawan Nalto."

Despite her fatigue, Nara laughed, this was the Sascha Whitestar that she had befriended. This was the lighthearted but earnest boy that she had come to respect. Where he had been for the last month was a question she would ask him later. "Let's go dancing, Padawan Whitestar."

Right now, it was a two on three, with Miriam being the only Initiate currently on the sidelines, but for the first time Nara felt like she and Sascha had the advantage. Together, she and Sascha didn't merely fight. They danced.

They attacked together, advancing on the thre Initiates in an all-out flurry. Her connection with Sascha in this last part of the sparring session felt so strong, that she simply knew where to attack, where to place her blade, and how to move around the Initiates. The two Padawans moved fluidly as one, taking advantage of any opening that was available to them. One by one, the Initiates fell to them, nursing a variety of textbook marks of contact, a mark of cho mai caught Quane on the left wrist, Nara surprised Lassiter with a mark of cho sun on his right arm. The last Initiate was the arrogant human, Kerk, and both Padwans overwhelmed him, each landing a burn, Nara's blue blade to his wrist, and Sascha's to his knee, causing Kerk to grunt in surprise and pain.

As the final strike landed, Master Drallig called a halt to the proceedings. Nara felt a wave of exhaustion come over her, she had pushed herself very hard in the drill and it was now catching up with her. She leaned against Sascha, who didn't seem to be in much better shape himself, as he also leaned on her for support. With the two leaning into each other, something had to give, and both Padawans simply slipped to the ground sitting back to back, too exhausted to even offer each other congratulations for a job well done.

At least she had a good view of things as the four Initiates trudged over to the Jedi Master looking dejected. They had been so confident earlier, and why not? They had been given a four on two advantage, but had been simply outclassed by the older Jedi. Master Drallig's eyes raked over the Initiates, and none of them tried to hold his gaze. "I think you all know that you should have done better in this drill," he said in his calm but stern tone of voice.

"Yes, Master," responded the Initiates miserably.

Master Drallig lectured the Initiates, finding them to be a more receptive audience now that they had been defeated. "Jedi work together, in studying, in diplomacy and in combat. The Jedi Order is a family and all are equal within its ranks, some may have different strengths than others but you should not think yourself superior to any of your peers. Understood?"

"Yes, Master" the Initiates parroted again.

"I want you to review this session, and tomorrow I want you to give me a list of five personal mistakes you made along with five things your opponents did well." Cin let a small amount of frustration show, "Dismissed."

The four chastised Initiates scurried out of the room quickly, obviously eager to be away from the site of their failure. Master Drallig turned his attention to the seated Padawans, "Are you both okay?"

Nara's energy was returning to her quickly enough, but she still continued to lean against Sascha, "I'm okay," she said.

"I'm okay too, though that collision with Kerk really hurt, that kid's head must be made of durasteel," said Sascha, who was rubbing his head gently.

"He fights like he has a head full of durasteel too," Cin muttered. "Such talent, but such arrogance as well. I always find this drill is helpful in showing young Jedi that they are not as good as they think they are, though this group was perhaps more arrogant than most." The Jedi Master clasped his hands behind his back, "Padawan Nalto, how does it feel to be on the other side of the drill?"

She grinned, "It feels much better to be on the winning side, Master Drallig."

"You've learned a lot since those days," the Jedi Master observed.

Nara felt herself nodding, "I have, and I know there is much more that I have to learn."

"A Jedi must always be learning," agreed Cin. "Maybe I could learn from your example, Padawans. You two displayed good teamwork together, I had no idea that you two had such a bond."

"Neither did we, Master Drallig," replied Sascha.

The tall Jedi Master smiled, "I'll leave you to your recovery, thank you for your spirited participation today," Cin bowed slightly and left the two Padawans alone, who were still leaning on each other for support.

"I'd get up, but I'm feeling kind of comfortable here," she jested lightly. Truth be told she was comfortable leaning against Sascha's back, she even let her posterior lekku flap onto his shoulder. On Shili that would have been seen as being quite forward, but she was pretty sure Sascha didn't understand Togruta social customs. And if he did…well there wasn't anything wrong with a little harmless flirting. Maybe that was even a way to get Sascha out of his shell….

"I've got to get going," said Sascha. He got back to his feet, "Thanks for the invite, Nara, but I need to rest now…I haven't pushed myself that hard in weeks."

Ignoring the ache in her legs, she rose to follow him, "Sascha, I don't know what has been up with you, but do you mind telling me why you are so out of shape? And why you've been treating everyone like a total jerk until today?"

"Not now Nara," he said, moving towards the door.

"I just want to talk!"

"Buzz off Nara, I said not now."

"Tomorrow then?" she asked hopefully. Sascha didn't reply, he just walked out of the room leaving her alone.

What in the Force had gotten into her friend?

Whatever it was, she was going to find out.

And she was certainly not going to wait until tommorow.