Sorry for the delay in updating this story. :( I hope I can translate more often in the near future.
Ashla was excited. Soon she would undertake her first big journey into the vast galaxy – together with other younglings of the same age. Master Plo Koon had told her, that she and the others would travel to Mygeeto, to find crystals in a certain cave for their new training lightsabers. Soon she would have her own lightsaber. That the Adegan crystals weren't as strong as their blue and green ones from the legendary planet Ilum, did not dim her joy. This way she and the other minor or adolescent combatants wouldn't injure each other during training.
"I don't get, why you put this on you – with all the small children. It is enough when one adult Jedi will bring the crystals to us", Luminara Unduli wondered, when Shaak Ti talked with her about that travel of the younglings in advance.
"But I like to go and see with the children. Especially because I don't have a Padawan now. Hence I can tend to the younger generation at least in this regard. A journey isn't bad for anyone. On Mygeeto there are no criminals. Everything is calm and well-arranged. What should ever happen?", Shaak Ti turned the concern down.
"I've heard that the Bear Clan has the most hot-tempered and boisterous younglings. It will be exhausting. I'm so glad, that Barriss Offee always was that calm and prudent – even in such an age."
Shaak Ti sighed. Her friend didn't let out any opportunity to mention, how serene, what an impeccable Jedi her Padawan was. And foremost, Barriss Offee was still alive – another proof for the superiority of the Mirialan as a master. But Shaak Ti was already happy that Ashla, as far as she had observed it from a distance, felt good cared for and was a promising aspirant for a Padawan later. Of course not for her, as she sadly became aware of again.
„But such a journey never ever happened in the history of the Temple", Unduli brought another argument.
"Then this will change by now. And you won't doubt Master Yoda's decision", Shaak Ti replied with a confident smile.
Of course her friend wouldn't. Shaak Ti knew that. And she also knew, that Master Yoda knew very well, why Shaak Ti did approach him with this bidding for a travel with the Younglings. Until now she did abide ironclad the rule that direct contact to her daughter was forbidden for her. And exactly this her adherence Master Yoda has rewarded now. Therefore she would never betray his trust and she would have just as much contact with her daughter as with the other younglings. Lest there would develop no undue bond with Ashla and hence no jealousy in the other children. Thad was understood. Yoda had been touched, as she thanked him with a warm, freed smile. What Yoda didn't know was the other aspect of her travel wish. Because neither it was allowed a Jedi to nurture a bond with her daughter, nor was it condoned, that such a Jedi would weave a connection with the family of the child's father.
"Whow! What an astral Ship!", J.K. Burtola, a human youngling of eight years exclaimed, when the two girls and five boys entered the Sorosuub luxury shuttle of the Jedi Temple, which was reserved for especially prestigious missions.
"We fly to the rich world of Mygeeto", Shaak Ti explained proudly. "There we want to represent the Temple in a worthy way."
The spaceport of Jygat was laid out clearly for a few glimpses. The crystals, the main export good of the planet Mygeeto, didn't occupy much space in the freighters, who did leave this domain of the Banking Clan. And also the traffic to other planets was rather medium-ranged. Most ships came or departed to the sister-world of Mygeeto, the home planet of the Muuns, Muunilinst. For this special traffic, there were much leaner and easier control proceedings, while travelers from other planets were tightly checked and screened. But this didn't apply for the Prosperity, which did bring Shaak Ti and the younglings to Mygeeto.
The spaceport authority of Jygat had ushered the Sorosuub luxury shuttle to a more distant place reserved for persons of high rank and celebrities. And on this landing place no lesser than the Administrator of Mygeeto himself waited for the Jedi personally, who wanted to visit the planet entrusted to him.
"Kars Slipher, Administrator of Mygeeto", the like most of his species tall Muun introduced himself to the Jedi Master.
"Master Jedi Shaak Ti", introduced the Togruta herself.
"Actually Togruta aren't known for leaving their home world – just like the Muuns", Slipher said.
"And still they leave from time to time and sometime they even come together", Shaak Ti replied with a sibylline smile.
"Have a pleasant day, Administrator Slipher", the younglings did greet their host.
"A pleasant day for you too, young Jedi", he returned the greeting. "Surely you are hungry and thirsty from the long flight. Allow, that we serve the peacekeeper of the galaxy a lunch in my home", he announced.
"Very well then", Shaak Ti agreed, who had agreed on this procedure before.
The house turned out to be a representative Villa, which had the long, fluted columns, which stretched over several floors – so typical for Muunilinst architecture. The building was situated at Hego Damask II place, like Shaak Ti noticed.
"Why Hego Damask II?", she wondered.
"It was the father of the Damask Clan, who bore the name Hego first. His son Caar, who was my predecessor as administrator of Mygeeto, named his third son Hego again. To distinguish both Hegos, we add a II to the more magnificent of them", the administrator explained.
It was an ample stairway, the Muun, the Jedi Master and the younglings went up into the dining room of the villa. At last everyone took place on the lavishly loaded table and the lunch started.
"Then Hego Damask had siblings?", Shaak Ti kept the thread of their talk during arrival, after she had chewed a dumpling in a slow bliss.
"They have died all fifty years ago. Hego Damask had survived them all and after his death and without any offspring, the whole Damask Clan is extinct now", the Muun answered thoughtfully.
„They all died in such a short time – just for good?", Shaak Ti wondered, after realizing that the dumplings she had eaten in Hego Damask's apartment had been much tastier.
"Caar Damask had a very rare hereditary gene defect, which only occurs to Muuns. It starts to infect the tertiary heart and spreads over all three hearts, and after one year death is certain to come. And hence it befell Caar Damask."
„I have three hearts too!", Ashla butted into the conversation of the two.
Shaak Ti turned to her anxiously. She saw the sorrow in Ashla's black eyes. "But you are from Shili. That's not concerning you", she replied in lack of something better.
"But the doctors told me, at the compulsory screening, before one is joining the Temple. I have three hearts: one primary heart, a secondary heart and a tertiary heart", little Ashla explained loud and clear, whereas the other younglings, all of them just with one heart, glared at her astounding.
"You never told us", Jempa, a Whiphid said, gazing at Ashla with his blue eyes.
"Nobody was asking me", Ashla retorted snippily.
"Mr. Administrator, may I ask you something?", Ashla turned to their host.
A genuine smile shone up on Kars Slipher's thin lips. "What is it, you like to know, little one?"
"How old was Caar Damask, when he died?"
"He was just forty-five years old, when the fate struck him", the administrator replied.
"And you can do nothing against this hereditary illness?", Shaak Ti asked, really concerned.
"The family hired a genetic, who promised to thwart the outbreak of the illness in the other members of the family. But it was of no use. They all died, with exception of Hego Damask, who had another mother than the other three siblings and thus he was save from this illness.
Shaak Ti breathed out in relief by this answer of the administrator. "Enough of the talk now. Let's eat", she ended the issue, giving her daughter a cautious smile.
After the dinner a protocol droid led the Jedi into a guest house, where they stowed their baggage.
"Is it evening already", Mari Amithest, a human Padawan with black hair and brown eyes asked.
„The planet rotation on Mygeeto is twelve hours only", Shaak Ti explained. "Thus we can decide, if we take a longer nap or just get up next night. But it will get very cold then."
The majority of the Padawans wanted to go to sleep to get up after six hours.
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It was nearly forty degree Celsius minus outside, like a thermometer showed on the outer wall of the guest house. The Jedi liked much better the twenty degree minus next afternoon. They prepped themselves after breakfast, to get to the cave, where the Adegan crystals were supposed to be.
A black-furred Lurmen, which had apparently the size of Master Yoda, accompanied them, as soon as they had left the guest house again.
„I'm Pita Ha. Administrator Slipher did charge me to lead you to the crystal caves", the Lurmen introduced himself.
"I thought, here are Muuns only", Mari Amithest wondered.
Pita Ha showed her a bitter smile. "Before the Muuns came, this planet was ours. But the most of my species live on the planet Maridun now. We leftovers are just good enough to be tourist guides, because the Muuns deem themselves to be above such low considered work." A smile lit up his face, while they marched on through Mygeeto's ice and snow landscape. "At least our healing abilities they don't contempt."
After they had passed many mountains and valleys, crowned with high, peaky ice formations, the colorful crowd arrived at the entrance of the cave. The administrator had offered them a comfy glider for this trip but Shaak Ti had considered this wandering by foot through the winter world of Mygeeto as an important and welcome exam for the younglings. When they entered the inner of the cave, Shaak Ti and Pita Ha incinerated glowing sticks to light up the cave. Nothing flashed back.
"You won't find the crystals that easy", Pita Ha explained. "You must knock open certain stone formations, in which the crystals grow unseen – like this here.
The little being with the long, black and white striped tail took an oval formed stone with a rough surface in his mall hands. Then with a honed movement, he smashed it heavily against the cave wall. The big stone split and gave free an orange crystal – perhaps ten centimeter high, which had grown inside the now visible stone hole until now. It has the form of a six-sided prism.
„Ah, how beautiful!", the Nikto-youngling Chian exclaimed and his green eyes twinkled towards the crystal.
„We'll make a draw for it", Shaak Ti decided and folded seven sheets of paper into rolls, each of them containing a symbol. The Togruta distributed the rolls among the younglings and they opened them at once eagerly.
"I have it!", Ashla shrieked joyful.
With a bright smile, Shaak Ti went to her and presented her the orange crystal.
Ashla stayed with her mother, whereas the other younglings swarmed out to look for their crystal likewise.
"Don't throw the crystals too heavy against the wall, lest the crystal inside will break", Pita Ha admonished the younglings, before their crowd scattered in the vast cave thoroughly.
„I always wanted to talk with you alone", Ashla confessed to her mother.
"What did you want to tell me, my child", Shaak Ti asked, shrugging inwardly by the words my child. How strange that felt!
"Is my father a Muun too?", Ashla asked eagerly.
"I don't recall another species when I think of your three hearts and look at your pale skin", she replied.
"I have almost the same tattoos like you. Is that by incident?", Ashla pushed farther. "Ahsoka has different ones."
"Ahsoka comes from another corner of the planet. But you belong to the Worsa tribe like I do. There this pattern is very common", Shaak Ti explained to her daughter.
Ashla's black eyes became wide. "You know my mom? She looks such and such?"
"Oh, you still remember her. No, I don't know her", Shaak Ti lied to her daughter about her grandmother and her own mother.
„What a pity. On the other side in the Temple it is much better as on Shili."
„Why that?", Shaak Ti wondered, blaming herself silently for this counter-question. Of course in the Jedi Temple it was much better as everywhere in the galaxy!
Ashla's eyes were filled with grief. "Because the other children at Shili did harass me, because I'm so white. Even when I got my red tattoos. They used to call me the Specter of Utapau." Her voice became agitated. "Despite the fact that my skin doesn't have that vertical wrinkles and my teeth aren't that terrible like those of the Pau'ans either."
Shaak Ti gave her a warm, short laugh. "Unless you show your corner-teeth, but that they can't blame you of."
„Look – my crystal!", Chian burst into the togetherness of them without knowing about.
Proudly the little Nikto held high a yellow crystal, having the form of an icosahedron.
"Oh, let me count!", Ashla said. She counted twenty even sided triangles in a very even shape.
"It's fine you found an icosahedron, Chian. But this one you can't insert into a lightsaber. This one is much too round and too thick. You need a prism or something longer and leaner. Like that of Ashla", the Jedi Master explained.
Disappointed Chian went away. "But the crystal is very beautiful and this shape is very rare", she said encouragingly after him. "I would keep it in any case."
Then she turned again towards her daughter.
"Ahsoka doesn't want to play with me", Ashla came out in a sudden sadness.
"But you have children, who play with you", Shaak Ti replied, as she had observed so far.
"But those are not like Ahsoka. Ahsoka is a noble girl!", Ashla explained.
"A noble girl?", Shaak Ti wondered.
"A girl everyone likes and is super beautiful."
"But you are looking beautiful too. And Mari Amithest …"
"That is not the same", Ashla snapped.
"You know, Ashla, I've seen, how mean Ahsoka was at you. It was not your fault that she didn't want to play with you. And some day she will perceive it and perhaps be nicer to you. But she herself is very young and sometimes careless. For her, other girls are noble girls, to whom she wants to belong – you understand?"
Ashla thought about it for some moments.
"But Tallisibeth wanted to play with her too. They have each other. But who I do have?"
Shaak Ti's voice became softer. "You have us all."
"But that's not the same", Ashla reiterated.
"Nothing is the same like something else", Shaak Ti replied stoically.
"Look, I've found a crystal!", Mari Amithest stormed towards them and her brown eyes glowed. She had found a duck-yellow crystal – in the shape of a long prism.
"Yes, that one is good!", Shaak Ti praised her. And Mari Amithest and Ashla beamed in contest, examining the new founding.
After approximately two more hours every youngling had found his or her crystal and they went back into the guesthouse at Jygat city.
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On the next day, the day of their departure, Administrator Slipher invited them for a final breakfast in his villa.
"I'm really moved by your hospitality, Administrator", Shaak Ti told her two-fold host.
"I enjoy that", he explained frankly. "Even my predecessor Caar Damask had received Jedi and ate with them here in this house, when they came to Mygeeto, to look on our planet for Adegan crystals for the training lightsabers."
„Oh, then the whole Damask family did like the Jedi", Shaak Ti supposed.
"The whole family?", the Muun wondered.
"When I guarded Hego Damask that time in his apartment, he explained to me, that he was pondering about the creation of a galactic army to assist the Jedi during their missions. Now I understand why", Shaak Ti revealed with a blissful smile.
The administrator seemed to muse about that. "Then you were close to Hego Damask?"
"I had the task to guard him for that night, because he was afraid of assaults. Just this once. In that night he told me about that army, desired by him. Fortunately nothing happened during this night. But next night he died, as I saw two days later in the Holonet. That's why I still remember."
A longer silence followed, during with all ate the food. Then the administrator turned to Ashla. "You've told me yesterday before that you have three hearts, my child. Your face color and the color of your Lekkus do resemble the skin color of many Muuns. And there is only one species in this galaxy, which has three hearts – ours. Do you know your father?"
"My name is Ashla. And any relation to our family is forbidden for us", the young girl recited what she had learnt in the Jedi Temple. "I don't know my father. My mom is very old and stayed on Shili. The Jedi Temple is my home now", Ashla explained in proud resolve.
Shaak Ti looked very happily at her daughter, then her lilac eyes screened the room. When this was really the house in which the Damask family had resided, then there could have remained some items, which stem from Hego Damask himself. But she deemed it inconvenient to appear that curious like the administrator towards her daughter. She wondered, if the administrator really was just curious and caring or if there was something more behind it. Whereas with Caar and Hego Damask, she was sure of both to have been staunch friends of the Jedi.
"How the death of Hego Damask was received here?", Shaak Ti wanted to know from Kars Slipher.
"Well, Hego Damask is here like at Muunilinst kind of a national hero. Long time he was considered lost. Over twenty years nobody heard of him. Some people thought, he retired. But many didn't believe that. It is not in the blood of Muuns, to do nothing while they are still in possession of their strength and health. But when he showed up suddenly on Palpatine's side at Coruscant, shortly before the latter was elected chancellor, many people were astonished. His death came unexpected."
„I found too, that his death came unexpected", Shaak Ti agreed. „Because I saw him the day before and he was in good health then."
"It is good to know, that other beings too see it like we do. An Hego Damask wasn't the only one of us who died under very mysterious circumstances. My own brother Vesto Slipher was tasked to investigate about some irregularities in gambling. One suspected manipulations in show fighting in the prison of Cog Hive Seven in the Outer Rim."
"The IBC is investigating in jails?" Shaak Ti was surprised but heavy that the conversation turned to something else before her curiosity about Hego Damask could reveal itself too much.
"That was a really hot issue. A Zabrak was brought there, who won all the fighting-rounds and killed his opponents. Countless people lost much money in the bets on those fighting-rounds. But those one, who set their credits on the Zabrak, always won. So you know the omicron-spindle, Master Jedi?"
"That is a special wave-pattern, which shows up in the electro-encephalogram in certain brain activity, when some areas of the brain are working together as it occurs in force-users only. Don't tell me, that with this Zabrak it was like this?"
"Not only that." Slipher lowered his voice. „That Zabrak was the same, who died one month later on Naboo by the hands of a Jedi. My brother showed me holo-pictures from the prison. There's no doubt – it's the very same Zabrak."
"Darth Maul!", Shaak Ti murmured. "But why a Sith should render fighting-rounds, that some people win in gambling? Or did the Trade Federation let some straw men set high sums on him to finance their droid army on Naboo?", she said ironically.
"We'll never know, where Maul is dead now. And so is my brother."
"Your brother? What happened?", Shaak Ti asked compassionately.
"He commed me to tell me that he's stuck in Cog Hive Seven to deal with the Zabrak personally. Next day Vesto Slipher was dead. Beheaded by a binary cargo lifter. His death was tabled by the IBC. Hego Damask personally had sent Vesto Slipher to Cog Hive Seven that time. After his death he explained to me, that my brother just hadn't been cautious enough and thus his death was on his own guilt. I did not speak up, even though I doubted his allegations. What should my in fighting totally untrained brother have done against a brutal, ruthless Sith like Darth Maul?"
"Can't somebody investigate now, what happened really to your brother?", Shaak Ti suggested. "There must be some recording. I know a capable droid, which could …"
"That's impossible", the Muun sighed melancholically. "This orbital station, which was Cog Hive Seven, did destroy itself immediately after Maul's departure."
"And then Darth Maul and Hego Damask did die the same night", Shaak Ti came back to her initial theme. "Somebody wants to erase traces. The whole thing is bigger and grislier, than it appears when you consider them separately."
"Mysterious indeed", the administrator mumbled stoically.
Shaak Ti looked at the administrator. She pondered about, if it was such a good idea to tell him about his one-time being together with Hego Damask. This Muun could hold some grudge against the former boss of Damask Holdings because of, what happened to his brother in the jail. Kars Slipher's brown eyes looked at her in a mixture of fatigue and concern. The Togruta saw a kind of sluggishness in them. What a contradiction to Hego Damask, whose green eyes always spread such a mysterious fire. And the administrator hadn't the energetic tautness of the body, the whole being of Hego Damask. Very quickly Shaak Ti suppressed those thoughts as soon as they came out. Finally the breakfast was over.
After approximately two hours the Prosperity departed from Mygeeto heading for Coruscant. Shaak Ti saw the white sphere of the crystal planet getting smaller and smaller. On their way back into the temple the younglings chatted boisterously with each other and mused about the shape and the length of their lightsabers to be built with their newly found crystals.
From afar Shaak Ti watched her daughter, how she assembled together her new lightsaber under Yoda's tutelage. When master Yoda ended the lesson, all younglings left the place immediately.
And then Master Yoda approached her.
"Enjoyed the travel – you had?", he asked the Togruta.
"Thank you, Master Yoda. It couldn't have been more successful", she replied with a smile.
"You – I thank", Yoda said. "Never ever the younglings fought so well with their new training lightsabers. It is a difference, if a master gathers all the crystals on Mygeeto, distributing them among younglings or if they do find a crystal on their own. Next year – the same journey to Mygeeto with new younglings – undertake we will."
With those words he left a happy Shaak Ti.
With the exemption of Kars Slipher, the new administrator of Mygeeto, and the Lurmen Pita Ha all characters of this chapter are canon or sub-canon.
Who wants to know more about the events at Cog Hive Seven, should read „Darth Maul: Lockdown" by Joe Schreiber (2014).