The doors to the LAAT opened up to reveal ONI-Wan stood there arms folded and a curious expression plastered on his face.
"Ah Ezra, the Jedi council is waiting for you; I hope you're ready" Obi-Wan said.
"Let's not keep them waiting then" Ezra replied "Lead the way master"
Obi-Wan nodded and led Ezra to the usual meeting room. During the walk he noticed the new weapon clipped to Ezra's belt.
"Ezra how have you come to own a Saberstaff?"
Ezra glanced to Obi-Wan and subconsciously put his hand on the weapon "That's what the meeting is about master. I'll explain it all when we arrive"
They made it to the room and Obi-Wan opened the door, allowing Ezra to walk in first. As Ezra made his way and stood in the centre of the room, Obi-Wan took his seat.
"Padawan Bridger" Shaak Ti started "Master Kenobi tells us you have something important to talk to us about"
"Yes Masters, during my mission to find the Recon unit which went missing, we were attacked by a flesh raider with this Saberstaff" Ezra said as he unclipped and held to Saberstaff up "I'll be honest; the thing was quite stupid as I shot and killed it. But that is not why I'm here; when I touched the weapon, my vision went completely white as I was momentarily sucked into the force."
"Tell us what happened, you will" Yoda said calmly, obviously this has happened before in his life time, or he's just heard about it.
"While I was there, I was visited by Master Satele Shan"
Ezra was immediately bombarded by waves of surprise in the force.
"What did she say?" asked Obi-Wan.
"She told me that I was to bring peace to the galaxy and that I am now connected to the Saberstaff"
"More to this, there his hmm" Yoda stated.
"Yes Master Yoda, I was also told that I was a descendant of her and that this Saberstaff was actually hers and now it is connected to me as I am connected to her through it"
"In all my years... I have never heard anything like it" Depa said, bewildered.
"Speak to Master Satile, I wish to" Yoda said calmly.
"Master, is that even possible?" asked Plo Koon, looking to Yoda as if he was crazy, but still with respect.
"Yes, possible it is. Ezra to meditation you must go. Then appear to us, she should"
Ezra face lit up with surprise; was this even possible, Satele said nothing about this. Ezra slowly sat down cross egged on the floor and slipped into a meditive trance.
After a minute a blue form appeared next to Ezra.
"You called me Ezra?"
Ezra looked up and smiled "Yes master, the council wished to speak to you"
Satele looked up and around at the Jedi council, taking each of the members one at a time.
"I am Master Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order; and you are?"
"I am Master Satele Shan, previous Grandmaster of the Jedi Order" Satele replied. Yoda smiled and looked directly at Ezra who had now come out of meditation and had stood up next to Satele.
"The Saberstaff that Ezra now carries was yours?" asked Obi-Wan.
"Yes it was. The force for now has given me enough information that Ezra is to be trained in Form VI: Niman"
"Why Form VI? He has already progressed quite far into Makashi" Obi-Wan asked.
"His huge force abilities rival master Yoda's, so he must learn to use them in conjunction with his lightsabre combat. His also rivals mine"
"Rivals yours? If I'm not mistaken Master Shan, you had abilities that were lost to the Jedi Order many years ago" stated Shaak Ti.
Satele pondered on this, but quickly obtained an answer. "I will teach him them"
The Jedi's eyes widened, but none more so that Ezra's "What?"
She smiled down at Ezra, who was still quite shocked "While you meditate, we can temporarily take your 'soul' and you can learn them from me"
"I'm sorry, but sis that even possible?" questioned Shaak Ti.
"Yes quite, but it does come with some serious issues" Satele replied.
"What kind of issues?"
"While he is training with me, you cannot under any circumstances try and wake him from it; if you do, his soul will be lost in the force and as you know him, he will die"
Ezra's eye's widened even further than he thought was possible.
"One with the force, he would become?"
"Yes" she replied bluntly at which the Grandmaster leant back in his seat.
"Train him you will, disturb him we will not" stated Yoda "Obi-Wan Train him in form VI, you will."
"Yes master Yoda" Obi-Wan replied
"Master Shan, anything, is there?" asked Yoda, who looked back at the glowing force essence.
"No, Master Yoda. I will be going for now" Satele then turned to Ezra and smiled at him "We will start our training when you next go into meditation"
"Yes master" Ezra replied. Satele's force essence then died down, disappearing the same way she had appeared. Ezra then turned back to the council and fiddled with his helmet once again.
"Something else for us, you have?" Yoda asked.
"Yes master, I would like to visit Mandalore with Sabine and Dulce"
"Why would you want to do that Ezra?" asked Obi-Wan, with his usual questioning look.
"For educational purposes, and to find out a bit more about my family; my father was Mandalorian as you know and there might be relatives that I do not know about that still live"
Yoda raised his eyebrow
"That and Sabine would like to visit her family; she hasn't seen them since she ran away from the Empire" Ezra added.
"Meditate on this, I will" Yoda replied "For now, Train with Obi-Wan you will"
Ezra nodded and followed Obi-Wan out the council chambers. "So you're a descendant of Satile Shan" Obi-Wan mused.
"It seems that way, doesn't it" Ezra replied "I'm still trying to wrap my head around it"
"So how are you feeling about the sudden change in training?"
"What is Form VI about? Niman was it?"
Obi-Wan let out a sigh "Niman is a mixture of all of the 5 previous forms, most easily used by people with Saberstaff's." Obi-Wan said but added "It is a very difficult form to master but if you do master it, you can become almost unstoppable and you would be using your sabre skills in conjunction perfectly with your force abilities"
They walked along the corridor while Ezra silently thought over all of the sudden info and changes; it quickly gave him a head ache. "This is going to be fun" Ezra said while letting out a breath.
"Come on now, nothing in life comes to you handed on a silver platter, why should this?"
"Fine" Ezra said sarcastically "Shall we get on with the training?"
Obi-Wan quickly realised they had already made it to the training room and sighed. "Yes, it might be an idea"
Ezra stepped in to the training room and went over to one the benches and put his helmet and lightsabre down.
"Shall we see what you can do with the Saberstaff first"
Ezra nodded to his master before pulling the Saberstaff off his belt with the force, adjusted to a training blade power and activated each end one at a time then he levelled it horizontally at Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan replied by taking his lightsabre and igniting it; holding it the Soresu form.
From across the room, Ezra leapt, force aided, toward Obi-Wan. Stopping just short, Ezra swung his lightsabre in a short arc, which Obi-Wan blocked immediately so Ezra used the other side and swung it back round hoping to catch Obi-Wan off guard.
Only it didn't, Obi-Wan blocked it with ease and let out a jab toward Ezra who deflected it easily.
After a few more swings and blocks, Ezra caught Obi-Wan in a blade lock, where neither looked like they were going to give up. Instinctively Ezra force pushed his master across the room and he smacked quite heavily into the Durasteel wall. Obi-Wan hit the wall with a crack and dropped to the floor, slumping.
"Master..." Ezra called out but after he got no reply he deactivated his Saberstaff and ran over. He was half way across the room Obi-Wan looked up and threw his now activated sabre toward Ezra.
Yelping, Ezra ignited one of the ends and deflected the blade back to Obi-Wan's hand.
"That's dirty cheating!" Ezra called out as he reactivated the other end.
"But you fell for it" Obi-Wan called out as he re-engaged Ezra who immediately went on the offensive once again. "I have to admit, you are a natural at this" he called out as they were trading strikes.
Slowly, Obi-Wan started to make Ezra back up and give ground. Once they were back to where they started, Ezra had to fight against his own reaction to flip over Obi-Wan, as he remembered what happened last time. Obi-Wan taking advantage of Ezra's hesitation, tried to slice through the handle of Ezra's blade, but as it connected, nothing happened.
Obi-Wan's eyes widened in horror as Ezra used this to disarm Obi-Wan, force him on to his back and level one of his blades at Obi-Wans chest.
"What just happened?" Ezra asked. Obi-Wan looked just a confused as he was. Ezra disengaged the blade, allowing it to fall back into the hilt, before holding hi hand out. Obi-Wan accepted the hand and pulled himself up.
"Can I take a look at the Saberstaff?"
"Yeah sure; why?"
"Because you're sabre should of cut out as if I was going through its hilt" Obi-Wan replied "But nothing happened"
Obi-Wan looked over the weapon with eager eyes "I don't know what this is made out of; I've never seen it before"
"Whatever it is, as least it stops the painfully obvious disadvantage of the Saberstaff" replied Ezra. Obi-Wan picked up his blade from the floor and looked at Ezra.
"I can understand why Satele wanted you to use a duel-bladed lightsabre, you're a natural" Obi-wan praised "and you seem to be picking up the use of the force with the blade quite easily as well, I just wish you hadn't thrown me that hard"
"Thanks master" Ezra replied happily "and the force whispered to me to do it, sorry about the strength, I didn't think it was that hard"
"Don't worry about it. Do you want to go again? I'll start giving you pointers this time" Obi-Wan asked.
"Yes please master!"
o0o
"How's Ezra?"
Sabine spun round to find Dulce stood behind her, with a worried expression.
"He said he was fine, but he looked quite shaken" Sabine replied "He said he had a vision or something; he was being very vague"
"I hope he's ok, he seemed to want to get the other Jedi as soon as possible" Said Dulce "You yourself also seem quite shaken from it, are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine" Sabine falsely smiled "Just a bit worried"
"I think 'a bit' is a small understatement" Dulce mused, but looked at Sabine with caring eyes but she changed the subject "I wonder when we'll be able to go back to Mandalore, sometimes I miss it"
"You're not the only one vod. I wonder if Ezra mentioned it to the council"
"You can only guess. Did you give the report to lieutenant Makan?" Asked Dulce.
"Yeah, did it as soon as we got back" replied Sabine "How are the other boys doing?"
"Bantering as usual, but Hotshot seems only slightly withdrawn, maybe he's missing his old squad"
"No, that won't be it, he asked to move to this squad once he heard about Ezra taking charge" stated Sabine.
Dulce shrugged before looking at her weapon "It needs a clean, you coming?"
"Yeah, why not" Sabine followed Dulce out of the hanger bay back toward Sabine quarters, as they were closer.
"So you and Ezra, you still just vod or are you thing now?" Dulce asked straight up. Sabine looked over to Dulce with a glare.
"Were kind of in the middle at the moment, I think" replied Sabine "We want to be together, but were just trying to figure it out at the moment"
Dulce looked back at Sabine and shook her head "Really, is that you're excuse?"
"What? We're taking our time Dulce. Something I know you don't like to do" Sabine smirked.
"Hey! That's completely out of context, can't believe you'd try and pull that"
Sabine shrugged and after a quick moment, both girl burst out laughing, surprising some of the clones around them. After a few moments they calmed down. Come on, we better get back to your before we get any more weird looks" Dulce barely made out.
Sabine nodded and carried on down the hall making it to her room in short time.
"What did you do with the rest of our squad?" Dulce asked, remembering there are more than just them.
"I gave them the rest of the day off to do whatever the liked, within reason" replied Sabine as she opened the door to her quarters.
"You're asking the clones to be 'within reason'?"
"Yeah, they know how to take orders, and they know what happens when they don't follow them" she said as she removed her helmet.
Dulce shrugged as she took her Westar-35 and started to disassemble it for cleaning.
Sabine did the same with her Westar-35's but looked over at Dulce. "Something's troubling you, I can tell"
Dulce sighed "I am worried about my family; I left them at the same time as you and haven't seen them since. I really want to go home to see them"
"I feel the same way a lot of the time; maybe we could go when Ezra goes"
"IF Ezra goes" Dulce snapped not looking up from her cleaning.
"Ezra will go, even if he has to steal a ship and leave a message" Sabine smirked, momentarily looking toward Dulce.
"He'd do that? I thought he was supposed to be a picture perfect Jedi"
"Ezra a picture perfect Jedi? Oh please he's too much Mando for that"
"Yeah, I can see that now" Dulce replied "I wonder what he's doing at the moment"
"Probably training knowing the Jedi; I heard him and Luke were the ones to bring peace to the galaxy, but that's only rumours"
"Really? Ezra being someone to bring peace to the galaxy? A Loth cat has a higher chance of doing that"
Sabine laughed quietly before going back to her blasters, which did actually need a good clean. Silence was brought on by the teens; only the scrubbing of cloth against metal was heard.
Finally Dulce broke the silence "Have you noticed Hotshot seems quite protective of Ezra?"
"Yeah I have; I think it might be because he saw Ezra being shot and him randomly collapsing" Sabine replied.
"He's being more protective than you" Dulce joked
Sabine shot out a glare that Dulce swore she could feel "Could you stop with the me and Ezra jokes"
"But it's so fun!" complained Dulce
"If you ever get a boyfriend, I will lay into you like there's no tomorrow" Sabine replied.
"Anyway back to the Hotshot thing; do you think we should talk to him about it? Ezra's had enough training since the incident"
"Yeah I suppose I could; I'll talk to him later"
o0o
Obi-Wan levelled his blade at Ezra's chest, who was breathing heavily.
"I think I win this one" said Obi-Wan
"Like you did for the previous one" replied Ezra as Obi-Wan helped him to his feet "How do I get passed your defence?"
"Some people class me as The master of Soresu; during the clone wars, I was able to block up to 20 strikes a second."
Ezra stood in awe looking up to his master "So how would I get passed that?"
"By becoming the master of Niman and using your brain to find other ways to get past someone's defence. While you are a natural at Niman, you are just starting out; it will take time and years of practice"
Ezra went over to the bench and grabbed his bottle of water and started chugging it down and Obi-Wan looked like he didn't break a sweat.
"Master, why do you look like you didn't break a sweat?!" he asked slightly annoyed at Obi-Wan's un-phased look.
"I've fine-tuned my body after years of duelling to last for extended periods of time. Our fight for me was relatively short, my young apprentice" Obi-Wan replied. Ezra's shoulders dropped down, realising the huge ability gap between them. "You'll get better with time, remember I have 40 years' experience on you"
"I suppose master"
"Destiny or not, you have to work for everything"
"I'll try master" Ezra replied.
"Do or Do not. There is no try" Obi-Wan replied smugly.
"I hate that saying, Kanan used to say it to me and I just cannot understand it"
Obi-Wan smiled and put his hand on Ezra's shoulder while Ezra looked up to him. "Nobody does apart from the Grandmaster himself. I think I'm starting to understand it, but I wouldn't be able to explain it"
Ezra let out a short laugh "I think I'm going to go get a shower, I'm a bit sweaty"
"Don't forget to see Leia, I don't think you've seen her all day" Obi-Wan called out just as the door opened for Ezra's exit.
Ezra playfully shook his head as he stepped out to the corridor and felt the cold air hit him. "Haar'chak Ibac's ciryc!"
Ezra quickly made his way back to his room and jumped straight in. As he walked in he noticed Leia sat on the sofa staring at a Datapad.
"Hey Leia" Ezra called out. Startled Leia looked up.
"Oh hey Ezra, how's your day been? You look quite sweaty"
"Hectic, first we had the ceremony, then I had a small mission on the planet's surface and then I had a council meeting and then training"
"Wow, full day then. I've just been here all day lying around. Where were you last night? When Dulce came to the door you didn't come back." asked Leia.
"Ah well there's no point in lying to you; I stayed the night across the hall at Sabine's"
Leia's mood darkened "Why did you stay there?"
"I may of fallen asleep" Ezra replied, dancing around the truth hoping she wouldn't ask further.
"Right... well you need a shower, so go get in." Leia said, and Ezra thought she could see her scowl "We'll talk once you've done that; you're too sweaty"
Ezra rolled his eyes as he walked to his room to strip off his armour. In less than two minutes he back out walking across the room in his base layer with a towel drooped around his arm.
Leia stared at Ezra noting how the base layer made his muscles stand out, but averted her gaze when Ezra looked at her, but Ezra noticed her stare and smirked. Once Ezra had locked the door to the fresher Leia went back to her reading. 2 minutes later her comm was going off.
"Leia Organa here"
"Hey Princess its dad" Bail replied
"Hey Dad! How are you?" Leia asked, her mood brightening considerably.
"I'm good thank you, how are you?"
"I'm good daddy"
"I'm coming to pick you up tomorrow; I've finally finished on coruscant"
"That's good; I'll start packing then"
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Haar'chak Ibac's ciryc! – Damn it that's cold
Hopefully you enjoyed this chapter. I know it's out early but I had time on my hands to kill so I thought I'd write up another chapter.