I Want To Be Your Knight: Chapter Five

I stumbled to a stop, leaning over and propping my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath. I glanced up to stare at my Master, wishing for a moment that I could fire blaster bolts from my eyes, and found him jogging in place. His lips twisted into a smirk, directed solely at me. Which made me really wish I had my blaster at hand. Or even a large stone. Kriff, who am I kidding, I would've settled for a spoon.

Anyways, I glared at him as I wondered how he could have so much energy while being over thirty years older than me, I had no clue. All I knew was that it annoyed me to no end.

Which of course pleased him to no end.

"Hurry up, Skywalker," he teased me. "Or are you going to let this old man out run you?"

I nodded my head, and between breaths gasped out, "I think I'm going to let you out run me."

He barked a laugh, and jogged closer to me. Then he grabbed a hold of my shirt, and started pulling. Muttering dire curses about him, I stumbled into a trot, as we continued through the course that he had picked out for this particular run. These things were annoying. No two runs were ever on the same course, and each was at least a few hundred meters longer than the previous path.

As we stomped through the dark underbelly of Coruscant, he glanced back at me, that smirk still on his face, and said, "Be happy, Ben. Luke's Master made him carry him on his back during these types of runs, in a swamp, all the while whispering oddball phrases such as, 'Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.'"

I shook my head, ignoring Kyp's laughter and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, just hoping to still be alive at the end of the run.

Finally, my torture was ended as we emerged from a set of stairs and into one of the sub-basement entrances of the Jedi Temple. Kyp ambled to a stop, and I collapsed against the wall, struggling to catch my breath. I glanced at him as he punched a code into the keypad by the door and noticed that he wasn't even breathing hard.

The door opened and Kyp walked through it. I pushed myself away from the wall and followed. In silence, we rode the turbolift up to the more populated areas of the Temple, and my mind wandered back over the past few weeks.

While my training had not been overly tough, I had been at a constant state of movement almost that entire time. Everything from these horridly long runs, to hour long sparing sessions, to hour long hand-to-hand combat training. Then I had the coursework: astrophysics, hyperspatial navigation, starfighter maintenance, survival training, field medicine, economics, Holonet research, and the course that started all of this hassle, Ethics. Top all that off with two hours of meditation and another hour for eating, and well you can see just how busy I had been.

Oddly, I couldn't complain that much. Sure my body hurt from the abuse it was taking, but I didn't feel any of the pressure or misery during training that I had felt the first time I had been through this stuff.

What confused me the most though, is that I wasn't placed in with the other padawans my own age; rather I was stuck in with the eldest group of trainees. These students, all about three years older than me, were right at the borderline between padawan and Knight. When I had asked Kyp about that, he said something about the stuff I had learned in GAG and just being outside of the Temple counted a lot towards how ready I was for being a Knight, but when I really pressed him, he had told me that I was on an accelerated plan, designed to get me Knighted and out of his hair.

Truthfully, I wasn't sure which story to believe.

As I told Kyp during that discussion, what this meant from a practical point of view was that I didn't know that many of my classmates. In fact there were only two that I really remembered from my first time through the Temple: Jysella Horn and Seha Dorvald.

These two girls were nearly opposites in every way. Jysella was very much her mother, having the same luxurious black hair and ice-blue eyes. In fact it hurt to look at Jys at times, because of how much she really did resemble her mother. She was outspoken and boisterous. A smile was ready to come to her lips, except when her gaze slipped onto me. Her skin seemed to have a perpetual tan, as if she spent most of her time laying out on a beach somewhere, which I knew for a fact that she didn't do, mainly because her training load was the same as mine, and I didn't have time to lay out on the beach.

Seha on the other hand was red-haired, green-eyed and very pale. She was quiet and serious, and usually the closest she came to a smile was this small, wry grin. One that reminded me of a whisperkit which had just eaten a treat it wasn't really supposed to have. One that reminded me just a bit of mom.

Of course, Jys had made sure that everyone was aware of who I was. As evidenced by the fact that they tended to ignore me, unless they were playing a prank on me. One usually instigated by Jysella. Since the Council had passed an edict that no one was allowed to intentionally cause me physical harm, Jys being Jys determined that that gave her implicit permission to cause me as much emotional, spiritual and psychological damage as she could inflict. She also realized that as long as she didn't intend to hurt me, if I did get a little damaged in her pranks, then it would be all right.

My proof for this involved one of the tricks that she played on me. It consisted of a floating lift platform, with a bucket of water set atop it. The contraption hovered right outside my quarters, a sensor directed towards my door. When I walked out and under it, the platform flipped over, and dumped its contents on my head.

It's an old prank, long used by many, many people. Usually, the bucket is a lightweight plastic one, and snapped down somehow to the platform, so it won't fall off and hit the person the trick's being played on. Somehow, Jys forgot to connect her bucket to the platform. So when it flipped, the bucket, plus the water, slammed down onto my head. Oh yeah, the bucket in this case was made out of cast iron, and just happened to be a type of crock pot, which contained an internal heating element, that she had accidentally left on.

To the highest setting.

The good part of that prank, is it allowed me to keep her from getting in trouble with the Council. When they had dragged in everyone involved, I spoke up on Jys' behalf, telling the Council that I was certain that she hadn't intended to hurt me, that the prank lost its amusement if the person who was getting water dumped on them actually got hurt. I stood there, and looked at each of the Masters in turn, spending an extra moment looking at her older brother, and then with a straight face, I said that it was an accident. That I didn't believe that Jysella meant to give me a concussion, and second degree burns on my face, neck and shoulders.

I'm not certain if anyone in the room believed me, but the Council didn't punish her, and ultimately that's what I really cared about.

Seha didn't play pranks on me. I don't know if she remembered me at all but I have to say she did, as I would occasionally catch her staring at me. For the most part during these early weeks of training she would leave me alone. She was never implicated in any of the pranks pulled against me. She was never part of the group who constantly teased me while the Masters weren't paying attention. Of course, she never spoke to me either. In fact, if I hadn't caught her staring at me a few times, I would had guessed she didn't know I existed.

The doors to the lift opened with a swoosh, and as we stepped off, I shoved my ruminations to a back corner of my mind. I didn't need to be focused on the past few weeks. While walking these halls, my focus needed to be on the here and now. Trying my best to find Jys' next prank before I happened to spring it.

As we reached my quarters, Kyp held out a datachit towards me. Hesitatingly, I took it from him and glanced down at it. Then I looked back up at him. "What's this?"

"Survival training is having a field trip next week. Because, I know that you have a rather... strained relationship with the other students, since this is going to be a group assignment, I guess I'm giving you a head's up about who's in whose groups."

I nodded my hand as I closed my fist around the data chit. Sometimes it's a good thing to have a Master who's also the instructor. I smiled as I said, "Thanks, Kyp."

He nodded his head, and wandered away. I stepped into my room, and my danger sense flared. As I started to duck, something warm and gooey struck my face. I pulled the metal plate away from me, and licked my lips, tasting the cream. At least it's a sweet one this time, I thought as I walked to the refresher to wash off my face.

That done, I returned to the door and reprogrammed my passcode, knowing that ultimately it was a futile gesture. Then I sat down at my terminal and put the datachit into the reader. The file opened, and I read through the list. For whatever reason, Kyp had given me the assignments for the entire class; so I knew that everyone was assigned into groups of three and then each group was assigned to a different undeveloped world. As I reached my name my heart sank, and I could feel heartburn flare in my chest. I instantly regretted the fact that I had ever told Kyp anything and promised myself that I would never do so again.

Because there, in glowing letters, right above my name were the names Jysella Horn and Seha Dorvald, and we got the beautiful assignment of Myrkr.