Chapter Eleven
When Ahsoka was finally cleared out of the medical bay, she didn't even need to pay particular attention to her wound. There was a sort of ugly blotch on her skin, however, and while she wasn't vain, she also wasn't outright 'not-conscious'. So she swapped her tank top and short trousers with a robe. Somehow, she felt that simple gesture earned her an incredible amount of Shade points -and why that thought crossed her head didn't even remark as strange. Still, she felt great. Even if she had lost herself to emotions, made an ugly figure, and utterly pissed off her Master, she felt great. She realized soon enough, as she stepped into the mess hall, that the source of her feeling great was actually her Master's bubbling, happy mood as he sipped from a very large mug the murky liquid known as 'Coffee'.
A couple of clones were amiably eating nearby, and her master seemed to be talking with a few of average, every-day things. She reached for the line to grab a platter of food, and by the time she had her 'meal' on her plastic tray -MRE, way better than Jedi rations, that was for sure- she sat down in front of her Master, who had meanwhile finished his coffee.
He raised an eyebrow. "You'll have meat for breakfast?"
"Carnivore, master," Ahsoka remarked offhandedly, tapping her teeth as she dug in the meal. "There is not much of a choice around here."
Her master made a dreadful sigh, and emptied his mug. "I found an empty hangar we'll be using for training, Padawan. I think it's high time I taught you something practical."
Ahsoka's right fingers flexed with incredible precision as she literally devoured the meal in front of her, until she primly stood up with a bright grin. "I'm ready to learn!"
The clones nearby burst out in bouts of laughter as her Master simply raised an eyebrow and gestured her closer with his hand. Ahsoka frowned, and grumbled before preparing herself for a Force flick. What she received was instead a napkin wiping away at the tip of her nose and her chin. If she could dig a hole far and deep in which to hide forever, maybe surrounded by black holes, she would. Unfortunately, she couldn't, and thus had to suffer the humiliation of having her master wipe her face with a napkin.
"I-I..." she stammered out.
"Let's head to the hangar," Master Shade sighed, shook his head, and stood up with the empty mug in hand. They stepped near the counter just long enough to drop the tray and the mug, and then they proceeded across the ship.
Ahsoka glanced at her master's arms, hidden by his robe's long sleeves. His lightsaber wasn't visible at his belt, and for all purposes, it looked as if he was unarmed.
"Master?" she was about to ask for permission to speak, but her master simply beat her to it.
"Mastery of form Zero means making people forget you even have a lightsaber," her Master retorted with an amused tone. "But if you wish to know, I clip my lightsaber to the inside of my left sleeve."
Ahsoka nodded. That was kind of cool.
The hangar was wide and, true to her master's words, empty for the most part. There was simply a set of crates standing at the center of the room, and her Master took a deep breath as he extended a hand, quicker than Ahsoka could see, and disarmed her of her lightsaber.
"This is confiscated until further notice, Padawan," her master said quite calmly, much to Ahsoka's surprise.
"Hey!" Ahsoka blurted out, but a simple gaze from Master Shade quieted her down long enough for him to walk all the way to the center of the pillar and then, with a well timed jump, reach the apex of the pillar. Once there, he crossed his legs and assumed a meditative position.
"Your objective, padawan," her master said quite bluntly, "Is to reach the top of the pillar and throw me off."
Ahsoka jumped, and suddenly she was slammed back down against the hangar's pavement with enough force to make her head spin slightly. "Just remember," her master added as she bleakly managed to stand back up on her feet, "I will do my best to stop you."
"Did you have to do the same with Master Yoda, master?" Ahsoka asked, scratching the side of her head as she looked up at the pillar.
"Yes," her master replied. "And to this day, I have never managed to throw him off," he continued. "It is not a futile exercise, but it will require-"
Ahsoka spun and delivered a kick to the lower crate, which didn't budge. The end result was that Ahsoka's eyes widened and watered up, before she clutched her foot and began to jump slightly around -falling on the ground as her foot tripped on her long robes. She fell, face first, against the metal floor.
Clutching her nose, Ahsoka rubbed her forehead and stood back up. "The crates are not empty," her Master remarked. "I did not have a single pillar of stone to use, but these crates are filled to the brim."
Ahsoka took a deep breath. All right, her lightsaber was out, and so was brute force. This was training, and her Master wanted to teach her something. She was going to throw him off before the end of the day, or the start of the sleep cycle, whichever came first on the spaceship.
She concentrated, and then lifted a hand up. The feeling of the Force suddenly grew thick, to the point where she couldn't even breathe. The mere act had felt like the fly trying to annoy a tidal wave. The tidal wave didn't care about the fly. It didn't care about anything but the beach, and the sand, and the sky. The tidal wave was simply...on another level.
"Can't use the lightsaber, can't use the force, can't use strength," Ahsoka mumbled, and then looked at the crates. She brought both hands firmly against the crate, and began to feel. Her Master was simply standing up there, concentrating and lost in meditation, as if he had decided not to bother with her any longer.
"Master," Ahsoka quipped, "Could you give me a lift up?"
"No," her Master replied. "I tried that too," he added as an afterthought, a chuckle leaving his lips. "Didn't work with Master Yoda either."
Ahsoka grumbled and began to walk back and forth in front of the 'pillar' of crates. She took a few steps back, and then a few more just to be on the safe side, and then she rushed straight ahead without using the Force, trying instead to wall-climb. She didn't go far, admittedly. The robes made her slip the moment she dug a foot on the first crate, and she stumbled face first against the crates with a loud 'thunk', before landing on the ground on her back.
"You know," her Master quipped, "I at least didn't hurt myself while trying this exercise. Do you need a helmet?"
Her master was positively chipper, and it had to be the coffee. Well, she was going to keep at it until she succeeded! She was-
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yeah.
She had forgotten about that. Thankfully, it returned to the forefront of her mind before she could attempt once more. Here she was, trying to succeed rather than succeeding. She wasn't going to fail. She had only one chance. She wasn't going to screw it up. She narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath. She took another. She ripped her robes at the level of her sleeves, and just above her knees, before tying the extra fabric into a rope.
Forming a lasso, she tightened the grip on one extremity and prepared herself to throw. If she wasn't capable of climbing up, then whatever was up had to come down to her level.
Ahsoka started to make the rope spin, and narrowed her eyes. Quickly, she threw the rope through the air with a flick of the wrist, letting the Force help her. The impromptu lasso snapped to a meaningless halt in mid-air, but Ahsoka didn't stop. She was also running forward, and as her feet struck the crate, she finally managed a few steps up before her master's power started to re-exert itself. As it did, Ahsoka spun, and having kept a hold of the lasso, threw it high again. The lasso snapped to a close around her master's shoulders, and then she grinned as she let go of her resistance.
There was a sharp tug, a small cry of victory, and then a gasp and a groan. Ahsoka hit the floor with her back, wincing once more. Her Master remained where he was, atop the pillar. The impromptu rope had snapped, and the cut extremities were charcoal black, as if cut by something hot, like a lightsaber.
"Astonishingly, I tried that too. I had to improvise with the curtains, and I was six, but I must admit there's a certain fondness in seeing the same thought pattern," her master drawled. "Master Yoda wasn't amused. He had me grab hammer and nails and fix the damage I had caused to the training hall from my 'trying to skirt the rules' thing. He did admit that in hundred of years, I had been the only padawan dumb enough to try to self-strangle himself with a rope. I wasn't as good of a shot as you were," her Master fondly reminisced, and in frustration, Ahsoka slammed a hand against the metal floor. "And he said I had merely made it harder for myself to complete the exercise." Her Master nodded sagely at his own words. Great. He was being sarcastic.
"How does that help me, exactly?" Ahsoka asked.
"Sometimes, the most dumb and obvious solutions aren't necessarily the ones that you need to apply." Her master suddenly quieted down. "Can't give it away by speaking however, so I shall take a page out of Master Yoda. I shall proceed to sagely chuckle every now and then and hum a song of sorts. I never quite got down what song in particular he hummed as he meditated...did it go something like..."
And her master began to hum.
It was the sort of hum Ahsoka expected to find in a seedy bar somewhere in the outskirts of Tatooine, and she highly doubted Master Yoda hummed that -if the great master of the Jedi Order hummed at all.
Ahsoka turned away from the pillar and stomped on the metallic floor, gazing at her reflection. She began to walk back and forth. If she closed the door and left him inside the hangar for a few days-right, no, that was a stupid plan, and was bound to fail with ease. The purpose was to reach the top of the pillar, and in order to do so, she had to climb, or jump, atop...it...because...
She looked at the nearby wall, smooth and without crevices. She then looked back at the pillar. Course, jumping on the pillar was easy. Using the force to meditate and climb a perfectly flat surface to then jump from it was kind-of harder, but...but it could pretty much work.
And the pillar of crates was also neatly placed below the lights of the hangar. The light switch was near the door. Theoretically-no, not 'theoretically'.
Do or do not.
This time, Ahsoka was going to succeed.
Her hand shot out and flicked the light switch off, and just as she did, she rushed towards the hangar's wall. Using the Force, she jumped atop it and then jumped once more, rushing in mid-air to grab at the hangar's light, using it as a swinging pendulum to jump and land where she thought the pillar of crates was.
She missed.
The moment she realized she was falling a bit longer than normal in the darkness, she screamed.
The lights turned on just as she nearly fell face first against the hard metal surface of the hangar's floor. Her master sighed from atop the crate of pillars. His right hand was extended, clutching her by her robes to prevent her a painful lesson on why artificial gravity hurts just the same as normal gravity.
"Shade points acquired: half. One day you'll get full marks, padawan. Lesson number one: a solution doesn't need to be apparent, and you passed it. Lesson number two: sometimes, your environment can help you solve problems. Lesson number three: trust your instincts, but remember that knowledge is more important," as her master said that, he floated up in the air, and together with him, so too did the first two crates. "Had you actually jumped in order to reach me...well, I would have moved the crates to the side."
"W-W-What!?" Ahsoka shot out as she found herself being levitated up to reach Master Shade's eye-level. He gazed at her with his usual smirk, but he sighed the next and let her go right next to him on the pillar.
"Exercise's over for the moment," he said, "We'll do it a few more times to teach you how to multitask effectively, but that can come after you understand the true purpose of this exercise."
Ahsoka sat and let her legs dangle from the side of the pillar. Her master seemed pretty much at ease up there, and she could kind-of see the why. It felt peaceful, being somewhere private where the troubles back down were not an issue to be dealt with immediately. She wondered if flying was like that-
"This exercise," her master spoke, and interrupted her thoughts, "Was about realizing limitations and capabilities."
"You did this when you were six?" Ahsoka found herself asking.
"I was a different case," her Master replied. "And I had different problems to deal with, Padawan. One day, maybe, I'll tell you. Till then, make no comparisons. Comparisons are a bane to our own worth. So what if a fish swims faster than you? Does that mean you are not capable of swimming?"
Ahsoka bit her lower lip, and nodded at the words, but not at the meaning. "If I train, will I be able to swim as fast as a f-I mean, will I become stronger?"
"It depends, padawan, it always depends," her Master replied with a wistful sigh. "Now cross your legs, close your eyes and meditate. Worrying about the future isn't going to make you better at living your present, and rummaging about your past will only weight you down."
A hand ended up patting her head, and Ahsoka quickly scampered to meditate, her back against that of her master -if only to stop the head-patting, because seriously, her montrals weren't there just for show. They were used for echo-location, and having a hand patting them? It was like going woozy every now and then and her instincts screamed of 'AVALANCHE' or 'EARTHQUAKE' every now and then. The only reason she wasn't afraid of it was because with the gesture came also the intention behind the patting, and so it was bizarre, for her, to give a definition of it.
The patting was both scary and yet oddly soothing.
As she entered her meditation, her Master began to hum, and whisper, and murmur in a tongue that she couldn't understand. A few words later, and it all muddled together as she was no longer 'there', but deeper into a meditation trance, gazing at the vastness of space within a warm blanket. She needed a different outfit, that much was sure.
Maybe something with leather, and straps, and-
An image floated by, and she found herself squealing because it was just what she wanted to-
Season? What did it mean 'later season costume'?
She frowned, but the image quickly faded away, out of her reach. She let it go -but kept a mental note about the uniform, because it really did look great. Her eyes regained focus slowly, but when they did, she had a purple, fat cat on her knees, purring contently.
Welcome back, Alice.
The Cheshire cat grinned fiercely, and his long tail swished back and forth. It purred against her hand, and rolled on its back.
Is there something you want to know, Alice? I so enjoy our talks.
"What are you?" Ahsoka asked in a low whisper.
I'm the Cheshire Cat, Alice. I'm here to baffle you, make you question your beliefs, and help you along the way.
"And why should I trust you?" Ahsoka murmured. "You belong to my master's Dark Side, don't you?"
The Cheshire cat simply grinned.
You may have noticed we're all mad here. I'm not all here myself.
As he spoke, the cat appeared to have indeed lost everything but its head, which still grinned fiercely on Ahsoka's lap. The padawan took a deep breath, and ignored it. She wasn't curious enough to check if below the neck there was a patch of fur or...everything else.
"Why are you here, then?" Ahsoka asked. "Why is my Master keeping you around?"
Because he's insane, of course! Silly Alice, only the insane equate pain with success, thus, he is most definitely insane! Deliciously insane! The Mad Hatter has nothing on him, I guarantee it!
The Cheshire cat didn't answer her, but simply rolled its head away from her lap and into the lava. As his head began to float away, it smiled one last time, a smile that filled with the bright orange color of the burning molten rock.
The uninformed must improve their deficit...
The cat head sunk.
...Or die.
Ahsoka opened her eyes to the pillar made of crates, away from the hot, scorching grounds of Musta-no, of a random place. The name slipped off her mind like a dream. Everything was all right. She felt refreshed from the meditation, as if what she had seen before had been but a slightly hazy afterthought.
The hangar door opened with a sordid click, and Master Kenobi's voice reached through. "We are about to reach Coruscant. Master Yoda would like to speak with you in private, Shade."
Her Master nodded, and quietly slid down from the pillar of crates with ease.
"Keep meditating, Padawan," he said before waving her goodbye.
Ahsoka closed her eyes and huffed, even as Master Kenobi lingered in the room a moment more, before walking out -had he done that to avoid walking by the side of her master? Seriously?
Sheesh.
What had he done of so scary that even a Jedi Master was fidgety near him when he was in a bad mood?
