The Age of Padawan

4. Real

~49 BBY~

Jade -

I was eight years old when I stepped into Master Yoda's room that day. Eight and almost a half. Little did I know, I would be working as hard as I could for the next three years.

I swung my lightsaber where my mind took it, right block, left block, left block, right block. Every shock blast the training droid fired at me, didn't touch me. And the best part was, I was blindfolded.

I was very swift in my movements, very agile and careful for the students around me while also being careful about the training droid's attacks. 

Then, I could feel Yoda's presence, more than I could. He was staring at me, I could sense it. I became unfocused for a few seconds and I got hit by a shock blast. A slight stinging feeling went through my body.

I got frustrated and then took a deep breath, I put my lightsaber back up defensively and kept blocking attacks. It was quite easy once you let the Force take over. 

Yoda started to speak, "An announcement, I have." 

We all took off our blindfolds and turned off our lightsabers. It had taken me a while to get use to the feel of my new lightsaber. It was lighter than our training sabers, and it was like I had a better connection with mine, it felt more real.

"If ready to become a padawan, you believe you are, you may enter the apprentice tournament. The sheet for sign up, over there, it is." He finishes and then waits and sees our reactions.

I could tell that every student was bursting with excited, even I was. I thought I was ready to get a master, I was ready to go on missions now. I just knew it.

The class was dismissed and instantly everyone when to go sign up. I was in the youngest class that was able to even enter the tournament so the sign up sheet was full of older initiates. A few initiates in my class decided not to sign up this year but I was not one of those.

Obi-wan signed up as well, so did my roommate, Genesis. 

I immediately started training. The first two rounds took place in the Temple's Sparring Arena, so that's where I went to train. After the first two rounds it takes place in some, less-artifical areas. It tended to get more violent, harder and real after round two because the winner of the tournament always gets to become a padawan. Always.

I was going to make it to the final round.

How the first two rounds work is we each have a training lightsaber and the first person to get three burns or cuts on their opponent wins. The next rounds are completely random. Sometimes people get Master Yoda's permission to surprise attack their opponent sometime in the day. Then some of the rounds are done in a room with some sort of optical.

I went to the Sparring Room and it turns out I was the only one that was there. I went to the control board and started to pick out the settings. This is the first time I had done this since you had to have a real lightsaber to use the room.

There was a thousand different types of droids with three different settings each that you could choose from. I decided to pick the most common battle droid on the easy setting. I chose three of them and then turned towards the middle of the room.

A big machine came down from the center of the ceiling and set down three droids. All separated instead of grouped up in one place.

I instantly think of a plan in my head. They must've been at least 2 feet taller than me but I actually had a brain. Size didn't matter. I brought my lightsaber out and pressed the button, the icy blue colored blade came out and that's when the droids turned on.