Chapter 52

The year is 383 BBY according to my understanding. I've set up a dirty little machine shop on the lower levels of Coruscant. I don't often go to the Jedi temple anymore.

I have mastered the first and third forms to the extent Yoda wants me to teach. However, when I showed my training and training room full of droids equipped with blasters and moving targets he changed his mind. I started with the lowest level to give Yoda an idea of what it was capable of. The droids take their positions and fire their weapons. I easily dodge and redirect the blaster shots at my targets, slowly the speed of each blaster is increased and new droids take positions to add to the attack.

Yoda seems to be impressed with each footstep I take and each shot I redirect but that's only the beginning. As the speed of the attack rises, so does my speed, i reinforce myself with the force and hop and skip through the air dodging each shot with impossible reactions. When I can't escape I redirect shots, when I can't move my lightsaber fast enough to block then I pull the loose plates from the floor as a makeshift shield. Yoda then realises that my training is too brutal for younglings when a blaster shot hits me in the arm but the droids continue firing and I don't stop.

Yoda is very impressed. The simple movements of each of my strikes and parries conserve energy. The blasters my droids are using are on full automatic, each shot is followed by a new one to the extent that it looks like a ribbon of hot laser fire.

Yodas' feelings of impressiveness are soon replaced by shock when the droids take two steps closing the training circle. I'm just a blur and my lightsaber is moving so fast that the light left behind looks like a wall.

The droids start to miss their shots. I'm pushing and pulling their weapons from the droid grip, not enough to disarm but enough for bolts to go over my head. The droids are used to this and they change their grip and reboot their targeting systems. I blend my force abilities, lightsaber techniques and body to create a master of combat.

Wherever it comes to pistol blasters or lightsabers I combine them into my form and become a menace to my enemy. A droid tosses in a stun grenade only for it to pause in mid-air a couple of feet away from my blurring image and get steadily pulled apart by my power. My knowledge of droids, mechanics and technology makes a simple explosive easy as pie for me to rip apart without detonating.

Yoda's mouth opens but is quickly shut again when the droids take another step forward but their shots still don't connect. Some of the shots are stopped in mid-air by shots that are coming from me. I'm shooting blaster shots out of the air with my own blaster pistol. It's not even hard to do because for some reason blaster shots are slow, and slug shots are too fast and small for me to do this reliably.

Again, a blaster shot hits me but in the leg this time. I stumble but slide across the floor with a neat tug of force pull to carry myself away from blaster shots. The blaster shots follow me causing brunt marks to spread across the floor. Yoda's eyes widened, he thought the blaster shots were nothing but light energy without any of the destructive power behind it but with burn marks on the floor, he now knows the truth.

I flip through the air on my one good leg parrying many shots with my lightsaber and pistol blaster. I'm using the protective floating metal pieces from the floor as stepping stones to keep my movements as unpredictable as possible. The droids take another step forward but are frozen, they shake for a couple of seconds until they stop attacking and step back to their stations. The demonstration is over. The steam from the many shots of energy weapon clears and I'm left in the middle of the room hobbling, sweat dripping from my face like a waterfall and inching my way closer to a seat.

Yoda enters as I sit. I'm hitting the spots where I've been shot to the surprise of Yoda.

"Damage yourself you will, healing is needed"

I shake my head and a blaster rifle the same as the ones the droids were using floats over. I hold it in my hands and fire a shot, blue stunning rings float out and slapps against the wall.

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"The stunning setting causes the electric current in biochemical life forms to destablise in a fluction causing the target to lose consciousness" I then flip it to the shots that hit me and fire a shot. The blaster shot looks like any other but I explain "This is a modified blaster shot that works the same as a stunning shot but instead of destabilizing the biochemical electrical field it overcharges it causing severe pain in the nerves in a 30cm around the shot. It does little real damage but you still do not want to be hit by them"

"Painful, it sounds. No purpose it serves" Yoda says with a little frown

"Yoda, you know better than that. Pain is the mind-killer, pain can make us do things that go against our very survival and a person who can't overcome pain might stumble and fall and give up but those who can overcome it have a chance to live" I continue to beat the pain out of my leg and shoulder.

Yoda looks at his clawed hands, he concludes that I'm right but something in him wants to fight back and deny my brutal training but he can't, even the younglings train with the Marksman-H training remote droids that give a sharp sting if it hits.

"Enough talking about training," I say "Tell me about Supreme Chancellors Orlen Mollo's plan for the great hyperspace rush"

"Know more than me properly" mutters Yoda

That was true, i always kept an ear open when things like this happened, there was a chance for super amounts of profits and power to be earned and I didn't want others to become insanely powerful without me knowing.

What I knew was that the Supreme Chancellors wanted to unify the galaxy with undiscovered hyperspace routes. The high Republic was expanding into the outer regions and they wanted safe and profitable trade routes. The Supreme Chancellor had already started ten years ago with pathfinders sent out to claim new hyperspace routes and claim them for the Republic. However, it was costly and took a lot of time, instead of spending money now and claiming the huge benefits later with a united trading route owned by the government they did the silly thing and used the private sector to find the hyperspace trade routes. It was such a stupid idea to share this massive pie with others.

I have been looking for undiscovered hyperspace trading routes since I got my first one, but they were incredibly hard to get. Unlike the government with its short-term thinking, those who discovered or had a trading route knew the wealth and power that they held and wouldn't sell it for anything.

Of course, I understood why the Supreme Chancellor was offering this to the private sector. It was simple, Supreme Chancellors weren't in office forever, they couldn't lean back and wait for the galaxy to be connected and take political advantage over it. They needed a positive outcome as soon as possible so they could leverage it into their next campaign.

"You know, I think it would be in the best interest of the Jedi to find an undiscovered hyperspace route and keep it for them selfs"

Yoda looked away from his claw at me. "Why," he asked without questioning me further, he was used to me saying things that made sense but were uncomfortable to say.

"A backup plan, you never know what's out there ready to destroy you in any numerous unseen ways" Yoda was about to interrupt but I pressed further "Let's play a game, What would you and the Jedi do if a rich, powerful well connected Sith slithered its way into the Republic and worked its way up to Supreme Chancellor. I can only guess the damage they could do to the Jedi"

"Never has that happened before, who is powerful enough to do something like that" asked Yoda

"Who knows but it's always smart to have a secret bunker that no one knows about, especially if you have powerful enemies such as the Sith. You never know I might fall to the dark side"

Yoda's hand squeezed into a fist and brushed against his lightsaber, strangly, despite knowing I had mixed the dark side with the light side he hadn't thought of me as a threat in hundreds of years. I had the money, power, connections and knowledge to cause the Jedi any number of headaches behind the scenes, if I were to go all out I could turn the Jedi temple to ash and wipe out the Jedi completely.

"Wouldn't it be wise to have a secret hyperspace route that the Jedi could retreat to at desperate times? Even if I'm wrong and there will never be a force that wants to attack the Jedi you can still make a shit ton of cash from it. It's a win, win"

I pressed upon it just a little more "That's what I'm doing, I'm going to hire so many pathfinders and claim as many hyperspace routes I can. The profits will be insane and if I need to disappear then all the better.....think about it but not for too long, the private sector will snap up all of the hyperspace routes before you know it. Look after the future of the Jedi by preparing for the worst.

I stood to my feet with a slight limp and felt what Yoda was thinking, his little clawed hands squeezed closed like he wanted to attack. He was working his way into a fight, everything I said was true. The Jedi have had several enemies that have hurt them throughout the years and even though I hadn't done a thing to the Jedi I could destroy them.

"Yoda... you need to leave before you attack me," I said with the cheekiness of a senior "May the force be with you," I said before I limped away breaking eyesight and giving Yoda no further chance to strike me down.