‘We were about to reach the infirmary when a high-pitched beeping alert resounded in the corridor. I looked around, searching for the source of this sound.’

‘In the meantime, the ga-... I mean, Tano’s master released a loud sigh after he checked his wrist communicator. So that was the source of the beeping. He stood aside and looked at me, already annoyed by the incoming call.’

“Uhm, what was your name again?”

‘He asked, somewhat embarrassed for not even asking my name all this time.’

“My name is Nizzal, Nizzal Grey, and what is yours?” — ‘I guess I was the same in that regard…’

‘I sensed genuine surprise from him, I see. He was used to everyone knowing his name. I was right, that he is considered some kind of big shot here. No surprise with that crushing force presence.’

“Anakin Skywalker.” — ‘Stated, watching my reaction thoughtfully.’

‘Didn’t ring a bell. He looked at my unmoved expression with even more surprise, well he covered it up reasonably fast as he continued.’

“Sadly, I can’t escort you the whole way. The council is waiting for my arrival to give my report. On the bright side, we have almost reached it already. You go down this corridor and turn left. The infirmary is in the third room on the right side. There is a medical cross plastered over the door. You couldn’t miss it even if you tried. Tell Soka that master says hi.”

‘With that, he bolted away, running towards the council room. I looked after him as he finally answered the call. A familiar voice could be heard dripping with sarcasm.’

“Hi there, my former padawan. It feels good that you finally deemed to answer my call. Was I bothering you, perchance I would call back later, but the council would become a bit dejected, I am afraid.”

“Argh, get off my back, Obi-Wan. I got into a mess with the kids here.”

“Oh yes, I could imagine half the temple was speaking about your dueling escapades. I can only hope that you reached a new height of enlightenment from beating up thirteen-year-old girls in your heroic deeds. Because you will need it to explain this situation to the council.”

“It can’t be that bad...” — ‘The young man stated tentatively.’

“Maybe you should tell that to Master Windu when you finally arrive. He is waiting through the holo call for about ten minutes now.”

“Great! He will give me another rant for disrespecting the elders...” — ‘Anakin whined while heading down the corridor.’

“Maybe you should follow his advice for once and there wouldn’t be a need for repe-...”

‘Their voices were cut off by the automatically closing air pressure door behind him.’

‘Heh, I knew that Anakin was reminding me of someone equally infuriating, should have known that his master was that Obi-Wan guy. They had too many similarities.’

‘Suddenly finding myself having nothing else to do, I decided to follow his advice and soon enough reached the place easily.’

‘I knocked on the door lightly, then walked in. I didn’t want to trouble any patient that may want to sleep here. It turned out that I was worried for nothing. It was a somewhat small room, and there were only six beds here.’

‘In one of those beds, a familiar togruta girl was resting.’

‘She seemed to be extremely bored. Our eyes met, and she immediately became livelier from seeing me. That made me feel kind of uncomfortable. Why was she so happy? We only met, and I already caused some trouble. Even if I didn’t want to.’

‘I felt strange, that someone that I hardly knew was this happy from seeing me, or maybe I was just overthinking things. Children were supposed to become attached to people easily. One thing that was definitely not true for me, in my memories I saw so many people, so many dead, friends, and family all gone, again and again, and again.’

‘Of course, I knew that I needed some social interaction to stay mentally healthy, but the amount of the needed interaction was very small in my case.’

‘I could stay alone, not talking or seeing anyone for months, and I wouldn’t feel the need for conversation. I would simply live for my hobbies: reading, painting, playing games, and so on.’

‘Well, being closed in an almost empty room with nothing to spend time with is still a big no, but if I can do whatever I want, I can easily occupy myself for an unholy amount of time.’

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

‘On the side, I have to say that I don’t hate speaking with people. It is a good activity. I simply never really had the chance to speak or meet with many fresh faces, or create new bonds.’

‘If you are someone with thousands of years of memories, you would also become accustomed to being alone. Being alone is not a bad thing, but you should not mistake it as being lonely. That is entirely different. Being alone is a choice you can make for yourself, while being lonely is something that others decide for us, most likely against our will.’

‘I choose to be alone because it would be very hard, if not impossible, to hide what I really am from someone who gets that close to me. I don’t want to figure out what would they do with me if they realized that I am practically a walking and talking holocron.’

‘One that has enough sith and jedi knowledge amassed to change the tide of the current war. Such knowledge in the hands of shortsighted beings that at best can only think in the length of a few years and not in lifespans would lead to a catastrophe.’

‘I also plan to be around for the next five hundred years, so if I don’t plan to become the subject of a force experiment on immortality or as a living holocron, while they try to forcefully extract memories from me...’

‘I shivered from the thought alone.’

‘Then I probably shouldn’t get too close to anyone right now, especially not a jedi.’

‘I already began to slow my natural aging through the force, therefore I will be in this child's body for the next fifty or sixty years if everything goes well.’

‘Why wouldn’t I wait until I became older, you ask?’

‘If I wait, for example, until I become eighteen or twenty, then I would lose five or seven years of my life. Not that big of a deal, right?’

‘Wrong!’

‘That seven years of lifetime elongated by the force would become seventy years, and that is kind of a big deal for me.’

‘There is a stretch to the level of the length which you can elongate your lifespan through the force, if you go beyond that which is by the way about ten times slower than normal aging, some of your bodily functions will slow down to an extent that would seriously endanger your life.’

‘For example, your brain functions would become so slow that you would only try to take a breath every minute, hour, or day.’

‘Your reaction to an incoming attack would also slow down so much that you wouldn’t be able to react to it at all.’

‘The healing of your wounds would become so slow that it would count as nonexistent.’

‘Overall, you would become an existence that is mostly out of real-time. You would slow down so much that the world would seem to accelerate around you.’

‘It’s no wonder, since the technique that we use for this purpose was originally a force hibernation technique.’

‘With an ingenious variation of the technique that you have to keep activated to a lower extent all the time, you can slow down your aging process to a certain degree.’

‘You may wonder why these side-effects only became troublesome after your bodily function is beyond ten times slower?’

‘The answer to this question is simple: the force. To be more punctual, my bodily reactions are already slowing down around ten times of their normal versions, which means without the use of the force, my body would heal ten times slower, and so on.’

‘With the help of the force, however, I can quicken my reaction times and desired bodily processes to the level of a normal force-sensitive, but that ability also has an extent, and its maximum is about twelve times your normal reaction time.’

‘Jedi use this technique all the time on an instinctive level to hasten their reactions to danger and such. What I do is simply to lift that instinctive process to a partially conscious level, choosing specific functions over others. Creating an incredible level of control over my body’s internal processes.’

‘Anyway, if you use the hibernation technique to its full power, you must be wary about your surroundings and the consequences.’

‘You don’t want to die in a pitiful and really cringe-worthy way, like being stuck on a tree that grows out of the ground under you then a few hundred years later the tree get struck by lightning, or the branch you end up on breaks under you and you fall to death.’

‘After all, entirely activating the technique, then deactivating it at the minimum takes about five hundred years of time.’

‘So don’t try to use it as an excuse for skipping the laundry like master Cil-Cil Muz did, that halfwit gungan...’

‘He was lucky enough that his family realized what he did, and they placed his body in a corner of the house like a statue, where he was at least dusted a few times a year for the next eight generations.’

‘What an idiot. Sometimes I am surprised that our memory line is still going.’

“Yoda is right in one thing. The force works in mysterious ways. Ouch!“

‘Something flicked me on the forehead. I looked around, a bit confused. I was sitting on the side of Tano’s bed while a nurse was treating my lekku, covering it with a bandage coated in bacta.’

‘Then I remembered Ahsoka began to rant about her master injuring me instead of properly apologizing and not even showing his face to visit her. Then I got distracted by my own thoughts while I was waiting for the nurse to come over since Vokara, the lead healer, was occupied in another room with much more critical cases.’

“Ouch!”

‘This time I was outright smacked on my forehead. I looked at Ahsoka, the perpetrator, with obvious disbelief in my eyes.’

“What? You were ignoring everything I said in the last ten minutes, so don’t give me that betrayed look now!” — ‘She lectured me aloud.’

‘Ugh, was I distracted for that long?’

“Sorry...” — ‘I said, eventually.’

‘The nurse chuckled behind me when she witnessed or antics. Both of us turned towards her with confused glares.’

‘She happily shared with us her reason for the laughter.’

“Don’t blame your friend little Ahsoka, it is quite normal for twi’leks to be easily distractible after lekku injury. You both have leks, but their physiology and therefore their functionality is not the same. Which is hardly a surprise being members of two different races originating from different planets.”

‘Ahsoka looked ashamed after hearing that explanation.’

“I... I didn’t think I didn’t mean to... Sorry...” — ‘She apologized quickly.’

‘The nurse laughed again as she finished my first aid treatment. Then she left us for our own devices, walking away hastily. There must be a lot of injuries in this chaotic time of galactic civil war.’