Chapter Eighteen

Something is changing, some new factor has been added to the board.

On Coruscant there was a series of hidden rooms, buried deep, deeper than most thought it was possible to go, well below even the lowest so-called habitable level. Within these rooms was a training area, a laboratory, a meditation area, a massive communication array and unregistered Hypercom array, allowing the owners of this series of rooms to connect to the Hypercom network with no one the wiser, a nearly untraceable means of communication since it simply added it's own signals to that of the Coruscant array, which was on and in use at all times.

This, hidden at the heart of the Republic, on the same planet as the Jedi Temple, was the home of the Sith of Darth Bane. They had been here for nigh on nine-hundred years, hidden underneath the eyes of the Jedi, the miasma of Dark and Light Force of the billions of inhabitants on the planet keeping them hidden from any Jedi's senses. The shadows are always darkest right beneath the candle.

The man who had that thought was a tall, gaunt Muun, sitting on a throne made of steel, pipes and glass. His face was pale, his eyes dark gray, his robes so black they seemed to suck in what little light there was in his laboratory cum meditation room. His name was Darth Plagueis, and he was a Sith master, the only one at present following the ancient and wise Rule of Two. His apprentice, Darth Sidious, was not here at present, overseeing the ongoing training of his latest project, the creation of a Sith Assassin.

Plagueis saw the point of having such a weapon to be their tool in the universe, but was ambivalent about using someone like the Zabrak. Anything that could hint to the Jedi that the Sith were still around was to be avoided in his mind. Still, he might come in handy in the future, and Sidious had already used him on a few missions without the Zabrak leaving any hint of his presence behind.

But that was in no way connected to the thought that had roused Plagueis from his meditations. At least I wasn't nearly knocked out like the last time. The last time Plagueis had exited his meditation before his allotted time was over was because of a massive splash of Force power which had reverberated across the known universe, so powerful that practically every Jedi master, and Plagueis and his apprentice, had felt it.

But the splash had been of the light side of the Force, and while to the Jedi it had felt like a bright peeling note of music or joyful exclamation, it had wracked both Sith with such agony as they had never felt before. Plagueis had barely stayed conscious, and by the time he regained his senses the splash had dissipated, and he was unable to find the cause. Sidious had been knocked out entirely, as had the Zabrak, which cause him to nearly crash his brand new ship.

Worse than their ignorance was that the Force had shifted somehow, the Veil Plagueis was putting in place had been set back markedly, and there was far more Light mixed up in the Force than there had been, but the source of it was still beyond Plagueis' senses.

Returning to the here and now, Plagueis frowned, directing his thoughts out into the Force now rather than letting the eddies of the Unifying Force guide him. Yet he could not detect whatever it was that had roused him. It had hidden itself in the Force beyond his senses. Perhaps if the Veil was fully in place I would be able to find it, but it is not, and I deal with what is, not with what-ifs.

Nonetheless, I detect a bit of Jedi deception here, the Jedi have discovered something. With a gesture, he activated the transmission system, which was piggybacked into the Republic hyper array, the underlying physical array that carried all the Hypercom messages throughout the Galaxy. The Jedi are so stupid not realize the Republic sees all their messages thanks to its control of the Hypercom Relay System.

This way Plagueis was able to find a copy of the message from an unknown array in Denon, but the signal itself was heavily encrypted well beyond anything the Sith had access to. Odd, very unlike the Jedi, and definitely an indication that there is something going on. I will devote some of my own time to this, if it has anything not do with that massive shift in the Force we need to learn what it is.

OOOOOOO

By the time they arrived at their real destination, Harry's lessons in Galactic Standard had brought him up to Aayla's level, and Aayla was practically as fluent in Standard as she was in Ryl. Both children had learned some forms of meditation, though Harry had not learned how to reach out to the Force for guidance just yet, and failed all the tests Tholme gave him in trying to discover things hidden behind doors his hand and so on. Still, such things sometimes came slower than others. Their meditations however had come along nicely, with Lily helping it along in a novel way, which Tholme was quite interested to see if it would take.

Tholme could also tell that some of the tenants of the Jedi he described to them, particularly abstaining from emotions, continued to bother Lily a lot. Their discussions along that score were not very pleasant, therefore, he decided not to push them just yet. It would be many years before Harry was going to be allowed to become a Jedi after all, they had time to convince him and his mother that the Order was in the right there, if they could. If they could not, perhaps another exception could be made.

Harry also didn't seem to understand why he had to abstain from creature comforts sometimes, but with his power of transfiguration Tholme didn't really see the point. He wasn't getting attached to the things he transfigured, and saw no worth in them. He just didn't see why he shouldn't have them if he could conjure them up.

The youngster also continued to learn from his mother, though Tholme was interested to note that Lily never told him or Aayla anything specific from what he could discern. Instead she merely guided them along gently, letting them reach their own conclusions. Aayla began to show signs of what could only be Force Jump because of this, and Harry's ability to multi-task grew in leaps and bounds, and he also began to create shields of pure Force power, though he couldn't hold them for very long under Quinlan's attacks. Nonetheless, the potential the boy had, both for himself and the Order, was massive.

"There is the training vessel Master," Quinlan said, pointing ahead of them through the viewing port and bringing his master out of his thoughts for a moment.

They'd been closing with the learning ship for several moments now, but it was within actual eyesight now. "Good Quinlan, please slave our ship to theirs, let their systems bring us in."

With that done, Tholme opened a communications with the training vessel. "Jedi training vessel Explorer, this is Master Tholme, I have two younglings to be added to your clans, and myself and my padawan will remain with for a few weeks."

"This is Master Illaviel. This is highly irregular master Tholme, but Grand Master Yoda called ahead and told us you were coming. We are ready and waiting for you."

The Consular class ship docked with the other ship quickly, and Quinlan chivvied Aayla and Harry aboard. Both children looked around the new ship with interest, before concentrating on the welcoming party, two young knights, and a master. One of the knights was from a race Harry had never seen with rainbow colored feathers and the face of a bird, the other a human with pale white skin. The master was an ancient-looking Bothan female, a race Harry had seen only twice before on Ryloth. The two knights looked younger than Tholme by a decade or so, though Harry and Aayla would be pressed to say how they knew the bird woman's age.

"These are the two younglings, they are a little older than most we would take master Tholme." said the Bothan, who must be Master Illaviel, looking at both of them with appraising eyes. "Have you been instructing them?"

"Somewhat, but there are… extenuating circumstances. For one, we had to teach Harry Galactic standard, and for another…" he gestured to Lily who as always had followed Harry. "This is Lily."

The two knights gaped in shock for a moment, their self-control not up to the sight of a Force Ghost, but the ancient Bothan barely reacted, nodding her head. She had already felt the presence of the Force Ghost, though this redhead was far more corporeal than most. "She looks like a member of the Sunrider clan. So the Corellians have continued their heretical ways?"

"She is not from Corellia and as I said there are extenuating circumstances. However I would like to get Aayla and Harry situated with their fellows as soon as possible. Would that be alright?"

"Very well, but you will have to convince me that this ghost's being here would be helpful rather than hurtful to the youngling's instructions."

"This ghost has a name and has learned enough Standard to know when she's being talked about." Lily replied moving forward to stare into the old woman's eyes, hovering before her almost challengingly. "If you have questions about me and what impact I will have on my son's joining your Order then ask them, don't just assume you know the answers. Too many people assume they know right when they know so very little."

The woman scowled at Lily's tone, which was really a shot across the bows of the entire Order, but she nodded. "Very well, To'neen, Laitha, show these two their new quarters. Master Tholme and… guest, follow me."

After looking to his mother for permission Harry followed Aayla and the two knights. The knights ushered them through several corridors. They passed by open doorways which led into various rooms, several of which looked like classrooms to Harry's eyes. Another looked like a woodcrafter's room, but not quite. Another was a gym. Eventually they were broken up, with Aayla entering a room to one side of the hall and Harry the other.

Inside Harry found several other boys of different races, most of whom he had never seen before. There were no twi'leks here, but one of them was a tall rangy green skinned boy, who suddenly set up from his bed is Harry came in. He looked about Harry's age, while the other boys looked younger. "Why am I with the youngsters?" Harry asked looking over at the knight who had shown him in.

"Because you, like young Alecto here, are starting late. Normally Force users are found when we are born and brought into the Order as soon as possible. Sometimes we miss you as babies, but you still have to start at the same point."

"Not certain I agree with that, but I won't argue." Harry said with a shrug. He looked at one of the younglings, a youngest boy whose body resembled that of a centaur, as he came forward, moving almost skittishly, hopping in place, racing back and forth as Harry watched. He had short curly hair, and two small horns which looked like they were covered by velvet sticking out of his forehead. "You must find these bunks uncomfortable."

"Y-yes. The ship's making a bed for me, but I'm the first Chironian to enter the Order in thousands of years, so they don't quite know what to do with me." The boy's tone had started proud but ended uncertainly. "The knight who found me forgot to ask my parents what kind of beds they used, and I only just arrived here last night."

Harry grinned. "Let me help you then." He raised a hand toward the bunk the Chironian had been standing by. After a moment's hesitation Harry had the image in his head, and a brief surge of Force/magic later the bunk changed shape, becoming thinner in the body and with a large headrest, large enough for the boy's head and shoulder to rest on while the rest of his body could lay on the bed.

All of the younglings and the knight blinked as they watched though only a few were able to feel the change occur through the Force. The boy in question looked at it, then grinned back at Harry, not questioning his strange ability, simply taking it for granted as children sometimes did the amazing. "Could you make the top where my head rests softer?"

Harry nodded, and the top of the board was suddenly covered with a pillow. The boy moved over to it, resting his lower body on the bed and leaning against the headrest, sighing faintly. "Almost as good as the one I had at home, thank you! My names Wulo, what's yours?"

"Harry." Harry replied, holding his hand out as his new friend left his bunk, racing over to shake it.

By that point the young knight behind him had gotten over his shock. "What, what was that, how did you do that!?"

"You people call it the Force for some reason, I just call it magic," Harry said with a shrug. "Anybody else want one?"

"We're not supposed to have personalized things like that," said one of the other boys, moving over the poke Wulo's bed as if he wasn't quite certain it was real.

"Master Tholme tried to tell me the same thing, but I didn't understand it. I mean I understand that you shouldn't be attached to things or that having more things can lead to arrogance and that arrogance is bad. But why does living like a monk automatically translate to being good?" Harry shrugged. "Anyway my question still stands, anyone want one?"

The boys, who were all new to Jedi training clambered forward, nodding their heads quickly. The Knight To'neen tried to stop Harry, tried to convince him it was wrong and when he didn't succeed simply grabbed Harry by the shoulder and simply tried to shake him into stopping. He had been sent to the training vessel because even though he had passed his trial many of the masters felt he needed more lessons in patience, and teaching younglings would teach him that. If he survived anyway.

A bare second after grabbing the youth's shoulder To'neen found himself suddenly stuck to the ceiling with Harry glaring up at him. "I was manhandled for years, do not touch me like that again."

"I apologize for that Harry. If I promise not to do that again, will you let me down?" To'neen said after a few moments of futilely trying to break Harry's Force grip that was keeping him stuck to the ceiling with his own power. He wasn't as strong in the Force as Quinlan and couldn't do it, yet ironically that very thing allowed him to regain his equilibrium.

Harry nodded, and let To'neen go. With his Force assisted agility the boy landed on his feet, staring at Harry. "All right, I suppose you can keep doing that, though how long will the, the change last?"

"Transfiguration," Harry said, using the word that master Tholme had taught him was the English equivalent of that word. "It's permanent as far as I know. You just tell the little atoms they are not what they think they are, Master Tholme says. I just think it's a way of changing the galaxy to how I want it to be in a very limited way."

"I'm not even going to comment," To'neen muttered, shaking his head and beginning to understand why the older master wanted Harry under wraps.

At that moment Aayla popped her head in then smirked at Harry. "That didn't take long," she chirped, gesturing to the beds, all of which Harry had changed as To'neen regained control of himself. "Harry, do you think you can do the same thing to our room?"

"Boys aren't allowed in the girls room," said the older green skinned youngling sternly as several others joined them.

Both Harry and Aayla looked at him with their heads cocked to one side. "Why?"

"They just aren't, it comes down to attachment again, you can't form attachments more than friendships with people, and if boy people and girl people interact things happen." Alecto responded authoritatively, though To'neen remained silent, smirking slightly from the sidelines. He'd tried once to get in Harry's way, now he was just going to watch events unfold until told to do otherwise.

"Oh you mean like husband-wife stuff?" Harry said, blushing. After those first few moments where he had learned a little too much about his parents love life Harry had made a point of keeping away from similar topics. On Ryloth that was somewhat difficult simply because of how the locals dressed, but he had tried.

Aayla cocked her head not understanding the husband and wife bit, though she was beginning to understand what the older boy was alluding to. "I'm not interested in that," she said plainly, gesturing down to her body, which while fit was that of a typical eight going on nine year old girl. "Ask me again in about four years or so and maybe, but until then…" she shrugged.

Grabbing Harry's hand Aayla pulled him out of the room across the hall to the girl's room, with Wulo and a few of the other boys moving after them. Harry didn't fight her, simply letting Aayla drag him along into the girl's room which was just like the boys room. "That's strange," he said aloud, "I always thought girls' bedrooms were supposed to be different than boys."

"We're Jedi, well Jedi in training," said a young human girl, lifting her upper body up off of her bed in some kind of physical exercise which looked like a sit up, though why she was waving one leg up at the same time Harry didn't know. "We're not girls or boys, the important part is the Jedi part."

"That sounds strange but okay," Harry said with a shrug. "Where is your bed Aayla?"

"Boys aren't supposed to be in here," said another girl, a slightly older girl with a look on her face when she looked at Aayla that Harry didn't particularly like. He couldn't put his finger on why though.

"Aayla brought me in, so I figured I should just do what she wants me to yes?" Harry shrugged.

Aayla nodded firmly and pulled him towards her bed, which was situated along one wall towards the middle of the room. It was the bottom of a bunk bed system which went all along the sides of the room unlike the boy's current configuration, since there were four more girls on the ship right now.

Harry looked at the construction, then nodded. "I can change just yours, or I can change both it and the one above it I think without doing anything to the rest of them."

"Thank you Harry," Aayla said before smirking at the other girls all around them. "But I bet the others will want you to after they see what you can do."

"What are you talking about?" asked one of the other girls, looking up from a data reader as other girls did the same, coming out of meditations or looking up from reading or other things . A few of them had been playing some kind of exercise game, and stopped moving over towards the newcomers.

Unbeknownst to Harry and Aayla, both the boys and girls of this clan, as teaching groups among Jedi were called, had already formed cliques. Coming in after the fact, the two of them would normally have been on the outside looking in, not quite ostracized but not welcome either. Harry's abilities however changed that.

"Do you want one like the one we had back in our hidey-hole, or something different?" Harry asked Aayla.

Aayla stroked one of her lekku thoughtfully, then smiled. "Could you make a circular bed with a raised edge, just big enough for me and a blanket? With all the sides soft instead of a pillow?"

"Like a sofa but only for you right?" Harry asked and Aayla's smile widened. Harry nodded thoughtfully, picturing what he wanted in his mind as he closed his eyes. After a few moments he had the picture in his head, and gestured with one hand, not opening them until he was done, shaking his head a little at the concentration that had needed.

A few of the younglings and both knights felt the change in the Force as Harry exerted his will, and suddenly the bunk bed was changed, both levels matching what Aayla had asked for, separated by thick wooden rails. All of them gasped in astonishment, except for Aayla who promptly hopped up into it, grinning at Harry. "This is great!" With that she reached out, pulling him into a hug before craning her neck to look up at the girl above her. "Do you like it?"

The other girl, a smallish girl that looked around six or so with four tiny horns sticking out of her head and light blue hair nearly the color of Aayla's skin, nodded with a happy smile, reaching down and shaking Harry's hand. "Thank you!" she chirped. "I'm Kass Todd, this is amazing!"

One of the other girls, another girl from a race Harry hadn't seen before, moved over to Harry and Aayla. Much like the boys she didn't question how Harry could do such things, she just wondered what she could get out of it. "Do you think I could get him to make that kind of thing for me?"

"Harry, are you feeling tired?" Aayla asked solicitously. She knew that big time magics sometimes tired him out. The shields he'd experimented were the best example of that.

Harry shook his head. "I had a great meal this morning, and we've been eating very well with master Tholme, so I can keep going. Where do I start?"

Halfway through that operation Lily came through the wall having finished her 'discussion' with the ancient master. Though it was more than both of them had realized they were heading into shouting territory and decided to call it a day while they were still somewhat civil than they had come to any sort of agreement.

Illaviel didn't like the fact Lily was here with her son, she didn't like the fact that Harry had already been taught in a school that was not of the Jedi Order, and she didn't like the fact Lily refused to leave him alone. She understood and sympathized with the bits about their background Lily and Tholme shared with her, but did not want to ignore or break the rules of the Order for Lily and Harry.

In return Lily practically told her those same rules, ideas about magic or Force or whatever you wanted to call it were stupid, shortsighted, and self-destructive. She flatly refused to leave her son, almost challenged the Bothan to do something about it, and bluntly told her she would continue to help Harry in his education and his life moving forward. The fact the alien woman literally couldn't stop Lily did not help matters.

A few of the girls squeaked, rushing away from the ghost while others simply gaped in astonishment. But Lily put them all at ease quickly, waving her hand lightly at them before moving over to hover over Harry as she looked at the beds ruffling his hair affectionately ignoring the twinge of pain. "I see someone has found how talented you are Harry, don't over exert yourself though. Oh, and you might want to know that Master Tholme and the other Jedi are coming down the hallway."

"What has happened here?!" Said the old master looking somewhat distraught. "These, these beds are far too comfortable, they are not conducive to a good educational environment, what kind of illusion…"

"Not illusion," Tholme said quietly, smiling slightly at Harry. "As for changing them back, you'll just have to convince him to do it, if you can't do it yourself."

He waited a heartbeat then went on. "Good luck with that. I've stopped trying to argue the point with Harry about his conjured up items."

In the end the Master couldn't come up with a reason that convinced Harry that the other beds were better, and actually even the rest of the younglings had begun to feel that maybe the masters were just wrong on this subject. This would not be the last time that thought occurred to many of them.