Chapter Seventy Five

Elsewhere in the training academy, Harry and Aayla were working with the younglings and several of the padawans while the remaining Knights were being put through their paces by Masters Fay and Giiett in terms of their knowledge of the Clan Saa techniques. They were technically here for that, though mainly they were here to see if any of them proved worthy of learning runes from Fay and Lily.

Lily, however, had decided to watch Harry and Aayla. Not, she had hastened to explain that morning over breakfast, that she thought they would need it, but that they might need a third eye given the number of younglings. Shaak Ti too decided to observe this class, given she was there primarily to learn runes and had already proven trustworthy.

Harry smiled at the younglings and padawans, waving his hands to either side of him as they all to a sentient paused looking into the training area. It was set up far differently today. Gone were the target dummies, replaced by dozens of football-sized balls stacked in a rough pyramid against the far wall from the entrance to the training area. They were all a stark white color, but that was all any of the students could tell from looking at them.

"Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all eager to learn this morning. Today we're not going to work on the stunner technique first. I know that might seem strange given how much progress you all made yesterday, but I noticed that many of you were having the same problem: visualization." Harry laughed wryly. "I thought the tough part would be helping you to project what you wanted. Silly me, right?"

His smile and easy-going manner made several of his new students smile in turn and relax, where before many of them had seemed tense and almost grim. Too often Harry felt that the Order removed the fun of learning too soon, and he was determined to make his lessons as fun as possible.

"So instead of that, we are going to work on a simpler technique today that can actually have a lot of uses in the world beyond the Order's walls." Harry gestured behind him and the top ball on the pile moved to hover over his shoulder. "Today we are going to learn the color changing technique."

As the students watched he flicked his hand at it, and an almost unseen wave of the Force hit the ball. Immediately the white of the ball suddenly changed between one blink and the next. Now it was a deep purple. "This technique is exactly what it says, it changes the color of things. It can change the color of anything, these balls, your clothing, or even… your skin."

Aayla smiled and stepped forward, touching her forehead for a moment. As the students watched in astonishment her blue skin changed yellow, then green. "This can have a major impact on spying missions in the future," Aayla said happily. "Even changing the color of your clothing can. However most people can't quite seem to make the jump from changing other things to changing their own skin color. If you can't don' be discouraged, even Harry here can't do that!"

"Hey, I can change my hair's color! That's enough!" Harry replied with a pout, causing many of the younglings and padawans to fight back giggles, which again was what they wanted. Learning should be fun; my moms have made that clear over the last few years!

"Anyway, first we're going to have a little lesson on imagination, holding the image you want in your mind; and then, then we're going to work on projecting that image out and aiming it properly," Harry went on, gesturing the class to sit all around him which they did quickly.

The class passed quickly after that. After a bit of a lesson on creating the image required in their minds, Harry, Aayla, Lily, and Shaak went around the training hall helping the students who needed it. When they were certain everyone understood that part of the lesson, Aayla and Harry set the balls to moving around the room as the students spread out and began the aiming portion of the lesson.

The class quickly learned that if their technique missed the target the thought of the image was still sent out until it hit a target, in this case sometimes one another. After a few moments, Harry laughingly warned them that if they didn't start to truly aim again he would force them to spend the rest of the day the way they were. Since many of them looked like circus clowns already, this was a major threat.

All in all, the first class was a major success, and the students learned a lot about the need to create the image of what they wanted in their minds. This was a skill that would carry over into the other techniques Harry would be teaching them. This would include the normal ones Clan Saa had already shared, as well as a few more based mostly on element manipulation, though Harry also wanted to include teleportation and low-level transfiguration.

But they would not be teaching the high end stuff: large scale conjuration/transfiguration and most of the actual attack techniques. Master Fay and Lily remained adamant that such things remain in the family, as it were. They had debated teaching Harry's Light-based constructs, but experimenting with teaching Quinlan and Aayla had proven that it was practically impossible to teach unless you already had some inkling as to how to bring the Light Side of the Force out. Of all living Jedi, only Fay, Yoda, and Yaddle could do that, though Aayla had been able to bypass that step somewhat.

OOOOOOO

Darth Sidious was not one to habitually rant and rage when things did not go his way. Even he had to admit it occurred sometimes, despite the knowledge that the Force as a whole had begun to shift to ensure his ascendancy. Yet at present, that belief was part of the reason why he was tempted to once more give into the base impulse for destruction that all Sith had to deal with when they began their training.

Damn Plagueis! Why can he not simply come down to where I can get at him without provoking a confrontation? Am I really going to have to openly challenge him?

And that was the nub of it right now. Sidious's machinations in the Senate were bearing fruit, his plans to divert the Order's attention working as well as could be expected. The Order was proving somewhat resilient in many ways, but they were still losing members here and there; four more Jedi had died since Plagueis had returned to the Coruscant system. Despite his inability to yet gain an eye in the training center on Serenno, Sidious was pleased with how the Great Plan was proceeding when it came to the Order itself right now.

Even the work to expand his underground contacts was proceeding apace. The Jedi's ongoing efforts to, as Ranicisis had put it, 'pull apart the spider web,' had flattened or broken the remnants of Black Sun so badly that they would never recover. The Falleen clans which had been on their way to rebuilding the organization were gone now, dead or imprisoned. Several other galaxy-spanning criminal groups had also been hammered, leaving nothing in their place. Sidious had then wormed his agents into the governments most effected by the corruption charges and into the smaller criminal groups, none of whom would ever amount to anything, but were still useful.

Yet the fly in Sidious's ointment was the Veil of the Dark Side and Plagueis. Plagueis was continually pushing his own decisions over Sidious's own. Twice he had forced Sideous to act in ways which he felt were wrong in the long term, and Plagueis's obsession with his experiments, in particular the vergence, clouded his judgment.

But that, if I felt he still served a purpose at all, could be borne. His impact on the usefulness of the Veil, I cannot, Sidious thought, leaning back in his meditation throne. Not anticipating a call from his master and having a few hours away from his public persona this evening, he had retreated here to meditate. Like all Sith, he felt the complete darkness of the room helped his focus, helped to merge his thoughts with that of the Dark Side.

The Veil of the Dark was designed to do two things: first, to block and overwhelm the connection the Jedi had with the Force throughout the galaxy. Eventually this could be taken to such an extreme that the Sith would be able to use the Veil to actually influence the Jedi indirectly. The second aspect, of course, was to aid the Sith in how far they could see into the future and how far they could send out their thoughts from their physical bodies.

However, for some reason Sidious's control of the Veil wasn't nearly as complete as it should be, and he felt that the reason was that the Veil was still answering to two masters. Plagueis pulling it in one direction to help him with his experiments in Sith Alchemy in that ship of his and on Wayland. This is pulling it away from me, from my efforts to observe the Jedi elsewhere in the Republic, which in turn allows them to surprise me on occasion.

And the Veil is also supposed to be feeding power to us from the Dark Side energies around the galaxy. That is not happening yet, at least not to me, which is very concerning. Sidious continued to meditate for a time on the nature of what Plagueis was doing, and finally decided. Even with the additions to our force, the Yinchorri and Maul clones and that hideous abomination he created from Maul and Fett's DNA, Plagueis has not added enough to the Great Plan to make up for his continued presence interfering in my own efforts. No, it is time for him to die. The question is then, how?