The End Of The War

Chapter 1

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is The Force. The Force is with me. I am one with it, and it is with me. It is around you, within you. The Force is my ally, and it is powerful.

He repeated these and many more mantras in his head as he sat with his eyes closed with steady, even breaths. He was going through these motions because, what else could he do? Master Yoda had told him he was too old to participate in lightsaber training with the others, and he still didn't have a master. Of course, that was because it was his punishment. Four years ago, he broke temple rules. Four years ago, still a rather young youngling, he decided to take a trip outside the temple. Outside Coruscant. He went back to his home planet. Or at least the planet he was born on. Lothal. It wasn't for nefarious or even upsetting reasons. He just wanted to know what his parents looked like.

For his curiousity, he was sentenced to remain a youngling until well after his peers had already been chosen to have masters. And his peers were all selected the year after he'd done what he did. After all, when the Battle of Geonosis destroys a large amount of Jedi, those who're already padawans need to be granted knighthood, and younglings will need masters to replace their fallen ranks. Two of his peers, Ahsoka and Barriss, were sent to be padawans at the beginning of the war. Whenever another Jedi came to select a padawan for the past couple of years, he was always hopeful but never chosen. He wondered if someone was telling them to pick him only as a last resort.  But hopefully, today, it would change.

Today, a Jedi was going to select a padawan. And the Jedi who was selecting was someone he looked up to. He wasn't the most powerful, he was no Master Windu. He wasn't the wisest, that was Yoda. No, he was the person who brought him into the temple. A Jedi he looked up to. A Jedi he wanted to be like. Jedi Master Toshinori Yagi. He saw him as a fatherly figure. He was the person who claimed responsibility for anything that he did. Even if he didn't need to. He tried to shirk the blame by saying that he wasn't watching over him and didn't know about his curiousity. He was the only reason he wasn't kicked out of the order. Toshinori would sometimes help train younglings in lightsaber forms, and though his primary form seemed to be not much like Toshinori's, he tried to copy it to perfection. Yet he still had to think about it whenever he tried.

He then realized that he was no longer meditating. He was reminiscing. And he was on the verge of falling asleep. He opened his eyes and shook his head.

Get it together, Izuku. If you can't even meditate right, then there's no way he'll choose you for a padawan, he thought.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He tried again. Before he could fully immerse himself, there was a light chime from his door.

"Enter," he said aloud.

The door opened, and he heard the light taps of a stick and some elderly grunts. He opened his eyes and saw that it was Master Yoda.

"Master. Is there something I can do?"

"Time, it is. Come. Into the training room, with the other younglings you must go," Yoda said.

He rose and looked to his sleeping mat. Next to it was his lightsaber. He extended his hand toward it and pulled it to him with the Force. It landed in his hand, and he put it on his belt. He left his room and walked through the halls of the Jedi Temple to where the younglings would show their skills to the prospective trainer. All around him were children several years younger than him. He was already sixteen, and everyone there was only in the age range of eleven to thirteen.

"Heh, if it isn't the Defiant Izuku. You still hoping for a master, Deku?" A Twi'lek youngling asked.

He didn't respond. He refused to respond to Deku. For three years, he'd constantly asked what a "deku" was, and for a while, the other younglings would lie to his face saying things along the lines of "it's ancient Mandoa" or "ancient Huttese" or some forgotten word in another language that wasn't Basic. Every time he'd check, and every time, he'd see that it wasn't a word. After they finally ran out of languages, they finally said it was shorthand for "Defiant Izuku." The only good thing that came from them calling him that was that he could at least understand most of the Galaxy's languages now.