Anabeth: New Beginnings

Chapter 19 - Time skip 1

The next few weeks went by in a blur. Aayla and Depa had returned from Ryloth, officially concluding the Jedi's role in the military. Organa had invited them to a small party for this occasion, an offer they could hardly decline.

At the party, Caleb introduced his new friend Hera to her. She and her family had been invited by Senator Tarr, and while her parents were busy talking to Senators and military personell, she and Caleb were running around the Senate building. She hoped the Padawan was just showing her around, but her gut told her the two of them were getting up to mischief.

She simply proceeded to adopt Depa's strategy of purposefully ignoring what was happening and making polite conversation with the other guests. An effective strategy as it would turn out, as she was able to enjoy he evening without any incidents. She'd have to keep it in mind if she ever had a Padawan of her own.

In terms of the Jedi Order, things were finally settling back into a routine. Plo Koon had taken Windu's offer of being in charge of training the Younglings and was thriving in the role. Positions had to be filled and reassigned around the Temple, but they finally had a system going that was keeping everyone busy and satisfied.

Ahsoka had been given a Youngling class to teach, something Ana envied her for from time to time. She had always enjoyed teaching, but at the current moment, it was not something convenient to her. Together with most of the Council, she belonged to the most busy members of the Jedi Order currently.

The Council was discussing the funding issue, and as she had been the one to bring up the currently most popular solution, Windu had asked for her presence in almost every meeting. On top of it, she had been spending her free time in the archives, doing research on what Jedi taught about the Sith.

In many aspects, the texts of the Jedi varied greatly from what Maul had once taught her. She spent hours writing corrected drafts and revising them over and over again. She was determined to promote a more correct view of the Sith among her fellow Jedi.

And in addition, she had set her mind to expanding her horizon on the topic as well. If Windu was going to make her his go to source when it came to Sith matters, then she had to make sure she was up to the task. However, she still had some hurdles to overcome. A lot of texts she wanted to read required the clearance of a Jedi Master. She was planning to talk about it to her former Master, but for the moment, their main priority remained the funding issue.

Of course Organa had been excited at the prospect that the republic would no longer be the sole carrier of the costs for the Jedi. The Senate had shared his enthusiasm and voted in favor of the suggestion barely two days after it was put up for debate.

In terms of the neutral systems, Obi-Wan and Satine had ben hard at work. They and Grace had  travelled Mandalore a little over a week ago to talk to Bo and the Council of neutral systems personally, and so far, things were looking good on that front as well.

With the Confederacy of independent systems, several discussions over the holocom had been held. They had been the most cautious out of the all the parties involved, and truthfully, one could hardly blame them. Their experiences with the Jedi during the war had been far from pleasant.

It had taken a lot of effort to get on their good side over the last few weeks, but much to everyone's delight, they had finally gotten to a point where they were willing to host a representative on Raxus to talk about the whole idea in person.

Windu had been quick to nominate the duo of Ana and Aayla for it. Truthfully, Ana suspected he had only asked Aayla to accompany her so she wouldn't be alone, but who was she to complain? At least it wasn't Mundi coming with her. Because even though the idea of reforms within the Order had been mostly positively received, there were still Jedi speaking out against it from time to time.

Master Mundi had been one of them, representing these voices on the council. And while the man had admitted that he was hopelessly outnumbered, he still seemed far from okay with recent developments. And as she had been the one to suggest the solution to the funding problem, Ana could help but feel like he had a certain dislike for her. She could understand where the man was coming from, but it still didn't make interactions with him any more pleasant.

"Master, do you have a minute?" Ana raced to catch up with Windu. "If it's about not wanting to go to Raxus, you can forget about it. I know you have a lot of things to do, and if I can help with any of them, feel free to ask. But since I can't go, Obi-Wan is already busy and Mundi really isn't the one for this topic, you're my only option left" Windu responded.

"I know, and I actually came to talk about something else" Ana replied. "Oh. Well, go ahead then". "Well, since you just so graciously offered to help, you can read my revised drafts of the texts we have on the Sith". "You're already done? How do you find time the tiem? But alright, I'll read them. Want me to talk to Madame Jucosta about introducing them to the archives as the up to date literature if they check out?" Windu asked.

"That would be great, thanks. This brings us to what I actually wanted to talk about though. My long term project is to revise all the texts. I know the texts on the Sith which just any Jedi has access to is very limited. Most of our data is classified and requires the title of Master.

I want to revise those too. I set my priorities to be the literature that everyone has access to, that's why I finished so quickly. But I'm not planning on stopping here, just taking it more slow.

In short, I want access to those restricted files. You can give me a special clearance for the files I need. I don't even want a full clearance, just the ones concerning the Sith. Trust me, there is nothing in there I don't know already" Ana requested.

"I know better than to debate with you about such a things. I'll see what I can do while you're gone. But only as long as you promise to really take it slower. No one will be looking up the restricted files in the near future" Windu set his terms.

"Deal. I'll make it a hobby I only pick up when I have a lot of free time" Ana promised. "That's all I wanted to hear. Now, go pack, you and Aayla need to leave early tomorrow". "I'm going, I'm going, don't stress me" Ana replied sarcastically "I'll see you at dinner".

A/n:
Hi guys, as you have probably noticed this chapter has a little bit of a different title than usual. This is because this book is slowly coming to an end. I have a few ideas I want to get in and story arks I want to finish to round the trilogy off as best as I can. And in order to get it all done, I'm going to be using a few time skips in the next few chapters and focus on the most important events only.

Secondly, I'd like to ask you guys for some more questions for the interview I want to do at the end of the book. They don't need to be deep or anything, you can literally ask me and/or the characters what my/their favourite food is if you'd like. I just kind of need more questions to fill the chapter, so if you could leave somemore that would be really great.
Thank you <3