The young boy, Aden, who was next to the girl blushed pink at the praise. "N-not any droid... but I'm pretty sure I can help fix yours." His pale pink hair messily hung over his face, shy from the attention now the focus was on him instead of the game of chase. "can we please have that part?" He asks the other boy politely while nervously fiddling with the tools on his belt, glancing at the girl clearly looking to impress her.

The force just slightly ripples as Aden unconsciously uses the force to help persuade the other child. If he knew what he was doing he wouldn't let the force influence people like that, but he was completely unaware of his latent powers.

The other boy gets an odd look on his face for a second then nods and hands over the part to the girl. She beams at Aden and he smiles back shyly clearly enjoying the attention from her, his crush obvious to any adult looking on.

The jedi walked towards them. "May I see this part?" she asked.

The girl looked up at her. "Are you gonna take it?" she asked suspiciously, squinting her eyes.

The vendor chuckled. "Jumen, she's a Jedi, dear,"

The girl's eyes widened. "Oh." She held the part out. "Why do you want it?"

The jedi knelt to be at the girl's eye level and looked at the part. It looked like a control board from her ship, but it had a clear sense of life energy.

"This part will fix your droid," the jedi said. "Aden is skilled."

Aden looks very uncomfortable at being praised by an adult, especially one as important as a Jedi. Attention from adults was usually not a good thing for him.

"Can we have it back now?." He asks the Jedi, and like before a flicker of the force pushes out to convince them without Aden knowing it.

He just wanted to get the part and go back to his makeshift workshop and fix Jumens droid so she would like him more. All this attention from adults was making him a little anxious. Usually, when adults took notice of him it was either to make him work or to yell at him.

The jedi handed it back to him. "You underestimate your own skill," she told him softly.

Her comlink beeped. "The meeting is over. We would appreciate your intervention."

She pushed the button on her wrist through her cloak. "I'm on my way."

On a second story above them, a door slid open. In a flash, she pulled out her lightsaber and deflected a blast. She leapt up to the second story and cut the blaster in half, then pushed the guard through the door.

Jumen watched with awe. "Jedi are so cool!"

"Let's get out of here!" He grabs Jumen and the other boys hand and tries to drag them to cover. No matter how good Jedi are supposed to be stray blaster bolts still seemed very dangerous! And surely anyone risky enough to take on a Jedi brought backup. Even if the Jedi was good enough to defend them all it would still make it easier for the Jedi if they were out of the path of danger.

"Come on, Come on, down the alley!" scrambling to try to get his friends to safety. The force gently guiding his movements so he wouldn't trip on any of the trash littering the streets and that his tugging them along did not trip his friends up either.

Jumen glanced behind them. "Nobody's running away," she said.

"I know," said Aden.

"Can we go back to the workshop?" the other boy said.

"Only if you don't steal my droid again, Gers," Jumen said, sticking her tongue out.

"Fine, I won't," Gers said, rolling his eyes.

He leads them down the twisty alleys back to his makeshift workshop. Hidden inside a shipping crate crammed into an empty alley is his sanctum. Half built droids and little whirring and beeping gizmos are stacked on makeshift shelves made out of boxes. He clears some boxes of parts so Jumen and Gers can sit down.

Aden seems a lot more in his element surrounded by his creations, pulling the hair out of his eyes and acting a lot more confident as he goes up to the broken droid Jumen found and slots in the part. Soldering some connections and giving the droid a smack on the side it lights up and beeps. "I did it! just need to fix up the plating and you'll have a camera droid ready to go!" He turns back to his friends beaming a proud smile at them.

The jedi leapt through the air, slicing his blaster in half. He ducked out of the way, letting her past, and watched as she sped into the meeting room, her saber still lit.

The room had a large, circular table, around which sat many beings, each with various forms of notes in front of them. Several of them were standing, with weapons pointed at both those who sat and some of those who stood.

"Let's put our weapons away," she said in a stern tone.

One of the spacers grumbled, but they all put their blasters in their holsters.

"Thank you. Let's all continue this tomorrow after the vote. I'll be here to ensure the vote is counted fairly."

One of the spacers sighed in relief. "Thank you, my friends and I have been concerned about the spaceport administration's honesty."

Another spacer stood up and shouted. "We've been nothing but fair! We've --"

The room filled with thick stillness, as though the air was more viscous. "Please sit down. I will ensure that fairness is maintained, and that no blood need be spilled to prove it."

The beings near the one who'd shouted fidgeted, then relaxed.

A being with grey skin and a respirator spoke, slightly garbled by the voice transmitter. "As the jedi says, we'll resume this tomorrow. Thank you for your presence, Master Jedi, I trust I speak for all of us when I say it is most appreciated."

She bowed deeply. "It is my honor. You may call me by name, if you wish. Master Rhuna at your service."

Many of the spacers stood and shuffled out, and those that remained slowly left as well, after first spending seconds and then minutes staring at the table or the wall.

----

Several hours later, Master Rhuna walked slowly through the city, listening. She was alone in an alley, between two bustling streets, listening to passers by. 

"... didn't want help, I told her I could do it, but ..."

"... twenty credits for the lot of them, they're no good in the ..."

"... have you? I wouldn't know what to do with ..."

"... that kid who works at the swoop races ..."

She turned back towards where she'd come, where that voice had been, and sped up, her brown robe flowing. She caught the same feminine voice speaking.

----

She stood in the shadows near the swoop races' pits, watching for the boy.

Aden rushes up as an aggressive-looking swoop piloted by an angry Iridonian pulls in, the pilot starts shouting at the boy even as Aden quickly fixes the damage to the swoop caused by collisions during the race. His hands seem to always know where to go with no wasted movement, moving out of the way of the helper droids without even looking at them. He wipes his pink hair out of his eyes before slapping the side of the swoop and saying something to the pilot before the pilot races off again.

Aden sticks around in the pit fiddling with the helper droids for a while, affectionately giving one of them a quick polish. The helper droids are all made up of mismatched parts that, if you had an eye for engineering, somehow seemed to all fit together perfectly. It is obvious from the way the boy treats them that he built them himself.

As he walks back to the crew area, a repulsor being fitted to a spare swoop activates by accident and flies off on its own towards Aden. He throws himself to the ground just in time, even though it came from behind him.

Master Rhuna walked out towards Aden as she saw an uncareful technician flip the wrong switch. She put a hand out to divert it, but as she did, he ducked out of the way.

She grabbed the stray repulsor with the force, slowing and stabilizing it. With a flick of her wrist, she turned it back off.

As she did, Aden stood.

"Are you alright, young one?"

Aden looked up at her and nodded.

"Aden! You okay?" came a shout from a few pits down, where he'd been working. A man stepped out. "Oh druk, hello Master Jedi,"

She raised an eyebrow. "Hello. Master Rhuna, at your service. You work with Aden?"

He nodded sharply. "He's a fine young fellow, does great work. Wish I could pay him a little more."

Aden looked slightly confused.

He didn't get paid at all, and his owner was always yelling at him for not getting enough done even if he outperformed most of the adults on the crew! Aden was a little worried that the Jedi from before had come in... Was there going to be another firefight? had she tracked down some criminal to the swoop races?

Aden brushed the dirt from the floor off of himself and tried to look obedient since he didn't know what was going on here, his heartrate was also a little high from almost getting spaced by that repulsor and he took the moment to calm himself down.

"Uhhmmm... did you need me for something master?" He looks up confused at the both of them.

"I'd like to talk to you alone, young one. Do you have a moment?"

Aden glances up at his master as if he was asking permission. Unsure how he should respond.

The man nods at Aden, whatever a Jedi asked for they should probably get.

"Uhm okay... let's go to the storage area?" Leading the Jedi to a back room where nobody was around.

She looked at him impassively for a moment, considering.

"Young one, you have great potential. With training, you could become a Jedi."

Aden has no idea how to respond to this at all.

"Me? a Jedi? but... I'm just me, Jedi are special magic knights! I just fix the swoops and bring old lady Oola her tea sometimes!"

He couldn't be a Jedi, he was a slave, nobody important like a Jedi was.

She sighed. "I was concerned you might react this way. It would require much training."

"You really think I could be a Jedi?" Letting himself hope just a little. A life offplanet in the stars, having Jedi adventures... what young boy didn't wish for that. "Oh... but uhmmm... I can't go off to be a Jedi... Master Teynar has my ownership rights..."

Looking as dejected as a child could, staring down at his feet.

Her mouth fell open in shock, her eyes wide. "You are a slave?" She turned her head, her lips thin.

"Yeah? Nobody free would work in the pit crew for gang races, The pilots blame you for losing all the time and the hazard pay would be huge." He shrugs as if this was just a normal state of affairs. "Teynar isn't the worst person to be indentured to, he just yells alot but you always get enough food and medicine. The gang leaders are much worse to thier slaves."

She pursed her lips. "Slavery is illegal in the Galactic Republic. I can easily free you. You are too old to be taken to the Jedi Temple for training, but there are other places Jedi are trained. The Almas Academy would train you, and you could learn more of machines as well. I must complete my mission here, but I will ensure your master frees you, and when I leave, you may come with me."

"Really? I get to go be a Jedi?!" His face brightening into a brilliant smile, bouncing up and down in excitement at the idea. Until he realises something.

"Wait...what about my friends?... do they get to come too?" He really really liked Jumen and the thought of never seeing her again made his chest hurt, and he liked his other friends a lot too and even old lady Oola who his master ordered to bring tea sometimes and the shopkeepers in the market were people he would miss.

She knelt to his level. "Do your friends not have lives here? You could visit them later, when you are both grown."

"I-I guess...." Still looking at the floor, he really wanted to go be a Jedi but he would miss his friends so much... "Okay, I'll come with you..." Not sounding terribly happy about it.

She nodded. "I can free you now, or return after my mission. Will you be in danger if I free you sooner?"

"How long is your mission? I need somewhere to sleep if its longer than a day, but I don't need to eat much." Teynar might even let him sleep in his room even if she did free him now though. The grumpy old mechanic had a not so hidden soft spot for his younger indentured workers, the only reason he worked Aden so hard is that Aden was able to take the workload better than anyone else.

"It may take three standard weeks to fully complete."

"Oh... well when you get back then, I don't mind working for Teynar. The swoops are cool and I sometimes get to keep broken parts to sell or reuse. And I guess it gives me time to say goodbye to everyone..." He was still sure he wanted to be a Jedi now the option was in front of him, but still, he was going to leave his whole life behind for this.

"Good luck on your mission ms Jedi"

She stood and bowed deeply, then turned and left, leaving him alone.

3 years later...

The binary suns shone brightly on Aden as he sat on the tall, thick, white-speckled purple and green kaluthin grass, among eight other younglings. He was the only one who looked like a plain human, the others with scales, or beaks, or headtails, or merely green skin. They sat among a garden of carefully cultivated trees, standing out among the purple-white-green multicolor grasslands of Almas, near the main paved structures of the Almas Academy.

In front of each of the young students was a flattened patch of grass on which sat a pile of several small rocks, gathered from the ground around them. In front of the class was a teacher, a humanoid jedi with a wrinkled face, sitting cross-legged.

"Now relax yourself, feel the presence of the force, and reach into it, guiding the rocks upwards."

Some distance away, the edge of the Academy grounds could be seen, on which was a farming neighbor's speeder. As the teacher spoke, the adult Tarasin lifted his smaller humanoid reptilian child out of the speeder, as the other clambered out, both of their skin bright red with excitement. They stood at the edge of the Academy grounds and eyed the Jedi younglings intently.

The teacher chuckled. "It seems we have observers. But let only the presence of the force fill your mind, young ones. There is no emotion, there is peace; if you focus on our guests, you will not feel the force. Let the code be your guide. Now guide the rocks upward and form a sphere."

Aden, the now 13-year-old padawan learner was doing his best to ignore the droning voice of his instructor lecturing him about the Jedi code and peace. He had heard it all before and he needed all his focus to try and pass this latest test of his abilities, trying to keep 30 pebbles in a perfect sphere. 

He kept bulging out the sides of the sphere or dropping pebbles at the tiniest distraction, he was starting to resent the lecturing Jedi that kept distracting him and that just made his efforts even less stable. And he was getting a little self-conscious about how he was doing compared to the other padawans, they had all been here years longer than he had.

He tries to clear his mind by thinking of something simple and pleasant like the sun on his skin. It wasn't properly emptying his mind but it always seemed to help focus him anyway. Getting lost in the sensation, his pebbles formed into a loose sphere, still not perfect but less shakey than before. His mind floating along on memories of times in the sun feeling at peace until it brought him to a picnic with Jumen and Gers from his childhood, He gets a smile on his face as the pebbles wobble a lot less without him even realising it as he remembers.

As he reached into the force with the good memories on his mind, his hand out to control the pebbles, something tweaked around his arm, and suddenly his pebbles stopped moving, locked in a perfect sphere. The upper sides of the pebbles was glowing the color of the sunlight, and the kaluthin around him glowed slightly brighter.

Their teacher spoke. "Padawan Tarren, calm your emotions."

As he heard the words, before he'd really processed them, the force pushed back on him hard, and he fell over backwards, his head landing on the soft kaluthin, his pebbles flying everywhere.

"Ow," said a student with a single head-tail, picking up the glowing pebble. "Huh, it's different."

"Hey, I was doing it! I felt it it was a sphere! for just a moment I had it!" Aden pulls himself back upright and dusts off his robe, very proud of himself for getting it just right for that moment before he lost control. But seeing one of his pebbles had hit someone he looks very bashful and apologetic at them. "Sorry Tarso... I didn't mean to lose control like that and hit you with them..."

Tarso smiled. "It's all right. What happened, Master Fost?"

Their teacher looked between the students. "I do not know the mysteries of the force. I know only that it can be dangerous to feel strong emotions when in touch with the force, young padawan. Let the force fill you and guide you, and only depart from its guidance make the slightest motion of your command. You do not need to demand the force obey."

Several students looked thoughtful.

"We shall try it again." Their teacher waved a hand and Aden's pebbles returned to a neat pile in front of him.

Aden continued his practice without emotion as the teacher said but all he could manage was a very wobbly sphere like before, doing no better than his peers at the task. It was never as stable as when he had been remembering that happy memory of a picnic in the sun with his friends.

All-day long he was thinking of the sudden control he had in that moment, and how the teacher only wanted him to be empty and clear of emotion when that obviously was less effective. The warnings about falling to the dark side were all about negative emotions like fear and anger but this was just a happy memory! 

He decides to try replicating what happened during training again even if he wasn't supposed to, he needed to know if it wasn't a fluke so time to recreate the variables from before. Plus he wouldn't become a dark Jedi just by thinking happy thoughts while using the force surely. 

So he gets some training stones, sits down in a patch of sunlight on the floor, and tries to focus on the nice feelings of sunlight and the good memories associated with that while floating up the pebbles. Getting sort of meditative as his mind goes back to happy moments playing in the sun as a child with his friends.

His sphere stabilizes with little effort, the force flowing with his thoughts. After a moment the the stones slowly start glowing slightly, and he floats into the air as well. Across the room, a piece of flimsy on his bed floats into the air next to the pen he'd been writing with, crumpling into a sphere, and various loose screws and bolts from around the room float into the air and form a sphere near his head.

Oooookay...that was too much, time to dial it back a little. Aden tries slowly letting go of everything he is holding except for one pebble. All the while trying to remain in that state of being in a happy memory, Having his attention split like that was getting kind of difficult though and floating himself was not something he was used to.

The spheres sit in the air for a moment, then crash downward as if pushed, making a mess.

Too much power! not enough control, maybe the teachers were onto something, at least for smaller things like floating pebbles. Lots of power wasn't always more useful.

What if he thinks of just a slightly happy thought? nothing as powerful as a childhood memory. Does using an eating a tasty sandwich memory change anything?

He finds it harder than he expected to remember the taste of food, and his control is shakier than normal. As he notices this, it gets shakier, and some of the rocks disappear from his force awareness and fall to the ground.

Well, guess that memory wasn't strong enough or the right kind of memory. He thought the power boost from before was neat but didn't appreciate the loss of fine control. Like a high powered swoop, it was powerful but harder to steer, maybe? He hadn't experimented much but he didn't exactly want to send the pebbles crashing around again.

Something else happy but stronger than a sandwich, but less than playing as a child. Tarso telling him he had good lightsaber form during practice? He tries thinking about that while controlling a single pebble and very very slightly trying to move it around hoping it doesn't fling itself through the window or something.

He feels a creeping sense of emptiness and the feeling that he remembered from the praise isn't present in the memory like it should be. The pebble movement is delayed and slow, but goes exactly where he intends.

Nope time to cut that out, He cuts off connection to the force immediately. He thought positive emotions would be safe but whatever was happening seems to be messing with the memories he was using and that screamed dark side shenanigans. Nope nope nope. He tries to clear his mind completely as well just to be safe. No force, No emotions, Just blank safe meditation to try and stop whatever this was.

He initially had a hard time meditating like he hadn't since his first year at the Academy, his thoughts spiraling around the idea of meditation as though it were just a word, but after a moment his focus returned and he was able to meditate as normal.

After a moment, there came a knock on his door. "Hey Aden, are you okay?" it was Kaskin, the older human Padawan with the room next to his. "I felt a - presence? - in your room, almost like a child." She sounded very uncertain.

Aden gets up and goes to the doorway. "Hey uhhh... I didn't notice anyone? I was just practising the pebble exercise in here by myself, I'm fine Kaskin." He probably shouldn't tell her what he was doing really, what if she tried it herself? But he was going to find someone to tell about this eventually, if he found an adult who wouldn't get him in trouble for it. This seemed like something important and someone who could deal with it safely should know.

She furrowed her eyebrows. "That's strange," she said. "I thought I felt a sense of loneliness, and ..." she trailed off, then shrugged her broad shoulders, looking up at him - even four years older, she was a half head shorter than him. "I will return to my meditation." Before he could respond, she had bowed and moved towards her door.

Steeling himself in the force to protect himself in case of more shenanigans. Aden leaves his dorm to go see if there were any knights or masters around that didn't have the reputation of being a serious hardass, and wouldn't come down on him like a Rancor for experimenting with the force. Definitely not Master Frost.