Chapter 20 - What in blazes did I just do?

It was about 2 days later before the nurses felt that she was well enough to go back to her room. and even then she was dizzy when she got up. But she was released from the Med Center and stayed in her room. She wasn’t allowed to start back her extra classes yet and she was extremely bored. She got bored quick and wanted to do something productive, so she would slowly start working with the Force again. She wanted this bad experience to just make her stronger, so she tried to come up with new and inventive things to do with the Force while she was on bed rest.
Echo had to get back to classes and didn’t see her often, so she had a lot of time to spend on her own practicing these new techniques.
She started out with small things…marbles, glasses, anything glass or metal. She would focus as hard as could on it with the Force and imagine it bursting into pieces. She tried to search for weak spots in the metal through the Force, and when she found them, she would use the Force and try to make that spot weaker and weaker until it blew up. She didn’t think it would work, but she was bored and had nothing better to do. She would work out, but she was still too weak and she didn’t want to strain herself.
The first couple of time, nothing happened. Ash was about to give up, but then she tried something that sounded absolutely retarded, but it sounded fun to act out.
She pointed her hands like a blaster and aimed at it.. She focused hard on the marble and she pretended to squeeze the trigger.. I’m so retarded, she thought to herself, laughing.
She concentrated, squeezed the trigger, fired, and the marble exploded into oblivion. She yelped, startled. Her hands moved instinctively towards her mouth.
“What is blazes did I just do?” she quietly whispered to herself.
She got up from her bead and got another marble. She didn’t think she would be able to do it again, but it was worth a shot. She let herself go to the Force and aimed. She searched for the weak spot and then pulled the invisible trigger. The marble exploded.
“Blaster boltz…” she said slowly. “I have to go show somebody this.”
She grabbed a lightsaber and another marble and then left her room. Quietly, she snuck out, and tried not to look like she was injured. She actually felt a lot better now since the Force was flowing through her, making her stronger, but her legs were still a wobbly and took her awhile to get to the Mess Hall. She thought that’s her friends would all be there, but they weren’t. Then she remembered that she had a comlink that she could contact Echo with.
“Hey Echo, where ya at?” she said.
“Ash? Is that you? You feeling any better?” Echo asked.
“Ya I’m better. Hey where are you at? I need to show you something,” Ash said.
“Um, I’m actually in my room. Juno, Kali, Broze, and Nya are here too. We’re just hanging out.”
“Okay, good. I need to show them this too,” Ash said and put the comlink away. She hurried as fast as she could and finally reached Echo’s room. She burst in. Echo, Juno, and Broze were sitting on the bed talking, Kali was teaching Nya how to braid hair, even though she n=had no practical use for it considering she was a Twi’lek. Everyone seemed startled to see her up and active.
“Guys, you have to see this. I’ve been working on this all morning and I have no idea how I’m even able to do it,” she said.
“Okay, let’s see it,” Echo said.
Ash put the marble in front of her face and let go, using the Force to levitate it to the other side of the room near the bed.
“You might want to get out of the way,” she warned them. They got off the bed and stood behind her. Kali and Nya turned around from where they were standing.
Ash raised her hand again like a blaster and aimed at the marble. She heard Broze laughing behind. He must have thought she was ridiculous to think it would even work. But Ash set that out of her mind and concentrated, finding the weakness in the glass. She let go to the Force and pulled the imaginary trigger. The marble exploded, and everyone jumped.
“Whoa!!” Nya, Kali and Juno said in unison.
“What in blazes did you just do?” Echo said startled.
“Ya!” Broze said. “And can you teach it to me?” He sounded excited.
Ash looked at them. “I told you I have no idea how I’m able to do it! I just can! I concentrate and I can do it! I don’t know how to even start to explain it!”
Everyone was startled and speechless.
Broze just looked at her.. He paused for a minute, and then said, “That is easily one of the coolest things I have ever seen.”
Echo walked up to her and grabbed her arm. “Come on, we have to go show the Council this! I’ve never seen anything like it! Can you do it to anything else?”
“I haven’t really tried anything else that worked, but I could try again. Do you have a cup or piece of metal I can try it on?” Ash asked her.
“When do I not have an extra piece of metal?” Echo said and went to go get a piece.
She came back with a metal cube. “She if you can blast this into oblivion!” Echo said tauntingly.
Ash accepted the challenge. She took the cube and use to Force to float it to the opposite side of the room. She sensed her friends watching her closely, looking for the first opportunity to make fun of her if it didn’t work..
Ash relaxed herself and concentrated. She aimed and fired like she had before, and like the marbles, the cube burst into pieces.
Broze looked at her. “I guess what they say is true. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think your living proof of that!”
Ash blushed. She wasn’t use to having all this attention from her friends.
“You have to go show that to the Council!” Juno said. “That is amazing.”
“Okay. Echo, do you want to come with me? I get nervous when I go myself.”
“Sure. Let me get another piece of metal for you,” Echo said and scurried off. She came back and Ash and Echo left again for the Council chambers. Ash was still very tired, and Echo did have to help her walk a bit.
“Wow, it’s weird that you need help to walk but you can do that imaginary blaster thing like a breeze,” Echo said as they were walking.
“Well apparently, the Force doesn’t like my legs right now.”
They made it too the Council Chambers, and to their surprise, only a few members where in there. Mace, Yoda, Adi, and Ki-Adi-Mundi sat talking together. They walked to the center of them room and waited for them to speak to them.
“We seem to be seeing you two a lot lately,” Adi said giggling. “What is it we can do for you?”
“Masters, Ash has this…gift. One I have never seen before. You have to let her show it to you,” Echo said, speaking before Ash could open her mouth.
Mace Windu nodded forward. “Go ahead,” he said.
Echo handed Ash the piece of metal. Ash levitated it to the other side of the room where the master’s weren’t sitting, so they could see it easily.
Once again, she found the object in the Force, found its weakness, and then gently exploited them, pushing them apart. She raised her hand, aimed, and fired. The metal burst into pieces.
She turned around to look at the masters. They were just looking at her.
”A natural ability for shatterpoint, you have,” Yoda said.
“What’s shatterpoint?” Ash asked.
“It’s an ability that can let you see many different futures and what paths to take to make a certain one come true. But in your case, you are actually able to apply it to physical things. You find the weakness, and let the Force surge through you and into the weak points of the object, making it shatter,” Mace Windu explained.
“That is so cool!” Ash exclaimed.
“You should be thankful for this gift padawan. Most Jedi cannot do that as easily as you can. Most can’t even do it, and rarely, if never, can someone as young as you be able to master it. It is a genetic gift,” Ki-Adi-Mundi said. “Just make sure not to over use this power and don’t get cocky with it.”
Ash smiled. They were always telling her not to be cocky. “Yes master,” she replied. “I’m very thankful!”
“Good. Now be on your way. You should still be resting,” Mace said.
“Yes master,” she said and turned away with Echo. They left the Chamber and went towards Echo’s room.
“Wow,” Echo said. “That is such a cool power. I wish I could do that.”
“Hey, we are related. You should try it! You might be natural!”
“I doubt that!” Echo replied. “I’ll probably be able to do something way cooler…”
Ash just stared at her and Echo stared back. They laughed at each other. Ash lightly punched Echo in the shoulder jokingly.
“You crack me up, you know that?” Ash said.
“Yes I know. I’m hilarious,” Echo said trying to act preppy. She flipped her hair away from her face in a good impression of Kali. Ash started to crack up laughing.
“We’re retarded, you know that?” Ash said to her.
“Are you just now figuring that out?’ Echo said smiling.
Ash just laughed. They were definitely related. No doubt about it.
“Come on. Let’s go see if you can do this shatterpoint thing!” Ash said grabbing her arm. “Got anything to experiment on?”
“Well, I do have a battle droid I’ve been building, but,” Echo started, then Ash cut her off.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute. You’ve built a battle droid?!” Ash interrupted her.
“Ya, but all I can say can make it say is ‘Roger, roger’ and it’s really getting on my nerves! So we can test it on that piece of junk.”
They hurried to Echo’s room. Everybody else had left, probably to meet up with their masters. Echo got the droid out and put in the center of the room. It stared at her, watching her every movement. It creeped Ash out.
Echo came over and stood beside Ash. Ash could sense Echo concentrating on the droid. She raised her hand and fired, but nothing happened. Ash snickered.
“Looks like you’ll live to see another day droid,” Ash said.
“Roger, roger,” the droid replied.
Ash laughed. She felt Echo concentrating again. This time it felt as though she understood what she needed to do. Ash could sense her searching for the weak points in the droid. Ash had already found them and wanted very badly to blast the droid herself, but she waited, letting her sister try again. Echo raised her hand again and aimed. Ash sensed that she had found the path to the droids weak spots. Echo pulled the imaginary trigger and the droid exploded. Echo gasped.
Ash jumped back, and then ran over to the broken droid. His voice modulator was still half-active and she heard a faint, “Roger, rooggeerrrrr,” as she stepped on it, crushing it.
“Wow. All I can say is…wow,” Ash said. “Oh, and now I know for sure that we’re related. “
“Like I said, I can do stuff so much cooler than you!” Echo said laughing.
“Doesn’t acting like your hand is a blaster help you visualize it better?” Ash asked.
Echo nodded, and then the speakers in Echo’s room clicked on.
“Echo Chi and Broze Caama please report to the Council Chambers,” the speaker said..
“What did you do now?” Ash said laughing.
“I think I know,” Echo replied, not laughing. Echo left quickly, leaving Ash by herself in Echo’s room. Echo didn’t even say bye, or ‘Goopta ma Bossa’ like she normally would. It must have been important for her to ignore Ash like that.
She waited in Echo’s room. She didn’t think Echo would mind if she looked around, so she started to look for some cool stuff. Ash remembered Echo’s cabinet of lightsabers. She looked in. Since the last time she had looked in that cabinet, at least 5 more lightsaber were in there, each with their own specific design. Ash was in awe. She wished she could build stuff like Echo. Echo was a mechanical genius.
Ash grabbed a particularly long lightsaber handle and ignited it in front of her. The blade shown a golden yellow. Ash immediately fell in love with it. She started to spin it around and flip it in the air in front of her. Then she went through some techniques that Cin had taught her.
About 20 minutes later, Echo came back in. Trying to be funny, she aimed the lightsaber at Echo went she came in.
“Back off Darth Maul!” Ash said with a deranged look on her face. She knew she looked retarded. Echo kept a straight face though and looked at her.
“Now is not the time for jokes,” Echo said and walked up to Ash. Ash deactivated Echo’s lightsaber and handed it to her. Broze walked in slowly behind her. The sadness that Echo and Broze were radiating in the Force filled the room.
“Aero is being sent to the Agricultural Corps. We probably won’t ever see him again,” Echo spoke up.
Echo looked worried.
“What else is wrong?” Ash asked.
Echo paused then looked to her. “He threatened to kill me Ash.”
Ash was shocked, but that shock quickly turned to hate. She knew that Aero had took part in the plan to kill her, and she hated him for that, but now he had threaten her sister too. That was definitely not the Aero she grew up with. She wanted to blast him into oblivion with her new found Shatterpoint technique, but that was not the Jedi way. But now…it was personal. More personal than it had ever been when he tried to kill her.
“He is definitely not the Aero we grew up with anymore,” Broze said. He looked to Ash. “You should have seen him in there. He was an insult to the Jedi name, and he disrespected the masters. It was embarrassing.”
“You’re also leaving out the part where you almost attacked right then and there,” Echo said. She looked to Ash. “I had to hold him back with the Force to keep him from getting himself into major trouble. It was kinda scary.”
Ash was glad she hadn’t been called down to the Council Chamber with them. She might not have been able to control herself, and Echo might not have been able to hold her back. She hoped she never have to see that no good, double-crossin traitor again.

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