Post by >kabra< on Mar 18, 2007 17:45:48 GMT -5
Just a one-shot... A young teenager from Tatooine goes to his first day of high school. With an unexpected twist.
The Datapad
“Now, don’t talk to any strangers-“
“Aunt Beru, I’m 14 already…”
“Don’t go anywhere until Owen and I come back to pick you up, ok?”
“I can take care of myself…”
“Remember, Owen registered your last name as Lars. No Skywalker.”
“Why?”
“We’ve had this conversation before…”
“I just want to know why. What’s wrong with my last name?”
“We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Luke, a young, blonde-haired teenager, sighed loudly and looked around the front of Anchorhead’s High School for anyone he recognized, ignoring his aunt.
“There’s a few credits in your backpack for lunch money. Lunch money, Luke, for lunch. Not for spare droid parts,” Beru Lars continued. “I wrote down Mr. Kenobi as your emergency contact, but don’t tell your uncle that, ok? He doesn’t like him.”
Luke tilted his head to the side, recognizing a dark-haired teenager around his age talking to an attractive blond girl some distance off. ‘Biggs has a gilrfriend now?’ he wondered.
“After school we’ll be back here to pick you up. Don’t run off anywhere. And please, don’t get into trouble. We’ve had enough run-ins with Tusken Raiders this month already.”
Biggs turned and saw Luke, welcoming him with a wave. Luke smiled and waved back at his best friend.
“Luke, are you even listening to me?”
“Yes, Aunt Beru. I’ll be ok. It can’t be that different from middle school.”
Beru sighed. “Alright then…I’ll see you after school.” With that, Luke’s aunt turned and walked back to the landspeeder where Owen was waiting.
Luke made his way toward Biggs, kicking up dusty as he walked. It was still early, but the twin suns of Tatooine were already glaring down at the desert planet.
“Hey, freshman!” Biggs said, acknowledging Luke. “Welcome to high school!”
Biggs Darklighter was a year older then Luke, and the two had been friends ever since Luke could remember. Both boys longed to go somewhere away from the “sand-covered, sun-baked heap of nothing” that they were doomed to live on, as they often referred to Tatooine.
“Heya, Biggs. Where’ve you been over the summer?”
“My family went to Mos Espa for a vacation…some kinda business trip thing. Not much different then here, just full of idiots. No one there worth talking to,” he said with a shrug. The blonde girl next to him smiled. “Luke, meet Kandji, Kandji, meet Luke,” he continued, introducing his friends to each other. “Luke, have you seen Tank and the gang anywhere?”
“No, not really—I just kinda got here, you know.”
“Ah, well, we’re bound to see them somewhere. Well, see you later, we better get headed to homeroom. You have your schedule, right?” Luke nodded. “’K. See you later!” Biggs and Kandji walked off to one of the doors in the school building. Luke took his schedule out of his pocket and headed towards the entrance, more then eager to start his first day of high school.
***
“Erik Jandai?”
“Present.”
“Deacon Kindlestar?”
“ I’m ‘ere.”
“Luke Lars?”
“Here.” Luke replied in a meloncholy voice as the teacher called out the names of the students, not looking up from his notebook. The teenager was sketching a picture of a landspeeder, adding accessories here and there to make it unique and more functional. He had survived the first two periods of school, and was bored already, now in history class. History had always been one of his favorite subjects, but this year he wasn’t exactly thrilled about taking a class that would most likely focus entirely about the 14-year-old Galactic Empire. Luke longed to learn about other things in history that his former classes had only mentioned in passing: the Old Republic, the Clone Wars, what happened before the Empire. Though Imperial influence was rare on the outer-rim world of Tatooine, the schools still had to abide by their laws of education. Luke sometimes wished he was born before the Galaxy’s complete change in government, but he couldn’t change that no more then he could change the suns from setting, as Aunt Beru often said.
“So, everyone’s present. I’d say we’re off to a good start.” The teacher’s voice jerked Luke out of his musings. He closed his notebook and grabbed his history book, ready to begin the lesson.
“This year, we’ll be covering the formation of the Galactic Empire and the influence it has had on all the planets, even way out here…” The teacher, a middle-aged brunette, seemed to be just as bored with the lesson plan as all the students. Luke wasn’t the only one who groaned audibly.
A black haired boy, one of Luke’s childhood friends, raised his hand.
“Yes, Deacon?” the teacher asked, checking her seating chart to confirm his name.
“Miss...”
“Chapao.”
“Miss Chapao, why can’t we learn about anything else in history class?”
Luke mentally commended his friend’s boldness. Rumors had been starting to fly about a Rebel Alliance forming, but nobody really dared to go against the Empire.
The teacher paused, obviously thinking of an answer. “It’s what we have to teach,” she said bluntly. “I don’t make the rules. I agree, it would be interesting to touch up on something else, such as the Clone Wars, but…well, we can’t.”
Luke sighed.
“If you open to page 3 of your textbooks, we can start reading Section One of Chapter One…”
Luke sighed once again as the class read a brief run-down on the Clone Wars, skipping lightly over the battles and focusing mostly on the corruption of the Senate…
***
The suns’ heat had intensifyed until now, the highest peak of the afternoon. Several students poured out of the building, some going to various vehicles parked here and there, others walking home, and some loitering around talking to their friends. Luke walked over to the parking lot where his aunt and uncle had dropped him off, sitting down in the shade of the building. The day had been pretty boring, average for a school day. Lunch had been atrocious.
“Sithspit!” Luke had been drawing in the sand with a finger when he heard someone cussing, accompanied by the sound of a broken landspeeder. He looked up to see Miss Chapao jumping back from her vehicle that was sputtering like a drowning womp rat.
Luke got up and looked at the speeder. “I think you may have bursted a repulsorlift,” he said.
“Hmm?” The teacher said, glancing at Luke. “Oh…um…how do you fix that?”
“It’s quite simple, really…could I have a look at it?”
The teacher nodded, stepping back. Luke walked over to the speeder and checked the underside. Sure enough, one of the repulsorlifts was damaged. “Do you have any spares?” Luke asked, standing up again and wiping the dust off his pants.
“Yes, I think there’s-“
“Mizz Chapao?” She was cut off by the voice of another history teacher running up to her. “Mizz Chapao, there’s a faculty meeting, an’ they want all history teachers there. Now.”
“Alright,” Luke’s teacher said before turning back to the boy, handing him a sheet of paper with the numbers to a combination scribbled down on it.“Luke, I’m pretty sure I have a spare in the closet in my classroom. You know how to repair it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Luke said, taken aback by the teacher’s confidence.
“Alright then…I can trust you,” she said before walking off with the other teacher.
***
One-One-Thirty-Eight-ding. Luke punched the numbers to the combination into the keypad on the door, relieved when it granted him access. The door slid open, and Luke entered the closet, switching the light on.
It was a small, narrow room, lined with mostly-empty shelves and a couple of boxes on the floor. Luke looked for the repulsorlift, but couldn’t find any on the shelves. Getting down on his knees, the teen lifted the cover of one of the boxes. What he saw inside was far from spare landspeeder parts.
A neatly folded robe, dark brown in color and covered in a thin layer of dust, sat on the top of the box. Luke lifted it out and unfolded it. It was long and made of a silky material, with a hood. The teenager looked at the garment curiously before setting it down on the ground and continuing to rummage through the box. A datapad caught his eye next. Curious, Luke turned it on. It looked as if it hadn’t been used for a long while—the last journal entry was dated the year Luke was born. The farmboy only lightly skimmed the journal entries, in respect of his teacher’s privacy, but he did look at the pictures that accompanied some entries—snapshots of strange places and unfamiliar people. The datapad intrugued Luke in a way that he couldn’t comprehend. One particular entry caught his eye. Battle on Geonosis—several Jedi dead. They were sent to investigate the Seperatists and to rescue Kenobi, Skywalker, and Senator Naberrie. “Kenobi? Skywalker?” Luke asked himself, fascinated by the mention of the very familiar lastnames. He had no idea who Senator Naberrie was, however.
Almost all that were sent died. The journal entry went on. Master and I would have probably had to go, had we not just come back from the mission on Dantooine. I can’t believe that there’s actually going to be a war. All the members of the Council seem concerned about the future. I have a bad feeling about this…
Luke blinked in surprise at the strange journal entry he had just read. He felt guilty for intruding on private imformation, but that had him completely hooked. The teenager looked at a picture attached to the entry. It showed two Jedi, one a middle-aged Twi’lek, and another a young human, a strand of hair behind her right ear twisted into a braid. The girl looked remarkably like Miss Chapao, but younger.
Intrigued, Luke scrolled back to the last entry and read it.
There was an assault on the Jedi Temple last night. Master is dead, and now I’m flying to Tatooine. I don’t think anyone will find me there. It was hard finding a pilot that would fly me there and not ask any questions. I almost had to use a mind trick on him, but he seems pretty nice. I have no idea what I’m going to do now, just that it’s no longer safe to go around as a Jedi padawan. I think I might become a teacher or something else low-profile…I always thought being a teacher would be nice. I’ll have to change my name, too…Chapao was my mother’s maiden name, I believe. It would be safe to use that.
The datapad fell from Luke’s hands as the information sunk in. His history teacher had been a Jedi! It took a while for the teenager to remember what he was looking for. Setting the datapad gently back into the box, he found another very interesting artifact.
It looked somewhat like the hilt of a sword, but more mechanical. It felt strange in Luke’s hand, as if there was some other kind of power within or around it. A few switches adorned one side. Fascinated once again, Luke brushed his hand over one of the switches. Snap-hiss. A beam of light flickered out one end, emitting a blue glow. Luke’s jaw dropped. He was holding a lasersword—or whatever it was called—that had belonged to his teacher! Shaking his head as if to shake off his curiosity, Luke turned the weapon off and placed it back in the box. He re-folded the robe and set it on top, closing the box and pushing it cautiously back to it’s previous position.
Luke looked around the closet once more before finding what he had been seeking. He grabbed the spare repulsorlift, his head buzzing with a thousand unanswered questions.
“Did you find it?”
Luke looked up, startled, and got back on his legs. Miss Chapao was standing in the doorway, looking neither concerned nor angry.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, handing his teacher the part.
“Your uncle and aunt are outside waiting for you,” she said. “I found a mechanic who could fix it. Thank you for your help.”
Luke nodded, at a loss for words. “Your welcome,” he said weakly as he walked out the classroom and went towards the exit.
***
If Miss Chapao had seen Luke looking through her keepsakes, she never let on to it. She treated Luke no better then the other students throughout the year, but they seemed to share an understanding with each other nonetheless, and if Luke was ever asked who his favorite high school teacher was, he would answer Miss Chapao. He never brought up the subject of being a Jedi to his teacher, but she seemed unconcerned if he knew. The farmboy’s head was buzzing with several questions, but he never asked anyone. In good time, he felt, they would be answered…and sure enough, years later, he found himself walking down a path he thought he would never have the opportunity of; the path of a Jedi Knight.
The Datapad
“Now, don’t talk to any strangers-“
“Aunt Beru, I’m 14 already…”
“Don’t go anywhere until Owen and I come back to pick you up, ok?”
“I can take care of myself…”
“Remember, Owen registered your last name as Lars. No Skywalker.”
“Why?”
“We’ve had this conversation before…”
“I just want to know why. What’s wrong with my last name?”
“We just don’t want you to get hurt.”
Luke, a young, blonde-haired teenager, sighed loudly and looked around the front of Anchorhead’s High School for anyone he recognized, ignoring his aunt.
“There’s a few credits in your backpack for lunch money. Lunch money, Luke, for lunch. Not for spare droid parts,” Beru Lars continued. “I wrote down Mr. Kenobi as your emergency contact, but don’t tell your uncle that, ok? He doesn’t like him.”
Luke tilted his head to the side, recognizing a dark-haired teenager around his age talking to an attractive blond girl some distance off. ‘Biggs has a gilrfriend now?’ he wondered.
“After school we’ll be back here to pick you up. Don’t run off anywhere. And please, don’t get into trouble. We’ve had enough run-ins with Tusken Raiders this month already.”
Biggs turned and saw Luke, welcoming him with a wave. Luke smiled and waved back at his best friend.
“Luke, are you even listening to me?”
“Yes, Aunt Beru. I’ll be ok. It can’t be that different from middle school.”
Beru sighed. “Alright then…I’ll see you after school.” With that, Luke’s aunt turned and walked back to the landspeeder where Owen was waiting.
Luke made his way toward Biggs, kicking up dusty as he walked. It was still early, but the twin suns of Tatooine were already glaring down at the desert planet.
“Hey, freshman!” Biggs said, acknowledging Luke. “Welcome to high school!”
Biggs Darklighter was a year older then Luke, and the two had been friends ever since Luke could remember. Both boys longed to go somewhere away from the “sand-covered, sun-baked heap of nothing” that they were doomed to live on, as they often referred to Tatooine.
“Heya, Biggs. Where’ve you been over the summer?”
“My family went to Mos Espa for a vacation…some kinda business trip thing. Not much different then here, just full of idiots. No one there worth talking to,” he said with a shrug. The blonde girl next to him smiled. “Luke, meet Kandji, Kandji, meet Luke,” he continued, introducing his friends to each other. “Luke, have you seen Tank and the gang anywhere?”
“No, not really—I just kinda got here, you know.”
“Ah, well, we’re bound to see them somewhere. Well, see you later, we better get headed to homeroom. You have your schedule, right?” Luke nodded. “’K. See you later!” Biggs and Kandji walked off to one of the doors in the school building. Luke took his schedule out of his pocket and headed towards the entrance, more then eager to start his first day of high school.
***
“Erik Jandai?”
“Present.”
“Deacon Kindlestar?”
“ I’m ‘ere.”
“Luke Lars?”
“Here.” Luke replied in a meloncholy voice as the teacher called out the names of the students, not looking up from his notebook. The teenager was sketching a picture of a landspeeder, adding accessories here and there to make it unique and more functional. He had survived the first two periods of school, and was bored already, now in history class. History had always been one of his favorite subjects, but this year he wasn’t exactly thrilled about taking a class that would most likely focus entirely about the 14-year-old Galactic Empire. Luke longed to learn about other things in history that his former classes had only mentioned in passing: the Old Republic, the Clone Wars, what happened before the Empire. Though Imperial influence was rare on the outer-rim world of Tatooine, the schools still had to abide by their laws of education. Luke sometimes wished he was born before the Galaxy’s complete change in government, but he couldn’t change that no more then he could change the suns from setting, as Aunt Beru often said.
“So, everyone’s present. I’d say we’re off to a good start.” The teacher’s voice jerked Luke out of his musings. He closed his notebook and grabbed his history book, ready to begin the lesson.
“This year, we’ll be covering the formation of the Galactic Empire and the influence it has had on all the planets, even way out here…” The teacher, a middle-aged brunette, seemed to be just as bored with the lesson plan as all the students. Luke wasn’t the only one who groaned audibly.
A black haired boy, one of Luke’s childhood friends, raised his hand.
“Yes, Deacon?” the teacher asked, checking her seating chart to confirm his name.
“Miss...”
“Chapao.”
“Miss Chapao, why can’t we learn about anything else in history class?”
Luke mentally commended his friend’s boldness. Rumors had been starting to fly about a Rebel Alliance forming, but nobody really dared to go against the Empire.
The teacher paused, obviously thinking of an answer. “It’s what we have to teach,” she said bluntly. “I don’t make the rules. I agree, it would be interesting to touch up on something else, such as the Clone Wars, but…well, we can’t.”
Luke sighed.
“If you open to page 3 of your textbooks, we can start reading Section One of Chapter One…”
Luke sighed once again as the class read a brief run-down on the Clone Wars, skipping lightly over the battles and focusing mostly on the corruption of the Senate…
***
The suns’ heat had intensifyed until now, the highest peak of the afternoon. Several students poured out of the building, some going to various vehicles parked here and there, others walking home, and some loitering around talking to their friends. Luke walked over to the parking lot where his aunt and uncle had dropped him off, sitting down in the shade of the building. The day had been pretty boring, average for a school day. Lunch had been atrocious.
“Sithspit!” Luke had been drawing in the sand with a finger when he heard someone cussing, accompanied by the sound of a broken landspeeder. He looked up to see Miss Chapao jumping back from her vehicle that was sputtering like a drowning womp rat.
Luke got up and looked at the speeder. “I think you may have bursted a repulsorlift,” he said.
“Hmm?” The teacher said, glancing at Luke. “Oh…um…how do you fix that?”
“It’s quite simple, really…could I have a look at it?”
The teacher nodded, stepping back. Luke walked over to the speeder and checked the underside. Sure enough, one of the repulsorlifts was damaged. “Do you have any spares?” Luke asked, standing up again and wiping the dust off his pants.
“Yes, I think there’s-“
“Mizz Chapao?” She was cut off by the voice of another history teacher running up to her. “Mizz Chapao, there’s a faculty meeting, an’ they want all history teachers there. Now.”
“Alright,” Luke’s teacher said before turning back to the boy, handing him a sheet of paper with the numbers to a combination scribbled down on it.“Luke, I’m pretty sure I have a spare in the closet in my classroom. You know how to repair it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Luke said, taken aback by the teacher’s confidence.
“Alright then…I can trust you,” she said before walking off with the other teacher.
***
One-One-Thirty-Eight-ding. Luke punched the numbers to the combination into the keypad on the door, relieved when it granted him access. The door slid open, and Luke entered the closet, switching the light on.
It was a small, narrow room, lined with mostly-empty shelves and a couple of boxes on the floor. Luke looked for the repulsorlift, but couldn’t find any on the shelves. Getting down on his knees, the teen lifted the cover of one of the boxes. What he saw inside was far from spare landspeeder parts.
A neatly folded robe, dark brown in color and covered in a thin layer of dust, sat on the top of the box. Luke lifted it out and unfolded it. It was long and made of a silky material, with a hood. The teenager looked at the garment curiously before setting it down on the ground and continuing to rummage through the box. A datapad caught his eye next. Curious, Luke turned it on. It looked as if it hadn’t been used for a long while—the last journal entry was dated the year Luke was born. The farmboy only lightly skimmed the journal entries, in respect of his teacher’s privacy, but he did look at the pictures that accompanied some entries—snapshots of strange places and unfamiliar people. The datapad intrugued Luke in a way that he couldn’t comprehend. One particular entry caught his eye. Battle on Geonosis—several Jedi dead. They were sent to investigate the Seperatists and to rescue Kenobi, Skywalker, and Senator Naberrie. “Kenobi? Skywalker?” Luke asked himself, fascinated by the mention of the very familiar lastnames. He had no idea who Senator Naberrie was, however.
Almost all that were sent died. The journal entry went on. Master and I would have probably had to go, had we not just come back from the mission on Dantooine. I can’t believe that there’s actually going to be a war. All the members of the Council seem concerned about the future. I have a bad feeling about this…
Luke blinked in surprise at the strange journal entry he had just read. He felt guilty for intruding on private imformation, but that had him completely hooked. The teenager looked at a picture attached to the entry. It showed two Jedi, one a middle-aged Twi’lek, and another a young human, a strand of hair behind her right ear twisted into a braid. The girl looked remarkably like Miss Chapao, but younger.
Intrigued, Luke scrolled back to the last entry and read it.
There was an assault on the Jedi Temple last night. Master is dead, and now I’m flying to Tatooine. I don’t think anyone will find me there. It was hard finding a pilot that would fly me there and not ask any questions. I almost had to use a mind trick on him, but he seems pretty nice. I have no idea what I’m going to do now, just that it’s no longer safe to go around as a Jedi padawan. I think I might become a teacher or something else low-profile…I always thought being a teacher would be nice. I’ll have to change my name, too…Chapao was my mother’s maiden name, I believe. It would be safe to use that.
The datapad fell from Luke’s hands as the information sunk in. His history teacher had been a Jedi! It took a while for the teenager to remember what he was looking for. Setting the datapad gently back into the box, he found another very interesting artifact.
It looked somewhat like the hilt of a sword, but more mechanical. It felt strange in Luke’s hand, as if there was some other kind of power within or around it. A few switches adorned one side. Fascinated once again, Luke brushed his hand over one of the switches. Snap-hiss. A beam of light flickered out one end, emitting a blue glow. Luke’s jaw dropped. He was holding a lasersword—or whatever it was called—that had belonged to his teacher! Shaking his head as if to shake off his curiosity, Luke turned the weapon off and placed it back in the box. He re-folded the robe and set it on top, closing the box and pushing it cautiously back to it’s previous position.
Luke looked around the closet once more before finding what he had been seeking. He grabbed the spare repulsorlift, his head buzzing with a thousand unanswered questions.
“Did you find it?”
Luke looked up, startled, and got back on his legs. Miss Chapao was standing in the doorway, looking neither concerned nor angry.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, handing his teacher the part.
“Your uncle and aunt are outside waiting for you,” she said. “I found a mechanic who could fix it. Thank you for your help.”
Luke nodded, at a loss for words. “Your welcome,” he said weakly as he walked out the classroom and went towards the exit.
***
If Miss Chapao had seen Luke looking through her keepsakes, she never let on to it. She treated Luke no better then the other students throughout the year, but they seemed to share an understanding with each other nonetheless, and if Luke was ever asked who his favorite high school teacher was, he would answer Miss Chapao. He never brought up the subject of being a Jedi to his teacher, but she seemed unconcerned if he knew. The farmboy’s head was buzzing with several questions, but he never asked anyone. In good time, he felt, they would be answered…and sure enough, years later, he found himself walking down a path he thought he would never have the opportunity of; the path of a Jedi Knight.
