Chapter 10: 10. Chapter

We were about to reach the infirmary when a high-pitched beeping alert resounded in the corridor. I looked around searching for the source of this sound. In the meantime the ga-... I mean Tano's master made a sudden loud sigh, while he checked his wrist communicator, so that was the source of the beeping. He stood aside and looked at me, already annoyed by the incoming call. 

- Uhm, what was your name again?

He asked somewhat embarrassed from not even asking my name in all this time. 

- My name is Nizzal, Nizzal Grey, and what is yours? 

I sensed a little bit of surprise from him, I see, he was used to everyone knowing his name. I was right, that he is considered some kind of big shot here. 

- Anakin Skywalker.

Didn't ring a bell. He looked at my unmoved expression with even more surprise, well he covered it up reasonably fast as he continued. 

- Sadly, I can't escort you the whole way, the council is waiting for my arrival to give my report. On the bright side, we have almost reached it already, you go down this corridor and turn left, the infirmary is the third room on the right side. There is a medical cross plastered over the door, you couldn't miss it even if you tried, tell Soka that master says hi. 

With that, he bolted away running towards the council room. I looked after him as he finally answered the call, a familiar voice could be heard.

- Hi there my former padawan, it feels good that you finally decided to answer my call, was I bothering you perchance I would call back later, but the council would become a bit dejected from that I am afraid. 

- Argh, get off my back Obi-Wan, I got into a mess with the kids here. 

- Oh yes, I could imagine half of the temple is speaking about your dueling escapades. 

- It can't be that bad... 

- Maybe you should tell that to master Windu when you finally arrive. He is waiting through the holo call for about ten minutes now. 

- He will give me another rant for disrespecting the elders... 

- Maybe you should follow his advice for once and there wouldn't be a need for repe-...

Their voices were cut off by the automatically closing air pressure door behind them. Heh, I knew that Anakin was reminding me of someone equally infuriating, should have known that his master was that Obi-One guy, they had too many similarities.

Suddenly finding myself having nothing else to do I decided to follow his advice and reached the place easily. I knocked on the door lightly then walked in carefully, I didn't want to trouble any patient that may want to sleep here. It turned out that I was worried for nothing, it was a somewhat small room, and there were only six beds here. In one of those beds, a familiar togruta girl was resting she seemed to be extremely bored. Our eyes met, she immediately became livelier from seeing me. That made me feel kind of uncomfortable, why was she so happy we only met and I already caused some trouble to her... Even if I didn't want to. I felt strange, that someone that I hardly knew was this happy from seeing me, or maybe I was just overthinking things, children were supposed to become attached to people easily. One thing that was definitely not true for me, in my memories I saw so many people, so many dead, friends, and family all gone, again and again, and again. Of course, I knew that I needed some social interaction to stay mentally healthy, but the amount of the needed interaction was very small in my case. I could stay alone, not talking or seeing anyone over months and I wouldn't feel the need for conversation. I would simply live for my hobbies, reading, painting, playing games, and so on. Well, being closed in an almost empty room with nothing to spend time with is still a big no, but if I can do whatever I want I can easily occupy myself for a large amount of time.

On the side, I have to say, that I don't hate speaking with people. It is a good activity, I simply never really had the chance to speak or meet with many new faces, or create new bonds. If you are someone with thousands of years of memories you would also become accustomed to being alone. Being alone is not a bad thing, but you should not mistake it as being lonely, that is entirely different. Being alone is a choice you can make for yourself while being lonely is something that others decide for us, most likely against our will. I choose to be alone because it would be very hard, if not impossible to hide what I really am from someone who gets that close to me. I don't want to figure out what would they do with me if they realized that I am practically a walking and talking holocron, that has enough sith and jedi knowledge amassed to change the tide of the current war. Such knowledge in the hands of shortsighted beings that at best can only think in the length of a few years and not in lifespans would lead to a catastrophe.

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I also plan to be around for the next five hundred years so if I don't plan to become the subject of a force experiment on immortality or as a living holocron, while they try to forcefully extract memories from me... I shivered from the thought alone. I probably shouldn't get too close to anyone right now especially not a jedi. I already began to slow my aging through the force, therefore I will be in this child body for the next fifty or sixty years if everything goes well. Why wouldn't I wait until I became older you ask? If I wait for example until I become eighteen or twenty then I would lose five or seven years of my life, not that big of a deal right? Wrong! That seven years of lifetime elongated by the force would become seventy years, and that is kind of a big deal for me. There is a maximum level of how much you can elongate your lifespan through the force, if you go beyond that which is by the way about ten times slower than normal aging, some of your bodily functions will slow down to an extent that would seriously endanger your life. For example, your brain functions would become so slow that you would only try to take in a breath every minute, hour, or day.  Your reaction to an incoming attack would also slow down so much that you wouldn't be able to react to it. The healing of your wounds would become so slow that it would count as nonexistent. Overall you would become an existence that is mostly out of real-time, you would slow down so much that the world would seem to accelerate around you. It is basically a force hibernation technique, that you keep activated to a lower extent constantly. You may wonder why these side-effects only became troublesome after your bodily function is beyond ten times slower? The answer to this question is simple, the force. To be more punctual, my bodily reactions are already slowed down around ten times of their normal versions, which means without the use of the force, my body would heal ten times slower, and so on. With the help of the force, I can quicken my reaction times and needed processes to the level of a normal force-sensitive, but that ability also has an extent, and its maximum is about twelve times your normal reaction time. 

Anyway if you use the hibernation technique to its full power, you must be wary about your surroundings. You don't want to die in a pitiful and really cringe-worthy way, like being stuck on a tree that grows out of the ground under you then a few hundred years later the tree got struck by lightning, or the branch you end up on breaks under you and you fall to death. After all, entirely activating the technique then deactivating it at the minimum takes about five hundred years of time. So don't try to use it as an excuse for skipping the laundry like master Cil-Cil Muz, that halfwit gungan... He was lucky enough, that his family realized what he did, and they placed his body in a corner of the house like a statue, where he was at least dusted a few times a year for the next eight generations. What an idiot, sometimes I am actually surprised that our memory line is still alive. 

- Yoda is right, the force works in mysterious ways. Ouch! 

Something flicked me on the forehead, I looked around a bit confused, I was sitting on the side of Tano's bed while a nurse was treating my lekku covering it with a bacta-washed bandage. Then I remembered, Ahsoka began to rant about her master injuring me instead of properly apologizing and not even showing his face to visit her. Then I got distracted by my own thoughts while I was waiting for the nurse to come over since Vokara, the lead healer was occupied in another room with much more critical cases. 

- Ouch!

This time I was outright smacked on my forehead. I looked at Ahsoka the perpetrator with obvious disbelief in my eyes. 

- What? You were ignoring everything I said in the last ten minutes so don't give me that look now!

Ugh, was I distracted for that long. 

- Sorry...

I said.

The nurse laughed behind me when she saw that we were looking at her with confused glares, she quickly told us the reason for her laughter.

- Don't blame your friend little Ahsoka, it is quite normal for twi'leks to be easily distractable after lekku injury. You both have leks, but their physiology and therefore their functionality is not the same, as members of two different races. 

She looked ashamed after that explanation.

- I... I didn't think, I didn't mean to... Sorry...

The nurse laughed again as she finished my first aid treatment. Then, she left us for our own devices and walked away hastily. There must be a lot of injuries in this chaotic time of galactic civil war.

 

 

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