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She leaned forward, kissing Padme on the cheek. "Stay in touch, okay?" she said, linking her hand with Harry's.
Padme blushed a little, unused to being kissed like that both in public and from acquaintances.
"Friends should always keep in touch," Harry said with a nod. Then at Aayla's urging acted on his own impulse, kissing Padme on the same cheek Aayla had before turning away.
A few moments later Padme was still standing there as the ship left, one hand gently touching the cheek Aayla and Harry had both kissed, willing away her flush. Eventually a growling voice spoke up from behind her breaking Padme out of her reverie, its words immediately translated to a very robotic common. "Your Majesty, we have chosen the five Warriors we will be leaving here to act as your Royal guard."
She turned, finding herself confronted by six Wookies. One of them was one of the leaders from last night, a grizzled old male with his hair marked by silver and hundreds of beads worked into it here and there. The others were young, most of them with brown fur, though a short one, who was standing next to a larger male, was noticeably female, which none of the leaders last night had been. Her fur was slightly darker, with a hint of red to it. The man she stood next to also wore a harness across his chest, with markings on it that seemed significant for some reason.
"I would like you to introduce you to their Captain and second-in-command, Chewbacca, and his second-in-command and wife, Mallatobuck." The old chieftain said.
OOOOOOO
Looking over the formal missive from the child queen, Sidious couldn't keep a scowl from his face, though luckily he was alone at present. It was a message, as he had been busy dealing with the Senate at the time she had contacted the office, but it detailed the agreements she'd reached with all the parties involved, as well as a brief blurb about how her people had been returned. Dammit, those ships could've been useful! Now I'll have to see what other ships we can pull out to transport the industrial nodes necessary to start the large scale military buildup.
On the other hand, Sidious thought after a moment, she actually gives me and my administration credit for helping the Jedi Order in this, so yet again my own position is actually stronger due to my earlier involvement. Yes, Sidious decided after moment, that is the important thing. This trade agreement would further cast reflected glory upon his position as Chancellor. It would make him and his words in the Senate more powerful, his position more certain. So in the end, what did those ships matter, really?
Harry, Aayla, their Masters, and Master Dooku stood in front of the small landing pad that had been built for the Serenno lightsaber training center. It had taken several months to build and prepare since they had all returned to Serenno, but it was now complete, and they were here now waiting for the first group of students to arrive.
The complex was rather sprawling, built around, and in many ways, into Master Dooku's mansion. One of the mansion's wings had been redone, now ready for the various Jedi who would be staying. The outer wall separating the mansion's gardens from the outside world had been knocked down in one segment, then enlarged to encompass several different training zones. Each zone was separated by a walking path several hundred feet long in order to let each training group have privacy from their fellows.
Near the leftmost edge of the training grounds was a large outside classroom that had very thick reinforced ferrocrete walls, but no ceiling. This would be the room Fay and Lily used to teach runic arrays to specially selected students. From the landing area, though, that oddity was barely visible around the corner of the mansion since the training center encompassed a sort of half-moon shape around the mansion's environs.
The small transport vessel touched down, and the ramp lowered smoothly, revealing Master Micah Giiett and his padawan, Alecto, leading the way down the ramp with several other Masters that Harry and Aayla had not met before.
The students were a very mixed bag, which Harry had anticipated considering the dual nature of the training being given here. Besides Master Giiett there were five other Masters and ten Knights who had been requested by the Jedi Order to undergo an evaluation of their lightsaber skills.
Dooku knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Niiman had become far too inculcated into the Consular mindset, but now that there had been a study on whether or not lightsaber styles correlated with deaths in the field, perhaps that style would be abandoned almost entirely.
Besides these more senior members of the Order were four unassigned padawans, padawans who for one reason or another had yet to find a Master or Knight to take them on. This wasn't quite unusual, though it wasn't normal enough that this stage of training had been given a special name. Following them was a clan of younglings with their minder. The idea behind their inclusion was to further spread the special techniques of Clan Saa among the younglings and padawans. Indeed, if this worked, then the training clans, of which there were normally five or six at any given time, could be rotated through the Serenno Training Center to learn these techniques before returning for further training at the Temple.
At the sight of one of the knights and two of the unassigned padawans Harry and Aayla had to fight back grins. While Harry was very happy to see his friend Alecto and the others, Mak Lotor and Kass Tod, Aayla was almost ecstatic to see Knight Shaak Ti, who she had not seen for several months before her ill-fated mission with her Master. Indeed, Aayla almost vibrated in place with the desire to rush forward and greet her older friend, almost an older sister figure, who stood between the unassigned padawans and the other knights.
While the younglings, padawans, and even a few knights paused at the sight of Lily hovering over the welcoming party's shoulders, Shaak simply smiled, locking eyes with the greeters in turn, past the Masters at the front of the group.
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