"So what do you want to be?"

"Doesn't matter," the boy sitting next to Revan said. "They haven't even called me for the first trial yet." He glanced over at the holoprojector in the middle of the group, sudden hope lighting his face. "But maybe this year… right? I'm nearly ten."

Dynn shrugged and turned her gaze to Revan, who was next in the circle. "Revan? You're expecting to be called for second trials this year, right?"

Revan nodded. It was a complete breach of etiquette – you never said that you were ready, only the Masters could decide that – but there had been so many very definite hints dropped in her direction that she felt quite confident. The only person who was more guaranteed to be taken was Ania, because you couldn't let such a strong Seer go untrained for long.

"So? What do you want to be?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know," Revan repeated, hoping that this wasn't going to turn into one of those conversations with Dynn again. "I'm not a Guardian, but I don't think I fit the others, either."

"Sentinel," Malak said. Several people snorted; the idea of Revan ending up in any catch-all group was, admittedly, a little funny, but she scowled anyway.

"I don't see why you're laughing. They'll never let you take Consular, Malak."

"They will too," he snapped, sitting upright for once in his life to glare at her across the circle. "They know I want to be a Healer. And I'm good at it, too."

"You're too big. They'll make you a Guardian, you know they will."

"Wish we could choose," a Cerean whose name Revan did not know said. The entire circle of apprentices murmured assent.

"Well, I know what I'm getting," Ania said, a statement which did not surprise anyone in the slightest. "Sentinel." She grinned suddenly, one of those horribly infectious grins of hers which made everyone else smile back by reflex. "And, I bet I can tell you who's going to be called."

"I thought you weren't allowed to predict stuff on your own," one of the little ones seated on the floor inside the circle of chairs said.

"I'm not on my own," Ania retorted, "'Cause you're all here."

Malak leaned into the circle to get a better look at her. "The Masters'll be really angry, An. Remember what Vrook told you last year?"

"He told me not to show off. I'm not showing off, I'm performing a public wossname –"

"Service," Revan murmured.

" – yeah, whatever Revan said. Can't hear her from here, but I bet she just corrected me. Anyway, it's cruel, what they do to us. Get us all neat an' tidy, make us sit in alphabetical order, then most people get let down anyway – why not jus' grab people from classes or whatever?"

"I think they do that with the third trial," Dynn said.

"They should do it more," Ania said firmly.

Several people were just opening their mouths to agree or argue when the holoprojector whirred into life, displaying Master Vandar in the centre. The apprentices stood more or less as one, though a couple of the younger ones had to be 'helped' by surreptitious kicks from their elders.

"Good morning, apprentices," he said.

"Good morning, Master Vandar," they chorused. Revan was fairly sure that Ania, who was behind the holo-Vandar, didn't say what she was supposed to; several people around her started to giggle.

"The list has been prepared," Vandar said, taking a datapad from his pocket. "If your name is called, please go to the Council room immediately. Now, the first trial. Alcott, Bandon…"

Revan got shunted to the end of the alphabet, again. It seemed to depend, she mused as she sat between Dynn and Malak in the antechamber to the Council room and waited patiently for her turn, on who was writing the list. With some Masters, having no last name could be a definite advantage; it meant that they put you down first. With others, she frequently ended up at the end of the list.

"How long's she been?" Dynn asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"About twenty minutes," Malak said. "None of the others took this long."

Revan snorted. "She probably walked in there, told them she was a Sentinel, and they've been telling her off for being arrogant ever since."

"Bet she comes out with a yellow crystal, though."

"Bet she does," Revan agreed.

"I don't know how she gets away with it," Dynn said.

"Who gets away with what?" Ania asked, popping her head out of the door to the training room. "They want you now, Dynn."

"Did you get Sentinel?" Revan asked.

"Yeah. Not sure about the colour, it looks like piss."

"Everyone says that," Malak said. "Well, humans do."

Ania wrinkled her nose. "Stop him, Revan, or he'll still be telling you about different colours of alien piss when they call him in. I've got to try and put a 'saber together now. See you in a bit."

"Try not to make anything explode," Malak called after her.

"I'm not sure that's possible with lightsabers," Revan said.

"She's Ania. She'll find a way."

"Probably," Revan said, and they lapsed into silence until Dynn emerged some ten minutes later, showed them a green crystal, and sent Malak in.

From then on, it was simply a matter of sitting and waiting; Malak had only just enough time to whisper, "Fracking Guardian!" to Revan after he left the Council room, and though she knew most of the people who were left on the benches with her, it was only in passing.

Finally Tri'ith, the last person left besides Revan, left the Council room with a green crystal and ushered her in.

"Ah, Revan," Master Dorak said. He looked tired, but still somehow managed to find a smile for her. "You're the last, I presume."

"Yes, Master."

"Do you have any thoughts on what you would like to be?"

"No, Master."

"No?" He looked – and sounded – surprised. "Everyone else did. Surely you must have some idea."

"I really don't know," Revan said. "Not a Guardian, though. I'm not built for that."

"I would tend to agree with you on that," he said, nodding. "Besides, you've always preferred your books. Very well, let me ask you some simple questions."

"Don't you already know what we're going to be?" Revan asked, surprised. "I mean, we were told –"

"We have a fair idea," Dorak said. "But sometimes, people can be surprising – it's best to be sure. Now…"

There followed fifteen minutes of some of the most boring questions that Revan had ever sat through. Dorak questioned her on her test results, her favourite subjects, her understanding of the Code and, bizarrely, her favourite colour. He wrote down all of her responses and, after a few minutes of consideration at the end of the session, suggested Sentinel. Damn – Malak had been right. He would never let her forget this.

"If you say so, Master," she said.

"Still no preference, I see," Dorak said. "Good. I'd hate to think you had changed your mind and decided you wanted to be a Guardian after all." He reached into a small pouch on his belt and pulled out a crystal, holding it up to the light for a moment before handing it out to her. Revan stared in dismay. "What's the matter? There's nothing wrong with it."

She'd never seen the yellow crystals before; in fact, she had never even seen a yellow 'saber activated before now, as everyone who taught them 'sabercraft was a Guardian. She had always assumed that it was a joke, just something people said because they were yellow. But it was, it really was…

"It's… the same colour as pee, Master…"

Dorak sighed, put the crystal into her palm, and pointed to the training room.

They weren't allowed help while building their lightsabers, so by the time Revan left the Council room every small, quiet nook in the Enclave was filled with an apprentice trying – with varying degrees of success – to put their set of components together in a way which somehow resembled a lightsaber. Minor explosions from the gymnasium indicated that Ania was not only failing, but failing quite spectacularly; as Revan went through the courtyard, she saw that Malak had claimed his usual spot in the branches of the tree and was muttering about the unfairness of the system as he threw a lightsaber together in a manner that could only be called slapdash – especially from Malak.

Revan hesitated, then climbed into the little garden and settled herself at the foot of the tree. As long as they didn't talk about the lightsabers, nobody could complain… she hoped.

Malak peered out of the branches as she began to set the pieces out in front of her. "Oh, 's just you. What'd you get?"

"Sentinel."

"Told you so," he said.

"And I told you so. So we're even."

"Poodoo scooper."

"Nerf-herder."

"I don't get it. I'd make a good Healer, and they're always saying we need more –"

"You're too big and you don't like playing diplomacy games," Revan said patiently. They had had this discussion far too many times, now.

"What sort of diplomacy games do you have to play in an infirmary?"

"Consular, Malak. Anyway, why can't you be a Healer and a Guardian?"

"Because Healer training takes hours every day, that's why, and you have to have the Force training to go with it. I'm not going to get that now, am I?"

Revan found that she had no suitable answer to that.

Ania was in the gymnasium, gripping one of the climbing ropes with her knees and hanging upside-down from it. The parts for her lightsaber were levitating in front of her; she was already on her fifth energy cell, the others having exploded seemingly on contact with her hand. It was becoming frustrating, and her hand hurt.

She was so engrossed in what she was doing that she didn't notice the newcomers until one of them, a woman whose soft brown hair was streaked with grey, cleared her throat. Ania, taken by surprise, lost control; her components clattered to the floor, and the energy cell exploded again.

"Sithspit!"

"Perhaps we should come back later," murmured the second of the three, a woman with blonde hair in a neat bun, but the man who was with them stepped forwards and knelt down, examining the little pile of ash left by the energy cell.

"That's quite a skill you have," he said to Ania. "Energy cells don't explode easily."

Ania grabbed onto the rope above her with her spare hand and swung herself upright. "Master Vrook reckons it's because I have no self-control. I didn't mean to do it."

The brown-haired woman lifted her head to look at Ania. It was a piercing look, and made her feel instantly uncomfortable… as if what she said was going to be held up against what she thought and compared, possibly in a public place. "You would be Apprentice Mellyn, I take it?"

"That's me," Ania said. "Did Vrook mention me?"

"At some length," the woman murmured.

"Have you considered that perhaps the Force wants you to make things explode?" the man asked. He was brown-haired too, broad-shouldered and muscular, and he was the only one of the three who was smiling. The blonde lady seemed nice enough, though.

"Oh, really, Kavar," the brown-haired woman snapped.

"It's not such a mad theory, Kreia. I know of another Padawan who followed much the same course. If this apprentice learns to control explosions using the Force, her troubles may come to an end."

It was at that moment that Ania's precognition kicked in, unusually far in advance for her; she was normally only an hour ahead of current events, not potentially several weeks.

Kavar, she realised as she looked between the three of them and tried to work out what they were talking about, was going to train her.

Frack it. Precognition took all the fun out of life.

"So the boy killed the serpent, right, and in the nest there were two baby shyracks. And at that moment the parents came back, and they were so grateful that they said, you can take our children, they shall be your servants –"

"That's not very nice," Revan said. Her lightsaber was almost done; the crystal wouldn't set properly, though, and she kept taking it out and re-setting it.

"Well, maybe not, but they were shyracks and he was a Prince. What else could they give him? Anyway –"

"Why did they have to give him anything at all?"

"Look," Malak snapped, "do you want to hear how he got his mother back from the Dark magician or not?"

"Just seems a bit selfish if he accepted, that's all."

"It's a story, Revan."

"They gave their children away," Revan objected.

Malak rolled his eyes. "Because our parents would never do something like that."

There was silence from the bottom of the tree for a while, then Revan said, "That's unfair."

"To your mother, maybe," Malak said. "But anyway, they put their wings together and he mounted them and they carried him, and then they came to the place with the circle of trees, and –"

"I still don't think it's right that -" Revan stopped suddenly. Malak, leaning out over his branch, thought he could see a small frown on her face.

"What's wrong?"

"Feels like there's someone here," she said, "but I keep losing the signal, it's as if they're blocking their Force presence someh- ow!"

"Revan?"

"I'm fine," Revan muttered, rubbing her head. "Just… it's like someone's poking my brain…"

Malak swung himself out of the tree and dropped down next to her. "C'mere, let me have a look."

"You're not a doctor," Revan protested. "You're not even getting Healer training, you - ouch!"

Did she have to keep reminding him? It wasn't as if he was likely to forget, with the stupid blue lightsaber being all… blue at him every time he ignited it. He should have been noisier in medical classes, but whenever he told them everything he could see to do with medical stuff, the Masters told him off for showing off or making things up. Malak had learned to keep his mouth shut and his head down, and now he was stuck with no Healer training for his troubles. It wasn't fair.

As suddenly as the brain-poking had started, it seemed to stop; Revan stopped rubbing her head, blinked a few times, and said, "Oh. That's better."

"At least I'm capable of learning Healing stuff," Malak said.

Revan looked at him in obvious hurt for a moment, then said, "So how'd that Prince get his mother back?"

It took almost a week, and nearly two hundred energy cells, for Ania to finally complete a working lightsaber, something which made her very unpopular with many of her fellow apprentices; it had quickly been realised that the Masters wandering around on Dantooine were looking for Padawans, but the Council deemed it unfair to allow anyone to be taken for their third trial while people were still struggling with the second.

Revan had even greater cause to resent Ania's forced seclusion; it meant that she had to deal with Malak entirely by herself. His sudden mood swings were notorious, and the past week had been – Revan was sure – as close to Hell as she would ever know. He had thrown things, he had shouted, he had spent hours on end doing nothing but lie on his bed or sit in the tree in the courtyard and stare into space and then, towards the end of the week and to Revan's alarm, he had suddenly cheered up.

The Masters, too, noticed the sudden upward swing in Malak's temperament, and for three days all that Revan heard when around Malak was how good it was that he had accepted the Council's greater wisdom, and that he had a great destiny ahead of him.

"I know you're up to something," she told him when they were sitting in the common room one evening. "You're not exactly subtle."

"No," he said, and grinned; there was barely a trace of the earlier bitterness in it. "All I'm good for is hitting things."

"If you'd tell me what you're up to, I could –"

"It's better for you if you don't know."

Revan swallowed a groan. He was planning to do something… something Malakish. Like releasing those gizka from the carbonite when they were seven.

"And before you tell me not to do anything I'll regret," Malak continued, "don't. I'm not going to regret a thing."

There were twenty-five apprentices lined up in the Council room, and only nine Masters; four from Coruscant, and five from Dantooine. They would be taking their final trials, the apprentices were told, on whichever planet their Masters chose to take them to, and those who were not chosen would remain on Dantooine until either they were chosen, or they passed the age of acceptance.

Most of the eldest ones, Ania thought, looked resigned to their fate already. The few that didn't were so nervous that they were barely able to keep still for more than a few moments at a time.

Only a few Masters actually bothered to do as Master Vandar, freshly returned form Coruscant, had asked and speak to every apprentice before choosing. Kreia made a beeline for Revan as soon as the signal was given, and seemed unwilling to even let anyone else near her prize; Atris and Kavar exchanged a few muttered words, then Atris drifted off as Kavar came over to Ania.

"May we talk?" he asked.

For once in her life, Ania remembered her manners. "Yes, Master."

He smiled, and waved her away from the crowd a little. "Do you remember when we met, and I said I knew a Padawan who had your… exploding problem?"

"Yeah," Ania said.

"I wasn't being entirely honest," Kavar admitted. "It was me."

It took nearly half a day. By the end, six of the nine Masters had acquired younger counterparts; Atris was one of the three without, Malak was one of the nineteen left over and Revan, who had been wishing that Malak would go away all week, was being faced with the uncomfortable truth that she really, really hadn't meant it. She suspected that the Force was having a joke at her expense.

What made it worse was that he just smiled, and kept on smiling as Master Vandar made a short speech about how the apprentices were a credit to the Dantooine Enclave, and those left over would have another chance next year. As everyone turned to go, Revan detached herself from Kreia to go and say goodbye, but was brought up short when Malak turned to face the Council and said, in a perfectly clear and very determined voice, "I'm going to Coruscant."

Silence fell. The only person who did not look utterly shocked was Ania, who, now that Revan came to think of it, had been giving Malak funny looks for almost an hour now. Ania could at least have shared the secret with her, Revan thought irritably.

"I beg your pardon, apprentice?" Vandar said.

"I'm going to Coruscant," Malak said again. "I'm going to get trained as a Healer. I'll stow away if I have to."

"Preposterous!" Master Vrook spluttered.

"You can't stop me."

"Actually -" Revan said, out of force of habit, and both Malak and Ania glared at her.

"You will not find a Master this way, apprentice," Vandar cautioned. "Such disrespect will not be tolerated here. If you retain this attitude, you will be sent away from the Order immediately."

Malak just kept smiling. "Then I'll train as a doctor instead. I don't care."

Silence. Then Master Vandar, his voice terse, ordered everyone out while the Council discussed this unusual situation.

"They're going to kick him out," Revan said for what seemed like the hundredth time. Ania sighed.

"Didn't you hear him? He doesn't care if they do."

"Well, I care!"

"Why? He's going to get what he wants either way, in case you didn't notice."

Revan groaned, pulled her spare cloak out of her bag and began re-folding it for the fourth time. "Yeah, but I'm not."

"You've been wanting him gone all week," Ania said, and upended her underwear drawer into her bag. "You said so every time I saw you. You said he was… what was it? Oh, yeah, insufferable."

"He is," Revan said miserably. "I didn't literally mean that I wanted him to go away forever, though."

"It'll be really quiet without him," Ania conceded.

"And predictable."

"Boring, you mean."

"Yeah."

"Your official training will take priority over this," Vrook said. He sounded more irritable than usual, which probably meant he'd been overruled. "You will achieve marks in the top two boundaries for both sets of training, or you will be removed from the Healing programme. And you will do the extra work on your own time."

Malak stood dumbfounded. Nobody could do that much work and live, surely. People had to sleep. He might as well just give up now, while he still had a –

Wait - that was the whole idea. They were going to make him give up on his own terms, because it was the only way to keep him in the Order and not have to deal with an angry student for however long it'd take. He was supposed to try it for a while and finally give up and admit that they'd been right all along.

Bugger that.

He put on his best happy-apprentice smile and said, "Certainly, Masters. Thank you."

"Report to the council on Coruscant," Master Vandar said. "They have found someone willing to take you – Master Zhar, I believe."

"He's a big pink Twi'lek," Vrook added. "Go and pack."