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Harry was now up to seven of the drones, with Aayla at nine when alone, and together they could handle thirty. Most Knights who didn't specialize in lightsaber combat could handle twenty, most masters forty. Dooku could handle upwards of seventy for a time. Yoda's record was a hundred.
"Instead, I will simply test that belief. If you live through the next few moments without being tagged by my little toys, you are free to go on your way and I will inform the High Council that you have no need of retraining. If not, then I will not listen to further arguments on this point."
Several of the Knights and Masters now looked quite confident. As one the group flicked their lightsabers on, slowly moving away from their fellows into a defensive posture almost automatically.
That confidence did not last very long after the droids began to fire. The tiny droids were being controlled by a nearby combat android, whose intelligence subroutines had been heightened to near sentient level. With the computing ability to concentrate on multiple things at once, this gave the Masters and Knights complete fits, as would any trained group of soldiers with similar numbers. Within three minutes, none of them were untouched. Dooku flicked the switch off then, smiled brightly at them, a very odd and somewhat disturbing expression on his austere face. "I take it I've made my point?"
"That was an unfair and unrealistic test!" said the Sullustan Master Marfel, shaking her head coldly. "After all, how likely are Consulars to run into such numbers? I have never been sent on a mission that devolved into violence at all, let along to such a level."
"There are far more Consulars in the Jedi Order at this moment than Guardians, yet the number of violent missions we are being sent on has risen dramatically over the past five years," Dooku replied calmly. "That information is available to any of you if you wish to check. It is not just my word, it is the High Council who has acknowledged this. The question then becomes, can you guarantee that you will not be sent on a mission which could become violent? Can you guarantee that you would not be targeted by an assassin's blaster bolt?"
The Sullustan master frowned, her face creasing so much her eyes practically disappeared and she wasn't the only one. Several of them were also feeling something like humiliation. Jedi were not supposed to have egos, but that didn't stop many of them from having one anyway. And they had just been made to look like fools.
Unfortunately, logic, which all Jedi, in particular Consulars, believed in almost as much as the Unifying Force, told them that Dooku was right. They could not guarantee that, and yes, more missions were coming the Order's way which ended in violence.
They all could feel the Dark Side continuing to close in, and that too was now grossly effecting their sense of balance and inner calm. In fact, though most of them did not realize it, it was because the Dark Side was occluding their vision of the future that they had begun to become more reactionary, less willing to change.
Yet with their shortcomings logically and very forcefully brought to the surface like this, they couldn't argue. Dooku watched that realization appear on each of their faces, and smiled thinly. "Very good. In that case, we will start now."
OOOOOOO
Elsewhere in the training academy, Harry and Aayla were working with the younglings and several of the padawans while the remaining Knights were being put through their paces by Masters Fay and Giiett in terms of their knowledge of the Clan Saa techniques. They were technically here for that, though mainly they were here to see if any of them proved worthy of learning runes from Fay and Lily.
Lily, however, had decided to watch Harry and Aayla. Not, she had hastened to explain that morning over breakfast, that she thought they would need it, but that they might need a third eye given the number of younglings. Shaak Ti too decided to observe this class, given she was there primarily to learn runes and had already proven trustworthy.
Harry smiled at the younglings and padawans, waving his hands to either side of him as they all to a sentient paused looking into the training area. It was set up far differently today. Gone were the target dummies, replaced by dozens of football-sized balls stacked in a rough pyramid against the far wall from the entrance to the training area. They were all a stark white color, but that was all any of the students could tell from looking at them.
"Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all eager to learn this morning. Today we're not going to work on the stunner technique first. I know that might seem strange given how much progress you all made yesterday, but I noticed that many of you were having the same problem: visualization." Harry laughed wryly. "I thought the tough part would be helping you to project what you wanted. Silly me, right?"
His smile and easy-going manner made several of his new students smile in turn and relax, where before many of them had seemed tense and almost grim. Too often Harry felt that the Order removed the fun of learning too soon, and he was determined to make his lessons as fun as possible.
"So instead of that, we are going to work on a simpler technique today that can actually have a lot of uses in the world beyond the Order's walls." Harry gestured behind him and the top ball on the pile moved to hover over his shoulder. "Today we are going to learn the color changing technique."
As the students watched he flicked his hand at it, and an almost unseen wave of the Force hit the ball. Immediately the white of the ball suddenly changed between one blink and the next. Now it was a deep purple. "This technique is exactly what it says, it changes the color of things. It can change the color of anything, these balls, your clothing, or even… your skin."
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