LUCKILY FOR ASTRA, the door was a few metres away and very much shut. Rubbing her temples, Astra stepped back from Jay and sighed.

"Sorry, I've just got a lot on right now." Like finding out about the Knights.

"It's fine. Man, we should probably get inside, Tute starts in two minutes." Jay graciously held the door open for her despite the fact she'd threatened him not even a minute ago.

Astra stepped inside Zaven's classroom, which, upon further inspection, was more of a lab than a classroom. The classes seemed quite small here, with only six benches and two people apiece. At the front of the classroom, near the door she was now standing awkwardly by, was what she guessed was Zaven's desk, his own work lab with an odd addition to the end so it made it look like an L. The other bit was wood and stacked high with missives and papers.

"Ah, Jay, Astra, come on in, Tute is just about starting now!" Astra recognised the Bothan teacher from the holodeck and smiled nervously. Jay jogged over to a bench next to a girl with blonde hair, setting down his mountain of books to unwrap the orange scarf around his neck.

"Your desk is just over there," Zaven pointed her over to a small table a few meters away from his in the front of the class.

Bantha crap. Astra sat down on the chair stiffly, keeping her gaze away from the rest of the students. She only knew Jay here (barely at that) and had been hoping Nya was in this class. Zaven cleared his throat, leaving his desk to pace in front of the board behind it.

"Welcome to Tute once again, folks! Today we're just going to play Fist to Face 2 in class since I bought it and we can start a running competition, eh?" Astra sat up in interest as Zaven brought out Fist to Face 2 and started setting up the game.

"Tute is basically a forced opportunity for us to get to know each other better, but Zaven lets us do cool stuff like this competition. You played Fist to Face 2 before?" Walker was by her side again, blue eyes twinkling in eager anticipation.

Astra thought back to how she and Nya had absolutely destroyed Kai and Lloyd in Fist to Face 2. She hadn't played since then, which had been a deary month, but she was up for a challenge.

"No," she lied, grinning. "What's Fist to Face 2?"

"Oh! It's this great combat game, sorta 2D, you'll catch onto it fast. Wanna team up?" Walker offered. The game was played in teams of two, and Jay seemed to be pretty experienced with it.

"Sure," Astra shrugged, taking one of the controllers. The opposing team was another girl and boy, both had fair hair and weird eyes - not that she could say anything about her purple ones - but they boy's were green, and the girl's was gold.

"I'm Rema," said the girl, sticking out a hand.

"Remalyn, actually," butted in the boy next to her. He looked like a child that had grown up a little too fast; very tall, but his face still had that babyish-look to it.

"This is Kade, my cousin. And don't call me Remalyn if you want to wake up with hair tomorrow." threatened the blonde quite seriously. Fist to Face 2 loaded up and the four of them chose their characters.

"All right, we've got our first round ready. Fists up, and fight!" Zaven yelled animatedly, pumping a fist in the air like he was another fellow student and not the teacher.

Astra was surprised to see that Jay actually wasn't too bad - he had great reflexes and counter attacks whereas she battled mainly as attack. Without exchanging too many words, she and Jay managed to get into a good rhythm that pushed Rema and Kade back into the defence. To their credit, the cousins nearly got them with a surprise-triple-axle-halo combo, evidently having practiced the move before.

But maybe it was because Astra and Jay had never played before that they won against their formidable opponents. They shook hands with good natured grins, and just for a second, as the class erupted into excited cheers, not caring that she was a TA or the kid of the headmaster, Astra wondered if she could actually consider this place home.

o o o

Tute finished at 7:15, so they managed to get another round in with two other different teams. Astra sat back at her desk quietly watching them fight. Most of the classroom except for Jay and Kade left to their next classes, waiting as the first-period students who had Zaven filtered in. Once everyone was settled again at the benches, the Bothan smiled grandly and spread his arms.

"Hello again everyone, welcome back to another day of thrilling Lightsaber Construction 101. We've got some extra help around the classroom now as well by the name of Astra," everyone waved at Astra so she waved back and sunk further down into her seat. Thank the moons his introduction was brief. At the first opportunity she saw, she'd sneak off to the library again. While Fist to Face 2 had been fun, she needed to clear her head and focus.

But there were so many interesting things around here it was hard to not get distracted.

"We'll be starting again today with construction theory, uh-uh-uh," at the classes' loud grounds, Zaven grinned, "But tomorrow, you are to begin sketching the first drafts for your first training saber, so buck up and try and see this lesson through."

The twelve students looked considerably more excited now, and all got out tablets as Zaven drew up a presentation on the board. As everyone got fancy tablet pencils and previous notes organised, Zaven guided Astra to the back of the room where a long bench ran across the back wall. Underneath it were cupboards, and floating above it, stuck to the ceiling, was even more storage. It reminded her of her kitchen.

"This is where I keep my spare parts for showing the rascals during lessons. Could you take two of each piece on this diagram and then pass them out?" Zaven handed Astra a tablet which had pictures of six different lightsaber bits. Astra nodded, beginning to search for the names underneath the pictures to match the neatly labelled drawers.

"Today is simply a review for next lesson, so let's begin with trying to list some parts of a training saber. Jay?" Zaven pointed towards the auburn-haired boy, who was basically standing on his stool.

"A blade emitter, RCS, a charging port, activator, a BIC, handgrip, oh, and a power cell release cap. That's some of it, at least." Jay finished triumphantly. Astra raised an eyebrow, then continued getting two of the power cells he'd mentioned to add to her tub.

"Very well done Jay. Let's see if we can apply that knowledge to a diagram now. Everyone stand up and take turns labelling anything on this image." Zaven had pulled up a holograph of lightsaber cut in half for the students to annotate. Astra finished distributing the pieces and gazed at the lightsaber in quiet interest.

Pulling one of her notebooks to her, Astra slowly began copying the diagram and labels into the second page in her neatest handwriting. It could be useful in the future to know or have on hand - really, with the strange life she was living now, who knew? The students finished labelling the picture and so did Astra, who closed her notebook and returned to loitering by her desk.

"All right, we're going to get started on the finer components of each part. If you look in front of you, you'll find that Astra has kindly sorted out several BIC's, field energisers, and so on. Let's begin with..."

o o o

Several hours and a few more jotted notes later, Astra saw that Zaven was winding down, sending off the second class of the day to lunch. In between the first and second period had been a twenty minute break (the classes were eighty minutes after all) where all the students got to enjoy the sun whilst Astra had been stuck inside preparing the same thing for the next class.

"I'm afraid it'll be a bit repetitive, but once we begin constructing our lightsabers, things will change up a bit today. Have fun at lunch, and be back on time for third period!" Zaven called after her, and Astra yelled yes back with her stomach growling.

Following the hungry horde of students was easy enough for Astra, tagging after a large number of students pushing their way towards the smell of food. One of a tower's levels had been dedicated entirely to a cafeteria, leaving plenty of space for the students to disperse and munch on lunch. Astra tried not to look for the four people she knew immediately: firstly, Lloyd, then Kai and Nya, and finally, Walker.

Her eyes found them in that order, somehow clumped together at the same table. She understood Lloyd gravitating towards Kai and Nya, but Walker? Astra would have thought he'd been lumped in with the nerds chattering to her left.

"Walker. Smiths. Can I have that pizza?" Astra swiped Lloyd's food for her own and he harrumphed in weak defence but appeared to find her food (some healthy couscous concoction the lunch lady insisted for good for Astra "rather skeleton look, dear") acceptable as a replacement.

"I didn't know you knew Nya and Kai," Jay started conversationally. Raising her eyebrows at the way he'd said Nya and Kai, rather than Kai and Nya which was what Kai loved and Nya hated, meaning he either preferred pissing Kai off, or as was pretty obvious by the pink flush on his cheeks, had a massive crush on Nya.

"We grew up on the same planet." Astra shrugged, biting into the pizza. "Different neighbourhoods, though." Different income. Different parents with different jobs. Different lives. Different clothes, different—

"Vareena, right?"

Astra nodded, and waited to see if the next words that came out of his mouth either started with podracing or Did you know Astra does.

"So, uh, Nya, that project we were talking—talking about, I was thinking that if we replaced the electrical comparator and switched it with a reflux indicator it might give the helio time to regenerate. That would fill the extra credit material, right?"

Nya considered this nodding, and then launched into further technical talk with Jay who looked overjoyed to be talking about what Astra guessed were his favourite things.

"—look, and it's not like Morro hates me, but he does, totally hate me. The guy did this weird power flip with Tox and I can't tell who it's worse to be bullied by, a wind—I mean, him, or Tox." Kai was complaining loudly. "Wait, what's the time?"

"Uh, twelve thirty eight, why?" Lloyd checked his watch and glanced around. "What's wrong with twelve thirty eight?"

"You shouldn't have sat with us," Kai groaned, sticking his head in his hands. "This was a bad idea."

"Explain," Astra said, but she had a pretty good idea of who, rather than what was the bad. Morro looked surprised for a split second to see them there, covering it with a dirty sneer that his what - ten? - other followers copied in earnest. On some of them it looked like a lopsided smirk, so Astra resisted the urge to tell them that and carry on picking at her pizza.

A blonde guy who towered over Morro (but also everyone else) leaned down with a cocky smirk."What's up, dork squad?"

Astra did not reply.

"New kids?" he scoffed to Morro. However much he acted like he was the leader, and he was desperately trying to do so, some automatic switch in him defaulted to Morro is our lord and saviour.

"Yeah," Morro gave them a disgusted frown. "Lunches."

In one swift movement, (Kai, who Astra wasn't used to be compliant, even held out his lunch) Morro's cronies swept up their lunch trays. By their, it was Kai's, Nya's, and Jay's. Astra had managed to throw her pizza into the blonde guy's face, who was now screeching something about his hair. Almost concerned enough to rival Kai's hair car.

"Leave it, Chad." Morro hissed. "Lunches."

He said it this time directly to Lloyd, staring down his cousin with unusual hatred. What had this school done? This was out of character for Morro - sure, he was a prick most of the time, but being a full on classic school bully seemed strange.

"No," Lloyd spluttered, "I'm not giving you my lunch. I'm hungry."

"Yeah, and Liam is too," Morro snarked right back. "Hand it over."

Astra stood. "Go stick your head down a trash shredder, Morro. If you've got nothing better to do at lunch, then you're just as sad as he is without his hair gel." she said, pointing at Kai who somehow had the pride, after being a coward, to appear hurt.

Stay out of this, Morro's green eyes flashed at her. If you don't want to get hurt.

"Morro, can I have both the girls?" Chad requested, pointing at Nya and Astra. That was the breaking point. Before Kai or Nya even reacted, Astra had landed a good hit on Chad that had him gasping for air and trying to kick her off. She reacted like a startled cat and retaliated, smashing her fist across his face as he kicked off and into the table.

Chad squirmed away from her, holding his nose with the hem of his shirt. "She hit me!" he wailed, blood gushing down onto his chest.

"Obviously," Morro drawled. "Get up, Chad. We have better things to do."

"Like I said," Astra pushed herself off the floor, cradling her ribs with an arm. "Sad life."

Chad pulled against two guys' holds (Jake and Liam, based by their stupid sports bolo-ball jerseys), spitting a mouthful of his own disgusting blood at the floor by her feet. Nya lobbed a perfectly-formed and aimed ball of mashed potato at the back of his head with a disgusted expression.

"Thanks," Nya said, sitting back down to have Jay stutter out an ever-so heartwarming check up on her. "You didn't have to."

"They didn't have to say any of that stuff," Astra shrugged, dumping her blood-splattered fries into the bin. "I didn't know they had bolo-ball here."

"They do!" Kai butted in, completely unaffected by what had just gone down. Guess he wasn't used to being hit on by creepy guys in extremely creepy ways (honestly, 'having' the girls like they were objects?). "I wanted to start a team but you need eight people."

"Huh," Astra at Morro's back with a frown. He too had a bolo-ball sports top under his stupid leather jacket, the black and gold colours of the school on his collar.

Interesting.

A/N: me - i'm going to make these chapters short! Also me - *slowly inching towards rtw length chapters* i plotted out the rest of this book! Bad evil is now confirmed! Yay! For us, not the characters. (and yes, zane, cole, skylor, etc will be introduced soon, i promise) also, morro is truly a jerk now. If you caught the prick mention (chad, jake, liam) then props to you, they're still pricks in this book except now they can use the force.

- dommie out