Jedi Academy, Ossus

A frown of concentration furrowed Amos' brow as he mustered his focus, staring out through his closed eyes at the world the Force showed to him. It was like watching the ocean, but only being able to see the waves: perceiving the shape and placement of the rocks only from the foam as the sea crashed against them. The waters shifted, as he willed them to, shapes moving across the surface like the shadows of ships. One boat slid into another; components settling into the places where they belonged. The flotilla swirled and twisted, the many shapes coalescing into a simple, uniform singular. There was a click; a sound of completion.

Amos' eyes opened. The waves vanished. The shape dropped from where it had floated, clunking against the surface of his makeshift desk.

He stared at it, his creation: his first lightsaber. It was an important step; a rite of passage on the road to knighthood. To the uninitiated it was merely a weapon, a laser sword used to devastating effect by the knights of the Jedi Order for centuries. To a Jedi, it was far more. Your lightsaber was a reflection of who you were: one of the few avenues for self expression that the Jedi Code allowed. Every choice was important, and none were taken lightly. The shape of the hilt had to feel comfortable, and match the knight's style. The material needed the right weight and the right heft. The placement and style of the controls. The design; simple or ornate. Some lightsabers represented an aspiration. Some lightsabers represented a memory. Some represented where the Jedi had come from; some where they intended to go.

The hilt that rested before Amos was all of those things, and neither. The design was simple, and as slender as science would allow, built for function over form and more akin to the hilt of a vibroblade than a lightsaber. Long before he had found himself amongst the Jedi, Amos had already been an accomplished swordsman; one of his toughest obstacles was to unlearn what he had learned, to regard the lightsaber as something new rather than simply treating it as a sword with a more effective blade. Rather than challenge his flaw he had chosen to embrace it: the earliest Jedi had learned to adapt from swords to 'sabers, and thus the first form, Shii-Cho, had been born. Amos embraced that form, and tailored his lightsaber into a lesson: a weapon on the cusp between the old and the new, to remind him to always adapt.

The metalwork was dull but robust: burnished durasteel, rather than the dull warmth of wood or the polished sheen of a more expensive metal. It was no ordinary durasteel however, but rather the remains of a battle scarred hull plate, salvaged from the Astral Queen, the ship that had been home for many years. More than just nostalgia, the Queen's hull was a reminder of the years he had spent escaping from his past, fleeing from his life as an Imperial before fate and the Force had led him to the Rebellion, and then here. The grip too was in a similar vein, wrapped in fabric torn from the lining of his old Scout Trooper uniform. Amos reached out, fingers wrapping around the hilt, keeping a grip on his past.

The activation stud was an aspiration: small and recessed, it required accuracy and concentration to find and use. His lightsaber was not a weapon that could be activated without thought; not a weapon compatible with his flawed and quick-to-anger nature. To become a Jedi he would have to leave that part of himself behind, or at least keep it under calm control; and so to activate the weapon that would so readily identify him as such, he would need to exhibit the same.

Most profound and personal of all however was what lay within. With cautious reverence Amos rose to his feet, and stepped towards the centre of the room. Embedded at the core of the weapon was something Amos would never have expected. The crystal was a sight he had seen a thousand times over, an innocuous stone that his mother had worn on a simple chord around her neck for as long as he could remember. He'd never thought anything of it, just a harmless accessory that his father had suggested he keep as a way to remind him of her. Amos' surprise when he had discovered that the crystal was pure enough to focus the energy of his lightsaber was profound: for one of the first times since he had become aware of his sensitivity to the Force, he truly felt as if it had a will that was acting. The prospect that the Force had great plans that even remotely involved him was troubling; instead he merely chose to believe that somehow, the Force had a certain sense of sentimentality.

The power stud depressed, and the lightsaber burst into life, violet plasma humming and crackling as the air collided against it. Amos watched as his hands made a few careful motions; the blade sang in satisfaction at being awake and alive. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as the memory that explained the poetic convenience of it all played through his mind. He had been just a child, back home on Naboo, playing witness to a rare parade of soldiers from the Gungan cities beneath the swamps. He remembered vividly the way their energy shields had rippled into life, the purple waves of energy a clear contrast to the greens and blues of the land and sky, and yet somehow comfortably at home within them. He recalled an account of Master Windu at the Battle of Geonosis, a purple blade at home amongst the blue and green of his fellow Jedi. He dwelt on the challenge that his instructors strove to help him overcome: to regard the lightsaber as a shield as well as a sword; to use it to parry, deflect, and reflect anything an opponent might throw at him. It all fit, all slotted together into a singular whole as neatly and perfectly as his lightsaber had. Too much to be coincidence then; and while Amos was unsure of what to call it, he did not deny that it was.

Amos swept the lightsaber through a few slow arcs in front of him. Not bad, he mused to himself. Not bad at all.