[POV: Ngani-Zho]
The Council's judgment had given me authority, but it had not given me patience. The Shadow Training Annex was a vast, open space beneath the Temple Archives, built to withstand the physical demands of high-level Force instruction. It was bare durasteel and energy absorbers perfectly suited for a sentient demolition derby named Inosuke Hashibira.
Before we began the intensive endurance work, we had one final administrative problem: the tunic. Satele had managed to wrestle him into the oversized brown garment after the disaster in the Youngling classroom, but it had been a temporary measure.
"Inosuke," I began, as Satele cautiously approached him. "We must remove this tunic. It is not standard Jedi wear, and you require freedom of movement for the exercises."
Inosuke, already dressed only in the boar mask, the loose pants, and a bandage wrapping around his waist, looked down at the tunic with pure contempt.
"WEAK! The cloth traps the good air! It smells like cleaning!"
Satele held up her hands in a placating gesture. "It's just for a moment, Inosuke. We don't wear heavy clothes for speed training. But you must put this back on when we leave. It's Temple regulation."
Inosuke shrieked, batting her hands away. "NO! I don't wear weak clothes! If you put it on me, I fight you! I am the strongest, and the strongest does not wear a weak shirt!"
He demonstrated his point by seizing the tunic and ripping it straight down the middle, tearing the fabric with surprisingly little effort. He threw the two pieces at Satele's face.
Satele, stunned, used the Force to stop the dirty cloth mid-air. "Well, that saves time, Master. And violates another twelve Temple guidelines." She sighed, conceding the point. "Fine. No shirt. But we still need to establish basic respect."
Satele insisted on a final attempt at basic etiquette, believing she could leverage the boy's superior intellect.
"We have a rule, Inosuke, for the UTP," Satele explained, standing rigidly in the Annex. "A Jedi must be able to introduce themselves properly and address others by their correct designation. This shows respect, even to an enemy."
Inosuke, now proudly shirtless, revealing his tightly muscled frame, pointed a tiny, clawed finger at Satele.
"Respect? Why respect? I am the strongest! If they are strong, they earn my meat-respect! If they are weak, I crush them!"
"This is not about crushing, it's about control," I countered. "If you want the force, you must learn the language of the Jedi. We will start simple. Repeat my name: Zho Ngani."
Inosuke cocked his head. He let out a loud, snorting laugh that echoed off the high ceiling.
"Easy! You are… Do-gabi the Long-Faced Freak! Right?"
I sighed, ready to move on. But Satele stepped forward, her teeth gritted with determined civility, seeing this as a challenge to her intellect.
"Listen, Inosuke," Satele challenged, her eyes narrowed. "My name, Satele Shan, is an ordered sequence of sounds. Sa-te-le is three beats. Shan is one beat. It is a formula. If you can remember how many times you breathe during a hunt, you can remember this sequence."
"...Shan-Tele the Soft-Headed Girl! It is too long! The formula is bad!" he finally declared, utterly confident.
Satele threw her hands up in frustration. "It is four beats! Sa-te-le Shan! Where did you get 'Soft-Headed Girl' from the four beats?"
"It's the true name formula!" Inosuke insisted, stomping his foot. "Shan is the strong sound, so it goes first! Then Tele, the middle sound. Then Soft-Headed Girl is the full-name ending! It is a better formula! Why should I use a weak formula?"
Satele stared at him, bewildered. She had tried to apply logic, pattern recognition, and subtle Force suggestion, but Inosuke had simply intercepted the raw data and overlaid his own, perfectly self-consistent, feral logic.
I intervened before Satele could shatter any more datapads. "Padawan, his mind does not recognize arbitrary social conventions. It only recognizes utility and dominance. His name for you, 'Soft-Headed Girl,' is a status statement, not an error."
"Yes! I'm testing you!" Inosuke confirmed, pointing at me. "And you are Do-gani the Long-Faced Freak! Your name is weak, like you!"
I raised my hands, cutting Satele off. "Enough, Inosuke. We will return to names later, when your mind is capable of retaining civilized thought."
"Good! I only remember strong things!" he declared, finally satisfied that he had won the argument by sheer vocal and intellectual aggression.
"Very well. Since you crave strength and destruction, that is where we begin," I stated, my voice turning cold and serious. "The Council has authorized a new training regimen. Today, we break your body's need for rest. You want to be the strongest? Then you will run."
I pointed to the far wall of the massive Annex, over three hundred meters away. "Inosuke, you will run to that wall, touch it, and run back here. One hundred times. No stopping. No resting. If you stop, you lose your Bantha steak ration for the day."
Inosuke's masked head snapped up, his small body vibrating with anticipation. "A race! I'm the fastest! I'll beat you, Do-Gani!"
"You will be racing yourself, Inosuke," I warned. "And we will be monitoring every single heartbeat, every breath, and every flicker of your Force-accelerated metabolism. This is the price of the magic you desire."
Inosuke didn't wait for a starting command. With a feral shriek of pure joy and challenge, he bolted across the Annex. The real, brutal training had begun.
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The Shadow Training Annex was a large, soundproofed warehouse with reinforced walls, currently the safest place in the Temple for Inosuke to express his physical power. The air was thick with the faint metallic tang of ozone, a byproduct of the dampening field that minimized the effect of uncontrolled Force surges.
Inosuke, driven by the promise of meat and the relentless pursuit of being the strongest, ran.
He ran not with the measured, energy-conserving stride of a trained athlete, but with the explosive, flat-out intensity of a beast fleeing a predator. He covered the three hundred meters in a blur, his tiny legs pumping with unnatural speed. His first lap time was so fast that the electronic timers registered an error.
Satele whistled, checking the biometric readout on her datapad. "Master Zho, his heart rate stabilized at triple the baseline, and his body is producing almost no lactic acid. His metabolic rate is absurdly efficient. He's consciously maintaining that Force Focus just to run."
"He has spent five years optimizing his body for primal survival, Satele," I observed, watching the small, piston-like form sprint back toward us. "His Midi-chlorian count is constantly feeding his endurance. This is not running for him; it is breathing."
Inosuke completed the first ten laps without a break, returning each time with a guttural, triumphant roar.
"HA! I AM FASTEST! WHERE IS THE CHALLENGE, LONG-FACED FREAK? I CAN RUN FOREVER!"
"You are only ten percent done, Inosuke," I stated flatly. "The challenge is simple: continue. The Force allows your body this efficiency, but your will must still endure. Now, use the Force to make yourself faster."
Inosuke stopped abruptly, his body coiling. "Faster? How?"
"Channel the energy. Don't just let it run your legs. Push it into your legs. Feel the ground reject you," Satele instructed, trying to translate the concept of Force Speed into his predatory mindset.
Inosuke roared in frustration, slamming his feet down hard and launching into the eleventh lap. He pushed with everything he had, and this time, the effect was visible. A subtle blue-white kinetic energy shimmered around his legs, and his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. His speed increased dramatically, nearly doubling his initial pace.
WHUMPH!
He hit the far wall so hard the structural dampeners registered a small seismic event. He hadn't slowed down, having focused purely on the acceleration.
Inosuke staggered back, slightly dazed, but immediately triumphant. "IT WORKS! THE MAGIC IS A SLICE! IT SLICES MY SPEED!"
"You must learn to control the slice, Inosuke!" I yelled. "You have to stop! That was lap eleven. Now, do another eighty-nine, and try not to destroy the annex!"
The rest of the morning was a chaotic, punishing cycle of running and crashing. Inosuke was incapable of moderation. He would run at his standard, superhuman pace for several laps, then attempt a burst of Force Speed that inevitably ended with him slamming into the wall or misjudging a turn, leaving his body momentarily winded from the shock, but never injured. His skeletal and muscular resilience, as noted in the medical report, was uncanny.
By lap sixty-seven, his initial enthusiasm was replaced by pure, grinding willpower. He was sweating profusely, the steam rising from his little body, but his gait never faltered. He was running on sheer Midi-chlorian efficiency and the ingrained, feral discipline of survival.
Satele, watching the readouts, was stunned. "Master, he is maintaining peak output for a time that would kill a grown, trained Jedi Knight. He is metabolically optimized for war."
"He is a Force battery built for a fight, Satele," I agreed, feeling a grim respect. "But the wall keeps teaching him that uncontrolled power results in pain. That is the first lesson of the UTP: Impulse has a physical cost."
When Inosuke finally completed the one hundredth lap, he didn't stop. He collapsed onto the durasteel floor in a heap of masked fatigue, his chest heaving with deep, rapid breaths that still sounded suspiciously like growls.
"DONE! AM I THE STRONGEST? DO I GET THE MEAT?" he demanded, his voice thin with exhaustion.
"You are strong, Inosuke," I acknowledged, stepping toward him with a measure of cautious approval. "But you must learn to conserve that strength. Tomorrow, we focus on vertical movement and acrobatics. You will learn to use the Force to jump, not just to run."
I activated the Annex's speaker system. "Bring the rations."
A newly designed, heavily armored food cart (courtesy of Master Sinube's revised medical budget) rolled in. It contained not just the Bantha steak, but also a nutrient-rich fluid designed to replenish his Force reserves.
Inosuke scrambled toward the cart, his fatigue instantly forgotten by the sight of the food. As he began tearing into the meat, I looked at Satele, my face etched with weary determination.
"We have taught him that strength requires endurance, and we have kept him from injuring the public. One day down. Twenty-nine days remaining on the Council's ultimatum. But Satele, his mind is still untamed. We need a way to integrate the concept of 'control' into his chaotic fighting style."
"Then we teach him control by giving the chaos a form. Master, I still want to teach him Form VIII: The Boar's Fury, just as I proposed days ago."
I pinched the bridge of my nose, contemplating the idea of teaching the most chaotic child in the Temple the most aggressive, yet unofficial, lightsaber style.
"Let us worry about his lightsaber form when he stops trying to eat the utensils, Padawan," I said, trying to inject some Jedi caution. "For now, we just need to survive until the morning."