It is not okay to levitate your classmates, Padawan

A Shiri Binin/ Yoda story

It was nearing lunchtime, and Master Shiri Binin was just reviewing his notes from the last Council meeting when something disturbed him. He couldn‘t put a finger on it at first. But then, the feeling intensified, and he knew what it was. His padawan was using his Force.

That was not a problem in itself. Yoda had been with Shiri for about two months now, and Shiri had given him permission to use his Force without supervision a few weeks ago. The permission was limited to actions they had sufficiently practiced in their training sessions, though.

Whatever Yoda was doing now, it couldn‘t be anything they had ever practiced. The emanations were far too strong - so strong that Yoda could apparently not uphold his shield. Shiri wasn‘t able to tell what exactly his padawan was doing, but it felt controlled and inaggressive. Still, Shiri knew by now that his padawan didn‘t need to feel aggressive to do extraordinary things. So he decided to go and have a look.

Shiri donned his robe and stepped out of his doorway, walking in the direction of the Force emanations. They led him to the inner courtyard between the classrooms.

When he arrived there, there was such a crowd that Shiri couldn‘t even see the pond at the center of the courtyard. However, what he could see very clearly were the four humanoid Padawans, two of them female, who were levitating about seven feet above the pond, flailing their arms and legs helplessly and apparently unable to get down. Shiri closed his eyes and sighed.

He made his way through the crowd that consisted mainly of very noisy youngsters and found a group of teachers surrounding his padawan and Yoda‘s best friend Ninye. About three different teachers were yelling at Yoda, who had his eyes half-closed and showed no reaction at all, which seemed to make them even angrier. Ninye, the small Sullustan, cowered next to Yoda, shivering in fright. Shiri shook his head. Human lack of self-control still surprised him sometimes. He could see that all this shouting would lead to nothing. He probed the Force field that was holding the four up, and found that Yoda had sealed it - they couldn‘t be brought down by anybody but him.

Shiri shoved the teachers aside as politely as possible, asked them to please be quiet for a moment and let him talk to his Padawan, and knelt in front of his Yoda.
//Padawan? Bring them down NOW.//
Yoda half opened his eyes and looked at him. „Hmpf. Punished they are, Master. Deserved it is.“
„Padawan, even if those four deserve punishment for whatever reason, we will leave it to their masters to punish them. You, however, are going to be punished right here and now if you don‘t let them down IMMEDIATELY.“

The next second, all four splashed into the pool, spraying about half of the onlookers with water.
//Padawan, that was NOT what I meant!// Shiri was as close to being angry as he had ever been.
//Immediately, you said.// Yoda replied innocently.
//Padawan, you know very well what I meant. You are in big trouble.//

There was a lot of screaming and yelling and general chaos, and it took Shiri about five minutes until he had Yoda, Ninye, the four sopping wet youngsters and two teachers in a classroom, the rest of the crowd dispersing slowly. He asked the teachers to call the masters of the four humans and tell them to fetch their charges. The four were clearly under shock and tried to bring as big a distance as possible between themselves and Yoda without being too obvious about it.

Shiri beckoned Ninye into a corner of the room.
„What was this all about?“ he asked gently.
The Sullustan looked at him with big, pleading eyes and then looked at the four human padawans.
Shiri sighed. „Ninye, you can imagine that Yoda is in a lot of trouble right now. If I want to deal with this matter fairly, I have to know what happened and what made him treat those four the way he did. Besides, if they have given him any reason to use his Force against them, which I assume, then their masters should know about it, so they can prevent it from happening again. I want the truth, and I want it now, if you please.“

Ninye took a deep breath, nodded and then started talking in his usual breathtakingly fast chatter that was even harder to understand because Ninye had the habit of repeating parts of his sentences. However, with a few questions, Shiri got the story out of him relatively fast. He could also have asked Yoda, but that would have taken much longer - Yoda tended to answer questions with four-word-sentences and then wait for the next question. Shiri was certain that Ninye had told the truth - it took a very good Jedi to deceive Shiri Binin, and very good Jedi didn‘t lie to other Jedi anyway.

Apparently, there wasn‘t much to it. The four humans had continuously been teasing Ninye for the better part of two years, and none of the other padawans had ever come to his defense - they were all inclined to laugh about the small Sullustan with his squeaky voice. When Yoda had noticed the teasing, he had immediately announced his intention to put a stop to it. He had warned the four humans sternly to leave Ninye alone. Of course, they had laughed it off and continued teasing both Ninye and Yoda - until today. At the beginning of the lunch break, they had made some cutting remarks aboutt something Ninye had said in class. Yoda had just given them an indifferent look, and their feet had left the ground, their bodies irresistably drawn to the space above the pond. In a courtyard full of people heading for lunch. Yody obviously hadn‘t even tried to be discreet. Which was very typical, of course.

One after the other, the masters of the four human padawans arrived. They were certainly surprised to find their charges sopping wet. When Shiri told them the story, they were even more surprised and definitely not pleased with their apprentices, though they didn‘t fail to give Shiri a couple of helpful recommendations on how to deal with his own padawan. One by one, four very subdued apprentices were ushered out of the classroom by considerably annoyed masters.

After the last one of them had left, Shiri decided to do something about the decidedly too smug expression on Yoda‘s face. He thanked the teachers politely for their help, beckoned Ninye to follow him, grabbed Yoda‘s thin padawan braid and marched him out of the room. Yoda yelped. //Let go, Master!//
//Oh, you‘re finding this uncomfortable, Padawan? Well, I think your four classmates didn‘t find it all too comfortable to hover over the pond either.//
Yoda always knew when arguing was no good. He resigned himself to his fate, though he definitely wasn‘t pleased with the knowing looks he received from the people they passed on the way to their quarters.

When they had arrived there, Shiri ordered Yoda to go and STAND in the corner of the living room, feet on the ground. He then delivered Ninye to his Master and explained things to her. This took about ten minutes. When Shiri finally returned to his quarters, he was relieved to actually see Yoda standing in the corner the way he had told him to. He could sense, though, that his Padawan still didn‘t see any problem with his action.

Shiri sighed. He‘d rather have lunch now than deal with a stubborn apprentice. /Actually - why shouldn‘t I?/ he thought. /I‘m hungry. Yoda has been way out of line. There‘s no reason not to let him stay in the corner while I go to the dining hall./ He nodded to himself.
//Padawan, I‘ll go and have lunch. You stay in the corner. We‘ll talk when I‘m back.//
//Yes, Master.// Shiri couldn‘t sense any emotion in the answer. He shrugged and left.

As Shiri found out in the dining hall, Yoda was the talk of the temple. Most of the Jedi Masters were torn between amusement and disapproval, while the padawans‘ attitude was somewhere between envy and admiration. Towwa Chow, a pretty Corellian Jedi knight, told Shiri she was surprised that he taught his padawan such advanced uses of the Force. „Well, I didn‘t,“ replied Shiri with a sigh.
„You can look forward to a visit from Deesaan Muul,“ Shiri was informed by Master Tssssk, a Shwwwzan council member. „When she heard about what your apprentice has been up to, she said she would have to talk to you.“
Shiri nodded, unimpressed. The prospect of having the head of the Jedi Council drop by didn‘t bother him. Deesaan was a good friend of his, and he knew that she had complete trust in him. In all likelihood, she just wanted to find out whether the rumors were true.

He finished his lunch quickly and came back to his quarters about fourty minutes after he had sent Yoda to the corner, much refreshed and in a better mood than before. He sat down cross-legged on the thick carpet in the living room and said calmly: „Padawan, come here.“
Yoda waggled out of the corner and sat down opposite his master, looking at him impassively. Shiri could see this was going to be a difficult discussion.Yoda could be exceedingly stubborn at times.

„Padawan,“ Shiri said, „I‘ll start by telling you Ninye‘s version of the story. What he said is basically that these four humans had been teasing him for a long time, and that you warned them to stop. When they didn‘t, you used your Force to make them hover over the pond. Do you feel that this is a correct account of what happened?“
Yoda nodded. „Yes, Master.“
„And may I ask, Padawan, what made you think that you had permission to use your Force to levitate your classmates?“
Yoda opened his eyes wide. „Permission I have to use the Force on things we practiced, Master. Levitation, we practiced.“
„Padawan, we practiced levitating small objects. We did not practice levitating living beings, let alone humans. Your permission did not extend to levitating four of your classmates, and if I find you interpreting this permission in such an overly broad and liberal manner again, I will have to revoke it. Do I make myself clear?“

Yoda didn‘t answer. This was not a good sign. Shiri sighed, got up, went into his room and picked up the switch he had used to punish Yoda the last time his apprentice had disobeyed his orders. He went back into the living room, sat down again and put the switch over his knees.
„I‘m going to repeat my question once and only once, Padawan. Did I make myself clear, or do I have to use other means to get my point across?“
Yoda hesitated. He could see that his stubbornness would lead him nowhere but over his master‘s knees, and he wasn‘t particularly keen on repeating that experience, though he suspected that he was in for it anyway. Still, no use in taking chances.
So he nodded and said levelly: „Clear, you made yourself.“

„Very well,“ said Shiri. „Next point. Whatever gave you the idea that you have any right to punish your fellow padawans?“
Yoda pricked his ears. „Not let them tease Ninye, I could. If to teachers or to their masters I had gone, never respected Ninye or me they would have. Not hurt them, I did. Only a lesson I taught them.“
Shiri shook his head. „No, Padawan. This is not an excuse. It is never acceptable to attack others without urgent need, and this was an attack, even though you didn‘t hurt them. If you didn‘t know how to deal with their teasing of Ninye, you could have talked to me or Master Soghra about it. It is nothing but arrogant to want to solve every problem on your own. Arrogance is not becoming of a Jedi.“
Yoda snorted. „Hmpf. Tell me whatever you want, you can. These four, tease Ninye they will not any more.“
„Maybe,“ replied Shiri calmly. „But if they don‘t, it won‘t be out of respect for Ninye, it will be because they are afraid of you. You sowed fear, Padawan. That‘s something a Jedi should avoid by all means. Another thing I‘m not at all happy about, Padawan, is that you dropped them in the pond when I told you to bring them down. You knew very well that this was not what I meant. You did it to annoy me and them, although you were certainly aware of the fact that I wouldn‘t approve of such an action. You displayed an absolutely untolerable amount of disregard for Jedi principles, of disobedience and defiance today, and I‘m not going to have any of it.“

Yoda didn‘t say anything. Shiri strongly suspected that he had switched to „I‘m not listening“ mode.
/Well, there‘s always a way to make him listen, as he will discover very soon/ thought Shiri.

He stood up, holding the switch in his right hand. Wordlessly, he led his padawan to his room, where he sat down on the bed and plopped Yoda over his knees. Without giving him any time to consider his situation, he bared Yoda‘s bottom and brought the switch down on it with all the force he could muster.
Yoda yelped and howled as the switch continued to descend on his little pale green bottom that darkened quickly as the spanking went on. Shiri was really determined to drive the lesson home today. While he applied the switch over and over again, he started to lecture his padawan.

„You (WHAP!) have no business (WHAP!) levitating (WHAP!) your classmates (WHAP!) or anybody else (WHAP!), whatever they did! (WHAP! WHAP!) If you have (WHAP!) a problem (WHAP!) with somebody‘s behavior (WHAP!), you come to me! (WHAP!) You don‘t (WHAP!) take it (WHAP!) in your own (WHAP!) hands (WHAP!) to punish them! (WHAP! WHAP!) And you will not (WHAP!) disobey me (WHAP!), defy me (WHAP!) or act in any way (WHAP!) that you know (WHAP!) I don‘t approve of (WHAP!)“

Yoda was crying hard now, and Shiri thought that he had definitely had enough. He threw the switch aside and pulled his apprentice‘s robe down. Then he lifted Yoda into an upright position, making him kneel on his master‘s thighs. Yoda blinked at him through tear-filled eyes, but didn‘t speak. Shiri didn‘t push it. He took a handkerchief and wiped Yoda‘s face.

//Would you like to meditate with me in the pond, Padawan?//
Yoda hesitated and then nodded. They both went out into the garden, got undressed and dove into the pond. Drifting upon the water, they dropped their shields and formed a connection between their Forces. Shiri felt that this helped Yoda to sort out his feelings towards him and his attitude towards the events of the day. Apparently, Yoda‘s skin wasn‘t affected by salt water like the skins of humans were - on the contrary, the briny water of the pond seemed to do Yoda‘s bottom good. Shiri was sure that he couldn‘t have done this with a human padawan.

They stayed like this for more than one hour, connected to each other, but not communicating. Shiri didn‘t rush it. He knew that Yoda needed his time to revise his attitude. Finally, Yoda broke the peaceful silence between them, at least inwardly.
//Master?//
//Yes, Padawan?//
//Apologize I must. Arrogant I have been and disrespectful. Right you were to punish me. Try to do better, I will.//
//Don‘t try, Padawan. Do.//
He could feel a smile through their bond.
//Always you say that, Master.//
//Indeed, Padawan. That‘s because it‘s good advice.//
Now there was definitely a laugh.
Shiri had to grin himself. //Padawan?//
//Yes, Master?//
//Even though I don‘t approve of what you did today... You certainly have a knack for entertaining the crowds. I hope you don‘t do this too often. I don‘t think I could stand the excitement.//