A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

The Old Republic, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. But when it was at its height, it rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside. Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very people he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears. Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy.

Meanwhile, a tiny planet of green-and-blue at the far end of the Northern Galaxy called Earth was on its seventh year of recovery from the terror brought about by the android named Cell. It was a long and tough battle, but finally, good triumphed over evil, although the said fight robbed the lives of some of the freedom fighters, including that of Son Goku, who refused to be wished back to life through the dragonballs.

But the peace would not last long. The rebellion against the Empire had begun, and it would only be a matter of time before the bright flame of resistance in the hearts of Earth's protectors, especially that of Son Gohan, would be ignited and used against the Imperials...

I, Jedi

Prologue

Two meters tall he was, with flowing black robes and a face forever masked by a functional black metal mask --- the Dark Lord of the Sith was a threatening figure as he strode through the corridors of the rebel ship he and his crew had intercepted in Earth space. Fear followed the footsteps of all the Dark Lords, but this certain one had evil inside of him so intense that it radiated like a blazing supernova, causing the hardened members of the Imperial army to back away and mutter nervously among themselves, and causing the rebel crewmembers to stop resisting and to run away instead.

Darth Vader turned at another passageway in the damaged starfighter, and only a robot was left to stir freely in the wake of the Dark Lord's passing. As See Threepio stepped clear of the restraining cable, he heard human screams from behind him, which could only be the cries of the rebels at their last stand. He looked down, and upon seeing a scarred deck, he called out, "Artoo Detoo, where are you?"

The smoke cleared out after a few moments. He found himself staring at the passageway, and found Artoo Detoo there. He wasn't looking at the taller droid's direction, however. He appeared to be frozen in attention, and leaning over him was --- it was hard, because of all the smoke, for Threepio's electronic photoreceptors to verify what it really was --- a human figure. Young, slim, and beautiful.

The haze thickened once more, and when he reached the end of the corridor, Artoo stood there, waiting.

Alone.

The droid shrugged. He was hallucinating, all right.

"Where have you been?" Threepio finally asked. "Hiding, I suppose! Well, they'll be coming back this way," he went on, nodding down the corridor but not giving the other robot a chance to reply, "looking for human survivors. What are we going to do now? They won't trust the word of rebel-owned machines that we don't know anything of value. We'll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel or taken apart for spare components for other, less deserving robots. That's if they don't consider us potential program traps and blow us apart on sight. If we don't..."

But Artoo had already turned and was making his way back down the passageway.

"Wait! Where are you going? Haven't you been listening to me?" Threepio exclaimed, racing after his friend, muttering curses in various language --- as he was skilled in many --- as he did so. Heaving what was closest to a sigh in droid language, he thought to himself, Artoo could be downright close-circuited when he wants to be.

An Imperial officer scrambled down to the fighter's control room, shaking his head briskly. "Nothing, sir. Information retrieval system's been wiped clean," he told Darth Vader who acknowledged the news with a barely perceptible nod.

Then, the Dark Lord turned to the regard the rebel he was torturing, and a short moment later, his metal-clad fingers contracted. Reaching up, the prisoner desperately tried to pry them loose, but to no avail. "Where is the data you intercepted? What have you done with the information tapes?"

"We... intercepted... no information," the man gurgled, barely able to breathe from Vader's iron grip. From somewhere deep within him, he dredged up a squeal of outrage. "This is a... councilor vessel... Did you not see our... exterior markings? We're on a... diplomatic... mission."

Vader growled as he squeezed harder, tightening his grip on their prisoner. "This ship carries the system crest of Alderaan," he said, leaning closer. "Is any of the royal family on board? Who are you carrying?" His fingers tightened further, and the rebel's struggles became more and more frantic... until he went limp with an awful, unquestionable finality.

Dropping the corpse, the Dark Lord whirled unexpectedly, and his officers shrank under his stare. With a lethal tone in his voice, he ordered, "Start tearing this ship apart piece by piece, component by component, until you find those tapes! As for the passengers, if any, I want them alive." He paused for a moment, then added, "Quickly!"

Officers and men nearly fell over themselves as they scrambled out of the room --- not necessarily to carry out Vader's orders, but to simply get as far away from him as possible. The Dark Lord was ill-tempered and quick to anger, and they did not want to die only because of a mood swing.

Blue and green. The two dominant colors of the planet that revolved around a bright, orange-colored sun. It was the third in its star system, the third from the giant ball of gas that gave light and heat to all the other balls of matter that revolved around it, and because of that, Earth was a planet teeming with life.

Three-fourths of the said planet was water; one-fourth was land, made up of seven continents with varying sizes. It had a vast sky that stretched over the miles --- bright blue in the morning, velvet black at night. Its moon, which shone beautifully with light borrowed from the system's sun, glided through the blanket of ever-changing colors, changing form slowly but steadily every month.

Sunlight shone through the layered atmosphere that protected the inhabitants of Earth from ultraviolet radiation and falling stars, and eventually fell on the vast area of land that stretched through the planet in different ways. That same sunlight, however, suddenly shone on the thin skin of a metallic shape falling crazily through the atmosphere...

Towards land...

Towards 439 East Mountain District.

When word came over the communicators in the Imperial spacecraft that the last pocket of resistance on the rebel ship they had captured had been cleaned out, the Captain of the said cruiser relaxed considerably. He was listening with pleasure to the proceedings on the captured vessel when one of his chief gunnery officers called on him. He moved to the man's position, stared into the viewscreen, and saw a tiny dot dropping away towards the watery world below.

"There goes another pod, sir. Instructions?" the officer asked, hovering over a computerized energy battery.

The Captain studied the nearby readouts monitoring the pod, and all of them read blank. There was nothing to fear or to be suspicious about, after all. "Hold your fire, Lieutenant. Instruments show no life forms aboard. The pod's release mechanism msut have short-circuited or received a false instruction. Don't waste your power," he instructed before turning away to listen to the reports about the captured men and the material coming from the rebel ship.

A small, shivering figure clad in flowing white robes hugged the back of the recess and stared up at the man who had walked into the passageway with a pistol at hand. Then he saw that he faced a young woman, and her physical description fit that of the one individual the Dark Lord was most interested in. The Imperial trooper grinned behind his helmet. It was his chance, his chance to be commended.

He was in luck.

Within the armor his head turned slightly, directing his voice to the tiny condenser microphone. "Here she is," he called to those behind him, "Set for stun forc---"

He never finished the sentence, just as he would never receive commendation he had hoped for. Once his attention turned from the girl to his communicator, her shivering vanished with startling speed, as if it had never existed in the first place. The pistol she hid behind her came up and around as she burst from her hiding place. The trooper who had been unlucky enough to find her fell first, his head a mass of melted bone and metal. The same fate met the second armored form coming up fast behind him.

Then a bright green energy pole touched the woman's side, and she slumped instantly to the deck, the pistol she had used to make the troopers fall still locked in her small, slender palm. Metal-encased shapes then clustered around her. One of them, whose arm bore the insignia of a lower officer, knelt and turned her over, studying her paralyzed form with a practiced eye. "She'll be all right," he declared after some time, looking at up at his subordinates. "Report to Lord Vader."


Crossovers are really hard to do, as writing the whole fic is as hard as thinking of the right plot. *rubs head* Anyway, there you have the first installment of my first crossover, please review and tell me what you think. When I thought of crossing DBZ over with Star Wars, I was confused because I had three phases to choose from: the trilogy, the first two episodes, or the books. I wanted to do the books, but I was thinking that many are not familiar with it, and I had trouble thinking up of a plot using the first two episodes. That's why I picked the trilogy! *proud grin*

Next chapter: The droids arrive on Earth, Gohan intercepts a cryptic message from a beautiful princess, and Videl's jealous. On the other hand, Darth Vader is suspicious about the malfunctioning pod, and he sends down his troops to retrieve it. Will a fleet of Imperial soldiers be too much for Goten to handle?

I, Jedi © Kaz, 2003
Dragonball Z © Akira Toriyama
Star Wars © George Lucas