The Constant

"How did you find me?"

"I have my resources, you really shouldn't be surprised."

"What do you want?"

"I found it."

The tall figure was silent as he turned around and examined the other's face. He was definitely not lying.

"How? Revan hid it…"

"And I found it."

The aged Mandalorian stood silent staring at his once comrade in arms. He took a few deeps breaths and seriously hoped he was not lying. The Mandalorian glory would be restored at last, after their shameful defeat at the hands of the feeble Republic they would finally be able to regain their power. It was almost too much to wrapped his head around it. He looked at his pack for the briefest second before speaking.

"Can I see it?"

"I need you to see it. I'm not certain it's the mask, not one hundred percent."

"Give it to me."

Canderous opened his pack and took the mask of Mandalore out of it, still wrapped in cloth. With a careful toss he handed it to the other man, who slowly began unwrapping it. The cloth cage finally gave way, and he was able to see the beautiful contents inside it. It was the mask, the real mask, there was no doubting it. Every inch of it, down to the tiniest of scratch, just like he remembered it from the time he served under Mandalore the Ultimate. And he had it on his hands. With a deep breath he wrapped it again and placed it on the table next to him.

"It is… isn't it?"

"It is" he said as he very slowly reached for his blaster.

"Good... Then give it back, I have a lot of work to do."

"Going to reunite the clans, are you?"

"You know the drill."

"Yeah, once a Mandalorian assumes the title of Mandalore all clans must accept his rule… or rebel against it" he said as he gave Canderous a serious glare.

"Yeah" the battle hardened Mandalorian said as he slightly lifted his repeater to aim it at his chest. This had been a concern that had been on Canderous' mind ever since he decided to ask that man for aid, but he had had no other choice, and now they had been brought to this point. The room they were was very small, it looked more like a shed than an actual room. A small table was placed next to his opponent, where the mask laid. A single strip of light ran on the floor, dimly illuminating the room. The only door was behind him, but there was no way he was going to leave without the mask, even if it meant killing the legendary Cassus Fett.

"I can do a better job than you."

"You're going to have to prove that, Fett."

With a quick move, Cassus aimed his blaster at Canderous while jumping towards the left side of the confined room. Canderous fired his repeater and immediately scorched the wall behind him before a single bolt hit him on the chest. Thankfully his armor absorbed most of the blast, and he managed to aim his repeater towards Fett at the last second. A few bolts hit his arm and hand, forcing to drop his blaster. Not letting himself being stopped by his attack, Cassus approached the downed Canderous and grabbed the already impressive-sized Mandalorian by the neck and lifted him with his right hand. Canderous struggled for air as he tried to kick the taller Mandalorian in the chest, but his legs only bothered the mighty Fett. With a hard move he brought him down to the ground, crashing his back against the cold steel floor. Canderous managed to free himself from his grasp and grabbed his ankles, pulling them hard and forcing him down on the ground. The mighty Mandalorians barely fit in the tiny room and using the small dimensions to his advantage, Canderous climbed on top of Fett's back, grabbed his head with both hands and lifted it as high as he could, before he slammed it down on the ground, using his entire weight to cause more damage. He heard a sickening crunching sound that told him his nose had been broken, but the mighty warrior refused to go down so easily and he quickly got to his feet, Canderous still on his back. Kneeling down, Cassus took a deep breath before jumping as high as he could, slamming Canderous against the roof. The smaller Mandalorian groaned as his back was hit two more times by Cassus savage attack. Thinking how to use the small dimensions to his advantage, he let himself go when he thought Cassus was going to jump again and he slid down as his opponent rose in the air. With a swift move he kicked the descending Cassus in the stomach and forced him down on his knees. Standing up, he landed two hard blows on the bleeding man's face before he grabbed his fist and began crushing it under his larger fist. His mind went back to the time he did the same thing to Calo, and a tiny smile crossed his face, he should have seen it coming. Trying to pull himself free, Canderous spotted his repeater with the corner of his eye and tried to reach it, but Cassus saw the move and threw him to the other side of the room, landing next to the now overturned table. Groaning as he stood up, Canderous grabbed the table and used it as a shield as Cassus began firing on him. Ignoring the deafening sound his repeater was making against the table, he began counting. Four… Three… The table began to creak. Two… It was about to give. One… He placed his foot against the wall and pushed as hard as he could, sending himself and the damaged table as a battering ram against Fett, who was taken by surprise when his repeater stopped firing, probably because Canderous had taken the large power pack out and it was running on the backup power, just in case something like this happened. He crushed Fett against the door and kept pushing as hard as he could. With a groan, Canderous placed both his feet on the opposing wall and was literally perpendicular with the table, using the wall to push his entire weight against Fett. He heard another crunching sound, probably his ribs, but he did not stop pushing. Fett said something he was unable to understand, but he really didn't care what it was, not right now. He pushed as hard as he could until he felt like his burning arms were going to give and he fell down, along with the weakened Fett. He stood up and managed to grab his blaster and aimed it at Fett, who was barely able to move.

"… Preserver" he breathed out between coughs of blood.

"I like it" he said after a long silence.

"… Good…"

Looking at his adversary directly in the eyes, Canderous respectfully nodded at him before squeezing the trigger, sending a single blaster bolt directly at his face, landing it between his dark brown eyes. He breathed heavily a few times as he rested there, trying to regain his strength. He turned his face to the right and saw the mask of Mandalore, completely undamaged by their fight and patiently waiting for him. He grabbed it and placed it inside his pack again, feeling a warm glow of pride as he did. He had it. He had the one and only mask of Mandalore. He silently thanked Fett for the confirmation as he stood up and opened the door, making sure nobody had noticed their rather loud fight, but the music at the bar was even louder, and nobody noticed him exited the room. He exited the bar and looked around, she wasn't there. She probably had headed back to the ship, he hoped, after all, he had told her to leave if she felt uneasy, and so close to the due date, she probably was. He hurried back to the ship and went directly to the women's quarters, or rather their quarters, but she wasn't there. Concerned he quickly checked the garage before he headed to the cockpit. It was empty. He arrived at the cockpit and found it deserted too. That left only one place, he quickly ran down the hall past the main room and pressed the release button for the medical bay's door. Aspyre was there, breathing heavily and clenching her teeth in pain.

"My water broke" she said as soon as she saw him. With an urgent look on his face, Canderous nodded and ran directly to the cockpit, setting the quickest path towards the nearest medical center. It was a mere twenty minutes away, he set the autopilot and to make sure nothing would happen he ordered T3 to intervene in case anything went wrong. The droid cheerfully beeped as he left the cockpit and headed back to his wife.

"How bad is it?"

"I've had worse… How did it go?" she asked when she noticed the blaster mark on his chest and the marks on his face.

"Great… better than I expected actually" he truthfully told her. She grabbed his hand as another contraction shocked her body. "Hold on, we'll be there in about twenty minutes."

"Okay…"

"T3, get this thing moving!" he yelled when he noticed an entire minute had passed since he entered the med bay. The little droid beeped an affirmative and the Ebon Hawk quickly rose in the air before blasting off into hyperspace.

00

Aspyre went into labor the second she arrived at the medical station, and they barely prepped the operating room. As she passed through the halls she saw lots of soldiers groaning in pain and many others who seemed like they were going to die. She wanted ask the doctor why the station was so full, but she only managed to gasp in pain. Another man laid in the operating table, dead and cold. With a heartless push, the nurses took him off the table and placed Aspyre on top of a sterilized bed sheet. She felt a tear being shed as she realized something she should have seen a long time ago, ever since she had joined the Endar Spire. War, war never changes. In the end people fight, live and die just like they always had because if there was any constant in their lives, it was war. War was the constant. She had had a vain hope that she would be able to bring her baby boy into a world where there was peace, but such a place she had not discovered so far, and she suspected she would be unable to. The only constant, was war.

She felt another wave of pain hit her and she realized the doctor was telling her to push, and she did, she slowly felt how that little miracle of life escaped her body and landed neatly on the doctor's hands, who proceeded to clean him and inject him with a few essential antibodies he was going to need if he was to survive in that space station for more than a day. He returned to her and handed her a tiny baby boy, small enough that she was able to hold him with one hand. She stared at him for a very long time, all sense of pain now gone, and not only because of her Jedi training. She stared at his little closed eyes, the tiny dark blonde hairs growing out of his head, the way his moved his lips so like his father. She turned her head around and spotted Canderous outside the room, staring at them through the clear glass. His face was as calm and neutral as usual, but Aspyre could read him better than anybody else now, and she saw the turmoil of emotions running inside of him.

She bit her lip as she wondered how she would be able to tell him what she wanted to tell him. She hoped that he would understand, but after all he was Mandalorian, maybe he wouldn't accept his son not bearing his name. Hell, how would she feel if somebody took him away from her and told her he wouldn't carry her name? She looked at her little boy in her arms and she realized that like it or not, it was the only name that fit him. He was Virial Shan Ordo, he could be nothing else.

"I love you" she told him through the Force. The little baby twitched in her hands and she smiled. I guess war isn't the only constant, she thought to herself as they took her out of the room.

People ask me why I "waste" my time with video games, sci-fi, and fantasy books. Let me explain something to everybody, everything has a purpose. It can be to entertain you, it can be to tell a story and pass the time, or it can be to teach you something. You can definitely look at the entire Star Wars universe and say it's a waste of time and that it's stupid, that it doesn't do anything useful, that it's a waste of time and products. From your point of view that is right, but it can also teach you something. It doesn't have to be what George Lucas intended to transmit when he created it, but it's definitely something. I learned that War is the only constant in theirs (the characters) lives. You can say, Oh, but there's no way it would sell if it peace existed in their galaxy forever. Fine, that is true, but it taught me that nonetheless (It also tells you a lot about human nature, it tells us about ourselves). War is the only constant, the only thing that never changed in 20,000 years of story. From that lesson you can derive a lot of conclusions I will not explain here, for they are too long. I hope that when you read "The Constant" and "Aspyre to More" you didn't only see them just as something to pass the time, but rather as an instrument to tell a story (I know it's a story, you know what I mean), a very cool story, but a sad one, a very tragic story in which injustice forces a girl's hand, in which life is underrated by all but one. I wonder, how many of you felt sorry for the bandits Carth and Aspyre killed in lower Taris, or Gadon, or even Brejick. Did you even remember them? I know they are not real, but if you pretend they are for a second, you can learn so many things that will make you see that the Star Wars universe is fucked up, but out world is even worse. Thank you for reading and giving me the support for writing and trying to get my message to you. Despite all the problems they had, all the injustice, pain and suffering that Aspyre had to deal with, she still had hope, she still tried to create a better galaxy. Against all odds she tried, and she didn't even have a reason! She was just created that way. Maybe she didn't succed at first, maybe she did not succeed at all, but she tried, and as long we have Aspyre Venars (both in the star wars world and in our own) we can have hope for a better future. Thank You so much for everything. I hope you enjoyed this, and I hoped you learned.