Chapter One

"When one falls, a new one rises". "Always a Master and Apprentice". Such was a code of the Sith, adhered to for most of the ages of that despicable order. Not always of course, decades, even centuries, saw no Master and Apprentice. Or so some believed, Garrit Magg thought. As a young padawan from Wastrel, he's thought sometimes they were just laying low, orchestrating behind the scenes, even over very long periods.

Two years out of Jedi Academy, Garrit had been patrolling a remote lunar outpost on a remote trading route when the Sith dynad again appeared to be extinguished. Two million light years away Darth Yy and her apprentice Darth Whuagon were defeated by a cadre of three dozen senior Jedi. Garrit wasn't informed prior. He wasn't called to join. He eventually heard that Yy had been bisected horizontally by the final dying blade swing of Hingus Pontaloof…an apt name Garrit thought, seeing as he hailed from the upper crust of Enobian Balannites. An entire, mineral-privileged family risen from the backs of slaves. Scum. That Pontaloof should be a hero now? Garrit had had to hold his gorge when the rumors reached him.

Five years after that glorious battle, Garrit again found himself on remote, useless duty, this time escorting a Venellian prince from one diplomatic summit to another. A very tall, very fat, very pungent Venellian prince. Garrit had gone the entire three week journey without any sense of smell. If someone had shoved his head into a bucket of Bengallian spice he wouldn't have noticed (except for sudden displacement of his head), so hard was he using his Jedi skills to suppress the stench. Perhaps in Venellian culture smelling like year-old festering Hutt cheese was a sign of virility, or maybe they actually coveted that smell. Maybe Lem Bastet had been using Hutt Cheese Cologne all this time. Maybe that was a major trading commodity from Nal Hutta. Garrit didn't care. He just wanted the duty done.

Bastet approached the bridge, carrying a small ring of insects around his belly. He tucked his silken red shirt in first, or rather tried to. Doing so sent the back part of his golden pantaloons uncomfortable northward. Lem stopped fiddling and let the shirt hand down. This Jedi was a pox. Why a Jedi and not a competent pilot?

"How long until Gestinita?" He asked. The Jedi didn't look back, but Lem noticed a grimace reflected from the viewport.

"Six hours seven minutes at this speed, sir." Given such accuracy, Lem retreated to sew his beloved dolls. Some turned out ideal and graced one entire room of his estate. The others were torn apart and were attempted to be forgotten about. Just as some Venellian youths were ideal, or torn apart. As he laid one careful stitch into a rakish cap adorning a young nubile Hutt, the needle and thimble and head were suddenly strewn to a side. Bleeding from his palm, Lem was outraged and made to stand his bulk up. Garrit was otherwise occupied.

"SIR!" Magg screamed from the cockpit without even looking back. "Return to your bed and lash down! We are under attack by raiders!"

Garrit quickly assessed threats: Four known z-95s on radar. Unknown others. He stretched out with the Force while dodging ion beams. No, that was all the raiders, but still not all to be worried about. Still a potential threat. He reached for the data transmit key with one hand while flying and firing with the other. :Venellian 34px 18 under threat request aid Venellia Jedi Order:

After hitting send, Garrit quickly launched to offensive, while eyeing other options. The only one was a small jungle planet, unclassified and unnamed, sixth of a thirteen-planet system. He would use fighting maneuvers that at the same time got him nearer that planet. His efficient calculation and tactics came between and during his shooting down one z-95 with a well-placed laser-strike. Still holding to that heading generally, he risked a loop to better set up another foe and displace the followers.

"Here's where I shine," Garrit thought to himself, while coming behind the tail of one raider. A few seconds of dodging and veering were useless. A Jedi in such a position wasn't to be stopped. Garrit bracketed the z-95 to distract, then knew the response, led it, and shot it down. Two remained, the best two, and Garrit thought to eschew the secondary plan and instead use all space. But the thought of dying here, in this barely sufficient transport, with this horribly pungent scum. If vaporized, would his molecules and atoms follow Lem's forever? Would his skills allow him to ignore that, even atomized? Would he be remembered other than a failed pilot, or even worse, failed Jedi? Garrit broke for the planet.

Lem Bastet had had enough. The Jedi "pilot" had ordered something from him, to "lash down" or something else nonsensical. Bastet was used to uninteresting transports, but more often luxury space yachts. Lem pushed into and forced the door to the cockpit open.

"What is the meaning of this! Are you practicing some Jedi maneuvers?! I demand you cease and continue on a direct course to Hox!" The Jedi didn't move. He did speak.

"As I said sir, we're under attack by raiders! Get your fat, smelly body back! I assume you can't be any help here since you don't know any aspect of starflier operations and controls!"

Lem, taken aback, never so haughtily spoken to prior…not quite retreated, but more just stepped back from the cockpit, to land in his bed. He seemed to spend hours there, pitching and rolling, but eventually came to a hard point, with his right arm crashing into a bed banister, rising a nasty bruise. He soon arose and sauntered forward to demand an explanation.

"Sir, we've defeated all the raiders but had to ditch on this planet. I've sent signals to your government and the Jedi Order. We should stay put until help arrives."

"What raiders?" Garrit had to sigh, deep down, in order to prevent him from rising up and cleaving the fat man in twain. Considering the smell of course, such twaining may be very unwise.

Chapter Two

Seven weeks in. All rations gone. Fat man even looking a bit thinner. Executive decision time.

"Sir, we have to move from here. The transponder will still be good for years, but we have to find sustenance." Lem shifted a bit. He'd suffered enough, being kept in bed and only having ship rations. But he nodded. The duo set off towards what the Jedi claimed was a likely water source.

"So, ever done much outbacking?" Garrit asked. Nonplussed, Lem replied in the negative. "Well, survival is about shelter, warmth, water, and food. Not in that order. We need to work together. If you see an animal to a side, tell me. If you see a bit of mist, it may come from a spring." Lem's response was a drawn out sigh. Not for long though, as the pair soon crested a ridge. And spotted a settlement. A large, ivory building close to a pyramid, with truncated top. Garrit saw no defensive emplacements or guards, and cautiously signaled to descend.

After six hours they'd reached a door. Bastet grumbled, even more than his belly usually did, until the door creaked open. An older gentleman with a particularly fine silver vest greeted them.

"Welcome to Hyda, visitors. Please, follow me." Garrit's senses tensed, immediately, and he managed to cut down six of the nine stunbots that swiftly targeted them. Lem swatted at one without effect. They awoke in a fetid room. Garrit wondered if Lem could smell it apart from his own stink. Vermin ran unopposed, their droppings rising to several feet.

After several days the silver-vested gentleman again greeted them, as happy as if he were greeting a baby Bantha into the shepherded care of Sand People.

"Come, please," he grinned, and Lem and Garrit eventually did stand and walk. Lem grew suddenly incalcitrant.

"Hu-How dare you! I am a Venellian prince!" The gentleman merely smiled and continued to lead them, by gesturing to them and a few Twi'leks. Lem became more agitated. "Where are my boys! Where..what are you doing?! Stop, you have no right!"

At that, Bastet also shoved the gentleman with the silver vest and belt-cinched tawny pants to one side. The gentleman immediately jumped upon Lem's back to put him into a choking lock, and began dragging him to a cell. Garrit, severely in duress but now roused, proclaimed an objection.

"Stop!" The gentleman paid no heed and continued dragging until Lem was locked within. Garrit struggled against going forward. "You can't do this!"

Garrit followed that by leaping off the ground into a half-moon to get behind the gentleman and near Lem's cell door. He prepared to Force Punch the lock, but the gentleman grabbed his fist inches away from the door and absorbed the Force of it. The gentleman smiled. And led him on.

After several more passages, Garrit was led through a wide door, replete with Sith iconography. He was weak, but knew Sith were now indeed involved, and would kill them all. One iconography seemed out of place however, of the home planet of Yoda. Surely there hadn't been any Sith from there?

The gentleman with the tawny pants and ebony gloves shoved Garrit through the door and shut it behind him. Garrit prepared to look up to see the new Sith, but knowing that that's a debilitating surprise they wanted, also prepared to be unphazed and immediately strike. He looked up. A small green entity came into view.

"It can't be!" Garrit shouted, a rush of confusion leaving him completely unsure of what was happening. Had Yoda been cloned and turned to evil? Is he a puppet, or a hologram, or another ruse? Garrit searched that entity through the Force; and got more than what he sought, as Yoda responded with a flood of reality, both in Force and memory and words.

"Ha, of course it can be, fool. A history lesson you want?" Yoda responded, barely audible between his mirthful chuckles. Garrit remained inert, though his right hand reflexibly fumbled for his weapon, as if it had its own mind. "For 2000 years I have been the High Grand Sith. Perpetrated as myth the Master-Apprentice reality, I did. There are always dozens of Darths, whom executed have been immediately if they went beyond their role and exposed themselves without my consent, I did."

"I guess as a nymph, as an earwig, as a momentary flash more interested in recent events, you'd be. Think you who, at last brought down The Republic? Sensed great potential evil in Anakin, did I. Easy manner to cow the other fools on the Council to abide to no training. My fight with Palpatine made for a good laugh. Choreographed that for a few weeks, we did. Just enough effort on my part to make it look like he'd defeated me, sent me to exile. Hah! Exile sent, I am not."

"But that fool Luke. Tried I did to make him fail. Underestimate I did his father fixation. 'Anger leads to the Dark Side'. 'If you do this we've already lost'. Gave my best useless and wrong platitudes to try to keep him on Endor until the final deathstroke to the Rebel Alliance. Why alive? Wait, soon mobile you may be? Your face is ridiculous. Wrinkled up. Believe it. All lies, told you have been. So why alive? Because Anakin was not fully broken, and actually quite powerful. He'd have sensed the death, and Darth Palpatine may have been in danger."

"Hoped my silent peaceful 'death' would convince Luke to value life instead of pointless sacrifice. Convinced even was the spirit of one of my most trusted comrades, Obi-wan, who tried to prevent him from getting in the X-wing. I say trusted—of course, Obi-wan was a Jedi to the core. But manipulated easily, he was. No idea even he had, that I was faking being a Force ghost. Utterly useful tool, he, almost greater than any Sith vassals." Yoda shifted a bit upon his taunton and wookie-bone chair. Perhaps reminiscing, perhaps lamenting.

"Worked still it would have, even as Palpatine floated down the core to a side-shoot. Vader was dead, Luke was alive. Both troublesome. But The Force isn't the only power. We should have crushed the Alliance." The Dark Emperor clenched his fist around an Ewok leg-bone. Disgusted at the memory, or the tough meat, he recoiled. "But that cursed Wedge Antilles. I felt no force-power from him or Calrissian or that ridiculous fish-faced fool. Sense the same mind though, I did, from one of the foils at Yavin. The factor that The Force is unprepared to deal with. And he has since survived Ysarra, Mara, Thrawn, dozens of others I've tried to use to end him. End me though he will not. None can."

But Garrit could. After being completely shocked he'd feigned the rest, and quickly rose up alight, swinging and shouting down upon Yoda. Yoda stepped to his right to bear himself, narrowly missing a deadly slash. "Don't, you!" He reflexively shouted before pulling his own saber. Garrit rolled to a knee-spring stance. Yoda took to a level saber defence.

Garrit was irate. He'd missed out on bringing down the previous Master-Apprentice. He'd always suspected that the Sith didn't just vanish for centuries. The Jedi ignored him. Put him on trade duties. The Sith mocked him. Even to the point of putting Yoda on the Council. Garrit's muscles peaked more at this moment than they ever had. He twisted one way and thrust another. He ducked and dove and crouched in one move. Yoda slashing as best he could. Until Yoda got caught, with a slash to the face. Garrit landed five feet away, with Yoda testing the side of his head's injury.

"You are done," Garrit demanded. He felt stronger than ever. The past week? Nothing, it only increased his reserves. Of Force power. And of anger. Wait, anger? That is the Dark Side…but wait, Yoda said that, and Yoda is not to be trus—

The High Grand Sith saw this sudden crisis, that he'd created over the past two millennia, and struck. Garrit swept aside the initial strike. Yoda knew he would.

"Fool, you are. To trust the Jedi to deliver any truth. Failed, they did, at protecting whoever you cared for. Failed to detect me. Failed in every way. To redeem them, want you to? Want to be the 'Real' worthy Jedi? None before you have." Garrit shuddered. Yes, Yoda was evil incarnate, but he suddenly knew the Jedi were useless. His entire life past the age of eleven was chasing a convenient agenda rather than any real values held. But he was still good, himself. Always good. He again rose, he again willed into this moment all his Force and all his spent muscles. He struck again.

Yoda also used every bit of his Force. A dangerous foe, this upstart. Yoda spent a great deal of his power to defend the strike, to deflect it and the saber into the near ground. Garrit stared sadly at the great, yet spent effort, signified by his saber in the ground. Yoda stood and leapt upon Garrit's face.

" You are defeated. Contemplate this in your cell. Take him away…"

Chapter Three

The Ewok had been marinated in a brine of Pwyll honey, Hoth lichen, and Gungan spices, painted in a murmapple glaze, then slow-roasted over a bed of pine. Yoda tore off a flank section with his claws and sunk his [rodent-like] teeth in. Juices flowed from either side of his mouth, quickly patted off by one of his twi'lek slave whores. He chewed slowly at first, then more vigorously, finally swallowing and rinsing with a goblet of nectar.

"Well?" Darth Scrad asked, nervously while studying the green Lord's expressive brow.

"Pff!" Yoda spat back. "Excellent the spices are and it's been well-cooked, but it's too tough. Actually letting the cattle exercise you are not, are you?"

Scrad took a brief moment to parse the meaning. He knew to be brief; he'd seen what little was left of those who weren't. "Of course not! They're kept ten to a pen, Master. They fatten up well."

"Harrumph. Either make the pens smaller or shove more of the vermin into each, you will." Yoda, still focused on the dish, even if dissatisfying, failed to sense a new arrival. She snuck between the Twi'lek slave whores, and kept out of bright light, eventually to the end of the table. A brunette with angry green eyes. A brunette put together again. Yoda sensed her eventually out of the Force or his peripheral vision. If peripheral vision only, he thought in the microseconds he was conscious of her, then isn't she like Wedge Antilles?

"I've come to kill you"

Yoda quickly recovered.

"Stupid bitch, you are," Yoda mocked, while performing a pelvic thrust at the woman he'd previously deflowered, and had tried to kill several years ago. Unfortunately for him, Hingus Pontaloof was one of her agents. "When 2000 years old as me, you should talk Bantha fodder."

Both immediately used Force to rise high in the air. Yoda igniting his lightsaber, Darth Yy only using metal swords, having always eschewed lightsabers. Yoda twisted and Yy turned, landing with half of Yy's left blade gone.

"Hah. Weapons your strong suit, not are," Yoda laughed with scorn, and Yy settled on ground and tossed away her left blade. Then her head rose.

"Your strong suits are all gone. Look where the blade went." Yoda, always the mocker, never the mockee, took a moment to realize anything. Took another moment to the feel the pain of two feet of metal in his right side, through his body, and beyond his left rib cage. Then pulled it out and reset himself.

"I've had worse," he claimed as he charged. Yy brought her remaining right blade to three-quarters defence while grabbing a nearby dish. Yoda brought his blade against, and Yy felt it as it sheared off much of her left shoulder. The dish was dropped and Yy moaned, while rolling into a corner of the room. Yoda advanced and spun in midair, as if he were in a cinematic event in his own mind. Yy slowly raised her sword, with Yoda still spinning towards her. She unleashed it at the center point of the spinning. It missed. Yoda landed and brandished his saber.

"Again, stupid bitch you a—" his taunt cut short by an Ewok bone going from his throat to his brain as Yy suddenly thrusted.

"Die! Ah…dead..at last.." Yy inspected the green corpse, it's mouth still exuding drool and ichor. She grasped the skull and pulled on the chin, performing a grotesque pantomime.

"Weak, you are! Invulnerable, I am!" Yy took a moment to thrust out his legs repeatedly, as if he were a Corinthian racer lizard.

"Die forever," Yy finished, before crushing Yoda's head with a powerful stomp. The new Sith Master then reached for an oilpot and torch. As she lit Yoda up, she allowed a slight grin as she nodded.

"No cloning for you, scum." Darth Scrad hadn't moved a muscle in the previous twelve minutes, trying to calculate what was going on and which way it was best for him. Yy's final dispatch of the Great Lord Yoda finally stirred him. He broached a query, but Yy didn't hear it, enraptured as she was at the smoldering ruins. He repeated.

"Madam Lord? Master Yy? Your, your orders?" Yy snapped out of her fugue and turned, then pointed to Garrit.

"That one. Endeck him in finery, take away his lightsaber, and chain him. Whether or not he turns, he will be useful. Twi'lek slave girls! All who have suffered under Yoda! You are free, come to me!"

The seven Twi'leks slowly gathered to Yy, who caressed and soothed each. Yy moved around and between them, until the opportunity arose. With a quick and single fluid strike of her lightsaber, seven slave girls' heads became undone.

"Ha!" Yy growled. "Scrad, that has to be some kind of record, no? Now fetch me male Twi'leks, and tell the chef to cook some Ewok fritters. Better not be tough."