Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Star Wars.

This one is a little weird, but that's because part of it came from a dream I had before I started writing it. It won't all be strange, eerie stuff like this first chapter, though. It will (I hope?) get very funny very shortly.

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Interstellar space was dark. And cold. And empty.

Until two Jedi starfighters locked into hyperdrive rings seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

The pilots of the starfighters sat in stunned silence; neither had intended to come out of hyperspace here!

"Anakin, do you copy?" Obi-wan's voice finally said over the comlink.

"Yes, Master," replied Anakin, out of habit.

"What happened?" queried Obi-wan. He sounded confused. "Did we plot our coordinates incorrectly?"

"No," responded Anakin, exhaling. "I don't know about yours, but my hyperdrive simply shut down, as if it was brought out by a mass shadow or something."

Obi-wan sighed in frustration. "How could that be, if our coordinates were plotted correctly?"

"I didn't say it was a mass shadow, I only said that the hyperdrive responded the same way as it would to a mass shadow," replied Anakin carefully, as though Obi-wan were three years old.

Obi-wan frowned. He felt that there was something very, very odd about this whole situation. Listening to Anakin's voice, he detected a very delicate, barely noticeable edge to it. Obi-wan knew that this meant that Anakin was frightened – possibly very frightened – and trying to hide it. This only confirmed his own fear: while being jerked out of hyperspace for no apparent reason and coming out in empty space was never normal, this incident had something completely unnatural to it.

Both Jedi sat in silence and tried to fathom why their ships were drifting in space. What could be wrong? Perhaps both of their hyperdrives had simply failed… at the same time. No, the engines wouldn't have both failed simultaneously; that was just too much coincidence. Unless, of course, they had been sabotaged. This could be someone's nasty way to get rid of two famous Jedi: sabotage their hyperdrives so they would fail in deep space and leave the Jedi stranded among the stars, too far out to reach a planet with their sublights before they ran out of fuel and their life support systems finally failed.

Even that was impossible, however. The ships had come out of hyperspace at exactly the same moment – which was actually a good thing; if one had kept going even a second longer, they could have ended up lightyears apart. But no saboteur could have ensured that they would both come out at exactly the same time – why would he want to, anyway? – and the chances that it would happen by accident were ridiculously slim.

Anakin finally broke their silent concentration. "Master," he said, swallowing and clearing his throat nervously.

Obi-wan waited for it. When Anakin didn't continue, he prompted, "Yes?"

Anakin was obviously having trouble with whatever he was trying to say. "Master," he repeated finally. "I've been thinking back over what I remember from just before we came out of hyperspace."

"And?"

"Master," Anakin hesitated, breathing heavily. He was frightened, and Obi-wan found that in itself frightening.

"Obi-wan." Anakin gulped audibly over the comlink. When he spoke, his voice was high pitched and strained with fear. "Did you, by any chance, see anything out there before we were pulled out of hyperspace?"

Obi-wan almost laughed. See something in hyperspace? Of course not; it was impossible! All that could be seen while traveling at lightspeed was a swirling blue blur.

He was wondering why his former Padawan would even ask such a stupid question when it finally dawned on him: Anakin had seen something.

It took him a moment to digest that.

Then he sighed and asked, "What was it you saw?"

Anakin took a deep breath, "I saw a ring of blue light around us – just a flash of it. And that was the moment we fell out of hyperspace." He sighed. "I know it sounds crazy, but – that's the message my brain got from my eyes.

Obi-wan sat there, stunned. The fact that this "vision" had coincided with the moment their hyperdrives shut down was enough to convince him that the two incidents were related. But how?

Anakin's voice came over the comlink again, even more edged with fear. "Master! Look directly ahead of us!"

Obi-wan stared for several seconds. Maybe Anakin really was becoming insane; there was nothing there.

"Anakin, I'm sorry, I don't see anything. Not even a star."

Then it hit him. There were no stars in front of him. Space was entirely empty, a black void of nothingness. To the sides and around the edges of the view out the front of his cockpit, there were myriad stars just as there ought to be. But their starfighters were pointed directly toward an almost perfectly circular black empty patch

Terror gripped both of them as the reality sank in: they had been pulled out of hyperspace by a black hole that wasn't on the charts. It seemed small to be a black hole, but a black hole of any size at this range would inexorably pull them in.

Obi-wan spoke to comfort Anakin. "Yes, my brother, we will most likely die, and will certainly never be able to return to Coruscant. But remember, 'There is no death, there is the Force.' We must calm ourselves and let go of all attachments and prepare ourselves to join it, as Jedi should."

He heard Anakin's shuddery sigh, and wished they were in the same ship so they might meet death side by side, hand in hand as brothers. But they could not. They were separated by the hulls of their fighters and the hard vacuum in between.

Obi-wan resigned himself to what must be, and prepared to reach into the Force, when suddenly wild, powerful emotions from Anakin assaulted him across their bond.

"Anakin, what is it?" he cried.

"Force, Master!"

Obi-wan was about to scold him for his irreverent language when he realized Anakin meant the Force. Obi-wan quickly reached into it and was blown away by what he found there. This place in space was pulsing and twisting with the Force! Especially the "black hole," which Obi-wan suddenly had the tiniest bit of doubt about; The Force radiated from it, almost seeming to beckon. When he saw with his own eyes the Force dancing across space around them, like a light show, his very soul thrilled and resonated within him. An even deeper thrill rocked him to his core when he realized that the light was bright blue – like the ring of light Anakin had described.

Both Anakin and Obi-wan sat in their cockpits, awestruck with the power of the place.

"What is this place?" Anakin breathed in a hushed whisper.

Slowly, the light show began to diminish, gathering toward the "black hole" or whatever it was.

"I'm following it, Master!" Anakin cried in an impassioned voice, his fear all gone.

"No! Anakin!" cried Obi-wan in horror as Anakin engaged his sublight engines. "What are you doing? You don't even know what's out there!"

"I know I'm supposed to go," replied Anakin, his ship taking off after the receding light.

Suddenly, both ship and light vanished into the black void.

Anakin was gone.

Obi-wan realized with a shock that he had just lost his brother, that he would never see his best friend again.

He broke down and wept.