Another Perspective of Things
A view of what happened in KotOR from one of the characters that had the least amount to do with the plot: T3-M4. Rated M for a bit of excessive violence.
Author's Note: Please have mercy on me; this is my first attempt at writing any type of story or any writing for that matter. What you have to understand is that this is T3-M4 showing what he has observed to the reader, every time there is dialogue imagine a hologram has just appeared out of T3-M4 and that it is a recording. What this is, are observations that T3-M4 has made while the events were going on around him, he speculates and predicates, he has the limited ability to observe certain emotions else it would be to hard to write this. I somewhat humanize T3-M4's thoughts on what he is thinking and seeing. The reason I made this was because I played the KotOR II before KotOR I and in the second game T3-M4 actually has a major role. When I finally got around to playing the first game I was in shock that T3-M4 did absolutely nothing. I've always felt that he deserved more then what was given to if any wants me to make another just say so, and I'll make a second chapter.
Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THIS, except the character of Kerc Venis.
From the Fires of Taris: Part I
- Intro -
I came to life in the store of the Twi'lek known as Janice Nall, on the planet Taris of the Ojoster Sector for a specific purpose: To bypass the security systems at the nearest Sith base so the crime lord Davik Kang could steal the launch codes to escape the Sith blockade of Taris. I did what my primary function was, that is to break into the base. But while the objective was the same for the mission, the people behind it were not Davik Kang but rather Canderous Ordo, the former enforcer who worked for Davik and the entity known as at the time as Kerc Venis, a Republican solider. As well as a Wookiee who went by the name of Zaalbar, a young female Twi'lek called Mission Vao, a Republican war hero known as Carth Onasi and a recently rescued Jedi Padawan, Bastila Shan.
In the ensuing escapades I had an overlooked role; merely I was on the side lines fixing whatever needed to be fixed. I was largely ignored by most, what ever I did as I had calculated had very little effect on the life forms who owned me. I was left to stay in the shadows, not to play as much of a pivotal role as the beings around me in the months to come. But I did what all droids do, I observed, I recorded, and I calculated the possibilities of some things, such as some of the revelations that have occurred had a three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one chance.
I am T3-M4 and this is my story, my challenges, my observations: on things that have happened and on what will happen.
From the Fires of Taris: Part II
As I have stated earlier the people that had taken me to Sith base were made up of a group of beings ranging from a Wookiee to a famous Jedi Padawan, whom everyone called under there breath or behind her back "Jedi Princess". As to why they called her this I have yet to understand. It may have something to do with her outward disposition as being rather hostile. The closest any of her companions have come to any logical explanation was during a particular argument between the Bastila and Canderous Ordo in the apartment on Taris;
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"So, Bastila" Canderous said with a slightly evil smile as Bastila entered the room, "I heard a rumor that the Vulkars took you without a struggle. It must be embarrassing to be taken down by a handful of lowlife street thugs."
"They were extenuating circumstances." Bastila diplomatically says "And I can assure you it took more then a 'handful' of Vulkars to subdue me."
An interesting observation is that at this point most life forms that I had to come into contact to at this point of my operational life span would of done a more angry retort to what the Canderous had said, but Bastila seemed to be more diplomatic then anything with him. The Canderous smirked at her and at approximately 1.0003 seconds before I would have predicted Canderous to have spoken, Kerc tried to intervene. I was curious as to why the Kerc tried to intervene with, since he only had a one in thousand six hundred point five to one chance in actually getting them to stop arguing.
"Just calm down, both of you." Kerc says while moving closer to the escalating argument.
Kerc was completely ignored by both Canderous and Bastila, and was trying to get in between them until Carth pulled him back. After about 22.5192 seconds Canderous Ordo made another attempt to what I understand as to try and convince Bastila of his point.
After a little while Canderous shrugged and merely said "Whatever you say, all I know is that if we had more Jetiise here like di'kut Jetiise kaysh mirsh solus here, fighting us in the war, we would of won."
"Bold talk from a broken down mercenary who was serving at Davik's heel as his pet kath hounds." Bastila angrily retorts with, and then with a second thought "Even then you don't fit the description since kath hounds have enough loyalty not to betray their own master."
"Insults?" Canderous quickly retorts gaining a dangerous glint in his eye. "Maybe if your master had trained your lightsaber as quick as your tongue you could have escaped from those Vulkars you spoiled little Jetiise Princess!"
The rest of the group was all listening to this exchange between the two with exception of Zaalbar, who was eating vast quantities of local Gizka much to Mission's protests.
"I was not spoiled!" Bastila shouts defensively "I was given the same training as everyone else in the Order! You are nothing but a… no I must not do this. There is no emotion: There is peace."
Canderous seems to have won the argument; most of the group starts to go back to whatever they were doing before the argument had started, as it seems to have ended.
"That's the problem with you Jetiise. Always chanting about peace and control, never up for a good fight." Canderous grumbles, and considers it again. "Well except for Revan, I guess."
Bastila's head suddenly shoots up and not very angrily but seems to just want this to end, immediately.
"Enough, Mandalorian." Bastila says with controlled anger, "I won't rise to your bait anymore. The game is over."
The argument ended there but it seems as if the phrase "Jedi Princess" stuck with Bastila even if she did not know it.
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There were many things that happened on Taris that I deemed as "oddities", these recordings I saved to analyze at a later date. Most of them are too trivial to be noted again, but some of them I have flagged as important. One of which happened merely two hours after I left the store and workshop of the Twi'lek Janice Nall.
The group of beings that I know belong to had taken me to perform my primary function, which is to hack into the Sith base. After we had blasted our way into the more powerful portions of the base, specifically a Sith Mark VIII combat droid serial number OZDD-3320, we found the elevator to the control room. Once inside the whole group, for lack of a better word was frozen by some unmeasurable and unseen power that is called "The Force". The Sith Governor who had used "The Force" on us was unable to use it on Kerc Venis for some reason the befuddled both my instruments, the Sith Governor and the rest of the group, save one.
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The Sith Governor was mediating four and a half inches off the floor, this changed rapidly;
"Who dares dist…" he said in a quickly becoming pissed off tone ".. ah the force is strong in you, who would even of guessed a force adept could be found on this pitiful planet" Mission Vao started to foam at the mouth when the word pitiful was said. The moment "force adept" was said I detected a slight increase in heartbeat in Bastila as if she knew more about the subject.
"You are just trying to confuse me, Sith! Hand me the codes and I just might leave you with your favorite limbs!" a confused Kerc yells as if trying to disspell thoughts from his head.
"Yessss feed your anger and hatred you will find the awesome powers of the dark side." the Sith Governor proclaims "Not that even calling upon it can save you now, hell I might even get a lightsaber from my master for gutting one such as yourself!" launching a flurry of blows at the Republican Solider.
Kerc was barely able to block the attack at the last moment, nearly having the vibrosword hit out of his hand. As the fight progressed it did not seem it was likely to end well for Kerc until something that I could finally detect did happen. Well detect is such a loose word in this context, rather, something that I could observe. Something from the right side of the room almost like a little amount of wind, as I could detect dust particles moving, went across the room and slighting impaired the Sith's footing. The Sith looked down and was too distracted, too late to block the incoming blow which took him down the middle cutting him in half from his right shoulder to his left thigh, ending the fight.
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I still do not understand to this day, what that force was that caused the Sith to lose his footing other then it was 'The Force'. It is quite possible that I will never understand what it was either but I do have my ideas on what caused it. If it was 'The Force' then it could of come from Bastila, but Bastila was similarly 'froze' as I was, I think that either a third party did it or the only one in our group that wasn't frozen did it. The night before we decided to leave Taris by going through Davik Kang's estate, Kerc decided to confide with me.
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"You don't talk much do you?" Kerc says as a way of greeting while walking over to me.
"BLEEP-bloop-beep" *translation: "Yes, just no one understands me."*
"Well then you wouldn't tell anyone anything I tell you, now would you?" Kerc says secretively.
"beep-beep-boop-blop beeeeep-zop-beep-beep-bloop-bleep" *translation: "I would completely tell everyone but since no one but you does talked to me, I shall not tell then. Well actually Mission tries to but all she does is poke me in the eye and ask if I am 'here'. Where else would I be?"*I instantly respond.
" ……okay then…..that was oddly creepy…..yeah……" a somewhat opened mouth Kerc mutters "Anyway, I think I may be losing my mind, I keep on seeing random bits of memories that just conflict with themselves, like I know I was in the Outer Rim a year and half ago yet it's like I have memories of being near Telos IV when it was being glassed. Its just like I don't know where I was before the Ender Spire assignment."
"bleep-bloop?" *translation: "And you are telling me this why exactly?"* I said trying to be as sarcastic as possible, which surprisingly is hard when you can't change your tone.
"Well... then..." Kerc said slightly taken back, "Honestly? There is no one else is who listen. Carth would think I was a sith in disguise". As he started to list them off on his fingers "Bastila would preach something that involved peace and being careful about the dark side. Zaalbar may be in a life debt to me but it doesn't mean he has to listen to my problems as he has so clearly pointed out many a time. Mission would think that I was on glitterryll and probably send me to that doctor in the Undercity who would in turn keep me in the cage with the Rakghoul infected people." he finished.
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After that night we left Taris, in quite possibly the most dramatic of fashions. After acquiring the launch codes, we needed to find a ship. We couldn't use what Bastila, Kerc and Carth came here on, as the escape pods no longer worked. Zaalbar, Canderous and Mission never owned any ships of there own on Taris. Fortunately Canderous had a plan. We were going to steal the Ebon Hawk, the master that I was originally made for, ship. He also had a plan to get two of our group into the Ebon Hawk, I was included mainly because Kerc and Canderous could possibly be unable to hack into the security system of the Ebon Hawk. After we had reached the hanger, my original master and a bounty hunter by the name of Calo Nord showed up. Things quickly escalated. I was put in to a position to fight my original owner or to be destroyed. Self-preservation or loyalty to the person who was wholly responsible to my creation. I was programmed with trio of basic rules:
1. I may not injure another life form that has sentience, specifically any owner of me in any way shape or form or, through inaction, allow a life form that has sentience, specifically any owner to come to harm.
2. I must obey any orders given to myself by my owner(s) past or present, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. I must protect my own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I had hit an impasse, I would have to break the laws, I would have to alter my own programming.
Part of my programming found it to be difficult, almost impossible to have such a thing happen, another part of me was wondering how it had come to this. It was self defense, I was programmed to be able to defend myself. But another rule that was programmed into me said that self defense was only when it didn't violate the rules of being used against my masters, previous or otherwise. I was left with one real option. I purged the laws from my memory. While this seems like something that would usually fixed my original problem easily, my laws DID have a fail-safe; in any case that my laws were corrupted or lost I would have to purge my main data module and would have purged my own personality, I would have gone to what some of the ancient computers used to do when corrupted. I would have had what the humans used to call 'The Blue Screen of Death'. So how, even though I did trigger the fail-safe completely, did I not effectively die? I found out later why even though it was tripped, why I survived. While I had been programmed to have the three laws, part of Davik's special order for me included the ability to think 'creatively' to get by certain advance security systems or to out hack, hackers. I had a secondary data module installed for that purpose with much less constrictive laws. Such as allowing harm to befall another sentient, so I could be much more aggressive when it came to over coming security systems, and have extreme self-preservation so I could never be caught and be traced back to Davik.
What was programmed into me by special orders as add protection to the man known as Davik Kang turned out to be his downfall. When the Kerc, Canderous and I attacked Cal Nord and Davik, Canderous and Calo Nord immediately went into a shooting match, both protected by armour and energy shields. Kerc couldn't get close with his vibrosword to Davik and was pinned down by hails of laser blasts coming from the Disruptor the Davik was using, denigrating anything that got near the shots. My whole issue took less then a second to sort out. Once it was sorted out, I went directly into a pile of disused T3 and T2 droids, completely camouflaged, waiting for the right time. I was given the shot of opportunity, the shot to save Jefardi from almost certain, impeding doom. Right as Kerc was caught in the open, just as Davik's arm muscles were in the act of pulling the tendons connected to his hand which pulled the trigger finger, I shot Davik through the right eye, left eye and in between the eyes, shooting a total of three times. The back of his head opened up and exploded in an explosion of red. My original master was dead by my own doing, I had killed that which had brought me into creation.
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After the death of Davik, Calo Nord's energy shield failed him and he was shot in both knees. All seemed to be lost for him until he pulled out a thermal detonator and activated the Dead man's switch. With impossibly good timing the sith started to bomb the planet and part of the hanger collapsed on the man. I immediately enter into the Ebon Hawk's security system interface, neutralizing it within seconds. We took the Ebon Hawk around back to the apartment to rescue the rest of our group from the orbital bombardment.
I did what I could to help out with our new ship, but there wasn't much to be done. I entered the communication and navigation room, and watched what the sith did to Taris. We left the atmosphere of Taris going past the blockade, leaving a burning world behind us. My place of origins, my homeworld was gone, destroyed in the fires that the Sith created. As the last bit of Upper city was being consumed by the fires, we escaped through hyperspace.
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