A/N: I've had several requests for a parody of KOTOR 2, but unfortunately I'm neither willing nor able to play the game at the moment. Those of you wanting more humourous stuff will have to wait for the Yet Another Kotor Parody Special Edition (in which Mission Vao is replaced by a Gungan, Canderous becomes a cuddly father-figure type for the benefit of younger readers, and Boba Fett is inserted into every third scene). In the meantime, there's this...

Part 1

The midday sun beat down mercilessly over the crowded spaceport. Down on the ground the heat was almost stifling; it was like being in an oven. People stood or sat in listless, subdued silence, penned in like cattle, waiting for someone to tell them where to go and what to do.

There were thousands of them, mostly women and children, clutching bags and cases and boxes overflowing with belongings – anything they could carry with them. They stood in endless rows, separated only by flimsy, hastily-erected metal barriers. Occasionally a shout would go up and the queue would shuffle forward another few feet; then the movement would cease, and the dreary, interminable wait would resume again.

Maline Jast clutched her daughters' hands tightly. They had no idea what was going on, and the heat was making them restless and irritable. "Mummy, I'm hot," whined Alora, who was three.

"Have some water, darling." She fumbled around in her bag for the flask. Five-year-old Catrel tugged at her sleeve.

"Why are we moving so slowly, Mummy?"

"Because there aren't enough ships to take all the people."

Catrel looked around at the long snake of people which stretched off into the distance. "Is that why Daddy can't come with us?'

A stab of pain shot through Maline's heart. She'd told the girls they were only going away for a little while; she still had no idea how to explain to them that they wouldn't be seeing their father again, ever. "Daddy's a soldier, Catrel. He has to stay here, to protect the planet from the Mandalorians."

"Oh." The little girl fell silent for a moment. "Will he be coming after us when they've gone?"

"I... yes, darling, I hope so." Maline turned away so that her daughters wouldn't see the tears beginning to form in her eyes. A woman in the next row looked at her sympathetically; in her arms she was cradling a tiny baby, no more than a few weeks old.

Suddenly the crowd began to stir. Near the head of the queue, one of the soldiers organising the evacuation was approaching the crowd, carrying a loudhailer. Looking tense and nervous, he raised it to his lips and began to speak.

"We can only take three hundred more." There was a sharp, collective intake of breath from the assembled throng. Maline's heart stood still; she frantically began to scan the rows ahead of her, trying to work out how many people were left to go. Hundreds, certainly...

The officer walked slowly down the line, clearly making a rough mental calculation of the number of people in each row. As he drew level with Maline's row he hesitated, stopped... She closed her eyes, feeling like she was going to throw up; her heart was hammering against her ribs and her chest felt so tight that she could hardly breathe.

"Row six. This is the last one." Maline's head jerked up. Row six? Yes, that was hers. "The rest of you... please, return to your homes." The soldier tried to speak with authority, but his voice sounded feeble and almost pleading – the voice of a man who knew he was condemning hundreds of people to death.

For a moment, there was dead silence. Then, as the realisation began to sink in, the cries and wails began... But to Maline, the clamour was barely audible; she collapsed onto a packing case, weak and trembling with relief, and folded her two precious daughters into her arms. It had been so, so close...

A sudden sound, like a strangled cry, made her look up. The woman opposite her was staring down at the child in her arms, her face frozen with horror. "No," she whispered, her whole body starting to shake. "No. My baby..." The look of despair in her eyes was beyond anything Maline had ever seen.

Now that she knew her own children were safe, the young woman felt a powerful ache of compassion for the family who had not been so lucky. She was under no illusions about their chances of survival; even if they escaped being bombed or shot, the Mandalorians would have little use for a mother with a newborn child. And Daminia was a desert planet; there was nowhere to hide...

Maline imagined standing on the other side of that barrier, faced with the death of her own daughters and helpless to prevent it, and felt sick. She had to do something. Almost without thinking she stood up, leaned over the railing and held out her arms. The other woman stared at her in astonishment, the faintest glimmer of hope beginning to flicker in her eyes.

"You... you'll take him?" she whispered. The queue was beginning to move off again. Maline nodded, and the woman hastily thrust the baby into her arms. "Revan," she hissed. "His name is Revan..." There was no time for her to say anything else; the tide of desperate people swept forwards, and Maline and her daughters were carried along with it.

When the pushing and shoving finally stopped, the woman was nowhere to be seen. Unaware of his fate, baby Revan gurgled contentedly in his new 'mother's' arms, watched curiously by the two girls. "Mummy," said Alora loudly, "why did that lady give us her baby?"

"Shh." Maline pulled her daughters closer to her and spoke in a low voice. "He's our baby now. A new little brother for you."

Alora screwed up her face in obvious disdain, but Catrel looked interested. She was too young to remember her sister's birth; as far as she knew, this was a perfectly normal way of getting a new brother. "Can I hold him?" she asked.

"No, Catrel. He's not a doll," replied her mother firmly. "Anyway, I need you to carry the bags."

As they finally approached the head of the queue, Maline's pulse quickened once more. She wasn't sure what would happen to the baby if it was discovered that he didn't belong to her; would she be forced to leave him behind? She could only pray that her daughters wouldn't say anything.

A weary-looking guard held out his hand for their identification cards as they approached him. "Maline Jast... Catrel Jast... Alora Jast." He entered the names into a datapad, then looked up. "And the baby?"

Maline surreptitiously crossed her fingers. "He - he was only born a couple of weeks ago. We haven't registered the birth yet." Unfortunately she was not a good liar; the guard looked suspicious.

"And his name?" he asked doubtfully.

"Revan."

"Revan?" For some reason, hearing the name caused the man to turn slightly pale. He bent over and looked closely at the sleeping child.

"He's our new little brother," announced Catrel proudly. The guard straightened up and smiled at her – rather sadly, Maline thought.

"Very well then. Off you go."

As they walked towards the last remaining starship, Maline wondered why Revan's name had produced such an effect on the man, and why he had not said anything when he clearly hadn't believed her. Perhaps he had children of his own, and could understand. It wasn't until they were on board the ship that she suddenly made the connection...

There were more pressing matters at hand, however. As the family squeezed themselves down on the floor in a corner of the ship, Revan woke up and began to whimper. Suddenly Maline realised, with a rapidly mounting sense of dismay, that she had no way of feeding him – and, for that matter, nothing else that a baby would need. What in the name of the Force had she been thinking?

In the end she had to wait until the ship took off, before wandering off in an attempt to find someone who would help her. Eventually she managed to find another new mother who, luckily, was sympathetic to her plight. As she returned to her place with a bottle of milk for Revan, she found her daughters fidgeting on the floor, tired and fractious.

"I'm hungry," moaned Alora. Maline sank down to the floor and shut her eyes, sighing. It was going to be a long flight...

--------

"We've been flying non-stop for fifty-five hours." The pilot, who was only in his early thirties, looked utterly exhausted. "We never thought the Mandalorians would bother attacking Daminia. When we realised they were coming, we only had a couple of days to get everyone out..."

Master Kirelle nodded understandingly. "How many of you are there?"

"About three hundred." The man mopped his brow with his sleeve. "We... we had to leave a lot of them behind. There was such a panic... everyone with their own ship just fled. There was nothing we could do..."

He gave her a look of helpless misery. Kirelle patted him soothingly on the arm, trying to calm him down. "I see. Well, don't worry, there's a Jedi enclave here on Dantooine. We'll organise a place for everyone to stay until we can set up a camp for them."

"Thank you." The man sagged with relief. Suddenly Kirelle felt a tap on her shoulder; it was her Padawan, Jodin. "Master, look..."

Kirelle swung round. A haggard-looking woman was approaching them, carrying a wailing baby under one arm and some travel bags in the other. Trailing along behind her were two very tired and dishevelled-looking little girls.

"Are you Jedi? Oh, thank the Force." She looked close to tears. "I can't find anyone to help me. Please –" She dropped the bags and thrust the crying baby towards the Jedi.

Kirelle opened her mouth to speak and then suddenly paused, gaping at the child. Were her senses deceiving her? The look on her Padawan's face suggested that she could feel it, too. "Madam," she began, "your child –"

"He's not mine. He's not my child." The woman appeared to be on the verge of hysteria. "I had to take him. There weren't enough ships, you see..."

Eventually, with the help of some food and a hot drink, the Jedi managed to calm Maline down sufficiently to get the whole story out of her. "Poor little Revan," said Kirelle softly, when she had finished. "And you have no idea who his parents were?"

Maline shook her head. "I could describe his mother to you, but I don't know her name." She drew a long, laboured breath. "Master Jedi, I can't look after him. I have two daughters of my own, and my husband – he had to stay behind..." She broke off, her voice choked.

"We'll look after him for you," Jodin assured her. She was cradling Revan, now fed, changed and sleeping peacefully, as tenderly as if he were her own child. The elder of Maline's daughters looked up indignantly.

"But he's ours!" she cried out. "He's our little brother. Mummy said so!"

"I'm afraid he's not really ours, Catrel." Maline looked very tired. "He belongs to the lady we met on Daminia."

"But she gave him to us! Mummy, tell them they can't have him!" Catrel looked outraged. Sighing, her mother stood up and took her by the hand.

"Come on, girls, we have to go." She nodded to Kirelle. "Thank you, Master Jedi. I... I hope you find his parents again."

"But he's ouuuurs..." The little voice faded away as Maline dragged her daughters off into the spaceport.

Jodin looked down at the tiny, helpless little bundle resting on her lap. Although it was not uncommon for children to be given to the Order as infants, she had never seen a newborn baby before. "He's so small," she whispered, awed.

Her Master nodded. "Babies grow very quickly."

"But the Force is so strong with him, Master... I've never felt anything like it."

Kirelle could understand her surprise. For all her years as a Jedi, it never ceased to amaze her how something as small as a baby could produce such a powerful effect in the Force. "We must tell the Council about this," she said quietly. "This one is something special, I think."

--------

In their chamber high above the city of Coruscant, the Jedi Council members were gathered in a semicircle around their chairman, Vandar Tokare. The diminutive Jedi Master was gazing almost reverently at the even tinier human he held in his arms, shaking his head as if unable to believe his eyes. Finally he murmured, "I haven't seen one this strong in the Force in two hundred years..."

Master Xorill nodded. "I can believe it. I don't think even Exar Kun had the kind of power I sense in that child..."

"Yes, and look what happened to Kun," muttered Vrook Lamar, ever the pessimist. Xorill suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. "Vrook, just because he's strong in the Force doesn't mean he'll go the way of Exar."

As if he had understood, Revan opened his eyes and beamed up at the circle of faces hovering above him; one might almost have said he was relishing the attention. Monir Ne'dolo carefully lifted the baby out of Vandar's arms and began to rock him back and forth, cooing to him softly in her own language. Master Dorak began to laugh. "Monir has fallen in love with him already."

Monir raised her head and smiled, but the look in her eyes was serious. "The Force has brought this one to us, Vandar. I'm sure of it."

"Don't be so hasty." Vandar held out his arms to the woman, who reluctantly handed Revan back to him. "Either one of his parents could have survived the attack, or even both. We'll have to try and find them before we can think about taking him into the Jedi."

Monir nodded. "I know, Vandar, but it is unlikely..."

"Unlikely, yes. But we must at least make enquiries."

The enquiries were made; but as expected, they came to nothing. Almost everyone who remained on Daminia had been killed during the Mandalorians' initial assault; most of the survivors had been taken as slaves, and of the few who had escaped, none knew anything about a baby named Revan. So the child became a citizen of the Republic and a ward of the Jedi, taken to their academy on Dantooine to be trained in the Force. Since no one knew his surname, they eventually named him after the ship which had first brought him there: the Skywalker.