Luke Skywalker was gravely perturbed. He felt a disturbance in the Force unlike anything he had ever perceived before. It was warning him about a foreboding danger. Someone who brought about the fall of the Light! As he dug deeper, much to his horror, he realised that the perpetrator was Rey! He sensed Rey's heart being devoured by the Dark Side.
After Luke had chased Rey away from the island, she had returned to the Resistance. That proved to be a mistake! He was wallowing in self-pity and despair that he had failed to see the potential within Rey. He had cruelly rejected her, and now she had fallen in the hands of The First Order. That light within her that once shone bright was a mere flicking glow in a hall of darkness.
The last time he had felt this sense of dread was when his nephew – Ben Solo – converted to the Dark Side.
Not only had he failed Ben, but he had failed his sister Leia and his friend Han. They entrusted Ben's future to him and he had failed them, both as a Jedi Master and as an uncle. If he did not go into Ben's hut that night, if he didn't obey his instincts and tried to strike his nephew down like the fool that he was, perhaps all this misery could be prevented?
No. He had to make things right. This time, he had to face his fears and undo the damage that he had wrought.
Luke hoped he wasn't too late.
-X-o-X-
Rey was used to crying herself to sleep. During those lonely nights when she was crammed in her makeshift home built from the remnants of a destroyed AT-AT, she had pondered to herself about her parents. What did she do to deserve this fate? Why did they abandon her? How could they let her suffer in this misery and famine?
When Rey woke up from her slumber, she found her cheeks blemished with dried-tears stain. Wiping it off with her sleeves, she stared at her quarter. For once in a very long time, Rey felt a sense of relief and peace in her. This was her moment of clarity; she had discovered the harsh truth about her parents, but she had also unravelled her heritage in the process and it was all thanks to -
Rey's eyes widened in horror and she cupped her mouth with a hand.
Naruto Uzumaki, the Lord of the First Order. The culprit of mass murders. The conqueror of worlds. The evil of all evils.
What was going to happen to her? Now that her faith to the Resistance had shaken, she didn't know what to do. Had she unknowingly submitted herself to the Dark Side? What was this feeling she had developed for… Naruto? Thinking about him gave her butterflies in her stomach and made her cheeks burn a bright red.
"Snap out of this Rey!" She chided herself. "I can't let him get to me. I… I can't join the Dark Side. I am…"
She was the descendent of a notorious Sith Lord. The Dark Side was in her blood. There was no denying it now.
Her musing was disrupted when Alema strode into her room, annoyance was written all over her face. "You overslept by three minutes this time! Get up, rat!"
"Y-Yes!" Clumsily, Rey bolted to the bathroom to get herself ready.
Alema however was perplexed by Rey's change of attitude. The girl used to be sluggish and unwilling, but there was a fire of enthusiasm in her now. After thinking for a minute, she couldn't really come up with a feasible conclusion and shrugged to herself. "Must be the Lambro shark that she ate from last night. People with weak bowels usually get diarrhoea the next day. Must be it."
-X-o-X-
Rey wasn't sure if Alema had the cognisance to differentiate training from torture. Alema insisted that Rey's training was light. Rey didn't think the term 'light training' meant what her sadistic mentor thought it meant. No, light training didn't require one to perform suicide sprints, jumping jacks, squats, and push-ups till exhaustions.
Hell, Rey suspected that she had almost gotten cardiac arrest during her third set. By her seventh set, she had vomited her breakfast out. What she did afterwards were too hazy for her to recall. Rey was genuinely surprised she didn't slip into a coma after she completed the arduous training. Wait, could she even describe what she had gone through as training?
"Aww! Stop being a baby!" Flipping a page across her orange book, Alema took a sip from her lemonade, a perverse giggle escaped from her lips occasionally. "The training you just went through is only a watered down version of what I did when I was an apprentice under Lord Naruto's tutelage."
Rey laid on the floor, her heart was pounding vigorously in her chest, her muscles were sore as hell, she was sweating all over, and she didn't have any energy to lift herself up. "You… You're crazy!"
"Meh. I got called worst." Alema shut her book and turned to Rey, her gaze steeled. "I'll be increasing the intensity of your training every week. You will thank me later when you start to learn how to harness the innate power of the Force."
"W-Why will this…" Rey coughed out. "Why will this stupid training help me get in touch with the Force?"
Alema rolled her eyes. "I'm not just training your physical aptitude. I'm also training your mental perseverance. You will need great willpower to balance the Force. Without it, you can kiss the Force goodbye."
The mentality of not succumbing to weakness was the goal of Rey's hellish training. She could appreciate the rationality behind what she was doing, but that didn't mean she like any of it. The worst part was that Alema intended to make Rey's training a living nightmare in order to force results out of her. Did Master Skywalker go through the same shit like she did in order to get where he was now?
"Probably."
Regaining her bearing, Rey shot Alema a death glare. "Stop reading my mind."
"You were easy to read though." Letting out a deep sigh, Alema stood up, threw her hands behind her back, and paced around the training field. "In battle, you must never drop you guard no matter how dire the situation is. If you encounter an enemy who happens to be at the calibre of our lord, there is no way you can do battle with erratic thoughts."
Rey nodded to herself. "But how can I achieve that?"
"Do not slack in your training and you'll achieve it one day."
Pointing a finger at the blackboard that was hung on the ceiling, Rey mused. "Do you think I can have my name inscribed on that board one day?"
The blackboard contained a list of names, with Naruto's being emphasised blatantly. It was a symbol of strength for the Knights of The First Order. To have one name's imprinted on the blackboard signified one's authority too. Ultimately, it was a list that presented those who could utilise the Force to bench-press the heaviest object. Rey couldn't believe it, but Naruto's record was bench-pressing one friggin' Star Destroyer!
"Oh, you best believe it. We all saw him did that. It was truly a sight to behold." Alema smiled. "The best I could do was lifting a TIE fighter. I'm more of a mind-reader than a lifter, yeah."
Rey giggled at how Alema pouted to herself. Truth be told, Alema's name wasn't very high up on the list.
"It's not funny, okay!" Rey's mocking giggle erupted into guffaws when she realised Alema carried a hurt look over her face. "If there is one thing you should know about the Force, it is not fair. Imagine it as a cup. Most people's cups are so small, they can barely feel the gift of the Force. Others, like me, have a reasonable flask of power. We can't train to enlarge it. We are given what we are given and that's it. The most we can do is to learn how to tap into this marvellous gift. And then there is the freak. There is no boundary to Lord Naruto's power."
Loosening the buns tied to the back of her hair, Rey blinked. "Did you just refer to our Lord as… a freak?"
"I-I meant it in a good way!"
"I'm gonna tell~!" Rey teased with an aggravating sing-sang voice, waving her finger disapprovingly at her mentor.
"You dare?" Alema was furious.
Sticking her tongue out provocatively, Rey climbed to her feet and bolted towards the exit. Her escape was for naught though, because her limbs were held back by an invisible force. This took a whole new turn for Rey. She used to be a grouchy girl-scout, but now she took her training seriously and had the audacity to make fun of Alema.
Frankly, Alema didn't know what was with Rey's change of heart, but she welcomed it. It was heaps better for Alema to deal with a cheeky apprentice than a goody-two-shoe Jedi wannabe. "You're hundred years too early to make fun of me, girl!"
Their moment was disrupted when Kylo Ren marched into the facility with a scowl plastered on his face. Rey could never forgive Kylo Ren for what he did to Han Solo. No matter how much Kylo Ren believed he was abandoned, he was not. Han Solo and General Organa loved him from the bottom of their heart. He had a family, someone who loved him, yet he treated them as trash.
Rey was the one who was truly abandoned, left to die in a wasteland like a nobody. Scavenging and starving were all she knew growing up in a harsh environment like Jakku. There were times she had contemplated of slitting her wrist and ending her misery, but something had stopped her. Perhaps it was her weakness, but she clung on to hope. Kylo Ren didn't have to go through that! That's why Rey could never bring herself to forgive a scum like that.
Alema turned to her apprentice, her eyes were ushering her to leave. "Why don't you go wash up? I'll meet you later for dinner."
"Oh." Rey stared back and forth between the menacing Kylo Ren and her mentor. "Okay."
Taking a last look at Alema, Rey scrambled out of the training field.
The atmosphere went dark and smothering when Kylo Ren and Alema were left to their own devices. They took a step forward, their gaze were intense, and neither of them were going to let this transgression passed. "The fuck do you think you're doing, Kylo Ren?"
"I'm just supervising your training for Rey. Making sure you're not screwing up." Kylo Ren shot an accusing glare at Alema. "What are you doing? Playing dolls with Rey and holding her back? I can tell you're envious of Rey's power. You're sabotaging her training, aren't you?"
Alema scoffed. "You see, Lord Naruto has entrusted my apprentice's training to my design! I don't need you to tell me what to do. You need to back the fuck up!"
"Profanity, really?" Kylo Ren stroked his chin as he turned his attention to the mess in the training field. "You were irrelevant before. A lapdog who begs for her master's attention, but couldn't amount to anything significant. I don't see why master would pick a failure like you to guide Rey."
"Oh, that's really cute. You're talking from the side of your face. You're talking way over there." Alema pointed at the gym equipment where Kylo Ren was looking. "Not right here, are you huh?" She pointed to herself. "What's the matter, you scared? Let me make this clear with you, Kylo Ren. You don't barge in here and start spurting your words of wisdom that nobody cares! You think I will roll over and play nice for a whiny, creepy little momma's boy like you?"
No explosive outburst came out of Kylo Ren, which Alema was expecting to see. Instead, he adjusted the collars of her leather jacket and grinned. "One day, master will realise how weak you are. That you weren't ready to have an apprentice yet. And if he wants to give you a chance to let you prove yourself, which I doubt you can, then so be it. But if Rey is still unwilling to join The First Order by the time this is over, then it's on you."
Alema's eyelid twitched vigorously. "That's on me, then?"
"Oh, that's on you."
"So it's like that?" Alema bellowed, ire blazing in her eyes. "You better watch your back!"
Kylo Ren spun around and walked to the door. He had accomplished what he came for.
It wouldn't be long before he had Rey all for himself.
He couldn't help but snicker to himself.
-X-o-X-
The imminent assault at the Resistance's base had disturbed Rey for a while now. Nobody was willing to disclose anything to her. Hell, even the storm troopers possessed no knowledge of it. Naruto had played his cards well. He knew Rey would try to probe any titbits of information if she could, so he purposely starved her off from any valuable intelligence.
Twisting the knob of her shower, she let the hot water poured on her, cleansing sweat and fatigue from her lithe body.
Now that Rey had discovered the truth about her purpose, the only reason she had ties with the Resistance was because of her friends. Their lives would be in jeopardy if she didn't do anything about it. There must be a way for her to deliver a message to them. Now that Rey had seen what The First Order was truly capable of, it would be too dangerous for the Resistance to fight them.
Besides, there were some… anomalous feeling she harboured for the enigmatic leader of The First Order. She couldn't properly describe it, but to know that the Resistance might attack The First Order and potentially murder Naruto somehow brought a pang to her heart. Why would she even feel that way? Was she worried for Naruto? The man who was hell-bent on conquering and dominating everything? It couldn't be! There was no way she could feel anything for the blond.
Stockholm syndrome! That's right! Her being captured must have put a toll on her mental psyche. This was just a phase! She just needed some time off to -
"Really? Is that really what you think?"
Rey jolted in fright and surveyed her bathroom warily. "D-Do you mind? I'm taking a shower here, Lord Naruto!"
"Your Force bond connected me to your mind. Not the other way around." Ignoring her outcry, Naruto continued in a deliberate soothing voice. "The Resistance are no better than a bunch of terrorists. They are weak, cruel, selfish, and capable of destroying the peace of this galaxy. I thought we have already established that."
"They only believed in doing what was right!" Rey argued to the wall, but she knew Naruto could hear her loud and clear.
"What is right for you? Disrupting the natural order? Sending people to die needlessly? All I ever wanted was to unite the galaxy under one regime. To ensure no war shall befall any civilisation. If the Resistance succeed, all the other planets will be in danger. I am the linchpin that binds them all. They bow before me in fear so that they will not kill each other."
"Liar!" Rey banged the base of her fist at the wall. "That's dictatorship! A man like you with absolute power will only bring destruction to the galaxy!"
"Perhaps so, but you have seen it, haven't you? The force has shown you things. The visions. Not just mankind, but all life forms spread across the galaxy. They were all primitive. None of them could uphold an armistice. Do you really foolishly think people truly want freedom? No. That's not what they want. Go around and ask the war orphans. Ask the folks whose crops were dried up. Ask the farmer who needs to feed his family of two. Ask the mother who needs to clothe her children. Is it freedom they want? Or is it the tools of survival that they need?"
Rey bit her lower lip. If this moment happened in a few weeks ago, she would have confidently shrug it off. She would stand with conviction that her choice was right; that the Resistance were the good guys and that Naruto was full of himself. But now? She wasn't so sure anymore.
"Now tell me, Rey. What does the Resistance hope to achieve? Overthrow us? And then what? What's next? Let the warring planets fend for themselves? Let them embrace peace? Is that it?" She could hear Naruto's cold guffaw. "My dear Rey. You are a smart girl. You know better than I do. Give them the tools to start a fire and they will learn to use it for war. History has shown. Jedi. Sith. They were all the same. They were warmongers who waged war because they wanted to defend their ideals at the cost of billions of lives. Outdated values. Uptight traditions. Ridiculous laws."
"And you're implying you're the good guy here?"
"I'm not. I am knee-deep in blood. That doesn't make me any lesser than General Organa though. In her perspective, she is fighting for peace. From my perspective, I am fighting for justice. Does that mean I'm a saint? No. Never has been. Never will be. Unlike General Organa, I will not preach about being 'the good guys'. I am but a provider. Someone who guides others. I give people the means of survival and make sure they don't abuse it. A deterrent, if you may. Well, I won't bother you any longer. Take your time to think about it."
"W-Wait!" Rey swallowed hard. "You wanted to attack the Resistance. Please, I'm begging you. I don't want to see my friends die. Help me save them."
"I'm sorry, Rey. I truly am. But the Resistance must fall. The needs of many outweigh the needs of the few. Your friends should know better. They have made their choice. Now it is time to make yours. Are you going to forfeit this life that I am about to give you? Are you going to help the Resistance destroy us, the peacekeepers? Or are you going to help me make sure that no child will suffer the same fate as you do? Will you help me save this world, Rey?"
Rey turned off her shower, her glazed eyes remained fixated at the bottle of shampoo beside her.
What should she do? Which side should she be on? Why must she make such an impossible decision? If she helped the Resistance, then many people would die without The First Order's aid. If she helped The First Order, then her friends were as good as dead. Either way, she was either an accomplice to an inevitable genocide or a traitor to her own friends.
The world was not as black and white as she naively thought it was.
"By the way!"
Rey squeaked indignantly and almost tripped on her footing.
"The next time you take a shower, try not to think about me too much. That way, I won't be forced to talk to you in your mind."
Rosy pink dusted Rey's cheek as she tried to cast Naruto out of her thoughts. "W-What the hell am I thinking?"
Covering her modesty with her towel, Rey walked to her closet to grab something to wear.
-X-o-X-
Darth Talon despised Rey with a great passion. Ever since the desert rat had barged into her master's life, things changed too drastically for her liking. Her master didn't hold her as much as she liked. Her master didn't fondle her, caress her, and love her with the same passion as before. That damnable desert rat had cast a spell on her master and there was nothing she could do about it.
Or does she?
"Don't think about it, pumpkin." Naruto sliced the pork roast with a rosewood forged knife, his eyes glanced up at the fidgeting Twi'lek. "Rey is our family now. You will learn to accept her as one of our own."
"She is nothing!" Darth Talon was seething, electricity crackled around her fingertips. "A Jedi lurks within our ranks, learning our principles. That is a recipe of disaster, my master! Can't you see? Rey is a threat to all of us!"
Instead of engaging a debate with his apprentice, he took a fork, stabbed a slice of meat, blew the heat off it, and fed it affectionately to her. She chewed the meat and inhaled the aroma; the gloomy look on her face wasn't wavered. Naruto pointed a finger at her lips, a thoughtful look marred his features. "How do you like the pork? I have it smoked."
"Master!" Darth Talon whined.
"Sakura."
The Twi'lek's eyes widened. She was born a street urchin in some decrepit alley of Ryloth, nameless and scrawny. Naruto had found her being bludgeoned to half-dead outside an abattoir for stealing food. It was a miracle she could be saved from her grievous affliction. When she come to, the first thing Naruto had asked of her was her name.
She didn't have one, so she couldn't answer him. After a moment of contemplation, Naruto decided to give her one.
Sakura.
It changed her life.
She was told the name belonged to a friend of his. A cherished friend. Someone who had been through thick and thin with him. She knew the name meant a lot to her master, so she vowed never to sully that name. No, she would rather die than to bring shame to her name. With her heart and soul, she devoted herself to her training and finally earned herself a place to be his lieutenant.
To be discarded by a fucking nobody like Rey infuriated her! Her master had no idea how much she wanted to sneak into Rey's bedroom every night and strangled her to death! Rey was a liability! An uptight, self-righteous prick who didn't deserve her master's love and attention! Why must she share her master with someone like Rey? Was she not enough for her master?
"Enough." Naruto diced the carrots, but his tone was firm. "Rey is family now. I will teach Rey about the Force the same way I have taught all of my apprentices. You have great affinity towards the Dark Side. Rey is your polar opposite. She has great affinity towards the Light Side. But I have also taught you to embrace the Light. For Rey, she has to accept the Dark. It is the only way for you to be stronger."
"Rey is a swine! A degenerate! She will betray all of us! And then she will lead the Resistance to kill us all! Can't you see, master?"
Clicking his tongue, Naruto sighed. "What is the real reason you're angry at Rey? I know it's not because she has the potential for being powerful. Come on. I want to hear it."
Darth Talon looked away.
"Are you jealous?" He grinned.
It wasn't hard for Naruto to sense Sakura's rage. He surveyed the floating kitchenware around him with a raised brow. Seems like he had hit jackpot for this one. If there was one thing Naruto couldn't help the Twi'lek overcome, it was her tendency to get envious. Naruto shook his head and flicked his wrist, the utensils dancing in the air dropped like flies. "Have I not showered you with love, Sakura?"
"I gave you more than Rey could ever hope to give. I gave you my body, my soul, my everything!" She protested vociferously. "Wasn't that good enough for you?"
Salty tears fell from Darth Talon's eyes as she met with her master's impassive eyes. It was more than enough to answer her question. How could her master so cruelly divide his love for the sake of Rey? She was meant to be her master's lover, both in bed and in mind! Not Rey! That desert rat deserved nothing! It was not just jealousy that plagued her. Rey had achieved something that she had took more than a decade to do.
Obtaining her master's heart.
Hatred filled Darth Talon core. Call her a glutton, but no woman would want to share her man with anybody. If she was that same vulnerable and hungry little girl like she was back in Ryloth, she would have crawled herself into a ball and wept, because she wasn't strong enough to withstand the storm. Now, she was a changed woman.
Now, she was the storm.
The path was clear for her; she must eliminate Rey once and for all!
Author's note: Rey's presence brought in some form of network externality in The First Order. Kylo Ren wants Rey to himself. Alema wants to properly nurture Rey. And Darth Talon wants to murder Rey.
Pairing
1.) NarutoXRey
2.) NarutoXDarth Talon
3.) NarutoXAlema
4.) NarutoXSuggestion
5.) NarutoXHarem
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