The sounds of battle echoed throughout the chamber as teacher and student clashed.
Luke was blindfolded while he fought Ventress in the training chamber of his home, forced to rely on his other senses. The lesson of the exercise was to teach him to fight without his eyes, for if he was a battle where he couldn't see, he could use the Force to guide his movements.
Luke had, of course, already mastered the art of fighting with restrictions years ago but it was the most important of the rules he was raised by, that he never stop honing his skills, to avoid being out of practice against strong opponents, such as the emperor's apprentice, Darth Vader.
Weaving around a blood red lightsaber aimed at his chest, Luke took his chance, grabbing his teachers wrist, ripping the laser blade from Ventress' hand and thrust it at her. (AN: Luke's fighting style is similar to Darth Mauls when he fought on Mandalor.) The two warriors exchanged lightning fast blows with the crimson swords, neither gaining the advantage until Luke head-butted the dathomirian woman, kicked her lightsaber out of her hand and blasted her against the wall with pale yellow Force Lighting.
"Yield?" He asked pointing the lightsaber at her. Ventress sighed and admitted defeat, "I yield."
Luke took off the blindfold and helped his teacher up returning her lightsaber to her.
"Your control with Force Lightning has come far." His mentor continued as she summoned her other lightsaber from the floor.
"I practised." The quiet human replied walking away.
Luke's clothes were similar to the Zabrack Nightbrothers who lived on the far side of Dathomeir, he wore a dark grey open chest shirt, metal bracers, armoured boots and dark grey leggings and battle skirt. (AN: think Darth Maul's upper body when he was on Mandalor with Savage's bracers and Savage's lower body but smaller and Luke wearing it.)
He possessed five lightsabers' in total, Savage's double ended one and Maul's two lightsabers' which had been retrieved by Mother Talzin, and his own, which locked together to form a saber-staff, otherwise called a double-sided lightsaber.
Luke's lightsabers were identical, metal cylinders with a small ignition button halfway down and three small blades that extended one and a third inches past the hilt. The blades were a pure white, to show he was held no alignment to the Jedi nor the sith.
Every year Obi-wan Kenobi would visit to 'check up on him' so Luke displayed no major Force powers and none of his other skills. Ventress and Mother Talzin made warned him not fall for Obi-wan's grandfather act. Hiding things from the old Jedi had been easy since he had learned deception at Ventress' knee. His guardian never came out of hiding when the old fool, as they both called him, was around.
Since he was five, Luke would spend the first two seasons with the Night Sisters and the other two with the Nightbrothers, though Ventress was always with him all year. When he was with the men Luke would join them in their daily exercises. First was the barefoot run five times round the perimeter of the village regardless if it was snowing or not. Then there was the rock climb to the top of the mountain in the centre of the open plain arena where Ventress had selected Savage Opress to be her champion years ago.
Lastly was the hand to hand combat training, in which for most of the first two seasons he was there, Luke was thrown around like no tomorrow. This lasted until the evening meal and recreational time filled the remaining time till sleep.
His first lightsaber had been Maul's original lightsaber which he trained with until he mastered three styles of combat with it, Shii-Cho had been his first style he learned, thus it came quickly to him. Later he learned to duel wield with Makashi using Mauls saber and the ancient Jedi sword won by the Sith Lord from Pre Visla. Luke had found this harder as he had to learn to compensate for the weaker block. The ability to attack in two ways at once, however, had more than made up for the difficulty of learning to block with two Sabres.
The form he enjoyed learning the most, however hard it was to master it, was the art of double ended lightsaber wielding. That was why he designed his lightsabers to be able to utilise single, double and two-sided forms of fighting. When he was ten years old completed the ritual the Jedi and Sith orders shared. The Gathering. He retrieved the two crystals that were to become the cores of his twin lightsabers from the crystal caves on Ilum and constructed the Sabres with the Force in the fires of Mustafar.
Through the nineteen years of his life, he remembered the death of his mother and the separation from his sister, whose name he knew to be Leia. He remembered the Jedi: Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda, and how they had tried to bury his past. He was no Jedi, nor was he a Sith. He was the balance of the two.
He never forgave, and he never forgot.
Time skip. (Three days)
Luke retreated from his meditation when Ventress told him it was time he be allowed to explore the galaxy and asked him where he wanted to go.
"Where the answers to my past lie." He responded getting up and summoning his five lightsabers from the stand in front of his meditation mat. There was no bed in the room as Luke didn't sleep, as when he had had tried to sleep in the past he was haunted by the face of his dead mother, and the separation from his sister.
Despite his efforts to avoid the horrifying visions by meditating instead of sleeping, he was still haunted by the same visions but new ones emerged with time. He saw his mother being choked with the force, a battle on Mustafar between the old fool, when he was younger, and a dark Jedi called Anakin. He saw Kenobi sever all of the mans limbs but his right hand which, when Anakin caught fire, was revealed to be a prosthetic. He watched the bearded Jedi take the man's lightsaber and leave him to burn.
When they landed the volcanic world in his visions, Luke and Ventress explored what used to be a mining outpost. They found Neomoidian bones and destroyed battle droids from the Clone Wars era. When the pair looked at the droids and walls they saw lightsaber marks and there might as well have been 'Jedi was here' written all over it.
They went to all the planets that held significance to his parents and his past, such as Naboo, Genosis, Christophis and several others.
When they were on Naboo, Ventress had taken a laser pistol from the royal vault which had belonged to Padme. Luke had nearly broken down crying as he finally had a link to his mother.
Certainly he considered Ventress and the Night Sisters family, but they were more like siblings and Mother Talzin was like a grandmother to him. No one could or had tried to replace his mother.
When the pair landed on Tatooine they cam across a Jawa trading group. Ventress leant down slightly to whisper in Luke's ear,
"That gold protocol droid was made by your father and the blue and white astromech was his too."
"How can you tell?" The young Skywalker asked.
"I've seen that little droid with your father in his fighter and on the ground so many times it's impossible for me not to recognise him. And I have seen that following your mother around on when I was on Coruscant as a bounty hunter."
They took the droids Ventress had pointed out and walked back to ship and pried the tracker studs off the both of them. When the protocol droid called C3PO complained about not having an oil bath in a week, Ventress snapped at him.
"Shut it buzz-brain, just because you can communicate in I don't give a kriff how many forms of language and you're used to being pampered, doesn't mean you can whine about some oil bath. Complain again and I'll amputate you like I tried to do to your maker so many times when I was a Sith assassin!"
The next day the two found R2-D2 had left and chased him far into the Dune Sea Luke encountered 'Old Ben Kenobi'. Needless to say he wasn't pleased when he found that the astro-droid had been carrying a message from his sister too Kenobi.
'How many times have they deceived you Leia? How long have they feed you lies?' Luke wondered.
AN: There we go, done. What did you think. Was that long enough for you?
Review.
