Note: This is a single chapter to smoothly transition from the previous episode into the next. I ended the episode the way I wanted, but in order to begin the next one properly, there needs to be a chapter of time-skipping where some things happen.
edit: i just now noticed how the summary takes up a huge portion of the beginning. holy crap. Sorry guys, but I do feel the summaries are necessary so people remember easily xD
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the clothes on my back.
Interlude - After Effects
Summary: Starkiller, apprentice to the deceased Darth Nihilus, was tricked by Darth Sidius into becoming a puppet of the Jedi through a force mind-wipe. He was renamed Varus Wynn and assigned to Anakin Skywalker as his second Padawan alongside Ahsoka Tano.
Following a lead from the former Sith, Starkiller, they found hostile droids unlike anything Skywalker recalled the Confederacy producing and skeletal remains. As well as a Sith Holocron linked to Revan that was implanted into Varus's mind.
The following investigation shed light on the fact that the Star Forge was still alive, and the Dantooine Council had left the information classified, hoping no one would investigate too deeply. Anakin Skywalker was assigned to follow the trail of Revan left in Varus's mind to find the Star Forge for the Republic.
Thus far they have landed on Dantooine and entered an ancient tomb of the Infinite Empire. Inside Ahsoka and Varus both encountered illusions. Ahsoka's illusion was of her team fighting in an evil, choking place in Coruscant. She ended the illusion by entering the fray to stop them and was met by a Sith Varus. Meanwhile, Varus encountered a version of himself, twisted and dark by the temple, and was forced to end the illusion by promising to himself to eventually remember who he was. They recovered the coordinates to five locations that would piece together the coordinates of the Star Forge.
Varus returned home and moved out of the Temple. After a blood scan, he looked into information that was contradictory. He wasn't human. He was a Miraluka. The Jedi had been wrong on his profile information.
Despite the Jedi's hopes, sins of Starkiller's past are catching up to Varus. Maris remembers him after Starkiller murdered her Master, and sees him in the Temple. She has been told it is classified, and to leave it alone. She spent time in mourning, and has improved while Ahsoka was gone, but then someone kidnapped her and took her to a dark place on Coruscant. There, he talked with her, and showed her who her true enemy was.
And an unknown power is having the Jedi be legally stopped and contained in their travels for a very short time. Obi-Wan has investigated the matter and found that a large number of Jedi who are stalled eventually come to find difficulty in the Force for some unknown reason.
A call to find the 'Manager' and bring him in for questioning was made, but he was found dead. A woman stole his belongings from his corpse, and the investigation was turned to her, but she evaded their efforts and appeared in Palpatine's office. There she confronted him as a Sith and presented the mask of Darth Nihilus.
The woman clouded the mind of the Senate Royal Guard under her control, but teams of Jedi managed to secure The Chancellor. She was found dead.
Maris confronted Ahsoka with the identity of the Sith assassin, but was met with resistance. To make matters worse, the very same assassin was being allowed free reign amongst thousands of other Jedi with little to no supervision. Realizing her list of allies had run short, she took up the lightsaber of her former Master and chose to go her own way to seek an ultimatum, letting the Force decide whether it be Justice or Revenge.
And Varus researched a possible lead into his former life. As a Miraluka, his existance was not human, but close enough that the Jedi assumed so. Now he knows not only of his people, and their death at the hand of Darth Nihilus, but also that the 'profile' of Varus is not sound.
The Chancellor was safe. The Jedi and Republic clone Commando forces flooded the Hall of Senators and cleaned it out of Turned Jedi. Efforts were made to take prisoners, but the Turned would not allow it, as was their code and orders as Senate Guards. They either fought back with a resilience and will seemingly beyond that of mortal men or took their own lives when they could no longer fight. Three thousand Senate Guards died that day and the halls became thick with blood and corpses. The stench, in such a confined building, was overpowering and left the Senate -without a secondary place to meet, and without the willingness to discuss one- with no work.
The Jedi focused their attention toward protecting the Chancellor and finding out how it was that so many formerly of the Order could have fallen. It was not their bodys that fell to darkness, but their mind. Such an overpowering illusion had been placed on them that it could not be removed by outside stimuli except under rare occasion. The few who were freed of its control could not remember anything they had done while under it, only that a sickly man robed in black had come up to them and touched them. While being touched by robed men was not anything special to speak of, the fact that so many said the same thing, brought about a horrifying realization.
As the only Sith Lord left alive, and the only one considered strong enough to overpower Jedi (although thousands was a bit of a stretch), Darth Sidius had to have been involved. Word spread quickly and the Council concluded: Starkiller had been right, Darth Sidius was on Coruscant!
The work for the Jedi Order was pulled inward from the front lines to Coruscant.
The Jedi focused thousands of their highest to meditation and work in the Hall of Senators to purging it of the Dark Side. The aura around the Hall was thick with a darkness beyond anything the Council had felt in ages. Even with thousands in meditation, the darkness and shadows that had come to call the Hall of Senators its home would not relent. It had taken root as firmly as black iron. In a way it almost felt as though it grew stronger, sated and nourished even, from their efforts. It would not be until many days later that the darkness had begun to recede. Even then, with it being safe enough for the Senate to reassemble for the first time in a week, the meetings were held with a subdued aura over everyone.
Few brought up anything of worth, few spoke, few could think clearly enough to discuss the issues pressing upon them, and even fewer considered it worth their efforts that day to work towards the betterment of the Republic. The talks that had before been of the war effort, had become silent and oppressed. The Halls, once lit brightly as the sun, were left in shadow as though dark clouds had come of them. The lights did not shine as brightly as before. The spark in their eyes were dimmed.
The top floor was completely dormant, where once it had been left exclusively for the Grand Chancellor. Instead, Palpatine was given a temporary place on the Council, where he might be kept safe for the time being; while he had no real say in matters beyond that as a Republic Chancellor. This arrangement was established for a month, or until the crisis was past, whichever came sooner.
While the Jedi worked toward purging the Dark Side from the Hall of Senators, they turned every single one of their teams to finding the Dark Lord Sidius. Great Generals were called back from the second and third lines of defense across the galaxy to join in the hunt, and the Jedi lead it. More than five-hundred thousand Jedi, forty billion clones and soldiers, and two hundred Generals, Commanders, and Jedi Councilers lead the effort to finding Darth Sidius.
Every floor of the thousands of layers of Coruscant infrastructure was searched. Crime rate bottomed out, gangs were uprooted in bloodshed, and entire sectors were cleared out and purged of the Dark Side. In the mad rush and influx of soldiers, chaos took hold of the capital. Soldiers received confusing orders resulting in them breaking into people's homes on purpose, breaking into the wrong warehouse or blowing up walls to inadversly damage people's homes or places of business. Soldiers from different branches would occasionally storm the same sector from different ends, perceive each other as enemies within in the smoke, and lay down fire; only to find when it cleared they had killed each other. Tanks patrolled the streets. Fighters searched the sky. Battlecruisers, frigates, starship carriers, and great behemoths of war watched the space around Coruscant ensuring nothing escaped. All trade came to a standstill as nothing was allowed to enter or leave without close inspection in at least fourteen separate occasions.
And Darth Sidius was never found.
With recent events having focused the attention of the Jedi and the Senate onto Coruscant, things had started to deteriorate across the Republic. The Confederacy pushed borders on all fronts as well as the Sith forces around Korriban. The Mandalorien clans and Revanchist both invaded the Republic borders, only to turn aside and flank the Sith offensive. It was speculated that the clans and chist neither hurt the Republic, only entered to cut off the Sith, so the Senate didn't make a big deal out of it. It may however just be hopeful thinking, as the Republic could not bother to pay attention to any border but the Confederacy invasion. Thousands of battles across thousands of lines fell in the first twenty-four hours. Their forces were pushed back almost to the core worlds by the time the Senate, Order, and Chancellor regained their focus on the war enough to halt the Confederacy.
A faction of Republic generals lost contact behind Confederacy borders and resorted to guerilla warfare and managed themselves as a small country to survive. They were led by a group of Jedi, Rahm Kota and Falon among them, and were attributed to having singlehandedly kept the Separatists from reaching Coruscant. Another faction did the same behind Sith borders, led by Carth Onasi, and cooperated with the Revanchist and Mandalorien Clans on that border.
By the time the dust had settled, a week since the attack on Palpatine, Palpatine was back in his office and the map of the galaxy was in shambles.
The Council room was oddly dormant. Before, when I have entered it, there was always a room full of old geezers in flowy robes and enough ego to fill the room. Now it's a room full of holographic old geezers. Well, as many as can be spared. Most are actively fighting while the rest are juggling local battle strategies with large-scale war discussion with Coruscant Council meets all together.
Boy am I glad I'm just a lowly peon in this crazy clown circus.
In the middle of the Council room is a map of the galaxy. It looks like a messed up jigsaw puzzle. Areas are flashing, colors are expanding, and the color I've come to associate with this Republic is the one suffering on all sides. In addition are a lot of little… hexagons? Not sure what shape its called, but there are a ton of them all along the borders. If I bet a credit for each one if I said they were battlefields…
"As you can see, the war does not go well. Here, here, and here, we are being pushed back because we lack proper entrenchment."
See? I'm a rich little Padawan. Pay up Baldy.
Baldy continued, "Our clones are suffering undue casualties. The Seperatists were able to take several key worlds and entrench themselves heavily. Uprooting them has been costly."
"How much?" Anakin asked.
Baldy did something I would never have taken him to do. He truly hesitated, "In the last week we have lost 23% of our total forces just retaking what we lost." A silent gasp rippled among all present. Now, to be fair, I have no idea how much 23% constitutes, but it sounds like a lot. "While the Confederacy have lost ten times as much in droids, they have lost no factories, and so the gain is short-lived. They shall recover it all by the end of the month."
Some arguing erupted amongst them, and frankly I stopped caring. Baldy's shiny head is much more interesting. It's like staring at the moon, or a siren light going 'whee oh wwhee ohhh' as the sun shines off his scalp.
"Varus are you listening?" someone says.
Oh, crap. "Uh…"
"In short." Anakin whispers to me, "They say that we need the Star Forge now more than ever."
"Your mission was delayed this week for work on Coruscant, but now our full attention must be on our border defense. We need a way to replenish our forces and to upgrade our existing one. Even now, Chancellor Palpatine is looking into some new 'toys' the Czercha have been producing."
Oooohhh, toys. I like the sound of that. "Do I get one?" I whisper to Tree-Hugger. He shushes me.
"Ani." Obi-Wan says. "Your team needs to follow the path Darth Revan took in finding the Star Forge. Varus needs to make contact with these 'devices' you mentioned so we can put it together. With the coordinates provided, we have secured the locations on Malachor V, Kashyyk, and Manaan. A message will be sent to Lord Jabba for safe passage to the Tattooine coordinates. We have spies watching Malachor. The wookies already control Kashyyk. Apparently Senator Zalbar was already familiar with the location in question and has secured it long ago. Manaan… will be more difficult. They are about as hard-headed as you in their neutrality."
"Ha-ha" Tree-Hugger mocked. "Isn't there anything we can do something about them? Trade for safe passage?"
"We are in process of negotiation now even as we speak, but the problem, we fear is not Manaan. Its Korriban."
A heavy silence came over them. I don't know where… wait. Is that the highlighted dot in the middle of the whole red area on the map? The one smack dab in the middle of Sith territory?
Crap…
"We shall depart for Tatooine immediately. We shall not return until we have the Star Forge's location." Anakin bows and we leave.
But Ahsoka stays.
"You have something to say, young one?" A Councilman asks.
"Yes, what of Maris? She is still missing."
"There still hasn't been an update on her. I am sorry." Someone said gently.
Even as I watched, Ahsoka's eyes saddened, met mine briefly in what was clearly worry, and then focused herself on the floor. "I understand."
What does she have to be sad and worried about? From what she tells me, this friend of hers is strong and able to take care of herself. Perhaps what this Maris needs is time truly alone to deal with her crappy life rather than being coddled to death and surrounded by people, even friends. And why does she keep looking at me?
"Is there something on my face?" I wonder.
Anakin glances at me. "No."
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