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Thanks to Learnfrom it for being 100th
Thanks to Antex , war sage, SFOTurtle, randomy, ShyMaryButterfly, swemanD47, hisners, agentfiyeroSummers, Rosephin, Streetsurfer95, and mcreaca for the constant support! (There are a few others, but these guy's I've noticed are the primary ones!)
Thanks to Aeterna Knight for helping me edit!
To thank everyone for their support in this milestone, here is a bonus chapter early. :)
This will be a rather short chapter. I wanted to flesh out this part of Manaan more, but I just couldn't come up with anything. I partially wanted it to be short anyway. So this episode will just be a two part-er. I know, there are a LOT of things that could go wrong in a planet with a ton of focus on law when you have Varus around, but I didn't want the focus to transition away from the main plot. I have momentum going, and I don't want to just break it up for 'potential' spots. I would rather keep up the momentum, say what I need to say, and not much else. There are periods of a story where there isn't too much momentum, where you can go ahead and flesh out things that aren't actually important to the main plot. This is not one of those times.
Episode 12 - The Guilty Part 2/2
The trip to the bottom of the sea and back has gone quite well and smoothly thus far. We found the location just beside the ruins of an underwater facility, the fish-head helped me into a suit, I walked out, touched it, spoke to the hologram, recorded the visual of the constellation, and returned. The sea didn't crush my fingers, the fish weren't any bigger than my finger and didn't bother me, and besides some fear of claustrophobia resulting in a kind of fake claustrophobia, it went off without a hitch. Easy peasy.
We are royally screwed. My luck is never this good about ANYTHING! This just means whatever happens is going to be so bad it will make up for everything else that has gone well.
Still, the only true bad part of the trip is the waiting, and the fish-head. He doesn't say a word. I talk to him, and I know he understands me because I tested that fact out by insulting his mother. He cringed, but said nothing. What? Is it illegal to talk to me? Don't answer that, I don't want to know…
I sit down next to him and look out the window in front of us. "So, Phil. How long till we surface?"
No answer. "Are we talking five minutes or an hour or what?"
No answer. "Because Tree-Hugger, my master, tells me that boredom doesn't do well for me. So that's when I start to get really weird and irrational."
No answer. "Don't make me bring your mother up again."
The fish-head turns to look at me, blinks, and returns to piloting the submarine. "Nice talking to you too." Ass.
With nothing to do, I lean back and count patterns on the ceiling.
My peaceful trip is cut short by a sudden surge of the ship. Phil clicks something out of his mouth that sounds a lot like he is cursing, and his fingers work frantically to regain control. The ship shakes again so violently that I fall out of the chair.
"What's going on?" I ask. Phil, the residential fish-head, doesn't respond, but I can tell by how violently he is messing with the controls that he is trying to evade whatever-the-hell-it-is.
The Force is screaming. It isn't just churning or warning me, it's going into panic mode and telling me to get the hell out of there. As if that wasn't enough emphasis, a huge piece of metal, a good five feet long, pierces the side of the ship and go cleanly through Phil's head. Water explodes in from every direction, the metal of the submersible crumbles from the violent change in air pressure, and metal hands grab me from behind.
"Master, now is the time for strategic repositioning." HK says.
He pulls me into a metal tube and the door shuts. The tube explodes with violent force enough to make my stomach fall to my feet, and through the small window I see the submersible completely implode just before disappearing out of sight. Right next to the ship was a metal man with a sword stuck into it.
"Thanks." I tell HK. My fingers reach for my lightsaber, but feel nothing. I had left it behind with the Manaan government. Great. "Wait, what are you doing here?!" I ask it.
"Fact: HK hid." HK says factually. "Your protection priority is a child inheritance of Revan Master's priority."
Child inheritance? I'm not a child…
The escape pod clears the surface of the water, and the lid pops open. I climb out. "What the hell was that thing?" I wonder. Odds are, the thing saw the escape pod kick out. But just what was it? Was it Manaan? Sith? Was it after me or fish-head? So many questions and I'm sorry, but I don't think this guy is a 'answer questions' type. More like a 'kill you then talk' type. A lot like HK actually, except HK likes to do both.
"Explanation: 'That' thing has followed us from Tatooine." HK says.
A hot coal sits in my stomach. Out of everyone I know, the only one with a connection between Tatooine and that submersible is me. Mr. Slice-n-Silent is after me with a blade the size of my… my… body!
Oh crap, and Mr. Slice can swim. I cant. And we are out in the middle of NOWHERE!
"Suggestion: We must relocate to a fighting position."
"I couldn't have said it any better." I say. I take off my outer robes and drop them. I don't have the lightsaber, but maybe we can make something happen. HK has a rifle for a weapon, and the Force is gathering around me in preparation. If the Force is trying to tell me I am gonna need it, then as much as I appreciate that, I don't want to know we are going to have Round 2 in our little match.
I scavenge around inside the pod. There is a switch or two to propel this thing through the water. It hasn't run out of juice, but it turned off when we came up. I flip switches and tap buttons and one of them manages to turn on the engine thing again. Now we just need to steer. I have no idea, so I will have to learn as we go.
"Which way is home?"
HK points. The Force suddenly freaks all-the-hell-out and the hair on the back of my neck stands like I've been electrocuted. "Shit!" I pop the button, and not a moment too soon it drives down the water just as 'he' comes up where we just were.
The guy is a flying, walking, man-tank with enough sharp edges and blades to put a porcupine out of business. Two -HOLY SHIT- swords, and a bunch of flying sharp rod spears all around it, and it's hovering. And he -or it- is looking right at me.
We are heading in the totally wrong direction, so now would be a good time to figure out how to steer. "HK! Drive!" I turn around and generate Force energy in my hands. Mr. Slice dashes after me. Perhaps dashing is not the correct term, 'floating' would be, but its fast enough to be considered a dash, so let's just cut the crap and say he is coming after my ass! I continue to build up energy at a steady rate and wait.
HK climbs in behind me. "Observation: There appear to be no controls. Our situation requires us to stand and fight."
I was really really hoping he wouldn't say something like that, because here comes the big bad man-tank. He swings his sword back to prepare for a strike, and he flies closer and closer. His spear-rods fly away from him and come at me to surround me. While HK manages to get the ship going as fast as possible, the man-tank is still gaining on us rapidly. A hundred feet, eighty… Wait for it… Forty… Wait… twenty. ten! I release the collected energy in my hands into his face just as he swings the huge sword down, and everything explodes around me.
"Did you hear that?" Ahsoka asks.
"Yes, I did." Anakin frowns. The direction of the boom was towards where Varus was. Of course it could have been anything. Whales for instance had a funny habit of jumping out of water and falling down again. Anakin recalled how seeing his first ocean had left him open-jawed for minutes, and he screamed like a girl when he came near a whale. They were wondrous and loud. There was no reason to assume it had to be Varus.
But there was every reason to think it was. With Varus, if there was the slightest chance for anything wrong to happen, it'd happen, every time. Well, right now there was the slightest chance it would be him going wrong, so odds are, it was.
"Let's go." Anakin and Snips ran down the road in the direction of the explosion. Before long they arrived at the docking bay and noted the number of Republic and Manaan guards looking out into the water. They were in the Republic wing, while the Separatists were on the other side. "What's everyone looking at?" Ahsoka asked.
"We heard an explosion out there." Someone explained.
Anakin put an ear to his comm. "Varus?... Varus are you there? Varus, if you can hear me now would be a really good time to pick up." The two Jedi looked to each other worriedly. No response. The line was dead.
-Varus!- Anakin reached out through the Force. He felt more than heard Snips flinch at his sudden mental outburst, but she held back and listened closely. -Varus! I know you hate it when I do this, but I need a response! NOW!-
No response.
"I'm not getting him." Snips said worriedly. "He's… I can't even feel him. It's like he's gone."
"He's not gone." Anakin assured her just as much as himself. "That Force shot he did had so much power in it, you won't be able to feel him. We need to do something…"
"Manaan authority is on its way. They are very punctual about responding to any disturbance." The Ambassador said.
"Hopefully 'punctual' is still fast enough." Anakin said gravely.
Snip's eyes expanded again. "You think he is in danger."
"Knowing him, taking the time to wonder about it is a waste."
The Iranian was prepared for surprises. He was trained in harsh environments, had half a million credits of implants in his right arm alone, and that didn't include the breeding to maximize mental and physical capability. Czercha went through painstaking efforts to create a prototype human just as much as a prototype suit to stick him in.
When he followed the girl's directions here, he was prepared for a Jedi. He expected a Jedi and to an extent got one.
The target had impressive power, enough to halt his advance, but not enough to send him flying or injure him in any way; even though the same attack completely destroyed the target's own vessel. What he hadn't expected was lightning. All sources indicate Jedi do not use electricity of any kind, but the kid's little punch included just enough to short circuit his suit. The hovering was kept intact, but he couldn't move his arms, nor take control of his floating armament.
The target was in reach. So close. The kid was unconscious floating on what was left of his little escape pod, and the kid's pet droid was floating freely in the water. If he could only move one of his hands for a few seconds, he could cleave the kid in half, end the contract, and do as the Republic wants.
The Iranian struggled in his suit. He pushed and lifted his arm, but the suit was locked down. It wasn't budging.
The prototype floating armaments would have protected him from the electricity, but he hadn't seen it coming.
After painstaking seconds, the suit slowly loosened. Inch by inch he found he could lift his arm, but it was too late. Hovercrafts in the distance were closing in.
He cursed in his tongue and retreated. Next time he would be prepared.
Windu allowed himself several moments to consider what he had just come to learn. There were a bunch of people whose death and witnessing are all linked in a chain. Along this chain is madness, the occasional Force-User were none should exist, and a mask. A mask he had seen on Palpatine's desk. A mask kept by a lady who had witnessed one of these deaths, and died in Palpatine's presence.
The same Palpatine who was more recently sending the Republic into a slow but steady decline with his ridicules political moves. Before he had been signing everything 'No' one day and 'Yes' the next in random order, but now he was beyond that. He has gone to disappearing entirely for extended periods of time without explanation or warning. He has ended all transmissions and public reassurances. He has stopped appearing on the news entirely whereas once he was on it every day. He has stopped shaking hands with arriving diplomats or being there when armies return to Coruscant. He's stopped having meetings with the Order for updates to and from both sides.
In fact the last time he was seen he was in a factory ordering thousands and thousands of… beads. Just little silver beads that play music. Windu understood music, despite what many thought, but beads that played music?
Palpatine was going mad.
"This is… intense." The Senator acknowledged slowly. Windu could only nod.
"You see my dilemma then?" Obi-Wan asked. "It all started with the one in Darth Nihilus's flagship."
"A disease perhaps? Concocted by The Sith Lord?"
"It doesn't fit his profile." Windu disagreed. He couldn't deny it was a possibility, but it was very unlike Nihilus. He did, admittedly, think it to be a disease at first, but the more he thought about it, the less likely it felt.
"His profile?" The Senator asked. "I know nothing on him."
"I must agree with Senator Amidala." Obi-Wan sided. "While it may not match the Sith's pattern, the origin is clear. Perhaps if we look closer at his profile, we may be able to predict just what disease is contained inside his mask."
The Senator looked between them and understood. "His profile is classified, isn't it?"
Windu nodded. "For this occasion, it would be fair to speak it. Then you will understand why I think a disease is unlike him." Windu began to explain the origins, life, and beliefs of the man that would later become known as The Lord of Hunger. Due to the Jedi Civil War against Revan, the information to him as a child was unburied from the archives and put into classified folders.
Barnabus Nitheal was born on a farm world just beyond the border of the Core Worlds region. His mother died in childbirth, and his father was gone most of the time drinking. The community raised him in his first few years, and even then he was a peculiar infant. As a farm boy, he was surrounded by the concept of life and death. Animals were born, and they were slaughtered for food. However, he lacked the initial fit an infant would have in coming to terms with this knowledge. Instead he was silent and incredibly observant as farm animals were slaughtered, while his little peers cried and screamed. When he was five, he was found to have powers, and was sent off to Coruscant to become a monk of the Jedi Order.
The Jedi to pick the boy up and take him away commented in the report that the villagers were almost… relieved to be rid of him. The boy had an empty nature about him and his community felt he was cursed.
He was incredibly brilliant and learned as fast as he was taught, no matter what material he was provided, and he was a good little pupil in that he had perfect manners, he was quiet, and he was observant to a fault; but an oddity found was his lack of expression. He rarely laughed, never smiled, but neither was he ever angry nor filled with rage. He was recommended for checking over by the Master's, and they found him to have no darkness. He didn't hate, he didn't become enraged with injustices, he, in fact, did exactly what any Jedi should do. What needs to be done.
As he became older, he was passed over by Master's for apprenticeship and almost dumped on a farm world run by Jedi, but he was recommended to becoming a scholar and historian. With his keen intellect and rational understanding of reality, it was allowed. His life calmly transitioned to studies in deeper matters, writing and studying papers, and devoting his life to knowledge of the Force. Many of his papers dealt on the afterlife within the Force, and life and death as a whole, and after it became over evident of his interest, he was gently questioned as to why his focus was in such a dreary subject. He calmly explained his life from the beginning. He spoke of his own birth where he felt his mother die in the Force, as if he could remember being born, and how he 'felt' the farm animals disappear into nothingness.
He was studied deeply at the time, but he was found to have no Dark Side in him. There was no hate, no anger, only peace. The teen was curious and calm in all things, and utterly brilliant in understanding just how depressing of a subject it was he was delving into, and the repercussions. In fact, they also found he had an unnatural ability to create Force Bonds with people both subconsciously and consciously to the point he could feel people dying from a far distance.
For fear of what he could become, and fear of not truly understanding his nature, the Jedi pushed him further back into the recesses of their society until he completely disappeared.
When Revan made the call for Jedi to follow him to defend the Republic, a Jedi scholar named Barnabus Nitheal followed him without hesitation. The scholar followed Revan from battlefield to battlefield, and was promoted to strategist due to his strategic mind and never ending calmness on the front lines, that was at times reported as being cold and calculating.
At the same time the number of papers he wrote on the subject of Life and Death, as well as the Force's role in it, only increased. Papers also were sent back of something called 'Force Balance'. Supposedly a theory that the more focus there was on the Light, the stronger the Dark side became, and vice versa, which was in perfect alignment with Revan's teachings and beliefs. Another philosophy Nitheal started delving into was the existence of a side of the Force called 'Void'. Nitheal claimed it wasn't Dark nor Light, but was rather the absence of it.
Nitheal was deemed as tainted with evil beliefs, charged with treason as a Revanchist, and sentenced to exile before he ever even returned home. There was no trial or process of law for him personally, but all of the Revanchist as a whole were charged with exile and excommunication from the Order.
In the battle of Malachor V, Nitheal was on the front lines as always. Leading, strategizing, and observing all things. When the planet self-destructed, he was caught in the middle of it, and he barely survived. The only thing that saved him was his unnaturally high number of Force Bonds with all life around him that fed him life just as he was going to leave it. He became a man living on the border between life and death, exactly where he wanted to be, and filled with never ending hunger. He was a wound in the Force, a vacuum. His ability to create bonds turned into a death mark, as the bond shared his lack of life just as much as it shared the life of those he touched. Killing at the same time as preserving him and feeding his hunger.
Nitheal followed Revan into the Unknown Regions, and returned with the name Darth Nihilus. He became a reaper of worlds, killing everything he put his mind to, and flying a ship he put together from broken pieces of Mandalorian and Republic vessels from Malachor's orbit. He focused his Hunger on Force-User rich worlds, and eventually came after Coruscant itself. The battle looked like it was going to lose, as he was using power unlike anything the Jedi had ever seen. It wasn't just powerful, its very nature was alien. It wasn't the rage of the Dark Side. It was something darker. Something hungry and all-consuming, yet cold, calm, and calculating. The Order could not fight something they did not understand, as their power only seemed to feed it and make it stronger.
If it wasn't for an unknown group having sabotaged The Sith Lord's ship, and sending it crashing down into orbit, the battle would have been lost. Nihilus died in the crash, his body was found broken and lifeless.
The recollection of the life of the one who would become Darth Nihilus left them all mute and shaken. To say the man was unique was an understatement. "That's sick." The Senator finally said. She held herself to hide away the shivers, and the Jedi nodded in agreement.
Windu speculated, "A disease wasn't his field, but what if 'madness' was? It is common for Sith artifacts to induce madness."
Padme frowned. She shook her head slowly. "No. No, now that you've explained him to me, that doesn't sound like him either. He's cold and calculating. Perhaps the next step is to ascertain 'why' he came?"
"We know why he came." Windu rubbed his temple. Obi-Wan's news was giving him a headache. "He was hungry. He came to eat."
"No, he doesn't sound like a self-focused type." She argued. "He had another reason. Think about it, why would a brilliant strategist, who is already known for cold, hard calculation and facts, invade the center of the Republic with a single vessel? He must have known it was suicide!"
"He nearly won, remember? We only had two battlecruisers guarding us at the time. If it weren't for the heroes who boarded his vessel, we might have lost."
"And such a powerful Sith just so happened to be boarded without knowing about it? If his power could reach beyond his ship down to all of 'you', if his power was able to consume entire worlds from orbit, then there was nothing to keep him from defeating the saboteurs before they ever arrived."
Obi-Wan put his hand up. "Regardless of Nihilus's initial reason for attacking, and whatever odds he believed he had in his favor, we have a very serious problem." He paused to look each one in the eye and noted their agreement. "You know I would never suggest we commit treason except under the most stressing of occasions, but I fear we may have to."
"The Chancellor is compromised." Windu stated flatly.
"The Senate would never go for it." Padme sighed. She leaned back and massaged her temple as well. The headache seemed to be spreading. "They will argue whether or not their 'glorious Chancellor' is ill with a mild case of the flu or if he has allergies down to the most minute detail for the next twenty years if we even suggest anything of the sort. The news will glorify it and feed off it."
"Then forget the Senate. Forget beurocracy." Windu said. The Senator's eyes exploded out of her skull in shock. She opened her mouth to begin a heated argument, but the Master put a hand up and continued, "Since the founding of the Republic in its current form, there has been a law buried that allows the Jedi to arrest the Grand Chancellor. It will take a lot of pull to ensure people don't go all up in arms as such an ancient law is brought up to the surface, and I can't blame them. It hasn't been used in many decades, if ever."
"And you remember it, how?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Yoda brought it up a few times recently. We have been worried we might have to use it with Palpatine out of sorts. Now I know we have no choice." Windu put his face in his hands. Even to the Senator, who doesn't see him often, it was evident the weight of the Order and Republic both were heavy on his shoulders.
She extended her hand to comfort him in some way, but he stood up abruptly before she made contact and he stormed out of the room. His eyes were hardened and he walked with shaky resolve. She felt for him. It wasn't hard to see that Palpatine and Windu were as close to friends as the two could get in their positions. It was a bond of respect and of understanding each other. For probably the only person in the Republic who was 'equal' to understanding the pressure Windu felt every day, and the closest 'aquaintance' said man could get, it had to be devistating.
The door closed behind him and left stunned silence. Obi-Wan felt that something big was about to happen, and that any second would cause the galaxy to snap and spiral in any direction. The Republic was barely holding, and Windu was intent on doing what he must. The question laid in how everyone would respond.
The two of them looked to each other, and he could tell Padme could feel it as well. Her insight wasn't in the Force as his was, but she had experience in politics. She pulled up her data pad and searched for something in the holonet. "What are you looking for?"
"Nihilus' papers." She answered. "This feels wrong. I don't doubt the Master's resolve, nor what needs to be done, but this feels deeper. The Sith Lord doesn't strike me as a fool. There has to be a reason he attacked. Something deeper than what the Master thinks."
Obi-Wan nodded his agreement, but still felt conflicted. On one hand, Windu's argument made sense and could possibly be true. Sith Artifacts often enbewed madness, and Nihilus' madness was as cold and empty as they come. The man was in a way both selfish and selfless. The man moved pawns on a board, including himself, regardless of the danger, while skilled at minimizing loss of resources and maximizing gain, but at the same time the Sith's hunger brought out his most selfish traits by consuming entire worlds of Force Users in order to satisfy himself.
He also felt the Sith Lord was making a strategic move in his invasion of Coruscant. Things of late have been acting oddly, and he couldn't help but feel that pieces were moving. The only question was how to prevent checkmate. If there was an enemy moving pieces around, they wouldn't be so nice as to call 'check'.
Review! Varus is lonely.