Chapter 15

Having just been promoted to being a full Jedi Knight, and having fled soon after thinking he saw a blonde haired Sith, Hiccup sits in his bedroom, pondering over what had just happened. He could've sworn he saw Astrid in that audience then. Well, perhaps his own mind was playing tricks on himself, a not-so rare occurrence as of late, after all it was quite the day so he lies back onto his bed and was about to shut his eyes when he hears something.

"Haddock."

Jerking his head back up, Hiccup looks around the room to see that the bedroom was empty, minus Hiccup himself. Figuring it was just his own head again, he lies his head back down but only seconds later, he hears it again. "Haddock."

Now he was certain it wasn't just him. Hiccup sits back up on his bed and asks to the air, "Uh…who is that?"

The female voice replies, "Wow, and I thought you knew me."

Then it all came to a realization. "…Astrid."

"I told you, it's Stormstriker, but I'll let it slide this time." Astrid's voice replies.

Hiccup gets up on his legs, both fleshy and droid, and asks, "Why are you in my head? what do you want?"

The voice simply replies, "Come to Tatooine. We need to talk." And just like that, the voice fades entirely.

"Ast-uh, Stormstriker? Stormstriker?" Seeing that the voice was gone, Hiccup sat back down on the bed, going right back to where he was minutes before, pondering over what just happened.

It was then that he hears a knock at his door, followed by another familiar but less threatening voice. "Hiccup? You there?"

Hiccup peeks though his peephole and spots Obi-Wan standing on the other side, so Hiccup unlocks the door and opens it. Obi-Wan grins saying, "Hello, there. Thought you might be hungry." He holds up a bag of food.

Hiccup's growling stomach made him realize the fact, so he takes the food and replies, "Uh, thanks."

Obi-Wan crosses his arms and says, "Now, you mind telling me why you left back there as you were being knighted?"

Hiccup looks up to see that Obi-Wan did still have a wide grin on his face, though that didn't always say everything. He simply replies, "I just…saw something. That's all."

Obi-Wan replies, "Something or someone?"

Yep, there was no way of getting past him at all, though that could also be why he's a Jedi Master. "I…thought I saw…her in the crowd, but it turned out to be some random girl that I didn't know."

Obi-Wan nods. "I see, so she really is messing with your mind. Look, Hiccup, in my time as a Jedi I've had countless people who wanted to see me dead at their feet. Course, I was never exactly attracted to any of them, not really into the kill-first-ask-questions-later type but still. The more you allow Astrid to get to your head, the more you are going to lose your focus."

Hiccup sighs to that. "I understand, Master."

Obi-Wan nods to that. "Please, call me Obi-Wan."

Hiccup grins wide to that before something else comes to mind. "Obi-Wan…I, uh, think I do need to go somewhere soon."

Intrigued by this, Obi-Wan replies, "Well, as a Jedi Knight, you don't exactly need me or any other Jedi, for that matter, to come with you. As long as you don't get yourself in trouble, then it should be fine. If you don't mind me asking, where exactly do you need to go?"

Hiccup wasn't sure if Obi-Wan could handle the full truth, so he replies, "Oh, uh, Tatooine. Yeah, uh, it's been a bit since I arrived in this world and, well, I kind of wanted to go back to where it started and reflect a bit."

Obi-Wan smiles to that. "Ah, excellent. Perhaps this will help you get your mind off of Astrid. Well, just make sure you're not gone too long, a new mission could pop up at any point. Oh, and, uh, this might help you." Obi-Wan tosses some starfighter keys to Hiccup. with that, Obi-Wan heads out and leaves Hiccup to wonder just what he was going to do.

Hiccup looks down at the new yellow hilted lightsaber that he recently built to replace the one he smashed from fighting Astrid, figuring he might as well be prepared, so he clips the saber to his belt and heads out.

Hiccup walks up to a small, black, diamond shaped starfighter that the keys Obi-Wan gave him unlocked. On the window of the starfighter, there was a note saying, 'Happy knighting. -Kenobi.'

Feeling glad that Obi-Wan gave him this ship, Hiccup was about to board when he hears a high pitched beeping next to him. He looks down and spots a black Astromech droid with red stripes beeping to him. Hiccup asks, "Uh, can I help you?"

There was another note attached to the droid's body, which Hiccup opened and read. 'This is T0-H5, your new friend.'

Only guessing that this was also from Obi-Wan, Hiccup looks down to the droid and comments, "Huh, a ship and a droid. I guess being a Jedi Knight does have its perks. Alright, T0, you mind helping me get to Tatooine?" The droid replies with a series of beeps, excited to be asked the question. "Alright, alright, well hop in."

T0 then loads himself into the droid slot of the ship while Hiccup climbs into the cockpit. Using what he had learned so far about flying, Hiccup turns the ship on and makes it head up into space where it connects with a black ring-shaped booster device that makes the ship jump into hyperspace.

After flying for about half an hour, T0 tells Hiccup that they're close so Hiccup exits hyperspace and they spot the dual sun, desert planet in front of them.

Once there, Hiccup comments to T0, "Well, here we are but she never exactly said where to meet her." Hiccup then looked towards the West side of the planet and spots some sort of cargo ship drifting along the orbit. Sensing The Force amongst the ship, Hiccup knew that that was it, so he has T0 take him in.

Once on the ship, Hiccup tells T0 to stay with the ship as he heads into the main area where a ton of boxes were stacked and scattered about. He walks around the ship and while he could sense that someone was there, he couldn't see anyone, though he did keep his guard up.

Hiccup gets towards the center of the bay when he hears the voice again, but this time much clearer. "You took your time getting here." Recognizing the voice, Hiccup grabs his lightsaber and activates the new blue blade and points it towards Astrid, who was standing on top of a stack of boxes, leaning against the wall of the ship. "Then again, you Jedi have always been rather slow."

Hiccup states, "Well, I'm here now, so what do you want? Care to finish what we started on Mustafar?"

Astrid looks down to the saber blade and comments, "Oh, put that thing away before you jab someone's eye out. I'm just here to talk."

Hiccup, not lowering his guard for a second, replies, "How can I trust that you just want to talk?"

Astrid raises a brow to that. "Is it really that hard?" They stare each other down for another moment before Astrid rolls her eyes and unclips her blue hilted, yellow spiked lightsaber hilt from her belt and tosses it to Hiccup.

Hiccup catches the saber and doing so led him to believe that she was telling the truth, so he deactivates his saber and asks, "What do you want to talk about?"

Astrid sighs. "How do you know me? Of all the people I've seen since arriving in this galaxy, you're the only one who has actually known who I am, you even know my real name."

Hiccup raises a brow to that. "Arrived here? So you weren't born in this galaxy, then?"

Astrid leans her head against the wall and looks up before replying, "Not that it matters, but, since I woke up that one day, no one has even recognized me for even a second, so how, how is it that you, someone that I've never seen before in my life, can possibly know me?"

Hiccup thinks about the question before putting a few pieces together and asking, "You felt something. Didn't you? Right before we blacked out." Astrid grumbles a bit before looking down to give Hiccup a glare and looking right back up. "That's a yes."

Astrid replies, "Just before we blacked out, I saw these visions of the two of us…together, not as enemies but as…friends."

Hiccup wasn't sure if Astrid could handle the full truth, the Jedi Council could barely handle it so how could she, so he replies, "All you need to know is that I know you better than anyone."

Astrid scoffs to that. "Doubt it."

Hiccup takes a droid-legged step forward. "Then how do I know that your favorite color is silver because it's the color of axe blades? How do I know that you have a triangular birth mark on your back? How do I know that your nose flares every time you see someone you despise?" Astrid looks down to Hiccup and her nose flares on cue. "Yeah, like that."

Astrid ponders all of that for a moment before replying, "How DO you know any of that?"

Hiccup was about to reply when he hears a deep voice coming from just behind another set of boxes. "Well, isn't this lovely?" He looks to see Count Dooku standing right there. "And here I thought my apprentice stole this cargo ship because there was actually something valuable on it."

Hiccup looks up to Astrid and says, "So this was a trap!"

Astrid scoffs. "I didn't even know he was coming." She jumps off of where she was perched and lands on the floor right next to Dooku.

"Then it's a good thing I decided to come as well." Said another familiar voice that made Hiccup's spine tingle. He looks back and sees Obi-Wan there. "Good thing I had T0's tracking software turned on, otherwise I'd think you really were coming to Tatooine to reflect."

"Kenobi." Dooku comments. "What a pleasant surprise."

Astrid crosses her arms. "You really don't trust me, do you?"

Hiccup replies, "Hey, I didn't invite him either."

Dooku comments, "Enough chat, since we are here we do have important matters at hand. Stormstriker, take your weapon back from Haddock and use it to strike them down. Finish what you started."

Astrid stares Hiccup down for a moment, thinking hard about the conversation she just had with Hiccup and how genuine he seemed to be about knowing those things about her. Then, in a sudden move, Astrid Force Pulls her saber back and activates the red blade before swinging it back, only to be deflected by Dooku's red blade which was quickly activated. Dooku asks, "What exactly are you doing?"

Astrid leaps back to where Hiccup and Obi-Wan were standing and states, "I may not know who these two are, but since arriving here, Hiccup here has been the first person to open up about me and tell me about who I really am, not who he wants me to be." She points her blade towards Dooku. "Count Dooku, we are taking you down."

Astrid gives Hiccup a side eye and Hiccup notices that her eyes went from a Sith yellow to the natural, sapphire blue eyes that he had known for years. Smiling, Hiccup activates his own blue lightsaber blade while Obi-Wan does the same and they all point their blades towards Dooku.

Dooku scoffs to this. "If you think I've never taken on three Jedi at once, then you are clearly mistaken." He raises his blade and dashes towards the others, slashing down and colliding with the other three blades that were deflecting him.

Hiccup, Astrid and Obi-wan leap back as Dooku steps back as well. Astrid charges forward and slashes her blade up to be deflected by Dooku, Hiccup comes at him from behind, but Dooku uses The Force to push some crates down in an attempt to block Hiccup's path.

Hiccup leaps clips his saber guard over his hilt and levitates it over the crate to slash at Dooku a few times, to be perfectly deflected each time before Dooku Force Pushes the blade against the crates. Hiccup leaps over the crates and grabs his saber as Dooku dashes to the right.

Obi-Wan then comes in slashes at Dooku from side to side with his blue blade. Astrid and Hiccup then stand on a few crates before jumping down and slashing downwards, which Dooku rolled out from under, making the other three blades collide.

Hiccup, Astrid and Obi-Wan pull their blades back, hold them up and keep a lookout. They split up and head in different directions with Obi-Wan going to the right, Hiccup to the left and Astrid down the center.

The blades of their lightsabers purred from being on as they search the cargo bay looking for the white haired Sith.

Unbeknownst to Obi-Wan, Dooku hidden in his direction as Dooku lifts up a scrap steel beam from the ground using The Force and throws it towards Obi-Wan, only to be sliced down the center when Astrid jumps up and does so.

Obi-Wan looks back and sees Astrid standing there, red saber in hands with the halves of the steel beam on either side. He comments, "You really are with us now."

Astrid glances back and replies, "Don't think that letting that beam hit you wasn't in mind."

Obi-Wan replies, "I wasn't expecting anything less." He jumps up and slashes his blue blade towards Dooku, but Dooku jumps back and begins to run away. As he was running, Dooku uses his Force Lightning on Obi-Wan to stun him and get him to drop his saber.

This was followed by Hiccup, who had heard the commotion and had run over, and Astrid charging towards Dooku. Dooku deflects a few more slashes from the two before making his escape again and quickly boarding a cruiser, which he had since Hiccup and Anakin had previously crashed his ship, and begins to fly away.

However, just before Dooku's new ship exits the shield protected entrance to the cargo ship, Astrid throws her lightsaber and the blade hits the right booster, causing it to get destroyed.

On the ship, Dooku attempts to steer the ship into the desired direction, but finds that impossible with the booster destroyed, and before he could even react he hears the entire back of the ship blow up and descend down onto Tatooine where, minutes later, it goes up into a fiery explosion that could be seen from the cargo ship in the orbit.

Hiccup, Astrid and Obi-Wan head down onto the spot where they saw the ship crash and begin to look around. Hiccup says to T0, who had joined them, "T0, scan for any signs of life."

The droid beeps in response and begins to do just that as Obi-Wan rummages though the piles of debris. That's when he notices something hanging from a steel beam that snapped off upon crashing. "Look!" Obi-Wan points out as they see a golden cape hanging from that beam. "That's Dooku's cape."

Astrid looks and spots something else. She uses The Force to bring forth the curve-hilted lightsaber that only one person in the galaxy could use. "His saber. Hard to imagine he'd be far without it."

T0 then beeps a bit after finishing his scan. "Well, besides us, T0 couldn't find any signs of life whatsoever. I…I think Count Dooku really is dead!"

Obi-Wan nods. "It seems that way."

Astrid replies, "But then, where's his body?"

Obi-Wan shrugs. "It probably burned up from the crash. Guys, do you realize what this means? This means that, Stormstriker, you managed to not only take down but kill the Sith lord that's been haunting our memories for years now."

Astrid rubs her arm and replies, "C-call me Astrid." She gives a slight smile.

Hiccup points out, "We better report this to the Council. They're going to want to know about this." With that, the three of them and T0 head go off to do just that.