Episode 1 Part 3 - The Beginning of the End

Tree-Hugger's entry into the Ravager was a welcome sight. Ever since he left to be trained by his father, we haven't seen much of him. He flew a small fighter designed for speed over all else. The cockpit opens and he climbs up and out. Ahsoka smiles widely and the happiness flows over me from her. She considers him almost like a second-father, as do I, so her feeling is respriprocated. Tree-Hugger smiles at the sight of us and gives Ahsoka a hug, while I shake his hand, and he bows to Ahsoka's students, but there is something about his smile and his stance that has me on edge.

The first thing I notice is his confidence. His power has increased with the training, but more so looks to me his self-confidence and how comfortable he is in his skin and position. He has always been a guy who is full of energy, but in such a way that it was as if he had trouble controlling it or had to hold himself back. He never much liked being the Chosen One of a prophecy and a lot of his self-control comes from his experience in tapping into the Dark Side. All of that is gone and he holds himself quite well, like the hero he is called by history.

The second thing I notice is the hesitation or tension. He has come here for a reason, and it rests heavily on his mind. So much so that he gets right to the point, "I wish I could say this was a social visit, guys. But something has happened, something that needs to be kept under wraps and only revealed to a select few."

Ahsoka's smile dims a bit, and she glances between him and the fighter. "Is that why you picked a racing fighter? And left it running? And with three seats?"

Ah, didn't notice that. I probe Ahsoka, 'You think he wants to take us for a ride?'

Maybe.

Tree-Hugger nods and his composure darkens. He glances at me briefly before looking down, building up his resolve, and grabs me by the shoulders to look at me heavily. "Varus… Nihilus escaped."

Ahsoka gasps. Her student's both turn a shade paler.

As for me… well. The solid steel wall directly behind me crumbles inward with a snap. Sparks fly and metal flies everywhere. The wall continuously scrunches in on itself like a man had taken hold of it and crushed it between his hands, smashed it like a soda can, and slammed it into the ground. Blinding rage boils in my veins and flashes of memory from every moment in my life where I have vowed to kill him fill my eyes. But in the back of my mind I feel Ahsoka's worry and watchfulness for how I will respond. I breathe in and out slowly, and force it all away.

I open my Sith eyes. My voice is restrained in a whisper, "So… who screwed up?"

Varus?

'I'm okay. I'm in control. Just needed to smash something.'

Tree-Hugger explains, "Nihilus was being kept in a joint prison run by each of the galaxies major powers. Any of them could have had the access to free him, but I doubt it was by them since it could result in war. Or at the very least, a very costly mistake and public humiliation. No nation would want that. The security was run by a full battalion of HK-51 model droids programmed to kill anything or anyone, no matter what nation, that is there without going through channels or tampers with the goods."

"HK-51 droids are the highest model to date." Ahsoka inputs. "Nothing could have broken in. It must have been an internal operation."

"Possibly… I don't know the details. The cameras were hacked before anything worth note happened." Tree-Hugger smiles apologetically. "What I do know is that Nihilus stole a ship and isn't bothering to mask his IFF tag. Everyone knows where he is and is chasing after him. Who knows, they might have already caught up to him. I felt you guys deserved to know… and…" He looks at me. "Your help is requested."

I glance to Ahsoka. I open myself into our bond fully, and feel her do the same at my insistence. My passion to hunt him and kill him mixes with her desire to keep me from losing myself and the man I have grown into, the man she loves just as I love her. I close my eyes and consider everything. She is right. Giving into my vengeance will lose who I am, but at the same time hunting him is a part of who I am. No… it was not wrong to seek justice, but the method in which I chose. I chose to enter darkness, and seek power and isolation, because I believed it to be the only way. Ahsoka reminds me it is not wrong to seek justice if I do it within the law and I have the authority to do it. I remind her all the same that to me the two don't matter so long as I reach the same result, and that is something that has always concerned her. I will still accept going beneath the law if it means ending Nihilus, but I will prefer to do it lawfully if that option is available. That way I still have a future with her. The problem then is not about whether or not I want to, but whether or not I should. It involves her now just as much. She can stay and pretend it doesn't, but my absence will be an internal war for her every day she doesn't know or isn't there to be sure of how I am doing.

Tree-Hugger glances between us as we continue our internal debate. Ahsoka's students give us barely a glance. They are used to us doing this. For us it feels like minutes when it has really been a matter of seconds before we lower the bond to its normal level with a decision made.

I look to Tree-Hugger. "We'll come. If Mandalore or whoever is in charge of the area can give us the all-clear, that would be great."

We dock in with the Mandalorian fleet. There is barely time to settle the ship down and lock the clamps down with the flagship before I am receiving friendly suggested 'demands' to meet. I don't put up a fight, besides, we are after the same thing. Nihilus.

Why in the hell he would sit here is beyond me. It's on the border of the known galaxy!

The door opens to reveal an escort of soldiers waiting with Falcon-boy in the lead. Or should I say man? He smiles in greeting and extends his hand, I match it. "Hey Falcon. Laid any good eggs lately?"

"Plenty." He chuckles. "Got an especially good one here. It is good to see you, Ahsoka."

"You too Falon." Ahsoka gives him a quick hug. "These are my students, Slavian and Aramis."

The three shared a bow. Falcon smiles in greeting to them as well. "I have heard you two were nearly ready for Knighthood, how do you feel about that?"

"Nearly." Slavian rubs his head nervously. He had heard of Falon Grey. The young man was a hero. He was on the news fairly often for his work against terrorism and the Eternal Hand. "I feel I have learned much from my master, but Varus has showed us there is whole areas of the Force we could improve in, without going into Sith stuff. I don't just want to be a Knight, I want to be a strong one."

Aramis writes, "I feel ready, but I won't leave Slavian behind."

"Well, it sounds like you two are getting there. You may not the be two youngest Knights in history, but you will be pretty young when you do. Even younger than me. The experience you have gained has shaped you more than you realize. Not everyone gets trained by the Starkiller or experiences history first-hand and lives to tell about it."

"Falon, are you thinking of getting students of your own? You are a Knight and you aren't that much younger than me now." Ahsoka asks.

"Nah. I deal with stuff on a regular basis that would be too much for a Padawan to handle. If I were to teach, it would be in a classroom on my off days. If anyone here should be getting a student, its him." Falcon motions to me.

I feel Ahsoka's agreement. I am a bit older than her and I have matured greatly since the Force Bond with Nihilus was cut. Marriage helped some too. I've never had a student. Regardless, I shake my head solemnly.

"I think I would make a good master, but I can't. Not yet."

"What are you waiting for?" Falcon wonders.

"It's Sith tradition that you defeat your master before taking on students of your own, or be formally acknowledged by a superior of your own master. I have done neither."

You know you can disregard that rule, right? You are as powerful as any Sith Lord. Ahsoka whispers in my head.

I reply, 'That's part of it. I just… I can't have that much more on my chest. I have so many people in my life, and I struggle to balance them with Nihilus. I no longer have the Force Bond sapping away at my every emotion, and I have you. But… you know my quest with Nihilus is set. With him in prison, I can fool myself into believing I can let it go, but now…'

Now that he has broken out, you don't feel you can trust anyone to be able to handle him but yourself.

'Is that wrong?'

You are the expert on Nihilus, but you aren't alone.

I sigh. She's right. Falcon gives us a glance as our faces express changing emotions, and he looks generally confused. However, he nods. "Its up to you, naturally. Now, if you would follow me?"

Falcon leads the way for us. Tree-Hugger enters the flagship now and we motion for him to follow.

"It is good to see you, Master." Falcon nods to him. "Now. Everything I am about to say is top-secret. Only a few know what I am about to say, and that is at the very top of government."

"Understood." Tree-Hugger says. We all echo him in our own ways.

"It started with negotiations with the Miraluka." Falcon explains. "The planet Forge suddenly shook, and the outer shell of the structure split apart from Forge. The outer shell reformed itself into a new shape in the make of a starship, and entered Warp only to appear at Nihilus' prison a few days later. All transmission from the prison was immediately cut, so all we had was the image of the Forge-ship. A prison ship, that is always being tracked, entered Warp and stopped here. By this time we had infiltrated the prison and found the security detail was destroyed, the mask of Nihilus was missing, and the orb containing him was empty. The Forge-ship also went missing and hasn't been seen since. Put two and two together and…"

"The Miraluka raided the prison and freed Nihilus?" Tree-Hugger wonders.

I scoff. "No. They would sooner blow it out of the stars."

Falcon continues, "That is what we think as well. Some third party has taken an interest in him. We found Nihilus here and he was surprisingly submissive. Turned himself in. We have been questioning him, but Nihilus hasn't been particularly in the answering mood. Or in any kind of mood for that matter. Torture and psychological attacks have no effect."

"That's him alright…"

"Turned himself in?" Ahsoka asks. "Why would he turn himself in? He was just on the border and could have disappeared, but he chooses to sit here and wait for you? Has that spirit lost its mind?"

If only. Nihilus has something in mind. He has made the first move, and he wouldn't if he didn't have a game plan.

"We've been asking him, but he has only given us two things." Falcon and us enter a room where there are dozens of monitors and officers. On the biggest screen is the image of a giant vacuum sealed box where a man sits still as stone. The man looks long dead from exposure to a vacuum. His body was inflated and puffed up with ruptured blood vessels all across his body. His eyes were blood red.

The eyes flickered toward the camera and a dark shadow moved beneath them.

"The first thing he gave us was a star map with systems not on our database. Hundreds of systems beyond the outer rim, with many of them marked as Sith Empirial owned."

Tree-Hugger gasps. I freeze. Ahsoka stares wide-eyed. "Where did he get that kind of information?!" Tree-Hugger exclaims.

"Don't know. He won't say. The list of questions just gets longer and longer, but so far the map checks out with what we have been able to dig up from the Starkiller-clone's old ships log."

I walk up to the image of Nihilus and look at him. "He gave you a huge bargaining chip. The one thing we need most to win the war, and he just gives it to us for free. He has an angle."

"That's something we agree on."

"What's the second thing he gave you?" Tree-Hugger asks.

"A demand, actually." Falcon hesitates before turning to me. "After giving that to us, he said he has much more to offer but would only talk to you."

Everyone in the room looks sharply at me, and Ahsoka most of all. I feel her fear in my mind, just as I feel a chill go down my spine.

"He will only talk to me." I repeat. Falcon nods.

"He hasn't said a word since. Like I said, torture and other methods don't have an effect on him, and Mandalore agreed to bring you in. We would have come to you if you hadn't already been coming to us."

Varus… I don't like this. I'm scared.

'I feel the same, Love.'

I look back at the image of Nihilus and think it over. Falcon says, "We wouldn't be asking if it wasn't serious. He has already proven the containment we had before wasn't sufficient. If you ask me, even now it isn't. He could break out of that box at the slightest whim and kill all of us here, but he is patient because he expects you will be meeting with him. I… I don't think he's the prisoner here."

"Because he isn't. You are. He is holding you hostage against yourself and only a few of you realize that." I state. "I know how you feel. I was in the same position once… The crystal was enough to hold him against his will, but this proves that any amount of tampering will break him out. Do you have any more Tree-Hugger?"

Tree-Hugger shakes his head.

"Then go to Koj'Ineh of the Ghorfa, he should know where we can get another."

Falcon considers it a moment before nodding and barking out orders to get him. "Koj should be back on Mandalore in negotiations with the chief. He's been breaking deals and contracts and the boss is not happy. However if he has the only tools we can use to contain this threat again, then we should be able to ignore that for now."

"Still doesn't give us enough time. Nihilus' patience has its limits. Its ridiculously long, but it still has limits. It already took use days to get here, and it looks like the Sith Lord has been sitting in there for a while."

"I agree with Tree-Hugger." I sigh in resignation. "I'll go."

The intensity of the moment, between me being there and being in the next room, is enough to terrify Ahsoka to no end. So between the time it takes to comfort her shaking nerves and receive follow up orders from Falcon (who I am going to guess is in charge of what is going on here, or at least is going to be the one engaging with me), and for useless safety precautions to be set up, it takes ultimately half an hour before I step into the same room as the bastard who shaped my life into the dark path it would ultimately be.

The moment I enter the room his eyes lock onto me.

A chair is placed in the center of the room facing the Sith Lord. The door shuts and locks behind me. I sit down on the chair and immediately the box holding Nihilus opens and collapses into the floor plates. Nihilus is now only 5 feet in front of me.

Nihilus just stares at me. I reciprocate it. Not like there isn't much I have't already said to him, or called him, or insulted him with. I can't be bothered to come up with any insults at the time. I'm fresh out of new ones.

Might as well go for an old classic.

"You look like shit."

Nihilus gasps for air with such intensity I almost hear his ribs cracking. His body violently implodes as the air pressure inside his body changes with the air pressure outside, and blood explodes from his mouth. He coughs on both air and blood for a long time before he finally pukes it up, coughs and gasps some more, and slowly comes to a more normal rhythm of breathing.

Ahsoka is about to be sick just watching this. I told her not to watch, but she's stubborn.

Nihilus returns to looking at me as though none of that really bothers him in the slightest. There is a gallon of blood pouring from his mouth and we might as well be here discussing what holofilm to go see. Not a romance fan? There's comedies. How about super hero ones where the big bad villain loses and good moral people win? I should take him to one just to spite him.

If only reality was the same way.

"Yes." Nihilus says at last after the pool of blood pouring from his mouth overflows from his chest, to his lap, to the floor. Really not a pretty sight. He looks up at the camera wishfully. He sounds so disappointed. "That is what happens when you put a living person into a vacuum for days. Quite inconvenient how its dead now… It would be so much nicer if I could get a fresh one, but I don't think they will be obliging."

"They're heroic like that. Goody-goody people aren't into the whole live-sacrifice thing."

He returns his gaze to me, and smiles. It is quite creepy with the blood filling his mouth and covering his teeth. "You have grown well. Not just in body, but in spirit. You look well fed and it appears you have kept up with your training. Your body has become stronger, into the body of a man; and your temperament is much stronger and sound than it once was. Minutes of silence and before you would have burst out. You have become… delicious." He breathes out hungrily. Just as fast as the emotion appears, it disappears behind the empty void of his face and the fake smile.

"No, thanks to you." I have half a mind to shove my marriage and friends in his face as having credit to my well-being, but that would only provoke him. He would target Ahsoka. I don't want him within a light-year of her if possible.

"Hmmm." He mutters. He looks up at the camera. "You have held to your agreement, so I will cooperate. Ask your questions, and remember, I will only talk to my apprentice."

"Former." I mutter under my breath in futility. I know my place. I have yet to defeat him. I still feel tied to him enough that I can't move on and get an apprentice of my own. I still feel like the child beneath him. Marriage hasn't changed that. It only gives me a person I want to hide behind.

After a while, the door opens behind me, and a soldier enters and hands me a headset. I place it on my head as he leaves.

"Testing, testing. Are you reading me?" I hear a man say.

"I read you." I reply. "Falcon-boy won't be the one working with me here?"

"I am formally in charge. Falon is my second. I am Admiral Rex."

"Good to meet you, T-Rex. You have questions for me to give our mutual guest?"

I listen as the man relays his first question. Nihilus waits patiently.

"So, how did you get out of prison?" I ask. "Who helped you?"

"I could have escaped on my own. The crystal held well for a time, but I had figured it out long ago. Rather than break out, I chose to wait patiently for… a very specific event I had predicted would happen within this generation. The one you believe 'helped' me did not break me out. He broke in for the sole purpose of relaying a message."

"Again, who?"

"While I am willing to reveal this, I won't until the time is right. The times are shifting. The pieces on the board are moving. The King piece has shown itself, and the identity of the one I am withholding is preparing for the battles which will follow. To tell you who helped me would only take away one of your greatest assets. No. The better question you should be asking is not how I broke out, nor who helped me. The better question you should be asking… is why."

"Okay. Why did you break out? What was this message?"

Nihilus nods in approval. "Much better questions. First let me answer the latter. The message was the star map I gave you, personally provided by Emperor Valkorian."

I gasp, and I feel and hear the same in the ear-piece as well as from Ahsoka.

The Sith Emperor sent a person to break him out and give him a star map?

"That doesn't make any sense!" I hiss. That isnt anything I'm told to say. "Why would the Emperor give you a star map to his own territory?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Nihilus wonders. "It's because the time for war has come. Valkorian is allowing us to make the first move, and that is precisely why I have come. I waited for you on the edge of the Outer Rim, just between our known space and Imperial space, because the time has come. I'm here to help."

I shoot up from my chair. "The hell you're helping us! You belong in the prison to rot!"

He continues to stare at me. "Despite what you may think, our objective is the same. You want the Emperor. I want the Emperor. So consider our interests… aligned."

"You don't get the right to demand such a thing! You are not helping us!"

"And you don't have the right to refuse me. I very much doubt right now you are answering for the Clans or anyone else. You may be wearing a headset, but I am not fooled into thinking that what you are saying is coming from them."

I grit my teeth angrily. I pick my chair up from where it clattered onto the floor, and slam my butt back onto it.

Nihilus continues, "Do not be fooled into thinking you can handle the Sith without me. I single-handedly wiped out the center of the galaxy at the peak of its power, and I can name at least four individuals in the Sith Empire even I cannot defeat at my greatest. Hm… Three. Three individuals."

"Tsk." I scoff. "Name one."

"The Dread Lords." Nihilus answers without missing a beat. "A team of Sith who exist as one. Their mental bond is comparable to a team of Miraluka Keepers given every steroid you can name. They created the off-shoot of the Eternal Hand you have been facing by doing nothing more than sitting there and mentally dominating every individual on the planet and in orbit. Every person affected was instantly made into a thrall to their service. You take a fleet to fight them, and you will find that very fleet turned against you. No barrier can hold them back. Only someone who's power is nearly equal to all six combined can hold back their ability."

"Then we bombard them from orbit."

"How stupid are you? Not only would that put you in range of them and their power, but even if you succeed, you would only be pouring salt on a wound. The Sith are holding on to the sins of the Jedi when they bombarded them from orbit, backstabbed them, and tried to commit galactic genocide. If you so much as hint at repeating that, and you prove them right in their eyes. The result is an enemy twice as fanatical and bloodthirsty, and half as forgiving, as what you would have started with."

"He's right." I hear Tree-Hugger take over the mic. "We can't have a repeat of the old war."

The mic is taken back to Admiral Rex. This time he transmits into the whole room so Nihilus can hear. "Varus. That's enough for now. We have a lot to report. We will continue this later."

I breathe in anger and breathe out hatred for the monster before me. I feel Ahsoka's comforting presence, and rely on it for what little foundation I can muster. I stand, turn, and leave.

"I will see you later, my apprentice." Nihilus says.

I snap and shoot a burst of energy into the room just as the door closes. The burst does nothing more than ruffle his clothes and hair.