Sighing slowly, he switched off the laser shears and set the tool on the cabin floor beside him, staring down at the cylindrical object centered in its own little mini-shrine of spare parts, colored accoutrements, and energy crystals. At the moment, it was nothing but a section of chromed durasteel tube with an end cap secured by six black slats laser-welded to both the end cap and the tube.

"Something wrong with the lightsaber you've got?" a voice of wisdom asked from behind him. "Why are you building a new one?"

"I'd give you two guesses," he replied, "but you won't need either of them."

Jolee nodded and walked around in front of the troubled young Jedi, seating himself on the floor a respectable distance from his workspace. He glanced over the myriad of tools, color and energy crystals, and personal accents to the incomplete lightsaber. "May I?" he asked, pointing to the partially-complete tube.

The younger Jedi nodded, then rubbed his hands wearily over his face.

Wordlessly, Jolee picked up the lightsaber-in-progress and turned it over in his hands. With but a minor glance to the exterior, the old man flipped the handle up and peered down into the interior, staring at the intricate inner workings of the lightsaber. "Oh," he said amusedly. "That's an interesting arrangement for the energy matrices. Completely different from the way I learned it."

"It enhances the focus of the blade," the young man answered. "I had one like it before, and I used to be able to focus it narrow enough to fit between the seams of a datapad."

"Oh ho, that is impressive," Jolee said with a smirk, reaching over to hand back the incomplete lightsaber. As he did so, his eyes fell on a collar-like device partially hidden beneath his comrade's leg. "Err, what, may I ask, are you doing with a neural disruptor?"

Kagi lifted his leg to look down at it, then sighed and placed his lightsaber hilt on the ground, then reached over to pick up the disruptor. "When I found Bastila on Taris, Brejik had her wearing it, not knowing that she could easily overpower it with the Force."

Jolee nodded, understanding immediately. "So you're going to break it down somehow and use a part of it on your new lightsaber. So that you don't forget Bastila."

"As if I could," Kagi replied, gently placing the collar down beside the work in progress lightsaber. "I can't feel her through our bond anymore, and that's only made things worse. I know she's alive, Jolee, but I had gotten so used to our bond, such that now that I can't feel her through it, it's as though someone walked up and took off my arm."

"I know, kid," Jolee answered, nodding sympathetically. "You and Bastila are treading dangerous ground. You already know why the Jedi forbid love and attachments, so I'm going to forgo my right as an old-timer and spare you that lecture."

Kagi smiled slightly, but it soon vanished. But it had been a smile, Jolee noted. The older man reached out and laid a reassuring hand on the troubled Jedi's shoulder. "Bastila blocked the Force bond to spare you the agony that Malak is surely putting her through. She knows what you're capable of, and your history of reacting to injustices. Tack on the fact that you are also in love with her, and even a youngling would know that you'd go to extraordinary lengths to save her if you could feel what Malak was doing to her."

"What should I do, Jolee?"

That question, asked not with any form of condescension or anything but utter dejection, gave the older Jedi pause. He knew that his younger companion wanted nothing more than to tear off into the wilds of space and rescue his beloved, but they both knew Malak had taken her to the Star Forge, and none of them knew where that was. The forced inaction was taking its toll, slowly yet surely, on the redeemed Jedi.

"Honestly son, I don't know," Jolee said quietly, for once letting his façade of bluster and a snappy elder drop to the wayside. "I know how this whole situation is making you feel. But we're going to find Bastila. All we have to do is find this last map."

"Jolee, I know revenge and hate are wrong for the Jedi, but I don't want to take Malak prisoner," Kagi said, aware of the danger in what he was saying. "He took Bastila away from me. Never before have I known this kind of agony. I want him to die for what he's done."

"Son, you just have your new lightsaber done before we get to Malak," Jolee said, squeezing Kagi's shoulder reassuringly. "If you hesitate to strike Malak down, I'll take you by the hand and put your lightsaber through him for you."

---

"How are the repairs coming on the ship?" asked another deep voice, in another part of the Ebon Hawk.

Carth turned around in his pilot's seat to find Canderous standing in the doorway to the cockpit. The Mandalorian must've recently come from scrubbing up in the refresher; his hair was wet, there was a towel draped over his shoulders, and he was walking around barefoot with just some loose trousers on.

"Not too good," the Republic soldier answered, glancing over to the Hawk's diagnostic display, with the engines still outlined in pulsing red. "T3 and HK are working as hard as they can, but that little gizka really stirred up a lot of trouble when it got into that hyperdrive motivator."

"Well, at least the good news is that the little snakeskin got shredded by the motivator," Canderous said, catching himself just before he dropped into the copilot's seat. Bastila always sat there, and in an unspoken agreement, the crew of the Hawk had decided that no one else would sit there until she was returned to them.

Coughing into his hand as he awkwardly twisted away from the seat, Canderous continued, "Instant corrective measures for disobedient behavior."

Not wishing to talk about the deaths of innocent little creatures, Carth decided to change the subject. "You talk to Revan recently?"

"No, and I figure I won't," the Mandalorian replied, leaning against the galaxy map. Before Carth could question him, the man explained, "I'll follow him to the ends of the galaxy and kill anyone he tells me to, but right now his problem is a matter of the heart, and that's something I can't help him with."

"I guess you're right about that," Carth said with a nod. "It's just a shame to see him like this."

"That's just how much Bastila meant to him," Canderous agreed.

"So you're actually calling her by name now? I thought she was just the 'Ice Princess' to you."

"She was!" the mercenary said, stepping back. "We've got a mutual dislike for each other, that's for sure. But she got better after she started warming up to Revan. I may not like her personally, but I do respect that she is the only person in the galaxy who can truthfully say that she has conquered Revan."

Carth smiled slightly and leaned back in his seat. "It's kind of funny, now that you think about it. Revan was the greatest war hero the Republic had ever seen."

"Mandalorians, too," Canderous interjected. "In battle, he was unbeatable. The entire might of the Mandalorian clans could not topple him."

"But the mighty Revan was laid low by a humble Jedi Knight, by name Bastila Shan," Carth said.

"I agree with everything but the humble part," Canderous replied, deadpan.

"Hmm, good point."

Republic soldier and Mandalorian warrior, bitter enemies only five years ago, shared in a heartwarming laugh.

---

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better, Mission," Kagi replied, welding a black band of metal around the activation plate of his new lightsaber, in a sort of a collar for the purpose of keeping the plate in place. With that complete, he set tool and incomplete lightsaber aside, and glanced over his shoulder at the young Twi'lek girl. "Need something, Mission?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," she said, seating herself on Canderous' bunk. She held a bulky, wrapped parcel in her arms. "You building a new lightsaber?"

"Yeah. Mostly just to pass the time, and focus my mind."

Mission nodded solemnly. "I understand. Having to drift in realspace while the engines are getting fixed must be driving you crazy."

He smiled tightly. "It is, Mission. It is." Stretching his arms out fully in front of him until the joints of his elbows popped loudly, Kagi looked over at the girl. "So. You never did tell me how you found out about Bastila and I."

The Twi'lek grinned mischievously. "You seem to forget that I was the sneakiest urchin on Taris. I could get in and out of everywhere. Compared to surviving most of my life in the Undercity, spying on you and Bastila in the portside cabin was a breeze."

"Ah. So then how did Canderous know?"

"He, uh…caught me," she replied sheepishly. "Told me that I'd better tell him what was going on or he'd tell you about the extra rations I'd been­– whoops."

Kagi laughed. "So that's where all those rations have been disappearing to. I thought we had two stowaways."

"Yeah… Anyways, so then I told him that I'd been spying on you and Bastila, and he figured out the rest from there." The young girl narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at her Jedi friend. "But you know, it's not exactly like it was hard to notice that you two were growing awfully sweet on each other."

"Hutt drool," Kagi replied off-hand, waving that thought away.

"You were!" Mission exclaimed. "You were sweet on her from the moment you met her!"

"How would you know?" he asked.

"Because I'm a woman!" she huffed, planting her fists on her hips. "I can tell when a man is sweet on somebody, and you were definitely sweet on Bastila." Lowering her voice to a whisper, Mission glanced around conspiratorially before leaning forward. "Though to tell you the truth, Bastila was also sweet on you from very early on. It was difficult to pick out sometimes, but I figured that her high-and-mighty attitude was just a façade she put on, especially to you, once she realized how she felt about you."

Kagi nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "Now that you mention it, it makes a lot more sense now why Bastila was so touchy on the subject of romance between us. It's not because we were Jedi, it's because of who I was."

Mission frowned slightly and patted him on the knee. "She didn't know you had grown beyond the dark lord back then. But then she realized that you had left Revan behind, that you were Kagi, and she couldn't stop herself from falling for you."

He nodded appreciatively, but thoughts of Bastila were the last things he needed. To distract himself, he pointed to Mission's parcel. "What've you got there?"

Glancing down at the package in her lap, Mission picked it up, then handed it to the Jedi. "It's for you."

Raising an eyebrow, Kagi took the package in his hands and carefully unwrapped the paper wrapping, revealing a mass of cloth that was a dark brown color. Grabbing it by a side, he pulled up on it, and kept pulling. Realizing how large the thing was, he stood up, allowing the paper to fall to the floor, and let the cloth object fully unfold itself. Once it had done so, he realized what it was.

"A Jedi cloak," he said. "Why are you giving me this? A Jedi doesn't receive a cloak until they become a knight."

The Twi'lek girl shrugged helplessly. "It's not from me. I was told to give it to you."

"Who is it from?" he asked, turning it around in his hands, inspecting it.

"Bastila."

He froze in place, folding the cloak in half lengthwise, then laying it over his left arm. "Bastila told you to give this to me?"

Mission nodded. "Right before we left Manaan, she gave me this package and told me to give it to you if anything happened to her."

Moving as though his blood had been replaced by slow-drying permacrete, Kagi turned and looked down at the cloak, running his fingers over the fabric. Slowly, he unfolded the cloak, slipped his arms into its sleeves, and settled it over his shoulders. Once it was in place, he looked down to see how far the cloak trailed. It stopped just at the tops of his boot soles. Perfect length.

Moving into the center of the cabin, he positioned himself as though he were holding a lightsaber, testing the cloak's range of movement. He twisted his arms as though engaged in a lightsaber duel, not feeling a single catch or snag in the cloak's movement over his form.

It was perfectly-fitted to him.

Bastila… He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to outwardly show the immense pain in his heart.

"She also gave me a message for you," Mission's quiet voice broke the silence. "She said to tell you that this cloak is a gift from her, and despite the fact that you have not yet achieved the title of Jedi Knight, you are the knight of her heart."

A/N: This chapter was meant as little more than a bridging chapter, since Battle of the Heroes is a series of one-shots, and not a true novelization of KOTOR. And just so that everyone's on the same page here, the party went to Kashyyyk first, then Tatooine, then Manaan. While on Manaan, Bastila and Revan admitted their feelings for one another shortly after arrival. Distraught that she had admitted, both to him and to herself, that she loved Revan, Bastila went out wandering Ahto City, while it was Canderous and Carth that accompanied Revan on the quest to the Hrakert(sp) Rift. While they were gone, Bastila had the special cloak made for Revan, in a little event that I may add in, should I ever do an actual KOTOR novelization. -Hint-

And it generally goes without saying that they were captured by the Leviathan after leaving Manaan. And a few random notes? Even though I don't have an actual savegame with Revan's name being "Kagi" I decided to use that in lieu of using the generic "Chris Ganale" that I use everywhere else. And this damaged hyperdrive motivator thing? Just something random I came up with to delay the crew's travel to Korriban, which is next.