Darth Warious: Don't be too sure of that, my dear Sithly friend... you can't possibly know where I'm going ALL the time. Though I suppose, since you have read 95% of my writings, you WOULD have a good idea of where this is leading up too... Candies 2, by the way, is being posted on M.E., not , so check there for updates... I should get an update up tommorrow if I'm lucky.
Audreidi: Not really much to say to you, master, as we've already commented by email, ehh? Yeah... longer chapters... okay, I swear that after this chapter, I'll try to make them 7 pages in Times New Roman font face, size 12. Heh. Thanks for betaing... I'm making you do the next chappy too! Hope you like the changes I did! Near paste... heh...
And the story continues...
Chapter Two
The Jedi did this.
The first thing that came to the Sith's mind was just that. The Jedi.
Where was the Jedi?
The red and black tattooed Sith looked around, his lightsaber still in hand, but now deactivated. He could feel them, feel their presence near, but yet, not that near. It wasn't Tatooine, that was sure as his hate for their Lightside actions, their pity, their justice, their mercy. Darth Maul hated the Jedi, and he would find them again, no matter where he was.
Which was a good question as it were. Where was he? It was no holographic trick, like he would've expected of the Jedi fools, but real, living, and green. Tatooine was not green. Green, and unnaturally moist, so different from the desert planet he had just been on. It was very jungle-like, giving him the thoughts that it was probably one of the moons of Yavin, or maybe Dagobah, the swamp planet... he had been there once, a long time ago.
It wasn't swampy enough, so Darth Maul was quick to assume that it was Yavin IV, or V, maybe. But he could feel other presence's near enough, and the moons of Yavin were not inhabited... at least to his knowledge. There had been people there, at one time, the Massassi people... maybe they were still there. There was a good deal of controversy running throughout his mind.
The Jedi did this.
Flicking on his lightsaber, with a snap-hiss, he brought the blade through some of the smothering plants that seems to attract themselves towards him. Watching the vines fall to the ground gratified him, the destruction, the power over living things. The loss of life from the plants...he did not know why it gave him power, but yet it did. The power over something's life or death... that was his his hands. It filled him with a level of feeling, that there was little that could stand in his way.
There was nothing that could stand in the way of the Sith, not even the Jedi. The proof of that was in the vines that lay in a heap on the ground-- destroyed. And it was not just the plants that he had his destructive control over... people. The Jedi even. Darth Maul knew that the Jedi had been tiring, he had felt it in the weakening attacks.
The Jedi were afraid of him, afraid of his power... the true power of the Force.
He would have his revenge. When he found his way off of this moon, there would be little in his way to destroy them, but, for now, his thoughts turned to just that: getting off of the moon. But someday... someday.
But for now, his goal was to make it out of this forsaken jungle, with all its living things, different from the world he preferred: Coruscant. Shifting his lightsaber to a more workable angle, Darth Maul began carving up the vines that lay between him, and the way out. Even the jungle held some danger for him, as did the swamps, and such. He wasn't going to stay there any longer then he had to.
Moving the red beam, he watched as the next set of vines fell to the ground, never to grow again, or block the paths of a Force-user.
A flicker of hate... a darkness...
Mara Jade found herself sitting up so sharply from where she had been meditating a moment ago, and startled herself out of her trance.
There was a darkness, not unlike that of the Emperor... hate... a strong feeling against the Jedi.
Looking around, the red-gold haired Jedi stood up. Luke was nowhere to be seen, probably off addressing his students in the assembly hall, or the cafeteria... hopefully the younger Jedi hadn't started a food fight again. They were so prone to things like that, though not so much now, not after so much had happened. The Vong... Anakin's death... the birth of her son... there was so much there.
So much tragedy, and death. So many lives lost... planets... things. More than once, they had nearly lost Jacen, Jaina... they had lost Anakin. For her, during those times, her son-- Ben-- had been one of the few bright spots in her life. Ben, and Luke.
So many potential Jedi lost to the voxen, those manic Jedi hunters...
Yes, with all the tragedy from the wars, the younger Jedi were no longer so prone to acts such as food fights, such as any manner of playfulness. She knew it as well as Luke, as well as all the others that had lost family to the wars... there was less joy in the galaxy now. Less cheerfulness, even though the battle had been finished.
The presence that had touched her felt so much like the Emperor... not like the Dark Jedi, even, but more pure evil, different, in a manner. Like Lord Vader had been... a clear amount of darkness caught within a single mind. Potent, and there, a very strong power. She couldn't feel it now, but it had been there, strongly in the back of her mind, as if it had been looking for her.
And yet not. There had been surprise in the touch, not just a hate towards Jedi, and a seeking eye towards her. Whatever the person had been seeking, it hadn't been Mara Jade, for anyone that powerful in the Force would've located her, and sought her out, if the goal had been to find her.
But what...
Or who.
The mind hadn't been a human mind, with human thoughts, that had disturbed her meditation, it had been an alien, with alien thoughts, and unknown intentions, that she had felt. That much she knew through the Force.
Remembering all that had happened from the Emperor, and Lord Vader, a resolve set into her. Mara Jade was not one to let an evil return to an already struggling galaxy. The old determination that she knew so well set into her mind, as she closed her eyes, and reached out with the Force.
And there it was... someone in the jungles, not too far away from the Temple, with a set reserve... and a feeling of destruction was the first thing she felt from him-- she was sure it was male. A presence like the Emperor, in many ways, though not quite as strong.
Mara made certain that her lightsaber was fastened to her belt, as she left the room, as well as her holdout blaster, and went to locate Luke.
There was a sudden splashing nearby, and Jaina turned to see what it was. The fact there was water nearby did not surprise her, being on Coruscant after it had been Vong-formed. Nor did the heavy amount of living things that blocked her from locating the pool that seemingly was nearby, on the other side of a heavy tangle of Vong-formed vines.
Reaching out, and ignoring the amount of invisible spots in the Force caused from the Vong-formed life, Jaina finally located the area, a few meters to her right there was a human, somewhere. And that would've been where the water was, then.
The tangled wall of vines prevented her from walking there easily, though.
The Solo girl shook her head, and began to push her way through, only to meet with resistance, at a ferrocrete wall, mostly deteriorated, but still solid enough to prevent her passage.
The splashing continued.
Jaina sighed, and looked around. None of the rest of the team was in sight; they had probably already returned to the ship now, as they were suppose to have left the day before, but the Coruscant mission had taken longer than expected.
"Jaina..."
She heard a voice off to the distance, implying that the others were already back at the ships, and shouted back, using the Force to amplify her voice. "I'll just be a few minutes..." I hope.
Drawing her lightsaber, it illuminated the area, as the light slowly went dimmer. She pushed it through the wall slowly, and carefully, bringing it around to cut a hole through the crumbled ferrocrete, and stopping at a voice from behind. And whoever the voice belonged to, she was sure that it was a Force-user-- the wall was thick enough that without the Force, the voice would've been muffled.
"Who's there?" A male voice from the other side. As said above, his voice was clear, Force-amplified as hers had been, when she had called over to the others.
"Jaina Solo," she answered, trusting that whoever it was probably knew who she was, being the daughter of the famous Leia Organa Solo, and former General Han Solo. She sighed slightly as the thought came to mind, whoever this was, Jania knew very well that because of her fame, he could be dangerous. She held her lightsaber at a slightly defensive stance, just in case he had a Blaster. "And you?"
"I am Obi-Wan Kenobi," he answered. There was another muffled splash, and Jania assumed that he had slipped backwards. Jaina hid a smile for habit, even though she knew that he couldn'tsee her. "I'll be finished cutting through the wall, Obi-Wan Kenobi, so if you'll stand back for a moment..."
At the moment, the name didn't mean anything to her, just a name. She was too frazzled from the last few days to recognize it, either.
He agreed with that, and Jaina finished slicing the wall apart, sounding a warning before she pushed it through, as to not hit Obi-Wan over the head... she was sure enough that she had came close to getting him with her lightsaber anyhow. There was a spoosh sound, as the remainder of the wall went falling into the pool, and splattered Obi-Wan with the greenish water-- again.
She smiled slightly, as she looked him over: a younger man, with a strange hair-cut-- one braid dangling from behind one of his ears, and a shorter cut. His clothes looked very much like most of the Jedi tended to wear as well... a loose fitted outfit, in a rather neutral tone. Not to mention that he was soaked to the bone with the murky looking water. He was on his knees in the water-- which wasn't that deep where he was: it came up to mid-calf on Obi-Wan-- and looking for something.
"That's... very interesting," he murmured, quickly locating what he was looking for-- his lightsaber.
A Jedi.
Only Jedi carried lightsabers... Jaina didn't recognize him from the Jedi Academy... and yet, he didn't seem Dark. His presence in the Force was not quite as evil as it would've been, had he been a Dark Jedi, though he could've disguised the hate, and anger within, if he was strong in the Force, she thought.
His eyes drifted to her lightsaber, which she carried quite easily, not as if she had been a non-Force-user. "You're a Jedi too," he commented.
I've never seen him before, Jaina though. That's odd. "Yeah. You will be looking to come off-planet," she said, thinking over what she was planning to do. He didn't seem evil, at least... there was definitely a feeling of the Lightside within him. "You can come with us, and dry off your robes," Jaina finished, more an order, then a suggestion.
There was a moment of silence, as both thought heavily, Jaina whether it was a wise idea to take this Obi-Wan back to Yavin 4, and Obi-Wan whether to accept her offer. The moment, however, went fast, as Obi-Wan nodded. "Very well then," he answered.
The two of them made their way towards the ships, slowly, both of them wondering all too many things, about the other, and about what was going on. The planet's landscape prevented the two from moving much faster, anyhow, being as it was rather rocky, and littered with old chunks of walls. Walls, and other things that had at one time covered Coruscant in a never-ending city.
It had been once said that the city went down so far that no living person had ever seen the true surface of the planet, and Jaina found herself wondering whether the Vong-formed land was even the planet's surface. Or was there another city down there, in the depths of the green, and soggy ground, a city that had lived underneath the surface for years, and years.
There were always things like that to wonder. Jaina knew that not all of the city had fallen to pieces, there were still many survivors that had eluded the teams sent out. Teams such as the one they were on right now. And nearly all of them composed of the waning number of Jedi, for only Jedi could sense the people hidden within in Force-invisible Vong-formed life. Yes, the waning Jedi... so many had been killed in the wars, but now, hopefully, they would begin to grow again in number. Maybe one day, like the Old Republic Jedi, they would be the keepers of the galaxy's peace once more.
The thoughts of the Old Republic brought her back to this newcomer, this Obi-Wan Kenobi. He didn't have the look of one of the survivors on Coruscant, nor the manner. Thinking of the Old Republic Jedi brought memories to mind, but she couldn't place them. It was as if she was suppose to know who this Obi-Wan was... but Jaina couldn't place him.
She hoped that it was the right thing to bring him to Yavin 4. Jaina wondered about him... he didn't feel like anything she had ever felt in a Jedi... he felt different, in a manner.
If only they had known...
