To my loyal reviewers (hint, poke)
Smenzer: Who would've liked it when they destroyed Coruscant? I sure didn't... grumble. But we live with it, I think. Think. Yeah. Yeah, feel sorry for Obi-Wan. Feel VERY sorry for him. Snrk. I hate to say it, but you were wrong. Since you emailed me about your ideas. No crossovers today... as for Qui-Gon... well... you'll see. (grins)
Lena Breeze: Thank you for reviewing me! Well, you'll see how it unfolds. I separated everyone for a reason, of course...
Master Darth Warious: A bit contradicting, your title there, sis. Yes, I updated. Heh heh...
Darth Zelthia: I touched you with the crying Padmé scene? Aww... I'm touched. Heh. This story's point is NOT to see how the characters react, mind you, that's just a side point that amuses me greatly. I have a plot here.
Molly: My biased beta/fanfic Master. Snrk. Egads, yes, I'm glad that I can even freak you out, considering you beta for me. Well, hopefully I'll be able to freak you out in coming chapters, not this one. This one you've read most of already. None of the characters have any IDEA what I'm up to... I'm tempted to reveal some of it to you, mind you, but that's about it. Heh. (hugs) Thanks for replying so soon to this chapter update, considering I hadn't updated you for about 4 months. But I did add some stuff since your last update...
Audreidi: I know that Jacen's too stable. I can't help that. I could probably send the Obi/Jacen scenes to you, but you really are lacking time, I know. Sigh. I'll work on resolving it. But not Obi-Wan's panic. Nu-uh. He has to panic. Look at what the poor man's going through! We've both very influenced on our main stories by LotG, my dear Master. (shrugs) Can't help that. It gets worse... look who's making an appearance into this chapter. (evil grin) Hope you like this chapter. You don't know HOW often I kept going back on Jacen's name after I called him Jether by mistake, you realize. YOU'VE RUINED ME. Heh. I keep wanting to write him as Jether's character rather than Jacen... I find it amusing, actually. Odd that Jaina stays Jaina and not Maei. You always bugged me about my chapter length... this one long enough for you? (cough9pagescough)
Mistress of Parchment: (sarcastically) No. I'm not going to continue ever again. What's this update look like to you, sister? Snrk. Sorry. Here's an update, hope you like it.
Chapter Five
Familiar underbrush, trees, and woods littered the area around the Jedi Temple. Luke stepped into it, and all possible fears melted away into a peace that came from that familiarity, and comprehension.
Nothing to worry about...
But it was there, and he knew it. He was only trying to convince himself of that perfection. Deep down within himself, he knew there was something wrongdeeply, and completely wrong. Things of paradoxal nature oft were like that, though the Jedi Master had no clue what was truly going on.
Something small could destroy them without a moment's thought.
He breathed in deeply, breathing in the temporary calm that was there, letting himself take it in, become the peace...
Mara standing beside him, hand on lightsaber, jerked Luke out of the peace that had for a moment surrounded him. As always, the Jedi Master to see peace and calm in a situation that could completely cause the galaxy to crumble. And he remembered why they were out there. If there's Sith once more...
...Then why haven't we sensed them before? Were we that lax?
"Anything?" he asked Mara in a low voice. She was standing slightly in front of him now, scanning the trees and underbrush with both eyes and the Force.
She shook her head sharply, eyes reflecting the order to be quiet, along with a grimness he had not seen in a long while. Grimness overshadowed with a faint fear for what could happen if the Sith returned. It was a hint of what she must've been like years ago in her days as the Emperor's Handa reminder of what she was like when they had just met.
Someone far darker than she was now. He shivered from the damp feel of death through the Force, his memories, the chill damp of the jungle air penetrating his clothing andcausing a physical chill.
The area was still familiar completely... he knew it as well as he knew his own X-wing, yet it didn't seem so peaceful any longer.
It was disturbing to think that he had not noticed the presence of the darkside on the now or, at least, for now peaceful Jedi Temple. Though the Jedi Master was unaware of the fact that this was a completely new happening, that the Sith had come from a past into a window of time that was alternate against what he had grown up in, it still bothered him.
It was a challenge to not think that it was his fault. Yet the Jedi were so few, how could've they noticed? They had been so tied up with the nonexistant within the Force Yuuzhan Vong.
Perhaps somehow they have only just came into being? Perhaps somehow it was akin to our last challenge, elusive to the Force itself?
He didn't know.
Luke shook his head hard, clearing himself from the thoughts. He didn't know what would happen now. The whole strange feelings throughout the Force reverberated in his mind. He shivered. There was something else out there...
Something more than the Force?
And he couldn't grasp it, though it was there.
It felt like some child had built up the New Republic now, looking at it through the Force. One block pulled out, one small holo deactivated, and the entire thing would fall into little pieces. And something more was out there. The big bad Tusken raider from little stories as a child. He felt like the little lost bantha who couldn't find his home.
Something felt wrong with the Force. Everything seemed so off balance, like someone would push it over.
The domino effect of dark reactions was already beginning, though he couldn't see what the catalyst was that had brought it to that point once more.
They couldn't let that one stone fall. Not now. Not after they had just unburied themselves from the previous collapses. We don't have enough Jedi to protect this New Republic. Even if we would be accepted by all.
He reached out, felt the area, felt for the dark mind Mara had found. He completely trusted her thereknew she would never joke about such a thing. Something had to be there...
Broadening his reach, Luke closed his eyes, following a resolved Mara into the jungle using nothing but the Force to guide him along after her. She could sense this, led him slower than normal as to not crash into anything. But he couldn't find the dark presence. Oh, there was everything else he was used to: the trees, and life that lived on the forth moon of Yavin, the feel of the reconstructed Jedi Temple there, all those who lived within. Everything felt alive and full of light. There was nothing he could find that was dark.
A ripple of uncertainty, and a sudden rift in the Force. He halted his search of the area, reaching deeper...
Then he was hit with a very familiar presence... almost. Almost?
He froze.
Luke's eyes snapped open, a blue ice in the green shadows, and he drew in a sharp breath. Time almost slowed, his breath making a sharp thunderclap in the half-peace of jungly calm. Then the colors of the area struck him, too rich they seemed, too bright, and the light hit him easily.
He blinked. Nothing was out of place. Nothing but the one presence...
Another thing that could bring down a mountaina storm, he almost reminded himself. A storm dark enough to destroy the entirety of the Old Republic's Jedi, and leave me the lone heir to that power.
Mara turned around at his sudden halt, looking back in front of her to nearly crash into a tree. They were no longer so quiet, but something strange in Luke's eyes made her want to stop and ask. So she did. "What do you sense?" she asked quickly, quietly, all senses suddenly alert, a bright light in the Force. She dropped her hand to her lightsaber. The light in her eyes was far from pleasant, though reassuring. If it's an enemy...
Luke's eyes were startled, he seemed as if flash frozen to the spot. When he found his voice again around the lump that seemed to have suddenly formed in his throat, his voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't drank for days. He seemed terrified.
"No. It's not true." A whispered statement, terror from dreams that had plagued him for the longest time after Cloud City...
"What's not true?" Mara asked, prompting him gently. When Luke refused to make an answer, eyes colored with fear she walked over to him, placing arms around his neck, and staring him straight in the eye. "Do I have something on my face?" she asked glibly.
Luke forced a faint smile. The humor seemed wrong coming from his wife, so on alert that she looked to be standing on the edge of a knife. But he couldn't force anymore words from his mouth, standing there as if he had been struck by lightning.
Mara stared at him, a strange look on her face. "Luke? Luke?"
He suddenly smiled, a face half through grief, and hugged her tightly. "I'm going crazy," he mumbled. "That's all."
She wanted to tear the truth from him, wanted to beat him over the head, but instead sank into his embrace. "It'll be all right."
He was cold. And not just from the chill of space. Sure, space was cold, and Anakin did admit that, as he shivered, half awake. But the chill he felt was not from that. It was deeper, darker.
The darkside is as cold as any day on Hoth, but unlike the chill from the snow it is not so lightly banished.
It's looking for me, he thought, shuddering. And he didn't even know what it was that sought him.
But it was there. Somewhere. Somehow, it knew he was here. It knew who he was.
As a child, he had feelings sometimes. He still did. He'd know what was going to happen a moment before it happened, he'd know that he was in trouble a moment before Watto came after him, he'd know...
Just like he knew he would leave Tatooine someday. Just like he had dreamed of being a Jedi, and now that dream seemed so far away, and yet so close. Just beyond his grasp, and yet so far away that not even a Jedi could grasp it with the Force.
Anakin had the strangest feeling that something completely beyond him was happening and yet, it was something that was completely about him too. My eyes, he thought to himself. The Jedi has my eyes. Blue eyes glazed with ice, that tore through his soul.
He didn't know where it had came from, but it was there. That thought in his mind, toying with him. He didn't want to go back to sleep. It hurt to sleep and see such strange things in his dreams. Seeing the darkness that was always there.
And it seemed just all too easy to grasp.
It grabbed him as usual, pulling him into the uneasy dreams of an untrained Jedi. The future was always in motion, but that didn't mean what he seen was not truth. It could happen, but that didn't mean it would happen. And this time it was different.
As if everything was wrong, as if they were following a path that lead far away from everything he ever knew. And somehow, he didn't think it was because of the change that was happening, being taken from Tatooine.
It was just different. Unsettling.
Twin suns rose across a horizon changed by time, years, and battle... a flash. Qui-Gon?
Now he was falling... falling into a fire that nearly consumed him.
Anakin froze, cold beyond belief, though the dream self was crying out from the pain of the consuming flames that flickered around him, grabbing at his cloak, and burning it into small pieces. He ripped it off, trying to escape drowning in flame.
...I'm older...
Someone grabbed him a moment before his fall.
...he's familiar...
There were three people... again the person with his eyes, and two others. Anakin had the impression that he was floating above both darkness and flame.
...who are they?...
The Force filled in for him. The one was Obi-Wan. The one who had saved him.
...I didn't think he'd save me...
But he didn't know who the others were. One was a black robed person, akin to the alien who had attacked them back on Tatooine. Anakin still had no name for the blue-eyed man. A child's notice of one small thing: Obi-Wan no longer wore the braid he had last time Anakin had seen him.
...and I have a lightsaber!...
He fought with the dream, trying to escape it. Not being able to hear what was going on, it still held him fast in its web. Not letting go, but not letting him see it all.
Two people burst into the dark room the Jedi Qui-Gon closely followed by a red-haired woman. Her eyes were a jade flame, but they showed relief at seeing... someone. Anakin didn't know who, though his dream self did. He shouted something, but again, it was silent.
He was still in midair though. A startled Obi-Wan dropped him from the Force-hold, and he caught himself before falling into the flames again.
Then everything happened at once; an explosion from the flames, two lightsabers hissed to existence, Obi-Wan was falling backwards...
And Anakin was freed from the dream suddenly; sitting up sharply, his head snapping back into the wall. "Master!" he cried, not knowing where the name came from. Then it completely let go of him, he was the ten year old boy from Tatooine once more.
Then the ship came from hyperspace, he could feel it rattle as it dropped from lightspeed into normal space. Inwardly, he wished he could take a look at how it was put together, just to see how it was done, and how the pilot kept it from falling apart in spaceapart from the obvious space tape, he was certain.
He stood up, shivering from the memory of the dream, though the memory all too quickly faded from his memory into the shadows of his mind. He still felt cold to the core.
As if it all were too normal to think of...
"We know little of the time during the Purge from any Jedi's perspective, but many Imperial supporters who lived during that time, and other information sources were able to tell us what happened. Lord Vader, after turning against the Jedi, set out to erase the Jedi from the galaxy. The Emperor Palpatine declared all Jedi to be enemies of the Republic...
"Slowly, they were all killed by the Sith until all who remained were..." Jacen paused. "Master Yoda, Vergere, and... you."
Obi-Wan did not comment. Silent blue eyes burning into Jacen's. Jacen felt very cold, very scrutinized, as if Obi-Wan was attempting to read through his soul, yet understand the whole tale. He continued.
"Vader had two children, my mother, Leia Organa-Solo, and Master Luke Skywalker. Leia had been placed into the protection of Bail Organa, and adopted by them, while Luke was left in the care of his aunt and uncle on Tatooine..."
Cold...
How can you be cold on a desert planet?
Fear...
It's leading to the Darkside.
Anger...
No.
Qui-Gon closed his eyes. Obi-Wan...
My Padawan can't be dead. Inwardly he knew this, he claimed this. Obi-Wan can't be dead. Not now. Not with the Sith returning. Not...
He raked his fingers through his hair absentmindedly, pausing only for a moment when his left hand found itself stuck in amidst a tangled mess of uncombed and greasy hair. He wondered how long it had been since he had washed his hair properly, but that was the only realization he had of the nervous gesture.
He was afraid.
He reached out further into the Forcethe Force that was no longer there. Well, it was, and it wasn't. It was almost hazy though, and he had the oddest feeling that if he were in the Core, the Force would be gone. The disturbance centered around that, around everything that wasn't. His feet refused to hold him up with that realization. He sat down heavily on the nearest solid object that wasn't the grainy sand of Tatooine, or well heated rocks that had been out in the duo-powered sunlight all day. Those would be like miniature ovens, small frying pans meant to burn the feet and tender bottoms of any unfortunate sentients who wandered by, although unintentional on the behalf of the rocks.
Though a well trained Jedi Master, he could scarcely focus on everything that enveloped himemotions overriding peace for a moment, and then the whole focus of the moment taking over again.
It was twisted.
Centered around what
He had to admit to being more confused than he had ever been, even as a Padawan. He knew Obi-Wan had to be alive, he knew the Sith was alive. He knew it was oddly quiet. And familiar.
He stood up. He didn't realize he had sat down, but standing up was a relief. It cut through him, and forced him to face the brutal reality. The Force fed him no information of what was happening. He was disconcerted by the brutal reality that if this carried on, he would be helpless. Most of the Jedi would be helpless.
We rely on the Force as little children on our parents... to have it ripped away...
Reaching down for a second to shake sand out of his left boot with a muttered curse, he looked up at the sky, which was growing remarkably dimmer, even with the two suns overhead. There was scuffling sounds from within the ship he was still beside. He had sat down on the ramp leading up into the access tubes without any thought. Even without a proper focus, he could tell those within were frantic.
And he had to remind himself of what was going on. The Jedi Master dashed aboard the ship, looking around it. It seemed almost empty, yet everyone was there, running around in circles, like a vrelt with its tail on fire. The lack of sense from the Force was far too confusing.
Nearly tripping over the R2 unit, he attempted to get out of the rush of peoplethough there were no more than ten or so aboardall of them seemed to have one common thought. What the hell happened to our queen! Even though this wasn't much of a vocal expression, it was in the Naboo people's eyes.
He had to echo it, albeit silently, while seeking a center point. Where on Kessel is my Padawan, and what the hell happened to him!
Qui-Gon closed his eyes, taking a breath, and attempting to run through an old Jedi calming technique, even without the Force. Normally completely calm, focused on the living Force... but theForce wasn't there.It was hardly effective, he was still in knots inside, wanted to scream, wanted to run away... All this centers around something...
Coruscant, the jewel of the galaxy, the center of everything the Republic stood for. Just the name awoke images in countless sentients across the galaxy of one thing, unless they had been hiding in a rock for generations.
Coruscant.
Just to hear that name, one would think of the planet, the world that was the linchpin to everything that happened, the unnatural glisten of buildings that went deeper than any sunlight could reach, no matter how bright the star. A world that's upper levels glistened with brilliant light, and that's lower levels were covered in shadows, a living hell to even a Jedi.
Coruscant.
Based on the corusca jewels by name, it was easy to see how some sentient being, somewhere in the mists of the galaxy could've named it such. It was indeed a jewel, in appearance, brilliance reflecting off of ferrocrete and plasisteel walls, roofs of multiple forms of bricks, metals, and other creations of a technology based world.
Home of the Senate, the Jedi Council, everything that their galaxy was founded upon: the decisions, the changes, later on the Empire that would try their every belief, every moral, and everything any respectable person with morals clung to. Coruscant, the Imperial City, the capital city of both the Old Republic and the Empire.
The balance point that could be tilted to destroy everything.
It was strange to think how one world, so centered around technology, would be chosen by the Jedi Council as their base, their center point for a Temple. When their beliefs were all focused on the Force, on life, it seems impossible to realize why they had chosen Coruscant, rather than another world, more alive than the dead hunk of rock that was covered in metal. But if one was to look deeper into the Jedi beliefs, to see it as a search deeper into the centerpoint of humanity, if such a term fit in an order made up of as many aliens as there were humans, you would understand why.
For Coruscant, the two rocks balanced on a scale that could determine everything that would happen in the future by one shift, was as much a centerpoint as anyone could've dreamed possible, besides the Force itself. Even without true life, it was still crucial for the galaxy... as were the Jedi.
However, at present, sixty-five years before the time after the Vong Wars, the Jedi were anything but linchpins, crucial protectors of the galaxy, and calm, peaceful beings who meditated on peace and harmony when not saving the galaxy from disaster. No, they were anything but calm, as thousands of Jedi Masters struggled to regain control over the Jedi Templesome worried about the other Jedi across the galaxy on missions from anything to cabbage disputes on Alderaan, to gang control on Ord Mantell, to retrieval of a Black Sun warlord on Borleias.
The Force had vanished, and they were left nearly as helpless as the remainder of the non-Force-sensitive beings across the galaxy who were unaware of the crises that had befallen the exalted Jedi, Masters of the Force and its ways. Of course, they still had years of training to fall back on, even without the guiding hand of the omnipresent energy field known as the Force, and other skills to back them. The most dangerous part of the situation was attempting to calm the younger Jedi, mostly first and second year Padawans, and the crechéling aged children, ranging from 2 to fourteen, as many were confused by the lack of presence.
With the chaos unfolding within, it was little wonder that the complete disappearance of a few known Jedi, and other people very tied into the present happenings, had gone unseen, and unfelt by all.
I should not say completely, for there were those who had noticedthose whose goal had been to notice. But they did not count, most of them, for at the present the plot circles around the happenings of the now and then. Yet there were a couple Jedi who, unnoticing to the complete chaos around them, even if they were a part of it did realize the absence of two Jedi, a Tatooine slave boy, a queen, and a Sith. One, of course, was the esteemed Jedi Master Yoda, but the other three were unknown to the canonthe first being a newly Knighted human female named Dia Ryshuu Calthye, a male Jedi Master called J'thwa Niathan Kyrae, and his Padawan, who most called Chade, but her full name was Cy'ladeialan Flaiya Aldosdaughter. Cy'ladeianlan had been born on Myrkr, away from the Force, and later on retrieved at the age of two by a scout team. Though her skills weren't particular in anything, she did have one ability, a tie to a darker side of things, and that was to recognize death when she seen it.
Kyrae had taken her as an apprentice at a the age of twelve. After a few days of stumbling through all eleven syllables of her name, not to mention the three syllable title of Padawan that went beforehand, Kyrae had shortened her name to Chade.
Padawan Cy'ladeialan Flaiya Aldosdaughter hadn't minded being retitled Padawan Chade in the least.
However, it is Dia Ryshuu Calthye whom we are concerned with at the moment, and it shall be Dia who we meet. She was a relatively short Jedi, with a friendly face, and a preference to wearing remarkably strange clothing colors merely for the sake of it. She had dark eyes, and straw colored hair with silver streaks, even though she was only in her mid twenties.
And she didn't know Obi-Wan Kenobi or Qui-Gon Jinn, so why she had sensed their disappearance was a mystery she couldn't comprehend, and, with the disappearance of the Force, she couldn't try to comprehend anyhow.
It was still there, that much was obvious to anyone who opened their minds to the old bonds they used to have to tie them to those connections, just cut away. Not like on Myrkr, where one had no clue that the Force existed at all, it was like being completely normal, it just wasn't accessible. As if someone had greased the strands most Jedi could weave into a telekinetic rope with oil from a Kath hound's hide, or the threads that made up the powerful mental bonds of a Master/Padawan pairing, or the puzzle pieces of the galaxy had been placed behind a solid wall. A Padawan could still sense their Master, with a slightly more telepathic connection than most would have had, but there was no contact in that bond.
Try as she might, Dia couldn't even get her datapad to lift even a couple galactic standard inches off of the table, let alone half the length she normally could've levitated a much larger object without thought.
But there was one thing she could read from the Force amid the chaos that reeled through her mind, and that was that five crucial beings to the fate of the galaxy were missing. She had never met any of themthough she thought it was possible she may have seen Kenobi at classes while she was still a Padawan but one thing was clear.
She had to find them.
She didn't even know where to begin, or what they even looked like. She had to find them somehow.
And she didn't plan on failing.
The centerpoint of the galaxy, and it was gone. Destroyed, wiped away by a race set on annihilating all technology. At least they had been defeated, Obi-Wan Kenobi thought, grimly, though Jedi teachings forbade him to continue thinking on the path he had been on. He took a breath, running calm through his mind. can't be can't be can't be how could they destroy everything how could anakin turn against me why would've i trained him the boy was dangerous surely qui-gon would've senator palpatine's evil but that's impossible...
His thoughts were running away, a tangled mess of everything that refused to be sorted out.
He hadn't stopped Jacen from telling a full version of the history of the wars against the Yuuzhan Vong, nor from going back further, to the fall of the Republic, to Darth Vader and the Emperor Palpatine, and all that had happened at that time either.
It all seemed like a dream.
And it was minutes of silence after Jacen had finished that Obi-Wan finally looked up, staring at the wall with a haunted expression.
The boy is dangerous, Master...
They're holding me back!
I don't think Anakin is ready for this.
He is the Chosen one.
Do what must be done...
He shook the memories that weren't his own away, turning a dull blue gaze on Jacen's all to knowledgeable one. "Anakin... was the cause... of all this?" he asked softly. Though the story was told, he needed confirmation.
"Yes."
Obi-Wan swore under his breath. He had a very, very bad feeling about this. Jacen raised his eyebrows slightly to hear the word coming from the younger version of a man he had grown to think of as the mythical, perfect Jedi. I wonder what sort of language Master Yoda uses, then, Jacen thought wryly.
"And I'm dead because my apprentice killed me when he turned to the darkside!"
"Well, he killed you much later on."
Small comfort. I'm still dead. He swore again, this time much more colorfully, borrowing a Corellian street term that his Master would've cringed to hear from his mouth. Even though it was Qui-Gon he had learned the word from. "And Senator Palpatine took over the galaxy, and Anakin's children are the present Jedi Masters!" He closed his eyes, trying to keep from freaking out.
Jacen nodded slightly, mumbled an affirmative after taking a look at Obi-Wan's closed eyes. He took in a breath of calm, and waited a few minutes for Obi-Wan to calm down somewhat. A flicker through the Force...
...something's very wrong...
But he lost it when Jaina sent through their twin bond a quick shoutout. /Tell your 'Jedi' friend to wake up from reality. We're coming out of hyperspace in five./
/Check that./
He stood up, repeated Jaina's message dutifully. "Would you like some stimcaf, or anything to eat before we land?" he asked, softly, with a mildly comforting tone.
Obi-Wan was silent, stood up stiffly, and felt his bones crack a bit as he moved from the cramped position, though not as bad as he received after meditating for any length of time. "Yes, thank you," he said, remembering some manners a moment later.
Jacen smiled, and disappeared in a moment.
And Obi-Wan wished he could cry, but knew this was not the time for such actions.
