Aang and Jo followed Exar through the secret passage way from the library, when all of a sudden, Exar stopped and shouted, "Wait! The crystal!"
Jo rolled his eyes. "Relax, Exar, while you two were busy ignoring me again, I got the crystal." He bragged.
Exar snatched it the second he saw it, leaving Jo saying to himself, "You're welcome." And they continued walking.
"What mission do you mean?" Aang asked out of nowhere.
"Huh?"
"You said something like 'I'll stop at nothing to complete the mission any way I see fit.' I didn't see how that relates to our mission, but you seemed to think it was relevant to the topic of secret keeping."
"It will make sense in time. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell you everything; I really do. You're an experienced war vet; you ought to know this sort of thing, right?"
Aang sighed. "Yes. I do. But the information that the Sith are out there was extremely vital. We should've been the first to know. We could've prepared better."
"No matter what we could do, it wouldn't have been enough."
"What does that mean? The only way that makes sense is if he knows the Republic's inner workings."
"He's not. Erk is one of the most powerful people in the galaxy. He could have ears in the Republic, but that's unlikely."
"You're being very shady. I'll remind you of the fact that you two were friends. I think you should spill whatever you have."
"Telling you is more dangerous than keeping you in the dark." Exar explained cryptically. "Trust me on that."
Aang sighed again and looked at Jo, who just shrugged at him.
They found themselves outside again, but in some sort of docking bay with small cargo ships.
"We can't take those. Erk has most likely disabled them already." Exar pointed out. "Only other way out of here is to jump." They stood in front of the ledge wall and jumped straight up and out of the pit.
Aang looked up and noticed they were below the landing platform they arrived on. "I didn't realize we were so far down." He mumbled.
"It's a casual decline the further you go. Hardly noticeable."
"I don't think we've ever jumped that high before." Aang said.
"That's what I'm for." Jo shot up, excited to finally do something. "Grab onto my arms." He said, putting his arms apart one hundred-eighty degrees, then folding his forearms downward.
"I'm good." Exar said. "I was trained for stuff like this." Then he jumped onto the wall, digging into it, beginning to climb up.
Aang locked onto one of Jo's arms; then from below Jo's feet, the ground began rumbling, and they began lifting into the sky.
They caught up to Exar, frozen in place on the platform. They failed to notice the ominous black, M3-A Scyk Fighter landed on another end of the platform. And a darkly cloaked and masked figure standing in front of it.
A cold silence brewed; anger stirred in the air.
"Erk." Exar whispered once out of his trance.
"Exar." Erk replied.
"A little birdie told me you were still around."
"I've always been around. And a lot closer than you realize."
"I've been waiting for a shot at you for a long time." Exar said, drawing out his lightsaber.
"Exar!" Aang intervened. "We use the force only for defense, never for attack."
"You're gonna need to, to take him down." Exar said, igniting his lightsaber and charging at Erk.
He thrust forward, to which Erk just dodged around and behind Exar. Exar swung all the way back around for a headshot, to which Erk ignited his black lightsaber and held Exar's blade in place.
Erk pushed the blades down, leaving Exar vulnerable, then ignited his second black lightsaber and swung down. Exar used the Force and pushed the lightsaber back, then used his agility to jump, spin, and kick Erk away.
Impressed, Erk lifted his head, then nodded in approval. Exar just shrugged.
Erk then disappeared into a cloud of black smoke and evaporated.
"What just happened?" Jo asked.
Then the danger rung in Exar's head. "Look out!" He shouted, pointing behind Jo and Aang.
Aang sensed it too. When Erk reappeared behind Aang, ready to strike, Aang swiveled around, reverse gripped his hilt, and blocked Erk's attack. "That all you've got?" Aang asked, grabbing Erk's blade with one of his extra arms.
Erk only grinned, then disappeared; and because Aang was touching him, he disappeared too.
"Aang!" Exar and Jo shouted.
Jo activated his orange lightwhips and stood on guard. "You might've mentioned that little ability before. How does he do that anyway?"
"That's a longer story I have no time for." Exar replied, thinking of a plan. "Okay, he only disappeared into thin air. He's not in some other dimension, so we should still be able to pull him out. You're going to have to lower your guard and tune into your senses. Don't worry, I got your back."
'That's what I thought before I learned your little secret here.' Jo said, but obeyed anyway. He retracted his whips and closed his eyes. When he reached out, he sensed Erk and Aang nearby. Still withing the area of the landing platform. "He's still here. He's-" Jo was interrupted by Erk's ship suddenly taking flight.
"There!" Jo finished, pointing at the cockpit.
Exar took out his lightsaber, tossed it up in the air, jumped and kicked it through the window. He then used the Force to pull it out of the ship through the engine. But it had no effect.
When Jo observed that, he asked, "What kind of modifications does he have?"
"With the resources he has, who knows?"
Erk appeared on the top of the ship, holding Aang in the air with the force. "With one thrust of my hand, your friend here will hit the platform as he would from ten times the height. Surrender now, and he'll live."
"He's toying with us. He knows I'm too smart for this situation." Exar whispered to Jo.
"I figured, so while we were in the cave on our way out here, I took a precaution." Jo whispered back.
A small robot drone crawled up the ship from behind Erk. It crawled up to him with the intent of electrocuting him. It went up and shocked his foot, and the electricity travelled throughout his body.
Hardly affected, Erk turned around and kicked the drone off his ship; but the distraction was enough to distract him and lose hold of Aang. Exar and Jo delivered Aang safely to the ground beside them.
Then all three of them ignited their lightsabers again. "He's barely warmed up." Exar said. "Don't expect this next bit to be easy.
Erk took hold of Exar through the Force; then some dark energy flowed from his hands, and connected itself to Exar's head.
"Exar!" He heard from beside him.
Exar awoke in a white abyss. He looked down and saw no visible floor, but he wasn't going anywhere. Same with any wall or ceiling. 'Nothing.' He thought.
A big, smoky silhouette of Erk's shape appeared in the air. Exar had never seen anything like this before, so he didn't know what to expect.
"You can't stop what's coming." Erk's omnipresent voice resounded.
"You know just as much as I do." Exar replied. "And I know that I can stop you."
Then the silhouette looked like it took out another lightsaber, except this one was shaped very differently. It wasn't one of his.
Three red blades emitted. One regular one, and two smaller ones on the sides of the hilt, just below the primary blade. Exar knew that lightsaber anywhere.
The silhouette moved forward, like it was charging at Exar. It then swung the lightsaber at him, but Exar felt no strike.
"Exar!" He heard from beside him.
"What happened?" He grumbled.
"He connected some dark energy to your head, then there was a flash. Then right after he did that, some kind of wraith-looking thing appeared out of nowhere and knocked him back before anything else could happen. Then Erk just disappeared." Jo described dramatically.
"I have to say," Aang started, "I thought you were exaggerating his strength for a moment, but he's more serious than even I had previously thought."
Exar leaned his head back and sighed. "We have to head back."
"Already on it." Aang said, he and Jo lifting Exar up and heading towards their ship.
Erk sat down in his cockpit's chair as if he was just relieved of a heavy burden. Reaching under his mask, he wiped his forehead. Then he punched in some hologram codes, and someone appeared on the hologram.
Kaiyah Lomax. Five feet and one inch tall. Short, but immensely tough. She had long, brown, flowing shoulder-length hair. She donned a unique armor set, similar to that of an Imperial Inquisitor outfit, but modified so it wouldn't date itself. The whole set was one newly polished shade of black, with some red splashed on in different places.
"Kaiyah." Erk started.
"Missed me already?" Kaiyah asked with a teasing grin.
"Something just happened, and it confirms the worst. I think the past is coming back to haunt us."
"Us or you?"
"I nearly claimed victory just now, and something came out of nowhere and attacked me. It looked like a wraith. A ghoul, or whatever."
"Is that what you called me for? I have no idea what to tell you about that." Kaiyah said.
"I called to tell you to be careful. We don't know what else is out there, or what that thing can do."
"You know better than anyone else that I can take care of myself. Did you send the message?"
"Oh I'm certain he knows what's coming." Erk said, holding up the crossguard lightsaber.
Calista awaited her husband's arrival on Coruscant; the matter was a need-to-know basis, so Calista herself was Bolen's entire welcoming committee.
Bolen made his entrance from his re-named Republic Lambda-class shuttle with two Republic guards. Bolen turned and nodded his head at the guards, who then faced away.
Bolen and Calista embraced each other.
"It has been too long." Bolen said, burying his face in Calista's hair.
"Far too long." She agreed, then they kissed.
Bolen joined Calista in her office, and went straight to business. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
"I didn't tell the Chancellor everything." Calista replied instantly.
"Okay, well, what was it you didn't say?"
"The body wasn't decomposed, at the moment; but after the explosion happened above the mountain, something stranger happened." She regained her breath. "When I reentered the facility, the whole place looked ancient. Like the place had taken a leap through time or something. One moment it looked new; the next, severely aged."
"What are you suggesting?" Bolen asked, scratching his beard.
"I'm not sure myself; but think about this, the substance we recovered hadn't been discovered before, and it matches nothing close to anything on the table of elements."
"That's extremely far-fetched. I don't think we could find anyone else who would believe you." Bolen's use of 'we' lightened the stress Calista was feeling; she feared he wouldn't believe him.
"Why do you believe me?" Calista asked.
"Through the force, I've seen some equally strange things. I'm very certain the Chancellor's in the same position."
"Oh thank Force!" Calista breathed out.
"I'll step in to cover your position here." Bolen said. "You should get to work gathering that investigation team."
Rye sighed as he finished a less-than-exciting secret call with Aang in his quarters. In the lounging room again, Erickson brought Brett as requested for an important conversation. Brett just sat down, holding his hands and looking down.
Brett wasn't a rebellious teenager; he just desired a purpose like many others, but a clone army was the last idea on anyone else's mind.
"I didn't want to do it." Brett blurted before Rye even sat down across from him.
"Okay?" Rye inquired, allowing Brett to elaborate.
"I was just exploring, looking along the Outer Rim for something. When -I suppose- I was a couple parsecs away from Kamino, I was intercepted-"
"Wait! By who?" Rye asked.
"That's i- I- I," He stuttered for a second, "I don't know; I never saw a face. I was just captured, I woke up on Kamino. Then my life was threatened if I didn't help make the army." Brett explained.
"Okay, but how did you make it? You weren't the most scientific brain; and by our Jedi's report, the technology that was there was beyond anything we have today."
"It was already there when I got there. The voice guided me and told me how to operate the machine. It told me that Jedi would be there to stop it, and that there was a trap door to activate to send them down to the stormtrooper training room. He said if I did all that successfully, then my life would be spared."
"So if I understand properly, you weren't stopped; you were rescued?"
"Uh. . ." Brett thought about it. "You could put it that way, yeah."
"Well, I just came from a rather disappointing chat; it seems we're going to have to have a little bit of training going on here. I want you to participate if you're going to be able to protect yourself from outside dangers."
The implication took Brett by surprise. "You're still going to let me go?"
"Of course." Nicolette joined the conversation after coming from one with Viran. "As long as you're able to protect yourself, we won't keep you from following your heart."
"As long as your heart isn't in making an army for evil." Erickson added.
"Right." "Of course." Everyone else in the room agreed.
"Although," Brett stroked his chin, "If there is another evil out there, why not make us an army?"
"We ought not get too ahead of ourselves. If we exaggerate the problem, an army would be a significant waste of money." Viran said. "And I believe our Jedi will take care of the problem in no time."
"Actually," Rye said, turning to face Viran, "There's a problem there I need to talk to you about."
"Is he certain?" Viran asked.
"Aang was very specific. The cold, the dark, all of it. Nothing else it could mean."
"Is this dark one the only one, at least?"
"That's. . . where it gets complicated." Rye said. "According to Exar, this Sith was in possession of a particular crossguard lightsaber."
"He was taken long ago. He couldn't be involved. That lightsaber and its legacy was destroyed alongside its owner."
"But it has reappeared. With everything and every war the galaxy has endured, we have to be prepared to expect nothing we've ever seen."
Viran sighed. "Who do we talk to about this?"
"There's only one we can talk to: the only one who knew even Kylo Ren's deepest secrets."
"I don't trust him."
"He's our only choice."
The tension was high on the trio's ship. Aang and Exar would share passive-aggressive comments about secretive lifestyles; but Jo would just sit back and listen, hoping he could think of some witty humor to break up the negative vibe he caught on to.
So instead of doing nothing, Jo just let them be and retreated to his room on the ship to seclude himself. He sat for a few moments, then decided to test his memory with a deconstruction and reconstruction of his arm's lightwhip mechanisms.
He finished the reconstruction; but before he reinserted his Kyber crystal, he felt his senses tugging at his mind. He took it as a sign.
'Is it time?' He thought to himself, sighing. He placed the crystal on the ground then stuck his arm straight out, palm facing the crystal. He cleared his mind of all distractions and focused. 'Nothing, and everything.' He reminded himself. The crystal began floating up into the air and stopped halfway to Jo's hand.
Then Jo felt as if a flood of water was rushing through him and around him. He felt the rush of the force coming back to him, a sense he hadn't felt in years. He felt the quick, the refreshing, and the cool of the light. He felt life.
But with the light comes the dark.
The refreshing cool he felt transformed into a spine-chilling cold. 'That I didn't miss,' He thought. With the light, he felt the dark; with life, death. But something was wrong, it seemed. 'Is the force trying to tell me something?' Jo thought.
Then Jo received a flash of a vision. For a split second, he saw darkness; then a red illumination. A specific illumination he knew all-too-well belonged to the weapon of a former enemy.
Then he saw it in the hands of the Dark One (or 'Erk' as Exar referred to him), standing over Exar. The vision ended just before the triple-bladed lightsaber struck Exar down.
'Can it be?' Jo thought.