Zack24,

I appreciate the reviews, but I simply couldn't get the youtube ones to work though the FF link was workable. FF is really tight on links (Why? I do not know). As for the concept of the FF story, it's interesting.

GoldManCharm,

I have seen certain sources that claim crystals do change color, however it was only done when crystals were fabricated (such as Luke's in ROTJ) or healed from the bleeding (Like Ashoka's later sabers). However with the canonicity of Revan and how the caves were portrayed in the games, I was using that as my source.

Guest13,

As much as Vrook would be an excellent addition, he was so utterly destroyed by Kreia that I don't even think his spirit survived. If you examine his corpse it said his very corpse was a wound in the force, I don't think it was possible to survive that, even as a ghost.

P.S. All credit to respective owners!

-Y.A.R.N.

Merrin nearly panicked as once again a storm of dusty clouds blocked the world around her and Malicos from the rest of the tomb. Even more importantly, it also prevented Cal from helping her; she didn't want to have to go through this again. She drew herself into her stance and took a calming breath, she didn't want to fall again.

'Focus.' She reminded herself, trying to still the rapid beating of her heart.

She didn't want to lose when Cal had already helped her come this far.

'Merrin.' Cal's voice suddenly whispered in her head, 'If you need power, take mine.'

Suddenly a wave of light and power poured into her, and she couldn't help the smile as the essence of Cal colored the Force as it empowered her. She closed her eyes for a moment and simply felt Cal's strength and emotion pour into her, letting her worries wash away. She ran the force in conjunction into her magic and her eyes opened — burning green and glowing — as Malicos snorted. His presence in the force blazed with derision and amusement, no doubt unimpressed with the sight.

"Intimidation tactics?" He scoffed, "Alone and suddenly you resort to petty tricks? Then again, I didn't expect any better."

Merrin's eyes narrowed, "No tricks. I am simply remembering why I left Dathomir. Why I chose to study the ways of the Force from my new family. I am remembering why you don't have a place in my life as anything other than a bad memory, and even then it's too generous."

Malicos frowned.

She deactivated her lightsaber and glared at the shade, she only needed one thing in order to destroy Malicos, and it wasn't a lightsaber, "You are a parasite Malicos. A weak man who was not worthy of the title of jedi or of my magics, Cal is right. You were weak. Weaker than him, weaker than me, and weaker than almost every single person I've met."

Malicos scowled and advanced, "Enough!"

This wasn't a battle she had to win by killing Malicos.

He wasn't real.

Just the representation of all her regrets and doubts.

Like Cal said, she couldn't change what she had done, all she could and would do is move forward.

So it was high time she lay her demons to rest.

Merrin drew back her hands and felt Cal's energy surround her before lashing out in tune with her green flames. Malicos raised his lightsabers in a guard as the wave of power slammed into him, causing him to stagger back from the force. He grunted as his lightsabers flashed and crackled as they caught the flames where they crossed. Cal's presence seemed to surge in time with her attack as he poured everything into augmenting her powers. Merrin's fire flashed and spiked in intensity as burns began to appear on Malicos' chest despite his guard and his feet slid back.

'Kick his ass Merrin.' She heard, making her smile.

"Begone." She commanded.

"No!" Malicos shouted as his form began to burn, "You can't! You don't have the power! You are too weak!"

"Perhaps I am weak." Merrin allowed, voice impersonal, "Perhaps as of now I don't have the power to cast you out on my own."

Malicos scowled as his skin blackened and his hair began to curl in the heat, hate glinting in his eyes.

"But WE are more than strong enough to force you out Malicos." Merrin growled, "I am not afraid of you anymore, I don't need my hate or fear of you to cloud my future."

Malicos opened his mouth to scream and Merrin's flames fully engulfed him.

"I will be a jedi, and as I protect my family, they stand with me."

Cal brow was furrowed in concentration as he pushed as much strength as he could toward Merrin. He smiled when he felt her calm down and grinned when he ran his power in tandem with her as she attacked. He could only grin as he felt Merrin's determination and laughed as she cast out Malicos' ghost from her for good. They was a flash of green fire that pierced the swirling dust that was keeping him from directly aiding Merrin. The clouds parted around him and he saw Merrin, hands trailing green fire and poised as though she just let out a force push. He got to his feet and grinned at her, and she turned to face him with a smile.

"You did it?" He asked.

"He's gone." She replied softly.

Cal put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze, "I knew you would Merrin."

Cal's hand rested against the thin wall of the rock that Vandar had raised as his next obstacle and training tool; he frowned as cracks barely extended from where his palm rested. While he hadn't perfected his force-healing while moving (only managing minor damage at his best), Vandar had deemed his abilities as 'acceptable for a good foundation' and moved him to the next force ability. Vandar stressed that moving meditation and healing would come in time provided he kept up on his training (something Cal intended to do as much as possible). Either way, Cal was now working on using shatterpoint or force breach, which admittedly Cal didn't get why he was learning, he could already knock doors down and rip droids apart with a force push, why learn this skill at all?

"Invaluable, precision is." Vandar spoke, cutting off Cal's internal monologue, "Not an invalid tactic, smashing aside your opposition is. However a subtler use of the force, shatterpoint carries. Important it is, to find the flaws in any obstacle or opponent to exploit. To see an object's composition, many a force user ignores in favor of utter destruction. To see the lattice of an individual's weakness, one of the most powerful abilities is shatterpoint's use. To see the fractals of a person's impact on the galaxy, natural talent and intense focus is needed."

Cal stared at Vandar his head in surprise. That made sense, powerful as a force push could be, it was not exactly quiet. Shatterpoint was probably less inclined towards a explosive entrance and more geared towards infiltration. Hacking through a object with a lightsaber was a telltale sign of (generally speaking) a jedi in the vicinity, if a door or armor failed because of faulty composition? Sneaking would become so much easier. As for sensing people's weaknesses and then using the force to reopen the damage, that seemed a bit more violent than Cal was really comfortable with.

"Careful, you must be!" Vandar said sharply, "Correctly understand the nature of a shatterpoint easy is not! Even if mastered, a practitioner of the ability wary, one must remain! To torture, the point of this ability is not!"

Cal nodded frantically, he knew that Vandar was not going to be happy if Cal just assumed to understand the nature of this application of this ability from the beginning or used it on all of his opponents. Even so, it was difficult to correctly apply the force in a physical way on an inanimate object, he half-wished he could test it out on something living, but ripping open a wound on some innocent creature was not something Cal was willing to do. Cal had placed his hand on what he perceived to be the biggest weak-point in the slab of rock, but either the rock flew away from a force push or cracked alongside several invisible fault-lines, but it hadn't crumbled like it should have. Vandar instructed him to pour the force into the imperfections and then make it explode, but the finesse to pick out those points was difficult to fully grasp.

Cal sighed, "I still have a long way to go..."

Another month passed as Cal and Merrin both grew as they fell into a comfortable routine of traveling to the temple in order to grow stronger and coming back to help Xavier while he still felt uneasy about going to the temple. Cere had been honing his shii-cho and shien skills while he struggled with his inner demons as no one wanted to push him into training with the masters if he wasn't ready. With Merrin having banished the shame of Malicos and ready to learn, she had begun sparring with Cal in the visions they now shared while under the watchful eyes of the Zhar and Vandar. Cal was strengthening his saber skills and refining his force abilities while Merrin still had a preference for her magic over physical combat, she hadn't been lagging behind at all in her own saber play.

But great as all that was, it wasn't all smooth flying.

Shatterpoint was frustrating Cal to no end as he honestly just wanted to smash the the damn rocks rather than crumble them. What was he missing? Vandar had tried to help him with only hints here and there in case he had to learn on his own; if he needed to bug out from Dantooine he would be left to his own devices so he wanted the basics down before he expanded on them. He placed his hand onto the slab and poured the force into it frustration guiding the intent. Suddenly, a burst of clarity hit Cal as he felt a fissure deep in the rock's core, the force flowing like a river as it began to spread through the fissure to every edge of the slab of stone.

Hairline fractures exploded across the rock with a rumbling crackle as it went still for a moment before collapsing into a pile of dust.

Cal stared at the dust and then at his hand.

"Seriously?" He bemoaned, "I only figure out how it works when I am literally at wit's end?"

Zhar sounded like he was choking back laughter at Cal's disgruntled face.

After Cal practiced the physical application till he managed it to at least a sixty to eighty percent chance of wholly shattering the rock walls, Vandar had him work on force sight. Which — surprisingly in Cal's humble opinion — came very easily; all it really entailed was focusing the force to 'see' if you couldn't use your eyes. It was practically the same as seeing aside from the fact that everything was in black, grey, or white except for the people around him. Merrin was a vibrant green whose edges flickered like fire, Zhar and Vandar's were pale blue supernovas of the force that pulsed in and out of focus like they were fading in and out of reality.

However, the whole reason why he was learning it wasn't quite as flattering.

Apparently Cal just wasn't in tune with shatterpoint to look and see the importance of people and what they could be — he did remarkably well in the physical applications of the force but subtitles were just not his thing — so this was a way to mitigate that shortcoming in his abilities. In the force, it was capable to pick up the 'hue' (per se) of a person, and then by experience, you might see where their allegiance and alignment really fell. A useful trick to root out traitors and a nearly lost art as the jedi almost completely forgone the actual utility of the ability after a millennia of being in power. In the days of the old republic, a group of aliens known as the Miraluka had the innate ability in the force to use this ability to see as a subsitute to having lost their eyes.

It was one of the most basic, but also one of the most useful. Jedi allowed the force to guide their movements, was sight really so different? It also worked as a way to spot someone who was shrouded in the force or by way of a stealth-field generator, dead useful in order to not be caught off guard.

But there was a problem in the training that had nothing to do with talent.

Merrin was a nightsister.

The only real problem was what should she do in regards to her magic, Cal had no idea how far along in her skills she was. Admittedly reanimating an army of zombies was frankly incredible, but was that the limit? Was she a master? Was she intermediate? Was she a novice? Cal didn't know if he had the tact to comfortably broach the subject without hurting or offending Merrin about the loss of her old family. The masters they trained with explained the flames Merrin used were a variation of pyrokenisis. While it was an ability that was possible for a jedi to use, the nightsisters had mastered and then created a variant that the jedi could not help with. So it was like she was trying to learn a language with an alphabet book after writing and speaking in another way for all her life.

Cal opened his eyes and let out a sigh.

So so so much to do...

Cal was about to leave when master Zhar stopped him and asked him to stay for a moment.

"Yes master?" Cal replied, "What is it?"

"We believe that the time has come that you should leave Dantooine." Zhar said.

Cal paled and went hunter still as his heart pounded, was their time up? Had they been located by Vader and other inquisitors? He needed to warn his friends immediately, they needed to warn Xavier that if he stayed they would kill him!

"How much time do we have?" He demanded, already planning the quickest and least noticable way to escape the planet.

"Calm yourself, you remain safe and unnoticed by the Sith. This isn't a matter of your safety or you allies in danger. This pertains to your intentions regarding the rebuilding of our order and what you intend to teach. Your beliefs about the Jedi could be considered blasphemous to traditional values of the order." Zhar replied, voice calm and even, "While we realize the folly of our mistakes — our arrogance and our dogma — we were in no position to affect a change till you came here. We may disapprove, but in the order decimation, we realized that our superiority was what led the Jedi blind to the threat. The Sith remade themselves to become stronger while the Jedi remained stagnant, however a traditionalist will not agree to your methods or ideas."

"And lives, such a jedi master does." Vandar said, "Believe it beneficial we would, to you see how Shaak Ti has turned a planet into a resistance outpost."

"Felucia." Zhar said simply, "We believe you should travel to Felucia."

Cal's mouth dropped open, a wild burst of hope and joy surging within him, "Master Shaak Ti survived Order 66? She's created a hidden Jedi academy on Felucia?!"

Zhar frowned, "No. While she does have an apprentice, she has decided that Felucia is not appropriate for a temple. The force swirls with life enough to disrupt the senses of both Sith and Jedi looking for a trace fo her, but the indigenous wildlife is simply too dangerous for children. She has used her abilities to militarize the planet and arrange the native species into an army should the Empire find her. Perhaps you should inform your allies about your journey? I believe it would do them good to know that there are still those teaching and learning the jedi arts. Perhaps it would help you all won't feel as alone as before."

"But will she believe us?!" Cal sputtered.

"No. Not quite." Vandar replied.

Some of Cal's exhilaration ebbed at hearing that, but wild excitement still bubbled within him at the thought of a Jedi Master alive. He wanted to tell everyone, but closed his eyes and calmed himself down a bit. He knew that he was intending to teach absolute heresy to a new generation of Jedi when it was safe. If other Jedi survived, no doubt they would disagree and maybe even hunt him down if they were truly fanatical to the old way the jedi had been. Either way, discussing his ideas with a remaining Jedi of the order would help him in any possible negotiation with any other Jedi he might meet. He also needed to make sure that some of the jedi survived if something bad happened while he was going to Felucia.

"I shouldn't take the Mantis..." Cal mused, "And I think three of us should stay back, Greeze wouldn't willingly part with the Mantis to fly another ship if he has his way. We still have that bounty hunter's ship, and we can stock it with supplies..."

Zhar closed his eyes and inclined his head in agreement, "That is a smart decision... Take one of your companions, two if you really deem it necessary, but it is a good that you leave a contingency plan should something go awry."

Cal bowed, "Thank you Master."

"One last thing." Zhar said, "The student is a female zabrak who is very... dark, not yet a sith but very unstable."

Stunned silence met Cal's declaration as he relayed what Master Zhar had told him.

"Master Shaak Ti is alive?!" Cere demanded, "And she's on Felucia?!"

Cal nodded, "She hasn't made an academy or something to rebuild the order, but she militarized the planet as much as she can. The only thing the masters wanted me to do is contact her and see what she thinks of how I am going restructure the order."

Cere steepled he fingers and gave Cal a very long look, "Cal, I don't think she'll agree with what you want to do. Shaak Ti — for all her wisdom and ability — is one of the most rigid followers of the jedi's traditions. Besides we don't even have a concrete plan of how we are going to teach the new generation or what our future goals are."

Cal scrubbed a hand through his hair, "I know, but we need to start somewhere even if it's just a reference point. Even if she doesn't agree, maybe she'll be willing to give pointers and ideas on what to do or where to begin. I know that the beginning must start with physical preparation and meld slowly with force training, but it's not like making an academy is feasible yet. While the Empire is active, any jedi academy on any planet is just a beacon for our enemies to hit us."

"Who are you taking with you?" Merrin inquired.

She had been quiet but interested when Cal mentioned Shaak Ti's student. Cal had not wanted to get Merrin's hopes up since the female zabrak was most definitely not a night-sister, but Merrin seemed to not care in the slightest. She was hoping meeting at least someone like her who knew what she was going through was enough to make her want to go. The only thing holding her back was Zhar's warning about the student's stability in the light. Merrin never wanted to meet another sith, inquisitor or fallen jedi. At the same time, Xavier knew about the campaign on Felucia and wanted to go as he had the most experience in what to expect in regards to any potential threats that were there. Either way, Cal didn't know who to pick.

But he did need to do one thing.

"Before we go," He replied, "we cannot go with any signs we are hostile. You are not going to go carrying red lightsabers. It's a bit early, but I think we should visit the caves. You both need lightsaber crystals and frankly I can't imagine Shaak Ti looking past the lightsabers to hear us out if we get there..."