All credit to respective owners.
-Y.A.R.N.
Cal's group watched as Jerserra's went up in flames as her body was laid in a funeral pyre and set ablaze in traditions of the Jedi. To be honest they didn't exactly have the materials to do a traditional night-sister burial or whatever that counted as (it was also the fact they weren't even on Dathomir). They were silent and watched calmly as Merrin knelt by the pyre, whispering prayers for her sisters to guide her fallen sister to some sort of peace, any type of peace. With her handled things should have settled but the fact she had found them had only confirmed what they were afraid of happening for so long.
Dantooine was not safe while hosting their force presence.
Their collective force presence when unrestrained was enough to send a pulse of light that pierced the shadows that nexus of the force that shrouded Dantooine. They could leave if they had no alternative, but where could they go? They needed to find a planet that was far enough out of the reach of The Empire, but where would that be? There had to be planets that the Empire simply didn't care about because they went unattended even when The Republic was around. But what planet would that be?
Bogano was definitely monitored if they ever returned.
Felucia wouldn't welcome them with Shaak Ti residing there.
Kashyyyk was under constant siege with no end in sight for the moment.
Zeffo was probably still being plundered by the Empire for the secrets that the Zeffo sages left there.
Dathomir was too steeped in the darkness to keep them sane and that wasn't even considering the night-brothers that would definitely attack them on sight now that Merrin had probably lost all standing with them.
Any of the core worlds were too dangerous as the Empire were making sure those world were happy in order to keep the Galaxy's other issues largely ignored.
Nar Shadda was a problem for obvious reasons — bounty hunters and other characters of unscrupulous morals even seeing them an deducing what they might be was not something they needed to deal with —even if they weren't going to raise a Jedi academy.
Korriban was not even worth thinking about.
So what was left for them?
They could learn to shield themselves in the force, to tamp down on their presence, but the stronger they grew, the more restraint they would need. Jerserra hadn't been a skilled user of the force and she could feel their presence, anyone who actually trained with the dark side — Darth Vader or The Emperor among that list — would be able to sense them before long if they didn't figure something out fast. The last thing he wanted was Vader coming to kill them all since he could undoubtedly find them if he actually looked hard enough. Cal wanted to stay, Dantooine had been nothing short of a fantastic opportunity to grow in skill and power, but he would rather leave than subject his family to danger. he sighed and watched the black smoke that floated into the sky as the flames fully consumed the last of Jerserra's mortal from.
Time to plan out their next move.
Darth Vader looked out over the stars as an admiral strode up behind him, "Lord Vader?"
"Report."
"The situation on Kamino has been taken care of. The cloning centers are once again under our command and we have increased our monitoring of the world to dissuade further rebellions."
"And the rogue cloners?"
"Dead. They tried to escape but were taken care of by our heavy troopers and gun emplacements. Kamino is secure."
"You're dismissed."
"Sir." The admiral acknowledged before leaving to attend to other duties.
Vader thought to the cloning labs and wondered what the Kaminoans had thought when they tried to formulate their insurrection. They must have known that the Empire was aware of the going ons of the their planet as they used their cloning facilities to churn out the Empire's stormtroopers. To think that they could create a separate cloning facility to churn out anti-empire troops was laughable. Either way, with the situation now handled, it came time to turn his attention to other matters he had wanted to take care of. Crushing any further rebellions and rebel cells were more important now that they didn't need to worry about a clone insurrection.
X-1 swung his saber and batted blaster bolts away from him as he pushed through his training corridor as several practice drones hovered around him and fired at him. He felt a blaster bolt hit his side and he growled angrily as he thrust his hand out and smashed the drones against the wall. He frowned and gingerly felt his side, hissing slightly in pain as his fingers pressed on the scorched area of his side. He had set the drones to not kill him when he got tagged, but he set them to definitely hurt him when they struck as motivation to improve his skills in blaster deflection. With a sigh he deactivated his lightsaber and stalked over to where he placed a medkit to retrieve a pack of bacta patches he kept in his storage and tore off the adhesive covers before he pressed one against his side. He grumpily thought of the fact he wasn't included in the raid on Kamino and the fact he was upstaged by a bounty hunter — off all the people and officers in the Empire — to command the 501st when he could have led them to victory on Kamino just as well if not better. He was spawned from a genetic sample of the Jedi Falon Grey that was a miracle as he knew that it had taken countless attempts and armies failed abominations before he and X-2 had been made and fought in The Clone Wars.
He scoffed to himself and let the hate for Darth Vader join the festering rage for the Sith Lord grow just that much more at how little the Sith Lord thought of him and how many slights against him he committed.
He would show him.
He would become a true Sith Lord and become too powerful for Vader to stop.
And when it was time, he would destroy Darth Vader and take his rightful place as the Emperor's right hand.
And then follow the one rule that he had found of the Sith from what texts he had managed to find in the times he had the chance to look; when he scoured as many Sith planets and acquire all the knowledge he could hoard before Vader could intervene.
That the apprentice would inevitably kill the master.
He let the savage glee of the image of him destroying Vader and the Emperor to rule the galaxy fuel his ego and self-absorption further.
He almost couldn't wait.
He turned to his datapad and read reports on the current Jedi he was hunting, there hadn't been many leads to follow, even with the alerts that The Empire had on the ship and what they looked like, reports had been scare. They knew what the ship looked like as AT-ST walkers had seen it on both Zeffo and Illum, but that didn't make things all that much easier. As a luxury yacht, it actually was owned by a number of the wealthier elite and detaining them was not helping The Empire's image (not that he really cared over that sort of thing).
With the little time that now remained on Dantooine, Cal went to the temple while everyone else busied themselves with the ships and choosing a resettlement system. He threw a cot to sleep down, a storage pack with some rations, and BD-1 hopped off his shoulder to guard him. He didn't waste time mourning his temporary home and sat cross-legged next to the crumbling ruins. He dove into The Force and swam into the visions where he trained himself. He himself clad in robes once again and knew Revan stood in front of him.
Revan looked at Cal who was knelt on the floor, "So it's finally time?"
Cal nodded, "Yes. Our presence in The Force has finally overpowered the shadows of the nexus that hid us from other's Force perception."
Revan was quiet for a long moment, "Do you know where to go?"
Cal shook his head, "We don't know what planets are safe. Even if we find a planet that doesn't have an Empire presence, we are still able to be located by the force if we linger too long. We are going to start refining our ability to conceal ourselves, but we can't stay here until we master it completely."
Revan nodded at that and Cal rose, "How much time do we have to work with me?"
"Days." Cal replied shortly, "Not enough time to go much farther with our training like we used to."
Revan nodded, "The get up. I want to teach you the final skill I can in this little time, Force Judgement."
Cal stood and nodded, "Okay."
"Ideally," Revan began, green lighting crackling up and down his arms, "I wanted to strengthen your Tutaminis and your Force Deflection to my standards before we got into it, but time isn't on our side anymore. Considering how long we did have to work on those skills, you can definitely catch blaster bolts and lesser lightning blast like the night-sister. That said, I am going to grill you relentlessly on Force Judgment since you never actually fought someone with master of Force Lightning, that night-sister would barely tickle compared to a real-user. You are going to power your Force Judgement up as much as you can, I expect you to keep training it after you leave, but we need your foundation strong to build up on it. What really helps in developing that technique is having experienced it, which is why I trained you the way I did. You better be ready to spend all your time here, we need every attosecond you can manage."
Cal grimaced at the fact that Revan wasn't going to be gentle — and that the fact that Revan had been 'gentle' all this time — but determination blazed in his eyes, "I'm ready."
Cere, Xavier, and Greeze poured over the map of the galaxy, trying to find any planet that might grant them amnesty while allowing them to work on hiding their presence without the Sith sensing them and coming down on them. Merrin silently meditated but it was clear she was listening in after Cal decided that he needed as much time as he could get at the temple with them having to leave soon. It was slow going, Dantooine had been ideal, but their focus on gathering power had made them forget that for the stronger they grew, the more their light began to pierce the darkness. If someone as inexperienced as Jerserra had found them, then Vader and the Emperor would only have to actually focus to sense them through the galaxy. They didn't have the time for them to fully learn how to shield themselves unless they did it like Cere did after her torture on Nur (something that they would not do). They couldn't let themselves be caught — at least not on Dantooine — if not for themselves than for the innocent people who would die if they were discovered having not told The Empire about the Jedi on their planet.
They could go back to their nomadic ways — in fact that was what they planned to do for the beginning — to keep moving making minimal stops to gather supplies, refuel the Mantis and Mercenary Star, and then bug out before suspicions could be raised. While Cal and his crew had done this and managed to stay undetected for a whole year, it was not cheap. Their ships would require fuel, maintence and general upkeep for them to keep moving, and they would need a steady stream of credits to keep it going. They had posed as bounty hunters back the — much like Jerserra had — and they could do that again, but that drew unwanted attention. Good bounty hunters were hard to find, and as Jedi in hiding they were very skilled at collecting bounties and gathering what they needed till their next stop. But the steady flow of credits was not always a good thing to have when it came to something like bounty hunting. While it gave them a very impressive reputation, the last thing they wanted was The Empire finding out about them and then send a missive hiring (or a demand considering it was The Empire) them to hunt people — which could very well be Jedi or themselves — down.
"It's not like we can just find a place where the Sith won't scour once our powers echo through The Force." Cere sighed, " We'd have to shield ourselves as much as we can otherwise there's no place where we can really hide out…"
"Isn't there some secret temple or bunker?" Xavier inquired, tilting his head as he looked at the hologram of the galaxy and various planets, "There must have been contingency plans that the Jedi made in case this was going to happen. Some place where there is a stronger perception filter that can't be sensed has to exist as a hiding place."
Cere scoffed humorlessly, "Of course, but all that would information that would be on the Jedi temple on Coruscant or any other planet with a temple. No doubt the Emperor has gone through all those files and has those planets watched for any Jedi activity. They don't need to do anything other than wait for anyone to get in, snoops around the temple, and try to look through the files. The moment they get too close the system ships are marked and if they get to the temple they executed on sight for being suspected Jedi."
Greeze chimed in, "We looked at every place where there could've been a bunker to see Empire blockades covering the planet. Not even I could get close without alerting them and we didn't have Merrin at the time to help."
Xavier sighed, "Then we could try and join a rebel cell."
Cere blinked, "What?"
Xavier gestured to the map of the planets, "None of these planets really suit our needs, none of them are an unwatched nexus like Dantooine is. The only reason they left this planet alone is because they have already been here and killed the militia and Jedi here. We need to stay mobile, keep hidden and keep getting stronger, right? The best way to do that is join for now is to join a rebel cell. They would welcome Jedi with open arms for what we could do and would be perfect since they can don't stop moving except to refuel. If they set up shop on a planet, we stay and then bug out since our continued presence would be a problem. All the while, we learn shielding our minds and see if there are any places we can settle while working with them. If we master shielding completely we can return here and then we can use the nexus and our shielding to stay hidden."
Greeze looked to Cere, "That's a good plan, that way, should the worst come to worst and that cell is discovered, we can bug out or try to defend the cell before we go our separate ways."
Cere considered that, and it was not a bad idea except for, "We may be 'asked' to do ops and participate in missions."
She felt the resident night-sister walk over after having gotten up at the suggestion of joining a rebel cell somewhere out in the galaxy.
Merrin sighed, "That's an inevitability. Alone, just our group, or with back up we have to fight. If we don't The Empire just keeps ruining more lives while we 'wait'. I understand what Shaak Ti is afraid and doesn't want to get involved, but I am not afraid of what comes next. We have to move forward and protect those who cannot protect themselves."
Cere closed her eyes and nodded, "Then I guess I'd better brush up on my slicing skills and comm hacking, if we go we need to be able to find a cell willing to take us in immediately."
One set of the anti-troopers were sitting in the battle simulator, another set was running the obstacle course, and the other set was given rack time after a harsh day of training. Kota's militia was happy to have the troopers and what few medics were happy with the genetic samples they had taken from the anti-troopers (they were nowhere near what considered an actual threat to The Empire with what forces they had before and even now they could barely be considered a minor inconvenience). They made sure they worked together and never made the anti-troopers feel that they were supposed to die in the line of duty to the Rebellion and not complain.
Despite his distaste at using the clones as he felt they were unfit — which turned out to be the best decision he ever made — Kota had demanded that they be treated fairly as he had known that even without the chips being triggered, there had been clones who wanted to had rebelled after feeling like they were unappreciated without the aid of any chips. In order to ensure loyalty against the might of The Empire and be willing, compassion was needed to displayed. Kota wasn't exactly the most kind of individuals, but in this case he had to assume and take advantage of every possible opportunity. He would never condone using chipped clones to win the war due to the possibility of them being triggered through sheer coincidence but with them free of that, he explained the reason why they were needed. As a general who didn't have a clone battalion who was indoctrinated to serve him until Order 66, he had to be a very inspiring speaker and able to inspire almost unwavering loyalty.
He wished he wasn't alone though, it would've been much easier to fight if he had any of the jedi left to confer with.
Still, now was not the time for regrets, but to keep his skills sharp and polished.
He would defeat Darth Vader and his Emperor, and then he would build the order out of the ashes.
He had to.