EPISODE II
Chapter 6: Sky Battle

After Zolph Vaelor entered the passageway at the bottom of the reflecting pool in Freedon Nadd's burial chamber and passed through what were clearly Rakatan ruins, he made it to the summoning chamber, where Machinus and two acolytes awaited. Zolph got their attention by immediately shooting down all of the probe droids monitoring the summoning.

"He's here, my lord!" One of the acolytes panicked.

Machinus responded to the acolyte as he approached Zolph. "Focus on the ritual! You know I can't summon Fafniros myself! I'll deal with Vaelor!"

"Yes, my lord." The acolytes then continued their summoning ritual.

The droid turned his attention towards Zolph. "Well, well. If it isn't the idiot that broke Neur's lekku…"

"You're not going to let me live that down, are you?" Zolph responded.

"Not until you get smarter."

"Speaking of, you didn't leave her unsupervised, did you?"

"Don't worry, Juga's watching over while I'm here. The only people I wouldn't trust her with are Masochus and Valkor."

"A lot of you seem to hate Masochus…"

"More than you'd believe…"

"Also, concerning you and Neur, what's her backstory? My friend back on Korriban only had a theory suggesting an abusive childhood among the Nightsisters, including the lobotomized lekku."

"You can tell her that theory's spot-on with what I know." Machinus then pointed one of his wrist blasters towards Zolph. "Anyway, back to the present."

"That's right: you're a droid. By the way, I have a present for you." Zolph suddenly pulled the EMP grenade from his belt, readied for it detonation and tossed it at Machinus. "CATCH!"

Machinus casually caught the grenade in his left hand and started lamenting in a sarcastic tone. "Oh no! An EMP grenade! My most dreaded weakness! What a world!"

The grenade then let out on an electrostatic charge into Machinus, causing his blue photoreceptors to stop glowing and his body to go limp in place while the electricity was coursing through the tentacles on the back of his head.

Zolph responded mockingly. "You should've thrown it back, dummy." He looked to the acolytes, but they were untroubled and he looked back to Machinus, just noticing the electricity coursing through the tentacles.

Machinus suddenly reactivated and his tentacles pointed towards Zolph. He yelled, "Just kidding!" and fired the stored electricity at Zolph, electrocuting him for five seconds and thankfully not killing him, as the grenade was designed only to disable machinery and not harm organics. Also thankfully, the way his prosthetic arm operated made it so it could move without electronic systems. Machinus's tentacles then dropped back down.

"You really planned ahead, didn't you?" Zolph asked him, still recovering from the shock.

"Oh please. You didn't think I'd predict you bringing an EMP grenade after our first meeting? I'm an engineer, dammit! I made my body this way so I'd be almost as effective as before I became a droid."

Zolph was thrown off by that last statement. "Uh…run that last part by me again."

"Your confusion hardly surprises me, but also annoys me as it usually seems to suggest prejudice towards artificial intelligence. Do you remember hearing that I had an actual name?"

"Sorry if I offended you because of that. Cid Geero, right?"

"That was the name I was given at birth. As my body design suggests, I was not just a Nautolan, but I was also a Jedi. I transferred my consciousness to this droid I built – originally a battle droid made for combating Force users - after I was fatally injured. I may have lost my ability to call on the Force when I transferred over, but I found ways to make up for it."

"Wow. This organization keeps getting weirder and weirder, but as far-fetched as it sounds, I can't outright refuse to believe that after all the other stuff I've seen in my life, especially those hallucinations. It also explains why you're carrying a lightsaber."

"You mean those Dark Side-induced hallucinations? I've had those before in my flesh days, and that's one benefit to being cut off from the Force." Machinus dashed towards Zolph and grabbed his upper body with one of his taloned feet. "But we really shouldn't be talking right now." He then tossed Zolph backwards over his head.

As Zolph got back up on his feet, Machinus drew out his lightsaber, which had a hilt-guard and produced a sapphire-blue blade, just like his eyes. The former Nautolan then jumped up into the air, with assistance from his booster jets, and made a plummeting strike towards Zolph.

Zolph avoided getting crushed under his sharp talons and deflected a few blaster shots fired by him – although some of those shots did singe through the sides of his jacket - before clashing blades with him.

As they fought, Machinus demonstrated that he had several other systems in addition to his booster jets and electro-absorbers to compensate for his lack of Force powers, such as repulsor field generators to substitute for Force push. He was even just as fast and agile as a typical Jedi. His mechanical body gave some advantages in the form of immunity to mental manipulations; however, he had a disadvantage in that he was still vulnerable to some Force techniques, although he had ways to counter some of them such as the electro-absorbers in the case of Force lightning and ionization.

The two lightsaber-wielders continued their lethal dance until the acolytes finished the summoning ritual, causing the two stop. "The ritual is complete!" One of the two acolytes shouted.

"Okay, now we can stop fighting." Machinus said to Zolph. The two of them did not deactivate their lightsabers, however.

Suddenly, a large winged creature erupted from the reflecting pool and faced his summoners. On the outside, Fafniros looked like a fully-armored dragon with some robotic parts and eyes on his jaws but when he opened his mouth, he revealed what resembled human-like gums and teeth and that he was organic on the inside, almost as if the armor was grafted on and there was no skin underneath it.

The Archfiend landed on the ground in front of the acolytes on all fours. He then addressed them. "Are you the ones who summoned me?"

"Of course, Lord Fafniros. By the whim of our Emperor. But we have a problem: the one who threatens his power is in this very room."

He then looked to Zolph. "And you want me to kill him?"

"Uh…yes, my lord."

"And are you equal to me in strength?"

"Uh… no, my lord."

"Then do it yourself! Unless you can defeat me in battle, I am not to be commanded by weaklings!"

"Yes, my lord." The two acolytes charged at Zolph with their lightsabers ignited, but Machinus suddenly pointed his left arm towards them, fired a flurry of blaster shots and killed them.

"The ruse is up, I take it?" Zolph asked him.

"For now it is."

Zolph then turned his attention towards Fafniros. "Alright, you archaic cyborg. How about a duel: A powerful Archfiend versus two squishy but empowered humanoids?"

"A duel is not two-on-one, child, and aside from Valkor, you humanoids have failed to impress me so far." He then spread his wings out. "If you any of you wish to fight me and gain my respect, know that you will have to face me at my full potential, and from what I know, most of you humanoids cannot fly, so you're hardly worth my time right now." He started flapping his wings to get him off the ground while Zolph and Machinus fired a barrage of blaster bolts at him, but they all deflected off his armor. He then activated his thrusters at the joints connecting his wings to his shoulders and dashed upwards through the ceiling, leaving a hole illuminating the temple with natural light.

Outside the temple, Besh Squad spotted the Archfiend and fired their anti-air missiles at him, but his aerial maneuvers helped him fend off the missiles. He then left Dxun's atmosphere.

Back in the ruins, Zolph and Machinus lamented the Archfiend's escape.

"Damn. That's the first time one got away from me." Zolph activated his comlink and contacted his fighter. "Seefor, I need you to come by for a pick-up. We're about to go dragon hunting."

"Command = Acknowledged. / R9-C4 + Zolph Vaelor + Escaped Archfiend = Opportunity for C4 to kill Archfiend?"

"Yes." Within a few minutes, Zolph's X-Wing arrived through the hole Fafniros made and Zolph climbed into the cockpit. He then addressed Machinus. "You gonna help out?"

"I'd love to. Really, I would. But I can't, because I can't be seen helping you. So sorry, you're on your own."

"Oh yeah. We can't have that yet."

"I also have to make it look like you defeated me in combat, so I'll be self-destructing soon. Don't worry, that's the nice part about being droid: you can be broken and rebuilt as many times as you'd like, and I can repair myself." Machinus suddenly exploded into several pieces around the room, with his disembodied head sitting on the ground. He then pointed one of his head tentacles up towards the ceiling as if his head were a miniature octopus, causing Zolph to start cracking up. "For the love of the Celestials, don't even think about taking any pictures and posting them on the Holonet, and not just for the sake my dignity. Now, go finish what I set out to do."

"Will do." Zolph then closed the cockpit and flew out of the ruins, although he was trying to hold back his laughter in regards to what Machinus looked like as a disembodied head.

As Zolph exited the ruins, he got a comms transmission from Xadisall.

"Besh Squad to Vaelor. We spotted what looked like a dragon of some sorts, supposedly the Archfiend you were looking for. We weren't able to able to kill it, but we were able to land a tracking beacon on it just in case. It has entered Onderon's atmosphere."

"You five did alright. Seefor and I'll handle the rest." Zolph then exited Dxun's atmosphere.


Moments later, Zolph had entered the upper atmosphere of Onderon, where several of the Kur'Ada's Katana-class battleships were in a skirmish with some Alliance Assault Frigates. Flying through the chaos, he eventually spotted Fafniros attacking both Alliance and Kur'Ada forces that dared to attack him.

"If it's a fight he wants, it's a fight he gets." Zolph commanded Seefor. "Seefor, lock onto the dragon." He then fired his laser cannons at Fafniros, provoking him into trying to attack Zolph by charging at him and slashing his ship apart with his claws. Zolph dodged the charge, getting behind him and firing some proton torpedoes at him.

The blasts did knock off some of his armor-skin, but not a lot of it. The dragon-like Archfiend then fired an energy blast from his mouth, prompting Zolph to fire some laser blasts to disrupt it. He then shot at his mechanical wings, burning away his wing flaps and impairing his ability to fly. He couldn't fly for a prolonged period of time, so he landed on top of the Kur'Ada battleship, Dragoon to recover.

With Fafniros now stationary, he was an easy target to bombard, but Zolph noticed Hiriss Moraana mounted on a Ruping – a four-eyed winged reptile native to Onderon commonly used as aerial mounts - approaching the battleship. The Ruping was shot by several passing Kur'Ada Glaive fighters, forcing Hiriss to jump over to the Dragoon, where she was confronted with Fafniros.

"Seefor, fly me over to the Dragoon, and provide me some cover fire if needed." Zolph started to climb out of his seat while his astromech positioned him above the battleship. He then jumped out of the fighter and landed right next to Hiriss.

"Hello, Zolph." Hiriss casually greeted him.

Zolph responded back. "Hello, Hiriss. Do you care to explain what you're doing up here and why you decided to travel by animal mount?"

"This is the Kur'Ada attack force's lead battleship, so I decided I could turn the tide of the battle by taking it down from the inside. However, I'm not much of a pilot like my cousin was, and Rupings are much better to use for upper atmosphere infiltration since they don't fly too fast. And you?"

Zolph then pointed to Fafniros. "You know, the usual."

"Wait. That thing is an Archfiend?" She asked in response to the cyborg dragon – also feeling the Forceless aura from him - before igniting her double-bladed lightsaber, which produced two green blades.

"And if you think this is weird, I just met a droid who claims he used to be a Nautolan Jedi."

"Well, it's a big universe. But this isn't the time for idle chatter." She pointed her blade towards Fafniros.

Fafniros addressed Hiriss. "You have not proven your worth yet, child. Therefore, I refuse to challenge you." He then looked to Zolph. "You, on the other hand, have proven to be very persistent. I accept your challenge."

"Let's do this!" Zolph ignited his lightsaber before speaking to Hiriss. "I'll handle this guy, you do what you came here to do."

Hiriss then headed for the battleship's bridge, and Fafniros fired an energy blast at Zolph.

Zolph used the Force to redirect the blast back at him. The Archfiend then retaliated by using his thrusters to dash at Zolph. He picked Zolph up off the deck and slammed him back down on it. As Zolph recovered his strength and got up on his feet, Fafniros waited patiently.

Suddenly, Fafniros started clutching at his head and screaming in agony, speaking to himself as if there were two personalities inside him.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! FINISH HIM OF!"

"No! I will not strike down an opponent while he's defenseless!"

"Your sense of honor means nothing to us! Did you forget that you were born specifically to serve the Collective? Because we think you have! Since you're holding back, we have deemed you fit for this body no longer!"

Fafniros then changed from his honorable warrior persona to that of a madman. "Now, Vaelor, PREPARE TO DIE!"

Just as Fafniros was about to fire an energy blast at Zolph, the latter dodged backward and redirected another energy blast back at him. "Well, I'm not quite ready to die yet. And I still have a duel to honor with that proud warrior you just hijacked."

Suddenly, a group of Kur'Ada warriors arrived on the scene, threatened by the beast.

"Oh look! More fools that want to die!" The possessed Fafniros then swiped at a few of the warriors, throwing them off the Dragoon's deck and plummeting to Onderon's surface. The last few he killed either by energy blasts, breaking their bones, or eating them alive.

"Focus on me, parasite." Zolph commanded the Archfiend.

"Now, how will I kill you? Immolation? Evisceration? Mechanical digestion? Or maybe all three!" He then charged at Zolph while his target stood in place. Once he was really close to him, Zolph stabbed his lightsaber through the Archfiend's heart.

"Or how about none of the above?"

As Fafniros backed towards the edge of the deck, he reverted back to his original personality. "You have done well. There is more to you little humanoids than your appearances seem to suggest. I fought for the Collective my entire life, and as I grew up, I was exposed to concepts such as honor, but the parasites I grew up with do not carry such values. I believe you can challenge Valkor and destroy the Collective." He then died and fell towards Onderon's surface.

"And I will." Zolph responded back.

Suddenly, the ship started to tilt towards the surface, and Zolph saw the engines smoking and several ships and escape pods fleeing from the vessel. Zolph then grabbed onto an emergency rail and Hiriss reunited with him.

"Sorry, they're out of ships and escape pods." Hiriss apologized to him for the situation they are in.

Zolph contacted Seefor, but the droid responded with some disappointment.

"R9-C4 = Disappointed. / Zolph = Said Seefor would get to kill dragon."

"I never said you'd get to kill him. NOW PICK US UP OR WE'RE GOING TO DIE!"

Within seconds, Seefor arrived, and Zolph jumped into the cockpit, but he then realized something he didn't think about when he called.

"Blast! I forgot this is a one-man fighter! I didn't think this through!"

"I don't mind!" Hiriss said as she climbed into the cockpit as well.

"Wait. WHAT?!" Zolph yelled in shock as Hiriss landed in his lap. The ship then flew away from the Dragoon as it plummeted towards the ground.


As the three flew back to Iziz, Zolph felt rather uncomfortable with Hiriss sitting in his lap. For starters, he had trouble flying the ship with her between his eyes and the viewport, but thankfully for him, she was naturally lighter in weight than he was.

"Please remind when we get back home to request that Incom extend the nose and install a passenger seat." Zolph told Hiriss.

"I'll take note of that."

However, he wasn't just uncomfortable physically. He's never had a grown woman sit in his lap before, and it felt rather unusual, but what made it feel even less comfortable for him was that it was Dynn Manthis's cousin – almost her split image if not for the species difference – sitting in his lap. He stayed silent and tried to purge himself of any thoughts that would trigger certain passive bodily reactions.

Of course, Hiriss could sense his nervousness. "Um… Zolph? Are you alright? Your body temperature's rising. And can you please stop breathing down my neck?"

"Dammit!" Zolph thought to himself. He then ordered Seefor. "Seefor, can you take over the controls? I can't fly the ship right now."

"Orders = received. / R9-C4 = Activating ejection seat in 5… 4… 3…"

Both he and Hiriss yelled at her in unison. "NO! Just fly us back to Iziz!"

"R9-C4 = Joking. / Zolph + Hiriss = Don't try anything funny. / R9-C4 = Can feel everything that goes on inside ship."

"Alright." Of course, that just made Zolph a little more nervous.


When they got back to Iziz, Zolph helped Hiriss push back the rest of the Valkoran attack force.

Hours later, both of them returned to the Jedi academy on Ossus to report their successes.

"So, how did it go for you two?" Luke asked them.

"Mission accomplished," Zolph answered, "but the Kur'Ada might not take what happened there very well."

"Why not?"

"Fafniros made it to Onderon's atmosphere, and they apparently witnessed him killing some of their warriors." Hiriss answered him. "Who knows if they'll still be on good terms with the Valks after that?"

"But it's unlikely they'll change sides considering they sided with the Valkoran because they hate Force users." Luke responded.

"And then again, they're also hypocrites, because the Valks have former Jedi and Sith among their leadership." Zolph said.

Grein interrupted Zolph. "By the way, Zolph, did you happen to go anywhere near Freedon Nadd's tomb while you were on Dxun?"

"Yes, because the tomb was apparently masking the dead spot."

"And did you have any hallucinations again?"

"Yes, except this time, she didn't want to kill me. Instead, she brought along what looked like several Forceless-possessed duplicates of my friends and allies, including you, Grein. They wanted me embrace the possibility of a future where everyone has been assimilated into the Collective."

"Well, it's good to know you're not suicidal anymore, but how did you respond to this?"

"I denied them. I did not consider it a certainty, but rather a possibility that can be prevented, so I fought back. And this time, I didn't need to be knocked unconsciousness to break from the hallucination."

"Fighting back at them isn't exactly the smartest thing to do, as it shows you still see them as real to an extent, but it's a step in the right direction as opposed to just giving into them."

Luke then commented. "Zolph, you did very well this time. Because of this, your prohibition has ended. Still, just don't accept missions like there's no tomorrow and if you have any more troubles surfacing up, just talk with us."

"I'll keep note of that."