A/N: Thank you to Brick88 for the kind review, and for new readers/followers/favorites!


Kenobi.

The name is all Darth Maul can think of. A storm of hatred and rage and pain billows in his mind and thunders in his heart, so dense, so black, that he cannot see beyond it. Even his eyes do not see: There is only darkness around him in this forgotten, reeking pit in which he has fallen. Discarded. Defeated by a Jedi. By Kenobi.

The name should mean nothing. Maul killed the other Jedi, the older one—Jinn. Qui-Gon Jinn is dead. And Obi-Wan Kenobi should be dead too, if only Maul's focus hadn't slipped at the apex of his triumph and sent him tumbling down, one moment of weakness that allowed the Jedi Padawan to rise and slice him clean through. One moment that has rendered him a half-man clinging to life in this foul darkness.

He does not know where he is. He hardly had time to think as he tumbled down the reactor shaft deep in the Naboo Royal Palace's generator complex. Tiny yellow safety lights whizzing by as he fell. The smell of burnt reactor fuel and the cauterized stink of his own grievous wound. Beyond that only silence, save for the name he shouted into the roiling folds of his own thoughts. Kenobi.

A crushing morass of metal and detritus surrounds him on all sides, gouging his arms and jabbing at his face and his devastated torso. The physical pain, however, hurts less than the agony of Maul's failure. A failure to Sidious, his master, who sent him here to kill the Jedi and Queen Amidala. There is no telling what happened to the young queen, but with Kenobi still alive, Maul doubts the Trade Federation toadies will have emerged victorious in the battle for Naboo. Moreover, failing against a Padawan has already sealed Maul's fate. If he wasn't already a dead man waiting to die from Kenobi's blade, he'd be as good as dead if Sidious ever found him.

If. Likely Sidious has already disavowed him, forgotten about him. Thrown him away like another wasted tool to the Sith and the Dark Side.

Maul stretches out with the Force, trying to push back the debris compressing him in this refuse prison, but he is trapped. He reached out and pulled himself to an air vent as he tumbled down the reactor shaft, a stroke of luck—although whether that was good luck or bad remains to be seen. Perhaps he should have simply died. Taken a warrior's death, a proud death. There is no shame in that. But this, this half-life, clinging to a burnt-out husk of an existence…there is no pride in this. He is helpless. Trapped. At the mercy of the Force and his surroundings, wherever this is. This is no way for a man to die, let alone a warrior.

He struggles against the debris again, and again his surroundings do not budge. Anger drives back the frustration of this undeserved sentence. The pain from his wound and his failure burns, broils, and ruptures. Maul balls his fists and screams into the claustrophobic darkness, letting out a blood-howl with every ounce of life and hatred left in him.

Kenobi. Kenobi.

He has to get out of here. He must live. So that if nothing else he can rise once again and kill Kenobi for this insult.

Then, suddenly as if answering his call, the debris shuffles. A slice of steel debris gouges Maul's wound and he bellows in pain. What is this? Some sort of trash compactor? Part of a vehicle or ship? Where has he fallen? Is he even still on Naboo?

In reply, a furious red blade burns through the surrounding refuse a moment later. Maul winces and clamps his eyes shut at the familiar sight: A lightsaber. A Sith's blade, at that. Has Sidious come to give Maul's failure his due?

The Zabrak clenches his teeth and snarls as the lightsaber saws through the refuse, burning a wide circle around Maul's body. The air hisses and snaps and reeks of char and ash. A drop of molten iron drips from the burn line and falls on Maul's waist. He hardly registers the pain. I will not die like this. I will get out. I will make him pay. Kenobi.

The lightsaber finishes cutting and withdraws, leaving Maul in darkness once more. Just as he shifts his arm to try and find his way through the refuse, something—or someone—rips open whatever container or room trapping Maul. Light spills in as he and the mountain of trash and debris spills out onto a dirty grey floor, industrial lamps flickering overhead, the smell of oil and dust and ash stinging his nostrils. A black-cloaked figure looms over him. Maul groans and raises his hands to shield his eyes from the light, burning bright after all that total darkness. How long has it been since he killed Jinn and Kenobi defeated him? An hour? A day?

"Master?" Maul groans as he looks up at the figure.

The cloaked one turns away. Maul can only just make out his words: "FourDee, he still lives. Bring me the syringe."

FourDee. He does not recognize it—or perhaps he does, but thoughts of Kenobi and vengeance and rage twist his mind in a cyclone of promised retribution and compounding fury. Who?

Something—a droid, based on the stumbling-step mechanical walk and the churning of servos—approaches the cloaked man from his left and offers a syringe so large it seems more like a weapon than a medical tool. The cloaked man takes the needle, crouches down to Maul, and presses his hand to his chest. "Your master is dead. He failed me. As you failed him."

Maul's eyes widen. Not Sidious. "Lord Plagueis?"

The cloaked man plunges the needle into Maul's chest.

Agony. Fire. Maul's heart and blood vessels contort and seethe, and he twists and writhes, clawing at his skin, his face, his mouth. He screams. "Blood of the dead Sidious," Plagueis thunders over Maul's shouts, "re-animated by the power of the Dark Side. There is energy in that blood. Strength in the Force. Blood of a power natural by Sidious's inherent ability and made manifest by my will. Let it flow through your veins. Let it strengthen you in your hour of defeat. Let it burn you from the inside out and leave nothing of the old Maul to burden you."

Maul flips over, pounding the floor with his fists, the fire spreading through his ruined body. Let it out. Let it out! He presses his palms to the ground, raises his head, and, with a burst of fury, unleashes a primal scream through the Force itself. The wall before him quakes; fault lines crack through the duracrete.

Then it is gone. The pain recedes as quickly as it arrived, and Maul falls to the floor, spent. His very soul smolders. Images fade before his mind's eye: Sidious training him as a young boy. Earlier still: A red world of rock and secrets.

Through it all: Kenobi.

Plagueis kneels down beside him. "You failed," he says again, his voice low, deep, and completely in control, "but failure is not forever."

Maul heaves. Breathe in. Out. He is not dead yet. "Yes," he murmurs, his voice no more than a ghost-whisper in a silent night, "my master."

"With Sidious's death, we must begin again," Plagueis says. "I will break you down. I will correct every erroneous lesson Sidious taught you. Draw out every ounce of venom he poisoned you with. I will reduce you to the base elements necessary to make a man." He leans closer, speaking an inch from Maul's ear. "Then I will build you back up. Step by step. Day by agonizing day. Until you are made the warrior of shadow that you are meant to be."

Maul clenches his fist and stares up into the light. "I will not fail," he murmers.

No. Because he knows the object of his rage. He knows that he is not dead, and because of that simple fact, he knows who he will kill.

Kenobi.


"He is stable, Master Plagueis, and I have completed transfusing the remaining blood of Sidious that you reanimated. But for now, he is only the upper half of a man. Nothing useful in any sense."

Plagueis's eyes flit to the communications holodisplay in the cockpit of his private courier, the Profane Arcana. An old ship, his personal vessel: Darth Tenebrous first gifted the custom-built, one-of-a-kind design to him when Plagueis was but an apprentice. The Arcana is nearly a hundred years old, yet it still runs without a hitch—and is packed with enough technological marvels to rival cutting-edge ships even now being built at the great shipyards of Kuat and Fondor. Plated in black steel to blend in with the stars and equipped with a miniaturized cloaking device and supercharged engines, the quick, tetrahedral craft has never failed Plagueis over all these years.

Steady it is once more as Plagueis accelerates towards the storm-torn blue world blooming in the viewscreen before him. Kamino. Erased from the Jedi Archives, according to Sidious, by former Jedi Master Dooku shortly after Sifo-Dyas have given the Kaminoans the order to begin the creation for a clone army for the Republic. But Sifo-Dyas had not come to that idea on his own: Plagueis had first planted it in the late Jedi Master's head decades ago when they had first met. The Jedi had never known Plagueis's real identity, knowing him only as Magister Hego Damask, the Muun chief executive officer of the financial lobbying and activism firm Damask Holdings and one of the wealthiest people in the galaxy. And of course, that same wealth had also paid the Kaminoans for Sifo-Dyas's order...which, by Plagueis's interpretation, really makes this his clone army. Just as it was always meant to be in the arrangement of the Grand Plan.

In the wake of Sidious's betrayal and Sifo-Dyas's death, that order will need adjustments.

"Keep Maul stable," Plagueis tells 11-4D via the comm. His droid is back in Plagueis's personal laboratory on Mustafar along with the alive-but-broken Darth Maul, tending to the wounded Zabrak's injury. Not broken enough, yet. Plagueis will have to tear him down, exhume every whiff of Sidious from the budding Sith warrior if he wants to make Maul into an apprentice of his own. But the Zabrak has it in him. He is angry. He is driven. And he will want to avenge this most insulting of defeats. Plagueis heard the whispers: Kenobi. Kenobi.

All in due time, apprentice. Remaking the Grand Plan will take years. Decades, perhaps. But so long as Plagueis can continue unraveling the secrets of life and death in the years to come, they will have all the time in the galaxy to work with. "Begin fitting him for prosthetics to replace the legs he lost. Optimize for utility and performance only; I care not for Maul's comfort. If the limbs will cause him pain, then that is something he will need to overcome. It will strengthen him," Plagueis instructs the droid. "And provide no anesthesia."

"Affirmative," 11-4D chirps before ending the transmission.

Maul is not Plagueis's concern now, however. He is not the only one left alive who knows of the cloners, even with Sifo-Dyas's death and Sidious's end. Dooku. He knows. Plagueis—in his guise as Hego Damask—has come to know Dooku well enough over the past two decades at trade conferences and political gatherings and other high-society events attended by the elite, including the Jedi. More proof of the Jedi Order's corruption, that, the same corruption that drove Dooku from their order and made him an ally of Sidious over the past few years. But Dooku, despite his entanglement with the Dark Side, is not a Sith. And with Sidious's death, Plagueis cannot be entirely sure that Dooku is even an ally, despite the Jedi being a mutual enemy.

He will wrench Kamino and the clones from Dooku's purview, but beyond that, Plagueis is inclined to be patient with the former Jedi Master, despite their history. Like Sifo-Dyas, Dooku has no idea as to Plagueis's true identity as a Sith Lord. So let him drift in the wake of Sidious's passing. Let him think the Sith have faded back into the shadows. Let Dooku take the next steps on his own, work the galaxy with his own hands and his own will, fuel his distaste for the Jedi until it blooms into red-hot anger and white-cold hatred. Time will tell if he is someone worthy of bringing into the fold or just another budding rival to kill off before he grows too dangerous.

Above all, employ patience. Among all the paths open to Plagueis now, the only wrong move is to rush. The years ahead are his true allies. They will give him the opportunities he needs to rend the Republic and the Jedi and rip out their footing from beneath them.

One thing at a time, then. First is Kamino.

They love their manners, these mad scientists of this stormy, ocean-clothed world, and Plagueis has already sent word of his arrival—yet when he sets the Arcana down on a rain-swept landing pad of the sprawling Tipoca City, he receives no welcome committee. He cannot blame them for not wanting to weather the elements. Thunderstorms wrack Kamino from midwinter to midsummer and back again, an ever-present and ominous specter from above as the mighty whorls of the world-ocean below churn and crash. Only these fortified, stilt-borne, curved-metal cities atop the ocean's furor provide any sort of relief from the battery, to the extent that even the Kaminoans shy away from the outdoors wherever possible. As Plagueis steps out from his ship, he raises his hood and hurries towards the entryway into the landing pad's guest receptacle, eager to take after his hosts' example.

A single white-robed Kaminoan waits for him just inside the silent-sliding glass doors. They tower over most sentients, these thin, secretive people, but for a Muun like Plagueis, his host is not even half of a head taller than him. "Magister Hego Damask," the Kaminoan says, bowing her head low. "It is an honor to finally welcome you to Kamino."

He could rip the life out of her without even touching the Force. One hand around her throat and that would be it. Fragile creatures. But Plagueis knows the rules of the game: Here respect and courtesy, even falsely given, will offer a greater bounty than raw displays of naked strength. And so he clasps his hands before him, raises his head, and answers in his most business-formal tone, "The honor is mine. I am here for my meeting with the Prime Minister."

"Of course," the Kaminoan returns. "Minister Lama Su is waiting for you inside. He is very interested to hear of your business. Please: If you would be so kind as to follow me."

White walls and white lights: Sterility dominates Tipoca City. For a people who claim to hold the keys to life in their hands, the Kaminoans go out of their way to make their home feel as lifeless as possible. Perhaps, Plagueis thinks as he follows his Kaminoan escort, it's because they do not hold life in their hands. Merely a simulacrum of it. A faded, shallow copy. Life is just as much the twisting, twining, ethereal lights of the Force as it is the amino acids and genotypes that comprise a physical body. For clones who are no more than tools, perhaps one can overlook such simplifications—but Plagueis has far greater ambitions in his view.

Still, the Kaminoans have their uses for now, and when his guide leads him into a curved-wall room with a pair of spoon-like seats descending from the ceiling, Plagueis plays his role. "May I present," the guide says, extending her hand towards the other Kaminoan in the room, a regally-dressed, slender male whose high, rigid robe collar rises up to the back of his head, "Prime Minister Lama Su, administrator and governor of Kamino, and overseer of all clone operations."

"An honor," Plagueis says. Do not let pride get in the way of progress. He can say what he must.

"Magister Damask. It was a most unexpected surprise to hear of your coming," Prime Minister Su says as he extends a hand towards one of the seats. "Please: Have a seat." He turns to the aide and adds, "Taun We, if you would be so kind as to bring us refreshments. It is a long way to Kamino from Muunilinst."

She bows and leaves as Plagueis and Su take their seats. "I would first like to thank you for your patronage of our services," Su begins. "The payment from Damask Holdings's accounts has proceeded as Master Sifo-Dyas promised when he contracted an army for the Republic some time ago. You and the Jedi Order may rest easy knowing that we here are prepared to begin initial development of your clone order immediately—save, of course, for the procurement of a genetic template for the clones."

Taun We re-enters before Plagueis can reply, setting down a pitcher and a pair of goblets upon an organic-looking table that rises from the floor. Caamasi sapphire wine, Plagueis recognizes as he takes a sip of the beverage. A common enough professional drink, but only slightly above mediocre in quality for anyone of a refined taste. Even for all of Kamino's civilized airs, he could teach them a thing or two. "That order was what I came to discuss," Plagueis says as Taun We leaves the room. "I will need to adjust its terms."

Lama Su leans back. Just a smidgen—so subtle their movements, almost as if they don't want to give anything away. But Plagueis can see right through the subtlety: He is surprised. A little offended, even. "Adjust," Su says. "I see. That may be arranged. What, specifically, did you have in mind?"

"A field army as Sifo-Dyas ordered will be…ill-suited…to meet the challenges ahead," Plagueis says, draping his request in the camouflage of the corporate tongue. Vagaries and non-promises and deception. Only reveal what you must. "A changing galaxy requires adaptive warfighters to confront those changes and the subsequent challenges. What we need are not frontline troopers but commandos. Elite operatives. Infiltrators, saboteurs. Not a grand army of soldiers, but a honed, tightened, narrowed arrowhead of special forces who can rise to any occasion."

A hint of a frown from Lama Su. "That is certainly within our capabilities," he says, "but the request you make would involve a significant downscaling of quantity and an equally-significant upscaling of individual unit quality. We would have to spend considerably more on training and development, including genetic tailoring, with a much higher per-unit investment."

"I am prepared to double the price of Sifo-Dyas's order," Plagueis says at once. Oh, he knows how the galaxy turns. The Force connects all life, binds us, unites us—but it's money that makes men hunger. And Plagueis commands credits just as adeptly as he commands the Dark Side. "Another ten percent completion bonus on top of that upon the delivery of the first operation-grade clone units. And—" he leans forward as if offering the Kaminoan a unique gift, a trick that so often has appealed to egos over his career as a Sith Lord— "Another ten percent personal bonus right now, assuming we come to a deal today. A direct delivery to your personal account, not Kamino's, from Damask Holdings. An untraceable wire transfer. The credits are already waiting for your word."

Greed. It is a language more universal than Basic, reaching from the Deep Core to Wild Space to uncharted systems, from past to present to future. There is a poison in all sentients, billowing up from when they all were little more than animals clawing their way up the food chain on hostile homeworlds. They all seek more. And Kamino is no exception to that. Nothing smoothens over a deal like a bribe. Even if Lama Su is the selfless type—and nothing about Plagueis's research has suggested that—credits are credits. Let him spend that ten percent bonus on Kamino's welfare, if he wishes. Or Su can put it to more nefarious ends, even sheer hedonism if he wishes. It's not Plagueis's concern. All he's concerned about is an agreement.

"I see," Su says after a moment of contemplation. "I am of the understanding that Damask Holdings would handle all necessary contract work."

"It is already signed by the necessary parties," Plagueis says.

For what seems like the first time in the entire conversation, Su blinks. "Do you have a genetic candidate in mind for this…elite force, Magister Damask?"

"Yes," Plagueis says. "A man with the reputation to live up to such a responsibility, and one who will ask nothing save for the details of his job and his pay—pay that, of course, Damask Holdings will happily provide in full over the lifespan of the contract. A bounty hunter." He looks Lama Su straight in the eye as he adds, "And one further addendum, Prime Minister. Another ten percent, you might say: This clone force will ultimately answer only to me and one other. A Zabrak named Maul."