Book One: The Return
Chapter 3: One of a Kind
"Let the past not dictate who you shall be in the future."
-?
Elemental, the name of a planet long ago conquered by the Sith War machine, was home to a race of humans that possessed abilities that the Sith had never before seen. When first attempting to conquer the planet, the Sith armies fell prey to titanic beings with the power to reshape the very geography of the planet itself. The two most feared among them had their very legend carved into the stone itself. Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had single handedly wiped out an entire invasion force with monstrous creatures made of wood and strange blue energy. At one time their two clans were mortal enemies, hell bent on destroying one another even if it meant they would be destroyed themselves, but a common enemy changed all of that. Soon enough, every clan on the planet was united in the single goal of preventing the Sith from taking their home.
Yet, much like all others that tried to resist the Sith, they were eventually broken by the Sith war machine. Learning from their mistakes, the Sith ordered that the planet be bombarded from orbit, and that all major population areas be vaporized. It happened so fast that the clans never even knew what hit them until red beams of death rained down upon them for an entire week without pause. The civilians were put in caves, to shield them from certain death, while plans were made for when the inevitable ground forces came for them. However, Madara and Hashirama fell during the first night of the raining death, giving their lives the shield their people as much as possible.
Without their strongest titans, it took the Sith thirty more years to finally break the people of Elemental. Their once expansive, population had been cut nearly in half, with most of the clans being wiped out completely. The Senju and Uchiha clans were wiped from the planet completely, having proven to be the most resistant of the many clans and the most dangerous. The Uzumaki clan was nearly wiped out but for a select few, their long lives and deep connection to the Force was something the Sith could mold with time.
Taken from their home, the young of the Uzumaki clan were taken to Korriban to become the first generation of Sith from their world. Their natural love for peace had caused most of them to die before graduating, but there was one who was able to make it through the trials of the Sith. Kushina Uzumaki had become one of many apprentices to a member of the Dark Council, her inner light slowly turning grey from so much of the dark side being around her. Yet, despite being practically drowned in the dark side, only one of her eyes had changed to that of the Sith yellow, while the other one remained its natural color.
It was one a mission, back on her home world, that Kushina's life was changed forever by a group of rebels that still resisted the Sith. It was a simple mission, she was to find and wipe out the rebellion and bring the leader's head back to her master. Yet it was on this very mission that she saw the power her people could wield, in the form of Minato Namikaze. Minato was the rebel leader, a young man with spiky yellow hair, bright blue eyes, slightly tan skin, and a strange amount of joy that seemed to just radiate off of him. Their first engagement ended in Kushina being captured for interrogation, having underestimated her people's chakra based power and Minato's own skills.
Their relationship began as them being enemies, acquaintances next, then barley allies, somewhat friends, good friends, a crush, and finally a romance after a year of Kushina being held captive. It was then that the light inside Kushina won out and she abandoned the Sith to help the rebels take back their home. Yet, on the night that the Sith finally found them, Kushina was giving birth to her one and only son. It was her master who led the attack and it was he who took the newborn child from the screaming woman. Kushina was killed the next morning, executed for betraying the Sith Empire, and her son was sent to Korriban as the only Uzumaki left in existence.
For years he was subjected to brutal training, battles to the death against other students, and was forced into the deepest parts of the Dark Side. He was taught to harness his wrath, to relish lust, to feed of other's envy, to break those of sloth, to use his opponents pride against them, to manipulate a glutton, and to use the greed of others to control them. So that's what Naruto did, his wrath was the cause of many deaths, the envy of others became the cornerstones which he built his castle, the sloth were used as bricks, the prideful for the workers, the glutton for the paint, the greedy for his wealth, and the slaves sated his lust for many nights.
That was when Darth Malgus came and turned Naruto's unstable castle into a fortress in which he would dominate all those weaker than him. Then again, it was because of all these events that Naruto found himself on a strange world, with three Jedi, and a faction of droids out for his blood. At first the Jedi sought to end him, not because he was Sith but because they believed him to be with this other faction, and Naruto had shown them the skill he had honed in bloody war. Now they watched with him as their shared enemy broke through the atmosphere of the backwater planet with ships large enough to carry a small army.
"Separatists, great, as if this day couldn't get any worse," Ahsoka Tano said, with no small amount of sarcasm in her voice, before she notice the Sith's eyes narrow ever so slightly at the incoming ships.
"Friends of yours?" Anakin asked, making sure his lightsaber was still ready to be used against Naruto, who simply shut off his own lightsabers and attached them to his belt.
"They're no friends of mine, I suggest we find a proper vantage point to escape their scouts," Naruto suggested, as if they hadn't all been in a life or death fight against him not a few moments ago, before simply beginning to walk towards a large tree off in the distance.
"Orders sirs?" Rex asked the two elder Jedi while he and Bly kept their blasters aimed at Naruto's retreating back.
"Are you going to have your soldiers shoot me in the back? I do wonder if a Jedi is capable of giving such a dishonorable order?" Naruto asked as he continued to walk further away, not bothered in the slightest that his possible death could be only a few words away.
"He does have a point, Skywalker; if he is truly not with the Separatists, then we stand a better chance fighting together than fighting one another, even if he is a Sith." said Aayla as she sheathed her own lightsabers and followed after the young Dark side user, even if she didn't like having to work with him.
"No good can come from working with a Sith..." Anakin said with an edge to his tone, trusting Naruto no more than he would trust Dooku but he was outvoted and outranked on the matter.
Despite trying to kill one another, the group traveled in relative peace and there was hardly any hostility in the air. It was when they nearly got caught by a group of marching droids that their plans changed from defensive to offensive. The droids' destination was a strange small village off in the distance, a village that were still using primitive tools to live their lives. If the droids attacked, then they would stand no chance. Naruto hated those who hid away and used an army to do their bidding. His own personal code demanded that this group's leader be crushed under his boot!
"Where do you think you're going, do you want to get us all killed?" Ahsoka hissed at Naruto, when he stood up from the tall grass and slowly began walking towards the flank of the small droid army.
"Then stay hidden, I will not sneak around when I have a chance to destroy my enemy." Naruto snarled back as he pulled out both his lightsabers and activated their red and purple blades.
Apparently hearing the sound of lightsabers activating, the small droid army turned around and instantly began firing their blasters at the young Sith warrior. Yet Naruto was hardly a rookie when it came to being outnumbered by enemies with blasters and the way he deflected each shot was proof of his skill. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, the Force stretched his senses to their max, and he became an immovable wall of light.
To most, this would be an impossible feat, to block as many opponents at once was a foolish risk, but that was only when dealing with organic enemies. No, droids were more predictable, they were programmed to fire at weak points in armor or for critical targets on their targets' body. Within the first few seconds of blocking, Naruto was able to devise the areas they were aiming at and slipped into his Soresu stance.
"Oh hell!" Anakin swore before he ignited his own lightsaber and charged the small army of droids from the side, using Naruto as a distraction to blindside them.
It only took three second for Rex and Bly to follow their general into combat, opening fire at the same time, while Ahsoka and Aayla joined in as well. With the three Jedi now carving their own path through the flank of the droids with the help of their clones, Naruto began to advance and redirect the bolts back to help thin the enemy's numbers. Naruto's defensive Soresu quickly turned into the highly aggressive form of Ataru and so he jumped into the fray with the dark side fueling his movements.
Droids fell left and right as the Republic and Sith forces decimated them until they were surrounded by a sea of scrap metal. Now the only person beside them was a rather fat looking creature, he had a lot of greed inside of him and that gave Naruto strength over him. With nothing more than a simple flick of his wrist, Naruto sent to pudgy creature to the ground before using the Force to slowly drag him back. The young Sith noted how the creature's fingers grew bloody as he dug them into the hard ground, trying to prevent his inevitable death from claiming him.
"What a pathetic little creature you are, fleeing in such a manner." Naruto growled before lifting the man up of the ground, holding him in the air while putting enough pressure on his windpipe to prevent him from properly breathing.
"Um, should we stop him?" Rex asked his fellow clone, not completely hating the sight of a Separatist pig being choked to death.
"Not unless we're ordered to."
"Pigs like you don't even deserve to live, be they Jedi, Sith, or any other group!" With a savage push of the Force, the pig was sent flying up into the air before landing on the ground with a sickening crunch.
Somehow, the man seemed to still be alive, and so Naruto unleashed lightning from his fingertips. The sound of the man's screams grew to the point that they were louder than Naruto's actual lightning. It was only when he felt Aayla's hand on his shoulder that Naruto decided to stop torturing the man, mainly since he didn't feel up to fighting the Jedi again so soon. If Aayla was honest, she thought the young Sith may have lashed out at her instead, but he simply stopped before taking a few steps back.
"Rex, Bly, restrain our Separatist friend here." Anakin ordered, an almost smug grin on his face.
"Gladly sir." The two clones replied.
With the injured ball of slime restrained, Naruto found himself staring off into space. However, in reality, he was trying to submerge himself within the Dark side. Something felt wrong...it was as if the Sith didn't hold half of the galaxy anymore, as if the Sith Empire had been wiped out almost completely. The looming void of darkness seemed to have been replaced with a calming light, which shouldn't be possible so quickly. Just what had happened?
"Sith, I would like to speak to you." said Aayla, walking past Naruto without even so much as glancing in his direction, and Naruto simply nodded before following after her.
Anakin and Ahsoka watched as the Jedi master and Sith Lord walked just out of hearing range, no doubt to keep their words hidden from the rest of them. Skywalker had no problem trusting the Jedi master, it was the Sith that he couldn't bring himself to trust. His own encounters with Dooku had led him to view the Sith as nothing more than monsters, monsters that needed to be put down so that peace could return to the galaxy. Ahsoka, on the other hand, only had the records of past Sith to base her opinion on. She hadn't really suffered at the hands of the Sith and only wanted to defeat them because that's what she thought a true Jedi should do.
"If you plan on lecturing me then save your breath, I have no want nor the time to listen to Jedi ways compared to Sith ways," Naruto hissed, having heard almost every one of the Jedi lectures at one point or another.
"No, despite my disagreement with your methods, you no doubt helped save many innocent lives by stopping those droids. I also wish to apologize for treating you as the enemy when you had risked your life to save us from death." now that had caught Naruto slightly off guard, but he would never admit it.
"I serve the Force and it told me that the five of you must survive. Don't make it anything other than it is Jedi, if we were enemies then I would kill you without so much as a second thought." with that said, Naruto began walking towards where that droid ship had landed, he needed to get off this mudball of a planet.
"I pity you, to be so consumed by the Dark side that you would take a life on a mere whim," Aayla said to herself, although the words still echoed to Naruto.
Aayla didn't see it, but Naruto's mismatched eyes actually lowered with a bit of sadness etched into them. She didn't understand, how could he know any different when the Dark side was all he ever truly had in his life? All he'd ever really known? No, he had more important things to do than debate his life's choices with a Jedi. There was still the matter of getting off this planet. As Naruto approached the half built metal walls, his gaze fell upon the ship hidden behind only a handful of those skinny brown droids.
Using the tall grass to get in close, the young Sith used the Force to weaken the wall's supports. With the supports bent, the wall came crashing down on some of the working droids, crushing a good portion if the remaining droids. Then, with an earthshaking battle cry, Naruto activated his red lightsaber and charged forward like a raging demon. As the last of the droids fell, Naruto couldn't help the triumphant smirk that formed on his face. These droids were weak, they had none of the tactical prowess of the Sith droids, and their armor could not deflect the blade of a lightsaber. They were easy to manipulate, their programming was to only shoot at target without taking into consideration any other alternatives, and that gave most fighters the advantage. More often than not, they could be tricked in the firing upon each other if the target was fast enough to get out of the way.
"Pathetic pieces of scrap. Even if they're weak as all hell, how the Republic is having difficulty fighting you, I will never know." Naruto hissed as he strapped his lightsaber back to his belt and casually walked towards the large transport ship.
Once inside, Naruto found a more cubic droid talking to the hologram of a very old looking man. The man in question had a long, pointed, grey beard, was dressed in expensive dark clothing, and had a cape draped over his shoulders. However, what caught Naruto's attention was the lightsaber attached to the man's belt. Without even a second thought, Naruto crushed the droid with the Force and walked out of the shadows, facing the strange holographic man.
"Well this is most unexpected, I was not aware the Jedi had already taken this world. If I had known then I would have sent a larger force," said the man as Naruto just glared at him, not appreciating being called a Jedi.
"Don't insult me, I am no Jedi, I am a Sith," Naruto growled, resisting the urge to see if he could Force Choke the man on the hologram.
"...How interesting..." the man said after a moment before the hologram turned off, leaving Naruto with the feeling that he would meet that man again.
"I'm going to need a vacation after this." The Uzumaki sighed.