Chapter Three - Transition
"Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future…the past. Old friends long gone."
- Yoda
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There was a roaring sound. The world seemed to be shaking so violently that it must surely have ripped itself apart. The surge of energy that had coursed through the Falcon, the Force, and into what seemed to be the very core of her being, had finally dissipated. Only the lingering tingles in her body and in the Force remained as proof that whatever had transpired had been something that transcended the physical world.
Mara slowly blinked her eyes open and uncurled herself from her position around Luke. Adrenaline spiked within her when she saw the wrecks of ships orbiting a planet that was looming closer and closer. Plumes of smoke and fire rose from the husks of warships and there were massive clouds of debris everywhere. There was visible damage on the planet surface, visible even from her vantage point, and the remains of orbital platforms and warships falling into the planet's gravity well proved to be responsible for most of the surface's scars. Such debris falling into the atmosphere, even broken up in reentry, could cause massive damage through the simple but devastating effects of gravity. Looking closer at the planet that was looming uncomfortably close, Mara felt her entire body shudder as a jolt of recognition spiked in her.
How are we still at Yuuzhan'tar? We jumped into hyperspace. What the kriff happened?
Mara had finally regained her wits and realized that the roaring sound and the tremors which had woken her were actually the effects of the Millennium Falcon's accelerating and steep descent into Yuuzhan'tar's atmosphere. Mara scrambled into the pilot's seat and began working feverishly at the control panel, trying desperately to control the Falcon's descent. In the process, she got a very good, very close view of Yuuzhan'tar.
No, not Yuuzhan'tar, she realized. Looking closer, the wrecks she saw were neither anything like the unique, biologically-based Yuuzhan Vong vessels, nor did she see anything remotely looking like the eclectic New Republic fleet of Hapan, Chiss, and the large Mon Calimari star cruisers that were the fleet's mainstay. She didn't even see much in the way of the old Empire-era ships, certainly none of the large bleached-bone colored Star Destroyers. Instead, she saw warships that were found more often in museums, ships like the Clone Wars era Acclamator and Venator-class Star Destroyers along with some of the CIS capital ships, but she hadn't seen such craft in decades, and certainly not as participants in a battle.
"Sithspawn! Where are we?" she swore. The planet closely resembled the Coruscant of her youth, a bustling ecumenopolis with four moons. Few planets could ever be easily confused with that Coruscant. But Coruscant, no, not Coruscant...Yuuzhan'tar, she reminded herself bitterly, now only had two moons and the ecumenopolis was now almost as much Vongformed jungle as it was concrete jungle.
"Where in the Corellian hells are we?" Mara exclaimed.
"Y…Y…Yoda!" Luke called out hoarsely from beside her before he fell silent once again.
"What? Luke?" Mara tried to get him to speak again, but he remained quiet and had returned to his healing trance. Feeling his presence in the Force, Mara realized that the poison's progress seemed to have slowed down. Reaching deeper into the Force and expanding her awareness, Mara was shocked at how much the Light Side seemed to fill her senses.
Everywhere, the entire galaxy, she realized. She could feel the pinpricks that often proved themselves to be especially sensitive or trained Force users from all across the galaxy. But the planet loomed in the Falcon's viewport was a focal point, a nexus where the Light seemed to converge into a brilliant torch that shone so brightly.
"What did you get me into this time, Farmboy?" she demanded.
Mara saw a swath of destruction on the surface below that looked like it might have been caused by a ship in similar circumstances also trying to make a survivable landing. Seeing the relatively open area that lay at the end of the trail of debris, she worked to stabilize and slow the Falcon down as much as possible. She could hear the groans of the hull that were testament to the strain the ship was under as it attempted to fly under her guidance.
"Come on, come on. This garbage scow has made it through plenty worse than this. You hear me baby, hold together!" Mara begged the Falcon. Han would be pleased, even I am treating the Falcon like a sentient life-form now, she thought sourly.
As the Falcon cut through Coruscant's sky in the same uncomfortably steep descent, the makeshift landing strip shifted into sharper focus on the viewport. Mara saw what looked like the extravagant 500 Republica building in the nearby skyline. It can't be, it was destroyed! Mara was concentrating hard on the landing, but her trained mind was still gathering details and processing them as fast as possible. Elsewhere, she saw the Old Republic's Senate Building and-
Her mind ground to a half and her body jerked even knowing the care she had to take in setting the Falcon down without getting Luke and herself killed. But she couldn't help it. What she saw was impossible.
Impossible.
"Sithspawn!" Mara couldn't help but curse loudly because, in the distance, she saw the very much intact and very undefiled Jedi Temple as it had stood before her former master came into the height of his power. Her mind still caught in endless loops of confusion, she retained just enough presence of mind to adjust the landing into a relatively controlled crash. The impact was enough to pitch her violently forward, but she was able to keep both Luke and herself from becoming one with the bulkhead by stabilizing their bodies' position through simple nudges of the Force.
As the Falcon skid to a halt not too far from a much larger smoking vessel that looked like it had gone through a very similar trip. Half of a star cruiser can't be easy to fly, let alone land, she thought, amused.
Looking out the viewport, she spied a group of individuals approach the Falcon. Individuals which were comprised of a number of brown-robed figures and what she guessed were security and support personnel. One of those brown-robed individuals walked somewhat more sedately behind the rest. He was short, perhaps only a little more than half a meter. He was green. He walked with a gimer stick and had a somewhat wild growth of white hair crowning his head. Walking at his side was a much taller, dark-skinned, and grumpier looking human. She recognized them from the descriptions the Emperor had given when he indulged in boasting of his victory and denouncing their weaknesses, and also from the experiences Luke had during his training.
Luke.
Mara slowly turned her head to glare at her still unconscious husband. She felt that she had the right to be confused and in turn, angry at him. The poison from the amphistaff was still within him and still progressing, but the sheer power that the Force that used to deliver them here, along with the already staggering presence of the Light that existed in their new paradigm, seemed to have slowed the poison's progress substantially. While he wasn't cured, Luke didn't seem to be struggling quite as hard just to breathe while in his trance.
"Farmboy, just what did you do?" she continued to glare daggers at her husband. Being at least relatively safe from the poison, he was therefore fair game as target to lay blame on and express her ire. And she felt absolutely no shame in exercising that prerogative.
The contingent of personnel and accompanying Jedi came closer. Apparently, somehow, based on the local architecture, which included iconic structures destroyed half a century ago and a flora and fauna that managed to include long-dead Jedi. With this information and remembering the very intact four moons above, Mara really only had one extremely baffling supposition to offer: they were neither where they were supposed to be, nor when, for the planet they were on was most certainly Coruscant.
Mara barely resisted the urge to bang her head against the nearest wall. "Luke," she finally managed to say to the empty air, "I've got a bad feeling about this."
Coruscant
19 BBY, 3 years after First Battle of Geonosis
Mara thought quickly. She had been trained by the Emperor to be an assassin and spy; her various skills and talents had never diminished in the years following his death, either of his deaths. Knowing she had little time, she evaluated the facts quickly. As impossible as it was, she and Luke were on the Coruscant of the old Republic and, by the looks of things, smack dab in the middle of the Clone Wars. An unidentifiable whisper flowed into her awareness and the overwhelming strength of it threatened to drown everything else out.
[Through the Force, all things are possible...]
The whisper had come from no person or being and Mara just knew, knew, in her heart that the whisper was one that spoke complete truth. Whatever was happening was a product of the Force and their arrival or transportation here was a manifestation of its Will. They were meant to be here, at this point where all things came to a head and where the downfall of the galaxy began as the realized product of a powerful madman's desire for galactic power. They, she and Luke, were here to change things and to prepare the Republic for the threat so close to home as well as the extragalactic threat that, even now, loomed ever closer.
A list of complications laid themselves out in her mind for analysis and consideration. Making a false step could have deadly consequences, she and Luke would have to take great care.
1) Luke
While Luke was stable-ish, the poison was not gone and it was still advancing through his system, albeit at a much slower rate. He needed help. Luckily, there now appeared to be a whole Temple full of Jedi from the old Republic on their doorstep that might know a thing or two about healing and the Force.
2) The Jedi
Both Luke and she were covered in blood and looked like they had blasted their way out of a sarlacc. Luke was in a Force induced trance and she knew their presence, even amid all the chaos of the recent battle and the number of other Jedi that were around, was strong enough that it would be identified as unique and would be felt from a distance. It was too late to conceal themselves and doing so now would only create further suspicion. And of course, two strange Force users showing up with their own lightsab-
3) The Farmboy's Daddy
Kriff me, Mara swore internally. She still wore Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, the one Luke had gifted to her. The lightsaber would be fairly easy to identify and there was no time or place for her to hide or even dispose of it.
Well, this will be...awkward, Mara thought without much humor. How in the Corellian hells will we deal with a pre-Darth Anakin not to mention-
Mara closed her eyes as her body locked up and a shudder ran through her. She felt her stomach try to jump out of her throat as an icy needle of realization jabbed into her skull. Her old master.
4) Palpatine
Palpatine was alive and they were at the final moments of the Republic and the Jedi Order. She felt a nudge from the Force that seemed to prod her into continuing that line of thought, On the eve of his rise to power and with the goals of preserving the Republic and the Jedi Order in mind...yes, stopping Palpatine and the Jedi Purge was an obvious must-do.
Palpatine.
Mara knew how powerful he was, Luke knew how powerful he was; no one else here on this planet did. The Jedi were completely unprepared for the power that Palpatine wielded. Warning would help things, but still might not enough to prevent catastrophe. Luke's father, who had been had descended into the Dark Side around this time, would also be instrumental in seeing to the Jedi's destruction. Anakin would have to be stopped, or knowing Luke, he would have to be saved before damning himself to his fate as a rage and despairing wretch of a man.
Another nudge seemed to indicate that the Force agreed that things would be better served with Anakin alive and on the side of the Light. Okay, so premature assassination isn't the correct solution on that particular problem. Mara considered all the information and sensations that were being almost violently shoved into her face or awareness by the Force. There was an awful lot to accomplish without much time to spare. How could they do all this in the first place, and where would they even start?
She glanced over at the still form of her husband. "So this is why we're here, Farmboy, we get to make things right."
Mara suddenly recalled Luke's hoarse cry on the Falcon earlier during their landing.
5) Yoda
Mara had never met the little green troll whom Luke had revered so much, had never gained the insight and experience that helped make Luke the consummate Jedi Master. She knew that the smile in Luke's eyes that appeared every time he scolded his flailing students that they must "Do. Or do not. There is no try," was a fondly remembered lesson he had learned in his training with Yoda. Mara knew from her own studies as the Emperor's Hand that Palpatine had feared an early invention, confrontation, or discovery by Yoda and the Jedi Council. If there was a Jedi that could match him based purely on the strength of their connection to the Force, it would be Yoda.
Before his disastrous duel on Mustafar, Anakin was reputed to have been the strongest Force user in the Galaxy, moreso than Yoda or even Palpatine, but his lack of self-discipline had held him back. While Anakin might have been the strongest of all Jedi, without the typical inner calm of a Jedi, he was unstable and fundamentally dangerous. The Jedi must have sensed the danger he could pose, and their distrust would have been so easy for Palpatine to use. She mused on those tidbits that she had learned so many years ago and considered, changing that the Jedi's distrust of Anakin, or helping Anakin find that desperately needed balance...perhaps that alone would be all that is required to see to the survival of the Jedi and the Republic.
Yoda and Anakin.
They would be the deciding factors, she decided, the linchpins that would save or doom the galaxy depending on her and Luke's efforts. They would have to know the truth about their identities and the future that might lay ahead of them. Dangerous though it might be to reveal such fantastic and horrifying information, holding back could be even more costly when Palpatine's mastery of manipulation could come to bear at any time.
The Jedi and a group of Republic soldiers had managed to lever the gangway of the Falcon open and were cautiously entering the ship. Mara closed her eyes, and put one of her hands around Luke's waist and entered a trance of her own to help heal her own minor injuries and to give her more time to feel out this new, old, universe that now surrounded her.
Hearing of Dooku's death at the hands of Anakin Skywalker had stirred bittersweet emotions as memories of a friend whose fall to the Dark Side flashed through Mace Windu's mind. Dooku had caused so much strife and had taken so many lives, even those of others he called friends, but Mace still remembered the Dooku from years ago when no taint of the Dark enshrouded him. Mace Windu knew that with Dooku's death, the Separatists would be greatly weakened and that the end of this terrible war might finally be on the horizon, but his death still weighed heavily upon his soul.
Following the rescue of the Chancellor, he and several other of the senior Jedi on Coruscant went out to meet them. After greeting Kenobi, Skywalker, and Chancellor Palpatine, the group had made their way over to a waiting transport. Only a short time later, as the transport neared the Senate building, Mace Windu felt that something seemed to insistently nudge his mind.
Mace frowned and a sidelong glance towards the Grandmaster revealed that Master Yoda had also felt...something. He focused and expanded his awareness in the Force, trying to catch what might have triggered his attention. He was peripherally aware that the other members of the party had already disembarked following the Chancellor and his sycophants to the Senate. Skywalker seemed to have disappeared somewhere…
Not too much of a surprise, Mace thought sourly, probably off to cause some damage or disruption that will require Kenobi's assistance to bail him out.
He cut himself off before he began to unleash an inner rant that was most unJedi-like. Skywalker would wait; the nudge he had felt was growing into a stranger pressure that surrounded his awareness in the Force. Obi-Wan had apparently lost a bet or deal with Skywalker and was now dealing with the media. Windu felt no small amount of sympathy for Kenobi for having to deal with them; those media vultures felt like more of a threat than the Sith sometimes. Casting dark thoughts of the creatures who called themselves the 'press' aside, he remained in the transport along with Jedi Masters Yoda, Kit Fisto, and the much younger Jedi Knight, Serra Keto. By now, all looked like they had felt what he had and were just as uneasy as he.
Frowning, Mace turned to ask Master Yoda for his insight when the pressure in his mind became almost vice-like and his senses were thrown into chaos, like a stun grenade had just gone off and his senses shorted out. It was only for a few brief seconds, but as his grasp on the Force settled, his senses continued to vibrate from the surge in the Force that he had just experienced. He felt the Force tremble and react violently to something...elusive. Not Dark, but different. Unknown. Judging by the winces and confused looks from the others, it hadn't just been him to have felt the intensity of it.
"A strong disturbance in the Force, there is," Master Yoda stated calmly. "Dark in origin, this disturbance is not. Locate the source, we must."
Master Fisto angled his head up and pointed upwards. "Does that count as a disturbance?"
Mace and the others turned to look and saw a plummeting ship that seemed to be angling towards the area they had just come from. It wasn't a large ship, a small freighter perhaps. Mace focused and found two incredibly strong signatures in the Force on board that vessel and, as Master Fisto had suggested, appeared to be the source of the disturbance.
The source of the disruption, or at least linked to that source, he mentally adjusted his thoughts as he studied the incoming craft.
"Their presences are...off," Master Keto commented. Without asking the others, she set the transport to return them to where they had so recently met Kenobi and Skywalker. "One seems muted...injured I think, perhaps in a trance, but his presence is...strong. Very strong, but it feels...familiar, too." Master Keto frowned in confusion.
"The other one is of the Light, there can be no doubts there, but I sense that...she has been touched deeply by the Dark Side. I sense a bond between them, a Force bond as well as a bond of a romantic nature," Master Fisto added, an eyebrow rising at the thought.
Speak with them, we will. Master Windu, call for medical assistance, you must. Only from these visitors will we learn more of this disturbance."
Mace alerted the nearby civilian emergency personnel that had been on the impromptu tarmac and asked them to join them at the place the crashing ship would most likely land. Mace then settled in for the ride back to the 'landing pad' where the ship which was just now landing on. Landing or...crashing; Mace was unsure, but he couldn't help the wince when the ship finally touched ground...violently.
What changed? mused Sheev Palpatine as he led his entourage into the Senate. He wanted to know what had happened but dared not show too much interest in yet another plummeting ship in the aftermath of the Battle of Coruscant. This was no small event within the Force however. Something has changed, but what? His unsuspecting soon-to-be acolyte was off with his wife and Palpatine felt no disturbance from him. Anakin was one of the few Force sensitives who could generate such a disturbance in the Force, and the fact that he couldn't immediately identify the source was most troubling.
The disturbance had been steeped within the Light and he was still suffering from the resulting migraine of the surge in the Force. What changed? Events were coming to a precipice; the noose which would destroy the Jedi Order and their vaunted Republic would soon tighten. A powerful disturbance whose source was of the Light Side was the absolute last thing he needed. His plans had to fit together precisely in order for his overall goal to be realized and a disturbance like this could mean that something was about to throw everything off kilter.
What has changed?
After disembarking the transport, the four Jedi Masters approached the ship. The strength of the disturbance and in the two signatures aboard the ship gave them reason to be cautious. Aside from the female whose presence had clearly been touched deeply by the Dark Side, there was no sign of any danger or hostility.
Another disturbing fact was how quiet and calm the Force was in the immediate vicinity. Only Master Yoda had so far sensed the blanketing-like effect the Force had on this area, but he knew that this calm, this quieting, would help the Jedi focus but would also help to disrupt any Darksider who attempted to pierce the veil of the Force to learn about this disturbance. When the Force communicated, precise and specific would be the last words to describe it. If this...event...was a message from the Force, than it was one that was absurdly precise and specific. There was none of the usual vagueness or subtlety that was the traditional medium of the Force. The unusual presence around this freighter was a message that told the Jedi that this occurrence, these visitors, were a product of its Will.
"To the temple, to healers, these two are to be taken. Tend to their wounds, we will. Only then will questions be asked of them," Yoda commanded.
"Is that wise? The Dark Side taints everything these days and certainly one of these individuals aboard the ship has been touched deeply by it. Should we bring them into the heart of our sanctuary?" Mace Windu questioned as they finally found themselves close to the sealed gangplank.
"Trust in the Force, we will," Master Yoda stated after a few moments of consideration. Mace Windu was a good friend, and a wise Jedi, and Yoda would always give his council due consideration, but the Force spoke strongly to him now. He reached out in the Force and coaxed the mechanical mechanisms into releasing the ramp.
Several of the civilians with light medical equipment and security officers holding blasters made their way cautiously up the ramp.
"Yes, we will trust the Force, Master. We are Jedi, our faith will always be in the Force. Then again, I've been known to appreciate a lightsaber or two," Serra Keto commented with a smirk, patting her two aforementioned objects of appreciation
Master Yoda 'harumphed' and smacked Master Keto's shin with his gimer stick before he began climbing into the battered ship. "Impertinent, you are. How you passed your Trials, I know not."
"It's her questionable charm, Master Yoda. Rumor is, Mace, that she can even make you smile. There's even a legend that she even put a grin on that face of yours," Master Fisto said, chuckling.
"Quiet, focus your minds. We should learn what we can before bringing them to the Temple. Inspect the ship and its contents. We may not be able to talk to them immediately, but we should gather as much preliminary information as possible. And I do not, nor have I ever, grinned," Master Windu said with his customary scowl, though there was a little more warmth in his eyes than before.
Author's Note: I apologize in advance for any mistakes I make in 'Yoda speech.' Trying my best, but I'm sure I'll be making mistakes.
Author's Note #2: I liked the idea of Fisto and Keto being more important figures, but I haven't decided whether to maintain that. Nejaa Halcyon was another character I'd like to see more of, though he would be dead by now as per canon. Perhaps references though?
Thanks for the positive feedback guys!
