Tuk'ata aren't generally lurching, but they are intruders here…
May the Fourth be with you!
So… I'm back to this story, finally.
I've got a general idea of where this fic is going, in the same way that Dont_Call_Me_Carrie over on AO3 does (which is to say that I know what plot points I'm going to end up hitting, but not how much time it's going to take me to get to them).
Fay sighed, releasing the kyber crystal to dangle from her necklace once again as the last tuk'ata collapsed to the ground.
"Like I said, Obi-Wan," snarked Siri, smirking as her lightsaber winked out, "nothing like Korriban."
"I actually found it quite like Korriban," replied Fay, gesturing with one hand and igniting the corpses of the tuk'ata with an odd blue-white flame that left small piles of ash behind. "After all, the tombs of the old Sith Lords was the unofficial hunting grounds of the tuk'ata hordes back in Revan's day, and we had to cut our way through them to earn our way to a chance to save Yuthura. At least we didn't-"
"Shush. Don't jinx us," said Knol, pressing her finger to Fay's lips.
Fay sighed. "Fine," she said, a little teasing petulance in her voice, "twist my arm."
"Don't tempt me," grumbled the pyrokinetic Bothan, lightsaber still ignited and held loosely at her side.
"Forgive me if I'm not exactly in high spirits, then," panted Obi-wan, allowing his lightsaber to fizzle out. "Korriban reminds me far too much of Bandomeer and Melida/Daan for anything of the sort."
"One of these days I'm going to get you to tell me what happened there," muttered Bant, her own lightsaber held loosely at her side and casting the whole hallway in a not-quite-eerie blue light.
"Melida/Daan… is that not the planet where the ongoing civil war caused the children to form a third faction and with the help of a Jedi in exile end the war?" Fay asked, frowning. There was something more she was missing in that explanation, but she couldn't for the life of her put her finger on what exactly it was.
Siri, meanwhile, was paling and rounding on Obi-Wan, mounting horror in her tone. "You were abandoned by Qui-Gon to lead children in a civil war?"
Obi-Wan winced. "It sounds worse when you put it like that, but I can't say that's a wholly inaccurate summation of my experience."
"You were thirteen and barely a Padawan," said Bant, the hum of her kyber swelling with her anger.
"When the Force calls, we Jedi must answer, no matter the age," said Obi-Wan wearily.
"And did the Force call Qui-Gon to abandon his Padawan without a lightsaber to win a war that almost killed a full Jedi Master for the sake of someone who had already made their choice?" snapped Siri, the fingers on her empty hand flexing.
Fay frowned. "Elaborate."
Bant turned to her, leaving Siri's now visibly glowing eyes to stare into Obi-Wan's (and Knol to lean with false casualness against a wall, well-concealed fury brewing behind her eyes). "Obi-Wan's early Padawanship was… contentious, to say the least, but perhaps the most complicated part was the Melida/Daan incident. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were sent to go check in on a Jedi Master, Tahl, who had been sent to the planet to resolve a dispute between two groups that both claimed to be the rightful planetary government. We've never been able to get the full story, but the official story is that Obi-Wan left the order for a girl, after which Qui-Gon returned to the Temple with Tahl and Obi-Wan's lightsaber, and he returned to the temple some time later having been disabused of his attachment. Obviously that's not the actual story, but we haven't been able to get anything more out of him until just now."
Fay's frown turned thunderous and her eyes flashed from gray to molten gold momentarily. "And Qui-Gon was never disciplined for his… lapse in judgement?"
Bant laughed. "He's always been far too close to Yoda for anything official to stick. Unofficially… well, no one wanted to do anything to hurt Obi-Wan, and he was adamant his Master had done nothing wrong. Tahl had gathered a large group of Jedi who wanted to give Qui-Gon what for once Obi-Wan was Knighted, but after Qui-Gon died on Naboo, nothing came of it."
"Partisan politics and nepotism, wonderful," sighed Fay. "Well then, once we finish down here I think I'll have to go have a… chat… with Yoda and elucidate the nature of his failures."
"Please take a holorecording," replied Bant.
"I'll consider it," returned Fay. In truth, she was going to record the conversation no matter what, purely for the purposes of ensuring that there was an impartial record of what exactly was said, but whether that recording became known to more than just her depended entirely upon how Yoda decided to handle the situation.
"You were a WHAT on Bandomeer?" Siri's voice rose into a shriek, and Fay just knew that she would have to take the entire Council to task about at the very least Obi-Wan's past.
That would keep, for a given value of keep, though, and they needed to handle the Vergence now. "Walk and talk- we need to get to the bottom of this quickly, and then I can see about the Council's thoughts on all of this."
None of them were truly happy with that prospect, but given how they all reluctantly continued moving (and how her fury kept rising at every detail that Siri managed to wheedle, tease, and otherwise drag from Obi-Wan's lips), she was willing to call it a successful compromise, inasmuch as a compromise can be successful when tuk'ata are anywhere even remotely nearby.
"It appears," said Fay, quite calmly, "that the ongoing lack of attention paid to the Shrine in the Depths has led to some serious negative consequences."
"For those of us not in the know," said Mace Windu, leaning forwards in his chair, "what exactly is the Shrine in the Depths?"
"It is what is left of the Sith's presence on Coruscant, one that precedes both me and this Temple. The Shrine was constructed to corrupt a Vergence in the Force, a sacred mountain spire, and the Temple was constructed atop this Shrine to try and undo its effects on the Vergence, which was of limited success in and of itself. We had more success when we would send a team of Consulars down into the Depths under the Temple to cleanse it once a decade, but it appears at some point since I began my wanderings that practice has… faded, and now the Shrine is even stronger in its corruptive influence. It's as if someone, or something, came and added a link to… elsewhere to it after convincing the Order to forget it," said Fay.
Whatever answer the Council was expecting, it evidently wasn't that- Fay could sense the shock all but radiating off of even the Cerean and the Kel Dor, both of which were attending via holoprojector from the Outer Rim.
"A Dark Side Vergence? Here, in the Temple? And it hasn't been destroyed?" The Cerean was making an attempt to appear calm, and just about anyone else wouldn't have been able to see through his calm front, and the constructed anger beneath, to catch a glimpse at the fear bubbling up underneath.
Fay barked out a laugh. "Destroying it may very well collapse the Temple, and if done particularly poorly, the planet. I'm not confident in my ability to do so safely, let alone anyone else's ability to still the waves that would inevitably cause, to say nothing of having the gall to think they can break something tapped into a Vergence so completely."
The Cerean reddened, but held his tongue, a white-haired Thisspiasian speaking up instead. "Enlighten us, then," he said, the very tip of his tail flicking nervously. "What effects, in your expert opinion, has this lapse in maintenance had on our Order?"
"Oh, not much, just the gradual decrease in the ability of the Order to commune with the Force, a gradual weakening of the average Order member's ability to channel the Force, occasional lapses in judgement, nothing that anyone would have noticed if they hadn't spent most of the past millennium off planet," Fay said blithely.
If the Council was unsettled before, they were positively riotous now.
Fay let them jabber at each other for almost two full minutes before she snapped her fingers and forcibly stopped the transmission of sound throughout the room.
Once the Council had returned their attention to her, she released her grip on the Force. "Enough. We don't have time for this kind of squabbling, not with concrete proof that the Sith have been sabotaging the Order for the last several centuries at least."
"What would you suggest we do?" asked a bald Human seated to the right of Yoda, whose mouth was showing the hints of tightness of suppressed pain.
"Something dramatic, I hope," said Fay, serene-faced enough that only Yoda recognized it for the sarcastic comment it was and chuckled. "In all seriousness, the procedures to start cleansing and contain the influence of the Shrine in the Depths should be in the Archives, and that would be a good place to start handling things here. As for hunting down the Sith who did it… I'll have to brush up on my old Sith languages, but I should be able to figure something out, at least."
"I would prefer an overview, if you would be so kind- once Anakin gets Knighted, we're about to ship out to Christophsis, so I'm afraid we won't be able to access the Archives, and even if we could they might have been modified again to conceal or delete the information," said Obi-Wan.
"This is one of those things that would be almost impossible to suppress- multiple Masters over the centuries have put up enough failsafes and redundant copies that it would genuinely be impossible for any one person, even the Head Archivist or whatever the title is nowadays. As far as the actual process of handling the containment and restarting the cleansing, It's fairly simple- anyone who can handle Force Light can do cleansing, although it's not as effective as how I would do it, and some basic alterations of the environment around the Shrine and the way they allow the Force to flow within them is how containment has been handled historically, at least." To demonstrate, Fay flicked out a quick burst of Force Light, the Mantle of the Force humming in harmony against her sternum.
Instead of relaxing at the sensation, all those physically present save Yoda and Obi-Wan tensed up, and Fay belatedly remembered that most of the Council hadn't learned the art of wariness without twitchiness.
The Togruta councilmember spoke up and disabused Fay of that notion. "How… how did you do that? Not even Master Sinube is as adept with Force Light to do as well as that!"
Fay frowned. "Truly? The power of Force Light has been diminished so much within the Order? The effects of the Shrine can't account for this…"
"No," said Yoda, quietly and mournfully. "The Shrine, this is not. Diminished, the Order has become. Fewer, we are, than in my youth. Less practiced, esoteric powers are."
Fay's lips pressed together. "Then it is enemy action."
Obi-Wan scrubbed at his face frustratedly. "When I was in Count Dooku's custody on Geonosis, he intimated that the Sith Lord, the one who we've been searching in vain for, is high up in the Senate… this suggests that he was correct, and it's been going on for longer than most of us have been alive."
"Wonderful," drawled Fay. "Well, this isn't the first time we've had to deal with a subtly hostile government, just the latest. We should be able to weather this so long as we keep our eyes open."
"On the topic of keeping our eyes open," said an Iktotchi councilor said, "where does the investigation into the clone army on Kamino and its commissioner stand?"
Fay turned the full force of her gaze on him. "What do you mean by that? The impression that the galaxy at large was given is that the Republic was the one to commission the Grand Army of the Republic- it is in the name, after all."
Obi-Wan shook his head. "Not the case- unless you count the Sith. According to the information we have, a dead former Councilmember named Sifo-Dyas commissioned the Kaminoans to create an army of clones of Jango Fett, who is-"
"The Mand'alor's brother? Where is he now?"
"Dead on Geonosis, unfortunately. That is where it gets interesting, though- Fett claims he wasn't approached by a man named Tyranus, who we've figured out is an alias used by Dooku based on intercepted holotransmissions. The issue is that he has no reason to buy the Republic an army, let alone having the resources to do it with just the coffers of his planet, Serreno, and there's no way he could get away with doing it with the CIS' resources," said Obi-Wan.
"So, someone wants a war- someone with fingers in the Republic, and Kamino, and with wherever the supplies and ships the GAR is using come from," replied Fay. "Someone who stands to gain from this war in the Senate."
"Continued, the investigation shall be," said Yoda, nodding. "Followed, your suggestions shall be. However, more immediate priorities, you have, hmm?"
Fay nodded. "I'll prepare a primer on Force Light and environmental alterations for whichever Jedi you decide to send with me. Until then, Councilors.'
Fay strode confidently from the Council chambers, leaving behind her a severely disturbed High Council.
And that's that!
Again, I can't promise the next time this fic is gonna get an update, but it's not dead!
I have a ko-fi now (no link, but I'm Lucifra there too)- feel free to check it out and leave me money to help me move in a couple months.
Oh, also, I'm trying to resurrect my writeblr- it might be easier to get a hold of me there for questions. I'm lucifra-writes and I've got a couple of prompt responses ready to go- if that's something you're interested in (or asking me questions), check me out!
That's it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!