Author's Note: Hello, I'm Mahina Fable. If you don't know me, I have a number of RWBY fanfictions under my belt; this is my first time writing a formal crossover.
I love me some Star Wars, and I kinda got a wild hair to do something set in the GFFA. This chapter is largely exposition, setting the stage and introducing most of our cast of heroes.
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For centuries, the planet Tython, birthplace of the Jedi Order, had sat in silence. Near two millennia prior, the Jedi that had once called it home had left, drawn by the allure of the power and prestige of the galactic capital. In that time, the Jedi had risen to the peak of their worldly power and influence. They had owned fleets of ships and cutting-edge starfighters, they held the ears of Senators and Chancellors, and most importantly, they had had the pick of apprentices from nearly every child born in the Galactic Republic.
Tython had rested in silence, as the Jedi had risen. And the planet had continued in its peace as the Jedi had fallen, slaughtered almost to the last, a victim of its own success almost as much as of the Sith. Decades later, the last Jedi, the Skywalker, had come to Tython, heeding the call of the Force, and on its surface, the Jedi Order was born anew.
There were many legends of that time. Adventures such as Finn Dameron's Outer Rim Crusades, the Reconciliation of Dathomir, or the Sealing of the Crystal Star. In time, the Skywalker trained more apprentices, sending them to Tython as she continued her wandering. Those apprentices became the first of the New Jedi Order, with Finn Dameron as the first Grandmaster of the Order. The Skywalker wandered out of the pages of history and into the realm of legend, and none had taken up her title since.
Five hundred years had passed since that time, and the New Jedi Order had stabilized. It was certainly a much smaller order than the one that had arisen on Coruscant. It collected neither tax nor tithe, operating off of whatever resources its members could scrounge while away on missions, or that were donated by well-wishers and family of its members. Instead of gleaming starfighters custom-built to their purpose, they made do mostly with light freighters, often second-hand, third-hand, or of so many previous hands that none could keep track any further.
It was a much humbler, almost vagabond order that called Tython home, but they were far more free and flexible than their predecessors. The New Jedi Order, unheeding of political ramifications, had crushed the Hutt Cartel, obliterating its slaving rings with surgically-precise operations, and bringing hope and freedom to trillions of sentient beings. When new warlords had arisen in the power vacuum, Jedi advisors worked with the natural leaders arising from the ranks of the emancipated to defend their hard-won freedom. What once had been Hutt Space now comprised the League of Star Systems, and when tensions flared between the League and the Galactic Republic, the Jedi Order, respected by both states, arbitrated their disputes as a neutral third party.
The Jedi Temple consisted of a large ziggurat made of hewn stone, with smaller buildings - dormitories, workshops, a hangar - forming a semi-circle outwards around its entrance. The temple had been built in an area of Tython with rolling hills and grasslands, near to dramatic seaside cliffs. There was a city not far from the temple which served as the planet's de facto capital - Tython City - and it was populated mostly by family of Jedi who wanted to keep close by, and by the descendants of freedbeings who had pledged themselves to the service of the Jedi out of gratitude. The Jedi had refused, of course, but they also hadn't objected when the freedbeings had settled nearby, so long as they understood that they were to rule themselves.
History had shown that having friends well-inclined towards the Jedi could make all the difference.
The New Jedi Order had neither the resources nor the inclination to scour the galaxy in search of recruits. Instead, all knew, far and wide, that if a youngling began demonstrating strange and unexplained abilities, the Jedi Order was located on Tython, and there, they could learn to control those abilities.
There, on the peaceful planet of Tython, on a balcony overlooking the central courtyard of the temple, a Jedi Master watched his latest class of students train.
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Jedi Master Qrow Branwen was a relatively unassuming human man of middle years, lanky and vaguely disheveled, with streaks of gray in his black hair to match the gray of his wrinkled slacks and tunic. He was unkempt, rough stubble growing on his face, and if not for the long metallic hilt hanging from his belt, one would never think to name him as a Jedi at all, let alone one of the most pre-eminent instructors of Jedi in all the Order.
That suited Qrow just fine. When he wanted to, he could detach his saberstaff into two halves, slip the hilts up his sleeves, and blend in anywhere in all the galaxy. People could sometimes get…odd around Jedi, and they would often freely share details with the friendly traveler buying drinks at the cantina that they would never dare dream of telling a Jedi Master.
But, a Jedi Master he was, and so, Qrow leaned on the stone railing as he watched two of the temple's apprentices square off against one another.
Weiss Schnee was an Echani, a hybrid whose ancestry was born of genetic experiments between Arkanians and humans, and as such, she bore the stark, ivory-white skin and snowy hair of her race. She was small and slight, clad in robes of blue and gray. Her lightsaber was designed to be wielded almost exclusively in one hand, with a spur just under the emitter that she wrapped her pointer finger around to gain greater control of the tip of her blade. As she took her saber up in her left hand, a thin, intensely-focused blade of glacial blue ignited from its emitter.
Weiss drew her blade up in the traditional Makashi salute. "I hope you're ready to lose," she said, as she flourished her thin blade into a ready stance.
The Echani girl's opponent was her opposite in every way. Jaune Arc was a tall, muscular human boy, who wore white enameled armor over an earthy brown tunic and leggings. Where Weiss was the stark winter ice, Jaune was warmth and summer sun, with his messy blonde hair and bright, easy smile. The damn boy looked like he stepped off the set of some holodrama. Arc put the "knight" back into "Jedi Knight," and not just with his armor. As Qrow watched, a golden yellow blade, much thicker than Weiss's, ignited from the boy's emitter, followed a split-second later by two more, much shorter blades that formed a crossguard.
"Well, I'm always ready for new experiences. Losing to you would certainly count."
Jaune powered up the circular energy shield that emitted from his left vambrace and moved in.
The matchups between the apprentices always proved interesting. Over the generations, the successive Chroniclers of the Order had labored to piece together what was known of lightsaber combat from their progenitors, but ultimately, the New Jedi Order had had to fill in the gaps in their knowledge themselves. While each apprentice was given a working knowledge of each of the forms, they were encouraged to experiment, to find which style suits them the best, and to further augment the forms to enhance their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. After all, they were all very different people, so why shouldn't their styles reflect that?
Weiss, for instance, was small and nimble, with a quick and calculating mind. She darted in and out, driving her lightsaber forward in quick stabs before withdrawing before Jaune's own saber could threaten her in turn. While Qrow oversaw the training of the apprentices as a group, as they neared knighthood, each had naturally gravitated towards a master to further refine their education. Glynda had done well to induct Weiss into the deeper teachings of the Makashi style; Qrow couldn't imagine her trying to generate the tremendous kinetic force of Djem So. Meanwhile, Jaune kept his cool, refusing to get riled up in the face of Weiss's quick onslaught, focusing on using very basic blade and shieldwork to deflect the Echani girl's stabs while threatening her just enough to keep her back.
Shii-Cho was the very oldest lightsaber form in existence. In fact, Master Mahi-na, the current Chronicler of the Order, had once told Qrow that Shii-Cho actually predated the invention of the lightsaber, and had been largely derived from sword forms used with actual metal blades. With Jaune's physicality, he could have excelled in any number of lightsaber forms; Qrow personally thought that he would have been an unholy terror with the Djem So form. But Grandmaster Ozpin had thought that too aggressive for the Arc boy's demeanor. Qrow had then suggested Soresu, what with Jaune's natural inclination towards defense, but again, Ozpin had demurred, suggesting that that style would be too passive, encouraging bad habits in the apprentice.
Instead, Ozpin had taken the Shii-Cho - the simplest of all lightsaber forms, the one that they taught younglings as a way to keep them from injuring themselves while getting familiar with the signature weapon of the Jedi Order - and had instructed Jaune to take those basic techniques and absolutely master them, to make them as intrinsic a part of himself as his own mind. The result was something to behold, and when Jaune picked up the shield, the balance of offense and defense just clicked into place.
Well, Qrow supposed that that was why Ozpin was Grandmaster. Still, Jaune wasn't the only one to learn from his instruction, and Qrow would remember that lesson well in training future apprentices.
The pair of students continued their duel, with Jaune attempting to use his sword and shield to trap Weiss's single blade, and Weiss continuing to dart away to harry his flank. The duel was interrupted, however, by the arrival of a black-and-red projectile hurling itself into the ring.
"Weeeeeeeiss!"
Qrow chuckled at the familiar call, as the red-and-black interloper awkwardly rose to her feet.
"I can't believe you guys started without me!"
Ruby Rose was one of the very few apprentices to have grown up in the Order. Her mother, Summer, had been one of Qrow's fellow Jedi Masters, and had left Ruby in his care before disappearing on a mission to the Unknown Regions. Qrow had attempted to find the girl's father, but all he had to go off of was that he had apparently been a "procurement specialist" - a polite term for "smuggler" - and had been a blond human with a big smile. It was a big galaxy out there, and with so little information to work with, Qrow had endeavored to raise little Ruby himself.
Hoo boy.
Master Mahi-na had told him that once, in the days of the Old Jedi Order, taking in infants and raising them as Jedi was the standard procedure, and that the Order even denied training to younglings much older than that. The Old Jedi Order apparently had an entire division focused on raising and caring for these infants and children.
That would've been nice.
Instead, Qrow had had to make do with just what resources he'd had at hand, including a nearby city with lonely women who apparently found that the only thing more attractive than "puckish rogue Jedi Master" was "puckish rogue Jedi Master single father."
Still, he'd managed - more or less - and while he had made absolutely, positively sure to emphasize to Ruby that she was completely free to be whatever she wanted to be in this life, she had taken to Jedi training like a space duck to water. Though a few years younger than most of the current batch of nearly-knighted apprentices, Ruby was a match for any of them.
Ruby was a short human girl, whose black hair was streaked with red. Ruby wore a simple black dress, with a red cloak over her shoulders. She had her mother's silver-gray eyes, and as Qrow looked at her, he recognized the truth of one of the sayings attributed to the Skywalker - "No one is ever really gone." Summer may have been lost to them, but she lived on in her daughter, and in all the living beings united in the Force.
"We waited, but you were late," Weiss told the younger girl, crossing her arms and tapping her toe in disapproval.
"Again," added Jaune. "Of course, you know what that means?" His grin broadened as he looked to Weiss. "Jedi Power Noogies?"
"Jedi Power Noogies," Weiss agreed, with grave solemnity.
Ruby gasped. "You'd turn against me, Weiss?"
"Hmm…" Weiss tapped a finger against her stark white chin. "Yes."
"Betrayal!" wailed Ruby. As her friends began to close in on her, Ruby took out a long, dark rod from behind her back. Ruby's lightsaber was unique, even among the more individualized styles of the New Jedi Order. While Qrow had, of course, instructed her to the best of his ability, he had also gently encouraged her to seek out other masters, so as to broaden her horizons and deepen her understanding of the Force. He had not been expecting an apprentice so young to effectively latch herself onto the hip of elderly Master Calavera, a Miraluka Seer.
The Miraluka were a species of near-humans, who were born without eyes, and so covered their fleshed-over vestigial sockets with cloth bindings. Seeing through the Force, the Miraluka were well-known for their affinity for prophetic visions and insightful application of the Force. Together, the old woman and the young girl had gone on an extended mission to locate the components for Ruby's lightsaber.
The pair had ventured to the Mandalore system, and after some misadventure involving the head of the Mandalorian Clan Mudhorn - a diminutive green alien who was rumored to have had some degree of Jedi training from the Old Order in his distant youth - Ruby had been awarded a rod of pure beskar, the much-valued "Mandalorian iron" that could, among other things, resist the searing strikes of a lightsaber.
Qrow had initially thought that Ruby was to build a saberstaff, like his own, but then the girl had revealed that she had only been meant to find a single Kyber crystal - and what a crystal it was. She had been called to the oceanic moon of Kef Bir, where she'd needed to take a submersible to locate her crystal. It had been set into the rusted remains of a crossguard lightsaber. It had been cracked, and most worrying of all, it had been red.
Neither he nor Master Calavera had been exactly thrilled at that, and had even taken Ruby to show the crystal to the Grandmaster. At his instruction, Ruby had meditated on the crystal, sealing the crack, though the blood-red color remained. Qrow would never forget how she had looked up at him, with her big silver eyes, when he had asked why she would keep a crystal that had been so obviously wounded by the Dark Side.
"Just because something's been hurt, that doesn't mean it's evil," she'd said.
The Grandmaster had accepted her reasoning, and so Ruby ignited a blade as red as her name. The long rod and single blade made Ruby's lightsaber a form of polearm, and as she began the duel against her friends, Ruby did as she always did, which was to take to the air.
Qrow would admit to being at least a little proud that she kept to his own preferred style of Ataru. Ruby had always had an affinity for the Force-enhanced acrobatic leaps and tumbles that were the hallmark of the style, but under Master Calavera's instruction, Ruby had learned to telekinetically throw herself with the Force, sometimes changing direction in midair. Her furious aerial assaults, combined with the great reach of her polearm weapon, effectively turned her into a whirling force of unstoppable destruction.
Even two-on-one, it was all that Jaune and Weiss could do to withstand her. Jaune had been forced to adopt a supplementary-level Soresu form, turtling up in total defense with his blade and shield, while Weiss had almost disengaged entirely, using her own telekinesis to try and push Ruby back.
It was very impressive to behold…for about three minutes, after which Ruby began to falter and slow. This wasn't due to any strictly physical exhaustion on her part - Ruby was always on the move, with an energy that made Qrow's aging joints ache just from looking at her - but rather, from the exertion of drawing on the Force so heavily. Her ability to draw upon the Force to sustain her style was something that only time and practice could deepen, and as naturally talented as she was, Ruby was still younger than her peers. Still, when Ruby did hit that level of proficiency with the Force, she'd be damn near unbeatable, and everyone knew it.
"Time?" Jaune asked, looking up at Qrow as Ruby slowly spun to a halt, huffing and puffing.
"Three minutes, thirteen seconds," the Master announced.
Jaune whistled. "That's a new best," he said.
"Yaaaay," Ruby cheered, weakly.
Weiss grinned at the younger girl, a predatory smile that was all teeth. "Still, you were late…" she began.
"Jedi Power Noogies!" Jaune crowed.
"Noooo…" Ruby protested, weakly, as the pair began to move in again.
A green blaster bolt slammed into the dirt in front of her, bringing Jaune and Weiss to a halt.
"What's this? A fair maiden, in need of rescue? This looks like a job for a Jedi," Ruby's savior deadpanned.
Lie Ren was Qrow's current Padawan, and like him, he had a natural affinity for subtlety. He was a Miraluka, like Master Calavera, and wore a white silk wrap on his face. He was tall and lanky, with long black hair, and dressed in a green robe with white leggings.
Whereas Qrow would hide his sabers entirely, Ren opted to hide them in plain sight. His lightsabers were built into hilts that somewhat resembled staple guns, but were, in actuality, fully-functional blaster pistols. The boy would just wear them on his hip, occasionally engaging in the casual shootout, and none were the wiser that a Jedi had walked among them.
While all of the apprentices were at least competent in the principles of blast deflection, Makashi was highly-specialized towards dueling with other lightsabers, and the same narrow, tightly-focused blade and dueling hilt that gave Weiss such precision point control also made it slightly more difficult for her to deal with the onslaught of green stun bolts that Ren's blasters sent her way.
Jaune interposed himself between the two, his shield and crossguard saber covering such a wide area that he was able to guard both himself and her. They charged Ren, closing into melee distance, and forcing the Miraluka to switch his weapons from blasters to sabers. Each hilt ignited an emerald green blade.
Qrow had trained the boy in the Jar'Kai variant of the Niman style. Niman didn't boast of any particular strengths, but it didn't have any weaknesses either, consisting of an amalgamation of all of the previous lightsaber Forms, from Shii-Cho to Djem So. This style placed an emphasis on flexible methods of attack and defense, which Lie Ren exemplified with his unorthodox fighting style. With his left hand, he switched back to blaster mode, driving Weiss back with blaster bolts, while he used his right to channel a Force push to try to shove Jaune back.
Jaune wasn't particularly mobile, especially by Jedi standards, but he was both stubborn and tough, and so he powered through, swinging a sidelong chop at Ren's waist with his golden blade. Ren pivoted in place, dodging a stab from Weiss's blue lightsaber, while switching his weapons. The saber in his left hand ignited, pushing the Echani girl's lightsaber out of line, while the blaster in his right fired at Jaune at point-blank range. Only Jedi reflexes enabled Jaune to bring his shield up to bear in time for the stun bolts to splatter against the shield.
With his attack foiled, Ren was still facing two opponents, instead of just one, as he'd hoped. The Miraluka attempted to disengage, backstepping as Weiss began pressing the attack. He had to use both blades to ward off her clever thrusts and feints, and as Jaune regrouped to rejoin the fray, Ren realized that he was in trouble.
Weiss yelped as her legs were yanked out from under her by a telekinetic grip, tripping her to the ground. She managed to turn her fall into a somersault, rising to her feet to see the latest interloper make her entrance.
Jaune waved cheerfully with his saber at the violet-skinned Twi'lek girl. "Hey, Blake. Thought you'd be reading today?"
"I couldn't concentrate over the sound of your rank incompetence," Blake replied.
Twi'leks were a near-human species, hairless, that grew extensions of the nervous systems in fleshy head-tails, called lekku. Blake Belladonna was a local girl from Tython City, born to parents who were beyond honored to have their daughter join the Order that had emancipated their ancestors. Twi'leks had long been enslaved, with the women and girls seen as particularly beautiful by many around the galaxy, and so Twi'leks were heavily represented among the ranks of the freedbeings that had come to settle Tython. Blake's parents were commonly seen visiting their daughter at the temple, and Ghira and Kali Belladonna had often watched the young Ruby for Qrow when he'd been called away for a mission.
Blake loved to read above anything else in the galaxy, and almost all of her leisure time was spent in the library. Master Mahi-na, exasperated, had declared that if the girl was going to spend all day in her Archives, she might as well show her a few useful tricks while she was there, and so took the Twi'lek girl under her wing.
Blake's lightsaber was the most conventional of all of her friends, being just a simple hilt with a single violet blade, entirely devoid of bullshit. Her bullshit came entirely from herself. Like Ren, Blake practiced Niman, though she did so in order to facilitate the deployment of rare Force abilities that she had learned during her studies under the Chronicler. Her telekinesis was the most refined among the apprentices, and she had more or less mastered the ability to accelerate herself through the Force, but her favorite ability was the use of illusions.
Another of the sayings attributed to the Skywalker was "If your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them," and Blake frequently made her fellow apprentices learn the truth of that saying in their duels with her. Of course, Ren pointed out that he didn't have eyes, and that, from his point of view, when dueling Blake, his friends all tended to wander off and swing their sabers in random directions for no apparent reason whatsoever.
According to Mahi-na, there was a way for a Jedi to project themselves to such a degree that even the Force senses could be fooled, but Blake still had a ways to go to reach that level of ability.
Still, learning to rely on the Force senses during a duel was a good lesson to learn, particularly for Jaune, whose eyes tended to wander when Blake was around, due to her tending to wear tight, brown leather leggings and a matching, midriff-exposing crop top. Teenagers, irrespective of their species, would always be teenagers, Qrow supposed.
"So, how do we want to do this," Ren said. "Girls versus boys?"
"There's three of them and only two of us," Jaune pointed out.
"Ah," nodded Ren. "Ruby, are you back with us?"
The small human girl nodded. "Yep!"
Weiss canted her hip as she looked at Jaune. "What are you afraid to fight us three on two?"
"Yes," he admitted blandly.
"Well, that's too bad," said the Echani girl, smirking at him.
The resulting three-on-two brawl went about as well as Qrow had expected it to, which is to say that it quickly devolved into more of a group play session than a serious training exercise. They had even invented a new sport, Rubyball, which involved using telekinesis to throw Ruby around in an attempt to smack each other with the girl.
Qrow was about to turn to leave, when he heard the familiar sound of Grandmaster Ozpin approaching, his cane clacking against the stone floor.
"Ah. I see that our apprentices here are taking to their training with their usual…youthful enthusiasm," the older man said, watching the teens at play.
"Well, what can you do?" Qrow said, with a philosophical shrug. "Younglings are gonna be…well, young."
"That would be the natural way of things," agreed Ozpin. "Still, they will not be apprentices for much longer."
"Ruby will still need a few more years, to really get the hang of Ataru. The rest of them? Yeah, the rest are probably about ready for Knighthood." He sighed. "Good batch of kids, that lot."
"One of our most promising classes in quite some time. You should be proud of what you've accomplished with them, Master Branwen."
"Eh," Qrow waved off the praise. "Most of their own masters deserve the credit, Mister 'Let Me Teach You Something New About Shii-Cho.' All I did was just show 'em the fundamentals."
"Well, teaching a Jedi is not so dissimilar to constructing a building like this temple, Master Branwen. Without solid fundamentals, the entire edifice crumbles." The Grandmaster nodded to himself as the apprentices helped a dizzy Ruby up to her feet. "If you would be so good as to accompany me to my chambers, Master Branwen, I'm afraid that there is a matter that will require your attention."
"Oh, really? What is it this time? Smugglers? Slavers? A new warlord out in League space?"
Ozpin looked at Qrow, his mouth drawn into a grim line. "I'm afraid it's rather more serious than that."
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Chapter Endnotes: And so, we're introduced to our New Jedi Order, a different status quo for the galaxy, and most of our cast. Don't worry - there are others still to come, they just aren't Jedi like this lot.