So here we go for the third chapter let's get into it.
"Normal speech"
"Comms"
-Driods-
"Kurama"
Ch.3 Old History
-Unknown ice planet-
Naruto still in a slight daze as he couldn't believe what he was seeing, his personal dreadnought that he captured from some random Sith Lord was in front of him. It looked mostly intact though he could see many blast marks littering the hull, and the bridge looked like it was decimated. Naruto steered the Twilight around the ship, in doing that he saw that the port side hanger bay happened to be unobstructed and Naruto made the decision that the library could wait a little longer and set the Twilight down in front of the sealed hanger bay. Naruto quickly stood up from his seat and walked out of the cockpit without a word leaving three confused Jedi to scramble after him only to see that the ramp was already down and Naruto was walking through deep snow to what looked like a small access hatch next to the hanger doors. The three tried their best to catch up with Naruto but they were slowed down by the snow. Naruto, in a feat that none of the three Jedi thought possible, ripped the hatch open and slid in. the others looked at each other and followed the strangely quiet Jedi Master. They followed him through passageways and up/down ladders until Naruto stopped in front of a control panel and tried to power it up. Amazingly the small console lit up and Naruto started to type in commands three holograms popped up on the table behind the console, each showing different information. One showed the emergency reactor's power status as critical; one showed the integrity of the ship's hull was at seventy percent, weapons were non-functional, that only one engine was operational, and only the backup hyperdrive was operational. Small blessings Naruto thought, he then looked at the third hologram to check crew logs. The logs stated that all surviving crew entered stasis pods, though almost all records stated that the occupants were deceased. Out of the three hundred remaining crewmembers on the ship only four still showed stable yet slowly decreasing vital signs. Though he couldn't see who still lived as the data was corrupted. Naruto turned to face his confused companions and stared straight at Anakin.
"The ship's emergency power is critical and the survivors in the stasis pods are in danger as they will die if the emergency power runs out. Do you think you, your Padawan, and your droid could activate one of the main reactors to restore power to the ship while my Padawan an I try to reboot the systems and try to reactivate whatever utility droids are still operational?" asked Naruto turning back to the console.
"Sure, though I have no clue where they are." Said Anakin hearing the urgency in Naruto's tone. With that said Naruto activated a section of overhead lights that lead to the aft end of the dreadnought.
"Follow the lights, they will lead you to the reactors, hopefully they are operational." Said Naruto as the two Jedi and astromech disappeared down the passageway. Naruto then checked to see what droids were operational on the ship. He counted out of two hundred T-3 utility droids on the ship, only half were operational and of those half, only thirty currently had sufficient power to function. Naruto sighed as he input commands into the console and activated the droids so they could start to repair critical systems, Naruto, with his Padawan following his instructions, started the reboot of all systems except the stasis pods. After an hour and a half the ships main power was restored Naruto sighed a breath of relief as the survivor's vital signs stopped degrading and began to rise back to normal healthy levels. Now Naruto had a new problem as extended time in a stasis pod was not healthy and extremely dangerous so Naruto wasn't about to thaw the survivors out. He looked at his Padawan and motioned her to follow him.
While she walked by his side, Rem was worried as her Master looked very troubled and being tired of not knowing what was troubling him she spoke up. "Master, what is going on? What is this strange ship, and why do you look so troubled?"
"Well this is my personal command ship from way back when during my days fighting against the Sith Empire. She originally named The Sorrow until I captured her from a Sith Lord called Darth Vallius and rechristened her The Hailstorm. As to why I am troubled the last time I saw this ship was when my Padawan took command of her for a mission to locate a missing group of younglings a week before my incident. Hopefully I can find out what happened to her." As the conversation ended Naruto stopped in front of the door that led to the stasis pod chamber. Naruto hesitated for a second and then opened the door, inside were rows of hundreds of pods that filled the room, though many of the pods were empty. He then went to the nearest console and brought up the information that he needed on the survivors, though all he could get out of the corrupted data were pod numbers 09, 14, 110, and 144. Naruto jumped over to the closest pod which was 144 which had a metal Plate labeled PVT. Allynor "Mouse" Wriggat, Female, Twenty years old. Naruto then jumped over to the next which was 110 which was labeled CAPT. Markus "Ice" Tappwea, Male, Thirty-four years old. Naruto jumped over to the last two and saw that one of the pods had the name he was looking for. Pod 14 didn't have a metal Plate on it but pod 9 did and it simply stated Jedi Padawan Sira Agror, Female, Age Seventeen years old. Naruto kneeled down in front of the pod and tears of joy started to come out of his eyes as he now knew his apprentice and adoptive daughter was not lost anymore.
This was the scene that both Anikin and Ashoka walked into and it was strange to them as they had never seen or heard of a Jedi Master displaying that much emotion before, so they just stood there watching Naruto weeping while smiling. Rem herself was at a loss of what to do as she had never delt with this situation before so she kneeled down beside her Master and gave him a hug that he returned.
Naruto stayed there for a while until he noticed that his three companions were around him showing concern and confusion on their faces. Naruto wiped the tears out of his eyes, let go of Rem, and stood up. "I'm sorry about that, I'm sure that you all want an explanation, well I found out that my lost Padawan is alive and that is all I am going to say for now. Let us head to our original destination and figure out what I need to bring back so we can quickly return as the survivors will need to have a full medical team on station to extract them from the stasis pods." Said Naruto as he began to lead them towards the same hatch that they entered the ship through.
Though Skywalker had a thought that puzzled him and he voiced his question to Naruto. "Master Uzumaki why does this ship have stasis pods? I thought those fell out of use after the hyperdrive was created."
"Well while it is true that they widely fell out of use due to the creation of the hyperdrive, it was still very dangerous and unpredictable to travel through hyperspace and to be honest the hyperspace lanes were not as well established as I bet they are now, so there were still many ships that were lost due to space anomalies. Many of those lost ships were eventually found floating adrift with all hands lost due to starvation, dehydration, or loss of power leading to the crew freezing to death. So I decided to have a contingency just in case that happened. Though there was one odd case of all the crew members going mad and killing themselves, that was a rather worrying sight that I still have trouble processing. Back to the topic at hand, living beings were not supposed to use the pod longer than a few centuries, it is a wonder that any survived longer than that." Naruto hopped out of the hatch and walked a couple of yards and suddenly sunk into the snow up to his chest. Hearing giggling behind him Naruto shifted the snow behind him and flung a decent sized pile of snow at the amused Padawans, who both yelped before being buried in snow. Both dug themselves out and glared at Naruto as he chuckled. Naruto dug himself out of the snow and started wandering around an area until he breathed a stream of fire at an angle at the icy ground. Eventually Naruto stepped into the tunnel of ice taking a breath and breathing more fire and repeating this action until there was an opening at the end of the melted tunnel. Naruto stepped out of the tunnel followed by the two annoyed Padawans and the amused Knight. The three were in awe of the structure that was in front of them, it looked similar to the architecture of the Jedi temple on Coruscant yet it was different as it looked much older and strangely in better shape. They watched as Naruto placed a holocron into a square shaped slot in a wall and a second later the 'wall' slid back and vanished along with the holocron. Naruto motioned for them to follow him as he led them down many flights of stairs and past many sealed doors until he stopped before a podium. Behind the podium sat an ancient droid that powered on as soon as Naruto stepped in front of the podium.
-Greetings Jedi Uzumaki, it's nice of you to return after three thousand six hundred and thirty-one years. I was beginning to think you forgot about us or had died.-
"No I would never forget about you D-7, I had an incident that left me displaced."
-I can't wait to hear that tale, I see that you brought companions, this is highly irregular. I assume you have informed our guests of your rules about the library?"- Asked D-7 as the droid looked at the other three Jedi.
"Yes I told them of the rules and if they stray from what I have told them please notify me. Now I was wondering if you could tell me if anything of importance has happened since I have been away." As the two discussed events Ashoka elbowed Rem to get her attention.
"That droid kind of looks like Professor Huyang doesn't it?" whispered Ashoka and Rem nodded as the old droid did look like the ancient lightsaber architect droid that she had met during her trip to Illum. Both Padawans focused back on the conversation going on in front of them.
"So, we have only had a few visitors…. One of those clearly a Sith, a Muun if I'm not mistaken, but they didn't seem to know what they had found nor how to access the library…. When did the Sith find this place?"
-Roughly Twenty years ago, but that monstrosity that you call your ship landed here only two weeks ago.- Now that news surprised Naruto and he began to think on how that could be, he would have to look at the navigational orders in his ship's log.
"That will have to be a mystery for another time D-7, could you retrieve this information and direct our guest to whatever they want to know in the specified section." Asked Naruto as he gave D-7 a list of information and holocrons that he needed and disappeared around a corner.
D-7 focused his gaze on the Jedi in front of him and spoke -Greetings Jedi, I am D-7, a reprogramed architect droid and the custodian of the library which you currently occupy. What can I help you find today?- D-7 directed his question to Ashoka first as she was the closest.
"Uhhhh…. I really don't have anything that I am looking for." Answered Ashoka smiling sheepishly.
D-7 gave the droid equivalent of a sigh -Very well, what about the other Padawan?-
"Could you guide me to the records of my Master's former Padawan?"
-You wish to know about your predecessors?-
"Predecessors? I thought he only had one Padawan before me." Rem asked confused causing D-7 to realize that he made a mistake.
-Ah… I am afraid I have said too much on a sensitive topic for your Master. This mouse droid will guide you to the records of Padawan Argor.- as D-7 said that a small turtle shell shaped droid approached Rem and did a few quick circles around her and started to lead her to the records section and Ashoka followed her. D-7 looked at the last Jedi and stared at him. (Quick note the mouse droids look like small turtle shell shaped droids)
-And how can I help you?-
"Do you have advanced training holocrons for form five?" asked Anakin.
-Indeed we do, though they are by your definition outdated by about a few thousand years, the last time our archives were updated was about five hundred years ago before the link to the Jedi library on Coruscant was severed.-
"That's fine, maybe there's some information that was lost during those years."
-Very well, please follow the mouse droid.- with that Anakin followed the droid and D-7 powered back off.
-Three floors below-
Naruto opened a door to a dark room that lit up a few seconds after Naruto stepped into it. At first glance the room looked like a museum, which was kind of correct as it held mementos of Naruto's rather long life behind many glass cases, some were from his home planet such as the Seven Legendary Swords of Kiri, Many different scrolls from every nation, the Sage's Tools, some War Puppets from Suna, and the necklace that Tsunade had given him as well as his godfather's book series. From his time as a Jedi Naruto had collected many lightsabers and ancient weapons from the time of the Je'daii on forward, many of the lightsabers were taken from foes or kept from fallen friends, old gadgets that no longer worked, a few old droids, Mandalorian armor, the mask of Revan, but what he cared most about were his second wife's shattered Kyber crystal, his children's three small corroded lightsabers, his first wife's necklace, his son's favorite toy, and finally a case that held an old Jedi Temple Guardian uniform and a plain white mask. Naruto opened the case that held his old uniform and retrieved his old mask and stared into the eye slits.
"It's been many years since I've seen that mask. You're not thinking about donning it again are you?" asked the old fox.
"Possibly, from what I have read in my short time back is that there aren't as many Sentinels since the Sith were all but destroyed a thousand years ago, they are mainly Temple Guardians and Watchmen. I was a Guardian at one point and probably know more about the older parts of the temple that are probably long forgotten, but it's disappointing that there are not even a handful of shadows left." Said Naruto while looking at another item that filled him with guilt and sorrow. In the corner behind a reinforced glass case was the double-bladed lightsaber of his first apprentice who followed Revan in his crusade against the Mandalorians and fell to the dark side along with most who followed Revan. Naruto eventually had to hunt him down and eliminate him as his apprentice had committed too many atrocities for Naruto to ignore, it was also the last time Naruto had worn his mask, it was also around that time that the High Council had asked him to build his library as they could see he was about to break. Naruto had lost too many people he had cared about within a rough hundred-year period including his planet, his son and first wife were killed in the invasion of his home, his former Master was killed in battle, he killed his second wife who fell to the dark side, and his three children were killed by Mandalorians. Naruto had lived in seclusion for many years after he was given the assignment of building a hidden library and he spent many years alone (Well as alone as one could be with a giant fox sealed inside him) collecting knowledge from everywhere until he met his second Padawan.
Naruto was brought out of memory lane and to his knees as his mind began to be assaulted by many force visions. One vision showed him leading clones in orange and white colored armor into battle, another showed Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting on a volcanic planet with Anakin being cut down, another showed both Skywalker and Kenobi sitting in a park on some unknown planet as old men, another showed a black armored figure fighting an older version of Rem and Ashoka in what looked like a Sith temple. Many more visions of possible futures and events long past. The thing that Naruto noticed was that all of the visions of the future that involved Anakin showed him falling to the dark side, Naruto didn't want to believe that his friend would fall as force visions were not set in stone, but he needed to prepare to either prevent his friend's fall or be ready to stop him. Naruto sealed his mask up and walked out of the room and walked to where D-7 sent his Padawan.
-Personnel Records-
Rem was neck deep in old republic records trying to find out more about her Master and his previous Padawan, his records stated when he stared out as an apprentice after he was found on his ravaged home world, he would always get into trouble even if he didn't go looking for it and what information she could find about her Master in his later years was the stuff of legends. He had married another Jedi and had three children with her but records stated that the children were killed by Mandalorians and that Naruto had to kill his wife after she fell. After that her Master pretty much leapt into battle after battle. To say that he was the bane of the Sith and their allies was an extreme understatement as he was the boogeyman to them, his mere presence caused all but the most powerful Sith Lords to tremble in fear. The amount of Sith and Mandalorians that her Master had killed or captured boggled her mind. Though something changed after he killed a Sith whose name was redacted, the Jedi High Council had given Naruto a long term assignment and he pretty much all but vanished from history around the time just before the Great Jedi Purge and reappeared around a few years before the Sith returned, there were mentions of many Sith being found dead with a spiral mark branded on their forehead, and many suspected that it was her Master reminding his enemies and friends that he was still out there. He returned to the light around the start of the Great Galactic War by chance when the world he was collecting artifacts and old knowledge was invaded by Sith warriors and a Mandalorian clan allied with the Sith. Naruto had single handedly massacred the Sith and almost wiped out the Clan of Mandalorians. Republic forces arrived shortly afterwards and found the remnants of the clan imprisoned by the locals and rambling on about a golden-haired Jedi that cut through their forces like emissary of death. Naruto soon returned to the temple and revealed to the High Jedi Council who he was as all that had known about him were long dead. He still tried to stay out of conflict if he could help it but unfortunately, trouble still found him everywhere he went and he eventually just jumped right back into the heavy fighting.
Both Rem and Ashoka looked on in awe of the achievements the old Jedi had accomplished, though they were more interested in his Padawans. Rem was annoyed when she was denied access to the records of Naruto's first Padawan so she looked at his Second one. Sira Agror was brought to an enclave at a young age after she was found on a world that the Sith were driven off of. She was taken as a Padawan by Naruto five years afterwards and the records showed that Naruto trained her very well and treated her like a daughter after a few years of a love/hate relationship. Both Master and Padawan were listed as MIA after the sacking of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Rem wondered if her Master would treat her like he did Sira.
Rem was suddenly assaulted by a vision of her Master injured and fighting like a wounded animal against some heavily armored warriors while protecting his downed Padawan. She saw his eyes turn a strange shade of red as he started to slowly heal and cut the warriors down one by one with rage in his eyes. When the last warrior was struck down, Naruto fell to his knees and released an angry roar that ended as sorrowful wailing.
Rem was brought back to the present when she felt Ashoka shaking her and looking at her in confusion. She also saw Master Skywalker looking at her with worry.
"What's up with you? You blanked out for a second." Asked Ashoka.
"I believe I just saw a vision of the past…. My Master was defending his Padawan after they were ambushed by warriors whose armor was resistant to lightsabers and he looked like he was in agony at the end of the battle."
It was at this time Naruto appeared from behind a pillar and spoke up. "I was in agony as I was in an immense amount of pain and I thought my Padawan was killed before my eyes. The Mandalorians of my time were exceptional warriors and took me by surprise. I ended up slaughtering them all after one shot Sira in the back twice. She was barely alive but she survived, but it was touch and go for a while. Now I believe it is time to leave."
Naruto ushered the three Jedi back to the podium where D-7 was situated.
-All the information you requested is in these holocrons Master Uzumaki, please return soon as we have a few matters to take care of.- Said D-7 while motioning to a stack of Holocrons on the podium.
"Of course, D-7, thank you again." Said Naruto as he retrieved the holocrons and lead his group out of the library and stopped at the door leading out of the temple and retrieved the holocron key causing the door to close behind him. Naruto then lead them back to the Hailstorm and worked on opening the port side hanger bay. Eventually the Twilight was stored inside and Naruto was struggling to light off the engines. After three hours, the engines were operating at half capacity and the ancient warship slowly broke away from the ice that encased part of its starboard side. Naruto was situated in the secondary bridge as the primary wasn't space worthy and he started to put in the coordinates to a republic shipyard that was the closest. Of course, he had knocked out his passengers as he still had to keep the location of the library a secret. Naruto then pulled a lever and the ship jumped into hyperspace.
-END-
Well this one took a little while as I had so many interruptions and work has kept me busy. This chapter is also a bit shorter than the other two but the next ones. Tell me how I did and what I need to possibly work on.
