The as-of-yet unnamed yacht entered the Kashyyk system, the rival life-bearing worlds of Kashyyk and Dosh rendered to little more than two tiny, unassuming dots against the raging firestorm of their star. He could sense the latter bore his quarry, or at least was nearer to it, and plugged the coordinates into the ship's navicomputer. It would be several hours before he arrived in orbit and could pinpoint the source of the Student's Call. He would take the time to meditate until then; leaving the bridge and situating himself in a nearby closet, he kneeled onto his knees and closed his eyes, reaching out into the Force. It felt odd, at first, having no other living creatures aboard the vessel, but he had meditated alone before. He delved into the sacred words he had dedicated so much of his life in service towards.
Peace is nought but deception, there is only Passion.
Somewhere in this system was a sentient who needed guidance, who needed protection. He would provide the gentle, nurturing hand and the stern rod of discipline to ensure their training was completed.
Through Passion, I shalt gain Strength.
He could sense they were not the strongest Force user, but that mattered little with enough practice, and in his day there were countless Sith who may very well have been less than perfect duelists or middling in Force sensitivity who were yet great scientists, making new discoveries in the Force and technology, or who became Masters of the Arcane and caused Sith Alchemy to lurch forwards by decades or even centuries in but a single night.
Through Strength I shalt gain Power.
If this person could call into the Force like this, then perhaps he was not the only one coming to -answer, perhaps there were other Sith, or Sith-adjacents, who were coming as well. There stood some hope of a reborn Sith civilization, hidden amongst the shadows to hide from the Jedi's intolerance of innovation, to hide from their misuse of the Force and false ownership of the so-called Light.
Through Power, I shalt gain Victory.
They could rebuild, perhaps they had rebuilt. He could delve further into this later, but for now the matter remained of finding this prospective student, the one who had first called out. He needed to find them and bring them away. Given where he was going it was most likely going to be a Trandoshan. He hoped it was a Trandoshan, he couldn't speak a growl of the Wookiee tongue. Did the Wookiees actually have a language?
Through Victory, mine chains art broken.
Does matter (until it does), whatever he found that called out to him he would find some way to accommodate them, and he needed to be the one to find them and guide them. He had seen too many self-taught, or poorly taught, Sithlings lose their minds upon opening the wrong holocron, too many delve too deep and too greedily into the Dark Side of the Force before they were prepared and come out twisted, monstrous. His guidance would serve this student well.
The Force shalt free me.
His people lived.
Jinx and O-mer were watching the two girls having a clear power-struggle, although Padawan Tano would never acknowledge it as such. They weren't sure if they had ever seen Kalifa this heated before, or felt the Force be this cold around her. They scooted a few centimeters closer to the fire they had going inside their tree hollow.
"You killed him in cold blood!" Ahsoka chastised, only for Kalifa to laugh.
"Oh, and I'm sure he would have just given us a pat on the head and told us to scamper off! 'Tag! You're it!'" she mocked, "Listen Tano, if you were really a Padawan you would know there's wisdom in experience. You can't allow those disgusting vermin to live, not after what they've done! Not after everyone they've killed!"
Ahsoka sighed in frustration, "Yes, they deserve to be punished, that doesn't give you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner!"
"And who would bring them to justice then?" Kalifa snapped back, "The same Jedi that just wrote us off and left us to die?!"
"No one even knows you're here or they would have rescued you!" Ahsoka argued back, "I have faith in my Master, he's-"
"SO DID EVERY OTHER PADAWAN!" Kalifa screamed, tears begin to well in her eyes "So did Jek, and Marik, and Tal, and Deng, and Twilla, and Janice, and Garl, and Luke, and Prithim, and Flor, and… and…" she broke down. She had lost so many people in the time she had been here, so many people she had once called friends. It was only a matter of time until she lost Jinx and O-mer too, it was nothing short of a miracle they had survived as long as they did. She had never allowed herself to cry over their deaths. There were no bodies to mourn, no graves to dig; there was only the laughter and hooting of those damned reptiles celebrating their murders. She hated them; she hated them!
Ahsoka felt the cascade of grief flow off of Kalifa, and tried to reach out to comfort her, only for the human girl to swat her hand away. She sat down across the hollow from the crying girl and just looked at her with pity. "I'm sorry."
"I don't need your pity!" Kalifa spat, before taking a few shaking breaths, "I just. I didn't need to scream like that. Someone could have heard it."
"We did!" sang a Trandoshan voice from down below, followed by celebratory roars.
The three younglings had looks of terror come onto their faces, and even Ahsoka was overcome with a sense of dread. Kalifa looked between all of their faces, starting to hyperventilate, "I-I-I, I'm sorry! I'M SO SORRY!"
O-mer came to her and put a hand on her shoulder, and sighed in resignation, "It's fine. We all knew this was going to happen eventually."
Jinx grabbed a heavy branch to wield as a club, "If we're going to die today, at least we can go out fighting!" he declared, his determined face hiding quite well the terror pouring off of his person in the Force. Ahsoka could respect that. Then the four heard a sound that three of them believed they would never hear again: a lightsaber igniting.
Celebratory roars turned into battle cries as the hunters shot at their assailant, blaster bolts ricocheting off the blade and being sent right back at them. A swing here, a strike there, even a lightning strike, the sounds seemed to come from all around the tree. Ahsoka felt a cocky smirk come to her lips, "I told you my Master would be here, and from the sounds of things he brought the entire clone army!"
Kalifa was confused, "Clone army?"
"Wait, how long have you been here?"
"I don't know. I think I was four when I was first captured?"
Ahsoka looked the young girl over with growing horror upon realizing just how long she must have been here. She sent a pulse out into the Force to let Anakin know they were in the tree- her eyes went wide; that wasn't Anakin.
A Trandoshan yelled, "Red lightsaber! He's a Si-" followed by a scream, then silence. A few more blaster bolts before all was quiet.
The four felt the presence of their liberator hopping into the tree branches and began walking their way towards the hollow. Slowly, methodically, listening for any more hunters who may have been lining up a shot, the lightsaber-wielder getting closer and closer to them. Ahsoka looked at the three younglings in a mad panic, "We need to get away from here, now!"
O-mer looked at her like she had just turned into a Wookiee, "Are you insane?!" he bellowed, "This is our chance to get away from this hell! We're going to take it!"
"You're going to get yourselves killed!" she screamed back, then blanched.
He was here. The Sith Lord turned round the branches surrounding the hollow almost like a platform, bathing the tree in the crimson glow of his still ignited and growling blade. Ahsoka raised her fists to fight, while O-mer and Jinx stared wide-eyed at what, to them, was a storybook villain come to life. The Cerean glanced at the Twi'lek, sending over a "Maybe he just uses a red lightsaber like Master Gallia?" over the bond they had developed.
"What are you doing here, Sith?" Ahsoka hissed.
Jinx sent back, "Well, there goes that hope."
The Sith, for his part stood silent, looking them over, "Who hast called out for me? Who amongst thee gave the Student's Call into the Force?" He looked Ahsoka over, "I take it wast not thou? Yet thou dost look quite familiar. Perhaps thou wast at the Temple upon mine arrival?" She stared daggers back at him.
Jinx and O-mer immediately pointed in Kalifa's direction, and she looked incredulously back at them and to the apparent Sith. "Wow, thanks so much!" she sarcastically remarked, "I always knew you would never rat me out!"
The Sith ignored the unarmed Padawan and entered the hollow, deactivating his lightsaber and hooking it back to his belt, he looked over Kalifa, furrowing his brow, "What age art thou?"
Kalifa looked at the Sith Lord with no small amount of fear; she remembered the stories the crechemaster would tell her youngling clan about evil Sith Lords who would come to take away and punish bad little children who didn't meditate properly or who used the Force to hit each other with random objects. Had she not been lying to get them to behave? Was he actually here to come collect and punish her for killing the Trandoshan? The man towered above her as she sat, shaking, his white clothes contrasting with both his red-lined black cape and the Jedis' own filthy dressings. She wasn't sure if she should answer this monster from her youngest self's nightmares.
"Well? Prithee answer!" he beckoned.
"I… I don't know." She shakingly replied.
Now the Sith was getting annoyed. "Thou dost not know?"
"I think, maybe twelve? Or fifteen?" Why did he talk so weird? Was that a Sith thing? Or did everyone do that now?
He hummed, then shook his head, seemingly in disappointment. "Nay," he said, "Nay, I shall take thou not as mine apprentice." Kalifa's eyes grew wider.
"And just what makes you think I would let that happen anyway?" Ahsoka challenged, probably quite stupidly considering the closest thing she had to a weapon was a stick, but she challenged the Dark Lord, nonetheless.
Said Dark Lord simply looked over at her with a bored expression in his eyes, his respirator covering the rest of his face, "Prithee child, how exactly wouldst thou stoppest me?" He looked between all four and remarked, "Ye art Jedi, correct?"
"Correct," Jinx answered reflexively.
The Sith sighed, "As I feared." Then he turned back to Kalifa and pointed at her, causing her breath to hitch, "Thou art too young to be trained in the Ways of the Sith. Thou wouldst never survive the Trials, and even if thou wouldst," he looked back at Ahsoka with a tad more than mild annoyance, "the Sith would nary stoop so low as to steal children and brainwash them."
"You lousy, low-life-" Ahsoka started.
O-mer intervened, "Ahsoka, please don't antagonize him when we're armed with sticks, please?!"
Ahsoka let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like an overheated machine releasing air pressure to keep from exploding. The Sith simply turned around and walked out of the hollow. "Follow, if thee wishest to come back home to Coruscant."
"And why would we follow you?" Ahsoka demanded.
The Sith simply rolled his eyes. "If thou wishest to stay hither, and meet thy death in stubbornness, I shalt not stop it. Those who wishest to live, come."
Jinx shrugged, "It's better than any other chance we have," he declared and made his way to follow the Dark Lord, followed by Kalifa's standing up and running after them.
O-mer looked at Ahsoka and said, "Jinx does have a point."
Ahsoka huffed and the pair followed the trio down the tree and to the beach. The Togruta opted not to comment on the mutilated Trandoshan corpses scattered about in charred pieces, already being picked apart by scavenging insects.
The Temple had already been on high alert since Flayseno had left the Coruscanti atmosphere, now it was at the highest level they could go without the planet actively being destroyed. The Mon Cala yacht, now remotely registered as the Elara, so now the Order couldn't even get the increasingly, irritatingly legal Sith on the technicality of being overdue for registering a name on his vessel, was fast approaching the Temple docks. Anakin stood ready to take the fight to the Sith: he could sense Ahsoka's presence aboard the yacht, and she was not happy. Plo Koon and Obi-Wan stood to his sides, and every available armed Master was nearby in case of a hostage situation.
The ship pulled into the hangar, its colossal bulk taking up most of the space around it as the various drones hovered around it automatically buffing out any scratches and refueling the ship. The entry ramp lowered to reveal three younglings running out into the Temple and falling to their knees, the Twi'lek among them actually falling to his knees and kissing the floor as they were all weeping tears… of joy? Plo Koon reached out to sense if any harm had come to the children and found that, yes there was a lot of damage both physical and mental, but none of it seemed recent. Ahsoka stormed out of the ship, annoyed but unharmed, and Anakin ran up to her for an embrace, which she eagerly returned. Flayseno was clearly visible but remaining inside the ship. He nodded at the Jedi and closed the ramp back, engines roaring to life once more, the drones floated back, and the repulsors of the vessel helped it back out of the Temple hangar and turn around, and made its heading elsewhere. Exactly where the Jedi did not know yet, but one of the drones had placed a tracking device on the yacht to keep tabs on it. Now that Flayseno was mobile, they needed to be constantly updated on his position.
"It doesn't make any sense," Obi-Wan pondered aloud, "Why? Why would a Sith Lord go out of his way to rescue Ahsoka and, presumably three other Padawans?"
"I do not know," Plo rumbled, "but perhaps we can glean the information out of them with a Council report."
Of the four Jedi Padawans delivered suspiciously unharmed by the Sith Lord, only one of them was actually a Padawan: Ahsoka. When the Council learned of the Trandoshan hunting guild kidnapping Jedi children to be hunted for sport, emotions became tense in Force within the Council Chamber. Shaak Ti and Kit Fisto's blood ran hot, Depa Billaba and Evan Piell were sickened, and Yoda's presence grew dim with mourning.
"Master Rancisis," Windu beckoned, "Would you take the younglings Jinx and O-mer to the healers? We need to make sure they are healthy and make sure any parasites they may have gotten are treated."
"Of course, Master of the Order," Oppo replied, slithering out of his seat, and motioning for the lost, now found, younglings to follow him.
"You may go as well, Little 'Soka," Master Koon replied, "Go be with your Master."
"Thank you, Master Plo," Ahsoka smiled and bowed, tossing a confused and concerned look towards Kalifa before turning to leave behind the other three.
"What about me, Masters?" Kalifa asked nervously, shifting from one foot to the other.
Piell looked at the other Masters and answered, "You… complicate things."
"If what Ahsoka said is true, then you delved into the Dark Side," Windu continued.
"Murdered in cold blood, you did," Yoda chastised.
Kalifa cowered while Ki-Adi Mundi added, "And used the Dard Side to not only kill a man but to summon a Sith Lord to your position. Which is something we didn't even know was possible, and he arrived declaring his intention to take you on as an apprentice."
"Add to that, the age matter," Coleman Kjac continued, "You were inducted into the Jedi Order at three, you were taken away at four. In essence, you have no real training, or even basic education, and your instruction would essentially start anew at your current age of," he checked the recently unsealed record on his datapad, "fourteen." He shook his head, "That is far too old to begin Jedi training."
Kalifa was shaking, tears welling in her eyes. She had once imagined what it would be like to return to the Temple, to become a Jedi again, before she had lost all hope of rescue ever coming. "I- I didn't know," she begged.
"I'm sorry, little one," Plo Koon replied, genuine sadness in his voice, "but it just isn't possible."
Kalifa felt anything even resembling hope for a future in the Order, any joy at seeing her home again, evaporate, "Please."
"Don't make this any harder than it has to be," Windu requested as two Temple Guards came in and stood beside the young girl.
"No," she whimpered, "No! I'll be a good Jedi! I'll do everything right! I can catch up! Please! Please don't leave me again!" She made to lunge at Master Yoda's feet, but the Guards each grabbed her shoulders "I'll do anything! Anything you want!" she pleaded.
Obi-Wan had to look away as the Temple Guards dragged away the terrified child, begging and screaming in absolute hysterics. A child with no family, no formal education beyond that of a toddler, no prospects at all, and no future. "We are making a mistake," he declared with sorrow in his heart.
"I fear we may have just given birth to a new Sith Order," Shaak concurred. The vote had been far from unanimous, but there was a solid majority for kicking her out into the street.
"What's done is done," Ki-Adi Mundi replied, "The Code demands it."
"The Code demands throwing an orphan girl into the cold to starve to death? Or worse?" Kit asked dismissively.
"Of any use, more debate, would not be," Yoda answered, putting an end to the conversation.
Roto Naberrie needed a drink, or fifty. This last hope he had for the resurrection or survival of his people, his civilization, was for nought. He had paid for a spot in the Coruscanti Spaceport for the Senate District to leave his yacht to rot and was walking back to his hotel room, and more importantly the bar. It had gotten to where he was no longer even able to process what he was thinking or feeling without ethanol in his veins. Elara would be disgusted with him. At the very least, he had managed to save those children. At the very least, he could say he did that. His route this way would take him past the Jedi Temple, and he considered going a different way. No, this was the most direct path to his vodka, if anything the enormous monument to his failure should make the vodka go down even faster.
He looked straight ahead, ignoring everything around him except his goal of getting to what was basically home now, getting drunk as hell, and going to bed to hopefully never wake up. Well, almost everything, there was still the blonde Shadow following him thinking she was being competent, and as he neared the Jedi Temple, he heard the sound of a child crying. He slowed his march into a stop beside the source of the sound and looked down: it was one of the younglings he had just brought back, sitting on the steps of the Temple and bawling her eyes out. Flayseno was confused; he was confused a lot lately. "Child?" he beckoned, grabbing her attention, her bloodshot eyes matching his own, although for very different reasons. "Wherefore art thou outside? Shouldst thou not be inside receiving antiparasitic medicines?"
She sniffled, "I," she hyperventilated slightly, "I was kicked out. They, they said that I was too old, and that," she inhaled between her tears again, "since I, I used the Dark Side, they could, ne- never train me. So they abandoned me," her face fell into her hands, "again."
Flayseno's right eye twitched a few times. "What?"
"Th-they-" Kalifa went on, "They had the Guards drag me out and toss me to the ground." She had cuts on her hands and knees from where they had evidently tossed her. They were bleeding.
"Come hither, child," he goaded, sending soothing waves into the Force until she stopped crying.
"I thought you said that I," she swallowed, gathering her shaking breath, "I was too young to be a Sith," a few more tears fell, "Just like they said I was too old to be a Jedi."
"Oh I shalt not train thou," Flayseno corrected, but continued before she began bawling again, "We shalt have a word with the Jedi Council. Dost thou thinkest thou can maintain thy composure before them again?"
She wiped away tears and looked into his eyes. They were bloodshot, he must have been crying too. She took a few shaky breaths and nodded. "I think so."
The Sith held out a hand to the young not-Jedi, and she took it. Standing up, she walked with him, hand-in-hand, back up the steps to the Temple.
Making their way to the closed front doors, the pair stopped. There stood two of the Temple Guard, who immediately ignited their dual bladed sabers. "Halt, Sith!" one ordered.
"Your kind are not welcome here, regardless of whatever service you believe you have done for us," the other added.
"I demand to speak with thy Council, Jedi," Flayseno asserted, spitting the last word like it was a slur. He then gave a thinly veiled threat, "Thou shalt inform them of mine intent, before I do."
The pair gripped their sabers tighter, holding position. Until he attacked somebody their hands were tied, but if he could be goaded- "We will do no such thing, Sith," the first Guard similarly spat.
Flayseno narrowed his eyes and dropped Kalifa's hand, eyeing the outer walls of the Temple. A lightning rod right near the Central Spire; perfect. The Sith shooed Kalifa to get out of the way before using the Force to project his voice up to where the Council presumably sat, "Let the Lords of the Jedi come forth!" He then whipped his hands forward and unleashed a storm of Force Lightning directly at the rod, the sounds of its thunder roaring across the courtyard. The Guards lunged at him, one going for a slice with the other jabbing at him. The Sith Lord leapt over them both, sending them stumbling for a moment before they regained their balance. When he landed the Guard again stroke and again, he ducked away, narrowly missing having his head severed. The first Guard swung at him, which he blocked with a wall of the Force, before pushing the man and forcing him to flip over himself and begin falling down the stairs while the other stabbed at the Sith, who ducked and weaved out of the way of every lunge.
The Sith was tiring of this meddlesome chore and blasted him into the nearby wall with the Force, leaving a sizable crater in the wall around the now dazed Jedi, just in time for the second Guard to finish reascending the stairs. He twirled his blades and jumped into the air, going for a diving strike the Sith again sidestepped. The Guard was losing patience now and began twirling his double blades to daze and confuse his opponent, to hinder knowledge of where the next strike may come, only for the saber to become heavier and heavier until it was immobile in his hands. With barely any warning, the yellow lightsaber staff flew into the Sith's hands. Lord Flayseno looked the Guard into the eyes, peering into his very soul, before snapping the blade in two, keeping the one in his right hand and extinguishing the half in his left before tossing it carelessly back to the Jedi. Now the Guard was furious, taking up the lightsaber he reignited it and swung, only to be blocked by the Dark Lord, who was now actively mocking him by suggesting improvements to his technique.
A swing blocked, "Slow."
A jab deflected, "Sloppy."
An overhead slice sidestepped, "Sad."
The Guard spun in an attack, with the Sith poking his shoulder with the tip of his lightsaber, the Guardsman's own blade, and stating bluntly, "Thou shouldst never turn thy back to an opponent. It leaveth thou open to a rear strike."
The Temple Guard was screaming in a furious rage as he started swinging wildly to strike down the Sith. "WILL YOU JUST DIE!"
"If thou were any good at thy craft, I would already be falled," the Sith replied in the most bored tone of voice ever used in a duel. "I am still quite hungover, a competent foe wouldst be mine end."
The Guard screamed and went for a diagonal slice across Flayseno's torso, which was again blocked.
"ENOUGH!" Obi-Wan shouted, causing the Guard to snap his head to attention.
Flayseno poked him once again with the tip of the Guard's blade, causing the other man to jump. The Sith's eyes crinkled as he smiled, "Never leave thyself undefended."
"YOU SON OF A-" the Guard shouted before being cut off.
"THERE ART CHILDREN PRESENT!" the Sith proclaimed, waving his free hand towards Kalifa.
Obi-Wan broke up the bickering again, "You have our attention Darth!" He scowled at them both, but particularly the standing Temple Guard, who shrunk in on himself. He really should have known better, and had lost control during the duel. Kenobi shook his head at the Guardsman and looked Flayseno in the eyes, "I was sent to bring you to the Council Chambers, immediately."
Flayseno nodded, tossing the lightsaber half back to its actual owner before turning and saying "Alon, I hast one more thing to add."
The Guard looked up at him.
"I am nay right-handed," he stated with a laugh, before turning to follow Kenobi into the Jedi Temple, Kalifa in tow once more.