Disclaimer: I don't own either of the Code Geass, Gundam Seed or Star wars franchises. This story is not written with comercial purpose in mind. I make no money from it. It is not for sale or rent.

A Black Knight Rising

=ABKR=

Chapter 1: A Family Reunion

Part 1: Finding a way back home

12 March 2009 A.T. B

Near Lake Sibhayi

South Africa

It's been a long, long time since I had the Force at my disposal. Her very presence, the fact that I could feel her again coursing through me… It made me drunk with power. The world itself was different. Sharper, more colorful. More alive than I've ever known it to be.

I got the Force back and I was arrogant.

It almost got me killed.

The four nearest of my captors weren't the problem. Only one of them had his wits with him and he didn't immediately open fire. That told me a lot. A common merk would have already shot me and asked questions later. This man's reactions spoke of training and discipline that wasn't common in the soldiers of fortune.

A mental command and his AR flew in my outstretched hand. Then I sent him flying back with a telekinetic wave which picked up the two armed men who were next to him, still gaping at me with shock. That got the forth, who was to my left, near the lake, out of his shock and he was raising his weapon my way. I pulled him towards me, and used the AR in my right hand as a club, bashing his head in.

Then I got dumb. Instead of fading in the rain and darkness so I can start picking up the rest of my captors, I started stripping the tactical vest of the last man I dealt with. Right there in the open, with no care in the world.

A level of arrogance I didn't have just a few moments ago, before getting those memories and the Force back. It was almost hilarious, considering that I am a Britannian prince of all things. A part of that was explainable. There are only couple of places that I remember having the force, where I wasn't usually clad in armor, with shields too. One of them was mostly medieval, so bolts and arrows weren't particularly threatening. A lot of men with steel in their hands and murder in their eyes were another issue.

However, right here and now I was only waring a dirty shirt and uniform pants. At least the bastards had left me my boots.

Needless to say, that didn't provide protection against bullets. My mind wasn't all right either, spinning as it tried to process all the information dumped in my head. All those memories surfacing at the smallest prompt… Despite the Force and the mental discipline that went with the training to use it, that was distracting.

I did feel her screaming a warning. It was enough to act on half-forgotten training and start rolling. So instead of getting a burst in the back, only a single bullet struck me, tearing into my left shoulder. Hot lead tore through flesh and bone, lighting my nerves on fire. Striking the ground hard and rolling away sent spikes of agony through me as the wound either hit the moist soil again and again. Fragments of my mangled bone bit deeper in my flesh aggravating the wound.

Using the Force to seek the source of the attack I could perceive a trio of signatures advancing on my position, which was on the white sand at the lake's shore. There was another group coming from the right too, though those were more distant and were advancing carefully.

The first thing I did was to use the Force to numb the pain so it wasn't distracting me. The second was to charge at the three men, one of whom had the temerity to shoot me, the bastard. The Force was enhancing my speed, making me appear like a blur. When I was near enough I screamed at them, putting all my pain and rage into it. The Force responded, enhancing my shout. I could see the very air before me rippling outwards as my scream went outward and struck the men. One of them managed to let out a burst in my direction, but the bullets were sent away by the shock-wave of my scream. The falling raindrops flew away as if picked up by hurricane. The sound wave shattered small trees and tore asunder brushes until it struck the men. They were picked up and bodily thrown back only to land hard and tumble over the moist ground.

I could feel their life force vanishing, laving cooling piles of meat and bone behind.

Then the other group opened fire. Bullets started buzzing near me. That prompted me to drop down. When I hit the ground my shoulder flared up in pain, making me grit my teeth. It was time to stop fucking around before I got shot again. That's why I called the Force, making it warp around me. Shadows gathered around my form, making me melt out of sight. The next thing was to use my power to create a sound-dampening field around me.

That's what I should have done in the fist place. Good luck shooting what you can't see and hear.

Once that was done, I got out of my position, dashing to my left while keeping low. There was no reason to present a bigger target even if I was for all intents and purposes invisible. In the same time, I was using the Force to scan the immediate area, something that was straining my concentration. For a moment I frowned at that. Doing all that used to be easy. Perhaps it was the wound or the fact I haven't done it in a long time.

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts. That was a question for another time. I could sense seven people who were still alive. Only five of them appeared to be conscious and one of those was in the lake after I threw him there. That left the group that was sweeping the camp searching for me as immediate threats.

I sneaked on their right flank and studied them for a moment. A pair had tactical vests over their shirts, they were probably part of this night's guard detail. The rest looked disheveled. They were probably sleeping when I started my little breakout.

I concentrated, letting the sound-dampening go away and leaving only the shadows as my defense. Then I reached through the Force and grabbed the man furthest away. My power picked him up and left him chocking half a meter in the air. His closest buddy swept his weapon that way. That in the middle continued covering their front while the last one swept to his right and then back. They also dropped low to make themselves lesser targets.

Good training all right.

It would have given them decent odds against a conventional opponent.

I smiled viciously and let my mind fly free, then I slammed all my Force enhanced willpower in the middle man. He left a strangled cry as his feeble natural defenses shattered, leaving him little more than a drooling idiot, who immediately became a pupped for my will. It was trivial to turn him around and shoot the man closest to me in the back.

Meanwhile the one I chocked with my power was already dead and dropped to the ground, leaving only one present threat.

I had special plans for that one. First I pulled his weapon out of his hands, making him cry in surprise and start fumbling for his sidearm, which followed suit. Then I pulled him towards me, leaving him suspended in the air in front of me, before I dispersed the shadows cloaking my presence.

His eyes threatened to pop out of his sockets when he recognized me.

I stumbled forward nearly falling to my knees. I could feel my body screaming in protest and swore. I've been so warped up in the glee of getting the Force back that I forgot about the possible consequences. My body obviously wasn't up for the usually fun and games even if I apparently had unrestricted access to the Force.

Gritting my teeth, I stumbled forward until I was next to my terrified captive and placed my right hand on his chest. I felt for his life force and then I tugged at it with the Force. The darker part of my mind watched with glee at the man's terror as he felt his very life being drained away.

At the same time I felt stronger. At least physically. The strain that I placed my body through by using so much of the Force in such a short amount of time wasn't going away. On the other hand my wound was getting better at impossible rate. Which meant that I had to grind my teeth as I sensed pieces of my bone move through my flesh before they were back in place and started knitting. After a few seconds I lost it and screamed in pain. My joint popped, bone fragments shifted, flesh became healthier. And if fucking hurt like a sonava'bich, damn it!

I don't know how long it took, but if my new/old memories were anything to go by, it should have been moments.

It felt like fucking hours of agony.

Suddenly I found myself on my knees, next to a desicated mummy. The cool rain was gently falling upon me and the night was unexpectedly quiet. Apparently a Sith screaming in rage and pain was enough to cower the local wildlife for the moment.

While I still could feel the Force all around me, I was no longer actively using her. That explained why the strain was gone, even if I felt like crap.

I glanced at my shoulder. It wasn't totally healed. I could see an ugly wound flesh but that was it. I gave it a gentle try and despite the pain, my left arm was working alright. I made a mental note to be careful with it in the foreseeable future. I knew that the newly knitted bones weren't as strong as before. It would took at least a few days for that, if I used the Force to make the healing process faster. It was too bad that there was no bacta on Earth.

I called on a bit of my power, cold fire spreading through my veins and I gasped in pain. Fuck. I've overdid it all right. I kept swimming through the Force for a few seconds until I confirmed that there were only four other living people in the vicinity, counting the man whose mind I shattered earlier. I noted their locations and let go, feeling a sudden relief as my body was no longer under the strain of the power running through me.

I found the two unconscious men who were among the first that tried to stop me and bound them so they won't be making any trouble once they awoke. Then I searched for a med pack while paying attention to the lake and the last man that might prove a problem. I could barely make his form amidst the rain streaked waters. He was slowly swimming towards the shore. My telekinetic shove might have wounded him. Or he wasn't a good swimmer. If my suspicion about those men origins were true, the former was much more likely. After all, usually you got your special forces folks learn how to swim during training, a long time before you let them deploy anywhere.

While I wanted the last of my captors to swim to shore I did my best to bandage my shoulder, without using the Force. I almost burned myself out already and if my guess was right I would need to use the Force in combat later tonight.

Against my own country's strike team too.

Ah, Britannian politics. It makes a Sith feel right at home.

I frowned at that thought. Who the hell was I really? Prince Delkatar Li Britannia? Delkatar Veil, the Dark Lord of the Sith? One of the many people with whom I've been merged while serving that strange, omnipotent being?

I got the memories of them all and I was finding it true that people were made up by their experiences. Even if those previous lives were distant things, something that I was grateful for or they would have already overwhelmed my sense of self… I could feel the memories changing me. Hell, I wouldn't have acted this way when I got the Force back if it wasn't for the short lived sense of invulnerability.

That by itself was a wake up call. Delkatar Veil would have been able to deal with my captors without breaking up a sweat. Those people were unfamiliar with what the Force could do… and his control over it was much greater. Now that I could look back at this engagement I could see clearly that I struggled in doing more than a couple of things with the Force at the same time. Not to mention that this short engagement almost burned me out.

Fuck. I got the Force, all right. However it appeared to be a great force multiplier instead of outright game changer. Which made sense. I wasn't in the body of the Sith Lord that Veil was. Hell, I wasn't that man any longer. Not really.

That wasn't necessary a bad thing. He might not have cared for my sisters, using them as pawns at beast. I should know. At the end of his last war he had been on the edge. Not really all there.

In the end he was a different man, with his own priorities, even if we shared the same memories and some traits.

A smile found its way to my face. At least I was myself, mostly.

I finished binding my wound just in time to see the last of my still free captors make it to shore. I grabbed an AR I retrieved earlier and made my way towards him. He pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster when he noticed my approach. So I shot him in the hand, the burst blowing most of his fingers and palm away. He screamed, clutching his crippled appendage. That was a distraction enough for me to make my way next to the wounded man and knock him out. I bandaged his hand so he wouldn't bleed away and bound him too, before dragging him to his two surviving buddies. I had put the mindless man out of his misery before bandaging my shoulder.

It was interrogation time, while I waited for the promised Britannian strike team to arrive.

A knife, a few sharpened sticks, ampules with ammonia, all was ready. It was time to let my inner Sith play.

=ABKR=

13 March 2009 A.T. B

Near Lake Sibhayi

South Africa

I was grateful that the rain didn't stop. It made washing the blood that splattered me during the interrogation much easier to wash out. I would have preferred to use the Force and simply take the necessary info from the minds of my captives, however that wasn't practical in this instance. I would need my powers when the Strike Team arrived to clean up this mess so I could handle them.

I wasn't so arrogant to assume that I could deal with unknown number of Imperial special forces operatives without the Force. On my own too. No when I almost got myself killed when facing a similar unit from the Euro Sphere earlier this night.

Because that's exactly what my captors were. I've been halfway through my second captive when the third one had enough and started singing like canary. What he said made sense and was in line with what I suspected. Their Intel division had received information about my flight. Someone high upon the food chain had decided that I might be an useful bargaining chip, so my plane was shot down, with me luckily surviving with only bruises and nasty bump upon my head. The rest of the survivors were killed by my captors and I ended waking up in that cell.

The fact that I expected an Imperial unit to come here and kill everyone still alive pointed out that the whole mess was caused by the infamous Britannian political games. It wasn't hard to believe that my plane's flight path and the fact that I would be on board could be deliberately leaked. The commando team coming in would make sure that I would be dead, though probably the Britannian soldiers were unaware that there was a Prince on the ground.

That was the question. Did they know and were ordered to kill me anyway? If they didn't, this presented and opportunity.

Whistling a tune that no one upon this Earth knew, I finished cleaning up and went to get myself armed with the best that the Euros had at their disposal. After that was done I went to their makeshift kitchen and tried their MRE's, which weren't half bad. They actually had pizza of all things, which was edible too!

When I polished up the first decent meal I had in days, I tentatively accessed the Force. It was unpleasant but no longer outright painful. Wasting no time, I scanned my surroundings. Not finding any people in my range I made my way to the nearby tree cover and searched for a nice perch. I found it in an old tree with thick branches, one of which made a nice position to wait for my possible ride out. So I climbed up and sat down, waiting.

It was couple of hours later, during one of my periodical sweeps with the Force that I noticed them. Ten signatures were fast approaching from the east. Probably on chopper. They were too low to be coming in on plane. Too close too. My range wasn't what it used to be. They were a few clicks away and the only reason I could find them was that they were the only sentients beside me in the region. As one could guess I didn't leave any one of my former captors alive. Can't have witnesses to my new abilities after all. They were a trump card that I intended to keep a secret for as long as possible.

Huh. The rumors that our special ops folks had stealth chopper were apparently true. I should have been able to hear the bird approaching by now. I concentrated and used the Force to check up what they were doing. Their signatures had stopped their approach. So they were disembarking. Two pilots, I think. That left an eight man team.

What to do…

=ABKR=

In the end I decided to try subverting the unit, preferring to avoid another confrontation if it was possible. That was a reasonable choice for a simple reason. I could use the Force to check if they would try to lie to me and shoot me in the back or something. After all those were ordinary people, despite all the training they should have, not brain washed clones.

Just in case I went deeper in the forest, intent on confronting them in a place with a lot of cover. My ability to vanish like a ghost in the night would be much more effective in the forest than on the open where they could infer my position by seeing me leave tracks in the muddy ground or passing through the grass.

I sneaked towards them until I was on their left flank. The men and women were moving cautiously through the night, carefully sweeping for traps that might give up their approach. They weren't in any hurry either. I think that they planned to hit the camp just before dawn.

"Hi there!" I shouted from behind a thick tree that looked sturdy enough to stop an RPG round.

Needless to say, they scattered, getting behind the closest cover.

Surprisingly, no one opened fire. Perhaps it was my upper crust Britannian accent or they were thinking that I was a distraction to let other nasty locals to sneak up to them.

"I'll make an educated guess. You've been sent do clean up a bunch of fucks that had irritated the higher ups back home." I continued in nonchalant manner. "You may calm down, too. We are the only alive people in the vicinity, if you don't count the crew of whatever transport brought you here."

"Who the fuck are you?" A man grunted just loud enough to be heard, but so quiet that you couldn't pinpoint his exact location.

"Me? I'm Seventh Prince Delkatar Li Britannia. The idiots you were sent to kill shot down my plane a few days ago and were keeping me captive until tonight."

"Yeah, pull the other one." Someone snorted aloud.

"If this was an ambush meant to kill you, the first you've know would have been machine gun fire with a few grenades to make it livelier." I deadpanned. "We wouldn't be having such a nice chat otherwise. The question is if you've been sent on a general search and destroy mission of if I'm specifically one of the targets to disappear tonight."

"Fuck. I hate politics." Someone grumbled.

Ah, so at least one of them got my meaning. And the possible mess they were in.

"Provided that you are an actual Britannian Prince, and not just a joker that begs to be shot, no, we aren't here to kill you. You Highness." The last was added as an afterthought.

"You sure about that? I can be a Prince and an idiot that needs shooting on general principle. Many of my siblings are just like that."

"Shit. I'm standing up and coming.

"Boss, you sure?"

"He's right. If this was an ambush, we wouldn't be talking."

"They might be getting in position as we speak."

"That's true. But Prince or not, that's a Noble's accent. Straight from Pendragon too." Grunted the man that appeared to be their commander. "If this is a trap I expect you to kill the fuckers. Hail Britannia."

I could hear the man moving towards me through the grass. When he entered the treeline I cloaked myself with the Force and changed locations. To my relief I could sense his soldiers were keeping their positions.

Soon enough I could see the man, despite the darkness. Another score for the Force. He was wearing uniform appropriate for the Jungle, complete with harness with all the toys you might expect a special forces operative to care on a search and destroy mission and then some.

"No fast moves." I spoke quietly from behind the man. He had been walking toward the tree I used for cover when I started speaking. "Hands up and turn around slowly. I've had enough excitement for one night."

He complied, moving slowly. I could feel him being anxious. He didn't want to get shot. Which was nice. No suicidal heroics if he could avoid it.

Despite all the rumors, there were a lot of sensible people in the Imperial armed forces. It was the Noble Idiots who often got in charge that gave a bad name to the lot of us. Them and some units fulled with brainwashed idiots who lapped the propaganda coming out of Pendragon like it was god's gospel. Fucking fanatics.

The commando finally turned towards me, obviously trying to appear non-threatening. Considering that he was covered with combat gear, topped off with night vision goggles that gave him a vague insectoid look, it wasn't working particularly good.

I grinned at him.

"I don't look at your typical prince, am I?"

The corners of his mouth, which were visible, turned up.

"More like a drunk vagrant. So you are Cornelia's little brother?" The man visibly relaxed after studying my face for a few moments. Thanks to the Force I could feel the tension bleeding away from his body. So they probably weren't ordered to make me vanish. Permanently at that.

I cringed. I loved my sister, however being know as her little brother wasn't endearing her to me. It wasn't doing my ego any favors either.

"Yep. However, I hope one day I'm known for my own exploits."

"What about the insurgents we were sent after?"

"Dead. They weren't insurgents either."

"Oh?"

"Euro-sphere Special Forces."

"And you'd have me believe you handled them?" I could feel his disbelief.

"Their camp is that way." I pointed at the lake. "There is a bit of Intel there you might want to grab as well as confirm that they are handled."

"Uh, huh." He glanced at my shoulder. "Do you need medical attention, Your Highness?

"I'll live. And keep that bullshit for when there is someone who cares around."

"He's one of ours. Howard, come here and check him up, our new friend is wounded. The rest of you move in towards the objective." He didn't tell them that the Euros were dead. Smart. For all he knew I was delusional or something. I would be doing the same thing if I was in his shoes.