-Tag-

"Hey. Wakey wakey, sleepy head."

I opened my eyes and was immediately blinded by the bright light of the operating room. I let out a low groan at the dull pain at the base of my skull. I tried to squint to let my eyes adjust to the harsh light.

After a few minutes, my vision had more or less returned and I was able to take in my surroundings. I was still in the same room as before, but this time I could see a variety of scans on the wall next to me of what looked like the inside of my head. In the sink, I could see blood stained tools and towels.

"I didn't break you, did I? You still alive?"

"Yes, I'm still alive," I grumbled. "Can I get out of these things now?"

"Sure, sure," he said, and I felt the straps fall away at my arms and legs. When I was fully released, I got up and stumbled forwards a few meters.

"Woah. Slow down there." Vince grabbed me to help me move around but I shoved him back.

"I'm fine."

Vince raised his hands in surrender and said "Whatever you say."

I took a few laps around the room until I was walking normally again.

"What do I put on first?" I asked him.

"The undersuit there. You want some help?"

"I'm fine," I said as I reached for the suit. It was heavier than it looked, but wasn't too bad. It felt incredibly resilient and strong, and I wondered how anything could penetrate it.

When I finally got it on, Vince said "Fits you well. Let's get the rest of this junk on."

He ran me through the checklist of how to put on the various pieces and how they fit together. He helped me with positioning the pieces and locking them in place. The first thing I noticed as I was putting them on was how light it felt. Vince was clearly having a rough time with some of them, but once they were on me they felt like nothing at all.

After Vince's massive struggle to get the main torso pieces together, he handed me the helmet, which I put on, completing the ensemble.

The viser was large, much larger than the one I was used to with my regular armor. The inside lit up, and a bunch of fancy features seemed to appear to the sides of the visual field, not obstructing my view but still close enough to let me quickly dart my eyes in their direction to check them.

A female voice said "Hello there."

I jumped in surprise. "Who said that?!"

Vince chuckled. "There's an AI in there. Forgot to mention."

"Do forgive him. Vince's mind isn't what it used to be. Now, you must be the new user."

"Uhh yea. I'm Tag."

"Nice to meet you Tag. I will be your companion AI. You can call me Aly if you'd like."

"Got it. So what do you do?"

"I run maintenance, diagnostics, remind you of your objectives, keep an eye out for you, scan and record information, and so much more. I reside in the suit, but I also reside in that neural implant. It will make suiting up in the future much easier, and you get to have the slight reaction time boost and the watchful eye even without the suit. But right now, I will be getting you acquainted with the suit's many features. Are you in an open environment?"

I looked around the cramped operating room. "Not yet."

Vince glanced at me curiously. "Not yet what?"

I was about to ask Aly why he couldn't hear her when she said "I choose when I want to be heard by others. You think I just speak primitively like you all the time? I can access your neural implant. Vince! We need an open space to test this!"

That open space turned out to be the back of his shop. It wasn't what I would really call open, but it was certainly more open than the operating room I was just in. Piled against the back wall were spare parts and unfinished contraptions. To the left, next to a pile of hyperdrive motivators, a large cargo speeder was sitting under a tarp. Sadie lazily followed behind the two of us and took a seat on a crate of goodies. She still looked angry with me.

"We're in an open space now."

"About time. Vince! Grab one of those EMP things you're so proud of."

Grumbling, Vince left through the back door we just entered through.

"You see that bar above your visual field? That is your personal shield indicator. The shield gets depleted after taking too much damage. Once the generator overheats, the shield will disappear until it reaches safe heat levels again. Luckily for you, Vince thought through it and created a rather efficient cooling system. It'll take about seven seconds of not getting shot at for the shields to start returning after being fully depleted. You got all that?"

"Yes ma'am."

The door opened and Vince returned with an EMP.

"Good. Vince, detonate it right next to Tag."

"Wait, WHAT?!" I cried.

"It won't hurt you. I think" she said before Vince pushed a button on the orb and it started flashing. All of a sudden, an alarm started beeping quickly in the helmet and a soft red light lit up the inside of the suit.

"That's a warning that you need to find cover. You can also see the bar above the visual field is empty."

I glanced up and noticed what she meant. Before, it was a thick light blue line. Now it had a light blue border and the inside was black. I waited for a few seconds and true to her word, the alarm and the red light disappeared and the bar started to fill back up with a low hum.

"See? Nothing to worry about. Now Vince! And you. Mandalorian in blue. Yes you! Stand up and start walking around the suit."

I turned to see Sadie stand, a rather confused look on her face, and walk from side to side.

"Quit staring at your girlfriend, paco. See that circle in the corner? Those moving lights? That's them walking around. It's a motion tracker."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"That is completely unimportant. I asked if you saw the motion tracker. Did. You. See. The motion. Tracker?"

"Yes. But still, she's not my gir-"

"You do get that I don't care, right? My goal is to make sure that you don't die because if you die, I die, and that's not something I really want to deal with. Hey Mandalorian! Quit pacing like a caged Wookie!"

Looking a bit flustered, Sadie sat back down. Then, rather abruptly, she asked "What about Force users? How does it deal with those?"

Vince said "I used my research on ysalamiri to make it work against Force users. Unlike my full size dead-zone generators though, it's only able to weaken any Force attacks used against it, though by a substantial degree."

"And what about mind stuff?"

"I handle that," Aly quickly chirped. "I scramble his neural signals, making him essentially impossible to control or manipulate using the Force. Why do you ask? You planning on fighting some Jedi?"

"Just curious," she said, though her tone conveyed that there was more. I seemed to be the only person to pick up on that though, so I didn't push.

"Anyways, there are a few other features that this suit is capable of that Vince most likely neglected to mention. Things such as active camo, thrusters, armor lock-"

"What's armor lock?" I asked, and a look of horror appeared on Vince's face.

"Aly, no! Those are prototypes I haven't finished testing yet!" he cried.

"Well, we're testing them now, so-"

"No! I forbid it! Those may not be safe!"

"He's wearing a suit of mass destruction, and now all of a sudden you care about safety?"

"Don't do it Tag. They aren't safe."

"I'm with Vince on this. Aly, maybe now isn't the best time to test them out," I said.

"Fine. I see how it is. I guess safety isn't important."

"No, that's not what I meant. But if it hasn't been tested, how do we know it'll work and not break us?"

For the first time, there was silence. Not a word from Aly. I looked to Vince and said "She's not responding."

"She's fine. Just pouting. Give her some time. Come on, you two. The speeder here is finished. Soon as y'all get in the cargo compartment, I'll call the Zygerrians to pick it up."

"Why do you even have it?" Sadie asked.

"They wanted cheaper repairs than they can get normally from the Kaminoans."

"I thought they only made soldiers like me," I said.

"They have Geonoans."

"Geonosians?" Sadie asked. "I thought they went extinct long ago."

"Not Geonosians, kid. GeoNOANS. They uncovered a preserved Geonosian. The DNA was still good so they took it and made a ton of modifications. Its ability to fly was greatly increased and it has a harder exoskeleton. The Kaminoans use them as slave labor, and charge to have them repair or build things for individuals, companies, planets, or governments. Kind of a big economic booster for them."

With that he pulled the tarp off and opened a door, revealing a compartment just big enough to squeeze two people into. "Well, don't be shy. Jump on in."

-0000-

Grand Master Sorsee slowly surveyed the wrecked Jedi outpost on Ryloth. He refused to let anybody else see the crime scene before him. He had already seen the security footage.

He'd seen Darin kill the Sith.

He knew that Darin was different. An experiment involving midichlorians that was done by the Alliance. He'd escaped, but not alone. Who his rescuer was was unknown. As he walked around the circular chambers of Maani Kodd, whose corpse was found hanging from the ceiling, he came across a bloody pulp of a mess he knew was there. It was unrecognizable, but it was her. Sylvia, she had called herself. He kneeled down next to it and examined the mess. The head was destroyed completely, and both hands were cut off. He examined the left forearm of the body, but turned up nothing.

He looked around and found a severed hand near the bricks of the fireplace. As he got closer, he found it to be the right hand. Useless to him. He used the Force to feel around the room for the other hand.

There. Behind him. He turned and used the Force to lift up the recliner, then willed the severed hand to come flying to him and snatched it in midair. Not in the least bit sickened by the severed body part in his hand, he turned it around and examined it. Bingo. There he found the tattoo, labeling her as E-1579. Absently, he rubbed his hand, empathizing with the pain she must have felt. The tattoo was brutally put on, he knew that much. Finding the confirmation he needed, he dropped the hand by the body and went over to the wall opposite the fireplace. There, like a sick decoration, hung Fral Joren, split in two.

A twinge of guilt appeared in the pit of his gut. He had known the man a long time, and had much respect for him.

But he failed. Failed in the most spectacular way.

He had made it possible for Darin to join the Order. He had trained him. Darin was weak in the Force, and he never should have been given the training he had been given. And most importantly, Fral had let the young boy's mind go wild without any restraint. The boy was different mentally from every other Force user. His mind ran at top speed in ways nobody else's did. He was intelligent, quick, analytical, and creative.

But he was also emotional. His emotions were strong, powerful, and difficult to control, like an avalanche. And they could get the best of him, as the carnage before him clearly showed.

It was no secret that the Order saw him as a joke. He was barely Force sensitive. How could he be treated as an equal? And Fral had let him see it as unfair. Unjust.

This he found humorous. The natural order of things was unjust? The powerful had to rule over the weak.

When the weak ruled, corruption was rampant. That was no way a government should run.

When the weak ruled, they clamored for war, trying their hardest to get more power or to hold onto what little power they had. In the end, the majority of civilians suffered. Unnecessary death. Unnecessary suffering.

It was true that there was a war that had been dragging on for as long as anybody could remember. Anybody except for him and a few others.

As far as historical documents went, the war had dragged on for eternity. But they were falsified, and he knew it. There was a reason that the holocrons were locked away. Information had to be controlled. If it wasn't, the media outlets would run rampantly, spreading fake news as they did before this war. It's what caused the Schism, after all. As total casualties around the galaxy numbered in the hundreds of billions, he made a change. He took over the government, and he led a campaign. It took years, but it worked. Since then, he brought order to half of the galaxy, with him having control of the inner rim. It remained democratic to appease these inner rim planets, with a Senate and elections. But his position was never challenged. Even though the war hurt planets throughout the galaxy, and even though he controlled information to make people forget that the Schism even occurred, he was never challenged. It was an understanding. An understanding that their sacrifice was for the good of more.

Then Darin showed up, questioning the world he had put together. The annoying upstart who couldn't even wield the Force effectively. Fral gave him the promotion to Chief Scholar. Fral had allowed him to sneak out at night and fight in Bebo's Arena. And now, he had Force powers that nobody else could have imagined, and he was in the possession of two holocrons. Two items that couldn't possibly have ALL of the information he didn't want getting out wiped from them. And to make matters worse, the other holocrons weren't responding. It was like he stole the only two that worked.

Sorsee turned again and stared at the dead Sith on the floor. She had had every advantage. Every chance to kill Darin. Every conceivable variable was on her side. Hell, she was more powerful than he was! He could feel the midichlorians in her corpse, and they were definitely more plentiful in her than in Darin.

So how? How did he win? How could he have possibly overcome such odds?

The visions were right. HAD to be. Darin was a threat. An even bigger one than the Alliance. The Alliance was predictable. If Sylvia had won, at least he'd be able to predict her. Slightly control her. Maybe even defeat her.

But Darin won. Impossibly, he won.

That thought gripped him with fear. He heard Darin's voice, promising to destroy what he had built. Those visions never left his mind. Never had he felt as threatened by the Alliance. But Darin… he knew the Order. Knew the system. He had two holocrons. He had newfound power. He had a ship, an Admiral, and highly trained soldiers. His apprentice had perished at Sylvia's hands. Probably for the best. Two rogue ex-Order Jedi could be even more dangerous.

He doubted that Darin could win. Doubted him immensely. He would die, just as every other attempted rebel. Of that he was certain. But he wouldn't go down without a fight. Something told him that Darin could potentially destabilize the galaxy, driving them back to their civil wars. He could destroy the Order. He could ruin everything.

Calmly, he pulled out a commlink and called his Press Head on Coruscant.

"Hello Grand Master. What can I do for you?"

"I need you to place a warrant on Catherine Cress. To be returned, dead or alive. She was an Admiral for Fral Joren. Crimes include conspiracy, treason, and grand larceny. Starting reward is one hundred thousand credits, and keep adding one hundred thousand every week until she is in custody of the Order or you reach two million credits."

He waited as the Press Head noted this down.

"Then I want you to place a warrant for Darin Kravhenn. To be returned, dead or alive. He is a rogue Jedi. Armed and extremely dangerous. Crimes include killing his Jedi Master, killing every Jedi, guard, and civilian in the Ryloth outpost, stealing government property, mind control, terrorism, treason, conspiracy, and attempted murder of his former padawan. Starting reward of five million credits, and add one million every week until he is in the custody of the Order or it reaches twenty million. Add that as a bonus, any crimes the finders may have committed will be pardoned completely."

He made the Press Head repeat it back to him for accuracy before hanging up and calling his servant.

"Notify the elite hunter Jedi that we have a few bounties to pursue. Catherine Cress and Darin Kravhenn."

With that he hung up. He knew a lot of the crimes were either speculation or plain false but at this point, he didn't care. Darin's destructive potential was much too great. He had to be either killed or reprogrammed. Killing would be much more likely though. Getting a chip into his head would be tough. Either way, he knew that the bounties would attract everybody's attention. They'll have all sorts of bounty hunters and dangerous criminals on their tail. One way or another, Darin's body would appear on his doorstep.