Saga A Broken Shadow Reborn (TFU AU - Starkiller/Darth Vader *COMPLETED!*

Title: A Broken Shadow Reborn
Author: darth_treyvah
Characters: Starkiller, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine
Genre: Drama, Surprise, Angst, Mwahaahah ...
Timeframe: TFU AU
Summary: Some things were never meant to be destroyed ... while other things were never meant to be born again.

It was a mission that puzzled Starkiller.

As he exited the obscure Temple of this Outer Rim swamp world, invisible to the natives and Imperial presence alike, he still didn't completely understand exactly why it was he was sent here to begin with.

Ever since he came of age and skill, his Master sent him on more and more sensitive missions. Sometimes, he infiltrated criminal and terrorist organizations, assassinating key leaders and informants there. He would pretend to be one of them, or not even exist among them, scout out the information that he needed, and quickly eliminate his targets, and thus achieve his objectives. There were even times that his Master tasked him with the retrieval of stolen information and the discovery of traitors within the Empire proper ... traitors that were brought to justice by his own hand.

It was much easier for Starkiller to operate in this way. His Master had promised that one day he would be his official Sith Apprentice. And then, when everything was in place and he was powerful enough together they would destroy the Emperor -- the current Sith Master and rule the Galaxy. As such, it was paramount that Starkiller remain undetected ... and alive until that point in time. But assassinations and sabotage, and even information gathering and retrieval was far less riskier anything involving Force-sensitives. Starkiller recognized the wisdom in this aspect of his training. Palpatine, should he ever have considered how Darth Vader accomplished some of the goals set for him would merely think that he was an agent or perhaps a cabal of very well placed specialists. At the most, the Emperor of the Galaxy would believe that one of Darth Vader's own Dark Side Disciples had some vague promise ...

An Adept, but not an Apprentice.

But sometimes, very rarely outside the Executor that was still in construction and had been his home for years, Starkiller would be sent out into the Galaxy on missions specifically related to Force lore. His Master very rarely told him anything beyond the bare minimum of what he was supposed to retrieve on these missions of his.

Such as what he now held in his hands.

It hadn't been much information to go on. His Master had allowed him access to a lot of the Jedi lore at his disposal ... as much as he had been able to access and understand. Especially for this particular mission. There had just been a few legends, and hearsay on the matter. There hadn't even any more information on Circarpous V, the world that he was in the process of leaving just now, except for more local superstitions, and myths.

However, what the local trader sold him had been very much real. No one else would have ever believed him. And no one would. Not after Starkiller finished the rest of his pragmatic business with him.

His Master didn't even have to tell him that there should be no witnesses. It was all second habit to the Disciple now.

But this particular item puzzled Starkiller. It certainly perplexed him to no end. The local had given him just a shard and it had glowed brightly ... and when he went into the Temple the entire thing just ...

He could sense the signal before it was even transmitted. Starkiller immediately took out his small holo-projector just as his Master's dark silhouette materialized on its round surface.

"What is thy bidding, my Master?" Starkiller intoned.

"Have you gained the location of the artifact."

"Yes, Master," Starkiller sensed that this was not a question, but an expectation of his competence, "I have just retrieved it and I am returning to you immediately."

"Very good," Darth Vader's mask inclined slightly to the side, "I sense that something is troubling you, Apprentice," before Starkiller could even pause, could even he

 

Very intriguing beginning.

I will be the judge of that, Apprentice.

I sense Vader is trying to hide something...not surprising considering his plans to eventually destroy Sidious.

I can't wait to find out what this shard is.

If you have a PM list for this, please add me.

Looking forward to more

 

KELIA - All the information that I just revealed in this part actually exists in canon. If you look for it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised. But of course, there is more I have to write on this matter.

*

Starkiller lay in the snow, barely even conscious. Barely even alive.

His mind hardly even registered the cold that was eating at his extremities or the blows that he took from his Master. His Master. He betrayed him.

Again.

In retrospect, through the fog of his mind, it made perfect sense. Perfect loyalty was an anathema to the Way of the Sith, and he had let his Master -- let Vader use that right against him. Despite everything he knew then. And now. He had his chance, to be something better. He had been warned: by Rahm Kota, by Shaak Ti, the spirit of his true father, even by the Sith apparitions he had been forced to duel. His own former Master had even told him time and again.

And PROXY by virtue of his existence.

And Juno.

Juno.

As a deep sadness took him, he felt the hard chitinous cocoon of the Dark Side in his heart crackle, and shatter. Suddenly, his body jolted. Starkiller gasped as Farsight overcame his weary and battered psychic senses. It blazed into his mind -- unforgiving and shrill, and urgent.

He saw his whole life. He saw things that had already happened. Starkiller saw Darth Vader crush his father's neck in front of him. He saw all the years of painful training that the Dark Lord had put him through. And all of the deaths he caused. All the people he killed in the name of the Empire ... even loyal Imperial soldiers who had no idea of who he was. And then Darth Vader's first betrayal as his lightsaber plunged into his abdomen in front of Palpatine. He saw the perversion of the Jedi Trials that his former Master made him undergo. He saw his own father and the sadness on his face.

"I never wanted this for you. I never wanted any of this for you. I'm sorry, son."

Starkiller saw the leaders of the new Rebel Alliance being taken to the Death Star. He saw Palpatine gloating before them. He saw himself fighting his former Master, kissing Juno before leaping to his fate, rescuing PROXY's remains, Rahm Kota blind and at his side ... He saw his friends, and the power of a superlaser as it tore through a planet ...

And then, his visions started to change. He saw himself as his Master's Apprentice again. He saw himself retrieving a Sith Holocron for him, taking it from the hands of a dead Toydarian. Then he was somewhere else. He remembered hunting down an agent, a detective and taking a stone from him ... a gem. The man had been Force-sensitive and might have put up a fight had Starkiller not just been that much faster. And then, later, finding his droid and taking that vial of ... plant extract? Words and images came unbidden into Starkiller's mind.

Pyronium. Bota. SD41263.I.

Finally, as the visions began to recede, Starkiller remembered being on Mimban -- he recalled it now only by the name that the natives called it, and the Temple of Pomojema ...

Kaiburr crystal.

"Starkiller. Starkiller!"

Starkiller gasped, his heart lurching as if someone had pulled its strings and made it return into his chest hard. It was just like when he had awakened ... months after what he thought was his own death on Vader's Empirical. But there was one key difference. A gentle hand was on his chest, and the former Sith Apprentice leaned into it unconsciously. Juno Eclipse's face stood over him, looking pale and concerned.

"They're gone..." Starkiller found himself mumbling, the Senators coming into his mind, "Vader took them all... to the Emperor."

He tried to sit up and Juno helped him, "I don't understand. Then why would Vader allow us to attack so many Imperial targets?"

Starkiller's face twisted into a derisive grimace, "To sell the deception. Credits, starships, Imperial lives--they're
all meaningless to Vader. Vader needed me to find the Emperor's enemies, no matter the cost. And I did just what he wanted..."

Juno's face relaxed into a consolin

 

PROXY jolted as the black silhouette of Darth Vader took over his body.

"You have done well, my Apprentice."

Then Starkiller watched, in shock, as his Master picked up the stone table that the Alliance had been gathered around and threw it at him. The force of PROXY's repulsor blast, created to simulate a Force Push and Hold combined with the weight of the table knocked the air out of the Apprentice's lungs and threw him out of the Temple onto the snowy banks beyond it.

The Apprentice barely staggered back to his feet as a familiar snap-hiss filled the air.

"... you agreed to stay away!" he screamed at the apparition with his humming crimson lightsaber as he ignited his own blue blade.

The two lunged forward, their blades crackling against each other in a saber-lock.

"I lied," Darth Vader hissed, "as I have, from the very beginning."

Vader pushed him back, and charged forward. Starkiller somersaulted over the Sith Lord, missing an arc that would have taken out his legs from under him. He released a forward slash on the Sith Lord's cloaked back, only to have the other block it from behind him.

Then he leapt out of the way, moving at a zigzag run, as he dodged his former Master's vicious saber strikes. His arms still ached from the saber-lock that he had barely met strength-to-strength. The force of that collision still rattled in his skull. Just one of those blows could be his doom ... Vader gestured only once. A large chunk of ice ripped itself from the ground and hit Starkiller in the side.

The former Sith Apprentice staggered, having blocked most of the damage with his lightsaber, but not enough to have kept most of the snow and debris from his eyes. He found himself maneuvered. Right to the edge of the cliff-side. The Dark Lord moved one free hand and Starkiller found himself kneeling on the ground, his throat constricting over a powerful Force Choke. His lightsaber cylinder fell from his hands.

"You never planned to destroy the Emperor," Starkiller gasped out, trying in vain to keep the black-spots out of his eyes.

"Not with you, no."

Starkiller's eyes glared up at him, as feelings of anger and despair engulfed them, "Without me, you'll never be free."

Darth Vader's masked visage tilted to one side, consideringly, at the man choking to death before him, "... perhaps."

With all of his strength, Starkiller ripped the repulsor energies away from his neck. He called his lightsaber back into his hand from where he knelt before Vader, lunged forward ... and ignited the blue blade. The Dark Lord paused over him. Then, for a few moments, his image flickered ... and the incandescent visage of PROXY glittered through. The droid's optic sensors looked apologetic, and at the same time relieved.

"Thank you ... Master ..."

Then, Vader's image returned to life and with a savage growl Starkiller found himself smashed in the face by an invisible force. He saw Vader ... PROXY crumple into the snow, a smouldering wound in his abdomen. And that was all he saw as the white cliff side surrounded him.

And there was only blackness.

These thoughts and more ripped through his mind and past his defenses as Starkiller -- as Galen Marek absorbed Palpatine's Force lightning into his hands: leaving Rahm Kota's in lightsaber smouldering pieces on the ground. The Sith Master and former Apprentice grappled with the Force, in the half-completed Death Star as Kota himself lay on the floor, saved by his new Apprentice.

Palpatine laughed, a harsh cackling sound, "So that is why Lord Vader chose to ignore my summons!"

The lightning lit their faces with a twisting eerie blue light, the shadows moving across them swiftly.

The Emperor kept laughing, a twisted maniacal laughter that ate at the corners of the former Sith Apprentice's mind, "All of this time, I was watching you. I knew you would be the one to kill him. And all this time, I underestimated him," Palpatine crowed.

Galen Marek grit his teeth. The Emperor's voice grew louder, and fiercer against the strain of their fight, "Oh yes, he learne

 

While there will be more, I am posting this Up.

 

Lovin it

Good times

 

WOW - that was intense!

I particularly loved Galen taking on Sidious!

"No," Galen Marek's brow creased, "No, this is definitely far from over."

Very ominous.

Great update

 

Darth Cable - Thank you for following this story. I'm glad you like it.

KELIA - Thank you, KELIA. Those scenes were very intense and challenging to write as well. I had to find the dialogue script for the game and adapt it accordingly. I never thought that after Vader attacked Marek on Corellia that Marek would have not in fact fought back then and there, given that Vader had betrayed him before. I also decided that Palpatine had to die. It is all part of the plan. And it definitely isn't over yet.

*

Galen Marek darted quietly through the shadowed corners of the ruined Jedi Temple, his blue lightsaber humming behind him in his reverse hand grip. From the shattered window panes, the skies of Coruscant bathed the interior of the Temple with a faded blood-red light, as though this very place were still infused with the colour of the decades-old slaughter that took place here.

The former Sith now turned Jedi Knight focused on getting to the very top of the Temple -- to the Tower of First Knowledge. He sensed that what he was looking for dwelt up there. Waiting.

There was nothing about this situation that made sense to Galen Marek at all, though in some ways it did. His former Master hadn't been on the Death Star, at his own Master's side. He could understand that perhaps the Sith Lord had found him so beneath him that he would have made PROXY finish his own dirty work, but to have not come to Palpatine's side meant a lot of things.

Then there were the visions he kept having, now that he had renounced the power of the Dark Side. It was as though he ripped away a self-induced veil over his vision, freeing it from the cloying blackness he had always had to live with. But it was in some ways even more frustrating. All Galen could see was a vial, a colour-changing stone that turned from light to darkness, and a serial number that kept repeating itself over and over in his mind. And then there was the crystal he took from Mimban a few years ago, the one that became next to useless when he returned it to his former Master ... to his enemy.

But it didn't make sense. At all. Why would the Force keep telling him this? What was it warning him about?

Perhaps ... it wasn't important, in the grand scheme of the things. The fact of the matter was that with the death of Palpatine, Darth Vader was now the ruler of the Galactic Empire. For all the destruction that took place on the half-completed Death Star, there had been nothing but order and coordination in the Imperial Fleet around Coruscant. And that was something else that bothered Galen Marek.

There was no increased security. There was no blockade. The Rogue Shadow itself had a cloaking device, but Darth Vader could sense him coming. Vader had in fact built the ship just for him: a perfect hidden weapon for his "hidden weapon." Another matter that concerned Galen was the fact that there had barely even been a token security force around the Jedi Temple. He had seen it before. In fact, he had infiltrated before. When Palpatine was alive, the ruined edifice was filled with elite Clone Troopers, and Sovereign Protectors. Now the only forces here were members of the 501st, of Vader's Fist and they were merely scattered around -- discouraging others from entering but leaving enough places unguarded so that Galen Marek wouldn't even have to kill any of them to sneak into the Temple proper.

It was as though Vader wanted him to find his way in there.

Galen wasn't an idiot. He knew that this was a trap, and there was something that the Force itself was trying to warn him about. And there was one final thing that definitely put Galen on edge, and it was the thing that waited for him at the top of the Tower, not even bothering to conceal his presence from him.

Darth Vader was in the Jedi Temple. Galen didn't know much about the man who tortured and shaped him into a weapon of death. But there were things he suspected. He knew that Vader had once been a Jedi and had betrayed the Jedi for his late Master. He also knew that Vader avoided the Temple. He alway

 

It was a trap, but he knew that just as the Force warned him in its cryptic way, it also told him that he had no choice in this matter.

I have to say, I'm impressed Galen is facing the trap with strength.

And I look forward to his meeting with Vader.

Great update

 

intresting i look forward to more add me to the pm

 

KELIA - Thank you, KELIA. But yes, Galen has no choice in this matter. He has been raised and trained to not feel fear. I hope that you like what is about to occur next in this confrontation.

imperial_Warlord5 - Thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying this.

*

The turbo lift doors hissed open.

As Galen Marek stepped into the Council Chamber, the light of the Coruscanti evening greeted him again with its faded blood red shine from the windows. The Jedi barely made a noise as he walked across the crackled tiles, and the past the fallen chairs to the centre-most window to the one other person standing in this room.

Darth Vader made all the noise that Galen did not. His respirator hissed as evenly, and mechanically as a metronome. Each modulated inhalation and exhalation echoed throughout the dilapidated Jedi Council Chamber, menacing in volume and by the invisible pressure it exuded on its surroundings. Whenever Galen had been forced to stand with his former Master, it was as though the labored breathing affected him more than it did the Dark Lord. It was as though his lack of natural breathing dominated all the space around him in a great, vast and slowly inevitable Force-choke.

The Dark Lord of the Sith stood in front of the centre-most window, his cloaked back facing Galen. Not even Coruscant's evening light could cast a reflection on the dark edifice of the Sith Lord's helmet. Galen Marek came to a stop and stared at at the great colossus of Shadow before the window.

For a long time, only the sounds of Darth Vader's artificial respirator, and the constant hum of Galen Marek's reverse-gripped lightsaber filled the room. Finally, it was the Dark Lord who broke this stalemate of silences between them.

"Your performance was ... most impressive."

For a few moments, it was almost as though they were back on the Executor and Galen was bowing before his Master, or surveying the blackness of space and the stars that they would conquer and control at his side. This feeling vanished quickly however. Despite this very brief reflection, Galen was very much mindful of his surroundings, and the Dark Lord in front of him. He waited.

"You have destroyed the Emperor," Darth Vader said, with a hint of finality, and no small sense of satisfaction, "and allowed me to take my rightful place as Sith Master -- as the ruler of this Galaxy. You have met, and even exceeded my expectations of you, Starkiller."

"My name ... is Galen Marek."

"That name," Vader said, turning his body to the side, "has no meaning for you."

Galen's jaw clenched, and he stepped forward, "It is my real name. The name that my father gave me ... before you killed him."

"You already knew that, my Apprentice," Darth Vader's cloak swirled around him briefly as he turned to face him, "If you recall, I killed him right in front of you," the Dark Lord flexed his right hand into a fist but did not draw on the Force, "and afterward, you joined me."

"I was a child then," Galen's voice was clear and grim, the memories of that day coming into the forefront of his mind, "I didn't have much of a choice in the matter."

There was a harsh barking sound. It took Galen Marek a few moments to realize what it was.

Darth Vader was laughing.

"Even children have choices, Starkiller," he pointed a finger at him, "especially children. But you were never a child, Starkiller. Most children would have chosen to remain powerless. To be powerless. Most would have chosen to die, just like the Jedi Younglings I slaughtered here in this very Council Chamber. They did not fight back. They never knew how. But not like you. Because, from the very beginning you chose life. You chose to live. You chose power."

Darth Vader's hand idly fingered the lightsaber hilt at his side, "And I gave you that power."

"And now, I am going to take that power, and use it to begin what I began years ago," Galen Marek's eyes narrowed, "to destroy you."

"I have trained you well," Darth Vader mused as his lightsaber cylinder flew into his hand, "and you have been

 

Please update this story. I want to see what happens. Up!

 

interesting sorry keep me updated.

 

UP!

 

@Senjuto - Thank you. I was actually wondering for a while if anyone found this interesting. Anakin and Padme stories, or even Anakin stories tend to get much more attention as opposed to Vader and Starkiller ones, I have noticed. I have also been very busy with school and a lot of writing projects for the past while. But I will get back to this eventually. I promise.

@sdhfs - And thank you too.

 

interesting, very interesting. I found your descriptions of Starkiller's trek through the rundown and broken Jedi Temple particularly impressive. I'm also wondering why that Kaminoan technology stood out to Starkiller...is someone cloning themselves, maybe? hmmmm. I would like to see just what sort of new powers this "god", Darth Vader, has developed, now that that his biggest stumbling block (Sidious) has been removed.

 

Vivid_Scripts - I am really glad you found this piece. I really like what you are doing with your stories, especially with "Despair." Yes, Kaminoan technology. Isn't that ... interesting? And I was really caught up in the moment when describing Starkiller navigating through the ruined Temple and trying to figure out where everything is, and what his feelings on the matter where through third person limited perspective.

Also, we shall see just what Vader truly has in store for his former Apprentice.

 

This story is most interesting. Can't wait to see where it goes as well as find out more about the Galen's vision

Please update soon.

 

I have been meaning to update this one. Here's to the first post here of 2010.

*

Darth Vader's downward strike was like a thunder clap. Had it connected to anything other than Galen Marek's upward horizontal block on suddenly bent knee, it would have broke it down if not completely shattered it into more than two pieces. As it was, Galen grit his teeth against the sheer force behind the blow.

But the Dark Lord made two mistakes in the initial round of their duel. First, he assumed that Galen would try to fight him on equal footing. Power verses power. Yet that was not how Galen fought. If anyone should have known this, one would have thought it to be his former Master. Galen knew that he was smaller, but much more agile than his opponent. He knew that Vader was weighed down by prosthetics and his armour. The tell-tale artificial breathing of his suit that caused much fear in the galaxy was also indicative of a severely handicapped man. Yes, Vader was powerful with the Force but Galen also knew that it took him some power to move around with both armour and metallic limbs.

And that was Vader's second mistake. Ironically, in any other situation more space would have been to Vader's disadvantage -- due to the fact that Galen was much more agile and could perform the Force-assisted acrobatics of Ataru -- in this case the opposite was true. Had he simply attacked Vader from an angle to begin with, Vader could have used a ranged attack: could have thrown something at him or blasted him with a Force push. But this close and knowing his former Master's speed, all Galen had to do was reverse his lightsaber angle, move under and sweep his blade right under ...

Galen's blade whirred into a semi-circular arc for Darth Vader's knees ... and found nothing but empty air.

It vaguely surprised the new Jedi Knight that his former Master had managed, somehow, to jump back from the blow: so much so that when the Dark Lord threw his blade at him, Galen barely had time to jump out of the way himself. As it was, he had to slash his own blue blade into Vader's thrown saber to deflect it away from him. A lightsaber throw so early in the fight. Galen knew he shouldn't have been surprised. After all, the Dark Lord had trained him to think in an unorthodox manner.

The former Sith didn't have time to think long on the subject, however, as the Dark Lord gestured and Galen barely jumped out of the way of two colliding shattered chairs. But that was an old trick: one that the hologram of Kento Marek, Galen's own lost father, utilized against him in these very Council Chambers. But then something hit Galen's chest with bone-crushing force. The Jedi barely got his elbows out in front of him, drawing on the Force to support him as Vader's Force push dragged him back on his heels a few inches.

He looked up just as Vader began to charge. Both blue and red blades clashed into each other into a screech of static. The power emanating from Vader's hulking form was immense. But the Jedi Council Chamber seemed to reverberate again and Galen felt the Force plunge into his body like the clearest of air would an empty vessel. The Force seemed so much more tangible here. So much closer.

"Of course of it is," Vader rasped deeply, and Galen could feel his unseen gaze burning into him from behind his mask, "We fight on top of a Force nexus. A truly powerful one. For all the Jedi claimed to reject power, they sought it well enough. Built their very Temple right over it. But they were always afraid," the Dark Lord leaned his body into their lock and Galen found himself giving ground against that inexorable force, "They were always afraid of that power. Power that I used to my advantage. Power that I will use to destroy you."

Galen glared at his enemy, building up his mental shields again and drew into his own power. The Force nexus below the Temple, a centre of collected Force energies in the galaxy flowed into him and he lashed out with his power. Darth Vader found himself thrown into a pile of ruined chairs. The Jedi reached into the Force again a

 

woahhhhhhhh

I did not see that coming

 

Darth_Rahl - Thank you for following this. I know it's been some time now, but even now Galen's vision is continuing to unfold. It will be tumultuous.

Darth Cable - I aim to surprise. With more surprises to come. *grins*

 

Wow!

 

Darth_Rahl -Thanks.

 

He looked just like PROXY's duel simulations except for those burning, scornful, hateful eyes.

Galen Marek dimly wondered why he hadn't realized it -- any of it -- sooner as the other man: young and lean in his dark leather uniform charged at him. Vader's -- Skywalker's -- lightsaber seemed to detach the more clunkier, heavier parts of itself: revealing a thin, dark grey skeletal hilt not unlike the lightsaber Galen had once made for himself so long ago.

Anakin Skywalker's crimson lightsaber struck the flat of his shimmering blue energy blade. Over and over and over again. Galen tried to roll out of the way, but the other man anticipated him. This duel had changed. No, Galen realized now that this duel had been different from the very beginning. With his heavy cloak and dark armour no longer weighing him down, the Sith moved as fast as the Jedi Knight. No, that was a lie and Galen knew it. For just as he knew that Sith took great stock in lies, he also knew that this man was faster than he was.

The Sith Lord was a black hole of burning dark fire and fury in the Force. Even though Galen countered and parried everyone of the other's the tip of the red blade sometimes got through. Galen barely registered gritting his teeth as the Sith's weapon grazed his shoulder and then his hip. He was staggering back. It was all happening far too quickly. Galen tried to move back, but the Sith back-flipped over him. He tried to swivel, but the Sith Lord blocked the stab to his back with ease.

Even though the energies of the Force nexus underneath the Jedi Temple sang through Galen, he also knew they were churning inside his opponent: his somehow newly rejuvenated opponent. Then Skywalker was a blur of speed his blade clashed against Galen's. It was then that Galen Marek understood something else as well. Farsight came unbidden and involuntarily ...

The Dark Lord stood in the laboratory, dark in his armour, as he directed a robotic arm with the Force. It was a laboratory with a transparent screen. At first, Galen thought it was on the Empirical, but he thought he saw a window in the background opening to a dark sky with dying trees and the sound of falling acid. But then there was the screen. First, the contents of a small and familiar vial were transferred in the sterilized atmosphere into a beaker. Then the talons of the arm gently deposited something else into the laboratory glass: a small unpolished nugget of gem.

As the gem settled into contents of the beaker, something began to happen. The stone and the liquid around it began to change ...

For all of Galen Marek's agility and precision, Anakin Skywalker's blows were as dexterous as they were brutally strong. They found every opening. Every opportunity. It was a savage Djem So that beat down, sliced and hacked, and penetrated. Even now, not being able to sense the presence of any prosthetics on his opponent at all, Galen felt the force of his opponent's weapon crashing down on his own in a vicious two-handed grip and arc. Again and again and again. Crashing. Crashing. Crashing together ...

The stone and the contents inside the beaker dissolved. They melted into each other: changing each other. The Dark Lord knew that one without the other might be enough, but he couldn't take that risk. He wouldn't. He watched as the forming liquid changed colour. From black to red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet and finally white. White ... white ...

A white light burned painfully behind Galen Marek's eyes behind each crash and small cut that Anakin Skywalker unleashed on him. He was falling back on his Soresu -- remembering every defensive position, movement and kata that had been drilled into his muscles and bones -- into his very being -- to deal with this assault.

Galen Marek had been wrong. His opponent's Djem So was not simply a brutal frontal or probing attack. That was Vader: the old heavily armoured Vader. There were no crude strikes. This Djem So was clean and efficient. It was Vader refined: refined and purged by fire. Som

 

The sight and sense of what Galen Marek experienced stunned him for a few nanoseconds.

The man was tall. He was as tall as the image of Anakin Skywalker had been and just as lean. That was where the comparison ended. Galen realized he must have hit the other several times with his telekinetic blasts and lightning because he could see the other's black suit was ripped and tattered in places. In fact, he wasn't even wearing any gloves or boots.

His opponent barely had anything covering his pallid heavily muscular chest, arms and legs. That same pale scar was criss-crossed with scars: some older and deeper than the shallow cuts that overlay them. He was bald: with a long ugly scar ran vertically down the left side of the top of his naked scalp and his left cheek was ragged with a series of old horizontal scars. He looked like a misshapen experiment that one would watch in only the worst kinds of Holo-Films. Only the baleful golden-red eyes were the same sunken in hollow eye-sockets.

He reached out a hand: a hand that was at odds with the rest of his body. It was younger and unmarred: a beige flesh connected by jagged scar tissue to a white arm. The young Jedi saw that the man's other forearm was the same along with his legs and bare feet. They were a young man's limbs connected to a ravaged older man's body.

It was when Galen saw the centre of the other's chest, however, that it all made a very horrible sense. Shards of red crystal pulsated: embedded deep inside the Sith Lord's chest and making the very air around him tremble. Galen remembered the Crystal being much larger and he knew that the other had done more than just implant it in his chest. He knew -- somehow -- that it was on his back and large shards of it were implanted all throughout his body.

Galen could only watch as small pieces of debris and crystal rose from the ground beside him and began to coalesce: coming back together into an emitter and then another crystal shard came to the fore from Vader's tattered clothing. Galen knew this couldn't be the other's synth-crystal. Sith synth-crystals were notoriously unstable creations -- Galen having learned after a time how to make them -- but they made up for it in raw power: sometimes even having the capacity to short out other lightsaber blades in a powerful strike. However, Galen also knew they were known to break down themselves and he'd counted on his lightning destroying Vader's crystal.

As Vader's newly repaired lightsaber cylinder came back into his outstretched hand, a scarred smile came to his lips.

"So now you understand," his voice was deep and reverberated with power, "It is as you said, Starkiller. I couldn't have beaten the Emperor without you. I couldn't have restored my power without you. In fact," he ignited his lightsaber, the red blade glowing with even greater strength than before, "I owe all of this to you because, without you, it wouldn't have been possible."

"The Kaiburr crystal ..." Galen murmured.

Galen really did understand. The Force had been trying to warn him about this: so much so it even gave him access to some of Vader's thoughts, or maybe the mere presence of the Crystal itself was enough to augment his own powers, his farseeing ...

"So you didn't need the Pomojema Temple after all ..." Galen willed the Force to flow smoothly and cleanly through his aching body and bruised ribs.

"It was built on a nexus. And the Jedi Temple's Force nexus -- this one -- more than suffices to power my Crystal," the Dark Lord of the Sith grasped the lightsaber pummel with his other far too young hand as well.

"But how --"

And then Galen knew. Vader had been injecting himself with the bota and pyronium solution he created from the Holocron that he himself retrieved for him so long ago. He'd been using it to slowly rebuild himself on the molecular level, building a tolerance to power until he could use ... this ... Then Galen remembered the Halls of Healing and the Healing Crystal of Greater Fire and the things in the cloning capsules ... the things that were attached to Darth