Revan Saga

From Shifti

This story is a work in progress.

Xanadu story universe

Revan Saga

[edit] Chapter One

"So, who are you supposed to be?" The woman handing out badges couldn’t possibly look less interested. Despite the brightly-colored staff badge and the eye-searing blue of the bunny-ear headband lying over her curly hair, she clearly had other places to be right now. She looked like late teens, early twenties. My age or younger.

"I am Revan Redeemed, former Dark Lord of the Sith." I’d been practicing a neutral voice that could be high male or low female for as long as I’d been working on the costume. The effect was helped along somewhat by my full face helmet and hood. Despite knowing that she must have seen dozens of costumes vastly superior to mine, a part of me wanted her to be impressed.

She wasn’t. "Uh huh. I didn’t see anything like that in the movie." She popped her bubblegum noisily. It stank of artificial grape. What a multitasker, I thought wryly, resigned. Chewing gum, counting the dues, and speaking. Why is she talking to me? Is it because there’s nobody waiting behind? If I had still been in my normal clothes, I would have felt cowed by her dismissive tone and ignored her comment. But wearing Revan’s robes, insufferably hot though they were, made me bold.

"That’s because Revan lived four thousand years before the rise of the Galactic Empire. Not all Star Wars games are based on the movies. Forty years after the defeat of Exar Kun-" She cut me off, sneering.

"Uh huh. Sure. Spare me the details, I’m not a fan. Okay, everything looks like it’s in order. You just barely made it into this ‘koter’ SIG." While it disturbed me that she was so ignorant of the best game in the world, it was only to be expected. Layfolk are, after all, everywhere. I might have been upset, had I not been Revan. Nothing phased my Revan. Not for long, anyway.

After a brief delay for hidden weapons checking and a bit of sighing at the too-bright pass that was slung around my neck, I was through. Xanadu. Maybe not the best choice for me. I had never been to a convention before, and I probably should have started small. Or at least come a day early so that I could take in the sights.

I’d actually planned to wait for my friend Nathaniel. We would have changed in the room rented for this purpose and gone in, in costume, together. At the time I’d thought that only his help would let me face this many people. I’m chronically shy when it comes to crowds, after all. Classic wallflower. But then I’d donned the robes for the first time since I’d finished fitting them and realized something important. The robes made me feel as if I was her. Looking at me, people would see Revan. And Revan would not hesitate. There was something incredibly liberating about being her. I imagined that my body moved on its own, without my commanding it to do so.

And here I was, trying to find my way across what was probably the largest science fiction-fantasy convention in the country, or one of them, anyway. Consulting the map proved to be confusing, and I didn’t trust the giggling fairy princess who pointed a direction. Slightly uneasy, I turned around a few times. Before long I saw, fixed in the narrow visor of my mask, a robed figure that looked familiar.

I took a chance, walking up to it and speaking as if I knew her very well.

"Juhani!" She whirled and performed a classic double-take. Unseen, I smiled.

"Ah, Revan!" While this girl’s costume was not as convincing as my own, mostly because she couldn’t cover her face and her nose was too snubbed, the red Knight Robe, the heavy black eyeliner, and the yellow contacts were recognizable as an imitation of the Cathar Juhani, a feline Jedi from the same game as Revan. Major coincidence. Her mock-Russian accent sounded hesitant.

"Are you- I mean, Did you fall to the dark side?" I grinned beneath my mask at her question, and responded boldly with a quote.

"I didn’t ‘fall’, Juhani. I had my eyes opened." Under the dusting of facepaint made to look like the stripes of short fur, "Juhani" smiled. Blinkered by the mask, I turned my head to look through the narrow horizontal slot. At this range I could only see sections of her face- the problem with Revan’s mask was that I, personally, could not compensate for restricted vision with the Force- but it looked like she also had plastic vampire teeth behind her lips.

She broke character, losing the fake accent. "You’re from the General Discussion boards, right? Lots of Revans there. I saw a bunch of photos on the costume thread. Yours looks familiar – um... huh... Are you Redsaber-5?"

Behind the mask I grinned like a fool, oddly and wholly pleased. I didn’t recognize her, unfortunately, but hopefully she’d let that pass. I made no attempt to conceal the smile in my voice. "Exactly! My real name is El-" The "Cathar" shook her head and I shut up.

"Let us leave names out of this," she said lightly, inoffensively. "Real or forum, I am Jedi Knight Juhani, and you are?"

"I am Female Revan, Prodigal Knight. Between the game and its sequel. My memories of life as Darth Revan are only beginning to return in full. Soon I will disappear to combat the True Sith, but not yet. I’ve just returned to my old robe and mask, because I’ve become enamored of them."

We touched gloved hands, mine black pleather(salvaged from a set of battered biker’s gloves) with red plating on the backs, hers a sandy-colored cloth with a marker applied. A bit of plastic at the end of each finger symbolized small claws. Like my own costume, hers was most convincing at a distance. Neither of us would be winning prizes, but we certainly looked better than the people who’d just picked up noses on strings or whatever was selling in the cheap section of the Dealer’s Room and called it a costume. I also thought we looked cooler than some of the fursuiters, the ones wearing baggy pajama-type things anyway, but I may have been biased.

"Come now, I will guide you to the room we will be staying in. I’ve been here for a few days, so I know where things are. Roughly." I accepted her help, placing my hand into the crook of her proffered elbow like a courtier. Half blinded by the mask, what else could I do?

It took a while and some ... navigational hazards. A large, orangy-colored Care Bear flirting with an admiring conventioneer whose costume was along the lines of "furry pajamas" blocked the way for a while before "she" squeaked a farewell and minced off. Somehow we managed to get pinned near a set of vendors dispensing fried edibles out of trays who were trying to sell their wares to some shockingly out-of-shape "superheroes" who should never have been allowed within five hundred feet of a Spandex costume. We barely escaped a confrontation between an armored knight in blue jeans and a seminaked nunchuck-wielding "girl" whose Adam’s apple was just a touch too prominent to be ignored. "Juhani" and I were teased by an Episode Two-style clone trooper who saw our shiny lightsaber hilts and demanded "Generals! What are your orders?" before having a hearty and distinctly un-clone-like laugh. "Robots" with the look of tinfoil creations from some low-budget Japanese live-action show grabbed at us before I, emboldened by the thought of being Revan, told them to run along and play. To my surprise, they obeyed. We had a brief run-in with some random skimpy-clothed fox-girl who, mistaking my companion for someone else, demanded to know why "Juhani" didn’t have "proper cat ears and a tail", but she gave up after a while. A unicorn-morph recognized my costume as sinister and cringed away from me while "Juhani" laughed and I folded my arms together imposingly.

At couple of those nightmare convention tales I had heard over the Internet turned out to be true. One was that people sold the most bizarre pornographic art conceivable. Another was that a few people in the crowd had not bathed since the start of the con, if then. Sweat, body odors, flat beer, reeking old cloth, and subtler, harder to define scents all combined into a miasma that in some places was drank in rather than inhaled.

There were a lot of sights I barely caught, what with the narrowness of the visor. Some good, others less so. I couldn’t help craning my neck and staring at an oriental dragon made of four people who seemed to have stolen it from the Chinese New Year, and there were some very impressive horse-type costumes. I saw hints of what looked like talent shows or perhaps simply skits on stages, and elsewhere heard snatches of filk that could be promising or terrible. Cosplayers with all levels of skill photographed each other and hugged and sparred. Xanadu was a major event for various fandoms, and today, the last day of the convention, the day Eric Winters handed out the prize money, the fans were going all out.

Eventually we got to the KotOR SIG room. It was just a door away from an unofficial gathering of more people in clone trooper armor. Half of them saluted. I supposed it wasn’t surprising that there were so many here... the infamous 501st, serious Star Wars cosplayers who made up the world’s largest Imperial costuming organization, was here openly, after all. I’d seriously considered joining - I was over eighteen, after all – but I wasn’t sure if my villain costume quite counted as "high quality", especially compared to what existing members had created.

Compared to most of the chambers here, ours, the room of the KotOR players, was on the small side. But there was only so much money we could raise in a hurry, and as expected only about twenty or thirty of us could come. It was still the first time I’d seen fellow fans in person, outside of the campus at Midtral anyway. KotOR was only a highly influential game set in the Star Wars universe; there were only so many people who could attend Kublai Con. Xanadu wasn’t the same thing as Celebration, after all. None of this was official.

There were two other Revans in robes, one of them in the white Star Forge Robes that I had stained so often that I’d gone for black instead, one Zaalbar who really looked more like a Chewbacca suit but carried a sign saying "I am Zaalbar; call me Big Z", three blue Twi’leks who might or might not be Mission Vao, someone with a repainted Maul mask as Bao Dur, a number of Bastilas, and a rather chunky battered HK-47 visible in the doorway, as well as various people in less distinctive outfits who could have been anyone from the Exile to Canderous. And there were more people that I couldn’t see due to the damn mask. Some looked hellishly halfhearted, but others...

"Maybe this was a mistake;" I muttered. But it was too late now; "Juhani" was plunging into the chaos and I felt it was my duty to at least visit. I’d paid the dues, after all...

And it was easier with the mask on. Easier to imagine that I was Revan, competent and, if not always composed, able to fake it. Not Alison Freeman, who was decidedly neither.

Even so, after less than a half hour, I was drained. Twenty-odd people in one room managed to create a lot more noise than should be humanly possible, and the long black robes that had been overwarm early on had become sweltering. The holes I’d drilled into my strapped-on mask weren’t working so well either; air didn’t pass through as well as I’d wanted it to. It seemed that all the water I drank passed straight out of my pores, hardly pausing to hit my stomach. The icepacks I’d stuffed into pockets after reading advice on Howstuffworks.com worked pretty well, but they couldn’t quite make it cool. But Revan would not have shown discomfort, and perhaps wouldn’t even have noticed, so I did my paltry best not to be affected.

As it turned out, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. I ended up doing a lot more listening than speaking, but tossed my two cents around more than a little anyway. Since we didn’t have anyone particularly well-known here, there weren’t any panels, just talk. It wasn’t too different from many of the forum discussions I’d had, except that I was here, not at a computer. I didn’t need Nathaniel here to "break the ice", not when I was Revan.

The thing about playing Revan is that he or she can be anything. You pick the face, you decide on male or female, big and strong or small and delicate. You decide if he or she is Dark or Light. You customize all kinds of statistics- intelligence, charisma, wisdom, strength, dexterity. Everyone who plays the game has a different Revan. Mine had started off as self-insertion fantasy, but over the years she'd grown out of that into someone I probably wouldn't like, but could still admire.

Despite my resolution not to feel the heat, I was working a black-gloved finger into my high vinyl collar, trying to coax air over to my sweat-drenched inner clothes, when a messenger in a frat-style toga with rubbery horns on his head ran in. He shouted what sounded like "Intercom’s down in this wing- the Awards Ceremony starts in five minutes!" and dashed off again, panting.

I moved my head in a wavy motion, looking for faces. The mask looked awesome and made me feel anonymous, but it was a damned nuisance. The Velcro straps that held it on my head were tangling and snagging my hair painfully. The inside was also starting to condense; beads of water from my slightly sour breath were trickling down to my chin and soaking me. Eventually I framed the visor slit around a girl who wasn’t already occupied.

"Revan Redeemed, in Darkside robes for old time’s sake," I told her casually. The mask muffled my voice. By her response, she heard fine.

"Nice mask. I’m a bit too lazy for anything fancy, so I’m some random Jedi from Dantooine - my character is Rhea Dorin. Took ages to make the gi and I had to borrow the boots, but I think it was worth it." She was a bit younger than me, I suspected. Not yet out of high school.

"Hmm. Do you really want to go to the awards ceremony?" I wouldn’t have minded seeing it, but I would definitely need a guide. I might stumble over just about anything, otherwise. It’s hard to look dignified and mysterious if you’re sprawled on your belly. In an hour or two, when our SIG breaks up and we all drift away, I should take the mask off and just wander around, see what people have made. I won’t be the only one.

Yes... that seemed like a good plan. With so many anime fans in attendance, there were sure to be people selling DVDs and manga and assorted action figures. Surely I could find something from a series I favored...

"No, I won’t know anyone there. Besides, no way am *I* going to win "Best Costume" or whatever they’re doing." A disappointing revelation, but I had only been curious, after all. And I wasn’t going to ask, not after seeing her obvious disinterest. Hopefully someone from Midtral was taping it and I could see a highlights reel or something later. Over the Internet, maybe.

I spoke with "Rhea" for a while. There was a minor rule about not discussing "who you really are", but we ignored it. This was actually her second convention ever - she’d been to a minor one back in September- but she still had little more idea of what exactly happened than I did.

Oddly, it grew easier to keep a conversation with each sentence. I suppose it’s true that when you forget yourself it’s easier to relax into a role, although the topic had ranged on to a real fourth-wall-breaker: why so many forum members were juvenile Darkside jerks.

In the process we walked back towards the entrance of the room. The knot of white-armored clone troopers had in fact gotten larger. Maybe they wanted our room. Some looked pretty bad, but others looked truly professional, as if they had just stepped out of the movies. There’d been a rumor on the Internet that Temura Morrison, the actor who’d played Jango Fett, was coming to Xanadu, but I personally didn’t believe it. There would have been signings – and signs advertising the signings - otherwise. In a typically Revan move, I leaned back slightly and crossed my arms to study the troopers for a moment, then swung my head back to find Rhea. She had followed me, and stood closer to my side, but I had no trouble finding her. I knew where to look.

And then the world changed.

I’ve heard a few descriptions about what it felt like. Some people - me included – felt it just before it hit. When it hit, some were dizzied or disoriented, overcome with faintness. A number of psychics, some of them Jedi, blacked out, as did most of those attending the actual Awards Ceremony, although others remained conscious. Some felt ill. Others were wracked with pain or fear or delirious joy. A few people claim that they "saw" it as it overtook them, like a wave or something. I’ve even heard that for some, it happened slowly. And of course there were one or two who, despite the changes, felt nothing of the change itself at all.

My experience was... interesting. I felt it just before it hit; hundreds, thousands of tiny pressures, of thoughts and emotions and muted voices, all around me, all of them calling out in surprise, then hushing. I was calm. Centered. Not uneasy in the least.

That calmness was overtaken by the strangest sensation. Somehow it was both agony and the most wonderful thing I had ever felt, washing over me, warm and cool and smooth and spiky all at once. Like a jolt of electricity, it ran from fingertips across my heart to my toes, brushing the crown of my head like a blessing, blossoming through my cells.

It passed through and remained inside of me, tingling and pulsing in every cell of my body; my legs buckled, and I fell, first to hands and knees, then to the ground. My vision, what there was of it through my helmet, faded to black.

I know I was only out for a few minutes, but it felt like hours before I came to. Hours of... dreams. Of purpose. Before I opened my eyes I felt it. An awareness. I knew that something had happened. Something big. Bigger even, to me, than the whole Xanadu transformation thing. I had reclaimed something so impossibly big and wonderful that beforehand I could barely conceive of its existence, as a blind man can barely grasp the concept of color. It was as if I had been blind and deaf and dumb and all of a sudden light and sound and speech were mine - at first, it was all meaningless, painful patterns, but then-

I opened my eyes, but I didn’t need the visor to see. Part of me cringed and fought, but for the rest it was as natural and easy as taking a deep, deep breath of clean air after years of shallow, fetid inhalations.

I pushed myself off the ground and swung my head back to look at the room I had been in, an instant and an eternity ago. I saw someone else in long armored robes, black and gray and red, but not like mine; burned, tattered, and damaged. He had collapsed on the floor. A red and black and gray mask was in his gloved hand. And a young woman in a tan bodysuit with a loose tunic-robe knelt at the head, palms on bloody temples, eyes closed.

Forging a bond, I knew, to keep him alive. She was Bastila, and he was Revan.

As I was.

Am.

Is that even possible?

Yes, it is. I am Revan.

No! I’m a teenager, a college student, cosplaying-

And I am also Revan.

I can’t handle this. I can’t handle this at all.

I brought my gloved hand up to my face. Such detail! Black gloves, like leather but not, as thin and supple as a second skin. It was protected by plates of muted reddish armor, the same color as my armbands, parts of my mask, and my breastplate. The black and gray robes obscured the rest of the armor, but it was there, underneath. The kind of thing I could have worked at for months and never gotten quite right.

The kind of thing I had designed with a great deal of careful thought. Mandalorians, too, wore full armor with T-visors. It was wonderfully mysterious and helped to inspire fear, as well as having practical uses. I had wanted that same effect, but I hadn’t wanted to appear too Mandalorian.

No- no! I’m not Revan! I can’t be!

More than the costume had changed. That wonderful big feeling of greatness? It bound everything. I could feel things through it. Like I was connected, linked, bound to them. With- everything. The figures before me on the floor, the floor itself, the walls, the air.... not just in the room. Everywhere. As if I was one cell in the body of the galaxy, one note in a symphony, one word in a tale, I was a part of it, related to every other part and, unlike them, aware of this. If I allowed myself, I could get lost in it.

I paced past comatose Rhea, Bastila and the fallen Dark Lord. Another Bastila, in more conventional robes, was sitting against the wall, knees curled into her chest, staring blankly at nothing at all. She felt... right. I stopped beside her, reaching for the words that she needed to hear. They came, of course. They always do.

"It’s not your fault." Her head jerked up, startled, and she stared up at me with wide, pleading eyes. Part of me melted... I firmed my resolve. There were things which needed doing. And this was not truly the woman I knew. She didn’t know me, but someone like me. And yet entirely different. Male, for one thing.

"I forgive you." I told her. What was I forgiving her for? Oh, the mindwipe. Which was probably being performed even now on the bloody figure behind me, unless the shock of becoming Revan right after the bridge was hit by turbolasers had done that. On the Star Forge, when I- when Revan! had redeemed her, she was forgiven for that, and for falling to the Dark Side.

But this was not my Bastila. I knew that. The Force told me.

I can’t handle this. This isn’t me.

The girl who looked like Bastila stammered, "I... I know. But I cannot forgive myself. I failed you. I... I don’t know what to do." I touched her chin and nudged, slightly. She stood shakily. Her eyes swept across my face, and I realized that she was looking for my eyes. Well, this could be interesting.

I knew that I didn’t look like the Revan she wanted me to be. But I could make her think that I was, if only for a moment. It was easy. Just the lightest touch on her mind, and I could see what she wanted and become it.

I sank both my hands back through the opening of my hood, as far back as my ears, and found the catch, where the front of my helmet met the back piece. Strange. I distantly remembered using Velcro and straps that tied around my head, but this was much better. With a slight tug, the mask came free. I looked into her eyes and met her pleading gaze calmly. It was clear to my senses that what she wanted from me was direction.

I gave it to her. "Use your Battle Meditation. Calm the crowds. I do not expect you to make everyone become still and peaceful, love, but every little bit helps. We don’t want riots." Love?! Admittedly it wasn’t a name I would normally have used, but if it helped... I smiled reassuringly, just a bit, and she nodded and sat in a lotus position, taking a deep, slow breath. It would work. Hopefully. I felt exposed without the mask, and so I latched it back. The visor helped me focus.

I looked-

"This is so wrong." A voice said unhappily. I turned, cloak cape swinging, to see Darth Malak climbing to his feet and looking at himself with dismay. I hesitated, then approached him.

Part of me felt no surprise at his appearance, but... somehow a computer screen fails to show how tall Malak was. Wide-shouldered, bald, with striped tattoos on his pale scalp, he was a head and a half taller than me, even leaning forward with knees slightly bent. He looked somewhat different than in the game, robed properly rather than villainous and without the signature prosthetic jaw. The bold tattooed stripes on his head were unchanged, but his skin was less gray, his eyes blue rather than yellow.

I’d played the game. He had been my- no, Revan’s best friend and lieutenant. Then when we- when they had become Sith, he had turned traitor. In the Sith tradition. But I did not feel threatened. This wasn’t the man I had grown up with. He had less independence in him, for one. He was used to obeying. There was hardly any fire or ambition in him; he felt... young. Pliable. Looked it, too, actually.

I can’t handle this. Not now.

He noticed me watching him with clear unease. "Revan. I don’t want to fight you. Please. I’m not M- I’m not who you think I am. Really."

"Of course you’re not," I said as smoothly as I could. My throat was starting to hurt, making my voice raspier and more unpleasant. Not something I wanted, but it would recover in time. A thought occurred to me. "How old are you?"

"I’m... huh. Eighteen. And... fourteen. That’s not right... Revan... if you are Revan... what’s going on?" Much younger than me. Interesting. He thought I was about to attack him, yet he looks to me? I was intrigued.

"I might as well be," I allowed. I felt a twinging in my awareness. Elsewhere, I knew, people weren’t standing around talking things out. I had better do something about it. "Look, will you follow me? I could use help."

His response was so automatic that I suspected it was reflex, not a decision. "Yes."

Rapidly, I flashed a thought-probe in and out of the young man who looked like Malak. No real ill intent, no deception; confusion, though, a desire to do well, and a strange, deep welling of trust. He wanted guidance? Well, I could give it.

"Then I can trust you."

I can’t handle this. I just can’t.

"I should have stayed home..." he moaned, but as I started to walk he followed as closely as he would had I snagged his hand and pulled.

I paused at a woman who looked like Juhani, apparently the one who had brought me to this room. Black eyelids accentuating scared yellow eyes that didn’t seem to have whites made her look alien, but I ignored this. And the expression of adoration which followed when she recognized me. She wasn’t mine, I wasn’t hers. She blinked as she realized this for herself, and settled.

"Keep the calm, Juhani. There will be trouble if some of us wake up and start fighting. You know how to slow them down, let them think." Willing saliva into my mouth, I swallowed, trying to soothe my irritated throat. It didn’t really work.

"I- yes. I will keep the peace until you return. But- you are not going alone, with him?" She glanced up at the one who looked like Malak, who was rubbing his face and muttering. Beneath my mask I smiled.

"I can trust him, Juhani. May the Force be with you." The thought dawned that I would probably never see her again.

I strode forth and pulled my lone follower out of the room and into more chaos.

Clone troopers were everywhere. Some were semiconscious; others had formed a defensive square, tracking their black blaster rifles to follow every movement. They hadn’t yet fired, thankfully.

One saw me and looked past the dramatic armored robe and mask to notice a lightsaber hanging from my belt, as if it were a magnet and his gaze was a needle. "General..." he breathed. Other clones turned their heads and saw me, emitting a relief that was almost palpable. Part of me was uncomfortable about this, part... wasn’t.

Oh, that’s right... Clone troopers call all Jedi either ‘Commander’ or ‘General’, and obey them to and past the point of self-sacrifice. Up until they get the correct signal and attack these same Jedi...

I just can’t handle this!

"How do you know I’m not a Sith?" I asked, half serious, half amused. I shook my hooded head before someone could come up with an answer. "Never mind. Men..." My confidence faltered for a moment as they all looked at me the way drowners see air, nakedly desperate. My surety returned in the same instant that it had left, along with an inkling of what I had to say and how I had to say it. Loose wording, certain tone.

"Hold your positions until you have judged it prudent to move. You are authorized to use force in defense of yourselves or others, but practice strict restraint. No casualties unless absolutely necessary. Do not take orders from anyone, even another Jedi, if they conflict with mine." My voice was calm, firm, and confident enough to reassure even the most cowardly of recruits. The clones all straightened, their world having realigned itself.

I received a set of salutes and "Yes Sir"s. They were ragged, but they would do. Already the troopers looked more professional, forming up into a more solid position. Even the young man who looked like Malak, standing behind me, felt more assured, and I hadn’t even addressed him.

The Force twinged again. A death. Without another word, I strode ahead, still trailed by my follower.

[edit] Chapter two

For the moment, things were calm. Calm enough, at least, to ask a mildly important question as we walked. I turned my masked and hooded head to face my tall, pale companion and asked, mildly, "What do you want me to call you?"

The young man who looked like Malak blinked, uncertain both in the narrow strip of view afforded by my visor and in the Force. "Um. I was... don’t laugh, okay?"

I smiled invisibly. This ought to be good. "I won’t."

"I was... ‘Cheryl.’ I told you not to laugh," he - or she? said rather stiffly. A quick, involuntary exhalation had escaped me- not quite a laugh, no, but not far from it. I waved a gloved, armored hand at him- sorry, continue- and he did. "But I think I prefer Malak. What about you?"

"What about me?"

I can’t handle this. Really, I can’t.

"What do you want me to call you? Do you respond to Revan, or...?"

Ah. I can’t believe I forgot that. "Revan will do nicely." I hesitated as something niggled at me, then added, "I would also respond to... Elisa... but Revan works better." One more thing- "And I stayed female."

"...Okay."

I hesitated again, then shrugged. Might as well. Other than the two of us, this hall is deserted. I don’t think anything is about to happen in the next thirty seconds. Nothing I could prevent, anyway. "This is what I look like." I stopped walking and turned towards my companion. Carefully, I slid both armored hands into the face of my deep, concealing hood, felt for the clasps, and pulled the masklike front half of my helmet down and away from my face.

My vision was restricted by the hood itself, cutting off everything on either side, but it was still astonishing how much more I could see. If not for the Force, maneuvering would have been a great trial wearing that mask. How had I managed before?

Malak peered into my face with a slight frown around his eyes, then nodded, not saying a word. I replaced the mask and we resumed walking in a rather awkward silence. What do you say to someone who looks like a younger version of your best friend since childhood, who later set a trap for you and left you for dead so that he could grab the title of Dark Lord of the Sith?

I can’t handle this.

Ahead was chaos. Perhaps deterred by the knot of clones outside, hysterical people had run away from the room I had found Malak in, but here there was nothing to stop them from doing all the things panicked people do. Running in circles. Trampling one another. Bashing themselves into walls. And screaming, of course. Lots and lots of screaming.

Most of them appeared fairly human in their physiology, though frequently sporting strange furred features like ears or snouts or tails which didn’t really match their bodies. Interestingly enough, it was mostly the ones without the odd ears-or-snouts-or-tails who had peculiar skin coloration, truly outlandish garb, or bizarre hair. Some appeared to be humanized animals. There were also a number of oddities in that crowd, things which really didn’t look humanoid. I didn’t bother looking too closely.

A panicked human with lips that curved out into a brightly-colored beak produced a shrieking cry that was so loud and so highly pitched that it seemed to bite through my eardrums and pass through my head, completely ignoring the sound-dampening features in my mask. Shuddering, I winced and resisted the urge to clap my hands over my ears.

The crowd members who were not running in circles were trying to escape the room. There were several doors leading outside, all fronted with glass and opened by means of shoving at a bar in the approximate center. Naturally, in the way of all panicked humans, these were ignoring most of the doors to press around one and only one. Clearly, Bastila’s calming Battle Meditation had not reached them. Or if it had, they were too excited to feel the effect.

"I don’t think we can do anything here!" I said to my follower, shouting over the noise of the crowd. Even if I opened another door, the small mob would continue trying to surge through the first one. Panicked people were like that. "Let’s just get out!" I winced again as the beaked human produced another painful shriek.

I can’t handle this.

"Yeah! Good idea!" Malak followed as I worked my way along the edge of the room. The crush of people here was not so tight; the wreckage of various small stands and booths disrupted them, and a hysterical mass of humans generally prefers more open spaces. The beaked human shrieked twice more before we were able to find our way into a different corridor.

There was still a great deal of noise, but the corridor was much less crowded and had less of a hysterical feel to it. The handful of people here were grim-faced or wide-eyed with fear, but they hadn’t whipped themselves into a frenzy. What appeared to be a bipedal dog was holding two cloaked figures away from each other and speaking rapidly.

I felt the Force twinge again. I was running out of time. Sweat started to form on my skin; it was instantly absorbed by the lining of my armor, but what I wore could do nothing about the way my stomach was starting to flutter. I can’t run out of time. I won’t. Running or allowing myself to draw upon the Force to move more quickly would use energy that I would need later. I settled for walking very fast, fast enough that people ahead moved to either side of the corridor to let me by.

"Revan, what do you think’s happened?" Longer legs meant that Malak had little trouble keeping up with me.

"I have no idea," I told him shortly. We were passing people that I knew I could help, but to do so I would be forced to use precious time and energy. I need both for what’s ahead. Let me be there in time. "It’s obviously something big. You can touch the Force, right?"

"Yes," he said uncertainly, as if he suspected a trick question.

"And you couldn’t this morning, could you?" I pressed. He shook his head, bewildered. "Now, what have you done between this morning and... sixteen minutes ago? Seventeen minutes ago, how were you different from this morning?"

He still did not understand. I wasn’t quite sure how to phrase it... Sighing inwardly, I sent a thought into his head, a hint. Just a quick thought-pulse, nothing major.

I can’t handle this at all.

"I’m not sure what you- oh. Costumes. You mean... they became real?"

Well, that’s as good a way to say it as any other. I inclined my head and then, realizing that it was hard to see, told him "Yes. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense. Not much, admittedly, but it’s all we have. When straws are all that is left, grasp at them."

I did not turn my head to look at him, but in the Force I could feel a bit of his confusion. "How did you do that?"

Sensing that he didn’t mean my deduction, I let a wry tone creep into my voice. I should have known he would feel my thought-pulse. "I’m the player character in an RPG. I have to be able to communicate without words at least part of the time."

I can’t handle this. It’s just too weird.

"Oh." There were doors set into the corridor. Some were closed, others were not. Malak stopped quite abruptly; something in one of them had caught his eye. "Revan-"

The tone of his voice made me stop, turn. "What is it? What’s wrong?" I didn’t feel any local disturbance in the Force. While there were plenty of unpleasant things happening around us, they could be taken care of by others. All but one. And that was mine. I was running out of time.

"That’s- I think that’s... David?" His explanation became a question, in a voice that sounded almost plaintive.

A boy in the room, teenaged by his rather nasal voice, demanded, "What?! Who are you? How do you know my name? What’s going on?" He sounded rather freaked out.

Join the club. I can’t handle this.

"Who is David?" I asked. My voice displayed a patience that I did not feel.

Malak hesitated. "He’s my... he’s my brother. Cheryl’s brother. I have to-"

In the room off the corridor, David yelped "What?!" again, his voice breaking.

I didn’t have time for this! Couldn’t he feel that urgency in the Force? Something clicked together. He couldn’t feel it because handling it was a task meant for me. Alone. Without any help whatsoever. It might well be that, in the impending incident, any companions of mine would be killed or prove untrustworthy.

Better if there was only one.

Almost I could feel responsibility settling over my shoulders like a new cloak lined with lead. Heavily, I accepted it. Very well. I will go it alone from here.

"I’ll find you later," I told my follower, unsure if I really could. He nodded, preoccupied with the puzzle of trying to explain things to David. I could only hope that he would remember my not-quite-promise later- but then again, perhaps it would be better if he did not. I was running short on time. We all were.

I can’t handle this.

Not looking back, I finally succumbed to the urgency I felt in the Force and broke into a loping run.

[edit] Chapter three

Hurry, hurry, hurry... I had lost any notion of conserving my energy and now ran as quickly as I could without damaging something. I used very long, loping strides with what felt like several seconds of air between each step, and I drew upon the Force that linked all things to urge more and more energy into my muscles.

Another twinge of disturbance rippled through the Force. Silently I cursed my armor and my robes; they were slowing me, but I knew that I needed them. The sweat that was emitted by my skin and either evaporated or was wicked away by padding was now not entirely produced out of anxiety; part of it was from exertion. I preferred sprints to marathons, all things taken under advisement.

But I’ve endured worse. I’m about to endure worse. If I can get there before something happens!

Fortunately there was little traffic here; everyone with sense - or without my crushing need to prevent something, anyway – had fled, either outside or simply to safer areas. It had been several long minutes since I had last seen anyone. If all went well, they would probably never hear about it.

If.

I sensed other knots of conflict, other great potentially-apocalyptic forces, around and about me. But they were all either willing to postpone whatever damage they wanted to do or were in the process of being neutralized, either by each other or by forces that opposed them.

Apparently, I was one of those forces. The... being... I was after did have several others resisting it, but they were not doing well. More precisely, they were being killed, one after another. The distraction that they posed this... being... was all that kept it from doing something. I didn’t know what it was, but it promised to be terrible.

And unlike the terrible... being... I was after and several of the other great forces, apocalyptic or not, I was not some demigod descended from on high. I was stronger, faster, in various ways more capable than the average human, and I did have some modest psychic abilities, not to mention extensive training with the lightsaber, but I was only human, and all too easily killed.

The only thing that truly set me apart from other humans was my connection to the Force. Not the telekinesis and such that it gave me, but the warnings, the guidance, the insights it gave me into everything around me. But the Force would only do so much. It wasn’t as if it focused on me and only me, after all. Clumsiness or a lack of awareness could easily be fatal.

I can’t handle this. The half-panicked thought returned, and I suppressed it firmly. I didn’t need more distraction.

It’s getting warmer, isn’t it? It wasn’t my armor. I could see the air starting to ripple.

Something produces heat. A lot of heat. I believe that it is fairly safe to assume that it is my new enemy doing so.

The short, cheap carpet was singed in places. As I ran on, I saw more and more such singes, on the walls and ceiling as well, as if the building was slowly beginning to toast. Trash dropped by frenzied people had also suffered from the heat. I was forced to slow. I’m close. Very close.

The corridor I was moving down ended in a "T" juncture. This was it. I turned a left and found charring and evidence of soot on one of the walls, which radiated heat like that of a working starship engine or the wall of an intensely powerful oven. Here the ripples in the air intensified; in response I tongued a control set into my helmet, causing the cooling systems in my armor to start up with a barely-audible whirr. I needed them.

There was an opaque door set into that wall. It was very warm to the touch, even through my gloves. When I opened it the sensation was very much akin to dropping into a tank of uncomfortably hot water, cooling systems or no. The heat was a physical pressure on my skin, a distinct and indefinable taste in my mouth. I gathered my will and stepped in as if entering a kiln. My already-dark visor polarized to compensate for the sudden increase in light.

Ahh. A lava boss. That would explain the heat.

The ...being... was roughly humanoid, although it lacked a neck, and almost tall enough to brush the high, blackened ceiling, which released a slow rain of ash and charred flakes. This room had once held more of those booths and stalls, but many of them had been burned away. Oddly enough, I saw no visible flames.

The light fixtures overhead were inoperable, but plenty of light came off of the monstrous "lava boss". Painful, hot, ruddy light, yes, but light all the same. The heat also caused the air to ripple madly, and the floor was giving off a thick, oily smoke, but while wearing this mask I depended on the Force for sight anyway, so it made little difference.

The "lava boss" roared in a deep voice, a sound somehow reminiscent of erupting volcanoes and rocky landslides. On its glowing, relatively short legs it staggered to reach for a flying humanoid figure in yellow. The figure, wrapped in a long yellow coat and flying without any evidence of wings, thrust some kind of a nozzle at the "lava boss". White foam flew from the nozzle, hissing furiously. After a moment, I recognized it as a fire extinguisher, and the yellow coat as that of a firefighter who also wore the signature red helmet. The seething lavalike body of the "boss" darkened wherever foam touched it, forming a solid crust.

I could see several similar dark patches, but it looked like the still-hot lava around them was softening and heating them, breaking them up into smaller pieces. When the "lava boss" flexed, the crusts fissured, revealing its yellow-red molten interior.

‘Only YOU can prevent convention fires!’ I thought on a whim, and then felt slightly ashamed of myself for being frivolous.

The "lava boss" roared again as its hand was solidified by hissing foam. It swung wildly at the yellow firefighter, who was knocked aside but recovered, hovering in place again. He cried out something in ringing tones.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to see that the carpet underfoot had been reduced to a fine, powdery ash. Whatever was under it had also been burned, to the point that I had no idea what it was, yet the foundations holding the floor up seemed to be intact.

For the moment, anyway. There was no doubt in my mind that, soon or late, the foundation would break and the soil would start to burn. One way or another, the lava creature would eventually touch bedrock. Exactly what would happen then, I had no idea, but something – no, not something, the Force, and wasn’t that a strange thought – told me that it wouldn’t be pleasant. Not as disastrous as what some of the other great forces would do if allowed to run unchecked, but not good in the least. The world would not end, no. But, at the least, an active volcano would form and start erupting. Not something you expect in the middle of the Sunshine State, marring the City Beautiful.

I can’t handle this.

The flying firefighter paused to cough hackingly. It looked like he was starting to suffer from smoke inhalation.

Whether or not the "lava boss" knew this or not, it took advantage of the coughing fit to swing again. I winced in sympathy; the blow was solid and drove the flyer into one of the blackened walls. After a moment he tumbled out of the crater he had caused and caught himself in midair.

And he’s still flying. Without wings, repulsors, jets, or any other visible means. How is that?

Finally I noticed that there were people besides the "lava boss" and the wingless flyer in the room. Offering support perhaps? One spotted me and waded rapidly through the ankle-deep ash.

"You hafta get outta here, man! It’s dangerous!" I noticed then that the speaker was a girl wearing a filter-mask who seemed to have a nonhuman muzzle and short, singed fur. Past her the "lava boss" rumbled menacingly at the flying firefighter, adding a certain emphasis to the girl’s warning.

"I can see that," I told her, making the extra effort to radiate competence and non-menace. It would have been easier to simply remove my mask and use the appropriate facial expressions, but I didn’t dare. Not in conditions like these. I had no desire to be singed or inhale a lungful of this smoke - tainted air. "I’m here to help if I can. What’s the situation?"

"We’re real lucky dat Fireman showed up when he did. Otherwi-"

"You’re serious?" I asked, unable to help myself. "That’s his name? Fireman? Sorry, go on. Pretend I was silent."

I can’t handle this.

The girl gave me a scornful look but continued. "We already lost three. Dat thing... Ah dunno what it is, but none of us kin stop it. Slow it down, yeah. Fireman don’t burn, but he can’t really hurt it neither. We’re jest here to d’lay it until sommun wi’ oomph comes roun’ an’ stops it."

Behind my mask I frowned. "If.... Fireman... doesn’t burn, what are you lot doing here? Can’t he take care of stalling that thing on his own?"

Even before I had finished speaking, the girl shook her elongated head. "Nah. He gets kilt if we don’ help now ‘n agin." Above the strapped-on filter mask, her muzzle wrinkled, one hand making a flicking gesture that indicated something on her face. "Ah wish Ah coul’ talk proper wi’ this thing!"

Taking "this thing" to mean either the muzzle or the filter mask, I decided to ignore that last part. She would become accustomed to it, and then she would dislike me for bringing up the subject. "What works? I have a number of weapons, but I don’t know what good they’d do."

"What kind’a weapons?" She asked immediately.

Should have known she’d ask that... "Many. I have a number of... melee weapons-"swords, quarterstaffs, stun sticks, a few clubs, a Gammorrean axe... "- butI doubt any of them will do any good here. I have sonic, ion, and normal blasters – pistols, heavy, and repeaters. I also have lightsabers and grenades."

Ah. I looked through my inventory, scanning the images that flickered across my vision. I have too much stuff. Should have sold this a long time ago...

"Well, hackin’ bits offen that thing don’t do much good; dey jest fall’n burn. Ah dunno how ye kin ‘elp, but yer welcome t’ try." I had the impression that the girl doubted that I actually had any of this stuff on me, and I couldn’t blame her. While things could certainly be hidden under my ceremonial robes and armor, I didn’t look as if I was carting an armory about.

Wait. How am I carrying this, then? I *have* it, I know I do... After a moment I set the thought aside as not currently relevant.

I just can’t handle this.

Greeting duties done, the girl performed an about-face to stand in a tense semi-huddle with the others in the room, who also wore filter-masks. While we had been conversing, the flying figure... Fireman... had resumed the tactic of zipping around and using his fire extinguisher to cool the surface of the "lava boss".

This is what I was so worried about? I asked myself, half-amused. Yes, this thing could potentially cause a major catastrophe, but it doesn’t look like my presence or absence will change anything. This awkwardly-named Fireman may not be able to win directly, but he seems to have a certain indefatigability. He can stall that thing indefinitely.

As if to prove that I might in fact be wrong, the "lava boss" swung its arms wildly, sending droplets of runny melted rock flying. The droplets didn’t hit anyone, and didn’t appear to have been flung with a great deal of force, but that seemed to be accident rather than intent.

I guess I don’t have anything better to do, I thought, flicking through my inventory again. What would work best... ah, grenades. What kind of grenade? Not sonic or poison or ion or concussion, I’ll bet... fragmentation might be helpful, but the shrapnel would probably go into things other than my enemy. Adhesive? The package says I shouldn’t use it near open flame, and I don’t know how that would work here. Plasma is a no, and even though a thermal detonator would probably work, I won’t use it. Small and contained or not, nobody likes a thermonuclear explosion. That leaves...

Cryoban grenades. Of course.

One dropped into my open hand, smacking against my glove; automatically I caught it. It weighed maybe half a kilogram or... just over a pound, a solid weight. The grenade was inactive yet, somehow, in the incredible heat of this room it was just slightly cooler than it ought to be. I knew that I was imagining it. If the special pressurized gas in a Cryoban was leaking, I would be dead, not holding it and thinking about the temperature.

Use it now, or wait? I had more than one, but I didn’t want to waste them.

The figure that I now knew as Fireman cried out as the flailing "lava boss" knocked the fire extinguisher out of his hand, sending it spinning.

Now, I guess. Breaking into a light run, I came closer – not in a straight line, but by curving around the two as if spiraling in, kicking up ash with each step. Even so, the heat intensified unpleasantly, pressing through my armor against my skin and eyes and mouth as if it was a physical presence. The filters connecting to my mask kept me from eating the ash; for that, I was grateful.

I thumbed the grenade’s trigger, sensing the optimum place to stop as clearly as I saw the "lava boss". Approaching that point, I cocked my arm back and hurled the grenade with as much power as the Force could give my muscles, sending the solid weight in a straight-line trajectory that ended imbedded high in the "lava boss’s" back.

There was enough force in that impact for a small amount of liquid rock to plash out. I narrowed my eyes in satisfaction. I could have levitated the grenade instead of throwing it, but that would have been slower, more difficult, a less efficient use of my resources. Hopefully the grenade could stand the heat... the things had been designed to combat fires, but...

Just enough time passed for me to suspect that the heat had fried its circuitry before the grenade finally went off in a burst of light and sound. Even through my armor, I felt it as, for a moment, the heat was sucked away.

And then it was over, spent. Better than half of the "lava boss" was encased in a rough, bumpy frozen shell. Almost as soon as it had formed the ice started melting away, but the creature’s movements were sluggish; the rocky cooled crust impeded it, even though it was already warming and cracking. It batted at Fireman, but this time he dodged easily and was able to recover his weapon.

Palmed, primed, thrown; another Cryoban went off, this time at the creature’s feet. The feet and legs were rather slender when compared to the rotund bulk of the body of the "lava boss", and the grenade had more of an effect on them. Somehow the "lava boss" was able to walk on molten legs just fine, but when solidified they cracked under its weight.

I can’t handle this. It’s ridiculous.

The creature fell, sliding heavily to the charred floor. Seeing more glowing lava stretch and flow into new legs without noticeably diminishing the body it came from, I pursed my lips in annoyance. Evidently this was going to take longer than I had hoped.

It did. The colorfully-named Fireman and I ended up with a sort of rhythm. He distracted it by diving and swooping and occasionally blasting what passed for the creature’s face with his extinguisher, which never seemed to expend all of its foam. On the ground, I ran about and lobbed my grenades, which also never seemed to run out. The handful of others in the room didn’t contribute much; mostly, they fetched and carried vast quantities of water from a mysterious source, sometimes sloshing it across the scorched floor, sometimes managing to get it on the "lava boss". In either case it boiled and steamed immediately away.

Despite our best efforts, the creature did not seem particularly effected. Slowed, not stopped. We were tiring; it wasn’t.

I had no way of knowing how long it took before a man in a white coat resolved it all for us. He just wandered in and, in a clear, dazed voice, said, "I know the secret of the Universe."

Somehow that simple phrase, inane though it might be, drew the attention of everyone in the room. I turned towards the speaker, enraptured. I wasn’t the only one compelled to move closer.

For the first time, the "lava boss" spoke, its voice distorted but recognizable. "Hwhaaaaut hizzz iht?" That brought me slightly out of the compulsion. I’d had no idea that the "lava boss" was intelligent enough or at all inclined to speak. Or even capable of doing so at all. Maybe we’d been going about stopping it in the wrong way.

My attention was recaptured as the whitecoat leaned forwards, the ends of his frizzy dark hair starting to shrivel. He opened his mouth-

Huh? What? Why am I lying on the ground?

I was confounded to find that my eyes were closed. A flash of light with a peculiar accompanying high whine flicked through my dark visor to strike my eyelids. I opened them, hearing a slightly bored voice reciting words that, by the sound of them, had been repeated several times before.

"All right gentlemen, ladies. This has all been a huge misunderstanding. You remember putting on your costumes..." The voice continued, but I stopped listening.

I’ve got to get out of here. Quickly, using my other senses, I determined that there were two humanoids in the room who were up and mobile, staying close together. Radiant heat was still washing over me like hot water, but it didn’t seem as strong now. Can I get away? More importantly, can I get away without being seen?

Exactly why I wanted to get away unseen, even I didn’t know. But I had an instinctive feeling that lingering would be a very bad idea. And I hadn’t gotten as far as I had by ignoring instincts and bad feelings. In my line of work, they tended to keep my side alive longer.

Wait. What?! I don’t even have a job. That’s not right.

Ignoring the niggling confusion, I gathered my limbs under me. My cloak was draped over my body like a collapsed tent, which would help. Patience. Shrouded by my cloak, degree by degree, I turned... turned... my knees, armored as they were, touched gritty ground. I eased my arms down, armored palms holding my weight as I brought my legs from kneeling to something more like crouching. My muscles ached and complained in this unnatural position, far too close to the ground. I was far more concerned with being seen.

Don’t notice me. Don’t notice me. Don’t notice me. I’m nothing more than another heap of trash, less interesting by far than all of these oddballs sprawled on the ashy floor. Don’t notice me. Look away. I could feel the attention of the standing figures as it flicked, flicked, flicked here and there, over me and away and over me again.

My position change had apparently attracted no attention... good thing, too... but actually leaving the room on my own initiative couldn’t be disguised.

A plan came to mind, and I grinned under the mask. Why not?

Most of the others supine on the ashy floor were just too out of it. Still tranced, maybe by the universe guy, maybe by the flash of light. It would take too much effort on my part to make them react in a satisfactory way.

But there was the "lava boss", still spacy but starting to come around...

I poked him. Hard. Not with any part of my body – I was neither that close nor suicidal – but rather with a frivolous use of the Force.

The temperature rose by two or three degrees and a garbled moan escaped the creature’s throat, instantly riveting the attention of the standing pair.

Here’s my chance! Rather than stand and run, I scrambled on feet and hands away and to safety.

Now what?

I can’t handle this.

[edit] Chapter four

"It’s okay. Calm down, alright?" I croaked at the hyperventilating orange-skinned girl wedged into the corner of the janitor closet. She nodded frantically, tears rolling down her cheeks. I would have tried harder to soothe her, but my throat was swollen into a raw mass. Breathing things not meant for human lungs does that. I knew that it would get better. Eventually.

When I had returned to the place where I had left him, the one who looked like Malak had been gone. I understood roughly why - perhaps this David had persuaded him away – but it was still irksome. Being alone without a purpose of some kind alway lead to pointless, aimless wandering, and generally a total waste of time, too. Like now! Trying to talk to hysterical idiots was not my idea of productive.

I can’t handle all this.

At the moment I could have used a bit of direction. My Force-given sense of purpose seemed to have deserted me completely after I left the scene of the lava boss - there were unpleasant things going on around me, yes, but nothing that called to me specifically. Other than the occasional faint go this way, I was on my own. I kept thinking that I was being watched. Silly, because not only where there people in all directions who might be staring at me – and even given the oddity of my mask, I wasn’t the most gawkeable creature in any given room, either, given the number of monstrous oddities and extraordinarily buxom women - why would someone just watch and not do something about me by now?

Of course, I might be going crazy. This is certainly the ideal day for it. I’m not running about like a headless fowl, but that doesn’t exactly indicate sanity. After all, I’m trying to talk to a hysteric, and I *know* that won’t work. She's obviously not going to do anything. At all.

The hysteric in question made an incoherent mewling sound, but didn’t seem inclined to violence, and I had the distinct impression that I wasn’t going to have the desired effect, so I rasped "Shhh. It’ll be fine." and turned away. The sense of where to go and what to do seemed to fade in and out annoyingly. It had led me in this direction, but-

Ah. Someone approaches. I felt this as a sort of jolt before my ears picked up the sound of rapid footsteps. Even so, it took a moment to find whomever it was through my visor.

This mask is getting annoying. Sometimes I can use it easily, at other times I’m waving my head about trying to see. It was almost enough to make me remove it here and now, but I resisted the impulse. The helmet would stay on until I found somewhere private to remove it.

There- the humanoid had stopped before me, rather close for my comfort. I locked my visor on a pair of blue, sharply-angled eyes. There was a moment of disorientation, and then-

Sudden shock, then looking up at someone else who had not been like that, the urge to fight, the urge to flee, flight won. Running away. Sense returning, trying to speak to the first calm-looking person, but being completely unable to. Mouth opens; voice comes, but only in wordless cries. Ran again, saw dark shape, came to it, not knowing why.

Huh. What’s the right response? I wondered as the sending faded, shaking the confusion from my head. Stalling for time, I examined the... man.

I panned my visor down the green tunic, noted a leather strap, tan leggings and brown leather boots, then panned back up to see a sword hilt, then the triangular face, the pleading large eyes, the elongated pointed ears pierced by blueish rings, and the long green cap. There was something familiar here- ah yes; this was that mute, androgynously pretty protagonist of the Legend of Zelda series. What was his name? Connect? No, that couldn’t be right - Link, that was it.

Hmm. I distinctly remembered holding an adolescent crush on the elf, or Hylian, whatever he was. There was a poster from "Ocarina of Time" still hanging in my dormroom, as a matter of fact. Several images of the infamously good cosplayer "Pikmin Link" were saved on my laptop, never mind that I'd known when saving the images that PL was crossdressing. Odd, that despite looking exactly the same this young man had no such effect on me.

No, it's not odd. I like a pretty face and form as much as anyone else, but training killed any carnal urges before they could develop. Thank the Living Force for that. The three things that motivate most beings to do the most hideous things are power, religion, and sex, after all. I have enough to worry about already without my mind being befuddled by a comely body.

Wha? ... I can’t handle this.

"Okay... okay, you’re fine," I got out. The words seemed to have no effect. Maybe he didn’t speak Basic. Or English. Or whatever.

I found myself wincing beneath my mask at the sore twinge in my throat. But at least I could speak, unlike him. As far as I could recall, outside of that terrible cartoon none of Link’s incarnations could talk, though they had always gotten their points across.

So. How can he communicate at all? With that thought, I found myself remembering that I too could send information without words. Would that work here?

Of course not. That’s ridiculous.

Ridiculous? How so? I may not be skilled in its use, but I have never doubted the existence of telepathy.

The stubborn, nagging thought had no response more advanced than its standard I can’t deal with this.

Well, nothing to do but try.

I focused on those angular blue eyes through the mask’s narrow visor and concentrated on the urge to calm, to stillness. The attempt made me realize that it was very warm under my robes, but I chose to ignore the observation. Why had this been so much easier when I hadn’t been thinking about it?

Ahhhh. Now I remember.

Link’s head snapped back slightly as he felt what I had told him. He blinked repeatedly and stumbled back, consciously taking deeper breaths. Good. What now?

Take him with me? Why would I do that? What would I do with a follower, anyway?

Another little anticipatory jolt shocked my nerve endings and made me turn to face in a specific direction. In the next instant, from that specific direction, came a roar that anyone who’s ever seen a monster movie would be familiar with. Godzilla’s inimitable cry has always been instantly recognizable.

It sounded close. Acting according to instinct, I ran towards it, mentally reviewing a map that I’d seen on a wall. It was the second-largest room in this section, probably possessing a skylight, and filled with little stalls. That map had indicated that there was a concentration of all things Godzilla in it, which made sense. There were plenty of people in varying degrees of panic clogging the hall, probably looking for the exits, but a dark figure charging forward with purpose made most of them fall back. I had to elbow a man in a trenchcoat aside, but he didn’t seem to notice.

I felt Link running in my wake. Well, he probably wouldn’t be of much use, but at least he wasn’t using that sword or any other weapons on passersby.

I shoved open the double doors rather melodramatically and slowed, belatedly cautious. What could I do about giant monsters with breath rays? After all, I remembered now with an odd, disjointed feeling, as a child I’d seen the movies- humans were never able to stop them. Even when equipped with tanks. Only other giant monsters, sometimes including giant robots and Spandexy heroes, can beat giant monster. I was not any of those. Still, it was rather late to back away without at least getting a look. I edged sideways around the "Who Would Win: Mothra Or Rodan" posterboard and there, framed in my visor, were Classic Godzilla and the more saurian "Zilla" from the badly-reviewed American-made movie, fanged maws half-opened.

Except that Classic Godzilla couldn’t have been more than six feet tall, and while "Zilla" was longer, it wasn’t any taller. And while there were some highly visible scorch marks on the white walls, the ambient Force energy didn’t quite suggest a rampage. Why hadn’t I tried focusing on the room before entering?

Now one of the giant lizards had swung its craggy head in my direction and was staring at me. The thought occurred to me that I certainly dressed the part of a villain, so I stepped hastily back besides Link, who gave me an annoyingly superior look that I could feel through the hood - wow, he had recovered fast - and guided me back out, closing the double doors again.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, suddenly hot and dizzy. Events were catching up to me, and questions were surfacing that should have come up earlier. How could I talk - at all - without opening my mouth? Why had I been running around like an action hero? I could remember, vaguely, explaining that to someone, but it was hazy. What the hell had I been doing running towards Godzilla? And what about all the weird people I’d just seen?

And how could I think of any of that except perhaps the weird people as particularly unusual? Why was my thinking starting to go in circles? What had happened?

Surely this isn’t normal. Kublai Con, even this year, was by no means the largest convention in the world, it had perhaps a third of the attendees of DragonCon and far, far fewer than ComicCon, but - maybe I should have started smaller. First con experiences are always supposed to be overwhelming, but this is a bit much.

The understatement almost made me laugh, except for the notion that if I started, I might never stop.

Consulting my mental map again, I took a right-angle turn in the direction of the room that Dana had rented earlier in the week. There was a hallway connecting the convention center to the hotel, but I had come in through the main entrance. That room would hopefully serve to let me some privacy.

I felt more than heard Link following, probably not having any more idea of what to do than I did, and paused long enough to turn and glare at him through the visor slit before wheeling and moving off. It was irresponsible of me, not getting any kind of help for the boy, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly. After that, events blurred for a while.

I walked for what felt like a long time, detouring frequently to try and shake any watchers, passing beings who were doing anything from being unconscious to playing cards. I passed a lot of people, from those who looked like enemies but weren’t to those who were angry at the world. I was only challenged once, but holding out a lightsaber, unignited, was enough to make the fool back down.

Room one sixteen. That was mine, I realized as I stopped before it, staring blankly at the numbers. Now, where was my card key... still in the pocket of my hakama, the wide "samurai pants". Well, something had gone right.

When I had shut the door, I let myself collapse onto the narrow mattress with my black cape puddling over like an ink spill. For a while I kept my eyes shut and just breathed, trying to keep some unnameable stew of emotions under control.

During that time, the phone shrilled loudly a total of five times. Although it was sharing space with a lamp on the pathetic square snub of a nightstand by the head of the bed, within easy reach, I did not bother to answer. I really wasn’t sure what I would have said.

After a time I shook off this lethargy to sit up. Faintly through the wall I could hear a deep male voice demanding something to do with the word "cortana", but I tuned it out. Lacking any real sense of what I wanted to do, I levered myself back to my feet and unsteadily came to the tiny cell of a bathroom.

There I closed my eyes and hesitantly removed my mask, reaching carefully within my hood back to ear level, finding the clasps, undoing them, then tugging the curved surface away from my face. The inside of it hugged the curves of my face closely, with only a minute space between it and my skin. The clasps weren't Velcro. No hot-glue overflow, either. One gloved hand set that mask on the counter besides the sink; the other pushed the hood back so that it fell to my shoulders. I savored the surplus light and air for a moment before opening my eyes and facing the mirror.

The face that met my eyes looked, at first blush, rather like the one I remembered, the one on my campus I.D., a blend of Filipino and Caucasian. But after a moment, I saw the differences - wider nose, grayish eyes instead of brown, a sharper, squarer chin and protruding cheekbones. It was... gaunter, harsher, older. More serious. Not to the point where it would get odd looks, let alone the kind of face that would scare children, but... I’ve never dared call myself beautiful, but I hadn’t hesitated to claim "sometimes pretty" or "sometimes cute." This face was neither. There was a certain elegance to it, but... this was a face that wouldn’t be smiled at easily.

And why would that matter to me? A pretty face doesn’t get taken seriously.

No, of course not. But... it was nice to have...

There were myriad tiny differences that told me that this was not my own face; it was only the same in general configuration and skin tone. Subtle changes, but they had an effect. If someone had shown me this face and claimed that it belonged to a cousin, I would have believed them. In low light no one would notice... maybe.

There was a high, stiff collar of some sort - a gorget. Protects my throat - around my neck; it had attached somehow to my mask. In back, it was connected to a sort of half-helmet that protected everything that the mask hadn't. It was that which the mask had been clasped to.

I remembered making that mask. It had stayed on because of Velcro and synthetic straps which had wrapped around the back of my head, with two from each ear and one from the top. They intersected in a way that looked like an upside-down capital T.

That doesn't work well, though. Helmets are more practical; a mask by itself has no life support for when the unthinkable happens.

I remember writing about that... Mandalorian-inspired. Yeah. Ten minutes of breathable atmosphere, an air filter, a system to heat or cool the air. But I didn't make it. I'm not that good.

I did not touch the back half of the helmet. At the sides, my hair was just barely visible. It was hard to tell, but it had to be longer. Maybe much longer; when I thought about it, I could feel a tightness in my scalp. Presumably there was more hair, pulled back and kept close to my skull.

I then bared my teeth and ran my tongue over them. They were still yellowish and very straight, and I could feel the three incisors of my lower jaw. But my four upper incisors had shortened slightly, and a flaring of my canines somehow made my mouth feel alien despite looking much as it always has.

Despite a feeling that I wouldn’t like what I was finding, I focused in on my lower lip. There was still a miniscule white scar from my childhood, but there was also a slight, notchlike depression where the skin seemed paler- an old burn? It was barely visible even this close, yet I stared as if they were feathers sprouting out of my skin. I haven’t been burned... I would have remembered getting burned there.

It’s an old wound, of course. Healed well, but there’s a bit of scar tissue left. I could have had that removed with a few hundred credits and some kolto therapy, but why? It's inconspicuous, doesn't impede me, and helps to remind me of what happens when I assume an opponent is dead.

Reaching up to touch it I saw an armored black glove in the mirror. I tried to tear both off, and ended up feeling for catches around my wrists to peel the things away, then shucking Revan’s extended armbands so I could roll up the pleated, thick sleeves.

I'd imagined Revan’s outfit to be this complicated. I'd spent a long, long time thinking about it. But I hadn't been able to reproduce it with anywhere near this level of detail. That’s what finally hit the reality home to me.

Well, that and the ugly, long lightsaber score that ran from just above the elbow to just below my wrist, fresh enough that it was red, not entirely healed. The memory of exactly how I’d gotten it hovered at the very edge of consciousness, but I pushed it and all it entailed away, suddenly desperate.

The next thing I knew I was kneeling crumpled on the linoleum with a sharp pain like chopsticks driving into my temples and a thousand thoughts racing through my head. I've got friends who came here yesterday or before that - what happened to them? Mom and Dad are going to kill me, and Kris already thinks I'm a freak. Eh. My little brother will just have to handle it. Oh God, what happened back there! I couldn't really have ... Wow, the floor is a lot cleaner than the rate suggested, I guess those renovations a few years back really made a difference. God. Why? Why now? Why me, why did I decide to go this year? My nails are still trimmed to the quick, but oh, my hands! I have calluses. There's no ink on them. Ohhh, Midtral is not going to be happy with me. Don't they have policies against tattoos and piercings? This is a lot bigger than that. It's a private college, too, and I'm not the one paying. I'm dead. So dead. This is completely impossible.

On the heels of that flood of thoughts, as the pain peaked and made all other thoughts moot, came one more, a thought that had crossed my mind several times before, but never with such ardor.

I can’t handle this.

And so... I didn’t. I fell into a sort of blank stupor. But the rest of me had no intention of doing that.

I didn’t notice that one of my hands had reached back up until it snapped Revan’s helmlike mask over my face as the other hand whipped the strap in place and flicked the catches down with practiced, casual familiarity.

[edit] Chapter five

As I dismissed the headache I stood again, wound my sleeves back around my forearms and replaced my armbands and gloves with their gleaming metal plates. Drawing my hood back up, I flicked my gaze across my reflection and started to pace. Despite the visor’s limits, I stepped lightly over the lintel and back into the tiny room reserved earlier. I could sense other presences through the thin walls - wood, plaster, insulation, paint - but they were not a threat. I could ignore them, for the moment.

Drawing a long breath in through my nose, I held it for several seconds before exhaling. The situation was complicated, clearly. I was not where I should be, although I could not quite place where that was. Not home; that much was clear. Neither Jedi nor Sith can afford to have a static home, not in such turbulent times. No, I should be doing - something. But what? One way or another, Daritha Malak no longer heads the Sith, and the Star Forge has been destroyed. My departure left a power void, true, that was filled. But Sith are always infighting; perhaps she will be deposed. There is still time. Admiral Dodonna survived and is competent enough for now, and I can't do much right now. Maybe not for years, not openly, anyway.

I had to go somewhere... do something. It was urgent- something only I could do. I did not know where, or what, or when, but it would be good to do it. Once and for all. It wasn’t here, it wasn’t now, it was very, very distant. I wasn’t called to go do something this instant. But it still needed doing.

First things first. Why was I here, and where was here? I have no idea what this planet is called, if it might actually be a large station instead, what star it orbits, which sector it's in... The air, clearly, was human-friendly, and although I spent several minutes tasting it I found no odors to help me identify anything. It was neutral, not thick or thin enough to make breathing more difficult, with a fairly average amount of oxygen. Gravity, as far as I could tell, was pretty close to Coruscant-standard.

And this is obviously a gathering of some sort. Very disorganized, too. I ... don't suppose I volunteered to help out?

I might have accepted that theory, but as comforting as it was, I knew it wasn’t true. I would remember something like that. And even the worst spaceport on Nar Shadda the night before a planetwide festival was as chaotic as what I had seen. Not unless you threw in a bunch of bounty hunters and perhaps some Hutt's escaped 'pets', anyway.

How did I get here? On one hand- blank. On the other- had I paid for tickets or something? Yes... I remembered coming in...

That memory seemed slow. Just for something to do, I checked my inventory. Four lightsabers that I had built and modified for my own use(One double-bladed green, one single red, two purple), three more looted off of opponents, an assortment of lightsaber crystals and the tools used on them, various vibroblades, an array of blasters, a quarterstaff, two stun batons, a huge number of scrounged grenades, all too many mines, two sonic emitters, a pressure suit made for deep sea and deep space, some powered Mandalorian armor, some light battle armor, Darth Bandon’s fiber armor, a Zabrak combat suit, some Republic Mod. Armor, a set of shiny black-and-silver Sith armor, four sets of Sand People robes, a number of sets of practical Jedi and Sith fighting robes, the Circlet of Saresh, Marko Ragnos’s Mask, various less identifiable headgear, a regenerative implant, Sith Power Gauntlets, about nine belts with varied properties, a number of energy shields, thirty security spikes, twenty-nine computer spikes, thirty-one sets of repair parts, a whole case of adrenal stimulants, medpacks, two tach glands, a datapad of Manaan tourist attractions....

At around the point where I pulled out the body of a whole viper kinrath that weighed as much as I did, I realized that I had been carrying hundreds of kilos of equipment and oddments, but hadn’t felt a gram of it. Nor was I carrying a bag of any sort. I just reached instinctively in no particular direction and found it. It was just... there. I looked at the mound of items covering the bed and spilling onto the floor, knew that I was carrying much more with me, and was suddenly bewildered.

All this time I had carried at least a ton and never thought about it?

How in the Force is that possible? I could make myself temporarily stronger, faster, more sensitive. But carrying equipment as if... as if... I don't know, as if I've got an invisible room at my fingertips... This makes no sense.

Cautiously, I moved the dead kinrath, swinging it out of my field of view by two of its hard-enameled legs. Nothing. The body swung back in front of me, dripping ichor as if I'd only just killed it. I tried this several times to no avail, becoming quite frustrated.

After a time, when I was deciding that this wasn't worth it, I quit. With a grimace of distaste I put the thing back in my Inventory -

How did I do that? I hadn't been thinking about it at all. Was that it? Sometimes, with the Force - but this was not the Force. Not quite.

Carefully, I reached behind myself and picked up a belt. Okay. How did I do that last time?

It took a fairly long time before I was confident in my ability to move items in and out of my Inventory, at which point I packed away all of the things that I had absentmindedly removed. I still had no idea where it all went, but the fact that I didn't understand how it worked had never stopped me from using anything before. Why start now?

I'm still wearing my war robes. Why am I doing that? I'm not Sith anymore. Why am I wearing them at all? They give away who I am. I can't afford that. Beneath my warmask I pursed my lips - my war robes, as signature as they are, still serve to remind me of my past. Of why I did what I did. When my mind was wiped, I lost everything. It's starting to come back now, but there's still a long period, the most essential period, that stays blank.

Then again, I can just bring them out and wear them later. Better than being recognized. I shrugged and stripped off my war robes, opting for a very neutral set of Jedi robes. Conveniently, I had quite a few just folded up in my Inventory. Perfect for roving aimlessly.

Now, perhaps, I'll find someone who can tell me just what is happening here. If not, I can certainly amuse myself.

[edit] Interludes

• Revan in Xanadu: Big Change (Interlude)

Narrative shift! Is it possible to write from the POV of a giant without actually describing the narrator as "big"? Apparently so.

• Revan in Xanadu: David's Camera (Interlude)

Another narrator shift, another sidestory.

[edit] Chapter Six

There’s something here, something I need to do. Leaving the little room and the puzzled David, I looked one way, then another. The helmet was off, as were the long Sithlike robes, so I was unimpeded. Even so, I wasn’t sure… where… which way… there was just so much here, so much that I could do, it made it hard to focus on just where…

Someone was always attempting to rob or injure or enslave or rape or kill someone else. Always. Experience, not cynicism, told me that. No matter the circumstances, there was no shortage of things I could interrupt or prevent outright. It would be too easy to spread myself thin. But there were others about trying to do the same, and there were some things only I could do in time.

There! A thread of need that felt right to me. Numerous individuals, seeming either shell-shocked or in slow motion, looked up when they saw me approach at my very fastest run, faces and bodies blurring to me. Guided by the Living Force, I pathfound even as I ran, threading between individuals, the hair and clothing of the closest ones whipping against my body with a numbness followed by stinging pain.

Running like this attracted more attention than I would prefer, and the pace was exhausting, even while tapping the ambient Force energy to refresh myself. There just didn’t seem to be a choice. This wasn’t as strong of a call as the lava boss’s beckon, where so many lives could be at stake. But if I missed this, I would be responsible for the result. So much had been laid at my feet already. So many things I could have done.

And so I ran.

There- there! Maybe it was the clothing, but I’d moved faster than I’d thought, and was forced to make a right-angle turn at high speed, skidding for a moment and nearly bowling over someone in hooded brown robes who managed to sidestep just in time. If not for the Force fortifying my body, I might have snapped a bone, torn some ligaments, or dislocated something, but as it was, I registered pain and damage to my legs, but ran on, regaining most of my speed within a few paces. Very close now, a hundred meters or so. It looked like I might be early, for once.

<Continue at this pace, and you will hurt yourself.> “Hearing” that “voice” resounding in my skull, I stumbled, damaged legs sending me very quickly towards the carpet.

I didn’t impact, though. Two hands inserted themselves between the floor and my body. The robed someone had given chase and somehow matched my speed closely enough that the catch had been too gentle to bruise. The Force swirled around him and through him, making my own blood quicken in response. Force-Sensitive, at least as strong as me. Possibly stronger. Judging from the lack of Dark Side energy, I would have tagged him as a Jedi, and the odd relief at finding another Jedi surprised me.

If I’d had the breath, I would have said something, maybe a thanks, maybe a complaint about surprising me and causing that stumble. But my lungs were fully occupied heaving in and out, in and out, trying to pay the oxygen debt in my muscles. Inertia was exerting its hold on me.

The stranger steadied me, bringing me back upright before releasing me.

“What is so urgent?” He asked, voice soft and cultured and exactly like his mindvoice, a sign of high skill.

I still hadn’t recovered my breath, so I sent a silent statement of my own. It wasn’t as articulate as his had been, and there really weren’t any words in it, but it got the point across that I was on my way to get something done. And I would like to get back to it.

“I see.” There was the briefest of pauses, and then, “Well, go on. Do what you must.” No offer of help, naturally. I expected nothing else from another Jedi; I was competent, and if I’d felt that I needed help, I would have asked.

I ran.

There was a crowd of near-humans peering cautiously into a side room who scattered rapidly, making little sounds of protest as I forced my way between them.

Inside, five men in white armor stood in attitudes of discomfort and alarm as a human woman stamped her foot in a childlike display of temper.

She was… striking. Quite, quite striking. Humanoid, just under two meters tall, her arms, from the narrow fingertips to the flaring, pointed pauldrons were armored with a reflective, ornamented metal that I couldn’t identify. Heeled boots made of the same material encased her feet, stretching halfway up her sculpted thighs. Her hair was some impossible hue glinting iridescently between violent purple and lustrous silver; it cascaded and rippled with motion, caught in a breeze that was evident nowhere else in the room. Framed by the metal over her arms, two petite triangles of reflective metal tried in vain to restrain heaving, spherical bosoms. Beneath her shapely navel was a small, skimpy lower body garment, made of some kind of animal skin so thin and supple that little was left to the imagination. Other than those, a sort of visorlike metal piece crowning her head, and an enormous, gaudy pendant around her neck, her pale, faintly sun-seared skin was bare.

“Ah… ahhh- Clones!” The voice was male, and followed by a rapid patter of retreating footsteps. Tearing my eyes away, I swiveled to see the brown-robed Jedi pushing his way out past the watchers in the doorway. Evidently he had followed me after all.

And now he was gone. Mentally I shook my head. Help me or stay out of my way. I’ve no use for people who take one look at a situation and then flee. But what was that about clones, anyway?

Well, at least he’d broken me out of that reverie. Now that I wasn’t focused on the girl’s physical appeal, I could sense the Force, or something like it, skirling and spinning around her, reaching out and withdrawing in a chaotic, tangled mess that tastefelt foreign to me. No Jedi or Sith or even untaught Sensitive was this one – I doubted she was even aware of it. The energy surrounding her seemed to be nothing more than an attractant, catching hold of onlookers - Look at me, it commanded. Aren’t I beautiful? Look at me.

And here I had just strode in and gotten myself caught up in it, just like that crowd of fools outside, unable or unwilling to look away. My Masters would be ashamed of me. I’m supposed to be better than that.

The woman – a few years away from what I considered true adulthood, even though she seemed to have developed early and quite spectacularly - recaptured my attention, though in a more mundane fashion this time, by stamping her foot again and demanding, “Yes, you were staring, you sons of bitches! Don’t you know who I am!”

She was not addressing me, but rather the white-armored individuals that I had mostly overlooked. As whatever had compelled me to run like this to get here didn’t appear to have completely flared up yet, I took a moment to examine them.

There were, as I had seen before, five of them, all extraordinarily close in height and bulk. Four of them wore identical armor, the fifth some mild variation on it. He – I sensed that all of them were male – seemed to be bearing the brunt of the dramatic woman’s wrath, for he was the one with his hands up, making an unsuccessful bid to placate her.

“Look, ma’am, I’m sorry, but-“

“Don’t you know who you’re messing with!” she half-screeched, cutting him off with a confused diatribe that seemed to describe either her parentage or her rank. Apparently she believed that she was either the daughter of an admiral and a general or she had been made “the strongest Majikal Girl in Living Memory”, possibly both. It looked like all five of her victims would have been only too happy to slink away. Each of them held some kind of ranged weapon as if seeking reassurance. Fortunately, they seemed reluctant to actually fire these weapons – if they hadn’t been, the idiot spectators would probably have been hit.

I noticed then that energy was starting to collect around her hands. It didn’t quite tastefeel like any of the variants of Force-based techniques that I’d ever encountered, but it was fairly easy to sense its destructive potential.

Time now to step in, I decided, and trusted the Living Force to guide my actions. Making use of my ability to move quietly, I approached to within five meters. The armored ones seemed to notice, but my target did not.

Clearing my throat produced a very amusing reaction; the girl literally jumped maybe twenty centimeters straight up and whirled to face me, as tense and angry as if I had struck her across the face. The face itself, although it seemed to express a rather disagreeable sentiment, was as attractively shaped as the body, but I now knew to ignore that look-at-me compulsion.

“Forgive a stranger, but don’t you think you’re overreacting?” I kept my inquiry smooth and pleasant, slightly deferential even, feeding into her subconscious expectation of how she should be addressed, and putting out my best “harmlessness” effect. It seemed to work as intended. The girl blinked, her hands lowering from their defensive position as she sorted out some internal dilemma. Some of the chaotic energy writhing around her died down, but by no means was it gone.

“These men have offered insult to my honor,” she said rather stiffly. “It- they… They were staring at me!” That last statement burst accusingly from her lips

“To be honest, fair one, you are easy to stare at,” I advised, voice dry. To my surprise, she laughed, appearing to relax a little. The smile transformed her face, making her look a good deal more likeable. I also noticed that her impossible hair’s movement seemed to have slowed.

“Truth. It’s not easy to forget what just happened, but…” Trailing off, she looked at her hands, encased fully in jointed metal. Then her elegantly-sculpted brow furrowed, and I sensed a quickening in her energy.

“Wait. You said ‘fair one’?”

Fantastic. No matter what I say now, she won’t take it well. Clearly, she’s unstable. Manic to reasonable to manic again… Still, I had to try to placate the girl.

“Of course. I do not know your name.” Sadly, my abilities in the Force do not include that kind of mind-reading. To get even something as clear as a name, I need to physically touch someone, and even then it’s more effort than just asking.

Now her personal energy was knotting and writhing again, as rapid and unpredictable as the tentacle-arms of a vaapad. She seemed to possess a momentary inability to speak.

“H-how dare you! You just... waltz in here, acting like you know me, ordering me around, and you had the gall to not know my name.” With every syllable, her voice rose in pitch and volume. The beginnings of a headache started to materialize behind my eyes.

Internally, I sighed. I like people, I really do. Can’t live without them, literally. But sometimes…

Uh oh. Perhaps, instead of being silently pained, I should have stroked her ego. The unstable girl’s eyes seemed to have rolled back in her head. The whites… glowed, softly, and her impossible hair whipped.

Whoops. Energy built again around her hands, and I felt her presence shifting in the Force, obviously a precursor to attack.

“You may regret this,” I warned, allowing one hand to grip the hilt of my lightsaber.

“I don’t care! I’ve already gone all day without-“ Not bothering to finish her sentence, the girl lunged at my face, her expression twisted into an unpleasant mask. Bipolar, perhaps? Or it could be chemically induced, perhaps. I wondered, leaning back so that her hand, fingers curved into claws, missed my face, what the problem was. Hormones or outside influence? For that matter, she might just be a spoiled brat.

Swiff. Another swipe caught at the fine, wispy hairs around my face, the ones too short to tie back. And another, close enough that the malevolent energy around her hands made my skin sting as if it had been scratched.

The girl didn’t appear to be calming down, or off-balance from her failed strikes. As I performed the minimum movements necessary to avoid being hit, I considered my next course of action.

The white-armored men who’d been the previous targets of the girl’s ire did not seem to have left yet, unfortunately, despite the "look at me" command having shut off. I didn’t quite dare physically look, which would mean taking an eye off of the wannabe psycho currently attempting to assault me, but I could feel them in the Force, too close to have snuck away.

They had very odd Force-signatures, but today that was hardly unusual. Most if not all of the beings I had encountered here were similar, in that their presence in the Force, or signature, was conflicted, strange. Normally, the signatures told me where they were, a bit about their physical and emotional states, and something about their natures. Here, the signatures they radiated were filled with confusing impressions.

The crazy girl before me was a standard example. Beneath the swirl of anger and confusion, she simultaneously felt the age she looked and several years older. Very peculiar. In the past I had encountered females who felt like males and vice versa, as well as some who felt older or younger than they really were, but never quite this ... duality.

So, what now? Turning my head to the side, I felt a thin tendril of energy lash my cheek, stinging. Her aim is improving. I may be able to block pain, but my legs are still worse for wear because of that high-speed corner back there. I can’t do this for much longer. They might collapse. If I ran, I would be leaving this situation to play out on its own. She was a complete stranger to me, so in order to pacify her mind I would actually have to physically touch her for a certain length of time, and that looked like a risky prospect just now. If I fought, I knew that I would win. But there was always the danger of collateral damage, and if I used my favorite weapon… The girl was unarmed; if I used a lightsaber she would lose something.

I wasn’t a Sith anymore. Trimming bits off of people was no longer one of my hobbies. Well, there was one thing I could do… I believed myself to be only average at unarmed combat, but the opportunity was readily available. It would hurt, but that would give me the chance to collect the white-armored bystanders and remove them from the scene.

As the girl swung at me again, conveniently taking a step and rotating her pelvis into position, I brought my knee up into that most sensitive region, and hit it squarely. Hard. Nowhere near hard enough to fracture the pubic bone – that is a terrible way to die – but more than hard enough to hurt.

As I had seen earlier, the only thing covering that region was a garment of thin animal hide, tight enough that if she had worn some form of armor there I would have seen it; although she was certainly furious, she wasn’t quite mad enough to just shrug a shot off. She should have doubled over in pain, or had some similarly appropriate reaction.

Unfortunately, the girl wasn’t following my plan.

“Hah! Idiot,” she declared, coming down out of her pique for a moment. “I think you will find that I have no testicles!” She wasn’t even hiding any pain, I could see through the Force. It was as if my counterattack had had no effect whatsoever.

“But- You…” It was my turn to be left without words. I’d been on the receiving end of a few of those groin attacks, and I knew what it felt like. “That had to hurt! There are enough nerve endings there-“

“Hmph! First you don’t know my name, next you don’t know that I’m female! Idiot!” She was heating up once more. How many mood swings will this girl go through?!

Crack.

Oh, finally you move... One of the white-armored men had taken advantage of the insane girl's distraction to smack her in the back of the head with what looked very much like a blaster rifle, instantly transforming her expression from furious to utterly blank.

From what I had seen, it didn't look like a particularly hard blow. The man obviously had no more desire than I did to go about randomly breaking people, even if they were idiots. It looked like the kind of impact that would stun and hurt quite a bit, allowing me to move in and use a Force technique, but she hadn't shown any signs of following my wishes before.

And indeed, she continued that trend.

The girl toppled, falling first to her knees, then flat on her face, one arm stretched out dramatically.

Sensing that this wasn't some kind of clever trap, I knelt to find her pulse and see if she was breathing, but I found nothing that the Force had not told me. Apparently, a rap on the head was enough to make her fall soundly asleep, so soundly that it would take an earthquake or a long span of hours to wake her. Further proof, if I needed any, that her anatomy was not as human her appearance suggested.

"Thank you. I was... somewhat distracted," I said conversationally, hoping that they wouldn't decide to feel antagonized. The day was finally starting to catch up to me, and my legs ached.

"You gave me the chance," the man replied. His pleasantly-accented voice was as polite as mine, filtered though it was through a speaker in his helmet. Neither of us spoke for a long, uncertain moment.

Observation is one of a Jedi's most important skills, I reminded myself, tapping into the Force to ease fatigue. Standing a touch straighter, I looked the men over.

Gaps between pieces of the white armor they wore revealed some kind of black undersuit, which included gloves. All five of the men had blocky, solid helmets with short sagittal crests. The helmets also sported opaque black visors, each shaped like the inverted letter vev with a thick bar across the top. They looked faintly Mandalorian, and also vaguely like the faceplate of my war mask. Coincidence, surely.

I had seen them before, or soldiers wearing something very similar, hadn't I? Yes... My memory seemed a bit confused about it, but when I had been in my war armor and accompanied by the one who looked like Malak, I had seen and spoken to a larger group of these people, a group with far more variation in armor styles.

The only physical variation here was in the armor of the one who had spoken, I saw. The armor structure was the same, but parts of it, particularly on the arms and hands and on that crest, were colored a dull red. A sign of rank?

More interesting was what the five of them felt like in the Force. Each of them had no fewer than three age-impressions - a competent young adult, an eager child, and, beneath the other two, a comparatively diminished third age, which varied between the five, and in one or two was minimal enough that it would probably be gone within a day.

The one with the red trim's deepest impression felt like the youngest of them all, younger even than the second layer's eager child, but the dominant, oldest layer was somehow... not older, quite, but... more mature. There was responsibility there, compounded with the dedication I sensed from the other four. Very odd. They all shared a kind of likeness that I could tastefeel in the Force. Almost like brothers, but... different.

One of the plain-armored ones twitched his head a bit, as if he'd seen something. I sensed what I took to be comm transmissions, little bursts of inaudible sound.

The leader's posture shifted from uncertainty to something slightly more forward. The speaker in his helmet popped softly as he shifted from communing with his fellows to speaking to me.

"Ma'am, I might be wrong, but is that a lightsaber at your belt?" He sounded like he was trying to conceal hopefulness.

Should I lie? No, not this time. "It is," I allowed guardedly. "Why?"

"It's just... well… if you have a lightsaber, that probably means that you are a Jedi,” he said, almost shy.

“And what if I am?” Guarded, guarded, stay guarded…

“We need a leader, ma’am. We need directions.” It seemed that he was gaining in confidence as he spoke. I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going.

“So why not you? I don’t understand.” A safe enough thing to say when it’s true. “Why would you need a Jedi to lead you?”

As best I could tell, the man took encouragement from my questions. “I don’t suppose you know what we are? No recognition at all? Ma’am, we’re soldiers made for the Grand Army of the Republic. Since a few months after decanting, conditioning encourages us look to Jedi automatically whenever something crazy happens.” He moved his arm in a brief, all encompassing gesture. “I think this qualifies, personally. I’m an Advanced Recon Commando; that means I’m used to a certain amount of independence. But most of us are just troopers. There’s only so much that I can do.” Ohhh, there's a stew of emotion in him. Pride, hope, self-acceptance… Then again-

Made? Decanting? Conditioning? He knows about Jedi; does that mean that my Republic does this? I don’t think they would, not after the wars… And I’ve only been away for a few years, I would have heard something… “And so you ask the first woman with a lightsaber that you see if she will lead you.” My voice was a bit dryer than I’d wanted to sound.

For the first time, one of the other soldiers spoke up. “Actually, ma’am, we’ve seen a few others.” His voice was eerily similar to the first man’s. More than similar – identical, differing only in assertiveness. This one was more diffident. “I was part of Group One, and two different Jedi in red and black armor approached us and ordered pretty much the same thing." Red and black armor... me? Who else? "Since then, though… well…”

“They run from us,” their leader said. The tone of his voice suggested disgust, but I could sense hurt beneath us. “They run.” No doubt about it. That’s the same voice, and they tastefeel so similar in the Force, and there was what that brown-robed Jedi shouted before he fled… Has my Republic become so desperate that they need to grow clones to bolster the army? What has happened since I was gone?

“If they are your leaders, why would they run from you?” I drained all accusation from my voice. No sense in provoking them… I could probably take them all, but there is wisdom in subtlety.

Perfect sincerity in his voice, the leader said, “I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense!”

Interesting. The leader spoke the truth as he knew it, but one or two of the others winced beneath their helmets. They obviously knew something, and just as obviously did not want to share it.

Well, I could handle that later. If I accepted this request. It had been a long time since I last led soldiers…

And it will be a long time before I do so again. What if I backslide and become a servant of the Dark Side again? ‘Hero, villain, savior, conqueror… all these things and nothing.’ That’s my fate, after all. I don’t want to take anyone with me. Not again. They might be able to stabilize me, but they might pull me down, too, if a situation becomes desperate.

“I don’t have any better idea than you do about what’s going on, where this is, who the enemy is,” I warned, remembering too late that soldiers don’t like their leaders to be too uncertain. I’m not sure what I want here.

“That’s fine, Ma’am.” From the way the leader’s pronunciation of 'ma'am' had changed, I could tell that group dynamics were already shifting. “You’re a Jedi. You’ll find out.” Because that’s what Jedi do, I filled in silently, keeping my face as blank as I could manage.

Another of the soldiers said, “Incidentally, we do know a name. It’s not much in the way of intelligence – just one word. Zahnnadue. Could be this place, this event, the mission’s codename, a person or a facility…”

“Yeah. Still, that’s more than we had before.” Now I was shifting the way I spoke and thought to make way for a little group. I shook my head. “Look, I can’t lead you. Not now.”

I cut off their protests before they were more than alarmed stirrings in the ambient Force, saying the first things that came to mind. “I can’t. You can find me if you need me later, but now I have to go it alone. This is a one-man operation. If you want me – “ I thought back a moment – “I think I’m in one of the sleeping chambers in that section of this place that rents them out. It’s…” The door to that chamber. In my memory, it had no numbers that I could recognize. “It’s marked by two vertical lines, each like the letter Isk, followed by a pair of circles, one over the other, like an infinity symbol turned sideways.”

As I finished speaking I winced. That was tantamount to agreeing to lead them, when I wasn’t even sure that it would be a good idea. Ah well. Can’t unsay what’s been said.

“Wait… that set of symbols…” one of the soldiers blurted after a moment, “That’s… one one eight, I think. One hundred eighteen. You’re in room 118.” And now they will be able to find me, if I go back there. I drew in a deep, resigned breath. What’s done is done. “Fine. Please, don’t call me ‘ma’am’. I feel like I’m being mocked. My name is – “Wait, wait. If they are of my Republic, they will know my name. And aren’t standing orders in place to kill or incapacitate me?

Dark Side take it. In for a landspeeder, in for a capital ship. “My name is Revan.” It was difficult to admit; my name stuck for a moment in my throat. For so long, I hadn’t known it, and for even longer after that I couldn’t bear to use it.

No signs of real recognition from the men. What an anticlimax! I suspected that they might have heard the name somewhere, but it obviously didn’t have the same connotations attached to it that I had.

It was deeply unsettling. Were they even from the same Republic? “I have to go,” I told them, turning to do so. The insane girl was still asleep, and without her influence the crowd outside had dissipated. “There’s ... something I have to do.” Indeed there was, a faint and sickly sense of wrongness that I might be able to right.

“Very well, General Revan. We will gather the others and contact you later. I am Ja- ARC N-98, or Nate. Until we meet again.” Wha- General? How many others? And what name were you about to give?

Forget that. I don’t want to waste any more time. “Until we meet again, may the Force be with you.”

And I was gone.

[edit] Chapter Seven

Hmm… I think it’s stronger over here…

The tastefeeling of wrongness hung in the Force like a mist, subtly deluding my senses. Unlike some of the previous events, I didn’t feel called to do anything or go anywhere in particular – it was just that in some directions I sensed more wrongness than in others. It didn’t feel quite like the Dark Side. Still, there was almost an aura of menace, and I was determined to track it down.

I physically sensed it as a whiff of decay, a haze in my eyes, and a sort of sibilant whisper, mostly incomprehensible but occasionally seeming to say ‘hahnass despicable’. In the Force, it just felt… diseased.

If I quit now, someone else will take care of it. This isn’t that big of a deal. Still…

It registered at last that I was in a completely deserted hallway in a place I hadn’t seen before. The lights - electric banks of tubing covered by square panels - were flickering strangely. The hall itself was now shadowed enough that it the walls seemed to have been smeared with nameless substances. My eyes tried to trick me into seeing shadows move and faces appear within them, but the Force showed me that I was unwatched.

I could not feel any lifeforms close by, but that didn't mean much. As if to underscore that thought, there was a scrabbling from the far end of the hall. The metal handle on one of the closed double doors half-turned several times, then completed its rotation with a click and cracked open.

A human girl squeezed through the opening and looked around frantically, wide eyed with fear. I noticed the oddly clouded look to those eyes, her paleness, the stickiness matting her hair and clothing, and the deep slash across her throat before she saw me and screamed hoarsely. When she did so, the gaping wound suddenly dribbled with blood and, horrified, I stared as if transfixed. By the Dark Side, how was she not dead, with a wound like that?

Force-given senses revealed that she was not really alive – part of the Force, yes, but no more so than a mossy boulder or a droid, devoid of the reassuringly complex interaction of energies found in the average living being. I shuddered convulsively. Ugh.

The girl ran past me as I automatically moved aside in revulsion, and her rapid footsteps echoed unsettlingly in the hallway. I had a sudden sensation of ill will, and felt a strong desire to copy the girl and simply leave the area.

What kind of Jedi does that? If something gives me a bad feeling, it’s probably not safe to ignore. Annoyed with myself, I strode to the doors she had slipped through. Taking a deep breath - blood, rot, offal, all those offensive scents of old death - and peered around the opened one.

A very dead human man stood a mere two meters before me, slack-jawed, with twitching maggots dribbling from every hole in his slimy flesh. He appeared to have been buried somewhere very moist and later dug up again – a practice I really don’t like. There is a reason why Jedi, and Sith for that matter, cremate our dead, and it isn’t just the symbolism of spreading our constituent molecules far and wide.

Remains everywhere, all apparently humans in various states of decay from freshly dead to skeletal, and everywhere in between. Some looked as if a noxious fungus had taken root in their flesh, and others had puffe