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The warm morning glow radiated on the surface of Tatooine as Luke Skywalker climbed out of his landspeeder, his two apprentices joining him. Luke straightened himself up and took a deep breath as he gazed upon his former home.

The Lars family homestead had been burned to cinders, along with his aunt and uncle. While he had lived here, he desired to leave the planet and find his own path in the galaxy. His Uncle Owen had been dead set against it. Luke had thought it unfair at the time; but later on, as he continued his path down the Jedi road, he realized something:

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were afraid.

They were afraid that, if Luke left, he would follow in his father's footsteps. No wonder they had tried so desperately to keep him away from Obi-Wan. Their rationale was that if Obi-Wan had failed once, why wouldn't he fail again?

After the Galactic Civil War and the end of the Empire, the New Republic had turned the homestead into a historical site, preserving the memory of Owen and Beru Lars forever.

As Luke kneeled before the headstones of his deceased aunt and uncle, he wondered what would have happened if he had stayed home on that day instead of chasing after R2 in the desert. Could he have stopped the Imperials from incinerating his family? Ben had told him that he would have been killed as well, and perhaps he would have been.

He sighed.

Did my father ever fail to protect anyone he ever cared about, he wondered. Besides the headstones for his aunt and uncle, there were two others. One for Cliegg Lars, his uncle's father, and one for his late grandmother.

SHMI SKYWALKER LARS, the marker read.

After spending a few moments reminiscing about his family, the Jedi Master straightened up. He motioned for his two Padawans that it was time to go, and they moved reverently back towards the landspeeder.

***

Up above, a small, circular probe droid hovered in the air, recording the whole scene. It then turned and whizzed back to its dark master.

***

The Dark Jedi waited impatiently outside his spaceship as a small black droid approached and began communicating in a series of bleeps. The Dark Jedi tilted his head.

"The Jundland Wastes you say?"

The droid nodded in affirmation.

"That's not far from here." He came to the edge of the cliff-face overlooking the Dune Sea. "They should be coming around here any minute." He raised his binoculars to his face and grinned as his prey came into view.

I see you, Jedi.

He turned, picked up a rocket launcher, took aim and fired.

***

Luke was weary from dealing with that Hutt the night before, so he allowed Jacen to pilot their landspeeder.

Big mistake.

"Jacen, would you slow down?!"

Jacen was laughing hysterically as he zoomed the speeder through the giant wastelands. "Come on," he protested to his uncle. "This is fun!"

Luke held on to the sides for dear life, and Jaina seemed to be ready to empty the contents of her stomach. "You and I have different definitions of fun," he retorted.

"Lighten up, Uncle Luke! Besides, you always regale us with tales of how you used to pilot your T-16 through Beggar's Canyon!"

Luke opened his mouth to speak but could find no words. Was I always this reckless as a youth, he wondered.

Then an even more disturbing thought entered his mind.

Have I become gotten old and crotchety?

Well, he may have become somewhat crotchety, but he was not old, dang it! Well, not that old anyway.

And then the Force issued him a warning.

"Jacen – WATCH OUT!!!"

Jacen sensed the danger too, and swerved the speeder as a huge explosion rocked nearby. They missed the initial detonation, but the reverberating shockwaves sent the speeder hurtling towards a rocky outcropping.

The trio braced themselves for impact as the front of the vehicle crashed violently. Smoke poured from the engines.

"Is everyone alright," was Luke's immediate question.

"I'm fine," Jaina answered, nursing a cut on her cheek. "But Jacen…"

The boy was slumped forward, his forehead bleeding. He wasn't moving.

"Oh no…" The Jedi Master reached forward and felt Jacen's pulse and breathed a sigh of relief. The boy had merely been knocked unconscious. He turned to his other pupil.

"Jaina, I need you to call Captain Keel and inform him that we need immediate transport."

She nodded and began speaking into a comlink.

"Oh, and Jaina – one more thing…"

She looked up at him expectantly.

"Duck."

Sensing the impending danger, the Padawan sunk to her knees as another rocket spiraled towards them. Waving his gloved hand, Luke used the Force to deflect it away into a distant outcropping, where it detonated harmlessly.

And then the Jedi Master's lightsaber was out in a flash as a flurry of purple light suddenly spun towards him. Jaina straightened her eyes to see that her uncle was dueling a black-clad warrior wielding a lightsaber.

"Who are you," Luke demanded as his blade parried an upward blow. The attacker's face was masked behind a black shroud, but he continued to attack the Jedi relentlessly.

Their lightsabers clashed again and again, and Luke still received no answer.

Jaina's hand moved to unclip her own lightsaber, but before she could act, the attacker thrust his palm toward her and she was struck with an unseen blast of energy, sending her slamming up against a rocky structure.

The Dark Jedi then turned his focus on his main prey.

They disengaged for a moment, and Luke brought his saber into a ready stance. He squinted his eyes, hoping to get a better look at the person's face. The assassin idly twirled his sword, and began to edge his way back into battle.

As their weapons spun and clashed, Luke tried to read his opponent's moves. His stance and style were like no Jedi's he had seen before. In fact, the attacker's fighting style seemed to mimic Darth Vader's – albeit it was much faster and more graceful than his father's had been, but it was brutal all the same.

"I sense a great deal of anger in you," Luke commented as their swords crossed. "And it's all directed at me. But why?"

With a snarl, the Dark Jedi pushed Luke back, before moving into another frenzy of attacks.

"What are you hoping to accomplish with this?" Luke was hoping to get his enemy to talk; perhaps if he reasoned with him, he could find out this Dark Jedi's motivations. "If you strike me down, the Jedi Council will not cease in their efforts to bring you to justice."

The Dark Jedi either didn't hear him or didn't care.

"Listen to me – I can help you! I sense a great deal of hurt in you as well. I can heal your anger and your pain, if you let me! If you join the Jedi Order, we can find the root of your problems and fix it."

Luke's words only served to aggravate the assassin even more as he felt a surge of pure rage fly up out of his opponent. The Dark Jedi fed on that anger, channeling it, focusing it into a tool.

He let the darkness flow through him.

He had only one objective on his mind, and it went beyond even pure animal instinct.

All he wanted was to kill Luke Skywalker.

Do it! Kill Luke Skywalker!

The voice tore through his skull, haunting him day and night. He was constantly tormented by his master's final order.

Kill Luke Skywalker!

With renewed ferociousness, he tore at Luke, hacking and slashing away.

And the next thing he knew, he suddenly had two additional lightsabers pointed at him. Cursed whelps! He hadn't counted on Skywalker bringing his two apprentices with him to Tatooine. But it didn't matter … he was more than capable of handling three Jedi. He adjusted his stance.

The two Padawan learners angled their blades and edged their way into the battle, taking the Dark Jedi from the sides, while Luke charged up the center. With almost supernatural speed, the Dark Jedi leapt over their heads, flipped in midair and landed behind the trio. He raised his hand and forks of lightning arced out unto the three Jedi.

Luke raised his weapon, deflecting the bolts with his blade. Jaina and Jacen tried to deflect it as well, but the energy was too much for them. In a moment, they were both blasted back into the ground.

Luke watched as they fell, their Jedi tunics smoking. He turned back to his attacker in time to fend off a renewed assault. The fighting was fast and furious, as the two went at it full force. This was a battle of equals.

And suddenly, an explosion blew a smoking crater in the ground a few feet from where the two were clashing. They both looked up to see a New Republic gunship hovering in midair. Captain Keel and his troops trained their blasters at the Dark Jedi.

Cursing loudly, the Dark Jedi withdrew a small pellet from his pouch and threw it on the ground, and a giant plume of smoke exploded around them. When it cleared, the Dark Jedi had vanished.

"Master Skywalker, are you alright," Keel asked as he leaped to the ground to join the Jedi. Luke was currently checking on his two students.

"Your timing is as impeccable as always, Captain."

Keel flashed a grin. "Oh, I know how to make an entrance."

Jacen and Jaina slowly sat up, holding their heads. Luke helped them to their feet. "What was that," Jaina asked, looking around. "Was it a Sith?"

"No, I don't think so," Luke answered. "It didn't have the feel of a Sith Lord. This was … something different."

"Well then shouldn't we be looking for him," Jacen asked.

"Patience. He came for us once and very nearly killed us all. He'll come after us again." He began climbing aboard the gunship. "I need time to meditate on this. And perhaps when we reach Coruscant, the collective wisdom of the Council will be able to find the truth of all this."

***

"The Jedi Order is stretched thin too much already," Luke was saying. He was sitting on a chair in the Jedi Council chambers of the rebuilt Jedi Temple. The rest of the Council was in session. "We cannot get ourselves involved in this conflict so soon."

There was murmuring among the Jedi Council. Some nodded in agreement; others hissed with disapproval.

Jedi Master Liang-Dormo leaned forward anxiously. "But the Jedi are the defenders of peace and justice in the galaxy! How can we not get involved? Is it not our sworn duty to defend the Republic?"

More murmuring.

"Our duty is to the Republic," Luke admitted. "But there is something else behind all this. I find it highly strange that the Mandalorians would begin invading the Outer Rim all of a sudden after having been scattered for thousands of years. And this new Dark Jedi…"

Jedi Master Kyle Katarn nodded in agreement. "Luke's right. The Dark Side has been growing steadily stronger over the past few years leading up to the attacks. There is something sinister moving in the galaxy – beyond the edges of the Outer Rim."

"And I believe the Mandalorians and that Dark Jedi are but symptoms of the true problem."

Liang-Dormo shook his head. "I can't believe what I'm hearing! The Outer Rim is burning! Millions are being massacred by armies of Mandalorian shock troops! And you would have us do nothing?!"

"I'm not advising apathy," Luke answered. "Nor did I say we would do nothing. We just need to be patient – find out the root of this threat and weed it out."

"And while you do that, how many more millions will die?!"

"That's enough," Kyle growled. "Don't you remember the Clone Wars? How the Jedi got involved in the war – and then what happened? The Sith used the war itself as a trap to destroy the Jedi Order! The Jedi Order has barely started to rebuild itself, and you would have us risk it all?!"

Liang-Dormo lowered his head.

"The Council's ruling is final," Luke said. "For now, the Jedi will observe this threat and offer any support we can to the Republic – but we will not engage ourselves in the war just yet until we find out what is behind all of this."

***

Luke walked along a circular ramp in the Jedi Temple. Below, in a circular room, Jacen and Jaina were sparring in a practice chamber. After dueling the Dark Jedi, they were determined to improve their skills if ever they should confront him again.

"Good block Jacen," he called from above. "And nice thrust, Jaina."

"Master Skywalker, may I have a moment please?"

Luke turned to see a sheepish Jedi Master Liang-Dormo. "I wanted to apologize for my outburst today," he said.

"No apologies necessary," Luke replied. "You voiced your opinion, that's all."

"But I shouldn't have questioned you like that." He joined Luke in watching the two Padawans spar below. "Those two will become powerful Jedi," he said.

Luke nodded. "I can barely keep up with them as it is."

"You'll train them to be fine Jedi."

Luke chuckled. "I had better. I wouldn't want to incur the wrath of Han and Leia if I didn't, now would I?" They both laughed. "But seriously, they'll make us all proud."

Liang-Dormo nodded. "The Force is incredibly powerful in your family's bloodline. But you must be cautious with them."

"What do you mean?"

"The blood of their grandfather flows through them as well. Anakin Skywalker lives in them – as does the shadow of Darth Vader."

"I've considered that. Every night I worry that I might make some mistake with them. That something I might say or do might cause them to slip into the darkness that consumed my father – that almost consumed me. Even if I train them properly, the cloud of the Dark Side will loom over them, as it looms over us all."

Below, the two Padawans continued to duel.

***