Star Wars: Return of the Sith

1: The New Lords

By Nanaki

Coruscant

"Are you SURE she is the one we want?"

"For the hundredth time, yes, she is ideal."

"I'd greatly prefer it if she were-"

"Human. Yes, I know. Though you have yet to provide me with any logical reason WHY. From the neck down, her species is virtually identical to yours. And mine."

"Very well, if you insist. If our attempts to duplicate the experiment are successful, we can always repeat it later with a human, anyway."

"We COULD, but we won't need to. Not unless you're hoping to create usurpers, instead of successors."

"I fear that's what YOU'RE doing."

"You? Afraid? Ha! Feel free to oversee everything, if you wish."

"Heh. If you insist..."

Several Months Later...

The elongated transport ship was ultimately heading for Bastion, though it would be making several stops along the way. Most of the passengers on board were quietly grumbling to themselves, because the layover on Coruscant hardly gave them enough time to peruse a few shops adjacent to the landing pad, never mind taking a good trip to one of the highlights of the Republic capital. The Senate Hall or the Jedi Temple would have to wait for another visit, and while visits to Coruscant weren't expensive, they were usually a hassle to arrange.

So pretty much the entire complement of the transport raised their heads as one when two people dressed in black Jedi robes boarded. Excited whispering started at the front and quickly spread back as a few people caught glimpses of lightsabers clipped to belts. But then, the two apparent Jedi turned to look a the myriad variety of beings who were obviously talking about them, and the talk died as quickly as it had begun.

The shorter of the pair was human, with dark brown hair and a rather severe look on his face. He might have been considered handsome, if his expression wasn't so dour. As the talk died, he found his seat in the front of the passenger area and dropped into it without another look.

The taller of the two was Zabrak, with thick black tattoos covering his face, and presumably the rest of him, in a design similar to that of the legendary Darth Maul. Where the black didn't cover though, his natural skin color showed through. He had a neutral expression on his face, until a small Mon Calamarian, apparently too young or too oblivious to notice her mother's anxious expression, waved at him excitedly. A slight smile appeared on his face and he waved back, then took his seat.

The young Mon Calamarian managed to lean into the aisle despite her mother's attempts to hold her back, and called up to the Zabrak with a voice that was somehow both high pitched and gravelly. "Hey, you're really him, aren't you? You're Darth Negian!"

He turned around in his seat and smiled again. "Yeah, that's me." Instantly, many of the adults aboard began checking to make sure that their concealed blasters were still where they'd hidden them.

The young Mon Calamarian continued, not noticing. "Why are you taking a transport instead of your own ships?"

"My thoughts exactly." The black-clad human snorted, without turning around.

"Because..." The Zabrak directed his answer toward his partner. "Many people find our personal starships very intimidating... that is, scary." He clarified when a look of confusion appeared on the youngling's face. "And we're not taking this trip to intimidate anyone."

"Why ARE you taking this trip?" The little Mon Calamarian's mother finally got up the nerve to ask, her fear diminished somewhat by the Zabrak's friendly manner. He certainly didn't ACT like the Sith Lord he was reputed to be.

"Our purpose is none of your business." The human said in an impatient voice.

Darth Negian sighed, then laughed a bit. "That's true, as far as it goes. I can't tell you the specifics. Suffice it to say, we're on our way to recover something of great value to us."

As he sank back into his seat and the ship began to rumble as its sub-lights came on, most of the passengers began to whisper quietly about the two black-robed Force users. Darth Seco and Darth Negian were the two latest Lords of the Sith to trouble the galaxy. Only, they hadn't done much in the way of troubling so far. When the two had been declared by the Jedi to be the founders of a new Sith order, the galaxy at large had expected an epic lightsaber duel between the Sith and the Jedi higher-ups to be beamed over the HoloNet soon after. But, as the Jedi repeatedly told the reporters who kept pestering them, there was no evidence that the new Sith had done anything wrong.

Of course there were rumors. Rumors of red lightsabers sending heads flying in distant corners of the galaxy, and always reportedly on the opposite side of the galaxy from the planet the rumor originated on. Rumors also abounded that the two had a "secret lab" on Coruscant close to the Senate Hall, even though decades of careful mapping had made sure every nook and cranny within a twenty mile radius of the triangle formed by the Senate Hall, Jedi Temple, and the recently renovated 500 Republica was well explored.

"What could Korgo be thinking?" Darth Seco grumbled as the star field outside his viewport was replaced by hyperspace.

"Well, he's either trying to undermine our efforts, or trying to increase his standing in our eyes." Negian shrugged. "It's quite possible he's trying to do both at once. He is a Hutt, after all."

"We never should have told him about this project." Seco shook his head.

"We didn't, really." Negian shrugged again. "But mention the name 'Darth Plagueis' and that's what instantly springs to mind."

"How did he find out it was her, though?"

"It doesn't matter." A calm smile returned to Negian's face. "A day from now, she'll be safely in our custody back on Coruscant. I got the impression from Korgo that he only sent one bounty hunter after her, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"For us, of course not." Seco's grimace remained unchanged. "But for her..."

Negian's smile also didn't waver. "Well, that's what makes this outing so very interesting."

.

"May you live in interesting times." - Traditional Chinese curse

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(Nanaki's note: Return of the Sith? Been there, done that, right? Hopefully this opening chapter introduced enough mysteries to get you curious about what comes next. But before we continue to chapter 2, I've got plenty of author's notes for you. Here's what I had to say about the timeline back when I first started getting ideas for this story in 2006: "Return of the Sith takes place roughly 230 years after the original Star Wars film. Why? Well, I never thought I'd be mad at Star Wars, (After all, Jar Jar Binks hadn't bothered me, and I thought that if he didn't, nothing could.) but on May 21st, 2006, I was. I had just picked up the new Star Wars Insider, and inside was an article about the upcoming comic book series Star Wars Legacy, which would be set ten years AFTER I had originally planned this story to take place. If I wanted to keep this story in the same time frame, I now had to make sure it lined up with what happened in Legacy, which would be an impossible task, since I didn't know what would happen in the series yet. Plus, even the barest of plot details conflicted with my ideas for the future of the Star Wars galaxy. Legacy will feature a "New Empire", while I had planned for the Republic to be back in full swing.

"So, if I didn't want to conflict with official reality, I had two options: Wait, (Which is what I'm having to do with my ideas for a killer Naruto story, and it's driving me nuts.) or change the time the story takes place in. I went with the second choice. I considered moving the story to the Old Republic era, but the strict Jedi code of that era would make a lot of my main plot points impossible. I also wanted the events of the movies to have an influence to some degree, but to have it be far enough in the future where none of the main movie, or expanded universe characters, were still alive. So forward another hundred years we went. In the end, I don't think it'll make a lot of difference, and if Legacy makes any aspect of this story seem impossible, I'm sure I'll find a way to explain it. Unless they blow up Coruscant. Or Ziost. ;)"

Thankfully, Legacy turned out to be insanely awesome, and I no longer have any urge to write a Naruto story, because it's become apparent that Kishimoto is going to cover every possible story himself, given enough time. Anyway, I'm going to be as vague as possible about what happened to Cade, but it's quickly going to become obvious that he lived long enough to reproduce. But really, is that such a shock? As Peter/Han/Carlos Spicywiener told Lois/Leia in Something Something Something... Dark Side: "Look, we've got four of the six main characters right here on this ship. I think we're gonna be just fine."

Finally, you may have noticed that I gave a distance in miles up above, instead of using the metric system, which is what's used in the Star Wars novels and everywhere on Earth but the United States. So, guess where I live. I actually thought about it a lot before settling on non-metric measurments, but Star Wars is a franchise created by an American, featuring a mostly American cast. (No offense to Alec Guinness, Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, or Ian McDiarmid, who are all awesome.) Plus, the bulk of my readers here at FFN are from the US, so I decided miles was the way to go. Though the metric system may still make an appearance from time to time, since Star Destroyers are described as being exactly one kilometer long, and I doubt that translates to a nice, even number in feet. All right, on to chapter 2!)