Our Wars

I entered this in a PT fan fic contest on The Force.Net, and I think it's simply amazing. I stopped doing fan fics because I grew tired of the Jedi romances on the beach and duty before love and all that, and wanted something a bit different. So, I tried humor, but my canned humor tends to run a bit stale. This story is a bit of a compromise...and a surprise that I hope is pleasant. Oh, and the poster is my first Photoshop. Granny got me interested in it...and now I'm hooked!

Note: The parts in black occur in the GFFA, while those in blue are happening in our galaxy.

OUR WARS

His hands were slowly losing their perilous grasp on the ledge of the power generator, searing pain darting through bone and tendon with a blistering relish. His temples pulsed with the black emptiness of grief upon terror, aching body, tired limbs, a cold deadness in his heart that was like a weight in his chest since he watched his Master fall to the Sith Lord’s blade. But it was like nothing when compared to the shame he had brought upon himself.

Reeling with shock, fear, and a blazing rage so unlike anything that he had ever imagined he would experience, Obi-Wan Kenobi felt the tender flame of the dark side of the Force. And he had embraced it. He had embraced everything from which he vowed to protect the galaxy unto his death. And that was wrong.

That was not how he would honor the sacrifice of his Master. That was not how he would honor everything that the Jedi Order had given him. That was not how he wished to live or to be remembered, and that was certainly not how he wished to die.

Be mindful of the living Force, my young Padawan.

Yes, Master. I understand now.

With a breath fueled by the energies of the Force, sheathed in the light shed by the goodness in his heart and the inner strength of his love, Obi-Wan Kenobi leapt above the rim of the power generator, calling to his hand his Master’s blade. With a strike made not in anger, but in a determination born of compassion, Obi-Wan swept his blade down toward the deformed demon that was the Sith and--

“Timmy! What are you doing?! You messed up the best part!”

The protests were as loud as they were unanimous, with Amanda and Daniel rising to their feet and shaking their little fists at the hapless boy with his hand hovering near the TV.

“Why do we got to watch it again?” Tim asked. “Obi-Wand’s gonna kill him, just like every time. There’s no point.”

“Don’t be a dummy, slime-for-brains,” said Michael. At eight, he was the oldest among all of us, and already a formidable expert on everything Star Wars. “That’s the way George Lucast made it. It has to go that way.”

“But why? Why does it always have to go that way?” Tim insisted.

“Because if Obi-Wand didn’t kill Darth Maul,” said Amanda, “Who would train Luke Skyhopper?”

I looked at Amanda with admiration at her feat of logic. Short, wiry, and the only girl invited to Daniel’s house for the Star Wars sleepover that day, she was always one for quick conclusions that nobody would dare to argue with. But Timmy was in an oddly single-minded mood that night.

“Why would Luke Skyhopper need training anyway if Obi-Wand died? The Sith could come back and control the galaxy again.”

“Then the story would be over!” shrieked Daniel, horrified at that sacrilegious thought.

“Yeah, and what’s George Lucast gonna do with all the other movies?” asked Michael.

“Well, that’s not the way I would’ve done it,” said Timmy matter-of-factly.

“You just can’t criticize the way it’s done, Tim,” explained Amanda. “It’s just the way it is. It’s the only way the story can work out in the end.”

“But I don’t want it to work out that way,” Tim whimpered, sitting down hard on the dark carpet and almost knocking over the box of Cheez-Its resting near the TV remote.

“Then why don’t you change it?” I offered.

Everybody stared at me. Well, I can’t really blame them. I didn’t talk much back then, and it was usually because I didn’t have much to say that people would listen to.

“What?” asked Michael.

“Well, why don’t we make our own Star Wars? I mean, just change the story so the Sith win and see what happens.”

“Hey, that’s a cool idea!” whooped Daniel, breaking into a monster grin that showed the bits of Cheez-It still stuck in his baby teeth.

“Yeah! Let’s do it!” said Amanda.

The little room covered from ceiling to floor and wall to wall with Star Wars posters, autographs, plaques, pins, and books, with tiny figures of Han and Chewie strewn around everywhere and bits of The Game of Life: A Jedi’s Path near the door where Dan’s mom was sure to trip on them, erupted with the sounds of cheering and anticipation.

And that’s how it all began.


--with a power surprising in its physical intensity, Darth Maul parried Qui-Gon Jinn’s green blade. Obi-Wan’s eyes went wide with a paralyzing mixture of shock and horror as the blood red of his fiendish lightsaber darted through the Jedi’s chest, glowing in twisted triumph out the end of his back. Eyes rolling back into his head, Obi-Wan Kenobi fell, lifeless, to the smooth floor of the power generator room.

Darth Maul tilted his head backward, shutting his eyes with the pure ecstasy of darkness enveloping his soul. He tasted it as it toyed with the back of his tongue, smelled its pungent depth in his nostrils, felt the delicious fire as it raced through his veins.

His Master would be quite pleased.

Taking long, eager strides toward the door of the power generator room, Darth Maul pulled a comlink from his black robes and keyed in the code to his Master’s secure communications link on Coruscant. With a slight crackle, the code was patched through.

“What is it?” rasped the voice of Darth Sidious through the end of the comlink.

“The Jedi are dead, my Master,” whispered Maul, his voice thick with the power of the dark side.

“Good. Good,” said Sidious. “And Queen Amidala?”

“She will soon join them, my Master.”

“Excellent. Just as I have foreseen it. You have done well, my young apprentice. Return to Coruscant. We make our move against the Jedi today.”

“Yes, Master,” Maul said, a small smile of evil pleasure twisting his lips. Replacing the comlink in the folds of his robe, Maul paused at the door in which Queen Amidala had cornered the Viceroy, and drew his lightsaber.

“How’s that so far?” asked Tim, squealing with delight at the fruits of his task.

“Hmmm…” began Amanda, sounding a bit too much like Yoda for my tastes. I was a Kyle Katarn man, myself. “It’s good so far, but what’s Maul gonna do when he gets to Coruu-scant?”

“Help Sidious get rid of the Jedi, of course,” said Daniel, his arms folded like Kitster.

“But what about Anakin? He’s gonna blow up the Trade Fedation’s control ship and the Gungans are gonna win the battle,” said Amanda.

“Well, in our version, he messes up and gets stuck there and the battle droids kill him,” said Michael, his chin jutting confidently.

“But what does that do to Luke Skyhopper?” I asked. I liked Luke. For one thing, Luke was necessary for Kyle Katarn to be useful.

“He just doesn’t exist anymore,” said Timmy.

“Can we just get back to the story?” shrieked Daniel.

“Alright, back to the story.” Amanda could really take charge when she wanted to. She eventually grew up to be a criminal attorney. A pretty good one, too. “Darth Maul goes to Coruu-scant to see his Master…”


“Queen Amidala is dead, my Master,” said Maul, kneeling before the shrouded figure that was Darth Sidious.

“And the Trade Federation?” prompted Sidious.

“They were victorious, Master. Not a Gungan was left alive, and the planet is in ruins.”

“Very good, Darth Maul. You may rise.”

With a silent, otherworldly smoothness, Darth Maul rose from his position on the cold steel of the floor and stood before his Master. The room was steeped in shadows, both from physical lack of sunlight and through violent plays of dark side against light.

“The Jedi are vulnerable at this point,” began Sidious, his gnarled fingers steepled in contemplation. “The shock of the deaths on Naboo will be received with some degree of…disbelief. A good portion of the Temple has been dispatched across the galaxy to search for the hidden fortress of these new Sith.”

“If we strike quickly, the Jedi will fall, my Master,” said Maul, his eyes radiant with the echoes of immanent destruction.

“Yes, young Maul. We will go to the Jedi Temple together, and there, the Jedi shall meet their end.”

The halls of the Jedi Temple were awash with horror and pain, resounding with the screams of dying younglings who would never know the light of another moon, and Jedi Knights and Masters in earnest combat with the Dark Lords and their army of battle droids. Gallant pillars and ornate passageways that seemed almost eternal in their solidity fell with the single blast of a detonator. The immortal internal strength of the Jedi was met with the cold, dispassionate face of death that was the battle droids and their Sith commanders.

Darth Maul’s face twisted in a grimace of invigorating joy as his blade punctured the heart of a young child clad in light Jedi robes, her little body sliding loosely to the polished floor. The sweet mélange of fear, death, hatred, and despair that swirled around him filled him with a wholeness that he never believed he would experience. Maul was not certain that his body was even capable of holding such darkness within it; the beauty was too magnificent for his mind’s eye to comprehend.

In the furthest reaches of the Jedi Temple Spire, the crested plume of a once noble structure, the Sith Lord Darth Sidious stood locked in deathly combat with Jedi Master Mace Windu. Around them lay the tomblike remnants of chaos: walls scorched with blaster fire, overturned Council seats steeped in pools of blood, and the bodies of what were the most revered Masters in the Order.

Sweat glistening on the top of his high, domed forehead, Master Windu struggled against the Sith Lord with everything that his soul could fashion for him and all the power that he could summon to his hands. He fought for the Jedi, for his home, for those he loved, for the light side of the Force, for the galaxy, for its beings, for himself, for his friends that he would never share the pleasure of being with ever again.

“The oppression of the Sith will not return to this Republic!” he gasped, his shoulders aching with every thrust of his purple blade.

“You have lost, Master Jedi,” mocked Lord Sidious. “The Sith will have their revenge, and your pathetic Jedi Order will be wiped from the face of the galaxy.”

“Not while I still live,” said Windu, the vigorous strikes of his lightsaber refusing to find their mark.

“That, Master Jedi, is why I am here.”

Rotating his saber in a feint positioned convincingly at Master Windu’s throat, Sidious twisted his blade downward with impossible speed and struck at Windu’s chest, his saber--

“Stop!!”

--slipping from his grasp and falling to the intricate carpeting below him. At the same moment, Windu’s lightsaber eased out of his shaking fingers and laid to rest adjacent to the curved hilt of the Sith Lord’s.

“Whoa! What…what…what am I doing here? What are we doing here?”

The astonishment written on the faces of the five children was mirrored by the stricken looks of the Jedi Master and Sith Lord. All memories of their mortal duel forgotten, the two adults gaped at the young five with interests only they could have identified. The moment seemed to last for an eternity; for the children, it could’ve lasted much longer.

“Amanda,” sobbed Timmy, “I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared about,” she said, but Amanda didn’t sound too sure.

“We’re…we’re in the movie!” howled Daniel, grinning like a madman.

“Not really,” Michael pointed out. “I think we’re in our version of the story. Look at the floor. All the Council members are dead. If this was Revenge of the Sith, then it would just be those three guys.”

“Wait a minute,” said Richard, everyone turning to look at him again. He rarely spoke, but when he did, others usually listened. But they didn’t necessarily follow. “You guys stopped dueling when we got here, right?”

Sidious and Windu nodded, still not trusting themselves to speak.

“And Papytine, you were ready to kill Mace before we showed up, right?”

Again, Sidious nodded.

“Well, before we got here, we wanted Papytine to kill Mace, but when we thought about it and decided that we didn’t want it, we were transpotted into the story!”

“So?” asked Michael.

“So, we can still decided who wins the duel!”

“Rick’s got a point,” said Amanda. “We could still kill Papytine and Mace can live!”

“You children think you can defeat a Sith?” snarled Sidious, calling his lightsaber into his hand with the Force. “Then you do not yet know the power of the dark side!”

Igniting his wicked red blade, Sidious advanced slowly toward the five children, relishing their terror that was emanating through the tendrils of the Force.

“Don’t be scared of him,” stuttered Amanda. “He’s not real.”

“He sure looks real,” whispered Timmy.

“This is all your fault!” yelled Michael. “If you wouldn’t said that dumb stuff about changing the story, none of this would’ve happened!”

“I didn’t mean to,” cried Tim, his eyes welling with tears.

“Luke Skyhopper!” Richard called suddenly.

“What?” asked Amanda.

“Luke Skyhopper in Empire Strikes Back. Yoda told him that he could lift the X-Ing out of the swamp him if he believed in himself.”

“What are you saying?” asked Michael.

“Well, I think if we all said what we believed in, all of this will go away and Star Wars can be back to normal. As long as we don’t believe that Papytine can win, he won’t be able to win.”
There was silence for a moment as the children contemplated this, and then, unwilling to wait any longer, Amanda spoke.

“I believe in the United States of America!”

“What?” said Daniel.

“Well, somebody had to start,” she said, crossing her arms.

“I believe in my Mommy.”

“I believe in magic.”

“I believe in the piano.”

“I believe in my gerbil.” (That was Daniel.)

“I believe in the Earth.”

“I believe in Santa Claus.”

“I believe in you, Luke Skyhopper,” whispered Richard. It didn’t hurt to try.

His face darkening in rage, Darth Sidious lifted a fist toward and children and exclaimed--

“Wake up, kids! Are you planning on sleeping all day?”

“Ugh,” groaned Amanda, brushing a few stray hairs from her eyes.

“You kids left the TV frozen again? One of these days you’re going to burn out the screen, you know, and I’m not buying another one.”

“You can’t burn out a plasma TV,” muttered Michael.

“Yeah, you can, genius,” said Tim.

It was quiet for a while after Mom came in and picked up the last of the Cheez-Its, gathered up the Han and Chewie figures, and turned off the TV. The picture of Obi-Wan preparing to vault to the top of the power generator wasn’t frozen into the screen.

“Did it happen?” I asked, blinking slowly as if just awakening from a deep sleep.

“Either that, or we all had the same dream,” said Michael.

We brooded over that for a while, when Daniel couldn’t help but say, “It was awesome, anyway.”

“It was,” we answered, nodding emphatically.

“So,” began Timmy, “wanna do it again?”

“What?” called Amanda. “Are you nuts?”

“Not the Sith this time, I mean. The Jedi.”

“Huh?” grunted Michael.

“Order 66! We could save the galaxy! Stop Anakin Skyhopper from killing all his friends. It would be a good thing this time, not a bad thing. We could do it, you know. We know how now.”

We held a short meeting, just as they did in the Galactic Senate of the Old Republic, to decide things in a manner befitting the new guardians of peace and justice in our own galaxy. After a short disagreement between Senator Amanda Wilber and Senator Michael Anton, an agreement was signed adjourning the Senate for twenty minutes, in light of the recent smell of pancakes wafting in from the kitchen.

Upon our return, it was decreed that a vote would be held to determine our next course of action. Should we adopt a path of noninterference? Or should we attempt to save the galaxy from an evil that we knew was coming?

The vote was unanimous. When Mom came back later to check on us, we were already gone.