Prologue:
Omega and Draken had just finished
reviewing the newest batch of Ar’Kell recruits. Then they moved out of the
Ar'Kell Wing and toward the interior of the massive
"Yeah, mondo
cool man," Draken shot back. "So man. I need
to ask ya. What's your favorite band? Personally, I
like the Glitterstim Spice Girls."
"Not me," Omega replied.
"The Back Street Bothans are buff, baby."
Draken frowned, his mouth twisting
to one side. "But Master Xar said the Glitterstim
Spice Girls were the official Division band; how can you not dig 'em? They're such babes..." Draken asked,
a confused look on his face.
"Come on dude, they stink
royally."
Draken snorted. "I can't
believe I'm hearing this. I could get you for treason on this. I'm embarrassed
to even have you as a Aedile."
"So you dig that 'ziggy‑zig’ crap?!"
"You betcha! And don't you diss
the Grand Master's group! He even has all their albums on mp3!"
"Diss this!!!" Omega yelled, launching himself
toward his Quaestor.
The friendly yet intense scuffle
that ensued could be heard throughout the entire section of the palace. Eventually
Draken summoned on his greater ability in the Force and threw Omega across the
room, where the impetuous youth sat nursing his wounds. Omega glared at Draken
with rage‑filled eyes.
"The Glitterstim
Spice Girls are gay!"
"So are the Back Street Bothans, and so are you!!"
"What?!"
"You're fired, Omega! I'm gonna to have you sentenced to solitary and I'm gonna play 'Wannabe a Smuggler' a thousand times until you
scream 'I love the Glitterstim Spice Girls! Guards!"
The NI Runon, Volume 4:
The Search for
Mittens
Jedi Templar Havoc stood on the
carpeted floor of the Grand Master's Chambers, wishing he could be anywhere but
there at the current moment. Xar paced back and forth in front of him, silently
contemplating the dire news which Havoc reluctantly presented.
"We... We lost, sir. Black Ops
has taken heavy losses. There were just too many of the Rebels, sir. They
launched a surprise attack on the Escort Carrier Liberator. I fear
Xar paused and turned to look at him
darkly. "Are you telling me that a dozen members of the New Imperium's
most elite force of Jedi have been defeated by the
"That’s... what I'm saying,
sir..." Havoc stammered, eyes downcast.
Xar resumed his pacing. "That
is what I thought. I could barely make it out in between all the excuses."
He sighed heavily. "I am most disappointed, Havoc. I am afraid you must be
removed as head of Black Ops."
"I understand, sir, and I
concur," Havoc said in a low voice. He'd expected that.
"Your career is far from over,
of course. You have usefulness elsewhere. I understand you are considering
taking the vacant Aedile spot in Ar'Kell since Omega
left?"
Havoc nodded silently.
"Very well.
We must strike back at the
"Uhh...
But sir..." Havoc began. "The Houses are in the middle of a mock-war
on each other..."
"Never interrupt me when I am talking, Havoc," Xar bit out, his
voice tense with anger.
Havoc opened his mouth to apologize,
but then thought better of it and kept it shut.
"This time we will devote three capital ships to this little
war..." The Grand Master's voice was full of anticipatory glee. "And
it will provide a good training ground for our Jedi. You are dismissed, Havoc.
Call the meeting. Tell them to come immediately."
Varanus Templar
Varanus
Templar had just finished cleaning the officers’ toilet. It stank of cheap beer
and cheaper tobacco. "This has to be the worst job in the Division. Maybe
that was why Draken gave it to me." Only hours before he had lost his
temper with the Quaestor of Ar'Kell. He hadn't meant
to but Draken was getting annoyed with all the AWOLs.
It wasn't his fault, after all two novices had just graduated and there was a
party, it wasn't like he could say no. The party was going fine,
they had had to use the officers’ toilet because there was nowhere else. Anyway
it had just reached its height when in stormed Omega Kira.
He didn't seem to mind, well not that much, but then he heard the music, it was
the Glitterstim Spice Girls’ latest hit. He went
absolutely mental and started thrashing the place. Everyone just sank into the
corners and tried not to be noticed. Besides what could a group of initiates,
novices and hunters do against the former Aedile of
House Ar'Kell.
When the dust settled everyone had
managed to leave, except him. Then Draken walked in. Varanus
probably would have gotten of pretty lightly only Draken had remembered his
earlier outburst. That was why he was there when Havoc walked in.
"Report to
general assembly immediately."
"Y‑Yes
Sir, I'll just go change..." stammered Varanus.
"NOW novice!" snapped
Havoc.
Varanus
wouldn't really have minded only he was still in overalls which were soaked in
beer and other stains. When he entered general assembly he knew that it was
going to be one of those days. Everyone was in full dress uniform, everything
was polished and pressed and here he was in dirty overalls which smelled of
beer and other less pleasant odors. It wasn't long till people began staring
and smiling.
"Hey Var.
Over here," called a familiar if rather amused voice. It was Amleth Uiara, a friend who had
recruited Varanus into the Division shortly after
himself. "What in the name of the Force happened to you.
Didn't you hear the announcement earlier."
"No I was in the
toilet..."
"What, swimming? Listen I heard
that the Black Ops got a thrashing so the Grand Master has taken the matter up
personally. I think that there is some kind of full mobilization going
on." He didn't have time to say more because then a hush fell over the
crowd like a dark veil of ominous dread as Xar Kerensky, Grand Master of the New
Imperium’s Jedi Division stepped up to the podium. He was a striking figure
standing alone clad all in black which was further emphasized by the gleaming,
faultless bone white marble of the wall.
He slowly turned his head to take in
all gathered there with his steady gaze and steely grey eyes. They were cold
and austere betraying no thoughts from the mind of their owner. They seemed to
bore straight through you, down to your very soul. Slowly he began to speak:
GM Xar
"My fellow Jedi, the
He looked around the room, searching
the eyes of the occupants, looking for their support. "Who
will fight to defend us from the enemy?!"
A raucous applause of affirmation
filled the room. Xar raised his hands, smiling and yelling support for the NI,
as well. The
Jarak Maldon
Xar’s Office
"...yes and
one with extra cheese. Thank you." Xar said.
"Do you really think the New
Republic Ambassador is going to like 36,473 Pizzas delivered to his house and
put on his tab?" Havoc asked.
"This is war!"
"Ok... whatever you say sir."
"What was that?"
"YESSIR!!!"
"Better...
much better! Is the fleet ready to depart?"
"Yes... all ships ready."
"Good... ready my
shuttle."
"Sir," An apprentice said,
"Message coming in from Andra Prime. Its the office of Jarak Maldon on long distance... something about him being turned
into a gungan and wishing you luck."
"Gungan? Haha! Figures, I knew that new experiment would change him into one of
the stupidest creatures in the galaxy."
"Well... some Gungans invented advanced weapons and..." Havoc
interrupted.
"What did I say about interruptions?"
"Sorry..."
"Well now, I should be the one
wishing him luck! Those floppy ears
could attract even freakier female bands to him, do
you know what it is like to be chased by the Glitterstim
Spice Girls, Havoc?"
"No sir, I don't."
"Thank the Force for that! Uhh... I
really do not want to get up out of my comfy chair here, just tell him
thanks."
"Yessir." The man said.
"Excellent! Now let us thrust
at the heart of the enemy! Now... do we have any gum?"
"Gum sir?"
"Yes, GUM!"
"Uh... no sir.
New Republic has but an embargo on all gum products."
"Dang!
I want my gum! New objective: Liberate all freighters carrying any gum or gum
based products!"
"Yessir."
Varanus Templar
Havoc slowly bowed and made his way
hastily out of the room. "There is something definitely wrong with the Grand
Master. I just hope that it isn't like what happened to Mathis and Vynd a while back."
Havoc paused to look out over the
city of
"I wondered what has happened
to Vynd Archaron."
Neres Warjan
After the meeting, in which the Grand
Master told them to prepare their Capital Ships ready to Battle, Jedi Crusader Neres Warjan walked into the
Hangar, in which his Shuttle was waiting for his return.
On the ramp of the Shuttle was waiting
one of the new Initiates. Sightly
nervous he asked Neres, "Any orders, Sir?".
"Yep, tell the Pilot that he
should fly as fast he can back to Castle Tanefang,
and then call our Aedile to tell him that he should
prepare the `Dark Knight` for Battle. We have to win a war against the so‑called
`Republic`."
"Ahm, and our Aedile is..."
Neres takes
a deep breath. "NiksaVel, boy, NiksaVel. Remember it this time."
As the Shuttle made the jump into Hyperspace,
Neres said to himself, "I've got a good feeling
about this."
Gui Sun Paan
‑‑‑‑Meanwhile,
in Xar's Throne room.‑‑‑‑‑
"Yes, master. I will destroy as
many of them as I can." Varanus got an evil look
on his face.
"Excellent my apprentice, you
have grown much in a short amount of time. I am pleased to know that I have you
as my apprentice.”
"Thank you, master. May I ask,
if I can join the attack on the
“Very well,” Xar nodded. “I do not see why not.”
The young
apprentice bowed to his master and then set about his task. "The
Varanus Templar
The young apprentice opened the door
to his chamber. To fight the
Then
Draken popped into the room with a stern look on his face. “There you are, Varanus.”
Delta1
Draken had caught Varanus Templar not cleaning toilets, and doubled his
workload.
"See this?" Draken had
said, pointing at a section of an ancient parchment map of the
That's how Templar ended up where he
was, and he looked around at where he was, awestruck. He stood in the midst of
a vast cathedral ‑ it stretched out before him as far as the eye could
see, then branched off in two directions. Where the
chamber split into three, someone had placed a huge pedestal ringed by small fountains.
Templar walked towards this pedestal, looking to his left and right, not at all
concerned about toilets. Gargoyles sat on a ledge near the ceiling. The walls
were lined with thick tapestries, emblazoned with the history of this world.
Feeling there was something to be seen, Varanus
pulled one of the tapestries aside; behind it was a small cell, perhaps a
prayer cubicle? One of the walls was adorned with the head of a dragon and two
tusks.
Varanus's
inspection was cut short by a scream. He immediately fingered his weapon and
glanced around him; it was too hard to tell where the sound had come from as it
echoed throughout the chamber. "Hello?" Varanus
called tentatively. "Do you need help?" There was another scream,
louder, more frantic. Varanus reached out through the
Force, but found only a delocalized sense of rage, pain, and an abysmal
hopelessness. He began running, looking for the source of the sound. "I'm
coming!" he shouted. "Let me know where you are!" But there was
no sound.
At last, he came to a door at the
end of the room. In one fluid motion, he sliced an inverted V into the door and
kicked it down. It opened into a smallish courtyard. Vynd
“Delta 1” Archaron was standing in the middle of the
courtyard, looking disheveled and wearing nothing but a towel.
"Um, D1.
Hi," Varanus said.
"You heard," Vynd said, sounding slightly surprised.
"What are you ... Why ...?"
"That was my early morning yell
of horror," Vynd said. "I emit one or two
every morning, but you're the first person who's heard."
"I thought you were out finding
Kurt or yourself or something like that," Varanus
said, still as confused as you, dear reader, must be.
Vynd
brushed past Varanus into the cathedral, then walked with a quick stride towards some point further
within the temple. "Xar had given me a ship ‑ that idiot Malphunoc refused to get the Angel reassembled ‑ anyways, he gave me a ship and said
goodbye. I was about to take off when I realized that I hadn't had a hot shower
for 18 months. So I went looking for a shower, started taking one, then realized I'd forgotten shampoo."
"Uh‑huh," Varanus said, following as best he could.
"So I went looking for some,
and ended up locked outside, in that little courtyard. After about two weeks, I
gave up attempting to escape and decided to live out the rest of my life as
best I could. Screw the shampoo now."
"I see," Varanus lied. "Why didn't you use your key card to get
back in?"
"I tried," Vynd said. He took something out of a fold in his towel and
handed it to Varanus. It was a card, and read,
"RAVENSPYRE. Present this card in the cafeteria to receive your
meal."
“Oh.” Varanus
mused. “But… Wasn’t Osiris with you? What happened to
him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Hmm.”
"I found a Beliblian
falcon chick," Vynd continued. I named it
Frightful and trained it to catch food for me." They had come to one of
the prayer cubicles. Vynd swept the tapestry covering
it aside, stepped inside, pulled the tapestry back, and tossed his towel over
the bar the tapestry hung on. The cubicle began filling with hot, steamy water.
"Did you catch anything?" Varanus asked.
"Are you going to talk to me
while I'm naked?" Vynd asked.
Varanus
shrugged. "It's either that or clean toilets."
"I see," Vynd said. "Some of the toilets here look like they
haven't been used in forty years. Try to flush one, and a dianoga
jumps out. Anyways, to answer your question, yes, Frightful did catch
something. It was our first day of hunting. I saw something furry moving on the
ledge surrounding one of the buildings that enclosed the courtyard. I took off Frightful's hood and let her go. She grabbed the prey‑creature
and flew away. I never saw her again."
"Ouch," Varanus said.
"That's only the
beginning," Vynd said. "After catching her
prey, she flew overhead and I got a good look at it. It was Mittens."
Varanus
felt as if he had just been gutted with a lightsaber. This was the most
horrible thing he could imagine. If D1 said the Death Star was outside and
getting ready to shoot Varnus, it would be less disturbing. "Maybe you
should stay in the courtyard," he said when he had found his voice. "Xar
knows Mittens is missing, but he thinks he's just exploring the Palace. If he
finds out his cat's dead ..."
"Don't worry about it," Vynd said. "He's my bestest buddy. I can handle him. I'll tell him over
a pack of bubblegum. You think I should be wearing shower shoes?"
Varanus
Templar didn't answer, he just shook his head and
walked away. Had he not been shaking his head ‑ had he been looking
upwards ‑ he might have seen a furry creature perched on top of one of
the gargoyles.
Mittens cocked his head, deep in
thought. "So, Xar will soon think I am dead," he thought. "If
that is the case, he will not suspect that it was I who poisoned his gum. I
must relay this news to Frightful ... It could mean yet another victory for the
New Republic Animal Intelligence Division!"
Varanus Templar
Frightful took to full flight. This latest
information from Mittens was brilliant. The mind‑control
device implanted in his brain which he directly controlled. He swept
round the palace one last time and set off into the sunset.
Down in the practice yard Omega was
drilling himself. He thought best with a lightsaber in his hand. His thoughts
were directed to the problem of lightsaber crystals being pulled out of place
by the Force. He was concentrating so hard that he did not notice the Beliblian falcon fly overhead. His thoughts were suddenly
and rudely interrupted by a large, rather sticky bird dropping. "That's
it. Now I'm really pissed!"
Omega looked up to see Frightful flying away in the distance. At last Omega had
definite target, he summoned the Force. Omega felt the power flow through as
Force Lightening coalesced at his finger‑tips.
High above Frightful lazily glided
along on currents of air. All of a sudden a flash of light preceded a massive
bolt of lightning as it slammed into it's tail
feathers. Beliblian Falcons like being vaporized as
much as the next invertebrate. With Frightful destroyed his control of Mittens
ended.
Mittens slowly licked himself then set off to find his owner, he was hungry.
Varanus
Templar followed Vynd trough the Southeast wing at a
distance, out of respect (and because D1 was incessantly mumbling to himself
about shampoo). They both suddenly turned the corner to walk straight into Xar,
Mathis and a rather annoyed looking Omega. The trio let out a combined gasp the
two latter in surprise the former in anger. "What in the Core are you
doing here? I thought I gave you an assignment?" asked the Grand Master. Vynd gave them the account of his life for the past two
weeks while though omitting the facts about Mittens and Frightful. At the end
of it Xar said, "Good work, but what happened to Osiris?”
“I don’t know. I guess he took the ship and left
without me.”
“Hmm,” Xar mused. He turned to Varanus.
“Have I not seen you before?"
"Y‑Yes sir, I clean the
toilets"
"Ah, now I remember. Thank you,
I have not seen the toilets so clean in ages."
"Why thank you Grand Master, When you think of poop think of
Things would have got very
embarrassing had not Xar sensed another being close by. "Mittens?
It is Mittens?!! Quick everybody follow me. The group of five ran over to a
nearby sewer grating. Peering down using his Force enhanced sight Xar clearly
saw Mittens lying down on some flotsam. "How are we going to get him up?”
“Somebody is going to have to go
down there and get him" said Mathis.
"Yeah but who?" replied Vynd.
"Well..." said Omega with
a smile on his face "...when you think of poo..."
All eyes turned to Varanus as he tried to get a better view of Mittens.
"No.
(15 seconds later)
"Man, this place stinks!" exclaimed
Varanus As he waded over to Mittens. Just as he was
about to pick him up Xar shouted. "Wait! Do you have any cat food?"
"Cat food?, why?"
Replied the unsuspecting Novice as he reached to pick up Mittens. "Too
late!" cried Mathis "Shall I call the medical staff?"
"You'd had better,"
laughed Omega.
"Well since you are enjoying
yourself so much, go down and help him," said Xar vindictively. "Now!"
A few days later Mathis was
presenting his report in the Grand Master's chambers. "The body of an
Apprentice was close by, horribly scratched and bitten.”
"Hmm.
Why was he down there so near Mittens? It does not make sense. By the way how is Omega and the Apprentice doing?"
"All right, Omega's almost healed but the
Apprentice is still a long way of from recovering."
"Thank you that is all" replied Xar.
Mathis left the room and Xar turned round to see Mittens on the window staring
intently at him. The mind control device had been recovered from Mittens, tests
had shown that it is was from the
Xar looked out over the city as the
fog from the river rolled in and the city settled in for the night.