"Which Jedi!?" Windu stood up in a mild panic, his eyes wide as his nostrils flared in minute anger; he was doing a good job of holding back his emotions.
The rest of the council wasn't any better, their expressions all frozen in various states of duress and concern. Harry and Sirius were utterly uncaring however, both of them were eager to return home and this meeting was delaying them significantly. Licking the inside of my lips a little I waited for the Jedi to calm down, which took longer than you'd think.
Once they were quiet, in wait of my answer, I exhaled. "I do not know her name or her species but she had diamond-like tattoos on her face or marking of some kind... I could feel her disgust through the force as if it were an oil stain upon a stagnant pool of water."
Yoda tapped his cane on the floor, bringing the councillor's attentions to himself. "Of importance this is, immediately must someone be sent. Hmmmrgh, Obi Wan and Windu, go they shall, to capture before she falls..." I coughed into his speech, everyone's gaze drifting to me.
"I will go as well. The meeting has already run for twenty minutes and we have just barely arrived... We could use this time to get fed and rest whilst you deal with some of the issues I have brought forth..." Yoda nodded solemnly, his hazel irises conveying the true depth of his lassitude.
"Given food and drink shall be. Many thanks must I give, a great debt you have settled upon our shoulders for such information... Request anything, you can, grant it we shall." I smiled towards the little green alien Jedi, trying my best to convey cordiality.
"Food and water will be more than enough for the short term... Now, Obi Wan, Windu, if we may? I'd like to confront this Dark Jedi for myself and see what her motivations are." The two Jedi nodded, the former of the two with a hint of reluctance. It seemed he knew which Jedi i was speaking about.
Blinking away my concentration on the Jedi I looked to Sirius and Harry. "You two, feel free to go. I know you have problems on your home world and that you are definitely home sick." Harry shifted on the balls of his feet, looking at me with a deep gratitude.
"Thank you Nexus... For everything, I'll meet you there." Harry intoned seriously before grabbing his godfather's shoulder and pulling him towards the turbolift. Obi Wan and Windu followed alongside us as we departed towards the lifts.
"Sirius, would you mind remaining here for a few hours so I can head back to my world and grab a device that would allow me to come back here in future?"
"Sure Elsa. They all think i'm dead anyway, let'em sit and spin for a bit..." Each of us spun around to face the doorway, the two Jedi Masters slipping inside the lift as the doors closed. I smirked at the dog's words, my mind working on the problem of connecting a Star Gate from this universe to my own.
~~~
Several minutes later I stepped out of the turbolift with Obi Wan and Mace Windu, Harry having already teleported back to his home world after breaking off towards the toilets, on the previous level of the temple. Sirius on the other hand had been handed off to Jocasta Nu in the archives.
Obi Wan swiftly swooped down the hallway leading to the turbolift, his pace slightly frantic whilst also oddly calm. The other Jedi Master just began a sedate walk down that some path, his lightsaber lightly rattling against his right thigh as the late afternoon light of Coruscant drifted in from the stained windows.
I followed in the latter's example and took my time in feeling out every presence on this floor of the temple. There were thousands to sift through and the most obvious was the one that clung to the edges of my sixth sense as if they were unignited napalm. Beyond the most obvious aura however, there were several dozen that had an unsettling emotional depth to them... They felt like people who had forced themselves to be Jedi despite the sheer immensity of their feelings.
Shaking my head of the constant sensation I watched as Obi Wan stopped in front of a very specific doorway, the entry panel glowing a bright blue onto the man's face as he interacted with it. The Jedi who was being corrupted was definitely behind that door.
"I will greet her first if it does not bother either of you...?" I stayed silent in light of his question whilst Windu waved him forward.
With a deep intake of breath he tapped the panel, the sliding door slinking into the wall with a crisp mechanical pop. Immediately he placed a thin smile upon his face, stepping forwards with his hands clasped behind his back.
"Ah Barriss, I am sorry for intruding but I had something urgent to speak to you about." The rest of the conversation slipped past both of us as the door closed behind the Jedi Master, their voices turning into a dull murmuring that matched humming more than words.
Eventually the humming increased in volume, as if someone was yelling. I looked to Windu, watching the man narrow his eyes and grasp his lightsaber in his right hand, his thumb resting atop the ignition button as if he were waiting for a cue from Obi Wan. I followed in his footsteps but with my control over matter.
My mind expanded beyond my physical senses and speared through several hundred thousand layers of latticed micro-structure that made the walls and flooring. Humming turned into vibrations and energy patterns that quickly and promptly became more understandable as I punctured up to the final layer of matter on the floor; I could now listen to what was being said inside.
"This is preposterous!" Barriss yelled towards Obi Wan who looked far more cautious than before, his clasped hands drifting slightly further towards his sheathed lightsaber.
"I assure you Barriss, you will be treated with the utmost respect... All you need do is come with us to the med-bay. From there we can determine if our information is incorrect or correct and we can offer you help." The 'Negotiator' was certainly using all of his disarming charm in speaking with her, I noted.
"So someone feels horrible from losing someone and now they have to be taken to be scanned, prodded and poked to ensure they are not turning to the dark side!?" Obi Wan winced at the volume but raised his hands before him, as if begging her to calm down.
"It is just a check to ensure that you are not suffering from the prolonged exposure to death. We fight alongside clones and feeling their death in the force can be dangerously impactful to us... We are merely concerned for you Barriss..." The woman was almost scowling at him at this point.
"No. I will not go to be tested." She stated plainly.
The Jedi Master sighed in deep-rooted exhaustion, his hands dropping to his sides. I withdrew from my power in a second and hurriedly walked up to the doorway, pressing the button on the panel. I could feel Windu following behind me, his lightsaber blade snapping into existence with a sharp hiss of plasma.
A mechanical pop followed soon after as the door opened, Obi Wan having already drawn his lightsaber into his hand as Barriss ignited her bright crimson blade.
"Now I see! Because I will not conform to your system, to your commands, you will now force me to do your bidding as if I am but a slave!!!" She screeched out in anger, her eyes flashing orange and red every couple of seconds.
If before she was unignited napalm, she was now more akin to a Molotov Cocktail with the cloth on fire. She was so close to being subsumed by the Dark Side it was as if I were watching someone clasp onto the edges of a cliff whilst looking down, yearning for the release of the drop.
Stepping forwards I pulled Obi Wan out of the way, shifting him to the side of the room and confronting her fully.
"So you wish to unleash your emotions do you?"
Her expression turned frustrated, almost confused in a way. It was obvious she didn't know me, nor did she know why I was here.
"Who are you!? Why are you here!?" Her voice came strangled, confused, annoyed, angered, frustrated... All the emotions that the sentient component of the Dark Side would feed to the weak-minded in order to sway them and ultimately puppeteer them forwards along a set path... Enslaving them within their own emotions and minds.
"I, am Darth Nexus. Dark Lord of the True Sith!" My proud proclamation jolted her from her staggering amount of emotions. She stood there with her mouth agape and her now solid green-blue eyes staring me down.
"And you, are not suited to be a Jedi at all..." Her mouth instantly closed and indignation quickly traversed through her neck and up into her face.
I could feel the Jedi Masters staring at me in slight anger and, even more deeply, in concern. I continued my impromptu speech anyway...
"You feel your emotions too deeply. You are too connected to those around you and those you consider friend, ally and lover. My senses were telling me this about you from the moment I entered the Temple... Being a Jedi, for you, is akin to torture." Obi Wan's eyes widened massively and he looked positively shocked at the explanation. Windu felt annoyed in the force.
Barriss's face scrunched up in pain, her gaze whipping between Obi Wan, Windu and myself as if she were a cornered animal. "H-H, NO! I can be a Jedi, I swear... Don't abandon me!!!" She staggered back as her eyes flickered between red and blue, her hands grabbing towards her own forehead in panic.
"You could be a Jedi... If you were willing to torture yourself every day in order to fit in and supress your perfectly natural emotions..." My words must have struck somewhere inside of her because her eyes immediately returned to normal and she looked deeply into my eyes.
"The path of a True Sith may be open to you, but that is a decision you must make on your own. I will not recruit you without you making the choice... For that, in the end, is what being a Sith is about... Choice..." I whipped my hand out, her blade slapping into my hand with a meaty thud.
In an instant I deactivated her lightsaber and threw it onto her slightly messed bed. "Come visit me if you wish to learn how to embrace and control your emotions... If not, I wish you luck in whatever choice you make." I immediately turned and left the room, my trench coat whipping around me with my movements.
The sensation of the Jedi Masters' eyes on me did not fade until I had entered the turbolift and set off towards the Jedi Archives.
~~~
Stepping into the Archive I finally allowed my mind to relax. Barriss, in the material I had read up on the clone wars, was an unfortunate soul that absolutely hated experiencing the death of her clones and of other Jedi and had suffered more than most in the setting knew.
She was barely past 18 years of age and had already watched Jedi die, clones be incinerated and flesh literally slough off of her battle-made friends. The force amplified the effect of these incidents and allowed her to feel what they felt as they died before her... It was a horror story unto itself and had instantly made me feel sorry for her after I had first read about her.
Hopefully she would come and meet with me and I could offer her the same control I had over the force and perhaps a new universe to explore... It helped that she was fairly attractive as well... A cough sounded from one of the nearby Jedi as I walked through the massive library.
Speaking of the Archive... It was massive! There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of rows of bookshelves that spanned upward into the roof and in some sections across it. A large hall perforated the middle of the greater library, allowing for hundreds of stations and benches to be spread across the 'intersection'.
Jedi of all ages were present. From a group of younglings who were joking and laughing with one another as they watched a documentary on fauna to a small cloister of Jedi Knights who were cross referencing information for whatever mission or enterprise they were set upon, the archive was busy. In the distance I could even spot the roguish grin of Sirius and the barely visible annoyance of the head librarian.
Naturally I ignored Sirius for now and sat down at a random station that had no one around it.
'Okay, firstly I need to download all of the information from the general archive...' I quickly went through the tutorial of the station and loaded the search interface. From there I siphoned some of the energy from the electricity flowing through the room and created a single USB stick that had a Yottabyte's worth of storage capacity.
10-100 Exabytes was equal to the storage capacity of the most advanced cloud storage system on Earth. A Yottabyte was equal to 1,000,000 Exabytes and this would be more than enough to copy the entire database onto... And that's what I did for the next hour or two. I interfaced with the archive directly through my technopathy and scrupulously copied everything onto the USB.
From Books, Holographic recordings, Holographic TV shows, Historical documents, Medical data, Force research, Star charts, Species databases, Temple records, Planetary surveys, Security footage, Jedi mission reports, Continuous sensor logs, Astronomical observations, High-resolution archaeological scans, Millions of Jedi personal logs, Force-sensitive biological research, Engineering schematics, Linguistic databases, Hyperlane maps, Planetary coordinates, Medical knowledge from thousands of civilizations, Xenobiology, Ancient Rakatan and Infinite Empire records (Those that the Jedi have), Sith history and Every Scientific Breakthrough for the last 100,000 years or more... Everything was mine now.
I had designs for old ships, new ships, lightsabers, gravity-tech... You name it. And this was just the stuff that wasn't locked behind a door physically. Technopathy was so busted and I loved it... Even the stuff they had locked behind a pass code was useless when the entire computational power of a human mind was put behind cracking it.
Now I just needed the Holocrons below the archive. Fortunately that was simple for me, since I could extend my matter manipulation downwards until I encounter a Holocron and slowly work from there, physically copying them and mentally transferring the information to a singular Holocron which I will most likely refer to as the 'Master' Holocron.
'Great! Now I just need to get the Holocron stuff done... Pop over to Earth and work on the problem of the Stargate with Apollo and then I have my anchor to this universe, can let Sirius go back to his original world and then join the others on the mission!' I did a mental 'Huzzah' before closing my eyes and faking meditation...
Those Holocrons weren't going to scan themselves!
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