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Shikako was a Star Wars fan. The first thing she thought when she saw the Sword of the Thunder God was "Lightsaber." She had worked with Kankurou to get the original trilogy turned into movies (with Kankurou bitching about not being able make them into puppet plays the entire time, and maybe published copies of a few of the Jedi Apprentice books), and the first thing she did when she got a breathing mask from Ame was to fiddle with it until it sounded like Darth Vader's mask from Star Wars.
Of course, she wasn't just a Star Wars fan. Sometimes she got bored and while that honestly wasn't as terrifying as most of her friends made it out to be, she did have a tendency to tinker with things like her mask. For example, at some point she made it so that the mask would function even in a vacuum. Then for a prank she painted it black with a white skull pattern and glowing yellow eyes. (It didn't look like Vader because at that point everyone knew he was fictional, which would have messed up the prank.)
Then she fought that jackass Sasori, who put poison dust everywhere, so now one of the iconic images of the Shikabane-hime is her walking out of a cloud of destruction, wearing that mask - again, a skull mask with glowing yellow eyes - and her trench coat billowing behind her.
Of course, then things got busy, so she never had the chance to fix it so that it wouldn't look like she had a death fetish. She still had no idea where that photograph came from. On the plus side, at least it was yellow eyes rather than her initial instinct to go with red eyes.
Yeah, that was grasping at straws.
In any case, she was about to toss the thing into an unstable spatial distortion - burning was too good for it and she had the replacement ready and everything - when she got sent on an inexplicable bullshit mission, as in a mission to investigate inexplicable bullshit, not that the mission itself was bullshit. That's seriously what the paperwork said.
"Well, I can't argue about the accuracy of the mission assignment," Tenten said. "Just the professionalism."
"Strangely, I have the urge to poke it with a stick," Shino said.
It was a glowing circle about ten meters in diameter hanging in the air that you could see stars through. Perfectly flat, when viewed from the side with one eye closed, you couldn't even see it was there.
"Sasuke?" Shikako asked.
Sasuke turned off his Sharingan. "I've got nothing. I don't see any chakra involved."
At that point Kotetsu jogged up.
"Random Chunin Number Two, report," barked Sasuke.
Kotetsu rolled his eyes. "I have a name, you know."
"Sorry, Izumo."
Kotetsu sighed. Shikako had no idea what those two had done to irritate Sasuke, but it was kind of fun watching the fallout. Though she did worry a little about how much influence Kakashi apparently had on their personalities. "So the witnesses have poked the damn things with a stick and thrown rocks into it. It seems to work like a portal into deep space. A stick doesn't come out the other side and they can see the rocks keep going."
"Why doesn't the air go out?" Tenten asked.
"And," Kotetsu continued. "Er, one of the local kids stuck his head in and it wasn't pretty. They pulled him back out but it's really like there's no air on the other side."
"Really? That's horrible," Shikako said.
Kotetsu inched backwards. "Then why do you sound so happy?" He looked confused as Tenten, Sasuke and Shino started taking out gloves. "Did I miss something?"
"Could you let your paranoid preparations stay paranoid preparations for once?" Sasuke complained.
Shikako smirked. "Is that your way of admitting that I was right and that having equipment rated for a hard vacuum would be useful?"
Kotetsu spun around. "Wait, you all have this stuff?"
"We have a teammate who thinks smoke bombs laced with itching powder are a legitimate tactic in spars," Sasuke explained. He gestured to Tenten and Shino. "I don't know what their excuse is."
Tenten shrugged. "Last time I had to sit out the fight with Sasori because I didn't have anything that could handle his poison death clouds. I mean maybe vacuum rated is overkill, but Sasori's death clouds were nasty stuff."
"Oh." Kotetsu looked around. "Well, I'm feeling under-equipped now."
Shikako sighed and took out her extra breathing mask. "Here. Have my spare mask." She seriously considered giving him the skull mask, but she hadn't actually used the new one yet, so it'd be more sanitary this way.
"Isn't this just a filter mask?"
"Seals," Sasuke said, which was apparently enough explanation for Kotetsu.
"Now this will let you breathe, but it won't protect the rest of you from the vacuum itself. Hopefully it should give you enough time to get back through the circle if you fall through."
"Sure, but, uh, I think I'll just stay far away from the circle of doom."
Shikako sighed and put on her own vacuum equipment. The seals to make cloth airtight and to hold under pressure were surprisingly simple. Slightly more complicated were the seals to make it so that those seals didn't broadcast chakra like a beacon, but they had the side effect of making it infinitely easier to conceal your chakra. The big problem was that it wasn't very comfortable unless you spent the chakra to regulate your temperature. It was still better than dealing with poison clouds the hard way - or that one guy who had the clouds of flesh eating bacteria.
(It didn't protect against the Sunset of Youth. Not that Shikako expected it to, but one day they'd find something that would.)
"Why would you go on a mission to investigate weird bullshit if you aren't prepared for anything?" Sasuke asked, his voice muffled by his mask. He pulled on a hood, that with seals would fasten against his mask and become air tight. It was so much easier than the NASA stuff.
Kotetsu shrugged. "I was prepared for normal weird bullshit, not extra weird bullshit."
"You sweet, innocent child," Shino intoned. He looked like a robot out of a sci-fi movie. Instead of a mask he had a full helmet with a visor. Something about the Kikaichu allegedly made it difficult for the seals to make the hood air tight. Shikako suspected that he just liked the look.
Kotetsu looked offended, which made sense since he was actually the oldest one here.
Sasuke patted Kotetsu on the back. "And this is why you haven't made jounin."
Kotetsu scowled. "I don't want to be a jounin. Then I'd be in danger of being in charge of a situation like this."
While this was going on, Shikako had made a quick calculation. "Alright, if it is a spatial distortion, it should only be conditionally stable. If we apply another spatial distortion to the area, it should collapse this one."
Sasuke shook his head. "And of course your first instinct is to blow it up."
Shikako shrugged. "It's already harmed one person. Personally, I'm a bit worried that whatever is keeping the atmosphere on this side will stop working, and, you know, vent all of our oxygen into space. Any way I look at it, that has to be the more fragile, or at least it's the more energy intensive of the effects."
"I rather like having a breathable atmosphere," Shino volunteered.
"Same," Tenten added. Her own mask drew on samurai armor for appearance, so she looked a lot like samurai Darth Vader fanart in black polished metal. It wasn't her usual style, but existed purely to poke fun at Shikako. (That wasn't supposition; Tenten admitted it. Her friends may all be complete and utter assholes sometimes, but at least they were honest about it.)
"We'll take some additional precautions. Dome it up with stone… I'm thinking a meter thick. Reinforce that with durability and air tight seals."
"Wouldn't that be enough by itself?" Kotetsu asked.
Shikako shook her head. "Then it might fail a year later, a decade later when no one is watching. Kicking problems down the line is just bad policy. Controlled destruction is the way to go."
Sasuke rolled his eyes. He didn't say anything, but she was positive that he was thinking about how he missed that she could be described as a sabotage specialist.
"Either way, dome first and we'll send a message back home and see what they think."
They might have gone slightly overboard with the dome, but, as mentioned, they all liked having a breathable atmosphere. Plus the decision makers in Konoha had taken their sweet time getting back to them on if they should try controlled destruction or not. The dome ended up being closer to five meters thick. The first meter was what Shikako originally wanted. The second meter was the rest of the team being paranoid about safety margins. The remaining three meters were added later out of boredom.
After two weeks being on site, Shino had resorted to putting decorative carvings on the outside of the dome while Sasuke was doing things to reinforce the bedrock the dome was sitting on. Tenten, Shikako and Kotetsu were on the inside. Tenten was putting yet another layer of reinforcing seals on the inner walls while Shikako was adding monitoring seals so that if they did try destroying the portal they could see if it was really gone. (It said something about their faith in Shikako's ability to destroy something if she felt like it that it took two weeks for anyone to suggest those.) Kotetsu had drawn the short straw and got to stare into space for a while.
"Guys, run!"
Shikako and Tenten didn't think about it, they rushed to the tunnel they left in the dome. Basically, if the guy you left watching a bomb said run, you ran.
A moment after he said run, Shikako felt like she was being pulled backwards. In retrospect, spending an extended period of time hanging around a portal to space when you're worried about it suddenly sucking all the air out of the atmosphere was a bad idea.
Shikako quickly came to a few conclusions. One, there wasn't enough time for all of them to get out. Two, since whatever was keeping the atmosphere out had failed, there wasn't actually any downside to trying to destabilize the portal right away. Three, the safest place to be when her spatial distortion seal was triggered would be on the other side of the portal. (In shadow state she could probably survive local space being warped to the point that her insides were on her outside, but that wasn't the case for the others.)
So in quick succession, she shifted the stone of the ground to push Kotetsu into the tunnel and seal the tunnel behind him, activated the spatial distortion seal, which was thankfully on a delay, and grabbed Tenten to go through the portal. They were both prepared for a hard vacuum, so of course the image in the portal shifted to the inside of a building right before they passed through it.
"You know, master, just once I'd like to go into an abandoned temple and not have some sort of trap activate!" Anakin shouted.
"And whose fault is that!?" Obi-Wan shouted in return as he moved further into the circular room, if you could call an open area surrounded by giant claw-like spires to be a room. He also checked that his recording was running, because with their luck this was going to be another one of those puzzle rooms.
Long, unfortunate experience taught him that the safest place to be when an abandoned temple started shaking was midway between the center of the largest open place you could find and a wall. The walls were all too likely to be trapped, either deliberately or just having decorations falling down, a truly bizarre number of which would be on fire. The center was also the most likely place for the floor to give away, usually due to a death trap of some sort but occasionally due to questionable architectural choices. It was especially tempting to move towards the center of the room seeing as the room was at the top of a pillar that had quite a steep drop if they fell off the sides. (So obviously, the Sith who built it declined to add guardrails to the bridges that led to this platform.)
"Not mine!"
Any rebuttal Obi-Wan might have said was preempted by a circle of darkness appearing in the center of the room. Two humanoid figures flung themselves out of the circle, turning in the air and landing on their feet.
"Well that seems needlessly dramatic," Anakin muttered as the circle disappeared.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Anakin Skywalker. Though, to be fair, the two people seemed like the needlessly dramatic type. Neither were showing a scrap of skin, with the one facing away from him wearing a kind of billowing cloak that likely blew dramatically with the wind. Only one was facing towards them, the other facing away, but the one whose face he could see - and he used that phrase loosely - was wearing a kind of black metal face mask. He supposed it wasn't that different from some of the Mandalorian helmets he had seen over the years (the traditional T visor wasn't actually universal), but it seemed subtly sinister.
Then the second figure turned and there was nothing subtle about the sinisterness there. Her mask was painted with a white skull and while there were lenses covering her eyes, they did nothing to hide the yellow glow.
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
Even her breathing was sinister!
"Sith!" Anakin screamed as he leapt into battle.
"Anakin, wai-"
The woman in the skull mask simply side stepped, grabbed Anakin's leading wrist and twisted until Anakin dropped his lightsaber. This was all done with an ease that suggested she was used to fighting opponents much faster than Anakin. It was worrisome since that was Anakin's prosthetic arm, which by rights shouldn't have the vulnerabilities that would make that a practical disarming move.
Anakin, however, wasn't out of the fight and used the Force to grab onto his lightsaber. The woman's body language had the confused exasperation of someone who had found out that someone had strapped a knife to a dumb cleaning droid and the darn thing kept trying to clean where she was standing.
As Anakin's lightsaber reached his off hand, the woman touched his head and the Force screamed - not in warning, but agony, as if whatever she did tore at the Force itself. Anakin collapsed and the woman let him fall to the ground. At least he still seemed to be breathing.
The woman in the skull mask said something in a language Obi-Wan didn't recognize. Her emotions came across unusually clearly in the Force. If he had to guess, he would say she was saying something like "What was that about?"
The metal masked woman replied in what sounded like the same language along with a gesture at the skull woman. There was a note of amusement in her emotions, so Obi-Wan assumed she was saying something like "Well, you do look like a Sith Lord."
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
The skull masked woman replied with a few syllables and a sense of prim indignation. So maybe "How uncivilized?" If so, this seemed like a good sign that violence wasn't necessary.
"Excuse me," Obi-Wan called. Both women turned to face him and the attention made him slightly more sympathetic to Anakin jumping the gun like that. Only slightly, because as alarming as their appearance was, they had only acted in self defense so far and weren't in the uniform of any organization the Republic was at war with.
…and looking at the skull mask, Obi-Wan could now tell that the yellow glow was coming from some kind of light, not the eyes. How she could even see like that confused him, but she wasn't necessarily human despite being mostly human shaped.
The metal masked woman said something to him. Did neither of them speak Basic?
Then the skull masked woman said something to the other woman, which didn't have much emotional content at all. The metal masked woman's response, however, was very clear, though that might just be familiarity. It basically came across as "If this is your fault, I'm going to strangle you."
"Are you the one who summoned us, Jedi?" asked the skull woman, which caused the other woman to release a feeling of "What the hell?" into the Force. Her body language didn't betray that at all, though.
"Summoned?" Obi-Wan tried.
"Created a portal through space-time that appeared and then sucked us in?" Accompanying that was a distinct note of annoyance that he somehow got the idea that she was annoyed at saying the word "sucked" because what had actually happened was atmospheric pressure blowing them in, but saying that would cause a pointless digression due to language conventions.
Something was very peculiar about how this woman interacted with the Force, because he should not be getting anything that clear from her.
"No, but the temple did activate when we arrived. Could you say what you did to my padawan?"
The woman stepped away from Anakin and looked around. "Knockout technique. I've never used that technique on a Jedi before, but an average civilian male about his size would be unconscious for about an hour and wake up with a mild headache," she said absently.
Obi-Wan winced as he got an impression of charts and graphs. He was starting to believe that her species used the Force as a secondary channel for communication. Whatever the reason, the effect was making it harder for Obi-Wan to think the more she talked.
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
Or perhaps his thinking had been affected this entire time. That wasn't the sound of breathing; that was the sound of life support equipment. It could be that they had very practical reasons for not showing any skin. There were any number of species that couldn't breathe in an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere.
"Is this the Trayus Academy?"
Obi-Wan wobbled slightly as a jerky barrage of images pressed on his brain: a small army attacking someone in rooms and corridors that looked similar to this temple - all of them being cut down with a lightsaber and a bewildering array of Force techniques. "We weren't told the name. Just an unknown structure, probably of Sith origin, possibly a temple."
The woman looked past one of the jutting claw-like spires. "It certainly looks like the Trayus Academy." She turned back to Obi-Wan. "Which is a problem, unless time travel is involved, because it was destroyed about… four thousand years ago?"
"You're familiar with it?" Obi-Wan said as he walked forward to where Anakin was lying. As he moved, the other woman walked backwards, keeping her distance.
"The architecture is very distinctive. Your friend is lying just about where Darth Traya died."
Obi-Wan fell to one knee when he got hit by an image of an old woman in black robes getting her hand cut off, then another of her wielding three lightsabers at once. Now he wasn't sure if it was the way these two interacted with the Force or just this place. "Yes, distinctive." He decided that the place a Sith Lord died was not a good place to leave Anakin, and began to drag him to the side. In the process he was able to verify that Anakin was just unconscious.
The two women began talking. Thankfully when directed at each other, the Force impressions settled back to being just emotions, the predominant one being what he would call "You have got to be kidding me" followed closely by "You can't make this stuff up." They weren't very Sithly emotions at least.
In the meantime, Obi-Wan took out his pad and tried to see if it had any information on something called the Trayus Academy or Darth Traya. He briefly considered calling Rex to evacuate Anakin, but discarded that idea. The men would likely overreact and this woman had manhandled Anakin like he was an unruly kitten. He didn't find anything on a Trayus Academy, which made sense if it had been destroyed four millennia ago. Besides which, Obi-Wan wasn't even sure if he was spelling it correctly.
However, Darth Traya was listed. On the off chance they encountered any more Sith, they were supplied a list of historical Sith Lords. It was in hope that the name matching with a historical Sith Lord might provide information. Though the only Darth Traya in the approximate time period had only minimal information: just that she was a Sith Lord and a member of the Sith Triumvirate, whatever that was. Well, presumably, it was a trio of Sith, but that was hardly useful information by itself.
The two women stopped their conversation. The one in the metal mask took out what looked like an ancient writing brush out of nowhere, which caused the Force the squeal.
The skull masked one approached him. "Tenten is about to start our first attempt to get home. With the way you react to our techniques, you may want to be a bit further away than this."
Obi-Wan rubbed the side of his head. "What is causing that?"
She tilted her head to the side. "You Jedi basically marinate your brains in the natural energy field you call the Force, right?"
Obi-Wan flinched at the mental image of a brain in a saucepan, and he wasn't even sure if he was the one who had it. "I wouldn't put it that way."
"Well, I wouldn't recommend visiting my home planet. People who connect to natural energy there - without extensive preparation - tend to turn into stone." Obi-Wan got the image of an alien figure halfway between a Karkarodon and a Gungan turning into stone. "I don't have a better explanation for you, but I assume we evolved to be quite different from species you might be more familiar with, and interact with what you call the Force quite differently. Speaking of planets, which one is this?"
"Saleucami."
"Never heard of it," she said cheerfully, which sounded like an odd thing to be happy about.
"Is that good?"
"Well, that means it's not Malachor V. Or really any planet in that system." The words were accompanied by an image of a planet that seemed to be literally falling apart with lightning crackling all over the surface. "Actually, I'd be happier not being in the same sector as the planet where a Sith Lord plotted the destruction of the Force itself."
"Malachor," he whispered.
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
The ominous sound of her life support punctuated the word. Even four thousand years later people used the name of the planet as a curse. Then more loudly he said, "I hope that happens to be unrelated to our previous discussion."
Though he couldn't see the woman's eyes through the yellow light, he felt a judgemental stare. "Trayus Academy was on Malachor V. It's where Darth Revan took captured Jedi to break to the Dark Side. It's where Darth Traya trained the other two members of the Sith Triumvirate: Darth Nihilus and Darth Sion, lords of betrayal, hunger and pain. It's the planet that Meetra Surik destroyed. Twice."
Obi-Wan was going to have nightmares about the images that bombarded his brain from those statements. While it would add some variety to his nightmares, he didn't think he was going to be grateful for that.
"Didn't Revan destroy Malachor?"
"That's-" She sighed. "I suppose it has been four thousand years. Very long story short: three people could be said to have destroyed Malachor V the first time: Bao-Dur, who created the mass shadow device and pressed the button; Meetra Surik, who gave the order; and Revan, who was their commanding officer at the time."
Obi-Wan got the image of a human woman on the bridge of a ship, nodding to a Zabrak, followed by the death screams of an entire planet.
"The second time Bao-Dur and The Exile destroyed Malachor, Revan wasn't even in the known galaxy."
As the image of the ruined planet being destroyed again hit his mind, Obi-Wan muttered, "Why twice?"
"Because the first time left a wound in the Force. You don't destroy all the multicellular life on a planet without consequences." She tapped the side of her head. "Imagine millions of voices crying out. Just once it's not too bad- Actually, it's horrible, but it's still far worse for those voices to be anchored to the remains of the planet and screaming for close to a decade until the remains were also destroyed."
"Oh. How… horrible."
"Such eloquence. I can see your fame as The Negotiator is honestly earned," she said dryly. "Seriously, if just being near us is giving you this kind of trouble, you do not want to be nearby when Tenten activates her seal. I'd help you carry Skywalker out but I'd be a bit worried that your men would shoot first if they saw us."
That was accompanied by an image of a group of clone troopers shooting Aayla Secura in the back.
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
"What was that!?"
"Huh. You saw that? That was Order 66, when Darth Sidious uses the chips embedded in the brains of the clones to turn them against the Jedi."
"What?!"
She sighed. "Clones. Control chips in brains. Override orders. Having what you thought were your loyal men betray you just as it seems that you achieved victory is a very Banite thing to do-" Obi-Wan saw Ki-Adi-Mundi and Plo Koon fall. "-but it would only serve to kill Jedi, not the idea of Jedi."
"Kill the idea of the Jedi?" Obi-Wan asked as he reached down to lift Anakin up.
"General Kenobi, all I would have to do to destroy the Jedi Order within three generations is to publish a completely factual account of your time as an initiate and padawan. Given your fame from the war it would be widely read and no one would trust the Jedi with a child ever again."
Obi-Wan winced. He wasn't sure if that was due to the memories from Bandomeer and Melida/Daan or if it was from the implications of her statement. He wasn't sure she was right, but at the same time, he wasn't sure she was wrong either. "My time as a padawan was hardly typical."
"In the light of the number of padawan casualties in this war, it wouldn't matter. That's not even getting into the various military failures, the whole slave army thing, all the fallen Jedi running around…. If he wasn't so murderously impatient, Sidious could just sit back and let popular opinion destroy the Jedi. Instead he's going to do something that can very publicly be traced back to him, and when his Galactic Empire becomes unpopular, it will make people remember the Jedi as martyrs and not as child abusing slavers." This time the image was of a dark robed figure addressing the Senate, his face hidden by his hood.
"We aren't child abusing slavers," Obi-Wan responded reflexively.
"I'm afraid that the truth doesn't matter in this case, just the public perception of the truth, and the optics on your situation aren't good, Master Kenobi. Be thankful I'm not out to destroy the Jedi Order. If I do so it will be by accident."
"By accident."
She shrugged. "I've destroyed a lot of things by accident. Never a religious organization, but I'm sure my friends would say it was just a matter of time."
Obi-Wan was not comforted by the feeling of agreement that he was receiving from the Force.
"Look on the bright side! Sidious lacks the paternal instincts necessary to regard this as a crippling line of attack. He can fake it-"
Obi-Wan saw an image of a man talking with Anakin. "Chancellor Palpatine?"
"Huh. I really have to figure out what's causing that before I talk with any other Jedi."
"You knew the Chancellor was a Sith and you weren't going to say anything?"
"You didn't believe it the last time you were told a Sith was in the Senate."
Obi-Wan winced as the image of his confrontation with Count Dooku pounded into his head.
"Yeah, if just talking to me is causing you these problems, you really should get you and your friend out of here." She looked over her shoulder at where her friend was working. "I'd say you have about five minutes to get as far away as possible." She started muttering to herself, and based on the images that pounded their way into Obi-Wan's head, she was trying to figure out what was causing her thoughts to be broadcast so clearly into the Force. Though mixed into sensible images of things like non-human circulatory systems were odd things like rocks in water.
Swinging Anakin onto his shoulder, which was not as easy as it used to be, Obi-Wan started to move out of this altar area, when the woman called out to him, "Say hi to Luke and Leia for me!"
He was hit by an image of a young blond man and a brunette woman standing next to each other in a forest. "Who?"
*Kuuuuuuh Kerrr*
"Skywalker's future children!"
No, he wasn't touching that at the moment. Turning, Obi-Wan made a good pace out of the temple. He was pretty sure that he didn't get the full five minutes, though. He didn't even make it out of the building.
It was just as well. He really didn't need the men to see him collapsing to his knees when the sensation of the Force being shredded and sucked down a pipe hit him.
"...and then we landed in Star Wars," Tenten said flatly.
"...Star Wars you say." Kakashi didn't sound disbelieving or disappointed. If anything, he sounded as if, with all the ways that the Team Seven Curse could manifest, they had gotten off lightly, but he still wasn't looking forward to the paperwork. He turned to the side to look at Tenzou, who was looking much less sanguine. How much was discomfort because of the mission and how much was discomfort because of being drafted into Kakashi's aide in the Hokage's office, Shikako wasn't sure about. "Where does this put the betting pool for 'Is Shikako a goddess?'"
"I'm not a goddess," Shikako muttered.
Tenzou shot Kakashi a "Is this really the important part?" look, but sighed and replied, "She could still be some kind of seer, so inconclusive."
"Hmm."
"Then we got attacked by Anakin Skywalker of all people, but Shikako put him down with a knockout tag. He had decent chuunin level skills, but I expected more out of the supposed Chosen One."
"He just attacked you out of nowhere?" Kakashi asked.
"She was wearing her Shikabane-hime mask."
"Which I really need to get around to destroying if it's going to get me into this kind of trouble."
Kakashi eye-smiled. "Don't worry, I have faith that you'd be able to get into just as much trouble without it."
Shikako scowled. "Anyway, I'm not sure that was a true example of his abilities. We have a weird effect on the Force. If I had to guess, the Force is just a much denser field of natural energy, and the way our seals were drawing on the natural energy caused eddies in the Force that were disorienting to the Jedi. It was definitely worse when we pulled things out of storage, but I think there was a certain baseline effect just from things like the vacuum protection seals. I don't know how to explain the fact that Kenobi clearly saw images whenever I talked."
"Obviously because as the goddess of their galaxy, your spoken word imposed itself on their reality," Kakashi explained.
Shikako's scowl deepened. "I was thinking of a more rational explanation like the way we circulate chakra in our bodies causes imprints in the Force."
Kakashi shrugged. "Sometimes the simplest explanations are best."
"How exactly is Shikako being a goddess the simple explanation?" Tenzou muttered.
"I know you don't actually think I'm a goddess, because if you did, you wouldn't needle me about it like this," Shikako growled.
"Excuse me, have you met this asshole?" Tenzou said, gesturing to Kakashi dramatically.
"I'm hurt, really," Kakashi said as he wiped away a fake tear.
"Anyway, Shikako somehow recognized the architecture of the place where we landed."
She had better. Due to that stupid save game bug, she had replayed that level of Knights of the Old Republic II something like a hundred times.
Tenten sighed. "So she briefed me quickly about what was going on and then, while Shikako distracted Kenobi, I put down my Flying Thunder God seal to get us home."
"Your version of the Flying Thunder God seal can cross dimensions?" Tenzou half stated and half asked.
Tenten sighed. "After Shikako broke my original version, yes. It takes ten square meters of space to lay out, but it works. Just not in combat."
"You asked," Shikako sang.
Tenten hung her head. "I know."
"Why did you need to distract Kenobi?" Kakashi asked.
"So he wouldn't see my shadow clone putting down an anchor seal outside."
Kakashi sat up from his slouch. "You can go back."
Tenten sighed. "Her idea."
Shikako shrugged. "We've got a lot of bored ninja with world peace being a thing. At least a few of them might want to try bounty hunting or mercenary work over there."
Tenzou groaned. "How is it that your solutions always create more problems?"
Tenten shook her head. "She just wants to go back to steal everything that's not nailed down."
Shikako crossed her arms. "Rude."
Kakashi eye-smiled again. "But accurate."
Tenten jerked her head at Shikako. "Wait 'til you hear what she said to distract him."
Kakashi sighed. "Did you break the brain of the only non asshole Jedi you created?"
"Hey, Plo Koon was cool!"
"But did you give him any speaking lines?" Tenten asked.
Tenzou scribbled something in a book. "I'm creating a new pool for whether or not she turned Kenobi into a paranoid mess that needs a night light to sleep."
"I'm sure it's not that bad," Shikako said.
Tenten sighed. "Now try saying that like you actually mean it."
"I do mean it. I even let him feel like he tricked the identity of Sidious out of me so he won't feel paranoid about just being handed the information."
"And in the process, probably convinced him we were the vanguard of an entirely different sect of Sith."
"I did what now?"
"-and the precedence is clear that we do not punish or condemn Jedi for visions of transgressions that occur in the future." Mace looked as if he wished he wanted to make an exception for this instance.
Next to him, Yoda didn't bother telling everyone that the future was always in motion, but they all heard it anyway.
Obi-Wan sighed as he got to the messy part of the debriefing, which was saying something after the arguments regarding Anakin's future children. "In any case, there is still more to report. I ran the recording by a protocol droid. Their language is a near match to one spoken on one Outer Rim planet that went extinct about three thousand years ago. Many of the grammatical constructs are radically different from Basic, so the translation is guesswork without further context. For example, it lacks definite or indefinite articles, so instances of 'a' or 'the' are conjectural. On the whole, I think it speaks for itself."
"We're in the Star Wars. That's Anakin Skywalker and that's Obi-Wan Kenobi."
"The Star Wars. Why do I go anywhere with you?"
"Because the deer would be upset if you avoided your sister-in-law."
"I'm starting to think I can live with that. When exactly?"
"Judging by Skywalker's hair, a bit after episode two. I'm not sure why he attacked us, though."
"Well, you do look like yourself."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, Corpse Princess."
Obi-Wan paused the playback. "By itself, my first inclination would be to assume a bad translation or a ceremonial title where the literal meaning has drifted with time. Possibly even a name that once meant something sinister but is now treated as just a name. However, she specifically referred to Sidious as a Banite, not just a Sith. Combined with the fact that her visions of the future were remarkably clear and not hampered by whatever is affecting the Jedi Order… I'm afraid that it's possible that another faction of Sith has emerged."
"Well, that would be inconvenient," Oppo said in a breathtaking display of understatement.
Obi-Wan resisted the urge to sigh. "It gets worse."
Mace was the one to say what was on everyone's minds. "Of course it does."
"While there were no usable records left, we did find remnants of the ritual used to summon the two outsiders. I'm hoping Madame Nu will say the droid's translation was wrong, but the Sith runes appear to say they were trying to summon a wound in the Force."
"Why would even a Sith seek to do that?" asked Adi.
"My working theory - and I sincerely hope that one of you will tell me that this is so outlandish that I must have hit my head - is that Dooku is trying to replicate the first destruction of Malachor V, creating a galactic scale geyser of dark side energy."
Mace looked like he wanted to swear again, but instead said, "Walk me through this."
"When trying to determine if the Corpse Princess was a Sith, I asked myself why a Sith would regard events such as Revan breaking Jedi to the Dark Side or training future Sith Lords to be reasons to avoid Malachor V. Then it struck me that it wouldn't be the individual events that were an issue for her, but that they were the steps necessary to produce a planet sized wound in the Force."
"Then wouldn't that be something she'd want?" asked Adi.
"The Corpse Princess clearly studied the subject of Malachor V extensively, and it's entirely possible that she had discovered a side effect of such a Force wound that would be unacceptable even for a Sith. It should be noted that despite the many atrocities committed by the Sith Empire of Darth Vitiate, not even he tried to replicate this." Obi-Wan shrugged. "Or it might simply be something that can only be effectively harnessed by one Sith at a time, which wouldn't be an issue for those following the Rule of Two, but would cause infighting for a larger order."
"I have a hard time believing that a Sith would spare Skywalker's life," pointed out Master Mundi.
Adi flinched, which was severe enough that it was clear even on the holo. "It makes sense if you consider that she was clearly trying to engineer a situation where the Order expelled Skywalker. He's already become one of the most popular generals in the war. Dead he would be a martyr. Expelled and he would be another reason for people to avoid sending children to the Jedi. Granted, the effect wouldn't be nearly as bad as publishing Master Kenobi's biography."
Obi-Wan winced. "That was mostly Qui-Gonn's fault."
"That's exactly the problem," Mace said dryly.
"Still, why would a Sith give the Order information that might save us," Master Mundi asked again. Obi-Wan had the distinct feeling that this wasn't because he found the Corpse Princess to be a particularly trustworthy character, but rather because he refused to believe that the Jedi had missed multiple Sith organizations in the past thousand years.
"We don't know she has," Obi-Wan replied. "Preliminary reports on the chips are inconclusive." Unfortunately, there was no shortage of clone bodies they could examine and while his own medical team was reasonably certain that the chips didn't do what the Kaminoans said they did, they had no clue what they actually did. "And pointing us at the Chancellor of all people could be a trap to have us disbanded as a treasonous organization."
"But you don't believe it," Mace stated.
Obi-Wan shook his head. "It's more that I can't afford to believe it. Yes, the accusation to the Chancellor could have been devastating if someone just grabbed the four closest council members and tried to arrest the Chancellor without following proper procedure, but even the Sith wouldn't believe we would act so incautiously. The usual complaint about the Order lies in the opposite direction. The most likely result of these accusations, if false, is a simple inconvenience for our Order. Granted, I know of many individuals or organizations that would gladly inconvenience us out of pettiness if nothing else, but none that I can think of would be so petty as to try to inconvenience us while revealing access to troubling amounts of intelligence such as my conversation with Dooku when I was captured."
"Then what's your alternative?" Mace asked.
"That she did reveal information that would allow us to foil some of the plots of Darth Sidious, but not all of them - only enough to change a clear victory of the Banite Sith to a Pyrrhic victory, leaving whoever is victorious easy pickings for this other Sith organization."
There was a moment of silence before Mace said what was clearly on the minds of several other councilors. "Well, kriff."
Shikako shook her head at Tenten's summation. "Really? The Jedi would have to be brain dead to jump to those kinds of conclusions."
"That's pretty much how you wrote them," Kakashi pointed out.
Shikako scowled. "These are actual, real people with real brains. Well, I mean for the species that have brains."
"Why did you write them like that in the first place?" Kakashi asked.
"Politics, mostly," Shikako replied instead of saying the actual crazy person answer of that being how they were in the original books. She should have plagiarized the Thrawn trilogy instead, but she couldn't actually remember all the twists and turns that happened in those novels.
Still, that answer seemed to make sense to Kakashi. "Ah."
Tenten waved a hand. "Mind explaining for the happily politically ignorant?"
"The Jedi are basically space monks doing the jobs of ninjas and courtiers. I didn't want anyone thinking I was actually advocating replacing anyone with monks."
Tenten blinked. "You're a ninja. Why would anyone think you want to replace us with monks?"
"Short answer: people are stupid. An individual person can be smart but get more than four people in a group and their effective intelligence drops like a rock." Shikako paused and repeated that to herself. "Oh. That's why the Jedi might think we were Sith."