1 THE BEGINNING

The red saber twirled and danced in my hands as I went flawlessly through a series of moves I had now repeated over a hundred times. My breathing became measured, and my heartbeat fell into sync with my moves.

"Almost there," I encouraged myself as I countered every parry and strike at the imaginary foes in both my front and rear. 

"Just a few more."

 I was now at the most crucial point of the form II lightsaber fighting style, but just then, as I turned to counter what should have been a strike from behind, I suddenly stumbled and lost my footing.

I hit the ground with a thud as the saber tore from my grip and clattered away, for the umpteenth time today. 

"Not again for fuck's sake!"

A sarcastic laughter emanated from a figure that had been sitting a short distance away watching me. Throughout the moves, I caught a glimpse of his eyes, and I could clearly tell that he had been almost praying that I would fail.

"Why do I feel like you are misleading me on the last part?" I panted as I turned to address the person. "I execute all the Makashi moves perfectly except for that turn, why?"

Count dooku slowly got to his feet and bent down to pick up the saber that had rolled towards him. I could see deep in his eyes there was a burning rage that he was doing terrible work of trying to suppress.

"Listen, boy, you say you want to be a Sith... but you clearly fight like a damn Jedi... like you have honor... like you are morally justified," dooku circled me as he spat the words bitterly. "So why don't you summon one of those hypocritical Jedi masters to babysit you because I am TIRED!"

The last words were so unexpectedly shouted that they made me jump up! I soon, however, gathered myself and met the Sith's eyes.

"That must be it... You are purposely misleading me in the hope that I shall release you and summon someone else, huh?" I walked slowly towards the count while never breaking our eye contact.

"First, I hate to bust your bubble count, but I simply have no intention of being a Sith, I just want to learn some of the dark side force skills" I paused just a few paces from the guy

"Secondly, I thought we had already been through this... If you can't honor your side, then forget ever returning to your world." 

Staring at the man's eyes, I could almost feel the rage boiling inside him.

The guy was tall, but I easily towered over him as we glared at each other.

 His grip tightened over the saber, and his finger made a move to power it up, but midway it fell back as if he realized that my death would seal him for good in this strange world.

dooku closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them, the anger had died away.

"There are rules that guide the way of the Sith, without them you cannot hope to master the dark side of the force," dooku began pacing again and my eyes trailed after him. "We are breaking the most fundamental one that...."

"Oh, please spare me that bullshit ..." I carelessly cut the count off as I realized the bluff he was trying to pull. 

"Let me guess, you are going to use Darth Bane's rule of two right?.. That at any given time, there can only be two Sith, the master to hold the power and the apprentice to crave it, huh?" From the surprise on the Sith's face, I could tell that he had never expected me to know this. I pressed my advantage.

"We both know that is bullshit... I mean, does your master know that you are training Ventress on the way of the Sith?.. wouldn't that make it three Sith already?" Again the surprise reaction on the Sith's face betrayed him. "How do you know... how?" He stammered as he struggled to deduce my sources.

Watching his torn reaction, I could not hold back a smile of glee. "You really surprise me, I pulled you right out of your fucking world with ease and brought you to my dimension, yet what surprises you is how I know about you?... One could almost say that should be the least of your fears, my dear count."

I could see the conflict of emotion building in dooku's eyes as his pride tried to war against reason. He was a bloody former Jedi master, and when it came to both sides of the force, Ndoku was pro... if he really wished to kill me, I really doubted whether he would even need his saber, he was after all Palpatine's apprentice, he could use force lightning and strike me right where I stood and I could do nothing to stop it. At the same instance, it was also clear to him that I was his only way back to the Star Wars universe, and without my consent, he had no way out.

I decided to give the guy time to process his position and come up with a decision, after all, I too had a lot of crap to figure out. 

"Take your time, count," I said as I picked up my towel from the ground and turned to leave. "You know where to find me, in the meantime, I hope you learn to love life in Gotham." 

A smile once more graced my lips as I left the Sith to get over his predicament.

****

My plans of mastering the dark side of the force had begun a week ago when I had woken up one morning to find myself in a strange environment. The room was not the place I had gone to sleep in... neither was the bed mine and worse my girlfriend who should have been right next to me, naked, had seemingly vanished... no scent of her that I was so used to... no carelessly scattered clothes that should have clearly marked my room after a night of careless passionate sex.

Nothing! Even though I noted that it would have taken nothing short of magic for her to transform the entire place in such a short while, my mind which was clearly in denial was willing to believe that she was pulling some kind of prank... we did quite a few of those now and then and since I had got her badly in my last one, I was willing to wager that she was the one responsible for this hell of a transformation.

But even then... I quickly realized that no shit made sense in this place... my apartment's bedroom window had a view,..this place on the other hand had nothing. only solid dark walls surrounded me... and the ceiling... what the hell...

She would have to have broken a bank or something to pull such shit and I would have to have been drugged to sleep through as she and whoever was helping her renovated the place, it simply wasn't possible. I jumped out of the damn bed