Chapter 53 – Six months

After this, the trip to Ossus seems to last for an eternity.

Layan knew he had to talk to someone about what he was feeling. Keeping hidden your fears inside of you isn't really a good idea.

Anakin Skywalker couldn't talk to anyone of what he was feeling because it would be admitting his breach of the Jedi Code. He may have talked about his fears and anguish to his wife, but someone non force-sensitive couldn't really understand what was the attraction of the dark side.

In a sense, he was lucky to be able to talk to Lyn, it was better to discuss it than kept it caged until reaching a point of no return.

The mood became heavy during most of the travel back home until HK-47 rose up from his seat and shot C2-V2. From what was yelling the assassin droid, C2-V2 cheated, and he hated being cheated.

"That's it, give me more work. I'll not tell you anything."

"Statement: You should reprogram him and wipe his personality. Addendum: If he cheats again, I'll shoot him again."

This little interlude alleviated the mood, and Layan replace the damaged parts during the rest of the trip.

"You're back. After I saw your droids come back with such a loot, I thought you chose to become a pirate."

Ood, Roc and Okko welcomed them after their landing. The progress of the older Ysanna was unsurprisingly less smooth than the young ones, as they had to unlearn all the tribal magics they learnt before.

As they weren't leaders of their respective tribes anymore, as all tribes merged and were now under Ood and hence Layan's leadership. They were less busied by their occupations and were training hard to catch up to their children.

"Not a bad profession but no."

==========

After this, life resumed as before. Only a few changes came during these six months.

Layan built his house, a big one as he wanted to store everything he looted from Pre Vizsla.

His house was more of a manor filled with the antics he brought back and maintained by all the droids he assembled from the scraps he found on Ossus. Inside, he built a library filled with books, another room was filled with antics and bizarreries. Another was made in an exhibition hall where all the armors were exposed. A huge training room with all the necessary accommodations and a dozen bedrooms and a huge dining room were built. Several statues were displayed all around the house, either depicting ferocious beasts or the masters he admired, be it Siths or Jedis.

In the cave, he made a wine cellar as Pre Vizsla had a few bottles and a workshop to work on his droids, he could construct him from scratch. He had every tool necessary and even a smelting furnace and can fabricate molds to create his droids.

It could have been overboard as 3 persons were living inside, no in fact 2 persons, a droid and 2 prisoners kept in a small cell and used as guinea pigs. To Layan, who never really had a place to call home after becoming a slave, it wasn't a house; it was a museum and a training space.

The cloaking device was finally completed after a few more months of researches, and the basilisk's reparations started, but it was slow, extremely slow. He had to create every piece individually, as there were no spare pieces for this type of droid. His workshop proves to be useful.

He also started to modify every HK-61 series as he wasn't able to modify them as he wished on Mustafar because of a lack of time. All of them were now equipped with integrated blasters in the arms like the B2 battle droids, a holographic disguise device, a personal cloaking device, and an integrated dorsal propeller.

The personal cloaking device was something he wanted to create or recreate as it existed already before, but due to their small size, they were less sophisticated than the others and were unable to hide from thermal and energetic sensors. Let's not forget the huge energy consumption.

HK-47 was also upgraded and repaired. His plating was reinforced, his joints were changed for new ones, and an overhaul of the secondary systems and internal computer was done. He had now a better target acquisition time, several more optical visions and a better calculating time.

As for the rest, he added a cloaking system, a shield generator, a disguise device, a voice modulator and foot propellers. The problem appearing was the reason why the HK-61 didn't get the same amount of upgrade. The energy need was huge, and this Layan had an idea to resolve the problem. He created a new power source able to provide all the new equipment in energy using 5 synth-crystals and Mechu Deru to create a new way to power the droid.

He didn't integrate blasters in the arms of the droid as HK-47 was reluctant to this and preferred to use old good blasters. So much that he was even encouraging him to create blasters, but Layan had better things to do.

Lyn training continued with a renewed determination, she still didn't know what weight was carrying her master on his shoulder, but she knew she had to be ready and strong to help him shoulder it.

Meanwhile Layan used the lightsaber pike of the knight of Zakuul to train, he wanted to obtain basics in all fighting form to know how to counter it. He never was trained in double bladed lightsaber wielding, but he wanted to learn it as well, so he created one.

Unfortunately, Ood knew nothing of it, as Exar Kun was the first in history to use a double-bladed lightsaber. As for the lightsaber pike, in his past life he fought against some Emperor's shadow guards. He already had some experience and knowledge of it.

The interest of using it, or a lightsaber pike, is the unusualness. Few were those who confronted someone using these types of weapon, thus their response in combat was slower. He didn't want to be taken by surprise if he had to fight someone using these weapons.

After a few trips back and forth to Kamino, the cloning of Shae Vizla entered stage 4, the injection of serum and research of the best combination to create a physiologically and physically enhanced clone. It took a few months to end Phase 4, it what took the longest in the experiment. He got a call recently, the final clone creation just started and he would have to visit her.

He met Jango and his sister Arla after he had gotten her out from the mental institution. Arla's condition wasn't really good. She didn't recognize her own brother and was attacking everyone. Using the Sith mask reconverted by the cube, he healed her in a few days.

Even if she was healed, she wasn't perfectly mentally healthy. The guilt of working for the Death Watch as an assassin and killing innocents was still haunting her nightmares.

A major change was his study of the Sith Holocron improved his knowledge of the dark side more and more. He already mastered Drain knowledge and even other skills such as Force Drain or Force Lightning.

It was a major change, but not the most important one. Layan study of himself and his new potential finally got some results. He discovered that he may be even more abnormal than he thought before. The only one able to equal him in weirdness being Meetra Surik or Darth Nihilus.

He discovered a few things like the maximum range of his telepathy was covering a good part of the galaxy and was testing his limits slowly but surely while trying to not kill himself in the process.

Several times, he heard voices while meditating. Incoherent voices, either crazy or what appeared as old variations of some languages he heard in the past. He tried to reach this state again, to hear them again, but failed. Each time he succeeded it was unconscious and involuntary.

While Layan was always repeating to Lyn 'after your trials' when she was asking too much questions, he never really thought to what would these trials would be before now. He established 3 trials for her to go through, divided between fighting skills and psychological tests.

Even though he called it trials, it had no relations with the Jedis trials, even though he used it as a base of inspirations. The goal was to see if she was trustful enough to teach her his secret and evaluate the results of her training.

Her trials would take place in 3 days as it would be the birthday of their encounter, and the beginning of the training, even if it had problems to start. Lyn was currently training inside the huge training room of the manor with a dozen of remote training droid and were parrying the lasers coming at her from every direction.

"From tomorrow on, you should rest. Your trials won't be a walk in the park, you'll need to be in tip-top shape."

"What's my first? You talked about 3 trials."

"I inspired from the diary of the Blackguard's founder. You will fight a ferocious beast, one able to pose a threat even to a Jedi knight, so be prepared."

"What beast?"

"A rancor. I thought to a Greater Krayt dragon at first, and later to the Zilo beast or a Gorog, but the goal is for you to survive, so..."

"Never heard of it."

She glossed over his words as it was something, he was doing from time to time for her to keep her calm. Their conversation continued, like usual, as she had to be able to parry a dozen of attack while having a room for breathing to do something else. Here again, it was to train her focus.

"Rancors live on several worlds, are generally the apex predator over the planet they reside in. Covered in a thick skin and fangs able to cut durasteel, it's a gigantic beast with nothing in mind except killing and eating. A dangerous beast to anyone, even more to someone like you with few battle experiences. It's a test to see if you'll be able to take on the rest of your training."

"From your description it looks cute."

While dodging and parrying the lightsaber, she was listening to Layan description of the dreadful beast.

"Yeah, you should try to give him a hug."

"I'll do that after you'll have kissed a Gundark."