This choice: Force move with forced growth. • Go Back...Chapter #5Force move with forced growth. by: Barlen   Anakin had a nearly imperceptible frown on his face as he viewed his wife’s womb through the force... no signs of new life, only Padmé’s own life force and the potential for new life to develop with in.
At the moment it was still two years before the end of the war and the birth of the Galactic Empire, over a year before he would sire the twins destined to be born on roughly the same day so many were destined to die along with the republic. Of course, Anakin, nor anyone else, save perhaps one Sheev Palpatine, had any inkling of the horrible day to come.
Anakin himself certainly wasn’t aware of his own potential fall into the dark side that the secretive Sith Lord was slowly engineering, only that his beloved wife would one day die in child birth, if something was not done to change fate’s design. Technically speaking he still shouldn’t be aware of that at this particular juncture. He only had the vision due to taking his once mentor’s advice/nagging to meditate to heart last night when he couldn’t sleep.
Normally, his hard life made it very, very difficult for him to meditate; past wounds and hardships he hadn’t dealt with clawed their way to the surface and made it very difficult to focus on the force... but for once as he took position on the balcony of Padmé’s abode, an odd calm overcame him and shooed his distractions away, allowing him fall deeply into force. It was peaceful, relaxing even at first until... a vision came to him from the currents of the force that had been otherwise muddled for the last several decades. A very ominous and difficult vision of his beloved’s death in childbirth.
On the one hand Anakin was relieved to not find anything, it meant he had time... yet to his surprise he found he was a bit disappointed to find he wouldn’t be a father, at least not yet.
Later on that day Anakin found himself in the last place anyone would expect to find the hot blooded Jedi Knight, the Jedi Archives, searching for healing techniques to keep Padmé alive when the time came. In truth this wasn’t hard, there were many healing techniques known to the Jedi, given their alignment that should come to no surprise to anyone. However so far all the ones he had found were all either to slow acting to settle his anxieties, or required training he is wes certain he hadn’t the time or the mindset for, or, lastly, carried a price to himself he was only willing to pay if no other choice was available.
In the last category the ability to transfer his own life force to Padmé to sustain her and insure she lived was straight forward enough, but it naturally came with the very real risk of weakening himself to point of death. Anakin would do it in a heartbeat if it came down to it... but, naturally he’d prefer they both live through the ordeal.
Eventually his search brought him to the holocrons: information storage devices only useable by force sensitives. The archives had holocrons from both their order and the Sith... as well as a number of similar objects from other force sensitive groups that fell in the moral spectrum between the two. Of course Anakin didn’t bother with either. First, the Jedi holocrons, which looked like blue jeweled puzzle boxes, were not likely to contain healing techniques... after all, why the Jedi hide them away? As for the Sith’s... well... he couldn’t give a womp rat’s ass about the their secrets. Sith holocrons were sinister little red and black pyramids, and if the Sith had any healing abilities that the Jedi didn’t, they were probably twisted and not worth the price in the end. Besides, and more importantly, all the true holocrons the Jedi had were kept securely in the aptly named holocron vault which was locked and only accessible by the Jedi council, so they couldn’t be taken out and fiddled with without their express permission anyways.
That just left the other force sensitive factions’ devices and objects for him to search through. While they were valuable, the items available didn’t get the same treatment for one reason or another, and came in all sorts of sizes and shapes, simply kept behind safety glass he was authorized to access, and contained information just as varied as they were.
Of course after several minutes of fruitless searching Anakin’s luck didn’t seem to change here either and he was just about to give up and go ask Yoda or another master if they knew of the sort of technique he was searching for, when one particular device caught his eye. It was bigger than the others, and had a rough general appearance of a holocron, with Royal purple crystalline sections with silver mechanical parts all put together like a large portable computer.
Something about it called to Anakin, and he felt his spirit soar when he read the description: “Holocron of Balen Dvar, grey walker from the time of the old republic with reported mastery over life and the body, said to contain the knowledge to replicate his powers. He is said to have found the key to immortality through the force, and has been repeatedly sighted through out history. Most recent sighting: Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine, date...” Anakin stared at the date in shock, it was roughly the day before Qui-Gon-Jinn landed on Tatooine and changed his life forever.
The Anakin rubbed his eyes and read it again, but no, nothing changed... this had to be joke! If the man wasn’t a Sith why didn’t the Jedi order care more about the little computer in front of him? Sure, the Jedi preached the acceptance of many a natural thing, including death, so immortality wouldn’t be something they by nature wouldn’t care much about... but still, all the other powers that would serve as stepping stones to achieve it would surely be valuable to the order, and combine that with his last sighting being right before Anakin himself was discovered on the same horrible ball of sand?
The only reason Anakin could think of for the order to ignore him and his holocron was that there was something distasteful hidden inside Anakin was missing... and maybe that the apparently immortal man had a tendency to show up before important events so him being on Tatooine was just par the course? (Anakin couldn’t tell by looking at the screen, it only showed Balen’s most recent sighting and nothing more.)
Anakin frowned and picked up the device to take it to the grand librarian for answers. To his surprise Jocasta seemed to be waiting for him to return with it.
“Ah I see you have found Balen’s holocron and I assume you are wondering why it wasn’t deemed more important?” The old, but usual kindly Master asked. Before he could answer she gave it a dismissive wave. “Almost everyone searching for knowledge of the healing arts ends up stumbling upon it... asking the same question. First, he keeps making the the things and sending them to us... and second? Well I’ll let one of the many copies of it we have speak for itself.”
“Okay, but he was last seen on Tatooine-“
“Before you were found, yes I know, not to be rude Chosen one... but yes he has a tendency to show up before important events, there’s rumors that he was at Geonosis before the battle, though none of the order saw him or felt him directly.”
“Ah... I was just wondering.”
She nods. “I’m not saying you aren’t important Skywalker, just he’s been doing this for thousands of years, it would be strange if he hadn’t shown up.” With that she pulls an exact duplicate of the device out from an alcove with thinly veiled distaste for it and motions for Anakin to follow her, stopping briefly to put the original back in its case. Then she leads him to a chair in an oddly remote and deserted part of the library and has him sit down to access the device.
“Simply reach out and feel for the device with the force, it should all be straight forward from there.” She says curtly before walking away at a brisk pace, leaving him alone with the device. Anakin looks at it with weary apprehension, what could be on the device to put the normally kindly librarian in a bad mood?
He takes a deep breath and reaches out with the force for the object in his lap, and immediately finds himself drawn in as it opens up and displays a hologram of a large man, built like a wookie with a groomed beard and long hair.
The man’s deep voice echos in his mind as the hologram speaks: “Greetings young Skywalker, I see you’re looking for ways to prolong life, and prevent it’s passing.” Holo Balen says plainly, before waiting for him to respond.
“Uh... yes?”
“Good! You’ll find exactly that and far more, right here!” It pats the machine projecting it. “Only one catch though, this will require “changes” to your body.”
Changes huh?. “What kind of changes?” Anakin asks suspiciously.
The hologram smirks.
“Well... for starters that” the hologram points at his crotch “has to get bigger, a lot bigger.”
Anakin blushes, admittedly, he is pretty average in size... not that he ever really cared about that, Padme never complained.
“What?!”
The hologram smiles darkly. “Here, let me show you.”  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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