**As Anakin stalked past the archway threshold – molten eyes sweeping the hangar, blue blade raised to locate his prey – Revan *exploded* from the shadows.**
Not forward, but *upward*, boots slamming into the archway's structural rib with bone-jarring force. Durasteel groaned under the impact. Simultaneously, both sabers ignited: violet screaming defiance above, crimson howling annihilation below, their intersecting light casting twin, elongated shadows that swallowed Skywalker whole. Revan dropped like a meteorite, a spinning vortex of plasma aimed squarely at Anakin's exposed spine. The air crackled, ozone biting deep. Skywalker reacted with impossible speed, twisting beneath the killing arc – not fully avoiding it. Crimson fury scored a molten trench across his backplate, spraying molten droplets as violet lightning deflected the retaliatory upward thrust meant to skewer Revan mid-fall. Revan landed hard on one knee, sabers crossed defensively, sparks showering the permacrete as Skywalker staggered, his snarl twisting into something feral, primal.
**Silhouetted against the burning hangar chaos, Skywalker didn't speak.**
He lunged, a blur of blue hatred aimed at Revan's throat. Revan met him not with defense, but with controlled, vicious offense – violet blade weaving a humming shield that forced Skywalker's strikes wide, crimson lashing out like a serpent's tongue to scorch vambrace, thigh plate, pauldron. Each impact was precision-engineered agony, designed not to kill, but to *goad*, to redirect Skywalker's fury away from the fuel pod sheltering the Padawan and younglings. Boots skidded on spilled coolant. Sparks rained from severed conduits overhead. Revan pressed, forcing Skywalker step by snarling step *past* the archway, *away* from the Consular ship, deeper into the open hangar bay floor where clone shouts echoed. He saw Anakin's molten gaze flicker toward the Padawan's hiding spot – recognition flaring. Revan's crimson blade flared blindingly bright, slamming horizontally against Skywalker's guard with teeth-rattling force. "Focus!" the modulator rasped, raw with borrowed malice. "The *real* threat is right here."
**Skywalker's roar shook the hangar.**
Blue blade whirled in a devastating arc meant to bisect Revan at the waist. Revan didn't block. He dropped into a crouch, violet saber sweeping low to shear the support leg of a burning shuttle loader crane beside them. The massive durasteel arm shrieked, collapsing downward in a shower of sparks and twisted metal – not onto Revan, but onto Skywalker. Anakin was forced backward in a desperate, Force-enhanced leap, the crane crashing where he'd stood, showering him with molten debris. Revan used the momentary distraction, kicking off the crane's falling chassis. He flew *backward* through the archway, crimson blade extinguishing mid-air. His shout echoed across the open ground to the Padawan: "GO! FULL THROTTLE!" Violet saber still blazing, he landed facing Skywalker's rising fury across the wreckage-strewn divide, buying seconds with his defiance. Footsteps pounded behind him – Padawan and younglings sprinting for the Consular ship. Skywalker's molten eyes burned through the smoke. The real escape had just begun.
**Blasterfire erupted.**
A clone squad breaching a side corridor spotted the fleeing group. Green bolts streaked towards the younglings scrambling up the ramp. Revan didn't turn. His crimson saber snapped back to life in his left hand. Still facing Skywalker's approaching storm, his right arm swung wide – violet blade a humming, violet shield deflecting bolts aimed at the Padawan's back. His left hand moved in blurred, precise arcs – crimson plasma intercepting shots targeting the Initiates with impossible, Force-guided accuracy. Sparks exploded around him like lethal rain. One bolt slipped past, grazing the Twi'lek's shoulder. She stumbled, shoving the last youngling inside before collapsing onto the ramp herself, dazed. The hatch remained open. Death closed in from both sides. Clone reinforcements poured into the hangar bay. Skywalker vaulted the fallen crane, boots thundering on permacrete.
**"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!"**
The name wasn't spoken; it was hurled like a thermal detonator, Skywalker's voice raw with betrayal and seething, incandescent rage. It echoed off the burning hulls, silencing even the clone shouts for a fractured heartbeat. Revan stood silhouetted against the Consular ship's ramp, violet blade still deflecting blasterfire, crimson humming a low threat towards the advancing Sith Lord. He didn't flinch. Slowly, deliberately, his helmet tilted towards Skywalker. The modulator crackled, dry and utterly calm amid the chaos: **"My death... was greatly exaggerated."** The words hung, insolent and final. Then, faster than thought, Revan *moved*. He pivoted, boots leaving the permacrete in a Force-enhanced leap backwards onto the Consular's ramp. His free hand grabbed the dazed Padawan's arm, hauling her brutally inside with a strength that brooked no resistance.
**The hatch slammed shut.**
Revan's armored fist slammed onto the emergency closure panel. Hydraulics shrieked as the heavy durasteel sealed with a resonant *thoom*, Skywalker's blue blade scoring a molten line across its surface a microsecond too late. Inside the dimly lit hold, Revan staggered back as the freighter's engines roared to life beneath his boots, vibrations thrumming through the deckplates. Anakin Skywalker's enraged silhouette, haloed by clone blasterfire, dwindled rapidly outside the viewport as the ship lurched violently upward. Acceleration pinned Revan against a bulkhead. Alarms blared. Distantly, turbolaser fire flashed against the rapidly darkening skyline of Coruscant – Order 66 consuming the world below. He saw the Padawan clutching her scorched shoulder, her green eyes wide, staring at the impassive mask. The younglings huddled together, silent. Revan deactivated his sabers. The crimson and violet light vanished, leaving only the trembling red glow of emergency lights and the echoing thunder of escape.
**He knelt abruptly.**
Water pooled beneath his armor on the deckplates as he leaned toward the Twi'lek Padawan. She flinched instinctively at his sudden proximity, her breath catching – this was Darth Revan, a monster from legends, his Mandalorian mask a pitiless void inches from her face. Yet his movements held no malice, only focused urgency. His black-gloved hand hovered over her wound without touching. Concentration radiated from him, fierce and desperate. This wasn't the effortless mastery of the Jedi Healers she'd glimpsed; it felt raw, *stolen*. He wasn't channeling the serene Light. He reached deep into the chaotic storm inside himself – the cacophony of Revan's memories, his own terror, the Dark Side's churning power – and *forced* it into a conduit for healing. The air crackled faintly. Her shoulder burned hotter, then flared with a searing, golden-white light that pulsed once, twice. The charred fabric dissolved. Beneath it, blistered flesh smoothed, knitting itself whole as the Padawan gasped, not in pain, but in shock. The scent of ozone and char vanished, replaced briefly by the clean, electric tang of raw Force energy. It lasted only seconds. The light faded. Revan sagged back, exhaustion palpable even through the mask's filters. Her shoulder was healed, unblemished skin stark against her torn robe. She stared at her own flesh, then at the dark helm, trembling. Words failed her. Relief warred with deeper dread. What manner of Sith healed with borrowed power?
**The Consular-class ship bucked violently.**
A proximity alarm wailed. "Turbolaser lock detected!" the droid shrilled from the cockpit doorway. Green bolts flashed past the viewport, illuminating the terrified younglings' faces. Revan surged upright. He stumbled towards the cockpit, his wet boots slipping on the deck. Beyond the transparisteel, Coruscant's orbital defenses were awake – Venator-class destroyers maneuvering, their massive cannons tracking the fleeing freighter. Escape pods jettisoned from the dying Temple like sparks. He slid into the pilot's seat, his gauntleted hands gripping the controls with unfamiliar urgency. This wasn't Revan's expertise; it was frantic improvisation. He yanked the yoke hard. The ship groaned, banking sharply as a turbolaser blast ripped through empty space where they'd been milliseconds before. G-forces slammed the Padawan against a bulkhead. She scrambled forward, bracing herself on the co-pilot's chair. Her trembling fingers flew over the navicomputer. "Vector… vector 7-7-Alpha!" she shouted over the alarms. "There's a hyperspace lane blind spot near the Foundry District debris field!" Revan didn't acknowledge. His helmet remained fixed forward, watching another Venator's prow swing slowly towards them. Its massive dorsal turbolasers began to glow. The targeting locks multiplied.
**The Padawan's hand shot out.**
She slammed her palm onto the hyperdrive actuator. "JUMP!" The Consular-class ship shuddered violently. Stars streaked into blinding lines across the viewport just as the Venator's cannons unleashed their full fury. Space itself seemed to tear apart behind them in a cataclysm of silent, incandescent light. The freighter bucked and groaned, straining against the hyperspace tunnel's embrace. Then, stillness. Deep blue vortices streamed past the cockpit. Silence settled, thick and heavy, broken only by the freighter's humming engines and the muffled sniffles of the younglings huddled in the hold. Revan slowly released the controls. His shoulders slumped. He stared out into the swirling blue maw of hyperspace, the Mandalorian mask reflecting the impossible escape route. The Twi'lek Padawan sagged against her seat, trembling. She glanced at him, then at her healed shoulder—a miracle etched in unblemished skin. The words escaped her lips unbidden, raw with exhaustion and disbelief: "Who *are* you?"
**Revan didn't turn.**
His gaze remained fixed on the hypnotic swirl beyond the transparisteel. The crimson saber hilt lay heavy on his thigh. The violet one hung cold at his belt. He felt the Padawan's stare digging into his backplate, demanding an answer the archives didn't hold. Silence stretched until it scraped nerves raw. Then, beneath the mask's modulator, a low, rasping chuckle escaped—dry as Tatooine dust and just as unexpected. His gloved fingers tapped idly against the armrest. **"HK would be having a field day if he was here,"** he muttered, the words distorted but unmistakable, echoing softly in the cockpit's sudden stillness. It wasn't an answer. It was a confession—of exhaustion, of absurdity, of a ghost haunting his borrowed soul.
**The Twi'lek stiffened.**
Her lekku twitched in confusion. "HK?" The name meant nothing—just another cipher from the legend snarled in durasteel before her. Yet Revan's helmet tilted slightly, as if listening to a voice only he could hear. He leaned back, the weariness radiating from him like heat from spent blasters. "A droid," he replied, the modulator flattening his tone into something distant, almost wistful. "Obsessed with efficiency... and creative dismemberment." Outside, hyperspace painted fleeting shadows across his visor. He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The sheer, incongruous weight of the statement hung between them—a surreal anchor in the madness. Here, fleeing genocide aboard a stolen ship, Darth Revan missed his murderous protocol droid.
**Alarms blared.**
The droid's shrill voice cut through the quiet. "Master! Unidentified gravity well detected! Dropping to realspace imminent!" Hyperspace dissolved in a violent lurch. Stars snapped back into place. Before them loomed not the black serenity of deep space, but the jagged, scorched ruins of an orbital graveyard—the Foundry District debris field. Crippled freighters, shattered starfighter husks, and the colossal carcass of a Separatist dreadnought drifted in silent, frozen chaos. And nestled among them, blocking their escape vector like a durasteel spiderweb: an Imperial interdictor cruiser, its gravity well projectors pulsing crimson. Clone-piloted V-wing fighters already streaked toward them. Revan's hands tightened on the yoke. His mask turned slowly toward the Padawan. "Guns," he said, the word a blade drawn in the dark. "Where are they?"