spncentral | When Sith Beat Jedi To The Prize (Of The Chosen One)

Garth'zel had intended never to go to Tatooine again. The entire experience the first time he was there was hot and miserable. The only good point, so far as he was concerned, was meeting Andronikos. But as luck would have it, his ship ended up deciding to need minor repairs. Nothing too bad, but it did require him to land somewhere to get the parts he needed, because of course, the bit that went was something he didn't have spare parts for. The only planet within reasonable range? Tatooine.

It didn't take long for a Force-sensitive boy to catch his attention. One strong enough that he was surprised the Jedi didn't already find him. Well, their loss was his gain. ...Once he pried him loose from Watto, anyway. He suspects he actually had an easier time of it than a Jedi would, although he's not going to hang around and give one the chance to give it a shot. At least, unlike them, he's willing to come to Tatooine from time to time so Anakin could see his mother. Probably not more than a couple times a year or so, due to it being best to go there when they're at least vaguely in that part of the galaxy anyway, but it's far better than 'sorry kid, we're never bringing you back'.

Of course, there is one tiny problem with this whole thing. He's never had to raise children before and doesn't know what he's doing. With the ship safely in hyperspace and not due to come out of it for a good long while, enabling him to do things that didn't involve sitting in the pilot's seat of the ship, he's in the lounge area. Time to figure out what he's doing. "Have you managed to get any kind of schooling? Like from someone you know, sitting down with you for an hour here and there as time permitted to teach you things like how to write?"

May as well figure out what he needs to teach besides how to use the Force consciously instead of unconsciously drawing on it.

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"Mmm, as with all things one learns to do consciously with the Force, it does take some practice. On that note, still noticing the stars we're passing?" Time to turn the subject back to something actually useful to talk about rather than what a long-dead Sith's decisions were.

Anakin's eyes widen for a second, because no, he'd lost them several minutes ago when he had stuttered to a halt thought wise, and he tucks his chin down as he answers. "No." But since he does understand what he's supposed to be feeling for, he can find them pretty quickly again.

It's not really a big deal, just Garth'zel getting back to what they'd been doing before they got side-tracked.

"I am thinking at stopping at a planet along the route to Bothawui, by the way. For a few reasons. One of them, to give you more things to sense while practicing at this. The other reasons being to get you warmer clothes more suited to space and to get the things needed to get your schooling started sooner. I think it might help to be able to have a set schedule for what's done when."

Less time for Anakin to be at loose ends should make him a little less twitchy.

Anakin nods, it's not like he has much in the way of clothing to begin with and he's wearing most of them in layers to keep warm. But having schooling started, he thinks, would be nice. "I'm used to having a schedule." He didn't really know what to do without one.

"What kind of schooling?" Anakin, nor none of his friends, have every had any, he isn't sure what it's like.

"First off, teaching you how to read and write, since assigning you history to read won't do you any good if you can't read it," Garth'zel points out in a vaguely amused tone. Although the history can probably wait for a few years mostly, honestly; give Anakin time to build up enough of a vocabulary that he isn't needing to spend as much time reading with a dictionary handy. "Once you've gotten a decent grasp on reading and writing, things can expand from there."

"That's it? Reading and writing?" History later, and he knew numbers were taught too. Numbers were needed for pilots, he didn't realize he already had learned some by piloting a pod and working for Watto. "What do you need to get to start those?"

"For one thing, age and skill appropriate reading material. Unless you want to try learning, using my reading, which involves a lot of long words you have no way to work out how to even pronounce while looking at them, much less understand the meaning of?" He thinks not.

"There'll be more subjects, but first, best to get you started on what you need to actually get anywhere with them."

"I didn't-sometimes the farmer's kids talk about schooling. They made it seem like more." In the small snatches of words he'd heard here and there anyway. Given he doesn't know what Garth'zel is even reading, he can't really comment on how badly that would be.

"Well, besides reading and writing, there's math, various sciences, history, art, learning various languages, philosophy and that's just the things I can think of right off," Garth'zel points out.

"Plus, you're getting taught things those farmer's kids aren't going to learn. That being things like how to use the Force in various ways, be it just for general everyday things we won't think twice about using it for like sensing where on the ship the other one is so we know where to find the other one immediately, or using it to fight. Among other things.

"Such as the point of what I was doing with the remote? To help me keep in practice with deflecting blaster bolts for if someone--or a lot of someones--decide to shoot at me. You may have noticed that I was effectively treating it as a target, aiming the bolts right back to where they'd injure or kill the person who sent them my way in the first place."

Anakin listens as Garth'zel reels off a list of subjects and 'philosophy' he hasn't the faintest of what it is. But sciences and languages he does want to learn, he already knows two languages.

He nods, "I noticed. Can you practice more than one person shooting at you with one remote? When did you start schooling?" He couldn't have been younger than Anakin and he was older, but younger than his mom. And his mom wasn't old.

"It's easier to just use more than one remote for that. I'd need to build a second one. Possibly a third. And save those sessions for when we're planetside so as to give them more space to maneuver." Therefore making it harder to predict where the shots are going to come from.

"I actually learned some from older slaves when I was younger. Couldn't spend too much time on it at any one time of course, but we'd find an hour here or there to help me learn. Gave me an edge when the Sith were looking for Force-sensitive slaves to train, since not everyone they found could read. Or write."

Garth'zel shrugs after a moment later. "At the Sith Academy and after Zash chose me to be her apprentice, I had more time to try to catch up through independent study. Particularly once I was an apprentice, given she gave me my own ship so I could go running all over the galaxy doing things for her. Although of course, I had to balance that with learning things to do with the Force, so some things, I only gained and still have a more or less rudimentary understanding of. I basically had to prioitize what I thought was more likely to help me stay alive."

Needing to build the remotes is filed away for later, Anakin paying attention as everything is explained. "I think Mom can read a little, but I know she can do some math, because Watto makes her sometimes." But Anakin had largely worked in the shop alone, and Watto didn't tolerate him doing things that didn't involve fixing parts, droids, or cleaning.

"Is that what you are reading? Things you couldn't learn then?" It seems to him that Garth'zel needs to worry less about being killed now.

"Well, eventually. I've got thirty-six hundred years of history to catch up on. Both in terms of major galactic events and things I'm personally interested in. Such as wanting to know when the Sith species went extinct, because them not being around anymore was just a little hard for me to avoid noticing." Considering how many of them there were back in his time.

Anakin can put thirty-six hundred into terms of people at a podrace, and he blinks slowly at Garth'zel for a moment.

"What's the Sith species?" Sith he'd taken to the flip of Jedi, like night was to day. But a species made him think he'd gotten it really wrong.

Garth'zel has to try really hard not to snicker at the slow blinking.

"The people the other kind of Sith had taken their names from. They're native to the planet Korriban, which is where I got my training as a Sith from. Besides what I'd already been taught before being sent there to one, make sure it was worth the time to send me there, and two, make sure I had at least some sort of combat training first, given it was dangerous there. And not just because of the wildlife."

"Why did they live there if it was so dangerous? Or was it like, better for them because they were from there?" He has a thought of the Tusken Raiders and dodging blaster rifle fire. "Did you find out what happened to them?"

"Well, they evolved there. That's where every member of their species ultimately originated from, even if, after they gained space travel and were able to go to other planets as a result, plenty of individual members spent their entire lives on other planets and never even visited," Garth'zel points out.

"Korriban's a planet with a... very heavy Dark Side presence. You're likely to find it uncomfortable. I'm used to it and can filter it out." Not. That he's planning on taking Anakin there anytime soon. "Anyway, the Sith I'm familiar with species-wise isn't actually the original version. Some Jedi who got kicked out of the Order settled there and basically took control of the planet. They and members of the original inhabitants used Sith alchemy to interbreed since humans and the Sith weren't genetically compatible enough to produce offspring without outside help.

"So I'm used to their descendants, who had traits from both. It'll probably be easier to show you holos so you can see what they looked like. Anyway, basically, they pretty much bred themselves out of existence. Someone with visible traits from the Sith part of their parentage having children with a human, those children having children with another human, further watering down their genetics, and so on. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if humans from planets that were within the Empire still had traces of Sith ancestry, but after this amount of time, you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at them."

"What's alchemy?" Anakin pronounces it for what it is, a completely new word, parroting Garth'zel accent as he says it because the shape of it is so strange to his mouth.

The rest is also a Lot Of Words again and ones Anakin hears and commits to memory to puzzle over later.

"Something that I'm almost certainly not teaching you. I'm... familiar with it, but it's not where I specialize. I suppose Sith alchemy can be compared to genetic engineering. Not entirely accurate, but helps give an idea of what sorts of things were typically done with it." He's fairly certain Anakin could probably understand about half of those words at best.

At best. Engineering he does, 'genetic' is added to a list of words he's never heard before, and he doesn't feel he understands it anymore than before Garth'zel had explained. "Engineering is a science of making things? Alchemy is a science of making people?"

Garth'zel tilts his head slightly as he tries to think how to explain. "Sith alchemy. The former word is part of the name. It's more about using the Dark Side to twist and warp living beings--mostly animals--into what the individual practitioner wants to create. Sometimes it's people being changed in such a way, sometimes animals. Like the tuk'ata. Their original species were herbivores which were apparently peaceful. They were changed into carnivores who are... bad-tempered. At best. Their main use were as guard animals. Often enough guarding the tombs of dead Sith on Korriban. I had to defend myself from a number of wild ones while there."

"Personally, I'd rather have a nexu instead of a tuk'ata and they aren't exactly sweet-tempered either. At least they don't have the Dark Side to make their temperament worse." Not that he wants a nexu either. But at least one's likely to be better behaved with training.

While a good deal of this is going over Anakin's head, rushing over him like Tatooine's wind, he is tucking the words away in his memory. And he was still trying to make sure he was sensing what they were passing. But this Sith alchemy really was being the most vivid images in his head, like someone chopping bots and droids are put them together in a nest of wires and chips. Only with living parts.

"I can see why people would think the Sith are bad."

Edited Date: 2019-03-02 10:42 pm (UTC)

"Among many many reasons," Garth'zel says with a nod. "Anyway, you can see why I'm not interested in messing with that sort of thing. I'll leave that to other Sith. If there are any others left. I assume a few managed to stay hidden over the past thousand years, but I'm the only one I know of for certain."

"Yeah, but. That's good for you, right? Like what you said about me doing something people wouldn't expect being helpful to you?" Much of Tatooine was about survival, he does understand that.

"Right," Garth'zel says with a nod. "The Jedi don't know to keep watch for Sith, so I should be able to fly under their radar. Particularly since my plan is to stick to planets in the Outer- and Mid-Rim for the most part. There's a few planets in the Core I want to visit, but not many and I'm steering clear of the ones that tend to have a Jedi presence so as to avoid tempting the galaxy to have a laugh at me."