Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo

Chapter 1

Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, Apprentice to Darth Sidious, Right Hand of Emperor Palpatine, and Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armies was currently stranded in a forest on an unknown planet with little recollection of how he got there.

Let it never be said that age had not taught the Sith how to remain calm in unusual circumstances, for even those that knew him would claim he was taking this exceptionally well.

As he strode through the forest, he vaguely recalled his last moments before waking up to this world. He had been on the bridge of the Executor while...who had he been speaking with? It was still a bit hazy, but by the Force or his returning memory, it was getting clearer. He knew the recently promoted Admiral Firmus Piett was there, but they were speaking with someone else. Someone...important? Or someone that knew something important.

'Hmm, yes, we were pursuing the Millennium Falcon. Fett reported its destination and we were discussing the trap for the Princess and her allies. We were making the jump to hyperspace, then...nothing? We didn't crash, or this forest would be scorched to cinders,' He mused to himself, marching through the forest with his imposing yet confident gait. He was currently just thanking the Force that he had his lights-

He stopped dead in his tracks as he felt something, a presence in the force; Two to be exact. Both were...familiar, but he couldn't place them. Whatever happened to him had made him feel temporarily un-synced to the force, as if his connection to it had suffered a metaphorical concussion. It made things murky, but his ability to sense through the force was steadily returning. Like how he had changed his course ever so slightly to head towards the nearest civilization he could perceive.

That too gave him a sense of Deja vu. In fact, the whole planet was giving him that feeling, like he had been here before. Unfortunately, he had been to many, many planets with forests like this, so that didn't really narrow the list down any. He was just glad it wasn't Tatooine-By the Force, how he had secretly wished for the Death Star to have been used on that planet before that disaster at Yavin. Then again, it wasn't Mustafar either. The less said about that place, the better.

If anyone could see his face, they would have seen Darth Vader blinking with a surprised look as he stared at an animal. It was a large creature, over eleven feet tall, with long legs and a very short neck. The fur was a golden shade while the head had large floppy ears and four twisting antlers. It watched the Sith Lord for just a moment before bolting into the forest, leaving a confused Vader in its wake.

"An copies?" He questioned out loud. While he didn't have a lot of experience with these creatures, he did know them by sight and knew that there were only two places to find them: On Naboo or one of its moons, Rori. And Vader had never been to Rori. His gloved hands gripped themselves so tightly, he worried he might actually break the machinery in the hands, "Of all the places it would be, it had to be here," He muttered in distaste, continuing his walk to what he was already guessing to be Theed...which meant the signatures he was sensing were probably two of Padme's family members or former handmaidens.

Naboo had been a place he had avoided with great zeal since he became the Dark Lord the galaxy knew him as. Coincidentally, so had Darth Sidious avoided sending his apprentice here or any of his more dubious agents. Naboo was a special place for both of them for different reasons. And even in the blackened hearts of the Siths, they both allowed themselves and each other that weakness, to keep this little planet mostly untouched by their works. There was also the solemn and silent agreement to utterly and painfully destroy anyone that would harm the peaceful planet and anyone that forced the Sith Lords to do so themselves.

Yet, here Vader was, on the one planet he probably never intended to revisit- and if he ever did come back here, it would only be either to die or because he had somehow made peace with his past. The latter hadn't happened and unless his life support was on the fritz, the former wasn't about to happen either. With a sigh, something he had actually had to try to accomplish these days, Darth Vader headed to the edge of a forest hill, hoping to get a good look at the city if only to get a proper guess on how far he was from there and approximate how long it would take to send a message to the nearest Star Destroyer to pick him up-and tell him what the hell happened to his Executor!