Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo

Chapter 17

Plagueis went flying through the air, blasting a hole in the metal wall with a Force Push, giving him more time to lessen his acceleration as he landed with a crouch inside the mighty indent. He mentally went over what just happened a hundred times in an instant, wondering if he could have avoided that nasty little encounter:

He had disarmed Sidious briefly, forcing the Naboo-born Sith to resort to using his weakened Sith Lightning again.

Just as before, he had parted the stream around him with relative ease.

He had been closing in on his wayward apprentice, ready to put a stop to this charade.

That was about the time when the Dark Side started rushing back to them in bulk.

And Sidious had an affinity with Sith Lightning.

It had honestly taken everything he had in that moment to keep a cocoon of Force Energy around himself- not just a single barrier, but layers of barriers. It was hard to do while still adjusting to the sudden influx of power, but it was the only way he could hold an attack like that at bay when he received it at point blank range.

The end result was that he was inevitably launched into a wall at blinding speeds from the sheer power the cackling Sidious unleashed at him.

Running over everything else he could have done, he summarized that no, there wasn't much of a better option in that split second window. Dodging would have been impossible, even with his formidable speed and the growing power of the Force Lightning outpaced his own increasing ability to hold it off.

"HAHAHAHA!"

That didn't make Sidious's laughter any less grating. Why his former student insisted on that kind of laugh, he never understood. The sound alone would have made anyone that heard it suspicious of the good senator.

"Well, well, it would seems your new favored's performance has ended on a rather lackluster and anti-climactic note, Darth Plagueis," Sidious sneered with his false sympathy.

"Hmm, I suppose I should feel fortunate. Any stronger, and that attack might have actually gotten to me," Plagueis mused absently, completely ignoring the gloating as he folded his hands behind his back and calmly walked off the edge of the hole, falling to the floor and hovering above the surface for an instant before his feet made contact.

Sidious's laughter ended abruptly, his attention once more on his regrettably still-living master. And said Master's powers were fluctuating, same as his own. The Dark Side was returning to its normal state with its various adepts across the galaxy, but for right now, Coruscant was a temporary hotspot for the Dark Side. It was flooding in and out of them in waves. For the next few hours, at most, they could both likely call on much greater power than they normally did without being noticed, masked by the fading collective of the Dark Side.

Greater, but much less controllable.

"What was the point of this?" Sidious asked with a scowl. "Why aid him with this?"

Plagueis almost smiled at that, as if he found the question sad. "Your pet, Maul? He was meant to be a way of revealing to the Jedi that we have returned. Or, rather, never left. Regardless, Vader has done that far more soundly and effectively. And if I'm being truly objective, more entertainingly as well," he said, forcing a snort through his mask. "So, when he requested my assistance with making that point very, very clear to the Jedi? That the Dark Side isn't so easily swept under the rug? I couldn't resist, no more than you could bring yourself to not lend him your hold over the Dark Side."

Sidious gritted his teeth at the very true statement. "And what does this so called Darth gain from all of this?"

Plagueis raised an eyebrow. "Have you not been paying attention, Sidious?" he asked, sounding genuinely surprised, albeit slightly.