Marcus Dean Reilly

Just as Dean was about to respond to Master Kitt, the Jedi Grandmaster stood from the table and ask a request of him. Nodding once to show his understanding, the young Apprentice went on his "mission". Within moments he found the furry Jedi alongside former Admiral Starlisk. Lowering his gaze so the former Republic Admiral would not notice his face, Dean spoke softly to the Wookiee. "Master Kirlocca, GrandMaster Kitt requests your presence in the Crystal Chamber."

As Dean sat in the dark, he attempted to clear his mind of everything. He had already burned away his past, almost literally. But he couldn't seem to clear his mind. He could feel the heat from the fire on the side of his face. It had been a long time since he had felt the true heat of a real fire. For most of his life he had felt the all encompassing warmth of a heating system. Whether it was in his quarters at the Imperial Academy, or his cabin on the starships he had been on. But here amongst the Jedi, far from the rest of civilization, a true fire seemed right and proper. Other than the heat on his face, he couldn't tune out the sound of the waterfall behind him. As much as he tried to focus on the spark that Kitt sensed within him, he couldn't turn his focus from the flowing water behind him. As he tried to focus on himself, he felt something welling up inside him. For a moment he would have sworn he was feeling the Force, but after just a moment he felt the desire to seek out the Jedi Grandmaster. He tried to shake the feeling from his mind and turn back to searching his connection to the Force but the feeling would not abate. Rising to his feet, Dean made his way to the entrance of the room. Before he crossed the threshold and left the room he took one last look at the ancient blades arranged throughout the room. After leaving the room Dean made his way to the mess hall where he found Kitt sitting with several people. Taking a seat across from his new Master, Dean waited to be addressed. As he waited, he allowed a single thought from his past to enter his mind. Back before the ”œfall”

OOC: Sorry for the delay. Been a LONG few weeks. Dean gave a slight nod to the young Grandmaster as Kitt walked away to a meeting with the rest of the Council and the other Masters. The apprentice wondered if he would ever reach the rank of Master. While the Grandmaster himself was not considerably old, most of the other Masters carried the weight of age and experience. He had heard that the Force could keep a man alive for many more years than was natural, one could never hide the years that the eyes had seen. Many of the men, and other species, before him carried many years beneath their eyes. He could tell they had seen many horrors, but they had also seen many moments of beauty and true goodness. But achieving the rank of Master was not the reason that he had traveled such a distance. He had traveled to Tython in order to answer the feeling inside him. He had traveled to meet Master Kitt on this long forgotten planet to unlock the potential was buried deep within him. He had traveled so far to become a Jedi. As he entered the meditation chamber, the first thing he noticed was the roaring fire on one side of the room. But the crackling logs were not the only sound within the room. Turning to take a better look at his surroundings, he noticed a small waterfall that constantly flowed. There were several plants arranged along one side of the room, yet in contrast to that peaceful nature, rows of ancient blades were attached to the walls on the opposite side. Taking several steps into the room, Dean sat down in front of the fire and looked deep into the flames. Not for the first time, the former Imperial Admiral wondered what he was doing here. He was no Jedi. As the flames leapt off artificial logs Dean continued to stare into the orange and red flames. The doubts within his mind once more began to flesh themselves out. But for once, Imperial training aided in the training of a Jedi. The willpower that he had gained quickly squashed those doubts and Dean did something that he thought he would do. He began to slowly rip the patches from his flight suit and lay them in the fire. But as each one was taken off, Dean thought back on his past and how it had brought him to this point. As the last one burned, Dean swore to never look back. Taking a seat in the perfect center of the room, the Jedi apprentice closed his eyes and attempted to clear his mind. But as the darkness closed on his mind, all he could see was the burning Imperial patches in the fire. The faces of those men who had died under his command appeared before him, the flames that burned the patches turning to flesh in the darkness. He quickly opened his eyes and looked around. The patches in the fire were nothing but ash now. Rubbing his palms over his eyes, Dean closed his eyes once more and tried to get in touch with the Force.

As Dean stood within the group that had gathered, he allowed his mind to wander. Since arriving on Tython, Dean had felt more at peace than any other time in his life. Pretty soon, the group started walking into the forest, and as Kitt waved him forward, Dean jogged to catch up. As he walked side by side with Kitt, he spoke up. "So how will my training begin, Grand Master."

As his TIE Defender orbited the lush forest world of Tython, Dean watched as Kitts Starsword burst from hyperspace. Quickly angling his own fighter towards the planet, the Jedi Apprentice was hot on the trail of the Jedi Grandmaster. Within moments the two had broken atmosphere and were landing in a large clearing in the forest. As the fighters landed, Dean climbed down from the cockpit of his Defender. As he took several steps to stretch his legs, he watched as several people began to emerge into the clearing. He knew they were all waiting on GrandMaster Kitt, just as he was. OOC: Sorry it wasn't longer. Didn't feel he desire, but I didn't want to hold things up on my end.

Dean let out a soft sigh and watched the air exhaling from his mouth turned to mist before his eyes. Even without the visual evidence he could tell it was cold, the tattered Jedi robes that covered his body did little to keep in warmth and protect him against the cold. What made it worse; the cold chains around his wrists kept him tight to the floor and on his knees. Each time he strained to move they grew just a shade tighter. He could feel the cold metal pulling at the hair on his arms and pinching he skin between its links. ”œNot very comfortable is it?”¦..Jedi!”

The eyebrows of the former Admiral and new Jedi Apprentice raised as he watched the conversation between the Jedi GrandMaster and the Dark Lord of the Sith. He allowed a breath that he didn't remember holding to pass through his lips as Kitt turned away from the Sith Lord and made his way towards the Starsword. As Kitt walked away, Marcus felt a shiver run down his spine, as what seemed to be a bit of warmth abandoned him. His eyes turned to the Dark Lord who met his gaze only momentarily. Giving a brief nod to Hephaestus, Reilly backed away before turning his back to the Sith and joining Kitt near the Starsword. Knowing he needed to provide his own transportation, Marcus briefly wondered how he could provide safe, secure, and possibly permanent transportation to Tython. He knew he could not have a shuttle carry him to Tython, only to drop him off and return to the galaxy at large; Kitt had wanted to keep the Jedi location secret. He would have to borrow a star-fighter from the Empire and return it later, with its memory wiped. Seeing a TIE Defender pilot making his way across the hangar deck, Reilly ran over to him and requested the use of his fighter. The young Lieutenant stuttered in response to the Admirals question. Marcus knew it would bother any pilot to have his ship taken from them. But he also knew that protocol would dictate that the inferior officer would give up his ship. After changing into Imperial flight gear, Reilly made his way into the cockpit of the TIE Defender. As he settled in, he thought back to the basic flight training he had received at the Imperial Naval Academy. Many of his instructors believed he would choose to continue onto the path of a fighter pilot, until his test scores showed him his future as a capital vessel captain. His second year in the Academy had been the last time he had flow a fighter, and that was almost 10 years ago. Beginning his pre-flight routine, the young Imperial thought back to his life with the Empire. The men he trained had long since either died and moved onto captain their own vessels. He hoped that they would not choose to abandon this fledgling government. While his own path seemed to veer away from the military, and hopefully away from politics as a whole, he knew this new Galactic Alliance would the men and women he had trained the arts of war. He thought back to the lives he had taken in service to his government. Only now he began to question why. The sound of his Defender coming online brought thoughts back to the moment. Donning his flight helmet, Marcus opened the registration of the Defender and began to make some modifications. Knowing the history between the Empire and Jedi, Marcus did not want people to know of his history within said Empire. Showing up in an Imperial fighter, clothed in Imperial flight gear would most likely tarnish his reputation with any Jedi who witnessed his arrival to begin with, so he would do his best to disguise his true identity until the right time came to reveal it. With that thought in his mind, Admiral Marcus Reilly ceased to exist for the time being, and Jedi Apprentice Dean Reilly was born. Dean maneuvered his Defender out of the resort hangar and began to input the coordinates for the Core Worlds. Luckily he remembered enough of hyperspace travel to make multiple jumps to keep the location a secret. So inputting the number of jumps he wanted to make, and the precise coordinates he wished to arrive at, the Jedi Apprentice watched as the stars began to elongate and the darkness exploded into light.

Marcus let a smile cross his lips and for the first time in a long time, he found he truly meant it. "Then if it is not too much trouble, I would like to accompany you to wherever the Jedi Order has relocated too. I have all of my possessions on me. I am ready to go whenever you are."

It was the first time Marcus had given any real thought to his life after this summit. He had known for some time that peace would be the standard of the galaxy. While Marcus did fight for peace, even prepared to die for it, he knew that peace would bring about the loss of position within the Empire. He had accepted that fact upon joining the Imperial Academy. But now that the time had come for him to relinquish his position, he had no idea what he was going to do. "I actually have not given much thought to what my life outside of the Imperial Navy would be. I remember you telling me once before that I had the ability to touch the Force. Could you train me to do that? Train me as a Jedi?"

After shaking the Jedi GrandMasters hand, Marcus turned slightly and allowed himself to lean against Kitts Starsword. The former Admiral watched as aides and diplomats slowly began to filter their way out of the conference rooms. His eyes followed each man and woman as they either boarded their shuttles or made their way toward the section of the resort that held the staterooms. "This galaxy needed a change, my friend. Neither the Republic or the Empire were doing the job properly. As much as it pains me, the Empire that I fought to defend hasn't existed in a long time. Deton has tried to make it work, tried to fix it. But when something is dead, you can't bring it back." Marcus lowered his head and stared at the hangar floor for a moment. His mind began to wander as he thought about his past. The things he fought for were long gone. His family had been killed a long time ago. All his friends were either spread across the Empire, or dead. The only thing he had were the men under his command. "In truth, my friend, I only came here today to make sure those men under my command were not left in the cold. Every act they committed in this war was either under my orders or another superior. I didn't want the Republic throwing Imperial soldiers and pilots into brigs for simply following orders. And as strange as it sounds, I also wanted to make sure the same thing didn't happen to the men from the Republic." Straightening his body and turning to face Kitt, Marcus turned to a topic that interested him more than the politics of the galaxy. "So how are you doing in these troubled times? How is the Jedi Order dealing with this change?"

Why can these people not understand what this meeting is truly about? This meeting is not to decide the specifics of this government. We are not here to bicker over armor, ship classifications, or paint schemes. We are here to end the fighting between the Empire and the Republic. We are here to bring about peace in the galaxy. We are here to do the most important and best thing for this galaxy, and all these leaders can do is bicker over pointless and trivial things. Things that can be changed at the drop of a hat by the new officials anyway. Just as Marcus stood up to get some air, Ambassador Talis rattled off the proposal for the new government, and the leaders of both governments began to sign. Allowing a sigh of relief to escape his lips, Marcus smiled and took a walk to stretch his legs. Even during fleet combat, something that required very little moving, Marcus did not sit for hours on end. As he exited the conference room he felt a weight lift off his shoulders, almost as if his muscles had been tensed to fight off some unknown foe and now that that he was away from the bickering, arguing, and debate of pointless issues, his body knew it could relax. Within moments he found himself in a hangar and spotted the Jedi Grandmaster Kitt leaning against his Starsword. The former Imperial Admiral walked over to the Jedi and offered his hand as a twofold gesture, the first as former adversaries ending their conflict and the second, being more important to Marcus, as a friend.

As Marcus took his seat at the conference table he found himself to the direct right of Emperor Rustic. He allowed himself a small smile that carried with it a weight of sadness. Even now, with the dissolution of the Empire at hand, the young Admiral still instinctively placed himself at the right hand of the Empire. It would be tough to give up those old habits; most of them had become second nature to him over the course of many years. He could still remember his old drill instructors screaming for hours on end at the recruits to learn their place and their duties. He could still remember the aches and pains of physical training, and the weariness that accompanied the long nights in the Imperial Archives studying for examinations. But to Marcus they had been worth it. At the sound of the Emperors voice, Admiral Reilly was brought back to the meeting at hand and the present. As many of the delegates took their turns speaking, Marcus sat patiently. He knew his limits in the realm of politics and had decided only to attend this function to make sure his men were treated fairly in the end, and to support Deton in making sure the Empire was not totally screwed. But the more he listened the more his insides began to churn. For a split second the anger he felt was different than the emotion he usually felt. Under normal circumstances he could feel a fire burning deep within himself. Yet now he only felt irritation, annoyance, and frustration. He watched and listened to each barbed word and defending argument was put forward. He grimaced when he realized that these were the men forming the government that would rule the galaxy. As the Emperor gave some more of his opinion on the pardon of war crimes, Marcus had finally had enough. ”œENOUGH!!”

Marcus nodded in agreement with Admiral Starlisks comment. During his time in the military he had seen many technological advancements introduced that were designed to increase efficiency. In truth these installations had been made in order to cause more death with less effort, or to make bringing about these weapons easier. Admiral Reilly had always been pleased and happy that those in charge of those weapons had not yet been replaced with machines. If human consciousness, respect, and emotion were taken out of battle and replaced with logic, numbers, and a simple desire for results, the destruction wreaked by war so far would pale to the future. As Onderin began to speak with the Emperor, Marcus allowed himself to drift through the gathering crowd. As he moved he spoke with several individuals, already feeling the gathering tension as so many enemies began to gather in one place. He knew that when these people normally gathered, death and destruction always followed. But this time, at least on the surface, it was peace that brought them together. And although he was a man of war, Marcus hoped that true lasting peace was the outcome. As he spoke with one of the Imperial delegates, he "felt" two new delegates arrive. If feelings accounted for anything, he would definitely have labeled them as Sith. Although not quite as cold as the renegade Faust, he felt a chill run through him and down his spine. He watched as one entered and quickly moved to a corner of the room. From his own Imperial training, Marcus knew he was taking in every being in the room, analyzing every person for the negotiation to come. Although he did not see the second come in, he could still feel a cold presence nearby. Deciding to move toward something warmer, the young Admiral moved towards his old acquittance, GrandMaster Kitt of the Jedi. Just as he was about to speak, a Link employee spoke to him and the Republic delegate about beginning the meeting and moving the gathering to a conference room. "I agree. A Force-free environment might be better suited to this negotiation. I say we proceed to to the conference room and officially begin this summit. Lead the way."

As Admiral Reilly lowered his salute to the Emperor, he felt a cold chill creep down his spine. His eyes narrowed and he cast glances around the immediate room, wondering if it was a threat to the Emperors safety. As his eyes searched around, his hands slowly dropped down to his ceremonial weapons in a soft gentle manner. Turning to face the Emperor he did not allow his suspicion to be known but proceeded to follow Deton at careful pace. As they walked, Admiral Reilly carefully considered the impact of this peace summit. For as long as he could remember, he had been a man of the military. Ever since leaving his foster family, all the life Marcus had known was the military. If this peace summit went smoothly, which in truth Marcus hoped it would, he would lose much of what he had gained through his career. If the summit succeeded in ending the need for an active military force, Marcus would make sure his men were taken care of. As the Imperial envoy met with Admiral Starlisk, Director Thalin, and a man personally unknown to Marcus but known throughout at the galaxy as not only the most wanted man, but highly regarded as the most dangerous. Marcus knew instinctively this was the source of the chill he had felt earlier. His grip tightened in reflex around the hilt of his ceremonial blade before withdrawing the sword, scabbard and pistol and handing it to the guards on duty. Throughout his movements, Marcus kept his eyes on Faust before turning to Admiral Starlisk. ”œAdmiral Starlisk,”

Marcus watched from the bridge of the brand new Star Destroyer Blessed as they quickly traveled through hyperspace. He watched the dark blue shapes and lines that represented stars and planets quickly flew past the his new vessel. He gently rested his arms on the ceremonial weapons at his side. The vibro-sword he had been given upon reaching the rank of Fleet Admiral was clipped loosely on his left, while the custom blaster pistol he had been given upon graduating from the Academy was holstered comfortably in a leather holster on his right. He had never used either weapon in anger or the heat of battle before, and he hoped he would have have to. Turning to face his new partner in crime, Captain Zinthos, Marcus allowed a smirk to cross his face before returning his view of hyperspace before him. The young Admiral thought he had been young when he had received his first commission. He could only imagine the skill and tactical genius that lay within the 16 year Captain next to him. As the hyperspace alert klaxon flared, he spoke to Zinthos without turning. "Captain, ready the honor guard for deployment. In addition to your own honor guard, take several troopers from the 108. Also, when we emerge from hyperspace, launch two squadrons of Defenders to escort our shuttle. Along with our honor guard, meet me in the Captains hangar and prepare for launch." As he boarded the grav-lift that would take him to his quarters and to his personal hangar, he spoke once more. "XO, reuquest permission to orbit the resort as well as permission to land with dignitaries."