Private Lost and Found

[Kaito Starfall]

Kaito had vanished.

He'd earned just enough trust, just enough favor, to commandeer a ship under false pretenses. When the moment came, he took it. He left everything behind. The silence of his disappearance was deliberate, protection, guilt, and desperation braided into one bitter choice.

It had taken him years to gather whispers, to peel back the layers of misdirection, hoping for a single thread that might lead him to his child. But each lead dissolved into smoke. The trail was cold. The galaxy, far colder.

Eventually, he secured a name: Jasper Kai'el .

The man had been listed as the legal guardian. Kaito stared at the dossier for hours before reaching out. It felt absurd... almost impersonal. An encrypted contact code and a title on a page. This was the man who now raised his blood, who now stood where he once had hoped to be.

It had been so long since he last saw the child, no longer a babe in arms but someone else entirely now, someone growing up without memory of their father. And Kaito could not say what remained of that child, if anything. He feared what he might find. He feared what he wouldn't.

Worse still, the threat of the Shadow That Remembers, loomed in every quiet breath of his past.

That ancient entity had taken hold of his beloved Seraphine, twisting her, haunting her, consuming her from the inside out. In the desperate, grief-choked years that followed, Kaito had done what many would consider unforgivable. To keep his heir safe, to spare the child from Seraphine's possession... he had abandoned him.

And in that abyss of separation, he'd sired two more.

A second son and a daughter.

Not out of love, but as a ghostly substitute, a sorrow-born echo meant to fill the hollow place in Seraphine's shattered heart where her true child had once lived. It had been a macabre affair, all of it. A tragedy stitched together, love corrupted by desperation, and a family torn apart by shadows and silence.

Encrypted Message Transmission
To: Jasper Kai'el
Subject: Regarding the Child

I don't know if you'll recognize my name. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't.
I am Kaito. The child in your care is mine by blood; though I've no right to call myself father, not after everything. I forfeited that title long ago in the name of keeping them safe.
I am not contacting you to reclaim anything. This isn't a demand, nor a plea to disrupt what stability you've given them. I owe you thanks I can never repay.
The truth is, when I left, I thought I was doing what had to be done. The thing that wore my wife's face, the thing that called itself Seraphine in the dark... it would have taken everything. I ran, and in doing so, I broke more than I saved.
The entity that once possessed her is not gone. I don't know what it wants now, but I do know the child may not be safe while it walks in memory and dream.
I don't expect forgiveness. I don't expect to be trusted. But if there's any part of you that can understand what it means to fear for them, then I ask this:
Let me help. In whatever way keeps your family intact.
I just want to be certain they live to grow old, not haunted, nor hunted by the past .
Thank you for protecting them when I could not.
— Kaito

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

Jasper had a lot of questions. To be contacted by Braze's biological father out of the blue was one thing, but the implication was intimate knowledge on why Braze was missing. To say that he had been worried sick for days was an understatement. It was hard to even start the search when there were no leads, and little Cole was another off-and-on concern. He didn't want to just up and leave. But if this was truly a lead, then Marissa would be okay taking care of the baby for a short time while he went off to find his son.

So Jasper provided Kaito with the coordinates of his home. Of course it had to be now, when war enveloped the Core. It always had to be something. He stood out on his porch as he awaited the arrival to set down on the landing pad.

This had better get him somewhere. Otherwise Jasper wasn't sure what he'd do with himself.

 

[Kaito Starfall]

Jasper Kai'el

As soon as Kaito could arrive, he did. He landed a small, weathered craft and disembarked, making his way up to knock on the door. He looked… well cared for, a visual aesthetic that had been much harder for him to maintain in recent years.

Dressed in simple clothes and a traveler's cloak, he stood at Jasper's doorstep with a concerned expression etched across his face. He wanted desperately to see his child, but from what little he'd heard, he feared this might not be the opportunity he'd been hoping for.

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

"Right... I guess I have some questions for you," Jasper muttered with a sigh. "Come on then..."

He opened his door and allowed Kaito into his home. Jasper wasn't going to pretend that he wasn't stressed. He was probably going to make both of their lives a lot more difficult in a moment.

"So..." he began, "My... your son... is eighteen now. He was knighted one year ago and has been doing his own thing without incident during that time. Recently, however, he was reported to have gone awol and helped someone break into the Jedi Temple. I... do not have records on that individual yet. His best friend was there and fought against him. She told me he didn't feel like he had fallen. You said that some... entity possessed your wife in your message to me..."

Already a thousand possibilities were running through his head. None of them were good. Of course, Jasper was predisposed to expecting terrible things. His creator had made him with the express purpose of being a weapon, and he did find unused behavioral modification chips in the facility on Lothal where he and Jalen had been born.

It was easy for him to expect the worse in that regard.

"Tell me what did it do to him?"

 

[Kaito Starfall]

Jasper Kai'el

So… Jasper didn't know where Braze was. Kaito felt his heart sink. What had happened all those years ago?

The truth was… he didn't fully understand. Not really...He had suspicions, yes...but the depth of it? The cost? That still eluded him.

He and Seraphine had been warriors, and they had tried to raise Braze the only way they knew how: by the traditions that shaped them both. Strong roots with rigid ideals in discipline and honor above all. Or so that is what he belived.

But now… it all felt like a cruel kind of blindness. A slow unraveling he hadn't noticed until it was far, far too late.

And when he finally did begin to see it...When the cracks widened just enough to catch his attention....That was when he'd caught on.

The pieces had only begun to fall into place, the hesitation in Braze's voice, the way he flinched at praise, the quiet ache for affection he couldn't name... and by then, the damage had already been done.

Kaito exhaled slowly, the weight of it pressing on his chest like stone.
"Truthfully," he admitted, "I cannot claim to understand the full extent of what was done to my precious child… or how long that creature had its claws in my wife before I realized it."

Saying it aloud made him feel like a failure, both as a husband and as a father. But he'd lived with that sentiment for many years now.

"At first, I wasn't certain what I believed. But I thought it best to place Braze somewhere safe while I tried to unravel the truth of what was happening… I see now, it wasn't enough."

He swallowed hard, gaze drifting downward.

"We trained him as our cultures dictated, but… there were gaps. Times I wasn't there. Instances I was not privy to."
His jaw clenched. "I've been held in captivity for over a decade. And all I know, all I feel...is the obsession that creature holds for reclaiming our child." His voice turned colder.

"I don't know where it stems from. I only know this: in some futile effort, she tried to replace him. The new one… was never enough. And so I was forced to train him as a viable warrior, yes… but also, I presume, as a new vessel."

He looked away, disgust and sorrow mingling in his expression.

"There were others, too. Created in the same twisted fashion. Tools... Prototypes, and 'failed' experiments. All for use..."

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

"Sounds... behavioral in nature," Jasper mused, rubbing his chin. "Maybe brainwashing..."

Jasper shuddered at the thought of other... prototypes. His mind occasionally wandered to the rows of dead bodies in test tubes that were his failed siblings. There was nothing he despised more in the galaxy. And now whatever entity wanted his son was guilty of the very same evil.

"If that... thing wants Braze, it may try to use him as a vessel," he noted. "He is, admittedly, remarkably powerful. Even for a Force User. If that is the case, it may simply decide to kill whatever is left of your wife when it moves from one host to the next. Rub salt in the wound. Truthfully, if there's something to be done about the matter, it's getting to her ahead of Braze to get that entity purged from her system. The other options I foresee leaving a lot of dead people behind."

Nobody could do that in the same way he could. Force Light was the only other gift he had been granted by his scumbag creator that wasn't his beloved little brother. It had the power to heal in a way nothing else could. That was, he hoped, the solution.

Because if it wasn't they were in trouble.

"I know you just escaped," the Jedi Master began again, "But I don't know how to get to where she is."

 

[Kaito Starfall]

Jasper Kai'el

Kaito was quiet for a long moment with a distant gaze and an unreadable expression. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, and quiet as he gathered the will to speak.

"She resides in a palace… on Takonda." He started softly looking away as he recalled the location he'd spent much of his time in.
"It wasn't always a palace. It used to be a fortress. She changed it after she... changed. Lush gardens now grow where barracks once stood. Perfume masks the stench of blood. It's all smoke and silk now..."

He exhaled slowly, almost bitterly.

"But underneath it... beneath all that illusion, there's still something wrong about that place. You feel it in your bones before you even cross the outer gates. Like the air's been taught to lie to you... She's always expecting company."

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

"Well... I can guarantee she's never had company like me," Jasper stated. "I've been told my skull is thicker than Duracrete. Not sure if that's a good thing, but sometimes if you want something done you gotta bash your head into a wall a couple times."

Jasper opened up an ornate cabinet where his equipment was being stored. His lightsaber, Lux Ultima, a handful of other weapons. All locked up, of course, so they were not anywhere the baby could reach them. He had geared up for hundreds of missions, but nothing got personal quite like this.

He had to trust that wherever Braze was he had the skills to take care of himself and stall for time. Jasper was going to nip this problem right at the roots.

"Every try to pin down a Force entity?" he asked of Kaito. "I'll tell you that it ain't easy. If you're lucky you walk away with your mind in tact and still know your up from your down. Tangible or not, I know for a fact that all of these things bleed in some way shape or form. You just gotta try and not die before you find out what it is. Not to pressure you into anything drastic, but..."

The Jedi Master glanced over his shoulder back at Kaito.

"In a scenario like this two is an optimal number."

 

[Kaito Starfall]

Jasper Kai'el

Kaito wasn't sure if he should be concerned or impressed, but he leaned more toward the former.

"Believe me... it's been the bane of my existence trying to rid the galaxy of that monster," he said simply. "I intend to see it undone."


His voice carried a kind of weary determination. He had been chasing that entity for so long that his hope had started to fade. He was afraid it might all be for nothing. Was there anything left of his wife? And if so... how would they be after all that's been done?

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

"Believe me... it's been the bane of my existence trying to rid the galaxy of that monster," he said simply. "I intend to see it undone."

"Well, then I don't see any point in waiting," Jasper decided. "I've already said goodbye to the people I need to in advance. Let's roll out."

He knew he was going to leave. It was inevitable. Little Cole had been tucked in and left to the care of his mother and Pyf, and he had been certain to talk to Phy as well. Jasper had become a true, blue-blooded family man. He had clearly dedicated his life to that above all else. In many ways it clashed with what it meant to be a Jedi.

In other ways, Jasper wore the light on his sleeve and in his heart brighter than any other person in the galaxy.

"I've got a starfighter with two seats," he explained. "We'll wanna pack light and go in fast. Anything larger will draw too much attention."

 

[Kaito Starfall]

Jasper Kai'el

"Two is a good number," Kaito echoed, faintly surprised by how much comfort he took in that.

He adjusted the collar of his cloak moving to step outside. He casting one last forlorn look up toward the distant skyline.

A soft sigh escaped him. "I'm no longer alone in this. Thank you, Jasper. Truly." Kaito Followed Jasper to his ship and hesitated before boarding... "It's strange," he murmured. "All these years I dreamed of ending this… but now that we're actually about to face her, I feel like I'm walking into my own grave."

He looked back toward Jasper with a hallow look in his soft blue eyes. "Promise me… if I lose myself in there...if she reaches through me.... just.. don't hesitate."

 

[Jasper Kai'el]

Sacorria
Tags: Kaito Starfall

Lightsaber
​

"Promise me… if I lose myself in there...if she reaches through me.... just.. don't hesitate."

"You have my word."

Jasper did not enjoy taking life. He also understood the circumstances in which that very act would be necessary. That was the price of war, after all, and he had been raised in one. For the greater good, hard decisions had to be made. Of all people, Jasper would be the last to hesitate to do what must be done.

So, without another word spoken, Jasper lead Kaito to his Epo-1 and loaded in.

They had very little time to waste.