The night at the Lars homestead was long and silent. Shmi Skywalker's funeral pyre burned in the distance, a solitary flame in the desert darkness. Anakin had locked himself in the garage, supposedly to grieve. Padmé, emotionally and physically exhausted, had finally fallen asleep.
But Kaelen didn't sleep. He couldn't.
The Rick attack had shattered him. The threat from their commander—"We'll find a universe where your precious wife doesn't exist, and we'll make you watch"—repeated in his mind like a poisonous echo. His knowledge was an advantage, but his body was a weakness. He was fragile. Human.
He headed to the garage, which was now a graveyard of alien technology. Anakin's confession had filled the space with grief; now Kaelen would fill it with cold, steel determination. He spread the pieces of the fallen Ricks' armor, the remnants of their weapons, across the workbench. He knew what he had to do. He knew what Rick C-137 would have done. If you can't beat them with your brain in your current body, upgrade the body.
The process was a nightmare of self-surgery. There was no anesthesia, only sheer willpower and a couple of reprogrammed medical droids following his precise, trembling instructions.
The Engineer's Transformation
Pain is a variable. It can be ignored.
The surgical laser slices open my left forearm. The blood, red and human, suddenly seems... inefficient. With forceps, I begin the process. I extract a sub-dermal armor plate from a Rick's combat suit and integrate it over my ulna and radius. It hurts. God, it hurts. But as I do it, the System roars in my mind.
VOLUNTARY BODILY MODIFICATION DETECTED INTEGRATION OF TEMPLATE-SOURCE TECHNOLOGY INITIATED WILL TO ADAPT OVERCOMES BIOLOGICAL LIMITS
I keep working. A micro-shield projector, the size of a fingernail, I insert into the back of my hand. A small, retractable neurotoxin dispenser in my right wrist. A data interface port directly into my spine, hidden at the base of my neck. I'm not just a man using tools. I'm becoming the weapon.
Every cut, every piece of metal I fuse with my flesh, is a betrayal of the person I was. But it's a necessary baptism. The fear of losing Padmé is a fire that burns hotter than the pain of the laser. Rick C-137 is a cyborg. To survive, to protect her, I must be too.
The entire night is a hell of blood, oil, and code. As Tatooine's twin suns begin to rise, I'm exhausted, covered in sweat and dried blood, but I am... more.
SIGNIFICANT CYBERNETIC AUGMENTATION LEVEL REACHED SYNCHRONIZATION INCREASED: +6% TOTAL SYNCHRONIZATION LEVEL: 36% ADVANCED ABILITY UNLOCKED: - Technorganic Fusion (Intermediate Level)
My mind is clear. The pain has passed, replaced by the cold sensation of metal under my skin. Now, the final step. The piece de resistance. With my new understanding and my nerves now directly wired to the machinery, I take the three damaged portal guns. I see the flaw in the Citadel Ricks' design. They rely too much on a centralized supply. I can do better. More efficient. Autonomous.
Using the heart of one of their weapons, the circuitry of another, and a casing I've fabricated myself, I create my own. It's sleeker than the abomination I built before. It's stable. When I activate it, it doesn't sputter. It emits a perfect, steady hum.
Done.
A New Path to War
The morning light found Padmé on the small porch of the farm, looking out at the desert. She heard soft voices from the garage and approached cautiously. Through the open door, she saw Anakin talking to C-3PO, the droid he had built as a child. It was a moment of strange, sad normalcy.
Then, Kaelen stepped out of the house, stepping into the scene. He looked different. There was a new hardness in his posture, a dangerous stillness in his gaze.
"We need to leave," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the emotion from the night before.
"Kaelen, Anakin needs time..." Padmé began to say.
"Time is a luxury an Interdimensional Council of genocidal tyrants won't grant us," he cut her off. His gaze settled on Anakin. "No more whining, Skywalker. The galaxy doesn't stop for your traumas."
The harshness of his words made Anakin stand up, his face contorted in anger. "You have no right..."
"I have every right," Kaelen said. He held up his new, gleaming portal gun. It was black, angular, and hummed with contained power. It looked unlike anything they had ever seen.
Padmé gasped. "You... you did it?"
Kaelen didn't answer her. He aimed at an empty space in the farmyard and pulled the trigger.
The air tore open with a clean sound, like a zipper unzipping. A perfect, stable green, swirling portal appeared, showing an impossible sight on the other side: the hanging gardens of Theed palace on Naboo, with their waterfalls and lush greenery. They could smell the flowers, feel the humid breeze.
Anakin froze, his anger forgotten, replaced by an awe that overrode everything else. The Force was powerful, but this... this was tearing the universe in half and using it as a doorway.
Padmé looked at the portal, then at Kaelen. In her eyes there wasn't just awe. There was fear. She saw the exhaustion on his face, the new, thin scars on his hands. She saw that the man she had married on a balcony under the moons had crossed a threshold he might never be able to return from.
"Obi-Wan is on Geonosis," Kaelen said, his voice that of a general giving orders. "He's been captured. Count Dooku is there. The entire Separatist leadership is there. And the Jedi are walking into a trap."
He looked at Anakin, his eyes gleaming with an intensity that was both brilliant and terrifying. "Forget starships. Forget hyperspace. We're going in the back door."
He closed the portal with another snap. The war for the galaxy was about to begin. But Kaelen Ror was already fighting an entirely different war. And he had just built the only weapon that mattered.