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Description
kudos if you guess what the title is a parody of.
Direct continuation of this

Where we last left our unlucky protagonists:
"This seemed to be the very definition of "between a rock and a hard place". Sith Lord on one side of the door... and some horrific semiparasitic death machine on the other. If he'd still had his lightsaber, Luke bet he could've taken it in a fight, but the library had had a strict "no weapons" policy. He'd left his new lightsaber at the desk.
Which probably meant his f- that Vader had it now.

Still, Luke had seen what the creature had done to the few other patrons downstairs, and he felt responsible for dragging the head librarian's daughter into it all. He steeled his nerve (failed utterly in that regard) and reached for the door controls."

The stacks seemed even more claustrophobic than before, and Luke almost wondered whether it was because of Darth Vader's stifling, overbearing presence in the Force. Almost wondered, but didn't have the time to. The Thing made a horrible screech -- the first sound beyond hisses and snarls they'd heard so far, and dropped down out of the vent quicker than Luke had known it could move. There was an instant's warning in the Force, and without thinking he shifted to the side as the lethally sharp tail whipped out between him and Aeshpe.

The girl screamed, and it dimly occurred to Luke that there wasn't much use keeping silent if the predator already knew where the prey was. Vader had not moved from the guarded stance he had been in when the door opened, and if Luke had expended any extta effort at all, he might've sensed outright confusion from the Sith lord. He wasn't moving forward to attack, but neither did he seem like he was going to drop the lightsaber anytime soon.

There were still a great many mixed emotions concerning the revelation at Bespin and the nightmares and questions that had followed. On the one hand, it ran so counter to everything he'd been told his entire life -- and how much did he know about himself if it was all lies? Who was he even? -- yet on the other hand the Force had been inescapably, mercilessly clear about the veracity of Vader's claim.
As if his instinctive response to the man's telepathic contact wasn't troubling enough.
Luke had serious doubts about the wisdom of his next course of action, but despite the fact that most people did not survive telling the dark lord "no", Vader seemed to want him slightly less dead than this creature did.

Besides, he and Aeshpe were unarmed. It was mostly sensible. Sort of.

Luke grabbed the librarian's hand and towed her along behind him, throwing them both out of the way of the monster's grasping claws and skidding on floors slick with blood until he'd dragged them both behind Vader's considerable bulk.
There were probably a couple different ironies in his choice of shelter, but Luke was in no mood to consider them at the moment.

"Luke-- rebel guy-- whoever you are," Aeshpe hissed to him as the strange being stalked out through the open door, "You knew Lord Vader was here without seeing. Do it again."

"What?" he blinked.

"Are my parents alright?" Aeshpe's fingers curled into his jacket sleeve tight enough to leave imprints in the skin beneath. "Are they safe?"

Luke winced, but didn't try to pry her hand off. It seemed like a bad idea to take his attention off of Vader and the whatever it was, but he supposed he couldn't deny the poor librarian this. He closed his eyes and reached for the Force -- temporarily taken aback by the roaring, crackling bonfire of Shadow that surrounded everything, but especially him. Bits of it snaked off towards the monster, but a great deal of the dark presence hovered over him like a cloud or like dragon's wings. Luke swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and fought to focus until he'd managed to find the light.

The creature stepped forward and so did Vader, brandishing his saber, and Luke nearly lost his concentration, but regained it at the last moment. When his eyes fluttered open, he realized they'd only been shut a few seconds.

"They're okay," he whispered to Aeshpe, "They're worried."

Aeshpe set her jaw. "Then I need to go to them. Papa needs to know we're both alright or he'll have another Umbara flashback."

Luke hadn't actually paid much attention to the man behind the circulation desk, but he did remember that the man was scarred, and had some kind of medal hanging on the wall behind him. If the man was a Clone Wars veteran, as his daughter seemed to suggest, he couldn't blame him for being unsettled by uncanny events. From what little he'd heard, Umbara had been a fiasco.

"Do what you have to do," Luke took several steps back alongside the young woman. "And I'm sorry I dragged your family into this mess. Honest, I didn't know that thing was inside the guy I gave a lift here."

"I believe you," said Aeshpe before she darted up the stairs, but her eyes had held doubts.

Luke didn't have time to contemplate that. The creature made an impressive leap, jaws dripping. Its hunger and malice made a decent showing against his f- against Vader's Force signature, and he scrambled back. He was doing his best not to think about anything but surviving at present, and considering the implications of accepting the truth wasn't helping him now.

"Do not lower your defenses!" The rumbling baritone was sharper than he remembered it being on Bespin, more a reprimand than intended to intimidate. And that was nearly more distracting than anything else.

Luke grimaced and rolled out of the way of a stab from the tail. Vader tossed his lightsaber then -- and Luke couldn't help a surge of terror, phantom pain shooting up his arm and breath catching in his throat -- and it sheared through several of the long spines on the creature's back. It shrieked and wheeled around to face the Sith, who didn't give it much time to assess the situation.

The being was surprisingly quick. It dodged four strikes in succession almost as though it had sensed them coming. Luke knew that he had a good opportunity to escape then and there. Sith Lord and parasitic death machine alike were distracted -- by each other, no less -- and if he could just get upstairs he'd be able to retrieve his --
Luke caught a glimpse of another hilt hanging from Vader's belt and his heart sank. Never mind, his lightsaber was already down here, though it might as well have been a thousand miles away.

He'd worked so hard to build the lightsaber in such a short time, and he couldn't very well just leave it behind. Well, he could, and he would if he had to, but he didn't want to.

Luke realized approximately fifteen seconds later that he'd wasted his opportunity to run. The monster slid around Vader and made a dash for him again. It's claws caught on the back of his jacket as he tried to evade it, and he felt the material tear. The lightsaber hummed and then a point of light appeared in the center of the being's carapace. It grew larger and brighter and then the tip of a lightsaber was moving up through the chest to split the Thing's head. It caught on the skull plate, being a material evidently too hard for lightsabers, but it was already dead by that point.

Luke stumbled back and turned to run as the creature collapsed.

"Do not move," Vader snapped.

Luke took as couple steps back anyway, turning his head this way and that and looking frantically for another exit. Then he heard the hiss.

A heavy hand clamped down on his forearm and yanked him forward so quickly that he collided with Vader's chest with an audible thud. Seconds later, a second creature dropped from the top of one of the stacks to land where Luke had just been. It was much smaller than the first, only recently "hatched", if it had come into being the same way the other one had.

Darth Vader stared at the thing, disgust quite evident mask notwithstanding, and ignited his saber. The half-grown thing hissed and tried to make itself look bigger, as though it felt threatened. Luke glanced at the glossy black chitin covering the dead one, then at Vader's armor and wondered whether the younger creature was responding as though Vader was a member of its species.

Something crunched in the darkness several yards away and Luke stiffened. How many of these things were there? Was it some kind of bioweapon outbreak, these parasite things? He shifted to try to peer into the darkness and was yanked close again for his trouble. Vader's arm circled his shoulders across his chest and made movement difficult.

"Let me go!" Luke squirmed. "You can't fight one-handed anyway!"
The mask tilted down a moment to regard him with an air of irritation, then Vader blocked an ill-timed leap and bisected the creature. Luke blinked.
"...okay, maybe you can," he muttered.

"We are leaving," Vader growled, and began moving forward, half dragging half shoving Luke along in a very awkward gait.

Luke couldn't argue with that, though he would've far preferred doing so on his own terms. He listened for the scuttling noises that seemed to accompany the newly hatched organisms and stumbled when his stride did not match his captor's. (His rescuer's?)

"No, wait-" he tried to twist out of the durasteel grip -- a near futile endeavor -- to look around. He could sense at least one more life form in the archives and he wasn't sure if it was at surviving patron or another one of those creatures.

"Enough, Luke," the hand on his shoulder tightened. "If you are waiting for me to become distracted so that you can escape again you will be disappointed." There was something both grim and the slightest bit...fond... under his words as he added, "You have run long enough, my son."

"There's still one down here!" Luke hissed. He tried to pry the hand off his shoulder, but that worked about as well as his previous attempt. "It'll kill the librarians! They're innocent, you have to-!"

Well. He didn't have to anything. He was Darth Vader, second in command to the emperor. He'd burned cities, killed thousands. What would a few librarians be to him. Luke bit his lip hard at the thought of having been the cause of Aeshpe, Tars, and Heloise's deaths. Vader certainly didn't seem interested in stopping.

"Father, please!"

The words had slipped out unbidden, and far too easily, and there was no way to take them back now that they hung in the air between them. The hand on his shoulder loosened suddenly as Vader pulled up short. The helmet snapped down and Luke got the distinct impression that Vader was staring at him. Luke swallowed hard, wondering if he'd just condemned himself in some way.

After a silence that stretched for far too long, Vader released him. "Very well," he took a step back, and raised a hand to point at Luke. "Remain where I can see you."

Luke was too startled by the capitulation to do otherwise. He pushed sweaty hair back off of his forehead and tried not to wince when he heard the last remaining creature's death squeals. He looked down at his boots and fought down a wave of nausea when he realized just how much blood and tissue was covering the toes. He barely noticed -- a difficult feat -- when Vader returned.

"Where did the parasites come from, Luke," he demanded. It would've been unusual for them to have been a Rebel ploy, but Luke sensed he was suspicious of Luke's involvement somehow.

"From the patrons," Luke rasped, still staring at his soiled boots.

"The patrons smuggled them in?"

Luke shook his head numbly. "They were growing inside the patrons. I let them in. I didn't know..." he trailed off, wondering why he felt the need to defend himself to this man. He shuddered. "They come out of the chest."

Gloved fingers tilted his chin up carefully so that he couldn't help looking straight into the mask. "Were you harmed?" his father asked in an astonishingly gentle voice -- gentle compared to every other time he'd spoken to Luke save once, and that was at Bespin.

Luke wrinkled his brow at the unexpected question, and the thoroughly absurd day he was having. All he'd wanted six hours earlier was a pamphlet on older astromech droids so he could give Artoo a long needed tune-up. Murderous aliens, angry librarians, and Darth Vader suddenly acting parental had not been on his to-do list. Belatedly, he realized that Vader was growing agitated and that he hadn't answered the question.

"...I think I'm okay?" he croaked as best he could with his jaw partway immobilized.

Vader's relief was tangible for the few seconds before he locked his emotions back behind his shields. His thumb brushed against Luke's cheek for a fraction of a second -- and what in the world was he supposed to feel about that? -- and then the hand moved to his shoulder again.

"Come." Vader said, quieter now, "it is time to return to the Executor. The local garrison will see to any further reports from this location."

He sounded calm and assured, but he felt on-edges as least as much as Luke himself was. Luke caught a brief impression of so close, it was so close to him! and decided not to ask.
He wasn't sure the man would answer anyway.

Then it hit him: Vader had not seen them hatch.
"F-" he took a deep breath and gathered his nerve. "Father?"

"What is it, Luke?" Vader asked, a trifle impatiently.

"How did you know they were parasites?" Luke squeaked.

The hand on his shoulder stilled, and the impression of heavy memories drifted around them. Then, "That is no concern of yours. Let us go."

Luke wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, but he wasn't sure he had much choice.

Description
kudos if you guess what the title is a parody of.
Direct continuation of this

Where we last left our unlucky protagonists:
"This seemed to be the very definition of "between a rock and a hard place". Sith Lord on one side of the door... and some horrific semiparasitic death machine on the other. If he'd still had his lightsaber, Luke bet he could've taken it in a fight, but the library had had a strict "no weapons" policy. He'd left his new lightsaber at the desk.
Which probably meant his f- that Vader had it now.

Still, Luke had seen what the creature had done to the few other patrons downstairs, and he felt responsible for dragging the head librarian's daughter into it all. He steeled his nerve (failed utterly in that regard) and reached for the door controls."

The stacks seemed even more claustrophobic than before, and Luke almost wondered whether it was because of Darth Vader's stifling, overbearing presence in the Force. Almost wondered, but didn't have the time to. The Thing made a horrible screech -- the first sound beyond hisses and snarls they'd heard so far, and dropped down out of the vent quicker than Luke had known it could move. There was an instant's warning in the Force, and without thinking he shifted to the side as the lethally sharp tail whipped out between him and Aeshpe.

The girl screamed, and it dimly occurred to Luke that there wasn't much use keeping silent if the predator already knew where the prey was. Vader had not moved from the guarded stance he had been in when the door opened, and if Luke had expended any extta effort at all, he might've sensed outright confusion from the Sith lord. He wasn't moving forward to attack, but neither did he seem like he was going to drop the lightsaber anytime soon.

There were still a great many mixed emotions concerning the revelation at Bespin and the nightmares and questions that had followed. On the one hand, it ran so counter to everything he'd been told his entire life -- and how much did he know about himself if it was all lies? Who was he even? -- yet on the other hand the Force had been inescapably, mercilessly clear about the veracity of Vader's claim.
As if his instinctive response to the man's telepathic contact wasn't troubling enough.
Luke had serious doubts about the wisdom of his next course of action, but despite the fact that most people did not survive telling the dark lord "no", Vader seemed to want him slightly less dead than this creature did.

Besides, he and Aeshpe were unarmed. It was mostly sensible. Sort of.

Luke grabbed the librarian's hand and towed her along behind him, throwing them both out of the way of the monster's grasping claws and skidding on floors slick with blood until he'd dragged them both behind Vader's considerable bulk.
There were probably a couple different ironies in his choice of shelter, but Luke was in no mood to consider them at the moment.

"Luke-- rebel guy-- whoever you are," Aeshpe hissed to him as the strange being stalked out through the open door, "You knew Lord Vader was here without seeing. Do it again."

"What?" he blinked.

"Are my parents alright?" Aeshpe's fingers curled into his jacket sleeve tight enough to leave imprints in the skin beneath. "Are they safe?"

Luke winced, but didn't try to pry her hand off. It seemed like a bad idea to take his attention off of Vader and the whatever it was, but he supposed he couldn't deny the poor librarian this. He closed his eyes and reached for the Force -- temporarily taken aback by the roaring, crackling bonfire of Shadow that surrounded everything, but especially him. Bits of it snaked off towards the monster, but a great deal of the dark presence hovered over him like a cloud or like dragon's wings. Luke swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and fought to focus until he'd managed to find the light.

The creature stepped forward and so did Vader, brandishing his saber, and Luke nearly lost his concentration, but regained it at the last moment. When his eyes fluttered open, he realized they'd only been shut a few seconds.

"They're okay," he whispered to Aeshpe, "They're worried."

Aeshpe set her jaw. "Then I need to go to them. Papa needs to know we're both alright or he'll have another Umbara flashback."

Luke hadn't actually paid much attention to the man behind the circulation desk, but he did remember that the man was scarred, and had some kind of medal hanging on the wall behind him. If the man was a Clone Wars veteran, as his daughter seemed to suggest, he couldn't blame him for being unsettled by uncanny events. From what little he'd heard, Umbara had been a fiasco.

"Do what you have to do," Luke took several steps back alongside the young woman. "And I'm sorry I dragged your family into this mess. Honest, I didn't know that thing was inside the guy I gave a lift here."

"I believe you," said Aeshpe before she darted up the stairs, but her eyes had held doubts.

Luke didn't have time to contemplate that. The creature made an impressive leap, jaws dripping. Its hunger and malice made a decent showing against his f- against Vader's Force signature, and he scrambled back. He was doing his best not to think about anything but surviving at present, and considering the implications of accepting the truth wasn't helping him now.

"Do not lower your defenses!" The rumbling baritone was sharper than he remembered it being on Bespin, more a reprimand than intended to intimidate. And that was nearly more distracting than anything else.

Luke grimaced and rolled out of the way of a stab from the tail. Vader tossed his lightsaber then -- and Luke couldn't help a surge of terror, phantom pain shooting up his arm and breath catching in his throat -- and it sheared through several of the long spines on the creature's back. It shrieked and wheeled around to face the Sith, who didn't give it much time to assess the situation.

The being was surprisingly quick. It dodged four strikes in succession almost as though it had sensed them coming. Luke knew that he had a good opportunity to escape then and there. Sith Lord and parasitic death machine alike were distracted -- by each other, no less -- and if he could just get upstairs he'd be able to retrieve his --
Luke caught a glimpse of another hilt hanging from Vader's belt and his heart sank. Never mind, his lightsaber was already down here, though it might as well have been a thousand miles away.

He'd worked so hard to build the lightsaber in such a short time, and he couldn't very well just leave it behind. Well, he could, and he would if he had to, but he didn't want to.

Luke realized approximately fifteen seconds later that he'd wasted his opportunity to run. The monster slid around Vader and made a dash for him again. It's claws caught on the back of his jacket as he tried to evade it, and he felt the material tear. The lightsaber hummed and then a point of light appeared in the center of the being's carapace. It grew larger and brighter and then the tip of a lightsaber was moving up through the chest to split the Thing's head. It caught on the skull plate, being a material evidently too hard for lightsabers, but it was already dead by that point.

Luke stumbled back and turned to run as the creature collapsed.

"Do not move," Vader snapped.

Luke took as couple steps back anyway, turning his head this way and that and looking frantically for another exit. Then he heard the hiss.

A heavy hand clamped down on his forearm and yanked him forward so quickly that he collided with Vader's chest with an audible thud. Seconds later, a second creature dropped from the top of one of the stacks to land where Luke had just been. It was much smaller than the first, only recently "hatched", if it had come into being the same way the other one had.

Darth Vader stared at the thing, disgust quite evident mask notwithstanding, and ignited his saber. The half-grown thing hissed and tried to make itself look bigger, as though it felt threatened. Luke glanced at the glossy black chitin covering the dead one, then at Vader's armor and wondered whether the younger creature was responding as though Vader was a member of its species.

Something crunched in the darkness several yards away and Luke stiffened. How many of these things were there? Was it some kind of bioweapon outbreak, these parasite things? He shifted to try to peer into the darkness and was yanked close again for his trouble. Vader's arm circled his shoulders across his chest and made movement difficult.

"Let me go!" Luke squirmed. "You can't fight one-handed anyway!"
The mask tilted down a moment to regard him with an air of irritation, then Vader blocked an ill-timed leap and bisected the creature. Luke blinked.
"...okay, maybe you can," he muttered.

"We are leaving," Vader growled, and began moving forward, half dragging half shoving Luke along in a very awkward gait.

Luke couldn't argue with that, though he would've far preferred doing so on his own terms. He listened for the scuttling noises that seemed to accompany the newly hatched organisms and stumbled when his stride did not match his captor's. (His rescuer's?)

"No, wait-" he tried to twist out of the durasteel grip -- a near futile endeavor -- to look around. He could sense at least one more life form in the archives and he wasn't sure if it was at surviving patron or another one of those creatures.

"Enough, Luke," the hand on his shoulder tightened. "If you are waiting for me to become distracted so that you can escape again you will be disappointed." There was something both grim and the slightest bit...fond... under his words as he added, "You have run long enough, my son."

"There's still one down here!" Luke hissed. He tried to pry the hand off his shoulder, but that worked about as well as his previous attempt. "It'll kill the librarians! They're innocent, you have to-!"

Well. He didn't have to anything. He was Darth Vader, second in command to the emperor. He'd burned cities, killed thousands. What would a few librarians be to him. Luke bit his lip hard at the thought of having been the cause of Aeshpe, Tars, and Heloise's deaths. Vader certainly didn't seem interested in stopping.

"Father, please!"

The words had slipped out unbidden, and far too easily, and there was no way to take them back now that they hung in the air between them. The hand on his shoulder loosened suddenly as Vader pulled up short. The helmet snapped down and Luke got the distinct impression that Vader was staring at him. Luke swallowed hard, wondering if he'd just condemned himself in some way.

After a silence that stretched for far too long, Vader released him. "Very well," he took a step back, and raised a hand to point at Luke. "Remain where I can see you."

Luke was too startled by the capitulation to do otherwise. He pushed sweaty hair back off of his forehead and tried not to wince when he heard the last remaining creature's death squeals. He looked down at his boots and fought down a wave of nausea when he realized just how much blood and tissue was covering the toes. He barely noticed -- a difficult feat -- when Vader returned.

"Where did the parasites come from, Luke," he demanded. It would've been unusual for them to have been a Rebel ploy, but Luke sensed he was suspicious of Luke's involvement somehow.

"From the patrons," Luke rasped, still staring at his soiled boots.

"The patrons smuggled them in?"

Luke shook his head numbly. "They were growing inside the patrons. I let them in. I didn't know..." he trailed off, wondering why he felt the need to defend himself to this man. He shuddered. "They come out of the chest."

Gloved fingers tilted his chin up carefully so that he couldn't help looking straight into the mask. "Were you harmed?" his father asked in an astonishingly gentle voice -- gentle compared to every other time he'd spoken to Luke save once, and that was at Bespin.

Luke wrinkled his brow at the unexpected question, and the thoroughly absurd day he was having. All he'd wanted six hours earlier was a pamphlet on older astromech droids so he could give Artoo a long needed tune-up. Murderous aliens, angry librarians, and Darth Vader suddenly acting parental had not been on his to-do list. Belatedly, he realized that Vader was growing agitated and that he hadn't answered the question.

"...I think I'm okay?" he croaked as best he could with his jaw partway immobilized.

Vader's relief was tangible for the few seconds before he locked his emotions back behind his shields. His thumb brushed against Luke's cheek for a fraction of a second -- and what in the world was he supposed to feel about that? -- and then the hand moved to his shoulder again.

"Come." Vader said, quieter now, "it is time to return to the Executor. The local garrison will see to any further reports from this location."

He sounded calm and assured, but he felt on-edges as least as much as Luke himself was. Luke caught a brief impression of so close, it was so close to him! and decided not to ask.
He wasn't sure the man would answer anyway.

Then it hit him: Vader had not seen them hatch.
"F-" he took a deep breath and gathered his nerve. "Father?"

"What is it, Luke?" Vader asked, a trifle impatiently.

"How did you know they were parasites?" Luke squeaked.

The hand on his shoulder stilled, and the impression of heavy memories drifted around them. Then, "That is no concern of yours. Let us go."

Luke wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, but he wasn't sure he had much choice.