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Star Wars: The Force Grows

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In the months since fleeing the destruction of Starkiller Base and arriving on the Forest Moon of Endor, much progress had been made to turn the crumbling ruins of the former Empire outpost into a new headquarters for the First Order. Whole villages of Ewoks had been utterly destroyed and wiped out before the Resistance could even be notified of what was happening, allowing the First Order to work quickly and in secret.

The native Ewok population seemed like too dumb and simple an animal to even try to call for help, it seemed, and clearing much of the moon of that vermin and other natives was easy work for the First Order Stormtroopers under Captain Phasma’s command and General Hux’s leadership.

Kylo Ren, however, seemed to be no help at all.

It had been nearly two months since the incident on Starkiller Base, and Hux had never seen Ren so . . . subdued. He had always had two modes: quiet, intimidating rage and tantrum outbursts. But this new Ren seemed pensive. Lost in his own thoughts. His brow furrowed whenever something seemed to remind him of the events of that night, and Hux didn’t know if he pitied the Master of the Knights of Ren or wanted to gloat about how far his closest competition had fallen.

Still, Hux had been tasked by Snoke to bring Ren to him to complete his training. Not that it had gotten them far. General Organa and that girl may or may not have found Skywalker’s hiding place by now, but after the death of her husband at her son’s hands, Leia Organa wasted no time in using the Force to find him. Usually, such an untrained user of the Force wouldn’t have enough knowledge of the Force to make such a strong link.

They never counted on her son’s weakened state and the strength of the Skywalkers creating a direct link for General Organa to come and find her son, with or without the missing Luke.

Hit with a surprise attack once more, Supreme Leader Snoke decided that for the time being, Ren would be safer out of the Resistance’s hands if he and Hux were in a secret location separate from himself, one where Ren could recoup and Hux could begin to rebuild the Order.

Ren, a man who had once could seldom been seen without his menacing helmet, had taken to wearing just the hood of his outer robe, opting not to replace his helmet after its loss in the destruction. True, the scar that now marred his features was menacing in its own right, but Hux could tell that Ren was hardly the man he used to be. He was a broken, unsure man who hardly knew which direction the Force was pulling him in. He was weak. Pathetic, almost pityingly so.

And somehow, Kylo Ren was still the Supreme Leader’s chosen one.


- - -



Weeks later, the old outpost on Endor was well on its way to being turned into a proper new headquarters for Hux and the First Order. Nothing quite like what the Starkiller Base had been, of course, but it would certainly do while they laid low and planned their next move.

Hux found it predictable that Ren had requested that his own quarters remain relatively unchanged from how they had been. Some cleaning of debris and vegetation as well as a patch job in the ceiling was all it took before he kicked all workers out and shut himself away in his rooms.

Probably wanted to keep as much of his grandfather’s little lunar outpost as it was, Hux thought, sneering at the walls of a corridor that had yet to be repaired. The walls in this section of corridor were old and crumbly, and its time had long gone. But the outpost was proving to serve well as a new foundation for his new headquarters, just as the Galactic Empire had formed the perfect foundation for the newer, stronger First Order.

“Until our glorified Death Star was destroyed in the same exact manner as Darth Sidious and Darth Vader's.”

Spinning, Hux glared at Ren, not realizing that the man had silently come up behind him and stood back in the shadows as he glared at a crumbling wall.

“Need I remind you, Ren,” Hux said through gritted teeth, “to not use the Force to listen to my thoughts?"

“If you didn’t think so loudly, General, they would not have probed their way into my head,” Ren retorted, completely unphased. Staring down at a quietly fuming Hux, Ren’s face was unreadable. “Next time you think such thoughts, General, just remember: the ashes of the Galactic Empire is what we stand in. Not a foundation, but a pyre. It’s what we could easily become the next time a base under your control allows access to the Resistance again. Remember that."

Turning away, Ren continued past Hux towards his own quarters, leaving the general once more with a feeling of contempt and rage towards his reluctant colleague.



- - -



The next time Hux saw Kylo Ren was as the Force user came storming into the old containment hall where Hux was viewing the refurbishment progress while no workers were present.

“Something’s wrong,” he barked out as soon as he entered the room. Hux barely had time to turn around and register that it was Kylo Ren that had even said something before Kylo turned and stormed out again, leaving Hux to quickly follow after him.

“Wrong? What do you mean, ‘wrong,’” Hux asked as he caught up to Ren’s long stride.

“Something’s happened to Supreme Leader Snoke,” Ren said. That got Hux’s attention.

“How do you know? What’s happened?"

“I can sense it. He’s in danger."

As if on cue, a short alarm rang through the corridors, stopping both men in their tracks. A call went out for all generals and officers to make their way to the control room.

“I need to go,” Hux muttered. “Ren, see if you can find out what’s happening. Use the Force if you have to, but . . . Ren, what is it?”

Ren was clutching his chest, his broad shoulders stooped over as he tried to regain his breath through gritted teeth.

“Supreme Leader . . . I can feel him . . ."

Hux stared at the man in front of him, wholly unsure what to say.

Looking suddenly in Hux’s direction, Kylo Ren had a look of shock on his face as his mouth fell open slightly.

“Snoke is dead."

With a cry, Ren staggered back against the wall as his words sank into Hux. Snoke couldn’t be dead, could he? Surely Ren was just . . . reading the Force incorrectly.

“Surely Supreme Leader Snoke is—"

Cutting Hux off with a loud yell, Kylo doubled over, his face contorting in pain. He quickly shoved himself off the wall and quickly turned his back to Hux, walking back the way they had come. Hux called out after him but was ignored. Turning to look back towards the direction of the control room, he sighed in frustration as he stopped an officer that was hurrying past him.

“Tell the officers I’ll be there as soon as possible,” he commanded. "The Master of the Knights of Ren needs my assistance."

“Yes, General."

Wondering if he would live to regret his decision, he turned to quickly follow in the direction of the one man who instinctively seemed to know exactly what was happening. Soon he was turning the corner into the hall they had been in just minutes before, and it wasn’t hard to spot Kylo on a far corner, crouched onto the floor hugging his torso with his eyes screwed shut. Even from the other side of the room, Hux could see and hear Ren breathing hard as every breath came out as more of a grunt.

He look like a hurt, angry child.

Slowly stepping into the room, Hux kept his eyes glued onto the other man. Something more than just Snoke’s death was affecting the Master of the Knights of Ren, that much was obvious. Hux was beginning to suspect exactly what it was; something his father had once said about Supreme Leader Snoke's past sprang into his mind, and Hux was beginning to realize that it was happening again. If Hux was correct, history was about to repeat itself.

“Ren, I need you to stand up,” Hux said without venom, but as if he were calming luring a child away from a crumbling cliff edge. “You need to get up, now."

Listening to Hux for once in his life, Ren shakily got to his feet, wincing in pain as he did so. Swaying, Ren threw out a hand to catch himself on the wall. Before he could take a single step, though, Kylo Ren cried out in shock, his body twisting and falling hard into the wall, face-first.

Everything after that happened so suddenly that Hux barely had time to take it in. One moment Kylo Ren was bracing himself against the wall by his forearms, hands balled into fits, and the next moment he was growing. Hux watched in disbelief, slack-jawed as Ren began to grow in height. His already wide shoulders became even broader as he grew proportionally larger, his robes growing along with him.

Stumbling, Kylo Ren backed as far into the corner as he could as if he could back away from what was happening to him, bracing his enlarging hands on either wall. Breathing heavily, he looked down at himself and watched as his chest broadening with the rest of him. A strange feeling seemed to shift inside him, and as he grunted at the sensation twisting its way through his body, the growth seemed to excel and surge even faster.

“R-Ren . . .” Hux stuttered, backing even further away from the man who was already more than a head taller than a Wookie. He had to be nearly three meters high, Hux realized in shock.

Suddenly, it hit Hux that the room was only around four meters tall; Ren was going to outgrow the room if this didn’t stop soon.

"Ren, Ren you need to stop this," Hux called out, desperate to gain some control in the situation. "You must—"

Almost as if the growth itself had been probing Hux’s thoughts, another surge in the continuous growth quickly closed the gap between Ren’s head and the ceiling. The now-giant Ren let out a pained cry, falling to one knee amongst a cloud of crumbling plaster and rubble.

In the resulting tremble, Hux nearly fell over and had to quickly grab onto a nearby table. An alarm was suddenly going off throughout the base. Hux knew that others must think that they were under attack, and he glanced back at the doorway. Soon someone would come looking for them, or the source of that tremor. It was only a matter of time . . .

Letting out a groan, Kylo Ren fell backwards into the corner, sitting down as the non-stop growth threw him off balance. Every breath he took seemed to fuel whatever was inside him, desperate to live, working hard to ensure that Ren’s body became what it needed to survive.

His hands once more braced against the walls, it was all Kylo Ren could do as he shifted his body to adjust for space. The room had become so small, and the ceiling was still rapidly approaching even now that he was sitting down. His head seemed to be spinning as he grew, and everything seemed so clouded. Distantly, he heard Hux actually attempt to order him to stop growing, saying that over five-and-a-half meters was "ridiculous."



“Oh, my god . . .” Ren grunted through clenched teeth, feeling what seemed to be the whole of the Force ripping through him. With a loud cry, a final surge of growth sent his head right back up to the ceiling. Plaster and debris cracked and fell once more, covering his head and wide shoulders. Whatever this new power was inside him seemed finally satisfied, though, and the growth seemed to stop just as suddenly as it had begun.

Panting, Ren looked down at himself. He was monstrously huge. Judging by the height of the room, Ren figured he had to be over seven-and-a-half meters high. Everything looked so different from this height. Everything felt so different, too. He felt different. A powerful new Force radiated from within him. Something dark and cold, spreading to fill out all the new space inside of him. Spreading to surround what Light of Ben Solo was left in him and destroy it from within.

The power felt good.

“Ren,” said a small voice came from the far side of the room. Looking up, Kylo saw Hux cowering in shock, taking in the vast expanse that was his bent-up legs, then up to the the rest of him, and finally taking in the large expanse of his face. “Ren, what have you done?"

Furrowing his brows, Ren lashed his hand out towards Hux, Force-choking the officer from across the room. At his new size, it seemed like his hand could cover more space even through the Force; even though he wasn’t physically holding Hux, he could feel his throat bob as he tried to gulp down air but could also feel the beat of Hux's heart as though his chest was pressed against Kylo’s giant palm itself. He was powerful before, but now it felt like he could do so much more.

“I haven’t done anything, General,” Ren spat, voice booming. Releasing Hux, the smaller man fell to his knees taking desperate, gasping breaths. For a moment, Kylo Ren loomed over the crumpled general, the sound of his gasping and coughing the only sound other than the continuing alarms.

“It’s Snoke,” Hux gasped finally.

“What?"

Cringing at the other man’s loud, echoing voice, Hux looked up with a glaring sneer. “Snoke. He’s dead."

“I told you before that he—"

“No, you don’t understand!” Getting up to his feet, Hux looked up at the giant before him. “It’s Snoke that did this to you, whether he meant to or not. Snoke wasn’t just Snoke; Snoke is Darth Plagueis."

Something inside of Kylo Ren twisted at that. He felt the pull of the Light shy away from the reach of the Dark inside him as if trying to escape the words that he had just heard.

“Plagueis found the secret of eternal life,” Hux continued, spitting out his words. “He was a man who could manipulate midi-chlorians themselves. When Palpatine killed him, do you honestly believe a Sith Lord so powerful could simply disappear?!"

“What do you know about the Force,” Kylo shouted, leaning forward to truly loom over Hux. “You, a general in the First Order, knowing more about the Force than the Master of the Knights of Ren, the last user of the Dark Side in Darth Vader’s lineage?!"

“Don’t presume that Snoke told you everything, Ren!"

Startling back from the small man’s outburst, Kylo glared but remained quiet.

“When Plagueis was murdered by his apprentice, what was left of him sought out the most powerful being it could. Not his apprentice Palpatine, but Snoke. Whatever was left of Plagueis recognized the power that Snoke had, recognized his potential. My father tried to warn me of this years ago when Snoke turned his gaze to me," Hux added, voice going soft. After a moment, he looked back up at where Kylo was still glaring at him.

"Snoke said himself that he had seen the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire, didn’t he? That wasn't just Snoke speaking that, it was Plagueis, too.” Hux watched a Kylo looked down slightly, no longer able to hold eye contact as he started to realize what Hux was leading to.

"Plagueis . . . joined with Snoke, somehow. He became a part of the Force that was inside of Snoke, turned his body into what he needed. Do you honestly think that Snoke was always such a giant? That sort of power corrupts the body in strange ways. He was a man, once. Just like Palpatine was, and now . . . just like you."

Kylo felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Surely Hux hadn’t just insinuated that the Force remnants of Darth Plagueis, a man his grandfather’s master had murdered long, long ago, was now inside him?

But Kylo felt it. No matter what his brain was telling him, no matter how impossible it seemed, the fragment of Plagueis that he felt inside of himself seemed to actively affirm what Hux had said. It wanted Kylo Ren to know what it was, and what it was capable of. He could feel just how dark and terrible he could become with this new power inside of him, corrupting the Light and his body to its whim.

Nodding once, Kylo looked down at Hux, who seemed to be waiting on him.

“Go inform everyone of Snoke’s death,” Kylo said after a moment. “I want to know how it happened. I know that the Resistance played a hand in what has happened. We need to know exactly how."

“Yes . . . Supreme Leader Ren,” Hux said, voice thick with contempt and something else as he curtly bowed his head and began to leave. Turning to look back at the new leader of the First Order, he looked Kylo up and down one last time. “Good luck leaving this room, Supreme Leader,” he added, a smirk pulling the corner of his mouth up before he walked off.

Kylo wanted to reach out and crush Hux sometimes, and now he realized he could. But the general was an invaluable source to the First Order, and now that Kylo was in command of it he needed all the expertise he could. Hux had already just proven not only loyalty to the First Order under its new commander, but also a surprising knowledge in the Force. Moreso than he had ever let on.

Shifting his weight, Kylo looked at his newly enlarged body. If the same thing had happened to Snoke, Kylo realized that the transformation was probably how he had become so hideously disfigured. He knew that a similar thing had happened to Darth Sidious when he was still masquerading as the innocent Palpatine, the Dark Side grotesquely aging and disfiguring him.

Why hadn't the same physical transformation happened to him?

Kylo felt the Light side of the Force pull at him, as if to say that the only reason he still looked like himself was because of being torn by both the Dark and the Light. But the more Kylo thought about the Light doing him good, the angrier he became until he lashed out with an angry cry, shoving himself up and through the roof. He had no idea if it was his sheer size or the Force or both, but the ceiling seemed to give away with next to no effort, leaving him standing in the open air, looking out over the base and forest as he utterly destroyed part of the building.

Breathing heavily, Kylo looked up towards the sky, wishing for the first time in his life that he wasn't walking this path alone.



- - -



Hidden by the trees, the Force-ghost of Anakin Skywalker watched the events at the old outpost unfold. Watching his grandson destroy part of the part of the building with his immense size, Anakin closed his eyes as he felt the Dark now so embedded in Kylo Ren that had caused this change.

Fading away, Anakin wondered if there could now ever truly be any redemption for his grandson in the years to come, or if Ben Solo was now lost forever.
---> SUMMARY:

After the destruction of Starkiller Base, a new, secret headquarters is made on the Forest Moon of Endor amongst the ruins of the old Galactic Empire outpost. Kylo Ren hasn't been himself ever since the defeat, and Hux is at the end of his rope with the Master of the Knights of Ren.

But when Kylo Ren announces that something is wrong with Supreme Leader Snoke, something happens that Hux had hoped would never come to pass, something his father had tried to warn him of many years ago . . .

---> NOTES:

1. This fic runs on the idea that Snoke is as tall as his hologram is. Yes, special effects folks at LucasFilm have stated he falls somewhere in the seven foot range, but here he's as tall as his hologram is, which is 20+ feet.

2. All heights are in meters as that seems to be what the Star Wars universe runs on, according to the Wookiepedia. As an American, I'm used to feet. So I roughly converted everything and as you read you'll see heights that are also links. These will take you to a visual comparison of Hux vs. Kylo at whatever height he is in that part of the fic! It's in feet, too, so if you're not used to meters I hope this helps. It certainly helped while writing.



Originally posted on my AO3 account here, complete with links and more notes: archiveofourown.org/works/7445…
© 2016 - 2024 Montyparnasse
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