Something ahead of me is weird. There’s something glowing there. And not like the cold glow of the crystals, more of a warm, fire-like glow. Just beyond the bend in the path ahead. My mangled body perks up, eyes flashing. Is it-, might it be a person? A human?? M-, making a fire, taking it easy, existing, being a human?!

  I drag my battered body faster. Speeding up.

  It could be a person. It doesn’t have to be. I get closer, seeing the light flare. But what if it is? What if they get scared? The bend is close now. It won’t matter! I’ll prove I’m not a danger, I’ll make sure they know I’m not dangerous! I grab a hold of the wall. I’ll greet them with a smile! Turn the corner.

  Burning, searing heat assaults my body, but I remain, eyes glued on the source of it all.

  A pool of magma. Lighting up the whole area with warmth and light.

  Meanwhile, I stand here, transfixed, burning, in pain and completely empty.

  Nobody, huh? Yeah. Guess so. Heh, I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. This whole place is deserted, and that remains true for this cave as well.

  ...Other than that, this place isn’t actually uninteresting, not at all! See, although one of my two tentacles has almost completely dissolved now, I can still see the incredible sight before me. This place is like a large, dome-like room, containing not only a few more small pools of lava but also, surprisingly, life. The floor is covered in thick green vines, bushes sprout from the floor, massive flowers erupt from the ceiling, green leaves grow from the walls… It’s like in the heart of this planet of ice, there’s a place where life can still thrive, despite it all.

  And that’s the last thing I see before my consciousness melts fully.

  I awake standing outside the temple with a bit of a startle.

  Whoa-, I-, who-, where-,,,

  Oh, right! I’m trying to get inside the mountain. Right.

  I turn around and face the pillar of light again.

  ...I guess going straight through the ceiling is the only way, huh? No, wait, maybe I should upgrade strength first? Hrm. Or, maybe, before I do anything, I should check and see whether or not jumping will even help? Just standing around and thinking was enough time for my tertiary tentacle to heal back, so this should be enough.

  ...But first, I’ll take some distance from the temple. Wouldn’t want to ruin it by falling on it.

  Right! Let’s grab some distance!

  I start walking. Hm. Just walking is kind of boring.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  ...I wonder if I could-, no, that would be-, but maybe… There will be no answers if I don’t try.

  I remove my weight from my other tentacles and stand on a mere two. Then, I point every tentacle away from me like a flat disc. Lean onto one of my other tentacles while releasing another. Next one. Faster. One after the other until I turn into a wheel of tentacles, flying up a wall and onto a mountain and over it and straight over a glacier until I finally can’t keep an eye on where I’m going anymore and I crash straight into a wall, all my tentacles flying topsy-turvy and landing on top of me and under me and around me.

  Ghhgrjehg. Y-, yup. I can cartwheel.

  Hehe. Nice. Looking at the pillar of light, I actually got pretty far! I probably won't do it again though, that was really nauseating.

  Alright. I’m far enough. Let’s do this.

  With my main body in the middle, I crouch down, all my tentacles squeezing down onto the ice, pressing and pressing until the ice starts cracking, my tentacles grow tense, channelling strength and power and mirth, and I lean down, down, down, until my main body almost touches the ice and all my tentacles are tense and strained like coiled iron springs, and just when I feel like my whole musculature is about to lock up fully and explode…

  I release.

  And fly.

  Up, up into the sky, the wind roars past me! The ground beneath me grows distant and the air grows thin. High, high up until the temple is a pin and the pillar of light is a needle.

  Up, up, up, until I bonk my head on the purple bubble-like barrier.

  I stretch against it for a minute, almost breaking through it, until it has slowed me enough and I no longer push against it. I fall.

  Well. Uhuh. So that didn’t work then? Right. I’ll need more strength.

  But first, I should probably deal with this landing. I spread my tentacles out in a star formation, making all my tertiary tentacles spread out as far as they can to slow my descent. And it works pretty well! Heck, if I just lean here or there, I can even control where I’m going!

  ...Such as, to go to the pillar of light?

  Oho. Ohohoho! Let’s goooo!!

  I feel like a flying squirrel, just straight-up plummeting while also heading right for my goal. As long as I make sure not to smash into the temple it should be fine, right? Right.

  Everything is going well. Getting closer. Wind rushing past me.

  Getting closer.

  ...Maybe I’m getting too close? That pillar is starting to look pretty close. Like, really close.

  I think I might be too clo-,

  GRAGGAHG

  As I hit the pillar like a mosquito striking an electric bug catcher I tumble away, my body smouldering and hot as I crash successfully onto the mountain, none of my tentacles too harmed, but all of them spread across the mountain like a flattened jellyfish.

  Good god. “Maybe I’m getting too close,” I said. “I think I might be too close,” I thought.

  Damn it. I shouldn’t play with fire, yo. Damn fire pillar of ass. Grgrh.

  -But, this does mean I won’t have to cartwheel back here. Hooray.

  Urk, I guess I’d better be careful of that pillar. Bugger can fry me in seconds. Like half of my body is covered in crispy charcoal, although it’s mostly on the surface. It’s barely healing though, so I guess I’ll have to eat the burnt parts while I’m walking. Man.

  After an hour or so of slow trekking, stopping every few minutes to bite off a piece of unappetizing charcoal, I get to the top of the mountain. This would probably have taken longer if I wasn’t around 400 meters tall. My first observation is that it’s very hot to stand around the pillar. Also, apparently, although the pillar of light indeed does protrude from the middle of the mountain, it does so through a hole. And the base of the hole is surrounded by what seems to be some sort of glass.

  Since I don’t want to destroy the glass (God only knows what it’s for) and since my Resistance and Regeneration aren’t high enough to handle going through the pillar, I’m left at a bit of a standstill.

  Hrm. This is… Unexpected.

  I didn’t really plan for this eventuality, so for a moment I just kinda sit down. At a fair distance, of course. The pillar of light is actually quite pretty. I feel like a moth. Wanna touch.

  I lean back. Close my eyes. The mountain is steep. I tumble like a snowball. Going down, down down, until, finally, I crash onto something. Something kind of hard. I peek an eye open. Is that… one of those racks? Yeah, it is! One of those they used inside the cave, for building and seeing and stuff! What the heck is this doing out he-,

  Only now do I notice everything else. There isn’t just one rack, no, there are many.

  Last chapter, someone told me that me getting lots of idea was good and keeping my creativity alive was especially good. And while I don't necessarily disagree, I do get a bit irked when I just keep getting new ideas. Like, seriously.

  So, uh, yeah, I got a new idea! God fucking damn it-, what if I just want to take it easy? Okay, alright. Anyhoo. Ignoring my current irrational fear of a break-in, I'll just say one last thing before I start explaining my new, radically idiotic idea. Uhh. I found a fun album! I know I don't usually talk a lot on here about like music and stuff, but I really like music. Mostly prog of various time periods. I don't often find new albums I just instantly like, so this one was really fun to find! It's called Freudiana, and from what I can tell without any research whatsoever, it seems to be a collaborative effort between many prog-sters from the 70s and 80s. Which I very much like. Highlights for me would be the anonymously titled "No One Can Love You Better Than Me" that is just... it's the kind of song you need to just listen to. Nothing else, no distractions, only the song. Really good. I also liked the Beatles-inspired "Little Hans", the latter half of "I Am a Mirror"(The first half is excruciatingly ordinary) and "Funny You Should Say That." Every song is very different, but all of them have a very cohesive Alan Parsons vibe. I highly recommend the whole album, though it might not be for everyone. Uh. Okay, idea!

  I have a feeling that all these Star Wars fanfiction ideas are leading to me writing something very interesting, but that will have to be done at a later time. Anyhow. Have I told y'all about how I love Dexter? Like, the tv show. Or the novels! I love both. I've seen the tv series like 8 times and read all the novels four times, so you could say I'm a bit of an avid fan. And I think you can see where I'm going with this. Okay, so, although it isn't the kind of crossover I typically like, for this particular situation, the only real option is to do a crossover of the "the characters are seamlessly part of the other universe." I've never written one of these and I avoid reading them, but... Here we are. Okay!

  Let's start with Dexter himsef, background and all. Of course, he'll be a Jedi. Erm, "Jedi." Okay, so, backstory. He and his similarly force-sensitive brother Brian (I'm not sci-fying their fuckin' names) were raised by their merc-for-hire parents (smugglers? scum of the galaxy-types) on a mostly frost-laden planet. And, as is customary with Dexter's backstory, his mother is murdered right in front of him and his brother, leaving them in a pool of her blood for a couple of days. I guess the murderers could be her former gang or something that she was trying to turn over to the Republic, and I guess they could also murder the father, it really isn't extremely important at the moment. Either way, Dexter is three and Brian is six, and this is very important because when Jedi Knight Harry Morgan arrives on the scene, he knows that Brian is too old to be accepted by the Jedi Order, despite his obvious strength in the force. And so, he leaves Brian, taking only Dexter with him. So far so good, until Harry realizes that his new Padawan (aside from his other Padawan, Debra. Not sure how I'll justify him having two Padawans, but, yanno... Somehow!) just doesn't have any emotions. It isn't that he's well-trained or great at overcoming his emotions, he just doesn't have them. This leaves him disconnected from the Force, unable to completely connect with it through compassion or good intent. The only way he can truly touch the Force and use its power to his full potential is through the emotions of others. Specifically their fear. He can leech off of their terror, taking it into himself and turning it on them. Harry recognizes this, and, more importantly, recognizes what use this might have. Because, after all, Dexter has no chance of falling to the dark side. His lack of emotions go both ways. Harry has for years become more and more frustrated with the incompetence and arrogance of politicians and beaurocrats, and, even more worryingly, he's started to believe that large swaths of high-ranking Republic officers and workers are, in fact, working beneath agents of the dark side, who were never gone at all, but merely in hiding. Harry can't investigate it himself, doesn't have the skills or the guts. But Dexter... Dexter would be able to get away with things Harry never could, taking up his goal and finally freeing the Galaxy from the clutches of the Sith. With this as his motivation, Harry spends many, many years training Dexter to become an excellent assassin and actor, teaching him how to pretend to be kind, how to present an aura of serenity instead of apathy, of warm calm. Even more importantly, how to shroud himself in the cowl of mundeinity. It wouldn't do for Dexter to stand out among the Jedi, to show how good he truly is with the lightsaber, to prove how cunning he really is. Following Harry's code, Dexter develops into an unassuming scholar, capable in academics but only average in every other area, especially with a lightsaber. However, in the dark of the night, he shows who he truly is, finding and interrogating corrupt official after corrupt official with staggering accuracy and skill, only drawing upon his emotion and passion in the heat of murder, the only thing he can do to hide the facts of his actions. Furthermore, Harry teaches him the ways of the Sith, letting Dexter draw upon the dark side of the force as well. One of these abilities is to cloak his inner self and hide his dishonesty. Ability-wise, he's great with a lightsaber, making use of two short-sabers in a back-handed grip. His use of the force is mediocre at best, unless he draws upon the fear of others, in which case he becomes excellent at tapping into the dark side of the Force.

  Alright, uhhhh, plot-wise! I got really tired all of a sudden, but the plot would follow a heavily changed version of the first season, with Dexter, Debra and a few of the other homiciders getting dragged to Dexter's planet of birth to investigate sightings of a Sith (guess who). It'd end with Dexter and Brian meeting again, having a duel or something, and stuff happening. Yeah. Or something. It'd be fun! But now I'm tired! Goodnight!