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Nico was born in the era post the Great Sith wars and raised during the Mandalorian Wars, to fight in the Jedi Civil War. For someone who had lived with the taint of battle on his forehead since birth, being a Sith apprentice, he couldn’t have asked for better. But, when questions of purpose and belonging arise in his inquisitive mind, he finds himself being turned down by the people around him he had grown to call friends and family as he discovers the truth behind Sith Philosophy. The deaths of his father and sister leave him with a hollow heart and an overflowing mind as he roams the galaxies different war fronts hoping to find someone with answers to his doubts.
But when he does meet his messiah of a man, he quickly realizes that he would have to give up everything he was raised to believe was right in trade for answers.
Will Solace on the other hand, grew increasingly unsatisfied with the restraints the Jedi Council placed on him, and it doesn’t help that he wields powers which even the greatest of Jedi feared to be a curse of the Force. One does not simply turn to war for salvation and he quickly realizes the gravity of his mistake as he loses his friends and stands bereft of a home during the midst of war. He hadn’t seen far enough to know this would happen and once a killer always the damned - Will finds himself quite unable to get out of the battlefront for the better.
He eventually realizes that maybe this dark stranger he keeps running into, might perhaps have something more to share with him besides an ancestral enmity.
Will these two young men, arch rival descendants of the greatest force wielding clans of the galaxy come to understanding terms with one other and realize that they each have what the other wants? Can they operate in mutual understanding despite of the blood of the other’s kin on their hands? And will the future hold the possibility of a relationship beyond mere tolerance to something that is new to either one? They probably aren’t willing to try that easily.3969 BBY, Korriban, Horuset System, Stygian Caldera. Outer Rim territories, Sith Space.The young boy observed the two men who had moved out of earshot to have a private conversation with a sense of wariness. One man he knew to be his father - Sith Master and close associate to the Emperor himself. The other one, a stranger.“Nico! Get inside the ship and tell the Captain to get ready to leave, I will join you soon…”, his father called out. Nico frowned in the direction of the second man whose silhouette was visible against the setting star of the system – Horuset. Korriban’s hot Westward winds carried with them a lot of the planet’s characteristic reddish-brown dust and made Nico blink rapidly while trying to place his father among the two men and make sure he nodded his head in reply before turning around while shielding his eyes towards his father’s ship.The landing ramp of the T-16-Skyglider was pulled down as it had been since they’d landed on Korriban. Nico made his way towards the opening while trying to pull his cloak closer around himself as it tried to whip free of his grip in the harsh winds. He vaguely wondered why they’d landed at such a high altitude, not only had it made the landing very turbulent, but it also made it nearly impossible to see to a distance greater than ten meters because of the particulate matter in the winds up this high.Zohron, their Arconan captain offered Nico a hand as he climbed up the ramp which the young boy promptly brushed aside and strode past, spitting out the sand that had gotten into his mouth in spite of not having opened it at all.“Whatever business warrants a visit where you can’t see or hear one another?”, he asked out loud. Zohron came up to the passenger aisle where Nico had seated himself and took the co-pilot’s seat and turned to face the fourteen-year-old.“You’ll know when you grow up”, he said in his brittle voice. The left side of the boy’s lips quirked upwards in a rough smirk.“Well, tell me Zohron… have you been to Sith Training academy on Korriban South?”, the Zohron made a gurgling sound as he moved his tongue about, a gesture which meant ‘no’. As unlike other sentient bipeds, Arconans not quite advanced as of yet. Zohron was like many other mildly force sensitive individuals who worked at various levels of Sith Empire as sentries, workers and the few force sensitive ones even as pilots – like Zohron, in spite of their below average eye sight.“I have… and one of the first things you learn there is to watch… one moment you’re not paying attention to your surroundings…”, then swift as lightning he ignited his lightsaber, its red hue illuminating the interior of the Skyglider in a sinister crimson. How he managed to bring it out in less than a second when it had been somewhere inside a deep pocket of his cloak was equally fearsome and fascinating to watch.“… and someone’s impaled you from the back.” Nico said. Zohron watched on with his huge set of yellow eyes as Nico turned off his lightsaber after his demonstration and placed it back inside the confines of his cloak.“The second - is to listen…”, he whispered the last word, the Arkonian captain shifting uncomfortably in his seat, keeping his distance yet seemingly curious about what the boy was going to say. Nico was pleased with the attention he was getting and smiled in his head.“If you know how to listen… even the winds carry answers from the dark side of the force”, he said mysteriously. Zohron made a low whistling sound from his mouths and leaned back into his seat.“I don’t know if you’re playing with me Nico…”, he admitted, the words making young Nico laugh heartily. It was a beautiful, yet haunting sound to listen to, but the Arconan knew it warmed his Sith Master’s heart to listen to his son’s laughter even though it was a rare sound that left the boy. Pleased about the same, he got up from beside the boy and made his way to the backside of the Ship, towards the landing ramp remembering his Master’s words to be back soon.The winds were still blowing a gale and carrying with them the red dust of the dying planet, but the two Sith Lords were nowhere to be seen. He frowned and stepped out of the ramp’s length, squinting into the dust storm. His visibility might not have extended to greater than a few meters but he knew there was a cliff face about twenty meters off in front of the ship and nowhere else to go because his Master had been specific about landing on that particular plateau-like outcropping in the Southern hemisphere.He was just about to call out to Nico, when a dark form zipped past him, almost knocking him off the ramp steps and disappeared into the gusts before he could react at all.“Nico! Come back!”, Zohron yelled, but he knew the Sith Apprentice was already gone into the winds beyond his vision, unable to hear him anymore. He gulped down the apprehension blooming in his chest and the bile rising in his throat as he pulled down the visor of his helmet and climbed back up the ramp, of the ship.As he walked into the cockpit to take up the pilot’s seat, where the Master Sith usually sat, he prayed to the force with every single bit of conviction he had, that no matter what happened to the father, the boy be safe and unharmed. 3969 BBY Jedi Temple, Dantooine. Core World territory, Republican Space.Will Solace knew his day couldn’t get any worse than it already was. All Thursdays were usually bad, and it was his timetable which was to be blamed. After the usual meditation and warm up course his batch did from 0630 to 0730 he had an hour and a half of intermediate force training. And one of the many things that sucked about it was that it was to be done blindfolded.Will could expertly defend and attack with his training light saber set at low voltage for Padawans at the temple just fine if the attacker were living. He couldn’t do it if it were a stupid flying gizmo that shot laser beams out of its many ass holes as Trell would have joked. No, seriously, the kind of sensitivity Will had towards analyzing and predicting the actions of living and growing organisms was simply lost to him when it came to the nonliving, like droids, gizmos and vehicles. It was frustrating.But, as his master repeatedly reminded him, Will told himself that he mustn’t let his frustration get the better of him. Because, the more frustrated he got, the more the force seemed to elude him. The harder it got for him to do even the simplest things he could do well. Like heal cuts, wounds and bruises, stem blood flow, analyze the depth and cause of a being’s suffering and discerning their vital parameters, no matter which species. Under regular circumstances he could also coax the most difficult species like Chikarri into holding his hand and eating from his extended palms. The same went with flora. Will knew he could will the plants in the nursery to grow faster, stretch taller until they hit the herbarium glass roof tops. He could make the flowers of the gardens bloom and fold in upon themselves just by caressing their stalks and talking to them soothingly. He could make the buds blossom in colors of his choice just by wishing so and make the fruits ripen just with a touch. He could will the fish in the lake to co-operate when he examined their health during the monthly prognosis for the denizens of the water body at the middle of the old Jedi Temple complex.Master Yaru’s voice echoed in his head as he pulled down the glazed visor of his helmet over his eyes, completely blackening out his vision,Do what you know you can do with a sense of joy and do what you think you cannot still with equal parts curiosity and humility…Leave it to the Jedi to phrase philosophy in the least number of words needed, yet, make the message clear and perfectly situation oriented. Will wanted to be able to advice somebody with similar phrases of deep meaning someday. Someday.Right now, he had to get through two hours of force training and concentrate on the tasks and assignments he would be getting this week before allowing his thoughts to wander about to becoming a Jedi Master, much less advising somebody else.TO begin with, he knew who the other Padawans in the room were. He also knew the two Masters supervising the training of the three Padawans currently being put through the exercise. Like he knew, living beings were never a problem.Will ignited his light saber and held it up in standard defensive position. He heard the ignition of the other two Padawans’ light sabers in short succession after his own.He could almost see his own light saber in front of him, an electronic controller clamped on slightly beneath the rim where he gripped it with both hands. The controller he knew was to make sure that the saber was powered to a lower voltage than it normally was so that even if the Padawans attacked each other by mistake, blows which would otherwise be fatal would only result in stings. A precaution even though by the age of fifteen, most Padawans not unlike Will knew how to handle even a fully powered saber to a good extent of safety in case things got out of control of the Masters supervising the same.In his mind’s eye, Will saw the sleek shaft of his weapon - silver with a chrome handle engraved with the words ‘Dispel darkness’ in vertical lettering. Thin ribs protruded from the backside for better finger grip and the base had an indentation with a magnetic hook mechanism that allowed him to clip his saber onto his belt. The design was simple but sturdy and very light weight that at times when he’d just gotten it at thirteen, Will wouldn’t even realize he had been wearing it on his belt for a while and would end up searching for it elsewhere assuming he’d misplaced it. Then, he’d grown more accustomed to and fond of the weapon even though he knew his future in the temple as a healer would probably not warrant much use of it.
He wasn’t going to be a warrior. He wasn’t going to be a guardian, he wasn’t going to be a pilot or mechanic or even archivist. He was going to be a medic, a healer. The lamest possible occupation in the whole order. He pushed the negative thoughts aside and spread his feet apart and braced himself, then it came.The same sounds of gears whirring and fans buzzing as the training droid spun and floated around the room, getting ready to fire randomly at the three apprentices holding their ignited lightsabers in ready anticipation of an attack towards them.Just as the first shots sounded Will sighed mentally, sweat already dripping down his neck as he sensed Kayla duck and swing her saber to intercept the droid’s shots. She’d moved a little towards him in the process and Will could sense the sudden quickening of her pulse and the rise in the sugar levels of her blood stream but scolded himself to concentrate on the droid instead.“Hold your position Will”, Master Jeth called out from somewhere, Will barely registered the remark when the droid shot out again and he swung his saber in the vague direction of what he assumed it must have fired at. Kayla was faster and more perceptive than him as she bent backwards and raised her saber, twirling it to her left just in front of Will’s chest, blocking off the shot which would have otherwise caught him in the right shoulder somewhere,“Move apart Kayla… Will must hold his own”, Master Devian’s voice said and Kayla obeyed without a word, moving off and away somewhere towards the right, well out of Will’s striking distance.But what infuriated Will was the low, almost inaudible chuckle from the third Padawan.Zarra Bulrano.The Nautolan apprentice of Master Devian whom Will had loathed since his years at the temple as a youngling.Zarra was an excellent combatant and also a good pilot for his age. Will had seen him beat three other apprentices in free for all combat with a blindfold on and Will didn’t doubt his abilities as a pilot either. Will might have had no problems with the all-round exceptionally skilled apprentice unless for the relentless teasing he’d had to put up with for all those years. Zarra had seldom gotten punished for his loose tongue however and the victim for his verbal abuse was usually, you guessed it - Will Solace.“What’s up today Willie? Didn’t find any trees to hug yet?”, he’d ask. Even though his jokes stooped to the lowest levels of Coruscant undercity in terms of quality, they had still hurt young and sensitive Will.“Go away Zarra, you have no business here”, he would reply.“Oh! Pretty boy’s getting angry… what are you going to do if I stay? Braid flowers into my hair?”, the Nautolan would retort and Will would try to ignore him and his friends until they got tired or simply decided it was no more fun once Will stopped reacting to their comments. Negativity and wariness were not completely absent even at the heart of the Jedi temple.Will collected his thoughts and forced them not to digress as he prepared himself for the next strike from the probe droid on his current exercise. He could feel Zarra’s presence a close five feet away from him and chose to ignore the proximity as coincidental as he raised his saber.Then, just as the droid fired at him again, he swung his saber in a defensive arc towards his right side, hilt going up first and blade following suite in a classic move that was also a basic defensive tactic, he felt the shot being deflected by his blade and dissipate in energy.“Good job Will, do not let your attention waver.”, Master Jeth’s voice came over, increasing Will’s confidence in himself as his posture got straighter and his stance more certain. Adrenaline pumped through his veins, but he forced himself to take a deep breath as he heard the droid ready itself for another round of shots and calmed down so as to not drain of energy too soon.When the probe droid fired for the third time, it was a continuous volley, but Will was prepared and so were the other two apprentices as all that could be heard in the room was the sound of quick intakes of breath, the swinging sound and the hum of the lightsabers and the clicks and whirs of the droid as it fired and repositioned, before attacking again and moving, just to disorient the three trainees.He moved to his left and straightened his light saber, then sharply twisted it to his right and ducked to dodge another shot which came at his head level. He then, moved his blade and shifted his grip on its hilt to block off two shots that came from the same angle before he ducked and rolled smoothly onto his feet, feeling less awkward than he usually did with his quickly growing limbs. The force hummed quietly in the back of his mind and he knew he’d tapped into it for his good show of defense for the last two times he accurately blocked the droid’s fire but he should continue to remain in the same state of mind in order to carry on through for the remaining one and a half hours of training.Taking a deep breath and allowing the slow energy to spread throughout his body as he’d been taught, he arced his senses outwards and tapped into the force, the energy everywhere, all around him and a part of all things living and non-living and felt the world momentarily deepen into a multidimensional void with a calling that was so vivid it was consuming. When an abrupt and external searing hot pain materialized in his abdomen, the sensation jolted him out of his trance and jerked him back rather rudely from his awakening.“Will!!”, someone was calling out. Someone was shaking his shoulders and someone else was talking rather loudly into a handcom unit,“Yes… Padawan Solace, right here in the intermediate training room on floor nineteen, immediately please…”. Then, water was splashed on his face and he felt cold hands pat him on the cheeks as he slowly blinked and opened his eyes which were no longer forced close by the blindfold he had been wearing.The lights which had been dimmed for the purpose of training had been turned on again and the anxious face of his friend Kayla was inches away from his own. With a start he woke himself and sat up in front of Kayla and Master Jeth both of whom were kneeling in front of him, anxious looks on their faces. Master Jeth must have splashed water on his face as he appeared to be holding a canteen in his hand.“Are you alright? You kind of went into a trance and then you started glowing and…”, Kayla started saying, when Master Jeth raised his hand to silence the Padawan girl and looked Will in the eyes. Will felt his all-knowing gaze rest on his and pry into the deepest corners of his mind as if searching for what might have gone wrong.Will couldn’t help but look away from the unsettling exchange, breathing deeply as he tried to compose himself, failing to recollect what exactly had happened.He could hear Master Devian and Zarra converse in low tones somewhere behind and that didn’t help slow the heat spreading down his cheeks onto his neck as he brushed his friend off and stood up.“Are you sure you can stand?”, Master Jeth questioned. He nodded, feeling rather exhausted in spite of the denial. Master Devian had probably called for a medical droid or even a healer from the temple infirmary who’d be here in a minute and he probably wouldn’t have to deal with trying to come up with an embarrassing explanation as to why he’d fainted mid training.Kayla shot him a worried glance but nodded her head in understanding when he said in a low voice,“Later”.As if on cue, a medical droid buzzed in and scanned the room until his robotic gaze fell on him and he smoothly glided over the floor towards Will. Will sighed and turned to face it just as Master Yaru walked into the training room. Will almost smiled when he saw his Master but he controlled his impulse to and tried to look as neutral as he could. His Master would help him handle this, he knew he’d help Will with anything. With Master Yaru there to comfort him, Will knew he could face any number of comments from Zarra and any number of cold looks from Master Devian.The Mon Calamari Jedi Knight stopped next to the droid and looked at his Padawan with concern in his big bulbous eyes.“Whatever it is that happened… I would like to discuss this with you at the healing center Will”, he said in his soothing voice. Will nodded obediently and followed his master as the medical droid declared the completion of its scanning and showed Master Yaru the report. He took one cross look at it and nodded before walking off, Will trailing behind him not quite able to meet the gazes of the four Jedi in the training room he was leaving behind. Nico activated the visor on the protective eye gear he’d adorned to shield his eyes from the dust of the storm. He had reached the edge of the cliff face and still hadn’t found a sign of either his father or the stranger with whom he had been talking to. He anxiously wondered what that sudden near explosion-like sensation he’d felt through the force had meant, causing him to get out of the ship and bolt into the hostile open of Korriban. His forehead creased as he frowned deeply, stretching his senses out into the force, hoping to meet the all too familiar signature of his father’s presence in it somewhere but came up blank.Slightly beginning to panic, he drew his lightsaber out of his cloak and ignited it, holding it up in offensive position with his right arm raised above his head and saber pointing downwards towards the approximate height of the chest of an adult opponent taller than him. He turned around in a complete circle in the spot, senses on high alert all throughout when suddenly, he felt it.Spinning around to face his opponent, Nico felt the dark energy pulse in the form of a force signature he’d never felt before. The stranger who’d invited his father.Spinning around quickly, Nico’s light saber met another red saber materializing in mid air just seconds earlier behind him as his opponent jumped seemingly out of nowhere to strike. The blow was hard and well trained and powerful enough to make Nico use almost all his strength not to flinch behind or let his grip slacken. He knew he couldn’t afford to step back even by mistake, it would lead to a fatal fall down the plateau edge. He barely registered the face mask of his attacker, with deep sockets at the eyes, filmed with dark tinted glass and a mesh over where his mouth would have been. He wore some kind of armor beneath a cloak not unlike Nico’s.Then, his attacker broke the hold and somersaulted back into the hazy dust winds, vanishing out of Nico’s visibility range. Nico swore under his breath, careful not to open his mouth too wide as he double tapped the small protrusion on his eye gear, enabling infrared vision on his lenses.His attacker was powerful and trained in guising himself well in the force, making his presence almost invisible Nico tried to find that similar dark pulsing to try and pin point his location. The infrared would help Nico though, and no matter how well his enemy could hide his presence in the force, he would not be able to hide his body heat from IR.Through the disturbed static in his lenses due to the moderately high temperature of the Korriban winds, Nico could see a bipedal figure stalking his father’s ship, moving towards the possibly still open landing ramp.With a groan, Nico began pushing his way through the gusts, his cloak billowing behind him, resisting his movements as he surged towards the Skyglider, hoping to catch up with the villain all while wondering where his father was.As he made it to the Skyglider, putting his hand on the surface of it’s Carbonite exterior, Nico was surprised to feel vibrations thrumming through it’s hull. Had the stranger gone into the ship and attempted to fly it? What ever was happening with Zohron?Then, to his not-much-of-a-surprise, the ship shuddered and lifted off the ground, making the young Sith apprentice ignite his light saber again, as he was forced to take a few steps back from the Skyglider which levitated a few feet off the ground. The wind whipped Nico’s face and the exposed skin of his hands as if reprimanding him into action.Not really knowing what to do and in a fit of frustration he couldn’t quite justify, as was the way with the Sith, Nico charged the ship.But, at the very last moment, as the ship lifted further more from the ground, Nico ran right into the huge shadow cast by the Skyglider on the plateau surface in the dying light of the setting star. He sunk into the black pool of darkness just as the ship unsteadily rose from the surface of Korriban as it fought the strong surface winds.In a second, he’d melted into nothing in the blackness. Will sat down on one of the infirmary beds as Master Yaru settled into a stool beside him and breathed out a sigh of vexation. The Mon Calamarian’s huge eyes pinned Will to his place and seemed to scan him from top to bottom, taking note of his vital parameters while judging his mental state of being, all at once. As was the case with almost all the Masters in the Temple, even Master Yaru could give that all knowing penetrative look that made naughty younglings confess their pranks, Padawans admit to their audacity and even make the younger knights tremble with self-consciousness.The Padawan learner willed himself to meet his Master’s gaze, hoping he saw what Will had experienced that had left him shocked and utterly drained of energy all at once.However, his Master nodded sympathetically and motioned for Will to lie down on his back. Will did as he was told and breathed out to steady himself.Master Yaru then said in his deep and steady voice, “Perhaps we should begin with your account of what happened…”, he prodded.Will closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to face the weight of Master Yaru’s gaze. Then, starting slowly in a low voice, he recounted his experience of tapping into the force until when he’d woken up on the floor with the concerned looks of Master Jeth and Kayla on him, calling out his name and patting his cheek as they had to get him back around the corner.“… it was as if I’d entered a new dimension, where my senses were….”, he paused and searched for the right word, Master Yaru patiently waiting for him to finish without interrupting Will’s flow of thoughts.“… overwhelmed with sensory response that was not quite physical…”, he finished explaining. But this time, Master Yaru was not looking at Will as the apprentice tried to meet his teacher’s gaze.After a few seconds of silence, Will was at the brink of his patience when his Master finally spoke and said something Will hadn’t expected him to say, but nevertheless made him feel better later on,“If it happens again we’ll see”, and he left, leaving Will to collect his thoughts in the infirmary. He had been expecting a long lecture on the Jedi Way and how he'd heard of other Jedi speaking of such things but somehow, Master Yaru hadn’t given any advice, which was scary and relieving all at once.A few minutes more and Will lay on the infirmary bed he’d been in since they came and turned on his right side, looking at the plants growing on the window sill and their pretty yellow flowers. They seemed to catch the sunlight and joyously open up towards the direction of the rays, as if they had no other care in the world and it made Will want to feel the same way. Carefree, not worried if he wasn’t as good as the other Padawan’s his age, not worried about whether Zarra and his friends were going to be making fun of him again during combat training, not worried about whether he’d ever be made a Jedi knight at all.He then swung his legs off the bed and walked all the way to the other side of the ward, passing the thirty or so empty beds all identical to his own, as he did on the way.At the sill in front of the flowers, he almost smiled. Their bright yellow petals were the only remotely colorful things in the whole room and they seemed so out of place in all the whites and light greens of the walls, the tiles and the bed sheets, it was almost gaudy.He then lifted his hand to caress one of the flowers, running his fingers along its delicate stem and wondering to himself if he should change their color to white or even a light green so they would perhaps not feel so left out among the rest of the medical accessories in the room.But, he stopped himself short and stared at the flowers for a few seconds.If he turned them white or pale green, they’d simply be ignored just like all the other trivial details of the place. It would make them turn into something contradictory to their very purpose. If they hadn't been such a bright shade of yellow in the first place, they probably wouldn't have caught his own attention.He felt so much better after that train of thought, he felt more than half the Jedi he was already. Smiling almost as brightly, Will walked out of the infirmary and towards the dining area just as the bells for breakfast chimed in the Temple corridors all about. “Hey Will, you look better, took rest, did you?”, Kayla asked as Will sat himself down with his filled tray beside her at their usual table neat the floor to ceiling glass windows on the Temple’s lower level.Their friends Jorn and Trell were there too, the usual company, across from Kayla and Will at their four-seater. Will shot them all a warm smile and sat himself down more comfortably.Jorn gave Will a meaningful look, his small Bothan eyes asking a silent question, ‘Are you okay?’, Will nodded once. Of-course they knew, Kayla would have told them, not that he minded this information being passed on to his two other closest friends in the Temple.Jorn was just as old as Will - fifteen and had been in the Temple for as long as he remembered. The Bothan Padawan was Will’s good friend. At thirteen, he’d been chosen as an apprentice and taken under his Master’s wing for further training a year after Master Yaru had taken Will in.“Yeah, we heard from Kayla”, Trell Tamar said, cutting her piece of meat with a knife and a fork as if she knew what Jorn’s look meant, she probably did. Even though her tone was lax and uncaring, probably even sounding rude to someone who didn’t know her well, her eyes were etched with worry that Will knew he could only catch since he knew her from when they’d both been younglings. Being the oldest among the four of them, Trell tended to act as if she didn’t care for the other three and shrug things off as something they’d all know as what they would ‘learn as you get older’, but Will knew she was actually a sap deep down inside that thick coppery Togruta skin of hers. If he said that out loud though, he might get force punched to the opposite corner of the Temple complex.As Will began eating his breakfast and avoided answering any of their probing, they all took it as a sign of reluctance to discuss the topic, but Jorn being the psychic that he was, glanced up at Will mid bite and said,“What’s so amusing Will?”. Will looked at his friend, his eyebrows shooting up into his blond hairline.Trell rolled her eyes and turned to Jorn, “He’s not really as disturbed as we’d thought he’d be eh?”, she asked, playing along with the Bothan’s assessment of Will’s state of mind.Jorn nodded, “He’s not happy…”, he drawled, eyes literally boring into Will’s own blue irises and penetrating his scalp and skull as if searching for his deepest secrets. Will had to physically struggle not to smile at that.“…more like satisfied, in a melancholic way.” The Bothan finished. Trell rolled her eyes,“I swear”, she said and lifted her hands up in a placating gesture. Kayla shook her head as if dismissing their judgements, but Will knew as she did that they were both relieved that the tension in the older Padawan’s shoulders died out by the minute. Nobody would be dying in the Temple at the hands of the impulsive Torguta today.“You can tell us what happened whenever and if you ever feel like okay?”, Kayla asked from beside him. Will smiled for real this time and nodded, thanking the force for such understanding friends while still remaining quiet.A few more seconds of silence and then Kayla and Jorn began conversing about an assignment they had due with Master Unduli, something about the history of Jedha, the moon holy to the Jedi, an all too familiar subject, when Trell’s eyes widened at something behind Will’s head and she raised a white eyebrow sharply.“Don’t turn around too quick Will, but I think your favorite Padawan has something up his agenda regarding you…”, she said quietly, eyes never leaving whatever they were fixed onto, somewhere behind him. With apprehension pooling in his stomach, Will sighed and asked Trell,“Its Zarra isn’t it?”. She nodded once, gesturing to the others to look too. Kayla and Jorn stopped conversing to stare at the spectacle behind Will.Will turned around in his seat, not too surprised to see the Nautolan Padawan stand up on one of the cafeteria tables and clear his throat.“This one’s for you Solace!”, he said. Will looked around the canteen area, were there no Masters to look at this? At least Zarra would get reprimanded if they were here. Seems like he’d been wrong to think Thursday’s were bad. They shouldn’t even exist, they were evil and merciless in Will’s mind’s eye.Then, Zarra said out loud to all the Padawans in the area,“Today in the intermediate force training room, Will Solace, softest and most timid of the Jedi had a fainting spell after he failed to block the shots from a Training class Probe droid…”, there was collective snickering from many tables for this. Will’s face turned red and he felt all his blood rush North.Then, Zarra held his head, black eyes narrowing into a dramatic, poorly imitation of pain and then he swooned in his place and fell right into the hands of his waiting friends whom he’d positioned to catch him below the tables. The whole room full of at least fifty Padawans erupted into laughter at the display.Will felt like ripping Zarra apart on the spot, and he would have done it if not for Kayla’s strong grip on his forearm, holding him back in his seat and Jorn’s eyes from across the table which silently asked him to be patient.Trell however, older and more mature than the rest of them as always, suggested to Will in a low voice,“I could take him with my bare hands…”. How considerate, since the dining area was a strictly no-weapons zone for the very reason. Will ungratefully ignored all of his friends and closed his eyes, trying to shrink into himself with the weight of all the stares on him and the sound of dying laughter and catcalls echoing in his ears. He could take Zarra’s comments and bullying, but not the shame of the situation he found himself in right then.That’s when it happened, again.He felt the slight tugging of the force at the back of his mind, just like it had in the training room, as if the backside of his head were being lightly pulled with a thin string connecting him to the mystical energy field all around him.Ignoring the display of Zarra’s group of Padawan friends who were each taking turns to get on the table, swoon and fall off it to imitate Will’s fainting spell, he dived deeper into his mind, following the force’s prodding while feeling like he was being tugged on the end of a string, navigating the current of thoughts swirling around in high speed inside his consciousness.Then, he suddenly found what he needed, the silence he had been desperate to seek as he heard the Padawan’s laugh on as Zarra made fun of him. He looked around in confusion wondering how his mind had just been able to create such a vivid vision inside of his head. Then, as if the highly accelerating hover train had reached its destination, he found himself suddenly jerking to a stop and being pulled back into a steady flow of thoughts.No Padawans, no Zarra, no laughter.Will was alone when he opened his eyes, standing in one of the many corridors of the Temple’s East wing. He knew this was not the present, how? Maybe an instinct, but he knew it. It was there. Also, it wasn’t the canteen area, so what he was seeing, was a vision.It was late in the evening, almost twenty-one standard hours. In a few minutes time, the Padawans would all be made to got back to their rooms and get sleep as the day dwindled to its end. The sky, visible through the glass panes set high above in the sloping roofs of the East side corridors was a dark blue and the stars were visibly twinkling in all their glory outside. Will scratched his head and wondered if this was even real, because his hand sure did feel like real when he scratched himself with it.Then, before he could think of anything else, he heard footsteps behind him and instinctively turned around to see who it was, wondering if it might be one of the many knights or Masters doing the rounds before bedtime, coming to reprimand Will for being up so late and so far away from his own quarters. But, he stopped short when he saw a familiar yellowish-green skinned Padawan about five feet, four inches tall, with dark, cruel eyes and an annoying smirk plastered on his mouth, sharp Nautolan teeth visible in the dimly lit corridors as he approached Will.Zarra was not alone, beside him walked his dumb Yaka Padawan friend Swuth. Swuth wasn’t the brightest of their lot, but he was awfully strong. He didn’t really need a lightsaber to reduce the best of their batch’s fighters into a whimpering mass of broken bones and bruised flesh, with just his arms. He towered over Zarra, both talking in hushed tones as they approached Will.Somehow, Will knew they wouldn’t be able to see him and again, he was proven right.“Tomorrow’s triathlon is going to be fun to watch, do you know why?”, Zarra asked and literally walked through Will. Will turned around and followed the two friends, easily shrugging off his new apparition status without a second’s hesitation and quite literally walking beside them to lean in on their hushed exchange. His new skill might give him invisibility, but it sure didn’t provide enhanced hearing, if anything, Will could swear his vision was a little blurry and the sounds he heard had an eerie echoing quality to them like in a bad holobroadcast. Zarra made life difficult even in a vision. Will suddenly wished he could materialize as solid while still being invisible, he’d do anything to be able to punch the Nautolan from behind just then.“Why?”, Swuth asked in reply. Zarra's nasty smile didn't vanish as he said,“Because most bipedal species need Oxygen to breathe when underwater… except Nautolans like me and Mon Calamari… we’re amphibious.”. Will’s eyes widened, whatever was the twisted little scumbag going to do?The blond Padawan stopped short, allowing his quarries to surge ahead in his stupor. Triathlon?If he had still been in the present, tomorrow would be the start of a new week for the calendar year and the first time their batch had contests for the new season, which meant that Will was witnessing…It couldn’t be. Will didn’t have the gift of prophecy. Glimpsing the future was a rare and greatly feared power even among old and extremely learned Jedi Masters. Will knew of only two Jedi who could even remotely do anything similar. An old Jedi knight whose name he didn’t know, who hung around the library and walked with a cane in his hand, too old to even stand up straight. Even though people claimed the grey skinned Jedi seer could tell the future, most of it was just dismissed as rumors and spiteful remarks on the dying man who sometimes turned senile in behavior. The other had been the legendary Jedi Master he’d read about from the archives, long dead in the Hyperspace War of the previous century.Hurrying over to catch up with Zarra and Swuth who’d almost made it to the end of the corridor by then, Will leaned in again to catch the conversation, but he only caught laughter.“Yes! That would do…”, Swuth said and Will hit his forehead with his palm and grit his teeth. Zarra nodded and put his finger to his lips and signed to the big guy to keep quiet. Swuth nodded in understanding and followed.They were done discussing whatever their plan was. Will had missed it. Just when they took off towards the corridor that branched off to the right and towards the pond at the center of the Temple, Will had a fair idea that whatever those two were up to, it was definitely not going to go well with tomorrow’s triathlon contestants which would include himself and his non-amphibious friends if it was even really happening.He started behind the two boys when he suddenly felt the return of that high-speed hover train- like sensation and he found himself unceremoniously being shoved into one of its many compartments and whisked back with the same alarming speed, back to reality.“Will!”, Trell was hissing at him when he sat up straight and blinked at his Togruta friend who was standing right in front of him, her strong fingers digging into his right forearm so much, it hurt.Kayla was looking at him worriedly again, Jorn had gotten up from his chair too,“It’s better if we leave…”, the Bothan then cast a rueful glance towards Will’s still full plate, but when he looked at Will, the blond boy didn’t waste time, getting up from his own chair and allowing himself to be pulled off to wherever his friends were taking him.He didn’t turn around to look at Zarra sneer at him as his own friends shielded him and quickly left the canteen area, almost knocking over two server droids as they did.Soon, they were lost in the winding corridors of the Temple complex. Will not really paying attention to where the others were taking him, mind still reeling from the glimpse of the future he’d just had.But there was only one way to find out if he’d actually had a glimpse of the future or not. When he looked at Trell, pulling him along as she expertly wove in between tables, chairs and Jedi alike on their way out of the place, he knew he had a lot of explaining to do.When he did go the East Wing of the Temple a few minutes before curfew that evening, hiding behind one of the buttress’s ringing the perimeter of the complex, he wasn’t surprised to see a familiar Nautolan and Yaka Padawan duo hurriedly making their way down the deserted corridor, talking in hushed tones.Will wasn’t alone that evening from when there was no turning back as he gestured for Trell to follow him quietly as they trailed Zarra and Swuth up to whatever they were going to do to thwart the Oxygen supply of the equipment they would be using for the triathlon happening the next day, which Will had told his Togruta friend following his earnest debriefing.Trell had taken his hand in hers, “The force is strong with you Will, don’t ever think this power is a curse… from today we do good with it and good only.”. The feeling of being suspended in oblivion, with the thought of being lost forever in the void was a fear even enough to rattle the Sith and Nico felt the idea rack his bones and squeeze his brain in those few bizarre seconds when he doubted his powers had failed him at last. But, he was probably not destined to go out so quick it seemed, as the ground materialized beneath his feet and he found himself taking a deep breath and get his bearings.He’d shadow travelled right into his father’s T-16 and stood at the cargo bay, the most backward part of the ship which was now empty save his own presence.Nico had carefully envisioned the place and willed the force to lend him strength as he’d made the jump into oblivion, hoping against hope that he would arrive correctly and not dangling from one of the engine busts or something. The force was strong with him, judging by the accuracy of his jump, and he tiredly slumped down, a bit too exhausted after using his powers for his own liking.A few moments later he looked around the small space, hardly a two by two meter in volume enclosure, currently devoid of any cargo for its assumed purpose, but Nico knew it had an extension of the life support system in here too. Set to correct pressure, the fresh compressed Oxygen pumping its way into the space revived Nico with its cool and steady blow, unlike the way the Korriban winds had been slapping his cheeks painfully, shredding the exposed skin of his arms with their particulate matter.Taking a few deep breaths and steadying himself, Nico crawled to the doors of the bay and pressed his ear to its steel shutter, trying to listen to any voices or sounds of the Sith assailant who’d attacked him on the surface of the planet.A part of him was still searching deep within the force to find a trace of his father out there somewhere and the other part was trying to find the assailant on the ship.Then, he found it, the same erratic pulsing of pure dark energy, the stranger. Nico then grit his teeth and took out his light saber, igniting it and holding it steady in his hands as he readied himself for battle.Swift as lightning, he activated the switch on the visi-panels controlling the cargo bay shutter on his right side, the steel shutters sliding aside to reveal the cabin and at the furthest end, the cockpit.To be honest, Nico had expected a dead Zohron and the assailant - whoever he was to be at the controls, hastily attempting to fly the Skyglider out of the Horuset system. He could have even believed a bound and gagged Zohron, or a Zohron being forced to fly the ship under the threateningly pointed lightsaber of the Sith attacker. What he didn’t expect was exactly what he got.Standing at the cockpit end was a hooded figure not unlike the assassin who’d attacked him. There was no visible sign of the Arconan Captain however.The person in front of him was clearly a Sith and powerful at that. The dark side of the force pulsed and thrummed around him like a gathering storm. Nico could not see eyes or nose through the cowl covering the face of his assailant, but he could see two braids of thin white hair dangling from the front of the robe through the opening of the hood.Was it a woman behind that hair? The figure definitely seemed to be one. Heavy set and sturdy though, it was clearly a female. Nico frowned, not quite knowing what to make of her just as yet.Something inside him told him to turn off his lightsaber though, and he did. And soon after he deactivated his weapon she spoke in a deep and surprisingly old voice; surprising Nico even though the white hair had been a forewarning of her age.“How did you get in here child?”, she asked.Nico frowned, not moving from his place,“What happened on Korriban? This is my father’s ship… Who are you?”, he asked, not bothering to answer her question. Even though he wanted to ask of his father, he knew better than to bait a Sith into nosing in on family.She stood there, completely still and relaxed, but even though Nico couldn’t see her eyes beneath the cowl, he sure could feel the weight of her gaze assessing him right through the fabric.Even back at the academy, Nico had been wary of tests and examinations, he’d hadn’t always laid bare all his emotions and instincts for the Masters and the visiting Lords to see like the other students did. He merely followed his duties, fought off his competitors and held his own. He knew being mysterious was always difficult for a newcomer to judge him by, but he liked it that way, even if did mean infuriating a few high ranking Sith Lords.But that had been during the time of recuperation after the Great Sith Wars, not now, as Sith Empire crumbled and the many Dark Lords split and recombined alliances in an attempt to defeat one another once and for all and reunite the dark side of the force under one single loyalty to lead their ultimatum on the Jedi and the Republic they protected.Sith space was still reeling from the dwindling effects of the last decade, fighting Mandalorians and Republicans alike in order to maintain control over their own territories of the Galaxy, the Outer rim dividing into one too many Lordships, impacting economy, education and population as well.As for his part, having an influential father with a say directly to the Emperor’s ear had meant Nico spent lesser time in the academy in his younger years and more time flying around the Galaxy, initially observing and later on even actively fighting in battles and skirmishes. The Sith regrouped and revamped their own war propaganda in the face of the Emperor’s disappearance, which had temporarily created a void of power all the next level Lords and Masters now envisioned with eyes too greedy, and hands too bloody for a share.It wasn’t that Nico didn’t know of the many Sith his father had hired, persuaded, threatened and even killed when necessary to get to the position he’d been in, but whoever said being a Sith Lord was simple. His father had not held the title of Darth, but he was almost there.The woman didn’t move from her place but she spoke again in a louder voice this time,“If I told you that your father is dead and so is the Emperor… who do you think is going to lead Sith Empire after their leave?”, she asked.Nico frowned and thought, there were quite a few Sith Lords who popped up in his mind as potential throne heirs but two names especially likely. He wouldn’t admit that the mention of his father’s death had shaken him inside, but saying it out loud might render him weak and incompetent. For the Sith, power and self-gain came first, then came family and attachments and the rest, if at all.“Lord Sion, or even Nihilus I think…”, he said uncertainly.The hooded woman bent her head low and sighed almost tiredly,“And do you think the Empire would do well under them?”, she asked. Nico didn’t know why she was asking him these questions. He hadn’t met either Sith Lord he’d mentioned before, only seen Sion afar from once, and that had been quiet enough an experience to even want more. The Sith Lord’s right eye, white and devoid of a pupil and the other one too clouded to see beyond his pain and his self assumed immortal-ism. Nico knew that Darth Sion was also known as the Lord of pain. His cracked skin and rotting flesh were testimony to his long, miserable life and he made even the most powerful acolytes of the Dark side tremble in fear and submission. It was said that every time he walked, the ground trembled and the deep spikes of his steel boots would leave claw marks bubbling with darkness which oozed into the Earth like poison in his wake.Nico didn’t know if he’d make a fit Emperor or if he was even worthy of the title Darth, but he sure as hell had heard his father strongly disagree with the rising support he had seemed to gain after the Great Sith Wars.“I have no opinion on that matter… my father did not approve of him though”, Nico settled to say. She nodded as if satisfied and stepped forwards towards Nico.“Tell me child… would you accompany learning from and serving me in eliminating the threat the likeness of these men pose to the Empire in the wake of war?”. Nico stared at her a long time.He knew that had meant his father would not be coming back, she had killed him.“Who are you?”, he settled on asking again. Surely, his father hadn’t been a man who could have been bested easily, this woman was powerful.When she pulled her hood down to reveal a human face with sagging skin and obsidian black eyes set in an ageing old face, Nico’s sharp intake of breath was unmistakable.He went on his knees as he ignited his light saber and placed it before the old woman’s form with recognition, looking at the deck of the ship with widened eyes.“My Lady”, he answered.Darth Traya motioned for Nico to rise and looked him in the eyes,“Our journey towards the re-establishment of the Sith Empire has begun, and one day you will stand on its new foundation leading an army of revengeful Sith on the Galactic Republic to end this imbalance of power once and for all… rise anew my apprentice.”. Nico did as he was told.
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3964 BBY, Suurja, Galactic Outer Rim, Ojester Sector, Suurja System, Conflicted Space.1600 Coruscant Standard Hours.Suurja had seen enough violence to last three generations, Will was sure. The very fact that the relatively timid and unexplored agrarian world in the Outer rim had been the spot of not one but four continuous battles as part of what the Republic had begun to call the Mandalorian Wars was enough testimony for the same. The Mandalorians were jerks. That much was certain.Will looked around at the pinkish soil of the planet and rubbed his boot on its coarse, grainy sand as he sat down beside Jorn who was tending the small fire they’d set up at the edge of the crop fields of a Suurjan farmer who’d most kindly offered the four Jedi his backyard for the night’s stay if they wanted. The Jedi had graciously accepted the offer and smoothly avoided thanking Will for the same, teasing him and mocking his abilities that had gotten them the hospitality all throughout the evening.But Will Solace didn’t mind, for the three beings in his company – one Jedi knight and two Padawans, to-be knights in question were his friends.“Thanks Will, I was getting sick of Ferrohand his litter back at the tower… I prefer much less chatter and serenity in comparison to what they provide back there…”, Kayla had said.“You’re welcome, though I’d much rather not have left the tower myself… we’re fine I think, there’s nothing to worry about”.“But seriously Solace, the way that old Suurjan fell to his knees and thanked you…. he probably thought you were the God of farming or something”, Trell said, roasting a piece of packaged meat over the fire. Kayla giggled behind her hands beside the Togruta.Jorn snorted and poked the tinder in the pile with his furry Bothan arms, keeping the fire alive in spite of the strong winds blowing across the fields. Jorn’s beard rippled in the winds as he looked at Will sideways to gauge his reaction. The blond Jedi knight shook his head.“No… he probably thought you were the God of crops and produce. All hail Will Solace! protector of vegetables and savior of malnourished soil!”, Trell said. Will raised his eyebrows.“You keep forgetting that I’m actually a healer… my powers over plants isn’t as great as the control I have over animal metabolism. And if you continue mocking me, I’ll conveniently infuse Nitrogen in your blood streams the next time you’re grievously wounded and in need of artificial respiration”, he taunted back.“Bends are very painful”, Kayla commented.“So are the Mandalorians, in my ass”, Trell said. Kayla shook her head and changed the topic, pointedly ignoring Trell’s vulgar phrasing.“That’s not exactly bends”, Jorn said, the Togruta ignoring the Bothan Padawan’s words.“Did Revan really have to come out so far to scout? This seems like he wanted to do this just to be a rebel, by going against the Council’s standing.”, Kayla said. The three other knights remained quiet for a while after Kayla’s thoughts.She was correct when she mentioned Revan. The charismatic Jedi knight had grown wary of the Council’s passivity in aiding the Republic against the probing of the Mandalorian neo-crusaders soon after having discovered that the warlike tribes of the namesake system had no intentions of stopping their encroachment propaganda at Republican space boundary.The moment Mandalore the Ultimate crossed limits of Republican space, Revan crossed the limits laid by the high council. All those who had felt the similar need to help their Galactic stand in the battle had followed suit, starting by helping the Republic scout the now battle-worn Suurja.And when the offer had been extended to anyone interested in the Order, Will and his friends had jumped it. Even though nothing eventful had happened so far, the four friends were, as it remained unsaid, relieved to be out of the Temple at Coruscant for a bit. The Republican capital was beginning to get a little stifling for their health.“The fact that we’re actually trying to help the Republic is satisfying in a strange way… but we haven’t gotten into the battlefronts like Revan promised us just yet. The real fun begins when we’re given ranks in the Navy and asked to lead squadrons of fighters in actual combat as part of service. I wonder sometimes if the council was right when they said that one simply cannot fight for peace… the very intention is ironic”, Trell said.“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it right now… regret is a dangerous emotion and it was our own choice to follow Revan and Ferroh.”, Kayla said. Jorn nodded and tended the fire.“I don’t regret it though”, said Trell, and laid back on the grass beside Will, and when he looked at her she winked, Will shook his head and looked away, a smile on his face.“No… you don’t care by the looks of it. You wouldn’t have had the courage to do this if the three of us or even if at least Will hadn’t come along when we left with Revan”, Jorn observed, fur rippling more out of excitement than the winds.“Thanks for that you walking horoscope”, Trell replied rudely.A few moments of silence followed the giggling and the four Jedi sat basking in one another’s company until Trell’s eyes widened and she sat up in a flash.“What’s that?”, she asked, pointing to the sky. Will, Kayla and Jorn all turned to look at what the Togruta was pointing at and saw a red streak flash across the atmosphere of the planet, tailing the body of a blackish object too small and too far away to be discerned as anything substantial.“A shooting star maybe?”.In a moment, Will had stood up and Trell right beside him. They exchanged a glance and turned to look at Kayla and Jorn,“We’re going to go check that out. Whatever it was, it should either have crashed or landed on the planet’s surface… the two of you make it back to the main scouting group and warn Ferroh and the Padawans to be watchful”, Will said.“And since when did you decide to take charge of things around here?”, Kayla asked him. Unsurprisingly, Trell said in Will’s defense,“Since he just told you to, Padawan… now obey your Masters and run along.”, and started towards the swoop bikes they’d ridden out into the fields. Will looked at his friends once and said,“Be safe, contact us if things get strange.”, dashing off behind Trell, his long legs taking him fast and far away.Kayla and Jorn didn’t need to exchange looks or words to know Will and Trell had spoken over one of his many visions regarding this, already. Dromund Kaas, Dromund System, Esstran Sector, Outer Rim Territories, Sith Space.1300 Standard HoursKaas City, also known as the Imperial City of Dromund Kaas rose high and mighty after conquering the wild forests and swamps that had once spread over the planet’s surface like a hungry parasite. A few other cities in the galaxy could rival its vanity. High hills rose from the ground, stone cut and mud embankments built by years of manual labor with the colonist population that had been made to slave by the Sith Masters of the land before they’d died out.Nico could see the peaks of the citadel of the stone castle that rested on the crest of Havell mountain in the distance, spires groping the dark blue sky above. Lightning flashed in green and white, dancing in tune to the distant thunder and fast-moving clouds fed by the funnel shaped vortex of dark energy that rose into the atmosphere from the planet’s very core – results of the Emperor’s vicious experiments as he dallied in the dark side of the force.Nico climbed down his Enforcer Prime – Clairvoyance and squinted his eyes at the group of Sith awaiting him at the end of the open-air space port on the outskirts of Kaas Commons.Then, one man, a tall and wiry Sith acolyte stepped forward from the group and jogged through the slight drizzle towards Nico as the latter removed his helmet and shook his raven black hair free of its confines, taking a deep breath and mentally composing himself to hear out what the subordinate had to say.“Lord”, he said and bowed to Nico. Nico acknowledged him with an audible breath and walked ahead, the Sith acolyte catching up with him as if expecting nothing less. Praise the force for Sith hierarchy.“What brings this welcoming party to the space port Minos?”, Nico asked, partly curious and partly giving Minos the opportunity to start talking about whatever it was that he and his party had come to get Nico for.“Lord Nico… there is nothing that escapes your knowledge. As you well know, the Emperor has given explicit orders to his most trusted to initiate the plans with regards to orchestrating the Mandalorian Wars in order to test Republican reaction, so that when the time comes Sith Empire can spread its roots into the Corellian capital…”, his raspy voice gasped as his aged frame tried to keep pace with Nico’s canter.Nico sped up as he reached the ends of the space port, mercilessly making Minos jog faster to keep up, nodding a silent command to a labor hand to clear his ship off the main landing deck. The labor hand bowed low and scurried off to obey as he skirted the group of Sith who had now started following their group head behind the young Lord.Nico snorted and looked at Minos’s face sideways. The Sith acolyte had been that – an acolyte, for as long as Nico could recall, and he might even die as one someday. Considering the way his eyes danced with a manic light and his hollowed, sunken cheeks sported skin that sagged over a bony, hawk like face with a scraggly beard of white and scarce, blading hair in a half burnt, half jagged skull, he was clearly not in the best of health. His left eye twitched as he took labored breaths in his attempt to keep up with the nineteen-year-old young man.“Lord Nico… you must listen to me, I am older than you-”, at which Nico shot him a dangerous look, making the old man gasp and amend his sentence hastily, “-if not of greater position of course, to advice you… but for a man who has seen many more things in his life, I have counsel to offer you without any expectations in return… would you not consider-”, but he barely finished his sentence as Nico cut him off smoothly in a low voice,“Your counsel is of no value to me Minos. Your words got my father killed five years back… maybe you forgot, old as you have become …I do however commend your audacity, it has, along with your band of dumb and submissive followers kept you alive longer than any of us expected you to live… really, it is a wonder by the force that no one has simply run their lightsaber through your guts just as yet!”, he spat, metaphorical poison dripping from his words.Minos’s eyes widened at Nico’s reply and he stopped in his tracks, letting Nico surge ahead on the winding road that led to the Sith Citadel of Kaas Commons.“Why you insolent…”, Nico heard Minos say somewhere behind him as his men moved to quickly surround him on all sides.Nico sighed and shook his head. He didn’t really want to get into a fight right then, but Minos didn’t seem to be in quite the mood to give him a choice. He looked sideways and spotted four men in front of his vision while simultaneously using the force to ascertain four more men behind his field of vision. Minos had protectively stood himself outside and beyond the ring his followers had made around Nico, cackling as he gave his order,“Finish him here… he will know his foolishness once he joins his father, soon enough”, and the men in front of him began closing in, drawing out their lightsabers and igniting them with the characteristic hum of static electricity filling the silence of the atmosphere, accompanied by the perennial thunder that tore Dromund’s atmosphere apart.Instinctively, Nico drew out his own lightsaber from one his cloak’s many inner pockets and held it in a visibly lose way in his right hand. He didn’t ignite it just as yet.“Are you sure your families will not weep after you are gone?”, Nico asked in a bored tone.Minos grunted in frustration and said louder this time, “Tear him apart! Finish him right now!”.“They won’t if they know you’re following him”, Nico said, pointing his thumb backwards at Minos and threw himself into battle.The first Sith to attack was the tall and well-built one on Nico’s left, who came at him, swinging his lightsaber like a hammer from above his head, as if meaning to dissect Nico about a vertical cross section. Overconfidence, it dripped from him like oil from the saturated wick of a lamp.Nico neatly stepped to his side to avoid it, his cloak flowing behind him in the wind and wrapping itself around his lithe frame. Underestimation of one’s opponent was such a Sith thing, Nico could almost relate.At the failed attempt of his counterpart, another Sith warrior, shorter than Nico and from behind him, moved forward in hopes to engage Nico in a dual while thrusting outward in a standard defensive move that he ducked away from all too easily, igniting his light saber in the process and bringing it up in an arc to defend himself from the blow of a third masked Sith who joined the melee.The two light sabers met mid strike in a lock that lasted about three seconds, before Nico withdrew his own weapon and deflected his opponent’s blade away from his exposed laterals. Just as the first Sith warrior who wielded his hammer like weapon and another new one stepped forward to attack in tandem, Nico smiled and closed his eyes, shriveling into the blackness of the shadow of his own cloak and disappeared into a pool of darkness, right in front of their eyes.The Sith minions all stared wide eyed at the spot where the young man had been just a second ago and looked around in confusion. A few seconds of high anxiety passed in silence as Minos and his thugs looked around the road for signs of the young Sith Lord they’d been fighting. The road was deserted for as far as the eyes could travel and there was no sign of Nico.Never before had they seen or even heard of a Sith with the ability to teleport like how Nico di Angelo just had. He had literally dissolved into darkness using the shadows beneath his feet. Not only was that a very powerful ability, it was also haunting.Then, in what happened in another second’s time, one of the less courageous Sith apprentices in the outer periphery of the circle gave out a startled cry as his companions all turned to look at him fall forward, the light from the blade of a crimson saber protruding from the front side of the chest.Kicking aside the body of the dying man, Nico stepped out from behind him and held his light saber up in an all thoroughly comprehensible offensive stance of battle.This time he didn’t need to say anything to Minos’s men as a means of appearing intimidating.Three of the eight - not very brave Sith bolted into the night, leaving behind the five of the larger and slightly more foolish Sith acolytes to fight Nico. Self-preservation, another very Sith - like quality that Nico could absolutely not relate to. For Death was a friend in waiting after all.“Come back cowards!”, Minos yelled after the three men who made a run for it, but he didn’t stop them, instead turning around to order the remaining five men to take on Nico.Just before he stepped into battle, Nico smelled their fears and apprehension, feeding off their emotions as he had been taught, to channel the power of the dark side.Then, he spread his hands out on either side of himself and stood still for a moment, then much to the chagrin of the five Sith minions in front of him, he stepped backwards and raised his hands level in front of him, palms facing downwards. He heard Minos shout out something to his men from somewhere beyond.In what felt like a rumbling that seemed to emanate from the very ground beneath their feet, the tar split in the middle of the road and crimson light shone out of the opening. Reddish fumes poured out of the bowels of the planet, cracks spreading all about Nico’s feet as he summoned the undead.First, a hand materialized from the rim of the crater that opened on the road’s edge and clawed its way out of the pits of whatever hellish dimension it came from. A head followed after the hand and another hand, following which came the torso, all of a Twi’lek make. Or rather, what might have once have been a Twi’lek male, for the said being’s face was somehow different in a way that was outrightly evil than any slightly abnormal Twi’lek.His eyes glowed with an orangish flame that were either luminous on their own or simply reflected the light that came from the crevice from which he had crawled out of.It didn’t stop there, right after the Twi’lek came a large, ripped Yaka male, a Nautolan male, a Human and a Cathar all with shadows beneath their eyes and sinister orange flames dancing in their irises.The Sith minions all looked a lot more uncertain than they had even when facing Nico all alone.Nico, feeling quite drained but not significantly less annoyed by Minos, jerked his chin towards the minions, his own five warriors immediately catching on his simple order and advancing to each choose a sparring partner.The young Sith Lord now turned all of his attention on the old Sith acolyte as he heard the hum of lightsabers and flash of flames he knew were his own warriors engaging Minos’s minions in combat from the side.Minos was stepping backwards, words of apology and askance for mercy forming on his lips already no doubt.“Those are, those-”, Minos stuttered as he looked at the warriors Nico had summoned. Nico raised his eyebrow in question as he advanced on Minos, putting his light saber back into the folds of his cloak.“Sithspawn”, Minos whispered. Nico smirked and nodded in appreciation,“Not bad old man… not many Sith know of them, I’m impressed”, he said sarcastically.Minos coughed and tripped, falling backwards on the road’s edge as Nico towered over him, cries of his Sith minions filling the air from somewhere behind as the Sithspawn massacred them.“But… but, it can’t be… only someone with the darkstaff can summon the Sithspawn-”,“Incorrect!”, Nico said and stomped the ground, the Earth rumbling in response beneath him, his black eyes turning red as he channeled his rage in tune to the dark side of the Force.“One needs to wield the darkstaff only to create Sithspawn, not to summon or control them… they chose whom to obey by the strongest resonance to the dark side of the force”, Nico said, now almost practically standing atop of Minos.More cries as the remaining of Minos’s followers were cut down by the genetically mutated warriors of the dark side.Nico lifted his hand and cupped his fist, telekinetically grasping Minos’s throat in a force choke maneuver.Minos was forced to struggle to his feet and choked on the little air that now entered his wind pipe. Nico squeezed his hand and Minos’s face quickly hollowed out, the white of his eyes turning red.Nico lifted his fist, lifting Minos in the process, the old man’s feet leaving the ground as his hands reached for his own neck and tried to pry Nico’s telekinetic grip off himself in vain.“Tell my father I said hello…”, Nico said and squeezed hard and sure one last time, Minos gagging in response and his body going limp in mid-air.Just as the last of the cries from the Sith acolytes from behind quietened down, Minos’s lifeless body fell to the ground and Nico turned around to look at his Sithspawn.The Twi’lek was sporting a stab wound in his shoulder and the Yaka was missing an arm, but otherwise, they were seemingly unharmed.Nico nodded and gestured their dismissal.As the young Sith Lord continued up the winding road to the Imperial Citadel on the crest, the ground rumbled and opened up behind him, swallowing up the five warriors, back into the belly of Dromund Kaas, home world of the Sith. The Emperor’s throne room was a place that reeked of dark side energy like radioactivity in a site of a Nuclear disaster, unseen but there, something that would simply not cease to exist even after the Emperor was gone. For centuries, Dromund Kaas would carry the taint of what the Emperor had done to it and his absence or even death, would not reduce its intensity or lure.Nico had an approximate idea of what the attraction of the planet was like to an outsider, especially a force sensitive. He had been told that to someone with virtually no experience of the dark side of the force, it was like the eternally echoing call of a voluptuous woman, attainable but not exclusive to any one.Not that women interested Nico anyway, he’d tried. It was the dudes that really caught his attention if ever at all. So, he didn’t really know about the voluptuous woman part.Nico stepped through the threshold of the throne room and approached the throne at which sat the current corporeal manifestation of the Emperor, Vitiate – a name that spelt doom to anyone who dare stand in the way of his goals.Nico knelt in front of the throne which was turned away from the entrance, he could barely make out the cloak the emperor adorned from where he stood, but when a low hum vibrated in the room, he took it as a signal to stand up back on his feet.A voice said inside his head,
What does the Ghost king bring news of?
Nico bowed once more in reverence and answered, “My Lord… the Jedi have taken a small step in their active involvement in the Mandalorian Wars as you expected they would… the Jedi knights Revan and Ferroh, along with a band of loyal apprentices gather to scout Suurja of the Outer Rim territories as we speak now…”, he said.Nico felt rather than saw the Emperor’s conscience tickle the shields of his own to test the authenticity of his words.
The pall of death hangs over you, thick like fog. The dark side of the Force is strong with you boy…
Nico bowed again and remained quiet.
… distract the knights while I coax the Mandalorians into making it to Suurja. The Jedi will know what happens of their rebels who stray too far away from the womb of Republican space… Go and finish with the knights… as many of them as you can.
Nico nodded in understanding and gestured to take his leave, another low hum and a pulsing of the dark side of the force that induced a sharp pain inside of his head and Nico was hurriedly making his way out of the throne room, hoping to get out of there as fast as he could. Of course, he had to bump into some jerk as he left. Devore, Dickhead Extraordinaire and second eldest son of his infamous Sith Captain father.The Sith apprentice was making his way towards the throne room from the citadel entrance and would inexplicably cross paths with Nico who was getting out of the place.Just as they both got into a few feet of distance between one another, Devore opened his smelly face hole to cuss at Nico,“Well, well… if it isn’t Nico-bastard-son-of-the-Emperor’s-chauffeur-di-Angelo”, he said, passing on and behind Nico’s shoulder. Nico’s face contorted into a snarl as he recollected the times when the two boys, nearly equal in power had almost killed one another on multiple occasions back when they had trained in Sith Academy on Korriban.Nico had simply stopped trying to nurture the idea of shredding Devore with his own lightsaber because he hadn’t found the right time to do it yet. He would someday, maybe it was today, maybe Devore had a death wish.“Leave my father out of this… fortunately for you though your father isn’t all that well known enough to be pulled in for an insult at all… and how long did it take for you to come up with that anyway?”, Nico turned around to watch Devore approach the throne room.“Watch the replies di Angelo… need I remind you that I was once betrothed to your sister… I can as well bring that up and have her marry me to torture her everyday just to see you react to it, and then we’ll see whose father goes down in history”, Devore replied.Nico’s eyes widened to a dangerous extent and he took a few steps towards Devore when a voice called out a few feet from behind him,“I don’t think the emperor would approve…”. Nico stopped in his tracks and took a few deep breaths as he composed himself and looked once more at Devore with a gaze he hoped would convey what a pain in the prostate he thought he was.At the top of the flight of stairs to the throne room entrance, on the stone carved threshold carpeted with local silks stood a robed figure, cowl covering head to toe in blood red robes that caught the lightning in its ceremonial silver embroidery. The figure’s chin was lifted with dignity and a nose was visible in between all that darkness of shadow in the low lighting.Blood red robes indicative of Sith assassin, a rank synonymous to Lord but with privileges beyond that of ordinary, even though it was more of an on-the-call job and with no paid holidays at all. Heck, for Sith assassins like Desdemona Mendoza there were no holidays.“Got a problem with something Devore?”, she asked in a quiet voice, which landed like a heavy, wet blanket straight from inside of a freezer.Devore looked back and forth between Nico and Dess until he gave up and turned back towards the throne room, grumbling something incomprehensible to himself as he left.Nico sighed and turned to look at Dess once more,“And how many more times do I have to save your sorry hind-quarters this week?”, she asked mockingly, pulling her hood out of her face, revealing sharp and well defined features, shortly trimmed golden blond hair and amber eyes, but her insult was hollow.Nico walked up to her, grabbed her arm in his and turned her back towards the stairs, skipping down its surface without tripping on his tricky cloak trying to side with Dromund gravity and said,“Dare you to say that to Bianca”.“Oh no… she wouldn’t take me seriously as being your guardian angel, she thinks I’m the definition of untrustworthy”, Dess said, nevertheless allowing herself to be driven on by the younger Sith Lord. “So… How’s the Ghost King been lately?”, Dess asked as they trotted on their rides towards Kaas City outskirts, where Nico and Bianca had their home.Nico scoffed at her poke and said, “Better than as someone in my place ought to be…”, he said.Dess chuckled, lightly nudging her ride with her right knee and snorting into its drooping ear, instructing it to turn,“Thus returns the Philosopher Sith…”, she said.Nico had known Dess forever, since he and Bianca had stood grieving at the tombstone of their mother’s grave when he’d been a tender twelve and their father had been off fighting in the Great Sith Wars. She was five years older and a whole decade more experienced in the force and its antics. Dess had topped her batch of the Sith training academy, being selected to join the squad of finest warriors of the Emperor’s guardians and eventually become an assassin, just like what Nico was now being tested for, hoping to become one someday.He shook his head as he directed his own ride to follow Dess’s animal. Dess’s blood red robes whipped in the wind as she turned around on her ride to look at Nico,“The emperor wants me to go on a scouting mission to Suurja”, he said. Dess’s eyebrows raised and she said,“Whatever business do you expect on Suurja? Looking to invest in agriculturally fit land?… not a bad deal if you ask me. Please do invite me home if you decide to buy a farm and settle down with your sister somewhere there”.“Bianca wouldn’t let you in though… you’d have to sneak in through the chimney or something”, adding seriously as an afterthought, “No, but actually… it’s Jedi business…”, for which her head snapped backwards and looked at him with her startling honey colored eyes glowing with an unearthly light in the darkness of the shadows beneath her cowl.“I thought the last we heard of the Jedi was that their High Council of tight assed Masters on Coruscant decided to not aid their Republic in its Outer Rim campaign…”, Dess said.Nico shrugged, lifting one shoulder rather oddly as he swayed on his mount’s back,“Yes, but there are rebels everywhere”.“Who would’ve thought…”, Dess whispered. Then, she grunted and swung her legs off of the animal, driving it forward with the ropes about its neck as she walked beside it, looking up at the younger Sith with a thoughtful expression on her face.“Do you want to come along maybe?”, he asked quickly before he could reconsider what he had said. He was supposed to go alone on the mission, the Emperor had only ordered him to go, as it was. Was taking company considered disobedience? Was it no very Sith-like? Did he even care?Dess tilted her head, staring at the closed doors to the beautiful stone cottage that sat around in the small glen at Kaas Outskirts where they’d arrived at.Sloping roofs and thick glass windows on two levels shone with warm light from somewhere within the house. A row of white flowers with petals that looked like tear drops decorated the small walkway leading to the front door, shrubbery gone slightly wild with irregular maintenance surrounding the perimeter like a protective shield of thorny sentries.“I’ll give you exactly five minutes to bid your sister farewell… if you’re not back by then, I’ll be long gone to Suurja on my own”, she said, eyes sparkling. Nico all but smiled as he dismounted and jogged up to the front door of the cottage, eager to be back. “The emperor ordered you to?”, Bianca asked. Nico sighed through his nose as he looked at his older sister, the only surviving member of his family.Bianca was two years older, but she had all but raised Nico even during their years when their mother had been alive and well. Nico associated his sister with the word family, and he hadn’t ever thought otherwise. Now, for the last five years, he had found himself nursing a desperate desire to protect her from any impending threats even though he knew she was more than capable of handling herself in a fight just fine.Bianca hadn’t attended Sith Training academy unlike Nico, she’d been raised by their mother at home until she’d been alive. In Sith society, females seldom rose to high positions and even when they did, it was mandatory that they were married to powerful (read: abusive) and chauvinistic husbands who would eventually not allow them to continue with their work in whatever rung of Sith hierarchy in fear of threats from the other male Lords.Trading and ill-treatment was almost unavoidable in that route, and Nico knew Bianca would have none of that nonsense. She was way too independent for marriage and considered men nothing short of an abomination. Nico remembered her quoting on multiple occasions, “I would hunt men if I could… except, they would not be useful for anything, not even meat or hide”. Nico left the house during such spells.“Yes”, he now replied, looking at her from where he sat on the leather couch of their living room. Bianca moved in and out of their kitchen, obviously cooking something that smelled delicious that Nico would not be eating that evening. She wore what she usually did, black slacks and a lose brown tunic with a braided belt of colorful fabric wrapped around her waist, holding the tunic in place. Her long black hair was in a lose braid behind her, stray strands of which escaped its hold and fell into her serene, olive toned cheeks. Her slender face was as beautiful as always, growing to increasingly resemble their mother.In all her years of homeschooling, Bianca had learnt a lot many things that she’d eventually teach Nico that Sith Academy didn’t bother tutoring its students in, that Nico wondered sometimes if Academy had been a total waste of time. His sister was one of the best hunters in the whole City, her shot famous throughout most of the local population. Her eyesight was like a hawk and her arrows swift and accurate even in the darkest and most dense parts of the untamed jungles of Dromund. It was common conception that anyone who found themselves on the business end of Bianca di Angelo’s arrows didn’t have a very bright chance of getting out of the encounter alive, or at least unharmed.That apart, Bianca could speak so many different languages including Mando’a, Bothese, Snivvian, Basic, Shyriwook and a whole horde of smaller, less prevalent dialects from around the old Sith Empire and the Galactic Outer Rim. She could cook like nobody’s business in stark contrast to Nico, who swore he saw their mother’s spirit every time he found himself alone in their kitchen making him chicken out. Though he never admitted it out loud.“Does he not have any other acolyte to send?”, she asked, shooting him a suspicious look through the corner of her vision. Nico put on the most earnest look he could muster, which was serious work for a Sith and said,“Well, it’s a privilege really… I would be stupid to argue or ask for someone else to be sent instead wouldn’t I?”, he asked.“Yes… you’d be branded as weak and cowardly, worse… you might not have made it back at all”, she answered. Nico nodded, “Absolutely”.“Why do I get the feeling that the emperor doesn’t mean well for you Nico”, she said exasperatedly as she placed a few plates in their places back into a rack in the kitchen. Nico couldn’t see her from where he sat now so he got up and approached her, steps slow and deliberate as he tried to formulate an appropriate reply.“We’ve spoken about this Bianca, the Emperor doesn’t mean well to anybody… he only has the goals of what he wants Sith Empire to achieve as a whole-”,“And your death and my death would be like flecks of dust in a nuclear explosion for him, as he stands bathing in glory from a new found empire over the blood of all his loyal followers who were felled by Mandalorians, Republicans and the Jedi alike, all forgotten in a moment and completely and agreeably disposable… so he can execute his own grand scheme and someday rule an Empire devoid of any living people”, she replied, practically yelling out the last sentence.Nico absorbed the silence that followed, thinking desperately for a convincing reply. Then, in a rare moment of self-resignation he gave in to his conscience and said,“We’re Sith Bianca… that’s what we do”. As the young woman turned around to lean on the kitchen counter, her younger brother stood in front of her, trying to put his hand on her shoulder which she swatted away in a moment of frustration.“Don’t be enslaved by his will Nico… greed for power has always been the downfall of the Sith, you know where the Emperor’s words got our father”, she said quietly. Nico frowned at how easily Bianca was bad mouthing the Emperor, the man who literally commanded all of Sith Empire, or at least most of the Sith that remained of its fragments following the Sith Civil Wars of the previous decade.“I don’t like your tone when you speak of the Emperor, it could get you in trouble”, he said. Bianca’s eyebrows raised as she stared at her little brother,“Oh”, she said, “Is that a threat I hear?”. Nico looked at the floor and controlled the rage coursing through his veins. No, he couldn’t possibly be trying to believe what Bianca thought of the Emperor. He knew his duty as a Sith and as not only one of the Emperor’s trusted initiates, but also as a loyal soldier of the Empire. Bianca would never understand that and there was no use explaining or arguing on said topic.“Not a threat… a warning of sorts. The same said in a public location could have gotten you killed or at least maimed. Not even our father’s name could save you from that”, he said. Bianca scoffed and left the kitchen, Nico following her, knowing he had gained a slightly higher hand with that last point of his.“Bianca… wait. You do understand, that no matter what you or I may think about the Emperor and his ideals is irrelevant and absolutism at the same time don’t you? Life didn’t offer us a choice once we were born Sith. Life as a Sith is all about being opportunistic and continuing to stay afloat of the many others whom you have come to antagonize”, he said.“Why?”, she asked and sat down at their table, head on her hands. Nico sat down next to her and placed his hand on her back, patting her gently and affectionately. She didn’t swat his touch away this time. They sat in silence for a while until Nico said,“You know… when I told Dess I was going to Suurja she made fun of me and asked me if I was going to buy out a farm and some agricultural land and settle down there… not a bad idea eh?”, he said in a light tone.When Bianca looked up at him, eyes sparkling, he knew she was actually considering it,“Too bad you aren’t…”, she said in a quiet voice.“Well, I could look into it if you’d like…”, he said, not really knowing if her meant it or not. She smiled for real this time and shook her head,“Just be safe”, she settled on saying.Nico looked his sister in the eye and said, “I’ll pass that on to the people I’m going to meet”.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The speeder bike had a horrible seat and Will was pretty sure he would be feeling the soreness in his backside for a while after he got down. He did his best to keep up with Trell who raced alongside on her own bike, eyes trained on the horizon.But seriously? Who designed these bikes, Will would like to have a formal chin wag with them, not just as an unsatisfied user, but as a concerned Medical Practitioner. This was clearly not good for the adductor muscles of the thighs or the lumbar members of the spinal vertebrae.They roared by lakes and pastures on their trail, following vaguely, the direction in which they’d seen the ‘shooting star’ disappear after they hadn’t been able to see it anymore past the horizon. And if Will thought what he thought it was, they’d better go take a closer look to see their arch enemies make a co-incidental landing on Suurja where knowingly or unknowingly to them, a group of passionate and rebellious Jedi had set up camp, awaiting for the return of their inquisitive leader.“Will!”, Trell yelled out to him from her bike as she turned her head to look at him through the wind whipping past her face. Will turned to look at her just as she moved her bike in, closer to Will’s own vehicle so that they wouldn’t have to scream their lungs out as they drove.“Are you sure you saw only two of them?”, she asked. Will sighed internally and nodded before he replied,“Yes! If not, we’ll find out anyway”, and increased the throttle of his bike, shooting forward and ahead of Trell. The rest of their trip, they rode in silence, mentally preparing themselves for whatever lay at the end of their journey. Will hadn’t expected a deserted ship when he found what he and Trell had made Kayla and Jorn believe was a shooting star.“My Gluteus Maximus is in distress”, Will whined, making a face as he came to a stop, ungracefully halting his speeder.Trell scoffed, “Pathetic covering up of an open declaration of your butt hurting”. Will strictly ordered his lips to not twitch into a smile.In what looked like a depression in the natural contour of the planet’s vast plains stood a small, dark space ship unlike anything Will had ever seen.“Stars and Galaxies”, Trell whispered, getting off her bike, killing the engine and carefully making her way towards the edge of the crater in front of them, inside of which sat the ship.The ship was all planes and angles, straight lines and sleek stripes of overlapping shades of grey and black. It shone like polished obsidian under the evening light of Suurja’s parent star. It might have been of a rough five by four in meters, a small, personal vessel for travel of one or two persons at once maybe. On the side of the hull, written in a language which Will was not familiar with, was a jumble of characters in faded white lettering that was probably the name of the Ship. It had two wings about the main cockpit, lights all in red, the source of the tail of crimson they’d seen streak across the sky earlier.“I can’t see how more than two Sith could have travelled in such a small craft”, Will said, joining Trell at the crater edge. Trell smiled beside him and nodded,“Yeah… that could get super claustrophobic”.“Let’s go check it out before the owners come back, shall we?”.“Human males first”, Trell said as they started down the slope and towards the ship. Things were going great for Trell and Will as they scavenged the Sith vessel.“I can’t believe these guys use such outdated technology… look at this, it’s nuclear powered!”, Trell exclaimed as she sat down at the pilot’s seat and examined the controls at the main console. Will shook his head, searching around the small space at the co-pilot’s seat as he sat in it himself. There were buttons and knobs and handles he couldn’t understand the purpose of, all around the cabin. The controls seemed so much more different than what the Republic used that he found himself quickly losing interest in exploring the ship, unlike his partner.“We should raise Kayla and Jorn and ask if they’re alright”, Will said, flipping a seemingly harmless looking switch on a glow board which illuminated the interior of the cockpit with harsh yellow light.Trell groaned and squinted up at the lights Will had set off, “Shut those off please”, the blond complied.“Did you hear me Trell?”, Will asked his companion, grabbing the Togruta’s wrist and stopping her mid motion in an attempt to grab a sinister looking handle beneath the navigation board.“Uh-huh?”, she replied vaguely and jerked her hand off Will’s grip as she continued examining the lever she had her sights set on.Will sighed and looked at the crater the ship sat inside of, via the translucent windshield. They hadn’t found the Sith Will had seen in his vision, which meant they were out scouting the surface of Suurja. But, what if they’d found the Jedi encampment or Kayla and Jorn? What if they had been hurt in a fight or something?“Don’t worry so much papa bear…”, Trell said.“Well, won’t it just work to disable the ship’s main computer or something and render it useless while we hide in darkness for those warriors I saw in my vision to come back and get to their vehicle… we can jump them while they’re distractedly trying to figure out what’s wrong with their ship and we can call for more back-up by then, now that we know there’s only two of them…”, Will reasoned.But the Togruta girl would have none of it, cocking her head to the side as she pressed a series of buttons with an ease that slightly frightened her companion, making it seem as if she’d done it one too many times before and the engine of the ship roared to life in a flash. Will was speechless for a moment until he was caught staring by Trell who waved a hand in front of his eyes,“You turned it on…”, he said feebly. Trell rolled her eyes,“Course I did dummy… and don’t worry about the rest of them… you’d think they’d have contacted us by now had they encountered trouble…”, she said, “I so want to see their looks when they discover their ship’s missing… can we leave holocams behind or something?”, Trell added. Will shook his head and looked across the windshield again, then glancing at his utterly lifeless handcom unit. The force felt empty and non-living, no sudden impulses of prophetic sights or warnings. It was almost strange. Nothing was ever this simple.He absently wondered if they should have told the others, at least Ferroh of what was happening, but that would risk questions like How do you know that? Do you have the power of prophecy? How come you never told us you could see the future? The Order has to be notified of your powers… blah, blah, blah which was the crux of Will’s very nightmares, the Order and its members discovering his prophetic skills. He was not going to go down that path, and if the only alternative was accompanying reckless Trell onto a rollercoaster of risks, he would very gladly face it and die.“Can you fly this thing?”, he asked his friend. Trell’s face grew dangerously blank and she bit her lip before replying,“The force is with us.”“That’s not a very reassuring answer!!”, and with a jerk, they were airborne in a couple of seconds and out of the crater in no time, soaring over the plains they’d just crossed, coursing at a steady altitude and gaining control of the good speed, smoothening out of initial lift air-turbulence. Will prayed to the force that they’d make it safe and sound to their friends without any further encounters or events or death. The two masked warriors each peered into their own pair of tinted binoculars from the cover of the stunted trees they’d hidden themselves in. One of them was watching the group of warriors at the very brink of their vision, counting the number of Jedi in the clearing.“About a dozen of them…”, Nico observed as he turned to look at Dess, her amber eyes shining through the glasses of her mask in the dark.She sighed and pulled the hood of her robe off of her head as she surveyed her companion,“Too bad we can’t go down there and show them a piece of our mind”, she remarked, truly upset at not being able to. Nico turned back to peer through his binoculars before lifting the holocom unit he held in his other hand and said in a steady voice,“Connect me to the main deck of the Renegade… get me Commander Dyre”.Dess snorted somewhere behind as the holocom unit glowed a dull blue and an apparition of a humanoid figure danced on its surface.“They’re insufferable… insisting on planning and overthinking even when it comes to capturing a bunch of Jedi apprentices, this is no real threat… it’s a shame, really, a poor show for the Mandalorians”, she said, pulling her red cloak about herself and stepping up, next to Nico as the holocom image stabilized and a figure appeared in bright blue.The apparition was that of a man in red and white Mandalorian armor from chest to toe, helmet in his hand, held against his right torso. His face which was the only part of him visible, showcased dark skin, brown, sorrowful but intelligent eyes set in a somber expression with a hardened jaw sporting a patchy beard of black hair. The man’s close cropped hair cut was a military standard close shave with absolutely nothing attractive about it. He was someone who looked like an all-business and no fun person. Nico sighed, glad to be wearing a mask.“Lord…”, Commander Rohlan Dyre bowed his head respectfully once. Nico acknowledged it with a nod of his own.“What is your progress Commander? I presume you have been notified of your business at the Suurja Sector already”, Nico said, testing the waters.The Commander nodded, “Yes my Lord, the Renegade is on its way as we speak, still in hyperspace transit… the Republican blockade will take some engaging on the parts of the other ships but I will be there with my own for the Jedi knights on Suurja as we were told”, he said.“I expect no less. What of Mandalore the Ultimate?”, Nico asked.“What about him… my Lord?”, the Commander asked, a confused expression crossing his face.Nico sighed internally before saying out loud, “Where is he?”.“He is aboard his fleet’s flagship - Crusader right now… his squadrons will actively engage the Republic in the Jebble-Vanquo-Tarnith Cordon that they have set up… it will take some work on their part to get through it”. Nico considered that before replying.“Hm… I hope you have enough Shocktroopers to get the job here done smoothly, we would rather not get involved in this fiasco with the Jedi just about yet”.“Of course My Lord… you need only say it”, he said. Pathetic, how they trembled in front of the Mandalorians and then the Sith, actually orchestrating the whole grand picture, non force users would forever serve only.“That will be it.” And he snapped the connection off, turning to look at Dess beside him.Dess breathed audibly through the filter in her helmet and said,“What now? Wait around until the Mandalorians get here?”, she asked. Nico nodded and absently gazed back to the Jedi station tower at whose entrance they’d been observing their quarries activities.“Yes… we can get on the Renegade with the Clairvoyance if we want, doesn’t hurt to go home a little late”, he said. Dess gestured animatedly, “Thank my dead ancestors I’m not answerable to your sister”. Nico huffed,“For the sake of the force! I am a Sith Lord! I’m not dependent on or the responsibility of anybody! I need no one for anything!”.“Good… channel your anger that way. Sometimes I wonder if you really do embrace the dark side or not, you can be awfully repressed and tend to reign in your emotions Nico… Sith live off of their emotions, it is what gives us the power and hunger to grab for more in every sphere of life and existence, we don’t compromise or consider…”, she said quietly.Nico didn’t reply to her, merely gazed unfocusedly at the horizon, the star of the Suurja system sinking across its surface, the sky giving way to darker shades of orange and greyish-blue.“Many people think you’re not competent enough even though you do have a scarily strong control of the Dark side”, Dess said into the silence. Nico didn’t reply to that either, lost in his own thoughts.A few moments of a tense silence followed and the two Sith just absorbed it, each keeping to their own thoughts.“Say, what about real estate on this planet… think we could find a bunch of locals who could tell us something about that farm idea of yours”, Dess said casually, lightening the mood.“We’re Sith… we don’t own farms, it’s not evil enough for our caliber”, Nico said, his voice having lost the intensity it had had from when he last spoke, playing along with Dess’s own digression.“Oh, I could think of ways to run a mean farm”, Dess said, “Couple of Acklays, Nexus, Reeks and Rathtars all locked up in durasteel barns, we could feed them with few of the annoying locals who trespass your lawn or something…”, she said.Nico was glad she couldn’t see his ear splitting grin through his darkened visor.“I could visit you guys sometime, bringing some local produce from Dromund for your carnivorous pets… watching you grow and export grain and cereal to Taris under the pretext of a farmer with destructive tendencies… you could even grow some Binarian plants and thronsnipers to double as sentries to your humble abode… they’d eat the heads off any of your nosy neighbors. No worry about thieves, invaders, competent Sith rivals or bounty Hunters… the ultimate Sith retirement home… you’d be a trend setter di Angelo”, Dess teased.Dess might have not been able to see him smile, but she sure as hell could hear him laugh, joining his outburst with her own snorting and guffawing. The Mandalorians arrived pretty soon after wards and Nico and his companion found themselves with something occupying to watch on, even if not actively participate in. The Jedi knights and their Padawans had been of little resistance for the Shocktroopers who easily overpowered them and put an end to their feeble attempts at fighting back. Nico had come to learn from their observation that there had been about three Jedi knights and a dozen Padawans (to-be Jedi knights) in the tower they had taken refuge at and the battle had started out with one group of the Jedi led by the three slightly older knights taking up an offensive, striking out at the heavily armored enemy who had descended from the hangar of the Renegade like a herd of semi-sentient cattle. The Mandalorians had over-riden the Jedi who had attempted to hold their own from the front and a whole squad of troopers had even gone after the few younger Padawans who had tried to make a run for it from behind.They had all been beaten black and blue, silenced with blaster holsters and barrels, almost dead but still breathing, bound and gagged and cuffed before being roughly hauled onto their feet, barely conscious on board the Renegade and a few other ships which had come to join their Commander, proudly painted with the various symbols of the Mandalorian Tribes.They had seen Dyre himself converse with one of the subdued Jedi knights and trade pretty harsh words by the looks of it. The knight clad in dark robes with a clean shaven head and a certain pride in his stance visible even from the distance had seemed unfazed by the Mandalorians overpowering them and had laughed weakly before the Commander had ordered him to be taken away. The few Shocktroopers who had been injured by the Jedi were put on makeshift litters and taken back to the ships as the others set up temporary camp in and around the tower that the Jedi had been occupying.There was quite a lot of activity until the Jedi had all been shifted to a huge fleeter with the name Praetor on its sides.Nico knew what the Mandalorians planned to do with those Jedi they’d just captured. Demagol was no stranger to Sith society. Nico pitied those Jedi in a way, he knew he would rather die than allow aforementioned crazy scientist have him bound and sedated and tortured. They were going to be used in various experiments to serve as specimen for learning the ways of the working of the force. He absently wondered what it would be like if Demagol ever got his hands on a Sith. No, that would never happen, the Sith are way too cautious and self-preservation oriented to ever submit to the treatments and medications of the Mandalorian scientist even if offered immortality in exchange. They would release their breaths and die, rather than be kept in captivity.Just when he was about to turn around and ask Dess what she thought of the whole scene, she reacted faster than he’d ever seen anyone ever move and bounded into the woods, red cloak flying out behind her as she flew across the thicket of trees they had hidden themselves in.Nico didn’t move for a few seconds after Dess disappeared, staring at where the Sith assassin had been standing just a second ago. Then, he did something unlike what any other Sith would have ever done, he closed his eyes and spread his senses out and all around him, searching for Dess’s smoky force signature and any other force sensitive presences she might have sniffed out before him, allowing his mind to calm and focus. Kayla and Jorn were having trouble processing everything they were seeing, yet they watched on helplessly as Mandalorian ships had entered the atmosphere seemingly heading towards the Jedi encampment a while back, when they had still been on their way to it.“It’s as if they just knew…”, Jorn whispered from beside Kayla, pulling her out if her reverie. They looked on from the edge of the woods where they were hiding, facing North and the Tower the Jedi had set camp in, and now, the Mandalorian ship Renegade whose cargo bay was open and buzzing with activity.The two Jedi had arrived at the very end of the fight, when a dark skinned man with close cropped hair and small, baleful eyes, presumably their leader had questioned Alek, Revan’s closest friend and apprentice about something which they could obviously not hear from their spot. Alek was badly injured, gashes and cuts all over his face and hairless head and the left side of his body even though he didn’t seem to have any blaster wounds, he was lacking his lightsaber.“The man is scared of Alek”, Jorn had observed from his place, making Kayla marvel at how her friend’s psychic mind reading skill was somehow not a battle winning ability.Mandalorians in red and white and black armor with no visible parts of their body had unloaded from the ship like as if they owned the planet, marched right into battle to meet the padawans with their lightsabers ablaze and put an end to the skirmish in a matter of minutes.Laser guns and heavy cannon barrages had gone off, light sabers humming in return, but the dozen or so apprentices had been easily over-powered and beaten about with the backsides of the bulky blasters carried by the Neo-Crusaders who had faithfully yelled out their battle cries in Mando’a before and after their charge.“That roughly translates to Victory be Ultimate”, Jorn had offered un-helpfully yet again making Kayla wonder how that could be even remotely useful in helping their comrades who were being whisked away on a Mandalorian fleeter to the force knew where, the two hiding Jedi watching on powerlessly.“We need to get on that ship, or at least know where it’s going…”, Kayla whispered urgently to her Bothan companion making his head snap up at the tone of her voice,“You are not sure about that plan”, Jorn noted. Kayla sighed, “I don’t even have a plan”, she snapped.“I suggest we wait for Will and Trell to get back, maybe they have more information to offer”, the Bothan Jedi said in his annoyingly calm self.“Jorn… we don’t have time… if that ship there… the big one you said was called-”,“The Praetor”.“Yes, the Praetor… if it leaves, all the other Jedi are trapped on it, we don’t even have Revan to lead us, we’ll never know where the Mandos are taking them unless we act now!”, she said urgently.“What course of action do you suggest?”, Jorn asked. And that’s precisely when things worsened for the duo. When the nav console had started flashing a symbol of a holographic ship in general radar range, Jedi knights Will Solace and Trell Tamar didn’t need to know Sith language to tell there was a group of ships up ahead in close proximity to the Jedi encampment they had set course to.“I have a bad feeling about this”, Trell whispered, yanking hard on the steering console and banking the Sith vessel they’d hijacked hard to starboard, cutting through the strong Westly wind current.“What are you doing?”, Will asked. Trell bit her lip and considered,“Our camp is compromised”, she said, scratching on top of her head tails.“Well… we need to go back and help them then, they could be dying Trell!”, he said. Trell frowned deeply, turning the ship completely around.“Any chance you can see the future now?”.“I’ve told you it can’t be voluntarily induced, its spontaneous!… even if I do try to view the future now, I need a quiet place and have to get into deep concentration which I don’t think we can afford now without knowing what’s happening back at our Camp!”, Will argued, blue eyes widened with the increased levels of adrenaline.Trell breathed out and steadily righted the vessel, heading back towards their initial destination, hoping against hope it was not more Sith. “Oh great Galaxies!”, Trell said as they cut clear of the thicket of trees, the only visual blockade between them and the ships which their stolen vessel had picked up signals from.In a matter of seconds, Will and Trell were flying overhead of four massive ships all standing in close proximity to their encampment, with signs of a recent skirmish and unconscious or even dead bodies of Padawans and knights alike being dragged inside of one of the bigger vessels.“What happened here?”, Trell whispered, taking stock of the situation below. Will looked over the wind shield,“That’s kind of obvious Trell, we better use the best we can of this vessel to stop those Mandalorians from taking the rest of the Jedi and pray that this nuke fed ship can dodge those scary looking turbo laser cannons on those fleeters”, he said, hands on the windshield and body half off his own co-pilot seat, peering down at the scene.“The force help us”, Trell said and launched straight into a break neck dive aiming for the smallest of the four Mandalorian vessels in the clearing down below them.Steadying himself down again, Will groped the most dangerous looking red colored button on his flight console and pressed hard once. A new joystick with a glowing red ball on top materialized from the mid section of the secondary steering console and he knew he might have gotten lucky. He placed his hand on the glowing red ball and hoped it didn’t open up the deck beneath the seats or spray Champagne. No, the Sith weren’t exactly party people.Just as Trell pulled hard on her own controls, righting the vessel which responded easily, pulling up just a few meters above the Mandalorian ship, Will fingered his glowing lever and pressed his thumb on it. They felt the vibrations and resultant hum as the Sith vessel dropped a tempered steel torpedo right out of its weapon’s hatch beneath the cockpit.“Woohoo!”, Trell said and cleared them off of the blast zone as the flames from the resulting explosion of the Mandalorian vessel sent shock waves up into the air in their wake. Will turned around in his seat to look at the fleeter they’d targeted burn and crumble, its outer hull dropping from its majestic stance, going down and hitting the Earth like a dying Rancor.If the rest of the Mandalorians hadn’t noticed them until then, they sure did now as Will saw a dark skinned man with red Mando armor and no hair, direct his men to get to their stations in their fleeters, pointing at the Sith vessel and ordering them to fire on it.Leave it to the Mandalorians in a fight. Anyone who wasn’t one of them was an enemy, what a simple philosophy, it almost made Will jealous.“What now?”, Trell asked, making a wide arc while surveying the scene below them which had slightly changed because of their apparent cameo.“We lost the element of surprise, our only strength… and it’s time to worry about those laser cannons now”, Will said, gripping the stalk of his control stick.True enough, and in about ten seconds, the fifty or so Shocktroopers who had been grazing the clearing in front of the Jedi tower sprung into action. A thirty or so men dashed back into the biggest fleeter among the four leaving a score of their comrades out in the open with heavy looking blasters and barrage guns pointed straight at them.Trell cursed as blaster fire hit their vessel, sounds of metal being punctured with heavy firing, evident because of the vibrations and jerks inside the cockpit as Will desperately tried to figure out how the Sith ship’s own laser cannons were operated. His Togruta companion wrestled with the controls as the vessel faithfully wove through a dizzy path in the atmosphere, twin nuclear engines whining in protest to the unholy maneuvers they were being subjected to.Will couldn’t see any more Jedi down there, but he sure as hell could see the gigantic fleeter in the middle lift into the atmosphere, enormous engines awakening like a Rancor from a drug induced coma. Lights flared from multiple decks as the huge vessel strained against Suurjan gravity and hovered a few feet above the ground, bay doors and landing ramps still open and sporting a bunch of Mandos’ aiming their blasters at the Sith vessel. The grim looking leader was nowhere to be seen.Just as the ship shuddered and lifted off a little more, Trell angled their own stolen ship in an oblong dive towards the port side of the fleeter, risking exposure to their cannons if any on the other side.“We’ll aim for the rear end, Mandalorian ships have their hyperdrive engines at the back… if we disable them, we can prevent them from jumping into hyperspace!”, Trell said, voice edged with desperation.“No! There are two more smaller vessels which will very soon outrun us in this wild goose chase and we won’t stand a chance against any other reinforcements on their way here even if we do get out of the next five clicks alive!”, Will argued. But Trell was not one to listen and in a moment of passion and fury, she made straight for the port side of the fleeter now very much off the ground and yelled,“Fire away!”. Somehow, even though Will figured out the right controls to emit their gallant display of high intensity laser cannons right at the vessel at the last moment, things went horribly wrong for the Jedi knight duo and Trell was not the one to blame.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
His moment of calm searching had yielded answers, very strange and annoying answers.Nico di Angelo opened his eyes in realization to two distinct and very new force presences in the area, none of which had been the smoky, extinguished-fire-in-a-windy-plain kind of feeling he got when he sensed Dess. One had been a lively and erratically pulsing light strobe making Nico feel like he’d been forced to stare at lightning in close proximity. The other presence had been a steady hum of light in low intensity, not blinding on quite the contrary, filling the young Sith with a deep sensation of calm and purpose. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. The kind of feeling that made him long for his family sometimes, made him want to leave Dromund and its Sith politics behind and fly out into the far reaches of the Galaxy, away from war and blood shed, the deepest desires he had never nursed in fear of being outcast. The second force signature he’d caught made him want to hug someone and rip his hair off his own scalp at the same time for making him think about weak thoughts such as leaving his life as a Sith behind.He was a pure blood descendant of the ancient Sith clan, born and raised to live off the dark side of the force, he shouldn’t long for a home or peace, he should get out there and see who the kriff was flying around his Sith Enforcer Prime and firing at the Mandos in the clearing.The Clairvoyance had appeared out of nowhere and above the Praetor the minute Dess had gone off and Nico had momentarily been torn between bounding after Dess and gaping at his ship he was very sure they’d left a little distance away in a crater off to the South. Then, he’d decided that the two presences he’d felt were actually Jedi flying his ship and he’d lost it.He saw the havoc his own ship was causing, torpedo damaging one of the smaller Mandalorian ships Holocaust. Then, the Enforcer swerved wildly up and above the Praetor, Mandalorian Shocktroopers rushing into the main fleeter, others taking up arms and aiming at his ship. Nico cursed under his breath, Jedi were a lot dumber than he thought it seemed. Maybe taking over the Galaxy from them wasn’t a bad idea after all.With a fresh surge of motivation, Nico closed his eyes and readied himself to make the jump into the shadows just as he saw the huge Praetor lift from the ground, engines stabilizing with much difficulty as they fought Suurjan gravity. The Clairvoyance had disappeared from his field of view and somewhere beyond the port side of the huge Mando fleeter.He determinedly stepped back into the shadows of the thicket of trees as he melted in upon himself, Dess would have to handle whatever she’d bounded after, on her own. Kayla sensed the new dark presence just a few seconds before the Sith assassin made a lunge for her friend.“Jorn! Watch behind you!”, she yelled and the Bothan blindly complied to her warning, ducking and rolling off to his left, barely managing to avoid the ignited red lightsaber of their assailant.The newcomer wore a blood red cloak from shoulder to foot which flew out behind him, moving like a flag which had life of its own. They watched the warrior using the force to saw the tree that Jorn had been leaning on a second ago, neatly into two where his crimson lightsaber sliced it through.The next few moments were spent scrambling away from the tree whose colossal trunk heaved and hit the Earth with a resounding thud, bare branches scraping the ground as the smaller boughs cracked under stress as if the huge wooden entity were popping its knuckles. The old tree whose trunk had bent oblongly as if wanting to touch the ground now smoked from where the most part of its upper body had been cut off, finally in unity with the soil it had been caressing with the tips of its branches.Kayla then faced the Sith warrior all by herself with Jorn nowhere to be seen. Good in a way, at least he would escape.The assassin who’d attacked Jorn was observing her, completely still, as if anticipating the Jedi Padawan’s moves. Kayla took out her lightsaber and ignited it with practiced ease, its bright blue light illuminating the darkness of the woods in sharp contrast to the red hue from the Sith assassin’s blade, enhanced by his cloak.“Who are you?”, Kayla asked uncertainly. The Sith warrior didn’t answer. Kayla studied the mask he was wearing, the only part of him visible, aside from all the red. The mask was sleek and completely black, with a glass visor for most part of where his eyes would be and a dark metal shaped crudely with progressive horizontal plates covering a breath filter and chin guard, similarly on top above the forehead and beyond to what was invisible under the shadows of his blood red cowl. Nothing could be said about his species or even gender for that matter, the whole body of the Sith was encased in whatever armor or discreet clothing he wore, hidden beneath the cloak to add to the confusion.Swift as lightning Kayla lunged forward, feigning with her right hand and leaping into the air, mentally grasping for the force to aid her. At the last moment, when she was just a few feet in front of the Sith, she shifted her lightsaber to her left hand and went in for the strike, aiming for the assassin’s neck, right beneath that fancy helmet.But, faster than she thought someone could move, the Sith bent low and thrust his hands outwards in a motion as if meant to be pushing away and Kayla felt an invisible wave of energy slam right into her, sending her sprawling backwards by many feet until painfully hitting the remains of the tree the former had felled. She wasn’t holding her lightsaber anymore, she must have dropped it sometime during her fall.She groaned as pain filled her sensory inputs, making her head feel woozy as she attempted to get up on her feet back again. The cloaked assassin might have finished with her then and there unless for Jorn’s brave attempt at rescuing her.From somewhere behind the assassin, a brown figure came charging right out of the darkness, strong, furry arms knocking down the Sith warrior as Kayla saw through her fuzzy vision, both figures wrestling on the ground.Bracing herself against the tree with her left hand, Kayla forced herself up onto her feet and took a few shallow breaths as she blinked the tears off her eyes and searched for her lightsaber which she’d lost sometime during her fall.She staggered about dizzily, unable to see in the darkness that had now fallen over the woods, well after sunset and barely heard Jorn’s grunts and breaths as he engaged the Sith somewhere ahead. Spreading out her senses into the force, she tried to summon her saber by reaching out to it, but telekinesis wasn’t really her thing. She was so drained of strength and in pain from her fall, she could barely stand where she was.“Aaaah!”, a shout resounded from somewhere and the young Padawan girl’s bones froze right to the core. She gulped unconsciously as she felt a little something inside her snap, like a thread tying her solar plexus to the back of her body had been snipped off with a pair of prunes, sending her down to her knees as she realized what had happened. Shivers racked her body as a part of her froze from shock within, momentarily leaving her stunned.Next thing she knew, she was up on her feet, running, or rather stumbling through the woods as fast as she could move, away and further away from the place, eyes stinging with tears and lungs burning with every new intake of air. She gasped and breathed erratically, survival instinct and fear reaching new heights.When she finally burst out of the woods, it was into the quickly growing blackness of night and visibility was nil. The young Padawan halted in her strides and tried to gather her bearings. She was alone, she knew it. No Will or Trell to help, no more Jorn for company, Mandalorians or not, she would soon die there out of exposure, hunger or even fear.Just when she took another step forward, unable to regain balance on time from her wrong footwork, she slipped and fell, a long way down a deep depression in the ground, her muffled screams the only indication to her ever being there. Will had pushed the steering console outwards and away from him in a moment of sheer panic and realized that he’d accidentally discovered how to fire the Sith vessel’s laser cannons. He sent his thanks to the Force and got back on hand to the situation where they were rapidly closing distance between their stolen Sith vessel and the huge Mandalorian fleeter they were approaching. A continuous shelling from their part along with the tough exterior hull of the vehicle had saved their hides many times now and Will wasn’t counting on his luck as much anymore.His premonition came true when the temperature suddenly dropped inside the cockpit and he felt a coldness seep right into his bones as if he’d been pushed into a frigid water body nude, without warning.Judging by Trell’s yanking of the ship off their course and their ultimate slowing down, she had felt it too, but before either of them could even exchange a look, the cabin interior went starkly darker than it had been and suddenly, Will had someone on his lap.A cold and black figure materialized out of nowhere and gloved hands were quick to grip his throat in a choke lock. Will’s eyes bugged out of their sockets as he fought for Oxygen. A new sensation racked his body as if he were being electrocuted, darkness emanating from the figure in front of him. He could feel hatred, pain and something he could easily understand from another entity, a sense of alienation and insecurity roll off of him in waves.“What the-?”, Trell exclaimed beside him and let go of the steering console, joining the melee and body slamming the intruder off of Will’s lap. Will gasped, hands flying up to his own neck as his assailant tried to grip something as the vessel careened dangerously to starboard, Trell’s hands no longer on the the piloting stick.Will felt himself lose his hold on his seat as he fell on top of Trell, back lifting off his seat and bumping into the vessel’s many provisions, the ship now uncontrolled and not being handled manually anymore. He was too stunned and his brain too thankful for Oxygen to even fight back or try and take control of the vessel once the intruder lost his grip on the Jedi.Trell and Will ended up becoming an entangled mass of limbs as the Sith who’d strangled Will banged along with them in the tiny cockpit, needless to say very awkwardly as the ship lurched and shuddered, surrendering to gravity and wind current, with no one to guide it.Strangely though, amidst the bumping and banging around, Will felt something inside of him snap, like as if a thread running from his sternum to his spinal column had been cut off by a pair of sharp scissors and he gasped more out of breath than out of the pain, registering someone’s knee assaulting his groin.Aside of the physical pain, the snapping sensation he’d felt, left him feeling hollow, as if a part of his living-self had been chiseled away and had dissipated into the force.Will saw green through the windshield as he registered yet another bout of sharp pain in his hip, hands now stuck in the mass of the huge ball the Sith warrior’s cloak had become with all their rolling around. He grit his teeth and hoped he would make it alive out of this as he heard Trell and the stranger both curse.The last thing he registered before impact as blackness filled his vision were scattered features of a face, pale as snow with a small curved nose and widened eyes which were so dark a brown, they were almost black.Maybe he was seeing force angels as he died. Yeah, that was it. His angel had come to escort him to the netherworld of the force realms. A really handsome male angel, all clad in black. Maybe death wasn’t a bad deal after all. Dess had not immediately bested the Bothan Jedi as they’d rolled about the forest floor. Every hunt was like that. A lot many times, the huntsmen underestimated their prey, and learnt their mistakes the hard way, much like Dess was going to. Finding the two Jedi Padawans in the woods had prompted an impulsive need to track them down and hunt them. The kind of instinct that had made her an assassin.Initially though, the Bothan had seemed stronger than herself, his obviously greater weight giving him an advantage over her. He’d come and tackled her from behind with all the agility of a Bantha and collided with the Sith assassin like a battering ram. Dess had dropped her lightsaber in the process, fought for control, hand automatically flying out to telekinetically summon her saber as they wrestled in the dirt.During that time, with one hand outstretched to grab her weapon and only one to engage the enemy, the Bothan had almost outed her with a punch to her gut as he simultaneously kneed her in the abdomen. There was a limit to what Sith armor could protect you from and street fighting with Bothans was not a recommended activity wearing the same.And when her lightsaber had promptly flown back into her hand, its familiar hilt giving her new found strength, she grunted and kicked out, yet again using the dark side of the force to knock her opponent off herself.The Bothan’s eyes had widened as he had been thrown off the Sith warrior whom he’d thought he’d had in a death grip as a force wave slammed into him, square in his chest and he felt himself fly up and away.Of everything the Jedi could do, they could not fly, and no way could one of them best Dess.After ascending for what felt like a five second’s time, he’d flailed, yelled and fallen to the ground but, Dess’s lightsaber was there to greet him though, ready to make sure he remained that way. Fallen.Then, the Sith assassin shut off her lightsaber and hooked it to her belt, turning around to study her surroundings. Sensing no immediate threats or Jedi Padawans, she reckoned the girl she’d faced before had likely fled for her own good when Dess had been occupied with her Bothan friend.Allowing herself to relax just a little, she let the pain flow through her body, basking in the temporary sensory overflow as she registered sharp stings in her abdominal region, feedback from the little fight. One high intensity, constant, dull ache at a concentrated spot just underneath her ribs on the left side of her torso alerted her to a possible indentation of her armor which scraped a cut wound it had probably made on her skin, sharp metal biting into flesh whenever she moved or adjusted her position. Kicking aside the body of the dead Jedi quite unceremoniously, Dess perched herself on the ground against a tree and took her cloak off, bending over to survey her wounds.She noted one or even two broken ribs and bruised skin on her neck where the Bothan had momentarily held her. When she put her hand to where she thought might be the epicenter of the pain in her abdomen, it came off red and sticky, coated with her own blood which looked black in the darkness. Igniting her lightsaber once again, she placed it on the ground carefully and began peeling her armor off, little by little in its light.The thought crossed her mind once and no more, that Nico wasn’t with her anymore. That could mean two things, either he’d gone off with the Mandalorians, leaving her behind or gotten killed in some fight somewhere. Either way it was of no use to think about him now and the Sith assassin doubled her efforts in trying to patch up her own body.Minutes passed, maybe even hours and after what felt like a short respite, Dess ascertained she could stand and walk without loosing any more blood from that seemingly shallow wound. She used her own thick cloak as a bandage, wrapping it about her torso to stem the blood flow, then stood up and ignited her light saber, walking in a rough Southward direction, limping heavily more out of exhaustion due to blood loss than out of hurt. Damn Jedi Bothan and damn Sith armor picking on her insides like bloody vultures. She cussed and spit out blood from her mouth, conserving her energy as she slowly made her way out of the woods and towards the crater where Nico had landed his Enforcer Prime when they’d first arrived on the planet, hoping it was still there.Damn this whole kriffing planet, what had she thought, accompanying that kid to this estranged world. The only thing she had to brag for was a gaping hole in her belly and no way to get out of this wasteland of a place. After a while of determined trekking, she had lost her bearings and mentally cursed herself on the vainglorious pride that had held her from going back into the clearing to check for Mandalorian ships if any, remaining on the planet. Heck, she could have taken shelter in the Jedi tower which she knew would be deserted now, all the Jedi taken captive by the Mandos. It would have at least had some basic necessities and would not have required her to live in the woods over-night like a deranged domestic animal. Why, as it occurred to her blood deprived brain now, she could even have found a local Suurjan inhabitation and stayed the night if she’d gone half the distance in the North.The woods were stark darkness, her saber the only source of light as she stumbled forward taking labored breaths, glancing overhead occasionally. It must have been well into the night as she trudged on, the young Sith assassin hoping she had gotten closer to the crater.What if she didn’t find Nico’s Enforcer there anymore? What would she do? She had set her course and she had gotten this far South, she wasn’t going to turn back just then.Continuing on her course, she thanked the force once for the absence of carnivorous predators on Suurja, at least that way the planet was safe to be walked across in the forests even at dark for a lonesome, hurt being. Dess wasn’t going to go out that easy.If she ever met Nico di Angelo, that son of a bitch would have quite a lot of questions to answer, if he was even alive that is. Nico di Angelo woke up with a first registered feeling of pain. Good, he was alive. Pain was the first indication to a partially even if not completely functional body. Second indication would be sensory input, primarily sound. He could hear something, he knew, but it wasn’t distinct enough. He didn’t try to strain his hearing or discern the words at the very periphery of his senses, instead allowing his body to come reeling back from its stupor at its own pace.Initially, he might not have quite succeeded in staying conscious for durations long enough to recall. After about four of five times he finally realized he was slipping in and out of consciousness and started mentally willing his metabolism to kick in and rev his body back to functionality, fighting the comatose sleep threatening to douse him.That’s precisely when the memories of what had led to his eventual black out began surfacing, and like any decent being, he panicked.Seriously, di Angelo, shame on your Sith training, get a hang of yourself.He remembered quite clearly, shadow travelling into the Clairvoyance and ending up half sitting on the lap of a young man, about as old as him with Golden hair and bright blue eyes and a faded beige tunic fastened to his waist with a brown belt. He had been by far the most colorful entity Nico had ever laid eyes upon and for a moment, the young Sith had been taken aback by his appearance. Then he’d realized that the man had been one of the two Jedi whose force presences he’d felt from his search while still in the woods after Dess had left.Then, he recollected the second force presence – another Jedi beside Mr. Chatoyant, a Togruta female who’d promptly body slammed him into the wind shield when he’d tried to choke the former with his hands. He decided he hated her intensely even if he did admit she had powerful legs.By now, thoughts were coming and going freely and faster, memories of arriving on Suurja, the fact that he didn’t know what had happened to Dess and other things coming to him more clearly now until he knew he was ready to open his eyes and see what was up.“Oh, Will’s gonna love this…”, a deep set female voice said, each syllable a drawl in an unfamiliar accent of Galactic Basic. Nico immediately disliked the owner of the voice as well as the languid and slurry pronunciation, a part of him disappointed that it was not Dess.Then, Nico heard footsteps recede and re enter and when he did finally open his eyes, he was entreated to the anxious face of Mr. Colorful.The Jedi Nico had strangled while inside of the Clairvoyance was peering down at him with raised eyebrows and dilated blue irises. Nico took the opportunity to look at the rest of him, deeply tanned skin stretched over a well-defined face, strong jaw and light dusting of freckles about his nose and cheeks, beneath his eyes. He didn’t have prominent lashes or thick eyebrows but his golden blond hair fell in clusters of curls all about his handsome visage, looking like strands of tangled silk in the morning Sun.Wait, morning?The Sith breathed in and out once before mentally frowning deeply and looking at the Jedi bending down at him. He was lying down on what felt like a bed, not too soft but firm enough. The surroundings were a blur at Nico’s inability to turn his neck sideways but he could see a ceiling of white and light filtering in through curtains somewhere from his left.“Well, do you always strangle people when you meet them?”, Mr. Chromatic Extravaganza asked. Nico stared, his voice was nice, low and cultured but not too deep, tone barely friendly enough to be so. Nico heard the same accent he had heard the female voice speak in when he’d regained consciousness but hadn’t opened his eyes yet, a while ago. Somehow, that fluidic and rather alien accent didn’t sound as bad from him as it had from the female voice from before.“You stole my ship!”, Nico hissed, trying to get up and give the Jedi a repeat of his greeting when he realized that his whole body felt like one useless piece of lead, heavy and immobile.“Good to know you speak Basic”, the Jedi said, and in a moment, he was gone and out of Nico’s field of vision. Nico heard furniture scrape against tiled flooring and the Jedi was in his view again, probably sitting on said piece of furniture.“Where am I? What have you done to me?”, Nico practically yelled out his second question as he attempted to get up again. His voice broke indignantly as he tried to raise his volume.“I wouldn’t try so much if I were you, the chemicals in your blood stream render your muscles immobile and weak.” The blond explained professionally. Nico felt like chewing out his vocal chords and spitting them back on his annoying, handsome face.“I can feel the fear in you, you’re right to be scared, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill you if I could right now”, Nico said in a low voice, sounding as menacing as he could at that moment.“Right now, you couldn’t even scratch your butt on your own for all that you can, you can barely blink as it is… look at your tears forming up to moisten your eyes, it’s a miracle you even opened them in the first place… for that I’ll give you some credit”, the Jedi said.Silence in the room and Nico’s vision blurred with his own tears like the Jedi said. He could feel them roll down the sides of his face and disappear into his hairline as he feebly tried to reign them in. This was bad, he felt like he was dying, shedding tears as he lay in a vegetative state, in the mercy of a Jedi.Then, the Jedi got up and gently closed his eyelids back for Nico, the last of his tears all crowding up and around his lids because of the action.“Get some rest… when you wake up next, I hope to see you in a better mood”, he said softly and Nico heard footsteps receding from the room and the sound of a door closing somewhere to his right. He cried on his own, unable to stop the tears rolling down the sides of his face as he lay there seething in anger and self-hatred until eventually falling into an uneasy slumber. The next time Nico came back to consciousness, he could open his eyes and even blink on his own without much difficulty, even though his body still felt numb and useless. He sighed through his nose and sniffled, trying to collect his thoughts and get a bearing.The curtains to his left that he knew were draped over a small window were devoid of any light or movement suggesting that they had either been shuttered completely, or it was night time. Was is the same day though? Was it the evening of the same morning he’d woken up after crashing with the two Jedi who were keeping him here? What had happened to the Clairvoyance? Were there more Jedi here? Where was Dess and why hadn’t he been killed just as yet? Frustrated and too tired to even think after that, he fell into an uneasy slumber yet again and allowed the thick, smothering paradise of unconsciousness drag him down to its depths. The next time he came around, Nico opened his eyes to the same bright white ceiling and a familiar deep, cultured and smooth voice questioning him,“Do Sith usually hibernate like you do all the time? Is that the way to the dark side of the force?”. Nico groaned and tried in vain to move his body, muscles still in unending protest.“Sorry, but your body is still out of order I’m afraid”, the blond Jedi said, leaning dangerously close to Nico and lifting him by his arms, propping him upright against the bed post with surprising strength and practiced ease, as if he’d done this to infinite Sith before. Nico shrieked slightly upon contact, electricity racing up and down his otherwise numb limbs and he felt rather than saw, hairs standing up in attention on the backside of his neck and arms.“Easy now”, he said and righted Nico’s head against the post, placing soft cushions about his head and adjusting him in a naturally comfortable position. A few moments of uncomfortable silence after the Jedi pulled back, then,“What’s with the horripilation?”. Nico looked at his host as if he had just sprouted a pair of horns,“What?”“Horripilation… the technical term for erection of hairs on one’s skin due to excess charge accumulation…”.“…”. Nico chose to ignore his observation, wondering if the Jedi knight had also felt the same electric zap like Nico had, when he’d touched him. A part of him also wondered if asking him to shut up might lead to undesirable consequences to Nico in his current vulnerable state.Nico breathed through his nose audibly as he drunk in his surroundings after days of a drug induced stupor. He was in a small room, maybe a good fifteen feet in length, breadth and height, painted a plain and stark white. Nico himself sat on a bed with light blue covers and a bunch of pillows all about him, a dark blue blanket covering his own legs from view, devoid of his armor and cloak. He looked down upon his own body as much as his eyes would allow him to, over his chin and noticed the many bandages and stitches now covering his pale, exposed skin.He knew he was in the Jedi tower where the unsuspecting Padawans and knights had been ambushed by the Mandalorians, informed about the Jedi’s activities on the planet by Nico himself, playing the Emperor’s scout.He looked at Mr. Chatoyant whose blond hair was now in a relatively neater state, longer bangs pushed behind his ears and eyes lacking the original intensity of the first time Nico had seen them. Well, the first time he’d seen him was when Nico had tried to choke the life out of him, and now he was nursing his killer, for the third day? Fourth day in his captivity, Nico felt uneasy at the very thought.“How are you feeling?”, the blond asked. Nico felt like laughing at that. If he knew the part Nico had played in orchestrating the capture of his allies, he wouldn’t bother about Nico’s wellbeing as much as he did.“Awful… I could do with better company really, are you the only one around this place?”, he asked harshly.The blond Jedi smiled thinly, “Not bad… and there I was telling Trell that the Sith were incapable of humor”, he replied. Then, he got up from his place and went to the far end of the room, returning after a while with a range of equipment in his hands. He began setting up a complicated looking box of machinery, wrapping a strap of cloth about Nico’s limp right arm.“What’s your name?”, blondie asked after a while, as he replaced the sphygmomanometer with some other instrument Nico didn’t recognize.“It shouldn’t matter to you”, Nico muttered, averting his eyes from those of the Jedi. The young man shrugged and said, “I’ll chose to ignore that…”, then,“I’m Will Solace… Jedi knight and healer”, he said conversationally as if Nico had never ignored his question.Then, much to Nico’s astonishment, he smiled and said after a pause, “You are Nico di Angelo, the Ghost King and Sith Assassin… hope I didn’t get the pronunciation wrong.”. Nico stared at the Jedi knight with wide eyes. How in the force did he know his name, with a perfect pronunciation at that? The Jedi – Will Solace’s eyes shone as he got up from his place and turned around to face away from the Sith, calling out to the doorway as he did,“Trell! Our guest is awake, can we have some food served please?”.“I don’t need your food or hospitality!”.Then, much to his dismay, the Togruta Jedi who’d been on the Clairvoyance, body slamming Nico against the windshield walked into the room, a server droid right behind her with a tray of something Nico could smell from over the bed. His stomach growled treacherously and Will Solace smiled.“Never thought I’d be feeding a Sith in my life”, he said. Trell – the Togruta Jedi knight snorted and said,“Never thought you’d adopt a Sith for a pet either”.“I’m not-”, Nico spluttered, eyes flashing with anger as he began formulating an insult aiming at the female Jedi but she smoothly cut him off,“Eat up Mr. Greyscale, I’ve got some questions to ask you… my methods of interrogation are not subtle, I won’t hesitate to cut off each of your fingers for answers from your pathetic excuse of an existence”, she snarled. Beside her Will frowned,“That’s enough Trell, you can go…”, he said in a soft voice, but evidently, she respected her soft spoken companion’s word and promptly stalked out of the room, leaving Will and the droid behind with Nico.An uneasy silence settled in the room and when Will broke it, he said quietly, “You wanted a change of company didn’t you…”, Nico glared at the Jedi knight who apologized,“Sorry, I didn’t mean to annoy you”.“You’re failing at that extraordinarily”.“You’re very sarcastic”.“If words could kill, I’d fling poison tipped daggers of Ionite at your face right now”.“You have a stunning level of mental functionality for someone who’s metabolism has been suppressed as much”.“Arrggh!”, Nico groaned. Will Solace looked on, eyes shining with amusement as he lifted the tray filled with food off the droid’s head and placed it beside Nico on the bed,“Here… have some food in exchange for us stealing your ship”, the Jedi said.Nico raised his eyebrows, or at least tried to, “And do me a favor by jumping off this window right now”.“Only if you say please…”, Will teased. Nico choked, his ego would never let him beg to a Jedi.A tense silence filled the room as Nico came back from his irritated high and Will Solace waited for him to relent into eating, his patience greater than his annoying attitude it seemed.“Just let me die Jedi… what do you earn from keeping me like this…?”, Nico asked, meeting the blond man’s gaze with staggering intensity. The knight didn’t smile this time and replied as he sat himself down on the chair beside the bed,“You hold the answers to questions that we have… who are you actually? Where do you come from? Are there other Sith like you out there still? Whether you did and why you informed the Mandalorians of the Jedi scouting mission on Suurja? Where did the Mandos take the rest of the knights and Padawans? Did you kill our friend Jorn? And where is my sister Kayla?”, he screamed out the last question.Nico stared at the golden haired man whose sudden outburst had left him shocked, he’d thought Will was a laid back and chill character, a good natured doctor with infinite patience, even timid probably, but it seemed that he was human after all. Nico had no idea who Jorn and Kayla were, but a voice at the back of his head was telling him that somehow those two Jedi that Will had mentioned, probably hadn’t been taken by the Mandalorians.Now seemed like a good time to pass out, but his body refused to co-operate, his stomach growling in protest at the smell of cooked meat emanating from the plate still beside him on the bed.He eyed the plate warily out of the corner of his vision and the anger drained right out of Will’s eyes, worry and sympathy rising in them. Nico liked it better when Will had been angry than the look he was giving him now,“Leave me alone for a while… I’ll answer your questions in time”, Nico said quietly, not meeting the Jedi in the eyes. He felt rather than saw Will agree and get up to leave. But when Nico opened his eyes to see the retreating figure of the Jedi, he almost jumped when he saw the former reach beneath the covers over Nico’s legs instead.There was absolutely nothing romantic about the gesture as the Jedi knight took Nico’s limp right hand in his own, his strong grip holding the Sith warrior’s pale wrist, fingers devoid of feeling, cold and lifeless against the warm hand of the former’s. Nico didn’t know if it disappointed him or not.Will closed his eyes and gripped Nico’s hand slightly harder, muttering something beneath his breath and the Sith felt a warm sensation run up and down his right arm, all the way from his finger tips to his right shoulder and back. Blood flow returned as he gasped in relief, metaphorical needles pricking his skin all along his arm, drawing a hiss from his mouth involuntarily.“I’ve enabled your right arm’s functionality, you’ll be able to eat on your own now, though I won’t guarantee chewing will be easy. The droid can provide water, you need only ask…”, Will said in a clipped voice, then abruptly got up and left the room, leaving Nico wondering what he might have said to offend him. Okay, other than his request to jump off the window.The last thing he registered before Will left was the Jedi knight’s force signature. There had been two presences that Nico had felt while in the woods after Dess had left, and Will was the steady, low intensity hum of light that had resonated deep within Nico, making him feel as if at home and at peace with himself. A sense of belonging, of an infinite ability to give while expecting nothing in return, a sense of healing and positivity, not a blinding garish light. Soothing, almost medicinal in quality.Why did he care if it was so? Did he care? Was he really going to eat the food that had been left for him? Nico snorted and lifted his right hand, surveying the movements of his own fingers as he bent and twisted them in front of his face.Then, taking a deep breath, he pointed it in the direction of the door and willed its lock mechanism to break open with the help of the force.No response. Silence. No unlocked door, no alarmed Jedi.The force was quiet and there was no effect to his action as he breathed out the now stale air he’d been holding in. He frowned deeply and reached for the food on the plate beside him. He’d eat, strengthen himself and try again, maybe later.One thing he knew, he wouldn’t be leaving behind a thankyou note when he left. He’d leave them both alive while he got away maybe, only because he wasn’t sure if he might be able to handle two Jedi in his weakened state even if he did manage to regain as much strength to be able to find his lightsaber and pull his body across the floor.
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Nico di Angelo wasn’t the only Sith with an extraordinary ability. Dess had such an ability too, only thing being that no one who ever encountered her using it, ever got out of it alive to tell the tale. Her new companion however, had decided to prove the same exact point wrong because of which, Dess found herself in quite the crisis.The Sith assassin stared at her companion with a bewildered expression on her face. And everything about the newcomer screamed out that something was wrong.Dess had done what she usually did when she ran into vulnerable beings strong with the force and with a suitable caliber for Dess to be able to incorporate their strength in herself. The routine set of events had happened in the seemingly predictable order she was all too familiar with. First the encounter, then discovering that the being was force sensitive, then approaching the target, analyzing her strength and deeming her a suitable selection for her power to be consumed.Then, the feeding, as Dess liked to call it. There was an air of crudeness, a raw sense of fear behind that word, truly a Sith thing. It made her smile.“What’s so funny?”, a new voice asked her, pulling her out of her reverie. Dess looked up to see the Jedi, now turned dark-side-of-the-force-attuned-warrior who now stood before her, and she knew that her feeding had gone horribly wrong.The last time she checked, she hadn’t sucked at it so hard.“Just a thought passing by…”, she said non-comital-ly.“…”. Silence, Dess closed her eyes, unusually tired for her own liking as she leaned back on the crater rim and took a deep breath to steady herself. The Sith assassin knew her limits and knew she could go hours, even days without food and water, because, such was the training of the Sith. But now, she felt exhausted and consumed and entrusted with the responsibility of an apprentice she hadn’t even asked for in just about a little more than twentyfour hours after arriving on this force forsaken planet.The force had interested ways to annoy a person.“Do me a favor will you?”, she asked, eyes still shut. She heard the Jedi Padawan stop in her aimless fidgeting and stiffen.“Yes?”, she asked. Dess opened her eyes and studied the other girl’s face. She still looked the same physically, short blond hair that fell to the shoulder in straight locks with waning traces of green coloring from long ago, thin and lithe frame in a white tunic and black slacks, fastened to their place with a belt where she used to have her lightsaber hooked on. Dess had seen the Jedi Padawan use it, its blue blade pointed at the Sith assassin’s chest before Dess had force slammed her hard into a tree.But now, gone was the scared, hopeful look in the eyes of the once-Jedi-Padawan, replaced by a hollow expression, irises ringed red with the dark side of the force which pulsed erratically around her. Dess felt the force surge into the new being that she had unknowingly created and thought to herself if she’d done the exact opposite of what she had thought would happen.Instead of feeding off of Kayla’s strength, Dess had given a part of her own inclination to the dark side of the force up to the Padawan and fed her with her own power while trying to consume the same.One thing she knew was that, with or without her own will, Kayla was bound to service under Dess, who’d shown her the opening to the dark side of the force. That meant, Dess had a new loyal follower, attuned to the dark side of the force. Like her own personal droid that needed food and water.“Lead me to that Jedi tower your lot used to occupy, I need to restock and rest before I consider my options to leave this world… I presume you know the way?”.“I do.” She answered, eyes flitting from side to side restlessly, as if ready to spring into action and draw her lightsaber on Dess, but the Sith assassin had been careful about that before hand, she had with her the lightsaber Kayla had used when she’d still been a Jedi, tucked away safely into the folds of her cloak, still wrapped around her abdomen to protect her flesh wound from the indentation of her armor.She wondered how this was even possible and if was simply a cruel joke. If Kayla had taken up some of Dess’s own powers and turned to the dark side, did it mean that Dess was now less powerful with the dark side? Could the force even be measured quantitatively? Did Kayla give up some ‘light side’ of the force to Dess in turn? Was that why she was feeling exhausted and completely and uncharacteristically drained?She struggled to stand herself up, hand involuntarily clutching the left side of her torso where her wound sat, stubbornly refusing to heal in spite of Dess’s ministrations and watched the dark Jedi girl nod and leave the small clearing where they’d set up camp in, vanishing into a thicket of trees to the far sides of the carter.“Where are you going? We’re supposed to head North!”, Dess frustratedly yelled.“There are speeder bikes parked at the other side of the crater I noticed this morning, we can use them”. Dess was too tired to be grateful or even voice her agreement.As she trotted behind the once Jedi Padawan feeling utterly miserable about her condition, she only hoped that she didn’t run into Nico di Angelo in this state, wishing again for different reasons this time that the young Sith Lord had left for good. Will Solace knew his week couldn’t get worse when his friend and colleague, Jedi knight Trell Tamar had flown right into the utility room and shook her head from side to side in dismay.“We’re marooned…”, Trell said and collapsed on the floor beside a crate full of used cooking implements they’d managed to gather from what was left over after the siege.“Nonsense… look at you Trell, twenty-one and a Jedi knight. How can you give up hope on something as trivial as trying to get a comm unit to work?”, Will asked as he rummaged through another sack of seemingly empty ration cartons.The Mandos had proven their point by ransacking the Jedi tower after taking its occupants along with them on their fleeters shortly after. The tower had been searched thoroughly, the building still bearing marks of little skirmishes and fights here and there. Damage most evident in the blaster shot peppered furniture articles lying askew, crates and crates of supplies the Jedi had brought and stocked their base with, all emptied upon the floor and scourged for items of value, torn and burnt fabric, the lingering smell of smoke and the general state of increased entropy in the building all indicative of the same. The control unit on the top of the tower had been badly damaged with intended fire, computer systems and terminals all shot down, droids disabled and scrapped, leaving behind no means of communication.When Will had initially awoken from after their crash landing somewhere in the plains beyond the woods, in the midst of which sat the Jedi tower, he’d realized two things.That they had been unable to stop the Mandos from doing whatever it was they’d come to do. And that they had uninvited and unconscious company in the form of a handsome young man about their own age. Judging by his black cloak, black tunic and black trousers and the lightsaber that hung from his belt along with memories that Will had of him before they’d crashed, of the warrior’s steel rimmed, sinister looking helmet… he was Sith. Oh! And throwing in the ability to teleport, and you have a good chance of having run into a warrior of a dark side force sensitive arch nemesis of yourself.One of the two Sith that Will had seen in his vision who’d come in the very same vessel Will and Trell had seen enter Suurja atmosphere three days ago, which they’d gone on to steal and eventually blow up.Then, before searching the burning wreckage for Trell or even assess his own condition, Will had crawled his way towards the young Sith lying a few yards away and took his wrist in his own hand, immediately sensing a faint pulse, equal parts relieved and worried. Then, in a split second’s time he’d decided that he liked the dark leprechaun in front of him better unconscious than awake. He’d immediately gotten to work and dwindled down all vital parameters in the boy’s body and steadied his faint pulse, willing his consciousness to lull into a semi-comatose stage, senses barely perceivable and consciousness programmed not to return for a good while. The task drained the little energy Will had left and he’d regretted his action.Even more exhausted but slightly less worried about surviving the next few minutes, he’d staggered to his feet and raked his hands through his hair, fingers coming off black with soot in a few patches and rough to the touch, scrapes and burns covering most parts of his scalp and facial skin. Will had then searched the place to find Trell, thank the force, still alive but unconscious and unharmed for most parts other than an oddly bent ankle and what appeared to be a scary looking inflammation on the side of her cranium. Nothing Will couldn’t handle, nothing he sensed urgent or critical.Then, he’d pulled both unconscious members as best as he could away from the remains of the craft, which for some miraculous reason hadn’t exploded just as yet. Will mentally appraised Sith craftsmanship for the late vessel’s durability, it was truly commendable if they’d all survived Trell’s flying somehow.Then, he’d rested for a while, gathering his strength for a bit and gone out to search for any signs of the Mandos, any Jedi left, Kayla and Jorn, leaving behind a message written in the soil right in front of Trell, telling her that he’d gone out scouting for supplies and that she should stay put until he got back and keep an eye on their dark companion.When he’d gotten back, it had been near midnight, but Trell had been awake and the friends had jumped at each other in a clumsy, yet emotional attempt at a warm embrace.“Thank the force Solace! I thought you were gone too!”, the Torguta girl had clung to Will and sobbed.Even though he didn’t say, he remembered how glad he’d felt that she hadn’t killed their uninvited guest yet. Will had patted her back then, uttering reassuring words he couldn’t quite remember now but eventually managed to calm his friend down enough to tell her what he’d found as far as he’d been able to in the dark.The Mandos had all left with the Jedi in the tower. There were no other Sith he could sense. Kayla and Jorn were missing, the force unyielding and quiet. The Jedi tower was empty and unoccupied and they could use it as shelter for the night until they found and beamed the nearest Republican ship or station regarding the whole incident. Until then, they were on their own.Even though he clearly recollected the events of three days prior, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he could pin point was what one could call hopelessness. It had hung heavy and unsaid in the air precisely until when Trell had come back from her fifth attempt at trying to raise anyone out there listening, through the radio unit in the tower which had been badly damaged until the two Jedi knights had succeeded in putting it back together as best as they could, the previous day.“The stupid receiver just hasn’t picked up any transmission replies… no response from anyone whomsoever”, the Torguta said. Will stopped looking through the third half-empty sack he’d been rummaging through for rations and turned to his friend who was pointedly glaring at him.“What?”, he asked. Trell raised one white eyebrow sharply at the human male and snorted before replying,“What? You ask… let me tell you what else sounds hopeless right now… the fact that we are far from any actual Suurjan inhabitation and it would days of trekking to get anywhere near, that our friends are all gone, dead for all that we know, taken by Mandalorians… and we’re stuck here, with no food rations, no water left and no way to get out of this wasteland of a Planet!”. Will shook his head and ignored his friend’s outburst, he’d endured worse before.“You’re just tired and-”“And that guy you’re nursing? Why exactly is he still here? To swallow up a third of the already scant rations that we have and need to survive on for who knows how much longer?”.“Trell, you’re being unreasonable, we can’t just leave him out there in the open, that’s inhumane”.“He’s a Sith Will… run him through with your lightsaber!!”.“Are you insane!!??”, Will countered, voice rising in pitch.“If you can’t, I’ll do it!!”.“Trell, he didn’t do anything to harm us so far”.Trell put her hands up, “You should try healing him back to normal and see what he does then… and by the way, did you forget he chocked you with his bloody hands!?”.“We stole his ship, he has all the rights to be pissed!”, he said defeated-ly.“Oh, I’m sorry! We should have asked for permission of course… and you don’t seem to care that I’m pissed!”.“Trell, we can’t leave him behind like that to die… as Jedi it is our duty to be compassionate to all beings, living and nonliving and as a healer it is against my very nature not to be… I can’t believe you asked me to kill him… it’s not what Jedi do, much less you and me…”.“My bad”, Trell said exasperatedly and stood up from her place, solemnly refusing to look at Will as he tried to reason with her and leaving the small room inside of which her male colleague had been scavenging for supplies.The blond Jedi knight followed his friend outside and took a deep breath to calm himself down enough to come up with a logical point to convince her to keep Nico. Trell didn’t seem satisfied with his feeble excuse of compassion, he’d need a much more persuasive argument to win this. But why exactly was he keeping the young Sith leprechaun? Yeah… it just felt right. That was it.“You know that he can be an excellent interrogation subject for the Republic if we take him back don’t you? So much more about Sith Empire, the Mandalorians’ plans, heck! He’s even potential hostage material if you come down to look at it.”, Will said hopefully, wanting Trell to stop.As expected, the Togruta girl stopped in her tracks and turned to look at her fellow knight with a blank look on her face, which then dawned with realization, “I didn’t think about that before…”, she admitted. Will almost smiled.“Your mind is occupied with trying to find a way to get us out of here, mine in trying hard to see the future for any clues… we’re both exhausted and weary… he can be of some entertainment, trust me… the last time I spoke with him, it was engaging…”, he added to lighten the mood. Trell smiled,“How about he entertains the both of us while he’s at it, just for laughs”.“Now… I don’t think he would approve of how we’re using him”.“But I sure do!”. Nico was woken roughly from his comatose sleep this time. He groggily blinked through a haze of white walls, golden hair, tanned skin with blue eyes and a curious face leaning down on him. Almost immediately, Nico’s mind supplied him with an idea and in whatever semi-sensible state he’d been in just then, urged him to go along with it.In the next few seconds, Nico pretended to groan tiredly and close his eyelids, the Jedi opening his mouth to say something when Nico’s right arm flew straight out from beneath the covers, aimed for a vice like grip on Will’s throat.What surprised Nico was that Will didn’t even bat an eyelid as he practiced-ly caught the Sith Lord’s hand in his own before it could reach his throat, his expression mildly amused as he looked at Nico as if he’d expected nothing less. His grip was strong and non-threatening at the same time, infuriating Nico at how he was being treated like a naughty child.“I think we’re past the stage which requires us to choke one another as a way of greeting, by all means I think we should move on to handshakes and hugs”, Will said.“Stab yourself!”, Nico yelled frustratedly as he tried yanking his own hand back from Will Solace’s grip, feeling the same tingling electricity race up and down his limb. Will smiled thinly and let go of Nico’s hand, but this time when the young Sith Lord tried to withdraw it back into the covers indignantly, he realized that Will had done his thing again and numbed the limb of its senses.The dark haired boy watched his right arm flop onto the mattress, heavy and feeling-less, the expression on Will Solace’s face grim and frowning.“We need to talk di Angelo… I know I can’t threaten to kill you because I know you’d much rather die… but know this… if we don’t manage to find a way out of here, we all eventually die on Suurja like this… deserted, hungry and very ingloriously.”“I’m not stopping you from finding a way to leave… and if it’s a glorious death that you seek, stop sedating me, I can provide you that!”, Nico shot back.Will sighed and shook his head, “Can you try to be helpful though? Try…”, he said tiredly.Nico looked at his own body, tucked away beneath the covers and then at Will Solace and said, “Ask away”. He was over-doing his ‘be minimally good for the week’ quota. Damn him, attractive Jedi paramedic!“Will you answer truthfully?”, he asked, eyes squinting dubiously.Nico couldn’t believe what he was hearing, now Will was being childish, “My life is in your hands”, immediately regretting his choice of words, heat surging to his cheeks and neck, but the blond Jedi knight seemed not to have noticed. Nico reprimanded himself mentally and wondered how and why his brain was supplying his tongue with the more sappier words of his vocabulary when he spoke to Will.“Why were you on Suurja?”, Will asked, all business again, looking Nico in the eyes. Nico sighed through his nose and found a part of himself idly wondering what it would be like to die in Will Solace’s arms. NO! By Will Solace’s hands… that was more like it. Jeez, his mind seemed to have short circuited with whatever drugs the Jedi knight had administered him with.Another idea flashed by and impulsively Nico seized it, “I propose a trade…”, he said. Will frowned, Nico thought about how he still looked striking in spite of pulling a sour expression.“That doesn’t answer my question… And you’re in no position to make a trade”, he pointed out. Again, Nico found himself wondering why a small part of himself felt bad at disappointing the Jedi knight. Pushing aside the emotional thoughts, he hopped onto the last bits of his scattered rationality and held on tight,“For every answer I give, I get to ask a question in turn… an answer from your side for me not killing you yet, not for lack of trying…”, he reasoned, as a means of a poor attempt at humor. Will actually smiled without exposing his teeth but Nico found his stomach lifting anchor at his very change in expression.It was probably nausea. Yes, definitely nausea. Nico di Angelo you shallow, semi-virile, confused piece of work.“Granted”, Will said, blond tresses bouncing up and down as he nodded his ascent, sitting himself down on a chair beside the bed. Nico nodded and collected himself, ready to answer the Jedi knight. He was glad the Togruta female wasn’t here, this conversation wouldn’t be going as smoothly otherwise. Maybe Will had deliberately asked her not to be there when he reasoned with Nico, as the young Sith Lord remembered the female knight threaten to interrogate him harshly the last time he’d been awake. It wasn’t fear he felt towards her, just a natural sense of dislike for Jedi that he ought to have as a Sith, a concept his mind seemingly ignored in light of Will Solace.“I came to Suurja to scout… I knew Jedi had arrived on the planet a few days ago, lead by your Revan…”. Will didn’t nod or encourage, simply kept mute. Nico didn’t know if his answer satisfied Will or not, but he jumped at the silence and said,“Where’s my lightsaber?”. Will looked at Nico with a steady blue gaze like a parent looking at a child who’d asked for a knife to play with. Nico’s patience deserted him and annoyance swelled in his chest like a poisonous mushroom.“With me… right here”, the blond Jedi knight said, patting one of the pockets of his tunic. Nico closed his eyes and tried to spread his senses into the force, trying to send out tendrils of consciousness swirling about Will Solace in his mind’s eye, wanting to find his lightsaber, but came back empty.Will raised an eyebrow, staring Nico down, “You can’t use the force di Angelo… I made sure you can’t”, he said.Nico frowned deeply and hissed, anger bubbling in his chest, “How did you do that? What drugs are these?”.“It’s actually my turn to ask a question, but I’ll answer you that one out of benevolence…”. Nico snorted. Pitied by a Jedi, there was no way he would set foot on Dromund ever again after being tainted so.“You’re not on any drugs… We barely have food rations from what’s left over from the Mados’ siege… where do you think we’d go for tranquilizer shots? I don’t work in an asylum or a zoo, I’m fresh out of sedatives… It’s just my ability, I’ve suppressed most of the advanced metabolic functions of your body for the time being… not paused, more like… slowed them down to an extent where you can’t actually feel any of it actively working at all.”, he casually said. Nico’s eyes bugged out of their sockets, sluggish mind trying to comprehend the extents of Will Solace’s powers. That was no ordinary ability no matter how much the Jedi knight downplayed it.“It’s like as if you’ve been frozen in carbonite… except that you’re conscious”, he said.Nico blinked rapidly to dispel the tears threatening to fall from his eyes, the moistness however a relief to his burning vision. He felt so hopeless and weak and defeated because of Will Solace, who was controlling his own body’s metabolism like as if controlling the flight console of a ship. There could be no worse punishment in the Galaxy than being dominated by a Jedi.Will continued on as if Nico’s inner struggle was of no matter to him, as if the obvious tears that had crowded in his eyes were absent and as if the murderous look the Sith Lord was giving him were all just an act. He felt like strangling the Jedi knight for it all.“Where and why have the Mandos taken the rest of the Jedi?”. Nico steadied his breathing, regaining his composure forcefully and looking at the Jedi.“That’s two questions…”“You asked two questions last time too.”“I asked about myself! And what you’ve done to me!!”, and almost immediately,“Not my fault you’re selfish”, Wow, Jedi could be cold. Even the warm and friendly Will Solace had steel beneath his fancy golden wig of compassion.But, that’s precisely when Nico realized that he’d been cold and rude to his host just as much, if not more. While all Nico had initially thought about was how to kill the Jedi healer, he realized that even though Will probably had Nico still alive only for answers, the knight had also treated him so much better than someone would usually treat their captive. Heck, if it had been the other way around, Nico the captor and Will captive, he’d have had the Jedi beaten black and blue until he spit his answers out with his own blood. Will on the other hand, didn’t look at Nico as an animal, an inferior-to-himself, slave of the dark side of the force being. He’d offered him food, shelter and even answers when Nico had nothing on his end to bargain with. He should probably reflect on all of that.Wait, what?The emperor and his father would be ashamed of these thoughts from him. Maybe Bianca wouldn’t. She’d always been the best human being Nico had ever known, so much from a Sith.“I need answers please…”, Will pressed. Nico pursed his lips and replied,“Right now, you don’t even have a way to leave this planet… what use is that answer of mine going to be to you?”, he was probably stretching his limits, Will was going to snap and end his life with his metabolism suppressing ability. But, astonishingly, Will looked at the Sith Lord calmly and nodded twice as if in understanding and reached inside of his tunic’s pocket with his right hand.Nico’s eyes widened in realization. He’d given away a very important bargaining chip for the Jedi to threaten him with, without realizing it. He stared, tight jawed at the blond man as he pulled out a familiar object and held it seemingly casually in between them as he looked at Nico.The Jedi’s eyes were not cold or calculative, not satisfied with Nico’s predicament or his own higher ground. They were almost devoid of their usual light as they fixated on the Sith in front of him.“I’d hate to break a valuable and no doubt… noble weapon of this sort. The craftsmanship is most admirable… I’d keep it to myself if I could. But, if it means I can coax answers out of you… my Jedi training can easily convince my mind to let go of its temporary material attachment to it and…”, he let the sentence dangle.Nico felt like he’d died and gone to the netherworlds of the force. Will Solace was going to be the death of him. He’d never been bested in an argument, much less, series of arguments with anyone as he had with the attractive Jedi knight in front of him.The Sith were nothing without their lightsabers. They were usually family heirloom or gifts from mentors or even trophies of enemies they had slew and overpowered. To lose one’s lightsaber was almost equivalent to losing one’s status as a Sith. Nico watched his known universe collapse about him as Will held his weapon in his right hand, rotating its hilt and examining it absently. He was at a loss for words.A few minutes later, Nico relented and began answering. But it wasn’t going to be as easy for the Jedi knight to simply draw answers from his Sith captive now was it?Just as Nico was half-way through his first sentence, the two young men heard shrieks and cries from somewhere outside.In a minute Will was up and at the doorway to Nico’s room, looking at the Sith Lord purposefully once more before bolting the shutter frame behind him and vanishing off Nico’s field of view. As the nineteen-year-old, black haired youth looked down at his body, titling his own head to, with much difficulty, Will’s receding footsteps were the only sound he could hear.Soon, even they were gone, leaving him feeling even more desolate and lost, wishing for death more than anything else. Will Solace hadn’t had a doubt of Nico’s safety, and a part of himself found him wondering why exactly it was relevant to think so. Just when he’d thought he’d succeeded in coaxing Nico into co-operating, he’d heard Trell scream his name, no doubt about that and it had caught him off guard and very stunned for a fraction of a second. Her screams could have meant two things.One, either the comm unit up on the control tower had picked up replies to their iterative distress signal and someone was coming to get them off of here. Or two, someone had ambushed the tower. Again.Will’s long feet carried him down the stairs, three at once and he soon found himself in the lowest level of the tower, facing an unlikely scene.Trell was standing beside the steel shutters of the entrance to the building, posture stiff and erect, ignited lightsaber held in front of her in a clearly offensive position. Will studied her from the landing of the flight he’d just descended and squinted his eyes, not moving from where he was. While everything about his fellow Jedi Knight seemed to be clearly ready to defend their tower from whoever it was she could see outside of it, her jaw was slack and eyes fixated upon one spot somewhere ahead, unfocused and not quite in sync with the rest of her body’s awareness or battle-ready-ness. Something was amiss and that something or those somethings were making their way towards the tower now, judging by Trell’s stiffening and straightening.Will’s brows furrowed in consternation as he looked back and forth between his friend and the doorway, waiting for their guests to show themselves. Trell hadn’t turned to look at him yet, but he could feel her acknowledgement through the force.Nodding once but still confused, he withdrew from his place and hid himself across the entrance threshold, beside where the stairs began and waited for the intruders to come. He’d jump them from his hiding place if a few of them managed to make their way past Trell. It was a plan.At least he knew they were equally matched in numbers, which was a relief, even if their identities weren’t exactly reassuring after realization told him they were being greeted by Sith.Of the two distinct presences he could feel, one was a calm and cold feeling of smoke drifting aimlessly in a gale, like an apparition in the night, more shadow than substance, but powerful nonetheless. The other one was perplexing, like as if many thick black tendrils of the force had entangled in a mass of non-discernible chaos, unable to separate and growing tighter and tighter as they formed knots among themselves. But what was really confusing about the second presence was that it felt familiar, like as if Will ought to know it. As if he’d felt it before but in a different way… at different times.He shook his head and gripped his lightsaber, not igniting it just yet, dimming his presence in the force to avoid letting his enemies know of his existence.Silence. The seconds ticked by and Will’s apprehension grew. Then he heard it, sounds of battle, lightsaber on lightsaber and the exchange of hisses and grunts as two individuals locked in combat somewhere ahead.Will couldn’t say he felt cowardly, hiding and waiting to sneak upon the enemy instead of running out to greet them, he knew he wasn’t meant for combat. Even though Will could be considered a decent fighter, he’d never been able to swing his saber in intended violence, it just wasn’t in him, and so he waited.Until, he heard the battle dwindle down and labored breaths being exchanged, as if the fight had been stopped momentarily. His impulses urged him to peek around the corner and see what was up, but his instincts told him Trell wasn’t hurt or beaten just yet, he stayed himself.“There’s more of you in there…”, a cold female voice said, almost low enough to not be heard at all. Even though it wasn’t a threat or a curse, the very voice that spoke the words made Will taste the raw power of the dark side. The owner was definitely sinister, her honeyed, smooth voice devoid of emotion.He gripped his saber tighter, waiting out the moments, wanting to jump out and help Trell that very second, but he held himself back.“What do you want?”, Trell gasped.“I think there are… or else, why would you bother defending the place?”, the same cold voice asked again, this time with a hint of curiosity. Will vaguely registered that the female voice that was not Trell, spoke with the same alien, clipped and sharp sounding accent as Nico. But, unlike the Sith Lord Will had been nursing, this voice spoke it in a way as if not used to conversing in Galactic Basic much in contrast to Nico’s good grammar and rich vocabulary of the language.But when another voice spoke in reply to the question, Will’s blood ran cold,“There is another - a medic… not much of a fighter, but not to be underestimated”, the new voice spoke. No, not new. Very familiar, very well known and very, very related.Will barely had the time to grip his saber tight and raise it above his shoulders to squarely defend the blow from the familiar hilted blue lightsaber coming down at him. If not for his Jedi reflexes and years of building his self-control, he would have crumbled as he saw the owner’s face behind the blue blade.As he defended himself and backed up the stairs to give himself some room to fight, Will looked at his opponent’s dirty blond hair and startlingly similar blue eyes to himself, hoping to find something familiar from before.When all he got in return was an empty, hate filled stare and a growing hunger for the dark side of the force, he grit his teeth and struck out with his weapon aimed for her midsection.As Kayla fell backwards to avoid Will’s lightsaber, she laughed sinister-ly as she looked at her once fellow Jedi and said,“You have a choice Will Solace… turn to the dark side, or die defending yourself from the power it has given me!”. As Will contemplated several ideas in his head, he decided that he could really use Nico’s help about now.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Nico didn’t need the force to tell him what was going on outside. However, he did need the force to tell him who it was that was causing it, and the answers were deeply disconcerting.If he had been mobile, if he had been able to move his limbs even a little bit, make his body respond to his brain’s commands, what would he have done though? What should he do? What would be the right thing to do? And since when did he start thinking about what was right and wrong? Rationality was not a Sith trait.One of the two new comers to the tower was Dess Mendeiz, Sith assassin, long lost acquaintance and his only, legitimate company when he first arrived on Suurja. But, there was another dark presence with her. Someone whose signature Nico had never felt before and even though it didn’t bother him, he had to admit, it made him a tad bit more curious than usual. The arrival of another Sith could either mean they had help and could leave the planet, Dess and Mr.X busting in to rescue Nico or… not likely, Sith weren’t big on the whole ‘rescue your fellow dark side warrior in Jedi captivity’ thing. Nico was no damsel in distress, the Sith were not knights in shining armor. If he got caught by Jedi, it was his own sorry ass’s burden to lug himself out of it.Which meant that Dess was here for something bigger.He didn’t know whether to rejoice or not that Dess was still alive. In retrospective, it might have made him happy maybe the first time he’d woken up to the face of his blond caretaker, Jedi knight turned nurse – Will Solace.But as the hours, (or days, he was clueless about time right then), passed, Nico di Angelo found himself worrying for Will in light of the danger Dess’s presence here made him face.Nico was staring face to face at an existential crisis for sure. Maybe it was for the better that he couldn’t move a limb in that state, he’d have been quite confused on which side to take right about then, had he joined the melee.Nevertheless, the warrior in him was agitated, fighting Will’s spell to overcome the infinite inertia of his physical being, calling on the force with every ounce of his strength left to liberate him from the prison of the Jedi knight’s powers. As much as he could now claim to tolerate Will, a small part of him was still cursing the former to a slow, painful purgatory for what he’d done to the young Sith Lord.He could hear the hum of lightsabers from outside, exchange of muffled words he couldn’t make out through the walls and the bolted doors, until,“Nico di Angelo! I know you’re hiding in there, get out here and show your cowardly face!!”, a cold voice screamed very close to the door and Nico’s eyes widened. He was going to die a horribly humiliating death, lying on an infirmary bed, half naked and unable to twitch a muscle in response to a threat from a Sith competitor. If only he could find some clothes.He hated himself, he hated Will for being called cowardly, for being accused of hiding behind the backs of a Jedi. Yet again, he called on the force, called the shadows to come and obey him, summoned the darkness that hid behind the light that fell on every object. He closed his eyes and dived deep into the recesses of his conscious mind, searching for that inky pool of blackness he was familiar with, the same unending tunnel through the void he had journeyed countless times before.His hands unconsciously tightened on the sheets, sweat beading on his forehead and teeth biting down hard, skin turning a shade paler than his already anemic complexion, dark hair plastered to the sides of his face.The shadows obeyed the call of the Ghost king, and in little more than a few seconds, he was but an apparition, long gone from the confines of his prison. Will Solace was not weak, neither was he not a fighter. It was just that he wasn’t excellent at dueling with his lightsaber and he could offer no better excuse than lack of skill in said domain. Everyone was different and Will couldn’t be branded as that flashy Jedi knight who swung his lightsaber around like a Twi’lek pole dancer at an undercity Cantina. He had his merits and demerits and he wasn’t going to mope around at his combat incompetency in times of crisis, especially while fighting a Sith, who would stop at no bounds to end his life if he slipped even the tiniest bit.He wondered what fueled their passionate hatred for the Jedi as he ducked low once again to avoid the Sith warrior’s lightsaber, taking a moment to catch his breath while he spun to avoid a rebound and counterstruck the assassin with his own weapon. How could a clan of people hate the Jedi like how the Sith did, generation after generation and with an increasing intensity. Were they raised with false stories of Jedi preposterousness? Were they told while still little that their very purpose was to end the Jedi, and it was their only destiny. Were they brainwashed to hate and kill and destroy everything that came between them and their prey? Did the teachings of the dark side of the force brandish co-existence and tolerance as sacrilege and Galaxy Wide Peace as an atrocity? Did these people actually think what they were doing was right? How do they not see that all that they stood for was evil? How could they not see that the force is something beyond light and darkness, the divide between them only deeper and more intense now, than ever before.Will’s blow was easily defended by the red cloaked woman as she limped gracefully to the side and met his green with her own red bladed weapon. Yes. Limped gracefully. Will observed the command the woman had over the force even in her obviously weakened state and thought whether he might have lasted as long in combat against her if she’d been in full strength. Then again, he’d been near starving for two days now, using most of his power to keep Nico’s metabolism suppressed and wasn’t at his best either.She was young, maybe a few years older than Will himself and adept with her lightsaber, it’s red blade and her red cloak dancing around her like flames of a forest fire about a canopy swaying in the wind, deadly to the eyes. She had a tanned complexion unlike Nico but wore similar clothing to his patient – black tunic, black trousers, black rimmed boots and a black helmet she’d discarded for the fight. But, what was most out of place was her blond hair and those golden-amber eyes of hers, they just didn’t seem to jell in with the whole being Sith theme. It was kind of odd. Especially after dealing with Nico di Angelo, sour-bomb-extraordinaire with his black hair, dark eyes and pale, milky white skin. Will had developed a mental image of an ideal Sith and anything that deviated from that opinion of his seemed out of place and unacceptable. This woman’s blond hair just didn’t cut it as very Sith like. Maybe she colored it. Black was a very Sith color and Nico di Angelo wore his raven black hair like a crown of Mastery of the Dark Side of the force. A sexy tiara of an eternal nimbus of brooding. It was just Will’s type… this train of thought was really unnecessary right now. He should stop and focus.Will’s green blade met the red of his opponent’s again and he grit his teeth, right leg in an odd position, finding himself desperately fighting for balance as he was pushed behind dangerously. The Sith seemed to sense his discomfort and pressed on her lock, lightsaber humming close to Will’s face, her own visage contorting into a snarl of triumph as she forced the Jedi knight to bend beyond the limit of his spine’s flexibility.“It’s over Jedi…”, she whispered through grit teeth and Will saw the maniacal light behind her amber irises, dancing with the reflections of the specks of red and green from the blades of their sabers locked in combat.Sweat poured down the sides of Will’s forehead as he bent further more, using both hands to grip the hilt of his sweat soaked saber and prevent his opponent from beheading him. One thought of consolation was that it wasn’t Kayla behind the blade, he’d much rather die in the hands of someone else than his own family.Just when he thought giving up and ending this game would turn out a better option than fighting at all, he heard a voice say from somewhere behind,“No, it’s not over yet… Dess”, Will’s eyes widened and he stood up straight, quickly side stepping the Sith assassin’s movement as she withdrew from her lock with Will and turned around in surprise.Will backed away from the Sith and stood himself, panting and gasping, taking support of a wall as he took shaky breaths and tried to compose himself.The Sith assassin who’d previously engaged Will was staring at the figure in front of them, facial expression unreadable, attention on Will gone. Will for his own part was equally stunned.For, lying on the floor in a loose, green medical bay tunic, tied only at the collar and at the hip and black trousers, trying with all his strength to get up on his feet and get his muscles to respond was Nico di Angelo. For a few moments, shadows clung to his body, making him look like he was half lying-half sitting inside a pool of black-black ink and his eyes looked hollow and glazed, almost dead.With all the physical restraints the Jedi knight had placed on him, the young Sith Lord had still managed to shadow travel right out of the room he’d been locked in and Will marveled his strength in that moment.What happened next was beyond him and he completely forgot that Trell and Kayla… no, not Kayla, the other Sith warrior were probably engaged in an intense duel somewhere else and one of the two could even be dead for all that he knew. One thing he consoled himself with was that he hadn’t felt either of their deaths through the force just as of yet, like how they’d felt it when Jorn had died two days back during the Mandalorian skirmish.The red cloaked assassin laughed. She laughed a cold, humorless and completely sinister laugh. The sound was sharp and unpleasant to the ears, wanting Will to close them with his palms and curl into a ball, but he didn’t, watching back and forth from one Sith to the other and trying to gauge Nico’s emotions in spite of the determination and grit in his eyes as the Sith Lord tried to prop himself up on his feet. Why wasn’t Will moving? Why didn’t he attack the Sith lady and be done with it? Something told him this wasn’t his battle, but another something told him he shouldn’t leave just as yet. Yet.“Di Angelo…”, the fair haired Sith said, pronouncing it the way Will had heard Nico pronounce it in one of his many visions when they would cross paths later. Mental pat on the back for you Solace. He’d never thought he’d ever be using his prophetic skills to impress anybody. At least not until Nico had come along.Nico didn’t respond, looking at his fellow Sith with an unreadable expression on his face. Will looked at him and wondered just how it was possible for someone to be wearing a ridiculous hospital outfit, hair looking like he’d walked through a sauna with shadows beneath his bloodshot eyes while lying on the floor helplessly and still look justifiably murderous. Nico pulled it off like a champ, Will was beyond impressed. Maybe he was in love.Nonsense, Solace, Nico is not even your friend. Slap yourself.“I came here to stock some supplies and try to find a way off this force forsaken planet, but what do we have here… I thought you'd flown off with Dyre and your ship, but now, I can't say I'm impressed you stayed behind...”, she said, eyes glinting with cruelty. Her voice came out sicky sweet and honey smooth, like a carnivorous plant luring its prey with fragrant, colorful flowers. Will found himself frowning deeply and felt the roots of a bottomless hatred blooming in his chest. The power of the dark side rolled off the Sith assassin in waves of thick poison, Will shook himself free of the influence and blinked rapidly to dispel the effect.Nico hissed, trying furiously to get up. Will’s resolve crumbled and he took a step forward unconsciously towards Nico as if meaning to help him up, mentally chiding himself for restraining Nico so.“Weak, vulnerable and lacking your lightsaber… living off the hospitality of these Jedi scum!!??”, she screeched. Will didn’t feel the weight of her insult to the Jedi, but her blaming Nico was very unfair and nerve wracking. Will’s anger grew beyond its past limits.Will looked at Nico as if meaning to ask him if he should take his restraints off but the Sith boy didn’t meet the Jedi knight’s eyes.“Look at you di Angelo… unable to drag your own body across the floor. If I take you with me, you’re only going to be a liability.”Will was pointedly looking at Nico now, begging him wordlessly to meet his eyes. Nico’s face was still scrunched up, trying to use the force to break free of his corporeal prison with all his will.“And I believe that no Sith must be a liability and alive at once…”. Will began panicking mentally, waves of darkness from the female Sith clouding his mind’s functionality and sowing in him the seeds of despair and hatred and desperation… something he’d never felt before. He crumbled, falling to his knees, praying this be over in a while.Any moment Dess was going to surge forward and kill Nico and it would be for waste, Will needed to act now or never. But, there was one last thing he needed to confirm so he remained in his place, still on the floor, vision still growing dark at the edges and mind still reeling from the effect of the dark side he’d experienced.Then, just as the female Sith raised and readied her lightsaber, Nico said in a surprisingly calm and steady voice, movements stilling as they were, torso barely supported by the weight of his weak forearms which held them above the floor, legs leaning heavily on his midsection,“Do it Solace… let me free, only one Sith makes it out of this alive”, and Will almost smiled, nodding once before closing his eyes and concentrating hard on Nico’s vital parameters.He unfroze each and every one of them, feeling Nico’s body come reeling back from its stupor and return to normalcy. Cell level metabolism resumed and blood pressure increased, pulse steadying, hormones kicking in and sensory inputs exploding. For a second he knew that all Nico could probably feel was pain, but little did he know that the young Sith Lord couldn’t be more grateful to the Jedi knight as he used and manipulated his pain to his advantage. He fed off of it like a starving man during the feast of Fortuna.Suddenly, the level of pain increased to such a high degree, Nico’s own feeling strongly resonating with the new physical pain he was experiencing that it was almost too much for Will to handle and their momentary connection snapped.At that moment, the raw mental pain that came off from Nico as he stood himself up, eyes smoldering with hate and anger as he charged Dess was enough reason to forgive everything unjust Will had thought Nico had done to him. The rudeness, the ungratefulness, the undue hate and rage were all nothing individually, compared to the sinister manifestation he turned himself into, using all the emotions he had, pent up inside of him.How could a person with so much pain and delusion inside of them not crack and still be sane? Were all Sith like this? Did the female Sith feel the same things Will felt coming off Nico? Did he have a special bond with the Sith Lord he’d nursed?Dess lashed out with her lightsaber and swung at Nico, blade aimed oblongly for the Sith Lord’s midsection. Nico stepped backwards and avoided the blow, kicking out with his right foot, trying to connect with the woman’s knee. Considering the speed with which he moved, it was no surprise that the blow connected and the assassin’s knee bent backwards, beyond its allowance in an angle it was not naturally designed to bend in and she screamed in agony and collapsed. Nico stepped forward for another blow but Dess was equally fast and quickly moved out of range from him, getting back up on her feet, her limp even more pronounced now, than before.Will witnessed the fight from where he sat, feeling more drained than ever after healing Nico and helpless and frustrated at unable to be useful.Until, static crackled through the receiver piece of a broken communit he had clipped onto his belt. As the little device vibrated from inside the folds of his tunic, he looked down at the console he'd been carrying but had forgotten about completely.This was his cue to leave and Will wasted no time doing so. When the pain had gone beyond his tested threshold Nico hadn’t blacked out or cried out. He had finally understood what it meant to embrace the dark side. The ability to use one’s emotions like weapons against others who can never understand or sympathize. And they worked effectively against Sith opponents especially, since the Sith never sympathized or considered the experiences of another worth the worry or the internal struggle no matter the magnitude of hardship. They were all selfish and hypocritic. They didn’t empathize, it was considered weakness to even try.And Dess was easy to overpower that way. Nico used all the hatred he had felt and the pain he had ever endured against her and she didn’t stand a chance. The years in Sith training academy, all alone and feeling alienated, always feeling as if he wasn’t wanted anywhere because he’d either excelled or hadn’t cared. His absent father and the demise of his mother at a very young age. Then, his father’s death. His torturous training under Darth Traya for four years and the scars he now bore because of it. Her deserting him after all the endurance as she felt he was lacking in what she thought one ought to have more in an apprentice. Traya trying to kill him and his barely managed escape from Ziost following her planet wide manhunt for him. His being turned down for trying to make it to the eternal fleet as an assassin. His subjugation by the Emperor and his apparent disposability in the eyes of equally ranked Sith Lords like Devore and Dess. Even Bianca’s reasoning that Nico wasn’t a true Sith at all, her very lack of faith in him.Then, the more recent ones like Will Solace.He channeled his rage and hate into a sharp blade and assaulted Dess as best as he could, digging into her mind’s barriers with his own consciousness.Almost dropping her lightsaber, Dess clutched her head and stumbled backwards, the red of her irises ebbing away and turning amber back again.Nico advanced on the assassin, speaking as he did,“Your taunt was empty Dess….”, Dess looked at Nico, eyes widened and whites turning bloodshot as Nico pushed past the sentries of the fortress of her mind. He felt her defenses crack as he breached the surface of her shallower thoughts. He sifted through the various things running on her mind, carefully avoiding delving into any of them, trying instead to go deeper into her very consciousness.“Get out of my head…”, she weakly protested, a wild look replacing the previous over confidence, her forehead creased with lines of worry and sweat pouring down her face. Nico moved forwards, standing up straight and advancing on the Sith assassin.“In time”, Nico said and advanced dark tendrils of the force into the recesses of her mind. Various thoughts floated past him, fueling his own anger and hate. Dess never viewed Nico as a friend, he was always a competitor, a potential threat to her position and someone she would have eliminated on any opportunity if it had come any sooner. She was actually scared of the emperor and losing her position in the eternal fleet.Then, something shocking came up in the midst of all of that. A little something that almost made him laugh.“Oh…”, Nico drawled, the blacks of his pupils swallowed up and replaced by a ring of red as he looked at the woman he was addressing and smirked. Dess groaned as if in pain and stumbled onto her knees.“You weren’t supposed to know!”, she choked, taking labored breaths through her mouth and wheezing air out between her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutched her head and tried to force Nico’s presence out of her consciousness.Then, Nico drew out abruptly, leaving Dess reeling back from the effect, standing right over where the red cloaked assassin was now weeping on the floor.When she looked up at him, the red in his eyes was gone, but so was any trace of pity if there ever was.“In one way, we’re not so different…”, he said. Dess’s eyes widened one last time until Nico turned around and took a step back, Dess lifting her ignited lightsaber and impaling herself from front, the latter half of its crimson blade appearing behind her back as she slid sideways onto the floor and went still.Blood began to pool all around her wound, the sticky liquid seeping into her already crimson cape. Nico watched eerily as her lightsaber rolled out of the Sith’s slack grip and onto the floor, a few feet in front of him.He picked it up and held it in his hand for a moment, trying to gauge its weight and craftsmanship. It was a beautiful weapon, not unlike his own. Tapered hilt, torch like chamfered edge on top and finger holds engraved in the dark metal. Traditionally the weapon was now his and so he took it. When Nico finally stood up and took a deep breath, he knew his connection with the dark side had gone slack. Even though he didn’t feel drained after the exhausting task, he felt empty and lost. Disorientation made him want to double over. He would have followed just about what anyone told him at that moment. After the fight with Dess, Nico felt as if he’d lost his very identity.Dess hadn’t been the first Sith he’d killed, but she had been the first Sith he’d had to kill to save a Jedi. He had never done anything even remotely similar to the same before and it made him question himself in new ways he had never found himself thinking about. It was as if at that moment when he’d shadow travelled out of the sick bay and in the foyer where Will and Dess had been fighting, he’d decided that this time, he’d go down fighting for Will, being his beneficiary.Would Nico have done the same thing if the Jedi fighting Dess had been Trell, the Torguta girl, instead of Will Solace? The outcome could have been infinitely different in those circumstances.But again, Dess would have still blamed Nico to have accepted Jedi hospitality and betrayed the teachings and tenets of the dark side. Nico would still have felt his anger spark at that remark, trying to rise from the prison of his physical immobility. For all that his exhausted mind could supply him with as means of an answer would be – at that moment, he might have tried to kill both Sith assassin and Jedi knight. Trell would have fought back too, not hesitating to use any excuse to get the better of Nico. It would have turned into a bloodbath.But at that instant, watching Will being pushed back and against the foyer railing, legs and spine bending beyond their limits and the smothering power of the dark side of the force rolling off of Dess like a thick blanket of fog, Nico had felt the crystal clear inner resolve to protect the Jedi knight. No, defend him. Will was a Jedi, he needed no protection from anybody, and even though he probably wasn’t much of a duelist, he was definitely a fighter. He knew that not every battle could be won and had stepped down and away when he realized the rest was Nico’s to fight.More confused than ever at his own behavior, Nico di Angelo walked up to the lifeless body of his once-friend, fellow Sith Desdemona Mendeiz. She looked just like what she had been when Nico had first seen her earlier that day. Red cloak tied around her torso, lightsaber in hand, pronounced limp after whatever she might have encountered during her time in the woods.He remembered his time with her in his younger years, when she used to talk to him and Bianca during her visit to their family, all the stories about Sith training Academy and how she would like to become a great General in the eternal fleet under the Emperor just like her father had been when he’d been alive during the Great Sith Wars.He’d enjoyed her company and more so her stories, hoping he’d join Sith Academy someday too. For a short while he’d even idolized her until he’d joined Academy and they’d lost contact. After years of Academy, he’d finally seen Dess the next time during his father’s funeral. She’d been Nico and Bianca’s stronger consoler, telling them that his passing would only serve to make them more stronger. Nico had found her words easy to believe, honest and completely earnest opinions of a friend who cared. For, after all, Dess was way more experienced, already training to join the eternal fleet at the age of nineteen and Nico had gone with her advice.Next time they met had been on Dromund when Nico had come back after weeks of hiding and roaming the outer rim after his escape from Ziost and she’d yet again taken him under her wing, offering comfort and counsel. But all the while, she’d only been waiting for the right opportunity to strike him down maybe. Maybe she hadn’t thought of him as a friend at all. When she’d realized that he’d grown much stronger than what she’d expected he’d ever be, she’d decided to take him down. It was the way of the Sith.What bothered Nico was that he felt it was so wrong. He felt betrayed by what Dess had done. He felt as if she should have stood her ground, heard him out and helped him make his way away from the Jedi. It felt as if her predictive Sith behavior had suddenly turned unacceptable to Nico.The anger that returned in Nico’s mind was not for Dess, it wasn’t for Sith society, it wasn’t for Will Solace either. It was for himself.That farm on Suurja South was sounding good now. He should buy an estate and import the animals and feed himself off to the carnivorous plants for what he felt like right then. He missed Dess a tiniest bit.“Thought I should let you know… we received a transmission from a ship passing by, the Captain said he’s going to bring the ship down here to get us off the surface.” A voice said into the quiet from somewhere behind.Nico turned around to look at the owner of the voice.Will didn’t look too worse for wear. Maybe they’d managed to easily subdue the other dark side warrior he’d sensed.“And why are you telling me that?”, he replied, not meeting those blue eyes he had memorized by now. Nico could see Will’s boots from where he stood. They were slightly apart but facing straight at him, calm and casually placed. Almost hesitant.Will’s reply came almost immediately, but not sharply, “To let you know the invite is extended to you too… unless that ship we crashed still works…”, Nico sighed through his nose.“I can’t believe you expect me to come along”. When Nico looked up at the Jedi knight, he shrugged with one shoulder and said,“I don’t… but I do owe you for that ship.”, with that he was gone, disappearing around the stairs.Will Solace was way smarter than Nico’s previous judgement, and the last time he checked, he’d managed to influence Nico into killing his own friend.Maybe this was a bad idea, maybe he was making a big mistake. Maybe this was fate at the heights of its cruelty. Nico could only accept it and roll along at least for now. He was too exhausted to make anymore decisions and stick around watching them turn into wrong ones. He followed Will. By the time Nico hobbled down three cursed flights of stairs to the ground level, he was beginning to feel fatigue seeping into his bones and a dull thrumming at the backside of his head telling him he was not going to be at his latest best for a while now onwards.The lowest level of the tower was identical in layout to the floor on which Nico had been kept. It made him wonder if Will had carried him up there all the way, the thought making his cheeks grow warm for a second. He shook his head and turned towards the entrance, squinting in the harsh afternoon starlight coming in unfiltered from the outside. As someone who came from a planet with a dying brown dwarf parent star, the Sith were not a people who were used to harsh starlight and Suurja’s parent star was very bright, its garish intensity stinging Nico’s unused eyes.He limped over to the doors when Trell came walking in from the outside, her silhouette casting shadows in the threshold of the entrance. They made eye contact for a briefest second and Nico caught the tear tracks staining her cheeks before she sniffled and creased her brow at the Sith boy, her voice coming out a little bit hoarse than he recollected,“Will’s outside…”, she said and nodded. It was the first non-threatening thing she’d said to him and Nico nodded in acknowledgement. A few seconds later he wondered why she’d told him that, but before he could come up with his query, she spoke again,“He left you a change of clothes…”, and pointed to a low standing table at the corner of the room beside a pair of chairs. With that, the Togruta girl left, coppery skin catching the planet’s starlight and making Nico blink rapidly and look away. The Jedi sure were a weird lot. After Nico changed into the brown tunic that Will had left for him and walked out into the harsh sunlight, he saw Will and Trell peering at the horizon, a bunch of sacks and roll-ons all around them with supplies they’d managed to rummage around for from the tower. Will held a broken pair of binoculars in his hands, alternatively peering into its lenses and with his own eyes as he looked at the afternoon sky.Nico walked up to the blond Jedi knight’s right side and double tapped a small black device he had plugged to the back side of his ear lobe. Immediately his face mask spidered its way across his face, the durasteel snaking its way across his skin and solidifying into a protective layer atop of it.He tapped the visiglass once more, activating his binoculars and caught Will staring at him.“What?”, he asked.“That’s a… very advanced piece of technology”, he said deliberately stressing on the word very. Nico turned back to the horizon and zoomed into a patch where he thought he’d caught some movement. Little did Will know that this wasn’t something all Sith owned, much in contrary, something he’d gotten from during his time on Ziost, while hiding from the planet wide manhunt for him. He’d bought it along with a cheap comm unit and navchart at a flee market sale in a bad part of town from a smuggler. It was a stolen product, maybe even multiple times before it had ended up being bought by him. He was glad it impressed Will though. No argument there.“There’s a ship approaching”, Nico said. Will looked at him and lowered his broken pair of binoculars,“Can you describe it?”, he asked.“If you’re asking me if its Mandalorian… the answer is no. It’s a T-class light freighter of Rendili make… the hull has a slight curve ahead with front engines and no wings… could just about be any outer rim vessel”.Will’s eyebrows shot upwards as Nico spoke, “You seem to know a lot about ships if you can tell so much about it from so far away”, he commented. Nico shrugged,“I wouldn’t have known if it was one of your Republican make ones”.“You mean Corellian?”, Will asked.“If that’s what you call it…”.“Not necessarily actually… Corellian Corp are the biggest space vehicle manufacturers in the Republic… there are of course, other popular ones like Naboo Space Corp and Kuwait drive yards, but they’re not even close to the boom Corellian has had over the past few decades…”. Nico nodded absently, retracting his face mask once again and looking at the ship which was now clearly visible and heading towards them in the horizon.Trell was working on their comm unit to probably help guide their rescuers, but they were close enough to spot the three people now and there was no more use for it.Then, Will said quietly, “I’m sorry about the friend you had to fight and…”,“Kill?”, Nico asked, turning to meet Will’s blue gaze, taking the opportunity to look right into the Jedi knight’s eyes.“I’d be more… subtle about it”, Will offered, a half-hearted attempt at satire.Nico sighed before he replied, “First thing I’d have you know Solace… I’d rather be frank than be subtle. Next, you shouldn’t apologize for something I did by my own volition… also I have no friends. The very concept is lost to Sith…”.Silence ensued over the little group until the vessel landed. And even if there had been a conversation happening, Nico wouldn’t have responded because he would have been too occupied in admiring the vessel. The vehicle wasn’t extraordinary in build or anything, a regular old T-Class Rendili just like he’d guessed, but it was the customization that blew the young Sith Lord away.Will and Trell were gaping at the vehicle too, and surprisingly to his credit, Will said underneath his breath,“Stars and Galaxies, they have proton energy shields… they’re practically radar invisible”. And yet again, Nico was impressed by Will’s accurate observation, for he hadn’t thought of the healer as someone who knew much about illegal customizations on Outer Rim vessels.Nico read the name of the Ship painted in a cheerful purple on the otherwise grey hull that glowed in the afternoon starlight. ‘The Discord’. The sleek metal chassis was riddled with strap welded sheets of durasteel punctured here and there with uniformly placed bolts in silver. The windshield was a glossy black covering the cockpit at the very front of what might have been the forecastle of the ship. Large stained port view windows covered the ship on both sides and when one of the glossy black glass planes slid upwards and disappeared into the body of the ship to spit out a landing flight, Nico almost passed out. The tech was so high end, he’d never quite seen anything like that ever before. Whoever owned the ship was quite clearly at the high end of the economic balance.Then, out of the landing ramp came walking a Weequay male with long braids on either side of the shrunken, shriveled brown skin of his aged face. By Weequay standards he might not be very old, but Nico knew the species tended to premature physically as such, when exposed to environments other than their own.Weequays weren’t a very populous species in the galaxy, but their presence was prominent in most planets of the Outer rim territories. They preferred the rather shady spectrum of occupations the Outer rim had to offer, which was almost just about anything other than agriculture and piloting. Contraband, illicit exports and imports, greater than norms cargo shipment allowance manipulation, outright smuggling, trafficking beings, droids and even produce, name it and they’d do it. They were probably the most immoral and uncaring species to ever be created. They’d sell themselves for money, and that’s what made them great business partners.Or maybe not. Chances that they’d end up convincing you to sell your own organs off was high with a bunch of Weequays. They were capable of just about anything and lied irrationally like nobody’s mother’s business. In short, they were the most sly and untrustworthy creatures the galaxy had ever hosted.Nico was beginning to enjoy the turn of events ever so slightly.They watched as the three beings marched down the landing ramp and stood themselves in front of the trio, the man in the lead surveying them wearily.“You the ones that sent the distress signals?”, he asked in a deep bored sounding voice. Will jumped to action immediately and extended his hand in a handshake,“That’d be us”, the Weequay didn’t take his hand, but looked him up and down once before turning around to one of his henchmen and whispering something in a language Nico hadn’t heard of before. The minion nodded once before casting Will, Trell and finally Nico a long look before boarding the ramp back into the ship once again.After the subjugate had disappeared inside, the head Weequay spoke up,“Captain Felt Unik… owner and Captain of the Discord at your service”, he pointed his thumb behind at the ship and lifted his chin. His braids fell behind his shoulders as he said that, exposing the textured leather of his overcoat’s lapels. Nico took a moment to survey his attire. Captain Unik wore black trousers over his spindly legs and a red shirt underneath the brown leather tan overcoat he sported. A gaudy looking belt with a buckle as big as Nico’s fist sat on his waist, Nico didn’t bother staring at for too long.“She’s magnificent”, Will offered and smiled. Nico had to tear his eyes away from the Jedi knight’s face when he did so.The Captain nodded thoughtfully once before abruptly dropping the bored, bordering on constipation – expression on his face and broke into a rather too enthusiastic grin,“Of course she is! She’s one of the fastest and best T class freighters in the whole of the outer Rim, the talk of the town back home!”, he boasted. Good job complementing the ship Will, Nico mentally appraised the Jedi. “…well come on over then, y’all must be tired to the bone… come on board and let’s hear the rest of your story on the way ‘ome”, he said and turned his back on the three force sensitives to climb the boarding ramp.Nico had never thought he’d ever look up to anyone for guidance in any situation before, but now he turned to Will and saw Trell looking at the golden haired knight in the same way.“Uh… Captain we-”, Will began, but the Weequay cut him off short mid sentence, at the very top of the boarding ramp,“Ohhh… that’s right, never asked you where you’re heading anyway?”, he said cheerfully. Will broke into an uneasy grin that Nico hoped hadn’t been as obvious to the Weequay Captain as he said,“Why… Taris of course!”. “Mighty blind courage you people have to hop on board a strange ship with men who could be smugglers for all that you know ‘claiming’ to be heading to Taris”, Captain Felt Unik said as he laughed heartily, his guests seated in a tense circle about the little rec room kind of arrangement on board the Discord.In the past few hours, Will’s life had gone from desperate, to determined, to anxious, to frightened, to weary, to dubious and finally miserable. Then, a kind of blankness had overtaken his consciousness and he had found himself lost until when the Captain and his crew’s arrival had jolted the rational part of his brain, still running on fight or flight hormones into abrupt action. Like as if he’d forgotten what it was like to feel anything at all, like as if his emotional reserves had completely emptied out, leaving him feeling devoid of that fundamental quality that made him a rational creature of intellect. The basic response to emotional stimuli that made him human.He felt winded and obsolete, but knew that Trell and Nico needed him now more than ever, and they hadn’t fared through the last couple of hours any better than he had emotionally either. Now was not the time to burden them with additional responsibility or whine. He would take it as far as he could on his own, even if it drove him to the brink of a breakdown. He was a Jedi knight, he’d trained for twenty years of his life in the Temple to face situations like this. This was how his life as a Guardian of the Whills was going to be. He was finally applying everything he’d ever learnt as a Jedi. A test of mental strength and integrity in times of emotional tempest and additional liabilities just like now.There would be a lot of time and plenty of opportunities to whine later. To whine and to mourn.Nico di Angelo wasn’t the only person who’d been forced to… subdue a friend. Will had too, indirectly.Will Solace had lost not one, but two members of his family in the last three days apart from all the other Jedi knights and apprentices who’d been kidnapped by the Mandalorians. The only person who remained with him was Trell.And as if to make up for it, he’d been given Nico di Angelo. A young Sith Lord whom he owed trillions in terms of Republican credits, time and energy and honor in forcibly suppressing his metabolism like he had and finally, the life of his friend.How was he going to repay the debt? How was he going to be grateful in turn for Nico saving his life and how was he going to convince his mind that when they arrived on Taris, there will come a time when he would have to part ways with the mysterious Sith Lord forever. One thing he knew amidst all of it was that the last thing hurt as equally as bad as the part of his mind still grieving for Kayla.He sighed as he looked at Captain Unik, watching as the Weequay gestured to one of his henchmen, standing by the corridor access doors to have refreshments come in. The man complied and left the room.“This is what me and my men do as business ya’ know? The liquor is huge these days and the Outer Rim is nothing without its own myriad assortment of wine barons and their wholesale breweries and retail watering holes…you might have heard of Tach…”. Will’s semi functional mind perked up when he heard the last word of the Captain’s sentence – Tach.What was that?Surprisingly Nico answered, “Of course… Tach are a non-sentient species from Kashyyyk… the glands in their heads are extracted for all sorts of chemicals and drugs…”, he said. Will looked at the Sith Lord and back to the Captain who laughed some more,“Well Mr. Walking Outer Rim Encyclopedia, is that all you’ve heard about them?”.Nico shrugged.“Well… the other and probably most important thing that is made with them… I might be slightly biased on this one…”, he said, dragging the sentence out as the henchman, who’d been dismissed to bring refreshments arrived again and the Captain let out a satisfied sound,“Ahhh… Here. We. Are”. Reaching out to pour shots of the Golden liquid in a tall bottle into three sparkling glass goblets, he said,“The jewel of Taris, the means of our livelihood and the very best drink ever invented by the Galaxy kind – Tarisian Ale! Drink up my guests… drink to your heart’s content!Drink until your worries are gone and life feels like a dream...".
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One should simply not argue with a Tarisian claiming their planet to be the jewel of the Outer Rim. No matter whether one agreed or not. It was not a wise thing to do and Nico di Angelo wasn’t interested in offending Weequay Captain Felt Unik while on board his ship making a jump through hyper space.He liked his body intact and in one piece. Thank you very much.Nico had been to Taris previously, and multiple times at that and he knew that it was a good place for him to stay on and try formulating his next move. Losing his ship hadn’t felt as impactful as it had when Will had claimed it was gone forever and up in flames than it did now, because he would have to hitch a ride to wherever he wanted to head to next. One good thing amidst all the turmoil was that Taris was no dead end.On quite the contrary, the bustling ecumenopolis of the Ojestor Sector was a great place to find food, shelter, transport and even entertainment at all levels of necessity and affordability.Riding on a wave of good fortune that had lasted for a little more than a century, Taris saw its rise as a buzz filled planet wide city whose economy was driven on by the exports of luxury items manufactured for a perennial elite clientele. Perfumes, fabric and liquor flowed through the streets of the Upper City as the nobles enjoyed lives inside the artificial habitats of their skyscrapers tucked away from the choking toxicity called the atmosphere. As for beneath the shining surface of the planet’s projected paradise, the least one could say was – the lower you get, the harder it is to get out unscarred. Slums and bad neighborhoods dominated a barely sustained economy of a working class that was never yielding or satiable irrespective of whoever ran the Governing body of the Planet.The human dominated nobility was probably the one to blame. For what had once been a beautiful and progressive society that accepted alien immigrants for domestic labor had deteriorated into a political monopoly run by an aristocracy that had begun exercising a selfish choke hold on the majority non-human population that had eventually crossed the seams of the predicted influx. Overpopulation and lack of surplus to cater the new demands of the ever increasing lower class lead to a stagnation in urbanization while industries soared to new heights as investors crowded the young economy in search of cheap labor and availability of local resources.As the human elite began isolating themselves in an artificial bubble of lives untouched by the resultant pollution and corruption, the lower class went through a blood boil phase as dissent spread amongst the inhabitants of the Undercity, leaving behind unforgettable footprints of blood and violence in the history of Taris as marks of revolt. Riots broke out on the streets and people died in thousands – due to famine, anger, stampede and the Planet’s police force controlled by the nobles.Since then, it had only been a journey downhill for the Planet City. The chief source of food supply dwindling down as the oceans belched out pollution like overflowing dumpsters. Crimes increased in the lower cities as the police forces were just not enough in number to be even slightly effective. The Undercity became a hive of shady antisocial activities and began housing bounty hunters and smugglers among others wanted by the Republic. And since Taris had never been a part of the Galactic Republic, their jurisdiction was null and void so far out in the Outer Rim and it was but a haven for just about anybody who was on the run and in search of a means of hiding.Paradise for a Sith facing an existential Crisis.But there was something on which he agreed upon with Captain Felt apart from his constant stream of irrelevant chatter Nico’s brain had decided to ignore. Tarisian Ale was an all time classic and whether or not the planet could hold itself out through the next few decades or crumble down into a shoddy cluster of barely sustainable neighborhoods after Zombie apocalypse struck, its name and fame and recipe would manage to stand the ravages of time. Many years later, in a completely different part of the Galaxy, someone would rediscover the secret behind its brewing and the drink would rise to a new high all over again for a different people, at different times and under a different name. Just like Nico was now rising as he took a good swig of the drink from the glass he had been offered as they sat around the lobby table of the Discord.Captain Felt laughed as he toasted something in a language Nico didn’t quite understand. Nevertheless, he raised his own glass, glancing at Will who was wearily surveying the other two men drowning themselves in Tarisian Ale.And Nico who was otherwise not even a heavy drinker in the slightest, felt the funny urge to keep drinking right then as if meaning to make up for Will’s share, the blond Jedi’s glass still on the table, untouched. He glanced at Will who was pensively staring at the port window as hyperspace went by, charged ions accelerated to speeds faster than light but slower than their ship, ricocheting off the metallic exterior and bathing the two men and Weequay in an eerie golden light. The effect made Will’s hair look like a halo. He looked like some sort of angel, curls of his hair falling about his temples and brushing his high cheekbones, blue eyes soft and vulnerable, turning darker as his mind occupied itself with deeper thoughts, expression meditative, almost lost.The sudden take to alcohol was probably driven on by the need to forget the conversation that had ensued before the topic had shifted to Taris economy and before Trell had been forced to leave to one of the rooms they’d been offered on the ship.Nico reflected on what had happened once again and smirked bitterly.When the drinks had first arrived, there had been exactly three glasses. The Captain had immediately lunged for one of the goblets and looked once each at Will and Nico, offering them to drink up. Trell’s left eyebrow had risen pointedly as she glared at the Captain. Felt hadn’t even bothered looking at her, completely ignoring the Togruta girl as if she didn’t even exist.Then, Nico had barely registered Will and Trell exchanging a look before she’d promptly gotten up and left. The Captain had looked at her retreating figure with a predatory look Nico could only associate with the tag ‘Concentric Evil’, Level: Sith. He’d seen Devore look at Bianca the exact same way and remembered wishing he could have strangled the son of a bitch for it.Then, Felt had turned to Will, his eyes sparkling and asked, “Females these days eh? Your mate didn’t look too pleased at not being offered drinks…”.That’s precisely when Nico had lost his grip on the edge. He’d outrightly stared at Will, hoping to see a reaction on the Jedi knight’s face at Trell being called his lover. Will hadn’t reacted at all, much less looked abashed. No straightening of the spine, no awkward shifting, no denial at the claim. Nico had felt like someone had pricked him with a pin and he was deflating like a punctured balloon.“She tends to be that way…”, he weakly protested and shrugged off-handedly.Nico had then blindly reached for his glass and taken a deep gulp of the Ale, looking rather too eager, but he didn’t care. He didn’t stop drinking until the cup couldn’t tilt any further and there was no more of the drink left.When he finally lowered the goblet down onto the table, slightly out of breath from the chugging, the Captain was looking at him expectantly, a manic glow in his eyes.“How was it?”, he whispered.One corner of Nico’s lips had quirked up and he said, “I’ll have some more if you don’t mind”, tipping his glass at the Weequay Captain. Naturally, as expected, the Captain laughed heartily, chugged the contents of his own glass down and clapped his hands for his servants to get them another round of Ale.For most of the while, Will had kept quiet and hadn’t touched his drink at all.As Nico withdrew from the flashback, he blinked rapidly to dispel the evanescence of the recent past he’d just relived, trying to focus on Will on the curved sofa beside him.Even though the young Sith couldn’t look at the Jedi knight as clearly as he had been able to a few minutes back, he could tell Will was looking back at him. Somebody was saying something, and as his vision deteriorated with time, he couldn’t even tell if it was Will’s mouth that was moving and producing the sounds he could vaguely predict were words.The last thing he could barely make out before he let the pull of unconsciousness lull him into the dark was the touch of warm skin, a quick embrace and soft, light colored hair tickling his neck and forehead as someone called out his name repeatedly.“Nico! Nico… Nico??”. In his dream, Nico was standing at a familiar place. Maybe he shouldn’t say familiar. The word was probably - unforgettable.Dusty winds blew by in dangerous speeds as they hurt the young Sith Lord’s face like whiplash. He found himself barely able to blink through the haze. Heck, he couldn’t even open his eyes. It felt so real, it might not be a dream at all. How did he know it was a dream? Because he knew he wouldn’t go back to that planet in reality, much less the same exact plateau-like outcropping that sat in the Northern quadrant.But he knew he was on Korriban and at the same exact time of the day when they’d landed five years ago, the parent star of the system drenching the soil in an orange overglow and the sky turning from acidic yellow to an orange that hurt the eyes with blinding intensity.But, when he turned around and tried to peer through the gust swirling about himself, he yelped in surprise when he saw another someone standing a little off to his right.For, wearing a green medical bay tunic and a murderous expression on his face was Nico himself.Real Nico looked at hospital-gown Nico and frowned in confusion. He looked down at himself next, and saw that he was wearing the black tunic and trousers from when he’d first arrived on Suurja. A cape bearing the emblem declaring his position as Lord, he remembered leaving behind in the Clairvoyance. But also, much to his surprise, his lightsaber hung from a belt hook, tickling the top of his kneecap, the sensation so overwhelming since it had been so long since he’d felt it.His hand involuntarily clenched the hilt of his weapon as his fingers trailed the cold metal, concentrating on memorizing its details all over again, momentarily forgetting the raging storm around him.“Do you miss it much?”, doppelganger Nico asked him, referring to his lightsaber. Real Nico, or at least what he felt like was his real self, looked at the questioner queerly.He continued, “Go ahead… fight your case and tell me you miss Dromund half as much as you miss having that metallic piece of sh*t!”, he spat. Nico’s own eyebrows rose at the sudden bitter outburst.Clone Nico’s lose green tunic danced around in the gale like it had life of its own and it made his other-self look so out of place along with his rolled-up pants and barefooted attire that Nico would’ve laughed if the scene hadn’t played out on Korriban. Or at the place where he’d lost his father.Doppelganger Nico stood at the very edge of the plateau, carefree and completely unaffected by the harsh winds or the sand being blown into Nico’s eyes and threatening to blind him for life. Neither did he look uncomfortable that he might lose his sight if he kept his eyes as widely opened for any longer than he already had, nor did he seem to realize how hot Korriban soil got during the afternoons. The skin beneath his feet must have already singed off.Nico winced internally, they were the same person after all. He hoped he didn’t wake up to feel the underside of his feet looking like he’d gone skating with cheese graters beneath his feet.But second-Nico was looking at him with an expression bearing the intensity of such self-assurance, it made Nico doubt himself. He knew he had never worn an expression that even remotely resembled this in the whole of the nineteen years of his miserable life.“Bianca is-”, he began, but fake Nico cut him off with a hand gesture meaning to ask him to stop.“Apart from her… and it’s not like she’s dependent on you at that. Any time she wishes, she can just leave and turn her back on Dromund…”.Nico was losing his cool quickly, stepping forward from his position and half yelling at his own self,“You’re just me, don’t you know the answer to that question? Why are you even asking me this?”.“Oh… I’m not you… and my answers are completely different, let me answer this for you and you can see if your answers would have been even slightly similar”.Nico looked on as his other-self sighed and folded his arms about his chest, settling down within himself as if getting ready for a candid interview. Nico thought the expression on his face was so weird and unoriginal, he wanted to scream out to the apparition that it was fake, and that it was just another trick of his own alcohol overloaded mind.“First off, I’m Nico di Angelo… someone who follows my sense of rationality and acts intuitively, rather than listen to the orders someone I’d rather be insubordinate to, gives me…”, but before he could respond, “… But YOU are Nico di Angelo, Sith Lord and aspirant to join the Emperor’s eternal fleet, working towards a static goal that does people more harm than good just because you wanted to prove to Sith society a point that you’re just as powerful and ruthless as your dead father… a society you have always hated and been shunned by”“That’s not true!”.“It is…”, fake Nico said in an infuriatingly calm voice.It would have been an understatement to say Nico felt like plucking his hair off his scalp. He didn’t want to add self-induced baldness to the burnt feet he might wake up to. Exercising supreme self-control, he breathed in through his nose, carefully avoiding inhaling any imaginary sand particles and looked at his greenish reflection.“Fine… let’s say it is true…”, fake Nico shook his head from side to side disapprovingly, which Nico blatantly ignored and went on, “Say I DO hate Sith Society… say I HAVE always wanted to leave… what can I do? It’s not like I can.”“Why not?”, the answer was immediate. Nico looked on, frowning as his mind-trick replied, “You think you can’t… but it’s not true. Who’s gonna stop you from leaving? I’m sure no one’s even gonna come and look for you if you do… a lot of Sith might even be happy. You need only work up the courage to accept the truth that you were probably never meant to be a Sith-”.“I topped my batch in Sith training academy!!”.“Well, I did my first ever good deed by protecting an innocent man who nursed me from a murderer I used to call a friend who turned out not be my friend at all…”.Nico snorted, forcefully blowing air out of his nostrils and bending down to look at the ground.When he looked up, he replied to his mirror self with forceful patience and exaggerated deliberateness, black cape dancing out behind him in the Korriban gale, “Will Solace stole my ship… flew into the battle… fired on the Mandalorians who probably think it was me attacking their ship… crash landed it, blew it up… suppressed my metabolism like I was some kind of subject in an evil experiment, a specimen of his to examine at his will… offered me pathetic food and refused to return my lightsaber even when I politely asked multiple times along with being extremely annoying!”.No smart-Alec reply, no witty come back one-liners from hospital dress Nico this time. Silence, other than the howling of the wind on the plateau.“You’re attracted to him…”, a quiet observation. Heat rose to Nico’s neck,“No!!”, he screamed.“I am… he’s cute… I also think he’s super smart”, green Nico shrugged. Nico stared at himself in disbelief, he would never ever fling something like that out of his mouth so casually. Not even to himself. He was a coward when it came to his personal life and he would never be ready to face his true feelings on anything. But fake Nico obviously knew that. HE was fake, not fake Nico. Fake Nico was way more genuine.He was fooling himself. Also, there was no point in denying or lying to his other-self. He knew what this dream was about now. Now he realized it.“I’m also very disappointed that Will probably has a thing going on with the Togruta girl after what the Weequay said… it also means that it’s no use routing for him, because he’s not like me…”. Because his taste probably lay only in women, as was common. Which remained unsaid, but understood.Green Nico continued, even though Sith Lord Nico didn’t reply or comment on that,“That moment back in the Jedi tower when I shadow travelled out of the room and saw Dess cornering Will and trying to overpower him, I cannot deny that it felt right to defend Will and not Dess. I was not one bit conflicted by that decision. I felt the resolve to do it and I did… and I do not regret killing Dess”, he simply stated.Nico looked down at his traditional black Sith clothes and up again. Would this self of his managed to have killed Dess in a situation like that? Would he have hesitated? Would he have begged Dess to take him along with her or at least help him out of Jedi captivity and asked her to kill Will and Trell? He didn’t know the answer to that, and medical-bay-tunic-Nico’s crystal clear answers made him feel insecure.“You probably can’t say anything remotely similar, much less agree…”, his mirror self said, “… and I get it. I initially appeared in a part of your mind when you allowed my actions to overtake yours in a stray moment of self-righteousness… and it was my resolve and my effort that managed to push Dess to the brink of hysteria like I did… she couldn’t handle the truth just like you… the truth offends the Sith… hurts them almost. What she saw in my mind and what she couldn’t stop me from seeing was in her mind, all made her want to kill herself. I only needed to breach a very thinly veiled layer of insecurity….”Silence for a few seconds.“But I know this, Sith Lord di Angelo… that what probably started as an imaginary crusade inside your mind began with Will Solace… but it doesn’t have to stop there… maybe tomorrow, I’ll save the Togruta Jedi knight from danger… maybe someone else another day… maybe someday a town, then a continent, even a world… because I know the Sith… and I know how exactly to stop them… ‘cause I was raised to believe I was one.”Black Nico looked at green Nico with widened eyes. He didn’t know what to say, he wished he did. He envied his reflection, who was far from a mere reflection of himself.“Go ahead…”, the apparition said, and Nico gulped. He knew exactly what he had to do. But, it couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be asked to.“You’re not scared of death are you Nico? Or are you just scared that this fake identity of yours that you’ve carefully built up and painted upon yourself will all peel off if you do?”. He swallowed again, not quite knowing how to reply to that.“Come on… prove to me you’re a true Sith and that death does not scare you. Trust me, ‘cause the galaxy can very well make do without you, and just me”. Sith-attire-adorning Nico stepped backwards, knowing that he was approaching the edge of the plateau.His other-self taunted him on, green tunic flapping crazily in the breeze as if enjoying the scene, “Remember that I can do the same thing as I did with Dess, to you… let it be gone with Korriban… like father… like Academy… like all those years alone… wishing for freedom and goodness and peace… leave it behind to rot… let’s turn deaf to Korriban’s call… I’m never going back there like I promised myself… and neither I am going to look behind at any of this… with you is gone the carefully crafted image of a wannabe loyal soldier of the empire who lives in constant fear of punishment and incompetency… with me shall begin the life of a man who is willing to renounce his past to make up what he now knows is true justice.”With that he lost his footing at the edge and tumbled blindly backwards, feeling the all-consuming sensation of weightlessness for a moment until the winds started picking up pace and gravity took hold and he was falling backwards, off the plateau’s cliff face. Hurtling towards the ground, gaining momentum enough to kill on impact, then fast enough to pulverize his skeletal system, until finally, terminal velocity.When he hit the ground this fast, there would be nothing of him left to recognize. He would not even be a memory. Whom he had initially thought was fake-Nico would be the one left behind now in his ridiculous green abhorrence of an attire… imaginary Nico - who had proven that he was more than just a figment of the Sith Lord’s imagination. Nico di Angelo wasn’t one bit surprised to see Will Solace sitting next to a small bed on which he lay, when he woke up. But, this time, Will was asleep and Nico took the opportunity to study his face.With his eyes closed, their blue not distracting Nico and forcing him to meet them, the freckles over his nose and at his temples were more prominent. His eye lashes weren’t very long, but the dim lights overhead cast long shadows over the Jedi knight’s face and made them look longer, almost seeming as if to brush the tops of his cheekbones.He looked less worried and less mature than he normally presented himself while awake, with his lips slightly parted and his teeth visible beneath.That’s enough. Nico turned his eyes away and reprimanded himself for staring for so long until he lay back down on the bed he had been placed in and sighed through his nose.Will stirred and woke up at the small disturbance at which Nico looked back at him again.“You’re awake…”, Will said and blinked twice, stretching his arms about the chair on which he sat.“I can say the same to you”, Nico pointed out, without meeting the Jedi knight’s eyes.Will rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn as he replied, “Didn’t realize when I fell asleep… last thing I knew, I was taking your pulse reading… must have dozed off like that”. Nico scowled,“I’m not your patient Solace… are you trying to make up for my ship with your consultation fees?”.“Not a bad idea”, Will shrugged and sat up straighter in his chair. Nico sat up in his own bunk and wrapped his arms about his knees as he folded his legs close to his chest.“Please don’t kill me…”, Will said in form of a forewarning, which caught Nico’s attention and continued, “… how are you feeling now?”. Nico closed his eyes and tried to convince himself that it was in Will’s very nature to ask that and not just to be annoying. He was a healer by profession, it’s what he normally did.“Like killing you”, Nico said deliberately. Will raised his left eyebrow,“So, normal then…”, Will said. Nico had to restrain his facial muscles with all his resolve to make sure they didn’t crack into a smile.“You had a LOT to drink… and even a regular alcoholic would not have been able to take Tarisian Ale or whatever, in such large quantities all at once…”. Nico’s mind reverted to the scene with Captain Felt Unik and what had triggered his round of excessive alcoholism. Immediately, the melancholy came crashing back into his tiny heart, making it Lead-heavy.It was fine. If not Will Solace, then maybe someone else would come along, even better than him. As it was, Will was way more annoying than Nico’s irritation-factor allowance in a prospective boyfriend. It probably wouldn’t work with Will.Probably.“Taris exports to my home world… it isn’t the first time I’ve had their infamous Ale”, Nico said. Will looked at him,“The Jedi are not allowed to even unknowingly consume alcohol in any form… it dulls the senses and degenerates metabolism”.“Sounds like something, someone I know can do-”, Nico pointed to the Jedi. Will cracked a grin at that and said,“Hey! Don’t compare me to alcohol!”.“It is the least derogatory thing I have said to you”, Nico noted drily, and Will laughed heartily, the Sith Lord not joining in the fun. It was a lame joke, Will shouldn’t even have laughed, but it warmed Nico’s insides.When Will stopped laughing, Nico asked, “If you’re not allowed to even unknowingly consume alcohol… and assume you don’t know it was alcohol until after you’ve had it… how could you have avoided having it at all, if you didn’t know?”.Will said, “We’re taught to identify them during training at the temple… some Jedi botanists even cultivate excellent grapes that go out for sales and processing for wine production on Coruscant”. Nico raised his eyebrows in surprise. If one knew the intoxication of a substance and yet was raised to avoid it at any cost while having to deal with it in front of your eyes everyday, the Jedi must exercise some kind of supreme self-control beyond the limits of his puny Sith imagination. Or, Will was lying his way to Taris.He nodded absently as silence fell over the two young men.Until Nico looked at Will and asked, “Can I have my lightsaber back?”.Will looked at him for a second until he nodded and reached into his tunic’s pocket for the weapon. Bringing out with more reverence than Nico thought he’d ever handled it with himself, and gave it to the Sith.“Please use it only if for an absolutely just cause”. Nico didn’t know what to reply to that, so he nodded once mutely. He wasn’t sure the Sith worked that way. But was he even Sith anymore? The fact that he hadn’t killed Will yet probably proved he was not. Or, imaginary Nico was right with his acute judgement of Nico’s feelings.Nico di Angelo you biased piece of homosexual wannabe supervillain.“Remember we were having a questionnaire back in the tower… until we were… interrupted”, Will said.Nico’s mind went back to the little talkathon they’d had and how they’d come to a compromise to answer one another’s questions truthfully in exchange for the other’s answers. It seemed like so long ago that Nico almost felt like as if the memories of the incident were already fading.Or maybe it was just the Ale’s aftereffect.“The last thing I asked you was… where and why have the Mandos taken the rest of the Jedi?”, Will completed his sentence. Nico looked at him like the Jedi knight was crazy.“You have a very sharp memory”, he observed.“So do you, if you can verify my exact words…”, Will said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms against his chest.This was not going to be easy.“You want me to answer that?”, Nico asked. Will nodded,“If you know the answer to that, yes… also, you can ask me whatever you like in return”. Nico looked down at his legs. What did he have to ask Will? Now that he knew what had happened of Dess and his ship and even his lightsaber. There was nothing left for him to ask of Will.Or wasn’t there?“The Mandalorians have a base at a captured battle station built by an unknown species before our era in the Flashpoint system. The planet on which the station is built is very close to the parent star with days about an hour long. The station is housed inside a very powerful magnetic field that protects the beings inside of it who would otherwise not be able to survive the heat and radiation.”Will was looking at him intensely as he spoke. He continued,“On Flashpoint station works a Mandalorian scientist called Demagol who dabbles in experimenting on force sensitives…”, he said. Will had stopped looking at him now, a lost expression on his face.“We need to tell Revan”, he whispered into the quiet.Nico didn’t reply to that. He could kind of understand how that news must have come off with the Jedi knight. He must have known the knights and apprentices who’d been kidnapped after all. Even though he had heard of Revan, he decided not to probe.“How far is it from Taris?”, Will asked. Nico thought for a second before replying, even though it was technically his turn to ask a question. He didn’t want to refute Will wearing a severe expression like he was now.“About half a day’s jump from Taris…”, he said. Will nodded,“Thank you”.“Can I ask you a question?”, Nico blurted out suddenly.Will nodded affirmative and Nico asked, “Back in the tower… how did you know I would not kill you and side with Dess? Why did you free me of the restraints you’d bound me with, when I asked you to? I could have killed you…”.Will’s expression softened at the question and the light that Nico had seen in them the very first time danced about his blue irises, “I think the very fact that you asked me was enough to confirm you wouldn’t be killing me… you exposed you’re vulnerability by letting Dess know that I’d bound you… also… before you came out, we’d been dueling for a while and Dess made it quite clear that she wanted to kill the both of us if she could… you would have had to fight her first to defend yourself anyway, and I would have escaped during then had I realized that you were bent up on killing me still.”, he replied.Nico looked at the Jedi knight. That was such a critical answer, yet Will made it sound so casual and simple, it baffled the young dark haired Sith.Will smiled gently, “Your turn again… I got two questions”, he said. Nico smiled for real this time before quickly erasing the expression off his face and clearing his throat. Maybe it was a bad idea to ask Will that, but he absolutely HAD to know.“The Captain called Trell your mate… are you two… you know…”, he left the question dangling.Will’s eyebrows raised slowly at the question. Obviously, he had understood it. Maybe even the reason behind why Nico had asked him that.His smile remained as he answered, “No… I just played along”, eyes never leaving Nico.And needless to say, Nico felt all warm and vibrant inside when Will said that.Will smiled wider as he asked Nico his next question, “My turn…”.Nico averted his gaze and lowered his head, nodding his head slowly and trying to compose himself. Geez, his new self was a certified sap.“Do you still want to kill me?”, but his eyes sparkled and the question just lacked the seriousness it otherwise would have warranted. Nico frowned in mock disappointment,“Maybe not… it would be a waste.”“Oh… can’t see why”, Will answered, that had both of them chuckling good naturedly. Nico took it as a positive sign that Will kept up the flirtatious demeanor. He admitted he kind of liked it from an attractive guy like Will. And of course, he had to ruin the perfect moment as usual,“So… who was the other dark side presence back in the tower… I sensed two of them… one was Dess, the other?”.Will’s expression immediately closed in like as if he’d shut the drawbridge to his mind which he’d momentarily considering opening up for Nico to let him across the vast Jedi-principle filled moat around the fortress of his overly matured persona.Nico’s heart flooded with worry as he mentally chided himself upon his mistake, whatever it was. Will’s smile vanished and he looked away from Nico, swallowing slowly before answering with a neutral tone.“Someone I used to know… a friend, almost as close as family to me. It seems that your fellow warrior… the Sith – Dess, you called her? She made Kayla fall to the dark side somehow…”.Kayla. Nico remembered Will mentioning that name before.
Where is my sister Kayla?
Kayla was Will’s sister. Yet, something else struck him as odd in what Will said,“What did you say?”, he asked, eyes squinting to look at Will. Will’s face had drawn blank in the time and he looked at Nico with a hollow expression as if suddenly meaning to mourn for his sister he’d forgotten about until then.“Dess made my sister fall to the dark side”, he said wearily.Nico looked at the Jedi critically, “What do you mean by fall to the dark side?”, he asked, voice dropping down by an octave as he asked, their flirting all completely forgotten by now.Will returned the look but didn’t reply.“Why is it that you Jedi say one of your kind fell to the dark side… as if we’re any lesser than you are or our teachings of the force any lower… very prejudiced and unrefined really… what if we said a Sith fell to the light side? How would that sound to you? Hypocrites aren’t we?”, he asked harshly.Will didn’t meet his gaze.“But you will never see that happening… because the Sith are quite happy with our own teachings and the dark side”, he said. Hypocritic Nico. Who pushed your damn evil twin off a cliff face on Korriban for following the dark side?Will looked up at that, “Pardon, but I don’t see a lot of happy Sith around the place”, under different contexts Nico might have laughed at that, reflecting upon his own words.Using the words happy and Sith in one sentence was a sin of its own right. With a whole ring of hell reserved only for those who had ever said anything similar to it when they died and went to the Nether-worlds.At least Nico knew that Will would be with him there for that specific crime. They’d both sinned.They pointedly looked away from one another in an enraged silence until Will did something unexpected and got up from his chair, walking outside the small room and disappearing behind a set of motion activated metal shutters which slid shut after the Jedi knight left. No goodbye, no words of farewell, it was most unlikely of the knight from what Nico knew of him.The dark haired youth relaxed his knees and stretched them in front of him, placing his lightsaber beside himself on the bunk and looking at the empty chair where the blond man had been sitting until a minute ago.He had genuinely enjoyed the little while when they’d laughed and traded hollow insults, even if short lived. He tried to reason with himself and tell his heart it wasn’t worth making a hit with Will because he was a Jedi.And no matter even if he had realized that walking the dark side probably wasn’t his thing, he’d still be a Sith. And Will Solace would always be an enemy by nature.Rivalry and love weren’t meant to coexist. Nico had to stop this wasteful charade even if Will had seemed to return the feelings at some point. He owed Nico money and time and a friend.Nico would give him allowance to his company until he got back a compensation and that was all. They would go their separate ways and never cross paths ever again.Will would return to the vainglorious Republican Capital at the Galactic core to his friends and righteous politics and thriving economy. The bustling population, the sights, neon signs, nocturnal clubs and party culture, advanced tech, fastest ships and finest fabric and food.Nico would go back to the Outer Rim and run from planet to planet until he got tired of the hiding and the crime, shady deals, the trafficking, the drugs and dirt and decay, the bounty hunters, the slavery and the constant fear everyone had to live with. Hoping he’d never have to go back to that planet he called home but hated.It wasn’t fair.But he consoled himself that he would not be bound by the imaginary picket fence Sith stigma set around him. Even if not for Will Solace, someday he would find peace and purpose, it was just not today, and just not with his assumed blond messiah.Just another day in hyperspace and they would arrive on Taris after which the clock would tick down pretty fast. And he would leave this string of incidents behind as another set of wasted memories he might try to learn something out of.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Will Solace was not shallow. Will Solace was a principled and mature person who held the reigns of his emotional self in an iron gripped fist that never went slack.He wasn’t a person who was moved, much less attracted by a stranger easily. It took a long time for him to get to know and build a healthy relationship with just about anyone. After a good understanding of said person’s character. But, everything Nico di Angelo did, his mind accepted without dissent or any kind of judgement.Nico di Angelo’s actions simply waltzed their way past the customs at Will’s conscious and bribed their way past the metal detectors while flirting right through immigration. And Will’s security surveillance simply stared slack jawed at the black hair and dark, dark eyes that still floated behind his eyelids whenever he blinked.His brain had turned into one dysfunctional intersystem trade-route checkpoint that handed out free VIP emergency passes to Sith Lord passengers named Nico di Angelo.He was tired of refuting his liking for the Sith boy and his mind decided not to mention that teensy bit of information to Trell who was currently ranting about the very same thing in a voice suggestive of a slightly breathless grandmotherly drone.“So, you’re up and off after a Sith Lord? I didn’t think you were this low Will…”, she said. Will pondered on that. Clearly, he was. It kind of shocked him. But, was it low to be attracted to a Sith? Honestly, Nico had been the very first Sith he had ever seen, and he had toppled every notion Will had ever had about them that it was almost overwhelming.Will, and that was to say all the Jedi back at the temple on Coruscant, thought and knew the Sith to be heavy and bulky in build, face and bodily skin covered with scary scars and deep gouges and wounds acquired from years of tough battles fought by lava pits and Rathtar nests. They wore black clothes and carried red lightsabers powered by Kyber crystals from caves on their worlds deep inside of Sith Empire. Some of them had physical deformities like claws instead of hands and tails, and nails either completely chewed off or always crusted with the dried blood of their opponents they chose not to wash off as a means of pride. Red rings in their irises and heavy set armor and boots with metal spikes that could kill with one solid, well-aimed kick to the enemy’s body.Nico had only met two criteria of Will’s expectations. Black clothes, red lightsaber. Even though, Will had technically not seen Nico light his lightsaber ever. He hadn’t ignited the weapon when he had had it with him either. But he knew it was red. He knew it.But what had really thrown him off his own stride and spun his mental compass into disorientation was the milky white skin, the lithe and toned build, the permanent scowl on the expressive face, the silky, inky black hair that crowned a beautifully sculpted face with features almost too delicate for Will to imagine any otherwise.He worried that if he concentrated too much on getting the details of Nico’s face right in his mind’s eye, he might end up making him look less angelic than he was and fiercer than how the actual features were delicately put together. And the thought scared him, just like how the thought of his huge debt to the handsome Sith boy scared him.“So, what are you going to do about his Ship?”, Trell asked him, snapping her fellow Jedi knight out of his reverie.“I don’t know… and by the way, you were one that was flying it”, he said drily.“Nice try Will, but I wasn’t the one who saved him to cause this mess we’re in right now”, the Togruta replied.“Are you saying I should have left him there in the open to die?”, Will exclaimed undignifiedly.“You shouldn’t have taken him in, in the first place… if he’s a force sensitive and a Sith Lord at that, you’d think he’d be able to handle himself in such a situation just fine”, she countered. Will sighed and shook his head, they could argue about this for hours and still come up with new reasons to support each argument.“There is something called compassion I think you’ve forgotten the Order has taught us”, Will said.“Oh no, don’t you dare quote the Masters on me Solace…”, Trell said as she leaned back on the bunk she was occupying without stumbling. In spite of making the jump through hyperspace, Will was impressed that the Discord was barely bothered by turbulence.“I think YOU forgot that they explicitly said their teachings did not apply to Sith”, she said rather casually as if it was obvious.“No, they didn’t”, Will said indifferently.“Maybe you weren’t paying attention… I’m telling you they did”.“I refuse to believe anything coming from the lips of a person who stole a ship she knew belonged to the Sith and refuses to take even a fraction of the responsibility for its destruction while flying it”, Will replied airily.Trell almost smiled.“Well, but time to brainstorm though… what are we going to do about it? It’s not like we can take him with us to the Jedi safehouse on Taris or even find money enough to pay him back…”.Silence.Will sighed deeply as if meaning to expound a fraction of his living force along with the carbondioxide and reached into one of the pockets on the side of his tunic and produced something from within it, opening up his fingers for his friend to see what he was holding in his palm and Trell’s facial complexion paled by a fraction.“By the force…”, she whispered, eyes cautiously darting to the door of the cabin before returning to the blond Jedi’s palm and the small object he held in it.“You stole it?”, she asked, eyes meeting her colleague’s uncertainly.“I’d prefer you say retained”, Will said. Trell tried to hide a grimace,“Bad timing Solace, this is serious leverage” she responded. Will curled his fingers inwards, returning the crimson Kyber crystal to his tunic’s pocket.At some point of time in the Jedi tower on Suurja while still healing Nico, Will had separated the Kyber crystal from inside the weapon and kept it tucked away. There was no better way to explain the action than simple intuition. It was paying off now. Going to pay off, rather. And from the short while he’d actually had to examine it, he knew looking at it too long would make it difficult to look away at all. As if it had its own magnetic field about itself, compelling the looker to keep staring at it. It was also how he knew it was red even though he’d never seen Nico ignite his weapon. He thought about how much more alluring it was than the ones the Jedi used, even though they all had a sense of bonding with their crystals.“Maybe I can sell it and return the money we get from it…”, he said half-heartedly. Trell sniffed his hesitation like a hellhound - fresh blood.“And watch you die in guilt because of a debt you owe to a Sith?”, the Togruta scoffed and rolled her eyes. Will swallowed uneasily and adjusted himself on his chair as he pulled his legs up closer towards himself and looked at his companion with eyes bearing a certain desperateness.“But it seems to be the only way we have out of this…”, she wondered, the two knights settling into a tension filled silence of the ship cabin until Trell perked up and said,“Hey… don’t you think it’s strange he hasn’t realized he’s missing it yet?”, she asked. Will cocked his head to the side and thought for a few seconds,“I was right about it then”, he whispered, eyes unfocused and looking through the Togruta girl.Trell looked back uncertainly and waited for Will to clarify his statement when the blond Jedi knight’s eyes widened to twice their usual size and he opened his mouth for a deep breath, Trell promptly steadying her friend as he leaned backwards in his seat, slack bodied and collapsed. In his vision, Will was a ghost as usual. He was in the cockpit of a ship he guessed he hadn’t been in before, surroundings vaguely familiar though. Making him feel as if he ought to be knowing where he was. Four technicians sat at different consoles, minding their own businesses and looking busy. He glided across the deck and peered through the windshield, looking at hyperspace fly past. Weird, he knew he was actually in hyperspace transit back in reality too.Apparition Will raised his hand to scratch his head, but was jolted out of his chain of thoughts by the appearance of a loud, slightly nasal voice whose owner Will knew.Captain Felt Unik entered the cockpit, barking orders to one of his minions in that unknown language of theirs and the shorter man nodded fervently and walked off, hastily making for the doors to get as far away from the Captain as was possible. Then, Felt walked up to one of the technicians, a Rodian with green skin and big black eyes and said in Basic this time,“Get me on line with this on Taris…”, he handed over a glowing comm unit with an activated connection to the Rodian, who nodded and got to work.Will crossed his arms and prayed to the force for the Rodian to hurry up. He didn’t want his vision to end before he learned anything significant from what the force was trying to tell him.The next few seconds saw the summoning of a droid, pressing some fancy buttons, impatient waiting, Will virtually strangling the Rodian technician to hurry the force up and the pulling out of a holo-board. After an initial few seconds of static which buzzed in discontinuous pulses of bright blue light Will knew was harmful for the retinae, the image of a man appeared on the cockpit deck.A human wearing some kind of semi – armor like attire with a badly damaged white breastplate and deep red shoulder guards and gauntlets at the forearms which should have made him look like a statue but made him look like a freaky cyborg instead. He wore no helmet or face mask and the Jedi knight could see the man’s dark colored skin and a deep scowl decorating a rather unimpressive and basic array of facial features. Shaggy thick eyebrows over small, dark eyes which plainly displayed a kind of hostility unwarranted for. Little to almost no hair at all, clumps of which graced a small fraction of his head were an unruly black.“Greetings old pal of mine”, The Captain of the Discord said, a cruel smile paying on his mouth.“Make your case quick pirate, I have better things to do that listen to you rant”, the armored man snapped back.“You mean like fight for your honor and lives?”, the Weequay scoffed sarcastically, then wrinkled his brow as if mimicking being in deep thought before he continued speaking, “Oh wait! You have none left after losing to the Beks last season”.Mr.Shiny-un-knight-like armor kept a neutral face at the comment but replied with steel in his voice, “Then maybe you should talk to the Beks about whatever it is that you called for...”, and made to turn off the connection of the holocomm unit when Felt jumped his blunder and hastily covered up.Will had no idea what a Bek was. Sounded like an organization of some kind, from the context. His interest was piqued about the kind of relationship the two men seemed to have. It was as if they didn’t really like each other all that much, friendship was definitely not in the question, but there was a certain lightness in the way they traded insults that did not completely rule out a long-term ‘We owe one another for THAT day’ kind of acquaintance.The Captain said, “Come now Brejik, you know as well as I do that I call only for business when the prospects are mutually beneficial and profitable”, he rubbed his rough hands together, braids falling in front of his chest as he shook his head expressively while talking.The man who’d been addressed as Brejik blinked twice before his holoimage flickered and stabilized again, his answer coated with a fine layer of static so realistic,“Profitable…only to you?”.“Don’t be difficult my friend, I have some good bounty now and know what?... I’ll even let you pay later on in installments, not a problem…”, Will was watching with interest now, mentally panicking for his vision to continue showing him the rest of the conversation even though he had knots in his stomach for the notion he had about where this was going.“I have some fresh meat that you can use for the coming season…”, Will held his breath, if it was possible to do so in a dream. He hoped his real self wasn’t asphyxiating and turning mauve. He’d hate to die watching a future he wouldn’t live to experience.Brejik looked away from the comm unit for a second before looking back at Felt and asking rather timidly,“How many?”.“Two”. Whee! Will and his friends were the meat, even if it wasn’t a very nice thing to be called. Wait, two?“Human?”.The Captain smirked wickedly, his brown skin bathing in the blue light from Brejik’s holoimage on the cockpit deck,“A human male and a Togruta female…”, then, drumroll…“… and not just that… they’re force sensitive”. Will gasped from where he stood, how did the Weequay Captain know that they were force sensitive? He’d implicitly made sure neither Trell nor Nico ever mentioned anything about who they actually were for the same exact reason. He’d cooked up a story about landing on Suurja to check out a warning sign in their ship’s nav console as they were passing the system, but lost control while entering the atmosphere and eventually crash landed into the woods and found shelter in an abandoned and battle scarred tower.Trell and Nico had played along with the ruse and he was very sure none of them had let anything like that slip out at any point of time. Will had stayed with Nico until the Sith had woken up to make sure he didn’t go stumbling off in a drunk stupor and tell the Captain or the crew who they were.Well, that was partly the reason why he’d stayed beside Nico. He’d also wanted to make sure the boy was okay and get to talk to him when he woke up, but had instead ended up staring at his face like a creep until he’d eventually dozed off himself.Will stared at the exchange between the two men and wondered exactly what this Brejik character would do to them if the Weequay pirate did actually manage to chain up and sell the three of them off. With the mention of a group called the Beks, Will didn’t actually reckon it could be that bad. It was not like a shady Coruscant drug cartel to name themselves the Beks. More like a chain of laundry stores or something.Most importantly, Will wanted to back up right then and know why the Captain was only mentioning him and Trell… or only Nico and Trell. Unlikely, had Nico turned on them and made a deal to sell them off to the Captain in exchange for a ship or something? It would also be the only way the Weequay Captain could have come to know about them being Jedi.The answer to his question came in the form of the cockpit door opening and the fabulous entrance of Will’s favorite Sith.Nico di Angelo cleared his throat and announced his presence, standing at the doorway with his hips on one side and his black hair tousled as if he’d just gotten out of bed. Will watched wide eyed, tears almost forming in his apparition-eyes as Nico strolled into the cockpit of the Discord and stood himself in a regal pose (much in contrast to his bed-head) out of the holoimage range, facing the Weequay Captain and folding his arms in front of his chest.Felt nodded to Nico once, meaning to acknowledge his presence before looking back at Brejik and asking,“Is the deal on… or do you still want me to call the Beks instead?”. Will made a mental note to enquire about the Beks, first thing when they got to Taris. If they got there at all.“How much do you ask for?”, Brejik sighed.A low chuckle emanated from the Weequay Captain as he replied, “Don’t worry, I know times are hard for you there on Taris… swoop racing is a wild gamble, one must expect the unexpected, much like business with me!”, he exclaimed, proudly banging his chest with his fist. Swoop racing, that’s what this was about. Will had heard about the infamous sport of the Outer Rim. Coruscant undercity had a fad for a similarly illegal Dumpster racing which drew inspiration from the former.Will’s eyes lingered on Nico across the room even though his ears caught every word of the holocomm exchange.The Sith boy looked exhausted and melancholic. So lost, yet so so angry, it made Will want to go up to him and give him a hug, but he held back, knowing that he might have been the one to sell Will and Trell in the vision and Will steeled himself at that thought. He had to admit that a part of him selfishly wished Nico looked as glum because of the guilt gnawing at his betrayal to the Jedi.Will Solace was a Jedi trainwreck of unusually high, un-surmountable expectations of the wrong people.Brejik didn’t reply, patiently waiting for the pirate to lay out his honeyed trap.“A fully armed, single passenger ship with hyperdrive provisions and a star map with trade routes of the Outer rim loaded into a functional comm unit”. Brejik blinked in confusion for a few seconds until he snapped out of his thoughts,“That’s it? No money?”, he asked incredulously. Will had been right, Nico had sold Will and Trell off for a ship. A piece of metal junk which he could fly away to wonderland in. Will was fuming. He wanted to materialize right there and punch the Sith in the gut and enjoy his grimace as he doubled over from the excruciating pain of diaphragmatic hernia. Again, Will had walked out when Nico had mentioned Kayla unknowingly. He wasn’t any less deserving of the punch.“Oh, yes there’s money too, but I’m in no hurry for that… I want the ship and the comm unit as soon as I arrive on Taris though. They get higher priority…”, at which the pirate glanced at Nico, who straightened himself, eyes darting from side to side, almost cautiously. Will sighed, Trell had been right. Who’d he thought he was, coming to trust a Sith like that. They were waiting to stab you in the back the minute you walked into their embrace.“Seems very personalized… far as I know you Felt, you’re not one to make such materialistic requests of anyone ever, what’s the special occasion?”, the human in the holoimage asked, shifting from foot to foot and adjusting his armor as he did.“It’s for one of my men actually”. Nico’s eyes flashed dangerously at that, the Captain quickly changing tracks, actions a little more jittery than usual under Nico’s gaze. And while Will was glad Nico had that effect on the Captain, he hated having to watch him on the other side. He’d taken in and healed him like he’d do to a friend after all, in spite of knowing he was a Sith.Brejik didn’t question the last sentence, nodding once instead and saying,“It’ll be done… quote your price when you get here, the ship and the comm console will be ready”. The connection snapped, Brejik vanishing into a speck of blue in the cockpit.Silence, then the Captain asked,“What of the Jedi?”. Nico took a deep breath and replied,“Bound and unarmed”. Will frowned, how did the half dead boy manage to overpower both him and Trell? He’d have to keep an eye open at all times now. Heck, it could be happening now, with Will unconscious as he usually was when he had his visions.“Excellent, we have ourselves a party then!”, felt said, stretching his arm out to Nico.Nico frowned, his expressive eyebrows nearly forming a V in his creaseless forehead,“What?”.“Give me the crystal, as you promised”. Oh no, Will tensed. Crystal meant…“I’ll give it to you when I see the ship and the star map on Taris and am satisfied”, Nico said. Felt Unik shrugged dramatically, a turning a full circle in his place before looking directly at Nico.“Well, let me see it at least… it is going to be my payment at the end of the day after all”. Nico looked at the floor for a few moments uncertainly, then reached inside his tunic and took out a lightsaber. Will breathed out a sigh of relief as he saw Nico holding Dess’s lightsaber.The young Sith tapped the end of the lightsaber once against the flat of his palm and the weapon cracked in the middle like a nutshell, two halves separating themselves as Nico eased them apart. Pretty crass, considering the Jeid usually opened their own lightsabers with much more patience and reverence. Again, Nico probably wouldn’t open his own lightsaber that way, the one he held was someone else’s after all.In the heart of the sleek dark metal implement lay a stone as big as a toe and in bright crimson red. It seemed to capture the light of the cockpit as if it had a gravitational field of its own and Will found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the kyber crystal, just like how he’d felt when he’d taken Nico’s own crystal out of his lightsaber earlier. Again, courtesy of the force for the realistic effects.“Stars and Galaxies…”, Felt whispered, inching forward towards Nico, his small eyes as wide as they could physically get, greed and gluttony swirling in their blacks.Nico quickly snapped his fingers close and put the crystal back into the lightsaber before tucking it away all in a flash just as the Captain snapped out of his reverie.“Such power…”, he whispered. Nico rolled his eyes. Almost.“Only the Sith can wield weapons which can convert the power of kyber crystals into the wieldable form of a lightsaber… to others like you, it will be simply be a priceless artefact only”, he said. Will almost admired the proud and egotistic way in which the black haired boy said it, demeaning the Captain as he did.Felt straightened and cleared his throat, turning away from Nico as he spoke,“Do the Jedi have similar crystals in their lightsabers too?”. There was something very shady, almost sinister in the low drawl of his words, Will didn’t like at all.“I’m no Jedi… but you have two of them in captivity you are free to ask that of…”. The son a pirate. Will hated to hear those words even more.“Hmmm”, the Captain hummed, and Will’s vision began dissolving. Trell was staring at him as he opened his eyes and blinked groggily up at her.“Quit staring!”, he snapped and Trell held her hands up and backed away, shrugging like it was no big deal. Will sat up in the bed Trell had probably moved him over to and promptly flopped back down onto it and sighed heavily.“You’re welcome”, his friend said, which he ignored. A few moments of quiet persisted until Will frowned and sat up, Trell following him closely and probably holding back the very obvious question she was bursting to ask, ‘What did you see?’.“You said something about being right…?”, she prompted instead, picking up on the last thing Will had said before being reeled in by his vision.“Have we been disarmed and locked up?”, Trell’s eyebrows shot up so fast Will might have laughed at a different time.“Will we be?”, she asked doubtfully. Will didn’t reply to that, instead swinging his legs off of the bunk and stepping onto the cabin floor in one smooth motion, heading for the doors immediately.“Keep your eyes open, just in case… I’m going to short wire the future”. When Nico heard the soft rapping on his door, his stomach dropped, his heart soared and his mind fumed all at once. Becoming quite the poet as he was, he made a mental memo to note that down when he could before calling out in a rather bored voice, even though he knew who it was,“Come in”.Will Solace walked in, an uncertain smile on his face, “Hope I didn’t disturb you?”, the Jedi knight asked. Nico looked him up and down rather indifferently.“Will you leave if I said yes?”, he asked rather harshly and was surprised to see how Will shrugged and sat himself down in the chair he’d been occupying the last time he’d been there a few hours ago, and replied,“Actually, no.”.“Then, does it matter?”, Nico asked, closing his eyes as he did. The golden hair, the blue eyes and the tall stature were all ingrained at the back of his eyelids forcefully enough by now, that he figured he didn’t really need to look at Will all the time. Not to mention, he might go blind if he did.“Alright… I want you to listen to me very carefully”.“The nerve”.“Seriously Nico… sarcasm aside… this is important, so hear me out…”, Nico opened his eyes to see Will, eyebrows knit together, hair falling into his eyes and posture bent and tensed, almost desperate. Nico decided he didn’t quite enjoy trying to be difficult to Will, he didn’t quite like looking at Will bend over and beg.“Make your case… I’ll be the judge of its importance”.He heard, rather than saw Will’s grin in his voice when he replied, “Yes, Lord…”.Nico almost smiled himself, but held back at the last moment. Hell, Will Solace had stalked out of his room when he’d seen himself at the end of a loosing argument just a few hours ago and left without a trace of an apology or an explanation after building Nico’s hopes up high just to push them off a Korriban cliff face. And here he was, entertaining the same Will Solace as if none of that drama had happened at all. He was allowing himself to be taken on a ride and he really ought to stop.So he said, “Go on”.Facepalm yourself with the ignited tip of your lightsaber di Angelo. You deserve it.“What I’m about to tell you might arouse several questions in your mind and I want you to know that if I chose to not answer a few questions from your side then they have a reason behind them… probably involving your own good”.Nico blinked. He wasn’t used to people telling him what to do. At least, people who were not the Emperor. Maybe also people who were not higher ranking Lords. Maybe even not Bianca. Maybe even not his previous Master… his own ego.But, Will Solace? A Jedi. The situation would have been comical to someone who was probably more easy to laugh than him.He settled with, “Your audacity is stunning, what gives you the right to command me, or even think of it, Jedi?”, sneering out the last word for good measure.“I think that’s enough of an attitude towards someone thinking to betray me”, Will answered just as coolly.Nico was taken aback. Betrayal? Nico frowned as he replied, an uncomfortable heat growing in his belly.“I don’t know what you think we are… but we’re definitely not as well acquainted to experience betrayal from one another…”. Will looked hurt. Or maybe, Nico’s eyes wanted Will to look hurt.“Considering all we’ve been through… a friendship’s on the line isn’t it?”, he said tentatively as if expecting Nico to take his words and rip them apart, then light them on fire for good measure.Nico wasn’t an arsonist, but he wanted to give Will a piece of his mind and said,“I usually don’t make friends with your kind… in fact I don’t make friends at all”, he added, not quite knowing if it was necessary. Will’s expression changed into something he couldn’t quite place.He looked like Nico had punched him, but he was about to laugh.“I don’t know if I should feel insulted or extremely sorry for you…”, Will said into the uneasy silence.The two young men shuffled about their places looking anywhere except at each other. Nico cursed himself mentally.“The Sith don’t need friends… you saw how that ended up becoming on Suurja didn’t you?”, he asked, still not meeting eyes. Wondering yet again, why all this had to be said to the Jedi knight. Because for some unexplainable reason, Nico felt the urge to keep talking to Will, to look at Will, to tell Will what he thought about things and life in general,“Then, maybe you don’t need Sith friends. Good thing I’m not a Sith huh?”, Will said, and when Nico looked up at the former, his eyes were sparkling, their blue very bright and full of life and hope.At that moment, Nico found himself wanting to nod and say yes, they were friends. Yes, and he wanted to take it further if he dared, tell Will he was right and seal the deal.But, what was a Sith without his pride.Will was literally giving Nico the opportunity to start their friendship from the beginning, all over again, and Nico with his infinite sense of wisdom decided to play the wet blanket.“What did you come to say? Say it and leave”, it came out a lot colder than he intended to and the light in Will’s eyes died down in the next few seconds.Suddenly all businesslike and professional, Will Solace said, “I had a vision… in which I saw you told on us to the Captain, who then made a deal with a Swoop racing gang head on Taris to have us sold for money and a ship for yourself”. Nico was surprised to admit that he was amused by this and said with a smirk,“Sounds like something I’d do…”, he admitted with a slight shrug of his shoulders as he leaned back in his bunk and watched something harden inside the Jedi knight. The heat in his belly was growing still.Will was wearing the ‘I don’t know why I’m still doing this’ look, but he said, “I came to make sure you weren’t actually planning on doing that…”.If Nico had had a heart, it might have shattered at that moment. But he ploughed on, just wanting to hurt Will now for some reason and quite enjoying himself while at it. A few minutes ago, he’d wanted to pour out his thoughts to the man and now, he wanted to dig into Will’s brain while he watched the Jedi knight pour out his own thoughts to Nico. Will was weak, he’d given into the incessant feeling of wanting to tell Nico about his own thoughts, when Nico had not. Barely.Little dumbass failed to realize however that the interaction had just revealed the hots for one another were mutual. Maye his wanting to hurt Will came from the realization that becoming the grim reaper in the blond boy’s eyes now didn’t really matter after what he’d already done.“You’re a hopeless case Solace… if you think your talking is going to make me not consider that fantastic idea that you just gave me.”“That means you still haven’t done it?”, Will asked, sulky expression gone and replaced by excitement, almost at the edge of his seat.The heat in his belly was now beginning to turn into an unpleasant stirring.“I haven’t moved from this bunk since you stormed off at 2300 hours”, Nico said. Will looked so relieved at that, Nico thought he felt a slight tremor at the bottom of his stone cold heart.It was so easy to make him believe. Will was so gullible, it hurt Nico’s conscience. And it was a startling revelation to discover he had one at all, apart from outrightly lying to Will in the first place. Suddenly he felt guilty. For his impulsive actions and his sorry predicament and the growing consternation in his mind.Will sat there for a few seconds, a small smile one his face as he looked at Nico and Nico resisted the urge to return it. While he did want the conversation to progress, even if on a different track, Nico however didn’t have the nerve to break the quiet and sat his stance.“I knew you wouldn’t do so Nico”, the fair haired boy said. Nico carefully kept a neutral emotion.“I’m sorry about my outburst last time though. What I said was not right and also, I need to learn to accept that Kayla isn’t coming back. At least not express my grievance to others in the future…”, he said more to himself than to Nico.To that at least Nico could relate. He knew he wouldn’t be as calm and composed or even attempt to subdue his sister, had he been in a similar position with Bianca at stake. Will was very brave that way. Dumb and brave.Though he didn’t really know what Will and Trell had done to Kayla, he didn’t want to ask. It was the least Nico could do to hurt Will right then, and he was glad without doing it.Nico glanced at the walls sullenly before coming to a decision. He settled his wandering mind and went with the flow.Sitting up straight suddenly in his bunk, the dark haired boy looked towards the doors of his cabin, eyes slightly wide. Will was looking at him, anxiety written in bold italics on his features, talk completely forgotten.“Disturbance in the force…”, then very deliberately meeting Will’s eyes, Nico said, “You may want to go and check on your friend…”, and with that Will got up from his seat and bolted to the door.After the Jedi knight left, Nico found himself feeling empty and remorseful.Will was so caring of his friend, he’d bought Nico’s act without a second thought. It had also meant that Will was very trusting of him, which he didn’t deserve for what he’d done.And what exactly was that fuzzy feeling in his gut as he relived the episode that had just played out between them?A confirmation of his suspicion that Will was psychic. He could see the future. That ought to count for something right? It was very impressive, but unfortunately it probably wouldn’t help against two dozen pirates with armed neutrino blasters on board a ship passing through hyperspace.Also, Nico greatly regretted what he’d just done. And the conversation he’d just had with Will more than that. He shouldn’t even have agreed to talk to Will after making the deal with Felt.Nico sighed to himself and looked at the walls of his cabin, hoping to get some comfort from the view he got from the transparisteel window outside of which hyperspace whizzed past, shards of gold reminding him of Will’s hair.None of it was helping, Nico needed a break from reality.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Will Solace had not known at the moment that the beautiful boy he’d left behind had lied to him. He hadn’t known that he’d been betrayed and he hadn’t realized that he was in danger. He had left in a blind hurry, with no idea that Nico had been bluffing his way to Taris. Nico had said Trell might be in danger, and Will had reacted spontaneously to that. He hadn’t stopped to cross check with his intuition if it was the right thing to do, or why he hadn’t felt such a disturbance in the force himself.He had simply gotten up from his place opposite to Nico di Angelo and spun around, crossing the length of the cabin floor in two strides and had opened the shutters with the activator panel on the right and stepped out onto the corridor before his brain began catching up with his body.The cabin he shared with Trell was just down the corridor he stood in, outside of Nico’s place and he wasn’t alone in it.For, standing a few feet in front of the cabin allotted to him and his Jedi colleague were three Weequay henchmen, carrying neutrino blasters and looking directly at Will. They didn’t look like they’d come to ask him for help with cleaning their hilts or reloading their magazines.Just as the Weequay on the left took aim with his blaster, Will took out his own lightsaber and ignited it. The first shot ricocheted off the green tip of the weapon as the Jedi knight swung his lightsaber with practiced ease.Stepping off the small shelter that the entrance to Nico’s cabin provided, Will exposed himself for a bit, attracting two more rounds of blaster fire, four shots whizzing past his ears and torso as he leapt to the other side of the passageway. But before he could think of calling out for his attackers to stop or ask for help from the Sith boy behind the doors of the cabin he’d just left, he noticed a presence just behind him, belatedly realizing why the men in front put down their own blaster barrels before darkness came crashing down.He registered a tingling sensation run up and down his spine, before the ship’s artificial gravity took hold of him and his face met the floor. The whole journey to Taris had taken slightly more than a standard twenty four hour Republican day. It had involved failed attempts of beginning a new friendship between a Jedi and a Sith – which went unrecorded in Galactic history, tension between two existing friends, repeated reminders of a huge debt and an abrupt bout of externally induced unconsciousness.The moment the blond Jedi knight’s head had hit the floor, the fourth Weequay pirate mercenary had laughed triumphantly at his three other companions and motioned to Will Solace, whose body was on the deck as he said,“That was easy”, in an unidentified Outer Rim dialect.“He didn’t notice you come from behind, not a bad idea”, one of his less jealous companions agreed.“We better search him for anything else other than his lightsaber he might have hidden”, the third, slightly more jealous one suggested in an attempt to digress from the praise his crewmate was getting and the Weequays got to work.They turned the body of the Jedi around so that he was lying on his back and began frisking him thoroughly. The fourth Weequay who’d come from behind watching over the other three, quite full of himself now, having bested the Jedi, not finding the need to do anything productive and enjoying his sudden position of supremacy through and through.But apart from the lightsaber they pried out of the loosely gripped fingers of the Jedi knight’s hand, the henchmen found yet another something by accident, hidden between folds of the sandy tunic the Jedi was wearing.A glimmering red crystal pulsing with some sort of energy of its own. The men looking at the artefact couldn’t help but stare dumbfoundedly at it, compelled to keep looking by the gravity its very presence seemed to emanate. The fourth Weequay bent forward and quickly pried it out of the hands of his companion who’d managed to find it.“Well Well… the Captain would be pleased now, wouldn’t he…?”.Four pairs of eyes, all fixated on the Kyber crystal until the silence was broken by a pair of doors sliding open, followed by footsteps approaching. The fourth Weequay quickly put the crystal into his trouser pockets and turned around in time to see the Sith boy approaching them.Standing himself a few feet away from the group, the Sith cast his dark gaze upon the Jedi laying on the floor and looked at the group of Weequays while asking,“How long will he be out?”.“Maybe for an hour, Lord…”, the fourth pirate henchman replied uncertainly.“What about the female?”.“Still in the cabin, whose doors we have locked.” Nico nodded more to himself than out of any kind of acknowledgement to the pirates and walked onwards, to the cabin he knew Will shared with Trell.He had shown no signs that he’d seen the men find the kyber crystal from the Jedi’s clothes. He hadn’t seen it at all. When Nico stood in front of the doors to the cockpit of the Discord, he felt the knots in his abdomen grow in number. A few more minutes and some more twists later he would have no more organs left in his digestive tract.He’d known that Will wouldn’t be able to pay back for his ship. He’d known it from the start, it had also probably been the reason why Will had come back to talk to him the last time too. The Jedi were too transparent in their every move and motive, Nico found he could read Will like a book that way.At least, predict the course of his actions. Honesty and loyalty should mean little to a Sith and he had been raised with those tenets taught in Sith Training Academy.A true Sith, the students were made to understand, was loyal to no one’s cause except his own and was honest to no one at all, including himself. The dark side of the force required lying to one’s own self to make sure the best (read:worst) in you shone out under the maximum restraint. One’s own true intentions would always have to be deeply buried and controlledly exercised under strict discretion and limited allowance. Small victories, no respite and the path of the force guided by one’s emotions were what truly led a Sith to the pinnacle of his achievements.The reason that Nico had always stood out from the other boys in his batch was probably because he had had good reason to object and question the morality of these tenets.When young, the mind is flexible, like dough. Any disruptive adult could as well mend and mold it into a desired shape of use to himself so that when the time came, the young Sith would grow up to do the same to another. That was Sith society in a nutshell.As he placed his hand on the activator panel beside the shutters on the right, he shook off the cobwebs of apprehension clinging to the corners of his mind and walked into a scene playing out before him.The cockpit of the Discord was as he remembered it from the previous hour. A stark whitish interior with an array of controls, blinking lights, electronic voices announcing the status of various ship parameters and the clicking of buttons by the technicians who worked in quiet efficiency.A Rodian sat up front before the primary nav console and beside him a slight Weequay who was observing the hyperdrive functionality on a small holoscreen.In the middle of the room, bathed in a blue halo on every inch of his skin stood Felt Unik, Captain of the Discord. He was in deep conversation with someone who appeared as a holoimage in the holocomm unit which was live relaying an exchange in front of him.Nico observed the holoimage of the man who spoke to Felt. It was a human in what looked like some kind of heavily modified armor with dents on the white breastplate. The armor also sported deep red shoulder guards and gauntlets at the forearms, but he wore no helmet. The man had dark colored skin and thick dark eyebrows over small, squinty eyes which made him look extremely judgemental and formidable. He had little to no hair on his head. He was not familiar, Nico didn’t know him. Clearing his throat once for emphasis and stepping further into the cockpit, Nico sighed and leaned on his left leg, unconsciously angling his hips outward and waiting for the Weequay Captain to notice his presence.Then, he stepped forward and made his way to the left of the Captain, carefully out of the holoimage range, holding his arms in front of his chest and put up an air of coolness about himself he didn’t quite feel.He heard the exchange with a certain detachment over the next few minutes. The captain asked for a hyperdrive enabled single passenger ship with a fully loaded star map as he’d asked for and spoke about the force sensitives he was trading away. Over the course of the talk, he came to know that this man was involved in swoop racing. Will and Trell would be sold off for the Taris Opener next season just like Will had predicted. It wasn’t bad. Nico told himself it could get worse for the two Jedi, this wasn’t the worst outcome in an infinite array of possibilities following his supposed betrayal.A sentence caught him in the middle of his reverie and he looked up at the pirate captain, “Oh, yes there’s money too, but I’m in no hurry for that… I want the ship and the comm unit as soon as I arrive on Taris though. They get higher priority…”, at which the pirate glanced at Nico.Nico straightened himself unconsciously and arched an eyebrow slightly. The Weequay’s expression was quite unreadable and the Sith boy could garner nothing about its hidden implications, or if it had anything as such at all.“Seems very personalized… far as I know you Felt, you’re not one to make such materialistic requests of anyone ever, what’s the special occasion?”, the holoimage man – Brejik asked. Silence in the cockpit for a moment before the captain replied in a smooth voice,“It’s for one of my men actually”, at which Nico sharply looked up at the Captain. How dare he call Nico one of his men. Nico felt himself flush at the sentence and held himself at bay with supreme effort, glaring daggers at the Weequay Captain, hoping his look conveyed the acute disapproval of the captain’s poor phrasing.Felt seemed to get the implication and quickly changed tracks, talking about irrelevant things for the next few moments and carefully avoiding mentioning anything to do with Nico. The conversation ended with Brejik’s assurance that the ship and the star map would be ready and waiting for Felt’s use on Taris when they got there.“What of the Jedi?”, the Captain asked into the ensuing silence. Nico considered giving him a piece of his mind. Not now, not on his ship. He told himself with gritty determination. Another time will come, another opportunity. Maybe on Taris, when they landed and Nico got the ship and the star map he’d asked for. He’d make Felt pay for it. He’d make the Weequay yield and kiss his boot for what he said. Nico feeling significantly demented enough to think so.“Bound and unarmed”, he said, using the least number of words possible.The Captain nodded and said, “Excellent, we have ourselves a party then!”, and offered an outstretched hand in Nico’s direction. Nico frowned. What party? The Sith don’t party.“What?”, he asked uncertainly, the situation quickly growing awkward with the Captain’s hand still outstretched between them.“Give me the crystal, as you promised”, the Weequay said to Nico.“I’ll give it to you when I see the ship and the star map on Taris and am satisfied”, Nico said almost immediately, cutting off any possibilities of parley or future debate.“Well, let me see it… it is going to be my payment at the end of the day after all”, Felt said, surprising Nico who’d expected him to shut up at the least and grovel for forgiveness on his knees at the most. He wanted to say so many things. Do you know who I am? I am the Ghost King, many Sith Lords tremble before me. But he kept quiet and looked at the pirate, trying his best to read between lines of his scrunched up face and piggy eyes.Pride, confusion and mistrust battled inside of him until finally he decided it probably won’t hurt as much. He had promised the Captain a Khyber crystal as payment and it was only fair that the captain be shown that Nico did actually own one of them and hadn’t been lying. Two, as he knew he had. One of which he was going to give away in exchange for a ship and a star map.He reluctantly produced Dess’s lightsaber from the folds of his robes and opened it up to show the captain the red Khyber crystal.“Stars and Galaxies… such power”, the Weequay whispered as he looked at the small crimson object Nico held between his pale milky fingers, the color in stark contrast to the holder’s skin.“Only the Sith can wield weapons which can convert the power of kyber crystals into the wieldable form of a lightsaber… to others like you, it will simply be a priceless artefact only”, Nico said with contempt and a fairly obvious demeaning tone, putting the crystal back into Dess’s lightsaber and that in turn, into the folds of the brown tunic he was wearing.Felt straightened and cleared his throat, turning away from the Sith boy as he spoke,“Do the Jedi have similar crystals in their lightsabers too?”. Something about the tone the Captain used left Nico unsettled and wondering for the third time during this interaction if the Captain had an ulterior motive about his words that had something to do, not with him… but with Will Solace and his friend. Taris was a planet with a rotten core covered with golden carnations on the outside. For, any outsider would want nothing more than to come and settle, while any inhabitant beneath the layers of Upper City would only ever wish to leave.The troposphere of the bustling ecumenopolis of the Outer Rim was bedazzled with an endless sea of domed durasteel structures looking like as if the planet’s many fingers were reaching out to touch the sky. Upper City, the planet’s highest level of inhabitation was home to the City’s wealthiest denizens, industries, shopping centers and most ludicrously expensive means of entertainment. It was also the level that housed the Jedi Satellite Training academy, a Jedi Outpost which soon turned into an abandoned observatory, no more a training center, its trainees too lax and corrupt to do anything about its maintenance, reflecting the neglect of the Republican Government in light of anything with regard to the Outer Rim in general.Will Solace had never been to Taris before, but he sure had heard and read about its exoticism to a great extent. Taris, the jewel of the Outer Rim, the place one would never want to leave if one visited, the land of dreams and fantasy. To a Jedi at least, it meant nothing. And more so to the Jedi who were raised and trained on the Republican Capital Coruscant. Coruscant had sights and experiences that would make Taris feel like a walk through a fair. And if Will was being honest with himself, he hadn’t thought he’d ever be visiting Taris.For the Jedi High Council used Taris as a means of exile punishment for apprentices and knights who either got too independent or rebellious in their ways for the former to handle anymore. Will had never nor would he ever do anything to find himself in that position, and had naturally been of the opinion that he’d never get to visit Taris in his span of existence.But fate and the force had different ways of surprising a man and here he was, being dragged most reluctantly down a seemingly endless dark corridor with almost no lights and absolutely no ventilation. Wrists and ankles bound by flux metal manacles that burnt the fine hairs on his forearms and a shock collar whose effect he’d endured when he’d tried to fight the men he’d been greeted by when he woke the minute he realized he’d been bound.Will had tried to do a lot many things in those first few minutes of his return to consciousness.He’d tried to get rid of the manacles and the collar by brute force, he’d tried to punch, then kick and even attempted a successful headbutt on a man whose lack of hair meant more of an impact due to Will’s move. He’d tried to search for Trell through the force unsuccessfully, carefully not mentioning her by name lest he alert his own captors to her presence in case she’d actually managed to get away.Then, he’d tried not to cry out of frustration and hurt as he realized this was all probably Nico di Angelo’s doing.When and if he ever met Trell again, he was going to have to endure a lot of lecturing and a lifetime’s worth of ‘I told you so’s’. She wasn’t going to let him hear the end of how much she’d emphasized on staying his distance from the Sith boy and how absolutely correct she’d been about her advice all along. Also, how they probably would have ended up better off than this, had Will never brought Nico back from the crash site on Suurja and healed him at all.It was all Will’s fault and now, Will and Trell were paying for it, as if Jorn and Kayla hadn’t had to already.As he trudged unwillingly along with the three man entourage through the dark maze of Taris Undercity there were exactly three things he knew from what the two men who were handling him had told him in broken Galactic Basic.“You’ve been sold to the Black Vulkars, the best swoop racing gang on Taris and the whole galaxy… you will be trained for the Season opener happening next week… and don’t even think of escaping from this place” Taris Upper City was an interesting place for someone who had the time and the curiosity to explore the length and depth of its multitude of sights and services. But not for Nico di Angelo.Upon arrival on Taris, Nico had stayed low for as long as he believed took for the Weequay Captain’s men to disembark and contact Brejik’s gang. He’d absently watched the Black Vulkars’ take Will and his Togruta companion away, still unconscious and stripped of their lightsabers. He’d suppressed the strong urge to tell the Captain to let go of the Jedi lightsabers, but held himself back. How did it matter to him what the pirate did with them? It wasn’t of any concern to him and butting in would only create confusion and feed the growing fire of attachment to Will Solace Nico did not want to harbor any more than it had already grown.Will wasn’t his friend, he wasn’t going to see him again. He was a Jedi, the enemy and now Tarisian slave/captive to a Swoop racing gang. The Black Vulkars.The people who’d most generously offered him a neat ordeal of a ship, an extensively detailed Star Map that was probably very expensive judging from all the information in its databanks and now, a Snivvian guide named Pick who was to take him on a tour of Upper and Middle City. Pick spoke too much, weighed too much and drove much too slowly for Nico’s liking. Many a times on their tour (which Nico had resisted, but Brejik’s assistant had insisted would be nice) Nico’s mind had been stuck contemplating if he wanted to draw his lightsaber out and chop the Snivvian guide’s snout off or simply jump off the side of the convertible Hover Car.“Oh, Oh! And there’s the most famous Dueling Ring people would die to visit when they come to Taris”, the Snivvian guide exclaimed, snout straightening out before his face as he excitedly bounced in his seat. His cheerful disposition was in need of some disposing, in Nico’s opinion.The young Sith boy cast an uninterested glance towards where the Snivvian male guide had pointed. The level they were passing in their hovercar was just like any other they’d come across so far. Grey durasteel structures with hollowed out window slots fitted with dark tinted glass that reflected the orange red hue of the Sunset over the horizon. Nothing extraordinary or eye catching in comparison to the rest, except for the crowd that was thronging the entrance to a building whose set of halo light illuminated double doors stood wide open to accommodate the lively influx surging onwards into the building.“Dueling ring?”, Nico asked, finding himself unable to stop looking at the scene, per se his deceitful façade of uninterest.The guide slowed the hover car down and turned himself about his place to completely face the street level they were hovering right next to.“Oh yeah! It’s the hottest thing next to the system’s star on Taris, owned and run by Ajuur the Hutt Lord, it’s a commercial establishment that’s been around for as long as he’s been alive I guess”, pausing to take a deep breath from his long snout, he excitedly gushed on much to Nico’s despair, “- it’s that old. It was originally part of the Cantina the Hutt runs, but later it became an entertainment of its own and now it’s what draws everyone to the place more than the drinks the Cantina has to offer its patrons… clientele’s mostly only the betting circle of Taris Upper City and-”.“Land the hovercar on the street, I want to take a look”, Nico cut the Snivvian in impatiently.“You want to go in there… Lord?”, he added awkwardly at the end. Nico didn’t turn to look at the guide but nodded once conveying his accent and felt the hovercar glide towards street level nevertheless.Nico hopped off the vehicle just as it hit the ground and the Snivvian guide called out after him as he took a step forward,“I’ll just wait outside here unless you need me to-”,“You can go back to the base, I don’t need your services for the rest of the day”, he dismissively called back and felt the hovercar retreat back into the traffic lane as he continued onwards to the crowded entrance of the Dueling club.He was going to be here for a week at least until the Season Opener as Felt Unik and Brejik had asked him to. He’d agreed, because he had nothing better to do and he also he didn’t want to go back to Dromund just as yet.Something better to help him forget about Dess and stop pondering about whether Rohlan Dyre had done business with Sith Empire that involved his suspicions about Nico’s part on Suurja during the Jedi ambush.Maybe the Manadalorian Commander was dumb enough not to realize that the intervening ship had been a Sith vessel. Maybe it hadn’t struck him that Nico might have been piloting it. Maybe he wouldn’t consider that to amount to Treason. Maybe he wouldn’t suspect Nico of playing a double role in the Mandalorian Crusade.Maybe. It soon became apparent that Ajuur the Hutt ran his business only by means of some influential contacts he probably had in the Upper levels of Taris City and it would otherwise be illegal to run anything of the sort.A seemingly voluptuous female Twi’lek had winked and handed Nico tickets worth a few Tarisian credits and ushered him in, once he got past the initial crowd of onlookers settling about various spots of the widespread floor area of the cantina extending through many levels of Upper and Middle City. The spectators it seemed, got to enjoy the matches that happened in the ring even without tickets on the multiple huge screens set up in various conveniently located spots with a perennial stream of drink and food on the call available at all times. But those with tickets got to occupy seats or even stand if they liked to, around the actual ring at the very heart of the Cantina over which presiding sat the owner Hutt Lord himself.Nico cast his eyes wearily about in all directions before slipping past the center of the audience seating area, towards the tables on the other end where a lot of beings, mostly humans, could be seen speculating and arranging smaller bets before the big shots rolled in with significantly large wads of cash. The evening was just beginning and Nico was partly glad he’d managed to get in early on before the tickets sold off or the matches had started.A dramatic male voice rang through the Cantina as Nico walked past the tables, eyes not lingering on any face longer than necessary and towards the bar counter.“And tonight, Ladies and Gentlemen of Taris Upper City… we shall all be enthralled by yet another spectacular contest of strength, speed, skill and high stakes at the tables between one of two competitors who’ll be opening the matches lined up for the evening… give it up for Twitch!!”. Loud cheering followed the announcement and Nico calmly eyed the ring and surrounding areas to try and find the owner of the name.The bartender heeded his beckoning and came up to him.Nico then turned back towards the empty ring around of which fancy light work of different colors had begun to flicker and dance about the flooring as the crowd swarmed in closer. He’d ordered a shot of a local make non-alcoholic drink to occupy himself with more than anything and keep his hands full literally, so that he didn’t look too suspicious to anyone who saw him lounging about all alone in a corner with nothing to do. He was hoping his brown tunic and black trousers, which he’d managed to cover up (mostly) with a long greyish cloak his new acquaintances had managed to get him as requested, didn’t look too alien among the local Tarisian crowd.Deciding that he had a good view from where he was beside the bar counter, he got on a high backed swivel chair with a leg still on the transparisteel floor that glowed when you stamped it, Nico settled in as the crowd howled and he couldn’t hear the announcer anymore, watching as the second competitor was announced and two figures walked into the ring.One was clearly a female judging from the figure and demeanor with a shock of straight white blond hair she kept gelled back behind her eyes. She wore a tight, body hugging suit of uninteresting grey and black, which was probably some sort of protective armor judging by the way it seemed to slightly restrict her movements. Nico didn’t know if she was Twitch or if she was going to be fighting Twitch because he hadn’t heard the second competitors name. But judging from the rambunctious yelling of the crowd on his side of the Cantina, Twitch was being popularly favored.“… an equally matched fight tonight as we’ll soon see… the stakes are probably getting higher and higher… let’s see whose night this is going to beeee!!!”, Nico heard bits and pieces of the invisible announcer’s voice yell above the shrieking of the crowd.Thinking it was probably his safest bet to ask the bartender, Nico turned around in his chair and beckoned the surly looking human male over for the second time.“You’ve still got a swill of it on ya…”, the bartender said, pointing with his chin to Nico’s still full drink.“Who’s fighting Twitch?”, Nico asked without preamble. A knowing smirk painted the man’s face.“New to town are ya?”, he asked.“New to the Dueling Ring”, Nico answered cautiously, carefully keeping his face neutral.“New to the Dueling Ring means you’re new to Taris itself buddy, no good Tarisian host wouldn’t show you off to the Dueling Ring within a day of your arrival… say have you had Tarisian Ale before, would ya like to try?”, he said teasingly, leaning on the counter top. Nico, who’d had enough to do with Tarisian Ale for a lifetime sighed to himself before,“I asked you a question”, he said, without any tact.“Well, I guess we’re not much for talking are we… that’s Ice over there…”, the bartender said with a wistful sigh to punctuate the word. Nico glanced in the direction of the ring. The female was called Ice. And as if it made sense now, Nico could feel waves of coldness roll off of her. It was a fetching name. One that had probably stuck on because of public opinion of her stature as a whole. Nico smiled to himself. It was such a Sith thing.The bartender probably noticed his small smile, because he misinterpreted it, laughed and said, “Oh no buddy, I wouldn’t now… Ice isn’t that kind to be swayed over by anybody. She earned that name because of it. Many men have seen her business end of the blaster work bad when they tried to get their way with her… you better not try to mess with her. You’re also new here as you said…”.Nico looked at the bartender sharply at that, the human male buckling under the intensity of his gaze.“I-I mean-”, the man stammered. Nico frowned once deeply, to convey his disapproval of the man’s poor choice of words and the bartender scurried off the way he came, leaving Nico alone.He’d seen so many Sith women like Ice before. He knew how he could get them to do what he wanted them to.As he turned around towards the ring once again he couldn’t help but think that even though Ice had blond hair, it wasn’t quite as nice looking as the golden locks that had adorned Will Solace’s head like a crown.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Will had a decent idea of time in his small cell. Judging by the three meals he’d gotten so far, it had probably been a day since his realization of being in captivity. And Will had to begrudgingly admit that it didn’t feel too worse for what it was, confinement inside of a small six foot by six foot by ten foot in height cubicle with a single over head halo lamp and a small window too high and too small for Will to see through, but enough to let in a blast of cool air now and then whose source Will was doubtful about. He’d known that escape was a lost cause.The manacles around his wrist were a flux metal he couldn’t physically tear apart or use the force to break or bend out of. His ankles being bound by similar restraints made the situation even harder, though years of temple training meant that Will was flexible enough to accommodate not being able to stretch too much. The shock collar was however, a constant reminder that anything funny from his side would leave his nervous system with deep regrets of trying it at all. He’d experienced it before, when he’d tried to fight the guards and didn’t want to again. He’d need all his strength to utilize any opportunity to escape, if it came by in the future.During his stay in his new, forced residence, he’d kept his mind occupied, carefully meditating and concentrating on other things whenever thoughts related to either Kayla, Jorn, Revan, the missing Jedi knights and apprentices, Trell or Nico di Angelo popped up in his head. And that was a lot in itself. He’d obediently eaten most of what he’d been offered by his not so hospitable hosts.The first meal had been dry bread and a brown gravy whose ingredients Will had highly doubted were edible at all. The second meal had been some local meat which hadn’t been all that bad and the same gravy which Will had avoided.The third meal had probably been designed based on his feedback from the previous two plates which the men who’d cleared them away had had left in them, because he’d gotten the same dry bread and some kind of fruit, but no gravy. He’d thanked the force and nibbled on both items cautiously. Sleep was inconsequential to his mind, hurtling forward at hyperspeed and he hadn’t tried to forcefully sleep at all. About an hour’s idling after the third meal, his first visitor came by.“How do you like our hospitality so far Jedi?”, a voice interrupted his thoughts and Will’s head snapped up at the intrusion of the voice, mentally cursing himself for not having noticed someone approach his cell.It was Brejik, head of the Black Vulkars and Will’s host.“Not much I should say…”, Will attempted at wry humor, “We do it differently back at home though. I’ll give you a tip… it doesn’t involve manacles, collars or confined spaces”.The man laughed, slapping his hand on his thigh and throwing his head backwards as he did. Will frowned slightly, but kept the rest of his face carefully neutral.“Perhaps I should introduce myself”, he said, “I am-”“Brejik. Head of the Black Vulkars, best Swoop Racing gang on Taris?”, Will asked in a bored voice, he wasn’t going to entertain the dude like some slave in his service. He knew Brejik from the conversation he’d seen Felt have with the man back on the Discord in his vision that had told him of Nico’s betrayal.Brejik’s eyebrows shot up as he said, “I presume that pirate son of a nerf herder told you that?”.“Surely, you’d know if Felt had described your gang as the best…”, Will said mysteriously.Brejik’s own slight frown deepened, “Debatable”, he agreed. Will broke eye contact and looked at the floor for a second before lifting his gaze to meet the man’s eyes again. Brejik was looking elsewhere too, hands resting on the belt he wore on top of his semi-armor attire.“We’ve heard of all the things the Jedi can do… and its very hard to come across you people out here in the Outer Rim”, the man said thoughtfully. Will waited for him to say what he was thinking of, drive home the nail and be done with it.“Is it true that you’re all very good pilots?”, he asked, finally looking at Will, head on. Will was amazed by the weight of his gaze as it fell upon him but he returned it calmly with his own coldest blue stare.“If we want to be”.“I want you to be”, Brejik said. Will held his gaze. His visitor continued in his low toned, quiet voice,“We have to win the Opener this season, you hear? I don’t care what you do to win… if you don’t…”, his voice dropped even lower as he leaned forward and rested his head between two bars of the durasteel door and hissed, “…your friend won’t see the next morning after the races.”Will froze. Will had no idea how many hours had passed after Brejik’s visit and his threat of killing Trell. He had no idea where Trell was or if they’d done anything to hurt her seeing as he hadn’t been able to find her signature through the force, nevertheless he’d kept his senses open and alert. Ready to receive the smallest shift in the quiet unresponsiveness from the force he’d endured so far, in case Trell called out for him or gave the tiniest hint of her presence. Instead, as he sat, head resting on his knees and breathing steady and regular, his mind’s tentacles flung out far and wide all about him in the force, he sensed another, unexpected presence he’d quite forgotten about in his concern for Trell. A familiar force signature, a sensation which could best be described as shadows coalescing about one, trying to douse any specks of light and drowning them in an inky, murky darkness. Something that couldn’t be pinpointed, had no solid form and could simply melt into a speck of blackness before completely vanishing, leaving behind no trace of its fluidic existence. It was not entirely sinister as compared to how mysterious it was.Footsteps followed the sensation as Will’s trained hearing picked the quiet, rhythmic footfalls of a visitor in the cell blocks a little distance away, getting louder by the minute and clearly approaching the general direction of his cell.He sighed and retracted his senses, knowing that his force sensitive guest would had sensed him by then too.The footsteps stopped in front of his cell and Will could feel the Sith boy’s presence right in front of him, still with his head down on his knees, making no effort to look up. He let his disapproval show by keeping his head bent. The Sith would have to handle the talking if he wanted to at all this time. Will wasn’t going to try to make it warmer from his side. Betrayal from a supposed friendship could only be given as much importance.“How does imprisonment feel Solace?”, Nico’s quiet voice finally questioned. If it had a particularly, emotionally specific tone behind it, Will couldn’t pin point what it was. He lifted his head slightly, still not looking at Nico and replied,“Not impressive, I gave Brejik feedback on how he can improve his hospitality… if you’re here for another round of surveying, please go back and tell him that a holoscreen with a holonet provision in here would greatly improve his rating. Also, the gravy I was offered along with bread was horrible and smelled like nerf dung…”.“Sarcastic even at the mercy of another”, the Sith Lord said drily, giving Will no credit for his comment.“Well, as the one because of whom I’m imprisoned in the first place, how does it feel from outside there di Angelo? Because it looks like you’re behind bars for me from in here too you know…”, Will said letting a lavish amount of contempt creep into his voice in spite of his generally sweet disposition.Even in the dim light Will swore he could see Nico’s left eyebrow raise critically,“You had no way of paying back for my ship, it didn’t go unnoticed…”, he said coldly.“It’s true… but I would have told you if I’d thought I’d never be able to pay you back”, Will said defensively.“What are your words worth to me Jedi?”, the Sith hissed. A tense silence fell between the two youths. Then, the Sith Lord bent down and sat on his haunches, looking at Will at eye level. The sole source of illumination from the small vent high up in Will’s cell cast a pale, yellow tinted halo on Nico’s pale skin, turning his dark eyes a much lighter shade of brown. Will couldn’t help but look into them.“You never gave me a chance to prove that I could pay you back… maybe if you’d been more patient and let me-”.“Drag me along like a dog to your Jedi base and wait in the lobby while you fished through the empty cupboards for Tarisian credits the previous occupants might have left behind?”.The silence that followed stretched on for way too long. Will had nothing to say and he didn’t waste any more words. Nico basked in the edge he’d won over in the argument.Suddenly, the Sith rose to his feet and turned around on his heel, an action Will barely saw him complete as the shadows crept up from the floor and surrounding gloom, enveloping Nico like a cocoon until Will couldn’t see him anymore, and a second later, the inky rotating fluid vanished in a breezy zephyr, taking the Sith with it. The corridor that led to his cell was now empty. No pale skinned, black eyed, attractive Sith boys to be seen anymore.Will gaped at where Nico had stood seconds ago outside his cell as the silence continued. Then, a second later, the spinning vortex of darkness materialized right in front of him, this time reforming into a very pale, very familiar sulky Sith Lord just two feet away from him. Nico was there again, very much inside his cell.Nico stepped back and made space for Will to be able to stand up without contact in the small enclosure,“…I’m bored…”, was the only thing he got out of Nico for his questioning gaze. Nico had just teleported using some dark side power, right into Will’s cell, the last thing he’d expected the Sith Lord to do.As it was the first time they had stood next to one another, the height difference was quite striking for Will to process. He’d never stood beside Nico before and had assumed for the sake of normalcy that the Sith would be about six feet tall or maybe a little lesser than it, skinny and lanky as he looked, just like most of his colleagues were back at the temple, Will towering over them all at six’ two. But Nico was barely five feet six inches maybe and almost a whole head shorter, it was funny.Nico probably noticed it too, because he quickly averted his gaze and turned sharply to his right, taking a step forward and then abruptly stopped, saying, “The collar and the manacles will remain. But brace yourself for what’s to come, if you lose contact, the netherworlds await you…”.Without further warning or explanation, he turned around, held Will’s left arm in a vice like grip that resulted in a painful, sensory overdose all about the blond boy’s left bicep, accompanied by a swirling vortex of darkness that engulfed Will too, spinning faster and faster around them until all the Jedi knight could see was black. His prison cell was gone in an instant and he was suddenly embraced by the sensation of weightlessness, followed by a very goosebump inducing shiver that ran involuntarily up and down his spine.Before he knew it, the darkness had enveloped his mind and it was freefall. Will had the first indication that Nico was drunk when he smiled at him. Will didn’t smile back. Rhetorically, he would speculate that he ought to have smiled back. Probably. History would have been made if he had. Will Solace had just never particularly been good with History as such.“You want something to drink?”, the Sith boy asked him. Will shook his head negative registering a slight dizziness.They had materialized right out of thin air, in the middle of a Cantina and Will had his first glimpse of what Taris was like, other than his dingy, dark cell wherever Brejik had him holed up. After getting over the initial shock of realizing that he was free, he experienced a really confused emotional state of being he would later realize why.Here was freedom with physical restraint, entertainment at a Cantina for a teetotaler, company he’d longed to have but now feared in light of a huge debt, needless to add, riddled with a betrayal, awkward, angry exchanges, attempted bouts of forcedly polite conversation on a hyperspatial journey underlying a natural enmity.What was the force trying to tell him? Did it hate him now? Will Solace would have much rather stayed in his dingy, unkempt prison cell than this, thank you. Not even that pathetic, taste bud murdering gravy was enough for Will to opt out an evening with a very handsome, very drunk Nico di Angelo now.You see, the problem was this. Once Nico had revealed his true colors, (as much as could be said of someone who dressed only in black) Will had firmly burned into the synapses of his brain, the clear and precise of knowledge that pursuing anything of a friendship of sorts, or any kind of bond with the Sith boy was futile and would bring him and his friends nothing but harm. He’d experienced that enough and wanted a break now, honestly.“Oh, that’s right!”, Nico said, pointing a slightly shaking finger at Will, “… you don’t drink alcohol”, then, the Sith boy leaned a little closer to Will and said in a conspiratorial whisper,“… want to know something?”. Will arched his eyebrows, wanting to look anywhere else but into those dark, dark eyes and doing the exact opposite. A rational part of his brain fumed at his body’s utter disobedience.“… I haven’t had a single drink tonight.”, Nico said huskily, leaning back into a high-backed chair, a rather smug look on his face. That lone rational part of Will’s brain said it was his cue to sport a skeptical look.He blinked instead, his brain giving up on the task of trying to understand Nico and trying to make intelligible conversation and simply shutting down for the night.The Cantina Nico had teleported them both to, was abuzz with excitement just as any Cantina ought to be. Lights danced about from the high ceilings in irregular intervals and abnormal colors. Music, if the sounds wafting through from invisible woofers could be called that, played on in an incessant hum, barely managed to make their way into Will’s ears over the constant chattering of the crowd. It was an alien genre Will had never heard of, needless to say.People were everywhere. Mostly humans, but also other species like Twi’lek, Rhodian, Quarren and Bothan. There was even a Hutt seated in a large bath tub like arrangement covered with what suspiciously looked like gold at the other end from where they were. It was a merry place, not unlike anything Will hadn’t already seen the likes of on Coruscant. Male and female patrons mingled freely, talked, danced and argued over tables with too much food, too much drink and too much cacophony than was civilized or simply normal. He was just secretly relieved that no one payed them much attention.The floor was a soft carpet of a really curios material that glowed beneath and all around one’s foot when you took a step forward. The tables were all beautifully designed glass or expensive tempered steel which reflected the colors of the bizarre lighting of the place. Spoons, forks, knives and other cutlery gleamed and glinted from their matching plates and the hands of the Cantina’s patrons as exotic meals were served along with dangerous looking beverages, downed in shot after shot of wasted money. The overhead lighting made Nico’s skin glow a deep pink as Will looked at the young Sith Lord and held back an involuntary sigh. He also mentally registered the fact that he hadn’t said a word since he’d left his prison cell.Would Nico block his attempts to escape if he tried? Didn’t his own manacles and shock collar look a little out of place in a Cantina? Did Nico know about whether Trell was fine and in similar captivity? His thoughts finally caught up to him and organized themselves in a relatively sluggish manner. After what felt like a while of staring at reality from the other end of a long tunnel, he was finally regaining his senses. His thought process was returning to normal.Will eventually got to thinking that maybe it was the teleporting that had had that effect on him. Maybe it was also the reason why Nico was behaving the way he was, which was to say in the least, drunk. Maybe too much teleporting made him unstable and dizzy, or woozy. As a medic, Will could begin to guess why.After a while of quiet speculation, the blond Jedi looked at Nico who seemed absorbed in thought, gazing at a particular area across the tables where people were seated, at what looked like some sort of fighting arena with a glimmering energy shield about it. Two men, Will could make out faintly through the shiny reflection of the shield, appeared to be wrestling one another inside of it. Will supposed it was some sort of fighting club that was probably one of the Cantina’s entertainments beside the food and drinks. Nobody seemed to be paying them much attention though.The Jedi knight shook his head and focused on Nico who was now looking at him.“Where’s Trell, do you know where she is?”, Will asked. Nico looked back at him impassively, eyes travelling back from their previous spot of fixation to Will. There was something about the way he was looking at Will that made the Jedi knight shiver internally.Then, the Sith boy leaned back leisurely in his chair, indifferent towards the fact that Will was still awkwardly standing in front of him. Not surprisingly, the Jedi knight and Sith were at the same eye level in spite of the latter being seated on a high backed stool of sorts.“What will you do to know the answer to that?”, Nico asked quietly. Will’s eyes widened, he didn’t know if that was a bargain Nico was offering to make, or if it was merely a threatening Sith-like way of conversation Nico had adopted to use.“Is she alright? Is she safe, what have they done to-”,“Didn’t you hear me Solace?”, Nico cut him out, smiling slightly as he leaned forward in his chair,“What are you willing to do if I answer that question?... because you are in no position to bargain for anything… in case you were wondering if you did at all… I’m not going to let you go… so save me some energy and don’t try anything funny.”, Nico said, smiling that smile of his again.Will stared at him hard for a few seconds before declaring his observations,“The teleporting that you did… does it have aftereffects? Does it make you weak or dizzy-”“I’m fine!”, Nico snapped. Yup, Will was right.Silence between them.Then Will said, trying to lighten the mood, “You know I can probably beat you in this state… you’re not quite yourself”. Nico smirked in response, tilting his head sideways, not breaking eye contact with Will and drew out something from the folds of his tunic. He was still wearing the brown tunic Will had given him, the Jedi knight reminisced, until Nico was holding his lightsaber in front of him, business end pointing at Will’s chest.Then, it struck Will with the gory realization of what he was facing.The way his breath hitched and came out shallow, eyes roaming down to look at Nico’s lightsaber wasn’t because he was scared of the weapon in itself. It was because Will realized that there was really nothing for him to be scared of about it at all.Nico’s lightsaber didn’t have a Khyber crystal.A little surprising that Nico hadn’t come to realize it himself as of yet.But this was a revelation Will had come to realize on board the Discord. Nico wasn’t exactly an orthodox Sith as such. His dark side tendencies just weren’t quite as evil enough.Meanwhile, Nico was saying, “I don’t know… I suppose that was a better response from you than ‘Are you fine? Do you need help standing’ or… ‘here’s some pathetic tasting medicine that’ll help you feel better… I promise you’ll be fine, I’m a medic, it’s what I do!’”, he intoned in a poor imitation of Will himself.“I don’t sound like that”, Will pointed out rather sullenly, secretly glad the conversation was taking a different turn.“Oh! you do all the time…”, Nico drawled uncharacteristically, waving his un-ignited lightsaber in front of him. Will had supposed it took a lot of energy to teleport two people even for a young man like Nico himself. As his eyes focused on Nico’s face, he could see the shiny beads of sweat on Nico’s forehead and that the Sith boy seemed to lean back in his chair looking quite exhausted.Not surprisingly, Will’s first instinct was to ask Nico if he genuinely needed help, but he shut up. He’d just been mocked at for the same thing and decided not to take the instinctive, caring mom-friend role that came to him naturally.He was going to be the rude-ass bitchy friend, this night was going to be history. Will Solace on an alien Outer Rim planet, being non-conventionally and intentionally rude to a rather good looking Sith boy. He was also secretly glad that his companion had put away his lightsaber at some point of time, it wasn’t in his hand anymore.“You sound drunk”, he tried.Nico’s pale forehead creased with a sharp frown and he replied, slightly bashful, “I told you I didn’t drink!”.Will rolled his eyes, finally deciding to get to the point, “Why did you bring me here if you have no intentions of setting me free?”.Nico’s frown deepened, “I thought you wanted to know about your friend…”, he said. Will chided himself for trying to open up a line of small talk. Turns out, Nico wasn’t as woozy as he’d judged him to be. He’d still kept track of their earlier exchange. “Yes, I did, but I’d like to hear why you brought me here first”, Will said. What he got as a reply was something Will hadn’t expected he’d be told, at all.“After a round of consideration, I came to a conclusion about these… Mandalorian sieges. Rhetorically, I realize that are a few things we can actually do to stop it before it spins out of control and blows up into something bigger than what it is now.”. Wait we? Will’s heart picked up pace for no apparent reason at all. Nico continued,“You’re here because you hoped to hold back the Mandalorians from what you think might be an opening campaign for a full scale invasion of the Republic… correct?”, Will nodded affirmative. It was why his friends, himself and other knights and padawans had answered Revan’s passionate call and rebelled against the High Council to join the Republican navy out to the farthest Jedi post in the Outer Rim, Suurja.“Then, I believe we might have a common agenda on our hands.”, the Sith boy added.When Will only looked back at him impassively, Nico did the unexpected and continued to speak in what Will thought was probably the longest the latter had ever engaged in conversation with him in, “Sith Empire have a big hand to play in the crusade Mandalore the Ultimate has, raging about…”. Will didn’t respond, silently encouraging Nico to continue. He didn’t know where this conversation was going, but he had to hear Nico out.“I don’t know how far into or to what extent they plan to encroach Republican space… but even right now the Mandalorians are arming themselves, earning small victories as they creep into the Outer Rim reaches of the Galaxy. Soon, they will arrive as they did on Suurja… on Jebble, Tarnith and Vanquo and eventually…”“Taris”, Will whispered. Nico didn’t reply to it, the silence that momentarily hung between them, enough to let Will know he was right.“Your Republic will soon lose its only outstretched hand in the Outer Rim. Once Taris has fallen, the Sith won’t remain hidden anymore, they will quietly start their own planned occupation of the planet City and use the Mandalorians as a battering ram against any of the Republican forces that dare to venture outside of their core world nests and into the farther reaches of the Galactic rim…”. Nico took a breather for a second before continuing to plough on,“Whatever’s brewing in the Outer Rim right now, has the potential to quickly escalate into a full scale war… but, Sith Empire are still reeling from the after effects of the ill ended clan wars… they have no definite leader, no force to follow… and if they remain that way, maybe they won’t be able to take hold of Taris or progress much beyond that to actually inflict harm on the Republic, which I believe might be one end of the string. If somehow the Mandalorians are stopped or just slowed down a little… it could put an end to the ambitions of a few high ranked Sith Lords… or a least postpone them by a few years…”.Will picked up from there, voice quiet in spite of the music, the chatting and various other noises buzzing all about them in the Cantina,“And, if the Republic finally started paying actual attention to the Outer Rim and make perhaps, a treaty of sorts with the Tarisian Government, then there is hope that this loose charade of the Mandos could end and just die down as it is? A series of small skirmishes that tried to breach the Outer reaches of Republican territory… and failed.”.Nico’s previous expression of an engaged concentration had broken at some point, replaced by a look of disapproval,“There’s one thing you’re wrong about”, he said, black hair falling onto his eyes and hiding them from the Jedi knight’s view as he leaned forward. Will raised a questioning eyebrow, silently urging Nico to explain why he thought so about the Jedi’s own opinion.Nico said, “The Tarisian Government… they will lick just about anybody’s boots if it means they get to continue living in their little bubbles of ignorant fantasy while the rest of the Galaxy burns out all around them. Also, think about it… look around at this planet…”, he gestured tiredly to all the patrons of the watering hole. Will let his own eyes wander in response,“I know you haven’t been outside of your cell and seen Taris, but mark my words… what I saw was only the façade of a planet whose civilization is enjoying the last of its resources as the economy lies in death throes… by an approximate estimation, I can say that this world will be well beyond ruins in less than two hundred years… if the Mandalorians or the Sith do not get to have their hands on it that is… because if that happens, the fall will be faster still.”.The lapse in conversation between the two men didn’t feel quite as awkward to Will now as he bent his head and considered all that his Sith acquaintance had said in the last few minutes. He hadn’t had such a heavy conversation with anyone other than himself for a while now and it was demanding all of his brain power.When he looked up at Nico, the Sith was leaning back on his chair again. As Will looked, the dark haired boy lifted his right hand and beckoned someone over with a small flick of his wrist. When the Jedi turned around to look at where Nico had gestured over to, he found no one headed their way.A moment later, someone was right behind Will, nearly making him jump as he addressed Nico with a small bow and spoke in a gravelly voice,“Good evening Sir… do you have a higher stake to place on the next match?”, asked the short male Cathar who’d made his way over from somewhere in the farther end of the Cantina.Nico frowned lightly and considered the Cathar’s words for a moment before scratching his perfectly smooth chin with a hand absently and said, “Yes, but before that… I believe Ice is up for another round?”.Will had no idea what in the Galaxy that was supposed to mean. He gazed rather dumbly between Sith and attendee, hoping to make sense out of something and failing to.“Yes Sir. It’s what she said, she’s open to any contender for another match”. Were they talking about the fighting ring in the middle of the Cantina? Will’s brows furrowed in further consternation. Ice was a person?“Good… I place three hundred on this one right here”, Nico said, pointing to Will himself with a lazy tilt of his chin.Will’s eyes widened in realization.“Take him into the ring and the remove the restraints… he’s not trained, but he can fight…”, were the last words Nico di Angelo said before surprisingly strong arms gripped Will from behind his back and he was involuntarily led towards the glimmering force shield which covered the fighting arena he’d noticed earlier.When he struggled to turn around and yell at Nico about the utter blasphemy of this, he met a pair of very amused dark eyes from behind a mop of unruly black hair sitting upon one of the most handsome faces Will had ever seen. As Nico’s lips quirked up in a slow smile, Will thought to himself bitterly, even though that smile was probably one of the Galaxy’s rarest, most precious and beautiful sights, it definitely wasn’t worth putting him into a death match against the force knew whom, for spectators at a Cantina.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Nico di Angelo was having fun. Yet another unfathomable event that went unrecorded in Galactic History.Throughout the cosmic timeline of events that had revolutionized the Galaxy, there have been many instances of colossal importance that beings, sentient and otherwise have turned a blind eye towards. The very beginning of the Galactic timeline with recorded events in the form of manuscripts and papyrus were geographically restricted sources of History. For a long time, the various worlds on which life had formed, be it carbon based or anything else, be it Oxygen supported or Methane and Sulphur based, be it sentient, semi-sentient, non-sentient or simply plant life, had all grown in total isolation. Needless to explicitly state, as implied previously, that they simply did not know (as a result of lack of sufficient technological advancement) that they had neighbors in their inter-Galactic vicinity who were just like them.It is today, a widely accepted fact that the Galactic core worlds were the first to evolve into a wholly self-proclaimed civilization that space-fared outside of their home stellar systems in quests for other worlds either to occupy and colonize, or simply to find and learn from.And as history began to be written and recorded on holorecords later on, humans of the core world began their rule by virtue of populous dominance and established themselves under a fancy banner called as the United Galactic Republic.All was fine as long as the closed knit systems of the Galactic core co-operated with one another. They built Thrantor, the old Republican Capital and developed it into an eyesore inducing buzz magnet for everyone who wasn’t a resident. The core worlds traded and interacted in a healthy way, exchanging languages, cultures, beings and eventually even genes.But, the turning point in history was probably the invention of hyperspatial travel. It now made travelling from one point in the Galaxy to another almost instantaneously as ships now defied everything physicists had previously believed Physics would never let them live down, if achieved.Then came the great era of un-urbanized colonialization. Around the time period shortly post-hyperspatial travel’s invention, the rather impulsive and boisterous explorers of the Republic decided to adopt colonialization as a sport. They took men, women, supplies to last for years and a lot of optimism and excitement and jumped through space time to unknow co-ordinates of the farthest, unexplored reaches of the Galaxy.Needless to say, not all the explorer groups that went out came back wholly or managed to find beautifully untouched worlds in pristine conditions with a welcoming party bearing exotic refreshment drinks for potential settlers who passed by. Ships exploded while mid jump, some of them had faulty hyper drives that just never managed to come out of their programmed jumps. Some ended up in deep space and were lost forever, exhausting their supplies until they eventually perished of hunger or disagreement over who would handle the exorbitantly enormous amount of laundry that had piled up.While those that did find unmapped planets went through an assortment of rather interesting outcomes, some of them were shot out of existence by the home population when they pulled into the orbit of said planet. Some ships perished while making their way through heavily ionized and stormy atmospheres.A very few crew managed to land on the exotic worlds they’d discovered and even did some exploring. But at this point, it is important to note that not a lot of documentation of any of these seemingly impossible events is available today because the settlers on the new worlds might have died out of exposure, lack of adaptation or simply been killed by the non-sentient local-ites.Taris had been one of those very few worlds that hadn’t put up a hostile welcome to its human settlers that had arrived many, many thousands of years ago.Even so, Taris hadn’t risen to become the jewel of the Outer Rim in just a few years after its discovery. It took hundreds of years for it to reach its current state of existence, passing phase by phase of rebuilding the highest nests for the human dominated Government and its elite accolades. Taris’s many layers included the promised lands over which now lay the sub-levels no one ventures into, Lower City, Middle City and Upper City. Hopefully the planet’s existing population would all either leave or completely perish before the necessity to build another layer came by.But, even in the case of Taris, whose initial settlement upon, colonialization and extensive urbanization had all been painstakingly documented by its founders and creators, there are still a great many things which remain a mystery about the planet.For instance, the invention of the infamous Tarisian Ale is an absolutely baffling (till date) and unsolved mystery. Many conspiracy theorists have debated about how it came into existence and have arrived at many different and bizarrely creative ideas so far. Another example would be the existence of the Promised lands beneath the sub-terrenean levels of Lower City. Most would dismiss the story of its existence as a myth, but there are many human natives who claim to be descendants of the original settlers and believe that the Promised Lands indeed are real, and that someday, someone would accidentally stumble upon them and it would be re-discovered.Today was a day of similar magnitude, for an event of great importance went unrecorded in history, an act of great Galactic erring on the part of all life that existed.Nico di Angelo was having fun. And no one besides Will Solace knew.Nico watched as Will struggled against the Cathar attendee who was escorting the Jedi knight most ungraciously, to the Dueling Ring. The latter had strong arms and a jeering crowd on his side to help subdue Will’s physical protests and soon, the blond man was thrust into the ring created by the glimmering force field at the very center of the Cantina.Nico turned around towards the bar counter, still seated atop his high stool and gestured with his hand for the bartender to come over.The last two hours had been enough of an incentive for the nosy barman to understand that even though Nico was new to Taris and the Cantina, he was no stranger to shady dealings that happened at such uncanny places. As the man quickly made his way over to where the young Sith Lord was perched, his eyes now held the look he reserved only for the most renowned and established patrons of the place. A look of complete and utter subservience.“Would you like to have something to drink sir?”, Nico was asked politely.“Get me the most vintage Ale of yours that you have in stock…”, the young Sith said. The bartender positively beamed. Nico was glad he didn’t bat his eyelashes at him.“Of course sir! Anything for our most esteemed customer!”, and was gone in a flash. Nico smirked to himself after the bartender hurried off to fix his drink as he turned around to look at Will’s status.As expected, Will was standing at the inner edge of the arena, attempting to break free through the small group of Ajur the Hutt’s men, who would have none of his reasoning about how he had been tricked into coming here. The blond man yelled something, receiving a hard shoving straight at his chest, pushing him right back into the ring. Ice wasn’t anywhere to be seen yet, which made Nico frown, but when he looked across the Cantina to the golden bathtub like arrangement atop of which sat a huge, disgusting creature that looked like a bloated, half mottled space worm, he got a disapproving look.Ajur the Hutt wasn’t having any of this nonsense and the scene Will was creating was causing quite a sensation among the audience as much as it wasn’t getting any bets placed or earning the Hutt Lord a profit.A rather elaborate gesture accompanied by some very dissatisfied grunting from the Hutt told Nico that he was probably being summoned by the owner of the Cantina. He got up with a sigh and headed over before any of the Hutt’s attendees was sent to get him.“What is this? I didn’t expect you to let me down like this, boy…”, the creature said in Huttese. Nico’s own Huttese wasn’t very good, but he tried his best to comprehend the Hutt’s words from everything he remembered Bianca had taught him. She’d always been the better scholar between them both.Bianca. The thought of his sister made him wistful inside, wondering if she was worried that he hadn’t come back for a little more than five standard days since he’d left Dromund last time. But, Bianca was no stranger to Nico’s untold disappearances, even if she was weary of them. She’d be fine. She’s probably understand.“I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for his poor behavior…”, Nico replied in Basic, “I told you he isn’t trained… but I tell you again, he can fight. He’s going to put on a good show for you…”.“I don’t care about how good the show is from a technical point of view… he’s already making a show there. It is the money I get from it that is really of concern to me. If you cannot deliver that, I suggest you step down and take back your slave.” Ajur said, moving his huge tail and readjusting his position to make himself more comfortable in his bathtub.Nico met the Hutt Lord’s big, watery eyes and smirked, “I don’t make empty promises… I will deliver exactly what you expect from a fight.” Then, turning around to look at the fighting arena around which still stood the Hutt’s men, trying to get a hysteric Jedi to stay inside of the Dueling Ring, he said,“Get ready to make the most out of a single fight you have made in a while… up the stakes as much as you dare to, Hutt. You’ll regret it if you don’t”.If the Hutt replied to the subtle taunting, Nico didn’t stay back to catch the words in guttural Huttese, starting to make his way towards the ring himself, just as a courteous voice stopped him,“Your order of one vintage Tarisian Ale Sir, I hope you enjoy it…”. “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to another round at the notoriously infamous Taris Dueling Ring! This evening’s third match is going to be an interesting one indeed… why you ask? Well, because one of the contestants is giving it another shot after her first fight earlier this evening. A fight which didn’t go all that well for her… Everybody, let’s welcome the woman with steel in her bones and Ice in her veins… You know her! You love her! ICE!!!”, the announcer yelled out dramatically into his microphone. The crowd cheered wildly, edging closer to get a better look as a woman with pale blond hair stepped into the Dueling Ring and waved at the Cantina Patrons.Many of the spectators were cheering loudly and chanting her name and Will Solace had no doubt that she was obviously a local favorite even if she had lost her previous match. He breathed out forcedly through his mouth and set a straight face as he remembered the last words Nico had said to him before pushing him back into the Dueling Ring for good.“Do you want to lose Trell like you lost your sister and the other Jedi…?”.So here was Will, having thickly swallowed Nico’s bitterly sensitive incentive, squaring himself to try and win over some fighting club contestant called Ice in a one on one challenge with no weapons of his own.“And up against her is a new entry to the Ring… a contender you have never seen before, someone who is sponsored by our mysterious and rather over-confident patron, who goes by the name the Ghost King…”, the announcer hissed. A chill dropped over the crowd as the patrons collectively ‘Ooohed’.Will frowned, Nico was puppeteering quite a show on his own, wasn’t he? And Will was allowing himself to be his main prop. Another incident to add to a lifetime full of embarrassment and failure.“… place your bets on the contestants now dear spectators… and place them carefully, because looks can be very deceiving…”, and the woman, Ice was attacking him.Will focused on his opponent, dodging the first round of shots as he rolled out of the way to his left, the shots falling wide behind him. When he stopped and got up from his crouch, Ice was already reloading and getting ready for the next volley. Without breaking momentum, he stood up and concentrated with all his might on his opponent, willing the force to respond to him.The invisible dude on the invisible mic somewhere yelled, “There we go! Ice has her turbo-matic set and firing away at maximum intensity as opposed to her rather dodgy opponent who doesn’t even seem to be in possession of any kind of weapon at all…”.Just as her shots left his opponent’s blaster, Will stretched out his hands and telekinetically pushed. The woman was thrown backwards, hitting the energy field hard and slumping down to her knees. Her shots went wide and missed the Jedi Knight.However, these had only slowed her down, not stopped her. Because next thing he knew, Ice was back up even more determined to see him killed and the Jedi Knight having discovered he didn’t have much energy left after his using of the force. He doubted he would be able to do that again as effectively.The three fuzzy meals he’d had while at the Vulkar’s Base was not anywhere near enough to support a nearly starving body whose last decent meal had been packed rations when they’d first landed on Suurja three days back.Will was beginning to regret calling on the force so early as he tried to steady himself on his feet, doing his best to ignore the commentary and the screaming coming from outside the ring,“And LO! has the Ghost King proven a point. It seems that Ice didn’t see she was up against a space wizard! All the betting stakes shall now be in very confused hands indeed!”.As Ice got back up onto her feet, she seemed to consider Will from across the arena. Maybe the commentator’s words had had an effect on her and she was now re-assessing her enemy. Maybe she’d decided that she didn’t want to fight a Space Wizard.“Look, I don’t want to fight you… it’s not what I’m here for. This glory and the money mean nothing to me”, Will said to her, hoping she could understand Galactic Basic and not just Tarisian.She replied in a clear, alien-accented Basic much to Will’s disappointment, “On the contrary… they mean everything to me!”, and she was charging him with a vibroblade she drew out of a compartment of the armor she wore.Will stood his ground, waiting for his opponent to get within striking range, senses narrowing down to his immediate surroundings, blocking out the cheering and commentary. Mentally riffling through his combat inventory for moves which wouldn’t hurt as much as disarm or discourage.Ice came in with a forward thrust aimed at his midsection, Will ready to dodge. As the Jedi knight stepped to his left, Ice began swinging her blade back towards him, hoping to open a cut in his side, but Will had anticipated that as well.Blocking her outstretched arm with his own right arm, he stepped forward and into her space, hoping to lock her legs from behind and make her fall, but Ice swung back clockwise, aiming for Will’s exposed back and coming down with a stab to finish the fight.In an instantaneous decision which could have caused him his life, had he been mistaken, Will turned and rammed with his full strength into Ice’s exposed torso, making the latter lose balance and fall to her side.As Will’s grip on the force retracted, both opponents regained footing and distanced themselves across the arena floor, each studying the other wearily.Just as Will was beginning to get a hold of himself, steadying his breathing, Ice whipped her blaster out once more, taking square aim at him, hoping to eliminate the Jedi from a safe distance. Caught by momentary surprise and cursing himself for forgetting that Ice still had her blaster with her, the Jedi braced himself, muscles tensed and ready for a last minute dodge as the shots came, the crowd jeered loudly, yelling for Ice to end the match already. Just as the lasers were about to hit him square in his chest, Will attempted to move his legs as fast as he could to get out of range, but found that they were glued to the floor.The shots were right at his face before there was a flicker of darkness, now familiar, followed by a momentary drop in temperature all around him, goosebumps forming on his skin, an oddly familiar sensation. Then, just as Will shut his eyes, bracing for inevitable impact and death, silence.When he cracked open his eyes, he saw a thin film of darkness surrounding him from head to toe, completely enveloping him. The rotating shadows had saved Will from Ice’s direct blaster fire and he was very much intact and alive.The firing had stopped and through the swirling cocoon about him, he could hear the crowd going nuts at the sight, the screaming slightly muffled due to the thin film protecting him. Then, as if a wind had blown their way, the shadows surrounding Will vanished like clouds of wispy smoke and he was standing exactly at the same spot, completely unharmed and Ice looking at him incredulously.Will’s eardrums might as well have torn because of all the screaming and yet, he could hear the announcer above all the pandemonium,“WHAT DID WE JUST SEE INSIDE THE RING! THE MAN IS STILL ALIVE!!”.Will was pretty amazed too. Even Ice looked stunned enough to stop firing for a few moments.Frustrated and more determined than ever, she quickly regained her composure and reloaded her blaster, walking forward this time, calm and poise completely gone, replaced by a single intent. To see Will fall.At that moment, something caught the blond boy’s eye in the crowd and he chanced a momentary look behind Ice. For, just outside of the limits of the glimmering shield covering the Ring stood a very smug looking Nico di Angelo, eyes alight with mischief. Traces of a smile on his lips.He’s having fun, trying to use me as his puppet, Will thought sourly before quickly turning back to Ice, who had her blaster aimed at him squarely, again.The next few moments were a blur, Ice’s blaster spit out a round of shots, Will stayed put. Then, just as the shots got within maiming distance of his body, Will’s right arm came to life of its own and blocked the incoming shots with a swipe through the air, leaving a trail of darkness in its wake.If the crowd had screamed for the defensive orb of shadows that had saved Ice’s opponent last time, they were howling now. Even if Will made it out of this match alive, he was definitely going to lose his hearing.“BY the mother of holy Galaxies!! What kriffing display of sorcery is this?? Ice’s opponent just blocked a round of blaster shots with his bare hand!!”, the commentator yelled. The crowd was beyond impressed, Ice was not.“URGGHH”, she growled and threw aside her blaster, drawing the vibroblade again. With no waste of time, she charged Will, weapon held with steely determination and a murderous expression painted on her face. Will scrunched his brows, wondering what other trick Nico had up his sleeve this time and braced himself, legs planted apart as his rival came barreling down the Ring’s other end.Ice thrust her vibroblade straight at Will’s chest, her attacks reckless and unplanned unlike the previous time. The latter side stepped the move quickly and turning around in the process as he regained his balance. The next move was a predictable swing to her right just like last time, as she hoped to cut through Will’s torso before he recovered, but the Jedi saw that move coming and quickly danced away.Will had hoped he’d get a breather as Ice stopped to gather her own bearings, but was nearly caught unguarded as the female fighter continued moving her blade intentionally in a powerful upper cut that could have split a less agile opponent into two neat halves from bottom-up.Will threw all caution to the wind and blindly leaped away from the attack. If the announcer was saying something now, he couldn’t hear the words anymore, just like how the audience’s shouting had dulled down to a mere background disturbance in his head. Adrenaline and Cortisol rocketed through his veins, clouding rational thought and activating his instinctual ‘fight or flight’ survival mechanism. Now was a good time for Nico to intervene again and pull a fancy trick, if he was going to at all. But Will figured that this was probably more personally entertaining for the Sith Lord than any trick for the audience that he could pull on. Will forced himself to focus once again, on his immediate threat, trying to override his body’s hormone driven responses.Ice jumped right back in with a series of shallow moves that were far from perfect fencing maneuvers, but were effective in getting to back Will up all the way to the very end of the Ring. A thrust, which Will bent and avoided, a swipe to his left which he barely missed as he jumped to his right, a back-slash which carried enough power to kill in a single blow at which Will threw himself backward at the floor, the hand he stretched out for balance behind him, touching the force field that ringed the arena perimeter.Nico! Will screamed internally, feeling the last of his energy depleting.Just as Ice towered over him, a malice filled expression on her face, she brought her vibroblade downwards in a fatal blow when Will sense the now all too familiar darkness envelop him and felt his right fist suddenly grow intolerably cold, black tinting the peripherals of his vision.Thinking back, Will would describe the next few moments as if he’d seen them in a dream as he found his arm directed in a solid punch towards his opponent’s stomach, bone impacting durasteel armor and sending the fighter woman flying across the arena as he got on his own knees. Will staggered to his feet, panting and dazed as he held up his own fist to see.It was in a tight ball, skin turned completely black and shadowy wisps of smoke emanating from his fist like steam from the surface of a hot metal. As he glanced at his opponent who was slowly standing up from where she’d landed, several feet away from Will’s own position, he noticed that the woman’s armor was smoking from where he’d landed his punch, just like his hand. A lot of things felt odd right then. Ice should have blacked out from that punch, or at least from impact as she fell, but there she was, standing up and on her feet, facing Will with an unearthly look on her face.She’d lost her vibroblade as she’d been thrown back by Will’s punch and she was now devoid of both her weapons. This finally put her on equal ground with Will, excluding his force sensitivity.Tired and unarmed and eager for the match to be done, Will got on his feet once more and readied himself for the final volley. The betting must be touching crazy heights, Will absently thought as he surveyed Ice who stood as still as a statue at the other side of the fighting ring. She seemed to be taking to the pain pretty well even if she did look exhausted and completely drained in her battered body armor.This fight had gone on for too long and needed to end. Will decided mentally. Even though a rational part of his consciousness reminded him that Nico was somehow able to control the Jedi’s body and his movements, he refused to believe that he had no freedom over choosing when this farce ended.As he stood himself up straight once more and balled his fist, for the first time in his life taking an offensive against a common, harmless citizen, Will thought to himself as he ran towards Ice for a final striking blow.‘I’d be damned, but this thing has got to end.’As he came within striking range, Will threw all his rebelliousness, sadness, anger, loss and desperation into the blow and went straight for Ice’s face.Thinking back, if the blow had connected, Will didn’t know what might have happened. Ice could have died. It was a possibility.But what actually happened was that Ice moved much too fast for a human being, much too fast for a non-force sensitive, much too fast for someone so exhausted that Will’s out-flung right arm passed through thin air, completely missing its target, just as he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head.But as the golden haired, blue eyed boy crumpled down to the floor in the next few moments, he knew that the unconsciousness that overtook his thought process wasn’t because of the blow itself, but because of the source of an enveloping smoky vortex that wrapped around his brain, forcing him to black out. When Will finally came around, the first thing he noticed was the bright light he could sense behind his closed eyelids. And as much as Will loved sunlight and its magical properties on any day, he really wished it would stop shining down upon him as hard right then.He registered the soreness in his muscles as recollections of his fight in the Cantina surfaced as coherent thoughts brushed aside the lingering drowsiness. In spite of the fact that his head felt like someone was trying to pry open his cranium with a pickaxe, he knew whose face he was going to wake up to.But, as he sat up and blinked groggily in the daylight with no company at all, disappointment flooded the synapses of Will’s brain.A strong wind was blowing from behind him and his body felt partly warm from the exposure to the Tarisian starlight but slightly cold because of the cool breeze that was blowing about him, causing goosebumps to form on his skin. In only his old tattered tunic and ripped trousers, he was exposed to the weather, who knew how long he’d been here like this? As he groggily got up onto his feet, his right hand automatically heading to massage his own aching temples, Will looked around at his location.He appeared to be at quite a height, judging by the closely looming peaks of the many other tall durasteel structures which would have appeared to be groping the skies from Middle City, now almost at eye level for the Jedi knight.Staggering a few feet forward and after one sudden, convulsive vertigo attack following his peak over the protective railing at the edge, the fair haired boy knew he was on top of one of the many Upper City towers on Taris.Panicky as though his peek had been, he had to admit to himself that the momentary view had been breathtaking as such. Maybe after he got a good grip on himself, he’d be able to take a steadier, longer look at Taris spread out staggeringly beautiful below him. It was the first time he was out in the open on Taris, at daytime.Had Nico left him here? Will thought it likely, because there seemed to be no other possible answer to that question. And it was also very much like the black haired Sith Lord to leave before Will had even regained consciousness, much less leave behind a note saying ‘Sorry for being a jerk yesterday, as recompense, I’ll let you go’.Will honestly didn’t know what to make of all that had happened at the Cantina yesterday. A part of him chided himself for thinking Nico would be by his side when he woke up. How stupid.Memories from the Cantina resurfaced and Will remembered Nico telling him about the plans of Sith Empire, the Mandalorian sieges of the Outer Rim. Of wanting to put an end to the crusades with Will’s help. Then, the dueling ring and the Sith Lord’s incentive about information regarding Trell. It had all been straight out of one of those really lame holodrama series. Will hadn’t ever thought would possibly happen to him.Then, there was the fight against Ice. It was all strange, how Nico appeared to have helped Will stay afloat and even saved him from certain death multiple times, aiding the Jedi knight with his own dark tricks. Then, the end of the match, when Will was certain he’d deliberately been made to pass out and lose, no doubt.If Nico has sponsored and bet on Will, why would he make him lose?None of it made any sense to him. Will supposed Nico had other motives behind his actions he simply hadn’t disclosed to Will, using the Jedi knight as one of his many inventory implements.Needless to say, Will felt used and frustrated.He frowned. This line of thought was strange and disturbing to the Jedi Knight. Yet, here he was, going from having woken up with the reassuring feeling of seeing Nico again to feeling like a rag doll in the expert hands of a Master puppeteer in just a few minutes following his realizations of the events from the previous evening.Sighing and raking his hands through his hair, he looked about the desolate rooftop of the tower he stood on before taking a deep breath and heading towards the only way down – a small opening with a steel staircase that led into the building from the terrace, determined to take a look inside before plotting his next course of action. Arriving at the highest landing of the building he’d awoken on top of, Will found the floor unsurprisingly deserted. It looked like what Will had anticipated it would look like. Tiled flooring, full-scape tinted glass windows, cubicles of durasteel in a neat row along a sparsely furnished isle that ran in a circumambulatory passageway about the whole floor area. What was surprising was there were no beings in sight at the workstations, the see through windows or at the caf machine beside a few droopy potted plants (he couldn’t recognize) at the opposite end to the landing he’d arrived at. Will sighed and did a nice stretch before heading towards the caf machine.Thoughts began formulating with the practiced ease of adapting to a new situation and improvising it as his Temple training kicked in. For starters, Will wasn’t sure if this was indeed the next morning after the night Nico had smuggled him out of Black Vulkar captivity. Surely, he couldn’t have been asleep for more than twelve hours after that blackout now could he? It was broad daylight now, and judging by the position of the Tarisian parent star, it was pre-noon.He had to formulate a plan to get to the Vulkar’s base and get Trell out of there. Nico had withheld information about her at the Cantina, barely letting Will know she was alive and in captivity for the moment, but there was no telling with the Sith Lord. He could have lied just as easily as he could have gone back to hurt Trell. The Jedi knight also doubted Nico might have set his companion free like he had Will, it was highly unlikely. But whatever other information Will might have hoped Nico would give him after the fight was for no avail now, as Nico had left Will’s company.Will wondered if he’d see the Sith Lord ever again and whether it will be with Nico having discovered his missing Khyber crystal. He sighed. It was better that they had parted ways. The last thing he needed on an alien Outer Rim planet while trying to rescue a friend from captivity with no weapon of his own, was a Sith Lord up his back about a grudge over theft.But none of that changed the fact that Will still missed his miserable company. Last night, (if it had been last night) Will had almost believed that Nico had meant well when trying to explain how he wanted to put an end to the Mandalorian sieges for the better. Sith or not, his intentions were good. He wanted the skirmishes at the Jebble-Vanquo-Tarnith line to subside and make sure the Mandalorians let the Galaxy be.Will had admired his ideology and had felt inclined to help because it was the exact reason Revan and the Jedi under him had come out all the way to Suurja for. Nico di Angelo wanted to do good, and he had sounded like he’d needed Will’s help. Even though Will hadn’t agreed to help Nico that night, he had most certainly decided with all his will that he’d lend the Sith boy his support for it.Then, the turd had forced Will into a fighting ring against an armed veteran fighter woman who wanted nothing else but to see Will’s head roll on the sand. He’d barely made it out alive in his exhausted state and completely at Nico’s mercy.Which the Sith boy had shown very little of.That was just as much Will would let anyone, lest someone who wasn’t even a friend yet, get to a level of, before blowing his top and deciding it wasn’t worth it.There was no way Nico could worm his way into Will’s heart’s solid defenses again. He could try with a battering ram for all that Will cared and he’d keep the doors firmly closed, drawbridge raised and unyielding, gangplanks burned down and moats filled with ravenously hungry alligators all around. The alligators would all be made to starve unless Sith Lords named Nico di Angelo happened to be wandering around in the vicinity of their still spiteful Master’s iron fortress of a heart. They’d even be trained to yap at the very mention of the name.Realizing that he was getting side-tracked again, Will shook his head as he surveyed the caf machine in front of him. Looked normal enough like the ones back at home, though the signs on the different labels above the various switches and levers were in the preferred Tarisian Outer Rim tongue that Will couldn’t read. He’d just have to fiddle about until he hit the right set of controls to get what he wanted. His growling stomach seemed just about as hungry as those alligators he’d need to guard that moat. He’d figure something out.Soon, after some intense cursing, fiddling about and kicking the machine, the familiar aroma of the Galaxy’s favorite morning beverage filled the air and Will’s caffeine deprived brain kick started itself back to life. Thoughts flowed more freely and Will found himself coming to a basic plan with next steps on what to subsequently do.Top priority was finding Trell. She was probably still under Black Vulkar captivity. Will just prayed they weren’t hurting her to know how he’d escaped. The last thing he wanted on his conscience was his only surviving friend to suffer because he followed a Sith assassin around like a leashed dog.And this meant finding the base of the Black Vulkars, the place he had been a captive at himself, until the arrival of his unexpected messiah with his dark deliverance. While he was at it, he should also probably find his own lightsaber and Trell’s before leaving. Even though he didn’t often use his weapon, it was still something that belonged to him. His only possession worth anything other than the clothes he wore.Then, they’d have to sneak out undetected and get the hell out of this planet and to Republican space as quickly as they could and contact Revan.Revan.They’d gone so offtrack from their primary mission at this point, that Will wondered if it still made any sense at all to get back to it. Had Revan found out that the Jedi had all been taken captive on Suurja by the Mandalorian Commander Rohlan Dyre? Maybe he’d gone back to the nearest Republican outpost to get reinforcements and rescue the captive force sensitives. But, how would he know where to look?Nico, for all that he had done to Will had still provided him with vital information about the Mandalorians and their intentions with the captives they’d taken on Suurja.Demagol hadn’t been a pleasant person to hear being described.Will could only begin to imagine how he might be to experience close up as a captive. The very thought made shivers run down the Jedi knight’s spine.How could Revan find the crazy scientist’s base on his own? The Republic probably didn’t even have that intel. If Will could get to them, he could provide them with that information, it would aid in their rescue.A very small part of his mind prompted to Will how the greater good would be to leave Taris first to find Revan and lend them the valuable intel he had from Nico’s words. No. The rest of him decided.He’d lost his sister and Jorn, he wasn’t going to lose his only remaining friend as well. Trell got highest priority. And he was going to find her and bust her out of prison first.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
A few hours back.
Nico didn’t know if it was fate that had lead to Pick, his guide around Taris from earlier that day, showing him to the hangar where Brejik had said, “You’re ship is being kept for you”.He’d nodded his thanks and followed his over enthusiastic Snivvian guide with a sullen expression, hoping the latter would take a hint and shut up this time. After the Cantina fight, he hadn’t felt like doing anything else for the day, but when Brejik had offered to show him his ship, he couldn’t turn it down.“The ship is magnificent my Lord! You’re going to love it!”.“It’s just a ship… there’re nothing in it to love about”, Nico replied flatly.“Oh! But this one’s a beauty you’ll surely change your mind about, once you set eyes on her…”.“I don’t get personally attached to ships. Definitely not enough to use pronouns for them…”, nope, Pick didn’t pick the hint, “… they are merely vessels used for transportation and nothing more. They are both expendable and easily replaced as need requires”.“While I do have to agree with your rational line of thought, the Hyaline you’ll see… is bound to impress just about anyone who sets eyes on her.”, by then, Nico and his long snouted guide had arrived at the entryway to a dilapidated building stretching several stories upwards and across. A steel shutter covered in some of the most vile graffiti Nico had seen in his entire life, seemed to be the only way into and out of the building.Nico had been assured that Brejik had his ship ready and waiting for him, the minute they had touched down on Taris. Skeptical as he’d been, Nico had agreed to give Felt his Khyber crystal once he had seen the ship for himself and only agreed to let the Vulkars handle the two Jedi.However, soon after, the Weequay pirate had received an untimely urgent summons from someone he’d called “The capo” and had urged Nico to hand over the crystal even before he got to see the ship. When rebuked for forfeiting the deal they’d only just agreed to work with, Brejik had come to the rescue and assured Nico that he was no friend of Felt’s and also happened to know where his assets lay on Taris, as a means of threat. He further went on to mention that by disagreeing to hand over Felt’s payment, Nico was insulting the genuine-ity of Brejik’s word of his promised ship and star map.From all their previous interactions, Nico could also sense that the two men tolerated each other for no reason other than purely business. He had then, begrudgingly handed over his crystal as payment and agreed to see the ship later at the time. Felt had left with the most insincere string of promises of future meetings riddled with good business. Nico had not reflected the sentiment.And now, more than a day later, he was finally going to be delivered his askance.“… this ship used to be the possession of a really influential Tarisian businessman. You might have heard of him – Jervo Thalien…?”, apparently sensing Nico’s impatience and disinterest, the Snivvian shrugged and waddled over to the command panel at the entrance and entered the passcode which allowed access to the building.There was a low rumble and the shutters to the building began rolling up slowly, the dull glow of the neon streetlighting further down the lane the only source of illumination in the place, seeping into the widening opening.Before they could even completely retract, Nico was already ducking down through the rising shutter and striding purposefully into the building.The Snivvian followed a minute later and turned on a bank of halo lamps overhead as the darkness receded and the dusty hangar was illuminated by harsh bluish light.Inside, Nico was treated to the sight of a moderate sized ship, bigger than the Clairvoyance had been, but definitely Outer Rim make. It was a light shade of grey, looking like a medium size freighter with a forward cockpit built for a single man pilot. The exoskeleton sported an aerodynamic design for reduced friction and some modifications he could spot judging by the different coloring. Two missile turrets and hyperspeed boosters at the rear. Laterally fitted heavy duty turbo canons and what appeared to be an activated ray shield all around the ship.“The ship is-”, Pick began, but Nico turned around and gave him a look which must have melted steel, because the Snivvian shut up and nodded in understanding, sweat dripping down his forehead as he looked at the young man’s expression.Nico walked around the ship once before saying, “I’m going test it and see if your Master’s word was true about this ship… you are dismissed”. The ship was a good job overall and the star map was the most detailed one he’d set his eyes on yet. Nico could almost say he was impressed but he wasn’t.As a Sith, one shouldn’t ever be impressed. And as required by one of his stature, Nico di Angelo decided he wasn’t impressed with either items he now found himself in possession of. As he directed his ship to the higher levels of Taris, joining a fast moving lane, he absently thought of the pandemonium that might ensue at the Black Vulkar Base when they discovered that Will was missing later in the morning. Would Brejik send his men out scouting for the Jedi? Would he threaten Trell and ask her if she knew where he’d gone?He wanted to be there to watch the consternation on the faces of the men when that happened. He couldn’t miss out on that, also because he didn’t want to look suspicious of having had a part to play in the disappearance. Before his mind returned to dwell on thoughts of Will Solace, he urged his attention back to his newest possession.The interior of the ship was a simple cargo hold which the Sith boy figured could probably hold three or four Swoop bikes laid beside one another, colored a similar grey to the exterior. The upholstery in the cockpit was a relatively new black leather with no manufacturer’s insignia he could spot anywhere. The controls were all in Basic and just like any other Outer Rim vessel Nico had ever flown. A part of him longed for the familiar comfort of his father’s ship, the Clairvoyance which he’d come to inherit and eventually lost. But the Hyaline lived up to Brejik’s promise and flew smooth and sure through Tarisian traffic.Just as he decided to make a turn and head back to the base, he spotted something odd in the horizon to the East. It was still nighttime in the part of the planet he was on and the Eastern sky was still dark. But, in the darkness, two pairs of red streaks appeared to make their way through the Tarisian atmosphere.Knowing that the lights were definitely too orderly to be space debris or meteorites, Nico thickly swallowed the apprehension pooling in his gut.He’d known and expected this to happen soon, but not this soon.They were here, and whether or not if only in a small number, they had come.Sith Empire was here. It was easy enough to keep a visual of the ships as they descended into the Tarisian atmosphere in all their dark glory. Whether or not the local population were seeing this, Nico couldn’t tell. The sleeping planet was blissfully unaware as its future conquerors descended from the heavens, probably sending their first group of scouts out to test the waters, threaten a beurocrat or two, stab a couple of locals and cause mass hysteria and pandemonium. Just the average Sith’s day out.As Nico guided the Hyaline outside of the regular traffic lane and towards where the ships seemed to be headed, he ran an array of probable courses of action in his head.He could either go up and directly confront the party, arranging a personalized welcome for his kinsmen, or he could keep low and watch as things unfolded, gather information and just stick to the shadows.Feeling no more social than usual, Nico decided that silent observation was his game and flew his ship towards the tail of red the Sith vessels had left in the clouds.Judging by their heading, they were going to land in a large private hangar of sorts sitting in the middle of a sprawling estate that must have belonged to one of the big shots of the Local Government in Upper City, or maybe even a businessman. It made him curious as to who would be as insane enough to host the scouting party of Sith Empire.Realizing that he couldn’t maneuver the Hyaline into the hangars without being spotted or shot out of the air, Nico decided to land somewhere nearby and proceed on foot. He didn’t like the idea of ditching his new ship as much as he didn’t like delaying his return to the base of the Black Vulkars, but he had to know who was aboard those vessels and what their intent was.Landing on a dilapidated building’s top, assured that the darkness would be a good cover, Nico hopped out and perched on the edge of the roof, activating his face mask as he did so. The slick black metal spidered its way across his face, his new enhanced vision through the mask’s special binos, giving him a high resolution, magnified live feed of the happenings inside the estate.The two Sith ships had put down on the open field at designated landing areas, droid personnel rushing in for maintenance as their massive engines hummed in idle and eventually stopped. The vessels were identical Theta Class Fighters Nico knew belonged to high ranking Sith Militia Officers. Maybe even Lords in the close confidence of the Emperor.One of the them was named Eridanus, the other Cetus. He’d never seen these particular ships before, and hence couldn’t begin to guess the identity of their owners either. His memory provided nothing useful about them from all the years travelling with his father or the years under his previous Master. Either the ships were brand new, or very, very old.Distracted by trying to jog his memory for more information, he’d nearly missed the two parties that had stepped out of each ship and were being lead towards the closest group of buildings within the private property.A little bit of scanning around the place after failed attempts at trying to get a look at the faces of the three Sith who’d arrived, Nico concluded that this must be the estate of one certain individual he’d heard quite a lot about from Brejik.Someone he’d like to meet in person someday himself. Owner of Kang Estate - the property he was about to trespass. Davik Kang. After shadow travelling without incident into the safely hidden shadows of the building he’d seen the Sith party escorted into, Nico watched the droid sentries patrol the perimeter of the estate in regular intervals and looked around for a way to enter without having to worry about a correct passcode.Of the three Sith he’d seen enter the building, Nico hadn’t the faintest idea of their identities as he’d kept his force signature low to avoid even being accidentally discovered. Because of that, he couldn’t even properly tell where inside of the building his kinsmen were, or whether they were still in there at all.With a sigh, Nico realized he was overthinking and instead, dropped all planning, looking for the closest way to the top of the building from where he was. With luck, there wouldn’t be as many sentries on the roof as there were on the ground and he’d be able to find a way inside.With a deep breath, he called on the shadows once more and dissolved into a wisp of smoke, envisioning arriving on the nearest roof top. He’d been right about lesser number of sentries, but wrong about the ease of finding an opening. Davik Kang lived in a minimalist style building whose exterior consisted of dull grey durasteel cuboids of different dimensions and seemingly no pattern. Windows were almost indistinguishable from the rest of the elevation, not to mention there were no trap doors, no chimneys and definitely no access hatches with signs of entry.Standing up at a height, the Tarisian surface winds blowing about, Nico felt woozy from all the shadow travelling he’d done for the day. His mind wandered to Will Solace, whom he’d also teleported out of prison for kicks, a decision he hoped he wouldn’t come to regret. He absently wondered if Will might have regained his senses from after the fight yet.Chiding himself for getting distracted, the young Sith assassin returned his focus to the task at hand. Quickly deciding to use brute force this time, he dug into the folds of his robe for his lightsaber, hoping to cut his way through the metal on the roof top. Not exactly a good idea, considering he could trigger any alarms by his action, but he was quickly running out of options and could be missing out on a lot over the little tea party the Sith could be having with Kang.Just when he was about to ignite his weapon, he heard voices from a little below. Creeping up to the edge of the surface he was perched on, Nico tuned in the sharp microphones of his face mask, the helmet’s tech enhancing the voices engaged in conversation. As he watched, two men emerged on to an aesthetically lit stone pathway from inside the building beneath his vantage point.One of them wore a long dark cloak, the hood over his head. Sith. The other was a human male in his late middle age, a receding hairline of whitening grey and expensive Tarisian clothing. Their host, Davik Kang.“… do not know if Taris is worth the trouble of exposing our intents”, the Sith was saying. He had a smooth, low voice and spoke with deliberate precision as if Kang wouldn’t be able to understand if he spoke any faster. His accent didn’t sound like that of someone from Kaas City, it was slightly alien to Nico’s ears.“Taris will not show resistance My Lord… under the superfluous façade lies a crumbling economy and a fragile society fractured by economic divide”, Kang replied.“What are we to gain from, other than a strategic position here then?”.“Once Taris falls, taking its resource worlds will be easier than ever”, Kang replied. Nico knew he was talking about Jebble, Vanquo, Tarnith and Suurja. The worlds which were almost under Mandalorian conquest as such.“I did not ask for advice on our next course of action…”, the Sith said.“Apologies, My Lord…”, Kang replied, not very apologetically and remained quiet.“The siege will begin when, I cannot tell. But Sith Empire will send out more and more of its crusaders to occupy and establish influence on Taris. Whether or not we choose to use it for resources, or be done with it is something only time will tell…”. Nico didn’t know what to make of this. He’d been under the impression that Taris would simply be destroyed by a siege, a demonstration of power of the Sith Empire to send the Republic a simple message. We are coming for you next.But it seemed as if the Emperor had other things on his mind besides a direct frontal assault on the Republic.“Of course. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Taris will show no resistance… you are welcome here”. Absorbed in his own thought, Nico absently registered another presence approaching the duo.Soon, a third figure adorning a black cloak had stood himself beside the Sith talking to Kang.“The first site has been marked ready My Lord… I will proceed once you give word.” Nico liked the fact that the new guy payed Kang no heed whatsoever. Annoyance at being ignored, was visible on the Tarisian’s face even in the dim lighting.“Good. I want it done during nightfall. You have my word to commence”, the first Sith said. His acolyte bowed respectfully and retreated into the building, vanishing from Nico’s vision.Knowing that he wasn’t going to glean any new information if he stayed in Kang’s estate, Nico decided he had a better shot gathering information if he followed the acolyte Sith headed towards the ‘first site’, wherever that was.A few minutes later, Nico sat in the cockpit of the Hyaline, watching as a dark figure accompanied by an astromech droid got into a local speeder. The vehicle then took off into the night, unaware of the light class vessel trailing it into Lower City. Nico really began to appreciate the Hyaline when giving the nimble speeder chase through Tarisian aerial traffic at night time. The trick lay in putting enough distance between the speeder and himself, not losing visual and keeping to a traffic lane to not seem too suspicious.He also had no idea why there were so many civilian vehicles out at this time of the night, nevertheless helping him blend in and keep low. A luxury he wouldn’t have had if the traffic had been any less dense.The Sith quickly wove through traffic and took the transits to the lower levels, progressively going lower and lower, making Nico wonder if maybe he was headed to the base of the Black Vulkars. But the speeder eventually made a dash for the industrial zone and Nico sighed in relief.Convinced that he could now pursue his quarry even on foot, Nico left his new ship a safe distance outside of Machineville and proceeded to shadow travel to where he could sense his Sith target. He knew the locality pretty well from a previous visit. It was home to some of the largest manufacturing and assembly plants on the planet, employing thousands of the local, immigrant non-human population for varying levels of semi-skilled labor.Perhaps the biggest and most successful venture among them all, was Lhosan Industries and their Swoop Bike assembly line. The company alone was said to employ about forty percent of all Lower City’s population on its own, making it one of the main pillars of the Tarisian economy.Lhosan Industries was owned by Jervo Thalien, one of Taris’s most prominent figures who had a much larger share in control of the Government than he claimed to, his company’s annual revenue incomparable to that of any other. And as with any other venture, his business depended on the annual Taris Season Opener, the grand event of Swoop Racing that brought hundreds of thousands of participants, stake holders and spectators from around the Outer Rim to the planet in a one-week gala.The Sith Nico had been tailing, had come to a stop in front of the main entrance to Lhosan industries’ plant. The road leading up to the facility was deserted in the wee hours of early morning, the light from the street lamps surrounding the plant, the only illumination. The stifling heat of the lower atmosphere of Lower City made Nico feel like he was being baked where he stood, making him long for the air-conditioned comfort of the Hyaline as he watched.The Sith man approached the gates, blocked from further entry by two Rhodian Security personnel.After a few exchanged words, the guards shaking their heads in denial, it was clear that the Sith’s arrival was not something the men had been told to expect. Once completely satisfied that he wasn’t going to be allowed inside without raising the alarm, the Sith man took out his lightsaber and with two quick strikes took down the men guarding the entrance.Nico frowned. He ought to know a psychopath like that.And just as the Sith turned around to look up and down the deserted street once, Nico caught a glimpse of his face in the light from the street lamp.Nico’s own face turned into an ugly expression as he made to follow the Sith into the manufacturing plant.He made up his mind. It was time to put an end to Devore’s doings. Once and for all. Sirens rang inside the premises as security droids surrounded Devore. Drawing his lightsaber effortlessly from the folds of his cloak, he swatted aside a volley of blaster shots that came in from his right. Side stepping another round, the human Sith Lord telekinetically pushed a droid into the wall, where it lay, a crumpled piece of steaming metal.Throughout the rest of his journey to the heart of the assembly unit, Devore did the same thing over and over with as many droids as came.Insignificant creatures, who were no match for the power of the dark side and his command over the force fell in wave after wave of attempts to stop him. They were all destroyed in a matter of seconds. Gone, to serve no other purpose in the future as they disintegrated after coming in contact with his lightsaber, its red blade hungry for more opponents, unsatisfied by the lack of savoring taking the lives of actual beings over droids.Finally coming to a stop in front of the access panel that would lead him to the main reactor of the plant, the Sith Lord heard footsteps behind him.A deep chuckle ensued from his belly, growing into a sinister sound of mirthless laughter as he stood in front of the panel, Tarisian commands displaying the lock down because of the security breach he’d caused. He quickly removed the two detonator devices he had with him and placed them on the access panel, setting their timers on.“Well, well if it isn’t the insignificant son of the Emperor’s infamous chauffeur…”, Devore turned around to face Nico, who’d shadow travelled into existence behind him. The sirens blared on in regular intervals, red lights creating an atmosphere of high tension, evil written in every shadow as the two Sith faced each. Devore was the same exact greedy, selfish and absolutely disgusting Sith accolyte as Nico remembered him. He hadn't changed in any way since the last time they'd run into each other at the Emperor's palace in Kaas City. Nobody had killed him yet, leaving it a job for Nico to do.The new arrival ignored the comment on his father and said, “You have no reason to be here in the dead of the night.”. A statement. Nothing for his opponent to refute, with no openings for another insult.“Just as you have no reason to be alive! We’d all happily assumed you had perished on Suurja following the skirmish between the Mandalorians and the Jedi”. Nico didn’t like that Devore had knowledge of the mission he’d been privately assigned to complete by the Emperor. But then again, Devore’s father was a part of the Emperor’s closest circle of trusted Sith Lords, the Dark Council. Which meant, almost nothing that happened on and around Dromund was a secret to him.“I don’t think I could stand to see you happy even for the shortest while Devore. I’m glad my prolonged existence disappoints you and assure you that the feelings on that subject are mutual”.“The dog has learned a few tricks eh?”, the older Sith snarled, “… in a short while, this place is going to be destroyed, and you will go down along with it. The first in line of casualties of the foundation upon which Sith Empire will pave its way towards Galaxy wide domination. And don’t worry, I’ll notify your sister of your death, personally”, stressing on the last word which only infuriated Nico even more.From the folds of his tunic, Nico drew his lightsaber out once more in the same night as Devore drew his own, laughing as he did.“Yes, yes, channel the darkness within, one last time…”, Devore taunted.And as Nico willed his saber to ignite, a sense of hollowness overtook him. He stared, wide-eyed at his lightsaber whose familiar red blade didn’t appear. Startled out of his senses, he stopped dead, shaking his lightsaber forcefully, willing it to ignite.Devore howled with laughter, breaking into a sprint as he approached Nico, ignited saber aimed for his chest.But, just as Devore came in for the killing blow, Nico vanished in a wisp of smoke, his opponent’s weapon passing through thin air as he rematerialized at the other end of the room.Shock was replaced by anger as Nico looked dumbfounded at his weapon which lay inert in the grasp of his cold fingers. What was wrong? Why wasn’t it igniting?Later he would pay the price for excessively shadow travelling in such a short span of time, but for now, he couldn’t be bothered by the slight titling of the ground beneath him as he steadied himself, his mind a mess of rage and consternation.Devore didn’t give the young man any time to ponder, using the force to propel himself forward, coming in with a sweep, hoping to deliver a mortal blow this time. But Nico was ready for it, dodging the attack, extending his own mind to tap into the force surrounding them. As he made to duck the next swing of Devore’s saber, its crimson blade barely missing him, Nico concentrated with all his power and pushed.The blow connected, telekinetically throwing the other Sith man backwards and onto the ground, putting a good distance between both men.“It seems that you are unable to sense your very Khyber crystal di Angelo…”, Devore said, getting back onto his knees with a smirk plastered on his ugly face. Nico calmly put his lightsaber back into the folds of his tunic.He’d think about what was wrong later, a growing train of speculation would only distract him from his short-term goal. Whatever thinking he had to do, would have to wait until after he was finished with his long standing nemesis. For now, he had to concentrate only on one thing, getting more information out of Devore, and laying waste to the man, forever.“Without your lightsaber’s crystal, you are no longer worthy of the title Sith… the sooner this ends for you, the easier it will be for me to fulfill my duty to the Empire and return to my Master”, Devore said, once again straightening his lightsaber in his grasp, approaching Nico with slow and deliberate steps.Nico didn’t move from his place. Taking slow breaths, he calmly raised a hand and activated his face mask, feeling the familiar sensation of metal encasing his facial skin in a protective layer, immediately giving him inputs on his surroundings about the closest target. Devore. The distance between him and his target. Fifteen feet and approaching. The estimated time until he was within striking range at current speed of approach. T minus eight seconds.When he was well within five feet of Nico, Devore sprang into action, moving inhumanly fast, his red lightsaber a blur, but Nico was gone again, this time appearing behind the Sith, managing in spite of the tilting world, a well-aimed kick to his back. Devore lost balance momentarily, staggering forward for a moment. But he was no ordinary opponent. He too was a well-trained Sith, strong with the dark side of the force.Regaining his footing faster than anyone could have imagined possible, Devore turned in his spot, bringing his saber backwards in a twisting motion hoping to catch Nico unguarded, but the younger boy was faster and much more cautious. He dis-apparated faster than an eyeblink and appeared ten feet behind his current position, forcing a guttural growl out of his opponent, almost animal in nature.This time, Devore lost all the poise he had and reached out with the force, his body enveloped by a similar halo of darkness just like when Nico shadow travelled and pulled, dragging Nico forward telekinetically, the younger man thrashing to free himself of his opponent’s grasp.As he approached Devore with frightening speed, headed dead on for his ignited crimson saber waiting to impale him, Nico tried to shadow travel once again, but found that the former’s grip on him was way too strong.Throwing caution to the winds, Nico concentrated with all his might on the force, willing to ward off Devore’s influence over his body. A few more feet and all would be over if he didn’t act fast. Deciding that there was no other way than to do what he had never imagined himself doing in his life, Nico reached inside the folds of his tunic again.As he came within striking distance of Devore, still under the telekinetic pull the latter had him gripped in, Nico ignited the weapon his hands, angling his body to avoid the outstretched crimson blade while swiping his own right hand downwards in an arc.A clash of wills battled in the force as Devore, momentarily distracted by the appearance of the new weapon failed to do any more damage than singe the front of Nico’s robe while he bent backwards to avoid contact with the new entity Nico had summoned. In the process, he’d lost his telekinetic grip on Nico.Finally out of the other Sith’s influence, Nico acted quickly, cutting upwards with his outstretched right arm in a deadly swing, faster than Devore could regain his balance, connecting with flesh.“Aaarrggghh!”, Devore yelled in pain as he rolled backwards, cradling the stump which now replaced the good arm that had wielded his saber. Dropped down, his weapon had rolled to a standstill a few feet away, its Sith owner in too much pain to summon it back to himself.Silence. Except for the sirens which continued to ring and the ragged breathing of the man who lay on the ground.Nico stood where he was after his final move, which had dismembered his opponent enough to put an end to the fight. He looked at the weapon he now held in his right hand unsteadily.A lightsaber of an alien make with a sturdy grip made of tempered steel and runic symbols denoting something he couldn’t really understand, blade glowing a bright green in color.The green lightsaber felt out of place in his hand and in those surroundings. He stared at it for a moment, before returning to look at the whimpering man who still lay on the floor, his arm a bleeding mess of work.“Aaahh”, Devore cried as he rocked his right arm, trying to gather himself. He was losing blood rapidly and was in obviously no condition to fight. Nico’s face contorted into an expression of disgust as he realized he’d seen Sith children who could tolerate more pain than him.Wasting no words on his now overpowered foe, Nico made to take his opponent’s saber. Just as he bent down to pick up the artifact, Devore chocked out a wet laugh from where he lay.“Yes, yes, by all means… steal my weapon as well di Angelo, maybe it will help you in the netherworlds. I might not be able to make it out of here alive but you aren’t going to either…”. Something about the way Devore’s eyes had turned completely red, and the manic light in them shook Nico out of the reverie he’d gone into after the fight.Turning around to look at the access panel to the reactor, Nico saw the final count warning lights go off on two detonators Devore must have placed there, realizing too late that the place was going to blow up.The last thing that would cross his mind would be the red lights from overhead, making the injured Devore look even more sinister than ever, the sound of the sirens adding to the dizziness that already threatened to overcome him from all the shadow travelling.Then, darkness.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Middle city was abuzz as Coruscant used to be, Will noted as he walked the streets of Taris in broad daylight, taking in the sights, scents and scenery, while trying as much to blend in with the crowd.Middle City, he’d realized, was where most activity on Taris probably happened. People walked, drove speeders, high class ships and other public transport shuttles from place to place as the daily routine of a metropolis planet City began for the day. Most of the population on the streets were human, even though there were a fair share of Twi’leks, Rhodians, Snivvians and other sentient species. But the divide was obvious.From the clothes they wore, to the transportation they took to wherever they were headed, the humans had their aristocratic touch which they flaunted, much in contrast to what the non-human working class could afford.As Will looked, a human family dressed in the finest robes he had laid eyes on, entered a shiny private transport capsule across the street while a Rhodian commanded a droid to load their luggage into the storage compartment of the vehicle. Once they’d boarded, the Rhodian, wearing some kind of uniform, stood outside of the opened door, probably waiting for a tip.When the human inside tossed some Tarisian Credits out the window, the Rhodian grabbed the money and curtsied.As the fleeter rose into the air and departed, Will could feel the shame and the relief fight across the attendant’s features from where he stood. Soon, the greenish man barked a command to his server droid and both went back into the building they’d emerged from, a hotel by the looks of it.Will looked around him, hoping to find something useful that could tell him more about his own objective. To find the base of the Black Vulkars. But something was telling him that maybe he wouldn’t be getting that information here on Middle City.When he’d first come around and fought the men who’d restrained him, claiming to be the Black Vulkars, it had been late at night. He hadn’t been able to see anything of his surroundings or remember much from then since he’d been too focused on getting out of his bindings and clawing the flesh out of the men who’d roughed him about. After he’d been completely bound, he’d been marched into the confines of their building premises without ceremony, his hosts lacking the decency of even giving him a campus tour.The basic teachings of his Master came to his mind, ‘When in a new place and seeking information, the nearest Cantina is the best place to begin’. But Will didn’t want to go back to the Middle City Cantina, lest someone identify him and cause any more trouble than he already had on his hands.With that option ruled out, Will figured maybe the Lower Levels were a better bet than he had on these levels.And he didn’t need signs or directions to go downwards from where he was. The lower he got, the progressively worse it got. The smells in the air turned smokier, more alcoholic and more pungent. The pedestrians got louder, smellier and rowdier. The species turned from Human, to a mixture of human and non-human to finally completely non-human beings. And that’s about when it hit Will hard that he was human himself and would stand out among them.It didn’t take long to find a stray piece of cloth, blatantly ignoring the bile creeping up his esophagus and putting it over his head. Considering his identity safe for the moment, Will began scouting the level he’d ended up in, undoubtedly one of the many levels of Lower City.He appeared to be in a street where the closest shops held remains of broken signs advertising spare parts for speeders or something. Keeping a low profile and sticking to the moving crowd, Will made his way to the opposite side from the active shops where a couple of dingy looking buildings with seemingly no entrances sat in dark, unilluminated solitude from the rest of the street. Light from the shops selling the spare mechanical parts washed over the people walking back forth, pedestrian traffic an equal mix of beings headed upwards from where Will had come and further down the street, to wherever it was headed.Will spotted two Twi’lek women each holding an arm of a Nautolan who staggered forward in an obviously drunken stupor, laughing loudly about something, pass by. Two young Rhodian men bumped each other rather violently as they argued about something Will caught bits and pieces of in a foreign tongue. Many others walked back and forth without any purpose as chaotic life went on in Lower City Taris. They didn’t wear fancy clothes or appear to be in possession of gadgets anything near the kind their own aristocracy seemed to have, but it didn’t stop them from finding happiness along the grimy, dirt covered streets, the baking heat of the lower atmosphere whose gases they inhaled and the lack of natural Starlight which plunged their world into an eternal artificial night. Will hadn’t realized that it was always this dark in Lower City, simply crediting the darkness in his cell of the Black Vulkars as the natural selection of an uninteresting enclosure to house a prisoner.Just as he returned his gaze to the shop opposite to where he stood, hoping to glean some kind of information about the Black Vulkars, the ground rocked beneath his feet and all the people on the street seemed to feel it too. Turning around to look in the direction of where the road went deeper into the level, all the people stood stock still as to Will’s horror, a brilliant orange explosion appeared at the edge of the horizon. Well, maybe horizon wasn’t the right word, for the explosion was nowhere near the surface, it was somewhere in Lower City and hence, for all practical purposes, underground.Blasts. Somewhere in a part of Lower City, something had exploded. And as everyone watched, the plume of orange-yellow which had mushroomed into existence out of nowhere, now shrunk down into a smaller glow, thick black smoke ringing the horizon before a second, more violent tremor rocked the ground.This time, people screamed and general panic and confusion arose, many pedestrians choosing to go up through the transits that would take them to the higher levels, others running into shops and buildings to take cover from whatever disaster ensued.Will watched the growing orange-yellow cloud and the smoke now spreading over the site of the explosion, faintly registering the sounds of distant sirens as he snapped out of his reverie. Time to put his skills to use. Nico was floating in the void. It had happened, eventually as he had been told it would. Someday, he had known, when he least expected it, his own powers would get him killed.Many Sith died in the hands of their apprentices, when the time was nigh and they had done all they could to impart to their successors everything that they had learnt in their life time. And the very weapon they had helped sharpen, would then impale them. Some others died when they finally found answers to the questions’ they had been asking all their lives. When they finally realized the obvious that had been evading the grasp of their conscience for years. Some others died when they were finally killed by someone who had sworn revenge on them or sought to avenge a fallen comrade or family member the former may have hurt or killed. Blood feuds and switching loyalties were common occurrences, many Sith eventually fell to.Nico was an altogether different category in that aspect. Seeing as he was too young to have an apprentice himself and had never been in the chase to find answers to any kind of questions, he’d simple run and run and run from Sith Society and the evil at its roots. His downfall, his last Master had once said, would be his own powers.“You are different from any apprentice I have taken before…”, he remembered Darth Traya’s words, “… and as far as I can see into the journey of your life, I can tell that you will never take an apprentice, nor will you ever be in the struggle to achieve anything high and mighty… I have a feeling that your own erratic powers and abilities will eventually take you. You will be an example to others that deviating from the traditional path of a Sith’s Social and Political struggle for power and stature will yield no better outcome than ostracism…”.And now, as he allowed himself to be carried on to wherever the swirling current of shadows were taking him, he allowed the voices of those similarly lost, to enter his head.“Save us… come join us… you belong here… the light is far away… save us, please…”, the whining chorus of the dead chanted in a melancholic tone. In their disembodied voices, Nico could hear loud and clear their invitation to somewhere beyond the life he’d lived so far. To somewhere better than where he came from.Really, was it in a Sith’s place to ever feel happy? To feel satisfied and live at peace with himself and the people around him. To do something different from just conquer, rule over and pass on a similar legacy of violence?Drifting in the void, it seemed better than he’d ever felt in the nineteen years of his life.No responsibility, no expectations to live up to. No constant fear of losing the ones he had grown to care for and no Masters to obey. No constant threats of hateful revenge at the hands of a jealous comrade or subordinate.Maybe he could join his parents. They were somewhere in the void too, probably waiting for him. He could forget about everything he’d done so far and not have to worry about the things yet to come either. It was ignorance, even if not blissful. An escapism of sorts, an opportunity he wouldn’t be getting again.Then, he remembered something.Bianca. His sister wasn’t here. She was still very much alive, far away from him, somewhere on a world full of vengeful Sith who held grudges on him, his father, his mother and all his ancestors, who wouldn’t wait a second to tear her apart once they realized Nico was gone.That was when he realized that not even his happiness was worth the trouble Bianca would be in, left behind all on her own, to fend for herself on Dromund Kaas. He couldn’t leave her behind like that now, could he? She would be so broken, feel so betrayed that he had left even without a goodbye. And what kind of brother would he be if he did that? He couldn’t leave Bianca behind, it wasn’t right.As he floated around in the darkness, he could now see something he hadn’t quite seen before. A small light somewhere up ahead. He blinked, stretching his arms out to reach for it. Something inside his head was telling him to hold onto the light while the chanting of the lost souls around him got louder and more compelling.“Please don’t leave us… save us… come help us… don’t leave us behind… life back there isn’t worth it… please…”, they called out. A part of Nico was tempted to stay behind. It felt ironic that a light would guide him out of the void of darkness to somewhere safe. Not very fitting for a Sith.But for whatever reason that drove him onward, compelling him to reach out for the light up ahead, he hoped he didn’t have to return to the life he dreaded every day. The ways of Sith Society, albeit natural to him, did not provide comfort or satisfaction in any way. As he inched closer to the light, he hoped that somewhere out there, waiting for him was a place he could call home. Maybe with people who would show him something other than hate, disappointment and scorn. Somewhere he would be accepted for what he was, and perhaps even find others like him.That was just about when something inside of him seemed to shift and settle down. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle finally being put down to complete a picture he’d been trying to figure out all his life. His powers weren’t going to best him today. He wasn’t going to die because of his own abilities like Traya had predicted. He now had himself a personal mission. To find his family that home he wanted. Somewhere they could truly belong. And he wasn’t going to die until he found them that place.Now, the light was getting closer and closer, the ominous chanting of the dead hoping to drag him down with them, getting fainter and fainter by the minute, until silence again.As he rose, buoyed by his own thoughts from the depths of that dark world of swirling shadows, Nico felt the breath rattle in his chest as he blinked his eyes open, swallowing mouthfuls of hot, sulfurous air.A face came into focus above him, sporting green skin and a pair of curiously wide yellow tinted eyes. Then, a rough voice shouting out, “He’s come around! Go get Will… tell him his friend just woke up, quick!”.He sighed internally as he closed his eyes tiredly once again, not really wanting to see what happened next, a part of his mind registering the dull lighting of halo lamps beyond the alien face and the smell of smoke, sweat and medicines in the hot air.How dare Will Solace call him a friend after stealing his force-kriffing Khyber crystal?Either the force was determined to intertwine their paths no matter how hard Nico tried to get rid of the Jedi knight, or, Will Solace had a death wish.Either way, Nico thought sourly as he mentally composed himself, his own hands weren’t exactly clean of treachery or thievery. And thinking back on his spontaneous decision to take Trell Tamar’s lightsaber aboard the Discord, he had done right. He could still remember making her black out and taking her lightsaber from her as her unconscious body had lain crumpled on the floor of the cabin. He’d then called in the pirate henchmen and asked them to tie her up as he’d left to settle his deal with Felt Unik.It might have cost him his life if he hadn’t been carrying Will’s friend’s lightsaber on him when he’d faced off Devore. He still remembered the green glow of the weapon and how it had felt out of place in the landscape of black and red as Devore had lay dying on the ground.When one saw it, one wouldn’t think the weapon capable of doing what it had done. Chopping the arm off a grown Sith man as easily. It made Nico wonder if Trell had ever used it for something like that before. Weren’t the Jedi all about non-violence and peace and fraternity? Why did they even carry weapons as deadly as lightsabers if they preached to never use the likes of them?He had a lot to talk to about with Will Solace, and a bitter score to settle. The reunion was not something he was looking forward to very eagerly. The base of the Black Vulkars hadn’t seen so much activity in a long time. That was, since they’d last won the highest betting stakes of the annual opener four seasons back. Another day in the secluded base of one of the most highly volatile swoop racing groups of Taris Lower City had begun as usual, men scurrying around to do their routine morning check of the base.It was during such a routine checking patrol early in the morning, when the effect of the Ale he’d had last night hadn’t worn off yet and he was still due his morning dose of Caf, that a Rhodian mercenary sounded the alarm that would damn Brejik straight to Hell.Still looking a little bleary eyed as he emerged from his personal quarters, he’d just given his first orders for the day, “Re-count the spare parts for the engine boosters that we received last evening once more… inform me if there are any discrepancies in the tally. I swear if that nasty Rhodian smuggler decided to play funny again like last time, he’s going to have earned himself a permanent place in my hitlist”. Another mercenary had nodded in understanding and scurried off to do as told.Then, just as he’d asked his closest aid for a mug of Caf whilst entering the common room of the base’s building, a human boy he often relied on for information on the happenings in Lower City had come rushing inside.“Sir! Blasts just went off in Machineville a few minutes ago!”, he paused to gather his breath as Brejik’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, “The main reactor of Lhosan Industries’s assembly line just blew up!”.“Lhosan industries??”.“Yes Sir…”, gasping, “… the whole facility appears to have gone down, but luckily no other nearby factories were harmed even if a lot of people’ve hurt pretty bad from the looks of it…”.“How by the Galaxy did the reactor blow up just like that?”.“Don’t know sir… the last we heard, it wasn’t even churning out forty percent. Next thing we know, ka-boom!”.“…”, Brejik’s own mind raced as he considered the implications of the happening with less than a week until the Season opener. Lhosan industries with its swoop bikes was the single most important factory on the whole kriffing planet. If they stopped production and accessory manufacturing at this point, the contestants would all just have to make do with the previous season’s hand-me-downs and old, rusty spares.And that’s when he heard something else which would turn his day from bad to worse. The sirens in the old Vulkar’s base had just gone off, their high pitched wails tearing through the morning calm and making Brejik jump out of his chair as two of the men he’d sent on rounds rushed into the common room.“One of the Jedi prisoners, the light-haired male... has escaped sir!”.“How?? When did this happen?”.“We don’t know sir… he appears to be gone from his cell in the block where we keep the fugitives. Ralf just sounded the alarm from there to alert the men into gathering here”.“Search for him everywhere! I want him back and in chains in the confinement of his cell within the next few clicks or you will all be feeling very sorry for the mistakes I’ve let you go for before!! GO!”. After the Trandoshan woman Nico had woken up to, had introduced herself as Rax, she’d explained to him how they’d found him passed out on the roof of a single storey building, injured and barely breathing and later brought him into one of the many medical camps that had been set up around the blast sites in Machineville by security personnel who’d come down to provide medical aid and quench the fire in the wake of the blasts.“… heard that about three hundred people have been injured, the death toll standing at fifteen so far”, Rax had said. She’d been going on about the blast and all the relief activity that had been going on in its aftermath ever since returning to his bed side after wherever she’d gone off to for a while in the middle, in hopes of fetching the Jedi knight.Right now, as he sat up on the makeshift bed covered with white linen, stained with blotches of brown or red (he couldn’t tell in the dull yellow lighting), he tried to block out the ramblings of the Trandoshan, too tired to even ask her to shut up.“… I mean, yeah! Will told me you didn’t talk much and stuff, so I kind of expected this. But still, you know he said that he wasn’t really surprised to see you here, even if he did mention that he wished you’d been more careful about whatever you’d been up to in the area, seeing as you could have as easily gone ka-poof! like the plant did if you’d been any closer during the explosion”. Nico sulked on the bed, praying to the force to make her shut up.“And also, he doesn’t really have to worry about me keeping his secret that he’s one of them space wizards or whatever cause he told me you already knew! … Stars and Galaxies! I almost forgot!”, she paused to smack her palm on her forehead dramatically, “After he healed you, Will said you were alright and that you were just really, really weak and low on energy. He said you didn’t have anything too serious to worry about other than dehydration. No broken bones, no torn ligaments or bleeding. Though he did look pretty concerned when we found you the way you were… he said you’d used too much of your ‘powers’ or whatever that meant… so, just between us, are you a space wizard too?”.Nico raised his eyebrows and silently speculated if this Rax woman was either in some drug induced stupor of sorts or maybe she’d become like this after interacting with Will Solace for a while. Nico could relate if it had been because of the second reason. He also absently wondered why every other person he ran into spoke like this, spitting words out of their face holes at the rate an automatic blaster pistol fired rounds from an unending magazine.Then, Rax leaned forward and closer to Nico, the dark-haired boy frowning at the proximity he found himself in to the green skinned, reptile-faced woman who seemed unfazed that he hadn’t answered her previous question, “Just a little heads up before he gets here…”, she then turned around to look at the entrance to the tent they were in, probably making sure Will hadn’t gotten here yet, “… he’s been working non-stop for almost eight hours now. He’s probably very tired and irritable, so…”, she shrugged, a conspiratorial expression on her face as if expecting Nico to understand everything she’s left unsaid like they’d done it hundreds of times before.Just then, the flap of the makeshift tent lifted and in came a tall man with a crown of golden curls decorating one of the most becoming faces Nico had ever seen. He was momentarily whisked back to the memories of seeing Will for the first time inside the Clairvoyance on Suurja.Gone was the man he’d seen on that far-away planet. Back then, Will had been clean and refreshed, wearing laundered clothes and looked like he had nothing less than three meals a day apart from supper and two snack breaks. Now he looked like what he exactly was.An aggrieved man who’d lost his brethren on an alien planet that he couldn’t stop from happening, traded off by a smuggler to a swoop racing gang who’d kept him in imprisonment and later made to fight to the almost-death in a Cantina ring and finally spent eight hours healing the wounded on the site of an explosion. He looked sleepless, hungry, lost and tired. So tired that Nico thought a holoimage of Will in his current state would look apt under the holoimage-thesaurus for the word 'tired'.His tunic sported holes, stains and patches of chemicals, blood and dirt all over. Strands of his hair were plastered to his face by his own sweat and he sported a cloth bandage on his right hand, running all the way up to his elbow.“He’s all yours Will”, Rax said, rising from the small chair she’d been sitting on beside Nico’s bed, making some space for Will inside the small tent. Nico watched as the Trandoshan who towered over Will, bend awkwardly as she shuffled out of the low roof of the tent, trying not to make it topple by tipping it over with her imposing height.Will sighed audibly and came to sit on the chair beside Nico’s bed like he’d done twice before. Once on Suurja and later on the Discord. But this time, he didn’t ask Nico if he was feeling alright. He didn’t take the Sith boy’s wrist to feel for his pulse or initiate any kind of medical diagnosis or treatment.The silence that stretched between them was devoid of any kind of emotion. No tension, no awkwardness between the two men this time, both too exhausted to even begin a conversation.In the silence, Nico could finally hear the sounds outside of the tent without Rax’s incessant chatter. It was as she’d said, the tensed clamor and activity of a busy medical camp, beings yelling out names, calling for attention from doctors and relief-force volunteers and asking for help or medicines for their friends and family. He registered names being called, droids dictating prescriptions and the back and forth shuffling of feet. Somewhere in the distance, sirens were still ringing, reminding Nico of the inside of the Lhosan industries plant where he’d fought and literally disarmed his arch nemesis. His rival from Sith Academy and his biggest pain in the backside – Devore.The thought brought back memories from Kang estate and the mysterious Sith Lord Devore had taken orders from. Then, he remembered he’d left the Hyaline on the outskirts of the district. And then, more alarmingly, Brejik. Seeing as it was probably more than eight hours into the next day after Will’s escape, the Black Vulkar’s might be on the hunt for the Jedi knight. And since Nico hadn’t been there when they’d discovered so, he might be on Brejik’s list of suspects who might have helped bust Will out himself.But now, Nico had a bigger agenda on his hands. He had pushed aside thoughts of what he would do about his lightsaber until after his fight with Devore. Now, with the reason for its disappearance right in front of him, it was time to focus on the issue.He had fought and defeated Devore, with Trell’s lightsaber. That brought back another thought. Did he still have that lightsaber with him in the folds of his tunic, or had Will taken away this one as well? Anger swelled inside of the Sith assassin as he recollected the image of Devore laughing at his predicament when Nico’s weapon had lain lifeless and completely inert in his hands when they’d faced off in the bay that had lead to the rectors. Devore hadn’t even considered that Nico had been weaponless.Well, technically not weaponless. Nico had been carrying a weapon. It just hadn’t been able to function enough to serve its purpose at the time, making Nico defenseless. According to the ancient laws of personal combat, it was not considered right to attack someone who had no means to defend himself as Nico had been. Thus, making Devore’s very actions impure.Unfortunately for him, Nico had had a long-standing gut feeling that Devore would die in his hands someday. And Devore, by initiating the fight inside the plant, had merely chosen the time and location for his very end.And now, it was Will’s turn to face the same, angry, tired Sith whose mood hadn’t gotten any better. Without preamble, Nico hissed,“You stole my Khyber crystal…”. Will raised his eyebrows as he settled himself on the mattress. He had the look of someone who had been expecting those words. Nico frowned deeply.“Yes, I did.”.A testament, a revelation. Nico’s mind spun faster and faster as he asked, “Where is it now?”.Will then gave him a weird look that drew Nico’s attention to his watery blue eyes as he said, “That’s my bed by the way… do you mind moving over? I just took a break from my shift and I want to rest a bit before I get back out there…”. Nico stared at him for a second before swinging his legs off the make-shift mattress.But as he attempted to stand up by himself, he felt unconsciousness threaten to overcome him and felt a strong arm steady him by holding both his hands in an iron grip. Another hand gently, albeit firmly pushed him down into the little chair beside the bed, which he gratefully slouched down upon.Silence engulfed the tent’s atmosphere as Nico said, “I asked you a quest-”.“I know.”, Will cut him short, “It’s not with me… maybe if you hadn’t traded Trell and myself off to Felt for a ship and a star map in exchange for your friend’s crystal, it would have still been with me. And now… that lucky pirate has not one, but three Khyber crystals”Nico looked back at Will without batting an eyelid.In the ensuing silence, Will said from on the bed, “Don’t do that”.Momentarily confused about what he heard the other say, the dark haired boy frowned, “Don’t do what?”.“Forcefully not blinking while trying to give me that threatening Sith Lord look... it isn't good for the eyes.”.Nico blinked rapidly a few times unbelievably, cursing the Jedi under his breath at his poor timing to digress from the topic at hand. He hadn’t even noticed that he’d stopped blinking regularly just to glare at Will. It was becoming increasingly difficult to restrain himself from killing Will. There was only one other way to shut Will up and wipe that smug confidence underlying his obviously disadvantageous situation.Nico reached into the folds of his tunic and produced Trell’s lightsaber watching Will’s gaze follow it and widen with realization.“That’s Trell’s lightsaber! How do yo-”“I had it with me from on the Discord when I disarmed her.”, Nico took immense pleasure in saying as he watched Will grit his teeth. The fair-haired young man looked at his friend’s lightsaber, mild signs of panic starting to show on his face for the first time. Nico mused as he looked back at Will.He knew that Will had the ability to look into the future, and whether or not he already knew everything that had happened so far, Nico could tell that he hadn’t expected to see what was happening now.And at that moment, Nico realized that he liked that look Will was wearing now and decided he wanted to see more of it. More of watching Will Solace squirm in unease and the anxiety of for once, not knowing what the future held. Like an ordinary person.Will was going to learn what an ordinary person stood for and had to do in the eyes of a Sith. Nico was going to teach him a lesson.“I’m going to keep this with me, of course…”, Nico said, adding as an afterthought, “To be fair, I didn’t think I’d still have it with me, considering your track record”. Will had the decency to turn red in the ears as he averted his gaze.“I’m not a thief. I was desperate and couldn’t find any other way to-”.“You really thought you could sell my own Khyber Crystal to repay me…”, Nico said, feeling the upper hand in the conversation shift towards himself.When Will looked at him the next time, the light in his eyes was gone. Then, he called out so loudly, Nico’s heart nearly skipped a beat, “Rax! Come in here for a minute?”.The next second, the Trandoshan’s face was inside the tent opening, “… can you please go outside the tent, find one of the nurses or a medical droid and ask for a pain-killer shot and some spirit…”, she gave Nico a look he couldn’t translate into any known expression, nodding once to Will and disappeared again. Nico’s eyes narrowed as he sat on the small chair, trying hard no to die of embarrassment. So much for the upper hand he thought he’d gotten. Will’s own raised voice gave him a shock when he hadn’t been expecting it. How had he thought he could as easily best him?Maybe if it came down to a fight in the dirt, Nico could beat Will black and blue. But Will was awfully collected and quick-witted for someone who was lost, alone and stranded on an alien planet, far from home and Nico wasn’t so sure about what he could do if it boiled down to a mouth-off.Rax didn’t take long to come back with the requested items. She came back faster than it took for Nico to decide whether impaling himself with Will’s friend’s lightsaber in front of Will, would be enough to make the cocky-ass Jedi weak in the knees.By the time the Trandoshan came back, Will was gingerly removing the cloth bandage he had wrapped around his right arm, examining it under the dull light. As Rax deposited the requested items on the bed beside Will, the latter muttered a quick thankyou and got to work. After a few clicks of intense examination of his right hand, Will applied some spirit to a spot on his forearm before expertly handling the syringe containing the pain killer shot with his left arm and injected the needle into his own skin. He hissed a little bit while pressing down on the syringe. Nico kept his eyes trained on the syringe.“Won’t sticking it in the side of your neck have done the job?”, the Sith boy asked, still feeling a little salty about being startled unexpectedly earlier after Will was done administering himself the painkiller shot.“Maybe… but I don’t want to give you the satisfaction of dying at your feet”, Will replied, “… besides, if you’re able to make fun of me, you must be feeling better. You can leave when you feel strong enough…”.Nico gave him an incredulous look, “And if I leave, I suppose my Khyber crystal will magically appear in my pant pockets a little later?”.Will, ever the gentleman said coyly, “Why don’t you try it”.Nico retorted without a second’s hesitation, taking the bait way too far, “You took my Khyber crystal… and now it’s gone! How do you think you’re going to pay back for the crystal and my ship? You owe me a lifetime’s worth of service Jedi scum”. the last part had come out a lot more harshly than he had intended when he began.Will looked straight back at him and said in an emotionless tone, “It was the worst thing I could have done… but unless you count the two times I saved you from near death as returns. Once due to alcohol poisoning and once more due to excessive teleporting…”.Before Nico could retort, Will continued, “When I found you where the fire brigade was looking for victims of the explosion, the medical droid accompanying us pronounced you dead… I told the men that you were a friend and wanted to send you off the way I wanted and had you brought here to my tent.”Then, another rough voice cut in, “He’s right…”, Nico turned around to look at Rax, “… Will was here trying to heal you for more than half the time he’s been in this camp… it was a little after sixteen standard hours, when he was convinced you would live to see the day, did he leave me with you and go out to help the other victims…”, Rax added, sitting outside the tent flap, cutting pieces of bandage into rectangular strips.Nico looked down at the floor, not quite knowing how to react appropriately like a Sith, for that. So many emotions swirled inside his head. Rage, guilt, sorrow and even a little bit of gratitude and relief.Silence stretched between the group, the three people looking anywhere but at one another.“Rax… give us a minute please”, Will said, and Rax obediently left, pulling down the tent flap close behind her as she did. Nico hoped she was gone for good this time and didn’t butt in like she did again.“Look, I don’t know what you were doing here in Machineville or… if you had anything to do with the explosion, but I’ll tell you this…”, in the dim lighting, the two young men met eyes once again, grim determination against an equal mixture of anger and annoyance.“… you are an extremely confused piece of work…”, Nico’s fists tightened in his lap as he met the Jedi knight’s gaze with an equal intensity, “… and somehow, you managed to pass a little bit of that on to me too. I didn’t know it was contagious, but apparently, I was wrong… again. You think I considered it a smart move to resurrect you from a certain death just to have you ask me when you woke up, about the Khyber crystal I took from your lightsaber on the Discord? Maybe if we’d switched places, you would have just let me die out there… don’t you think?”, Will was nearly screaming by the last few words.If air was inflammable, the atmosphere inside the small tent would have ignited, burning down the tent and the two young men with it.Nico composed himself before speaking again, careful of every word he uttered, “You brought this upon yourself… and I’m not satisfied that saving my life counts as repayment”.“Why not?”, Will asked hotly, still too consumed by his own anger to catch the evil glint in Nico’s eyes.“Because, you’re a healer. It’s what you do. You saving me was more professional prowess than a personal drive to see me alive… you healed countless people out there in the camp. I don’t think you did it because you owe them something…”.Will’s silence and his pursed lips told Nico he’d won the argument. He’d later realize he was wrong when he would recall the look in the blond boy’s eyes. Something inside of the Jedi had snapped at that moment. The look he gave Nico was so raw and hurting, clearly eating away his insides that worry began worming its way up his throat.“What else do you want me do?”, Will said frustratedly, running his fingers through his hair, “I have to get Trell out of there… I don’t know what they’ve done to her. Then, I need to go find my friends and release them from captivity and then regroup with our leader. But, here I am, nursing victims of a power reactor blast on an alien planet with a huge debt to you I know I can’t pay back!”.“Good speech… but it wasn’t enough to get my Khyber crystal to return to me…”, Nico said, feeling a little guilty in spite of the carelessness he made sure to exhibit. Will’s face contorted into a strange expression.“Luckily for us both, I know just the solution…”, Nico said, “… in Sith society, when one owes another a huge amount of money or property or whatever he knows the other can’t repay, we have an easy way out of the situation… can you guess what?”.Will sighed as he replied listlessly, “You kill them?”.Nico widened his eyes and clutched his chest dramatically as he gasped in exaggeration, “Oh no! That doesn’t serve any purpose, does it? We force them into a lifetime’s worth of servitude, a kind of… contract bound slavery”. He could have gotten rich from selling the expression on the Jedi knight’s face. It was priceless.“Great”, Will said defeatedly, “when do we start?”.“I’d thought we’d already started in the Cantina last night hadn’t we?”, Nico asked, smiling from ear to ear by now, “… now, how about you get off the bed and let your Master enjoy that mattress… Will”, the Sith assassin said in a sickly sweet voice.Will obeyed.