Alien Loop

[Matsu Xiangu]

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Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2m9lQgsDN4

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[SIZE=16pt]Outer Rim[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Unmapped Coordinates[/SIZE]
[SIZE=16pt]Abandoned Space Station[/SIZE]

​

She turned the flattened piece of metal over and over between her fingers, a force of habit since she’d plucked it from around the neck of some faceless soldier on a planet they’d passed through. It clicked against her sharp nails when she pinched it – a dog tag with no identification, a scrap attached to a skull that’d been blown apart. That was how she thought of him: rosebloom, carnivorous, forbidden reds. She couldn’t get something so beautiful out of her mind. She’d taken the necklace as a keepsake.

It hadn’t been her doing, no. Krius had seen the holoreports and taken her there. It had been a lesson in waste.

“See how they devour each other? And for what purpose? They are so small.”

In so many ways – in all the ways that counted – she’d veered from his all-consuming philosophy. But on that they had agreed. There was so much more than the war for supremacy between the light and the dark.

________________________________​

​

The dogtag rolled between her knuckles, a movement accompanied by the ticking of its metal against her phrik-laced fingers. She didn’t have to look down from the stars she was gazing at. The movement was as easy as it had been back then – even more practiced considering she had over a decade of habit. 1, 2, 3 ,4. Roll right. 1, 2, 3, 4. Roll left. 1, 2, 3, 4. Roll right. It was her metronome, a soundtrack to her contemplation sitting cross-legged on a railway overhanging some part of what used to produce energy in this abandoned station. There hadn’t been electricity coursing through its veins in a long, long time. The only illumination came from the stars outside filtering light from lightyears away in to a hallway that hadn’t known footsteps in centuries before she’d come along.

Face tilted up, she looked out at the moon the station had fallen in to orbit with. White-faced, it matched her as its light bloomed across her high cheekbones, a burst before the shadow of a railway fell across her features as the station slowly turned, slowly turned, slowly turned.

Silence.

She could close her eyes and forget anything else in the metronomic melody of expansion, stars devouring their cores in the centuries-long race to eventuality. She was alone in a way that had no resolution, sitting cross-legged on the other side of a gulf created not by her power or position but by a fundamental differing of biology and time. (Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Don’t forget. Blink. Tilt the corners of your mouth up to smile when they smile. Blink. Don’t forget to blink.)

It was a thing she couldn’t even explain to herself, but she felt caged by a million lightyears of galaxy to roam. Not enough.

She felt his presence in the Force just as a small fighter dropped out of hyperspace, looping around the white moon’s face towards the hangar bay. The tick-tick-tick of the dogtag did not change as nothing but her eyes slid to watch its advance. She would wait for him in the dark.

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkp80PB4PkA

The mighty space-station came into view, and once Connor broke out of hyperspace, it loomed before his E-wing like a gigantic super-structure that housed who knew what sort of forgotten monsters of the darkest regions of space. Well, he knew one of them for sure – Sith Lord Matsu Xiangu.

She had left a lasting impression on the Jedi, both mentally and physically, to a point where he didn’t even know if his thoughts and feelings were still his own or fuelled by a residue of the Sith Magic that had been festering inside his own brain. Couple that with the tapestry of scars cratered alongside his torso, and he was a wonderful specimen of what the Sith could do.

But not now. It wasn’t a coincidence she had been able to be located this easily. From her time with the Fringe, to her hold over the once gleaming jewel that was Coruscant, her absence away from the chaos of the galaxy itself led him here, and there was…something…a little voice…a whisper…guiding him out this way instead of that, to look here, not there, and to travel forwards, not backwards. Her talons kneaded his brain without him ever knowing.

The space-station grew in size as Connor pushed down on the yolk to take his fighter to an open hangar bay, the imposing moon making him feel even more inferior in his tiny ship. It didn’t take long bring the ship in, to land and kill the engines. There was ghostly silence, and no sign of life. Pulling back the canopy, Connor slowly stood and glanced around. Cue the dry swallow, for his Jedi Master wasn’t afraid of much now, but a place like this in the middle of nowhere even chilled his bones a little.

Up and out, sliding down to the hangar floor, kitted out in his armour and cowl – no chances – and the trust blade by his side, he walked carefully and casually forward, craning his head left and right, blue eyes taking in the hangar and all the technology and debris that littered it.

All the while he followed the presence of the Sith Lord, and in minutes he came through the hangar blast doors - all systems inactive and all doors open - to stand beside a railway that ran right through the station itself and dangerously close to a large chasm that led…who knew where. And drawn to look up, he saw the figure of one Miss Xiangu sat casually looking on him, as if she had been waiting all along.

He didn’t want to shiver, but he did, as their eyes locked and a thousand thoughts raced through his mind alone. He had his reasons for being here and being with her; he was never anywhere without reason. But as nobody, not even the person he was doing this for partly, knew he was here, it meant he was all alone with the one woman who had always held the strings.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2TCtk-ZCf0

[SIZE=10pt] And perhaps she had been waiting for him the whole time she’d been sitting on the cold floor, looking upwards.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] The curse she’d given him had sunk its claws in to her as much as him, though for her the effects were markedly less detrimental. No act of sorcery came without a price and her tiresome connection to a test subject halfway across the galaxy had been her toll. At first she’d been unable to understand where the stray emotions had come from – a rush of excitement, a thrill of fear at times that made no sense. But it hadn’t taken long to realize what she’d done to him had imprinted, however faint. She liked to think she’d been there to taste his despair, watered-down across lightyears.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She could hear him before she saw him, the solid sound of boots treading across old metal drawing a tilt of her head towards the open doorway. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] It was impossible to see how much he’d changed, if at all, in the years since they’d run across each other. His presence in the Force was different – that much was obvious. But physically he appeared much the same. Perhaps there was a little more experience in the set of his jaw, a little more of that characteristic world-weariness so many Jedi seemed to wear like a shroud. Whether he’d retained that handsome, almost alien set of features remained to be seen – most of him was hidden behind the kind of armor that seemed just as fitting for a billionaire vigilante as a Jedi. But perhaps that was the point.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Reaching up, she twisted her fingers around the railing and hoisted herself from the ground only to lean her forearms over the balustrade, watching him with the intent one might a sporting event they’d bet a sizable amount of credits on.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “Connor…” (a spider hidden, forelegs slipping out from behind the leaf it hid behind, languid and confident as it crawled towards the prey struggling in the center of its web) “…I wasn’t expecting you. It’s been quite a while.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She turned from the railing then, leaving one hand to trail along it with a metallic sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh as she walked slowly so that they might be standing directly in line. “Do you like my new arm? I believe I had at least one natural one when we met. I lost the right one to a Jedi Master. So violent, don’t you think?” She was decidedly less forthcoming with the knowledge that said Jedi Master came out of the confrontation considerably worse for the wear than Matsu did. (She could feel her dying. Matsu had stood on that battlefield, missiles exploding mid-air and bridges collapsing on every corner of Manaan, and closed her eyes to sit in Aaralyn’s mind and feel her drowning after Matsu had shoved her from the bridge. It was so singular, water rushing in to her lungs through the hole the Atrisian Sith had punched in her side with a knife. Exquisite.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “But enough about me. To what do I owe the pleasure?”[/SIZE]

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Standing below, like a subject waiting to hear what a royal would say from their balcony high above, Connor looked up at the petite figure of the Sith and had a patient, calm expression on his face. As she stood and addressed him casually, it felt like an old friend welcoming one back for a catch up over caf and cake. It had been years since their meeting on Ord Mantell, but oh not a day went by when he didn’t remember what had happened. How could he? His body was a love letter to that very day.

A graceful nod of the head followed, before her soft words were spoken with no hint of malice or mockery. The size of the station around them both, and the fact it was just the two of them, made Connor feel even more dwarfed as their voices echoed slightly. His eyes flicked to her arm. To be honest, he couldn’t remember her anatomy, but whatever she carried now seemed to look just as natural as flesh and bone would on her.

”Matsu.” As is greeting an old friend; a kiss on the left cheek and then the right

”Yes, I see – very nice. Suits you.”

He blinked carefully and looked at her. She didn’t look too different, except her features seemed more defined and sharp, but her presence seemed…withdrawn? Then again, what did he know about how to hold yourself before a foe. Each time he had, he had been beaten so regardless how she appeared on the outside, Connor knew Matsu could fold up the space-station into a neat pocket sized wafer of metal if she really wanted.

His left arm shot out, fingers gripped around what he envisioned to be her pulpy, delicate throat as he channeled all his loathing and impatience with the Jedi and Sith into one vengeful attack. Eyes burning, Connor pulled the feeble Sith Lord through the balustrade with each, her cry of shock echoing around him with falling metal down the rift before them.

Down to him she came, struggling against his tightening grip as everything boiled down to this moment; finally being one up against the Sith and not holding back in his violence. Her pretty little face held inches from his own, as the satisfying snap-hiss of his blade came to life in his right hand, and without a sound, he smiled and looked into those dark eyes as he slowly cleaved a burning gash across her throat, sizzling the flesh and forcing her body to erratically convulse as the torso dropped onto the track, now leaving ju-"[background=#232323]To what do I owe the pleasure?”[/background]

Her voice snapped him out of the perverse daydream in an instant, and she was still up above, leaning over and now facing him.

”How can I find and destroy Sage Bane?”

Why had he travelled this far to ask such a question? And especially to a Sith Lord? As the dank, cool air of the station wafted over him, he knew that yet again he was edging closer to Pandora’s Box.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkdHdsxgc-k

Back and forth. Back and forth.

[SIZE=10pt] It’s her who must be snapped back to reality by his question. She can feel his daydream, catch glimpses despite not actively looking in his head. Proximity, his capacity for violence, made his vision all too real to a woman who’d spent almost twenty years thinking of little else but other people’s thoughts. Especially when they were dying. A sick sound. But after all, they were all animals. The biological imperative to s u r v i v e demanded that one escape potential harm, and in order to identify harm it should be sufficiently horrifying. Just the smell of blood set off alarms. Pain existed to make even the dullest of creatures run from things that could kill them. The way he imagined wounding her was, traditionally, horrifying. But she wanted to know. That was the moment in which she found religion, the brief seconds she savored before a test subject died, before her opponent fell in battle: those last, embittered feelings, thoughts, flashes of memory. She’d experienced thousands of ends, sitting in someone else’s finale. And she’d seen herself die a million times at the hands of others, the things they wanted to do as she cut them open simply for her own knowledge. And this one…it was particularly cruel for a Jedi. [/SIZE]”How can I find and destroy Sage Bane?”

[SIZE=10pt] Her eyes snapped open – somewhere along the way they’d shut, careless despite his murderous visions – her slow, savoring inhale sounding in the echo chamber the empty skeleton of a station had become. Delicious.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She pushed off from the railing, moving to walk slowly down the steps that would make her level with him. If she had a credit for every time someone asked how to kill Sage Bane, she could stop lording over Coruscant and reaping its funds. She imagined that even if he hadn’t been her Apprentice that she would have heard over and over and over again…how do I kill [member="Sage Bane"]? So she didn’t laugh. She knew his propensity for cruelty. But she wasn’t the Sith to ask either. She had a finite store of affection and loyalty and Bane was lucky enough to have earned it with his strength.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Her footsteps echoed, bouncing off the ceiling a second after each real one, a stuttering staccato that left the silence between them even louder when she stopped a few feet away, hands clasped together lightly behind her back and head tilted in study of him.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “Why?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She wasn’t one of this Sith foolishly confident enough to believe a Jedi posed no threat. Matsu had spent her fair share of time around Silvers – both with and against them, oddly enough – and knew what one might be capable of. That she’d chosen to stand fairly close had less to do with disrespect and more to do with her nature. She had long forgotten fear.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt][member="Connor Harrison"][/SIZE]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Matsu acted with the air of that of a monarch, coming to address a subject as she glided down the metallic stairwell. One foot at a time, click...clack...click...clack. Their eyes never seemed to part and she took forever to slink down to his level and let the silence hang. Connors lips twitched a little as if he acknowledged this familiar game of friend or foe once more. He was never good at winning it however, but he would try again.

With a smack of his lips, comfortable with her being close - they WERE grownups after all, right - he looked at her.

”Because he's hurt me and someone I care about and I wouldn't be very good at my job if I just let that pass now would I?”

He didn't break eye-contact, not willing to let her air of mystery and death haunt him. She had, after all, already been inside his most vulnerable asset before. What more could she do?

”Your name was mentioned. And, to be honest, I can't rely on MY side to help so I need to strike a deal with the devil if I'm going to get anywhere.”

With a small bow of the head, he made it clear the said devil, was her.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=10pt] If she hadn’t already been wearing an approximation of a smile it would have dawned on her face then. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “When he mentioned me, did he include that he was once my apprentice? One of the more impressive ones too.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She could understand why he’d come. She was the Devil he knew and that was always better than the alternative. But she’d spent a lot of time digging through the mythology inherent to the hundreds of cultures spread across the galaxy and in all, whether in their roots or their current belief system, there was evil. Even civilizations heavily isolated from the rest of existence showed evidence of the idea of the nefarious. Hundreds of worlds and all of them knew something existed in the vast, vast universe that was to be avoided at all costs, that was the root of everything that rotted in their hands. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Matsu had barely made it past her thirties and yet she felt old – not white-haired and frail old, but ancient, thousands of years stretched endlessly over and over on each other. She was connected to the Force in a way that few were born with the power for, and she’d taught those with the same strange connection – like Sage – what she knew, as long as they were strong. She was the Mother, those that had sought her infecting the galaxy with the same brutality she’d given them the knowledge to use. And the wars, the torments, the things that seemed imperative to everyone around her felt insignificant in the face of some burgeoning revelation. The more she read, the more she explored, the more she learned…the more she was convinced that it was not about the Light and the Dark or balance or victory. There was something bigger than any of it, and she felt it every time she used her sorcery, every time she looked out of a viewport. The more she dwelled the more unraveled her head felt, big enough to swallow the entire galaxy in a black hole. (Stars drift in loose curls from widening cracks in her skull, bone peeled back like lotus petals. Of plague and fever, thy name is nowhere – thy name is never. Oh Lion-Serpent Sun, the beast that whirlest froth. A thunderbolt, begetter of life! Thou that flowest! Thou that goest! Thou Satan-Sun, Hadith, that goest without will! Thou air! Breath! Spirit! Thou without bound or bond! The wandering mother of air, the wanderer spirit of all. Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me. Thou spiritual sun. Satan, thou eye, thou lust! Cry aloud, cry aloud: whirl the wheel, oh Mother, oh Satan, oh Sun!) Perhaps it had just been use of a common expression on his part, but he was closer to the truth than he knew.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “I won’t give you Sage. But I’ll fix your friend if you do something for me first.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Truthfully, what she wanted she might have achieved just as well by herself. But she was a firm believer in the old ways when it came to sorcery, when it came to ancient power – that Ashla and Bogan were needed in equal measure. And it wasn’t often a Jedi saw her and gave her a chance to make a suggestion before attempting to cut her down.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Turning slightly, she rested her hip against the lower lip of the viewport casting a soft glow over their faces, throwing one side of Connor’s face in shadow as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “The moon outside…when I was younger, it was where I discovered I have the ability to perform sorcery. So few of us…and you must be born with the gift.”[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt] She paused, contemplating the voices of Naga Sadow, Darth Bane, Zannah, before continuning.[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt] “In honor, I’d like to remove it from existence. Something of a demonstration of how far I’ve come, of what it’s given me.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] The moon glared white and brilliant, welcoming its inevitable implosion. (She could feel it crying out to her. Their lifecycles were intertwined.) [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “It would be a little easier if I siphoned your connection to the Force as well.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She would take what she wanted, but they were striking a deal. It felt quaint.[/SIZE]

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

”Sage? Yes, he mentioned he was cut from the same cloth as your gracious Lady Xiangu.”

Connor learnt not to move much in the presence of one like this, they were cunning and calculating and knew every move before it was made. He stood still, relaxed and not fearing her snake-like eyes and sharp facial features that moved slightly with each word spoken and turn of the body.

To say Sage was like Matsu would be a lie, and he was obviously more deluded than she, at least on the surface. While Sage seemed like he had a score to settle with the galaxy and a point to prove about himself, Matsu seemed to be something Connor couldn't identify. She was Sith, but she wasn't. She was hurting, but from what, he had no idea. A broken heart? Had a scorned lover turned her this twisted and isolated? The pursuit of power too boring for her and sent her into a spiral of self-destruction?

Watching her move, Connor followed suit as she explained the price for him being there. She talked once more in that annoyingly calm voice that just showed how much she was in control. The Jedi looked to the viewpoint, to the wonderful glow of the moon, and then back to the Sith. Deluded.

”You want to level a moon? You're aware of the effect it will have to the surrounding system, right? If you're so gracious why don't you simply protect it from harm to honour the memory it gave you, or something less dramatic that blasting it into oblivion.”

He figured that would be the end of that little far-fetched dream. Was there life on the moon? Probably. Was this more evidence the Sith always aimed higher than their capabilities? Definitely. Was Connor intrigued? Slightly.

”You don't need my help for that. I'm sure you're more than capable of doing something like that yourself, Lady Xiangu. If you just give me the location of Sage then I'll leave you and your dreams in peace.”

The vipers nest was stirring, and Connor wasn't phased by walking around, kicking it gently.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=10pt] [/SIZE][SIZE=10pt] “Matsu, please,”[/SIZE][SIZE=10pt] she offered. Lady Xiangu reminded her too much of the sycophants on Coruscant.[/SIZE]

For a brief moment she appeared confused, her eyes narrowing in thought as he asked whether she’d considered the effect destroying the moon would have on the surrounding system. Of course she was aware of what it would do in regards to gravity – that was mostly elementary to anyone living in this day and age, if not even more primal. So what did he ha—her features seemed to settle once she’d figured it out. Life. He was concerned for those who might live on the moon or on one of the planets surrounding it. That hadn’t been a factor in her calculations.

[SIZE=10pt] “Yes. I am aware,” she answered, unperturbed. “But that’s what it wants. Can’t you feel it?” [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She didn’t think it was delusion to experience the adoring swell of affection from the mass of rock and elemental fuel outside the viewport. It had given her truth and she would give it rebirth – become a million pieces of itself, to float to some distant world and start again. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “True, I could do this by myself. But the possibility of dying is high, and I’m not quite finished in this place. I won’t tell you where Sage is – consider that a gift. His fuse is far shorter than mine.” She turned her head, inhuman and unblinking.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Once, she might have dismissed the notion that he would understand entirely. He was just as stubborn and toxically sarcastic as she remembered from even that brief encounter. The Dark had roamed somewhere in that vast plain of his mind, but hidden – tucked away in groves, crouching in the dark in caves and down deep in valleys. But now? She’d dipped in that world and left her footprints. (They waited until he’d left the Devil behind. Careful at first, beady yellow eyes blinking from the shadows until they were sure the coast was clear. The Light was everywhere…but they wanted to live too. When they were sure they were safe they scurried from their hiding places and gathered around the symbols she’d left behind, the traces of her purity in the Dark. Fighting each other for real estate, they elbowed and bit and kicked their way to the front, reaching spindly fingers to touch her footprints. And they wouldn’t forget.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She turned, looking back up at the moon and dusting her influence in the Force just inside a mind she already knew. “Come. Help me now, and I will help you. Aren’t you curious to see what it might feel like – that sort of connection to the Force all at once?” She sounded wistful.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She would rather he agreed. Forcing him to help would require some of the energy she would rather spend on her spell. But she would if it was required.[/SIZE]

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

As Matsu spoke, putting him down with not giving him Sage and stating her power regarding the Force in equal measure without a hint of urgency in her voice, Connor felt, for the first time in a long time, utterly defeated by himself.

Her talons could be felt kneading his mind, but he didn’t fight it, because they’d been there for years since she infested his brainstem with Sith Magic. A silence hung between them, and they didn’t converse, but he knew as well as she did at that moment in time they were both searching for the right path to take and analyzing the one standing next to them.

He looked out over the moon from the viewport where they stood, being dwarfed in the space-station alone and that in turn dwarfed by the moon, but both beings had the power to unite and take it down. They were Masters of the Force in their own right. However, Matsu knew what she was. Connor didn’t. And if he didn’t know what his existence was for in the galaxy even now, he was better off dead. She wasn’t deterred by him, there was no threat by him and she simply stamped out the notion of him finding Sage – there was nothing Matsu took from Connor to warrant him being a worthy opponent and Rogue Jedi.

This is what his legacy was coming down to; a confused, torn Jedi who talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk.

She then turned, and faced him, and asked for help. She. A Sith. Wanting his help. Why? Connor calmed his imagination and understood there was nothing remotely attractive or appealing about one who was as weak as he to those like Matsu who could read his soul. If it wasn’t him here, she would be asking whoever else it was. No matter how he held himself or what he said, she knew the conflict he had and the fear of trying to be something different from everyone else.

Blue eyes dropped from hers from a moment and nodded, confirming his choice before meeting her gaze again after the slight hesitation. The air in the station seemed to warm them as it gently whistled around the sparse chambers and passages.

"Show me what you want. But you’re not giving Sage to me, so you’re not helping. That is why I am here. I know I’m just the unlucky fool who happens to be here when it could be anyone else, so just get on with it. The sooner your delusion is over the sooner I can go.”

He shook his head once, as if casting away an invisible touch. He really wanted to throttle her there and then. He WAS better than all her tricks and nonsense.

"By the Force; why did I think you’d be helpful at all.”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=10pt]For once, the expression she wanted didn’t require thought. One eyebrow raised in question, she seemed confused. One would think stopping another being from throwing themselves towards certain doom would elicit at least a thank-you, but perhaps she was wrong. She’d even thrown in the offer to undo whatever harm her once-apprentice had done, but that wasn’t good enough either. She’d forgotten what it felt like to need to prove something.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] Nodding once, she closed her eyes and turned to the moon, its bright light shining blood-red through her eyelids. (Kill me now. Kill me now while I’m not looking. How easy would it be?) The beautiful mass of earth rotating through space spun slowly on its axis, imperceptible but to her that could feel it. She was quiet as ever, sinking in to its familiar feeling before starting her spell. Hands clenching the railing she started on her own, lips moving without sound as she mouthed ancient Sith, the silence of space seeming to creep in to the station as even the creaking groan of its abandoned inertia disappeared. The system held its breath as its gravity started swallowing inwards, the core of the moon in front of the Sith and Jedi starting to boil under Matsu’s encouragement.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She could feel the enormity of what she was attempting curling up her limbs, threatening to snap them off at the socket if she kept trying. Alone, she might have attempted to keep going, consequences be damned. But instead she reached out to her reluctant partner, attempting to tap in to the wealth of power he held. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, he was a preferred conduit. No matter which ‘unlucky fool’ had wandered on to the space station with her, it was his mind that made it even easier – she’d known him before. A neural pathway she’d already traced was infinitely easier to navigate when it really mattered, and she swam to where she could entwine the threads of his Force with hers. (That’s it. Can you feel it?! It’s working…)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRrrrrrrrrRRRRR-----[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] The station shifted underneath their feet, blowback as a massive concussive blast blew outwards from a moon pulled in at the equator, its core burning itself in a star’s final death throes. Matsu could see none of it, her eyes shut tight and fingers gripping at the railing to stay upright as she concentrated.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] (Fire, a galaxy primordial made of oranges, brimstone and creatures that had not even yet learned to walk on two legs. Expansion – a thousand stars born from the collective ebbing of dust clouds, each living a billion years only to explode and give birth to a thousand others. The point of everything: to keep on, to make even more, to destroy the one that Created to make a thousand more, to know MORE, to grow MORE. Folding in on herself a thousand times and she was burning, bones snapping and crunching under the weight of what she’d opened, muscles atrophied, desperate for her mouth to open to say anything at all.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She opened her eyes, gasping for air just as a Reaver slammed against the viewport, burying its sharp nose in the plexiglass and trying to drill through with suicidal abandon. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “We killed them all…”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] She took a step back, a thousand images of her fellow Fringe members collapsing, eaten from the inside out by robotic horrors from deep in the Unknown Regions of space. It had taken everything they had to escape, let alone escape the Reavers. But they’d planted some of the most impressive explosive units ever produced in a nest, a Queen’s nest. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] And yet…[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] A dozen more crashed in to the viewport, adding to the deafening clacking of metallic bodies against thick glass.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] “We have to get out of here,” she said with all the placidity of someone who’d seen someone she’d rather not have a conversation with, and not the most dangerous invasion since the Vong had first found their galaxy.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] One of the smaller Reavers slammed its face against the glass one more time, screw-like nose piercing the viewport enough to send a huge crack zig-zagging up the inner face just as an impossibly huge Bull-Reaver shot out from behind the moon. Larger than a starfighter, it sped towards the station and without hesitation crashed itself in to the outer wall, its weight knocking the space station from its fragile orbit and sending Matsu flying backwards. Shielding herself in the Force, she avoided most of the pain when she collided with the back wall of the immense chamber, hissing slightly as she scrambled to her feet. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10pt] The Reavers would kill themselves in order to make sure anyone with the Force was dead, and after that, anyone without it. And Matsu got the sense they remembered her.[/SIZE]

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1B3Mgklfd0&index=72&list=PLIAe_xNOyjSmAd-9qWJP-nvNhgKP8XDpY

With a slight twist and nod of the head to the obviously rattled Sith Lord, Connor gave a slow blink and turned his attention to the viewport, the track below them running far into the darkness of the station. He gripped his fingers around the cold metal that guarded the chasm, following her lead in looking out to the orb.

Glancing sideways at her razor-sharp straight black hair and thin frame, Connor saw how perfect a chance he had to prove what he was – a butcher; cutting away the rotten meat of the galaxy. A swift strike through her ribcage from behind would end her life, and what better way to send a message than return the cleaved head of this powerful sorceress back to the Sith Lords she left behind. It was tempting, so tempting, but…right now, he couldn’t lift his hands to do so.

Returning to the large v-shaped windows that gazed into space, Connor felt a heaviness in his head. Not painful, nor sharp, but a dull weight. As if a sharp needle would release the tension inside. He pushed on the railing beside Matsu and watched the moon before them, and it started to move a little more unnaturally. His face slowly creased into a confused frown – she was actually doing this NOW? The throbbing in his head didn’t go, even with a tightening of the eyelids to blink it away; instead it hummed around his skill like a vibrating mass of muscle being shaken by an external force.

The moon appeared to lurch, before it then started to implode inwards, sending out a wave of energy that was tinged with blood-orange fire. Connor held tight as the station swayed under the shockwave of whatever Matsu was doing, and for the love of him couldn’t tear his eyes from the enormous moon starting to buck under whatever she…they…were doing. A thousand thoughts raced through his head, and part of him wanted to syphon her power to make the moon implode faster to see the sheer spectacle that would happen, and part of him wanted to stop it all and push her over into the chasm and claim victory.

Whichever came first – the sharp crack on the viewport glass or Matsu’s gasp – it brought Connor around, and to hear her vicious statement. He turned.

"What do you mean we, and killed who?”

She backed away, Connor stayed still, rooted by a power he was channeling and not wanting to let go. He grimaced and turned back to watch the moon eat away itself form the inside; molten rock spouting from the core, debris cascading through the stars – it was a disaster that was glorious and mesmerizing to watch. If he could do this to a moon, what could he do to a planet of Sith…?!

The cracks made by the Reavers were ignored, as was Matsu, as he watched the moon. He would control this “space junk” hitting the glass, and it would not be a problem.

"You get back here and finish -”

He didn’t see the Bull-Reaver, or simply didn’t choose to, and he was flung back with the Sith the second it impacted against the space-station. Gravity worked against him as he twisted his body as best he could to protect himself, but impacting sideways into the far wall and crumpling down to the metallic floor with a groan. The sound of creaking metal and muted alarms rung out above them, stating the obvious that trouble was afoot. Craning his head to see the cracked viewport, he looked up and over into the hangar from where he came and saw what looked like dozens of spider-like creatures crawling up the blast shields, covering it gradually like a thick blanket – whatever the hell they were, they were working to get inside.

Pushing up on his arms, Connor stood, looking forward at the surprising distance they had been flung. The moon had shifted in the cracked viewport, indicating it was either falling out of its own gravitational pull, or the station was on the move.

"Ok, go, now.”

Without thinking, he reached and clamped a hand round what he forgot was a hard cybernetic arm of a vicious Sith sorceress and started to pull Matsu along the distorted train track that led the opposite way from the viewport and those…things…but into the bowels of god knows what else. A loud scraping sound, a huge nail across metal, started to come from above them.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clndZD_beQA

In any other instance she might have killed him for touching her without permission. Almost nothing tormented her – a Sith unbound by the traditional chains of a wicked past and a hatred for all sentient life – but Krius had left scars more potent than the obvious reams in her flesh. Physical contact was always a burden, a hurdle that needed passing over and over until she was comfortable with an individual. But at the moment she had far more pressing concerns.

Sprinting through the halls was a constant effort to remain upright as the station fell away from a disintegrating orbit, knocked even farther by the Bull-Reaver’s suicidal plunge. Metal groaned beneath her feet, bending in ways it was never intended to as space tore relentlessly at its bones. She could hardly see for the constant tilt and whirl of alarm systems running on some generator that took its job seriously enough to still work after decades of neglect. The scraping sound tore across the top of the station, large and loud enough to reach them through layers of durasteel over the din of the warning.

“In here!” she shouted, tugging the Jedi Master through an open door and slamming her fist on the emergency seal to lock it behind them. It would buy them minutes at most to figure out a way back to the hanger bay.

She paced the room, eyes roiling with amber. She’d forgotten what fear felt like, but in the hole where it was supposed to be, rage pounded against the walls. Objects around her rattled as she stalked, her features sharpening as she ruminated. When she and her fellow Fringe members had made their journey to the heart of the nests these wretched creatures built, it had been with the intention of removing them from existence. But all their homes, all the places they’d built to hatch their young – if that’s what they could be called – were in or near civilization. It was the Fringe’s prerogative to protect the Unknown Regions, to rule over it and protect its people. They had been criminals and Sith Lords, but they ruled with a strange benevolence. They would not hurt the people they’d chosen to protect. It was a strategy she hadn’t liked, but at the time she’d not yet risen in their ranks high enough to have a say.

Such half-measures cost Matsu now.
But now there was no one but her and Connor. There was no one in the way of her trying to kill every last one of those things outside.

She’d felt Connor’s pleasure as the moon buckled under their combined power, rust and dirt and moon-blood pouring from the fissures of rock that crumbled under their touch. What strangely beautiful power, was destruction – a leap of dark faith that led to something that he perhaps had not imagined before. True, the Dark consumed. But what it gave before it ate everything was worth the price. And without it they would not survive this damned space station in the middle of nowhere.

Turning to look at him, she narrowed her eyes, an eerily reptilian expression as she paced through the room towards him, gathering her energies for the inevitable battle just outside the door. “Do you know what those are outside? I doubt it, as they haven’t been seen in the Galaxy for nearly twenty years. Reavers…scum, base beings! I watched them tear civilizations to pieces, eviscerate my brothers, leave them empty skins like paper bags to toss through the wind! And my brothers thought we’d killed them all, but they were WEAK! They were too blinded by compassion to do the job that needed to be done and now you and I… –” she paused, stopping right in front of him with pupils gone pin-point in a storm of copper – “…you and I will have to do that job. We do that job, or we die.”

“ATTENTION – ANOMALOUS ACTIVITY IN OXYGEN SYSTEMS DETECTED. REPEAT—ANOMALOUS ACTIVITY IN OXY—”

The vent above their heads came crashing down on the conference table, bending under the force with which it had been ejected as thousands of tiny, delicate little silver nanobots came hurtling out of the air system.

Without thought, Matsu spun around and let forth a blast of telekinetic power, the nanobots flattened behind a wall of air she could only hold for so long. “The door, get the door!”

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLmtbx5HR50&index=25&list=PLJ4encsixJEIbaQFkYxzpCOKyr9Vlza7E

And so became the game known as Jedi v Sith tag – Connor had Matsu at first to navigate away from those…things…and their footsteps thundered along the floor of the space station which shone disorientating light upon and around them. Viewports were letting in glimpses of the swollen moon outside caving in on itself, spewing out all manners of debris and god knows what else that banged and smashed and scarped around the station exterior. Warning lights flashed above and below them to state the glaringly obvious. And the normal pale lights themselves blinked and flickered from the short-circuits happening around the system.

Now Matsu had Connor, and then the Jedi took the Sith another way, and then the Sorceress took the Rogue again with greater force to shut them away in a room that seemed to have everything except air sucked out of it – noise and natural light.

Breathing heavily, Connor composed himself and watched the Lord pace, as if verging on the senile, ready to start another bout of chanting. She looked nervous, but in control, and also angry. Slow, repetitive blades of white and amber crossed her face from the lighting above as the station clung onto the erratic orbit she – THEY – had caused it to take. Well, if that was power he had, then it was worth it. Next time he could do it standing on a secure fortress or flagship perhaps?

He took a look around, and feeling more in control than Matsu, wondered if he could actually kill her here and now. She was distracted and desperate, and she was obviously using him as a tool and weapon against these Reavers, as she told him, so that gave him the advantage, right? He only had to feign interest and move closer to those snake-like eyes and sharp cheekbones, and with a cocky smile of assurance, take the handle of his blade and push it into her fragile body and thumb the switch – oh he wanted to, but he knew he needed her as much as she needed him to get out alive.

About to speak, the AI system stopped them both from their conversation, and soon enough the Reavers gatecrashed the party with a bang that made the Rogue jump. Like a wild group of wasps they moved, fighting the show of quick thinking from the Sith who soon shouted another order for him to obey. He wasn't hers to command - typical Sith, thinking they had all the control over the naïve Jedi. Not this one.

She gave her command for him to help, again. Connor looked to the door behind them, locked with the seal that was enough to keep out bugs, but not enough to keep in a Master. Rubbing his fingers together, he span around again to Matsu fighting her battle with the swarm.

"Well I never thought I’d see a Sith, let alone you, need my help so much. I’m quite happy to die here you know if it means I take you out too. I’ll finally have claimed my Sith and thrown a hydrospanner in the works of those warlocks you serve.”

He walked beside her, as if gazing up at the stars and not a raging horde of Reavers out for blood. The fact was, he was enjoying the thrill of staring death in the face again, and he knew somewhere there was a prize to be had, a truth to be found and a power to be sourced. And he wanted it - instead of losing, Connor wanted to win!

"You won’t give me Sage – so what ARE you doing to do for me to make this worth my time? You better hurry,” he leaned his head over a little, inhaling her scent and relishing being close to the enemy, "because you look like you’re struggling.”

This time HE was in control of the Sith, and SHE would have to choose. His lips curled and his eyes flicked back to the Reavers who wouldn't wait much longer for their prize.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]