Andromeda

[Hades Michae]

Hades had taken a liking to the rooms surrounding the more visitor-friendly areas of The Unit, the front put up for those who were willing to do business as long as they didn’t have to look directly at the monster they were helping fund. Not that Hades had any problem looking that monster in the eye. It was just quieter here.

It was easier to concentrate.

He was still looking over Kesare’s drawing, running his finger along the jagged lines of some place he’d seen in his dreams. Sitting in a leather armchair backed up against Matsu’s seemingly universal floor-to-ceiling window design, he spread the drawing in his lap. Lacking any talent in drawing he always went to the other woman when he had something he simply had to see outside his own mind. Despite her reputation she was exceedingly patient, listening to his winding descriptions of places that didn’t exist, drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing until they reached the point where he looked down and the place was real. There was some measure of comfort in that - that someone else had seen it too. All these places. All the things that looked right at him.

When his fingers came away they were dusted in charcoal, blackened.

It whirled away from him, the wracking pattern of his fingerprints curling in his pupils until he was lost. His palm opened wide, yawning like some great mouth splitting backwards, the strangest third eye. He blinked, trying to force it away. It didn’t. It whispered. Around you climbs a city of steel, rotten on the inside but strong without. They pray for you to end their tedious anarchy. But you’ve chosen a higher path, haven’t you? That’s true ascendency, seeing the needs of those around you and choosing to ignore it simply because you can. They’ll keep waiting for an answer to their prayers, tell themselves you allow bad things to happen because you’re working on something to help them. But it’s really because you don’t really exist. God: the title suits you well.

He blinked again.

When he looked up he wasn’t alone. Another man had entered the set of rooms, perhaps directed by someone who didn’t have the time of day for yet another face on Maena. The place was quickly becoming full to bursting.

“You look lost.”

Hades was made of leather and bones, a permanent sour scowl roping a spiral in the middle of his aging face. He didn’t look at all like someone who should have been lounging in these halls. But there he was. And he was also probably the stranger’s best bet on using the next hour of his time effectively. The alternative was getting lost.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

Out of sorts, that's how most people described Xander Mavros, an individual lacking moral tether, sinister, but with style. This was a man dedicated to a belief that evaded definition. The absolute worst type of soul. Dark were his desires, wrong were his fetishes. He'd found himself ran out of the more civilized parts of the Galaxy ages ago. His Research panned as unnecessary and boorish. More often than not, his particular taste of Science and Medicine was downright torturous.

He was, categorically, observed as a Criminal. Torches and pitchforks, you know the Drill. Hutt Space had been his only place of refuge for far longer than he cared to remember.

Nar Shaddaa provided ample opportunity, sure, a place that lacked any sort of codification in how one should run their practice or ply their trade. But with that lack of law, came the most stress-inducing interactions with seedy shot callers that demanded an every growing fee to exercise these immoral freedoms. For a time that worked just fine, he could enjoy the drugs that sustained him, kark the way he desired it, study and expand his craft contrary to the laws that Governed more cultured Worlds. It was convenient and smooth.

You see, Xander liked to watch things die. He liked to monitor horror. Over time, his work, it became little more than murder pornography. He didn't labor to save lives, no, Xander went out of his way to develop and provoke death. Going as far as to survey the cause and effect of that desolation; how it withered and interacted in The Force itself.

Maena.

It was a place the man had never heard of, some crazy little world on the opposite side of the Galaxy, a place probing the Darkness to uncover those endowed with insatiable, morbid, curiosity. A fanatic tide attempting to push all manner of monster and ghoul up it's shoreline.

It was a risk for him to leave what he had established for himself on the Smuggler's Moon. An adventure that may not offer the reward those black shadows and dingy, lice-ridden, wild-eyed Fringers promised. After a thin stretch of time, the cruel man decided he'd hazard the uncertainty, that he would, shoulder this gamble. Of course, a place that may very well fund his endeavors certainly was a benefit he couldn't let slide.

He made the Journey, even going as far as to surmount his reality breaking superstition of Long-Distance Hyperspace travel. He wasn't, so to speak, terrified of flying. But those Galactic Disc-wide vaults. There was something unnatural there, something the choir of voices in his head routinely warned about. He had, after all, recalled a story about a particular Droid that got swallowed whole by an Anomaly, taken somewhere outside this time, doomed to wander in that Other Space.

Nothing some heady Nyriaan Spice couldn't take the edge off of. Man, he's still coming down off that dose.

It made things feel strange, three days adjusting to Maena, nursing the bruises from the inoculation procedure that had seen him stuck with needles that looked as though they belonged penetrating the hide of a Rancor. Xander was floating in a fog, his concentration somewhere between here and Coruscant. It was sort of groovy, his body weightless and vision hazed over like steam on a mirror.

"I feel pretty lost, " Xander replied, turning eyes towards [member="Hades Michae"]. The Unit was not at all what he expected. He was used to working out of an abandoned building, one thousand and eighty-four Levels down back on Nar Shaddaa. This place? It was clean, it looked official, not nightmarish at all. "Apparently I'm not the only one."

All around him, this ersatz room squirmed awkwardly with life. Humans, Aliens, Droids. . . and this man. A rugged sort of guy that looked as though he'd spent far too many years baking under a Desert Star. Of course, Xander, ever the sybarite that he was, drank Hades in with one, indulgent, long gulp. He wondered, silently, just how rough this man liked to play when no eyes were watching, or kark, even with all eyes gazing.

"Fortunately, it seems I've stumbled right upon the perfect man to. . . help me out."

 

[Hades Michae]

After he rolled up the drawing and pushed himself from the armchair, closer inspection revealed small nuances that Hades had seen enough times in the mirror to recognize in someone else. The stranger was practiced he would admit, perhaps the same sort of connoisseur as the man under the desert-star. But there was still that subtle blow of his pupils, a black hole a little too large for the well-lit hallways of the front of the Unit. Or the subtle slowness to the tick of his gaze. That was what Hades noticed as he stood in the long, lazy, lasciviously languorous appraisal of the stranger.

Unfortunately, he would find nothing there. Hades’ drive had long since dissolved if it had ever existed at all, a sexless demon drifting in a world driven by so much he could understand only academically.

“That’s debatable,” he responded. True, he looked displaced in those clean, pristine, expensive hallways. But he was here on Matsu’s invitation and such he was left largely alone. “But I’m probably more helpful than anyone else.” He nodded his head towards the back of the room where it yawned in to a hallway that seemed to lead in to infinity, turning to lead the way. Magma lurched slowly through meandering pathways seen through the same huge windows, cut and redirected to avoid the buildings though its heat in places make the light curve the air in wavy patterns. The place was still bustling, but in the way a well-oiled machine was noisy, free of the confusion they left behind as they moved in to the Unit.

There were a thousand reasons that the stranger could be on Maena and really Hades had no idea where exactly he should have been leading him considering the wealth of possibilities. That wasn’t exactly the man’s primary concern though. “So, while I’m taking you…wherever it is you’re trying to go, I’ve got some fantazi I’d be willing to share if you’ve got anymore of whatever has you spaced.” Hades was shameless in that way that all cosmic explorers were, always searching for a ride. If he was wrong and he got back the look of confusion or disdain, he didn’t particularly care.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

To say that the abrupt bend from, Let me show you further in, to wanna frazzle up and get shredded, was astonishing. Was, in fact, unexpected. Now, Xander wasn't entirely a professional, at least, not in the sense that he did not command a very formal figure. There he strode, dirty canvas sneakers on his feet, one lace hanging nearly down to the floor with every fall of his foot. They'd once been bright red, now they were closer to blood, or maybe brown, rough and worn. It described them perfectly. He had on some dress slacks, black, roughly three waist sizes too big, but they worked. He even had on a dress shirt, plain white kind of button down deal, with the top undone, no tie, and only half tucked in.

He wasn't a mess, but for someone that was 37 years of age, and here to make an impression. . . or something. . he really didn't reach towards the stars. He had a see-through, green, folder. It's content Documenting his most recent effort prior to abandoning his life in Hutt Space. It told the story of how he had spliced aspects of Aorth-6 with the Luf Virus, creating a slower liquefaction process of the victims insides, and making it a highly contagious and transmutable nightmare.

Dozens on dozens of pictures and Test Subject documentation, plus the exact process he took in splicing the two Viruses together. If that wasn't enough to secure him a position here, and funding, he quite literally did not understand what would.

Don't do it, his perpetual audience whispered, voices just for his head, for his ears. It's a trap, he's tricking you. Don't listen to him. Quiet team, let Xander think.

Nyriaan Spice, it was a good ride. It made you delirious with joy, giving a euphoria that was legendary, and leaving your reward centers in the brain get overclocked and mega-loaded. It was a good time. As Xander and [member="Hades Michae"] leisurely ambled onward, gliding down a corridor that gleamed brilliantly, a hall that seemed to have no end in sight. Come to think of it, that was sort of frightening.

Xander liked fearsome things. Too bad Hades seemed uninterested, the bad Doctor could have quite enjoyed hurting him. To each their own, some people just liked vanilla. Disregarding every other mind breaking taste out there.

"Listen, " Xander said, his voice scratchy and dazed. "I need to catch [member="Matsu Xiangu"], whereever she may be, so yes lets do this." The lack of logic just seemed to make sense.

Naturally, when exchanging drugs with a complete stranger, he and Hades now occupied one of the restrooms that had stood out like a welcoming marvel. There they were, two pairs of shoes and some ankles beneath the gap of one toilet stall, someone else occupying the other, unleashing something fierce and fiery in to the watery basin.

Kark it.

Xander was too busy lining out six obnoxiously yellow trails of coarse Nyriaan dust for them to share. Doctor Mavros operated far more efficiently with his head lost up in space somewhere, anyhow.

 

[Hades Michae]

If Hades smiled, he would have smiled then. He didn't give much thought to the brazenness of that request. Matsu didn't exactly entertain people who wasted her time and therefore usually people showed up more...put-together for fear of being that thing annoyed her above all else. But she seemed to like Hades and he wasn't exactly in dress pants.

“Matsu? That works out - she’s always got tea going.”

But the spice first.

Even bathrooms as nice as those presented to the well-to-do with soft stomachs were full of...soft stomachs, as evidenced by whoever was in the stall over. But Hades wasn’t really bothered. Leaning against the wall of the stall with his hands in his pockets he was just musing that this was probably the cleanest place he’d ever huddled with a stranger to catch a buzz.

As the other man cut lines, Hades reached out for Matsu.

“You around? Got somebody looking for you.”

Of course, Hades wasn’t paying much attention to the fact that he was talking out loud to what appeared to be himself. He hadn’t quite mastered telepathy and he still had to speak out loud to make and send the words long-distance in his head. Multi-tasking, he’d already peeled an edge off the drawing and was rolling the paper between his fingers, a tube he handed to the stranger as he carried on a conversation with himself.

“In my offices. What does he want?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get that far. But he’s got drugs and they look pretty good. And a folder full of what looks like some of the weird poodoo you get up to.” Of course, he hadn’t exactly looked inside the folder but he hadn’t gotten where he was by being unobservant. The folder was green yeah, but translucent. He’d seen a picture.

There was a pause in his mind.

“Alright. Bring him up.”

“Mkay. Give us a few. And boil some water.”

By the time he was done the stranger had already taken his share, handing the tube to Hades so that he could bend in for three fine looking lines of spice. By then their friend next door had seen fit to beat feet. Just before setting to it he casually stated, “By the way, I’m Hades.” Seconds later, and he'd taken his fill. Time to go.

“Come on.”

Hades could use the fresh air.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

“And boil some water.”

All alone in her offices, Matsu’s expression twisted in to amused bewilderment. When Lucas had brought along the weathered Hades the first time she’d met the assassin, she hadn’t been sure what to make of him. The inside of his mind was strange, a spiderweb void of its creator that hung disused in some forgotten woods. But give him a purpose? There was no one who could solve a mystery like the psychonaut.

Regardless, she rose to put some water on.

__________________________​

There was no announcement when Hades entered. Security knew Michae by sight and therefore he passed with little more than a nod of recognition from the heavies outside.

Though Matsu lived in the City, she kept rooms in the Unit for those nights she didn’t feel like making it back to the inside of the dead volcano or when she was meeting with executives or other people looking to make a deal. They were barely in to the Unit and therefore the hallways outside still had that veneer of propriety that was so important. Her rooms and offices had the same modern, sleek sense of wealth as the rest of the outside layers of the massive, sprawling facility. She found the display, though perfectly subtle, important. It was one thing to be a Sith Lord feared simply because one possessed a power the rest of the galaxy struggled to understand. It was another entirely to wield both the Force and something that every mortal understood: staggering, unstoppable wealth.

She didn’t stand when they entered, though she put down her datapad and leaned back in her chair.

“Finding acquaintances wherever you go, Hades,” she quipped, seaglass voice indulgent.

“Yeah, yeah - look what I got though,” he said, lifting a bag of fantazi sealed tight.

“Ah.” The water made sense. Lifting herself from her seat, she came around her desk, diminutive height augmented by heels that looked like they might take out an eye. “Have a seat,” she said as she snatched the bag from Hades’ fingers and moved to steep them each a cup. Mixing a cube of sugar in each, she picked them up delicately and brought them with her as she went to join them on the circle of couches nestled in the center of a sunken floor design. Putting down each, she took her seat and crossed her legs, leaving her cup alone until the fantazi had time to sit.

“So, who’s your friend?” she asked Hades, though she was looking right at the stranger as she asked, sifting quietly through the emotions that bent and swirled around him. Strange.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

You know, there really was no better sensation than when that stimulant started to jolt you. The process was faster than light, the Spice dropkicking you in the face, the pain from snorting it up rapidly dipping around the corner, taking off fast-footed, never to be seen again. It was just so, so good! Xander, he was left standing there, [member="Hades Michae"] articulating a bunch of words that just seemed entirely out of place and strange. But then again, Xander, in that rush of glory, had been fidgeting with the bag his candy was in over and over and over and over. Fingers rolling, re-rolling, sealing, and hugging the air out - which popped the zip-lock more than once and left him starting from the very beginning again.

Delicious euphoria, even the voices had to take a break and relax. It was something that bode well with him, he was certainly ready to get this parade moving.

Nodding his head, perhaps more than he should have, he contorted the lock on the stall door, pulling it in towards he and Hades, "Xander Mavros." He enlightened, striding out in to the restroom proper, then back out in to that ceaseless hall.

He'd never met [member="Matsu Xiangu"], though, as were most individuals from sordid backdrops, he was familiar with the name. Darkness could be many things, and he knew her to be cut from that cloth - the blackest type of monster. Together with Hades that rode the wave of rapture further on down that clean passage.

Somewhere, maybe half way there, he decided he needed to carry that special little folder in two hands, damn did it feel awkwardly heavy. Then, finally, arrival.

The first thing that struck Xander was most assuredly this room, if a room it could even be considered. Exceptional, luxurious, a couch he couldn't wait to sit on. But no sooner than recognizing that, his demeanor changed. His game face, eyelids hanging half closed from the incredible high he was climbing.

"Xander Mavros, " He informed slowly, answering her himself, taking her offer, his body sank in to the plush furniture.

He watched, he nodded, he caught the crimson gaze of the most unsettling calm he'd yet witnessed; one not unlike his own. But there was more here. Much more. He could actually, feel, this woman. That still surface harbored an intensity below it's glass. The sensation was sickening, in a way. So strong it nearly scrubbed away the chilly cry of a howling type of high.

"I'm here to make myself indispensable. To climb the rungs and take my Research higher than I've ever been. . . " Said the man, carefully reaching for the hot glass, the Fantazi Mushrooms continued to steep in, using only the pads of his fingers around the wide mouth of the glass while he stood once more, carrying the green folder over to her. "But, I'm of the opinion, that you already know that. . . in fact, I bet you know a whole lot of things." The blue pools that were his eyes, captured her full gaze. His hand still outstretched holding the folder. His entire body scorching with endless delight.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The sense of euphoria steadily climbing - rocketing - through both men could have been overwhelming had she not been able to isolate it away from her direct ability to sense them. She made it a point not to actively dig. It lost her the advantage of going unfelt and unseen.

I’m here to make myself indispensable.
To climb the rungs and take my research…

He was starting off on a good foot: something for you, something for me. There was nothing more sickening than a sycophant. When he stood she was perfectly still, that pause of a predator ready to pounce. She saw Hades flex his hands, prepared for the same. But all the newcomer did was offer her the folder and an opinion. Looking up at him, she caught his eyes and offered back the slightest hint of an amused smile, the huff of a light laugh escaping her as she took the folder. Without diving deeper in to his head, or one thought that overtook him and transmitted itself of its own accord, she could only get a sense of him. But a sense was enough. He stood near her sea and she imagined he’d swim. And she’d devour him. Looking down at the folder, she opened the files across her lap.

And all of the sudden she was lost.

Of course there was the technical side of things, a neatly aligned rundown of exactly what she was looking at that seemed at odds with its creators slapdash get-up. There was passion even in the formulas she thought, an interest that ran beyond academia. Truly, it was brilliant and terrible. Already she had a thousand questions: had he attempted to weaponize it? Could it be spread dry or would it have be submerged within something within the dispersal unit?

But the pictures.

The Lady appreciated the science of it perhaps even more than one could really explain, but the pictures. Full-color images of men and women in various stages of infection. With every page she turned there was more agony, more suffering, so beautiful, so perfect. It was the last page that sold her, a perfect y-incision folded back to show total liquefaction, a putrid sludge in which one organ could not reliably be identified against another. She hadn’t meant to but she ran her metal fingers over the image, almost reverent.

Taking a breath, she reached for her tea.

“Questions about this particular creation aside, what arrangement do you imagine is here for you on Maena? If you’ve found this place - if you were looking for me in particular - you must know what I offer. Free space to conduct your own research, whatever it is, with the understanding that I will want a piece of it if I see benefit in it. And assistance on whatever my team is working on at the moment.” It was a strange, beautiful, sprawling but cohesive system she’d come to create. Doctors and scientists using the facility to create monstrous atrocities, learn new ways to hurt and control, expanding their own knowledge. And in return they shared that knowledge or assisted her in her endeavors. So far it was proving endlessly lucrative.

“And I don’t see anything in this,” she said, tapping a finger against the contents of the folder, “as to your credentials or where you’ve been conducting this research.”

He was right. She knew a whole lot of things. She didn’t need to be a mentalist to realize that the contents of the folder were answer enough to her questions. But she wanted to hear him say it.

She took a sip of her tea, mushrooms and all, crushing a cap between her teeth before it made its way down.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

He wanted to groan, release this fervent pressure that had begun to radiate like a cyclone within him. Just the slip of the folder from his fingers, as Matsu took possession of it, drew bumps to his skin. He could keep it together though. The Drugs didn't control him, he controlled the Drugs. Reminded of his manners, as the steam from the glass moistened the palm that latched fingers precariously close to the edge of the ceramic rim. A quick whisper in to a pocket, came back with the sealed bag of Nyriaan Spice. He didn't offer it, however, more just tossed it down on the cushion right beside her.

He wasn't ready to interrupt her scrutiny of that last Project he labored on.

"Hmffff," Xander exhaled, skillfully shifting his grip down around the robust belly of the concoction he had been served, sipping deeply from it's warm contents.

Fantazi Tea---Fantazi Mushrooms----he quite enjoyed that taste, surprised every single time it washed over his tongue and down his throat. It wasn't earthy or bitter, rather, it gave off a very sweet and tart flavor. These felt exceptionally potent, his face forging wrinkles in response to the intrusion.

His breath was held, the voices, silent. He merely inspected the woman, [member="Matsu Xiangu"], in front him, thighs crossed, corruption of a life that was vile and sheathed in hate, bleaching her skin pale, but not horrendously so. Yes, thought Xander, he would plunge in to the ebon depths of her brilliantly controlled sea.

"I'm not interested in Galactic Patents, I'm not interested in weak-kneed overhead." The Spice made him bold, his words strong enough to break bones. "I'm here to conduct Research, to push limits, to strive for things that rest beyond reach. That is what I heard you offer here. That's why I came."

Xander wasn't quite as casual as his dress code. This was a man responsible for a vast number of terrible things himself. A man that may outwardly come off as intensely laid back. But those eyes. There was no hiding what he really was behind that gaze of his. He swallowed another large sip, chewing the Fanzati that spilled in with it quietly.

"I'm Death Marked on a number of Core Worlds, Wanted for Crimes against Organic Sentience straight through to the Outer-Rim." He laid it out on the table, she wouldn't need to be the most powerful Mentalist in the Galaxy to decipher then, where he had been conducting his trade. "I've been stranded in Hutt Space, " He finished his Fantazi Tea, letting the arm of the cup dangle on hooked little finger, "I came up on Rhinnal though, went to University for Biomedical Science."

There she had it, now it was just a question of whether she was willing to play with it.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She just nodded without looking at him when he cut through the meat of it, when he dismissed almost every doctor and scientist more interested in getting their name on something rather than the art of the thing itself. Her eyes were still on the folder, flipping another page as she drained more of the tea. She registered the bag of spice that dropped on the couch next to her and put her cup down without looking, still glued to the page of notes that outlined the exact length of time each stage of infection took as she picked up the bag.

Another woman might have found his standing in front of her as she sat and read unsettling, but the frenetic waves pouring off him were strangely pleasant.

She was reading silently as she drew two lines on her arm. Still didn’t look away as she tugged on the Force to pull paper from her desk and roll it. The sound of her pulling the lines up her nose and off her cybernetics punctuated the silence after he explained where he’d been working, though she had nothing but a casual shrug to offer at that.

“In my opinion you’ve simply already bypassed the hurdle most of the others working here seem to struggle with the first time they’re vilified for their work. Though, I’m sure you know the Death Marks hardly matter to me,” she said, finally looking up at him as she closed the folder and stood up. As she rose so did something heady and induced, a rush that nearly unseated her. Her mind bent outwards, a sensation for others like roaming too close to the edge of a black hole as her gravity lured them. It was momentary at best and by then she’d lifted her gaze to his. Sneakers, dress pants too big, half untucked. But yes - like her, it was the eyes that mattered more than anything else. And how deep is your ocean?

“This,” she said, holding up the folder for him to retrieve, “is truly beautiful work.” For once that endless veneer of indifference was broken, her voice thick with fascination, red shooting through the smoothly curling amber of her eyes. “I have a few questions about it, but while we’re at it…” She slipped what was left of the spice back in to his pocket. “Let me show you around.”

“I’m gonna go find Lucas,” Hades interjected, seemingly satisfied enough to move on to new adventures. “See you around Mavros,” he offered, a short nod of his head offered to both as Matsu downed the last of her tea and the three went their separate ways.

​

________________________________________​

They were truly leaving behind the Unit’s sinister-but-believable outside veneer as Matsu and Xander caught an elevator, the Lady pressing a button on the dizzyingly large panel of options. The drop of its downward motion curled her stomach pleasantly, the spice seeming to grip at her and pull up as her body went down. Her fists curled ever so slightly, her jaw sharpening as she clenched lightly.

“So that splicing - have you tried weaponizing it? I’m curious as to whether it can be loaded in to canisters dry. It seems wet-mounting some of the other viral weapons we have at our disposal is the only alternative and that’s been...inconvenient.”

Without really thinking about it, a thin string of her anger - irritation really, frustration - slunk out of her head. Once more her mind bent around a feeling, her endlessly still ocean rippling as if some great monster in its depths rolled just beneath the surface. It was subtle. Reality was still as she knew it.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

Was Xander distressing? He actually hadn't even meant to stand so closely forward of her, not this long. There was a nagging agony that electrified and terrified his sense of calm. Wait no, scratch that. He was far too lost to feel any sense of how threatening she may have been, or how perplexing it may had seemed for him to loom just so. Truth was, while he wanted to sip down each and every gaze she gave the work, the full inspection of it, it was equally true that he just outright forgot to return to his seat.

He was keeping it together very well, though. Sure he became rooted, sure his palms decided they needed to exploring the soft shirt and slacks he swam in. But at least it stopped there. Weren't drugs great? Xander certainly thought so.

"Oh, really?" Xander challenged, but the rest of the words really didn't get a chance to make it out.

Not when, from nowhere, it suddenly felt as if the very atoms that kept his body together were rapidly separating. It was pain, it was pleasure. It lasted far too short of a time. Then there, in but the most brief seconds, the man silently could have sworn he saw some tall, cloaked, nasty thing hanging just over [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s shoulder. It made him snatch that folder right back out of the woman's hands, and hold it tight----damn, it felt so karking good!

In silence he took her compliment, not wasting a single moment longer, that Fantazi Tea vanished greedily. No voices.

No voices.

Keep your mouths shut!

Xander willed himself on, Doctor, Scientist. . . unhinged Schizophrenic trying to hide the dim gloom of his mutilated soul. That's right, she stared right in to his gaze, could she see the shadows banished to the very corners of those blue windows? While he had no training at all, and frankly, never even considered it outside of understanding exactly what The Force did and how it affected life, death and the in-between. Yet, even so, this man could feel. Feel the provocative poison that was this small woman.

He'd nodded once to Hades as this show got moving onward, walls breathing, colors sharpening, doom growing. Then, the metal jaws of an elevator, it opened wide, ate them whole. This was undoubtedly the last place he wanted to be at this very moment.

"No, it's not fully weaponized, per se." He informed carefully, "But it is an Aerosol Transmission, so, in that way, yes. You could use it as is, and the pathogens will move person-to-person through inhalation."

Oh no, not again with the malfunctions. This woman was unstable. Again, that figure. Tall and pale, face scarred over. Standing just behind this tiny woman. Xander didn't look away this time, at least, not until a sickly thin finger rose to it's lips, sshhhhh.

Hmm. . .

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Hmm…

She was going to ask him another question, dive deeper in to the intricacies when perhaps they would have been better served by waiting...but then she saw where he was looking. Up and to the side of her, unwavering, trying to piece something together. She could attribute it to the drugs, a hallucination he was rather calmly observing. But that was the second time she’d seen him look in that direction.

Just for a moment she reached out for his mind with a gentle, imperceptible, masterful tap. She wasn’t looking for anything but his vision, bending down in to his occipital lobe and sitting in on his sight.

She saw herself, impeccably dressed below a face dreamy with the come-up, and behind that karking thing, that apprentice that followed her around and seemed to drift and disappear at will. She hadn’t figured it out since Bapho. But he didn’t come from outside. He came from inside. He was born inside of me...and he won’t leave. She still couldn’t figure out if he was visible to others, if his manifestation was just in her head. But this man was seeing him. And--
A chorus of whispers, loud and quiet, male and female and something that didn’t sound like either, rushed towards her and around her.

Matsu pulled away from his mind, her face impassive stone despite her confusion. She’d heard guests in other people’s heads but never like that. They’d been products of the Force, hauntings from the Netherworld. But they weren’t like that. Was he…?

The elevator chimed softly and opened on the first of dozens of medical floors.

The Unit, although highly organized in to buildings and floors and sections according to the type of work being performed, was dizzyingly large. Without a guide or few months worth of experience navigating its halls, one had best be prepared to get lost several times a day. And even then, visiting a new area meant more learning of left’s and right’s and up’s and down’s. The administrative building, the beautiful front that had welcomed Mavros like the mouth of some great monster, was built specifically to be a smiling facade of propriety in which businesspeople and contractors alike could maintain their sense of superior morality and reasonable doubt.

Moving outwards from that front, the journey became steadily harder to rationalize in terms of morality. The further one went in to the complex, the darker the path. And at the end, underground…

But they had yet to get there.

What Xander and Matsu walked out in to now was a maze of hallways as beautiful as could be found anywhere in the galaxy’s most state-of-the-art hospitals. Well-lit, it was designed with an open floorplan leaving rooms to either side with duraglass walls. Nurses and patient beds and doctors and discreet flashing call-lights, scientists pacing with clipboards as they thought and wrote, the drip of IV lines, the rolling of gurneys down aisles - all in fantastic kaleidoscopic symmetry through endless glass walls. She’d been here a thousand times and yet the sight was almost pleasantly overwhelming now, as if the universe had no tether and there was no earth beneath her feet.

“Pre-existing conditions,” she explained quietly as they walked, her gaze moving slowly over the activity all around. It was hushed, only the hum of voices over the continual relaxing whirr of climate control. “Here, those already afflicted with some disease come to donate themselves to science or find a cure.” It was a nice building to start with, almost altruistic. It was a good way to cover how the doctors at the bedsides were drawing vials of rare, virulent diseases straight from collapsing veins for the purpose of studying them and turning them against the Galaxy. It hid how those who found their cures (antidotes, ways to stop weapons Matsu forced upon the world, for a price) were discharged joyfully only to never make it home, the strong who were spirited away to darker parts of the Unit to be experimented on, easy prey. It hid how sometimes they didn’t try to cure them at all.

“Some people who come here asking me for space to work have no real particular interest. They simply want the prestige that comes with it, and that works for me. I place them where I need the minds. But most - like you - come with specific interests. I know you say you don’t care for the benefits besides the space and freedom to work...but what kind of space do you need? A room, a wing, a floor, a building?”

Frankly, she found his impassioned answers interesting, and his work beautifully macabre. He could prove exceptionally useful. She was willing to give him a building if he got through the day.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

What she regarded as indistinct, a breath that was meant to be exhaled silently, she couldn't have been under a more ill-advised impression over the nature of her power. That wasn't to say this was some piece of dislodged brickwork, left to despair and decay under a wilting sort of heat in the fallen husks of The Slums. NO! It wasn't anything like that at all. His skull did not crack and evolve in to jagged, flesh shearing crags under the blunt trauma of a disturbed and dreamy lover scorned.

There was a certain type of agony though!

Yeah, it was deep, tempting provocation and ire to rise. It managed to cut right through this far-out high, that place his body just barely managed to find balance on. An elevated beam stretched out across the floor of this descending casket, that he could barely find purchase on, mirrored doors warping both his and her reflection in to something ungodly and obese, nah wait, it was more blurry and unrecognizeable. Nope. Definitely plump. Two porcine little Gamorreans squat and squealing in this radiant white glow of an overhanging light.

This. . .

nagging

sensation though!

Xander cleared his throat, nodding his head down for a moment, plucking his gaze off from the slim Mentalist of limited height. It wasn't so much the calm stroke of her palm over the wrinkles and silk of his gray matter. His potential in the Force, as of this encounter between them, was weak. Something untrained and laughable. Just another fixture decorating a Galaxy that had abilities that were beyond the average sentient; but they had done nothing to harvest and see the fruit.

But his eyes.

When she touched those blue eyes of his! Leeched the sight from beyond the glowing pools, the ache was incredible. Of course, he'd chalk that up to the inordinate consumption of drugs he'd inhaled and swallowed down how many moments prior? Kark, he couldn't tell anymore.

"Excuse me, " He breathed slowly, clenching lids tight, his face crumbling tight as he pinched the bridge of his nose right between his eyes. By the time he'd opened them again, the white had grown red, vessels eviscerated so violently that at any moment it looked as if blood would spill from their murky milk.

But, at least they were out of the elevator.

Hurt her. . . Witch. . cut her. . . . bash her. . she's lying. . listen to her lie! Don't follow her, trap. She's leading you to a trap. Poison. She's poison.

Poison her!

My friends, give me space. Yeah. Silence.

"It's all, very, very groovy man." His voice returned, it was confident, cool, collected and karking calm. His head was lit, the pang in his eyes forgotten. Yeah, it was all real nice. He liked the show. He liked the presentation. It had a style that was far removed from the grime, dust and shadow he labored in all around Hutt Space. An actual studio to conduct his opus of pain, progress and sickening science.

His fingers strummed and stroked the folder he so carefully clutched. His eyes wandering through glass and over perfectly spaced and planned cubicles of operation. It really was an impressive masterpiece. Gaudy. But he liked that. But, he didn't want a room. Not a wing or a building. He presented himself before her, the drugs in his eyes showing no signs of fatigue for his passion or weakness towards the craft. A fully functioning addict. The most dangerous kind.

He didn't even seem to mind----perhaps suspiciously--too much that the hideous blight that lurked over her had once again vanished. For Xander, he saw the Korog hidden in [member="Matsu Xiangu"] everywhere. Demons and monsters were a part of his life. And he was the worst one out of all of them.

"I want. . " He paused, his chin down, and brows slowly raising, "All of it, I'm done playing with scraps."

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

I want...all of it.

First he’d called her ‘man’, and now he wasn’t even attempting to hide his ambition. And why should he? There was nothing so unappealing as a creature that skulked around their true purpose, hiding it thinly-veiled and near insulting to whomever they attempted to coddle. It was no secret that she appreciated when others didn’t walk on eggshells around her but this was different. It almost felt like a challenge.

The corners of her mouth quirked up in a barely perceptible smile.

But that was her only response to the answer he’d given.

Deeper they went, walking and turning, taking elevators and speed-lifts, talking and sharing silence in turns as the tea took hold. And that journey got progressively darker. From ‘pre-existing conditions’, that place it was still possible to convince oneself everything was on the up-and-up, they left the safety of plausible deniability behind. Down, down, down - past floors where the people being experimented on had never had anything to begin with, where doctors and scientists gave disapproving looks to passerby and pulled the curtains around rooms closed. Where the halls had air exchange and isolation, where the pathogens being worked with threatened to take down whole star systems if not carefully handled. The exact details of human and alien atrocity that occurred behind those impeccably cleaned glass doors were blurry, but the farther they went the clearer it became that is was all very wrong.

By the time they’d reached the second to last floor (down down dooooooowwwwnnn in the earth) it felt like it might have been days since they’d started.

“When I started this place it was about biological warfare. But I have this...fascination,” she breathed, the last word near indecent as she paused in front of a glass cage in which a man was curled up in the corner. He should have been dead. When he rolled over pathetically it was obvious he should. have. been. dead. He was bloated, gas collecting in pockets underneath crinkled skin. Wet and waxy, weeping purge fluid in thick black puddles on the floor underneath him. He looked like he’d been floating for days, eyes bulging and tongue sticking out of a mouth frozen with pressure. “Once, when I was younger and didn’t know how to control my power so well, I felt a Jedi I was fighting die as my lightsaber pushed through her flesh. I’m still not sure how it happened - maybe just her shock, it grabbed my senses and made me listen. Either way I felt like I was dying too. And since then I’ve been...addicted to the sensation. I thought of it as sitting in. Spectating. There are thousands of ways to leave this place, some peaceful and some painful, and I wanted to know all of them. I wanted to master all of them.” The wretched creature in the cage was dragging itself closer by the arms, skin sloughing off in green-black sheets.

“But eventually that wasn’t enough. What we do up there,” she explained, waving her hand in the direction of where they’d come from, “has purpose in terms of the galaxy at large. But this? This is for me. So I can see what happens if you push the things you shouldn’t. So I can feel it.” The product of sorcery that rolled on the ground in front of them, praying for release, would die either when Matsu let him go or his brain lost all integrity. Whichever came first.

“Would you like to see?”

A heartbeat for acceptance, and then she bridged them. It was a mere taste of her power, equivalent to dipping one’s toes in to the edge of the ocean. But it was enough as the three stood in the same space at the same time - two listening, one unable to do anything but explain.

(The living were good at imagining agony. It was a survival instinct, the ability to fantasize about nerve endings melting at the kiss of fire, the stab of a bone poking up out of flesh. And perhaps those things might even be accurately imagined, though undoubtedly underestimated. But what was this? To rot? To feel oneself grow soft, useless, putrid. What was worse, the physical suffering or the mental? The same instinct that allowed imagination also drove disgust, the absolute horror that created avoidance of pain and danger. The inside of the subject’s head was as soft as his body, thought no longer connecting as it should have been as connections weakened, lobes softened, neural pathways disintegrated.

Words. Ideas. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. Help me. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. HELP ME. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick. The whole thing I think is sick.

As a thick sheet of skin peeled off to another drag, the thought was gone to a string of screaming whispers, reason gone to the wind. Who was he to comprehend this anymore, curled up in his corner watching his hands turn blue-green and dead, bloating, falling off god he could see the bones if he pressed down on gangrenous fullness. How long could he last this way? Please let me go.

To sit there. To be both be him and herself at once. That was beauty to Matsu. To know. To see the dying as the artistry. Efficient. Unbiased. Needing no gifts but its own ends. So now she’d rotted. What next?)

When she let them go there was a little more silence, just to let the moment pass.

“Of course, most of this knowledge - these experiences - can be applied to ideas to bring upstairs. But most avoid this place and let bring what I’ve learned without affecting their delicate sensibilities.”

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

It was a protracted journey Xander felt very calm in - distressingly calm. The substance of this place, of her, that halcyon shine from the literal substances flooding him under a tidal wave of sea foam that casually strode over shoreline, something someone off lesser chill may have found themselves set with such unease that stone from this mighty and mountainous Volcano might had come dislodged, but not him.

Déja vu, somewhere therein.

Maybe he was, sort of, really lit. Radiant and blinding. Seemed after his little back-paddle through the Surf they'd only rounded a row between the brilliantly crafted and displayed operating cubicles. They'd been over there, he looked across his shoulder, just a mellow glance, and now they were over here. His head turned back, just in time to watch her wave something in front of a Security Terminal before glass doors retracted and they glided onward.

Yes, he was still clutching his folder. One hand, the side of it bouncing against his hip as they walked. His demeanor had changed, in some way. Ambition was one of his many lusts - not for wealth, fame or the recognition. No. Passionate Initiative to strive forward, to peer deeper, venture further. Death was exquisite. Fever, Illness and Affliction the finest Art. He was a very different type of monster. Or maybe that's something every savage insisted quietly to themselves.

But that fallacy of familiarity. No matter how hard he shook, it clung upon him tighter than the loose clothes that hung from his athletic build. Small bits of her past, very meager, were the portions, and so very vague. They began to disentangle, one string of mysterious webbing clipped, then another. Never anything too deep, too far down the strands, not a breath that could collapse the structure. But the insight, it enthralled him.

The Spice, The Fantazi 'Shrooms, wow, they were beginning to expand his senses with unflinching absurdity. The halls seemed to stretch on endlessly, curve and dip, defy the very rules of Nature in a way that was not a perversion of the Force - or was it?! Their feet began to sound thunderous, the transition changes level to level, corner then stairs. It left him feeling staggered and unbalanced.

The lights were brighter than Stars, the walls breathed waving tendrils and bulging lungs. For a moment he'd thought a pane of security glass was littered with the climbing legs of a million spiders, all of them racing across the metal safety netting. He'd almost taken a step back when they stopped in front of another Terminal Check Point.

But he was too good for that.

"The very addiction of Time and the Galaxy. Something I've studied, something I've tried to open the envelope on. The very thing my life is dedicated to." He wasn't a Scientist or a Doctor looking to save lives, he never had been. The admission of her enslavement to the cruel bite and frigid clutch of Death, it only spurred him more towards curiosity of her. [member="Matsu Xiangu"].


He noticed a lot about this area, the way the lights had gone dimmer and yellow, the foot traffic around them was far lighter, sparse cropping of men and women behind black scrubs and clinical masks. Identity hidden from the eyes of this newcomer, what few glances he did illicit they quickly returned to their clipboard and work load. When Matsu was present, not a single I went undotted, or T crossed.

"So fascinating indeed. . . " Xander breathed, stepping ahead of Matsu towards the looking glass. Watching this creature belly towards them. A thick trail of rot and waste peeling from his rotting hide. When she asked if he wanted to see. . . the head snapped sideways, his chin nearly rotating over his shoulder. But, while his body turned and he loomed up towards her, what darkness he held in his posture was almost comically removed when next he spoke. "Dude. . . . " Like, Sith. . . do you even need to ask that?

Show. Me.

For Xander, it went deeper. The touch of Matsu, that possession she affected him with. How all at once he was both her and another. Three heartbeats, four eyes and two things that had become the deflated and soft shells of painted eggs. Just bulbously expanding from the sockets of a face rotund and colored with death, waiting to crack and release the yolk .

The lips were fatter, the tongue like leather, retch and vile welled through and sprayed sickeningly from around that organ of taste and speech. It'd never know either again. The only taste he knew now was cankerous rot and cessation of his life, the breaking of his Will.

Xander felt, suffering of a certain kind. A type of beatific agony that silenced the illness of his own mind. A release that made the encroaching Dark seem worthy and right and beautiful. But he felt more. More than the physical pain of ripe and rotten splitting, of slushy blisters bursting. He felt the exact moment.

The exact. Moment.

There where inflated, purple fingers, pressed through flesh and meat that had corroded to mush and a certain type of sulfuric stench. The actual pain didn't exist, but the sensation of a bloated hand sloshing inward, he was certain it had been his own. Certain that sensation had come from the intense curiosity he had to reach out and touch it.

But death.

Bitter, cold, lonely and broken.

When Matsu released Xander, his knees nearly buckled and he had to grab an edge of glass to sturdy his height once more.

"Show me more of this, " After a pause, after the bloom of exquisite release and attraction she had just allowed him to witness, he had again strode forward upon her. Close and leaning to find her eyes. Something perverse and sinister bleeding from his tone and presence. "And I will craft you suffering of the likes you have never even dreamed of witnessing." It wasn't confidence speaking. Or ego. His voice did not waver an octave. Almost daring and begging her to test him.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She had turned from the glass to face him as he strode the few steps to close the distance and lean down in front of her. Her hands by her sides, she didn’t move once the slide of chest neck chin mouth nose gave way to blue eyes level with her amber answer. The Lord was perfectly. quietly. still. Breathing slow. She watched the light blue-blue-dark blue of the mountains in his irises lengthening like evolutionary uplift as pupils shivered. For a moment she considered putting him down like all those things that threatened to become too interesting. But somewhere along the way she’d already gotten too curious, pulling at a strand in her web only to find something that relished in the trap instead of fearing it.

“Quite a promise...dude,” she responded, turning on a heel to move further within that floor which seemed only for her.

There were, seemingly, thousands of things to see, hundreds of glass cases they might have stopped in front of and witnessed. But time seemed to be one of the things Matsu viewed as elastic or just simply in enough abundance that his request became something of an opportunity. Should he prove worth keeping around, capable of delivering on such delicious promises, they would have hours and days and weeks and months and years of just sitting and watching.

“You could do it too, you know,” she said, unsure if he was even aware of his connection to the Force. She’d felt it when they’d shared the same headspace, a twisting and chaotic hum in the web she visualized the Dark. “See those things. Or others.”

She stopped in front of another case, this one by design instead of chance as the first. This was something she thought could be worked with, to see his proclivity - for cruelty or knowledge or fascination, or for all three. She was interested in them all. She’d seen natural and simple death enough. Now it was about understanding it all.

In front of them was another man, though this one was decidedly more intact than the first. He too was curled up in the corner, perfectly still. He faced away from them but Matsu could feel his fear when they came to a stop.

“This one…” she began, that tone of fascination creeping in to her tone again. “When I was on another planet in this system, I came across insects I hadn’t seen before. Hardly amazing - there have to be millions. But these are particularly useful. They can be picked up on food or in water, or they might enter through the feet or some other limb that touches a nest. Either way, they seem to migrate until the colony finds a place it likes. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where they settle. But once they do they liquify the host. But...curiously...only if the host moves.” What might have been mistaken for catatonia on the part of the man inside the case was suddenly even more sinister. “As you can see, he’s been conditioned to remain as still as possible. The insects move and digest and release acid seemingly only when stimulated by host movement. I think eventually they’ll make a nice long-term interrogation technique. This one agonizes over the decision to move across the cage for his water for hours until his thirst grows greater than the fear of the insects.”

A wave of something like despair but more maddeningly existential ghosted over Matsu’s mind.

“I will do the same thing and lend you my power. But this time, think of the thing you want to see closer, feel more clearly as if it were your own.” She didn’t elaborate more than that. If he was clever enough - and she thought he was - he’d find his own way through the vagaries. That was where the most original of talents came from anyway, experimentation. It went without saying that should he try to control her he would find the gift she offered revoked quickly and followed by his own stint in one of the glass cases. But curiosity was ever her galvanizing creator, however reckless.

And then she opened the connection between him, the man in the cage, and her mind again and gave him the reins.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

Right there, always there, that particular moment - the one where her eyes, sickened with darkness, met the polar bite of his own frigid blue pools. Xander had always found a bizarre sort of adumbration there, a silent glimpse through the barely opened windows of the mind and the soul behind the glossy glass. But where he had only known barriers; restraints set against him that did not allow further venture, limb by limb, through the gleaming black portals to witness the lonely rooms and cracked walls of the minds interior spaces.

Matsu, he now knew, had no such limitation.

If his prior words had not spoken with the restless greed to explore the beyond even further, his actions most assuredly would. That was of course, if he'd manage to survive the night, or was it still day? No bother. But what did bother, while on the subject of nuisance and irritations. . . he wanted to kiss her? He wanted to feel his lips press on the soft, full, shapely swell of her pout. . . those sort of awkward and ridged scars that cleaved across the jaw, what'd those feel like?

Not kiss her. .

NO, do not!

Bite her!!

Serious?

Very. .

Xander's eyes blinked slowly, listening to this woman utter the word dude in return to him, he found some sort of humor there. Maybe it was just her voice. Or maybe who she was. . . but whom she was entirely evaded him right now.

Bite her face.

Lads, keep quiet. Xander had a job to secure here, maybe after, some time long, long removed from now. We could get back to considering the sensation of teeth fleecing flesh and lip from face and bone. Right now our legs needed to move, and now we're walking. . . it always felt incredible with a head full of drugs.

Transitional spaces that were fickle and fluctuating, multi-colored and breathing out gasps of life that only the enlightened and brave could witness. An entire Galaxy that was alive and in misery. An entire disc full of the weak and laughable. So many still unsure about the Science and Medicine. The art and beauty in the desolate and isolated suffering. How provoking and seductive it was to examine the agony and suffering. To open the wounds and play with the hot, and steaming insides.

So many knew even less about the invigorating murmur of madness that bewildered and bludgeoned the senses when you stuffed all that gore and muck back in to the cavity and tied it tight. Let it live maimed and broken, twisted and new. Something utterly alone and unlike anything else.

"I wouldn't say it's really crossed my mind," Xander suddenly replied to her, sharply clicking thick glass with the pointed knuckle of a bent index finger, the strength of his knocking tearing the flesh and smudging blood. Whoops. "I've lead myself down a different path," From within that room, where the light was so bright and white it was nearly blinding, black smoke began to curl inward. Wisps collecting and churning together until a roughly man-like shape began to climb out from the clearing fog. "The. . . connection. . just hasn't found the right conduit yet."

More and more, the smoke, blacker than the ink of a Starless swathe of space, looked more and more familiar. Arms, legs, a torso and head. No features, at least none that would be recognizable to the two of them, not until an eye blinked and the shade that had been blackening the opposite side of the room was now directly upon the glass, thrusting a fist that neither made noise, nor caused damage - it merely struck hard surface and vanished in to an expanding, shadowy, cloud. But it's eyes. . . emerald and fiery, they watched as Matsu and Xander continued on, unphased by the ordeal.

He'd been eager before, back. . . well, actually it may have only been a handful of minutes ago, but by Emperor he swore it'd been longer. But, yeah. . . wait not. NO YES. He'd been eager. But now he was salivating. Did this mean she was experimenting on more than humans and near-humans? The thought made him shiver, a vast sigh escaping full lungs.

They'd arrived to her next little marvel, the area around them seemed dark. Strangely dark. Maybe it was less the corridor, which Xander noticed, much like the rest of the building thus far, was as modern and well drawn. Perfect lines, blinking tools and machines, sexy curves and sleek passages. While it seemed considerably tighter here, most of the space in this area swallowed up hungrily by the observation rooms, there was still enough room for them to maneuver shoulder to shoulder in their stroll of the Facility.

But that darkness.

The hall lights were dim, leaving half of their bodies fixed in dark shadow, but their faces, as she spoke and they approached, that clean glare was almost blinding.

"Billions upon billions. . ." He offered his own estimate on how many of these hidden little gems may reside out there in the Galaxy. He was in awe of it. He was seduced by it. He watched silently as she filled him in on the rest, and then. . . offered herself? "That's a very, tempting. . little. . . . gift?" He pondered out loud, suddenly turning, putting his back on the glass, his hands clutching the railing behind him before he pushed off and stepped in to the thicker darkness behind her.

Now, even as high, and as crazy and out there as Xander was. He did not for a moment think that he could overpower Matsu in any way. He was not simple. Given what she had shown him thus far knew, to her, he would present as little a challenge as a less interesting insect would to the sole of her shoe. But, however brash he may have came off in the next moment, he was prepared for the consequences to feel this sensation that she had seemingly promised.

He dove right in.

He could feel her mind, it's curves and murky obscurity, a place of twilight. . . a realm governed with a looming moon frowning on the fog-filled graveyard of her deepest mental layers. A place so foreign, that even had he wanted to explore further in to her perpetual night, he'd have only found himself lost and unable to return.

But in there, in there he could feel her press strength in to him. Like the union of some great, untamed, deadly beast feeding energy and power in to his muscles from it's own. He tried to breathe it in as deeply as he could, his left hand suddenly slapping down on to the edge of her shoulder, fingers rigid and tight as he gripped her body, as if the connection between them was somehow even more intense with the added texture of her flesh under his palm.

The voices that haunted him seemed to cower from her in silence, ducking to hide behind stones and statues, fleeing beyond sight in to forests of gnarled trees and horrid foreboding. It left Xander feeling naked, in some way, alone in complete silence. Not even the smallest whisper ringing his ears.

It was a silence that was now shared between he and Matsu as the two stood there, backs to those blinking globes of multi-colored light. But right there, right at that time. Neither could honestly say that was where they spoke. For both he and her now resided in someone else entirely.

A place that felt only of pain and suffering.

The cold white floor didn't even feel so solid or unforgiving now. The lights above were not nearly as intense or painful. But the hunger was. The hunger was something that had driven this place to silent insanity days ago. Or had it been weeks? Months? There was no telling inside of there. The only thing one could hear inside of this place was the sizzle of fat and meat. The melting of butter and sting of onion. In here the only sensation was for the desire to turn a burning skillet sideways and let the scalding grease scorch tongue, throat and belly.

Food, just give it food!

But. . . there was. . food. Not it's food though. No. It couldn't eat. Not with hurt. Not without pain. Why did they make it fear, what had it done? Why was the woman like this? Had it not told her she was beautiful? Had it not told her she was best? Did it even know who she was anymore?

Hunger. Hunger. Hunger.

Please let it eat. It's starving. The ribs. The ribs they ripple painfully. The flesh is so tight. Bugs. . . it can feel bugs and eyes and loneliness. Please talk now. Talk. Why won't you talk to it?

The bugs though!

Crawling, biting, sleeping. It can hear them. It can hear the pulsating of their bodies. It can't even blink. It's eyes are like stone. Is it blind? No. The floor is white. . . or brown? Brown with stains. Like streaks of filth. Bile and and bowels.

It could eat it's tongue?

NO.

She'll make it hurt. She makes it hurt so bad. . . don't let her hurt it anymore.

HUNGER! BY MAENA IT NEEDS TO EAT! LET IT EAT! EAT! EAT!

Xander was inside, Matsu was with him. It was passion and torment like he'd never known. He could feel the thoughts and sensations. He could understand the justifications and breaking that [member="Matsu Xiangu"] had put this subject through. Destroying it's sense of self, dignity and understanding until it only laid there in it's own disgusting mess even when it had the nourishment it so required.

The protein biscuits. Akk Dog food. Mmm. That'd be good?

Xander began to try and work with what Matsu had given him. But he was no Master, and even with her help, he was sloppy. But she already knew he was not trained for this sort of thing.

It'll be so good. It can eat it. It can eat it all. Then they'll bring more -- BUT THEY'LL HURT IT! NO! No more pain! It can't move! She put things inside of it! She made it do things and took samples! She made it hurt and suffer! She watches it daily! She watches it suffers from behind glass and in front of door! She breaks it's flesh and slices it's body!

Inside! She's hid things inside! They crawl! The lay and expand and clutch! They hurt! They itch! The flesh, peel off the flesh! It want's to scratch it all away! But it hurts! HELP!

HELP! HELP!!!

NO! IT CAN'T MOVE!

IT MUST! IT MUST EAT! IT WANTS FOOD! IT NEEDS FOOD! IT WANTS MEATS AND CHEESES! IT WANTS FATS AND OILS! IT WANTS PAIN! OH PAIN! NO PLEASE!

The subject had gotten to it's knees and had began crawling towards a glimmering, stainless steel bowl that had been slid in to the room through an entry port in the locked door on the opposite side of the room.

PLEASE STOP! THEY MOVE! THEY CRAWL! THEY BITE?! DO THEY BITE?! THEY BURN! IT BURNS! WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!

Blood had began to gush, hands left prints of thick, viscous, pools of dark crimson. The sensation was nothing short of the most tormenting anguish ever felt. Muscle and tendons snapped and steamed, bubbled and peeled back until nothing but bone clicked on the solid surface of the floor.

More and more of the Patient withered and wilted. His screams became something that even the other subjects held in this ward could hear as dull warning to their own fate, some day. Tongue fell from jaw, a slab of flesh splattered wetly beneath it's crawling limbs. More and more just stripped itself away in the fury of the swarm was they turned this thing from a man in to a gleaming skeleton mid-stride on it's hands and knees towards that bowl it had just wanted to mouth one bite from.

Perhaps that, had some way, caught her attention?

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She worked beside him the entire time, the passenger in a vehicle the driver had no business steering, somehow placid despite the stutter-stop of the foot on the gas pedal and a complete inability to find the brake. The clap of his hand on her shoulder was unexpected and her cybernetics clenched in to fists involuntarily, but quickly relaxed. She hated touch. But she found she didn’t mind this one, somehow.

She offered no help besides the weight of her power, watching his clumsy steps. Of course she didn’t expect him to command it with any real precision though she expected that he’d be capable of it someday. She simply wanted to see what he would do with it, given some cultivating of his own. And she wasn’t disappointed. It was one thing to make the wretched thing in the case do as he wished, but it was entirely another to try to reference its memories to manipulate it. She felt him searching for glimpses, finding moments of particular horror for the test subject, glimpses of Matsu’s impassive face through the glass as it suffered. And when he pushed hard enough to reduce her weeks-long experiment to nothing but a skeleton, it was nothing short of exquisite.

The insects, encased in hard shells that nevertheless seemed to pulse with the wriggle of their soft insides, rattled in sick little manic tappings as they ran out of food and instead searched around the skeleton they’d created.

It left Matsu with a moment to think.

She’d felt his curiosity about the smoke taking human form. She’d felt his ecstasy at the man rotting in the case far behind them. He’d searched for precise cruelty when given the chance to use her power. His attitude and frenetic passion for his work, nevermind the ingenuity and possibility for bringing the galaxy to heel, was somehow as addicting as their high.

Her attention was, without a doubt, caught.

But she’d felt the heavy moment of contemplation that had hung between them when he’d leaned down to look her in the eyes. They’d both considered leaning forward, as unprofessional as it would have been.
And...she’d heard the voice.
Bite her!!
Very. .
Bite her face.

And where had they gone when he’d touched her, where had they run?

She turned on him, wresting the reins from his hands but keeping him with her as she pulled and swallowed him in to a yawning moment of dark liable to crush him despite its wide hunger. For a moment there was blindness, her voice quiet and warm in his ear as outside of their minds she pulled him to the floor, injected his mind with poison as potent as the insects she was likened to. “Be quiet. Don’t move.”

When the blindness lifted, she was alone. The inside of most people’s heads was just a space full of thoughts, connected in webs and easily followed, each connected by thin gossamer to another that made sense in its juxtaposition. But this wasn’t a web at all. She found herself in some forest, the canopy dense enough that moonlight barely made it through. Her eyes adjusted, the bare glimmer of the rock above lighting the outline of pine trees with branches hanging low with some rain she’d missed. Each trunk was claustrophobically close to the next. It was dark beyond the feet that she could see, the sort so dense that it moved - or at least, she thought it did. The quiet plop of fat drops of condensation pattered against the mossy ground, its soft surface under her toes as she realized she was barefoot. She moved towards a tree to her left, its bark somewhat fuzzy under her fingers, the wood like threads. She was quiet for at least a few minutes, listening to something padding around just beyond the ability of her eyes to see. Sometimes she heard it breathing just behind the tree on which she leaned her back when she’d sat down and crossed her legs.

“Come out,” she said to the voices in his head.

[member="Xander Mavros"]​

 

[Xander Mavros]

And such was the danger of playing with Spiders. . .

Xander had been absent, consumed by the strength and influence of [member="Matsu Xiangu"]'s woefully impressive capabilities. Devoured by the death she had meant to feed his curiosity with. Now, in his time, during his career - if it could be considered that by the decent standards of Practice in the more civilized Galactic Community - he had been no simple transient visitor in the art of taking something that had once lived, and making it know the most agonizing sever from this Mortal realm.

But what she had just gave him, that had been different. An entirely new type of Drug he now needed to explore on some sort of molecular level. Something, even with just this tiny, infinitesimal taste, he was now addicted to in the most subatomic of ways!

By the time she had transported him to the darkened, cold tile floor below their feet. He had only but the briefest type of fortuity to even claim his eyesight back as his own. Fielding a momentary glimpse at her face, barely illuminated from the glow of blinking lights - orange and red - in the wreathed shadows that spilled down upon them from the brilliant beam of Hospital White Glow that flooded out from the observatory window.

Then blindness, her voice, and the sting of her venomous bite on his senses.

But then,

Nothing.

The weald of his mind was remarkable. It was somber in this darkness, exhausting in the ambit of it's endless obsidian. So remote did it feel. So isolated and lonely that it was almost overwhelming with a hidden sort of misery for life. Something well hidden below the surface, drowned from the windows of the eyes and syllables that swam from tongue, buried so deep under the consumption of drugs that no amount of digging up the moss, or siphoning out the rain water could ever show them the surface they so needed to break.

Limbs of trees shivered, the ground rumbled and lightning of neon green and electric blue just barely shone through the awning of branches and dripping needles. Xander had moved his head, somehow she could feel it on the inside. He was trying to fight her, but then, almost all at once. A wave of euphoria took over.

His lust for danger and lack of inhibition was giving in to her. A man that didn't fear things hidden beyond the veil, or know a set of restrictive boundaries other than the ones his own subconscious had built to defend him.

The whispers inside were loud, but somehow inaudible.

She was not witnessing ghosts nor phantasms, but something else entirely. Something far more natural, yet no less supernatural in their metaphysical abnormalities.

C OM E O U T. . . . .

The word seemed to yawn through the entire forest. Demons and shadows, men and women and creatures unknown. A million tongues repeating the syllables she uttered all at once. Before the particular one she had been looking for stepped forward.

It started with a light, a hum of life as the CRT powered on and static lit the glass screen of the square Television. Two metallic limbs pointed like clockwork handles standing on it's top, a small woman sitting not much unlike Matsu herself with her back to the Necromancer. Her back was black, cloaked by the constant glow, the globe of which illuminated a large swathe of wormy red moss around her.

A tongue swam forward, velvet and wet on the side of Matsu's neck as the woman licked upwards at the snow on the screen, the touch was electric - tingling and warm. "You're not supposed to be in here. . . " She was darkly informed, the feminine figure not once turning to face her.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The sensation where it should have just been sight, a tongue on the screen but a tongue on her neck… Minds weren’t games. Some were exceedingly and disappointingly simple, broken with no effort. Others were complicated either by intelligence or the weight of time and experience - a labyrinth to pick apart. Still others, the minds of Force-Users in particular, manufactured the strangest things such as representations of ideas, allusions to the past or future, whole compartments made for the purpose of hiding memory. But this mind…

“Isn’t that the point?” she asked quietly, static reflection stuttering and crawling over her pale skin as she looked from that short distance over the woman’s shoulder.

She could feel the world in the moss under her folded legs. Her heart seemed to be beating incorrectly, maybe two beats at a time instead of one. She felt sweat break out along the edges of her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the high planes of her cheekbones. The ground felt indecent - smooth, slick with the moisture dripping down from the trees above. It ran over her knees to soak in to the earth, coated her where her legs pressed against the red carpet and the soil just underneath.

And then the moss moved.

It rolled at first, two perfect thin fins that seemed at first like sharks in red waters before they kept coming up, rolling outwards to give way to one smooth plane. A back.

It disappeared, dropped down.

When the fins reappeared they were much closer, swimming underneath the earth towards her before rising again to give way to more of a form. The back, and then two arms, a head lolling down between both arms though truly that was only given away by the slight bump between them. The whole thing was moss, something underneath it struggling in the dark to tell Matsu something. She didn’t lean towards it, instead watching as it drew closer and closer and closer and closer until its head was by her elbow. She wasn’t sure where the voice came from. It didn’t seem to have a mouth.

Don’t listen to it.
It lies.

The TV went out, the crunching of constant static overtaken by the sound halfway between pressing the OFF button on the remote and the pinched line of complete loss of power - a drone, a punching hum that cancelled out all ambient sounds. What if that was just the rest of her life? What if this was it, trapped in the dark with this sound? Time seemed an irrelevant concept here in this place she’d invaded without a second thought. For a moment she considered the idea that she might be out of her depth, a concept that was wholly laughable and yet - the fact that she was considering it at all spoke volumes.

The monitor came back to laugh, snowing along Matsu’s features again but this time---
this time the other small woman was perhaps three feet in front of her.

A small thrill of apprehension dripped right down her spine and pooled between her legs.
It was foreign. And it was good.

She watched the static over the other woman’s shoulder. At first it seemed like there was nothing there. But if she watched long enough...eyes. Maybe the eyes the moss didn’t have. Maybe trapped. Trapped like her. Would eternity be so bad? It was at least a thrill. At least it was new. At least it surprised her.

“Do you ever get the feeling you’re not supposed to be in here either?”

[member="Xander Mavros"]​