Duel Because I Could Not Stop For Death

[Kai Bamarri]

Oh.

Well.

Trapped in stasis, Kai was like a caged animal, unable to move. He reached out with the Force, flinging objects from around the room toward Arc in an attempt to disrupt his concentration. Anything that wasn’t tied down, anything he could get his hands on…

Ishani didn’t realize she was screaming until she was out of the freezing mud, her throat aching. Khayyam had his hands over his ears, wincing, but when she stopped he scrambled forward to grab her shirt, keeping her from toppling over.

“Careful with the crystal. Last thing you want to do is drop it.” Khayyam dragged her to the tank. “Now, into the clone. Come on, you can do it. You’re a Sith, aren’t you?”

Ishani stared at him, panting, sweat-soaked, and barely able to stand. “Can I—have a moment to rest?” she rasped.

Khayyam glanced toward the closed door, then back to her. “Sure. Maybe her friend will kill your boyfriend while you're on break.”

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Arcturus stood in the center of a Kai-induced whirlwind of thrown items, and shook his head as he held them off with a telekinetic barrier.​

​

"You really don't know when to stop, do you?" he spoke, disappointment and disgust principal within his tone, "At least when I killed your progenitor it was in one quick impassioned moment, at least there I was trying to save someone I loved, you're over here picking fights and actively hindering the recovery of someone you claim to be like family to you. What the feth, man?"​

​

The boy couldn't talk back to him, so at this point Arcturus was just monologuing.​

​

"You got issues, kid. I'm supposed to be the Sith here, yet you? You're textbook... Keep struggling, keep throwing things, and I'll make sure you're out cold in two seconds flat. You know I can do it, I've done it before."​

​

Kai Bamarri ​

 

[Kai Bamarri]

Kai could certainly “talk”, his “voice” knifing into Arc’s mind.

<You’ll keep going. You’ll spread the teachings of the Sith through your students, create more Messalas, more Khayyams, more people like you and me. I come from an entire community of people who were taken by the Sith and twisted into something they were never meant to be. You kill yourselves for power and leave desolation and suffering in your wake. It will never end until you’re all dead, or the Sith are finally forgotten.>

The whirlwind stilled, and for a few seconds it was eerily quiet.

<Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m wrong to fight you. Maybe I should just rip the Sith parts out of your mind.>

Kai’s last stand was an attempt to do just that—digging into Arc’s brain to consume his thoughts and memories, as was in a Sith Doppelganger’s nature.

Inside the lab, Ishani was struggling. Her connection to the Force had been fickle even when she was an acolyte. Four years of virtually nothing had atrophied it. She still wasn’t quite sure how she had managed to get Claudia inside the crystal—yet now she was being expected to move her into a clone body.

“Will the clone… resist?” she asked Khayyam. Did the new body already have a consciousness, or was it just as dead as the corpse in the hoverchair?

“No. Really, you’re making this into a bigger deal than it is—”

“It’s literally disrupting nature,” she retorted. “To do this, I… I’d have to be so powerful, even death couldn’t reign over me. It’s one thing to capture a soul inside a rock, it’s another to bring them back from the dead. It’s necromancy.”

“Necromancy is a different discipline, don’t get confused.”

She shook her head. “Normally only emperors do this kind of thing, and I’m… I was never even properly apprenticed to a Sith.”

“You’re already halfway there. It’s just one more step.”

Staring down at the Soulstone in her palm, she took a deep breath. “It’s of the Dark Side… I can feel it. If doing this corrupts me, I stand to lose a lot.” The kids, namely. If Arc was concerned over exposing them to corruption borne of a hunger he could control, what about Ish defying the laws of nature, defying the very will of the Force?

Well, damn the will of the Force, then. What had been done to Claudia wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve to die because her grandfather wanted an amber tree instead of a granddaughter.

Focusing on the crystal, she began to draw the essence out of it, toward the body in the tank.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"You don't know a fethin' thing about me, kid" he stated, as he reached into one of the pouches and took a few steps toward him, even as he tried to poke and prod within his mind. Darth Empyrean didn't raise no fool though, and he had decent mental fortitude; to keep the kid busy he just let him into the most basic parts of his mind, the more immediate thoughts, and as he closed the gap he took out a fist full of sand and tossed it directly into Kai's face.​

​

He wasn't even trying to fling it from a distance. Arcturus wanted to put him to sleep then and there, before he hurt himself.​

​

Kai Bamarri ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Not long after Kai was knocked unconscious, Claudia awoke inside the tank with a jolt. Khayyam pressed a button and the fluid around her began to drain. Through the glass, she could see the figure of Ishani standing upright, though a little hunched over by fatigue. She seemed to look right at Claudia without really seeing her, too lost in thought.

Khayyam was there to help her from the vat, giving her a towel to dry herself and hospital-type clothes that looked like pajamas. He ran a mediscan. “There, see, you are healthy!”

“I feel strange,” Claudia replied. Her tongue felt either too big or too small for her mouth, she wasn’t quite sure. It made it difficult to form words, so she spoke slowly.

“That will pass eventually. Look—” He gestured to the tree-body in the hoverchair. “That was you, but now no more. You haven’t a touch of corruption about you. You are a new person, in a new body. Born again, if you will.”

Again Claudia found her eyes drifting toward Ishani, this time in wonderment. Ishani's back was to her; all she saw was a long yellow braid of hair, the back of a shirt, the curve of an elbow. Standing on her own two feet, she was surprised by how small in stature Ish was. Yet she was the one who had performed the essence transfer? "Thank you," she said.

Ish did not reply.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

Not for the first time in his life he watched as Kai crumpled to the floor in exhaustion.​

​

It would have been so easy to rid himself of this pest once and for all. Lop off his head, stab him through the heart, mutilate his body into a hundred thousand pieces and scatter them across the stars.​

​

So easy. He was lying there helplessly... The boy had been the one hunting him after all, he was the one who couldn't stop himself from seeking vengeance. Arcturus had only been trying to help. Both times, in fact... Both times he'd tried to help the kid, and both times the thanks he received was held at the tip of a blade.​

​

Instead Arcturus sighed and raised his sleeping body up from the ground to transport it through the Force. He brought it into the lab, set it down on some empty surface, and immediately turned to Claudia.​

​

"He's fine," he stated before anyone could get all uppity, "Just sleeping." He blinked, and looked at the chair bound girl. No... That was just a hollow shell. His gaze shifted, and he found her stood there in her new body. He bowed his head.​

​

"Good... It was a success." Part of him lamented the fact that he hadn't been able to learn for himself, but with Kai so hellbent on vengeance what else was he to do? At least Ishani had managed it. He couldn't have been prouder.​

​

His gaze shifted to Khayyam. "Do you have stun cuffs? Something that'll suppress his Force ability until he's no longer around me?" His lips were pressed into a thin line as he spoke. "I'll gladly bring him back to his ship, but I'm not going through all of that again."​

​

Arcturus looked exhausted, but Ishani?​

​

Ishani looked even further gone.​

​

He approached the girl and tenderly touched her upper arm. "Are you okay, Rhi?" he whispered, seeking out her gaze.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“Maybe we had better take our own ship,” Claudia said quickly, eyeing the unconscious form of Kai. “No reason to keep traveling together, especially if relations are… strained.”

She drifted away from the others, preferring to stay by her friend’s side. It also put some distance between her and the tree-body she had once inhabited.

Ish roused at Arc’s touch, turning her head to look up at him. For a moment she seemed lost and uncertain, searching his face as though looking for answers there. Then she embraced him tightly. “I was just thinking,” she said. “If I wanted to, I could stop anyone from dying now. This is it. The last taboo broken. Death holds no dominion over me now. I and all that I love are deathless.”

“Uh, right,” Khayyam said, clearing his throat. “And what do we plan on doing with the, ah, old body?” He gestured to the tree—for without a girl inside it, that was all it was.

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"Very well, if that is what you'd prefer. I can have your ship delivered wherever you see fit once Ishani and I are back home. You just... Let me know."​

​

His gaze fell to the wound which lay upon Kai's arm. "I apologize for the injury he sustained, I did my best to avoid such. I would ask, in lieu of payment, that you find a way to steer him off this bloodthirsty course he's on. This is the second time now he's tried to run me through. It was cute the first time, but I have a family to take care of now. I won't show him the same mercy if he dares bring this vendetta to their doorstep."​

​

It wasn't even really a threat, it was inherently a request. Clearly the man didn't want to put a stop to the boy, he didn't want to have to take it to extremes, but what choice was he being left with? He had Ishani to think about, the twins... No. This had to end.​

​

Ishani's words drew him then, and he frowned slightly. Wrapped his arms around her in turn as she embraced him. "Don't get yourself wrapped up in all of that" he whispered quietly into her hair, "What we did here is one thing, but don't try to dictate the natural course that life might take, love... Please, don't obsess over it."​

​

It would be easy to, he knew. Oh so easy to...​

​

His eyes shifted to Khayyam, though he didn't release Ishani from his hold.​

​

"If I may take a sample or two from both the transformed and the semi-transformed cells, it would be much appreciated. The chances that we run into similar in the future are slim I imagine, but even so having them on record may help keep others from reaching so drastic a point..."​

​

Besides, it gave him something new to study.​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

Claudia’s blue eyes flicked heavenward. “Oh, hell.” She shook her head. “He does this all the time. Hates the Sith more than anything—except himself. If it so much as has a label that reads ‘Dark Side’. he’ll try to annihilate it. As for changing him, that’s a thankless job you’ve set me on, but I suppose I could try… I could throw in some credits anyway for your trouble?”

As for Ishani, she was strangely calm, serene even. So much seemed to have slipped away, her worries shed like old skin. Perhaps she too had been reborn, as someone new. “Rhiannon,” she whispered under her breath. Exhausted and half wondering if this was all a dream, she closed her eyes as she leaned against him. “You keep calling me Rhi…”

Yet she stirred again once the discussion turned to the matter of the tree. “Well, you’re lucky I don’t have any interest in it,” Claudia said, a bit annoyed that nobody had thought to ask her permission. “I have a garden at home, but I think planting myself would be a bit too weird.”

“It could be planted, couldn’t it?” Lifting her head from Arc’s chest, Rhi looked at the tree. “Maybe I could find some use for it. I’m good with plants, after all.”

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind supplying me with some alchemized amber every now and then…” Khayyam coughed nervously. “Very useful stuff, that.”

Arcturus Dinn​

 

[Arcturus Dinn]

"No credits" he stated, with a soft shake of his head. Then he paused, and turned to look at Ishani and Khayyam. "Well, I suppose they might have a payment in mind. They did the work, after all..." Arcturus had just pulled the strings to make it so.​

​

At some point he'd have to return to the Alchemist, see if he couldn't learn how to do this all for himself. But for now?​

​

Well, for now they'd done as they came here to do.​

​

"Rhiannon" he corrected himself quietly, reaching up a hand to lightly brush against her cheek. Truth be told he still wasn't sure if it was even fair of him to speak that name into existence, but he liked it. It felt like some little secret he was in on. Intimate... Masochistic in many ways, it only further eluded to what he couldn't so readily have.​

​

Talks turned to the body, and Arcturus grimaced slightly at Claudia's words. Yeah, she should have been the first to be asked about it shouldn't she? Still she didn't have any qualms about it being put to use, in fact if anything she seemed intent on avoiding it entirely.​

​

"I can help you bring Kai to the ship, if you'd like?" he told her instead, "Then it's time we headed out too. We've already been gone too long. Thank you for everything, Khayyam, I'm in your debt. Feel free to call upon me at your discretion."​

​

Ishani Dinn ​

 

[Ishani Dinn]

“I’ll be your Rhi,” she said, even as he tried to correct himself. “Rhiannon’s always been a classier name than Ishani, it’s just that it was already taken…”

Maybe she should reclaim it now.

“I won’t charge anything,” she assured Claudia. Turning to Khayyam, she added, “I’ll give you your amber, but if you try to extract money from these kids, I’ll string you upside down out in the snow.”

“Oh, of course, of course,” Khayyam chittered nervously. “I’m happy just for the opportunity to study and work on such a unique case. Pleased to be of assistance.”

At Arc’s offer, Claudia nodded. “I’m still remembering how to walk properly again, so if you could move him, I’d appreciate it. I guess I’m done here…”

“I’ll take the, uh… tree out of here,” Rhi said, reluctantly sliding out of Arc’s grasp. “A few days alone together on the Leviathan will be nice, but I think the whole family needs a vacation…”

Arcturus Dinn​