Bicameral Mind

[Connor Harrison]

The Ring certainly reminded Connor of Nar Shaddaa, except if one looked beyond the protective bubble the void of space was a reminder how open this world was. It didn’t feel secure in terms of authority, and it felt like a place, as Matsu confirmed when they walked, where anyone could get anything for a price.

He felt empowered walking beside Matsu, regardless of height, she commanded authority without speaking and her presence alone was electrifying, Force aware or not. She had the confidence and the respect from others he craved.

The meeting place was set, and they were soon ushered into the ominous looking room with those seated around a central table rising to greet them. Connor automatically went to feel for anything, but it was a painful reminder that he had a flickering spark of the Force only, not a well ignited flame.

Connor turned his head slightly as the conversation started, to acknowledge Matsu in his mind. Not something now he fought, but something he drank up. It was true. The air of mystery around him and the company he was in commanded respect straight away without even opening his mouth. The Jedi tiptoed around certain situations and had a reputation for never being the ones to instigate authority and order. They were laughed at.

Those with the Dark Side as their ally – the Sith Lords – were known for simply acting on their instinct, and heaven help those who disappoint them. That was true power.

His dark eyes scanned the room, but something felt off.

Slowly, he stood, fists clenched by his side, but saying nothing and moving with no urgency. The conversation stalled, but carried on. Connor walked around the edge of the room slowly, looking at the walls he passed. There were a few stacks of sealed boxes, a table with munitions, and a couple of frosted windows that were covered, only letting a streak of light form outside bleed in.

He walked slowly around, not stopping until he made it full circle back to Matsu. He leant over to her and whispered.

"I don’t like it. Those wanting to avoid trouble could easily sell out a Sith to their enemies. Anything for a price, remmeber. This room. It’s not secure. "

It was a gentle whisper for her ears only.

This was something he could imagine the Shadows being part of. Contacts on dark, seedy worlds such as this were always ripe in selling out crime lords, or even politicians and commanders, to those wanting to pay the right price. The whole situation felt off. He felt exposed. Maybe it was without the Force to guide him, but his gut told him something wasn’t right.

He stood beside her, rather than sitting.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVJGh51wR7k​

The tension in the room increased tenfold when Harrison rose from his seat to patrol the room. Though the criminal ‘businessmen’ speaking with Matsu remained outwardly focused on her, she could feel their attention split in two to wonder what the nameless Sith associate had taken interest in. She tilted her head to listen when Connor leaned in to speak to her, her amber-orange eyes unwaveringly on the main broker of the deal throughout.

There was some sick part of her that wanted these idiots to turn on her.

Once she’d had to prove herself at every turn. Though she hadn’t grown up deep within the arms of the Sith code, the Fringe had been no less testing in their own way. Her name had meant nothing. Her title was just meaningless words. It had taken action to show the galaxy she was not to be trifled with. And now they never came. Now they heard her name and they knew it was not worth the risk. But she missed the test.

Because after all - she’d always been an adrenaline junkie, hadn’t she?
That little girl on Utapau, so many years ago.

His choice to stand beside her was telling. She’d been paying attention since he chose to stand in front of her defensively when ‘Coci’ had arrived. She spoke to the man who’d arranged the meeting, who seemed to be leading all the others.

“Who else did you tell about this meeting?”

“No one,” answered the man with a truly impressive display of certainty - even Matsu would admit that. “Only my partner knows.”

“Are you sure?” Matsu asked, her voice nearly a whisper as she felt the sudden flare of threat in the Force. It wasn’t from anyone in the room. But something was coming, and it felt powerful.

The man’s thoughts were loud in her head as fear made him less prone to hiding them. He was wondering if she was real. Her stillness was eerie, too perfect - statuesque. The slow rise and fall of her chest was the only thing that suggested that she was even alive. He was remembering a time as a child when a nexu cub his fur-trader Father had kept around attacked him, the five seconds of perfect stillness before the thing went for his throat.

“Jedi,” he said quietly. “I told Jed--IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!” He was screaming the word as his body slammed forward to smash his face against the table as if someone had come up from behind and pushed him. Matsu was still perfectly still but the fact that she was controlling him was evident by the ticking movement of her eyes as her victim thrashed (a fly stuck in a web, tangled tighter by its struggle). His muscles seized, limbs jerking as he threw himself bodily on to the table and appeared to have a seizure. The sinew in his throat was jerking violently as he gasped for air, choking on whatever Matsu was doing to his mind as nerve endings stopped communicating with one another. By now every other person at the round table had pushed back from their seats in horror, pressed up against the walls as if they could melt in to them and escape. It was stupid, animal instinct to freeze up when faced with something abominable. They’d even forgotten their blasters.

Matsu lifted from her seat, gliding around the table to the man she suddenly released. His entire body flopped uselessly to rest, his expression dazed even as the Sith Lord curled her fingers in his mop of hair. “Fool,” she said, almost pityingly. “I would have paid you far more than whatever the Jedi traded you.”

She used her claws to sever his head from the rest of him, the smell of blood filling the room. Once free, she held it up to watch his eyes tracking back and forth uselessly - much like a spider’s legs kept moving for a few minutes after it died.

Then everyone in the room started shooting.

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Connor felt the inner smile curl as the head honcho - Chen - began to answer Matsu’s question. She was so calm. So controlled. It wasn’t going to be long before - and there it was.

The body slammed into the table with such brute force, it was effortless in pushing and pulling his body. Connor’s eyes went a little wide, seeing the attack come from nowhere with no indication of the great Sith Sorceress and her plan.

So this is what it felt like to witness the surprise attack of the Force. The men around were recoiling in shock as the body in Matsu’s mental grip began to convulse, swell almost and become abnormal in movement.

He just watched, eyes moving to the men in the room against the walls in their semi-circle arrangement. Matsu still had control, in her stance and her voice. She had control when she took his head clean off. That made Connor wince a little - his first beheading. Not that it bothered him - not at all - but the ease in which she did it? Impressive and brutal.

A few outraged cries, the clicks and movement from the arms to blasters in belts and holsters. They were going to retaliate. Connor moved and shot out his hand to the nearest thug.

Nothing.

A lifetime ticked by in those split-seconds when no Force energy could pull the blaster away from his grip. It was then Connor kicked up Matsu’s chair with his foot towards the gun-toting sap, and it was followed by Connor who used the distraction to grab the man’s arm with one hand and his head with the other and run back into the wall.

Crushing the man’s gun wrist between his knee and the wall, resulting in said gun falling to the floor, Connor gave four hard and swift slams of the skull into the wall, each one leaving more bloody residue on the chipped paintwork until the body slumped.

A blaster bolt whizzed by, and Connor span, scooping up the blaster by his side and scurrying forward to the ground, arm up and firing lucky shots across the room away from where Matsu was.

Matsu - he didn’t even see what she was doing, or if she was hurt in the cross-fire. What could HE do? He was as useless as the next meat-bag in the room!

Keeping himself curled, Connor shifted position, cursing his lack of sensation, and raised the blaster. It was then he clicked there hadn’t been a wild bolt since the one that missed his head a few seconds ago.

He froze, listening, and slowly peered up from the edge of the table.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She admired the efficiency of nature. Save for those planets whose atmosphere had been eaten by the merciless march of time or war, decay was the same everywhere. Every body exhaled its last breath, grew soft with muscle breakdown, turned a sharp delineation of white and blue as blood settled. Eyes melted in sockets, skin dried and tightened over skulls and eventually succumbed to the sun, water, or time. Ashes to ashes. She often imagined teeth stuck in bleached skulls, empty sockets watching the sky change as stars were born and died, a thousand years of motion it wouldn’t rejoin. Inertia and ennui. A final rest. The same everywhere, the ultimate fate for everyone from Luke Skywalker to Naga Sadow.

She was a force of nature.
Small and quiet as she was, she was entropy.

She saw Connor switch to a more primitive style of fighting out of the corner of her eye, tracking him just he destroyed one of the men who’d been sitting at the table. She smiled.

At once everyone in the room who wasn’t Matsu or Connor raised their blasters to their temples and took the shot. Silence followed, broken only by the sizzle of burning flesh and duracrete from all the blaster holes everywhere. When she spoke it was quietly, loathe to break the mildly reverential hush they’d managed to find there in the depths of his planet.

“There are Jedi.”

Matsu was to death as a shark was to blood, able to sense its arrival long before it’d shown any visible signs.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked as her eyes turned on him. She was not asking about his capability. Though they would be up against people with use of the Force, she knew he would either find a way, or he would die if that’s what the Dark Side wished. She was asking whether he was ready to face what he’d once been so sure he’d always be...and cut it down.

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

He nodded, and scratched his brow before standing amidst the smell of burnt flesh, seeing the bodies slumped against the walls and vacant expressions on all faces. Connor didn’t know what he felt more – admiration or embarrassment.

But his face soon fell at the mention of Jedi, and he darted over to the high window, standing on a chair to look out into the streets. He glanced left, and saw nothing. Glancing right, he saw a street-fight.

"Nothing out front."

He turned to the Sorceress.

"And yes," he jumped down, "I am more than ready.”

He crossed the smoky room to the side door and opened it, seeing that it ran deeper into the building they were in. The blaster was tight in his hand, but fat lot that would do against one of his former own.

"Follow me, but don’t let me die please."

There was no point trying to make a joke with her, not yet. This whole situation was crazy when one stopped to think, but that’s what Connor Harrison wasn’t going to do anymore – stop and think. It was time to act, so he picked up the pace through the murky brown passageway, lit but small lights up above.

Stairs. He took them two at a time, glancing back to see if Matsu was even there. A middle landing, which he turned to follow up some more stairs before another door blocked his way. He rested his palm on it and closed his eyes and tried. Really tried to feel something. There was SOMETHING there…he was sure.

Connor tried to feed from Matsu’s mere presence. Tried to find faith in her and let her immense power surround him. For a few moments, he felt like he’d found his power again. He pulled the door open, blaster out, and fired at the figure standing behind it.

The drinks tray crashed down and smashed before the body of the Twi’lek girl did. She fell to the floor like heavy rocks, silent, as half her face came away. Connor froze, and looked down, and it was clear this girl was simply out to bring refreshments for their little meeting. A couple of datachips, drinks and a bottle. Nothing more. He closed his eyes and sighed. But as soon as he had, he was over it and stepped into the parlour room, seeing a few ornaments dangling from the low ceiling, orange lights glowing in the corners and some intoxicating smell from a dispenser on the side wall.

Another door led out opposite, and Connor moved right to it and kicked it open with a bang, swinging open as the noise from outside met them with the changing light. They were on an outside canopy of the building, and the vast protective bubble could be seen all around, as well as the industrial looking buildings that lined the city itself.

He felt it, again.

Something inside him was alerting him. And he wasn’t even thinking about Matsu – it was like he was possessed by some other force.

Connor glanced across the way, and he could tell that two figures watching him from the opposite building weren’t passers-by. He span around, but a woman with a cybernetic eye and a ominous brown and white robe blocked his path.

So this is what it felt like to meet a Jedi.

"I’m Connor Harrison, Master of the Silver Jedi Order from Voss under Thurion Heavenshield. There is a Sith Sorceress in there who - "

He fired twice into her belly, and her body recoiled as her head snapped back, twisted in pain, before falling onto his shoulder. Connor caught her, gripped her hair in his hand and inhaled her scent. It was peaceful. It was death.

"Be at peace, " he whispered.

He fired again into her, and let the body slump forward with a heavy crunch landing face-first on the dirty floor.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She kept behind him, content to watch him work. In her experience there was little fundamental difference in the way Jedi and Sith operated - just in their views. Take away the stereotypical grab and the specific color of lightsaber and one could not be told from the other moving down a hallway towards danger. In that moment he could have been anyone at all. In the heartbeat before he threw the first door open and sent a blaster bolt at the unsuspecting server-girl, he was in the limbo between either extreme.

But then he shot her and he chose.

As the girl’s face melted inwards towards her skull Matsu felt the Force swell, a ripple around Connor that excited her. The Dark Side was not so macabre and droll as to find murder the answer - it was the power that was the answer. The power to play god, to make the decisions when holding the thread of someone else’s mortality. To be strong enough, to be practical enough to see others as a roadblock…

And on and on he went.

It was when the Jedi appeared that Matsu knew the true turning point had arrived in front of them. Though her hand was wrapped around her lightsaber she didn’t make a move, watching Connor. And what she saw was good. Deception, ruthlessness. A shot to the stomach. Painful, slow. The kind of thing one could siphon power from when one learned to use a victim’s pain as fuel. As it was, she walked forward and took the pain for herself, wrapping a hand around Connor’s shoulder as he let the body fall. “Well done.”

But now the two he’d noted - the two she’d felt when the enemy had first landed - were getting closer. She could feel their signature in the Force approached, attempting to push back the Dark.

_______________________________________​

He was nervous.

He’d been in the field more than a few times, but never against Sith. And especially never against Sith like this.

With his Master by his side, Muha Silan hurried through the building they’d hurriedly made their way over to when they’d realized that Knight Yoan had been woefully outmatched. The closer they got to the place where she’d died (shot in the stomach, cut down without a second thought, he couldn’t stop replaying it in his head), the harder it was for him to concentrate. He tried to focus on his Master’s calming signature. Master Kahto had been his mentor for years, teaching him all he knew, and though there were times he struggled not to be irritated with her he couldn’t help but feel safer in her presence.

He needed it when they came upon the two Sith moving away from the body they - he - had slaughtered as if it was nothing.

Master Kahto spoke. Her voice was unusually deep, commanding. “Stand down, Sith. No one else need die today.”

Muha looked to the male of the pair, suppressing a shudder at what he saw there. He dared not look at the other one - the Lord. She was someone who had been so long in the Dark that she hurt just to look at, reached out and clawed at him even when she wasn’t looking at him. But the man...he felt raw, like a wound just torn open for the first time and aching for another press like some sick fetish.

“I’m not sure that’s true,” said the Lord, her voice like some horrible oil-slick as her red saber igniting over the pool of blood soaking in to the carpet around her feet. And then her hand came forward, seeming to coil at the palm before a spear of what looked like the same oil-slick he’d imagined her voice to be shot out of her hand. Master Kahto ducked gracefully, narrowly avoiding the spear as it drove through the wall behind her and dissolved in to some acidic mess. It would have melted her.

“Go Muha! And save them if you can!” she shouted, the blue of her saber glaring in his eyes before she ran off towards the Lord to engage her directly.

That left the male of the pair for Muha who immediately realized he couldn’t let his Master face the Lord without eliminating the male from the vicinity. Surely he would move to stop Master Kahto from reaching the Sith lady! Working up the biggest push he could at Padawan level, he let loose with the Force as he ran forward and attempted to shove the Sith male back in to - and possibly through - the wall to protect his Master.

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

Her hand on his shoulder was comforting, and, to him, acceptance. With a solemn nod, he fell more into the web.

"Thank you."

Connor's eyes danced over the streets below and, for a second, he saw this as a whole city - a planet - before him with Matsu standing behind as the calming Force that drove him to be something bigger and better than ever. Ruthless. Cunning. Calculating. Powerful. This was true strength, and it was glor -

The voice broke his dream, and his head turned but an inch at the unwelcome visitor. A Jedi. He could smell the righteous stench even if he couldn't feel his aura. Funny, how in just a few days, he was eager to start cutting them down on by one. They repulsed him. Their very arrogance that had had subscribed to and worn like a faux coat; nothing but lies and... ugh, it was sickening. Hopefully he would be able to take this one down too.

Matsu ignited her blade, and the confrontation was on. The Master was taken, and Connor knew he had to do what he had to do in order to stop the Jedi whelp getting involved. Connor darted across to take the blaster to his chest, but the Jedi acted first as they always did.

The Force blast was like a sheet wall pushing him back and off his feet, through a thankfully weak wooden and plaster wall, but into the top flight of stairs that he rolled down, covered in debris and splinters of the wood.

Gasping for his breath amidst the dust that clung to his throat and face from the air, Connor rubbed his face and staggered up and ignored the shooting pain in his back. He launched himself up the stairs to be met with the frame of the Jedi. Connor stopped dead, glaring up at his foe. Their Masters were otherwise...engaged.

"Your Master is already dead. You're about the face the most fearsome Sith Lord in the galaxy and I suggest you back down and beg for your life or you run, very far away."

He placed a foot on the next step up.

"Stand down, Sith." The Jedi presented his blade with a pale green glow.

Connor stopped.

"Don't be FOOLISH. I am trying to save you. To spare you from a fate worse than death!"

Connor took a step forward, blaster in his hand behind his back.

"You will not take this day! You or your Mas - "

Connor shot his right hand out and fired off centre to the Jedi, who was forced back a step and brought his blade down to block the bolt. But in a confined space, the disorientation of the noise, the light and shot glare and spark from the saber would be enough. The ex-Jedi leaped up the stairs and grabbed the Jedi's arm and held that saber out as best he could, using all his strength and loathing for this poor fool who represented everything and everyone he hated.

The two grappled on the top of the stairwell, and the fiery glow from the saber clashing and scraping the wall and ceiling was dazzling.

With a cry of strength, Connor twisted the Jedi's left arm back and up until he felt the bone break and a cry of pain, and threw him as best he could down the stairs. With loose footing on a debris strewn stairwell, the Jedi took a tumble as Connor fell back, feeling light he'd been wrestling an out of control mynock.

A noise that sounded like an expulsion of pressure sounded from the room across the way where Matsu was locked in combat, and he turned, not knowing what the hell had just happened as the walls shook around him and muted screams could be heard outside.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There was nervousness in the Padawan despite the way he went for Connor without hesitation, and as the Master Jedi came for her she grinned. The two of them immediately locked sabers, two women in a fine and delicate dance as they moved down the hallway in a blur of blow and riposte. Matsu’s heart beat in time to their brush and glance and as the came together in one great press, sabers screaming against each other as they both leaned in, the Sith Lord looked in the Jedi Master’s eyes.

“You doomed your Padawan,” she murmured just loud enough to be heard over their weapons. “That one will kill him.”

“If he dies, he does so in the service of the Light,” she Jedi responded, though Matsu could taste her fear.

They continued down the hallway, the Jedi performing a masterful sideways parry with her blade that sliced through Matsu’s suit to burn against the skin over her ribs. The Sith Lord hissed as the two women moved in to a much wider room. Men and women who’d been deep in their work screamed in surprise and panic as they sprinted away from the clash. Matsu took notice of the Jedi’s attention to the civilians around them and tried to push her towards a few cowering innocents against a side wall.

Almost without warning however the Jedi let loose a huge telekinetic shove, pushing Matsu back several feet before lifting her hand and opening a huge wall of light that seared from her palm and threatened to blind. Almost at the same time Matsu lifted her hand and let loose with the Dark, inky tendrils that lifted in to the light and dripped like oil. The two powers met, the Force manifest and struggling against itself before all the sudden it exploded like a thunderstorm on the ground. From the distance it may have sounded like just that but in the building in which it happened it was nearly deafening, throwing both Sith and Jedi back off their feet.

“Force, no!” she heard the Jedi shout, getting her bearings and seeing the matronly Master realize in horror their explosive clash had taken the lives of two of the civilians who’d chosen to hide instead of run.

She reached out for Harrison, speaking in to his mind.

Draw him outside. To the roof Connor.

______________​

Though the man he had confronted felt strange in the Force, there was no denying now he was something frightening.

Muha’s arm was a blaze of agony. When he looked down he saw white bone sticking out of his olive skin, a nauseating thing. But he pushed it down. If he had to die today, he wouldn’t do it with fear in his heart.

Pushing off the ground with his right arm, he reignited the saber. It would be somewhat useless to him now considering he only had one good arm to wield it with, but it was better than nothing. Confronting the other man head-on would now be foolish. Clearly he was stronger than Muha, more experienced. He would have to try another tactic.

Moving up the stairs tentatively, he appealed to the statement the Sith had made before.

“What do you mean, save me? From where I am standing, it’s you who need saving. We can help you. My Master, she can help you. That Sith you’re with...she’ll make everything around her rot. You don’t have to go down with her.”

If he could get this Sith to come to the Light, it would be an even greater thing than stopping him from hurting anyone else.

[member="Connor Harrison"]​

 

[Connor Harrison]

With his face focused like a man possessed, Connor stood at the top of the stairs, covered in dust and knowing Matsu was safe. Her voice whispered in his head like a comfort blanket, just before the Jedi spoke, and he shivered slightly.

The Jedi whelp appealed to a fragile part of Connor. The fragile part that all Jedi had in them in times of danger – hope to be saved. He just stared at the Jedi for a moment, a few cries behind walls around them added to the severity of the situation they were in.

Connor shook his head and his face started to fall.

"No. No…."

He leaned back on the wall and held his head with both hands.

"I didn’t want this! I don’t want any of it!"

His eyes were red, and he looked drained.

""I’m no Sith. I’m an exiled Jedi. Failed Jedi. Cast out!"

With a pained groan, he ran his hands over his face and gripped his hair in frustration. The Jedi’s voice got a little closer as he moved up the stairwell cautiously, saber burning away casting a blue glow around them all in the dark building.

"It’s not too late, my friend…"

""It is!" Connor shouted, turning his head to the Jedi, recoiling at the blade. "The Sith killed a Jedi, and I just watched, and then attacked you…I mean, look at me. I was a Master once. But then they caught me. Stripped me of the Force. Hurt me…and took me away. I lost everyone and everything and now there is no hope for me to find a way out."

He stared at the blue lightsaber.

""I carried one, once. I miss it."

The Jedi puffed out his chest, nodding, and wincing a little in pain. He killed the blue blade of the saber, and adjusted his broken arm and knelt on the step below Connor. He seemed to look through the evident eye-wound, the flushed face and dusty complexion. What a mess. The Jedi just seemed to see a fragile man.

"Your aura is weak. But there is hope. There’s always hope. You know that more than anyone, Master Jedi.”

Connor inhaled to stop his emotions coming out, trying not to smile at the confidence pushed on him.

"We can get you to safety. You will be a Jedi again.”

Connor found it hard not to look distant, his mind racing, not really listening. With a slow nod, he looked to the Jedi. ""Her ship is on the roof. I can fly it for us, if you get me out, I’ll fly us away."

The Jedi Padawan nodded and smiled. "See. The Force is with you. The Light is with you. Come, my friend. We must go. The fighting has stopped, and we must go now.”

With a final wipe over his face, Connor stood, nodding and he tossed the blaster to the floor. ""Yes, thank you, come on! Follow me! Quick, she won’t be hidden for long." He navigated the debris strewn hallway, glancing into the room that was now gutted, and there was no sign of Matsu or the Jedi Master. Just bodies across the floor.

A final small stairwell led to the opposite end of the roof, and Connor signalled for the Jedi to stop. He leaned into the door to listen, hand on the grate ready to pull it open.

""I can’t feel her, but I can’t hear anything. It’s safe."

The Jedi hissed and pulled Connor back gently.

"You can’t feel her, but I can. And you are in no position to fight her. Stay with me and get to that ship, and start it up. Can you do that?”

Connor nodded, an eager look in his eyes.

The Jedi shuffled to the door, but grunted in frustration at the broken arm holding him back. He fixed the hilt back to his belt, and took hold of the grate with his good hand and pulled it sideways, opening the door to let in the night-time sights and sounds. He moved forward.

"Okay my friend, g -”

His voice was cut off by the large arm wrapped around his neck and the weight of a man on his back. Connor over-powered him down, buckling his legs as his windpipe suddenly decreased in size with the tight grip. Connor had his face set in stone and wrapped a leg around the Jedi to keep him down. A muffled cry came out as his broken arm was mauled in the struggle. Connor already had the hilt in his right hand.

""I AM saved.”

The blue lightsaber penetrated the torso side on and Connor slowly pulled it across, half-gutting the youth as his flesh and clothing and internal organs sizzled from the blade. The body seemed to cave in when Connor released it, and he knelt down, holding the saber hilt in one hand and looking around with hungry eyes for Matsu.

""Where are you…,” he whispered.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]