Private Bounced Off A Sounding Board

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Mercy

DEEP SPACE
THE POMOJEMA
NONPARTISAN, NONDENOMINATIONAL DARK SIDE ACADEMY
CURRENTLY DRIFTING
FOR SOME REASON
A PARSEC OFF CORUSCANT


Though she'd retired after decades as its captain, Ashin maintained space on the Pomojema - a simple bedroom, a private meeting room, her shooting gallery, and odds and ends. This being the Pomojema, she also had more than enough access to forge and lab and training room and hangar and qabbrat and all the rest. You could make a good life here, and she'd done so for a long time, splitting that time between her duties as captain and instructor and her family on Eshan.

She no longer needed to split. Existing in more than one body at once, she was simultaneously with family and aboard this ship and elsewhere. The her that was here was the body she'd stolen from Delila Castillon.

She'd asked for Mercy to drop by and expected her former apprentice to enjoy the challenge of just plain getting here. How the Pomojema was within a parsec of Coruscant without interception came down to ritual and skill and above all no malevolent intent that could set off precognitives or visions. Everyone was on strict instruction about that. Zero malevolence toward Coruscant allowed. Think of a pink bantha instead.

 

[Mercy]

Ashin Cardé Varanin

Mercy loved a challenge. If she was told something was hard or better yet, impossible, she'd do even more her best to do it anyway.

Just because she could.

This wasn't a challenge you could smash your head into until it cracked. Think non violent thoughts while the public cargo hauler ran it's passage through the Core Worlds.

For Mercy especially that was difficult. She managed to get through it by just imagining punching the pink bantha and not think about Coruscant at all.

Eventually her shuttle detached from the hauler and some more eventually's later it finally docked with the Academy.

She hadn't been here in a while. It still felt larger than life even though Mercy wasn't that young impressionable Apprentice anymore. So many Sith had passed through here on their way to make a mark.

Inspirational.

She found her way to wherever her former Master was. If need be she'd ask around.

"Master Varanin." No bow though, but the tone was respectful enough. "First time you send for me. Planning to get jailed by the Jedi again and need an extraction plan?"

A little smirk.

Yeah, she was still a shit. Age didn't erase that.

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"First time you send for me. Planning to get jailed by the Jedi again and need an extraction plan?"

"Recall, Mercy. In my three Jedi trials, I was and always have been my own extraction plan."

Ashin was not the hugging type even with family, but she felt an unexpected little bit of affection for easily, easily her third most irritating apprentice ever. She took off her mask and set it aside - this was Ashin's private shooting gallery, and her collection of long guns was laid out on the wall racks. She and Mercy had trained here together many times.

"It's good to see you. I could use advice from someone who will see certain things clearly, will have a very different perspective than mine, and does not care what I think nor care about offending me."

 

[Mercy]

Oh, Mercy did recall.

She remembered how Avalore had planned on couping the academy to force it into rescuing Ashin. How she had enlisted Mercy to help as the muscle.

How in the end none of it had mattered.

Back then it was funny, looking back at it, plain hilarious.

"Can't say people ask for my advice often."

Which to some point Mercy understood, since for the longest time she had been more muscle than brain.

"I'll bite, what has gotten the Conqueror of a Thousand Worlds in a twist?" Usually from Mercy it would have been snarky, another ribbing. But the way she said that ancient title of Ashin? Still a touch of awe there, just enough.

Good reminder that once upon a time as a young princess, Ashin had been her role model.

The entire reason she had enough courage to abandon her family who had tried to mold her into a shape that would never take. And to carve her own way through the Galaxy.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

For all that she'd wondered how this moment might go, she hadn't yet quite figured out the words. The shape of the problem kept changing, and all her first attempts had been tainted by the coy delicacy of Sith and Echani court politics. Truth be told, that conversational mode felt like it had tainted more than just these words. It felt pervasive.

"I am dissatisfied with retirement. I have walked the halls of Sith palaces long enough. I fear it makes me weaker than the right alternative. So I have offered my services to Solipsis, to train and resurrect, as needed, his Dark Side Elite for a strike at the Alliance's heart. I don't believe I told you that I resurrected him.

"These are brutal and unrefined people. I have my doubts about encouraging their games. What would you do in my situation?"

 

[Mercy]

Solipsis.

She was about to spit on the floor in response, but managed to hold it in after one look at Ashin.

"The guy who came in with big promises, got smashed on Coruscant, disappeared and then reappeared again a while ago? Operation Cinder? Come on, Varanin." Her tone dripping with disdain, the disgust so pronounced she even forgot to call Ashin Master. "His group is all wanna-be has-beens chasing past perceived glory. Petulant after their last attempt at destroying the Alliance failed and trying the same trick, expecting a different outcome."

And if anyone knew petulance it was Mercy.

She leaned back against the table and looked past to the target boards in the distance. She didn't know Solipsis personally, or his entourage, but she heard the stories. More importantly it went against what she personally believed. You didn't run from a fight. You kept going until you broke or your opponent did.

"Then again, fueled by petulance or not, they are the only ones actually trying to wreck the Alliance." The Sith Empire seemed content just sitting in the Unknown Regions and swallowing worlds that barely offered a fight.

But Ashin had wanted to know what Mercy would do.

"I wouldn't have resurrected him. Certainly wouldn't have offered further assistance after that. If he doesn't have the strength now, with the Alliance at its lowest, to break them without your help? He wouldn't be worth the sweat of my brow." Eyes flicking back to Ashin. "The shit he touches has a way of crumbling and magically he is never around to see it fall, I'd be concerned the next time it's me that would crumble while he stage exits left."

Then a smile.

"If I was in your situation anyway."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Exactly the candor I had hoped for. And the reaction."

Ashin took a weapon off the rack, a Dartflower sniper lanvarok that Mercy would know well. Its discs were built to ricochet, careen, fragment if needed, and carry a bloodletting toxin. It was one of the least effective penetrators in the collection of sniper, marksman, and anti-materiel long guns on display. She began cleaning it on a metal maintenance table.

"Tell me, Mercy. How much do you know about dice? Do you know the difference between rolling three cubes and one Canto Bight twenty-sider, for example?"

 

[Mercy]

She quietly watched as Ashin picked up the rifle and began to work on it.

It seemed random but knowing Ashin it was part of the point.

Mercy was sadly not one to think too hard about something. The exact opposite of the way she handled problems that needed a physical component.

"Wasn't ever much for gambling, Master." She said after a moment. "Or playing games, dice or otherwise."

Then glancing up to her again.

"You don't expect him to win? But it costs you little to send him on his way with some help and see if he manages to surprise you?"

Shit stirring basically but on a Galactic level.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"His odds of winning, of enduring, are immaterial. His actions have a reasonable chance of inspiring the anger, embarrassment, and contempt of not only the Alliance but certain actors within the Sith Empire, in a wide range of ways that are useful to me."

Carefully, using a tool made for the purpose, Ashin removed the short stack of lanvarok discs from within the cylindrical clip and set them aside so she could work on the lanvarok's internals.

"It might entertain you to know that my wife and I lived on Nar Shaddaa for a time after I lost the throne. I learned a thing or two about dice in the process. If you roll a number of them, their results are likely to trend toward the middle in steeper and steeper curves. A single die has flat probability; a very good result is as likely or unlikely as a very bad or mediocre one. So if I were to roll, oh, three cubes against a single twenty-sided die, the upper and lower bounds of their results would have a similar range of possibilities — three to eighteen versus one to twenty — but in terms of likelihood, the group would have a bias for mediocrity. Its most common results would be a ten or an eleven.

"The empire of the Sith has spent almost four decades producing steady, predictable, occasionally impressive, occasionally weak results. Solipsis' team is a single die capable of moments of miserable failure and blazing success. One can grow tired of seeing just elevens."

 

[Mercy]

Eyebrows went up at that admission.

She guessed that is why Ashin had been an Empress and a Lord presiding over thousands of worlds. And why Mercy was... Mercy. Not a Lord, not an Empress, just a terrifying monster that ripped people to shreds.

It was the scale of it.

"Retirement really started to bore you." Mercy respond with a soft impressed whistle. "You know, some people take up knitting, or bird watching." She never truly believed that Ashin would retire completely. But there was not retiring and there was making a move that had the opportunity to rearrange the entire fabric of Galactic society while barely lifting a finger.

She had to hand it to Ashin.

"I have always liked Nar Shaddaa. That's where I got my start, you know. After I fled the Sith Academy." A bit of a wistful tone there. "Guess I was wrong to doubt your sense when it comes to Solipsis. Either he wins or he fails spectacularly, but either way it will be hilarious. I still wouldn't have done the same, but I guess that's why we wear different boots."

And one had had several crowns and for now Mercy held none.

"Since we are here anyway. I was going to reach out to you eventually, I took up an apprentice." Watching her curiously.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Either he wins or he fails spectacularly, but either way it will be hilarious.

"That's so perilously compatible with my intentions that I find myself laid bare, order and respectability revealed as little more than aesthetics."

"Since we are here anyway. I was going to reach out to you eventually, I took up an apprentice."

Ashin finished cleaning the Dartflower lanvarok and returned it to its place of honour between a pair of Mandalorian sniper rifles.

"What qualities did you look for in an apprentice? This time, at least? I've found that my criteria shift."

 

[Mercy]

Ashin finished cleaning the Dartflower lanvarok and returned it to its place of honour between a pair of Mandalorian sniper rifles.

"What qualities did you look for in an apprentice? This time, at least? I've found that my criteria shift."

"I wasn't looking, that's the thing." She said with a sigh as she watched her put the Ianvarok back. It was a ridiculous thing, but somehow that only made Mercy appreciate it more.

"I was on Rattatak, came across her in the slave pits. Soft little thing, scared of her own shadow. But powerful, Master. Very powerful. Her mind overwhelmed everyone in her cage and the guards right in front of the door."

A shrug there.

"I thought it was a waste to leave her there, to either be killed or be thrown to some cretin looking for pretty flesh. I am doing my best to shape her up, make her hard, but you know I never had any talent for the mind shit." As far as Mercy knew neither did Ashin. They had that in common at least. "You open to having your wife take a look at her? Appreciate her sponsorship in the Kaggath by the way, much kind."

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Many years have passed since I dared to be my wife's gatekeeper. Connect with her as you see fit. But I will say her taste for taking small strange prodigies under her wing eclipses mine. Her time depending.

"What might intrigue her, what almost intrigues me, is the parallel between your meeting and skillset contrast and ours. When I met my wife my emphasis was much like yours, and she was already the mentalist, the empath, the Phobis Device in embryo.

"I'll warn you that your student's confidence may surge as she gains yours. My wife kept hers in proportion. Other apprentices of mine have not. Be ready for both outcomes."

 

[Mercy]

Inclining her head there.

"I have noticed the parallel myself. What is it the Jedi say? The Force guides us all?" Bemused there a touch. "Maybe it was the Force that led me past her cage that day." She didn't truly believe it, but the parallel was interesting enough to at least think about it. "I will ask Spencer Varanin about it then. Time permitted, she might be able to help the girl in ways that I cannot." It was interesting. She always assumed she would never take an apprentice. Take someone in her confidence that one day might betray her? Preposterous. But here she was, not just taking an apprentice, but doing her best to make her as strong as possible.

Funny how that went.

She stretched slowly.

"Guess that doesn't count for me. When you took me on as your Apprentice my confidence was already up there in the stratosphere." A curious look at Ashin.

"Any other advice for me? I haven't had a review from you in a long time."

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

She gave that question the consideration it deserved, puttering around the shooting gallery and arms display to tie up loose ends.

"Remember the lessons of Vectivus and Lumiya. The valuable truth hiding behind the Sith way is this: choose what matters most to you and pursue it, whatever the cost. You're at a level of seniority to enable that freedom. If you do not know yet what you want most, now is the time to begin that lifelong decision and redecision, or you will atrophy into habit and predictability as so many Sith Lords do."

 

[Mercy]

Mercy nodded there but didn't immediately respond.

Instead she watched Ashin, thinking, turning things around in her head, but eventually she'd sigh.

"I don't do this often." Standing up there and extending her hand to her Master. "But thank you. I would have gotten there myself eventually, but you took the time to educate me and I am stronger for it. I will always appreciate that."

From a stupid brawling apprentice to a nightmare in the Galaxy.

How's that for a dice that would oscillate between spectacular failure and blazing success, equally hilarious, no matter what.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Empowering the right student is its own fulfillment, as you may learn. You were that for me, one of the few."

Ashin came around the maintenance table and accepted the handshake. She didn't indulge in a contest of strength this time. She'd made her career out of being an immovable object; Mercy had made hers out of being an unstoppable force. There was no point in attempting to resolve the paradox.

Well, maybe someday.

"Safe travels. Over the next few days, keep your eye on Kuat and Balmorra. You will see developments of interest."

 

[Mercy]

Ashin Cardé Varanin

And in response Mercy didn't try and crush Ashin's hand.

Even if she was morbidly curious if she'd be able to.

"Never a quiet day with you, is there?" She said bemused but with interest. Kuat and Balmorra? That was smack in the middle of the Galactic Alliance. She didn't miss the fact that this was at the tail-end of Ashin asking her about Solipsis and those around him. She inclined her head and then let go of Ashin, taking a step back.

"Hope I managed to help you in return. Good luck with your entertainment, Master, I hope it will be as spectacular as you are hoping for."

Then she took her leave.