Private Catch up

[Syd Celsius]

Wearing: 90 Suit

Armed with: Wind and Fire Wheels

Objective: Aid Starlin Rand in training his student, Lief .

She had meant what she said about not abandoning Starlin ever again. In the days since that fateful journey to the House Io Star Destroyer, she had constantly kept in contact with him, sending him letters about where she was and her progress, always making sure to stop by and visit when possible.

She was in fact visiting him to aid him in an undertaking she had misgivings about.

Starlin had taken an apprentice for himself. A man named Eliphas.

Syd, unsure whether she was fit to guide or teach anyone, given the self inflicted disaster that Starlin's apprenticeship had been.

She had destroyed it. All of it. She had been on the road to at least trying to make amends.

And then Laertia had needed help and Syd had been so emotional she hadn't seen it. Hadn't seen the danger. Or had she willfully ignored it?

Syd tried not to think about the latter possibility.

When not searching for where House Io's main base of operations was, she was in disguise helping others Anonymously in her other guises. But today she was here in a more official capacity.

Starlin had needed her help, and she hadn't been there for him when he had sunk to his lowest.

She didn't know how she could ever make up for it to him. But here she was, trying.

Syd sat on her bed, staring at the preserved Golden Rose Laertia had given her. How long had she been the apprentice to that heretic?

Syd blinked.

Laertia had always been apprenticed to Sith. Her very destiny had been shaped and determined by Sith with the Jedi having completely and totally failed at reaching her. But she wasn't attracted to the things most Sith were attracted to. She didn't hate the Jedi for the same reasons most Sith did. In some ways that made her more dangerous.

Even now there were so many blanks. Certain questions had been answered aboard the House Io Star Destroyer, such as what Laertia had been up to.

Xiphos had built a fething modern army, with advanced technology. She had had not one, but four central benefactors/mentors, all aiding her for various reasons over the years. Much of this carefully concealed by Laertia.

Syd had found herself beginning to ask why Laertia had hidden so much from her. Why she had hidden so much from Laertia in turn. Was she truly that scared? Had they both been truly that scared of spoiling what they had?

No, she realized. That wasn't why.

Looking at the perfect, preserved rose, she realized it was the perfect metaphor for their relationship.

It had simply been too fragile. Beautiful, but no matter how beautiful that was, a barrier kept it in stasis, keeping it beautiful, but static, and unable to evolve. The barrier between it and reality was trust.

And it was a barrier, in the end, that had proven too strong for either of them to overcome.

Xiphos was sworn to avenge her parents. A lot of things might complicate it, delay on her end, but Xiphos would never waver: Xiphos must kill Syd, not just to avenge her parents, but to undo the shame and humiliation of unknowingly losing her virginity to said killer.

It could only end in blood between them now, and try as Syd might to ignore the truth, the next they met it would be a fight to the death. Syd knew Xiphos would have to be imprisoned or killed. But she didn't want to be the one to do it. But she couldn't let the factions have the final satisfaction of killing her. She would spare Laertia at least that indignity. For all the chit the Major Factions had pulled in the third Imperial Civil War, they didn't deserve to have her answer to them. They didn't deserve to have either Xiphos OR Syd answer to them, for their choices disgusted her to no end even now. Her faith in the Jedi's competency had permanently been broken at Sarka and she would never aid them again, not even if they put a gun to her head. Starlin was the one exception. It was now for him she did all this for.

If she couldn't salvage herself, she could at least salvage him. Starlin was probably the one good thing in her life now, and Syd would never have biological children...

Syd piloted her craft down to Taris after putting the rose away, towards one of his old hiding spots she had helped him build. She didn't know how many others he had.

She set down and opened the hatch, floating into the landing pad, trying to hide her sorrow at the happy memories this place brought up...

 

[Starlin Rand]

“There she is,” Starlin said as the ship pulled out of hyperspace before a dull greenish-gray planet. “Taris. This place has been bombed to shit so many times, it’s basically just a salvage world now. Most people don’t even realize it still has inhabitants… Which made it the perfect planet to build a secret hideout on.”

Starlin’s “castle”, as Syd had dubbed it, was their current destination. Constructed from bits of local scrap, his master had used the opportunity to teach him how to manipulate metal with the Force. Now it was Eli’s turn to learn the art of Metallokinesis.

Or at least, that was the plan. As they approached Taris’ surface, and Starlin’s orientation in the galaxy adapted to the faster-than-light jump, he felt a familiar presence.

For a while he sat very still, falling completely silent as the ship cycled through landing procedures on autopilot. Eli would probably notice how quiet he’d gotten—it was pretty impossible to miss the change. Starlin’s brow furrowed, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“Looks like we have an unexpected visitor,” he finally said. “She’s here. My master. Syd is here.”

She had no reason to be on Taris (that he knew of) unless she specifically wanted to see him. Probably urgent too, if she hadn’t bothered to call him first or arrange a meeting. She just showed up at the same place where he was headed… with his new Padawan. So far Starlin hadn't exactly built up a great image of Syd for Eli, but it didn't take a full in-depth knowledge of their history together to figure out that their relationship was a complicated one.

The ship touched down on an old landing pad close to his hideout. Starlin leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Well, nothing to it. The lesson’s still on, I’ll just have to… er, deal with her, I guess.”

Lief Syd Celsius​

 

[Lief]

For all the strange worlds he'd seen so far, Taris had never even been a blip on the boys radar. He'd heard of it in passing during one of his history lessons, something about a ghoul outbreak in its long and sordid history, but that felt like decades ago now and the details were hazy in his mind. Shifting in his seat, Eliphas peered out of the viewing port and nodded his head appreciatively at the green planet.

"Looks pretty harmless from up here," he stated, "A salvage world?"

He was unfamiliar with that term. Just as much as he was unfamiliar with the strange look which crossed his Master's expression as they neared it. Starlin was typically Mr Upbeat, there wasn't much which had ever brought a true frown across his brow, and yet here it was... Eliphas didn't pry, of course, but soon enough he got the answer as to why all the same.

Syd.

Starlin hadn't exactly had a glowing review of the woman, what little of her he had explained that was. "You alright, man?" the kid asked, as they lowered down and docked. He stated that they'd still do their planned lesson, whatever that lesson might be, and he nodded his head.

"Alright, well... If you need a minute, I uh... Need to use the 'fresher anyway."

He didn't. But he got up and made his way toward the ship's refresher anyway. Give the man a minute to compose himself or adjust to the surprise or whatever. Then they could exit the ship.

Starlin Rand Syd Celsius

 

[Starlin Rand]

“Basically, everything’s rubble and not too many people live there anymore, so salvagers can come and take whatever they can find,” Starlin replied. “That’s part of why we’re coming here, because there’s plenty of scrap metal lying around that we can use for practice.”

He was glad for the distraction of talking about their upcoming lesson, but the matter of Syd wasn’t going to go away. Starlin didn’t answer right away when Eli asked him if he was alright. “Yeah,” he replied eventually, his tone somewhat half-hearted. Then, as Eli got up to use the ‘fresher, Starlin left the cockpit and headed down the loading ramp. Stopping at the bottom, he went no further than that.

The ruinous landscape of a former ecumenopolis was both terrible and wondrous to behold. Nature had begun to retake the bombed-out shells of buildings, speckling gray durasteel and white duracrete with sprouts of green. In other areas, the desolation ran too deep for life to take root. Some places still smoldered, smoke rising from the charred remains, while others harbored the buglike shapes of airspeeders—a population of sentients that stubbornly persisted in their own little corner of still-functioning city.

There in the foreground stood Starlin’s castle. The structure rose out of the rubble, a twisted mass of metal too deliberate to have been created by the destructive blast of turbolasers. Somewhere in there (or somewhere nearby) was Syd. He wondered what she wanted.

When Eli came out again, Starlin would still be there at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for him. "Maybe, uh, don't mention you're my Padawan around her until I have a chance to figure out why she's here," he said quietly. "If she asks you, just... uh, say you're a friend." He didn't explain why he wanted to hide this fact from his master, but he did add, "For your safety, kid. Don't take it personal, I don't know what's going on here yet."

But they were about to find out, as Starlin led the way toward the castle.

Lief Syd Celsius​

 

[Lief]

"Huh..."

People could come and just take what they wanted? A strange concept to him, but he supposed it made sense when there wasn't really anything or anyone to make use of it. Better than it just sitting there, at the very least. Either way Eliphas soon did his business, then he was making his way down the boarding ramp, glancing over the skyline. Airspeeders zipping this way and that, devastation still evident, and pinning his eyes to the center of it all a great big towering structure of metal.

Starlin's comment as he made his way down toward him had the boy tilt his head to one side.

"I mean, you are my friend," he stated plainly, with a shrug, "You were my friend before you were my Master. Shouldn't be too difficult, right?" Eliphas wasn't stupid, he certainly understood the need for discretion. He followed after Starlin, hanging only a little bit back since he didn't really know the way. The air felt a little staticky and heavy, though maybe that was all in his head and owed more to the tension he felt worming its way into every fiber of his Master's being.

"What is this place?" he asked of the building they were approaching.

Starlin Rand Syd Celsius

 

[Syd Celsius]

Syd Force Phased through the walls of the Castle, trying to retrace the old memories.

She saw the place where Starlin Rand had kept his music. She had bought some for him, including Harmonica music.

She remembered the smell of Pizza through this place. After tough, demanding hours of training he would sometimes veg out at a scavenged game console. She had never beaten him in a fighting game.

She had tried to teach him so much, to try and make him a better Jedi. And she had nearly damned him.

As she went through the old hide out, she tried to retrace her steps, tried to figure out her emotions, searching for some moment, any moment, that might have culminated in her decision to aid Laertia. But she couldn't find it. With a sigh she decided to stop dallying about.

Syd floated through the passages, phasing through walls to reach the front entrance faster.

She stopped when she spotted him, walking up to the Castle in the distance, her golden chrome and navy blue catsuit reflecting him and Lief .

She let her feet touch the ground and she began walking toward him.

"Hello...Starlin..." Syd said quietly, awkwardly. Sometimes she wondered whether or not she should have let Xiphos kill her at Kerest.

"I'm glad to see you. I...I came to visit you. That's your Padawan, isn't it? I can feel his connection to you..."

Syd scratched her head nervously.

"How are you doing, at the moment? Beyond training a student?" Syd asked, trying to hide the knife pain the happy memories she had of his apprenticeship brought, because each one just seemed to remind her of how she had all screwed it up. She wanted his forgiveness. But beyond keeping him safe from Xiphos's assassin's and trying to unravel her decidedly deadly and increasingly complex schemes (Xiphos was the first Sith Marauder she had ever encountered who qualified as legit Evil Mad Scientist) she wasn't sure how.

 

[Starlin Rand]

Starlin shrugged at Eli’s observations about their being friends first, master and apprentice second, but he was smiling.

“This is my ‘castle’,” he explained. “I built it from pieces of scrap metal, which I manipulated with the Force. It allowed me to practice a very specific form of telekinesis which involves working with metals. It’s called—wait for it—Metallokinesis.”

Before he could say anything else, Syd appeared at the entrance, having emerged from inside the castle. A beautiful woman with Atrisian features, hair the color of flame, and orange eyes so intense they seemed to almost glow, she was clad in one of her usual Force-imbued catsuits. And as was becoming the status quo between them, her manner toward Starlin was painfully awkward and guilty.

“It’s good to see you too, Syd,” Starlin replied. For a moment he hesitated, still wondering if it was a good idea to expose Eli to this part of his life, but seeing as she had already figured it out, he figured secrecy wasn’t really an option. “Yep, this is Padawan Eliphas Dune. My apprentice.”

She asked him how he was doing. It was a conversation starter, and a sign that she still cared. In moments like these, when Syd seemed so beaten-down, worn out, and in some ways almost pathetic, Starlin longed to give up all his grievances with her. He wished he could throw away all the years of pain and heartache, the feelings of abandonment and resentment, the sense of having been misled and deceived. He wanted to forgive and forget.

But he also knew that telling her all those things didn’t matter would be a lie. They did matter. He couldn’t forget them, couldn’t stop feeling them, not even with the numbing powers of alcohol or drugs offering a temporary respite. He’d probably wrestle with these demons for the rest of his life, or for a long time, at least.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, I’d say I’ve been doing better lately than I have in a while. I finally left the Silver Jedi… and joined the NJO instead. I’m on probation, of course, but they’ve shown a willingness to work with me. I want to make amends for what I did at Dantooine.”

Her feelings regarding that battle were… mixed, he knew. From what he understood, she still believed she had done the right thing by allying with the Sith. Her one regret was that she had dragged her apprentice into it. Never mind that Starlin had made the decision to follow her, despite her urging him not to. How would she react to the news that he was walking back on that choice and seeking forgiveness from his enemies?

Lief Syd Celsius​

 

[Lief]

A castle?​

​

Well it was certainly something, that much was true. He ogled up at it as Starlin further explained its construction, then uttered a rather ludicrous term. Metallokinesis? "You're pulling my leg, right?" he asked, with a chuckle, but he realized soon after that he wasn't. Okay, so they could manipulate metal with the Force? Interesting... Very interesting.​

​

He pinned that idea for later, as a stranger appeared from within the depths of that metallic behemoth's halls. Someone who was quick to identify him as Starlin's student, no less. His Master. Former Master. Syd. Eliphas hadn't exactly heard a glowing review of the woman, nor did she address him directly, so for once in his life the boy didn't try to make nice and introduce himself, in fact he didn't say anything - to her, or to Starlin. He just sort of hung back, gaze awkwardly drifting between the both of them.​

​

Truth be told he'd never felt like such a third wheel before.​

​

Starlin Rand Syd Celsius​

 

[Syd Celsius]

Syd nodded at what Starlin Rand had told her.

"I see. You're doing whatever you have to do, Starlin..." Syd replied. "I won't question it. Not like I'm fit to judge anyone at this point..."

She stepped a little closer.

"All I ask is you keep using what you know to help the innocent when possible. You'll find helping people can calm a lot of inner pain...not all of it, certainly...but enough to keep going. To make it...worth it..."

Syd was real quiet at that last part.

She now wondered if he finally understood what she had told him all those years ago, how power...too much power...can be a special horror all it's own.

She looked at Lief .

"Nice to meet you, Padawan..." Syd said humbly. "Starlin's been through the ringer. That's exactly why you can learn much from him."

She turned back to Starlin. "I did miss you, for whatever it's worth. Zabka's not exactly Mister Talkative most times...so, visiting old stomping grounds?" she asked, looking back at the Castle.

A faint smile unconsciously crept up her lips at better times.

"I'd like to tag along for a while, if it's alright. I uh...I don't want to be by myself right now. I...it gets too quiet and I...I..."

She stopped.

"I'd just rather not be alone right now..."

 

[Starlin Rand]

She didn’t make a fuss or criticize him for joining the NJO. In fact, Syd’s entire demeanor seemed resigned. Though she showed no outward signs—no dark circles under her eyes or pale, thinning flesh—it was plain that she was exhausted, if not physically then certainly emotionally. Her quest to find Xiphos, the one goal that had kept her going, had stalled. So what did she have left?

“I’m here to train Eli,” he replied, hands in his pockets. “I was thinking Metallokinesis. Have him build his own structures with it as practice, like my castle—or whatever he wants to make.” He glanced at his Padawan with a smile.

Her pleas for company were what finally got to him. Starlin inhaled a sharp intake of breath, exhaled, then nodded his head. “Sure, Syd. I don’t mind having you around. Hey, while you’re here—you wanna give him some pointers on Pyrokinesis? I’m sure you could teach him better than I ever could.”

He figured giving her the opportunity to teach again would help. At least, it could provide a distraction.

Lief Syd Celsius​

 

[Lief]

Truth be told Eliphas didn't rightly know what to make of any of it, but this wasn't his axe to bear so he followed Starlin's lead instead. When she turned her attention toward him he dipped his head into a bow of respect. "It's nice to finally meet you, too" he stated, as smoothly as he could, before his gaze lingered back toward Starlin.​

​

Nimdok had put in his mind the idea of Empathy as something he could expand upon through the Force, and since their return to Coruscant following that meeting he'd tried to put the idea into practice. Without distinct guidance in it he was mostly grasping at straws, fumbling his way through it, but maybe that had afforded him something of a deeper connection to it. He'd fought to learn, because he wanted to not because he had to.​

​

His initial dabblings had somewhat worked with Iris Arani though it had admittedly been rather difficult to separate thoughts and feelings into more distinct aspects. This time as he focused upon his Master it was a little easier. Of course, he largely wore his heart on his sleeve where the girl had been far more reserved. Apathetic at times, even.​

​

Uncertainty swirled around him, a reluctance to getting burned again no doubt, but he wasn't fearful at least which meant Eliphas didn't have to be on edge. He relaxed some, then nodded his head to the idea of both strands of instruction. Metal and fire... An interesting combination, to be sure. Just what would he try to make?​

​

Gaze flickered to the gargantuan structure before them.​

​

Certainly nothing so impressive as what Starlin had formed.​

​

Syd Celsius Starlin Rand ​

 

[Syd Celsius]

Syd nodded. "I'd be glad to, Starlin..."

Syd floated over to him with the Force, his appearance reflected in her blue and gold chromium like catsuit.

"Well, Eliphas, if I'm going to show you properly, I suggest we get started at the very basics. All kinesis related powers are tied inherently to the movement of matter. Atoms. In this sense, Pyrokinesis is really just a highly specialized form of Telekinesis, except that it focuses on matter during a specific state..." Syd explained, conjuring a very small flame above her hand for Eliphas to observe.

"You have to concentrate, slip past the surface of normal matter to their excitation. You must be very careful as you do this, Eliphas... Pyrokinesis is among the most deadly of all Force Powers. Proper manipulation of fire must come from a place of logic and restraint, with as little emotion as possible... emotion can make it very dangerous and powerful, and nearly impossible to control once your grasp of it slips..."

She looked at Starlin Rand "By the way, I looked through the interior, before you arrived. It seems pretty stable. Nothing broken, certainly. Actually rather clean all things considered."

Truth was she was just happy to see him again, no matter the circumstances. With the full weight of her past had come a crushing loneliness for her. The more she remembered, the less she wanted to.

She now fully recalled the death of Julia's parents at her hands, and it was so horrible she was starting to have nightmares. But that was nothing to the terror of what Starlin was going through: he had a family to protect, and murderous robotic killers wanting to turn the last 14 minutes of his life into the ending of Saw (Does it matter which film in the series? They're all gross. The main villain is Discount Riddler though, so there's that).

"Start small, Eliphas. Start very small and don't push yourself. Go only with what you think is safe..." she added, quickly turning back to Eliphas.


OOC: My apologies for the delay.

 

[Starlin Rand]

Letting Syd take the reins for the moment, Starlin nodded to her and Eli, then entered his old hideout. He wanted to see for himself how things looked. Or maybe it was just the sentimentalist in him.

He strode through the halls of his castle, his footsteps echoing in the empty, cavernous space. The durasteel hadn’t rusted, but every surface was covered in a thick layer of dust. Approaching a shelf, he swiped a fingertip over its surface, leaving behind a clear silvery trail.

Starlin flicked a hidden switch underneath a table, causing a hidden panel to pop open. Inside was an assortment of strange items, most of them seemingly junk to the ignorant eye. He reached in and pulled out the meditation band Syd had given him some years before. He gazed at it for some time, idly rubbing his thumbs against the smooth sides, before he ultimately replaced it. He knew now that he needed to learn how to resist the darkness on his own, without the protection of armor or gadgets.

After closing the panel, he ventured back out into the open, watching Syd and Eli as she taught him the lesson. He didn’t want to interfere too much, figuring it was best to just stay back and only step in if necessary. Starlin had been encouraging Eli to seek out other teachers, after all. Syd was simply another source of knowledge, a person he could learn from.

Lief Syd Celsius​