Annihilation Clash of Destiny

[Matsu Ike]

OBJECTIVE: Crystal Assembly
ALLIES: Jedi Connel Vanagor
ENEMIES: Sith

The aftershock of distant explosions, the sizzle of blaster fire and the silent screams of clashing lightsabers were a persistent hum in the Force, a discordant symphony to which Matsu was only half-listening. Her primary focus was the chamber itself, a cathedral of crystal and energy. The Empire's response, she knew, was a coiled serpent. They would let the invaders wear themselves down against the station's endless ranks of soldiers and zealots before unleashing a calculated, overwhelming tide. It was a predictable, yet effective, strategy for a beast of this scale. But Matsu was not here to be predictable. While Connel laid his more conventional explosives, a worthy and satisfyingly destructive endeavor, the Jedi Grandmaster worked on a subtler, more fundamental level. Her bare hands, palms flat, rested against the cool, pulsating surface of the largest Lignan crystal. To anyone else, it would have felt like a solid, unyielding monument. To Matsu, it was a song of atoms, a lattice of molecules vibrating with infused dark side energy. It was there and she could manipulate it.

Her eyes, reflecting the light of stars from a thousand corners of the galaxy with gaps like polished obsidian, partially altered focus as she plunged her consciousness into the aart of the small. She didn't need to shatter the crystal; that would be messy, unstable, and potentially catastrophic at this proximity. Instead, she began to persuade it to be something else. A low, resonant hum, distinct from the station's own industrial drone, began to emanate from her touch. The air around her hands shimmered, not with heat, but with the visible stillness of fabrics being altered at the smallest level. Under her fingertips, the perfectly aligned atomic structure of the Lignan began to… soften. It wasn't melting in the traditional sense. It was delaminating, its fierce crystalline bonds gently, irrevocably persuaded to release their hold. A fine, glittering dust of crimson motes began to float away from the main structure, not falling but drifting aimlessly, like ash from a silent fire. The fine, glittering dust of the neutralized crystal drifted around her like a nebula of extinguished malice. This was good for a start, a proof of concept on a single component. But the chamber housed a network of these crystals, a symphonic array designed to focus unimaginable energy. To disarm the weapon, she needed to do more than silence one instrument; she had to alter and manipulate the entire rooms contents to sabotage the chamber.

She breathed in as sslowly her mind was contemplating what was there... several scenarios as Connel was there to be able to keep threats that might come here. Things were quiet but she was dividing her consciousness into several aspects to handle the larger scale manipulation. Weaving her mind through the metal aand crystal... and air. Her mind continued to push throughout the stations as she had mapped it previously... there were still more people while she reached the edge of it.. the tram lines and gift shops.. the hanger bays as there were conflicts happening around all of them. Outside she could see more and she was able to focused her mind to observe parts of it while she was becoming larger... observation across it all and she felt Ashin was here.. the powerful darksider was around as well as one or two others who were different then the normal sith and darksiders.... but she still expanded herself reached out to become larger as she wanted to swallow it and mentally her consciousness were checking on more of it. She had other aspects and thoughts worrking on the manipulations of the atomic struggle of the crystals and chamber itself. Alterring the fundamental parts of it would help and hopefully whoever was going after the ritual were making progress.

 

[Mercy]

Allies: Herself
Opp: Darth Solipsis | Romi Jade | Inosuke Ashina | Odria Kaelthron
Others: Meliant | Hasuras Na-Gerra | Sars Sarad | Arris Windrun

This was starting to drag and not in a fun way.

No one had ever warned Mercy that a Kaggath or any duel, for that matter, could be boring. But that was exactly what Mercy was experiencing here and now. The hints of boredom. That and she was getting concerned that this one would end exactly as the previous one. Herself coming out of it, declaring victory, but unsatisfied by the experience.

Her body angled towards the engagement, aiming to finally strike against Solipsis herself. To interrupt the duel, instead of giving the Jedi more time.

"Reinforcements."

Mercy blinked as Gerra's voice filtered through in her mind.

She glanced away from the battle and towards the gap created from the Destroyer's impact. Out there, with enhanced vision, Mercy could see parts of Gerra's fleet detaching.

Beginning to approach the floating spire instead.

What, you thought, I might not be able to heist the Death Star... so I might as well heist the Dark Lord? Mercy responded to Gerra through their mental connection, colored with amusement. Fine, but do not forget he is mine. I came here to finish the Kaggath, one way or the other. I might be dying of boredom here, but that hasn't changed.

 

[Connel Vanagor]

What is left
UNDISCLOSED
LOCATION - Death Star III

Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, Sariel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Connel, Raguel
[Any text in brackets signifies comm-link usage and not face to face conversation]

The chamber smelled like ozone and old promises. Matsu’s touch on the largest crystal sent a ripple through the Force that felt like a bell struck at the edge of hearing — a small, impossible thing becoming wrong in the nicest of ways. She was doing something that could not be shouted; she was undoing songs at the level of atoms, and the sound of it was beautiful in a way that hurt.

Connel watched her as she worked. She looked ridiculous and immeasurably deadly all at once: hair floating, eyes like fossilized stars, humming some nonsense rhyme to a door like it owed her money. He could feel the crystals fall away in a shower of red motes where she’d asked them to let go. That was her: chaos with a scalpel.

His job was uglier and quieter.

She sent him a thought — light as breath, impatient. “Keep moving.” he could have moved. He had hands full of things that would have made very loud punctuation marks. Instead he let the thought settle into his chest like a coin. ~“[COLOR]Finish the job[/COLOR]”~, he answered, wordless. The Empire would have its body—if he could spare them the weapon.

He didn’t think of himself as heroic in that moment. He thought of the Vanagor line, of knives slid into the dark, and of his father’s hands teaching him how to be an edge. This wasn’t a chance to prove anything to the Order. This was the only language the Empire respected: pressure. He was going to push where it hurt.

The station’s map throbbed in his head from the stolen comm-chatter and from the small, constant threads Matsu kept opening and letting him touch. Tram lines, service bays, prize corridors where soldiers leaned like bored dogs — they were all routes and rhythms. Connel threaded his way through vents and maintenance crawlways like a thought made visible, pockets of gunfire and shouted orders folding around him.

Connel did not go for subtlety because to him, subtlety is a courtesy to those who deserve it. He set things to make noise, to make men run and make commanders curse the names on their rosters. By doing so, Connel siphoned time from the station so that when the ritual’s dancers tried to pivot, they would hopefully find their feet gone. He rerouted attention; made corridors echo with wrong alarms; and fed false commands into a trooper’s channel and watched units shuffle into tidy little graves of their own making. None of it required finesse — only cruelty, and a mind that liked the way control tasted.

They came for him in groups. Someone always did. They believed in armor and orders and the safety of being many. That did not bother Connel at all. He worked them like a machine. Close, disable, shove, press, leave. A few still tried to make noise. A few thought themselves brave because of a corporal’s braid. They learned quickly that bravery tastes like a snapped bone.

He said very little.

“Orders don’t keep the dead warm.” at the Corporal shouting orders. “You won’t be missed.” at a patrol trying to cordon him off.

Words are a luxury on the edge of a blade. His voice was a thing for necessary things. When Connel did speak, it was the Ariel way: short, flat, cold. Those were the nails he drove before the hammer hit. Men saw the look behind his mask and understood in their marrow that this was not a duel; it was a verdict.

There was a part of him that wanted to show off — a thin, childish part that wanted to stand in the open and be a storm. He swallowed it. Showing off wastes time. Instead I gave them the thing they feared most: certainty. No flourish. No challenge. No mercy.

At one junction, a squad tried to form another cordon to cut off Matsu’s route. He let them think they might hold it. When the first line of men rushed forward, they met the e-web He’d laid earlier — a curtain that answered with hot light and malfunctioning ordnance. Their blasters hiccupped and died. They staggered; they bled radio commands that got routed into nowhere. Connel moved in the gaps, a shadow using their noise against them. One by one they fell into silence, and the silence did what I wanted: it made places for Matsu’s bright madness to pass through.

It felt good. Dangerous things make a certain music in the gut. Connel let it play. If he could not stop the weapon by hands alone, then he would bleed it until it could not sing true.

Another corporal spat at him once — loud, small, cruel. “You’re just a boy playing at a mask,” he sneered. The world narrowed. Connel answered with a hand to his chest, the kind of hold taught to men who break things for a living. He inhaled and found the light cut off. You die for orders, he said, and the sentence was like a last currency. He did not answer.

Each action did not simply take life; it moved weight. It shifted the station’s attention, its resources, its time. The ritual’s priests could not be everywhere, and the Empire could not move faster than he could make them count their losses. If Matsu could braid the crystals wrong, he made sure the empire had fewer hands and less time to fix what she broke.

Between fights Connel breathed in scents of weld smoke and singed hair and the metallic sweetness of blood. He thought briefly of fathers — of mine teaching him how to stand when everything wanted him to fall. Connel thought of the Vanagor creed in a new, harsher light: not the noble sentiment, but the truth it hides — that sometimes you must be a weight on a world to keep it honest.

As the tram screamed on above, and Matsu’s laughter threaded through the lattice of his attention, Vanagor let one thought ride down to her: ~Don’t wait for me~. It was not disobedience. It was promise. If he died in the ribs of that station, then let the Empire feel the hole.

When the last squad Connel had been watching funneled into his trap, the corridor became a theater of short, sharp violence. He danced through it—close, brutal, efficient—each movement a whispered lesson in anatomy. When a trooper reached for a fallen comrade’s weapon with shaking hands, Connel met his wrist with a light that would not go out and ended him without theatrics. When an officer shouted that reinforcements were coming, Connel smiled under his mask. Reinforcements were a resource. Resources can be burned.

Blood was a stain on plating; Connel left it neat. He left no messages. That was not his trade. When he paused at the mouth of the service duct, Connel then looked up at the crystal vault and felt Matsu’s work like distant thunder. The lattice she was reshaping would not fall apart tonight. It would, however, sing wrong when they tried to aim it. That is enough. That is mercy.

Before he folded into the shadows again, Connel found a man who had been the loudest about duty. He gasped in the ruin of a doorway. Connel crouched, level to his eyes, and said one thing ConnelI knew would be carried in nightmares for years:

You let nice things die on Coruscant. This is what you get now.

He understood then that his sanctity of order had been a lie. His last look was not at Connel but at the stars visible in the Death Star’s latticed vents — tiny impossible points of home he would never see again.

Connel slid away, letting the station close like a mouth. He left trails of mayhem small enough to be believable and precise enough to be lethal. If Connel died here, so be it. But the thing Matsu whispered later — the small, private laugh in the Force — told him she would not let him die where there was no meaning to it.

Night and Day(his shortsabers) hung at his hips, dark as a promise. He walked back toward the tram’s roar and toward the red light of the Crystal Vault. The station had been bent tonight. It would not be whole again for a long time.

If the Empire tried to use what they left behind, they’d find their weapon sang like a broken harp. If any trooper lived to tell the tale, he’d have seen a shadow with two blades and a voice like an empty room.

Either way, they would remember that the Vanagor line did not end quietly. They would remember that the Mirror Creed takes no prisoners.

Matsu Ike • Dark Forces
Personal Effects - Omega Squad Loadouts - Shadow Sanctuary - Enterprise​