Location: Apartment Complex with a view of the Palace.
Objective: Brood
Allies: One Sith; the miserable ones
Enemies: The Republic; potentially everyone
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Aldera City trembles. Not from artillery fire or demolitions, but from nervousness. From fear.
It’s not the metropolis it used to be; physically as well as memetically. It had died before. The Sith, they had killed it.
How often is it that a world dies? Does it scream? Does that great spirit to which the aboriginals once sang thrash in the abyss?
And when the world is put back together, does that spirit return?
Aldera City was different now. Alderaan was different now. All of the children of which it had carried and raised were dead. The flora, the fauna, the sentient that looked to the planet, were nurtured by its ways and called it “Mother,” had been eradicated in one cruel second.
Now, it had become a host to imported outsiders to which it had not birthed, but sought its care.
Aldera was no longer a mother, but a hapless father – thrust into a position before he was ready, and so crippled by past failure that he would not hold his own child for fear of dropping it.
His children grew, building monuments to which they presented Aldera – testaments to their capability, their worthiness of him, his value as a caregiver, and their love of his providence.
And with every birthday, Aldera felt a little more like an imposter and found himself staring longingly at the door. He feared that dreadful day when the universe would once more test his mettle and reveal what a loser he always had been.
In this moment, Briar Stadd had a lot in common with Aldera (as did much of the population, really). When the war turned explosive, many a family feared the worst and opted to check out early. The Stadd’s decided that gravity would be their ticket out, and rode their elevator to the top of their apartment complex, where they all lined up along the rooftop, hand-in-hand.
And jumped.
But as Briar looked down at the incomprehensible distance, his acrophobia awoke, and in that moment of hesitation, he bore witness to the unreal, soul-crushing sight of his wife and two young daughters plummeting to their premature demise.
Hand-in-hand.
He nearly vomited, recoiling in sublime terror from the ledge. He barely saw the inkblot in his peripherals as he spun away to avoid it.
It’s me again, so if you ain’t already, you might wanna start holding your nose now.
The trenchcoated man jumped back slightly, letting Briar narrowly miss him and topple over onto the rooftop ground. The ex-father audibly whimpered at first, but as it became clear that Benedict was no Angel of Death, he fixed his attention on resuming proper breathing.
The Guttermage stepped toward the ledge of the apartment complex and stared down. He was passive, asking without irony, without judgment, “Second thoughts?”
I’m a soothsayer of sorts, yeah?. Did you know that? I can tell you the future of every person on every world in every sodding iteration of this whole unfortunate, karking universe.
They’ll all die.
“I…I…panicked. I didn’t want to die…I don’t want to die….but it was going to happen anyway, right? They’re coming to kill us all….,” Briar began to hyperventilate again, “Oh gods – how could I let them….Is it wrong if I don’t jump?”
Benedict glanced over his shoulder at Briar, his eyebrows raised in mild amusement, “Fink you’ll be a good dad if you do?” He removed himself from the ledge, moving more centrally to better engage the civilian who was now talking and looking to him as though he were an authority figure.
“I…I…I…They had attacked the University…” It was kind of like a question, but it wasn’t clear what he was looking for.
“They were looking for information, like,” Benedict spoke around a cigarette, cupping his hands around the tip as he went to light it. “Reckon they thought they’d find somefing they couldn’t order off the Holonet.”
“Wh---What? Why would they think that?”
Benedict shrugged his shoulders noncommittally.
No, squire, of course I don’t mean –you.- You’ll go on wiff impunity, decimating worlds, and nicking from graves, and building your kark-off mighty doomsday devices, et-bloody-cetera. And maybe, one day, we’ll get lucky and you’ll finally get what’s been coming to you since your mum botched that clothes hanger job so many years ago.
Briar looked down at rooftop, retreating into his thoughts for a moment only to return with a new revelation and a craving for hope.
“I don’t want to live without them, y’know? I have to jump…I want to see them again.”
The Guttermage glanced away a moment, surveying the chaos obvious from this vantage point. “Spoiler alert, mate,” he inhaled, prophesying a cloud of smoke before looking Briar in the eye. “You won’t.”
But you’ll just smile, and laugh, and jump into the body of the supermodel d’jour to find one more land to turn into a flaming toilet.
Meanwhile, the miserable lot down here on the ground? Dead. Painful, humiliating, like. While lying to their children.
Briar’s face turned white and appeared to shrivel, squeezing tears from their ducts in reaction to the news. Reaching into his trenchcoat, Benedict produced a bottle of cheap whiskey – awful, ridiculously cheap whiskey – and handed it to the man. Briar cracked it open and took a swig, making the most resistant cringe and swallow he possibly could – his bitter first steps down a long road of Alcoholism.
Compassion, the way Sith knew it
And that’s when I’ll shuffle through the gates of hell, all trenchcoat and cigarette, misery and madness, to scrape up the corpses and welcome in the strays so that they can get to measuring their lives by holovision episodes and hits of junk amidst the rubbish and the refugees. And I’ll let them stay, right yeah? And I’ll protect them as best I can, but I can’t bloody save them because there’s kark-all left to save. You made damn sure of that.
Benedict left the former husband and father to collapse into a heap on the ground and casually made his way back to the ledge, looking down at the crimson smears along the pavement that were barely recognizable as human from this distance and probably any other.
And I …I don’t how long I can keep doing it….
With a sigh of cigarette smoke, he raised his gaze unto the horizon and beheld the continuing firey destruction of the Royal Palace.
I’m here because your ridiculous crap called me here.
“Alright, you sniveling, little poof…,” he muttered to Aldera. “War it is, then.”
But I’m just a karking band-aid
