Private Convergence of Dark Tides

[Naniti]

Naniti hated shuttles. They were cramped. Devote of anything visually or audibly stimulating. Mediocre food service at best. Years ago she wouldn't have even noticed the food quality. Food fueled the body and mind. It was a necessary tool to survive. Then Lysander and her kept indulging in culinary pursuits and started cooking their own... Turned out just like she'd expected. It was difficult not to notice when the food wasn't properly seasoned, properly cooked, or fresh instead of flash-frozen for interstellar transport. All thoughts and sensations that only made the trip more unbearable; she couldn't get away from thinking about what had happened.

She was alone on the shuttle. Lysander had always run off on missions and pursuits, and she'd had a few background things herself, but she could always find him again when she wanted to. Now? Her efforts at building some kind of spy network didn't amount to much when it came to launching an invasion on the Republic to get him back. Infiltrating confinement facilities hadn't been a priority. What Sith planned to be captured? There'd been more pressing concerns.

At last, the shuttle docked aboard Throneworld. The violet Togruta stood to her feet and made her way down the ramp without sharing a word with another soul. They were even less important to her now then they had been before Jakku -- back when the only person that matter had been Lysander. With him... held by the Republic now she found other people even less tolerable. They weren't useful to her. Their blank stares and self-interested pursuits only made Naniti want to literally tear their heads off and stick them on a pike.

Fortunately, and perhaps completely normal under the circumstances, the guide didn't offer to escort her to a room to rest first. The Empress Mercy was awaiting the Togruta's arrival. Ordinarily she'd spend considerable time turning that over and trying to discern the outcomes. Maybe peek at the future to find the right avenue. Not that divining the future had allowed her to see Lysander getting swept away on Jakku!

Naniti's sharp teeth clenched as her hands balled up at her sides. Each stride was full of vigor; not an ounce of lethargy or hesitancy to be found summoned to the Empress. Lysander had been her student. Was her student! If there was someone with the power and interest to help free him of the Republic it was her. With that thought, her fingers relaxed, but the rhythm of her pace remain the same.

 

[Mercy]

Naniti

Jakku should have been a simple affair and in the end it had proven costly.

As she understood from Arris Windrun , Isobel Serraris had left the fold, which had been hard to understand because Windrun had a whole hole in her body which made her a little bit dramatic. Why it was so difficult for her to put down Acier Moonbound was beyond her. At a certain point you were simply playing with fire.

But not her circus, she had her own trouble.

Lysander von Ascania had been captured. That should have been simple too. The Jedi got him, so Mercy should have raised a fleet and gone after them, destroying everything in her wake until Lys was safe again.

Except.

Finally, he worked his neck side to side and put his eyes back on the other blonde noble. "Feel better now?" His jaw closed around the taste of iron. "If not.. keep going."

The dare ended as quickly as it began. Every protective nerve he owned hummed to life along the spine. Whatever found his sister, the sensation arrived first, image catching up a half step behind; by then, the sword was already leaving the ground. He didn't care. His lead foot drove into the sand and the body committed, blade tracing upward, the whole of everything narrowing down to the gap between them.

In that brief moment, as Mercy had been responding to Corazona von Ascania , something had shifted within her former Apprentice. Even now Mercy wasn't certain who he had tried to attack. His sister? Lysander said he had been there for Cora. But that attack... she had turned the memory around, over and over, in her head.

One inch more and it would have taken her head clean off.

Mercy couldn't get around that, because Lysander was not sloppy.

Something spiked inside of her, a fury born from ambiguity, something that Mercy was never good at. And the throne room trembled in response to her anger flooding out of her.

The floor cracked and right as Naniti was given entry, the expensive marble and mosaic was ripped to shreds from Mercy's fury, creating a line that ran straight from the large Throne she was sitting in, towards the doorway itself.

Mercy looked up, amber eyes bleeding with the Dark Side, and the atmosphere in the room was oppressive. She did not often radiate the Dark Side, it was almost always packaged neatly inside of her. Hidden away out of sight. But now, it was everywhere, her anger, her fury, her desire to rip everything to shreds.

It would be like a weight settled on the Togruta the moment she walked in.

Bearing her down.