Eye of the Storm

[Kuzo]

Kamino​

Tipoca City​

The sound of rain was a constant. In the morning she woke to it, in the evening she fell asleep to it, and for the last two days it had accompanied every step and waking thought. Even in the depths of the city, there was a subconscious awareness of the driving deluge, just as with the movements of the sea itself. It had taken her a day to grow accustomed to it again after years on solid ground. Even in Tipoca city, large and relatively stable, one would occasionally feel the shift and swell of the ocean and need to make minute shifts in position and posture to feel on even ground again.

'Doctor Calais' had promised a week for the first stage of the project before she had to return to her other work. In truth it was all the time she could spare without the absence of [member="Dr. Vain Jar'He"] being noticed in Sith-Imperial space. She could get away with that long, but she dared not risk longer. Not yet. A week however was not so strange for the good doctor to disappear into a project, only to return, confused at how long had passed, back into people's attention. It was a familiar enough habit of the clone, and one Irajah intended to utilize for her own ends without hesitation. These days [member="Darth Carnifex"] rarely called upon the family physician, but just in case Irajah had set up a relay for the 'priority' level of the message that would come through. If he did, she could easily claim to be off planet but would of course return immediately. In its way, the deeply anti-social nature of the clone he had made of her, and placed in such a position of trust, had been exactly the tool she had needed to begin building the base of her vengeance. Hubris, at its finest.

While her purposed for being here were ultimately her own, that did not mean that she did not give the lion's share of her attention to the project she had been hired for by [member="Adron Malvern"]. It was in fact only when one of the lab assistants gently reached out to touch her shoulder that she was brought up and out of the simulated projection, blinking in some confusion.

"Doctor Calais? Have you been here all night?"

"Hmm? No of course not. Just since you left on your break." It was nice to put aside the caustic persona of Vain and return to herself, the purity of her work. In a way, this was almost like a vacation for her.

He smiled ruefully. "That was the end of my shift, Doc, not a break."

"Oh." A pause and then. "Oh. Oh alright, yes, I have then."

It explained the tight pain at the center of her shoulder blades certainly, if she had been hunched over the three-dimensional projection and testing splices for ten hours without realizing it. With a sigh and a stretch, she unfolded herself from the stool, and sheepishly agreed to leave the lab in other hands. Get something to eat, get some sleep. With a groan, she stretched out her back, and headed out. A nod to the droid guards Adron had left in that sector, she headed out into the more public areas. The project was largely a secret, and casual wanderers were sternly discouraged. But she came and went as she pleased. And what she pleased right now, was a cup of caf and some time to unwind her mind from the work at hand. Sleep? Not before she had managed that and she knew it.

She picked up caf and a quick bite before taking the later with her and winding through the hallways to one of the observation rooms. Wide open windows all along the exterior opened up to a wide view of the stormy seas outside. This time of the day they were largely empty- too early for the usual after breakfast crowd. The high backed seats, facing toward the wide windows, were best suited to the native kaminoans, and when she didn't see the tops of any of those tall, slender heads swaying absently above them, she assumed this one was empty as well.

The mug of caf cupped in both hands, the diminutive woman stepped up to the window, taking a sip and sighing as she did. A shift, a small sound, and she turned, hazel eyes blinking in some surprise. The room was not as empty as it had seemed- only empty of the too tall locals. Not that he was short- just enough for the back of the chair to block. Quiet for his size, but then, Irajah was used to that at home wasn't she?

" 'Morning," she offered with a smile. "Apologies, I didn't see you there."

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

He'd come in on a woman quite engrossed in her work. He didn't bother her - she was clearly engrossed in something. As something of a hermit himself, he knew better than to interrupt such a train of thought. Whatever she was thinking of, or working on, it was important. There was a certain hunch to the shoulders that matched the downward furrow of an attentive brow; you couldn't miss it. It was the tension in her frame, though, that sold him. He hadn't even needed to look at her face.

It was obvious, at least to him.

And so he'd gone to a nearby seat, pulling up training simulations. Each was run over the holo before him, the sound off, and he watched as squad after squad attempted to surmount - from low ground to high - a tiered defense in depth. The point wasn't to win; you wouldn't. The point was just in seeing how they tackled the obstacles before them while also teaching them that sometimes you weren't going to win. Some enemies, some battles, would just outlast you.

Sometimes, the only way to win, was to fight another day.

They would have been told that during debrief, but when he went to reach for a communicator in his pocket, the chair creaked, and just like that, he was noticed. Turning in his chair, enough to look at her sideways, he smiled tightly. He knew her - he'd freed her, actually. And she should be dead.

His hand rose, brushing over a carefully trimmed beard of grey-flecked brown. His hair was carefully parted and combed over, but likewise showed the stress of age. His chosen attire added to the air of a still-young professor, his turtleneck and slacks carefully maintained.

But there was no missing the shrapnel wounds that turned his right cheek into a moonscape, nor the void black eyes of his that glimmered like the spiral arms of their galaxy. His veins, thankfully, she couldn't see. His neck was a river delta in black, as seen from above. "My apologies," he replies calmly, "I thought you'd died."

 

[Kuzo]

She absorbed the appearance before he spoke, a hint of surprised interest in those hazel eyes when they met his. His experiences marked him, mute and intense against the gentleness of his voice. A contrast there that caught her attention.

While he recognized her, she did not remember him. There was nothing to remember. His had been a presence that she had never seen, never knew existed. She didn't know about Ashin's interference during her incarceration by the Alliance, or of this man's actions in response to it.

The smile froze on her face as the words continued past his own apology.

"You must be mistaking me for someone else," she said after a moment. She was still smiling, but it would not be difficult to miss the more artificial tilt of it.

Irajah had been careful. Stayed away from the First Order and from those who could recognize her from before, unless she knew they could be trusted. But for a short time she had been, if not well known, certainly not nameless in the Order. Decorated, named a Baroness for services to the state. Even at the time it had all been a strange, but enjoyable form of mild insanity. A sort of baffled acceptance of more than she had, in her own mind, given at the time.

Of course, the price she had paid later put it all into perspective.

He was not technically wrong, after all.

She rarely thought about those moments anymore. The cold edge of the knife. The hot rush of blood. Gasping, slowly fading as the face of [member="Samka Derith"] filled her view. She had died, murdered. And then covered up by flames and the state, proclaimed a tragedy. And then, slowly forgotten.

Or so she had hoped.

"I'm Dr. Calais. And you are?"

As if there could be no doubt that he was mistaken. But already she was considering just what to do. Risking a crack in her lock down of the force, a trickle of power. Reaching out.

She wasn't expecting what she would find.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"I'm not." He replies, her anxiety foremost in his mind, especially when he was confirming he wasn't making a mistake. Ayden had always dealt in secrets, and he'd passed his love for them onto his assassin, who in turn became a head of state, prison warder, and then, information broker. Not that anyone was aware he worked as one. He was probably known by more titles than he'd ever be able to remember, and that was fine by him. It wasn't the prestige that concerned him, merely the power. Power that had seen him make friends like Ashin Varanin, though he'd argue it was his winning personality.

A winning personality, and the ability to out-draw anyone else in the galaxy. Semantics, really.

"Sarge." He replies simply, and the only person comfortable enough to say it like it was a name and not a title was the former Lord Protector. It was hit or miss on being recognized, but even if she didn't, he wasn't going to elaborate further. He didn't like to elaborate. "And if that's what you're going by now, I'll add it to your dossier."

Blissfully unaware that she was reaching out in the Force, she would find... nothing. It was as though his mind didn't exist. Nothing was there, save a void as black as his eyes. He'd been told, once, that it was a swirling, cloudy orb of 'wrongness' where his thoughts should be. It kept him from looking out, but it also kept them from looking in. He was a fortress with no gates.

"Don't worry, it's safe with me. Anyone that Ashin is willing to lend a hand to is a friend to me. I trust her more than anyone else in this galaxy." He smiled, but it wasn't kind. Ashin held fond memories for him, but that didn't mean he liked talking to former prisoners. Especially not former prisoners who'd been murdered... presumably.

 

[Kuzo]

"A friend of Ashin's," she echoed.

And there some of it clicked and settled. The other woman had taught her, tutored her. The interest had come from a shared enemy initially, true, but there had been real friendship there as time had wound on. Enough for her to reach out her aid when the Alliance had taken her on Bespin.

It was so odd, looking back. As far as the Alliance was concerned, she had done nothing wrong outside of exist on the wrong side of a conflict. She had broken no laws, military or otherwise. In the end, she had even given them the information on a shared enemy, everything she knew about Carnifex.

And they had turned it against her. Holding it like a sword on a thread above her head. Defect, in full, or we will tell the First Order of your betrayal of their ally. The promise that if she did not do what they wanted, they would leak what she had told them. Knowing that the First Order had not hesitated to stone to death a tenth of the soldiers who had done nothing worse than follow orders on Skor. It was a death sentence. Even if she had refused to betray the First Order itself directly, they would have executed her for the knowledge she had shared.

In the end?

They had.

The part that was so odd was that, in truth? Irajah had not been innocent in those days. The actions she had taken on Maena to ensure her survival, even if in the end she had failed to arrest the course of the Gideon virus, had been monstrous. And yet, there? That place and that time? Perfectly legal. With the blessing of [member="Matsu Xiangu"] she had done what she thought she'd had to do, and gone down into the darkness on her own long before her death at the hands of [member="Samka Derith"]. In a way, she had deserved everything that had happened.

Just not for the reasons those who had meted them out believed.

And now?

There was no question.

Irajah Ven had no illusions that she was a good person. She had left those lies to herself behind with the sliver of her soul lost in the Netherworld.

As she reached out, she met no resistance. No barriers, no walls. No defense against the tendril of attention that uncurled to measure the man before her.

Sarge, he had called himself. Irajah had never paid much attention to galactic politics. And yet something about it itched at the back of her mind. Something she should be able to place, yes? And yet it eluded for now, the connection not yet made and then-

It was like gazing over a precipice.

The Force shifting like a sea. Reaching out into it like dipping in a toe. But to look deeper one had to go deeper. And beneath the surface? Things waited. Dipping beneath the waves was the only way to seek the truths in the black waters, and the deeper you went, the less light filtered in from above. The greater the force of the water above you became. And here, staring into this man's eyes she found the same blackness within him that filled his gaze. Not an evil- that was too simplistic. But a yawning void of promise and pressure, where one could step off the edge into it but there would be no promise of a return.

Irajah did not step off over that abyss.

It all happened in barely more than a pair of heartbeats. And then she blinked, and reached over, resting a hand on the arm of a chair, drawing back into shallower waters. Away from the things that swam in the deep.

For now.

"I see why Ashin likes you then," she said softly, dropping the pretending. "I have trusted her with my life, but you must forgive me if I do not assume, upon a moment's meeting, that it would be easily extended."

There was a wariness there. How could there be anything less?

"A friend of Ashin's, however, is worth consideration." A pause, eyebrow quirking up with a small smile. "Have you heard from her lately?"

[member="Sarge Potteiger"]

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

He couldn't sense. It was part of his 'condition.' But he didn't need to sense to know how anyone with the ability to use the Force would react to his presence - so often, it became a crutch. You could touch someone's mind, and read who they were, and how they felt. She was, if not now, then soon, going to touch his mind. He also knew how that would turn out. It was, in many ways, different for everyone, but the end result was the same: questions. So many questions. How? Why? And, perhaps more importantly, what. "Ashin and I are... perhaps more similar than we would ever care to admit." That same, tight lipped smile returned, if only for a brief moment.

"I have not. Last I heard from her, she was an old woman, and I stopped to help her catch her breath on a snowy eve."

Whatever the hell that meant.

"But I don't hear from too many, unless they want something." He gestured vaguely to the workstation she'd just vacated. "I was trying not to interrupt." As if that explained his silence. Not that she'd know his habit of always being silent. His void black eyes never quite showed where he was looking, but much like when looking at lenses, you could just get a sense for when they were directed at you, and for now, they were on the workstation.

Then, he shook his head, and they were back on her. "If you do happen upon her, tell her I said hello."