Private For the One Who Has Everything

[Arlo Renard]

Sitting in her garden, Claudia glared at all the invaders to her realm—which was to say, roughly half the population of the Reef. Scowling, she pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders, then turned to Kai and asked, “When did you say the heating system would be fixed?”

<Soon?> Kai replied with a shrug. Arisso had tried to get the old factory’s air conditioning working, but it was proving to be a lot more work than anticipated. The whole system needed to be replaced. In the meantime, a weather machine malfunction had resulted in a freak blizzard hitting their little corner of Coruscant, leaving them snowed in. To keep themselves from freezing to death, the Sithspawn had retreated to the greenhouse, where the heat lamps meant for the plants now doubled as sources of warmth for a host of alien species unaccustomed to such bitterly cold winters.

Among them were the Shi’ido refugees who had arrived at the Reef not long after Professor Nimdok’s departure. Numbering about half a dozen, several of them looked like spindly insectoids. Fuzzy mothlike wings sprouted from their backs, and their angular heads were crowned by leaf-shaped antennae. They slept in piles curled up underneath the heat lamps.

Claudia reached out with a gloved hand, fiddling with one of her plants, then balled her fingers into a fist. “It’s not fair,” she muttered. “Some of these can’t survive sudden shifts in temperature. They’ll die!”

<We can get new ones,> Kai tried to reassure her, but Claudia just crossed her arms and sulked. <Which ones are the most at risk?>

“All of the tropical plants,” she said. “Especially the one the Shi’ido brought. I told them I would take care of it, but Ax took my last heat lamp, so it looks like it’s a goner.”

She hovered over to the plant in question. It was little more than a green stem with a few leaves attached.

<Could I keep it warm?> Kai asked.

Blinking in confusion, her brow furrowed. “You mean like… with your body heat? No, that wouldn’t be enough. It needs sunshine. You can’t produce UV light, can you?”

Kai shook his head sadly. Claudia snorted. “You really thought you could keep a plant alive by hugging it?” He nodded, which made her laugh. “That’s not what being a ‘treehugger’ means, but you’re cute…” She abruptly trailed off, turning her head back toward the plant.

<What are those things?>

She glanced up to see what he was pointing to. "Some type of caterpillar," she replied. "There were a whole bunch on this one. They ate most of the leaves." She poked and prodded until she found a second caterpillar. "See, there's another one. I don't know where the rest went..."

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Can't I just shock it back into gear?"

Arisso glanced over his shoulder, one organic eyebrow raised. "We need a coupling, not power," he replied. "Have you even been listening to me?"

Damsy shook her head and went back to pacing. "My head's like five different places, my man. Sorry."

"I get it," he said, though he didn't—not in entirety. Random Jedi inspections of the level, probing for Sithspawn leftover from the invasion; those unpredictable Sithspawn themselves; all the pressure associated with growing the still-secret community and keeping it that way; the unraveling police case regarding her; and now the internal and external weather pressure: it all was too much.

Not almost.

Emphatically.

"Wait, I got an idea," Damsy all but suddenly exclaimed. She took a knee beside the Technobeast and lay her new trident on the ground. Leaning over it, she unscrewed the head until the prongs clattered to the floor. She produced the oversized cap to Arisso with a beaming smile. "Use this."

"Are you crazy?! You just finished building that!"

She shrugged. "Yeah. And? I'll do it again. It's not like I need it right now; Jedi threat ain't exactly imminent. If we're snowed in, they snowed out."

Slowly, Arisso took hold of the piece and fit it to the air conditioning unit's pipes. It wasn't a perfectly fit, they'd be losing quite a bit of heat, but it'd do for now.

Damsy gathered up the trio of spikes and placed them in her utility belt. If the time called for it, at least she could use them as miniature blades. She walked down the Labyrinth towards Claudia's makeshift greenhouse. Ironically, they routinely heated up the coolant reactor, but it was easier to do that than try to cool down another like the power station or even the vault. The A/C rattled to life behind her, echoing down the halls and through the vents like something awful dying. In a few minutes, it found its balance, and the clanking exponentially dampened. Cold air blew through the corridors and into the rooms at first like a faucet turned on for the first time in a while. It heat up quickly, thankfully, but not quite to the point of true comfort. For neither the Sithspawn nor their foliaged lifelines.

Still, better than nothing.

Progress was hard to come by down here.

"Still alive in here?" Damsy asked generally just before rounding into the doorway.



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

The missing caterpillars forgotten for the moment, Kai and Claudia turned to face Damsy. Kai noticed that she seemed rather tired and worn out. Understandable, given all that had been happening at the Reef lately.

“Is the A/C fixed?” Claudia immediately asked, and when she received an affirmative answer, she heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank the Force.”

She started to hover towards the nearest pile of sleeping Sithspawn, only for Kai to stop her.

<Let them keep sleeping. Just for tonight.>

“Sure, sure—but I still need a heat lamp for my plant, remember?” Pausing, she reached out her hands and beckoned to one of the lamps with the Force. It rattled and shook, seemingly on the verge of falling, before it began to levitate, floating over to the at-risk plant she was so worried about losing.

Kai observed her show of improved Force ability with approval. <Good job.>

“Thanks.” After adjusting the lamp to her liking, she checked the plant one more time. “Hey Damsy, you wouldn’t happen to have seen any caterpillars around here, would you?” Her tone suggested she was afraid Motina had decided to use them in one of her “experimental” dishes.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy took to idly petting a leaf as Claudia retrieved the heat lamp.

Kai mentioned something out of sight:

<Let them keep sleeping. Just for tonight.>

Damn, she wished she could sleep.

She glanced up when the younger woman asked her a question. And blinked. "I didn't even know there were caterpillars," she admitted. "Damn, were they Refugees too?"

Here's to hoping Erictho didn't eat them off the floor or something either.

"Were they on the stems or sumthin'?"



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

"Damn, were they Refugees too?"

“Heh, I guess you could say that.” Claudia tried to speak through a sudden yawn. “They’re… not sentient though. They were chowing down on the leaves last I checked. The lady who brought the plant in, what’s her name, uh…”

<Nanaya.> Kai remembered all the names of everyone who came to the Reef. His eyes flicked over toward the pile of sleeping Shi’ido beneath the heat lamp. Nanaya was one of the mothmen-looking ones.

“Mmhmm, her. She said they were sacred to their religion or something, so if they did come to an undignified end, that’s not good.” She yawned again. “Man am I tired. It just hit me…”

<You should get some rest,> Kai said. Turning to Damsy, he gently added, <You too.>

“You’re so lucky,” Claudia muttered as she hovered over to the little office which she had made into her sleeping quarters. “You don’t ever have to sleep.”

Kai watched her go. It wasn’t just that he didn’t need sleep, he couldn’t sleep. Didn’t know how. Sometimes he wondered if that was necessarily a good thing. His thoughts would race and he would fidget, unable to sit still. And of course, there was no escaping his hunger…

“Good night!” Claudia called out to them before closing the door, leaving Damsy and Kai alone in the gardens.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy watched too, then stepped in front of Kai and turned to him. She took one of his hands. "I'm good. Thanks though. I'll stay up with you," she nearly promised. She slept like a shark, one side of her brain at a time, always while on the go. Even on land, walking, she'd drown if she ever stopped, from the weight of her landlubbing problems rather than the deep water.

"I guess matter one is finding those little buggers," she mused, glancing over her shoulder as if she'd locate one just like that. "What'd they look like?"



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

Damsy and Kai were the only people left in the room still awake, surrounded by slumbering bodies on roll-out cots and makeshift bedding. None of them snored, making the whole scene resemble a silent morgue rather than a sleeping place. The faint buzz of heat lamps and the muffled drone of the newly activated A/C were the only sound—cold, mechanical droning like electronic white noise.

<There are two left on the plant,> he said, plucking at the leaves. He found one, but couldn’t locate the other. Pursing his lips, he extended a finger and let the lone caterpillar crawl onto his hand. <See?>

It was tiny, green, bumpy, and had a set of four hornlike appendages sprouting from its head. Kai watched it inch across the span of his palm, fascinated.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Aww, cute," Damsy cooed, bending over to get a closer look. "Looks like Kezi if you squint." And develop spontaneous colorblindness, sure.

Damsy straightened. "Well, I 'magine they've not made it upstairs," she mused. "Seein' as they don't have thumbs an' most everyone's, uh, collective napping down here." Meaning the elevator hadn't been used since the heater had first blown out. "If you check the vault, I'll get the power station."



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

<Okay good, okay fine,> Kai agreed with her plan. He opened himself to the Force, but found that he couldn't sense the little creature. Nor could he feel its friends elsewhere in the Reef.

Departing the greenhouse with the caterpillar still crawling over his hand, he headed for his own personal quarters—really more of a glorified locker, given that he had no need for a place to sleep. There he found the BD unit Professor Nimdok had given him and activated the little droid.

[BD, I need you to scan this,] Kai chirped in perfect Binary, crouching down and holding out his hand. He planned on using BD to help him locate the others. While the droid scanned the caterpillar, Kai was briefly distracted by a noise that seemed to be coming from somewhere outside the room. He turned his head for only a moment, it seemed—but then BD suddenly shrieked a warning.

Kai turned back. [What is it?]

The droid chattered excitedly, bouncing from foot to foot as it unleashed a flurry of data on the caterpillar’s species, the chernamila. Native to Lao-mon, it was a type of parasitic insect that burrowed into a host’s body in order to transform from larva to moth…

As soon as he heard this, Kai tried to find the caterpillar—but it was no longer visible on his hand. He searched frantically for the lifeform, hoping against hope that it had fallen off of him and onto the floor somewhere—

It happened fast. A numbness spread through him, like the prick of an anesthetizing needle. Sinking to his knees, Kai slumped, eyes open yet vacant. He was distantly aware of BD’s panicked screeching, but that too faded as he slipped away, falling into a state deeper than any dream.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Is it warm enough?" asked Arisso as Damsy all but stormed back into the power station.

She nodded. "Everyone's all toasty." Her voice muffled when she turned away halfway through her reply, scanning the factory room. She just hoped the caterpillars weren't too toasty. A little more than half the flooring was corrugated to let steam up from the machinery below.

"You looking for something?" he asked though he was indeed smarter than that.

"Uhhh..." Damsy trailed off, walking over the a nearby worktable and checking the underside. "Lil' green guys."

"Like what, Motina?"

Damsy turned around to pull a face for Arisso. "Ha ha. Smaller. An' no legs. Claudia said the Shi'ido had some caterpillars on the plants they brought in, but she lost track of 'em I guess."

"Oh." He stepped closer to her. Before touching her upper arm, he wiped some engine grease off his metallic fingers with a drop rag. "Like this on—?" He gently pulled on a section of skin, or at least tried. A joint in his digit caught one of her fine arm hairs, and she tried to pull away, muttering, "The 'ell, 'Riss'? Don't trip me out." "No, I swear I just saw it..."

When Damsy opened her mouth to reply, what rushed up her throat was a strange numbness rather than a smartassed comment. Her joints locked all at once like she was about to metamorphose. Light, bubbly foam washed over her vision, gnawing into her mind. She heard her name exclaimed further off than her Technobeast friend stood, and just barely felt him catch her before she lost grasp on reality.



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

The young Bamarri was taking its first steps. Stiff legs of crystal tottered over the ground, walking on unsteady feet of quartz toward its guardian.

The desert of Bamarre around them was quiet, devoid of noisier lifeforms. They communicated with their minds alone, projecting each other’s feelings back and forth. At last, the youth reached out and touched the guardian’s leg, feeling its approval.

Together they walked to a cave. It was cool and dark inside. The guardian led the youth to a pool of mineral-rich water, fed by the steady trickle of a stalactite hanging above. Since it was the smaller of the two, the guardian explained to the youth, it would need to absorb the minerals in the water in order to grow.

The youth smiled inside itself as the guardian submerged it in the pool. The water rippled, but soon fell still. Under its guardian’s watch, the youth was safe and content...

***​

In the real world, BD quickly scanned Kai, checking his vitals. The doppelganger was alive, but he didn’t react to stimuli. Even his pupils failed to dilate when the droid shone a light in his eyes. The chernamila had him cut off from all sensation.

There was no possibility of removing the creature at this point. It had already dissolved, fusing its nervous system with the doppelganger’s. Kai’s only chance was to fight the illusion the creature was projecting into his mind—a prospect that seemed unlikely, given the nature of the simulation. Whatever Kai was seeing now, it was his own personal heaven.

Wondering if others had been infected, BD scurried out of the room, scanning anybody he found. The results weren’t good—as many as half the Reef’s residents looked to be infected! All because of the problems with the A/C, which had forced many people to sleep in the greenhouse where the caterpillars could easily reach them…

The droid skittered off to find someone who remained conscious and warn them about it.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

A cloud of dust left Damsy's vision clear but somehow still confused.

"Dams'?"

"Huh?"

She looked up at her executive officer, who had been walking ahead of her, but was now standing still and looking backwards. Concern soaked through his balaclava like the desert sun's libation of sweat.

"Want a carry?" Damsy shook her head, allowing each exchanged word to chase away a fuzzy memory just out of reach. As she caught up with him and subsequently fell into step, Typhan glanced over at her again. "What's on the Stormbringer's mind?"

"Stormbringer?" she echoed dimly.

"Yeah. Of Kamino," he added. "You." Then he leaned over, working a palm under her hijab-like hood. "Are you sure you're okay? You've never gotten heatstroke, not even when Bakari make us island hop half of Mustafar."

**​

Shortly after Damsy had collapsed and Arisso had laid her on the nearby workbench, another caterpillar had made its way onto him. He was only able to tell when the green organism inched into his advanced peripherals as much of his skin, steely as it was, had no mechanized stand-ins for nerves. Thinking in no culturally-sensitive terms, Arisso plucked a hydrospanner off his belt and swatted at the thing just as BD rolled into the generation room.



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

Once the young Bamarri had grown a little bigger, its crystal body no longer so delicate and brittle, they set off again. This time they traveled beyond the desert, into the deep dark forests, using the glow produced by their inner essence to light their path.

The youth felt something strange as it wandered this place, like a memory, and yet not. It didn’t frighten the little Bamarri, but by the time they cleared the wilderness, it was glad that part of the journey was over.

<This is a mortal place,> the guardian said, guiding the youth’s sight to the village up ahead. <We must not stay for too long, or they will want to keep us here forever.>

<Forever? Why?>

<Because we are beautiful to them, and beautiful things are worth keeping. If they can’t keep us, they will be angry. They may try to destroy us.>

<Destroy?>

The guardian gave the youth a quick summary of the meaning of destruction and death. Then, while the youth stood stunned by this revelation, the guardian took its hand and led it past the village…

In the real world, Kai stirred. His body spasmed in the panicked throes of a relived memory.

Kai responded with images and emotions related to its lost kin, the other Bamarri whom Nefretiri had killed. Friend. What had become of its companion?

Messala answered with sorrow and regret, and the finality of Death.

This was a new concept to the Bamarri, one that disturbed it greatly. Why? Why? Why?

Sacrifice.

“There can be only one. Only one.” Messala soothed the Bamarri. Put you into the water to grow. Gave life so you could live. “Your friend gave you to me, so that I could take care of you now that their time has come to an end. You do want to live, don’t you?”

Live. Want. Afraid.

“Then I have a gift for you..."

“A gift for you,” one of the villagers said, her tone solemn. “A body for you to take. A stronger body than the one you have now…”

The Bamarri youth stared at the swaddled corpse in the old woman’s arms. It was bigger than she was, wrapped in a thick blanket and tied up with twine.

The guardian wanted no part of this gift. It stood before the youth protectively, and when the old woman took a step too close, it pushed her back with the Force.

“Please,” the old woman begged. “It’s my son. He’s dead. I have no one left. If you possess him, I will vouch for you. I’ll say he was only sick. The others will not harm my Cal. It will be as if he never died…”

The little Bamarri felt the old woman’s sorrow like a hot knife. Though the guardian stood like an immovable barrier between them, the youth stepped forward.

<I want to help her.>

The guardian regarded the youth as the wise look upon the naïve. <You cannot help everyone you meet.>

<I want to help her,> the youth insisted. <She’s right, it is a stronger body than mine. Mine will shatter if I fall.>

<You don’t know what that body will be like.>

<Do you?>

The guardian did not. <If you leave the body you were born in, it will be destroyed. You’ll never be able to return to it. If you don’t like this body, it will be very difficult to leave it, and the longer you spend wearing it, the harder it will be.>

While the two Bamarri conversed mind-to-mind, the old woman had taken their silence as a godsend. She laid the corpse of her son on the ground and unwrapped it to show them. When the Bamarri youth saw his face, fair and framed by raven hair, it felt another twinge of familiar strangeness, much like it had felt in the forest.

<I want to help,> the youth repeated, taking another step toward the corpse and the old woman, with her eyes full of hope. <I want to do good.>

<Then I cannot stop you.> The guardian stood still as a statue. <You must decide.>

Slowly, the youth stretched out a fingerless appendage toward the young man’s corpse, touching his head. It felt a pull, then it felt itself unmoored and falling into flesh…

***​

BD twittered loudly, practically shrieking at Arisso in Binary an explanation as to what the chernamila was. No doubt it was evidence enough to kill the caterpillar currently crawling on the technobeast.

Blue light washed over Damsy’s prone form as the droid scanned her. Another infection case. This was getting to be very bad. But what could they do?

More Binary toots and beeps. BD suggested they enlist a telepath to enter the infected persons’ minds and put an end to the simulation. But where to find a skilled mentalist, especially during a snowstorm?...

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Arisso sighed, the sound like a shuddering computer fun turning on then almost immediately shutting off. "I hear you, little guy, but who could help us?" he asked, echoing the droid's thoughts. "Motina barely has enough in her to telepath a full sentence these days..." He had to think about who else in the factory he knew to be Force Sensitive, besides the two currently laid up of course. "I don't think Damsy's gotten to teach Forerunner much yet."

Then two other names hit him at once, one that he knew had an outstanding connection to the Siren and the other he was not sure as to the status of her Powers. "Claudia—you think she has it in her? You check. I'll find Kezi. She can help too."

**​

Their progress was like a scratch in a record. A few crucial moments of aeolian ambience has been skipped over in a single bound. In a blink of an eye, the two were upon an oasis. At the juncture of the sandy valley grains gave way to solid bedrock, tumbleweed and cacti to palm trees and shrubbery, dehydrated topography to lake bathymetry.

Nothing seemed right. When had she gotten to the top of this dune? Why was Typhan toting a rifle alongside her again, as if they weren't estranged comrades, calling her by a moniker she had never gone by? How was she not feeling even a hint of heatstroke?

"C'mon, Maj. Evac's at least half an hour out and we're basically on the LZ."

His voice easily broke her confusion. Once the curtain was cut, either side quickly dissolved into the generality of her consciousness. Her eyes refocused from daydream to reality, smiling at her second-in-command. She let him reach out for her forearm and all but drag her down the dune, their bootprints breaking the sinuous curves etched into the hills. When then come to the valley, Typhan let go of Damsy and continued through a small thicket of foliage. She walked after him, quite a bit slower, savoring the strange wonder that was a temperate patch of life in a desert. Her eyes spotted a plump, pink berry growing in the middle of a bush, and she realized she had grown hungry. She stopped, stepped near, and reached into the leafy canopy for the treat.

When she resumed her track of Ty, worming her way through a trio of trunks, she came to the lake. It wasn't a large body of water, but it also wasn't insignificant. The surface glistened gold as the slopes all around. Grasses blanketed the shore. Likewise blanketing them were Typhan's clothing from the waist up. His weapon was leaned against the tree nearest her.

But he was nowhere to be seen...

Until the air itself ruptured with a splash. Instinctively, Damsy jolted back.

Typhan's head, bobbing just above water and sweeping its hair from its eyes, laughed. "C'mon, Maj," he repeatedly egged. "It's great in here. Nice end to a fortnight's trek outta enemy lines."

She opened her mouth to refuse, but nothing came out.

Then, despite her fear, she walked towards the lakeshore.



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

With an affirmative beep, BD sped off to the greenhouse. He picked his way through the hoard of unconscious bodies to the door of Claudia’s quarters.

The door slid soundlessly open. Inside, Claudia was asleep, her hoverchair waiting beside the bed. BD skipped up onto the sea of white sheets covering her, chittering incessantly.

Claudia didn’t so much as twitch in her sleep. With a worried dwoooo BD scanned her… and found that she was infected too.

***​

The boy sailed through the air, laughing. Wind blew through his hair, rushing past his ears as he swung from rooftop to rooftop, grappling across the city. The night was his.

Approaching his target, he slowed down just enough to be precise, losing none of his momentum as he burst through the window of a starscraper. Glass showered the floor around him as he landed among a slew of thugs. They raised crowbars, wrenches, bats, or bare fists—no blasters or lightsabers or stun batons to worry about with this bunch—and rushed at him.

Padawan Cal Bamarri grinned.

They never stood a chance. He punched and kicked and tossed the thugs around, crashing them into each other, knocking heads together. Soon the room was strewn with bodies—unconscious, but alive. There was no need for killing here.

His real target lay further inside: two figures sat tied and gagged in back-to-back chairs, one a raven-haired man, the other a blonde woman. Cal removed their gags and cut their bindings.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Aeris said. “I don’t know what they were planning on doing with us.”

“Probably sell us as slaves, or maybe trophies,” Dag muttered, rubbing his wrists. He laid a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

Cal beamed at them both.

More thugs appeared out of the shadows, surrounding the trio. Seeing how poorly they were armed, neither Dag nor Aeris bothered to take out their lightsabers. They stood together, feet apart, fists raised.

“Ready?” Dag asked.

The fight began. Beating up the petty criminals with ease alongside his friends, the boy smiled. He was content.

When the last of them lay unconscious on the floor, Cal dusted himself off and stood proudly among them, his fists on his hips.

“Hey,” Dag approached him. “I’ve been thinking. Since Jem went to prison for cold-blooded murder, I have a vacancy where apprentices are concerned…”

Cal’s face lit up. <Really?>

“Yes, really. I want you to be my apprentice.”

The boy could barely contain his joy. He flung his arms around Dag. Yet even as he embraced the Jedi Knight, his expression flickered, the light in his eyes faltering.

“What’s happening outside?” Aeris asked. The sky was darkening. As she approached the window, she saw ships appearing in the atmosphere. “What the—”

“We’re being attacked again,” Dag muttered, his tone defiant. He started to pull away from Cal, but the boy clung tighter to him, hiding his face.

<I’m sorry, Dag,> he said.

“What for? Cal, these look like Sith ships. We have to fight them off!”

“They’re firing on the planet!” Aeris exclaimed in horror. “Some sort of laser weaponry…”

The air was rapidly becoming hot and difficult to breathe. Kai finally forced himself to face Dag, tears in his eyes.

<I’m sorry,> he repeated. <But I don’t think any of this is real.>

The atmosphere ignited around them. Kai opened his eyes, tears still flowing freely from the corners and down his temples.

He was lying on his back on the floor of his quarters. A stinging pain up his arm and a strange sensation in his chest told him the parasite was still inside him. Even now it was trying to get him to succumb again, to return to the beautiful dream.

Sitting up, he rested his hand over the spot where it had cocooned itself in his flesh. He could kill it easily, sever the fragile nerve endings that were connected to his own system. Part of him wanted to, as punishment for inflicting such a sick and twisted form of torture upon him.

But it hadn’t meant to hurt him. Only to pacify, to lull him for a time until it could emerge as a moth. The thing wasn’t sentient. He could feel its mind linked to his, the base instincts that drove its actions. With no conception of morality, it was immune to judgment.

So he left it alone, sealing the wounds it had made with its burrowing instead, and slowly rose to his feet.

His steps were unsteady at first, not due to any physical ailment, but because of how shaken up he was. He wiped frantically at his eyes, trying to stop the leakage there, but it was no use. Crying uncontrollably, his white hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, he staggered out into the hallway.

His arrival coincided with BD exiting the greenhouse. The little droid shrieked happily and tottered over to him, running mediscans and chirping in binary. Kai listened, and gradually the urgency of the situation began to ground him again. Apparently a lot of people in the Reef were infected, including Claudia and Damsy. Something had to be done about it.

[I’ll help them fight its influence,] Kai replied.

BD whistled with worry, making a few concerned remarks about his current state. Kai shook his head.

[I think Damsy stands a chance at breaking the spell on her own. But Claudia and these other people, I don’t know how strong their minds are. This thing could break them.] Like it almost broke me, he thought. [I’ll help them first, then her. I think that’s what she would want anyway. Captain goes down with the ship, put everyone else first. You go tell Arisso I’m awake, and it’s possible for the infected to break free, okay?]

BD agreed and left to deliver the news. Kai stumbled into the greenhouse, feeling like he was being dragged down with every step. Eventually he was crawling on the floor, across bodies, to reach her.

<Claudia, can you hear me? You've got to let me in.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Arisso could be found down the twisty, turning hall from the power station in Damsy's quarters. The space was rarely-used by her, but the near permanent residence of Keziah. Her napping places were either here, under this bed, or up in the rafters of the first coolant reactor.

As he had gotten close, he had realized that her door had been somehow opened—if not by just a hair. Strange, since she had mentioned she had left it shut to try to preserve an oasis of cool air for the semi-aquatic dragon.

Oh no, could she have been infected too? Might even her little body afford a caterpillar enough room to metamorphose into a moth?

Upon barging into the room, Arisso saw Kezi folded politely on the end of the bed, staring at the prone body of one of the insects. "Kezi!" he exclaimed.

She stood when she saw the Technobeast. Emotions of fear bookended in sorrow washed over the Sithspawn, non-verbal communications, though she mewled pathetically once they had played out. The way her top lip pulled slightly up revealed a bit of blood on her canine teeth.

"It's alright, little one," he said. "Well, this is." He motioned to the bed. "But a lot's not. Those things got to a lot of people, including—"

<Own!?> came the sweet telepathic voice of Keziah. Her very primitive vocabulary still expanded from time to time, but did tend to shorten words that she considered long to a single syllable—two at most. In this case, owner: Damsy.

Before he could confirm or deny, Kezi had leapt off the mattress to the floor and galloped out the door.

**​

When Damsy actually got to the shore, she managed to stall her momentum.

If only for a moment.

She set her jaw, or felt like she was, but the reflection she glimpsed off the crystalline surface of the water was not. Her feet were the same story: one sensation told her their heels were digging into the sand, the other that they were level on the surface.

The spell broke. Whatever invisible resistance pulled taut the air snapped.

And her reflection became one, met together at the water's surface, first feet, then ankles, knees, hips, culminating at waist.

Damsy drew a sharp breath that never came. Nor did the incineration she expected to blossom forth from her chest and consume her limbs. She waited on the passing moments, watching her mirrored face and holding her breath as black stayed black, not a cell turning blue-grey.




**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

Claudia walked barefoot across a velvet carpet of green grass. She was in the gardens of her grandfather’s estate on Cophrigin V, now restored and reclaimed as a sanctuary by the Sithspawn Sanctorium.

Paper lanterns hung from the trees, the remnants of the party they had held to celebrate their new home. Everyone had been there—all the Sithspawn residents of the Reef, as well as Claudia’s friends and family members. But now, as the evening gave way to night and the festivities began to die down, she was alone.

At least, until she felt a hand clasp hers.

Smiling, she guided Kai to a bench, where the two sat side by side. Claudia stretched out her legs across the garden path, her unblemished toes splayed across warm stone, and breathed in the scent of night-blooming flowers.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said. “The whole planet is like a garden, but this… nothing is quite like this. The place where I grew up, where I ran and jumped and played with my brothers and sisters. Where I felt only Grandfather’s love…”

Kai touched her chin lightly, turning her face toward his.

“I am happy,” she said. “I’ve wanted to go home for a long time. It isn’t the way it was, but that was all a lie anyway, right?” She sighed as his fingertips brushed her cheek, gentle as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. “This is my real home. In a garden, where a god falls in love…”

She let her eyelids close, but she did not receive the kiss she expected.

<You think I’m a god?>

“Metaphorically,” she mumbled, leaning forward.

<And you’re in love with me...>

Her brow furrowing, Claudia opened her eyes. Kai sat beside her still, but he was blindingly vibrant. She jerked her hand away from his, burned by his painfully real touch upon her mind.

He seemed contemplative, though not for long. <None of this is real, Claudia,> he said. <You’re in a simulation. You need to wake up.>

“But—” Claudia started to protest, but already the garden was beginning to crumble. Her legs tingled, then went numb, and finally the ground beneath her collapsed, sending her screaming into the abyss.

“No!”

Claudia’s wailing pierced the silence of her room. Her sobs were punctured by a coughing fit, then finally reduced to pained, wheezing whimpers.

“It hurts—my chest—” she gasped. Kai, moving painfully slow by his standards, fumbled with a medikit until he produced a syringe filled with bacta and injected it into her veins. There were splotches of blood on the bed sheets where the open wound in her wrist had touched them.

<This should be good until we can get you to a doctor,> he assured her. <Try to stay calm. Breathe slowly.>

“Why did you have to wake me up?” she rasped with a grimace. “I was having… the most wonderful dream…”

***​

A curse in Shi’idese rang out from across the hall. Metal sliced through the air as a strange alien dagger was thrown, the blade striking the wall and narrowly missing the scampering Keziah.

“The rodent has killed one of the Chernamila!” a Mician bellowed in heavily accented Basic. “I will have its hide for a new pair of boots!”

The mothman began to chase Keziah.

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

Shrill neighs followed the expletive. Keziah contorted her body as she ran to avoid the Mician's projectiles.

"Woah, hey!" Arisso yelled over the commotion as he joined in chasing after the miniature dragon. "It was trying to infect her!"

As if to agree, Kezi threw packages of emotions from her mind, scattering them all over the living space. Upon hitting the cold floor, their energy dissipated into nothing. She was finally able to jump high into an open vent, where she turned to the mothman and attempted to send her emotions straight to him. If successful, realistic feelings of a rapidly beating heart and cold sweat would unfold in the being's consciousness. It was unbridled fear, not callous intent.

**​

"What...?"

"I know, feels a little weird, don't it?"

Damsy glanced over at Ty. He was floating a few meters away. "I'm not...?" Once more, she could not finish her sentence. Some wall stopped the words up in her throat.

He knit his brow. "Not what?" The water sloshed in Damsy's ears, but he was on her before she saw him move. A hand dove to take hers, interlacing their fingers. "We're safe. The boys'll be here in no time."

"Ty, but I'm-I..." That block again. She screwed her eyes shut. The more she tried to force out of her windpipe, the hazier her will to actually say it got. She opened her eyes in time to latch onto that fleeting desire, the last few sand grains caught in the safe spaces of the sieve that was a hand.

Tactic change.

Ty still looked deeply worried.

"I'm bleedin'..." Even as she said it, a red mushroom bloomed through the shifting water. She looked down, astounded. She had never actually dreamt in her life, for she couldn't even properly sleep, but this is what she had been told by some it was like. At least lucid dreaming. Ask and ye shall receive. She had never asked to be hurt before. First time for everything, even fake.

"Oh, Gods." Another slosh, but this time pair with appropriate vision, as Ty scooped her up and waded back to shore.



**
Arlo Renard

 

[Arlo Renard]

The mothman was undeterred by any projected emotions; his own were running high and hot enough as it was. Another knife went sailing through the air before Arisso’s exclamation reached his ears—and mercifully missed Keziah.

“The Chernamila does what it does, but the burrowing was not meant for her. It was meant for us. We are the chosen people, the vessels of their transformation!”

By now, others had been roused from their quarters, among them other Micians. The mothlike people gathered around Arisso and tried to explain, or alternately to plead for forgiveness and understanding. It quickly became apparent that the caterpillars and the infestation process itself held some special religious or cultural significance to their people. They were sacred creatures that the Micians carefully cultivated. Yet someone had been careless and left them somewhere out in the open, giving them an opportunity to infest others.

Kai emerged from the greenhouse to all this ruckus, still clutching his middle. He’d gone through all the most at-risk patients; now he needed to see to Damsy…

The first Mician—the one who had chased Kezi—took notice of him. “You have overcome the utopian vision?” he asked, though in a tone that suggested he already knew the answer. “You must not remove the Chernamila which sleeps within you. It will grow strong, now that you have proven yourself worthy, and be a boon to you…”

<I won’t kill it,> Kai replied without stopping. <That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.>

“The vision is difficult to part with, it is known. But those who abandon the dream of utopia are granted access to true paradise in the Netherworld of the Force.”

Kai paused, turning to glance at the mothman preacher.

“The dreamless have dreamed, and the dreamer has awakened—but you will dream again,” the mothman said, his tone earnest and sincere despite the cryptic, almost nonsensical nature of his words.

With a sigh, Kai turned away and resumed his trek toward Damsy.

He found her lying in bed. Blood was welling up from the wound the Chernamila had made in her body, staining her clothes red. Kai immediately set to work cleaning and dressing it, then laid his hands on either side of her head. An unnecessary gesture, but one that helped to focus him.

<Damsy. You’re dreaming. You’ve got to wake up. None of it is real.>

Damsy Callat​

 

[Damsy Callat]

<Damsy. You’re dreaming.>

A disembodied voice emanated over the horizon how heat baked up in waves of vapor up from the sand. Damsy turned, contorting her body in her squadmate's arms.

<You’ve got to wake up. None of it is real.>

"It hurts, don't it?" he asked.

"Uhhh," she muttered, trying to track two conversations at once, one one-sided and the other not. What was she supposed to say? More importantly, what had that voice said? And why did it sound so familiar? "Like a schutta."

That this was a dream?

Well, yeah. She knew that.

She needed to wake up?

But logicing her way out had thus far proved ineffective. What alternative way was there?

Hold up a second.

"Like a..."?

Damsy righted herself and screwed her eyes closed. Actually 'urts so much, she thought, I might...die.

**​

Damsy woke with a start. If Kai was leaning too close over her, she would almost hit into him as she jolted upright. "Feth, Kai!" she exclaimed before throwing her arms around him. Almost as quickly as she had arose, she pulled back from the embrace and instead held her own bicep over her new wound. She first grimaced at the sensation then glanced again at Kai. "I thought I was stuck. What happened?"



**