I Am Shell, I am Bone (Matsu Xiangu)

[Sage Bane]

Location: Coruscant, Mastu Xiangu’s Residence
Theme Music:

Spoiler

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmTWi6kz3-k[/youtube]

Feels:

Spoiler

Sitting in a rigid, high-backed chair in a waiting room belonging to the unknown benefactor who had purchased him from the fleshy grey abomination known as Zambrano the Hutt, Sage Bane felt human again. Well, as human as he could manage as property that had just been shuffled from one slave master to possibly another. The young Jedi padawan had been captured at a shadowport by Zambrano, and had spent a few long days being sullied in unimaginable ways on the Hutt’s sail barge. Until by coincidence or the grace of the Maker, a shadowy character had intervened in his fate. Soon thereafter, Sage arrived on a small, private landing pad, looking and smelling like a ghoul and was released from his Hutt captor, who would not be getting a goodbye hug.

Cleaning up the man was not an easy task, but one that that his benefactor’s female staff carried out stoically and with strong stomachs. Clinging to the edge of consciousness, the young padawan had been bathed of his gore and grime, given a square meal, fresh clothing and most importantly medical attention. An Emdee droid had been brought in to ensure that Sage’s foot needed no amputation, and that his infected open lashes from Zambrano’s favorite whip were tended to with Bacta salves. Sage was given antibiotics, and after the neural stimulating drugs given to him by the Hutt wore off, he finally slept. It was the deepest sleep he’d had in, how long was it even? A few days? A week? Time was a flimsy concept to Sage during his time languishing on the slug’s sail barge. Once rested, he was awakened and taken to the room where he now sat.

The residence was a sleek apartment with modern decor and breathtaking views of Coruscant skyscrapers. The sheer height of the buildings looming in the distance told Sage he was in the playground of the Sith and possibly near the Ambassadorial Sector where the more high-ranking Sith Lords resided. It was perplexing to him that he wasn’t caged, chained, nor given a Force suppression collar. It showed an unusual and extremely dangerous lack of precaution. Two no nonsense female guards stood in waiting nearby, and they were enough to keep him in his place on the chair.

Sage felt an unexpected flash of gratitude towards the petite, dark-haired stranger who had taken him off of Zambrano’s chubby hands, and he quickly batted the feeling away. Those pointy teeth, the clipped way she spoke, as well as the strangeness of her black metallic arms did not promise kindness within that slender form. In his youth, the former slave had been nicknamed kaae dohdoha, Huttese for “little barbarian.” The childhood nickname was earned from the ferocity in which he’d kill other slaves he was pitted against in gladiatorial battles to the death, a common entertainment for Hutts. Although emaciated, Sage’s warrior spirit still lurked deep within his gaunt shell, and as he waited to meet the architect of his fate, the padawan vowed that as soon as he regained his strength, he’d move aside the webs which shrouded and asphyxiated it and let it break free.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

While Sage slept Matsu plotted. She was, at the core, a simple creature. She had very few real wants and needs but that did not stop her from making connections, hedging her bets and shoring contingencies for a future that could change despite her wealth and power. She was no fool. Zambrano was ancient, a confusing mashing of pasts and experiences that drifted through her consciousness whenever she dipped a hand in. Though he was clearly incredibly unstable that did not negate his value to her and she could offer him power and pull in return for his particular brand of wisdom.

But once the negotiating was done, an agreement for the future reached, she had played the gracious host and walked him back to the landing pad, watching him go and waiting until his sailing barge had flown away before practically sprinting to the refresher for a shower so hot it nearly scalded her (which would have been fine – preferable to the slimy feeling the Hutt left in his wake). When she got out she took her time getting dressed, leaving her long, dark hair to dry naturally as she ate and retired to her room. Her time was split between Wild Space which she considered her true home among the outlaws and adventurers of the Fringe, and her new work within the One Sith organization. Both kept her busy but she was an undeniably vain creature, sure to keep time for herself. It would be a while before the boy woke anyway.

It turned out to be hours before one of the women came to inform her that he was awake and waiting for her in one of her sitting rooms.

He appeared far more comfortable than when she’d first seen him despite the dark circles under his eyes and the convex bend of his spine hollowing in emaciation – at least more rested, numbed by painkillers and slowly fighting off infection. But what she liked most was the curious flavor to his thoughts, an undertone of rage, the thought of revenge he breathed just before she had entered.

She sat across from him, crossing her legs and resting one cybernetic along the arm of the couch, the other in her lap. She let silence rule them for a moment, used his uncertainty to filter through his thoughts before speaking up, a voice as soft as her presence. (And this has always been her greatest strength, appearing gentle, cultivating a sense of security that made her infiltration much easier.) “The Hutt didn’t know you gender, much less your name, but it is nice to meet you Sage,” she said, gathering the moniker from a snippet of memory in his head, some man’s voice speaking tenderly to him. “My name is Matsu.” If he was Republic Jedi the name might ring bells - she'd fought against them countless times, killed dozens of their number, nearly taken the life of one of their Masters Aaralyn Rekali. Anonymity used to matter to her, but she'd realized it was a vain hope before too long.

She paused, considering him. She wasn’t much for talking herself but this situation – this…opportunity – must be treated with care. “When I was ten, my closest friend disappeared. I spent every day of my life with her. We were inseparable. She just…vanished along with her family, house left exactly as I’d seen it the day before. I spent the years looking for her, but discovered her only by chance in a club on Ryloth. She’d been sold in to slavery and had spent the last decade of her life dancing for men, sold for the night to the highest bidder for credits that would go to her owner, credits that would never cover the cost of what they took from her, what they did to her in backrooms, even if she’d gotten some of them.” Her usually stoic demeanor was fraying at the seams slightly, amber licking at the edges of her irises, a subtle shiver to the art in the room as her anger took hold. She took a breath, returned to the center, reined herself back. (She is not the fire most Sith emulate. She is an arctic ocean, floes of ice crossing an impenetrable surface. If you dive in to her dark you freeze, you suffocate – quietly, drifting past sea monsters so gigantic it takes a full minute to sink past their eyes alone, deafening silence save for the roar of immense pressure and your heartbeat pounding in your ears. So cold…so cold…) Everything is still again, her eyes dark as she continues. “She had them killed. All of them, bodies laid out over the very bar she stared at night after night instead of looking at the faces of desperate men looking slack-jawed at her. She got even, and she is free.”

Another pause, a chance for him to speak if he wanted it. He was on the precipice of a great discovery, one she could perpetuate. And subtlety was her game. He had to want it for himself, without her suggestion. She could feel anger, rage, a thirst for revenge. She merely had to nurture it – so she initiated her first step. “That is why I am freeing you, Sage Bane. You are no slave to anyone.”

[member="Sage Bane"]​

 

[Sage Bane]

The city lights of Coruscant’s towering spires glinted off of her dark eyes as the woman named Matsu spoke. Was the manner in which she used the word “free,” the same the manner in which Zambrano the Hutt used the word “friend?” There was no way in chaos that a woman who consorted with a being as foul as that Sith slug was setting him free. It had to be a ruse. Sage’s trust took eons to earn and a nanosecond to break, and he would make no move to rise from the high-backed chair.

Still, a tiny ember of trust flickered softly within. Or perhaps the desire to anyway. There was candor in the story she told him about her childhood friend who had shared elements of his tragic past. Despite himself, Sage’s lips twisted into an almost imperceptible smile as she told of her friend’s savage disposal of men who had humiliated her. Matsu’s tone seemed relaxed, almost kindly as she dangled his freedom. What was missing were the attached conditions. Yet, attempts to reach into her mind with his own dim threads of the Force were thwarted. The young padawan found an impenetrable barrier protecting her emotions.

The presence of her black cybernetic limbs snapped him back to laser-focused caution. Those were not the kind of arms that cradled. She was toying with him, a kitten on the edge of a koi pond. His rage strained just beneath his gaunt frame. One quick vault from the chair and he could overpower her, hands wrapping around her graceful throat, closing like a vice. If it weren’t for the physical limits of his weakened body, he would have already sprung. His body thrummed with the desire to kill anyone who sought to keep him servile, and much like the need for glitterstim, this was an eternal craving that could never be sated.

Once she was finished, Sage spoke. Words scraped against his dry throat, which had been parched for days on the Hutt's sailbarge.

“What’s the catch, Matsu?” he simply asked, putting deliberate emphasis on her name, a hunter’s mark. Then he added. “There’s always a catch.”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Suspicion was an admirable reaction. She had just offered him one of the greatest prizes afforded a slave: freedom. However, she was making no effort to soften her signature. That he was in the lair of the final beast – the last to rise from the sea, born from the waves wearing a crown with ten horns, metal teeth, a blasphemous name – was obvious even without the Force to aid the warnings surely going off in his mind. If he had accepted easily she might have walked him to the window right then and kicked him out in to the Coruscant traffic, seen if Jedi knew how to fly or if he’d just shatter in to a thousand meaty, horrible pieces with the first impact of a vehicle.

But he didn’t.
She smiled.
She didn’t say anything as she began building an illusion.

Leaning forward she rested an elbow on one knee, her left arm still on the arm of the couch as she studied him. His anger made it easy to rest in his mind and she settled in, a spider’s crawl over gyri and sulci before she bit him.



[SIZE=12pt]You should hurt her. She’s so small, so delicate. Even now you could take her. You could kill her before her guards even moved a muscle, kill them too and escape. She said you were free – take it, take it for REAL. Look what they did to you, hungry and starving for scraps and forcefeeding you remains. They took everything. You used to be someone. Even in the dark, they whispered your name – Little Barbarian. They feared you. But now you are nothing. You’re wasted. The Hutts made you weak. The Jedi made you weak. They took away who you are. Who are you? WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU? Weak, weak, weak? No. You should hurt her. You should hurt her. You should wrap your hands around her little white throat and squeeze until she turns blue. You should hurt her. You should KILL her. KILL her. KILL HER.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]KilL hEr.[/SIZE]​

kILl Her​

kILL Her​

Kill heR​

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K̜̤̺̫͔̱̳̥͙̭͕̮͈̙̯̹̻̦͒ͫͭ͋ͤͨ̑̊ͫI̻̖̹̥͕̻̠̱͎ͮͩ̈ͨͩ́ͬ̇ͥͬ̽ͩ̉̿ͫL̺̝̞̝̼͕̟̟̹̱̪̹͈̆ͣͮ͒̀͗͆́ͅḶ̺̘͙̠͈͚̪̤̿͆ͬͯͧ͂̔͛́͋ͯ͑̽̏.̜̤͎̞͕̠͉̗̬̦͓̙̘̝̬̖̈͑̒̅̅ͬͩ͊̽ͩ͋̐͆̃̀ͅ ̜͎͈̩͕̤̱̰͚̾ͬ̄͑ͬ̎ͯͮ̍̾̆̐H͍̦̗̱͔͚͇̦̞͋̓͑̈́ͤͮ͋́̉̔ͫͣ͂̔ͮE̗̩͔̤͖̙̤̲̹̥̹ͨ̇̑̈ͥ̉R̳̻̙̦͖͍̬̭̘̻͇̤ͨͩ͑̃.̝̱͉͇͓͉̠̯̞͖͐̈́͋ͫͪ͊̊͐̔̉̌​

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[member="Sage Bane"]​

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[Sage Bane]

Sage’s question was left dangling, a corpse at the gallows, its neck cleanly broken. His brown eyes moved between Matsu’s blood-red lips, with their flash of ivory fang, and her black cybernetic arm in its contiguous position on the arm of the couch. Too close. She was sitting too close to him. Any semblance of kindness the young padawan might have felt when she first entered the room was dimming under the expanding shadow of dark wings that tendriled through Matsu’s sitting room, revealing her true presence.

Sage’s body was a frail instrument, skin thinly stretched over a skeleton, leaving multitudinous gaps. The spider skittered in, hiding in those corroded holes. Venomous thoughts seeped through the sluicegate of his mind, goading him on, giving him permission to do, let's face it, what he wanted to do anyway. A hushed voice dripped through his mind, a siren’s song, wailing in minor keys of vengeance and bloodthirsty urges. He tried to shove it out. Seductive as it was, it was still too intimate a violation for his mind to accept. Despite his efforts, it clung, like a virus settling into its host cell, its words dividing, replicating. When the beast softly whispered his slave nickname, its Basic translation far more beautiful than the dirty slug tongue, something snapped. Cymbals crashed. A vein was opened.

As the beast mocked him, Sage’s anger surged violently. Shaking with rage, he could taste Matsu’s blood in his mouth, like warm sangria. He could feel her skin underneath his hands, the twist of her neck bending at an unnatural angle as his hands tangled through her soft black hair, gripping her head. Crack! Hurry up, do it do it do it do it do it do it do it.

Sage rocketed himself off of the chair, and with every bit of fury that hadn't been left on Zambrano the Hutt’s sailbarge, the Little Barbarian viciously attacked the Beast, his thin hands clawing at her throat, his grip searching for pale flesh to squeeze into a limp, lifeless doll.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=12pt] YES! YES![/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] Matsu had a propensity for watching others die. The first time she’d sat in the mind of a dying man had been ecstasy, the kind of reverent religious experience the Jedi always touted was their experience of the Force. She’d watched her victims die from inside their own minds every chance she got – she’d died a thousand times. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] She had been drowned[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] beaten[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] starved[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] choked[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] frozen[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] dismembered[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] tortured[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] bled out[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt] burned.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] But the times when death truly came knocking were few and far between, even less frequent now that she’d reached the ability to protect herself in ways powerful and hideous. Long ago – a decade – she had almost died, bleeding in to the snow on Skye after someone she considered a friend tried to kill her and failing that, took her arm and left her to weaken to the elements. It was the closest she’d ever come to truly crossing to the Netherworld and since then she’d been fascinated with death, dying, feeling someone else slipping quick or slow or painful and peaceful. When Sage wrapped his hands around her neck she let out a hiss of pleasure before she couldn’t find air, gasping around his vice-grip and smiling. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] She let it go for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, three heartbeats, before she seized his mind again. His rage made it easy, distraction her greatest tool as she rifled through and took hold of his brainstem – primal, base instinct, core reactions at her fingertips.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] In his vision, she would look up in to his eyes, irises nearly black they were so dark, pleading and panicked. And when the Little Barbarian did not stop her mouth opened in a soundless scream, her face starting to melt in great Dali-esque portions. Her eyes softened in their sockets, vitreous humor pouring from her skull, her cheeks sloughing off an extending canvas like a body wrapped in plastic and left to rot in the heat, her mouth extending downwards in a horrible mockery of bone structure as her jaw went limp. Her skin melted down over his hands and burned, like prison napalm, sugary and sticky and impossible to pull off before it burned down to the bone. IT BURNS, IT FETHING BURNS, OH MY GOD SOMEONE HELP ME IT BURNS IT BURNS, I’M DYING. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] In a great burst of gathered power born of her pleasure she let out a repulse, a telekinetic shove that would hopefully send him flying right back to where he’d been sitting if not quite a bit farther. She took a deep breath, rubbing her fingers over her throat where he’d squeezed. “I would call it a gift, not a catch,” she finally answered, voice thick with the strain of his attack. “The Hutt tells me you are Jedi. But no Jedi would do what you just did to me. And no Jedi could take the revenge they deserved to enact on those that hurt them. Do you want to forgive Zambrano? Do you want to forgive anyone who got you here? Or do you want to learn real power…learn how to start over?” She branched out, the slightest blush of the euphoria of a high, something he would recognize as the ecstasy he knew so well.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt][member="Sage Bane"][/SIZE]​

 

[Sage Bane]

It was almost terrifying just how much he enjoyed the feeling of constricting Matsu’s beautiful, white throat. From the surprising sounds that escaped her lips and the beatific expression on her face, his victim seemed to be taking as much pleasure in the violent embrace as he. Sage grunted like an animal as he tightened his grip. Another few centimeters and her airwaves would be completely blocked. As vice-like hands squeezed into her flesh, his thoughts flooded with memories of every slave master who had whipped him, humiliated him, starved him, and so much worse. Out of the corner of his eye, Sage absently noticed that Matsu’s guards were nowhere in sight. It struck him as odd, and a small part of him registered alarm, but the rest of him was too committed to murdering the Beast that lay underneath him.

Then her face changed. It metamorphosed beneath him, impossibly twisting, melting into a monstrous, fetid corpse. Blood and viscous liquids seeping out of her pores and onto his hands. Squalid, honeyed, fluid burned into his flesh like acid, stripping his skin, exposing his bone. Despite the intense agony, the vision was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, an absolute manifestation of the sublime. In the distance, Sage heard a cacophony of shrieking, of banshee-like wails, and he suddenly realized those sounds were coming from him. Then Sage found his own pair of dark wings. He was aloft.

Sage flew backwards with the force of a torpedo, his torso smacking into the high-backed chair, knocking it askew, landing on the floor beside it with a resounding thud. It took the half-Chiss a moment to rise, carefully righting the chair, taking his place it it once again, his eyes regarding Matsu with pained suspicion. She sat on the couch, her face once again a mask of beauty and poise and not a screaming horror. The only telltale signs of the previous scuffle were the vocal fry in her speech and the small blush on her cheeks, a shameless, sated afterglow.

“The Jedi. Ha!" Sage spat in response to her Matsu's mention of them, his voice full of scorn. Despite his drill sergeant demeanor, his Jedi Master had been kinder than anyone had ever been to him, aside from his sister, but Sage had not joined the Jedi of his own volition. “The Jedi were a punishment," he explained with a smirk. "I was forced to join them to avoid a jail sentence for drug trafficking. They’re a joke to me now.” He shrugged a shoulder dismissively. When she invoked the name of Zambrano the Hutt, his face couldn’t contain its naked hatred. “I would rather die than forgive that Hutt, or anyone who enslaved me for that matter,” he hissed. "May that dirty slug cikha du kanway."

To Matsu's question about starting over, Sage pursed his lips in thought. He was starting to put two and two together, but he wanted to hear the words fall from her own lips.

“Why did you purchase me, Matsu? What do you ultimately want with me? The question is not ‘would I like to start over?’ I believe that is a given, isn't it? The question I want to know the answer to is, why? Why me?”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

The Sith were often accused of loving the sound of their own voice. It was a claim Matsu would not dispute, having sat enough in enough discussions and listened to enough old holorecordings to know for once the insult rang true. But in this she was different from her kind as well. She didn’t like speaking any more than she had to though when she did she was good at it, able to change minds with her words even before breaking in to their minds. And she certainly didn’t like games. Whether Sage liked to talk remained to be seen, but he clearly seemed to share her stance on bandying about.

So, honesty.
Wasn’t communication the key to a good relationship?

“Fair point. That it was you was merely chance, but when he said you were Jedi, who was I to say no? There’s something decidedly delicious about watching the Light go out.”

One question answered. She sounded wistful, hungry, as if discussing a great steak and not the course of the rest of his life. She was the picture of desensitization, living proof that while nature could win out over nurture, the way she’d spent her life only made her worse. Once she might have admitted that what she did was wrong, breaking some law of nature. These days no line existed. That war and cruelty did not fascinate everyone seemed foreign to her.

“What do I ultimately want with you? Hmmm…either outcome of today is fine with me. Train with me as Sith, bolster our ranks and speed our conquest of the Galaxy. Or do not, and I can use your brain to further my experiments.”

That he could freely choose was real, but the difference between both was illusory. Both options were death, just of a different kind.

[member="Sage Bane"]​

 

[Sage Bane]

Sage hesitated, his brown eyes full of suspicion. The Jedi padawan could see very few upsides to Matsu’s proposition. The choices seemed to be train with Matsu as a Sith or be experimented on like a hapless womp rat. Both Jedi and Sith, at this point, seemed like two sides of the same coin to Sage. Authority figures who wanted to use him to further their political ends. He was an empty shell to be filled with stuffing and outfitted with strings, a marionette made to dance for others’ amusement. Although Matsu wore a different face, she was the same old puppeteer alright. So much for freedom.

When he finally answered, Sage managed a smile that resembled a threatened ape showing its teeth. A bestial warning. “While the other choice seems like a barrell of laughs," he said, his voice holding more than an edge of sarcasm. "I will choose training with you, Mistress.” With that, Sage bowed his head deferentially, a deliberate movement, practiced for many years under many different owners.

There was one benefit to undertaking an apprenticeship with Matsu. Her relationship with [member="Zambrano the Hutt"]. If the two were even mere acquaintances, the chance that he’d cross the slug’s slimy path again was a good one. Zambrano had ignited a raging fire of bloodlust in Sage, a vendetta that wouldn't likely be extinguished, a burning eternal flame. With Matsu, he would nurture and stoke the embers, and if she could get him closer to Zambrano, close enough for Sage to, say, roll him off a towering cliff perhaps, then he could use the woman much like she would use him.

“I have two more questions,” he added, looking at his hands. “First, where am I to stay?” Although Matsu was mostly likely too cunning to overlook details such as this, Sage's hope was that she would put him somewhere with minimum security so that he could find a way to escape.

“Second, do you have any spice?”

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=12pt] She liked to think of it as showing Sage the truth. True, she was forcing him in to it and perhaps he wasn’t happy about it. Maybe he didn’t see it as freedom now but she was sure one day he would look back and realize she’d given him something infinitely precious. (The thought that he might one day reject that Truth didn’t occur to her. Who walked back from the Dark Side?) Maybe if she did her job right he’d betray her or try to kill her. Then she could be proud.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] “You will stay here tonight. One of the guest rooms has been made ready for you,” she answered after clearing her throat again, the irritated sensation only getting worse as time passed. Such thorough damage done boded well for his potential but then she’d assumed the nickname she’d found in his head had been given for a reason. The word ‘guest room’ sounded disarmingly friendly as if it weren’t rigged with sensors if he tried to use the door, break the window, or crawl through the ventilation system, or as if there would not be two guards stationed outside at all times. It had been the room of several ‘guests’ she’d kept over the years in the service of the One Sith. She meant to give him freedom, but she was sure some habits – like trying to escape hell – died hard. “Tomorrow we can discuss a more permanent situation.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] She felt a smirk peel back on to her face when he asked after spice. She had been known to indulge in glitterstim on occasion, night-long binges with Kesare. But she had never fallen in to its clutches, careful to never give anything permanent control over her. She could understand the craving. She didn’t care what Sage did to his body – it was, after all, his. If he killed himself with Spice it would merely be proof of his worthiness, or rather lack thereof. “I don’t have any on me, no. But one of my people can get you anything you want.” The words ‘within reason’ were omitted – he was stubborn, not stupid. “You’ll find a holopanel in your room. You can contact one of my servants from there.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] Standing, she smoothed the front of her dress and watched him without speaking for a moment…and then left without another word, a wave of her hand leaving her guards to his care.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt][member="Sage Bane"][/SIZE]​