Say Amen (Saturday Night)

[Natasi Fortan]

​

"What in blazes happened to you?"

The barman in the hole-in-the-wall pub in Cloud City's lower wards was polishing a glass with what at least appeared to be a clean rag. That was more than one could expect at a lot of hole-in-the-wall pubs, in the city and elsewhere. He set the glass down and leaned forward against the bar, studying the face of his patron. Decima Fortan was unflinching; even if her face was in a fit state to be recognized beneath the bruises and lesions, he would have no way of knowing just who she was. She had spent much of the last five years of her life in a mask, and even before that she hadn't been well-known to the public. Her name, on the other hand -- well, there was a reason she signed her bar tabs as Irene Strallan these days.

Decima waved a hand while the other raised her glass to her lips. She gingerly placed her lips to the rim and tilted her head back, allowing the mixed drink within to sear its way down her throat. She winced and swallowed, then set the glass back down on the bar. "You should see the other guys," Decima said wryly and tapped the rim of her glass. "I'll have 'nother Meltdown."

"You'll want to pace yourself, lass," said the bartender. "These'll knock you on your -- well, they'll get you sloshed."

"Isn't that rather the idea?" Decima asked with an indulgent giggle. "I mean -- look." She waved her hands vaguely to either side, accidentally slapping the shoulders of the two beings on either side of her. "Sorry mate," she muttered as the one on the right turned towards her and hissed an insult. "Sorry, sorry."

"Now let's not get out of hand," the bartender said, apparently to the Rodian on Decima's right, who stood and gave Isobel's a light shove.

Decima, for her part, brightened. "Oh, are we going to scrap? Isn't that what lowlife scum like you say? Little scrap?"

"Who are you calling scum?" the Rodian demanded.

"You," said Decima simply, before turning back to the bartender. "Meltdown."

She took it and downed it in one long drought, the unceremoniously slammed the glass against the Rodian's face as he stepped up to her. The glass shattered and sliced rubbery green flesh. He howled in pain and his colleagues, two other burly Rodians rising to advance on her. "Oi!" shouted the bartender. "Take it outside!"

Decima moved to put a credit chit on the bar, but before she could she was seized by the two burly Rodians and hauled out the back towards the alley. The quickening of her pulse made Decima's blood sing in her veins. Maybe tonight would be the night. She was a little drunk, which would help -- maybe slow her reactions, maybe make her do something foolish. Still, some instincts couldn't be suppressed; after being hurled to the ground, Decima rolled and sprang to her feet in the dirty, dumpster-and-garbage-bag lined alleyway. She dodged the first punch easily -- Rodians telegraphed something awful -- and ducked the second.

"You call that a punch?" she taunted.

[member="Aramis Shin"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Decima Fortan"]

When the world shatters around you there are two options left-

Crumble.

Rise above it.

Aramis had picked the second option. It had been easy, but then again... the Master of Ren was cheating. His world had crumbled around him once before. When the Lords of the Fringe collapsed. When monsters started to flood back into the world. When the bulwark against the chaos of the Unknown Regions fell. Crumbling felt like the easy option back then. Until the First Order showed up. Oh, they were a bunch of straight-coated purity believers, sure. But they had power. And they took over the role of the Fringe. The imperial war machine swept through the regions and reasserted civilization. That had been enough for Aramis. He continued to hunt the beasts of nightmare himself, until the Rennites caught up with him.

At first Shin expected them to kill him.

Then they offered him a job. He took it. Why not? He didn't really believe in all their psuedo-zealotry, but that didn't matter. Sieger might have been a kool-aid drinker... he got the job done though. Which mattered more to Aramis than anything else.

It was pure coincidence that the former Ren found himself in the same bar as Decima. Coincidence that he settled at the counter the same moment that Decima was hauled out the back. His eyes briefly scanned the damage, the chaos. Then shrugged and ordered himself an ale. "What's that about," Ara inquired nonchalantly. The barkeep explained, he listened and accepted the ale. Taking a lazy drink, while the fight outside in the alley escalated.

He could feel it.

The pain, the suffering, the dark mood of this Irene Strallan. What's more? Aramis felt her presence in the Force. Uncontrolled now, beating with the pulse of the drink and death. Still there though and still strong.

"Might as well go check. Never did like people beating down on an idiot drunkard." By way of explanation. Then Ara slid off the seat and settled back on his feet. Breathing in and out, letting the Force swarm over him once more. It always felt alive in these moments. Laughing. Beating with a heart that span the entire Galaxy and more. It guided him on- through the corridor, past the door, into the cold of the outside. There was laughter in the air, but none of the mirth that would have colored it with genuine pleasure.

No, it was cruel laughter.

And hollowings of pain.

It was the pain that Ara homed in on. Drawing from it, feeling it shudder just underneath his skin. He watched from the shadows as four (two more had joined while he was drinking) beat on one. "Ain't doing to bad with those numbers," Aramis thought to himself. His hand brushed the metal casing of his lightsaber. Covered up behind his coat. It would have been easy to engage it and cut them all down. Too easy and potentially threatening in the long run. It would draw too much attention.

Instead Aramis slipped out of the shadows.

The Force pulsed and his fist slammed into the neck of one of the Rodians. A crunch. Then the alien collapsed with a sickening lump. Another one disengaged from Decima, instead focusing on this new threat.

Two on two.

Odds evened.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Decima bobbed and weaved as the Rodian swung at her, ducking and leaping back on instinct as the thug attacked. A shadow took her attention and Decima took a solid slug to the gut, causing her to double over in pain. She was winded by the blow, and she felt she couldn't catch her breath. The shadow came into focus; it was a man -- tall of height and broad of shoulder. A new challenger entered the ring. Decima watched as the man strolled into the fray and then --

Attacked one of the Rodians?

Maybe not a challenger, Decima thought. The distraction let her push herself to her feet as the Rodian turned to investigate. She swept his leg and he went down, but she didn't have time to question the newcomer. The radiation of his presence in the Force answered many of the questions she might have asked anyway. His attack on the Rodian answered still more -- the most likely explanation was that he thought she was in distress and wanted to help. The second most likely explanation was that he was the second patron she had accidentally slapped and wanted the kill himself. In any event, she would deal with him later.

Maybe.

While Decima was considering this, her Rodian stood and lunged at her. She dodged too late; his punch landed a glancing blow to her side, and she stumbled to one side. Inside the battle raged; one side of her rejoiced in the pain brought by the attack -- insisting that she deserved every bit of it for her failures. She did not deserve to live while the Supreme Leader had been forced into exile -- or death -- by the Praetorians' collective failure. The other side of her was animal instinct, self-preservation even against her own wishes. Decima returned the punch as hard as she could at the Rodian's face; her knuckles crunched against the leathery skin of the Rodian's face. He howled in outrage and kicked out at Decima's knee. Decima jolted backwards and let his weight carry him to the side, then returned with a kick at his lower back. The Rodian slammed headfirst into the dumpster opposite, the metallic clang satisfying like very little else in the world.

Decima turned towards [member="Aramis Shin"] and began to walk towards him, studying him from the short distance. A whisper of warning in the Force distracted her; the Rodian was up again, and threw his arm around her neck, choking her from behind. The ex-Praetorian struggled with him for a few moments before summoning the strength to bend and hurl him over her shoulder to the ground. She ended the fight with a stomp to the Rodian's throat, leaving him choking and gasping on the dirty alley floor.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Decima Fortan"]

After evening the odds Aramis let Decima kark the rest up.

These animals were beneath him.

Undisciplined rabble. Coiling emotions ruling over them, rather than the other way around. Only a month ago Aramis would have overseen their execution. Trying to swing at a Ren had been a capital offense. Instead... instead they were here. A place that was still unfamiliar to Ara. No longer the Order at their back. Back to those early days, when the Fringe had just collapsed and nothing else had yet filled the void.

Even when the Rodian was choking her? Aramis didn't step in. Letting her handle the business, but watching as she did.

Observing her moves.

They were slurred, slower than they should be, drunk and sloppy. But there was experience underneath it all.

"You fight against your own instincts." Aramis commented as she crushed the throat of the last Rodian. "These ones should not have been a problem for you." Squinting at her, trying to figure her out. "Who are you? I feel the Force within, you aren't a useless dog like these ones, that is for sure."

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Decima breathed heavily -- not panting, exactly, but definitely feeling the burn -- as she returned Aramis' gaze. There was a moment of hesitation between them when Decima wasn't quite sure whether he was just there to watch or if he had more nefarious plans. When he spoke, Decima felt her muscles relax a little, but her dark eyes narrowed at the man between herself and the bar. "These ones were not a problem for me," said Decima in response. "Even before you involved yourself." The Praetorian suddenly felt exposed as he recognized the Force in her, and she half-turned, instinctively pulling the hood of her traveling cloak over her hair, shadowing her face from view.

She seemed to regret her bravado, considering that she was trying to fly under the radar -- or crash under it.

"I'm no one," she said quietly, reaching up to tug her hood further down around herself. "No one."

Decima folded her arms around her slender frame, pulling her cloak around herself against the chill. "I could ask you the same," she said. "What do you want from me? I warn you, I'm an equal opportunity brawler -- I don't just kill Rodians." She glanced sidelong at him, her eyes glinting in the waning light. "Just in case you were planning to scrap."

[member="Aramis Shin"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Decima Fortan"]

He watched the tension build and relax with amusement.

Like an akk akk mongrel.

Pacing back and forth within a cage of its own making. There was potential there. Training too. She might claim she was no one, but Aramis knew better. It was just a question who she truly was. Or what, anyway. "They were not." Ara agreed with her calmly. Relaxed. From looking at him, it wasn't noticeable there was a Rodian choking to its death just a few steps away from them.

Nonchalant about death.

That would tell her a thing or two. "Except that you made them a problem." Pointing at her lazily. "You were holding back." Then a shrug. As if it didn't really matter, even though he had just called her out.

"I am not sure what I want from you, nobody."

Then something hit him. Maybe it was the Force... or something else. "But my government just collapsed. And I am looking for purpose." Leaning in to look at her, behind that cowl of hers. "And for some reason the Force is pointing me at you."

"Why is that?"

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Decima let a moment pass between them, then gave a derisive half-laugh, half-exhalation as she smirked. "If you're looking for purpose, you won't find it here," she said. "I don't mean just this alley. It's this planet -- this empire -- or what's left of it. My god, man," she exclaimed, turning to walk a few paces away from him. She turned her face up to the sky, which had adopted an attractive purple hue in the dusk, growing darker and darker in the falling night. "If the First Order could be so... so... " Her voice fell silent and she waved a hand over her shoulder. The motion caused her hood to fall back, exposing her chestnut hair and pale skin, nearly white under the bruises and scrapes. "What's the word? Temporary doesn't fit, but -- we all thought it was an empire that would live a thousand years, a thousand generations. It took a fortnight to destroy it."

She shook her head and kicked absently at a rat that had come waddling out of a pile of garbage to nibble experimentally on her boot lace. Not enough to hurt the rat, just enough to encourage it to seek its culinary delights elsewhere.

"Purpose," she repeated, the sneer evident in her voice if not her face. "There is no purpose. If you can feel the Force you'll know that for certain. The only thing these people want -- the only thing they can understand -- is survival. There are millions of them. Maybe billions. Their homes are gone and their lives are destroyed and they want to keep on living, but for what? What good is purpose against such reckless destruction? Destruction on this end of the scale and total indifference on the other? Kriffing purpose. Don't make me vomit."

She turned back to [member="Aramis Shin"]. "You'll forgive me for waxing poetic," Decima said. "I'm a little drunk. And frankly, if there's purpose to be found, I think I'll look for it at the bottom of my next drink."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Decima Fortan"]

He squinted at her.

How the mighty have fallen indeed.

"To destroy is easy, to build difficult." Aramis countered. It was the easiest thing in the world to destroy something. To kill. To break apart. To make something grand and great collapse under its own weight. This was why Aramis hadn't been surprised when the First Order fell. It was why it hadn't shaken him to his core. He had already gone through this once before.

"To maintain? Hardest of them all."

That was where the First Order had failed.

He had warned them. Over and over again. That their focus was too much on the Alliance, the Outer Rim, the Core. They didn't matter. They were just cogs... nations that would rise and fall on their own accord. No, it was the horrors of the Unknown Regions they had to be wary of. The Order believed they had tamed it. Aramis had known better, but who listened to him?

No one.

His hand raised lightly. Then snapped to the side- in response [member="Decima Fortan"] might just be able to notice the Force solidifying around her. Just before compressed air smacked into her cheek. Like a slap of an invisible hand.

"You served the same government as me." The Master of Ren proclaimed. "Did its fall truly rob you of every value it instilled in us?" Scowling at her.

Aramis wasn't certain, of course.

But either she was of use of him... or she wasn't. If not? He'd put her out of her misery here and now.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

The smack sobered Decima right up. Her head jerked back and she touched her cheek for a moment, then looked at the man opposite, her eyes flashing in anger. She didn't speak at first. The only sound was the rustle of her cloak, and the only visual of her action was the subtle metallic flash on the dull dusk night. The light situation was aided in the immediate vicinity when a beam of red plasma erupted from the hilt of Decima's lightsaber, casting pure crimson light across the alleyway. "If you lay a hand on me -- or the Force -- again, I will remove it, and then your head. I am not to be trifled with, worm, am I making myself understood?" She swung her lightsaber along the ground, stitching the asphalt with the tip of her lightsaber, leaving angry scorches in its wake.

"You don't know me, so don't let's pretend that you do," Decima went on, inching closer. Her free hand clenched into a fist, and she drew on the Force, but it wasn't quite clear whether this was gearing up for a defensive or offensive maneuver. "I served no government. My loyalty was to the Supreme Leader, not to the worthless fools that let this happen." Energy crackled around her clenched knuckles. "The stench of failure is so thick I can hardly breathe. Government. Absurd."

She came to a halt a few steps from [member="Aramis Shin"]. "You're either very brave or very stupid to strike at me after what I did to these jokers," she said, nodding at the Rodian who was still clinging to life just behind her. She straightened her fingers, unleashing a blast of Force energy at the ground, causing trash and dumpsters and indeed the Rodian behind her to be thrown from their positions.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Decima Fortan"]

If Aramis felt any fear, it wasn't clear from his expression or indeed from the Force itself.

Impassive.

"Oh, you are done? Apologies I wasn't certain if you wished to bluster some more." Aramis finally said with a smirk. Nothing suggested he paid any heed to her warning. Neither did he seem particularly worried about the lightsaber being parried around like a stick of death. "Ah, yes, because the Supreme Leader, most powerful of the Ren and epitome of leadership.... has no blame to the Order's fall." A lazy yawn there. "He was blinded by emotion. Blind to the threat that was always in front of us."

Waving his hand, as if to wave the issue away.

"If blame can be put in one singular place? It is there and nowhere else." Taking a step forward too. His finger gesture lighter and more relaxed. Nevertheless the lightsaber she held was pushed away to the side. Resolute strength behind it. Like the slow tide of a mountain pushing against it. "Brave? Stupid? No. What I am... is... not impressed."

There was only a singular warning that came to her.

The Force screeching in pain as it was twisted to serve his needs. A blast of telekinetic might erupting from him. There were only several breaths between them and the kinetic pressure was traveling squarely at her.

 

[Natasi Fortan]

Decima felt the welling of Force energy a moment before it manifested itself, and she threw up a half-cocked shielding maneuver so that the kinetic energy buffeted her, sending her hair billowing as if in a great storm, and she staggered but did not fall. Her rage fueled her, and she locked eyes with the handsome stranger -- handsome fool, more like, she amended internally, for who would speak so contemptuously of the Supreme Leader if he wasn't seeking death? She stared at him for a moment, the hint of a shake of her head in her eyes and posture.

"You're not impressed?" she sneered. "Join the club. I'm thinking of having jackets made. Who do you think you are to speak of the Supreme Leader this way? A fool or a crazy person," she declared. "And you are a fool if you think I'm going to stand here and let you handle me." She brandished her lightsaber, letting the vivid crimson light bathe her delicate features, reflecting like rage in her eyes. The Knight of Ren had been a Praetorian, and was talented in the art of dealing death with her blade. The only thing that gave her pause was the fact that she'd been drinking. It would have been nothing when dealing with Rodian thugs, but this was obviously a kindred spirit, a fellow devotee of the arts of the Force. She wasn't at her best, now.

Twenty minutes ago she wouldn't have cared whether she lived through the night. Now, her pride dictated that she could not let a clear challenge go by. She shook her head firmly, trying to clear the Meltdown-induced cobwebs. "I did warn you," she reminded [member="Aramis Shin"] gently before she lunged at him, lightsaber swinging in a surgical strike towards his midsection.