Private Seeing Double

[Arlo Renard]

Kai emerged from the shadow of a bookcase with a smile for Aeris. Seeing the papers, he thought she might be preoccupied—but if her hair wasn’t all neatly bundled in a ponytail, she couldn’t be that busy.

<I was in here earlier but I came back. I’m showing Kal around. He’s a wandering spectator, and he very much wishes to learn more about the Jedi and their ways.>

This was exactly how Kal had described himself, word for word. As the Shadow was properly introduced, Kai simply stood by, looking in the vague direction of Kal’s presence, whether he had chosen to materialize or not. Then he turned to Aeris, seeking a reaction, approval or not; it was clear by his bright, unsuspecting expression that he thought he had made himself a new friend.

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

"Well, you are with Kai, so I figure you would most likely not be all that bad." Aeris shrugged and reached out to tie her hair back in a ponytail. "That, and you are both in a place full of guardians. Other than that, an attack would most likely not be launched from the library if someone were to attack."

Kai explained their presence and she gave them a warm smile.

"Well, I could use a break, I suppose." She said and began to pack her belongings into a neat pile that she promptly picked up and held in her arms, almost like a mother cradling their child. "Been a while since you came by now. Security slipping up less, or have you found more friends to talk to?"

Her eyes set on the shadow with the same smile that she had given Kai.

Kal // Arlo Renard

 

[Kal]

<Depends on the attackers' motivations, I imagine. I hope you've taken sufficient safety measures, in these violent times?> At the very least the texts ought to be backed up remotely, either in physical copies or digital archives or better yet both. He hated the thought of lore lost to the fires of war.

She was quite friendly, this Aeris - and no doubt clever too, or the Jedi would not place her in charge of their lore. He could see why Kai liked her.

Concentrating for a moment, the shadowy figure of a lean humanoid - vaguely male in form - became visible where Kai was looking. To him and Aeris, anyway. It had less detail than Shadow Dagon from before, it was little more than a contour really, but it raised fewer questions.

<You still use pen and paper?> Likely not the question she would have expected from an unannounced spiritual visitor, but Kal was not quite as unfamiliar with modern society as one would assume; HoloNet access was spotty at best in the Netherworld, but even that had its workarounds. Datapads were simple enough to operate, by comparison, though he tended to need a body for that.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Arlo Renard]

Satisfied with Aeris’ reaction to the Shadow, the Doppelganger approached the desk in order to see what she was doing, though he didn’t get much of a look as she began packing up her things in a neat pile. He looked momentarily stricken as she asked him where he’d been, though he was quick to offer an explanation.

<I met another Sithspawn named Damsy. She lives in the cell two doors down from mine. Dagon brought her here too. He seems to do that a lot.> Turning to Kal, he asked, <Did he bring you here?>

At the mention of pen and paper, his eyes drifted toward the desk, where pens and pencils sat like flower stems in a repurposed glass jar, and leaves of flimsiplast were stacked in a pile, ready to use. He took a piece of paper and a pencil and started to write. After scribbling names and seemingly random words, he switched to drawing. The blank page was soon filled with doodles of various figures he had seen around the Temple, many of them holding lightsabers, along with rough sketches of Aeris and her books, Damsy with her trident, Kal, Dagon… and the satyr-like Sith who had created him, Darth Transitus.

He abruptly flipped the flimsiplast over and began a new drawing that completely filled the space. It was a vast desert landscape, craggy mountains and rock formations in the distance, chunks of crystal scattering the foreground. At the center was a figure that was humanoid, if only barely, their body made up of quartz, tongues of lightning licking the ground around them.

Turning back toward the others for the first time in several minutes, he held up the by now quite dulled pencil and asked, <Do you have these in other colors?>

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Kal // Arlo Renard

“There are many precautions, but I am not at liberty to say what those are. I am sure you understand why.” An almost uncharacteristic frown set on the librarian’s lips for a moment as her brows furrowed in thought. They were prisoners, she was very cautious about sharing anything of value. “I do!” She chimed up with joy however at the second question. Pen and paper? Of course she did! “It just feels so much better. The tickle of a real surface against your hand, the hiss of progress…”

Kai began to draw something and ask questions. She raised a curious brow at him and glanced over at Kal before she focused on the drawings he was coming up with. It seemed to be a sort of outlet for him. She tried to make sense of the figures that emerged, one was clearly her, but the others…

Well, one of them was Dagon. There was… Two others.

“I uh, do not. But I can try to go get some?” She said and looked at Kal with a pen extended as if to offer him the chance to do what Kai was doing too. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she wasn’t, but kindness had seemed to work. The things that she learned from Kai by just watching him adapt to the world was something she assumed would take any interrogator months to acquire.

He was an innocent soul in a horrifying body, a scourge held at bay by his own innocence, and all that she wanted to do was to help him. She wondered if this ‘Kal’ was much the same. That one remained to be seen.

“Do you two want that?”

 

[Kal]

<Oh no, I came of my own accord and by my own devices. To be honest, I just walked through a wall.> It was a lot easier to gain entry to restricted locations that way, in his experience, though a small minority of organics did plan for such intruders. He had yet to encounter such countermeasures here, but then he had avoided the more restricted areas - wherever these Jedi kept their artefacts, for one.

<Naturally, I would expect nothing less! I just wanted to make sure the knowledge kept here was sufficiently protected.> It would be rank folly to let him in on internal security procedures given that he was an uninvited guest at best, an intruder at worst.

Drifting over to watch Kai draw, Kal fell quiet, only "speaking up" again to politely reject her offer. <No thank you, I don't have a physical body.>

After a moment's hesitation, the Shadow added a little addendum. <Not that I couldn't handle one. With the Force, that is. I am quite happy to watch, however. I have never tried to draw anything like that - with one's hands.> Much easier to simply form an image in his mind and project it.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Arlo Renard]

“I uh, do not. But I can try to go get some?”

<Yes.> Kai gave Aeris a brief glimpse of Bamarre as he remembered it, with all the colors of the dunes he wanted to add to the landscape. <Please.>

Regardless of whether she went to look for colored pencils at once or remained where she was, Kai tucked the dull pencil between his thumb and forefinger, twisted it, then pulled it out sharpened. He looked around the desk for a trash bin, opened his palm and dumped the pencil shavings into it.

While he did all this, he thought-spoke in a voice which only Kal could hear.

<Where did you come from? Are you the ghost of a dead person? Or did you come from lightning, like I did? Or did someone make you?>

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Well, okay then. Aeris looked at the two before she gave them a quick nod and disappeared for a few minutes. Eventually she reappeared with a small pack of some very basic colored pencils. She put it down before Kai and then took a seat again right where she had been seated. Her books were placed on the table. She wanted to go back to her studies, but this wasn't the time.

"There you go." She said and gave them both another smile. "I hope you wouldn't mind, but I really need to get back to my studies."

 

[Kal]

<The latter, in a manner of speaking. My kind never come to be by accident, unlike your average organic; it is always an intentional process, one that requires significant amounts of effort and energy.> It was all true, in a manner of speaking. That was how most Shadows were formed, but Kal was not a product of his own kind's efforts, per se, but his origins - and indeed that of his kind - was not something they tended to be upfront about.

Unless any further questions were asked, Kal was quite happy to watch Kai draw in silence, both style and content offering insights into the shifter's inner workings. In theory, anyway, art was but one of many subjects with which the Shadow did not yet feel overly knowledgable.

Once Aeris returned he turned towards her in greeting, mental voice tinged with understanding. <I do hope we have not interfered unduly with your studies?> That was something he could relate to, more so than many other things - he was not one to get between someone and their desire to seek knowledge, not unless the knowledge was of a kind that he ought to keep for himself.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai’s brow furrowed at the Shadow’s answer. It provided less information than he would have liked. <Who made you?> he pried, trying to coax the rest of the story out of Kal. <Was it Messala?>

He flipped the flimsiplast over, pointing to the sketch of the Sith Lord who had made him into what he was now.

Aeris arrived shortly thereafter with a small box of colored pencils. It had only a few colors, and the blue pencil was noticeably missing. He couldn’t color in the sky, but he could make do with the rest. <Thank you.>

Yet now she had to go. Kai looked at her with sad puppy dog eyes. <But we just got here!> Hopping off the desk with his pencils and paper, he slouched as he walked away, his body language obviously exaggerated. <Okay, have fun studying.> He was going to find a table to do the coloring at.

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

Arlo Renard // Kal

“I know, I know,” Aeris frowned. “I just…”

What was a good way to say that she really enjoyed reading about Master Oka Tekk and his preposterously progressive analysis of the effects that prolonged force usage had on the physiology of its practitioners when put in situations where cooperation between different aspects of the Ashla-Bogan spectrum was crucial to survival?

That was to say, how could she decipher a madman’s writings and what was it that she could learn from it when cross-referenced with Karn Millien’s article analysis on the benefits and downsides of both the light and the dark. A quick sift-through said catharsis during power usage was an illusion caused by excess dopamine that intoxicated the user and caused an intoxicating feeling of power.

A potential dark-light bridge? Most likely not, both papers were horrendous, but that didn’t mean Aeris was averse to at the very least read and document her findings.

But, then… She also had a mopey child in her presence, and if there was one thing she was bad at dealing with…

A long sigh blew from her nose as she stared up at the ceiling.

“Fine.” She said and looked over at Kai and Kal. “We can catch up at the very least, but then I really want to get back to my books again. Okay?”

 

[Kal]

Inquisitive, was he? An admirable quality, even if Kal was not particularly interested in entertaining this line of questioning.

<Oh no, I have heard of him, but not in that capacity. Our kind makes ourselves, sort of like how humans do, except the process is more spiritual than sexual.> Again, everything he was saying was technically true - that was how one told the best lies, in his experience. <We do not necessarily raise our young in the same way, however. I was never particularly close to my parent, creator, source - whatever you want to call it.>

Shadows were "born" fully developed, after all - what happened next was intellectual and emotional development, a process that lasted well beyond the stage of Shadeling, for to understand oneself and the world was a lifelong pursuit and Shadows lived a very long time.

Perhaps Kai was similar - his body was mature, but his mind seemed childlike, naive. To Kal's surprised the whining was met with success, however, the Librarian postponing her studies to continue engaging with them. <Understandable, you seem to be studying quite an interesting topic.>

He was only tangentially familiar with the source material she used, but the topic was another question - he studied under a Je'daii, after all.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Arlo Renard]

Kai smirked over his shoulder as Aeris caved, then batted his eyelashes innocently when she looked at him.

<Okay.>

He sat down at the table as Kal offered an explanation of how his kind were created, beginning to color in the drawings he had made. That didn’t mean he wasn’t listening.

<You should tell Aeris about all this stuff you’re telling me. She’d probably write a whole book about you.> He projected his thoughts so that both of them could hear, adding for Aeris’ benefit, <He’s talking about how his kind are created. They poof each other into existence and then the new ones start flying around unsupervised as soon as they are made. He thinks it’s more efficient that way, but it sounds dangerous to me. They could get in a lot of trouble if they don’t have anyone there to guide and teach them.>

Kai was speaking from experience. A great deal of the suffering he had endured was because he was born ignorant and innocent, then left all alone. He eyed the sketch he had made of Messala, running his thumb over the back of a red colored pencil, and for the first time he wondered if he had not fled the Sith Lord’s grasp immediately after his rebirth, would Messala have been his parent, his guide?

He continued to privately pester Kal. <What do you know about Messala?>

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

"It's an analysis of several different articles detailing different theories on how the light and dark differentiate from each other. Not much of value, but only a fool would take those extra two-percent for granted." Aeris said and looked on as the two continued to interact. There was a very subtle reach for a notepad from Kai's intrusion as seemingly without even looking, Aeris began to write something down.

"Oh really?" She said and seemed to take a very keen interest on Kai's new friend. "Would you be willing to tell me more?"

Kal // Arlo Renard

 

[Kal]

<An alchemist with a penchant for the esoteric, from what I've heard. A dabbler in exotic technologies and arcane techniques. Not someone I or my kind have made a habit of interacting with, at least to my knowledge.> Even by Sith standards, the man was said to be a bit odd.

Which was saying something.

Mildly befuddled by Kai's summary, the Shadow projected the nonverbal equivalent of "yes and no", considered the librarian's question, and deemed it quite reasonable. <Why not. It is true that we come to be not through biological circumstances but through intentional effort, with one or more of my kind investing significant time and energy into the formation of a new being. Unlike mortal younglings, they are not helpless.>

Shades were not created to be free-willed, but there was no need to muddy the picture at this stage.

<Our young are not simply thrown out there, however - family structures are far more varied than with, say, humans, but they are still guided and kept safe by their creators or the community as a whole. Education is more freeform, mind you, as we do not mature physically but rather intellectually and emotionally; my kind are formed clear of mind and more often than not with near-flawless memories.>

As an added benefit, there was always the option of absorbing knowledge from the minds of hosts - or willing peers.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Arlo Renard]

While Kai knew only a little about Messala, he did know the Sith Lord’s fate. Dagon had learned of it from Amelia Ardal, the Cold One, and added it to his report on Kai and the events on Dahrtag.

<Nobody interacts with him anymore. He’s in a cell somewhere, encased in amber. Now he can't experiment on anybody else.>

Exchanging the red pencil for a green one, the doppelganger continued his work as Kai elaborated on the subject of Shadow families.

<That’s good, I guess.>

There was a faint tension growing in Kai which had motivated him to jump to conclusions. Though they had barely interacted for an hour, he felt that Kal thought himself and his race superior to others, particularly those with physical bodies. The Shadow certainly was quick to compare himself to humans in a way that highlighted their perceived shortcomings—calling them accidents, among other things. Even if his observations were correct, in a way, Kai was beginning to find it obnoxious. But his attempts at undermining Kal were as clumsy as a child exchanging playground insults. Were he a little more mature and observant, he might have realized he would only frustrate himself if he tried to compete with Kal in the first place. Kal not only had no stakes in the game, but could easily manipulate and outmaneuver him regardless.

<How can you be both clear of mind and have near-flawless memories when you’re born? That sounds like an oxymoron.>

Kal Aeris Lashiec​

 

[Aeris Lashiec]

This information was crucial, or so her mind told her. To understand a shadow, to understand more about the Netherworld. Curiosity killed the cat, but Aeris wasn’t a kitten. As her pen etched charcoal onto the paper with fervor, she continued to look at the shadow. Writing was second nature, and although the symbols on her parchment were seemingly unintelligible, Aeris had long since moved from using an aurebesh set of symbols into one of her own making, a cipher — if you could call it that.

“Fascinating, and—” She was interrupted by her comms bleeping and chiming for a second. “Chit.” She muttered and looked down at the paper, the comms, and the shadow as frustration seemed to curl her lips into a frown. “I— I have to go.”

“Jedi business.” She said with a gentle shake of her hand and shook her head. “If you are still around later I would love to finish this up, and if not…”

“Well, it was an honor meeting you, Kal.” Aeris bowed and glanced at Kai. “You too, Kai. Please take care.”

There was no real time for a long goodbye. The business was urgent and Aeris pushed from the table to go see to it.

Arlo Renard // Kal

 

[Arlo Renard]

<But—>

Aeris had already hurried away. Kai ceased his protests, knowing that Jedi business had to be important. Now he was back to being alone with Kal.

<Are you a Sithspawn?>

The question was blunt, and the look on Kai’s face as he asked it was jarringly vulnerable. Ever since Kai arrived at the Temple, he had been trying to find something in common with those around him. He could be friends with Dagon and Aeris, but he wasn’t like them—that much had been made quite clear to him from the start. Any similarities he shared with others were a comfort. He craved a connection, a friend.

More than that, Damsy had told him about her vision of uniting all Sithspawn and demanding acceptance from the Jedi. Perhaps Kal could join the revolution.

The doppelganger gazed down at his drawing. He had just begun to color it in, but now he paused in his work. Taking three more pieces of blank flimsiplast, he divided them into even squares by using two of his fingers like scissors, then began making small cartoonish sketches on each of them, depicting Kal in various stages of spectral movement. When they were completed he stacked them together like a deck of cards, then flipped through the pages. Kal floated around the flimsiplast, then phased through a brick wall. Where he’d gotten the idea to make a flipbook was anyone’s guess—presumably from eating the mind of someone whose hobby had been arts and crafts.

He held the finished book out to Kal; a peace offering.

Kal​

 

[Kal]

<We do not necessarily forget as others do. We come into being fully-formed, so to speak - the spirit adapts, but retains its essential character.>

If Kal was aware of Kai's efforts to compete with him, he made no mention of it. Aeris' sudden departure drew more attention, however. <Time stops for no one, hmm? Farewell, lorekeeper; may the fickle fortunes favour your endeavours.>

Gaze swivelling back to Kai, his first instinct was denial, but the vulnerable impressions surrounding the Doppelganger made him reconsider. It was clear that the young being was searching rather desperately for a sense of belonging. <I am very different from most too, Kai. Both in nature and origin. That said, I am not alone and neither are you - I find that the connections we chose are as important as connections of birth.>

Projecting a sense of appreciation, pinpricks of light traced the motions of his little creation with curiosity.

Reaching out with his mind, the gift drifted gently through the air, then began repeating its motions. <Thank you, Kai, but it is difficult for me to bring material items with me.> Considering its small size and negligible weight, as well as the Sithspawn's need for affirmation, he made a decision.

<Difficult, but not impossible.> Shadowy appendage rippling into the tiniest of rifts, the flipbook was quickly pulled elsewhere.​

Arlo Renard | Aeris Lashiec [EXITING]​

 

[Arlo Renard]

So pleased was he with the acceptance of his gift (and the revelation that Kal was “different” too), Kai attempted to give the incorporeal Kal a hug. He almost managed it, too—the Bamarri part of him could give a type of spiritual embrace, at least.

<You should meet my friend Damsy,> he said. <She’s making a home for Sithspawn down in the underworld. It’s in this place called the Reef.>

He paused. <We should go there now! She should be there—can you come?>

Kal​