THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
THE ONE SITH
It was known as
Coco Town.
For most, it was as far down as one could go in the ecumenopolis, the city which was the planet. As such, it featured such quaint and archaic things as streets or avenues. There was a sense of this being
the ground, something that people would live their entire lives on Coruscant and die without ever experiencing. There were railways here, not sky cabs. It was the last bastion of the working-class man. Home to everything
blue collar.
Including labor unions, organized crime, and the ubiquitous red light district that seemed perpetuated by both.
However, it wasn't the bottom. That was the realm of
the Undercity, that forsaken realm that now occupied the forgotten mantle of the planet. The last refuge of dying men. Homelessness. Vagrancy. Nothing good came of the Undercity, and so the people seemed content to leave their trash undisturbed. Occasionally a sanitation task force would be dispatched by the government of the One Sith, burning the shanty towns of the impoverished and sending its occupants either to a debtors prison or into hiding. There seemed no other option for any of them other than those possible outcomes.
There was no place for them in the light.
Coruscant was a world where the higher you stood, the more you were worth. As spire inspired only another ziggarut, soon the lattice work of buildings had created a multitude of iron and concrete layers, shutting out the lower levels from being able to view a sky. Because the sky was the sole realm of their betters. And the people of Coruscant demanded that those of lower stratus respect their place. It was how the society worked. It was how civility was structured. Those who had, stood tall. Those without bowed low.
And the Dark Lords of the Sith ruled all.
The boy was barefoot. There were blisters on the soles of his feet. He could barely walk, but he was trying. He was Pantoran, though his skin was an unhealthy pallor of blue from the lack of exposure to light. He was emaciated, skin stretch taunt over bones that seemed to be jutting out from underneath. He was a miserable looking thing, with clothes that were ragged and unwashed.
He might have been all of seven years old.
He held a battered cup in one hand, shuffling among the tourists and visitors to Coco Town as he begged shamelessly. For what? For anything. Food. Credits. Clothes. Shoes. It was all the same to him.
When you had nothing, everything was of equal value.
THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
THE GALACTIC ALLIANCE INVASION OF THE ONE SITH
He was the slave to a Sith Lord. As such, he was used to being roughed up. It usually wasn't quite the same as being
manhandled though. Dark Lords of the Sith rarely got their hands dirty, or used them to pick up much of anything. Let alone a dirty, bloodied, thirty kilo kid.
The world spun in a dizzying vision, before the young Pantoran had face-planted in the lobby of the devastated spire. The amphistaff was still encircled around his thin frame, the biot stunned in surprise at the landing. Neither had much time to appreciate the situation they were in, as a hand interjected itself to snatch him up from the ground.
And that was where things got confusing.
First he was picked up, then dragged. Or pulled. Or carried. He was kinda confused on the specifics of what was happening.
Then he was back on the ground, and there was this dark-haired lady kneeling over him. And it kinda sounded like
half the building was coming down around them.
...that last part might have been an exaggeration, but this was the mind of a child.
In any case, the blue-skinned child just sat there, his eyes vacant as his mind was still trying to catch up to everything that had just occurred over the last several seconds. His mouth was agape, though no sound was made. Instead, the boy was just breathing through his mouth. His heart rate was accelerated, his skin clammy...
...and then she had to go and say something. Something so simple.
Words he had never heard before.
"It's okay now."
THE PLANET
D O S S U M
THE FIRST ORDER
"General Chiyo. Permission to come aboard?"
The first time that the Irajah had given him
a toy, his response had been:
What am I 'sposed to do with this?
For the purpose of the current drama, in which the F.O. Joes were battling the dastardly
Rebel Alliance -- who were led by the villainous Princess Oeia Lr'gana and General San Holo, with help from swindling black marketeer Cando Lalrissian and the Wookiee eco-terrorist, Chowbacca -- the Joes were striking at the Rebel base on the planet Sofa IV.
Said rebel base was, in fact, a blanket and pillow fort, which was anchored by the large cardboard box he'd earlier retained possession of after the Irajah had gotten a large package in the mail.
Underneath the covering of a linen sheet, the Pantoran was tucked inside of the box, articulating the battle that was taking place. Azi was there as well, coiled up and wedged between the Pantoran and her beloved plush toy.
Hopefully, the Irajah didn't have other plans for her living room. Which was where this Hollywood studio production of
F.O. Joes: The Movie: Episode WTF was taking place. Largely because he'd required the use of some of the sofa cushions for the construction of the pillow-and-blanket fort.
The curtain was drawn back on the theatrical stage, revealing the child playing inside of the cardboard box. Unlike the Irajah, the boy was only half-dressed. A pair of soft, pajama shorts adorned his trunk. There was a matching top for the outfit, but he didn't seem to ever want to wear it.
Yellow eyes peered up from beneath the veil of the sheet.
"You hafta ask Azi," the boy remarked in reply.
"She's in charge of the base."
It sort of made sense. Azi was kind of the undisputed master of the house anyway.
The diamond-shaped head of the biot just perked upward, most likely curious about the mug in the woman's hands. The amphistaff was usually interested in whatever either of them was holding at any given particular time.
Mew.
"It is Cadet... Chiyo, isn't it?"
For most younglings his age, independence was a brave new world.
It was true for him as well, albeit from a somewhat different perspective. As a slave, even when he'd been sent on errands for his master, he'd always had a
shadow. Someone watching over him, ready to reign in the illusion of freedom. It had kept him in bondage without chains. A prison without walls.
Now, those ethereal chains had been broken. As he'd walked away from [member="Irajah Ven"] at the transport stop, no one had followed him. He was aware of no presence lording over him. For the first time, he was alone.
It should have been liberating. Instead, he found it
intimidating. Frightening. He had been alone before. On the streets. In the alleys. In the lightless reaches of Coruscant's forgotten Undercity. Starved. Eating out of rubbish bins and sleeping in flimsiplast boxes along rivers of chit flowing through the planet's sewers.
Like the tasks he'd performed for his master, they had practiced what he would do. The route from the house to the school that he would take. The stops on the transport. His ticket and fare. He had a comlink with limited functionality. It allowed him to call the Irajah and the school, with the option for the Irajah to expand the options for calling select friends when, or if, he made any.
His first day was supposed to involve something called an 'orientation.' The start of which was some kind of test. The Irajah had been going over reading and writing with him in preparation for that, as his scores on the test would determine his placement in the school. He was supposed to go to the library for the test, and then they'd give him his schedule of classes and introduce him to his teachers afterward.
The voice, and subsequent appearance of a Pau'an startled him.
He wasn't accustomed to people sneaking up on him. Whether on the streets, enslaved by the Sith, or even at home with the Irajah... the Pantoran was typically wound tight. Anxious like a nervous feline. Constantly alert. Glancing around, as though always expecting the devil in the dark to be somewhere close. Somewhere watching.
That's what he felt now. The
devil in the dark.
He'd jumped, startled. Then shaken, obviously unsettled as his head whipped around to gaze toward the voice that had spoken. He found himself at eye-level to a midriff. Above which was a chest, that gave rise to a ghastly alien visage as the violet-headed child craned his back to peer up at the Goliath now peering down over the proverbial David.
He hadn't expected the devil to appear so... literal.
"I'll be administering a test so we know where to place you as you get started on your education," the librarian intoned in hollow, deliberate tones.
"Now... shall we begin?"
THE PLANET
B E S P I N
THE FIRST ORDER
"You wanna buy some deathsticks?"
He was a
child.
He wasn't one of those Pantorans who could pass for eighteen in middle school, and he was getting solicited by the local drug dealer not even five steps inside of the so-called 'Brown Sector.' A ghost of a smile played across the youngling's face as he breezed past the Duros that was tweaking as he came down from his own supply.
Some people would look out on a place like this and say that these people were the salt of the earth. The dealers. The pick pockets. Con Artists. Merchants, some legitimate and a few who operated outside the law. More and more, it was the legitimate ones who merely had something going under the table. Fixing the books to reduce what they paid in taxes. Working in auriodium ingots so there was no traceable credit transaction. They thought that they were getting by.
And, in a way, that was true.
"...Naboos is crazy baby. Don't forget that Bith told you get, that, dirt off your shoulder..."
As he passed through a bustling market, the boy's eyes were drawn up toward the flash and color of the holographic renderings overhead. A Gungan hip-hop group performing in an advertisement for a concert.
"Gunganlicious: Resurrection. The galactic reunion tour, here at Cloud City!"
Turning his eyes up, the youth admired the holographic advert. Perhaps there would be something interesting for him on this assignment after all. But, for now, there was work to be done. Passing over the threshold into a package store, the blue-skinned 'tween' made his way toward the counter. A Zygerrian gave a low growl in greeting at the sight of the boy approaching the counter.
"I'm here to pick up a package," the boy remarked simply.
It was a set phrase, intended for his contact on Cloud City.
"A package for who?" the Zygerrian demanded.
"Plutonia Courier Services."
The Zygerrian gave a grunt rather than a response. Reaching under the counter, the gruff felinoid planted a small package down. It was small, like a jeweler's case. As the boy reached to take it, a large Zygerrian paw slapped down on top of the boy's hand.
"For our Leader," the Zygerrian uttered softly, before withdrawing the hand.
"For our Leader," the youth agreed, glancing up at the merchant before sliding the case toward himself. Finally, he picked it up and then simply turned to make his way out of the store.
As he emerged from out of the shop, the boy popped the top on the case, exposing an ear link that was resting inside. A flashing indicator on the side revealed the presence of a stored message on the device. Pulling the link from out of the box, the boy chucked the case into a trash bin as he walked. Fitting the ear link into place on the side of his head, the youngling tapped the play-back feature.
"Good morning, Chiyo Ren."
Just a few months earlier, he had escaped the very life in which he found himself now.
Just a few months earlier, he'd been guided by the hand and walked out of the fires of Coruscant and the atrocities of the One Sith. Come away, O Pantoran child, to the doctor and the wild. With an Irajah, hand in hand, from a world more full of weeping than he could understand.
But the Irajah was gone now.
There had been a fire.
Boo had never come home from school on that fateful day. He had a new family that had been waiting to welcome him with open arms.
The Knights of Ren.
It was refrain that proved familiar. Sith 2.0.
They had even taken his name from him. Gone the form of Boo Ven. He was Chiyo Ren now.
And a boy who had been slave was a slave still.
THE PLANET
L O R R D
THE HOLY SEE OF THE PRIMEVAL
The more things change, the more they tended to stay the same.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
The boy's boots scraped against the floor of the shop. An elderly, grandmotherly matron - Carlita Letiz Suisse - sitting behind a cash register, cross-stitching with a ball of yarn propped on the counter. The two delivery men were moving from out of the back room. All three clearly startled by the sight of the young Pantoran. He could sense their surprise. And their irritation.
Fumbling with the map in his hands, the boy put on his best smile as he said,
"I'm sorry, but I think I'm lost." Taking another step forward, the boy approached one of the men, holding it out as he explained,
"Can you tell me how to get to the Crypt of the Martyrs from here?"
The irritation deepened. The atmosphere in the room one now eager to be rid of the intruder as quickly as possible. As the man reached out his hand to take the edge of the map, the boy dropped the act.
Even with their kinetic communication being so acute and innate, it was a couple of seconds before anyone had caught wind that anything had changed. Time in which the Pantoran had slipped a hand under the map to grab the hold-out blaster.
Breathe in.
The temperature in the room seemed to suddenly drop, as the boy reached inside of himself to seize hold of the Dark Side of the Force. His movements accelerated, the boy struck like a mongoose in a single fluid motion that brought the snub-nosed blaster up and leveled it at the man's head nearest him before anyone had even followed the fact that the boy had moved at all.
The two trigger pulls went off in such rapid succession that it seemed only a single shot had been fired. Double-tap to the head. The way that [member="Tyro'din"] had taught him.
He'd already sighted in the second man by the time that the Vianist had realized what was happening. The shot catching him in the head the same moment in which his hand had grabbed hold of the blaster he'd been concealing in his pants.
As the last delivery man toppled over, the boy swept his arm up to level the blaster at the matron. As the echoes of the last shot faded, the shock was just beginning to lift the veil from her reasoning, so that as realization and horror overcame shock and awe, she knew that she was staring down the barrel of a gun.
Blood splattered up against the back wall of the shop, the sound of the blaster shot echoing loudly throughout the store.
The boy let out the breath that he'd been holding, his shoulders sagging slightly as he did. Stepping over the bodies, the young Pantoran reached around the side of the counter to put a second blaster bolt in the grandmotherly corpse on the floor. Then, lowered the pistol in his hands, casually ejected the spent blaster cartridge. Slipping a new cartridge into the hold-out blaster, the boy casually tucked the small weapon away as he did a quick inspection of the bodies.
He took the comlinks, credit cubes, and identicards off all three of the bodies.
Then just walked out of the store, and vanished into plain sight.
It was a routine that he'd been duplicating to one degree or another ever since he'd finally managed to break away from the fanatical grip of the Knights of Ren, vanishing into the far reaches of Wild Space while he grappled with personal demons and lingering doubts about the fire that had, for the briefest,
brightest glimmer of time in his life, promised hope for a future that would never be.
He'd encountered a Hutt warlord there. [member="Zambrano the Hutt"]. A crazed sociopath whose one saving grace was the fact that he didn't particular care that the mercenary in his employ was a youngling. So long as Boo killed for the Hutt, the Hutt could care less who or what or how old Boo was.
The Hutt had connected the Boo with a religious cult, a group of similarly lost souls who bonded over personal demons and dark prophesies.
It wasn't home, and it damn sure wasn't The Irajah...
But it was something to believe in.
So when he was offered an opportunity to serve the
Bleeding Sun, he didn't think twice about accepting. What he had undertaken as a slave, the bloodletting he had done as a Knight of Ren... he did it all again.
This time because he believed in it.
Can you hear me? can .. you, hear me?
A voice.
There was someone there, across the hall. In another cell. But it wasn't Ren. And it wasn't the mission commander. It was a young voice. The small boy? As the Pantoran pressed up against the door, his eyes moving furtively while his mind tried to work through the questions gathering in his waking mind. He listened for any other sounds, indications that Ren and the others might yet be out there. But there was naught by a sudden echo, as though something or someone was moving toward them.
But who?
And why?
They couldn't have been targeted for being a Jedi ship. The merger and formation of the Coalition was too new. As a result, the transponder on the
Hraesvelgr had been broadcasting a Levantine ID code.
"Someone's coming," the boy stated, dropping his voice though he hoped it was still loud enough that the smaller child could hear him.
"It'll be all right. For now, stay quiet."
Pushing away from the door, the Pantoran took stock of the room. His eyes trailed along the walls and up to the ceiling.
"I'll get us out of here..." the boy promised, stepping on top of the mattress as he stretched to see how far up the ceiling he could reach.
"...somehow."
The boy's thoughts brushed against the Pantoran's mind. He might well have felt the
anger that the tween was tapping into, crouching in wait as he closed his eyes and let loose the fetters he normally maintained on the turbulent emotions of a scarred childhood. It would have felt cold to Theo.
Cold as ice.
Cold as the grave.
Oblivious to the mystic energies that were gathering, a meaty, green fist banged against the door to young Theo's cell. The small eyes and large head of a Gamorrean appeared through the slits as the guard took note of the prisoner and then stepped across the hall to do likewise in the cell with the older child.
A
Dark Rage flowed through the boy, as he extended out a hand and tried to concentrate all of his anger, the whole of his dreams, and the sum of all fears into the palm of his hand. A layer of frost formed over his exposed arm, as an icicle began to take shape -- its rudimentary point extended away from the closed fist like the point of a knife. The boy channeled the Dark Side energies he had wrought there. Trying to grasp the Force. His fist overflowing, as it washed down the icicle like a sheath of energy. Reinforcing the ice.
A series of grunts could be heard, as the Gamorrean peered through the door to the Pantoran's cell. And did not see him. The door opened moments later, the tween standing - braced against the corners of the wall just above, and to the right, of the door. The porcine thug passed beneath him, as it's brutish head was stuck inside to search for signs of the blue-skinned boy.
And he struck.
Like a viper.
Like the amphistaff he kept as a pet.
The fang of ice pierced the creature in the side of the neck, the Gamorrean toppling forward in surprise as eighty pounds of Pantoran suddenly slammed down on his shoulder blades.
From across the hall, Theo would have heard the death throes of a pig as it was slaughtered. The squeals and bleating hoarse and raw as they depicted a living creature having its life ripped violently from its body. The sounds sent shivers through the spine, and set the skin crawling.
And then it was over.
The cold lingered. Colder now. Silence. A stillness of death in the air as seconds ticked by. A sound pierced the stillness. The sound of the door to the Pantoran's cell shutting at long last.
And then a voice spoke in a whisper to say,
"Don't be afraid."
THE PLANET
K A S H Y Y Y K
THE ORDER OF THE SILVER JEDI
“I am sure the healer will arrive soon”
Adults were sadists.
Now, kids usually weren't ones to throw shade, but
come on. Spankings? Chores? You know, that whole
unpaid, forced child labor by the very same denizens of the free worlds who claimed to oppose slavery...
And then there were school physicals.
Seriously, it was
school. It wasn't like he was training for the Knights of Ren. Or the Primeval Bleeding Sun. Or the role of Darth Scorpius' slipper fetcher. Because those whole Sith slave thing had been no joke. The Dark Lord had killed two or three street urchins before Boo had come along, however unwillingly.
But still, it wasn't like school with the Silver Jedi really required a medical exam. Yet, here he was.
Granted, it
had been awhile since
his last physical. That had been conducted by a Jedi Healer named Teynara Jeralyr, back when the Silver Jedi had pulled the young Pantoran away from the cult of the Primeval. Her notes in his medical file narrated a horrific depiction. Marbled scaring of the soft tissue from repeated Force Lightning strikes. Fine fractures and indications of the bones having mended after being broken through the application of Force Crush.
Those were all mostly invisible. Concealed by the azure, powder blue flesh that dressed over the soft tissue and muscle. The physical scars were, for the most part, on the soles of his feet. The evidence of years spent barefoot and malnourished, crawling over broken bottles and through dumpsters looking for something that might have passed for food.
Then there was the puncture wound on his left hand. That did not appear in the notes left by Doctor Jeralyr, having occurred
some time later. When the Silver Jedi had come to the distant, former Sith world of Tash-Taral. [member="Rasu Gan"] had been attacked by a tarentatek and Boo, ever the
fool, had jumped to the Jedi Master's defense.
They had slain the tarentatek. Rasu Gan was safe. And all it had cost anyone was the spine that had impaled through Boo's hand.
It was a wound that had never fully healed. All the physical ailments had been tended to, but the spine had introduced a Dark Side poison to the blood. The work of Sith alchemy, severing the child from the Light Side of the Force even as it had twisted his cellular anatomy into the condition known as Sithspawn.
The wound was more metaphysical than it was tangible. It would seem to scab over and return a semblance of normalcy for a respite, however brief, only to break open again whenever there was a disturbance in the Force.
“How about we go for ice cream after this?”
Théo had no idea how long this could take. Doctors were all on their time.
He was kinda used to it. His adoptive mom had been a doctor. Boo was pretty sure that doctors didn't really have things like schedules. People got sick all the time. It was kind of a thankless job in that sense. Even when doctors did everything they could to help someone, people were still just gonna die anyway. So, really, it seemed like a whole lot of effort for not a whole lot of anything.
Slouching back, the young Pantoran put his back against Théo's, so that the youngling was resting with his head against the man's shoulder blade.
He liked when he could reach out and touch Théo. To reassure himself that Ser Scruffy was still there. That this wasn't a dream. That Théo had disappeared or left him.
Sometimes parents and kids didn't come home again. One morning, on Dosuum, Boo and [member="Irajah Ven"] had left for the day. Boo to his school and the Irajah to her hospital. Neither saw each other again.
So it was tempting to believe that this was all a dream. A dream he would wake up from, only to find himself slowly dying in some loub-paper box that he was living out of in Coruscant's Undercity.
THE PLANET
C O R U S C A N T
CURRENT DAY
He truly hated this place.
It was something about himself that he knew, on some level, in the back of his mind. The memories of Coruscant lingered as an ever present reality. Yet, seeing the planet evoked an instinctive emotional response that still surprised him.
It was a feeling somewhere between nausea and anger. He felt sick. He felt rage. He felt fear.
He shouldn't have come here. [member="Théodred Heavenshield"] would never have allowed it. So, Boo hadn't asked permission. Hadn't told Théo that he was going. The flight plan on file with the Antaran Rangers had the
Equinox traveling from Midvinter back to Alaris Prime.
Except he'd navigated away from Silver Jedi space, traveling instead to the Core Worlds. A place where he knew only misery. Poverty. Starvation. Disease.
Coruscant was everything wrong with his life. Everything wrong with the galaxy.
"It's okay now."
Those words were the only good thing to come out of Coruscant, a place that she had taken him away from.
A
life that she had tried to take him away from.
It was strange. With Théo, it was easy. Théo knew his demons and, somehow, loved him anyway. Boo didn't pretend around Théo. Boo didn't have to
act around Théo. He simply was himself. Sithspawn, mistakes, regrets and all. And none of that mattered, not with Théo.
But the Irajah...
She had tried to make things better. And what had he done? The Knights of Ren. The Hutts. The Primeval. Even among the Silver Jedi, his hands were not clean.
He was a monster.
She had tried to make things better, and he had failed her. There was no right by which he deserved to see her now, except he
wanted to see her. Wanted to know the truth. Wanted to believe that she was okay.
One of them needed to be okay.
Every moment Coruscant grew closer. Every moment another struggle to not order the astromech pilot droid to turn the Sith courier around.
The Sith had devastated the planet in the recent battle with the Galactic Alliance, so there was no way to know if the address on the package even still existed or not.
...but he had to try.
No, that wasn't true. This wasn't about The Irajah. It was about him. This was possibly the most selfish thing he had ever done. Which only reinforced the notion of how far he'd fallen and failed the woman who had tried to take him away from all that he had become.
[member="Irajah Ven"]