Tainted

[Corey's OOC]

Marek Starchaser/Peregrus didn’t know what the feth to do. All he knew? He needed to get the hell out of dodge. After the Geonosis battle the Foreman of the Techno Union took off. He had his personal ship aboard one of the Techno Union’s command vessels, took the Flow, took his armor and completely bugged out. The ship left in the hazy fog of the Golden Beach arriving in the space to provide much needed R&R and morale boost to those who were fighting. He knew that he could trust Token to do the right thing by Bright Star, girl was smart, bubble and charismatic.

As for the Union herself? Marek was… well he wasn’t sure what the felt was going on with him. But he didn’t want to spread false alarm to Alana or Sasha or Darell, or really any of his inner circle. He’d just sign off, he knew that Alana would track him that was half the reason he had hired her. She could keep her ears and eyes on him and not same a damned word.

But he made his way Coreward, a place he said he’d avoid like the plague. Take your pick on which. And now? He took a spin by the remains of his homeworld, once he was able to pry himself from Peregrus’s mental domination. He and that darker influence were fighting for control over the body. The fight wiped down Peregrus’s defense and Marek took over, setting the ship on a flight path down the Corellian Run. Halfway through, the other tried to fight back.

Marek wasn’t having any of bantha chit. He made his path over the remains and jumped once again to Coruscant.

This world, now that was a treat. What was he going to do here? He had no idea. But walking the world? He’d find out how it was supposed to be. Was Peregrus his future? Or was Marek Starchaser his future? He ran his hand through his hair as he walked the streets of Imperial Center.

These were the people who were rightfully in charge of the galaxy. Didn’t matter what those peace thumping Jedi thought. False power. Still, he checked himself into a bar near the Palace and ordered the bottle, not a glass, a bottle.

Now what?

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=12pt] Hades had the same dreary, drug-induced sag to his face that seemed the man’s defining characteristic. He was world-weary with a face made for black and white footage of ‘the great generation’, deep valleys of wrinkles that he shouldn’t have sported for another twenty years – at least – already lining what once might have been strikingly handsome. Running a thumb across lips he wet with a quick swipe of his tongue, he offered a closing offer to the deal the two had on the table. She nodded in agreement as he pressed a cigarette – the fourth of their casual, brief meeting – between his lips. He nodded back and got up to leave.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] Perhaps she looked odd there, a petite Atrisian dressed in the finest from head to toe curled up in a booth with a man who looked like he’d just crawled out of a cardboard box a few hundred layers below in Coruscant’s underground. The latter wasn’t actually that far from the truth but Matsu hardly gave thought to their appearance. Hades was a friend, and he provided her with some of the finest organs from dozens of different species she’d ever seen. He also didn’t seem to mind that unlike most clients that wanted the organs for medicinal reasons or for use in life-saving transplants, she wanted them for experiments. Yes, she liked him for his indifference.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] Lifting herself from her seat, she moved to leave, trailing along the bar on her way out. For once she had no particular meeting to be at, no specific place to go, and the openness was rather dizzying. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] She was just mulling her options when a flutter of thought dusted past her mind. It was nothing specific – no words, not even a concrete idea, but she would class it as…gravity, the pull of two things against one another in some quiet, uneasy battle. She’d spent almost her entire life learning to work with someone else’s head, to read emotions and thoughts, to influence. Following the feeling back to a man sitting at the bar, dark blonde and handsome, she found it difficult to miss the entire bottle of alcohol slid across the bar to him. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] She reached out just before it got to him, the bottle stopping against her plexisteel palm with a light metallic clinking. As the bar was right next to the palace the bartender had no trouble recognizing her – not that it was hard elsewhere, her face cropping up all over the planet as its new ‘benevolent’ overseer (One Sith brings stability, One Sith brings opportunity) – and took the bottle back as soon as she waved him over. “Whatever you keep under the counter,” she asked as she pulled herself up on the stool next to the stranger, turning a sharply-featured face to him once the bottle was placed in front of them, glasses for good measure. “Might as well do it right if we’re going all out.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt] Whiskey, smooth and dark – a perfect complement to the party she’d invited herself to though she seemed to have no concept of intrusion. “Can I ask why you need the whole bottle?” Gravity. She liked that feeling. And she liked the idea of disturbing the natural order even more.[/SIZE]

[member="Marek Starchaser"]​

 

[Corey's OOC]

See? That was the thing. This Marek Peregrus Hybrid being was… annoyed. He wanted to drink. He wanted to get through these damned issues in his fething brain now. Geonosis opened up a path he had avoided. Training in the Sith arts had been rushed and he had learned enough skills, but they were fragmented and the alcoholic Foreman had a need to get more of whatever made him feel… better. And the dark side? Sure as hell made him feel better about being who he was. There was power. A way to defeat the blights on the galaxy that stood between such groups as the Techno Union, One Sith and Primeval and their rightful place of complete elimination of the Jedi and their false freedoms.

Power was the ultimate freedom. Power, and booze. They were the only things that made sense and had a logical place in the damned galaxy. And everyone knew that age-old adage. Everything was about sex, except for sex. That was about power. Everything Marek Starchaser was was about power. Gaining it, over everyone. From one night stands to other CEOs, he had been the big fish in the Techno Union pond.

But now? He couldn’t fething control his own damned mind. The digs that he and the part of him that was Peregrus took at each other on the field of battle. He let that other side win. And it was worth it. Getting rid of the Jedi from that world? Getting rid of them from the galaxy? He had his targets. He was going to take down, wipe and annihilate the galaxy of that plague. But he needed to get his head on straight. If the parts that were the Marek and the Peregrus were not getting along? The finesse from the former wouldn’t join with the pure, unbridled joy of overflowing the world with the dark side that arose from the latter.

And the feel of the dark side would fill the bar as the bottle stopped coming. Marek, that was who was making that movement, looked over at the new comer. Cute. Cybernetic hand. Like him. Something about her. Dark. Good. Still, his eyes filled with a darkness as the bottle stopped, but it was quickly clearing up as the ‘good’ bottle popped onto the bar top. “Clearing the air, the mind. Best way I know how.” Most easy too. He had the money, wasn’t worried about burning his wallet. Was worried about letting this thought pattern take him too far.

Might not get back to his balance. And the Force knew he needed it. The dark and wild ride that needed fine skills he’d worked on. What good was artillery if you didn’t know where to fire it?

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Conflict. A Sith fed on the uncertainty of others but Matsu had never been quite as casually malicious as to ruin something just because she could. She thought first, considered the options.

Whatever was going on inside this stranger’s head reminded her of all her favorite stellar phenomena – black holes, gamma-ray bursts, luminous red novas. In short, things created through some split-second moment of violence, a momentary struggle right before acceptance and creation. Nothing truly incredible in the galaxy was created without some cataclysm, some revolution in thought or person.

She didn’t make it a habit of trawling through other people’s heads without reason, a fact that had less to do with compunction and more the preservation of her sanity. She imagined it was a lot like those who believed in a deity thought of their ‘god’, the endless stream of a thousand thoughts left errant and floating around her mind deafening in their distraction. Nearly two decades of mentalism had left her exceedingly sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others if they weren’t protecting themselves and she’d learned to filter them out if she wasn’t actively searching for information. However, she didn’t need any of that power to see the change in his expression when she stopped the bottle, feel something more significant than displeasure emanating from him.

Interesting.

She nodded in response to his answer, running a finger over the rim of her glass before lifting it to her lips and taking a sip. With the Force she wasn’t going to be getting drunk off of anything less than the entire bottle – not an unwelcome prospect – so she wasn’t worried about a glass or two around a stranger.

Anger, irritation, sadness – any strong emotion gave her a doorway to someone’s mind even wider than the original, and she tilted her head in question as a wayward echo coasted by her perception. “Who’s Peregrus?”

[member="Marek Starchaser"]​

 

[Corey's OOC]

The uncertainty in the galaxy mixed with the man’s addictive personality made things really tricky at times. Marek was the type to work to build things, not tear them down, but when he was on Geonosis? All he wanted to do was tear EVERYTHING down. Every last one, enemy and ally alike. Where had that come from? The One Sith that had showed up to assist the Union in eliminating the Rebel Alliance from one of the Union’s former worlds were his friends, his brothers and sisters in arms and in the Force.

Why had he… had Peregrus wanted them all dead?

That was not something Marek could even make sense of. And being here? It wasn’t helping as much as he hoped.

One thing Marek was never good at was disguising his emotions, his intent. He was not one to learn the finer things in the Force, and that was just a trademark to the writer. Learning, in a one on one setting, was odd. And sometimes you didn’t hold to a prescribed path. When he was under Verd and Van Derveld’s teachings, he learned a few things, but mental defense? That wasn’t one. Hell, aside from causing storms, creating lightning and bending bullet paths? His only still was preventing himself from getting poisoned. Way to go, Marek.

Besides, being open with his thoughts and feelings? In his line of work, it helped.

He wasn’t sure what he expected when the woman sat down beside him. “Peregrus? Something I thought was gone.” Apparently he was wrong.

[SIZE=12pt]Dead wrong.[/SIZE]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]