The Reason We Fall

[Ronan Nakasla]

The Force flowed as surely as it ever did. For Atretes Rhoujen the Force was solace. For Sigma, the Force was home. The place he could go to get away from it all... and be with friends. One friend, in particular, who had been there since the beginning. He plunged his consciousness into the great energy that spanned the Galaxy, abandoning his body aboard the Hand of Fate where it was safe. In this state he could return to the place where Rhoujen was broken. Exis. He needed some form of comfort, and despite the boy's weak resolve he had been through these events first-hand. Sigma was powerful, he was absolute... but he was not infallible. He learnt that the hard way as everyday life took its toll on his psyche. His very sanity crumbled from the sudden exposure to the world.

"Why did you have to fall, boy?" Sigma caught himself saying into the void.

He was still riding the stars. Nowhere near where Atretes was bound. Still, he asked what he would to the nothing. He was riddled with questions. He thought he had all the answers, but in the end he was more broken than He Who Was Dead. Omega may have understood this problem, but he wanted to overcome this on his own terms. In his own way. Alone. Ultimately the only one anyone could rely on was themselves. Or so he'd thought. He found that the coexistence, that symbiotic relationship between Rhoujen and Sigma kept things intact. Atretes, a normal sentient, took the brunt of life while Sigma provided power. He was a shell of a person. A being with no soul, built to destroy. He felt that calling tug at him, pull him back to his body to return to duty, but with no Galactic Empire to directly control him as he was intended he fled from that siren's call to find himself. What do the soulless search? Those with that which is missing.

And so here he was.

On the spiritual plane of the Force he was now at the threshold of the room on Exis Station where that operation took place. The body didn't have enough energy left to sustain them both, so Rhoujen allowed Sigma to carry on. 'You're the more capable of us', he claimed. He wanted to know the truth. There had to be more. There always was more to the motives of others. Sigma strode through the closed door into the operating room.

 

[Ronan Nakasla]

"RHOUJEN!" Sigma called out.

He knew the boy was there. He could feel him. There was no mistaking the presence of the boy like there was no mistaking the presence of himself. Sigma waited a few moments, then called out again. Atretes' lack of a response was beginning to grate on the creation's nerves. Immersed within the Force as he was, Sigma began to exude that irritation into the space around him. Like an invisible wall, Atretes' ghostly form absorbed and redirected the waves of negative energy. He manifested like this, a clear place in the swelling sea of reds and violets. Sigma locked onto that spot and approached slowly. There was a strange emptiness to the sensation now that he'd focused his attention to it. As he came within arm's reach, the presence of Rhoujen suddenly stood, shifted around, and reached his index and middle fingers out to touch Sigma's forehead. It all happened in stop-motion movements like a flickering light, and Sigma was left immobile.

"I knew you would come." came an echo of a voice into Sigma's mind, "You were never capable of interacting with the Galaxy."

"You... you knew!?" came Sigma's incredulous thought, but it was snuffed by Rhoujen.

"I'm weaker than you, but only in manifested Power. You're raw, Sigma, untouched by others. You're like a kid, trying to survive with the bigger kids. You have a big stick but you're too small to use it." Atretes told Sigma.

The idea that this boy was more powerful than Sigma in any regard frustrated him. While he missed the boy on the way here he never anticipated that the demoralisation table would have turned. Yet here they were, roles reversed.

"Why... did you have to fall...?" Sigma muttered, repeating his question he asked the void just minutes prior.

"Because you needed to learn," Atretes answered simply, "Now pick yourself up and live up to our name." he finished.

Then something happened. Atretes' presence dwindled until he was barely there, then he changed altogether. His form was little more than a shapeless sprite. Sigma stared, and felt the strange urge to touch it. Reaching out with a shaking hand, his palm met the wisp with a searing pain. He felt that surge of pain shoot up from his hand to his elbow, to his shoulder, to his heart, then settle in his chest. It spread from there like his blood were turned to lava, before it centralised into his chest and left hand. He curled up on the metaphysical ground, but then he heard Atretes in his mind again.

"Get up." Sigma curled tighter, the pain intensified.

"Get. Up." Sigma's brow furrowed. He defied the orders of the boy.

"Get up!" came the shouting voice, and pain seared more intensely than before. Sigma growled and planted his hands on the floor.

"Get up, Sigma!" He pushed himself onto all fours, straining to force himself up.

"Get UP!" He was on his knees now, clutching his left hand as pain shot through it like molten needles.

"GET UP!" Sigma brought himself up to kneel. One final motion would complete the action.

"RISE!" Atretes uttered that word, filled with weight since [member="Salem Norongachi"]'s toppling of the Confederacy. That word brought a fire into anyone who was present to the Fall, and Sigma was as much a part of that time as Rhoujen was.

He rose.

 

[Ronan Nakasla]

"Good." was the last anyone would ever hear from Atretes Rhoujen.

Ash Valente was now truly born. From the fires of war and strife, the pain of all that they had gone through surged through Sigma one last time. Every instance from Bestine to Naboo flowed freely in an instant that seized Sigma's mind. He fell to his knees from the shock, but he gritted his teeth, and he rose. He took one detemined step, and another, and another, until he made a steady pace back to the ship he kept as his home. He clawed through the Force back to his physical self, and drew upon its essence along the way. What do the soulless search for? Their soul. Sigma had his soul back. He came out the victor for control of the body. It was his, with no passenger, but without Atretes he was incomplete. An incomplete machine cannot function. He was now whole.

He was complete.

Now he could get to work. He slipped into his body and was greeted by an echo of that pain he felt before. He looked down to his hand to see a strange symbol etch itself into his left hand in the black, blue, and violet flames that became his signature all those months ago. After is glowed there for a moment it faded into his skin as though it were never there. He rubbed that spot knowingly, and for the second time tonight he rose. Dressed only in loose pants and a sleeveless shirt, he nearly stormed through the halls of the Star Destroyer. If [member="Salem Norongachi"] were aboard he would surely have sensed the wild torrent of energy that followed Sigma through the vessel. His target was the training hangar. He needed to vent and revel in his return, in his rebirth, and as a creature forged in fire there was only one thing to do.

Burn it all. And burn he would.

Ash threw open the doors of the hangar with a pulse of telekinesis. They barely remained on their hydraulic rails, but the point was that they yielded to his entry. He looked around him and felt the energy coil around and within him. Like a vortex of power it swirled around him, coming as easily as he would call it. He wanted a challenge.

"Emah," he said in a tone so calm it contradicted the wild energy around him, "Give me something to fight."

 

[Ronan Nakasla]

"Are you sure...?" the AI asked.

She was concerned. That was sweet, or so Sigma chose to tell himself. The reality was likely that she did not wish to receive blame if Omega's protege became damaged. That was of little consequence, however, when the man gave a nod. She could have readily disobeyed him, but chose instead to oblige. It was fun to watch, anyway. She gave him a look over through the many cameras she had at her disposal, and tried to analyse him. In his impatience of the moment, he glared up at the nearest lens and gave her a look that said all that needed be said. She decided to go up the levels, starting with the little stinging droids from his... from Atretes' first encounter with this hangar. He sensed their coming near as soon as they activated, and he gave a disappointed sigh. When the shutter opened and the first remote hovered out, he flicked at it and sent a single surge of electricity that used the remotes' very conduits as relays, bouncing through and frying their circuitry before they had a chance to fire a bolt. There was little point in making a show of it, the overload was enough for him to make a point. Though that point was rather ignored.

As Sigma was shooting another bolt to kill the circuits of the fifth set of remotes, he considered that perhaps machines weren't the best opponent. That's when he was snapped out of his wandering mind by the lightning harmlessly dissipating off the metal shell of the next remote. It must have been insulated against electrical surges. Still, it provided little more than a switch of tactics when he flicked his wrist and the line was smashed into itself through a shrinking sphere of telekinetic energy. A clever trick on Emah's part, but ultimately useless. She was growing both amused and irritated in her own twisted circuitry, wanting to push this man like he did her master. She decided to up the difficulty, and Ash had a moment to react. His suddenly ignited lightsaber met the lunge of a lightsaber-wielding training droid. A parry and forward-stepping slash were enough to end the droid. Sigma grinned. This was where things got fun. With the success of that test pushing Valente's senses to a higher limit, Emah decided to level with these droids for now. She unleashed a handful of them unto Sigma, who gave a bloodthirsty smile to the variety these units presented.

The first droid did the same manoeuvre as its predecessor and suffered a similar fate, only its corpse was crunched into a ball of slag and hurled like a telekinetically-controlled bowling ball at the rest of them. Most dodged, one was impacted in its cranial structure and its processor was demolished. The others flanked, as was their strategic programming, but Ash mustered the Force to conjure a barrier on one side to protect him from the strike of that droid while he focused on a parry and lethal riposte for the droid of his focus. Its collaborate was victim to a ball of blue-black flame that melted through its wires. No longer useful, Sigma grasped it by the neck joint and infused strength into his arm by channeling energy from the Force. With a jolt of electricity to its metallic parts, he threw it to the other droids. The charge did little more than sparkle, but the bright projectile served as a distraction for the man to make his offence. He leapt onto the most distracted droid and jammed his saber into the machination's servos. Its processor and optical arrays were still intact, but it was incapable of movement. He wrenched the head off, and any residual power it had viewed the ball of metal and other materials being hurled at the next droid. Sigma's hand reached out and grasped the arm of the final droid as it made a downward stroke, and used the direct contact to channel a blow of telekinetic might that made the droid into a stick figure.

In showmanship habit learnt from his mentor, Valente gave his lightsaber a flourish before looking up at the camera watching him.

"That was fun, can we play some more?"

 

[Ronan Nakasla]

"Very well," Emah replied.

She would hold back, of course. This was no Norongachi, he would be beaten easily compared to the greater man. He was raw power without channeling or flow. He was, put simply, inexperienced. A mechanical whir was Sigma's warning to the coming storm. Ports opened along the walls and a raised section of the floor, and inactive, shielded auto turrets emerged. To the sides, doors screeched open and similar droids from earlier stepped out. Above, ports slid open and remotes dropped out. Ash let Emah position her pieces, before he took a deep breath. This was essentially everything he'd faced so far with the addition of the auto turrets. He mentally steeled himself and already started realising what obstacles he faced. The droids were the more immediate threat. Their abilities were those of basic swordsmen, but they would get close and distract him from the true threat presented by the remotes and turrets. Those would sting and blast at him, forcing him to remain always mobile and changing positions. The wrong step could put him in the way of a lightsaber. Excellent.

"Begin." She announced.

Immediately the turrets were active. Valente had a precious moment to position himself behind the saber training droids before they charged, and he still caught a graze across the shoulder. He winced, but the pain only reminded him of past injury and hurt, and spurred into him a sense of kill or be killed. His lightsaber flicked through the air like an extension of his own arm, and he whipped it around him easily as a child would flail a stick, only with lethal precision. The first cut severed the support structure of a droid, lowering it to its knees. The resulting flourish knocked an oncoming blaster bolt into one of the remotes. He risked a sweeping kick that launched the crippled droid toward an auto-turret, but it blasted through the metals and sprayed a volley to Sigma. The man sprung into defence, literally, in an airbourne twist that kept his lightsaber close to his body. With the aid of the Force, he spun at such a rate that the blaster bolts were deflected in a wild pattern that betrayed where his mind was now. He landed in a crouch, saber up, and blocked an incoming strike from a droid. He slid forward and grappled the machination's arms. He bent forwards suddenly, and wrenched the lightsaber from the droid's hand. With a simple stroke the machine was beheaded, and now he was doubly armed. He set his body into a nearly automatic defence state to deflect blaster bolts and keep enemies at bay, while his sight went inward. He exhaled slowly, and gripped the massing tendrils of the Force, so ready to converge to his will, and gathered them around the second lightsaber. His hand released it even as his other knocked away an incoming blow, and it hovered there. Suspended by that ethereal energy.

Then a blast made its mark.

As a creature born of endless pain at Bestine IV, and fueled by the frustrations of watching Rhoujen struggle through every mundane thing, the searing in his left thigh sent a shockwave through his control. Electric sparks skittered across the floor near his feet for a brief moment, and then the lightsaber under his will sparked and crackled from the concentration he'd had there when he was hit. His growing anger, that destructive emotion that only grew when a remote stung him in the arm, took its own hold of his abilities and launched him into a new state of being. The lightsaber turned on its axis and began to sweep around him, blade out. It went slowly at first, deflecting blaster bolts when they crossed and forcing Sigma to block, but when he started to move to resume his assault on the droids around him, still relentlessly attacking, he felt his energy return. Such was the creature he was made to be. He growled deep in his throat and launched into a new flurry, and as he intensified so did the spinning of that second lightsaber, until it created a ring of crackling light around him. Any of the training droids who drew too close were immediately bisected by the blade, leaving him to focus on the ranged assailants. He used a saber droid as a spring board and launched himself into the air. He plucked a droid out of the air and hurled it at the next. His body acted like an independent entity within the spinning lightsaber, appearing something gyroscopic as it mained horizontally level regardless of his movements. The two remotes collided, and both went plummeting down to the chaos below. The auto turrets were still relentless, but Sigma willed himself up just a little higher, and made it into the support structure of this hangar-turned training room. From here, he blocked turret shots that flew up at him into the remaining pesky remotes. He dared not stay long, though, and ran across the durasteel beam.

Ash dropped down, and as he did he threw his lightsaber in the typical spinning fashion at the ceiling-mounted turrets. It cut them apart as he fell, and when he landed he was beside the line on the floor. He reached out to throw again, but the saber hadn't returned to his hand yet. Instead, the second saber reacted to his will and shot out of its rapid orbit to spear through the line of turrets. It pierced every one of them before deactivating uselessly on the far side, and Sigma's starting saber returned to his hand. The fight was over... and despite being in control of an unrestricted Sigma, the body still couldn't handle such exertion. His knees wabbled and gave, and Valente was brought prostrate by his own overuse of power. He coughed, and laughed.

"Well, it's good to know where my limits are..." he mused, speaking to himself as much as he was to Emah, "I'm going to rest and think on how I just did that. That spinning lightsaber trick in particular." he gave a friendly wave to the camera and walked out.

Was he Salem Norongachi? No, Salem had much more experience and conditioning. He'd been through the toil and torment that made him indestructible, even in his destruction. He was Omega. Ash had a long way to go to meet that standard, but she he was pushed to the limit he could handle himself well. It was a matter of necessity, a matter of trials. He had many trials ahead of him, and by the end, who knew... perhaps he would come to be stronger than his elder. That was something to be told in time, though, and nothing in this universe was certain anymore. For now, he simply needed to focus, exercise, meditate, and think. He needed to hone himself as one honed a blade.

~Fin