Private The Rumor

[Maple Harte]

(SELECT DIFFICULTY)

I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!

HURT ME PLENTY!

ULTRA-VIOLENCE!

NIGHTMARE!

ULTRA-NIGHTMARE!

YOU SELECTED: ULTRA-NIGHTMARE!

Alderaan.

Twelve hours before Hunt for Witch begins in earnest.



A girl floated in a dark lake, whose edge was joined by a simple, one story log cabin with basic hygenics facilities, a stove, and a bed.

She was naked, simply floating in the dark lake staring at a starry sky. Green eyes observed various constellations, all twinkling brightly.

Flower petals from surrounding trees hit various parts of the large lake, which, aside from small fish, she alone swam in.

It was moments like this, with her ears in the water, that she sometimes had those rare, precious moments of complete silence in her skull. Where it wasn't trying to convince her of a million other, equally false things.

Moments like this were among the few she regarded as true.

Other than her nightmares. The old fears returned suddenly and she was stirred from her silent revererence of the stars. Would she see it again when she went to sleep? That was part of the reason she stayed up so late.

It wasn't long before she felt the need to swim ashore. She tread gently on cold sand, recalling how it felt to be born from an aquatic race of psychics. Skip. Back at the lake. Not aquatic. Fully human. And cold in the night air. Her lithe, toned body glided across the sand back to her log cabin, so she could wash her feet off in the tub and...try...to go to sleep.

She was not expecting to find the door open as she grabbed a towl off her front porch rail. She went forward cautiously, quietly picking up her stick as she advanced inside, towel tied around her waist.

A curvy, twilek woman with green skin, and in a black catsuit with two pistols holstered one thigh each sat on her bed. Her face was heart shaped, and her lips were full, and just as heart-shaped.

"You're a hard girl to track down Uri." came that soft, silken voice.

"Siva." was all Maple Harte said, beholding her old bounty hunter contact from her days as a Jedi Shadow. "You look...fit."

"Glad you noticed."

"So what gave me away? How'd you figure out I wasn't dead?" Maple asked.

"The deadest girl in the galaxy can't completely conceal that antique you fly around in. A black J-Type 327 Nubian DOES draw a few turned heads these days.

"I'd sooner piss lava than part with The Silent Erika." Maple said. "Whatever else might be a lie, I earned that ship. You don't discard something like that. Not even if you are dead."

Siva shrugged. "Fair enough, Uri. It IS a fine ship after all. You look healthy."

"Somebody put a price on me?"

"Oh, don't insult me, you know I'd shoot anybody who offered me money for you on general principal."

"Nonetheless, do I have a price on my head?

"Not that I know of. All your enemies are dead, as far as I know."

"So why show then? No offense to you but I DID want to remain hidden," Maple said. Siva didn't know about the condition Maple was diagnosed with. And Maple was too frightened to speak it. Or tell her about the dragons planning to take over the universe.

"Well, one, I came here as a courtesy. Got a ping. Something came across my desk. Thought it would interest you."

"What?"

Siva tossed her a datapad. "A massacre...of sorts. A number of villagers, all tortured. All driven insane."

"Survivors?" Maple asked, glancing it over.

"One." Siva said, holding a finger up. "A man from Ryloth was mentally damaged but still trying to speak.

Maple glanced over the grisly details of the attack.

"Who did this?" Maple asked, getting a chill.

"I think its her. I think its your 'Mind-Binder'." Siva explained. "Supposedly, he told eyewitnesses during a psychotic ramble about a Sith Witch. One who preferred almost exclusively telepathic torture."

"Could you be wrong?" Maple asked hoarsely. "Lots of Sith specialize in that. What makes you think its the Mind-Binder?"

"Because the victim is asking for Uri Udinia."

Maple stopped. "Me? Specifically me?"

"Yes. You," Siva confirmed.

"I have to go and see him," Maple said immediately. She started to dry off in the simple wooden space.

"Uri, there WAS one other reason I showed." Siva stated seductively, rising up.

"Yeah, what?" Maple asked, drying off her hair as she went to the dresser.

A faint sound of something unzipping made Harte turn her head. Siva had pulled off her suit and was strutting towards her. Maple felt a silken hand touch her shoulder. Remembered how it had felt the first time.

"I never did forget our night on Nar Shaddaa, Uri," Siva whispered in her ear, smirking.

Crushing, biting loneliness made the Ex-Shadow pull Siva close.

"You're probably not gonna forget this one either, in all fairness." Harte replied, pulling Siva's lips to hers...

Dawn.


One hour into hunt.

Siva was gone when she awoke. She hadn't stuck around last time so Maple was unphased. Siva went where she wanted, and left when she wanted. Theirs had always been a casual understanding, even after the first few times things had gotten...intense. Like that attack by an army of cybernetic mythosaurs. Wait. Skip. Not real. Back to normal. Stay on target.

Maple grabbed her footlocker, getting her old gear out...

 

[Maple Harte]

The gear was basically black biker leathers, a walking stick, and her old rifle. She had one pouch of spare ammo and five thousand credits reserved.

She must find the witch. If she at least found the witch it would not be all for nothing. At least something would count as solidly concretely real to her.

She headed off to the part of the woods where her ship was parked, in a vast clearing of grass ringed by trees. The Silent Erika lay in the clearing, an old antique that had been allowed to slip Naboo through exhoribitant price, and which had been her Jedi Courier once she had acquired the ebon beauty, plated in black chromium, its viewports tinted red. She had acquired it in a duel with rapier fencer and multimillionaire Lur Redtide. Redtide had been infamous for having out dueled full on lightsaber users, and had never once been defeated in a duel. But when Redtide was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he decided he wished to have one last, grand duel with a truly unique fencer while he was still in prime fighting condition as a retirement match, and offered up his prize possession to whoever accepted his terms: If he loses, they get his vessel, The Silent Erika, named for a pet bird he had once owned that never sang but always cuddled next to him. If he wins, he gets their prize possession. It would be a one time only duel. No repeats.

Two hundred petitioned to be the one to fight the great Lur Redtide. Many were their styles and methods. And great was their talant.

But in the end, a letter from a then-young Jedi Shadow claimed she could defeat Redtide but only by using a style as ancient as his: A staff of durasteel and Cortosis weave, wielded in a drunken manner. Intrigued by someone who adhered to the old ways, Redtide chose her over the others as his retirement bout. For twelve minutes, in one stone circle of ruins in the wilds of Naboo, they had battled. Lur had been a devastatingly fast fighter, forcing her to rely on her "Drunken" method of wielding her staff to evade and eventually entrap his sword. Graciously, she had offered to allow him to keep it, out of respect for his marvelous dueling, but he had been adamant, saying her technique was too beautiful not to reward it. The Silent Erika had been hers ever since.

He had made one additional condition on parting with it. In accordance with Naboo culture, it must never be armed. That was the one price he had truly agreed to, more on gentleman's honor than anything else, and it was the one she would have to adhere to as well on her honor. She had never broken her word. It was one of the few concrete memories she had, and she latched onto it tightly as her condition worsened, using it as an emotional anchor when nothing else worked.

It was just her and him that day, him clad in his blue fencing gear, her clad in her her dark brown and black Jedi Robes, dueling away in the ruins--

Skip. Back to reality. She headed to the ships inside, throwing the hatch open.

 

[Maple Harte]

Ship's audio log playback:

"Making this log while I'm still relatively coherent. Before it gets any worse. The doctor gave me about a year from his diagnosis before dozens of episodes are playing out per day."

"I have a rare form of hereditary schizophrenia called Shrodinger's Syndrome. It causes me to invent multiple backgrounds for myself. No matter how outlandish. Or terrifying. I know they are all false yet simultaneously believe them to be true. They play out in the ticks of a second yet it feels like I experienced actual events that lasted for sustained lengths of time."

"I am going mad. And there is nothing I can do to stop it."

"I will leave a record of concrete truths for myself, in case my delusions become too stressful, or unglue me too much from reality."

"I was born through C-Section on a river bank on Alderaan. My mother was a tailor, and my father was a carpenter. I loved them both very much."

"Then one day, I lifted a datapad with my mind. And then a Jedi Recruiter came to my house. They talked alone with my parents for a long time. And then they came out and asked if I wanted to be a Jedi."

"I was six years old. They explained what an incredible opportunity it was. What an honor it was to be chosen. I wonder...which of them passed it on to me?"

"They don't usually take such an old recruit, they said. They told me I would become a defender of the galaxy. Against the tyranny of the Dark Side, which was everywhere. That was a lot of ground to cover, in retrospect. I fear in hindsight that perhaps I was unsuited for the task. Unworthy."

"I should never have said yes. But the chance to be a hero was irresistible."

"I was taken for training. I had to work three times harder than others, do more than others. Push myself harder than others. All to prove I was worthy of being taken as padawan."

"I studied to be a Jedi Sentinel. I learned my stick fighting techniques from one of my best friends in the order, Kasin Gil. But I was also good with rifles. Perhaps...too good..."

"This got me noticed by a highly skilled Jedi Shadow. Her name was Ursula Sandraven. She was the leader of a band of Jedi Shadows that specialized in long range sniping. They were known as The Marksmen."

"Ursula asked if I would like to be a shadow. What made me say yes? I wanted to stop threats like the Sith without taking unnecessary risks like duels that could involve innocent people getting hurt in the process. I was to make my own Sniping Blaster. Ursula tutored me personally. I learned to shoot, and shoot well. My status in the marksman grew and I soon began getting trusted by Ursula with more sensitive tasks. And by "sensitive" I mean "Assassinating Sith."

"I put a lot of people in the ground."

"Its too late to take all that back. What's done is done."

"Part of me secretly wants to think the Madness will be a blessing in disguise...it will help get away from all those dead Sith. I know it won't. Not really."

Audio playback log ended.

Maple sat up from the cot on her vessel, ship still in the grass clearing. The world slightly reaffirmed, she made pre flight checks.

 

[Maple Harte]

The Silent Erika flew through the dark between stars, its destination headed to Ryloth. Maple was at the controls, blinking in and out of the real and the delusional.

She knew she would need funding to conduct this hunt, and when she found her hated foe, she was going to use her stick repeatedly until there was nothing left of the skull. Anything less and she would never be sure the Mind-Binder was dead.

But even she knew she was not strong enough yet. Even Siva had said it last night...Maple was ill prepared to fight a Sith Witch, and she doubted the Jedi would put up with retraining her. Fortunately, their authority wasn't half of what it once was: she could get her retraining from other sources...

Plus, plenty of money to make along the way...

She didn't care about the money in truth. It was all to finding the witch and ending her, and then living out the rest of her days as quietly as possible in her madness.

As the ship sped into hyperspace, Maple played back the second audio log.

"I was once known as Uri Udinia, now I am just a simple, low level bounty hunter named Maple Harte. I left the Jedi after faking my death on Mimban, where my final assignment took place."

"I killed close friends who had fallen. And I decided that was enough. Now my days are spent waiting for my delusions to overwhelm me. I can barely do bounty hunting, some days. That's why I was going to retire. That's why I should stay retired."

"If you are listening to this...remember who you are, and never give in to evil."

The log ended. "I try, Uri," Maple said of herself. "Some days harder than others."

Skip. She feared seeing it in her sleep. Skip. The ship sped through the blackness, her feeling all alone, in spite of being visited the night before.

She always felt alone, these days. And it was getting worse. So tempting to sink into her delusions, like the monster in her sleep said was best. But she was not an evil person, and would never willingly give in. Never.

She hoped.