Private Theater of Fear

[Arlo Renard]

Roughly a week after Damsy showed him the hideaway in Sector 943, Kai had returned to the rusty elevator shaft, descending down into the depths. He found the hideaway empty. Dismayed, he left it behind and headed further into the bowels of the underworld…

Eventually he found himself in a tall chamber. Silhouettes of steel beams criss-crossed the room, some of them collapsed. The air reeked of rust, an odor like the scent of blood, and the mustiness of dust particles disturbed by the slightest breeze. Yet as Kai's vision adjusted, he glimpsed the skeletal remains of a fallen spotlight and realized what the room was—a theater, ancient and long abandoned.

Movement on the stage below drew Kai’s attention. Dangling from the rafters like a spider from a web, he watched and waited. The cord he hung from, made from his own elastic flesh, could easily pass for a grapple in the darkness.

The rustling heralded the emergence of… not a beastly creature of the underworld, but a human male. Kai pursed his lips. Still, he dipped into the man’s mind, wondering what he was doing here.

— stupid stupid never should’ve come here alone, motherfether thinks he can shove me out, I’ll show him —

Both he and his opponent were street criminals, little better than thugs. Kai dug a little deeper, then recoiled at what he saw within. The man was beastly in nature, if not in appearance. Kai felt a need to defend what he considered his territory... and of course, the ever-present longing to feed.

That was enough for him to justify what he was about to do. The doppelganger silently dropped down into the shadows of the stage wings, then reached out telepathically to subdue the mind of his prey...

Michael Sardun Ishida Ashina​

 

[Michael Sardun]

The lower sectors of Coruscant were a good lesson in his opinion.

The gleaming pearl of the planet at the top. Dazzling those with its splendors, but underneath? There was corruption. Darkness. Vile things creeping in the shadows and waiting to take advantage of weakness.

"And so... nothing is as it seems, Padawan Ashina. Something beautiful can be corrupted beyond repair. Do you understand?" Questioning his apprentice over his shoulder while calm grey eyes scanned the environment. Sometimes he wondered if his armor needed an update. Many questioned his reliance on the Force alone and without any technological upgrades to his suit.

But part of him liked it that way.

Unburdened by tech he had a far deeper connection with the Light.

About to say more a shadow crossed his expression. "Did you feel that?" His tone hardened, tight, as he felt the Light sing out to him. That telepathic manipulation from Arlo Renard rippled in the Force.

It was subtle and perhaps if they had been farther away Michael would have missed it entirely.

"Use your training, Ishida. Where did it come from?" Even here the Jedi Master would not let an opportunity for practice go to waste.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"And so... nothing is as it seems, Padawan Ashina. Something beautiful can be corrupted beyond repair. Do you understand?"

Beyond repair.

Ishida nodded slowly, savouring the teaching with a sort of sageness that seemed as though his words were touching her core. It was a haunting sort of lesson, and dismaying. Like all the politicians parading around, placing the Jedi Temple on top of such rot –– it was all just a façade. Humiliating.

"Then why is it permitted to continue exis––" her question stopped short, a prickle of negativity emanating from the monster-of-a-man she walked just behind. He was alarmed by something, and she blinked at the abruptness of his shift.

"I––" There was so much rot around them, like an absence of anything worth focusing on, that she initially found it difficult to pinpoint what it was he was referring to. She was hesitating. There was nothing but loss and defeat with hesitation.

Drawing in a breath, she centred herself in the relativity of nothingness all around them. Nothing generous, nothing benevolent. Only selfishness, crudeness, anger, frustration. It was contaminating her connection, and she tightened.

The Force extended from the young Jedi. One hundred and thirteen times a second it reached out; fully aware of the echoes of the crimes done, doing, and about to be committed, and the consciousness bound within these rag-tag doers. It knew people were dying, and going to die, but it's consciousness only manifested in the comprehension of the girl that was wielding it. She was aware of what it was feeding back to her, and while her senses were somewhat unrefined, she was parsing the information to see what was useful versus not. The Force was constantly feeding information of life and death, of history, present and glimpses of the future. The balance in dichotomies.

Ah! Something. It rooted out something and fed back a discovery that balanced between the current and the forthcoming. It throbbed, the unidentified shade of Arlo Renard nothing more than a blur of evil in the Force's network.

"That way," Ishida pointed a finger toward the entertainment district, her voice hollow. "Something dark –– Master!" Her explanation became more urgent, and her little feet transitioned into motion and she lunged in the direction of the theatre.

That sensation which had nearly evaded her was overwhelming now, and she had honed into with a vice-grip focus. In a blur of white, the youth darted from her position and wove through silhouettes of pedestrians. She was small enough not to knock them to the side, dodging and weaving until she slammed into the doors of a theatre that looked well-abandoned. They burst open, startling a pair of squatters who scrambled to get away from the sudden flood of light from the flickering neon signage and whatever street lighting existed.

They outright yelped when the Padawan eagerly brandished her blade, activating the white saber with a fwoooom!

It was here. It had to be here –– but..whe--where?

 

[Arlo Renard]

Rusted hinges shrieked as the doors were violently thrown open. The sound sliced through the silence, echoing in the cavernous space, and sent a shaft of neon light leaping across the dusty floor toward the stage.

Kai jolted, his body tense as a startled alley cat. His eyes were unfocused, half-drunk from the interrupted feeding as his pupils adjusted to the sudden brightness. Empty seats, their coverings rotted, filled the space between entrance and stage along with decades’ worth of cobweb curtains.

At first he thought the man’s would-be opponent had arrived at last for the promised duel, but the hateful figure in the memories he had eaten didn't match the short girl with long pale hair who stood in one of the aisles. Besides, gangsters didn’t carry lightsabers.

Jedi? Had they followed him here? His absence from his cell must’ve been noticed sooner than he thought.

Kai glanced guiltily toward the comatose man beside him. He didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing here. He wasn’t supposed to be outside in the first place.

That left only one option: escape. Leaping off the stage and into the shadows, he reached up with one arm, the fleshy cord which so resembled a grapple extending up toward the rafters from his outstretched hand. But he had wasted precious time deciding whether to stay or run—and without a doubt, the Jedi had seen him.

Or rather, they had seen Padawan Dagon Kaze, NJO leather jacket and all, standing over a body.

Michael Sardun Ishida Ashina​

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Ishida burst through the doors that separated the concession and ticketing from the theatre's seats.

What was on the other side, she was not expecting. Dagon Kaze hunched over a body, staring doe-eyed in her direction with a feverish sort of paleness to his face.

"You." Ishida sneered. She'd wanted to shout it, or to whisper it with such venom that he felt it instead of hearing it. But unfortunately, the pronoun fell somewhere in a juncture between the two. But maintained the snapping heat on her tongue.

She knew who Dagon was. Michael Sardun had told her of his fall to the darkside, set him as an example of one of those tenuously held examples. A weakling.

And here he was, doing....

Brazenly, she stepped forward. What was he doing?

That one step turned quickly into a flurry of right-left-right-left-right-lefts down the aisle toward the fallen body and the space where Dagon had been as he decided to incriminate himself and run away.

Dropping to a knee, she pressed a finger against the neck of the fallen victim. He was a lowlife, and didn't deserve to live, so her pressure against the pulse of his shoulder-to-head-connector wasn't really caring enough to validate his survival or not. She was too consumed with the pursuit. She'd exact justice on Dagon, the darksider within their ranks.

With senses on alert, and her lightsaber still activated, she dashed off in pursuit of Arlo Renard had gone.

"STOP!"

She'd kill him.

 

[Arlo Renard]

She was chasing him.

Dagon felt her approach at his back, right on his heels, and realized that she would be upon him. The cord had yet to reach the rafters when he abandoned the enterprise, the flesh reabsorbing—but even then, it was too late to run.

"STOP!"

He turned around to face her, feet apart, back hunched up, wild-eyed as an animal caught in a trap.

<Leave me alone!>

The telepathic plea was intended to freeze her in her tracks. It was like ice water being poured into her brain, guilt and paralyzing terror filling in the cracks. A kind of forced empathy, making her feel what he felt. His gaze fixed on the white blade in her hands as it drew near. He made no move to attack yet, though his arms were up, hands forming claws, ready to protect himself if necessary.

Michael Sardun Ishida Ashina​

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Surprisingly, Dagon stopped.

Stopped and squared up.

Her chest fluttered with the excitement that came before a fight, and she realized that he was looking to engage. Dagon Kaze was looking for a fight and he had the audacity for it to be with her. Why would he run? Why would he fight if he weren't guilty?

There was a primal wildness to his expression, not the hardened stare of a trained warrior and he exuded fear. It rolled off him in waves. Fear was a path to the darkside.

Arbitration settled within Ishida's perspective, and she glared at the accused.

Just about to lunge and deliver the final blow of judgement, to bring him to his knees, an intrusive spear pierced through her psyche.

<Leave me alone!>

"Augh!" She shrieked and stumbled, a trill of terror spiking through her body. Inherited chills made her tremble, and she gasped through the intrusion. The grip on her mind was as excruciating as it was disorienting.

Bracing her temple, she glowered through strands of hair and back at the beefy silhouette of the raven-haired Jedi. There was a subtle shake to her head, one of disbelief –– not disbelief that Dagon would attack her. Of course he would, he was of the darkside. Disbelief that it felt so scared.

She moved her fingers to brush aside the out-of-place strands and straightened again, shaking off the grip of apprehension. When she could see straight again, he was still poised to attack. His body changing, horribly, to produce weapons.

There was a certain efficiency, she observed, to having the ability to change and create weapons of one's own flesh. It wasn't a technique she knew Dagon had.

Nevertheless, she lashed out with a powerful telekinetic blast to send the creature sailing back into a nearby wall before picking up the pace and lunging forward with an intent to sear right through their abdomen. Or neck. Or leg. She wasn't picky.

 

[Arlo Renard]

One moment Kai was standing upright. The next, he was knocked off his feet and blasted back against the wall. He crashed through old drywall and wood paneling, brittle with age.

There was hardly time to think before she lunged at him, blade slashing at his torso. He rolled to his left, splinters of wood embedding into his back, but felt the searing heat of her lightsaber bite into his flesh as he moved.

He staggered away, clutching the cauterized gash she had sliced across his throat. No gurgling noises issued from his mouth—he didn’t need to breathe, so he wasn’t struggling for air. On his hands and knees, he permitted gravity to keep his head on his shoulders while his claws scratched at the burned skin, trying to stimulate reattachment. These fresh wounds leaked black blood that trickled down his chest like ichor. It smelled strange and alien.

Faced with his own helplessness against this trained killer, Kai regressed back into the feral state Dagon had found him in, concerned only with survival. He expected the white-haired Jedi to continue her assault, but even if she showed the slightest hesitation, whether because she was shocked that he was still alive or on the off chance she considered granting him mercy, he would take advantage of the break.

Without bothering to subdue her with hypnotism as he had with his other prey, he sank his teeth into her mind, tearing into her psyche as he began to feed on her thoughts and memories.

Ishida Ashina​

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Usually, she would have kept swinging. She'd felt her blade make purchase on his flesh, and fully expected him to drop down and claw for life, beg for mercy through gurgles of blood but –––

There was no noise. Only a putrid, foreign smell that was far from the coppery odour she'd expect from blood. The time it would take to process what she was seeing, the demonic Dagon, was not afforded. Instead, she shrieked out against her will. Hesitation is defeat. Shocked by the piercing sensation that spiked through her psyche. It pulled and tore, ravaging and thrashing through the fortress of her mind. The last thing she remembered was the scolding Hesitation is defeat mantra from her father, and again from her Brother more recently.

There is virtue in proactivity.

Like a shameful echo chamber, the instances where each of their silhouettes lording over her reverberated too and fro' –– and suddenly, her brain felt too large for her skull. It crawled and throbbed, feeling discomfort from her head to her shoulders to her elbows to her knees. She staggered back, clawing at her head, curling a fist and knocking the heel of her hand against her temple as if she could shake out the intruder.

Wild-eyed, she forced herself to focus. Try and zero-in on the renegade Jedi Padawan in front of her and bring him to a heel.

With a gnash of her teeth, she lunged at Arlo Renard again, swiping blindly while the chambers of her mind continued to flutter with distracting noises and anecdotes from loved ones.

 

[Arlo Renard]

Hesitation is defeat there is virtue in proactivity father brother mantra...

Though he could not physically devour her mind, the muscles of Kai’s wounded throat worked as if he were swallowing all the same, the glow of her blade glistening white on the black blood oozing down his neck like an old streetlight painting circles on wet pavement.

Her scream of pain made him cringe, bringing his rabid consumption of her thoughts and memories to a brief halt. That was when she started swinging.

He darted out of the way, scrambling across the dusty floor, searching again for an exit. The theater was built like a stadium, with seats stretching upward from the stage on all sides. He would either have to climb, or reach the entrance she had come through.

Pushing past her, he ran towards the door, dripping blood all the way there.

Ishida Ashina​

 

[Michael Sardun]

"Do not r-"

But Ishida was gone already, chasing after the foe.

Sardun barely suppressed the snarl that had almost forced past his teeth. The excitement of youth was frustrating at the best of times. In these moments it could very well be deadly. Michael only hoped that his training would guard her against Dagon Kaze . While a weak soul prone to the Darkside, he was still a dangerous opponent.

Trained by the Jedi to be a sword against the Sith.

How ironic that he turned to their side in the end.

Rather than rush into battle, he let his mind expand across the area. It wasn't difficult to track both Arlo Renard and Ishida Ashina through their chase. Wild emotions, aggressive overreach. They were still children.... and yet Kaze felt strange to him. Unlike what he had experienced during the second invasion of Ziost.

His brows furrowed as he decided to circle around to cut the Darksider off up ahead.

Something was very wrong, maybe-

That is when Ish's anguish rippled through his connection with her. His eyes closed again and he steeled himself against the pain. Then he pushed his Light through that shared space to fortify her own faculties.

DO NOT RUSH. DO NOT OVEREXTEND. ARE THESE LESSONS FORGOTTEN SO QUICK?

His words burned into her mind as he traveled quick. There was no wroth behind those words. Just chastisement to do better next time. Only a moment later the errand former Jedi crashed through the door. Right into the warm embrace of the Light. There was no warning, no moment where the danger to him became clear.

One second his path to freedom was clear.

The next a wave of power would move to slam into his side. Aiming to fling him against the wall.

"You lie well, Kaze. But even the best liars slip up. I will give you one chance to surrender to your execution, as a favor to Arden and Asmundr. Just one."

 

[Arlo Renard]

A blast of Force energy sent Kai flying, crashing into a wall. His barely healed throat wound reopened upon impact, splattering more of that dark, alien smelling ichor.

As the massive Jedi Master moved in for the kill, Kai writhed across the ground, crawling into the shadows in an attempt to get away from Sardun’s searing Light. He heard the name Kaze, followed by Arden and Asmundr, and his blood ran cold.

Do not lose yourself. Not now.

Though he was not Dagon Kaze, he remembered Ziost the way Dagon did. Fragments of it, anyway—he had briefly done to Dagon what he had done to Ishida only moments earlier, consuming portions of his memories. He knew who Arden and Asmundr were, their identities surfacing somewhere among the swirling vortex of pain and guilt and regret those inherited recollections were soaked in.

“....What...What have you done?”

He raised his eyes to look at the Master looming above him, and recognized Sardun at last.

GIVE UP THIS WEAKNESS, BEFORE YOU LEAVE ME NO CHOICE.

In one of the Ziost battles, Dagon had fought his twin. His doppelganger, as identical in form to him as Kai was now. To Sardun, it must have looked like Dagon had become his evil twin, reeking of the Dark Side from every pore. The punishment for becoming Aeric Kaze was much harsher than the childish pranks and minor rule-breaking Kai had scapegoated Dagon for in the past. This was life or death.

<I’m not Dagon Kaze.>

This was not the defiant proclamation of a fallen Dark Jedi severing himself from his past identity. Kai's thoughts were clear and guileless. He was thinking only of how he had to make sure he didn’t get Dagon in trouble for all this... thinking of it when he should have been focused on escape.

Ishida Ashina Michael Sardun​

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Ashla's benevolent breath exhaled from Sardun's metaphysical influence, flooding her psyche with the steel necessary to fortify and force out the intruder. She blinked back all her discombobulation, refocusing a glower at Dagon.

Michael Sardun erupted on to the scene, easily besting the demonic Kaze twin and extending a favour on behalf of attachment. Her lip jut out in protest, and she tightened the grip on her blade. The word surrender rolled around in her mind, as if she would be able to communicate it back through the telepathic tether the fallen Jedi had tried to establish to her earlier. Surrender surrender surrender or we'll gut you.

Of course she preferred the latter. Kaze was a cancer, spreading his influence through the New Order and posturing as though he knew The Light when he just so easily fell to the coercion of darkness.

<I’m not Dagon Kaze.>

What?

Scrutinizing his appearance, Ishida dared a step forward –– everything about her continued the threatening promise of just one favour and how close execution was at the hands of the crusaders.

"That's not a surrender." The girl murmured, her voice tight and slick through her teeth. Restraint was wearing thin, and the only patience she had left to exercise was duty to listen to the direction of her master. This was more his right to execute the boy than hers. He'd been witness to his destruction before, it would only be justice for him to arbitrate the finality.

 

[Michael Sardun]

Arlo Renard | Ishida Ashina

Ishida joined him at his side, but he didn't spare a glance for her.

It was difficult to determine what to do with her.

Her zeal for the Light was good. Far better than most he had encountered in fact. Yet, there was something... that left him unsatisfied. The lack of patience, the brash unrestraint eagerness that she pursued her quarry. It left her exposed, those that counted on her as well, and in the end it could spell danger for them all.

"We will speak of your performance once this is done, Padawan." The steely voice said while watching the Doppelganger speak. He put Ishida out of his mind for now.

Her time in the Light would come.

"This is all you have for us, Dagon Kaze?" Even as Michael said that, he squinted at the whimpering form on the ground. It certainly was a different behavior than Dagon Kaze had performed before. Something did not smell right in the Force either. Yes, the corruption of the Darkside, but something... other than that.

It was the only thing keeping his hammer from moving down to execute.

"More lies? A case of mistaken identity?" His hand casually lashed out and Light erupted from the tips of the gauntlet's digits. It would move to burn the creature in front of them. To expose its lies and shadows.

"What of your victim? Was that also a mistake of perception? Did you in fact mean to feed him, rather than drain them of their life?"

Where Ishida was all unrestrained impatience Michael was a slow-moving mountain.

Judgement would come. It was not a matter of if, but when.

And it would come when Sardun was happy with it.

 

[Arlo Renard]

The white-haired girl and the armored hulk of a man stood side by side over a kneeling, bleeding, and petrified Kai. He sensed their bewilderment at his statement. But the master didn’t believe him. If the apprentice did, she did not care either way who he was. Only what he was.

A gauntleted hand stretched toward him, fingertips crackling with power. Any further protests from Kai were silenced amid the roar of white-hot agony that ripped through him. His mouth opened, but no sound came out as his face caved in on itself. The image of Dagon Kaze melted beneath the rays of Light like a wax figure in a heat wave, an idol smelted back to its raw components by the furious zealots of a rival creed.

But rather than collapsing into a puddle of molten ooze, Kai’s true form emerged from the blur of flesh tones like a vaguely humanoid shape will remain in a portrait vandalized before the paint could dry. A hairless, mouthless, spindly creature, colors chasing across his skin in a runny rainbow, flesh seething as the Light burned him. Even his blood boiled.

Beyond the capacity to scream in pain, he crawled up the theater wall, desperate to get away from what was hurting him. Distance cleared his head enough to spot a gap eroded in the wall near him, cold air seeping through from outside. He didn’t stop moving as he headed for his salvation, not even as he speared an answer into the two Jedi’s brains.

<I meant to feed me! To eat and to share my food with you, with the Jedi!>

As he vanished through the wind-battered hole, he poured all that the criminal had known into them, the vulgar contents of a filthy mind. A killer of innocents, a peddler of flesh and means of mortifying flesh, he had belonged to a petty crime gang in Coruscant’s underworld, dealing on occasion with much bigger circles. Faces and names were recorded as evidence or leads in an investigation—if the investigators could only stomach the source.

Ishida Ashina Michael Sardun​

 

[Ishida Ashina]

A shocked gurgle spilled from Ishida's throat at the hideous scene before her. Michael Sardun 's light burnt away the façade, melting and destroying the image they'd been so sure of. Lips curled back in a snarl of disgust –– both at the sight and the meaning. With Ashla's purifying deluge, the darkness rolled from the creature in waves. Sithspawn. Her brain thought the word, her lips mouthed it.

<I meant to feed me! To eat and to share my food with you, with the Jedi!>

"That's disgusting!" Ishida spat, furious at the time that had been spared the creature. Her muscles begged momentum, for this stand-off to be resolved, for her to pursue the fleeing perpetrator. The wretched body of darkness. She was mid-lunge when her mind was once again penetrated with unwelcomed influence.

Her agony wasn't shrieked out this time, instead, she dropped to her knees in silence, gripping both sides of her head and pressing against her temples as if she could squeeze out all the unwelcomed images. The pain, the faces he'd seen before their everlasting gasps died in their throats, the malignity of their actions influencing her perspective.

Struggling to crawl, she dragged herself toward the wall the spawn had sought refuge in. Her breaths ragged, thin, shallow.

"Master, y-you let him –– he can't get away." She whispered hoarsely, barely able to hear her own voice above the whimpers and mewls of lives taken by Arlo Renard 's victim; surviving only in memories. Stormclouds for eyes, the Atrisian focused solely on the small break in the wall while stumbling to get back up and chase after him.