Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Whetstone

Hyperspace
An hour after leaving Kol Huro



Make them bleed.

Kith sat on the edge of the bunk. Leaning over, elbows on her knees, she slowly drew the stone across the edge of the blade. Slick. Slick. Slick. There was no hurry to her motions, no indication of what was going on behind those stormy eyes. Just the evenness of expression she usually exhibited. Her actions were calm, methodical, and occasionally, she would inspect the blade before returning to her work.

The blade itself was entirely ordinary. It had not been imbued with sith sorcery, had not been created through alchemy. About as long as her forearm and slightly curved, it was simple and elegant. On the bed beside her was its mate, soon to be attended to.

She had given Luca their heading. Kol Huro was deep in Imperial territory, but it was a straight line to where she had told him to go.

Felucia. The closest Silver Jedi world as the mynock flies.

Make them bleed.

The Dark Lord had not specified how. So Kith chose the swiftest path. The one that would lead to fulfilling that order as quickly as possible. Not because she wanted to get it over with, no. But because until she did it existed as an itch just on the inside of her skin. She couldn't touch it, couldn't ease it in any way other than to do it. It was a need, as surely as food or sleep were...

And soon she would realize that it was in truth a higher category than even those.

She didn't look up when she felt Luca darken the doorway. She just kept herself to her chore.

"How long until we reach Felucia?"

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

She didn't get a response immediately.

Instead Luca just looked on as she sharpened the edge of her blade. Methodical, clean-cut and with perfection, it was the Kith that he had come to know across the months of working together with her. But there was something in those eyes. Instead of the waiting storm, the eye, it was the coming storm with rain and lightning... spelling doom behind the calm veneer. How quickly had it changed, what had caused it? Just the words of their Dark Lord or was there more to it than that?

"Four days, three if we push the ship to its limit."

"Then push it."​
Eyebrows rose a fraction at that.

No, behind the thin veneer of calm there was more and some part of Luca was concerned about it. Not even because of Kith, she was a grown woman and could handle herself, no, what Thorne was concerned about was the mission. If she started throwing herself into things, instead of thinking them out?

That didn't spell much good.

"What is this about anyway?"
 
Running her thumb along the edge of the blade, Kith nodded in satisfaction. Setting it carefully aside, she picked up the second, starting her work all over again.

Slick.

"Got a job to do," she answered simply.

Slick.

"Nothing more. Nothing less."

But it was more. It was a drive. A desideratum that curled through her core, warm and inviting. It didn't push her, pull her in uncomfortable directions. It coaxed, promises of satisfaction once the order was fulfilled. Not desire- she did not long for it, did not cherish it. But there was a certain settlement, an easy recompense of gratification waiting on the other side. Wherever that other side was.

After the initial strangeness, the unsettled nature of the realization, Kith was finding that there were worse things that this compulsion. Even if she would not have normally done this- anything like it- she was not left feeling angry and resentful. The programing had been well made, she could realize distantly, and still without dissatisfaction even from there.

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

Luca studied her for a little while longer.

"Ain't just a job." He replied before turning around and leaving her to it. It was strange- she was strange and yet it didn't change a damn thing for him. Probably should have cut his losses and left, but he enjoyed this type of work and he was good at it. They were doing good work... peace and stability, order and the checks never bounced. They were meaty too. From the cockpit he maxed out their velocity, it would burn the fuel for a time and ther was a chance it would kark up their engines.

But Kith wanted it this way.

He had never been much of an independent operator.

Worked best when someone was holding his handle and pointed him the right direction. For some reason that hadn't ever bothered Luca in the slightest, it was just a thing, just a shape of genetics build up from the ground by his old Master.

Just a tool doing what a tool did.

The ship shook violently as the reactors caught on and added to the additional juice, swallowing it whole and begged for more. Nothing more to give. He made a few last minute alterations for their course, making sure that the extra velocity didn't stray them off into a different star system or sector altogether. After that he left the cockpit. Took some time, maybe about twenty, but eventually Thorne returned to Kith's room. This time there was food on a plate and tea.

"Got food."
 
He found her pacing.

There was nothing more to do, nothing more to prepare. She made the passage back and forth across the small berth in just three strides before turning again. It wasn't nervous energy. In was simply too much. She felt like the inside of her skin itched and moving was the only way to scratch it. Do something, anything, because sitting was unbearable.

It was unfamiliar and uncomfortable to a woman who found solace in stillness and quiet.

She paused when he reappeared. The look she gave him was one of confusion for a moment, incomprehension as if he had spoken in another language completely. But that faded a moment later, quick enough that someone who didn't know her well, didn't work with her, would easily miss it.

Kith wasn't particularly hungry, but she accepted the plate and mug anyway with a small nod of thanks. She didn't sit right away, but realized quickly it was eat *or* pace. And while the pacing seemed the more appealing in that moment, the eating was more necessary. Once she started this, she didn't know when it would end... how it would end. So she perched on the bed again, depositing the mug on the shelf and started in.

But a moment later-

"You got something to say, say it. Otherwise sort it out."

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

It went from strange to odd to plain weird.

This was not the Kith that he remembered and certainly not the one that he had been working with for all those months. There was anxiety there fueled by energy that did not have any direction. It concerned him and as he settled down opposite of her to dig in, those concerns were still lingering in his head and made him wonder about a healthy mix of things.

Maybe it was something in his facial expression, the tightness of his shoulders or maybe it had been the comment a while ago.

Either way she spoke all of a sudden and it took a moment for Luca to slowly drag his attention away from the food to her. The soldier looked at her, really looked at her this time around.

Searching her expression for something.

"I need to know that you have yourself under control." Luca finally said- part of him had wanted to make a glib remark I didn't say anything right now, did I? But Thorne was a practical man, pragmatic, it was what had drawn him to Caecus and Kith... it was what made him state his concern out in the open.

They couldn't fix or modify anything, unless they were open about it.
 
She hadn't looked at him when she asked the question, and she didn't look at him now. She finished bringing the forkful of food to her mouth, chewing and swallowing before setting the fork down. There was quiet for a moment before she spoke again.

"I can't reassure you of that Luca," she said finally. Looking up at him, only the barest trace of a frown flickered across her lips before vanishing again. She watched him, his reaction, but there was a certain resolute set to the line of her mouth that said whatever it was, it was.

"And I can't explain to you why." The finality to that comment made it clear that he could try to argue, but it wasn't going to get him anywhere. There was also something there that hinted that it wasn't because she didn't know, but that she truly could not say.

The truth was that she was not in control. Not really. She never would have gone this route, sharpened the knives, chosen Felucia on her own. She was not impulsive. Occasionally it might look like that to the unfamiliar observer, but Kith always thought out her actions ten steps ahead, drawing out a hundred, a thousand, possible paths based on how something split off. She reacted so swiftly to the unexpected because it was utterly expected and already accounted for. But here, she was doing none of that.

"So if that's what you need to come with me, then we can let you off. Because that is not something I can give you."

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

A beat.

Thorne studied the lines of her face, the expression of neutrality, but also the smallest twitches of muscles just underneath the skin. It wasn't tension, not as such, but almost as if she was trying to say things and at the very last nano-second something diverted her into something else. It was strange, she was strange, but what had really changed here?

Nothing- truth was.

He was still being paid, still doing the same thing, it was just his attitude that had shifted. Grown used to a certain rhythm while working with Caecus and Kith.

Liked it even.

"Wasn't expecting an answer, Kith." Thorne quietly responded before diverting his gaze towards his plate. "It's why I didn't bring it up." A shrug of the shoulders followed, as he took some of the food, munched on it, swallowed and then sighed happily. "I am a weapon, Kith, made to fight, make war and kill. This ain't anything new to me- I am in all the way."

That's when he did look up.

"Question is... are you?"
 
Something flashed in her eyes. Something new. It was there for only a moment, then was gone again, replaced by the careful neutrality of indifference she greeted most things with.

Anger.

But only for half a heartbeat.

"Well, we have something in common then," she said quietly, looking back down at her plate. She pushed the food around for a moment.

She knew that wasn't why she'd been made. She'd been made to... to what? Give her creator a chance to 'save' some remnant of the original? To play at white knight, at Pygmalion? At god? But that didn't change what she was here and now. A tool of the Dark Lord, a weapon wielded at his enemies.

The image of a jessed falcon, hooded on the fist and only allowed to fly when an animal was flushed flicked behind her eyes. She didn't know where it had come from, but it resonated. Some small part of the original, recognizing and nodding.

"And if you have to ask if I am all in, then you don't know me at all."

She started eating again then, focusing on that. Really, they didn't know each other. Which was perfectly fine. They knew how they worked, that their skills and methods fit together like pieces of a puzzle. But that was all. All that mattered, really. Kith had never in their time working together shirked back from something, had never hesitated.

Had never once gone half way on anything.

That, at least, was not different.

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

He didn't notice the flash of anger.

Words already spoken, now was the time for food and not even her second remark gained enough attention. Maybe some little mumble in between bites as the food was devoured. There was a method to it, Kith would notice, if she bothered to observe. Even in his hunger Luca took his time to pick apart the largest sets into smaller pieces, over and over again, everywhere, what was big and insurmountable broken to pieces that could be managed in its fundamentals.

That was the thing about being created as a weapon.

It blended into everything you did, even when you didn't notice. Something as basic as eating food would have an entire narrative constructed behind it to fit the logic pre-programmed.

"Never played thousand and one questions with you, Kith." Luca remarked over the rim of the glass of milk. Tasted fine, but it was the nutritional value that he was more interested in. "Kinda difficult when we are busy executing traitors to the Empire and infiltrating those accused of sedition every waking moment."

Some humor in that last, there.

No, Luca did not particularly mind that he was a tool to be used. They all had a purpose; why fight it?
 
They both focused on their food for a minute. There were narratives to be had across the plate if either were interested enough to read them, but for the moment, they were both absorbed in their own instead of in the other. She reached absently for the tea, cooled down to simply a pleasant warmth. Appreciation for him remembering she liked it lined her face, but that was all.

She did, however, quirk a brow at him over the rim of the mug.

Neither were big talkers. It wasn't even that they were hiding anything (well, she did, but that was one specific thing) necessarily, just that neither was particularly interested in unnecessary chatter.

"I imagine you'd get bored if we did anyway," she said finally, shrugging. "Haven't done much with my life worth talking about."

The statement was both obviously true.... and obviously false. He had found over the months of working together that she was deeply capable in dozens of ways. Combat, tactics, ability to see through a situation down to the meat of it and make split second decisions that more often than not turned out to be the right ones. It spoke of a wealth of experience.

And yet....

She didn't know how to play simple card games. New foods were treated with interest, and so frequently they were things that shouldn't be noteworthy for a normal adult living in this galaxy. She didn't know sports, or familiar holo series. If a book came up, something almost any school age child should have known, she simply looked blankly. The pale haired woman was oddly removed from the social zeitgeist that could be found to one degree or another in most sentients. Even coming from different cultures, the connectedness of knowing- if not the specific thing then at least an analogue- 'Oh, I've never played that, but we played this growing up.' All of that was missing. It didn't come up often, and when it did it would be easy to miss. After all, who spent enough time with another person that would allow them to notice something like that?

Maybe someone else with a similar experience....

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

"I imagine we would both get bored." He countered before breaking off a little piece of bread and using it to soak up the last drips of milk in his can.

Waste not want not, as they said.

It was reasonably tasty too in fact. "Only so long before ending a story with: "And then I ripped his spine off" gets boring, don't you think?" Not that he had ever really done that. It was a joke or... Luca thought it was reasonably funny anyway. If there was one thing that he wasn't good at? It were the little things of socializing, the protracted glances met and held to establish interest, the touching of skin to hit it home, the intense interest in each other's lives and every single detail that went around there.

A joke or two to break the ice beforehand.

It didn't take long, before every single part of the dish was done and there was nothing left to do here in this room. Months ago, before they had properly met or spend practically every day of the week together fighting one enemy of the Empire or the other, he would have simply left. Not a word- purpose served and answers received, what more was there to do? "Want to spar again in an hour or so?"

That one had become part of a peculiar ritual between the two of them. No true warm camaraderie, but the distant trust of professionals. Raised up by a bout or two to sharpen each other's skills a few days before the start of a particularly trying mission. They would exchange tips, criticize each other until every little flaw was discovered, corrected or covered by the other's skills. It was one of the few things that they had kept up across all those months.
 
There was a pause and then a sharp nod. Somewhere between dismissal and agreement. Once he was gone, Kith would resume the pacing. Back and forth, back and forth.... unable to stop, in truth. The wait to carry out Carnifex's order was like an itch beneath her skin. It almost physically hurt to sit still, and that was such an alien sensation. The moving, the pacing alleviated it somewhat, just enough to melt the itch from inside of her skull. It drove, incessant and merciless, a compulsion that she knew could not be eased until she had actually followed through with the act.

But how long? How much blood would be enough to sate the impulse? Would the first cut accomplish it? Would she simply know when enough was enough? Or would she go on, bleeding them dry until the entire surface of the planet was slick with red- still, silent, unmoving?

Kith didn't know.

She picked up the pace.

****

Kith was in the hold by the time he got there. Already she'd moved the crates out of the way to form the clear space they needed. For the moment, the energy gained from the need to fulfill seemed bountiful, endless. It was almost like a high and she wondered distantly just how far it would take her.

She needed to move. To act. But with three days to Felucia, there was nothing to do but wait. So it was imperative to find other outlets.

The Kith [member="Luca Thorne"] met when they met in the middle of the floor was a stranger. The methodical, conservative fighter was asleep- not gone but drown out by the barely constrained energy. Her movements were still tight and controlled, but they seemed to boil over with something more. She dared more, took greater risks for greater rewards- she was not a weaker fighter for it, possibly even stronger. But it was unsustainable, no doubt about it. The question was simply how long she could hold onto it.
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

It was both easier and more difficult to fight her as she was now.

Easier, because she slipped up more often than before, but harder because every hit she connected hurt three times more than they had in the past. She was faster too, constantly on the move, taking risks, big ones that paid off more often than not.

They ended in a stalemate the fifth bout.

His hand curled around her throat, hers pushing against the soft bone of his side, pressed together and staring at each other. Both of them dead if it had not been hands but knives. Waiting for the next move to happen, the next one that would spell the end of this match for one of them.

It didn't come.

Bodies tight as a string locked up in tension.

Then a push as they both stepped back and created space, instead of allowing the stalemate to continue, but it had been hard on her. Luca saw that in her eyes and shoulders, the desire to press forward, to rip and tear no matter the situation.

Dangerous.

"Should get some rest." Thorne suggested finally, wiping off some blood from the corner of his mouth. "Got plenty of time to train later."

They hadn't slept for at least a day now, Kal Huro keeping them up and ready to move at a moment's notice.
 
There had been a thin line. Just for a moment there, she had stared at him with something utterly alien in her eyes. But it wasn't his blood she wanted, not in the slightest, and it was gone again in a heartbeat. Kith, even if it was this one, strangely shifted ten degrees from center. She shook out her arms, rolling her shoulders and neck as she turned away from him.

"Go ahead. I will in a bit," she said over her shoulder.

There was tension in every muscle. Even starting to physically tire, the need to move was overwhelming. She didn't have the concentration, the patience to move through katas or stances, but she would keep working here. Move crates around the hold if she needed to. The idea of laying down, laying still was entirely anathema. Enough to invoke a certain anxiety she was wholly unfamiliar with.

Felucia should be closer, she thought to herself, reaching down to stretch and then up again. Step step step, moving moving. If it was, this wouldn't be so difficult.

Waiting had never been a problem for Kith. She was not particularly good at relaxing, per se. But one slept when they had the opportunity. Rested and refreshed the body. The flesh was a tool, and one worn down without the whetting of sleep, food, taking of ease, was a tool likely to break when it was needed again.

But she couldn't.

She bounced up onto her toes, turning around.... frowning ever so slightly in surprise when she realized that [member="Luca Thorne"] was still there.

"Don't have to wait for me. If you're tired, go rest."
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

She was being stupid and it annoyed Luca.

This wasn't supposed to be their dynamic. Either they were equals or she led, but never did Thorne have to worry about anything that had nothing to do with him or his mission. Except... this was part of the mission, was it not? If Kith wasn't in a good condition then this was a suicide run. He was fine with that on principle, but there had to be a point.

A larger tactic behind it that spelled victory in the end.

Just throwing their lives away for some stray command was senseless and stupid. She annoyed him, but Kith was all he had right now.

"I need you at peak performance, Kith." Luca replied, moving in closer and stepping back into the room proper. "You haven't slept for the past two days." Thorne pointed out, stepping up to her so there was no way of ignoring him.

"How are you going to kill them, if you won't be able to fight?"
 
"And neither have you," she observed. "Go to bed, Luca," she said, her tone dismissive in a way it had never been with him. "You're worrying over nothing."

She shifted. It wasn't conscious. Just habit. She eyed him, pivoting slightly so that her side was facing him, instead of her front.

"I'm fine," she said, but there was an edge to her voice. "When the time comes I'll be ready. I always am. You keep your house in order, I'll take care of mine. Hired you to fly the ship and kill stuff, not be my handler. I'll rest when I can."

When I can. It was the closest she could come to telling him. Telling him of the thousands of ants crawling beneath her skin. How the words Make them bleed filled her head like a swarm of bees, angry and stinging. How the only way to relieve any of that was to keep moving. To trick whatever part of her this was into thinking she was making some miniscule progress on the order she'd been given.


"You hired me to get the job done." He stepped up closer. "Right now you are standing in the way of that."

Both of her eyebrows shot up at that.

"I am not. Ready. To rest," she bit out, her tone precise but low. "So unless you're gonna try to make me, I suggest you go take your mother-ass-hen mentality elsewhere."

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 
[member="Darth Caecus"]

The dismissive tone annoyed him even more.

Not because it was dismissive or because it was her, but because she was clearly not taking the situation as seriously as she needed to. This wasn't a joke, not a thing to just disregard or ignore. This was the mission and there was nothing that came before it.

Not a single thing.

Not emotions, feelings, not anxiety or fear or even death. "Ain't a try in this book, love." He moved, lightning, it was immediately made clear that Kith hadn't been the only one holding back. The last few steps already taken in a blink of an eye.

Either she would sleep by her own accord or Luca would knock her out.

The mission before all.
 
It became clear in a span of breaths that, until now, they had not truly fought each other. Both had always held back because it was exercise, it was practice. But he came in with intent this time and Kith answered in kind.

She let the irritation, the sensations crawling beneath her skin bubble up and out. Even Luca, usually so tightly controlled was being pushed by annoyance, frustration- by emotion. Neither of them were the sort to dive into that. It was easier or safer, depending on the moment and the situation, not to. The initial attempt to ground the clone in emotions that connected had back fired. Forcing it when there had been no right to do so. She had rejected them, hating the way they felt, these emotions that weren't hers. They didn't belong to her, to her experiences. She was not those people she had been shown.... and most especially not the woman who had intruded in, the one she shared her face with. In rejecting them, she had found a certain power, an ironfisted control over her own destiny. She was not a play thing, to be manipulated into the form someone else desired, but a creature wholly her own, to pick and choose the life she had wanted.

And yet, here she was, spurred on by a command and the omnipresent need to fulfill it.

Despite the desire, the pleasure she knew she'd feel upon seeing it done, knowing it would be a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment even if it was only in her programing to be so.... even knowing that, Kith was furious.

It was a new and uncomfortable sensation.

It burned and twisted, striking back at Luca with far less consideration than she usually showed. It was too much, a small part of her whispered. Like muscles underused and stretched to their limits, it left her shaking and hating everything about it.

If this was the emotional turmoil that had been desired a year ago, she was right to have been quits of it.

Again they ended with his hands on her neck and hers at his side. But this time, instead of a stalemate where no one won, they found their lips together, kissing, pulling each other in. The energy not dissipated but redirected, no longer against each other but in to.

[member="Luca Thorne"]
 

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