The Way of the Blue [Lantern OC]

Landing next to Pel and Obi-wan, I help form a trifecta of defense with them. The two managed to fight to a chokehold with the Slaaneshi - formerly 'dark elves', the disfigurement makes a little more sense now - they're using their sabers to cut down enemies getting too close while trying to fend off projectiles with the Force. At the same time I land behind the two Jedi, Elise lands behind the Slaaneshi and starts tearing them up like she has some kind of grudge about it.

On our side of the canyon there's a loud thud followed by the two Jedi splitting just in time for me to process the giant tentacle-face-gorilla-thing bringing its heavy forelimb down to smash me. I don't even think about it and punch upward reflexively, hoping fiercely that'll stop it somehow. My environmental shield brightens and the thing howls as my arm pierces it like somebody slapping their hand down on a nail, the ring reinforcing me where I stand. My knees bend a little when the limb comes down and the ground underneath me shatters, the ring somehow transfering the force of the blow through me and downward.

Unfortunately, that causes the entire part of the structure we're on to collapse, the supports giving way where the stone has shattered and they're suddenly no longer rooted in the canyon wall. Pel and Obi-wan begin to drop, but I don't think so. Thin cables of light catch them as the giant gorilla thing tumbles past them, bouncing off the canyon wall with an audible cracking noise as its chitin breaks.

Bringing the two of them to the other side of the bridges where Elise was fighting, all three of us land next to her. It's a little like seeing Ren when she goes on one of her rampages. There's a shudder, a seismic shockwave felt through the ground and I turn my head in Vera's direction.

"She's fighting Nemesis out there and I'm low on power." Before releasing Obi-wan and Pel I refresh them, then reach a cable towards Elise -

Resistance detected. High levels of rage are preventing a connection.

- oh. Elise gives me a frown when my cable doesn't touch her. "What, you think I got cooties now or something?"

"No, it's... you're so angry I can't make a connection to you."

That makes her blink, then frown at herself. "I don't feel very angry."

"Everytime you speak, your hands pulse with red light, a little."

She looks down at her hands, turning them over to look at the back of them, the red glow the tips of her fur has taken on. Another tremor breaks her reverie. "I'm going to help." Then she's off and for the first time I can see how she's been climbing, grabbing the wall and almost throwing herself upwards recklessly, digging her fingertips in anytime gravity starts to assert itself. Makes scaling the walls look easy.

Next to me, Obi-wan deactivates his saber, spinning and attaching it to his belt. "Can you heal others the way you did for us a moment ago?"

"Yes, but I have - Ring?"

"23% power remaining."

"Right, that much. I lose flight at ten percent, so I'm getting limited in what I can do here."

He nods as Pel takes a running jump, launching herself off the ledge and freefalling to another one below, somehow landing without breaking her legs and taking off running to start fighting a few of the raiders who made their way down.

"Come, the wounded are this way." Kenobi turns and heads into a tunnel of the canyon, reigniting his saber for light and bathing the entire corridor in blue. Ring, do a quick scan, how many wounded do they have?

There are approximately 34 individuals with wounds of varying severity, five of which are currently in critical condition.

Estimated cost of healing them all?

11 percent.

I sigh inwardly. "I just took a look, I can heal them up but it's going to leave me almost useless, with only 12% power remaining."

He looks over his shoulder back at me for a second. "We're not there yet."

"I scanned them."

He turns for a second to look at me, looking for a device or something, almost walking right into the steel door at the end of the corridor. He catches himself at the last moment, opening it and holding it open for me as I follow him inside. They've created a makeshift hospital ward and I can see one medical droid in a sorry state of repair along with a Vali providing some heavy lifting and two... well, they're definitely women, no doubt about that. A pair of nude, green women with flowers in their hair are helping to tend the wounded, apparently completely unshy about their nudity. No one seems to mind them letting it all hang out, either. Odd. Can't say they aren't shapely either, with the whole hourglass thing -

Whatever, I'm not here to oogle them all day. Lets help some people.

Blue threads fan out from me, reaching out to touch the wounded and restore them one by one. Doing this is a lot easier than the first time I tried it. I've given hope to so many people with serious injuries, conditions or diseases they thought were terminal, that bringing up memories to help me work up the power is a lot simpler.

The two flower girls look a little startled at first, arms up as the threads weave their way around them, then touch the two of them and check them over as well. Oh, that's interesting, they're some kind of hybrid. Human and something else. Even the medical droid gets a refresher, the ring pulling its schematics from its memory and then using them to repair the thing to full functionality. Kenobi is watching me with a mix of concern and approval, one arm across his chest, hand holding his elbow while his other hand rests against his chin thoughtfully.

"Medical droid, what are you?"

"I am a 2-1B surgical droid."

"Did you suffer any memory damage before?"

"No. However, my ability to perform my full set of functions was limited by damage from the crash. I am now capable of full performance levels."

"Glad... to have helped." I glance over at the two green women who are watching me, standing together. "That pretty much wipes me out, Master Kenobi. Ring, state charge."

"11% charge remaining."

"Awh. Less than I thought I'd have."

"Oh, I wouldn't say the day is a total loss." He gives the two women an amused look. "Meet Po and Ro. They're teiflings. Sorry about the clothes, we've tried - "

"Oh, I don't mind. I don't mind."

 

I don't remember the last time I did this.

I'm laying on... it's not quite a bed, I don't think Po and Ro have a bed exactly. It seems to be straw with a lot of furs on it. Though I've got to be honest, I really wasn't paying a lot of attention to the bed itself, here. But this, the aftermath, just kind of basking in it with others... No, no recollection. I haven't done anything like this since arriving here.

Ro is out cold next to us and Po is sort of draped across me, so I won't be getting up any time soon. I don't think I would've gone for something like this before touching the orange ring. I just wasn't very interested in putting in the effort, getting to know someone enough that being comfortable doing this with them wouldn't feel awkward. If I'd known it was this simple... heh.

I raise my right hand, turning the ring around so I can look at its sigil. At low power, it feels... crippling. I got used to always having a charge and now I run through it so fast when I start expending it I'm finding I struggle to limit the ways I can use the ring. It's almost disappointing that the hope they detected when arriving turned out to be Kenobi. Finding a blue artifact he could keep for himself would be invaluable, even if it is slow.

What do I hope for, now? I'm not the same person I was when I arrived here. Looking back at it, I can see what the indigo ring meant, the... way I looked at things. The stuff I wasn't taking into account because all I cared about was learning how to focus the use of the blue light. To me, that meant helping people, inspiring hope. I didn't really think of doing it for the sake of helping people, it was just a way to master the ring because I hoped to master the ring.

Now? I don't feel like I've mastered it. Things have been happening so fast that I've never felt like I could sit down and just take a couple weeks to really explore what I could do with it. Even now, with Elise in her condition, I don't feel like I should just stop and take a break to mull things over. But I've gotten a little better at using it and the fact that we let each other use our rings has given all of us a little perspective, I think. I struggled to make the green ring work at all, but the indigo one came naturally to me. Orange felt overwhelming until Fela stepped in... none of us has touched it send then, though I still have it. I don't like wearing it, the majority of Mina's construct-slaves were in the ring when we took it. Makes me feel dirty.

Running the fingers of my left hand up and down Po's back she makes a quiet, contented noise and nuzzled her face into my side a little. Heh, cute. I know it feels nice, though I can't recall it ever being done to me.

What do I ultimately hope for? I want to make Durjak successful. Well on the path to that goal, I think. I'm hoping we can spread Durjak's success too, form a regional government and start bringing people together and forming a zone of safety in the absolute madness the patches have brought. It strikes me that Psyche looks much the same, instead apparently bringing small groups of people instead of whole places, then throwing them into what might actually be some kind of hell-projected version of Mars.

I haven't seen a lot of Psyche, so far. What I have seen, I wasn't really hanging out for the scenery. The only thing useful I've ever picked up here was that lexicon on runes, but without the underlying theory I can't make use of a lot of it. It's like having an alphabet but you don't know how to form the words.

Apparently demons are an actual thing here. I've tried to keep the Doom references to a bare minimum, but I mean, there's only so far you can get when you have demon-worshiping self mutilating cultists attack your town and shit in your bed. I had a hard time believing they actually did that to somebody. Who the fuck even does that?

Scans of some of the technology here are fascinating. Some of it is just busted up junk that doesn't even work but even from that I'm learning tons. Their busted junk still has parts that aren't entirely busted and I've learned ways of creating microcircuitry here that I don't even know how to describe. Some of it doesn't even use metals, instead relying on a sort of crystallized quantum computing system. The size of a USB drive. None of us is a full device on its own but all of it combined is giving me options for invention and fabrication I would never have even been able to consider before.

But now, with the ring acting as a UI for a way to mix-and-match parts, I think I can sit down and actually invent things. I don't need to understand all of how it works, the ring can help with that. But being able to replicate 2-1B back home for the town, that will be great. I actually asked about it and he - he? he. - seemed to find it fascinating that he was effectively now the founder of an entire race. Then he got distracted with a patient and stopped thinking about it entirely, but... still.

Po mumbles something, then moves up to kiss my chest. "You are being very distracting."

"All I'm doing is touching your back lightly."

"Mhm. But now I'm waking up and I think Ro will soon, when she hears us."

"Hears us?"

And then I'm not worrying about that because oh boy here we go -!

 

"You smell like them."

I'd have expected Elise to be annoyed, especially considering her current state, but she doesn't seem to be. The two of us are watching Vera directing efforts to fix some of the damage from yesterday. Although she can't build anything with her ring, people listen to her and there's basically no bickering going on at all. Kenobi and Pel are helping move and reconstruct things as well, but Elise was never an engineer and since I'm low on power, I'm standing by for now. At least until Kuri and Fela arrive later today.

"Really? I would've thought the environmental shield would prevent that."

She just shrugs noncommittally. "Your habit of letting scents permeate it goes both ways. Kind of a downside to having a powerful sense of smell, but useful sometimes."

I nod slowly, having the ring do another swipe over myself to clean up. Which I did this morning but apparently it didn't take, or... Oh. The two of them hugged me before I left this morning, but it was after I did that, wasn't it? I didn't think much of it at the time.

"I'll... try to remember that. Sorry." ... "You're a lot less annoyed than I thought you would be about that."

"You're human, they look human. Guess it makes sense. Fela too."

"I'm not dating Fela or anything."

She nods. "I know. And I know you know why, being able to see hopes and all."

I fight down the urge to take a deep breath and exhale slowly. "Yyyyyyes."

"Is that why you never expressed any interest in anyone before? Because you knew I liked you?"

"No. Orange ring." That makes her nod, an of course look on her face. "I just didn't... really... it's not that I didn't care, because you're my friend and I care about what happens to you obviously, but I wasn't really libidinous."

"And now you are? Didn't take you long to wander off with them."

"In my defense, they're apparently like that with everybody. And I mean everybody. They don't get sick, they don't age and they really like hedonism. I was just, you know, the man of the day for healing everyone."

"Heh." She looks down, kicking the ground. "Never had a chance, did I?"

"I don't know? I'm not whole, Elise. There's parts of me just missing, just not there. Everything we've done and been through so far has been an insane journey where I'm trying not to die or let my friends die while balancing that out against the fact I'm apparently productively insane."

"But I'm not human. So."

"Elise, until I put the orange ring on, I didn't give a damn about how you look. Now you look like a very human-shaped ferret to me. Who you are, your personality, is important to me. How you look isn't."

"Do you really think I'm that stupid? You don't look at me the way I saw you leering at those two yesterday. You didn't even notice the first day I met you and tried to flirt with you." She stops, blinking hard, the sudden contrast to how she was then compared to how she is now visibly throwing her for a moment.

"No, I -"

"Shh." She raises a hand at me, still staring off into space. "Ainsley, how much have I changed?"

"I'm sorry, what?" I turn to face her, paying closer attention to her body language. I have a really hard time interpreting it sometimes without the rings help but she looks... nervous?

"Since you met me, how much has my personality changed?"

I stop for a moment to think back. "Well, you started out really happy and bubbly. Then we kept getting into fights. You started to be a lot less like that after Nemesis messed with you that first time, started getting more serious. More the soldier. I didn't really think much of it, just assumed I hadn't seen all of you and that was what you were like when you weren't in carefree mode."

"But... Speak in complete sentences, stop fucking me around."

"But... since we got seperated on Psyche and you guys were captured, you haven't been the same. Everything was moving at an insane pace and I wanted to address it but I didn't know how. Then that red weapon thing bonded to you and that really changed you a lot. Since then, it's like every bad thing that ever happened to you has taken control and now your worst memories are all that you can draw on."

She nods slowly at that, folding her arms. "Vera told me that decoupling the thing from me means I have to resolve the anger, that my own rage was what was keeping it on me. How much do you know about my past, anyways?"

"Only that you've been military for awhile. I didn't know your dad was a bigwig until he showed up."

That makes her twitch. "You haven't... heard anything."

I shake my head. "I'm sorry, we have people spreading the word, out looking, but no. Nothing yet."

"Who ordered that fancy ship of yours to fire at the temple, Ainsley?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The air strikes that collapsed the temple as you were arriving. Who."

"Elise, that thing is orbiting the sun and drinking in solar power. It hasn't been hanging around."

"DON'T LIE TO ME DAMMIT!" She spins to face me, all the little red glowy bits on her suddenly lighting up at once.

"I'm not." I look at her levelly. "We didn't have anything to do with the temple collapsing like that. Ask any of the others, the only ones on that ship are the two cats. They get along for... some reason."

She stares at me, searching my face before flexing her hand, looking a little lost. The red in her is visibly dimming, dimming more than it was when we came up here. Whatever this is about, she's been really pissed about it, I'm guessing.

"But... then, who did it?"

 

"No."

"But we'd be there in less tha-"

"No."

"Oh come on, you know we could both probably use it."

Emil stopped and took a deep, slow breath to rally himself as the surge of anger at being endlessly bothered about this for almost a week hit him. Taking a moment to master himself, he exhaled.

"Ren, I am fully aware of how useful putting the ring on would be. Fully aware. You have spent the last several days making me aware of every single fucking aspect of the situation and if you don't stop needling me about it I am going to personally slap the goddamned shit out of you, are we clear?"

"Dude, you're like, one third my si-" He's moving before she even finishes the sentence, sliding around smoothly backwards like a figure skater coming out of a spin and using the skids to sweep her foot out from under her, coming to a stop next to her as Ren hit the ground. Taking a step up, Emil stood on her stomach, towering over her as she gave him a look somewhere between wariness and confusion.

"Ren, I like you, but you're wearing my patience thin. Did you think I got my rank because I couldn't handle somebody for their size? Do you even know what I can do?"

"Well, apparently you have a knack for legsweeps."

Emil hopped off her, skids stopping him in the air and then letting him slide down toward the ground as though he'd done a grind down a railing nobody could see. Standing up straight after landing, he nudged her foot. "Get up, we have ground to cover."

Standing up faster than her size would imply, Ren rolled her shoulders and rumbled. "Lemme guess, if we tussle you're gonna be like fighting an oiled pig, aren't you? You're all speed."

"No, and yes. I'm pretty fast - and you wouldn't know this from my medical records - but I also have an advantage."

"Yeah, what's that?"

Reaching down, Emil picked up a small rock, tossing it up and down lightly, then casually squeezing it. After a sharp click, he opened his fingers to reveal the split stone.

"Cybernetics?"

"Yep."

"How much?"

"Just the arm. Not that useful, really. But if I get a grip on you..."

She nods. "Okay. Just answer me this, why are you so dead-set against either of us using it?"

"Little surprised, you were hanging out with them longer than I did. Ren, every single lightsmith is a little crazy."

"Even Elise?"

"Especially Elise. That girls been through some shit. She tries to act the same but, you know how it is. I can tell. Catch her looking a certain way or something."

When they'd been 'dumped' it had been on the edge of the desert, at the one place in the mountain range allowing access to the southern half of the continent. Here the desert was giving way to shrubbery that was struggling to hold off the encroaching desert, slowing getting more dense as they continue on. Miles and miles of scraggly trees and wild grass broken up by patches of dirt where apparently nothing grows anymore.

It was apparent they were someplace in northern Tovalon but without anything like localized maps or landmarks to position themselves they'd been reduced to just striking south and hoping they eventually hit something. The fact they were getting to more habitable land was probably a good thing, since he didn't fancy trying to forage or hunt bushmeat. With any luck they'd come across a caravan or travelers they could barter with or something. Hell, even enemies. Kicking somebodies ass usually left you with some supplies once you searched them over, if you were ruthless enough.

Ren rumbled next to him, kicking aside a log. "Seemed okay to me. Y'know, for a pipsqueak." She side-eyes him. "You're like that too, I guess. Too bad we never served together before."

"All things in their time and place, Ren."

"You didn't answer my question though. Not really. What do you mean by them being crazy?"

"You saw how Vera fought. She's just layers and layers of control until she's not, like her ring has preconditions to her unleashing it. Mina is undoubtedly crazy, even if she is a good lay -" That gets a snort from Ren.

"You really went for her?"

"More like she really went for me, but... why not? It was fun. Anyways, Nemesis is crazy. Green seems to be the least crazy but Elise got a lot more serious when using it, dunno how Aetius is holding up. Ainsley? Definitely crazy, even he admits it. Kuri...? Ehhh..."

"Yeah, she's a little debatable. For someone so small, she's kinda big inside, if you get me."

"Yeah. So what do you think will happen to either of us if we try to use a violet ring, eh? Because I bet you it'd like that teleport platform. You didn't find that any more comfortable than I did, you really wanna wear something that makes you feel like that all the time?"

"I guess you kinda have a point. No, I wouldn't. Would I put up with it long enough to get home? Yes, I would."

"Luckily for you the sanctity of your sanity is not a decision left in your hands, then."

Ren stopped and held her hand out to gesture for him to as well. "Permission to speak freely?"

Emil shrugged. "Hell, 's what we're doing anyways, right?"

"What I mean is, I don't want reprisal for anything I'm about to say."

"Go for it."

"You're a tiny little motherfucker and I have a hard time respecting anyone who can't hold themselves up in a fight. You can so I'm willing to listen to you and that's why you've never gotten any backchat from me. I don't know you, man. You're just some guy to me. So yeah, I'm cool with going along with the chain of command, we both know how that goes, but it's just the two of us out here and you basically just told me you're going to weigh our survival on your emotional squeamishness. Sir."

He sighed. "Okay. I've had a little sense of you now and you really fucking like violence, so I don't want to hand over an incredibly powerful weapon to you that I can't take back off your ass when you start going crazy."

"See? That's what honesty feels like."

"Yes, very cathartic. Now, can we continue on, or would you like to needle me unnecessarily some more so I can ignore you while you steadily piss me off some more?"

"Nah, we cool." Ren clapped him on the shoulder, grinning. "I just don't like bullshit, that's all."

"Fair enough."

 

"...and that's the story so far, basically."

Kenobi looks like he's somewhere between being incredibly disturbed and being unsure if he actually believes me. "I have been to many different planets, met many different species, but what you're describing sounds like pure insanity. Half of it doesn't even make sense."

"It makes a kind-of-sense?" I'm walking with him as we tour the outer boundaries of Vera's settlement. After Vera chased him off, Nemesis just left all of his crap here. Now the entire area is riddled with little bands of Slaanesh cultists. Even worse, they keep trying to summon things from the more hellish parts of the planet. With so few of them scattered around it's never anything really large or dangerous. For people like us, anyways. To the people in the settlement it's a real problem, so now we're on goon patrol.

"How in blazes does any of that make sense?"

"Well, I can't... I mean, I know the bits about me showing up and all of us lightsmiths doesn't make much sense. But if you ignore that and just decide to deal with that later, then the rest sort of does. To me it was all just a long progression of events and this is the first time in months we've had the chance to just slow down and take a breather."

"I'm not sure I would call stalking through fungal forests searching for monstrous cultists hellbent on killing us all a break."

"Yeah, we started out like that. World-killing maniacs and massive armies are where we're at now. Like power leveling in the universes most fucked up RPG."

Kenobi continues on next to me for a few seconds before speaking up. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what an RPG -" He breaks his own sentence to whirl around, saber activating and intercepting something that causes the blade to flash and crackle for a second. Immediately I extend my environmental shield to him but I'm far from full fighting strength. At the very least it'll guarantee him protection from arrows or small projectiles.

Something flicks off the side of my head, bouncing off the shield at about the same time I'm doing that and it occurs to me that they probably just have no idea what they're getting into here. An ambush only works if you have a superior level of force, or at least enough to take a surprised opponent. Kenobi is deflecting his third or fourth dart by the time I'm running a scan aaaaaand there they are.

Cables flick out and yank our would-be opponents out of the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms around us. Which I know are caustic but apparently they don't care. Their bodies are smoking from the mildly acidic goop that the fungus is sweating, something we've been careful to avoid. Mainly because I don't wanna burn power dissolving any that touches us and healing Kenobi up.

I don't bother actually negating gravity, letting them faceplant-and-scorpion into the ground in a way that makes even Kenobi wince as he deactivates his saber. Dragging them towards us I lift them up and hold them arrayed around us in a semi-circle while they struggle. Not a single one of them has made a sound the entire time, either. Creepy.

"Hello, campers. Just out enjoying nature today are we?"

All three open their mouths at the same time and then there's a sound -

Restore.

- and they sort of explode, the flesh chunks writhing as the three of them splatter all over the place. Immediately the areas where their gibbets land begin to blacken and decay, the rot spreading outwards. The environmental shield appears to be protecting us.

"Oh, this is new." Kenobi doesn't sound pleased by it.

"Purge." A blue glow spreads out from us, struggling at the edges of the rot before slowly covering it and incinerating everything down to the soul bacteria. The flash is bright, blinding for the few seconds it's happening but neither of us feel anything and the ring compensates for the glare easily.

"Alert. 7% power remaining."

"What did you do there?"

I sigh at the loss of flight. "Incinerated everything to a few thousand degrees. It was some kind of bio-weapon, I think. Burnt it at solar surface levels."

He nods, looking around at the broken glass that used to be dirt. "Don't really leave anything half done, do you?" He says it as he begins walking again, heading back the way we came.

"No, not usually. Where are you going?"

"Heading back, of course. With your power that low, it would be dangerous to continue on and get into many more fights if they're pulling tricks like that."

"I suppose you have a point." Turning to follow him theres a brief sticking sensation as my boots unfuse from the glass that melted around them.

"What exactly do you plan to do once your friend gets that damned... thing off her?" He frowns. "I don't know what to call it, really."

"Blood weapon? Me neither. Probably go home and start exploring again. There's other stuff we need to attend to but the only way to make new allies is to go out and meet them. Would've never known you were here if Elise hadn't decided she wanted to come visit."

He nods. "Once the others are back, we may come with you to this town of yours. It sounds like the sort of thing we should be encouraging, especially if you can evacuate some of us there."

I tilt my head a little. "Evacuate?"

"Look around you, Ainsley. These people are surviving, not living. Vera does her best, but between the demons, Nemesis and the environment itself, this is not a friendly world. We're all hiding out here, those of us who leave to go help others escape here are taking massive risks to do so."

"And you don't want to help them?"

"It's not really about that." He shakes his head. "Some of us can live like that. Some even like it here. But there's too many who are just getting by and if there's a chance they can make it out, they would take it. Fight for it, even."

I nod slowly. "I'm surprised Vera is doing this at all. I don't think she'd take it if I called it a gift or anything but if I can find a way to reliably bring things to and from here, I think I want to help provision this place. That'll probably just end up being one of us doing flights but even using ring FTL is kind of chancy because Nemesis knows to look for it. Or at least I assume he does. Seems to know what he's doing better than we do when it comes to using his ring."

"Things here will have to be dealt with eventually, I suspect, if any of us are to have peace on this... wretched planet." He sighs. "But nobody here is in any condition to mount anything like a civil war. Escape and shelter is still a struggle. But one day. And the only way to make new allies..."

"Heh. Point taken. If the others don't object, I'll bring you back with me. Pel too, if she wants. But we're not leaving until this place is more secure."

"Thank you."

 

Twice, he had to stop traveling because the rage was interfering with his ability to use the yellow light. Each time he had to set down, go to ground and wait, calm down, then begin the fear meditation again. Already low on power, he couldn't keep wasting time. He needed to get back to his citadel, the focus of all the fear he'd been working to generate on Psyche since he got here, the seat of his power. Perhaps he'd make a demonstration of somebody publicly to get things flowing. Once there was enough ambient fear going around, meditating would allow him to slowly charge the ring. A percent here and there.

He knew that the attack on Vera would be costly, but judging her to be there alone, he could have handled that. He had no idea the others would be there at all. His own stupidity at not simply scanning the area first didn't make keeping himself in the right mind set any easier.

20% charge left. If you're going to improve that, wasting time being lazy won't help.

He took a deep breath. He was in sight of the citadel already and increased his speed, almost smashing into the balcony he typically used for landings and stalking inside with all the injured dignity of a supervillain who has been thwarted once more.

Which is how he almost missed the fact there was a hooded figure sitting in his goddamned throne.

He stopped halfway across the room, chuckling. "Whoever you are, coming here and trying this today was a mistake. I am in a very foul mood and you have all the look of a convenient outlet for it."

"Heh heh heh heh." It was a dry chuckle, like the person making the noise spoke in dust. "Oh, I disagree." Rising, the hooded figure began to walk down the steps towards him, face in shadow. "I have been watching you, Neil. Your attempt at the mastery of fear has been very amusing, seeing how pitiful you are at it."

Generating a construct railgun, the round fired at the figure was fired at a velocity far exceeding what he would normally use. Which made it all the more startling when it explodes almost immediately, followed by the hooded figure charging at him through the smoke the blast generated -

- wielding a red lightsaber.

Reinforcing his environmental shield and generating construct armor, Nemesis had the ring jook him aside, turning and moving back as the figure slashed at him at a speed that made the blade dance in the air. Even with the ring moving him the figure was keeping pace, a cable trying to catch the sword-hand. As it grabbed the hooded figures wrist the blade changed hands, severing the cable and bringing him within striking range, the blade passing through his environmental shield somehow and slashing him through the side even as he tries to move away.

What the fuck? was the first thing that passed through Nemesis's head. The second was to restore himself before it was too late.

But the hooded figure was giving him no time to think, staying on top of him and forcing him to move defensively, trying to avoid the blade. Instead he rose up into the air, flying towards the ceiling and standing on it as though gravity were reversed, generating guns to fire down at the figure.

Stay alert. 15% power remaining.

Fuck, he thought to himself, I need to wrap this up quickly and find time to recharge. Why now?

Then it occurred to him. 'Now' was precisely because he was low on power. He'd made a miscalculation and finally, somebody was capitalizing on it. Fuck.

Somehow he didn't think whoever this was was going to make the same mistake Ainsley did and not finish the job.

The shots fired didn't seem to be hitting the figure, either. It was like trying to shoot a hummingbird on cocaine, like the figure knew where he was going to aim and was intentionally working around him until finally it stopped.

Got you now, he though to himself.

Firing the round it stopped, just... stopped. Gripped in the air by the figure, who stood with one hand raised, holding the blade lazily.

"Fucking Force users." He dismissed the constructs, switching to a positron cannon, but didn't have time to fire it before he found himself being gripped in something iron-clad but invisible, then flung into the walls as hard as the hooded figure could manage.

"You think yourself a master of fear." He smashed Nemesis into another wall, then forcibly dragged him through it with sheer overwhelming telekinetic force. "So small. So weak. You're nothing but the same pitiful, sniveling boy who lucked into his power."

The grip weakened and Nemesis pushed himself out of the indent in the wall, growling. "I'll show you who's weak."

"Come then and fail, as you always have."

A short transition down behind the figure -

10% power left.

- and he had just enough time to register his ring telling him that before his world turned into light and pain.

The figure was standing over him, white-blue lightning dancing from their fingertips and raking across him regardless of the environmental shield, striking through him. It was more than just electricity, striking his self rather than just his physical body. The sensation was like every nerve being on fire, of being torn apart from the inside and it was only through the ring that he didn't scream.

Then the grip came again and he was sailing across the room as he was tossed like a ragdoll into the wall next to the left of the lift up into the throne room.

"You are nothing but a mere pretender. But could have made a good student, once you knew to call me Master." Pushing himself up off the floor, Nemesis screamed as his ring-arm was parted at the elbow by the red blade, the sound cut off as he was kicked in the face and sent careening down the elevator shaft.

In the throne room, Darth Sidious picked up the severed arm and delicately, reverently removed the yellow ring.

 

Exhale. Inhale.

He felt his chest rising and falling with each breath, completely independent of any action on his own part. He'd long ago become accustomed to it, strange as it was from the memory of true breathing. Sometimes when he was exerting himself he could feel the strain because he had to rely on the system to update its intake/output based on the needs of his body for more oxygen. He couldn't just huff and puff like a normal person would.

His mind began to clear as the fugue slipped away and he became aware of more than just his own breath. It was like the sensation of fainting but in reverse, his ability to think clearly turning back on as though somebody were rotating a dial on his intellect. He struggled to remember, the last thing he remembered...

...Was the face of his son as he died.

Anakin pushed himself up off the ground, found he had been laying in sand. Why was it always sand?

Why was he alive at all?

He had died. He had made the choice to die, to be free of... this. To let go of all the pain and rage and self-immolation that had driven him since Her death. To find himself in a desert, surrounded by dry, dead grass trying to find purchase was confusing and alarming. Even worse, he was still trapped. Still in the suit.

He stood there for some time, silently staring at the horizon that reminded him so much of the Dune Sea. Exhale, inhale. Exhale, inhale.

Whatever was happening, it was happening. His mind had cleared at the end, the death of Palpatine more or less ruining what was left of him. He was convinced he was signing his own death warrant by doing it to prevent... prevent Luke from being corrupted. To prevent the daughter whose name he never had the chance to learn from being destroyed by the Emperor as he had.

When he made that choice he thought he wouldn't have to live with the fallout of trying to find himself again after decades of self-hatred and monstrosity. His hand drifted to his belt, to find... ah. He lifted the lightsaber he found clipped there, brought it up to look at it.

It was not the weapon he'd wielded as Vader. Underneath the mask, his eyes watered as he realized he had the lightsaber he had held in his final days as a jedi, the one Obi-wan had taken from him on Mustafar. He activated it, the blue blade coming to life with the crackle-hiss that was so different from the way the red saber had sounded.

He slowly turned the blade, flicking the settings of his vision in the mask from the usual enhanced red-with-HUD to optical vision in true color. In no hurry to get anywhere he stood for awhile, contemplating the blade, before deactivating it and clipping it to his belt again.

His suit was convinced it had a general orientation of north-south based on the magnetosphere of the planet, so that gave him direction. Looking up into the sky he slowly turned his head, looking for... yes, there. Flying animals. Any life in the desert required water and while his suit could filter any he found, he couldn't just make it ex nihilo. He would need it for traveling, whatever happened.

As he walked through the sands towards the rocky outcroppings where the birds were hovering about, his mind wandered back to his days as a child. He hated desert planets, b-

He turned his head slightly but didn't stop walking. He'd meant what he'd told Luke. If by some chance he had lived to escape with him, he would have taught the boy all he knew, tried to at least partially redeem himself in some way... Unless he were able to find a ship and get offworld to access the HoloNet, that wouldn't be possible. But as long as he was here he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

A lifetime of ruination for what? To end up back in the sands in his ruined body with his mind more clear than it had been since the end of the Clone Wars. Thinking back filled him with unspeakable shame and grief and each time his mind looped back to it he stopped walking and hunched over a little as though struck, though being unaware he was doing so.

Exhale, inhale.

As he reached the rocks he began to hear the cries of the birds, which sounded agitated. Passing through the rocks he found the path narrowing as the rock faces inclined slightly overhead, looming as he passed into them.

He sensed somebody up ahead. Two people. His first instinct was to drop his hand to his weapon before his mind caught up and reminded itself of the old lessons.

A jedi uses their strength to defend, not attack.

It had been so long since he thought of himself that way. Every thought felt out of balance, or perhaps rebalanced in a way that felt foreign after being tilted towards insanity and darkness as long as it had been.

Passing through an arch in the rock he found himself in a small oasis surrounded by rock faces on all sides, fed by a small waterfall that trickled down the rocks from above. The birds were wheeling overhead because the two beings in the clearing were cooking one of them on a spit next to the waters edge.

They were unlike any races he had seen before. The first was massive, looming over even him, at least 8' tall and covered in fur. It reminded him a little bit of a wookiee, but the face was more animalistic and he found himself wondering if it could speak with a mouth shaped that way. The other was smaller but also covered in fur with distinct markings around its eyes.

Both of them were wearing what looked like actual, serious combat armor and were carrying some kind of rifle. Neither was quite aiming it at him but both were watching him warily.

He raised his hands to show them being empty, then spoke, wincing slightly at the sound of the electronically modified voice the suit gave him. "Do you understand me?"

The smaller one nodded. "Yeah man. What are you?"

What was he? Who was he?

He didn't answer right away and the two exchanged looks between each other at his hesitation.

"My name is Anakin Skywalker. I was... I am... a Jedi. I should be dead. Where am I?"

Even a week ago from his perspective he wouldn't have asked that question. He would have demanded it, threatening them. There would have been violence already. The thought filled him with shame.

"Oh hey, cool. Us too." The big one claps him in a friendly, informal way on his shoulder and the lack of any urge to harm her for the casual informality threw him a little. "I'm Ren, that's Emil. Grab a seat, we're heading back to some kind of civilization too. You new around here?"

"Yes. I suppose I am."

"Oh man, do we have a story for you..."

 

Kurishalia

She danced and all around her, her people danced with her, more than a hundred strong.

As the music played there was co-ordination but nothing planned, nothing rehearsed. The music moved them as much as their own impetus did. The dancers had formed circles around the ritual fire at the center, four lines that wove around each other or sometimes flipped inside out as dancers traded places in and out of the circle next to them. They bounced to the same beat, moved with the same momentum, each one moving a little differently but all of them flowing together despite what ought to be a mess of bodies.

Kuri herself was at the center, the innermost circle of dancers spaced around her and the flames. The flames themselves moved in time with them, in time with the music, responding to Kuri as the music moved her and brought raw emotion to the front of her mind. She felt the exhilaration as she felt with an intensity only music and emotional extremes seemed to bring out in her.

But the music did it without the events that often surrounded such extremes of emotion and it was more than just her. Everyone around her moved on the same wavelength, the same momentum, the energy of it almost a tangible thing in of itself. The power of the synchronicity of the crowd and though she didn't know enough to make the comparison, if she had ever attended a stadium sports event, she would have recognized that same sort of energy as the crowd got caught up in the game.

The music itself was coming from her and without conscious intent she was guiding that wavelength, acting as the stone while the crowd became the ripples in the water. She'd plundered every electronic database she could find for music, then taken to scanning music sheets and working out how it was meant to sound. Burning power little bits at a time but the dance...

The dance made up for it, in a way. When the dance finally finished, the stories would begin, everybody in the same state of mind, empathizing with her. With new arrivals every day she often re-told stories that some had heard before but none seemed to mind. Stories of challenges they had faces, people they had met, Skal myths and anecdotes and news from the old lands. If she was lucky she might get 1% charge. 1.5% if she got them really into it and the crowd was large. The group got larger every night.

In the darkness the firelight danced as much as the Skal, flickering and throwing shadows. They'd taken to doing this in the sparse woods between Durjak and the Blue Keep, mainly to keep from disturbing Durjak. Sometimes the residents came to watch and listen but few understood what was being said, so the stories didn't work with them.

As the Skal began to melt away into the night after the last of the stories, she stood in front of the fire, still burning strong. As the last of them slipped into the night she watched the fire dying down, taking her time. She was naturally nocturnal anyways.

Then she wasn't alone, suddenly. Next to her stood the likeness of a Skal, but it was no particular breed. All of the Skal she knew were animalistic; sometimes new species that took root in the land would also become Skal. Whatever this was wasn't a shadow, but it seemed to change and dance like one in the dying firelight. It had a presence that mere shadows didn't have.

She didn't sense malevolence. The entity sat down next to her in the grass, apparently content to keep company with her.

"You are not panicking."

Kuri nodded. "You're right, I'm not."

"Do you know what I am?"

"I have no idea."

The thing next to her turned its head as though looking into the fire. "I am what the Skal would call a god."

"Ah." She nodded slowly. "I've heard of shamans speaking directly to you before. This seems new, though?" She glanced over at it, curious.

"Yes. You are the first of your kind to reach a social familiarity sufficient to understand any of this. It happened much faster than we anticipated. Social contact outside of your own cultures would not have happened for hundreds of thousands of years in normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances."

"No." She bowed her head a little. "Am I doing this right? I'm just guessing, trying to guide them while they learn to deal with..." She made a vague gesture around them to indicate 'everything'.

"Yes. Do you know what the most difficult thing to find in the universe is?"

"People who care without conditions?"

"No. People."

That got a puzzled look from her. "What?"

"We approve of your efforts to socialize the Skal. It will require altering our uplift program earlier, but the benefit will be worth it. But you are limited."

She turned her head to look at the shadow-being. "Limited how?"

The thing next to her seemed to fold in on itself, loop over itself and fold it on itself again, then split into geometric shapes and unfold like a flower at the center of which floated a tiny, indigo gem. The 'flower' folded back inwards and disappeared, leaving the gem to fall and thump gently as it landed in the grass.

Reaching over she picked it up to examine it, only to have it break apart in her fingertips and turn to indigo sand that seemed to begin crawling up her arm. Her first response was fear before she clamped down on it, reminding herself that if it was truly one of the Skal divinities then it probably wouldn't harm her. Probably.

She still felt it as it reached her shoulder and then seemed to flow through her and her breath was stolen away.

In her hands, the staff flickered weakly.

On her ears, all along the rim, a new set of piercings appeared, a dozen glowing rings and studs and a small chain that ran from the tip of one ear to the bottom of it.

After a few moments she pulled herself up off the grass and spun the staff, holding it behind her with a snap. When she did, the head of her staff pulsed with that same weak, flickering light for a second.

"Thank you." She whispered it quietly, not knowing whether or not she was heard.

 

Kurishalia

She loved the smell of the flowers. Even the smell of the dirt, which was everywhere, thanks to Samazurasha.

"Sammy." She said it with the same tone as an exasperated mom. "Why are you being so messy?"

Sammy sat up from the hole he was diligently deepening. "'cuz it's fun, of course. Besides, spreading the dirt around helps the grass."

"You're getting it on me."

"So? You never used to mind."

"I never used to have baths. Come, I think your hole is deep enough already."

That got a disappointed aww from him, but he climbed out while she gestured across the field to the Big People. Together they started carrying a crate over to the two Skal, too large and heavy for Kuri and Sammy to handle.

"Why're we doing this, again?"

"To grow food. Trade is good but we need things to trade, of course. And I like having fresh vegetables and herbs for cooking."

"But why don't we just go gather it?" He seemed genuinely puzzled. "That's what we always used to do and it was okay."

As the two humans put the crate down, one of them ruffled Sammys ears, giving him a smile. Sammy beamed back at him, tail actually wagging.

"Sure, but it would be much easier if we didn't have to go searching, so we'll grow our own, like the Tovari do. The genkits call it 'farming'. They have big tracts of land to support huge cities, apparently. All their wilderness cut up into plots for growing things." She made a face.

"I can't imagine that but it doesn't sound nice."

"Well, no, not if you made everything like that. But if everybody grows some of their own food it wouldn't have to be that way, right?" As she spoke she opened the crate, taking out the seedlings and beginning to plant them in the dirt, labeling them.

"I guess... Seems like a lot of work though."

"Price of progress, little brother. Doing this will make enough food that if we can teach the others back home, they'll never have to worry about gathering enough for winter. We could even trade the extras to the hunters and teach them how to keep animals."

His eyes widened. "Meaaaaat?"

"Yes, Sammy, meat."

"I changed my mind, I think I like this idea."

She snickered. "You like growing your flowers, right? This is just like that."

"I loooooove my flowers." He swayed his entire upper bodies as he said it. "It always smells so nice at home. Your home is like that too but you have different flowers so it smells nice in a different way."

"Well, imagine what it'll smell like when I always have spices to cook with." That got his tail going again and she couldn't help but smile a little.

Sammy got quiet for a minute while she worked, then got up and started helping her plant the seedlings. "What's gonna happen to us if we stay here?"

"What do you mean?"

"This world. This place. You know."

She hm'ed, sitting back and plunking her butt down in the grass, feet out in a V in front of her. "I imagine we'll keep adapting and that will change us. We'll grow up as a people, I hope. Maybe even one day unite the clans."

That got a snort from him. "Like THAT will ever happen."

"Hey, a girl can dream."

He flicked some dirt at her. "You're not a girl, you're a mom."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Sammy, I've never born children."

"You never needed to, you're just like that with everyone." He shrugs, planting seedlings as he spoke. "You've always taken care of me, even though I'm a little stupid -"

"No you're not."

"Shh." He held up a hand to stop her and accidentally flung dirt at her doing it, forcing her to lean to the side so it sailed past her head. "You know I am, compared to you. To all the shamans. You're all a little smarter than the rest of us, you get stuff." He shrugs. "It's okay, it's why you're all so revered. You're important. But most of the other shamans, they're kind of remote, you know? Detached. You've never been that way."

She gave him a curious look, one ear flopped as she tilted her head, tail twitching behind her. What was he getting at?

He shrugged at her look. "I guess I'm saying thank you? Sometimes I don't really understand everything going on but you always keep me on track. I dunno what'll happen but..." He shrugged. "You say it's okay, then it's okay."

Getting up she leaned over and hugged him, pressing her forehead to his for a moment. There was a quiet sort of purr-chirp between them - neither even realizing it - before she got up and smeared dirt on the top of his nose, making him laugh and bat her hand away.

"What's after this stuff?"

"Well, I'll probably spend some time studying with Aetius later. Both of us need to catch up on all the stuff the genkits know."

"Hey, you're not angling to keep him as a partner, are you?"

She gave him a funny look. "No, of course not. He's not Skal, that would never... he's huge compared to me."

"You spend a lot of time with him though? And you never took a mate, so..."

"I spend a lot of time with you, you bent twig." She hm's. "I suppose I just never met somebody I looked at that way."

"Yeah, but if all you're looking for is leaves, you'll never see the nice rocks around them. You'll just be looking at the leaves."

She smiled at him. "Don't ever tell me you're stupid, you butt. You're probably right though. I wasn't even really looking."

"Find someone to court so you can get them to plant your veggies for you."

She rolled her eyes at him and tossed some more dirt his way.