A moment for pause and celebration...

[Reverance]

​

Selvaris

Recently partially vong-formed

Early Morning - Time of Celebration and Escalation


Gabriel stood upon the pinnacle of his recent creation, the proclamation of Vong ascendancy over Selvaris, and the reclamation of native habitats and return to center. Towers of biological advancement grew layer upon layer, floor upon floor, as workers piled shaped yorik coral atop one another to manifest monstrous formations for the purpose of shelter and experimentation. Re-purposed, the buildings breathed and lived just as all Vong specimens do and perhaps, in this moment, their beauty was something behold against the backdrop of the barren land that surrounded them. Such a brutal scorched earth policy had left nothing in the wake but vong plants and lambent trees, still gripping to life and the shock of transplantation. Vong beasts of all assortments roamed the land freely, stopped only by built up garrisons for the native population who had been saved for numerous reasons. Primarily, they were a source of income and though they may now live in the fearsome shadow of the One Sith, they continued to move forward and live. Such was their existence now, survival, but not for all. For some, they found life removed as they were whisked away in the middle of the night, torn from their home for the purpose of biot development and torture, both things that interested the shapers of Hrosha-Gul.

The Sith Lord stood upon an unnamed hill, gazing as he often did, in silence. He wore an unzipped flack vest, tattooed and scarred flesh was exposed upon chest and arms, to feel the breeze upon his skin and the serenity of this moment. The hill stood between recently vong-formed land, and those areas retained for native human populations. The swift juxtaposition, his posture upon the fulcrum between the two communities, was jarring to say the least. And this was the nature of the planet now: Bubbles of human civilizations nested, in cramp densities, between what was now primarily a Vong oriented planet. Goose bumps rose upon his skin as his mind drifted towards the potential for this planet, it's orientation so close to the core of the galaxy, and the technology that could be rendered from Vong ingenuity and lust for pain. Hair tied back in a knot, he felt the furious itch upon the swirl of skin formed over sealed eye, as he recalled his purpose on this dry plateau.

A call in the night to [member="Matsu Xiangu"], a longing to once again find comfort and pain in her intoxicating presence. Not in the field of battle, not upon lands being ripped from bloody hands by the fierce grip of the One Sith. No, he wanted to experience her in the circumstance where he could welcome such inebriation. Mind drifted to thoughts of events on Annaj and the consequences of such obsessive tendencies. In the simplest terms, he missed her, more than just seeing her as she escaped his vision in midst of turmoil. As much as someone like him could miss someone, he did. And he waited upon crest of land, hoping that she would get here in time. In time for the rituals of Escalation.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She was surrounded by the symphony of Vong even within a camp slightly removed from their continued shaping as she passed through the night, an insectile ticking akin to the ambience of cricket-song on a planet less changed. Though the frantic hum of growth and activity lingered long in to the night on this new Selvaris the early morning felt like a breath held, a moment’s pause before throwing back in to the galvanizing grind of the Vong’s pursuit of pain. Sleep came at strange hours lately and Matsu was awake when he called, though she would have pulled herself from her bed regardless.

As she climbed the hill, quiet as the man who stood at the top, she looked up at Gabriel and wondered at how she’d gotten here. It had never been her intention to do more than assist, perhaps steal a few more glimpses of the things he could do than she’d otherwise be afforded if she hadn’t fallen in with the Sith. And yet here she was at the end of yet another of their conquests – truly, she’d lost count. She’d taken up more permanent residence on Coruscant. She’d trained their up-and-coming, led troops, spilled blood in their name. She was, perhaps, a blasphemer to their Dark Lord, rather indifferent to its existence or mission, but Matsu had always done exactly what she wanted to. She was built for carnage, conquest, the strung-out afterglow of confrontation’s end – all things the One Sith provided in spades. Her old Master’s affiliation had drawn her in, but she stayed for the blood, and she stayed for Gabriel. So much of their lives happened independently – he, with his hundred-hundred years of developed appetites and interests and she with experiments and exploration – and yet she was never unaware of him. On the contrary, perhaps she belonged back in the Hell they’d escaped for how often she indulged in pride in respect to him, a sin among many he seemed to inspire.

Stopping at his side, blending in to the early morning shadows in a dark bodysuit, she reached to run her fingers over a larger run of scar tissue over his ribs – a strange greeting, but it was in her nature. She’d been worried when her remaining arm had been taken that she’d never feel anything at her fingertips again, gore or brain or flesh. Her original replacement had been unrefined, lacking in a proper substitute for her nervous system. She’d felt nothing with her left hand for a decade. But Neuro-Saav had taken care of it’s own and she could feel the raised lines of his scars with hands that promised to hurt him as much as heal him.

When she’d had her fill she looked out over the expanse of vong-formed planet beneath them, her voice quiet when she finally chose to speak. “You’ve done well.” An understatement, but she preferred hyperbole in visions, not in speech.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Her fingers crawled across his ribs and scars and tattoos, moving in a dose of stimulation, as he clenched his jaw in surprise momentarily. Turning his head, he couldn't help but lift the corner of his mouth in a smile, that she arrived so quickly upon request. He paused, allowing the tantalizing touch of her prosthetic limb to linger further upon his skin, relishing the proximity that he had been so far removed from in the recent days of conquest and destruction. He wanted more but settled for the appetizers, in anticipation for the main course."I have done very little...Matsu." He surveyed her form, the figure trapped within the black bodysuit that hugged her small frame and gave hints to secrets he had once been made privy, and lusted for once more. But more so, he desired that power and that coupled activation of receptors and emotions in response to the intermingling of pain and pleasure. A spider playing with her food, he longed to be devoured.

Reaching down, he placed his hand upon the small of her back and pulled her closer as he began walking down the hill, towards the Vong division of the region. She could fight his insistence, he imagined, though he doubted such prospects. After all, she could always dig in and draw blood and bore bated breath from the manifestation of his internal wishes. "I'm glad you came in time...I wanted to show you something." He truly wanted to show her everything, but time allotment would be a concern for such ambitious intentions. He looked out towards the towering structures of Vong monoliths, bubbled coral cutting jagged holes in the blood-orange sky. Slivilith screams echoed as they circled the living skyscrapers, as defiled corpses were tossed from nictitating windows and caught upon tentacles. For those not caught for food, husk-carriers were ushered around the large bases of the buildings to carry the dead to mass burials.

"After great victories, such as the taking of a planet..." He smiled, remembering the days of the burning fields and the wetland reformation into vonduun crab bogs. "Sub-alterns, a lower rank of the vong warrior caste system will celebrate with a promotion. The process is called Escalation." He wanted her to see the ritual for a number of reasons. Mostly, it reveled in the same sort of sadistic tendencies that she favored and that he loved about her, if love was the right word. Maybe infatuation or lust was more apt. But on top of that, with the addition of the prosthetics, the change in her physiology closed resembled the biological ritual in both the process and the purpose. Something weakened or damaged is strengthened through pain, parallels that form across the universe. "If you'd like, we have been invited to spectate the ritual to our hearts content...There are over a thousand occurring today."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Despite her penchant for pain, it was the balance of his strength – the fear that ran rampant in anyone in the room when he entered, the demand for relief from the wall of his silence – that drew her to him. That he craved receiving what she was so adept at giving and yet still struck her as ultimately unbreakable in her hands was what set him apart from any other creature she’d known. So she didn’t mind the direction of his hand, answering his diverting of her compliment with a quiet ‘hmmm’. She should have known he would not accept.

She knew little of the Vong, the extent of her experience limited to various battlefields over the past several months. She knew they despised the Force, that their technology wasn’t so much technology as bioengineering. And she knew that they revered pain, saw it as both proving ground and pleasure. The last was all she really would have needed to understand the level of involvement Gabriel had taken with their kind. Whether a hobby or true interest she wasn’t sure, but either way he knew far more than her of the extragalactic species. She appreciated their capacity for irreverence however, demonstrated by the wet squelch of a discarded corpse as it missed a tentacle and hit the ground, bursting like overripe fruit. The head rolled to a stop with glazed eyes watching the pair wander by and Matsu imagined it looked accusing, teeth jutting from maxilla made more obvious by a lack of mandible.

A celebration for Vong could mean nothing but exquisite pain, something she would be more than interested in seeing. Their predilection for organ grafting promised a sight more visceral than the violence observable in most species in the galaxy at least from what Matsu had seen, and she made it her work to find the strangest sights the stars had to offer. “A thousand…” she repeated, her tone confirmation of what he must surely have already assumed. She imagined snapshots of grotesque scene after grotesque scene looped endlessly, the sound of carapace cracked open to reveal guts rearranged at will over and over and over again. “Yes, I’d like to see.”

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VV8sgVSZNQ​

"Good...I wanted to show you this." To experience it with her, to taste it all with her, to share the bath and soak in the pain. An inflection of lust to turn into a promise of more to come, to incite that cruel curiosity that hid behind darkened and tempting eyes, so often held at arms length. A sort of serenity in their intensity, silent as much as was musing, he craved to release that beast from the unlocked cage and roll through the universe with it. But for now, spectacle would bring salivation and salvation of a soul that longed just for her presence in this place, in the here and now. His hand drifted from the low of her back to her prosthetic limb, intermingling his and her fingers between one another, as his eye looked forward into the tower of darkness that stood agape and ever inviting at the prospect of their increasing proximity.

For the most part, the faction of the Legion Yun'Do were filled with the fanatical basin of those that so often turned scarred nasal cavity and unsheathed bone towards the notions of technology and their heretical ways. Many a night, he had spent time deep in the discussion of things, as the practice of flaying became the right of passage for those not openly welcomed into the group. Even in the upper echelons of the Shai domain, Gabriel towered far above them in his fascination for pain. But where they had their God, he had something far more powerful and potent. His lust for pain was a self-devouring thing, folding upon itself in constant rotation, finding bending knee before her, in constant prayer for more, begging for it, to his own personal God. A drug that one never forgets, always an addict, always a craving, constant and never ending devotion. They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, well it's even worse for obsession.

The coral and living structure welcomed their entrance with the thralls of Vong that stood around the inner carapace, a gauntlet of spiked flesh and sharpened teeth to those they welcomed for their intrinsic kinship. That while they were born in different worlds and different times, they appreciated these finer and more vilified things of life. Dark eyes, beady in wide set sockets, bore down upon Matsu in reluctant acceptance, having never known her full capacity for misery and inquisitive squalor. Soon enough, given time and presence, they would decree something far more authoritative then the title given to Gabriel, who wore the scars of flesh removed upon the inner forearms and outer legs. A requisition of trust, the solace of knowing that the transfer of power was given to someone who earned it. Respect birthing reward.

The focus turned from the newcomers, continuing towards a table as shapers moved about in dancing chorus, full operation occurring. Gabriel encircled Matsu, his hands finding relaxed position crossed over one another on her abdomen, arms wrapped around her as he stood closely from behind. He would give her space to interact should she desire it, an odd gentleness to his grasp. The scream of the Vong warrior was violent and overwhelming, nearly overcoming his attempts to communicate with her. Whispering in to her ear, his spoke basic, to which the Vong wouldn't understand, having been requested to not employ the tizowyrm. "Steng's talons...made from the bioengineered sgaura bones, covered with yorik coral. Without any anaesthesia, the shapers operate on the warrior, upon his request, to physically embed the species into the body. It's one of the more honor bound forms of Escalation and often leads to death. But for those that survive, they often become prominent members of their domain." He looked on, his silence consuming of her presence, as he watched the shapers continue their work. If anything, Gabriel hoped that Matsu would recognize the similarities of her prosthetics to those of not only the escalated, but also the shapers. Not that he sought to change her, he would sooner cage a Ralltiir tiger, but to bridge the gap between her and the people he had learned to accept as his own - he wanted it more than he would admit.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Though in most ways she was not the same person (mentally or physically) she'd been when she'd first struck out in the Galaxy, there were some things that remained the same - primarily, a love for learning. The subject did not matter though of course she had her favorites, as evidenced by the hundreds of brains she'd harvested herself kept safe and cool in jars in a room made just for that purpose, or the way she sat in someone's head as they died. But she would absorb anything she could get her hands on, any experience she could have either first-hand or vicariously. Her life was characterized by fascination.

So when Gabriel spoke she hung on his every word through the chorus of agonized screaming, filing his explanation away for safekeeping in a vault of a mind.

She moved her arms to rest over his, a motion as thoughtless as the fluttering of her fingers as a Shaper cleaved arm from body, a trigger for phantom pain long forgotten. (The feeling of her muscle, surprisingly smooth, like running a finger over silk before she tore through more of it. Strings of skin pulled taut, begging to hold on to what she’d cut away, forearm swinging grotesquely.) The smell of the warrior’s blood reminded her vaguely of dirt, a black pool rolling like syrup, hanging like the moment before release at the lip of the table before spilling over in thin strands. (Blood in the snow.) The Shapers seemed to pay it no mind as they worked, walking through it as they completed the ritual. They worked with the speed of the practiced and the knowledge that they had hundreds more to complete, stepping back as the first of the day gave one final heave and expired. She felt a shiver up her spine at the thought of what might have been, of her corpse under a mountain’s shadow. Dragged off without ceremony, the body was replaced with another who would seek the favor of their gods.

Stepping from Gabriel’s arms, she made to move closer to the table. She didn’t understand their body language – or their language at all, for that matter – but the sudden buzzing that shot through the gathering as she approached stilled her, their disquiet giving her pause. Although she didn’t turn her head to look, she watched the Shapers looking over her shoulder at Gabriel before seeming to acquiesce to whatever he’d done or said to reassure them. Even still she didn’t interfere, moving as close as she could and following the rhythm of their movement around the table. From this angle she could see every detail of their work, the strange biology of their species on display both in the pulsating inner workings of the warrior hoping for escalation and the hands of the Shapers. She found herself lost in their movements, a business-like efficiency as they scraped and pulled and threaded and directed. For the most part they seemed to accept her observation, for once an alien truly and not just in behavior – she even thought they seemed curious about her curiosity, but perhaps she was just imagining it.

The second of the day was a success, his blood mingling with that of his predecessor to drip along the uneven texture of his back as he rose and lifted his replacement. The parallels to her own experience were not lost on her. But as a human there was a certain natural revulsion at the thought of losing a limb, a body-horror she knew well. She’d always imagined the Yuuzhan Vong as a species immune to that sort of singular emotion. “What does it mean to them?” she asked her fellow Lord, watching one of the Shapers turn their head to listen to her Basic though she didn’t seem to understand. “Is it survival itself that elevates them, or do they believe themselves favored?” One could almost hear the gears in her head spinning.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

He felt her warmth escape him, the pause in his own reflection as he mentally grasped at her presence, as if his insides were falling out and lunging scrambling arms scurried to pull them back in, pushing bloated flesh back into a wrapper cut open and far too small. Outwardly, he remained unmoved, as his arms crossed across his chest and his expression resembled that of acceptance. He was pleased in her sort of enthusiasm, marked curiosity, morbid and delightful. He had seen hundreds of escalation procedures, the tugging of pain and flesh was a thing he had long been accustomed. But to feel her look upon it with new eyes, he watched vicariously and envious of her silent zephyr.

He gave a long and piercing gaze to the shapers, who had known this practice of speculation before, and accepted the change in the mood - her approach gave them a close sponsor, gleefully compiling knowledge as a tunnel spider builds it's abode. It was a foundation for her, an understanding drawn from the capacity to see and touch and feel and experience, living in the moment of this individuals pain. Gabriel found himself outside the house he normally lived within, looking in at where he often rested in recliner. Where her curiosity normally burned holes into his flesh with a smile and laugh, it now drew stern mental consumption upon the broken flesh of the vong. And the Sith Lord would do everything he could to help appease her appetite; as much as he was one for being in the fray, he enjoyed the occasional view from a distance. Well, the mental distance, anyway.

Walking behind her, he surveyed the table before them, his right hand resting upon her right hip as it crossed the small of her back. His crimson gaze, matching the pouring outflow of the life from the Vong, remained split between the display and her facial expressions. A mix of micro-expressions, often missed by the lay-men, told stories of the thoughts rolling through that mind. He couldn't help but smile at her question, as he looked at her to confirm the eventual release of an answer, his attention turning back towards the newly promoted as he celebrated with gesticulation and a scream that could peel paint from the walls. Gabriel laughed and lifted a left arm, shaking the hand that hadn't been operating on, before helping him down and watching him shuffle away, holding his operated limb in pain. And just like that, another was slid upon the table, and the pair were allowed their spot to watch, despite the obstacle they presented.

The next one was a different biot, the emplacement of extra knuckles with and extending species that could retract a blade at will. He leaned over, eye fixed upon the Vong. "Fighter's claws...parasites that burrow into the flesh, extending sharpened conical blades with the clench of the forearm flexors. I have been told they cause pain with each use." As he was near Matsu now, he brushed past what the Vong might have thought, and kissed her softly upon her head. Anything more and he may not have been capable of controlling himself. Turning his face not entirely away from her, he would proceed to answer her question. "The warrior caste worships Yun-Yammka..." He whispered, just barely audible above the screams that were now ensuing. "One of many deities, the God requires blood and death sacrifices, but even more so, glorification through pain and scarification. To endure pain in this way is to please their God...As the Gods sacrificed their bodies in the creation of the universe, so must they for the greater purpose." He let the thought roll around as the operation continued, blood spilling from revealed tendons and muscles as the alien species slithered its way through striations with the callous injection of forceps. Skin pulled back and revealing the screaming Vong for what she was, Gabriel continued to feed Matsu the knowledge she desired. "The Vong have a modified nervous system, allowing for enhancement of pain through conductive stimuli...and believe that nothing can be learned without the presence of pain."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There’d been a time when physical touch had been just as shocking as a mental one to her, unwelcome and threatening. Once she might have stiffened at the sensation of his hand at her lower back, fingers curling around her hip, but now she melted. By nature she was a queen, never denied that which she wanted. She knew little of mercy, a study in domination in an unlikely package. At first whatever they’d shared had been just that – she’d invited him to her room that first night out of a desire to crush something that presented the only real challenge she’d ever come across, something that had unsettled her as much as excited her. Oh, and she had. She could still remember being amazed not only at his tolerance but how he always came back for more. She’d stayed in bed late the next morning, tangled in her sheets with the taste of his blood in her mouth and aches of her own as maid-droids bustled around her rooms cleaning the mess she’d made with him. But it had become something she hadn’t anticipated, evidenced no more clearly than the flutter she felt when he kissed the top of her head. She smiled, a micro-expression to match the rest but one he’d see easily.

Going back to her study, she repeated him as he spoke the god’s name, testing their tongue. “Yun-Yammka…” The more she listened the more she thought she might like this god of theirs. Perhaps it was blasphemous or vainglorious to compare oneself to a deity – she considered herself a quiet power, silent and patient and without the same need to be recognized that so many others held – but she felt some sort of sameness with the foundation of their beliefs. She sacrificed her body, had become something greater. Perhaps they’d make blood sacrifices to her someday. Enough blasphemy for one day.

It was without thought that she reached forward as the Shapers prepared the replacement, prying at the vessels already exposed by forceps. Humans, and most of the alien species native to their Galaxy, all looked like thick red meat sliced open the way this Vong was, muscle surrounding a white ring of humerus with barely a nerve path or artery to be determined within such a mass. That this species resembled nothing she was familiar with wasn’t surprising, muscle striated with dozens more thin nerves present than any other being she knew of surrounding a system that seemed to writhe around itself, though that made sense with what Gabriel was explaining. The ear-piercing screaming of the Vong she was essentially dissecting didn’t bring her back to reality though the crowding of one of the Shapers did, moving out of the way and allowing them their ritual.

Why he’d brought her wasn’t lost on her, at least in part. Whatever greater purpose this show served, that it bore so much resemblance to the pain she’d gone through was obvious. But for those that survive, they often become prominent members of their domain. She looked up at him, turning her body back in to his hold and running a hand across the hard expanse of his stomach to curl around his ribs. “Thank you…”

And then, after a moment… “Can you ask if they’d let me take some of their brains?”

Incorrigible.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

Music to his ears. The woman most important in his life, repeating the name of a God worshiped by his people, for the sake of pain. He couldn't have been happier then he was now, watching her actively pursue this culture with a clear and purposeful enthusiasm. She may have been cold and calculating, but blood and passion were intermingled in her mind much like the marriage of pain and pleasure within his. He would continue to breath just to feel her bated breath, the rise and fall of her torso in excitement, at the prospect of hurting him.

The shapers were warned before hand about Matsu's more hands-on approach to the escalation process - she was one for tactile stimuli given the proper setting and context, Gabriel would know that more than most. While unorthodox, they found a certain gratification in the predicted fascination of the Atrisian. While the Vong felt themselves superior to most races, mostly due to their rejection of the force, which was ironically not something they could control, they appreciated the notion of others looking towards the heavens for guidance. Or down into hell, given the proper leaning.

Her actual interaction with the process was unnerving for them though, as they hastened to prepare the warrior for his ascent. Gabriel covered his mouth as he censored a laugh, a muffled sound escaping his lips, as he waited for them to shoo her out of the way. And so they did, proceeding with their work, she found her way back against him, fingers tracing the ribs and bringing to mind thoughts of scars across his body, perfectly matching the nails that now entranced him. As she thanked him and uttered the quirky question that so accurately personified her, he couldn't help but smile, his top teeth pressing against bottom lip as he lifted his hand. His fingers fiddled with a loose bang hair as he watched the cogs move behind those deep eyes.

Not physically deep, set against the face with that sort of perfect appeal. More deep in that so much had occurred to her, in the short span of her life, that he stood in awe of the perfection of her being, a thing reflected in those ever searching eyes. Constantly capturing, constantly scouring, constantly outward looking and cognizant. Like looking at the stars upon clear night, superficial glimpse of the woman gave no true inclination at the magnitude within. A bauble from afar, the immensity of a celestial body. She may have not been ancient, like him, but she didn't need to be. There was a density there, a volume of experience that took him so much longer to accumulate, and in contrast, he suddenly felt light in her arms. And it dawned on him.

He loved this woman, more than sharks love blood. And he would never scream it from the mountains or profess his love in grand scales, but in his own way, he was committed to her. The inner confession felt strange, for someone so seamlessly removed from orthodox emotions. But he had no other words for it, the likes of which were shown through action. A kiss placed upon the bridge of her nose and with the upward tilt of her chin, one upon her lips. With the moment grasped for the tenderness it was, shared between a sadist and masochist meant for each other with torture and mutilation in the foreground, he pulled away and smirked slowly.

"Let me see what I can do..." He whispered as he unraveled himself from her hold, if only for the moment, before pulling aside a shaper. Matsu may not have been able to hear the words spoken, but she may have seen the movement of his lips, the likes of which foretold the speaking of a language far removed from basic. It was likely Vong. With a smile and pat on the shoulder, Gabriel walked back over to Matsu, bending to her will as he always would. She was his queen, deserving of desires fulfilled. And with a smile, he closed the distance and drug the tip of his finger across the shoulder seam of her suit. While the distance was one born of his wish to be near her for however long he could, the truth was that he needed to whisper to prevent anyone over hearing his words. After all, while he had made requests for the lack of tizowyrm use, he couldn't be sure everyone took heed of the command.

"In three more escalations, they will be promoting a shaper with the shaper headdress. It will require removal of the top portion of the skeleton and implant of the biot..." His idle fingers continued along, no direction in general. "They intend to botch the procedure but until they do, you'll have free reign to remove to your hearts content." He feigned a frown. "I don't suspect the individual will survive." This was a common practice of the shaper craft, explanations for the future or perhaps pillow talk. While it was believed that failure to accept biots was the fault of the escalated, and thus intervention by the Gods, the truth of the matter was that it was a failure on the part of the shaper, either intentionally or unintentionally. It was an aspect of the culture he refused to root out, despite the loss of ranks, negligible as it was.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She watched something run across his features after her question, a split-second expression too quick for her to truly read. She couldn’t know what he was feeling behind the familiar fortress surrounding his thoughts, but then again she didn’t have to. Returning his kiss, she ran her hand from his side to his jaw, never happier for the artificial nerve endings in her cybernetic than now, for the simple ability to feel him under her fingers.

She loved him too.

They were apart before the Vong could offer their species’ equivalent of a throat-clearing, the warrior Matsu had taken a more hands-on approach with being dragged from the table, another unsuccessful escalation. She already had a dozen more questions (where do they think they go if they fail? why do they hate the Force? are they born to a caste or does each cultivate the talents to join one? and on and on and on) but before she could ask them he’d stopped her with a smirk. It was an expression that always caught her off guard when he wore it – it promised something more, something that started a buzzing in her brainstem, a violence she associated with him. Or in this case, getting what one of them wanted.

She walked around slowly to watch the shapers begin work on another warrior though she looked up to Gabriel often. She hadn’t realized the extent to which these people were his until now, seeing not only how they looked to him, but how naturally he worked in their presence. They appeared to have no difficulty understanding him as he spoke a language she could only assume was theirs, not pegging them for the sort of creatures that would bother spending their time learning another people’s tongue. And when he patted the Vong on the shoulder it dawned on her that there was always something more of him to discover, that he was as endlessly fascinating as the mind or another’s pain to her. When he dragged a finger along the seam of her suit, agonizingly slow and in juxtaposition to the violent screaming from the warrior being shaped, it took everything she had not to drag him to the ground and have him right there.

She let out something of a laugh as he ‘frowned’. “A shame.”

The escalations passed in violent rhythm, a rotation of anticipation, screaming, shapers’ flurry of practiced concentration, ending in either celebration or post-mortem shame. The majority of the time she kept near him, back pressed to his front in a position she thought would serve to quiet her growing need, as she couldn’t see him.

She moved away from him, walking around the table again as she had before, no different than any other observation she’d made throughout the day’s rituals thus far. She was willing to play part to the Shaper’s planned botching if it meant getting her hands on the brain of a species she’d never had a chance to see firsthand. Somehow she controlled herself until they’d opened part of the skull, peeling it back to reveal an organ similar in a few ways to a human’s, but for the most part entirely unrecognizable. She would have liked to remove the entire thing but that usually required an environment more conducive to cracking open an entire skull down to the occipital and being able to reach her fingers around – it was a delicate thing to pull the brain from the skull just enough to reach down and cut through bone and brainstem to pull it free. Now was probably not the time and place.

As they placed the skull to the side Matsu went in for a closer look, feigning her usual amount of interest as the Shapers ignored the slight extension of her claws as she reached forward and carved. She was careful to monitor the screaming and thrashing of the shaper under the knife, not wanting to go too far and kill her; Matsu didn’t know if the Vong would be offended at her speeding what they intended to botch anyway, but she knew she’d be a little annoyed if someone took her kill. Pieces in hand, she palmed them and stepped back as if she’d seen enough. (It would never be enough. She’d rather be sitting there, listening to the crunch and crack of bone as she worked her way deeper, feel the sudden freedom first when they stopped moving, and then when every failsafe to keep the brain in its place gave way under her work.) She had nowhere to put them that wouldn’t compromise their peak condition, but it didn’t much matter to her. These wouldn’t be for her usual experiments – just a prize, a morbid reminder of a morning she’d enjoyed, a few slices of Vong brain to put in a jar full of preservatives and add to her collection. She had about an hour before they started to look less than healthy, at least by conventional standards of decay. The Vong might have entirely different physiology, an observation that would be interesting in and of itself.

Moving back to Gabriel, she took the liberty of reaching out and delicately, with one finger, pulling back one of the pockets on his pants and tucking the pieces inside. “Do you mind?” she asked, looking up at him and smiling the kind of cheeky fang-bearing grin she reserved for him. Someday, when he let her in his head, she would share things with him. She would build magnificent things for him, entertain him for hours. She could provide the kind of pain impossible in reality, expand on his proclivities in a way no one else was capable of. She could show him exactly how she saw him.

“A few more?” she queried, mostly trying to discern if he’d planned anything else though in truth she wanted to see another survive, one more reminder of the parallels he’d wanted her to see – who she’d been, what she’d become. She tapped on the pocket she’d slipped the brain in. “And then I need to get that in something. No offense, but your pocket isn’t conducive to preservation.”

Nerd.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

"A shame indeed..." He whispered as he titled his head, watching the women devour the knowledge through sight and tactile sensation - eyes that could see, hands that could feel, nose that could smell. The Arkanian could appreciate the sort of scientific exploration that Matsu seemed to be so focused on, having known that sort concentration first hand. As she moved about the table, he crossed his arms for the purposes of comfort, the cogs moving behind the glass crimson eye, as if watching everything move without truly focusing on anything in particular. A field of grass as the wind blows, not a single blade missed, not a single one counted.

She dived into the process with rudimentary knowledge, far different from how she had done against his flesh in what felt like an eternity ago. Sheets stained in blood, the pallor of skin that offset against the rose of scars and black of tattoos - he closed his eye for a moment, the recollection was fresh and came with ease. She had a way with pain, a mastery over the sensation and collected passions as to assume she had always known it intimately. But as soon as it was there, she was back and tugging at him, her positioning precarious for the current tempo of the scenario. A piece of flesh placed in his pocket, that almost innocent smile deceiving the world for what lied beneath. He knew better, glad to have that in-depth knowledge, surviving her just to receive her once more. Again and again, he could live happy in such an unbroken cycle.

"Just beyond this structure, I have a small living facility...a place for me to think..." And play, he thought, though they had so little time for that these days. Between the conquests and changes in the One Sith operation, they had both been consumed by work, not often taken to hobbies or extra curricular activities. The facility was a marriage between natural appeal and the advancement of technology, hidden from prying view of the Vong. It allowed him time away from the carnage and destruction, if only to come up for air, before jumping back in head first. Beneath the facility, a basement was prepared in anticipation of Matsu partaking in her more unique habits. While he had never taken part himself, he was naturally aware and supportive of her proclivities. The mind must be fed, after all. "You'll find what you need for that..." He said with the hint of a smile, as he flashed a gaze towards the pocket she tugged at. Placing his hands on her shoulders, he spun her slowly back towards the table and drew her in, a spider grappling it's prey.

She knew this proximity all too well, as he hugged her back and nudged her attention towards the shaper, press of the skin pushing her to see this last part through. His arms crawled beneath hers, before crossing once more along her stomach to grasp her tightly. "One more...and then we can go." He had thoughts towards some activities, but also towards some developing interests. He had always known that the Atrisian would find interest in the shaper practices, but he had never attempted to actually create a bridge for her. He would need to do some research, copies of personal manifests in his abode. "A firespitter..likely a relative of the fire breather, you surely have seen them between Manaan and Kashyyyk. The bones are removed from the forearm of the warrior and replaced with scales of the small species. The outer portion of the beast coils around the warriors arm until it is called, where it will blast the enemy with a ball of fire."

After this, the final escalation before a break for feasting, Gabriel would take her to prepare her specimen and see what other sorts of trouble they could get into.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She assumed he knew that despite wanting that particular slice of brain for herself, another jar on the wall, she was not so eager to leave behind that which he’d brought her to see. It sounded as if where he stayed wasn’t far and she had time – and more importantly, interest – enough to stay and watch what happened next.

She offered no resistance as he wrapped her back in his hold, enjoying the momentary relinquishing of control, molding to his body and resting her head on his chest as he pressed for one more shaping. “I’m in no rush,” she offered quietly, arms resting just above his, wrapping her fingers idly around them. This shaping as he explained it was the easiest to assimilate out of all she’d seen thus far. She knew so much, a head stuffed full with information she hoarded like treasure. It wasn’t that she needed to know everything, but that she liked to. The Galaxy was full of infinite wonders. But Vong were still completely foreign to her. She had names for nothing unique to their biology and knew only the basics of their culture. Manaan and Kashyyyk had given her more than enough experience watching them in battle, including the particular organisms Gabriel pointed out, but even still she would have been at a loss to describe what she was seeing. However instead of turning down the wealth of knowledge as overwhelming, she saw it as a challenge to conquer, an endeavor that would see her better for its completion. She guessed he’d come to such vast knowledge only through experience, something she would have to remedy for herself.

The shapers worked studiously, no hint of the inclination they held to botch the very thing they were trained for in their movements though now Matsu wondered if there was a reason for each escalation they let fall to the wayside or if it was simply whim. But he lived, raising the new limb in triumph despite body language wracked with pain. And in this too she felt a kindred emotion, the victory of finding oneself whole against terrible odds. Again the parallel brought the slightest of smiles to her face. She expected more, content to fall in to the rhythm of shape and scream, but it seemed the Vong had other plans. For a moment Matsu stayed where she was as they broke for their feast, listening to their alien tongue spoken in a far less turbulent situation than she was accustomed to hearing it. Like much of the Galaxy she’d never stopped to wonder about the Vong as a people, instead seeing them as the endless killing wave they presented on a battlefield. It made her feel strange in an entirely welcome way.

She was stuck watching them for a while, kneading her fingers absently against Gabriel’s arms. When another of their eardrum-rattling chorus of triumphant screams sounded, another celebration of a particularly esteemed escalation, Matsu snapped out of her observation. It was time to go while the getting was good, hearing intact. Tilting her head up to him, she looked past the salt-and-pepper spread light over a jawline she was perhaps more fond of than was healthy. “Let’s go to this place where you...think,” she suggested. Although there were things on her mind that certainly had nothing to do with what they’d just seen, she also planned on finding anything he had laying around about the Vong that she could get her hands on. He’d created a monster.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

He grabbed her prosthetic hand, something he had accepted as being a part of her as anything else attached, if not more so. In those limbs, pain manifested in something visible and tangible, the likes of which he could touch and trace with the trail of a sharpened nail. The hairs would rise upon flesh all the same, the sensation transpiring across synapses and nerves all the same, the jovial response across deceitfully delicate face was all the same. He might as well have been touching her real and natural skin. And while he held her with a firm grip, a titan balancing unbreakable glass between gingerly held fingers, he moved her within his wake - transcending this escalation to find exit at the back of the room. The gauntlet of vong, the screams of their presence, the wails of pain serenading the ascended, it would all become a receding whisper to their path as the man and woman, two sides of the very same coin, meeting through such fated events.

As they exited the organic building, they would see a large hill, covered in lush growth of fescue, giving hair to the dog. Upon the hill, a small building resided in jarring juxtiposition to the hellscape that was the autogenic succession of the vong-forming platform. Gabriel gave an odd expression to the woman at his side, as if mid pause to take in her presence before proclaiming another moment of visual chastity, casually climbing the hill to the place he called home in this alien land. The breeze across the hill gave an almost peaceful aspect to the land, is if it hadn't just recently been violated beyond recognition and destroyed for the purpose of Hrosha-Gul and the One Sith.

The wooden door to the house would open upon brass hinges, the shine of light casting columns to view the collection of dust. The house would open up with two floors, hard wood stained dark spread across multiple rooms. To the right, a large room filled to the brim with personal copies of the multitudes of manifestos kept by the Wrath. Mostly personal experience, but they were largely transcribed across parchment to binding by cronies aboard The Right Hand. It was there, that should Matsu look, she would find everything she needed on the Vong culture, particularly on the practice of shaping, to which the knowledge had been transcribed from cortex to written word. Straight forward, a long hallway would lead into a metallic kitchen of grays and blue, oddly offset by the rustic appeal of the house. Before the kitchen, the door to the right would lead down into the basement, an area specifically prepared for Matsu and her unique interests. Unique in the universe, though Gabriel shared in her passion and supped upon the consequences and paid all necessary expenses to keep specimens preserved and hobbies well practiced.

The large man, at least in respect to the Atrisian, strode into the kitchen. He set his flack vest down on the back of a stool, as he had nothing but flesh to offer the woman who accompanied him. That and a broken mind, unbreakable to her powers except as her request. Nonchalance characterized him as he pulled a plate from the cupboard above the countertop, metal doors opening upon polished silver hinges, with assisted closure for a silent seal. Pulling the brain out from his pocket, he placed the flesh upon the plate and slid it into the opened refrigerator, which was of course metal to match the room. As he closed the door, he approached the island, placing an apple on the permanent cutting board. One might notice that he failed to wash his hands, though the thought didn't seem to cross his mind, as he pulled a serrated knife from the block.

Back and forth, deftly, he dragged the etched blade across the flesh, pressing down softly as he halved the orb. The translucent spray was visceral and magnetic, clinging to the counter top as it shot from open wound upon flesh, as he flipped the halves over and quartered it before cutting out the seeds. It wasn't until he was finished that he realized he had cut a thin braid across his pointer finger. Eyeing the woman, he placed the index finger against his teeth as he slid the seeds and debris from the apple into the receptacle with the backside of the knife. "The library down the hall should have all the info you want...the basement was built for you. And the upstairs has additional rooms, including the master bedroom and shower. In case you wanted to clean up." He smiled as he placed the knife on the island, crossing one arm over his bare scarred and ink carved chest, his other hand placing a piece of apple between his lips as elbow rested against braced arm. He recalled that time upon Annaj, the mess and the cleanup that followed, and then the mess afterwards. It was one of the few times he felt truly gifted for his capacity for explicit memory anamnesis, that he could recall how she devoured him and how he had returned in kind.

His crimson eye, that stare that seemed to go on and on, followed her cooly, as he sated his desires on fond memories. If she wanted knowledge or pain, this was the place for her. And in both, she would find a true companion for the journey. But in his own ways, he would need to research something as well, as he manifested ideas upon blank canvas that needed research for true formulation.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She wouldn’t say it’d been a long time since they’d been alone like this together, but still enough to miss it. Hand dwarfed in his, she relished in the quiet he allowed without argument, taking comfort in just being near him. He’d always seemed to accept her habit of silence, granted she spoke more around him than most others.

The house was as she might have imagined it given time to dream it up, save for the kitchen. Following him inside, she lost track of his path when she glanced in the room to the right. To her this was the dragon’s horde, a cache of gold just sitting and waiting for her to take it. It seemed apropos that here in this place, dark-washed and gleaming, that there would be a room full of books when the information may have been easier to chronicle in data files or holologs. But that only made it more tempting – she loved the feeling of a book in her hands, diving in to a subject, study the only time her idle habit of twirling her hair between her fingers was on display. She might have just stayed in there, started with the tome closest to her and worked her way around, but the sound of plates being shuffled loud in the silence of the house managed to break her from her contemplation.

She found him just as he was pulling brains from his pocket and depositing them in the fridge, something that should have been off-putting to say the least to anyone else but just left Matsu feeling pleased. That would do for the moment. She had more pressing concerns. Standing in the doorway, perfectly bisected by the divide between hallway and kitchen, she studied him with the sort of open expression only the truly boundless were capable of.

To Matsu, lust and death had always been intertwined. There was something inherently beautiful about a thing that managed to outsmart all of them, that bided its time and took every single creature for its own given enough of it. Unstoppable. Equal in its hunger. The galaxy moved on past bodies being picked clean, the rolling faux-life of maggots cleaning bone, playing time-lapse decay in her mind. But she found it artful. A flash of a memory danced across her mind, finding its place among the sudden ramping of her thoughts as she watched him. She’d taken Kesare to some ocean planet, a stretch of beach like nothing the recently freed slave had ever seen before. Matsu had found her own treasure beneath the water, happening along a small two seater that must have crashed and sunk before its occupants could escape. She assumed the women strapped in to the pilot’s seat dead until she started moving, an almost dance-like motion against the current. Matsu could hardly believe the woman alive considering how long she’d appeared to have been down there, but upon closer inspection she realized the corpse was roiling with crabs feasting, pulling the body back and forth. Very, very artful. She could only hope to rule the same arena with such creativity. She spectated in other’s heads when Death came, studied that which in her mind was the ultimate god – cruel, uncompromising, that which undid all creation. She was not so foolish as to believe it would not one day come for her. She deserved it more than most. But it would know a kindred spirit: it would know a woman that would rot down to the skeleton with obscene alacrity just to see what this master had done.

So if death was so beautiful, it was no wonder she imagined supernovae when running her eyes over the constellations of scars and ink covering Gabriel. Violent star-death, the most brilliant of last breaths, a heaving implosion of sonic expression glowing for months with what once had floated beneath its surface. All colors were possible, superheated ejecta glowing the brilliance of their proximity to a now absent core. Green (cutting him open, blood spilling between her fingers), blue (the color of his flesh, hands wrapped around his throat, that perfect jaw struggling reflexively against her grip), purple (slamming his face against the counter, a symphonic crack of bone followed by an encore of labored breathing, thin through a broken nose and the mash of spit and teeth lodged in his throat), yellow and red (sitting on the floor, cradling what was left of him in her lap, his blood flecked over her delicate features as she collected the bits of brain closest to them back in the hollow, shattered cave of his skull, cooing to the rosebloom of the top of his neck. Oh I love you, I do love you.) If he was the supernova, she was the black hole, death on its grandest scale, pulling him towards destruction only for him to be reborn on the other side. Pain was her gift to him, a beautiful unfolding.

The constellations shifted as he moved an arm to cross over his chest, drawing her from a side-trip through the wild storm of her head.

She almost laughed at his implication of cleaning up as she finally crossed in to the threshold of the kitchen, half reminded of the first real conversation they’d ever had and half amused at the prospect. Crossing to the side of the island he worked at, she lifted herself to sit on it, sliding herself between him and the other pieces of fruit. She reached up and took the hand bearing the finger he’d cut in her own, bending it just enough to watch the small wound bead again, a slight rivulet of something she remembered the taste of so well. “I’m sure all those things can wait."

When she kissed him she ran a hand behind him, fingers crawling slowly up his spine before she let her claws out to dig in and draw an entirely new constellation.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

She slithered on the island, a pale queen cobra upon granite, erect and assessing. Discerning the qualities of the man before her, measuring his volume before consumption - she would provide the release he desired with the click of fingers against skin and the show of fangs before the fall. He envisioned it, her stomach growling a small purr as the jaws unhinged, slowly gnawing and swallowing him feet first in lazy decadence, crushing and bruising until as last there was nothing left of him but her and her acute understanding of his simplified complexity. That while he may have been an explosion of constellations, he didn't understand this universe without her in it. A simple truth he had easily come to terms with. He couldn't recall the time before Matsu. He knew it existed somewhere along the line, but it blurred and intermingled with the dearth and death and conception and those faded things that one could talk about, but never truly recall. A light turns on in the darkened room, no one remembers that darkness for the warmth of the bulb - but this bulb burned hotter than a sun, whips of solar flares scarring the planet with fresh blisters and punctuated scorches that defined her touch across his flesh. He had descended into hell with this woman, known her proximity in the throes of lust, but the only time he ever truly felt forsaken was in her absence. A planet assuming it's ice age as it drifts from a star. Time slows, reminding him of the incessant numbness that coalesced with their departure from one another's teeth and claws and obsessions and depravities. For every moment he had with her, he had thousands upon thousands, sitting in apathy as the shine she wrought turned to lackluster and rust and matte and dusty nothingness. A constant overcast with only the occasional alleviation - the arrival of her presence, those eyes that casted the reflection of his own pain back at him, and that curiosity to see just how far the flesh could pull before it ripped - it sated his soul and his body, leaving nothing but exhaustion and ache in it's wake.

Her claws dug into his back straps, the skin resisted as nebulae and tissue turned to cracked stone, the arch of his back almost imperceptible, as his hands dug into her thighs and yanked, closing whatever distance may have remained between the Sith Lords. But there was no lord here now, just a Goddess and her ever willing disciple. That the mere touch of her flesh promised of intricate pains later, a shiver ran down the course of his spine in anticipation. He was wood in her hands, every swipe and cut and claw was a hammer and chisel against his form, defining and clarifying who he was. Complacent towards consequences of the cost, he savored the prospect of paying it. Free hand, unbound by hers and currently un-wounded, traced the bodice of her body suit from ribs to center, before finding anchor on the tongue of the zipper. Just beneath the neck, he pulled downward and took his time, parting metal teeth from teeth as he degloved her to reveal the pale and perfect skin beneath. From the legs to hips, hips to shoulders, chest to neck - he desired her mind and her petite form more than he cared to admit to anyone but her, the crescent reflection of blood and sweat at the small of her back. Scars formed where wounds were formerly cut against flesh but he found the prospect of tracing it with the tips of his fingers as something soothing and soft, a break between the pangs of pain that would inevitably come, the heaving crescendo and decrescendo of her chest with such certain and spontaneous activity.

Removing his hand from her grip, he lifted his own to the shoulders of her suit as he rolled it back and pulled down, unraveling her for only him to see. Coils and coils, his pain was her spool to which she found grounding and lucidity - that so much could be gained from his pain and her capacity to inflict it, it warmed his back and mind alike as he felt the draw of blood trickle down. And as he entrapped her arms in the clothes she once donned fully, he pinned the suit between thumb and index, and rested his fists against the table as he took in the full view of her body with the wayward glance of a blood etched eye. There was was nothing left to the imagination, and while he enjoyed the silent teasing of peers and glances, he preferred to exist in the real and non-abstract - he knew what rested beneath the body suit, having entangled with it and felt it's stinging caress many times before - he could never find boredom in the basking and viewing and experiencing of such things. To penetrate and be penetrated by her, he was nearly blinded by the desire for that wash of pain and pleasure.

Leaning inward, he hovered his lips across the arch of her right trapezius muscle, the feel of his own breath reflecting back from the inviting touch of her skin. Strafing towards her neck, he planted his incisors against her shoulder, biting down softly, indenting the skin beneath in raised pink edges. "I missed you..." He spoke in a hush as he moved along her neck and jaw line, as if the words were something he would prefer no one else hear. He would never lie to her and while he had known other flesh, he had never needed it the way he needed hers. And that jarred him, mentally, confusing the man who saw such passion as a weakness that would provide a means to his own downfall. A crack in the plate, a shatterpoint. He willfully acquiesced to her dominance in such things, that what was once an obsession to cause her pain would become an obsession to receive it and submit to her - in the only way she was capable. He would die every night, if it meant receiving her, and the inevitable conclusion of his life would not prevent him from living it - in the here and now with the only person he deemed vital to his own survival. Kissing her, just at the crook of her jaw, he inhaled of her aroma and how it naturally conflicted with vong formed world around them. For the first time he could recall, he rejoiced in the departure from the sado-masochist culture that so closely resembled the loving relationship between the two.

Sudden realization of her heat flushed him, recalling that the distance between the kitchen and the bedroom might as well have been miles away at this pace. He loosened his grip on her body suit, his palms having shifted to overlapping her fingers, knowing that those digits served no purpose to him in shackled form. He wanted something more, that mysterious strike of the nerve cluster, where pain could enter one place and exit the next, but more he just wanted to soak in her presence. To roll around in the blanket of her cruelty and indifference, having felt the winter of her absence stretch much further than he ever wanted - the realization of his need for her came with a sense of comfort, alien and foreign, as he embraced it timidly for the love he bore her, absent regret.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Maybe it was because pleasure and violence were so closely intertwined for her, but Matsu always felt the world slow down at moments like this. As he degloves her she is only flesh and bone, muscle made obvious by removal of that which prevented her from truly feeling, muted the agony of unbearable sensation. Every touch was more real, each hard press of his fingers unfolding a blossoming spur of adrenaline that left her with a delicious buzzing. It ran along the edges of time slowed down, the sound of her breathing loud in her ears as he looked at her. She imagines her limbs cracking at unnatural angles, elbows snapping like twigs as they bend and break, her knees wrenching apart as she rearranged - arachnid, waiting as he struggled in the middle of her web. She would open and devour him, flesh sleek and dark, a black widow pulling him towards a soft, pink center. Semi-trapped in her bodysuit, she looked back up at him with a mixture of the same hunger he always elicited and a comfort unique to his presence.

Once such a thing might have worried her – the ability to trust someone enough to feel better next to them? But she’d given it thought, especially after Lasedri had attempted to draw her out by threatening Gabriel. If the time came when something was more important than either of them, she would expect him to leave her behind. In her mind, being Sith meant coveting without letting it get in the way of the goal. And her ultimate goal was pleasing herself, so her feelings for him were well within her aims. She knew some would view such an attachment as weakness, but she thought of it as strength for exactly the same reason the Jedi of old had shunned it – it made her immeasurably powerful. Putting aside that she didn’t worry about him (because of all the Sith she’d run across in the galaxy there were none more capable of neutralizing a threat than Gabriel), she’d felt just a sliver of the promise she held if someone were to truly threaten him. He was not a weakness simply because he was a wellspring for the passion from which she drew her power, a hotbed of agony and attraction. She would ruin worlds for him, raze the earth, drain the seas, press her hands together and listen as a whole planet imploded, the center contracting in one great groan before the whole thing came undone, molten core flowing off a brilliant death for decades – she was capable of things that would erase whatever threatened him from history. But at the end of the day, none of it mattered - not a strength or a weakness or a source of power. It was just him.

I missed you.

For a moment, a breath, any vision she has of dismembering him and storing him for later in the fridge with the slice of brain is gone. Closing her eyes, she leaned in to the shiver of his lips along her neck, tilting her head to follow his progression. That she agreed was said as much by the way she curled towards him when he loosened his grip, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck in a touch far less brutal than what she usually bestowed on him. When she opened her eyes it was just to his one, the exhalation of the breath held, of sentiment before they devolved, her free hand already crawling towards the buckle on his belt – a one-track mind when it came to some things, clearly. “And I certainly missed you.”

A lot of her free time was spent dreaming up various fantasies, ways to hurt him, push them both farther than they’d previously been. She liked to think of herself as inventive but there were some tried and true things she liked to return to if it’d been a while, little things she missed. Pulling herself from the parts of her suit that still clung to her and reaching behind herself in the same motion, she procured the knife he’d used to cut his fruit. She didn’t know if the juice of an apple would sting an open wound, but there was only one way to find out.

She'd worried the first time he might break, find a limit. But he never did. He came for more.

_______________________​

​

It looked nothing as they'd left it earlier, sleep and a shower in that order providing more than enough time for the mess in the kitchen to disappear. Impressive either way she thought as, standing where they’d finished (far from the island with the cutting board, to be sure) she pulled apart an ever-available orange. Popping a section in her mouth, she made her way towards the stack of books she’d been so distracted from earlier. The house was quiet save for the occasional scream of Vong in the distance, the churn of Selvaris’ rebuilding a far-away idea as she settled herself in a chair with the first book she got her hands on. Orange in hand, she curled up with the book resting against her thighs, twirling a lock of hair between her fingers and absently finishing the fruit as she set to work learning more of what Gabriel had spent the early morning showing her.

He’d have to forcefully remove said book from her presence if he needed her anytime soon.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

What remained of her bodysuit soon found itself flung to the wayside of the elongated counter top, slumping along the sharp edges before plummeting to the floor in an almost silent clap, inaudible to the thump of his heart beat in his ear. She was more than any animal could be, an apex predator - a slithering and hissing thing tossing away her old flesh to breath out in revitalized vigor and residual beauty, the pale and pink tones of her flesh gave a soft reminder to the deception of nature and the crescendo of an elegance that met him on an even kilter, despite his misgivings. That he stood so outwardly marred, body riddled in tattoos and scars and the etchings of time and antiquity - and she sat longingly for his tolerance and touch and pain and lust, hands deftly removing his belt with the certainty that truly nothing separated them now. The clack of the buckle, such a simple thing, roused certain primal inclinations uncontrolled and unabated and he realized that any space between them was too much. She was the poster child to the notion that the most beautiful things in life are often the most dangerous, and he wanted it all. The ebb and flow of her breath an her obsessions and cruelty and depraved curiosity…

The knife tore openly the flesh that he suddenly desired to be rid of, the cold metal burning a hot path of oblong curve against his ribs. The trickle of warmth was something he had known before, that comforting and soothing wetness that clung in drained stains of sanguine flow, soon to turn to crust against inked skin. This wasn't the first time she would drag wounding blade against him, it wouldn't be the last. Both equipped with itches they couldn't scratch, the two made a perfect pair - a perfect fit, as they filled that emptiness left in each other’s absence. Two halves of the same puzzle, fitting against each other evenly.

For the time they now spent together, there were no more games, no more teasing or sideways glances and implied tension. Everything had been leading to the culmination of this event, the tangle of their flesh as he sought to re-discover every piece of her as she pulled pieces from him - in slow, steady, and soothing action - the likes of which stood opposed to the common portrayal of his character. That in the world of such enormous magnitude, he stood a titan on the hill and gazed upon the reflection of his malevolence in the eyes of those he deemed unworthy. But next to her - he felt akin to an insect against an incoming tsunami. Incapable of calculating what had accepted him within the slender physique of her tempest and unadulterated form. With the pull and jerk, she yanked free the crescent half moon of flesh and he responded with a sharp growl.

The knife began again. He had found something that pushed him beyond the meandering notions of what was best for the universe and what was best for the inhabitants, the faltering of the weak in the face of the strong. He had found something he wanted not because it made sense or because there was some end game or because it served the empire that currently claimed his fealty. He just wanted her and in this moment, the lapse of time that he deemed fitting to go on forever - he wanted nothing more than to embrace it for the eternity he now demanded.

Another sliver of skin, another arch of the back, another clench of the teeth. As everything quickened and their bodies amalgamated, the curvature of her figure would find itself framed in the ravines of his blood, pooling from gashes cut with paring knife. He would find scraps of his body pulled away, a desire to cling to her and feel that power dwell within himself. And in the end, he would always readily wear her skin to follow suit in the moniker she adopted, peeled clean away to start anew as a skin walker.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

He had finished placing another piece of gauze over his various wounds, tapping them over so keep them dry and away from anything that might caused infection. It wasn't a setback, not like what some would consider. Should the need arise, he had plenty of flesh left for the snipping, she need but ask or ply. As he strode into the kitchen, he found the remains of a peeled orange and smiled. Walking slowly over to the automatic caf machine, he filled a simple porcelain cup to the brim and smelled the aroma, before exiting the room to find the origins of the sounds of pages turning through the unusually acoustic structure. A creak of the boards, the trickle of the faucet – the house came alive at the drop of a pin, despite the abundant silence.

For a moment, he merely leaned against the threshold and sipped his caf, finding comfort in the frame as he viewed Matsu deep in her own predilections. For all the wickedness and indifferent malice that resided within the woman, there was a lingering sense of innocence, or at least it's presentation. Not that she was innocent; she had been baptized in pain and sacrifice as much as anyone he had ever known. But her mannerisms. He absently picked at the tape as he walked in behind her and sat the cup on the nearby table, placing a hand on the back of her seat, gazing over to view the book currently claiming her concentration.

“Oogliths?” He whispered, noticing that the topic of the book was on the species used for versatile armor, when vonduun was inappropriate. More aptly, it was in reference to cloakers. Of course, the text contained information on masquers as well, as the two species were tied to each other in purpose. It would all go back to shaping, which he suspected would be of most interest to her.

Removing himself from the chair, he approached the wall and began thumbing through the books. “I've attempted to catalog the cortexes of the shaping protocol…” As best as could be cataloged, attempting to provide instructions for what was essentially an experience. It served for visual cues and picturesque representations of surgeries, but that was the extent. In the end, in order to learn to cut, she would have to push blade against skin. Something from which she would, most assuredly, not shy away.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She was vaguely aware of his presence though she didn’t look up, the smell of the caf he’d made curling slowly in to the room to share a sense of a moment smacking of more normalcy than was entirely natural where they were concerned. She relished it despite her distraction, immersed in her reading completely until she felt him behind her.

“Yes – I didn’t realize what I was seeing on Kashyyyk,” she answered, calling to mind the mix of sleek and brutal that was the marriage of Sith and Vong. That they were a form of lighter armor had been enough for her at the time but she’d been completely unaware of the process of donning and removing them. Halfway through her reading she’d had to look up to stare in to space, imagining the sensation of cilia hooking beneath the skin, the body meshing with something not only foreign, but extragalactic. But if experience had taught her anything it was that this vessel was extraordinary, capable of recovering from almost anything given the right circumstances. The brain was not her only interest though time and again she returned to it for obvious reasons. The entire body was fascinating, a complex piece of machinery that managed to – nine times out of ten – perform its duty without fail for years and years. So many small, intricate parts. It was as much a practice in the thousands of ways to hurt another being as it was a study in the divine.

To Matsu, the body was kami, a word in Atrisian that translated to no one thing specifically, but an emotion: ‘wonder’.
To suffer was to perfect it.
To change, to remove, to break.
Sometimes at night she would press a hand to his back, steel fingers fitting between loops of tribal tattoos, and imagine what it must have been like for him to lose his eye, all of the thousand abuses since then.
He understood.

Lifting herself from the chair, she padded barefoot over to him, letting her eyes linger on the patch of gauze he’d covered the burn mark she’d left him with earlier. It’d been a gamble to try and direct the Force to heat the plexisteel of her arm considering phrik’s reaction to temperature but the split second she’d allowed it had been worth it – she could still hear his skin dying, a smell that made her hungry.

She reached up to the first book he’d pulled farther from its brothers, letting it fall open on some page and nearly forgetting herself again at the illustrations. Brilliant colors caught between messy ink strokes reminded her of home and made her want to try.

“And I can do this? Shape?” Her question wasn’t a matter of if she would she be allowed – the Vong seemed, at least from her admittedly lacking experience, a people that could be won over with the right proof and she would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. It was a question of whether she was capable as a human, if there was something that would prevent her from changing another as they did.

[member="Reverance"]​

 

[Reverance]

"They were pivotal in our victory..." As much as any other component of his plan, they served their purpose and died valiantly in the destruction of the stronghold. He still remembers the sound of the crumple, the wine of the wood as it ached and bent against itself before it's sweet release, cascading downward in a reeling moan as it turned over on itself. Vong that appeared as Wookiees, they died for their God and pleased the unannounced Warmaster. From afar, he recalled the briskness of that day, the spray of blood from battered and bruised body, the price of pain he gleefully paid. He had lost Matsu somewhere in the fray, a recollection of things long passed as she turned into the framed and blurry image of herself, assuming a mantle that he often couldn't follow, as she was so often to do. He smiled at the thought of her pain and the being, the presence, that such pain had turned her into; something increasingly stretching towards the fringes of perfection, ascending far beyond the scope of understanding.

The elicited pause, the momentary slip in thought, was unshackled with her words about shaping. An idea that meshed with his own thoughts, he lifted a smile as he perched his lips, tilting a vigilant eye from her form to that of the opened pages. The aroma of caf lifted through effervescent drifts, almost visible, as beams of light caught debris and guided the cup to his lips. After a long drawn out taste of the deep flavors, he placed the bottom of the cup in his palm. "You could...but I would not have it of you." He had never denied her anything, be it pain or pleasure or material goods. But he would not have more cut away from her flesh, the show of selfishness deceptively hidden by mysterious sagacity. He smirked at that notion that for such obsessions and desires, he would watch helplessly as the Atrisian whittled away at herself, becoming something not even resembling what he now, even now, so furiously desired. There was a roll in his shoulder, an ache in his step, as he placed the book about Oogliths back on the table. He wanted her as she was, not some monstrous being deformed by Vong shaping protocol and it's manifestation against flesh.

Licking the tip of his finger, he scanned through the pages with a certain laziness, blinking steadily as he accepted each image freshly into memory. There wasn't a page he hadn't turned over in this solid repository, but even etched markings against flesh fade with time. Prior to her arrival, Gabriel had taken the time to put the shapers towards a project that touched on this very topic. The capacity for the non vong to shape without the sacrifice, should such measurements have already been properly weighed. But there was so much to describe, so much detail, that it could be overwhelming to explain. And there was fitting. And to fit someone in the suit that currently consumed his mind, the shapers would need time for observation: wholly in action. He grimaced, with a back turned, as he sipped his coffee once more. It wasn't that he worried about the harm that would come his way; in fact, he looked forward to round two. But something else, a lingering notion, continued to weigh his mind down with preemptive regret. A foreign notion at best.

He placed a finger on the book, the pages ceasing to turn, as he eyed the small woman - capable of so much pain - and took another sip of his caf. "Knowledge, in the world of Vong, is stored in the qahsa. But for the shapers protocol, they are explicitly stored in the Qang qahsa. With this knowledge alone, no one, not even you...could shape a Vong biot. It requires additional...sacrifice." One he would not have her pay. "But I have something else in mind. A vehicle, fitted specifically for you. With all the knowledge necessary to assume the position of Master Shaper. All that is required is for you...to be fitted for it. For it to be shaped to your body and your mind."

A simple enough task, at first glance.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Additional sacrifice.

Sometime between losing the left arm and the right she’d converted instinctual horror to religious fervor. This was evidenced no clearer than during the Sith’s invasion of Manaan. Her bones lay somewhere at the bottom of that planet's ocean, picked clean by fish and crabs after her arm had slid off the shattered bridge she’d battled on. She couldn’t remember even sparing it a glance in her hunger to kill the Jedi Master who’d managed it, had turned her back after throwing Rekali off the bridge to keep on going. She’d heard tell that Rekali relived that moment often, resting on those laurels as if they’d shield her forever. But Matsu had gotten her knife back and had grown stronger for the sacrifice of removing a power-player from Manaan’s map. And she liked the new arm better.

And that was the sickness. Somewhere along the way she’d come to hold her mind above all else, viewing every cut and sever as an improvement. The body was of little consequence, a vessel for what she considered the real ‘her’ – not the flesh and blood.

Her affection for Gabriel was too complicated for her to explain, painted in images and sounds rather than words, as most things in the bloom of her consciousness were. Where she consistently couldn’t find the ground for how high in the stars her mind was, he felt like earth to her. He felt like certainty, like some ancient, misty mountain pass in the silence where no one else dared step. He was a thing she could never be.

As proof, she had to pull her head from the stars (a never-ending fascination for the constellations both at home and overhead) when he answered her, drawing her own perception of a ‘qahsa’ despite the page he’d stopped the book on. Even their ‘computers’ were organic though she would have suspected as much even without the visual aid. She assumed there would be pain associated with the fitting he spoke of but the end result was something she craved. She didn’t know that it would require taking on Vong characteristics to do what she asked originally – perhaps the one thing she wasn’t willing to do to herself as she saw them as separate from her eventual ascension, outside the Galaxy she knew and would one day consume, though it explained his earlier hesitation. “And what is the price I’m supposed to pay?” She didn’t need to know exactly what he had in mind. He knew her well enough to pick out that which she’d take to.

[member="Reverance"]​