An Unlikely Shadow

[Armand Temi]

Nar Shaddaa - a world where anyone could hide. Even Rausvas, with her bright red skin, brow stalks and yellow eyes, a Sith pureblood mingling with Hutts and Evocii on the Smuggler’s Moon, was free from any caste system her own race clung too, able to make a living, to come and go as she pleased.

But the problem with a weaker member of society - human or alien - living on a planet with that much crime is that eventually you’d become a target unless you were immediately well connected or preternaturally cunning. Neither of which Rausvas was.

Her work for Rabozz the Hutt took her often into the Undercity, so it was here that one afternoon, she felt herself grabbed roughly, a black bag of some sort thrust over her head, hands tied behind her back. Rausvas did not fight back - she’d amounted to no more than a glorified librarian on her homeplanet of Ziost. She may have had her multiple flaws and ill temper, but she was not a physical fighter by any means. As she rode in some kind of speeder or ship, blind and struggling to breath through the sheer claustrophobia of the makeshift head cover, the pureblood sith could hear the rabble of voices and other beings around her. And one loud Zygerrian shouting out commands.

Slavers? Had she been sold out by Rabozz even after she’d worked fifteen hour days delivering packages, greeting his guests and picking up his dry cleaning? Great Bantha, Hutts had lots of dry cleaning! It hardly seemed fair to be sold to slavers when one had hauled around that much fabric on a daily basis.

Abruptly the transport stopped, and still not able to see, Rausvas was marched to what seemed like a room, maybe now on another higher level of Nar Shaddaa as the air was somewhat fresher, the ever-present stench of the crime-ridden planet less potent. She was placed in a chair, fastened with cuffs which robbed her of Force-use, though throughout her life, she’d often fled from that part of her heritage and was highly untrained in Light or Darkside powers. And then the bag came off, and sure enough, the Sith was in an empty room, nondescript with a table and the metal chair - bolted to the floor - in which she sat. A metallic hum could be heard and gruff voices outside of the room - less reassuring than the steady drone of the air conditioner.

“M'tye buti is antai,”* she heard in her native language.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

*She’s in there

 

[Connor Harrison]

Nar Shaddaa. What a dive. A place that had no interest for Connor Harrison right now. A place where the law seemed to operate unto its own devices for the Hutts who kept a tight, slobbering, festering grip on things.

Slavery. Prostitution. Gambling. Smuggling. Theft. The place for low-lives and degenerates to thrive.

Connor had been given a contact by the Sith to meet at a designated time and place to receive a package. While he was no courier, he had been told whatever it was he could keep, but it was going to be a worthy addition to the Empire and establish good relations between the Hutt cartels that operated on the hazy planet.

For that reason, he found himself standing outside a room with steel doors and no windows. A room that was hidden away within a larger room up in the top floors above a whore-house. The level of clientele Connor was ushered past on the way up was enough to make him loathe being around people so desperate and so sleazy to please.

As a red-skinned humanoid unbolted the door and guided him in with some foreign dialect, Connor looked to him with his amber eyes, then into the room, and then back again.

"The door stays open."

The red-skin nodded, holding his hands up and turning away, taking his colleague with him to stand across at the far wall to converse and wait until the deal was done. Connor walked through, his black and silver attire topped off with the tatty crimson cowl that once was rich and a proud symbol of the Jedi he used to be.

Beyond a metal table, bolted down, and sat – strapped - in a metal chair, also bolted down, was a being that looked like a Sith Pureblood. Red skinned, dark almost flaming hair and sickly eyes. The two watched each other as the gap shrank between them.

Connor looked at her for a minute in silence, working out what this creature was to him. "What’s your story," he asked quietly.

[member="Rausvas Sveni"]

 

[Armand Temi]

His question was met with wary yellow eyes and a half-sneer, but easily explained by the fact that Rausvas had been unceremoniously plucked from the streets, chained to a chair in an unknown room and now faced this stranger, a human no less.

“Nothing personal, but I don’t really feel like explaining my life story to you,” she growled in heavily accented Basic. “I think you need to tell me what’s going on and why I’m here. I owe no one money. I have not broken any laws.” Not that there were any laws to be found upon the Smuggler’s Moon.

Still because of her own Force sensitivity, she could feel the man’s dark and powerful aura, and instead of fear, she was hit with a poignant nostalgia for Ziost as the Darkside of the Force was so achingly prevalent on her home planet it practically oozed up from the ground like bubbling lava.

“Better yet, what is your story?” she asked as though they were in a cantina somewhere and not in a stifling, humming room.

For someone so enslaved and vulnerable, the alien woman displayed the type of entitlement that Connor might recognize as a hallmark of her race.

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

He looked at her. He took in the shape of her face and the structure of her brow. Her hair. Her eyes. She spoke with an accent, so she was certainly making and effort, and if this was a Pureblood then it explained a lot about her attitude and her Dark Side aura.

"You’re not the one in a position to ask me questions, so let’s try again. What’s your story."

He didn’t move, nor did he try to intimidate her with force.

Those eyes just looked at her – burned into her.

The intimidation could come later if she tried his patience.

[member="Rausvas Sveni"]

 

[Armand Temi]

He is right, you know.

Rausvas was trapped now like a pest, loathed by the inhabitants of its shared home, despite the shared goal of survival. Loathed truly by the kind of being that most wanted to eradicate despite her fabled heritage.

Still, the Sith pureblood tilted her chin up at the human, eyebrow stalks twitching like some insectasoid species more arthropod than human. “I don’t know why I’m here. That’s my story.”

Her yellow eyes gazing down now, realizing she did not stand a chance if she remained so obstinate. “My name is Rausvas. I’m from Ziost.”

She had no clue about the back-alley deals that had brought her this close to a Sith Knight. Despite her proximity to the Sith race, she’d actually never encountered someone with such an imposing Force power as Connor Harrison.

“Why am I here?”

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

He had never met a being such as this one before. The strange bone structure and pigmentation – like another manifestation of the Dark Side. Connor wasn’t here to play games. He sat back on the table.

"I don’t know why you are here, nor do I care about what happened to bring you here. All that matters is now, and the fact you’re strapped to a chair and I either take you away or leave you for the next client."

Connor tapped his fingers on the desk – his own fingers, not the cybernetic ones – and sighed.

"Will you serve the Dark Side of the Force and the Sith forsaking all others. Your answer will dictate your future, so please remember that."

[member="Rausvas Sveni"]

 

[Armand Temi]

Of course! Now it all made sense.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my father was the one who engineered this whole kidnapping, she thought. No more would she bicker and argue with them about becoming an Acolyte if she were forced to do so.

Little did she know that Rabozz sold her for 50,000 credits, happy to be unburdened by his sullen, useless alien. Even her vibrant crimson skin the Hutt grown tired of.

“I suppose I don’t have a choice,” she growled. “I never had a choice. Not like you, human.” And if she answered to how she really felt, it was clear she’d be executed on the spot. Despite his suffocating Force presence which filled up the entire room like a pulsating dark fog, Rausvas naively assumed Connor Harrison was some kind of go-between, that her real Master would be a Massassi or a pureblood like she was. Fear gave way to curiosity and her eyebrow stalks quivered.

“Who purchased me?”

[member="Connor Harrison"]

 

[Connor Harrison]

With a little roll of his eyes, he sighed.

"Everybody has a choice. If you make the right choice then you excel. If you make the wrong choice, you wither and die and we move on."

He flexed his fingers and raised his palms, and the shackles on her arms creaked and buckled open, little screws falling to the floor.

"You were purchased by the Sith. For what? To serve me and for me to mould in to a weapon. Now, it’s your choice if you want to leave with me and become that as you were born, or stay here and take a chance on your own." He waved her up. "I have use for you, so make your decision now."

[member="Rausvas Sveni"]