Death

[Tyger Tyger]

Deep Space
One month ago

Things had changed. Not in the usual, rapid way, no. The plot did not thicken, the character did not grow. Instead, for the first time since he began, Milo felt everything slam to a screeching halt...and once more, he was at a loss as to who he was, both in relation to his father and the mystery that was Tyger Tyger.

The Far Star had been way too quiet since the fall of the Sith Empire. In the political poodoostorm that had followed, Watcher-Four's communications had grown sparse, his messages increasingly vague. Finally, one awkward (presumed) afternoon, he transmitted something cryptic about the nature of cycles, about the limits of the universe and inevitable return...

About an Eternal Empire and a Black Myth.

The Intelligence Officer then promptly cut feeds, leaving Milo without a mission. Without faction. Without a home.

A ship without anchor, set adrift.

Tyger Tyger and [member="Akk Akk"] survived, as they always did, nickle and diming through courier and mercenary work. They got better. The work got easy. And in the now-rarely occurring circumstances where they couldn't beat 'em, Akk-Akk would simply eat 'em. The young Kaalonian remained a giant, disgusting little bastard until the very end.

With time, Milo was able to impress upon the teenage Kaalonian the virtue of clean, fresh food, free from the marinade of garbage. He taught the benefits of weapon maintenance and the value of a diverse, custom-made armory. He even managed to impart, to the best of his own limited ability, a degree of artistic appreciation that extended beyond the Shine/Does-Not-Shine binary. Whether or not Akk Akk fully subscribed to these new points-of-view, Milo could never be sure. However, with this broadened perspective, it was only in the nature of his animal aspect that he become curious, and the rat grew restless walking between the walls of the Far Star. With his cut of the remaining credits, Milo dropped his friend in the space of the Omega Protectorate to make his fortune and sate his wanderlust.

The two still holocalled from time-to-time; short, terse sentences, devoid of sentiment, conveying only the most practical of details. The two men were warriors, after all -- communicating their bond best in how they had synchronized in battle; the way they leaned on one another's strengths, shielded one another's weaknesses. Emotion would not be displayed until the day one died prematurely, leaving the other to tear across the galaxy in a bloody, drunken swath of self-destructive behavior.

It was in these long days of nothing that Milo most missed having to sweep the maggots from the floor; the stink of death festering in the hallways.

Alone aboard the Far Star, the routine of bounty hunting became inertiatic; a simple, automatic process unconfounded by notions of self or placement within a tribe. It was the oldest of cyclical processes -- the nomadic spacer navigating the galactic tundra in search of the mammoth bounty so that he may eat to repeat it all again. Some of the steps had become a bit more symbolic in these modern times, but the story was the same. It was the Life Dance, and Milo accepted this, stepping to the beat of the World Drum.

For it all seemed necessary somehow.

But then, then the wheel broke.

"Shhh...Shhh...Please, please, please don't talk when I'm talking...I have something to say, please hear me. Please...I think it's important...I just want you to hear me...and then you'll understannnd..."

"...Where are we? *sniffle* What did you do to my mom --?!"

And the axle started to drag.

"SHHH! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I'M TALKING. I. AM. TALK-KING!"

The signal came in the middle of what Milo's routine had begun to consider night. It was rough, amateur. Somebody narcissistic enough to broadcast their voice to the cosmos, but underfunded, nobody wanting to hear them. So it was only Milo, alone aboard the Far Star, adrift in space.

"Do you know what it's like...? <krzkzkt> --rse you do...You're just a boy....Mommy and daddy love you <krkzkt> they listen? Noooo...you're too little, you're too little..."

If the man's words didn't make it obvious, the second voice did. It was a child. Sobbing.

"Please...," he whimpered.

"<KRKRKKZKKT> I SAY?! WHAT DID I SAY?!"

Static. Roaring static.

"...You're at a party...with alllll your friends...and you're standing, and you're standing, and everybody's <KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT> --timmmee....."

The sound of masking tape being stripped, ripped. A cry.

"And you have something to saaayyy....nobody else does, but you do. Something big. SO <KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT> --ly fit in your mouth...and it's growing...and you say it...YOU FINALLY SAY IT...but then..."

Muffled screaming. Something falling over.

"Nobody hear <KRRKKKZZZKKKT>. They're all too busy talking...You say it <KRKKZKKT> -in <KRKKZKKkkkkkkkkkT> --- she says it...and everyone claps and laughs and applauds and <KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT> you realize..."

There's a roar of something mechanical, monstrous -- so oppressive the man's words become indiscernible. The noise continues until, suddenly, a crash of static. Milo shook himself free from the terrible daze, hurrying to the Far Star's elaborate signals intelligence platforms, desperate to regain the transmission. To track it. To maybe stop this frightful trajectory. To alleviate this gravity, but it was too late. He'd lost it.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

Sleeping became harder for Milo, after that. It came on unexpectedly, for maybe an hour at a time, but never when he wanted it. At what he formerly understood as nights, he would sit up in the big empty living room, trying to find the signal again, but from where once was something, now only nothing.

The bounties somehow seemed harder, and Milo found himself quitting those which cost too much effort. The flavor was gone. Often, he would wonder if he dreamed the whole broadcast, a madness begat by his loneliness and boredom. Unrested, his thoughts began to darken, turn inward. He had wondered if he had finally gone mad.

But then he heard it again.

"<KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT> --sn't anybody ever listen to me?! I'm helpful, I'm so helpful --stop! -- I could be -- <KRKRKKZKKT>"

"NO! NO! AIIIIIII<KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT>"

It was a girl this time.

"I'm saving you...I'm saving you...You don't un--<KKRKKRKZKKT>"

That hellish engine roared again, a sound like warped steel drowned his mad chatter, except:

"<KRKKKZT> --'re prey."

And they were gone.

In Milo's year alongside the massive, decaying rodent, he had witnessed more unstomachable, dehumanizing acts of violence and horror than the whole of his military career before it. However, for whatever reason, it did not plunge Milo's heart into darkness. This was not the gazing into the abyss from which the Jedi steel themselves and the Sith build masks to fetishize. With Akk Akk, it was different -- be it in the animal appearance of his species, or the genuine innocence of his demeanor, or even the relish with which he devoured the reluctant target. Despite their protest at the extinguishing of their sentience, Milo watched with the passive, natural acceptance one has when witnessing a snake consuming a mouse.

It all seemed necessary somehow.

But how could anything be anymore?

After he stopped taking the bounty requests, It wasn't long before Milo forgot the sound of his own voice. Bathing went next. He'd stopped eating and sleeping altogether, unable to move from where he sat in the big empty, piss and poodoo accumulating in his drawers.

His eyes remained fixed at the receiver on the wall.

The smell never bothered him, his time with Akk Akk long desensitizing his nose to such odors. Periodically, he would even shake from delirium, believing the Kaalonian had in fact returned. During one of Milo's brief dalliances with sleep, he dreamed he even did, scooping the man who once was never Tyger Tyger up from his own filth and carrying him off into the bathroom.

Milo awoke, confronting a man in the mirror, but it wasn't him. This man was much thinner, paler. His eyes reddened, but dead, on a face bordered by a mane of tangled black hair...a beard extending down to his chest. Milo clawed at the glass, searching for an honest reflection, but found instead only words.

A message from Tyger Tyger.

For how a thing sees itself through itself is not the same as how it sees itself in something else which acts as a mirror for it.

Beautiful golden caligraphy around the edge of the surface. How could he have never noticed this before?

The sofa was ruined. How long had he layed there? Milo set to dismantling it, slowly in the beginning. His first major undertaking in some time, he hoped not to become overwhelmed. Each piece moved slowly to the cargo bay to be pitched out at a time of convenience.

Akk Akk's desk chair was moved to fill the void. There was minor satisfaction to be had in this accomplishment.

He sat in the old chair, his eyes fixed on the receiver.

But there was nothing anymore. Only noise.

For how a thing sees itself through itself is not the same as how it sees itself in something else which acts as a mirror for it.

Until, at last, from nothing became something

"The 'Nerfherder' look. Oh, Tyger Tyger --"

And from the noise...

"--Please don't tell me you threw in with the Republic. How tragically hipster...," Watcher-Four antagonized, his face smug as ever as it filled the holocall platform.

...A signal.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

Deserts of Korriban
Three Days Ago

The growl rumbled somewhere below. The source was uncertain, for Milo had been wandering these red sands for some time, the Valley of the Dark Lords many miles behind him. Or, at least, so he had come to understand. Nothing remained out here. And yet, as he approached, it got louder and meaner, and the danger electrified the air.

His body took hold of him for a moment, silencing his mind's desire to push forward -- primal communication, demands for caution, echoing in his mid-brain, shouting through his unconscious. So he froze. Scrutinizing every contour of terrain, he finally saw it.
A ruddy Tuk'ata, made a camouflaged crimson from the sand, stalked menacingly before a tiny archway, all but buried. Barely distinguishable pillars marked it as a temple to a once somebody, now forgotten by all, save for its loyal guardian. The treasures of a Sith Lord Ozymandias made safe by years of neglect and the popularity contest that is History

Who would have wanted them anyway?

Slowly, carefully, Milo edged away from the ruin, which seemed to make the hound ease up. In passing, he wondered just why it was that so many fools thought they could build anything of lasting value on this shifting world of sand.

There was no course to guide him, no mission parameters set to measure success or even progress. It was just a location, a planet, and he had began walking from the single starport. So much of this globe unused. So much lost to memory.

Milo staggered down rolling hills. The shawl around his face shielded him from kicked up sand, from its onslaught in gusts, the cloth tails blowing about him. Saline stung his eyes and he tried to wipe the sweat from his brow. Tired feet stumbled. He fell and had to ascend the dune with the aid of his hands. The wind whistled around him. More sand. More gusts. More blindness. He struggled to his feet, searching through binoculars for something, anything, but wound up settling on that mountain off in the distance which carved into the setting sun.

Where was he going?

The Force echoed in this hell. Every atom knew the story.

"Luke, it's only one more season."

"Yeah, that's what you said last year when Biggs and Tank left."​

"Where are you going?"​

"It looks like I'm going nowhere. I have to finish cleaning those droids."​

"Owen, he can't stay here forever. Most of his friends have gone. It means so much to him."​

"I'll make it up to him next year. I promise."

"Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him."​

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Was this the middle of that same maze from where Luke Skywalker once stood and beheld that binary sunset?

No, that was on Tatooine.

But the center of the universe is anywhere.

Before he took that first step. Before that plunge that lead to Rebellion and Forgiveness and the Force...If you had asked him, "Luke, where is the way out?," what do you expect he would have said?

What had he been looking for out on that horizon?

A cool breeze drew Milo away from his reflection. He let the binoculars hang around his neck and unscrewed the cap to his canteen, its light weight foretelling a dark future. He accepted it solemnly, taking only a small sip before resealing it and letting it fall back to his side. His journey was coming to an abrupt end.

Milo kneeled, illustrating the idea with a handful of sand which he let slip through his fingers. Anger welled in his heart, all for not. There was no face to punch or console to hit. He came out here in search of nothing specific, and that's exactly what he had found: Specifically, nothing.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

So, what now? Search for water? For what? To wander around in search for more? To build sandcastles, to watch them wash away?

Milo returned to full height and smoothed his hair back, casting his gaze about primarily just because they had to look somewhere. All fed up with his hands on his hips, the bounty hunter shrugged and decided to just pick a direction and start walking, and that mountain from earlier seemed good enough.
But something moved on the horizon.

He had barely taken four steps when he saw it. Grabbing his binoculars, he returned the lenses to his face to scope out this new possibility.

It was a man, certainly, with skin pale as chalk, carrying in his hand a small, pink box. He wore jet black robes and had hair to match. Of the Sith, without a doubt. And though their temperament was traditionally cruel, Milo HAD found work within the service of their Empire's military...back when it still stood. It was a stretch, but Milo was desperate.

He was desperate, but the Sith at least offered hope.

So Milo set after him, running at first before the dunes proved it impractical. Still, his pace remained hurried.

"Wait," he commanded sternly, trudging behind the Sith. Milo was panting, exhausted. It was getting hotter, as though the sun were once more rising into the sky. And for some, curious reason, he could not gain anymore ground on the man of which he tailed. "Wait!," Milo called again, almost pleading, only to be drowned out as the wind picked up, battering him with sand, as it would every time he attempted to speak, until finally, Milo resigned to silence, walking in the shadow of a shadow apparently oblivious to his existence.

With careful conservation, he was able to make the rest of his water last almost an hour.

For miles, he followed the Sith through aisles of protective runes of sith magic, past old temples and schools; the Valley of Golg lost under time, and short memory, and perpetual conflict, and every individual ego that insisted, too, on being remembered forever and so ransacked these old city ruins. What was old, made new again, until the owner themselves turned old and forgotten.

Like a snake eating its tail, Milo reckoned, delirium encroaching on the edges of his mind.

He could even see it, there shifting beneath the sand. The Leviathan.

He wondered if it would eat him when he died.

Milo fell, crawling to keep up. "Wait!," he tried again. However, this time, there was no gust of wind.

And moreover, the Sith actually stopped.

"W-Wait...," Milo croaked out, his throat dry. His arms continued to pull him forward. He lifted a hand to guard his face from the sun, hoping the Sith was coming back for him. He wasn't.

In fact, he had stopped to talk to another man, dressed all in white. He was elderly, as indicated by his white hair and beard, and his skin was black as coal. In his hands was a little blue box. As he crawled toward the pair, Milo was able to pick up on their conversation.

"Have you not learned your lesson, Jedi? All will fall to the Darkside."

"Think again, Sith. It always seems darkest before it's dawn."

"Cling to your precious metaphors. They will not save you from what's coming."

"We'll see about that."

The two men dropped to their knees, shaking their boxes in their hands, rattling that which lay within. Simultaneously, they both removed their lids and cast the contents onto the ground.

K'lor'slugs. Two k'lor'slugs.

"Get 'em, Blinky!"

"I hope you haven't grown too attached...Balthazar, do your worst!"

Milo stared on incredulously as Blinky went left, Balthazar snaked right, their edged legs digging through the terrain like a dozen artificial fingernails. Before long, it was over. Balthazar's leg fell awkwardly in the sand, providing Blinky with a key opening. Sustaining a bite, Balthazar would succumb to Blinky's venom and be shredded in his gaping maw.

"YES!," the man-in-white shouted with a showy fistpump.

The man in black lowered his head, "So it is, Jedi."

"Until next time, then?," the Jedi offered.

"Until next time," agreed the Sith.

The shadowed man stood from his seat and turned, walking back from whence he came, not even offering Milo a passing glance from where he lay in the sand. Milo craned his head back, watching him as he went. "Hold on -- Where are you --?"

Once again, the Sith had left him to die.

He looked back to the immaculate man. He had just ushered his slug back into his little blue box and had begun to turn to leave.

Pushing himself to his feet, Milo expended the rest of his reserves to dash after him.

"No, Jedi! Wait!"

And to his surprise (though perhaps it shouldn't have been), the Jedi actually stopped. Not looking back, simply waiting for Milo to catch up.

Panting, Milo praised the man, "Oh, gods....Thank you," his stature dropped, his hands on his knees in rest. "I ran out of water a way back -," Milo regained his breath, returning to his proper height, "Do you have any I could borrow, or hell, even buy?"

It had suddenly dawned on Milo that at some point in this one-sided conversation, the day had become night, and as the Jedi turned around, he found, to his horror, that the only thing left of his face was a skull.

Dehydrated, Milo collapsed face first into the sand.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

The Far Star, Deep Space
One month ago

Milo could only stare at the holographic officer, closed off brain channels struggling to reopen, trying to reacquaint the bounty hunter with just how to interact with Watcher-Four within the context of their relationship. In the end, he had found too much had changed, and their former arrangement had become untenable.

With the Sith Empire dissolved, Watcher-Four's leverage, his blackmail, no longer held any water.

So, like a psychologist, like a businessman, Milo felt obliged not to say anything, waiting for the Intelligence Officer to crack and break the silence. Tyger Tyger's gaze had always possessed a certain intensity, sure, but with the most recent erosion to his soul, his eyes burned like a world on fire. Watcher-Four frowned.

"You don't seem too happy to see me, Lieutenant Nox," Watcher-Four affirmed in a backdoor attempt to reassert Rank-and-File dominance.

"HAH!," Milo scoffed, giving nearly zero consideration to the fact that it was the first time he had heard his own voice in weeks. "Lieutenant?! In what? His Excellency's Wamprat Republican Army?! The Empire fell! My contract is toilet paper! Our business is concluded."

"Yes, the Sith Empire has fallen...", Watcher-Four stated, his eyes shifting up and to the left in thought. He left a trail of ellipses in hopes Milo would follow it.

He didn't.

"'Yes, the Sith Empire has fallen,'" Milo childishly repeated, "Gods, who the hell are you supposed to be?"

The hologram looked down his wrinkled nose at Milo, fighting back a sneer. Unwilling to answer the question, he let the seconds tick by, inadvertantly replacing them with gravity. So much so that, when he finally attempted to regain control of the conversation with "I see you've been redecorating...Did your little friend leave?," he touched Milo's nerve so hard he snapped.

"What? Oh, yeah, you're a real karking Intelligence agent, alright," he mocked, standing from his chair and moving toward the holocall platform. "To hell with you. Don't call me again."

Milo depressed the button, ending the transmission.

Watcher-Four remained.

Milo depressed the button again.

And still, the image persisted.

"Are you quite done?," Watcher-Four antagonized, anger finally present in his voice.

Milo pushed it again, and again, and again -- respondent aggression toward the exinction of classical conditioning. Recognizing the futility, he sighed, lowering his head, punching the button one final time in rage.

"Good."

There was a mechanical shriek as all the on-board intercom panels came to life, reinforcing the officer's voice to ear-splitting decibels.

"NOW LISTEN."

Milo clutched his ears instinctively, ineffectually, closing his eyes tightly in a thrash that brought him to the floor.

"This is NOT your ship. This is not your FATHER'S ship. This is MY ship, because YOU. WORK. FOR. ME. Did you forget? WITHOUT ME, YOU WOULD BE A RANCOR PIT TOY."

The intercom continued to ring out for emphasis, driving home the point like nails through Milo's eardrums.

"What is it you think? Do you really believe any self-respecting operation would base its success upon a foundation as unstable as the Sith?!" Watcher-Four, normally so poised, flailed his arms about with a verbose fury, communicating in that violent language that only arms know, "Teenagers, teenagers all! Temperamental, emotional, impulsive, ego-driven narcissists! Coup d'tats every bloody weekend to finally sit on the throne as Emperor and mutter," Watcher-Four altered his voice, emulating a mentally-retarded person. "'Well, bugger me, I guess I don't have any ideas!' Impossible! Unsustainable! "

 

[Tyger Tyger]

He slapped a gloved hand to his forehead, casting his eyes to the ceiling of wherever he was, looking for mercy from whatever deity shepherded the exasperated. "It is as if you think that the Sith are the only ones capable of subterfuge! Yes, once upon a time, in the primordial aeon of the Architects --"

"What the hell are you even talking about?," Milo questioned bitterly, ignorant and uninterested in all this occult nuttery.

"SHUT UP" Again, with the intercom.

"The Four Hundred Year Darkness leveled the playing field. There in the black, the galaxy grew things far more vicious than the Sith. Far more competent, too. Organized," he let the moment land before winding back around to drive the point home, "And yes, they even know how to keep a bloody secret."

The weight of silence. The pressure of gravity.

"So, then, who is it you work for?"

Watcher-Four's voice transitionied to the smug inflection of a victor trying and failing not to 'rub it in,' "Well, isn't that the one-billion-credit question? WOWIE -- What's this? Is someone finally waking up?! We may just make a Spook out of you yet!"

"Give it a rest already. Just gimme a damn answer." It was a mixture between a growl and a sigh.

"Why, I'm with the Empire, of course. Same as you," he grinned, a second face present just on the other side of his profile. "Beyond that? Well, I am afraid your reach exceeds your....clearance."

Milo just looked at him, at a loss.

"What? You thought it would be that easy? One question and, alakazam, all is illuminated? Skywalker's cross, if you want that kind of simplicity, throw in with the Crusaders...Find God. Gods. Whomever. All you need to know, Tyger Tyger, is that the Empire has taken care of you so far. What else is there?"

Milo shrugged from his position on the floor, defeated. His facade had cracked, and it was clear he had been going through something kind of profound.

"Look," Watcher-Four began, in the interest of compromise. Perhaps it was empathy. Perhaps he was recognizing Milo's decrease in usefulness and saw a need for a remedy. Whichever the case, he patronized the man, "If you really must know, I will give you a hint." He crossed his arms, his right hand raised to allow the rest of a ponderous chin. "Korriban. Go to Korriban. You will know it when you find it. Be sure to hail me when you do."

Watcher-Four lingered on screen for a moment, waiting for Milo to speak again or maybe for some final words to come to mind. Neither arrived. He gestured to something off-screen, and then, with a flicker, he was gone

Again, Milo was alone.

"Well...kark it, then."

 

[Tyger Tyger]

Korriban Desert
2 Days Ago

Darkness.

Then light.

A cosmic disco.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fsssssssssssp.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fsssssssssssp.

So dance.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

It was the sound that lured Milo away from dreams. Incessant; an engine, or a heart. His eyes fluttered open.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

Vader.

Milo shot up quickly, the image of the Dark Lord falling from his face in the form of an elongated card. He recognized it as familiar and had even found a number of these in his travels -- The Pod Racer and The Virgin Mother, The Apprentice and the Princess; The Rescue and The Puppet War... They were beautiful enough, and so, he had been collecting them. But where did they keep coming from?

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

Sunbaked, exhausted -- he rubbed a tired eye and picked up the Fortune Card for inspection. The image presented had been far more straight forward than the others, much less going on; only the obsidian skull mask of Darth Vader. At the top was the number XIII and the bottom, the message.

"Death."

Kunhk. Tpp. Fss--.

Kiki-klkik-klkiklik.

"Yesss," came a voice of agreement. He looked at Milo for a moment before resuming his project.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

He was thin, tall as evidenced by the way his bent legs splayed out from where he sat on a rock. A dark complexion made even darker by the rays of the sun, but with oddly hairy forearms for a people that had evolved in this land naturally. His visage was wrapped in silken shawls, draped around sporadically located platemail of ornate craftsmanship. A native, Milo reckoned, of a warrior class. As he further assessed the scene, he took notice to the rather huge, rather dead spider at the warrior's feet.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

Its carapace stripped from its back, the man had been using it to fashion a new mantle of armor. Milo watched curiously as he worked, using an odd, blunted chiseling device to first punch a hole in the edge of the shell, then threading a high-tensile silken string (likely belonging to the nearby spider) through the newly-made eye. What happened next, however, was slightly more curious. Making an odd shape with his hand (which Milo now noticed only had three fingers), the warrior produced an additional silken material which glowed with a slight yellow light even in the midafternoon sun. This new strand was then woven around the former binding as reinforcement, entwined as a double helix, as a cadeucus. As the warrior pulled the weave taut, it better affixed the shoulderpad to the chestguard.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

Milo relaxed a bit, assessing the warrior as non-hostile and moving to pocket his new tarot card. Suddenly, he realized he felt light. He patted himself down. His bowcaster. His scattergun. His canteen. All missing.

His stomach sank, and he realized he was feeling more than a little queasy.

The warrior took notice to Milo's distress.

"The Anans'ai found Tyger Tyger in hunting groundklkiklik..Brought you here to shade."

He gestured to a weird looking container not far from where Milo lay, the butts of his weaponry clearly apparent.

"Your affectsssss."

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

"You called me Tyger Tyger."

"Yesss. The Anans'ai saw Far Star passss overheadklkikli."

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

"What? How do you know my ship?"

Kunhk. Tpp. Fss---.

"Have eyesss. The Anans’ai always recognize the Far Star."

Milo shook his head, both in protest and to rid himself of the sudden sharpness of color in the terrain. The reds almost seemed pink to him. The yellows, a green.

“That doesn’t matter,” Milo began, moving and proceeding to acquire his belongings. “I’m not Tyger Tyger. He’s dead.”

The warrior set his work down against his lap and brought his hands together. When he spread them again, bridging the distance, there was a Jacob's Ladder made of the same glowing webbing with which he wove the armor. "You walk, draped in old stories," he clarified, turning the ladder so that Milo could see it. "You say you’re not Tyger Tyger, and yet, the Mother of the Void ridessss on your backkliklkik.” The holes between glistened like soapbubbles, showing memories of the Far Star dating all the way back to the Lifewell.

"The Anans’ai alwaysss recognize Tyger Tygerkliklkik.”

"What is that? Are you laughing?," Milo asked, of course, instead of the myriad of better questions.

The Anan'sai pulled down the shawl that had been obscuring his face. Mandibular chelicerae framed the edges of his mouth -- the apparent culprit of the clicking sound. More horrible still, there, on the corners of each eye, a cluster of four little ones, all glowing with a more pronounced version of that faint blue that coloured the man's iris. Gripping the armor in his spinnerets, he resumed his work.

Kunhk. Tpp. Fssssssssssp.

Milo shook his head again, exhaling sharply. His pulse had quickened, his chest felt tight. In some completely inarticulable way, breathing was more difficult. The sky had turned purple, and he had no idea if he was seeing the man for what he was. He had been poisoned by the sun, by the Anans’ai. Looking down in the small container, he noticed a small handheld radio. Who it had belonged to, Milo had no idea, but it wasn’t his.

KUhNK. TPPPPPPPPP. FFFFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSPH.

“What the hell are you doing?,” Milo asked, probably louder than he’d meant to. He clutched his head, the sound ringing out over the planet. He grabbed the radio in his confusion, his mind turning to mashed potatoes, leaving him considering that, hey, maybe he had, in fact, brought it.

KUhNK. TPPPPPPPPP. FFFFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSPH.

“What did you…do to me?”

Milo felt a vibration through his feet, somewhere off in the greened desert. A heartbeat, an engine. His path was marked by a crystalline tether, and he walked without intention under violet skies.

“She will you show the way. You are the hunterkliklkik.”

KUhNK. TPPPPPPPPP. FFFFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSPH.

So loud in his head, Milo nearly collapsed, his hand shooting down into sand to catch himself, but instead finding something stickier. He rubbed the sand between his fingertips, studying it without even the faintest grasp on reality, and even as the sand fell back to the ground, it seemed supernaturally adherent for some reason.

“ You bring back the goodssss.,”

The Anans’ai’s voice was a distant mumble now, and Milo, turning around, had no idea how to get back from where he had come. His brain boiled behind his eyes, and the crazy sensory information pouring in was becoming more and more acceptable as real.

KUhNK. TPPPPPPPPP. FFFFFFFFFFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSPH.

Something was calling him back out into the desert, if that’s what this place even was anymore. Korriban. Durga, whoever that was. Tyger Tyger?

No, he was Tyger Tyger.

No, wait, he was Milo. Everyone just called him Tyger Tyger.

Did anybody ever call him Milo?

Milo tried to count on his hand and came up wanting, came down unstable, falling into the not-sand-anymore. He scrambled to the top of the dune and withdrew his canteen, miraculously full, and took a swig, exploiting the break as an opportunity to look around. How long had he been walking? He dumped some water on his hands, trying to remove some of the extra sticky sand – the amount contributed absolutely wasteful in his condition of deteriorating awareness.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

How did he wind up right back here again?

Time peeled like the skin of an orange, husked off in mass, but clinging in fragments, sourly stinging his eyes when he wiped away sweat in hopes of seeing more clearly. The world was rotting, was rotten, in all those pruney colors of decay, and as he trudged, he realized he hadn’t been perspiring, and he wondered if it was getting cold, or if he was dying, or if the sweat was just pooling somewhere in his guts and he was about to explode.

He dropped, smacking his face into bones. Everywhere, everywhere, bones. Picked clean by ants and scavengers. Perhaps, they had always been so immaculate, a pile waiting to be used or put on display. Born dead in a spiderweb placenta. Milo climbed to his feet, a sense of this wrongness sounding in the back of his mind like the siren to a fire engine screeching somewhere out in the night, showing up way too late to prevent someone’s life from incinerating in front of the whole neighborhood. How humiliating.

The bones crunched beneath him. They crunched behind him. Once more, he froze – a career of violence had made him sensitive to these moments; the death goddess at his back reined him to it. Milo turned suddenly, pivoting on his right leg, powdered bone flying up from the earth. Grabbing his scattergun from his thigh, he fired once, twice, pumped the weapon, and then a third time in the general direction of behind him, instincts and old magick guiding his aim. He was initially embarrassed, seeing nothing, but as the seconds rolled off the moment, the hssiss faded into few, blood pouring from its wounds.

Blood pouring onto the ground.

Blood pouring through the ground, through the sky, through the dividing gashes between atoms.

A wounded planet, a monsoon of gore. He was awash in it, swept away. He struggled as it tore him into its shallow depths, plunging his face into the pool. And, though, resistant, he fed on the extinguished life.

And as he gulped, as he slurped, his mouth became stained in blood like a feral animal, a devout husband. Milo drank until his belly was full and his thirst was sated. He wiped the liquid residue from his lips, but when he looked around, the horror was gone. No bones, no blood, no spiderwebs. Just a tiny oasis and a tinny, posh voice coming from somewhere out there.

Out where?

“How did I get into this mess? I really don’t know how. We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.”

A friendly series of beeps.

“I’ve got to rest before I fall apart. My joints are almost frozen.”​

Beeps.​

“What a desolate place this is.”

A whistle. No, a whimper, trampled under static like crumpled paper.

And then, the radio spoke.

“Shhh Shhh Shhhhhh…You’re being very rude. I’m trying to h-help you, and you’re being very, very, very rude…”

Milo’s expression darkened. But it was not a darkness that made him lost.

It made him singular of purpose.

“Where are you going?”​

He felt a tug at his reins, strands of Force webbing issuing him a trajectory. He knew not where he was going, but he knew exactly where it was. A bloodhound with a scent. A hunter with a trail.

“Well, I’m not going that way. It’s much too rocky. This way is much easier.”

“<krzkzkt> There’s a good -<krzkzkt> -see, I know how to protect you from - <krzkzkt> -- won’t be able to get you with me <KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT>”

Milo’s pace hurried. In this place of all this suffering, all this illusion, he trusted this new path that lay before him. He trusted it with every fiber of his being.

“What makes you think there are settlements over there?”​

“The road…,” Milo muttered to the robotic, ethereal voice from across time and space. “It…”

He lacked the vocabulary to describe what was happening to him, so he committed to the action. Just where was this a road to?

“Don’t get technical with me!”

What path was he on that lead him here? This path that burned from all he had left?

“What mission?! What are you talking about? I’ve had just about enough of you! Go that way! You’ll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile!”

His body warred with him to return to the safety of the oasis, to retrace his steps back to the Anans’ai camp. But the crying on the radio…

“And don’t let me catch you following me begging for help, because you won’t get it! ​

<KRKKZKkkkkkKKkKT---KRKKKZT>

"No more adventures. I’m not going that way.”​

Until finally, the spirit had abandoned him. Abandoned him to his destination.
Quietly, pathetically, the radio died.

It is a path to Death, Milo recognized, staring up the metal shack – the madman’s lecturing audible from the outside.

But name a path that isn’t.

 

[Tyger Tyger]

The Far Star (Korriban Starport)
(Closer To) Now (Relatively)

“YOU?!”

Me.

Another fan. All the way out here, in this. One more freak looking for an autograph from Tyger Tyger. Signed it with my bowcaster.
Of course, it’s never that easy.

“Of course.”

Forcer. Sith. Barely saw the inside before I was out again, dangling like wet laundry in the wind.


Psycho made his pitch. Usual salvation, damnation, gibberish. Black Myth, he said. The words poured out of his mouth, and they didn’t mean a thing to me.


All I kept hearing was, “One more Forcer excuse to hurt people.”

Blackness at the edge of vision. I remember thinking about how I had friends once and I couldn’t help but guess as to how it was I wound up in this tight spot of all tight spots. Inevitable panic, the trained response to suppress it. Death ain’t a time to lose your head.

And then I remember falling. Hitting the sand. And that the kid was still alive. By the grace of whatever god, the kid was still alive.

“I take it she interceded on your behalf?”

Yeah, she did that. Psycho thrashed the girl from his leg. A flash of a lightsaber later, her arm was gone. And she stood there, silent. Even bent down to pick it up, try to reattach it. Only a whimper; the sound of nearly a decade of practice wasted. One more reason why her life could never go back to the way it was.

He wouldn’t add another.

A scattershot to the gut, and he was screaming. A scattergun to head and he stopped. Just as sudden.

I’m not going to pretend I knew what he was doing in there, and I’m not going to pretend I care. The smell. The little skeletons, strewn about the gears of an engine. A jacket hung on the back of a chair, a badge with a screaming girl on its arm -- Some child murderer novelty club. Hell, this goddamn galaxy – I’m not really surprised anymore. On a splintered table, there was a roster. Nar Shaddaa orphanage – Every kid with the middle name “Lucas” or “Leia.” Two dozen Lukes and Leias, ground into hamburger by this misery machine.

Growing hip to this game, Milo deliberately withheld information. There had also been a small diary to be claimed from that same table: “From the Mind of Prefect Grenathan R. Skylark” it said on the cover, blood stains sporadic upon the leather.

It’s like you look into a black hole and see nothing; but it’s not just nothing. It’s all these shapes of nothing, and colors of nothing.

One more big, bad Sith Lord, convinced he was going to save the universe, or destroy it. There he lay, helpless. Born of carbon and luck. Same as you. Same as me.

“And you left the desert to play gravedigger.”

“He wasn’t dead.”

“He wasn’t dead?”

He wasn’t dead. In bad shape, yeah, but…sure as sunrise, still kicking. Maybe it was the drugs, the dehydration, the adrenaline…Something bigger and weirder altogether – I don’t know—but I felt obligated to bring him along. Hogtied, dragging him through the desert with the kid on my other shoulder.

“Look at you – Mister Universe, Muscle Man.”

I remember when I graduated boot camp. My family wanted to see it – I really didn’t see any point. I’d just drank all the fruit punch, hadn’t I? I didn’t really know what I had in common with them anymore, at least in that context, y’know?

“I know.”

My father had been an officer – You know that, right? Yeah, you know. He felt obliged to come by, welcome me into the fold – A sort of tradition, rites of passage. We weren’t really religious, so maybe that’s what we did as Nox’s. We were military. Anyway, he made me salute him for laughs…There wasn’t much between us, but he…he tried – my old man. So, some Darth or Apprentice or something saw this, decided he didn’t care for it. This nerf herder decided he wanted to make a point.

Watcher-Four sighed sympathetically, waiting for that other shoe to drop.

61 years old, retired, and here some karker was making him roll around in the mud, do push-ups until his heart exploded in front of his kids, his wife, everybody on his son’s first official day as a citizen in the Sith Empire. And I did nothing. I stood there and watched in the name of Service, Fealty, and Fidelity. It was my mother who said something. Guy used the Force to choke her, but, finally, backed off as he realized he was making a scene.

It cracked the mask my father had been wearing. The look was different – all the pride was now something else. Melancholy for his lineage. It was all a lie. Shame. Cruelty. Slavery.

"So, it was vengeance, then?"

I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.

There’s something in a man that makes he keep going long after he’s lost his reason to. For years, I seemed to be going even when going didn’t seem to make any sense. Some clinging fire that would keep burning until someone finally put it out. I just had to have the end come.

“You’re a bit of a poet, aren’t you, Tyger Tyger? Who would have guessed…”

Couple years ago, it was I would’ve died for the Sith Empire. Wake up this mornin’, gotta remind myself it don’t exist anymore. Somethin’ else is there now. Different. The same. I think I finally take your meaning, what, with the Infinite Empire. Seems like one of these fething things always has to exist in some way, shape, or form. I guess maybe you work with this new empire? Maybe some other one?

“Could be.”

Maybe you don’t work anywhere. Maybe nothing works at all.

“That’s been my experience, yes. Tyger Tyger…Milo…I know how I present myself, and I know it’s condescending, but I –am- your friend. I’m sorry if it doesn’t always seem that way. It is just necessary to get things done around here. I –do- care about your well-being. You’re far too expensive an asset to lose.”

“Hah…So, then, buddy, -- what’s the Black Myth?”

Watcher-Four deliberated, before responding, in all sincerity “…I don’t know.”

Milo nodded, weighed the information, and continued.

But yeah, maybe I just wanted some sort of Justice.

He woke up right around midnight, screaming. He didn’t stop, shouting his prophecies or whatever – just a whole lot of bad noise from a shriveled face. It was amazing what the kid was able to cope with, but she finally broke down around midnight -- dehydrated, exhausted, no doubt traumatized.

Though Milo omitted it in his recounting, in that moment, he had sang to her – a song his father sang to him as a boy that originally had no meaning, but as he pronounced the words, he could feel their little hooks dragging along his heart, binding him to the dead man that shared his ship and a never-diminishing amount of blood.

“These are the days of miracle and wonder, this is the long-distance call;​

The way the holocam follows us in slow-mo, the way we look to us all.​

The way we look to a distant constellation that’s dying in the corner of the sky​

These are the days of miracle and wonder, and don’t cry, baby,​

Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry…"​

​

I mean, she was only kid. Nobody should have to live this hard.

But yeah, I brought him back to the Anans’ai

“And did you get your Justice?”

Tyger Tyger took a moment to reflect on it. The Anans’ai had untied the Killer, let him run. And he did; wild, tumbling down the sand dune, desperately trying to escape. This was the fate he was so determined to inflict on others, but when it came to himself, he wasn’t willing. His last act in the galaxy, one of a hypocrite and a debtor.

Yeah…Yeah.

And as he scrambled into the canyon, he found himself stuck. His arms, frozen in mid-air, his legs splayed open mid-dash, and he began to shriek, desperately trying to thrash free. And that’s where the Anans’ai appeared, crouched, as if floating, stuck on an imaginary wall.

“Leia” began to cry hysterically, the sight too confounding, too terrifying. The Anans’ai crawling upon the invisible web toward their Sith prey, their joints collapsing, bending awkwardly, their movements anything but natural for their humanoid shapes. Force-webbing drew from spinnerets, wrapping tightly around the killer, twisting him into a tight, transparent prison from which his last words could not escape.

But that was not the end.

From the clouds, a massive spider emerged, descending alarmingly fast down the invisible web. The Anans’ai scattered to the periphery, allowing She of the Mountain to gorge. “Leia” gave one final scream before passing out.

Watching the whole thing, it was hard to believe that these were the Good Guys…The way they moved, like monsters…I had to keep reminding myself that Goodness wasn’t a Human trait. In fact, in my experience…

“It’s anything but.”

The Warrior from earlier had chuckled, causing his mandibles to click involuntarily.

“Tyger Tyger, are you sssscandalizedklilklilkilik?”

Exactly.

And Milo, as he watched the horror unfold before him, holding Leia in his arms, replied

“No.”

“Did you find it, then, Tyger Tyger? That what I nonsensically sent you across the universe to fetch?”

“I did.”

“And what was it?”

“Nothing.”

“So you understand – Excellent. Then let us get back to work.”

 

[Tyger Tyger]

Long after the sun had set over Korriban, in the early morning hours, Milo would prepare for he and Leia a dish of onions, grilled in the small pittance of spider meat from the goody bag the Anans’ai had packed for them, and the two would sit down in the living area to eat it. She didn’t talk, at least not anymore. But then again, these days, Milo didn’t really say much, either. In their silence, the acoustics of the Far Star would make their chewing audible, the scraping of forks against plates somehow elevated in meaning, in profundity.

But they would be okay.