Dude, Where's My Planet? (Mikhail Shorn)

[Manu Xextos]

Colour him crazy (and he probably was), but Manu did what he'd promised to the red-skinned black tattooed emotionally questionable Twi'lek chick. He'd brought Mikhail Shorn back to his place on Tythe. Tythe had been resource scoured until there was nothing left but a desolate core and murky weather, the corporations had taken the planet remorselessly and when Manu was given the choice of planets within the Confederacy of Independent Systems to rule over as Viceroy, he'd gotten a lot of confused looks.

Tythe was a wasteland. It was spent, a ruined rock past its prime without even the gumption to put on some lipstick and its favourite dress, but Manu saw it and loved it. He would remake Tythe as he would remake the sordid trail of himself left eight hundred years behind. Since coming to Tythe & Nelvaan, Manu had begun to terraform the planet. Asteroid mining syndicates were bought off, precious minerals of carbon, nitrogen, alkaline metals, transitional metals were shipped in and from another asteroid they mined ice for the desolate water table. Every spare credit he got for his positions in the Viceroyalty, Navy and Obsidian Order went to the terraforming process. Seeds from Thyrsus, Echan and Naboo were shipped in, held in vast bio-domes until they could acclimatize to the shifting atmosphere. Algae ponds began to flourish and spew oxygen into the air, microorganisms which had dwindled and all but gone extinct began to take their planet back. From inside the Viceroyal Mansion: A pre-fabricated collective of Echani engineered settlement pods, the barren grey-blue ground had in places begun to take seeds and sprout.

The settlements spread and grew - as settlements did - with the officers and soldiers from Manu's Sv'yato Fleet, many Chandaari refugees and House Xextos and Najwa Echani. Others from around the Confederacy and the neutral planets had begun to pioneer on this once decimated world. The air buzzed with optimistic ions, people who worked hard and made a path for the future generations. Upon bringing Shorn down to the planet, Manu had left the Garhoon in a room attached to an inner courtyard. A fish pond rested in the middle ring, and in the centre Manu Xextos sat in the lotus position, floating on a waft of Light-based levitation. The flora in the courtyard seemed to respond positively to his meditation, after all: If Manu only had a few weeks, maybe months left at least he could bring some semblance of life to a once dead world.

Upon waking up, Mikhail would be attended to by an Echani who for all intents was identical to Manu but for the massive scar across his jaw and spilling down past his shoulder. "The Progenitor wishes you to meet him for a drink, after you've acquainted yourself." There was a sonic shower, a change of clothes, anything a man might need to wash up. "Manu, Kavi. How many times do I have to come in here and remind you his name's Manu. He hates it when we use titles." A fresh faced woman with silver eyes and hair swept in, waved a little and punched Kavi in the shoulder. He slapped her arm back and she kicked him in the back of the knee.

"Sisters. Blech." Kavi mumbled, going to walk out as the woman shook her head and laughed. "Sorry, Kavi falls off the wrong side of his ego a lot. Need anything?"

 

[Lord Ghoul]

He awoke from a blissful dream to an enormous headache. The transition did not settle with Mikhail as his eyes flickered open, squinting at the sterile lights above. He raised a hand to shield his face and groaned. At once, a voice rang in his ears. Similar to the voice he'd heard in his dreams, but a little more harsh and gravelly. Blinking wearily, Mikhail sat up.

"Gah," he clutched his throbbing head. Finally, the words registered. "Proge-" Shorn's eyes flicked between a man and a woman with sudden alertness. "Uh huh."

Memories began falling back into places. Pieces of the puzzle. Except, the puzzle was his brain. "No, I'm fine," he muttered. Mikhail moved over to the sonic shower, stared at it for a moment, then elected to just get dressed in his old pair of clothes. Shorn walked outside and looked up. No solar devil stood shone down rays to burn him. The lighting was mostly artificial. Mostly.

Grimacing, Mikhail moved further into the courtyard, noting the silver haired man sitting on the lotus leaf. But more importantly... water. Shorn hopped into the pond without second thought, not bothering to strip off his clothes. The cold water soaked in, better than any sonic shower could ever be. Mikhail stayed underneath the surface for several moments, then pulled himself up and out to lay on the ground, soaking wet. He stared up into the sky above, finally saying.

"So.... thanks."

[member="Manu Xextos"]

 

[Manu Xextos]

[member="Mikhail Shorn"]
The first impression Manu had of Mikhail awake was him jumping into the pond with the fishes. 'Did Mikhail Shorn just commit suicide in my fish pond?' He waited for Mikhail to come back up for air, wondering if he should say, help him or such. Well! Protein for the sea life! The girl from Shorn's room came into the courtyard and slumped down with her back against a young tree to read a book, she glanced up then shrugged.

As Mikhail surfaced, Manu bit on his cheeks in an attempt not to laugh. Why did Manu get the feeling that there were at least thirty souls who would have preferred if the Echani Master had held Mikhail's head under the water until it stopped twitching? Must have been the weather, or lack thereof. It had occurred to Manu that he'd healed a monster, but it also occurred to Manu that monsters were relative in the right environments with the right stimulation.

"You're welcome. Ah, and you owe me one. Maybe two. You might owe me two." Manu stepped off from his meditative repose and stood to the side of the pond. "It's not every day I get to put a Garhoon's mind back together while an emotionally loop-de-hoop Twi'lek weeps two feet away. My mentalism was getting rusty, thanks for the top up. Need a towel? A place to hide from [member="Jared Ovmar"]'s wrath? How about a drink that makes lesser mortals go blind?"

 

[Lord Ghoul]

The water dripped slowly from Mikhail as he lay on his back, forming a puddle around him. His eyes stared up at nothing in particular, wandering. A chuckle broke his lips, those meandering eyes suddenly narrowing to slits.

"Mmm, no, I think we'll just count this as one," the disagreeing words dripped with his usual snide wit. Not so much a slight against Manu in particular as much as a general disrespect for anyone who told him 'how things were.' Mikhail stretched his arms back, wrapping the soaking limbs underneath his head in a semblance of comfort. "As for Ovmar," he paused, a deep breath expanding his chest, then leaving in a sudden rush from his nose. "I'll handle him."

"So..." Shorn finally turned his head to regard the Echani, pale blue eyes cutting like icy daggers through the man, "Why does the great Manu Xextos, Admiral of a vaunted CIS fleet -" he noticed Manu's look and rolled his eyes, "Oh, I learned all sorts of important details about the CIS after we played footsie on Rodia. What was I- oh right, why would NuNu care about saving little old me?"

[member="Manu Xextos"]