She had read somewhere that the dead have hyperspace lanes. It made sense to her - After all, people revived from a fatal condition often claimed to see a dark tunnel leading to a bright light. It sounded serene, at least to Suhr anyway. She thought back to the years she had spent with Magnus Kytra, a Jedi who had seen fit to train her after freeing her from the shackles of slavery. During, and since that time her lightsaber had been the direct reason for a handful of deaths, yet... Well. She doubted that the beings that she had sent on their way had found a place full of fluffy white clouds and peaceful eons. Or at least not if they believed in any sort of afterlife.
Suhr often thought of the idea of some form of afterlife, yet she had long since come to doubt that she would be let in if there was any kind of heaven. The other Templars spoke of the Force like it was some kind of God, but it never seemed that way to Suhr. A God, to Suhr, was meant to forgive, and absolve a person of sins... Yet after cutting down more people than she had digits on both of her hands, she figured that a God would be intelligent enough to wash it's hands of someone like her... And the Force certainly hadn't. It had stuck with her for her entire life, and would continue to do so until her final breath. She wondered that if there was a God, and an afterlife, then maybe she could barter her way in by pointing out that everyone who had died by her hand had caused a great deal of suffering to the Galaxy. Maybe she would outright say that they deserved to be put to the lightsaber. Yet if a God was all seeing, then it would know about the little bit inside of her that enjoyed watching life ebb away from another sentient, and thus damn her for eternity. The thought alone was enough to make a god fearing person scurry to the nearest priest and attempt to redeem them self. She smiled. Luckily for Suhr she lacked the faith necessary to be afraid of a divine being. She could keep her secret thrills.
________________________________________Su'Di'Calp Saira walked quickly through the speeder lot. His beady eyes darted back and forth, scanning for his prized possession. His body was adorned in simple clothes - Brown pants reminiscent of the Jedi Order, black Synthleather boots and a Bantha hide jacket that appeared to have been through the wars. He had a smirk on his unshaven face, and a swagger in his overweight, middle aged, unclean step that stank of confidence. Confidence for crimes he thought he had gotten away with. So confident was he, that he had neglected to look over his shoulder. Had the Aqualish done so, he would have seen a figure draped in black stood not five feet away from his body. He might even have seen her shift her hand forwards, or the slight ripple of air that hinted at the Force Push that launched his body head first into a Plascrete pillar...
It was no simple coincidence that Mr. Saira had been attacked. You see, it all began with a series of abductions. Eleven children. Six girls and five boys. They had simply disappeared from one of the recreational grounds dotted about the port-city of Nime some time ago and regrettably the local security enforcement had failed to link the cases, as there had been no discernible pattern. Yet not here. Not with this one. But Suhr had been vigilant. She had spotted a pattern that the authorities had missed. Of all the children that had gone missing, only six had been recovered. All of them were female. What Su'Di'Calp had visited upon them... Well. It was enough to make this particular narrator feel ill, so I will spare you the horror. Yet all of them had been sighted leaving with other children from a local orphanage... Located "conveniently" in between the park that the children had disappeared from, and the place that they had been found. An orphanage that was owned by an Aqualish, by the name of Su'Di'Calp Saira.
The local security had dismissed this as merely coincidental - after all, Saira was welcome in the community, and he had helped those that arguably needed the help the most. He couldn't possibly have done anything like that. Yet Suhr knew better. She could tell from the look in his eye, by the way he carried himself, and by the fake emotions that he had shown during his interviews with the security forces. He was guilty, and happy to be so. She could feel it through the Force like a strong breeze carrying the scent of fresh decay on it. Yet she needed more than just circumstantial proof. It only took one week of surveillance before Suhr came to an agreement. He needed to die and she needed to be the one to kill him. The state believed his home to be a safe haven for troubled youth, but by placing children in his care they delivered them to a brief, pain filled, thankfully brief lifetime of hell. The desire to end Saira was like a physical pain to Suhr, but finally, having incapacitated her mark with a swift Force Push and relocated his unconscious body to a more secure place to execute him, the phantom pain had begun to subside.
To Suhr, Saira was the worst kind of monster. Not content with simply killing or maiming another being, the Aqualish was the kind of person that enjoyed making children believe that his abuse was somehow their fault, and his depraved cravings somehow a twisted display of what adult love was. He transformed his victims into fellow monsters, and then used them to find newer, younger, and more disposable victims that he and his acolytes could descend on. And to think, if it wasn't for the messy disposals of his students, he might well have gotten away with his crimes.
Saira moaned in a mix of pain and disorientation as he began to wake... The sight that met him when his eyes finally unclouded was the blank stare of Suhr's mask lurching over his bound body. "Do you know why you are here?" She asked, yet they both knew that it was a question that didn't require an answer. The Aqualish simply sat there, staring at her like a Bantha caught in the headlights of a speeder. It wasn't long before his silence turned into fear.
"Please!" he begged, "Please let me go, you have the wrong man!" Even though he didn't speak Galactic Basic, the Translator that Suhr had attached to his neck had conveyed his begging for the Twi'lek to hear. Suhr simply grinned at him, and with the hilt of her lightsaber she pointed over to the pictures of the lives that he had directly, and indirectly annihilated. The game, at least for Saira, was over. He knew that he had been caught.
And that is when he started truly begging for mercy from the Twi'lek. Mercy that he never offered to his victims. Mercy that she would not give him. "Please, I'm ill! My mind is sick, I promise, let me go and I'll get help! I'll never be able to do it again!" Suhr's laughter was cold, and almost calculated. She didn't need to hear any more from him - Indeed, his "story" had been told to her so many times that it had become somewhat of a catchphrase for her. She thumbed the ignition of her Lightsaber. He soon shut up when confronted with the vicious hum of the blade.
"You are sick," Suhr agreed, "But you won't stop. I know you won't stop. You see, we're just the same, you and I..." she began to explain. "But I'm not quite like you. While I have my Dark Passenger and it's hunger, I never harm the innocent. I save my sickness for people who deserve it, people like you." He began to whimper, albeit quietly. Suhr began to realise that he was taking things surprisingly well for someone that was about to meet his maker. Suhr had no wish to make this a long and bloody affair - With a swift flick of her arm, the blood red blade of her lightsaber cut through her victims neck, ending him instantly. The feeling was beyond euphoric. Everything about what she had just done made Suhr feel alive. This was not cutting down a foe in combat - That was a different kind of rush. A combat high. This... This was different. It felt right. Justified. She had willingly taken a life in order to protect countless others. A crime to stop crime. Suhr stopped to pick up the head of her victim, and for a moment peered into it's lifeless eyes. "You made a better listener than you did a talker..."
She left after that, dropping the head of the Aqualish into the arms of a passing disposal droid on the way past. In the following hours it would register the "discovery" it had made with the authorities, and perhaps eventually they would discover the fetid corpse of Suhr's latest victim.
Suhr's dark passenger had fed well that night. Yet it would soon be hungry again.
The story continues...
