Hunting For Pearls

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=9pt] Weeks had passed – she had trained, suffered, bent, and built herself back in to something she had never expected. Matsu Xiangu had been born a girl with something wrong to no true purpose. That had translated in to violence without inhibition, the flaring of a power with the potential to devastate entire planets were it not held in check. While magnificent it was unrefined, animalistic. That kind of power threatened to take root in her brainstem and take away all ability to reason, the fruition of base instinct driving nothing better than a shell – and what was unlimited power without the ability to think clearly enough to direct it to its best use?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] The Matsu that had left that bar at Jared Ovmar’s side was dead.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] The Matsu that trailed to his office on 244Core now was a creature, though equally as formidable in her potential, much like a diamond he’d plucked from the rough. She was no longer unhinged and willing to let her power consume her – control was the name of the game, and she’d become very good at it. She was the viper he’d seen she could be, quiet and hidden in the grass until her prey got too close and she sank her fangs in. But not before – never before they were close enough to catch. She kept her true power, the things she could do, hidden so far up her sleeve that it was too late once it had begun. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] The power to destroy was still in her. But now it came with a deadly precision of thought.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] His secretary buzzed her in without a word, perhaps hesitant to break the silence that seemed to hang around Matsu like a pall, punctuated by a face that seemed to have gotten more delicately angular as she had delved in to her training.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] A comment was already on her lips, some remark on how hard it must be to find good help (because Matsu can never let Jared, her master ovmar friend promise teach me everything and i’ll give you everything go without giving him a hard time) when she saw the man behind the desk. She stopped in her tracks, her face expressionless save for a slight narrowing of her eyes. Wrong, wrong, wrong… She reached out, searching for the fold of inattention she’d gotten rather adept at finding, the slight distraction that would let her slip in to the man’s mind while he wasn’t looking to find some answers. But she met resistance, pushing her fingers up against some wall that seemed to surround his mind – practically shoving after a moment before taking a step forward.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] “I’m sure you have a good reason for sitting in my Master’s chair,” she said quietly, the low husk of her voice filled with the promise that if he was unable to procure said reason, she would remove him herself.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt][member="Darth Carach"][/SIZE]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

A peculiar grin played on the Sith Lord’s lips, a grin that had once belonged to a different man in a different life time. Blood dripped from his forehead, dirtying the outlook of his appearance; the rips in his robe only amplified the overall feeling of wrongness. As she tried to touch his mind she would encounter emptiness, a state of… simply not being there at all. Where once a man’s mind had resided, there now was only decay and death, all the while the knowing grin stayed plastered onto the lips of the Dark Lord.

Then the insolent child spoke to him and demanded answers, and answers she would get. In due time. For a while the red, burning orbs just studied her, her all. The way one of her legs was slightly bend, a viper readying herself for a lunge. The way her lip was slightly bend downwards, expressing her distaste with someone else filling the seat of her Master, and most of all.. the creation of something deep inside her eyes. Something she didn’t even know herself was there, but would find out soon enough.

A feeling that something was terribly wrong, and that for once there was no one to help her understand. No understanding Master who supported her lust for freedom, and would only shake his head if she disappointed him. No resources available to her, except the sharpness of her mind and the power that lingered in the far reaches of her essence. She was truly on her own this time.

Eventually, the man did do something. Something that Matsu would feel instantaneously, a display of pure will and strength when the Sith Lord reached out with his mind and touched every single person in the Skyscraper. Suddenly everyone came to the realization that they weren’t needed here on this very moment and very day. A mother realized that her daughter’s play was going to start in twenty minutes and that she was horribly late, a Janitor would realize that he had been mopping the same surface of the floor for two hours straight and that his shift had long ended et cetera… et cetera.

Then… he finally spoke. ‘Oh… yes, little Matsu Xiangu. Yes, I do, for you see… your Master is dead and now I am...’ Carach smiled. ‘...in complete control.’

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=9pt] (You’ve forgotten something important. What’s happened to your time? You missed something along the way and its right outside your claws, just a moment from realization. But does it matter? Maybe you should just go home. Yes, that sounds good. Go home.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] (These aren’t my thoughts.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]Your Master is dead.[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=9pt]Your Master is dead.[/SIZE]​

[SIZE=9pt]Your Master is dead.[/SIZE]​

​

[SIZE=9pt] Matsu felt emotion like color, like someone flung rage, hate, sorrow out and then smeared their hand carelessly across her brain. One connected to the other in seamless order and yet nowhere in the burst of thought and feeling was there uncertainty. She was not foolish – she’d have to be blind to the Force to miss the power that had just radiated out of the stranger, the promise of what he might be capable of. If he was telling the truth and Jared was truly dead (show me the proof) her only purpose there in that room was to see the red-eyed stranger dead in the same chair he dared sit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt]And now I am in complete control.[/SIZE]​

​

[SIZE=9pt] (You’re alone, alone, alone! There’s no one here for you – everything you knew is hollow, empty! And it was gone before you could lift a finger.)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] (These aren’t your thoughts. Take a moment, take back your mind. Never let anyone in again right, not without your permission. Let him think you are little Matsu Xiangu – arrogance is a hard way to fall, and won’t it feel nice to cut him down in your Master’s name?)[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] Being on her own made no difference – she had never wanted her hand held even in those first flash-bang days of being Jared’s apprentice. Without him now she fought with a quiet he’d instilled but a fierceness that was all her own. She had meant to be his Knight, but she was always her own woman – time to make good on both.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt] She didn’t bother answering him, instead –without moving a muscle, without letting thought give her away on the sharp angles of her face – she wrapped her thoughts around the desk in front of the stranger and lifted it from its bearings on the floor, hurling it backwards towards him and at the same time lifting every marginally pointed or heavy object in the room (paperweights, pens, send them through his ears and out the other side) and harpooning them as well. He’d look rather sporting as a pin cushion.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=9pt][member="Darth Carach"][/SIZE]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

She was good, very good. Whoever trained her was a real hotshot.

Why was she good? Because she didn’t try the same trick twice, instead of trying to ram her way into my brain she changed, switched up tactics to try and put me off balance. Had I been someone else… it might have worked, but I was me and at the moment… being me was a bad person to face off against.

I snapped my fingers and a halo of power surrounded me, everything screeched to a halt - the various objects, the table it all halted in its track and I simply said.

‘ No. ‘

The moment my barrier was gone, I kicked the table towards her: my muscles were enhanced with rybcoarse, it gave my form a bigger advantage, it would be painful if it hit. Didn’t wait to see the result though, instead I crafted a ball of kinetite and lazily threw it behind her.

No way back now, Matsu. Whatcha gonna do?

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

What, was this guy three years old? ‘No’? It was with the intent of someone just learning the effectiveness of the word, of learning there was vocabulary that meant “I don’t feel like it”. Matsu was not an idiot. She could feel the way his mere existence was tugging on the Force in the room, an unmistakable aura of power only reinforced by the way he froze everything in mid-air. He was powerful and she would have to use everything she knew to hurt him – but he claimed to have killed one of the few people in the entire Galaxy that meant something to her, and she was about to teach him that ‘no’ did not always get you your way.

Remember what he told you – do this for him.​

Use your anger, use your passion…but quietly.​

As the desk came flying at her she tugged on that ball of sorrow and pain and rage and compressed it as she’d learned to do, concentrating all that fueled her control of the dark side until it was concentrated, sharp and lethal. The ball of lightning was, at its core, more a projectile than the traditional method of torture from a Sith but regardless she could feel its interference in her left arm, hear every mechanism slowing and gasping to work as concentrated electricity whizzed past it. It nearly shorted her out and she had maybe a second to defend herself before she’d lose it completely. Lifting her natural arm she sent a blast of the Force in a push towards the desk, smashing it in to the floor and splintering it in to pieces – pieces she lifted and shot with all the power she had towards the man.

They weren’t her true attack – no, she was going to try something she’d used to great effect on Ashin Varanin (or, at least, the greatest effect she could possibly have on that woman), using the shards as distraction since they weren’t likely to hit him before sending a blast of the force down at his feet and then another immediately after up high.

Her arm shorted out just as the kinetite went by and she scrambled to get everything working, knowing she had about two, maybe three seconds before he used something far more direct against her.

[member="Darth Carach"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

She didn’t get the time to see if her attack had any effect - the moment the shards penetrated Carach’s skin the scene shifted, changed into something else. She was back, alone for now, on that one planet she cut off her own arm but the writer is too drunk to remember what the name was again.

Then a voice would call out to her, as she turned around… she would see his face. It was different though, shaped as a caricature of the real thing. Sharp edges where they weren’t supposed to be, soft hanging flesh hanging in other places.

He spoke.

‘ They are worthless to our cause, Matsu. Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? Why don’t you understand? You could be a Goddess… and instead you turn your back on me.’

the Prophet stretched himself out on his true height, his mouth unclenching and from it came a penetrating darkness, a mist that whispered chaos. Thousands of souls screaming in agony, converging upon Matsu. Their voices, intermixed, screeched into a chorus of desolation and through it all… there was silence in the background.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

This was a place she had been before.

She had seen Krius a thousand times in her dreams at night, relived this moment more than she cared to admit. She suspected it wouldn’t leave until she’d wiped him from the Galaxy. So when suddenly everything was gone, she experienced a split second of panic before she realized this was just the 1,001 time.

And in her dream, she never died - he did.

She let the sounds of screaming, the writhing smoke of the spirits surround her until she couldn’t see the so-called Prophet anymore. The agony of others had never brought her pause, not when they begged and pleaded and certainly not when they got angry. It gave her power. And it didn’t bother her now. Krius would never have been this effective – he wished to bring this much pain on the Galaxy, but the vision he’d had would never see the light of day.

She closed her eyes, waiting a moment and piercing holes in the screams, clawing for the silence outside them and crawling out of the vision. And as clarity sank in to her she thought…this stranger’s touch on her mind had been familiar. He was, without a doubt, someone else; but she could swear she knew the flavor of the intrusion. “What did you do with him?” she asked, flexing the fingers on her metal arm, unwilling to keep expending energy attacking the man until she had a better feel for him. It would be wasted effort, clearly.

[member="Darth Carach"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

During the vision her push made me fly across the room against the chair I had been sitting in two seconds ago. It crunched satisfying beneath my bulk and eventually rested against the wall, I cracked my neck - trying to remove the tension easing into it and then waited for her to snap out of it.

Lighted a cigar while she was at it.

Smoke poured out of my mouth and then I winked at her.

‘ Think we have been over this already, lass. I killed ‘im. ’

Strictly speaking that was exactly what had happened, though perhaps just a little bit obfuscated and muddled.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She narrowed her eyes slightly when he answered, something about the teasing name reminding her of…

Or maybe it was more the reaction, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes in a good-natured show of patience in a situation that certainly didn’t call for it. She was on-guard as she watched him from across the room, taking a few steps forward to close the distance. The smell of the cigar was heady, nostalgic and it was then she thought maybe…just maybe…

“You’re right, we have. But how? How did you take him out? Tell me the details – explain how you managed to pull one over on Jared Ovmar,” she said, winding towards him a little more. She didn’t want the answers as fuel for her rage, but rather as proof to the quickly building theory she had. (Even the way he sits…is it you?)

[member="Darth Carach"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

It is.

A soft smile tucked at the lips and continued to suggest that what she was considering right now and yet…. yet there was a simple danger in this fact. It was clear that this Sith Lord was a Mentalist at heart, if you for a second considered that this man had bested Ovmar, then that suggested he was better than him. Which in turn said a lot about what the long-haired roguish Dark Lord could actually do, perhaps… just maybe he had killed Ovmar, but before doing that drained him from all his knowledge.

And so… the mannerisms, the way he smiled, the way he tugged at his cigarro, the way his eyes studied Matsu boldly with the same attention, the way he spoke and underlined his pet name for her with a slight intonation in the last syllable.. perhaps it was just that. An act, a way for him to get her closer, until he finally could slip his big greatsword in between the cavity of her third and fourth rib - an illusion crafted masterly by the Master.

...or perhaps you were just reading into the situation and it was really Jared Ovmar playing one of his tests again.

Who knew?

‘Jared Ovmar was a smart man, an intelligent man… and perhaps a bit dangerous even. But above all there was one thing-- well two things that really marked him as the man he was. A man of pragmatism and a man of simple arrogance, which he himself tried to refuse to acknowledge by deprecating himself whenever possible. Such a man is lead by his ego, even when he ain’t realizing it - besides… the man cares, even when he pretends not to. Wasn’t hard to use that.’

Once again the Sith Lord tugged at his cigarro and once again he gave her one of his grins, together with a wink and a shrug that meant to transfer the simple attitude of ‘Well, what do you want me to say?’

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Ain’t.

It was the single word that flipped the switch from theory to proven. There was, of course, the possibility that the Lord in front of her had ripped every shred of information from her Master’s mind and made it his own – an impression made perfect by absorbing everything Ovmar had been. The illusion had cast made that possibility more tangible. And yet she still couldn’t believe it had been so easy. Jared had been a lot of things – egotistical, infuriating, often bewildering – but he had also been far smarter and more savvy than she thought even he gave himself credit for. She couldn’t imagine it had been so easy for this stranger (not a stranger) to destroy him. (Or maybe she was just wishful and unwilling to believe he was gone. He had taken her hand and lifted her up when she had needed it and she had promised him the world.)

Tilting her head and studying him she slunk forward, one hand still on the saber at her hip in case she was wrong…but she didn’t think she was.

“That hair is going to take some getting used to Master,” she said, imagining lacing her fingers tightly in it as a grin bloomed across her lips.

[member="Darth Carach"]​

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

Eyes glanced over the saber and then the smirking lips, it was followed by my own satisfied grin. She was a smart girl, ah… definitely ready - can still remember how she sat at that bar and got her mind wrecked, loving every second of it - how many girls like that existed in this sickening Galaxy?

Not many… not many at all.

That’s when I decided it was definitely time, overdo even. Always had liked to take my time with things, put plan upon plan until it all fit together neatly. Sometimes… you gotta do what ya gotta do though, this was one of those times, even if I didn’t want to admit it myself.

Smile was gone, replaced by a serious look. One that wasn’t often present which only underlined what he said next.

‘Kneel, my Apprentice.’

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Admittedly she’d learned to control the sickness, make it less obvious over the years. She owed a great deal of that learned control to Ovmar, but it had been within her too to be a predator – a predator that liked a bit of torture now and then, though not necessarily handing it out. (She’s messed up, cut her some slack.) Her words were confirmed by the change in his smirk, blurring in to something more knowing and familiar.

His appearance made her consider his command at first, rolling her tongue lightly in her cheek in consideration. She was certain it was him, but it was natural to have a harder time assimilating the radically different shell in front of her. Hand by her saber she, however, bent to her knees and looked up at him, tilting her head to the side and blinking in reptilian study.

“Yes, my Master?”

[member="Darth Carach"]​