Lightspeed is a Confusing Word

[Gen Gurasame]

Gen did not believe he would ever get used to the ridiculous sound. He had been under fire once before in his life and he had never really recovered. He still heard the noises in his dreams and if there wasn't enough to detest about one of the more horrific moments in his life, familiarity breeds contempt. Gen dealt with contempt through scorn, he hated that weird slinky noise every time the flash out light pierced through the empty space. Whoever designed the modern laser must have been incredibly bored with a spring and decided that it made the most annoying sound possible and that, not only could he cause untold amounts of physical harm with weaponized light, but the emotional and psychological torture that listening to his weapons fire would forever devastate the sensibilities. Never before has history endured such sinister evil. The ship rattled again, one of the aforementioned sinister lights detonating a few feet from Gen's head. The young man braced himself against the hull of the ship, his eyes frantically scanning back toward his family, hungry and terrified. It had been a week since they had escaped their master and Gen has truly hoped they would not have been able to scramble after them quickly enough. He was wrong. Hiring an actual pilot seemed like the proper decision though. If he was flying this thing the fighters currently after him would have already killed them. The pilot in question however wasn't especially fond of being shot at and the wide array of expletives escaping him was nothing short of impressive. Another explosion followed, this time genuinely flinging Gen from his braced position on to the floor, the ringing rifling through his head forcing him in to a daze. He barely understood what the pilot was saying.

"Something something I feel I might pee."

Then they were gone. Gen felt a light pull at his naval and suddenly bright lights and then equally suddenly, they were no longer being shot at. The Atrisian man slowly gained his bearings pulling himself to his feet off the cold metal floor as he tried to orient himself. Apparently, given the obvious context clues, lightspeed travel did not in fact contain much urination. The look on the pilots face was ragged and frightened, but it was considerably less tenuous now, were they out of immediate danger? No, of course not, good things don't happen in this place, that's apparently no fun for whatever sick beings enjoy his life. The engine, not a fraction of a second after a state of calm started to set in, exploded behind him, throwing the ship forward and jostling everyone back to the ground. Gen scrambled up toward the cockpit as the pilot frantically tried to gain any sort of control of the vessel, to no avail. The pilot turned to Gen and said the most asinine thing of the evening.
"We're stuck."

Gen held in the string of curses he wanted to retaliate with, but he was thinking of the children, specifically the four behind him. He barely knew enough about lightspeed travel and ships to crazily fly this ship to an adjacent planet and while he knew they were headed toward Fringe space, Gen had no idea where they actually were. A black, sparkly void looked pretty much the same regardless of where in the galaxy he landed. If their pursuers had any way to track them, they were in trouble.


[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Atrisia was not a place Matsu visited frequently, if only because she found the culture stuffy and oppressing. For a people that were known for being powerful fighters they certainly liked to act as if the Force didn’t even exist.

Kesare sat by her side, her Apprentice in name but her partner in crime in practice. They relaxed, legs crossed and pouring over the plans for the Fringe’s upcoming move on Ralfor, waiting to enter the planet’s atmosphere and descend downwards for a meeting to discuss business for Neuro-Saav Corporation. It was bound to be the type of gathering filled with double-speak, lies crafted in an attempt to discern truth – truly, the kind of time-waster that Matsu despised. But it was a favor to her former Master, and she could practically hear her bank account filling with credits with each second that passed. She was drawing one of her metal claws along the line of a mineshaft they were planning to plant with explosives when the delicately prodding sound of the radar picking up another ship caught her attention. It shouldn’t have – there were a few dozen ships coming and going out of the planets’ space at any given time and the radar had alerted her to all of them – but for whatever reason it made her get up and look out of the viewport just in time to catch the soundless explosion of the small ship’s engine, a little firework in space.

She was strong enough to feel exasperation, the winding down of panic, and…fear radiating from the small, stuck vessel below.

She smiled.

Moving slowly to the comms system of her frigate – a massive, sleek beast of a ship – she hailed to the little lost transport below. (Why? She had no real reason beyond how delicious their anxiety tasted, or the thought that no one would miss anyone within if she were to take them and use them to further her power. Their engine exploded. They starved. They were lost in space. Thousands of things could have happened to them but the one you are thinking of – their minds torn apart by a woman seeking the truth of the universe.)

Her voice is smooth like sea-glass as she calls to them, watching them float. “It seems you need some help.”

(Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are wolves.)​

​

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​

 

[Gen Gurasame]

"Tense" did not really begin to describe the emotional cocktail coursing through the now defunct freighter. Gen was stressed, horrible flashbacks coursing through his mind of the last time he and his family were aboard a ship that got shot at, and the rest of the "crew" were not fairing much better. His mother looked terrified, her arms wrapped in a vice grip around his siblings as if her arms were somehow explosion proof and Gen was rather certain the distinct smell of ammonia was wafting toward him from his little brother. The pilot was busy cursing himself, then cursing Gen for not telling him they were going to be shot at by Sith, which to be fair he thought such a possibility was assumed when he took a random job to smuggle a family of underfed and dirty people out of Sith Space. The cursing persisted for quite awhile, but was quickly falling on deaf ears. The look on Gen's face was one of...well not terror per say, Gen wasn't really the kind of person to be particularly terrified, but his eyes were wide and apprehension seemed to pour out of every...well pore. The pilot might have thought he was intimidating him, or something, but Gen barely even acknowledged that he was next to him. His focus was entirely on the massive frigate casually meandering toward them and, more specifically, the presence he felt inside it. Gen had been around many, many Sith. He was familiar with how they felt, how it felt to be around them...but he wasn't remotely prepared for this. Maybe he hadn't met one this powerful, or maybe he was just getting better at sensing it...but this was the queen of evil feelings and Gen was not remotely enthused by its presence. He was less enthused when the voice echoed through their tiny little ship. The pilot, oblivious to what was talking to him quickly reached for the comm button on the ship.

"Yes, Yes we need some he..."

"No!"

And then the noise completely cut out immediately following Gen smacking the button conceivably hard enough to break it completely. The string of expletives that left the man, words that Gen was now convinced comprised the majority if not all of his vocabulary, were particularly loud after that. Which, in turn, made Gen's rebuttal even louder. The volume of the screaming inside their tiny little ship would have been heard without the comm button if not for the vacuum of space. The crescendo of their particularly loud feud came when the pilot angrily pushed Gen away from the comm system and resumed his desperate plea for help. Gen landed smartly on the metal floor as the man continued begging what he must not have realized was, or perhaps he simply didn't care that she was, a Sith. Gen slowly dragged himself to his feet as the pilot finished his plea, muting their side of the comms before Gen could colorfully call her something offensive. He was still trying to decide if he wanted to go with "Wart Riddled Swamp Monster" or "Florence." This was bad, potentially even worse than the situation they were fleeing from. Sith were disgusting creatures, at best his family would be going back in to slavery the second they set foot on that behemoth of a frigate. At worst...well...he didn't want to think about what was worst. He'd just have to find a way out of this...he could do it, he did it once already.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She felt Kesare lifting herself from her seat when the pilot confirmed that they needed help, going to alert Lucas to the ship that would be ‘boarding’ within the next few minutes.

Matsu however, was still stuck on the exclamation she’d heard from someone in the background before the feed had cut out the first time. There were any number of reasons someone would be panicked even if they didn’t know who she was, but Matsu figured he was either hiding something or was smarter than his pilot – or both. She was making no effort to hide her signature…and she wasn’t alone. There were three Sith besides herself on her cruiser and a powerful Witch – the dark side crawled over the monster-ship. She felt potential on the smaller vessel and it was entirely possible someone down there was partially masking themselves.

There was only one way to find out.

She closed her eyes and let out a breath, sinking herself down in to the ship paused in space, reaching for the mind of the man who’d seen fit to deny her. There were several aboard and she brushed past a few children, a woman nearly beside herself with panic, a man that she decided fairly quickly was the pilot as there was no complexity to be had there and then…him. She ran her tongue over her fangs, settling in his mind and picking through the emotions strung one over the other, each struggling for dominance though he seemed to have his head screwed on the tightest. She spoke lightly in to his mind.

Hello.​

She laughed as a particular thought he’d had floated past her search.

I like ‘wart-riddled swamp monster’.​

She spoke to the pilot through their comms then, though it was more just to let them know than out of any real choice they had. “We’ll pull you in.” As she stepped away from the comms unit she let her eyes shift to the Sith Lord that piloted her cruiser and commanded her armies. “I’d like them brought in to the front hangar, if you would Taiyi.” A Sith Lord was a strange choice for a pilot but Taiyi was strange all on his own, and there was nobody better.

Making her way slowly to the hangar in question, the transport was being hauled in by the time she breezed in. Kesare and Lucas – an assassin they’d met along the way, and a Sith to boot, a beast of a man with an ax to grind – were already there to oversee what would be done with the passengers aboard the captured ship. Matsu stopped just a little shy of the beat-up carrier and waited for the doors to open. An Atrisian family came out haltingly, all of them looking like frightened animals save for the pilot who looked blissfully ignorant of his situation, and…him. She settled inky black eyes on him and tilted her head, blinking in reptilian observation.

“Your family?”

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​

 

[Gen Gurasame]

"Fine, Florence it is then."

The second Gen spoke those passionately embittered words, he had wished he hadn't. Not because he might have offended whoever he was talking to, he could not possibly care less about that, instead it was because no one had ever spoken inside his head before. Perhaps if he was in a completely rational and calm state of mind, he would have been able to tell the difference between spoken and whatever telepathic magic was happening there, but right there, after he'd been shot at and was being accosted by what he felt now to be a massive pulse of Sith evil, he hadn't noticed the difference until it was too late. He had reacted as if the words came in over the communications system and a confused look was shot toward him by everyone else on the ship. A feeling washed over him, a mixture of dread and...in some small part awe. If she could talk in his head and respond to a thought he hadn't verbalized, then he had confirmed that he was dealing with Sith. The feeling was not imagined and no Jedi would feel so dark. Granted, he'd never actually met a Jedi before, only heard rumors, it was hard for him to differentiate the two, they both used that witchcraft called The Force. They were both disgusting, they might both feel dark. The rest of the "crew" did not have long to ponder Gen's awkward little outburst as the female voice that they had heard earlier, and Gen had heard seconds before in his head, spoke again, informing them that they were being brought on board. Gen's reaction really should not have been displayed around children.

It did not take long before the contents of the freighter were herded out of the ship by their new captors and displayed to the more prominent feelings of dread that Gen had experienced. The one his eyes were drawn to first was the feeling that bugged him the most. Gen was playing his part of "frightened animal" quite well. He immediately began sizing the woman up from head to toe, even threw in a little snarl there, with an intensity that in any other situation would probably flag him as a completely different kind of predator. A thought that he somehow managed to have in the back of his head despite the situation. He must have issues. Before he could really set off on his leering induced shame spiral, the woman spoke. She also made no sense. What exactly was she asking him? Did she want to know if that was his family? Did she want to know if they were a family? Did she not know what a family looked like? Did she even know what a family was? Do Sith have families? It'd actually make sense if they didn't, Gen had always been convinced that Sith just manifested when the Galaxy had a particularly potent bowel movement. The universe all made sense again.

"What of them, Florence? Couldn't come meet us yourself? Needed the entourage to deal with a bunch of starving people? Sith sure are terrifying, Florence, really raising their stock."

He had, consciously or otherwise, positioned himself between his family and the Sith formerly known as Matsu. He also wasn't sure why he kept referring to her as Florence when he was well aware she could probably snap his neck with a flick of her wrist, but to be fair that sounded better to him than returning to the enslavement he so very much loathed. He was also at the point of destitution that pissing off a Sith, at all, would be completely fair recompense for his life.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

It would have been difficult to miss the fact that despite knowing just what she was, he still wasn’t afraid. She could feel his fear came from his knowledge and there was something…adorable about the way he lashed out. It wasn’t something she was used to. Begging, pleading, and sobbing were par for the course and ironically, what should have gotten him killed was instead making her more interested. And if he wanted to keep calling her Florence that was fine as well – eventually he would learn her name, if he didn’t have a clue who she actually was already.

She actually laughed at his accusations, glancing at Lucas and Kesare before looping her gaze back to him. Reaching out one more time she latched on to his brain, crawling over his mind spider-like before burrowing in where it was soft. It took her only a moment to find what she wanted.

“Fair question Gen,” she began, dropping a name he had never mentioned aloud, sounding rather bored even if she was anything but. “I may have power but I still don’t possess the ability to be in two places at once, contrary to popular belief. They’re here to take whomever I don’t.” She didn’t explain further, assuming leaving the fate of his family unknown would get her answers faster. He clearly didn’t care about his own life too much.

She looked at the children huddled behind him, cowering around their Mother with little fingers gripped at the arm she used to hold them closer. She’d never experimented on children before – there hadn’t been much need, they weren’t a threat – but perhaps they’d make for something to study regardless if subjects had fallen without effort in to her lap. Taiyi had perfected a method of extracting the brain from the skull without killing the subject, revealing the underside of the brain. It had made understanding their functions far easier and the longer she looked at them the more it seemed like maybe sticking a few probes in a juvenile brain could prove at least mildly interesting.

She dragged her eyes back to Gen. “Tell me," she said, reaching out with the Force like fingers to run lightly over his neck, what might pass for a caress between lovers feeling decidedly more like a threat here, "what are you doing in Fringe space?” She didn’t need to remind him not to lie.

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​

 

[Gen Gurasame]

She didn't need to remind him that she didn't want him to lie, but that was an entirely different concept compared to his actual tendencies. Sith did not deserve honesty. Lies would prove pretty useless though. After she laughed her decidedly frightening witch cackle, which was how Gen was going to interpret that laugh regardless of it's sound, tone, or reality in general, he felt something that he was in absolutely no rush to feel again. He hadn't noticed it before, with the tension going on and the sensation catching him unawares before, but now, when he was actually focused in on his assailant and present object of his hatred Gen felt it, the feeling of his mind being carved in to, creeping and crawling through every crevice as she violated him in ways he did not even sort of appreciate. Gen's hand reflexively went to his head...pointlessly, as if maybe his hand would shield his thoughts in a way his skull wouldn't, but he was short of options. He also was not entirely sure what she was even doing. The sensation abated rather quickly, the boy staggering back as if he had been pushed in the chest as he glowered at the woman, his hatred now completely and utterly visible. Even without consciously dedicating thought to it however, his body still reflexively shifted to put him right in her eye line as she moved to examine his family. In his mind, he fully embraced the bravado, ignoring that if she wanted to touch them he had no way to stop her, but he was certainly going to posture like he could. He was not very aware of the Sith community, his Masters only spoke of the ones they particularly hated, but of the ones that were spoken of, only a few could pry in to his skull so effectively...and Gen wasn't really enthusiastic about meeting any of them.

Gen recoiled in disgust as he felt the caress along his neck. What he felt disgust toward was a little ambiguous though. He was not sure if he was disgusted by the fact that he was being touched by the force or if he was disgusted that she was touching him, probably a vicious cocktail of both. Her question...confused him though. She had done this twice to him now by his count, once to at least pry his name from him and another to at least pry one of his colorful nicknames for her out of his head. If she could find things like that so easily, why was she bothering asking him questions? Maybe she couldn't read everything, only the surface and ever present thoughts? He'd have to test this. Gen glared at her with impressive concentration, as if trying to violently force the thought he was having in to her head, maybe if he angrily thought it, it'd work better. He wasn't exactly trained in telepathy or anything else related to telepathy, but that was definitely how it had to work.

'You look like a Huttcor in a dress, You look like a Huttcor in a dress, You look like a Huttcor in a dress."

As to her actual question though, Gen wasn't really sure how to respond to her. Lying would be pointless if she could read his mind, but by the same token...asking him the question in the first place was fascinatingly pointless if she could read his mind. He was still also trying to probe the limits of her abilities, if she could really focus only on one surface thought, he needed to keep prodding her until he confirmed it. He had no idea if the information would help him escape this horrible situation, but any weaknesses he could find had to be helpful...somehow...but if she wasn't lying to him and they were actually in Fringe space like they tried to be and she didn't just pry his itinerary out of his head like she did his name, then he picked a horrible place to go. The Sith Welcoming committee was a horrible decision.

"We were shopping for a vacation home, you know, for when the oppression gets a little too rich come mid autumn. Why do you need to ask such asinine questions? If you could figure out my name without me telling you, why do you need to know why we're here? We're surviving, poorly at the moment."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

For a woman who’d committed the crimes she had – over and over again, laying her head on her pillow at night with a satisfied sigh and sleeping like a baby despite the blood on her hands – there were things she wouldn’t do. They were curious lines to draw in the sand as she had no problem with the short, violent burst of causing a cerebral hemorrhage or ripping someone in half with a wave of her hands…but here, her strongest power, she would not use unless provoked. It all stemmed from a situation she wouldn’t be describing to Gen anytime soon – he wouldn’t care anyway. He’d probably even smile.

Regardless, she didn’t have much time to think about it as the thoughts he was pushing blared out in her head. He was trying so hard it sounded more like a shout and she blinked, raising two fingers to her temple as if stemming off a headache. “Feth, you don’t have to yell.” She didn’t bother applauding the imagery of a hutt-rancor hybrid, though it was duly noted.

She could feel the Force in him, only confirmed by the fact that he pushed words in to her mind instead of her just reading them once they’d been thought, but there was a strange quality to it – one she’d seen once more before, a denial that Lucas had displayed for reasons dissimilar to the man in front of her but just as powerful. She doubted he even really knew what he was capable of, what he could be.

For whatever reason she felt a spike of irritation as he continued with the sarcasm, finding it unnecessarily acerbic when she’d been nothing but reasonable up until this point. It wasn’t as if she’d told him she was thinking about dissecting his brothers and sisters, so she wished he’d calm down for a moment until she gave him a reason to hate her. She took a step towards him, almost daring him to lash out and try to hit her, give her a reason to reach out and pop his head off with the vice-grip of her durasteel arm. “I’m asking you because I’m doing you the favor of retaining a little autonomy, a little dignity. But if you don’t want it…” She ground in to his brain, taking taking TAKING everything she wanted to know. There would be pain but she was hardly inclined to care. She saw everything from the last few days, stopping there since while she could search for more she just needed what she was seeing now – a slave, escaped, and now inside a zone of space entirely against the enslavement of any species. Ballsy to be sure, but she already knew that.

She watched him for a minute, let him recover from what had surely been an unpleasant experience. “Congratulations, you’ve made it in to slave-free territory." She looked over her shoulder to her two Sith companions, pointed to Gen's family. "Take them to the labs. He's coming with me." She didn't bother looking back to him, lifting him off the ground in a short show of telekinesis, his body trailing behind her.

She was in no rush as she moved back to her quarters, sparing a glance for Hades as he looked up from his drawings (spirals and triangles of sticks and fur, things he called talismans that would usher in a new order), before continuing on and speaking to him as if they were friendly acquaintances. "Have you given any thought to what you'd like to be as a free man? It's an important decision. Something boring like a farmer or a factory worker? A soldier, perhaps? Mmm, but I can sense the Force in you...maybe you'll follow that."

I can show you. Even if you don't want to see.​

​

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​

 

[Gen Gurasame]

Ha? It worked? Success! Of course, her reaction was a little less shock and awe and a little more like a disappointed mother scolding her child for shouting in the grocery line, but that didn't matter, Gen had succeeded, for science. Of course he didn't have much time to celebrate his new found discovery. She had begun moving toward him, which in retrospect he really should have expected, but it still caught him off guard. He didn't expect to annoy her quite that quickly, but at the same time she was Sith. Emotional control was not necessarily their specialty. He barely had time to process her words before his head was wracked with pain. It is difficult to describe the sensation in the words provided with Galactic Basic. Excruciating did not quite cover it. Gen rather quickly, and pathetically, fell to his knees and his hands went to his head. This was different than it was before, it wasn't a trickle through his scalp, this was a jackhammer, pounding and pounding until it took whatever little gem it wanted. For the first time, he was specifically afraid of her, of this Sith. He tried to fight it, but that only made the pain that much worse and he wasn't even sort of equipped to put up any sort of struggle. Then, the pain suddenly stopped. Apparently the woman was done carving her way through his gray matter and Gen fell rather inelegantly to the ground, his hand clutching his scalp in an effort to grip away the pain. His eyes however, stayed perfectly open as she watched him, his eyes fixated on hers with an emotion that Sith knew quite well, hatred. Every shred, every semblance of pure hate that he had amassed over his life toward the Sith, toward slavery, toward their lot in life, was directed straight at her in the most violent way a thought possibly could be. There was fear in there, it was not possible to completely remove the fear he held of all those things, but they were very quickly being covered up by the anger and hatred. To the point that he didn't let the small semblance of cheer that "slave free territory" would have normally occurred was completely swallowed by his ire.

Even if it weren't however, Gen wouldn't have had time to celebrate. He did not know what the labs were, he did not know what she intended to do to his family, but if a single hair on their heads were harmed, she would find that he was an incredibly determined creature and she would not survive long if they were. He did not vocalize this, partially because he was sure if she cared she'd pry it out of his head again and because even in this situation he realized that screaming his intent to kill her if she harmed his family sounded incredibly cliche. The sense of fear slowly began to come to the forefront however, not as Gen was picked up by the air and wrenched after the object of his detestment, but as his family was wrenched from him in the opposite direction. The struggle Gen put up was impressive, but unfortunately amounted to little more than a child throwing a temper tantrum. He didn't have the strength to fight her, either physically at this point or in sheer attunement to their witchcraft. Their journey took an excruciatingly long time and it gave Gen's imagination ample time to rifle through every possible scenario that might involve the Sith, his family, and a lab. And while he harbored some small, faint hope that they were being led to a pen of adorable little dogs, most of his thoughts went to more graphic and terrifying places. The cold blank halls of the behemoth of a ship did little to add pleasantness to his imagination. When they finally arrived at the woman's quarters, Gen shot a rather aggressive look toward the other person present, not entirely fond of having ANOTHER one of these...things to account for. She still hadn't released him from whatever telekinetic hold she had over him when they arrived however and Gen tugged at the invisible "restraints" upon arrival, finding the effort useless.

Then she spoke. She sure did seem to absolutely love asinine questions. Gen looked at her with incredulous disbelief, thankfully...or unthankfully, whatever hold she was using to drag him around like a worn out doll did little to obstruct his rather wide range of facial expressions. Had he given any thought as to what he wanted to do as a free man? She had, painfully, wrenched out his thoughts not a few minutes prior, she should know that they had been on their way to freedom for all of a week, reaching freedom(this wasn't it) had been his only and an all consuming thought. They'd have time to think about their futures once they weren't being hounded by Sith(again, not this) but at the same time, the lack of a plan was pretty evident. Gen and his family did not have any skills outside of "being a slave." His father did all the work in their days as The Space Hobo Troupe and while Gen could probably find work, he had no idea if he would be able to genuinely provide for his rather destitute family. At the moment though Gen's only thought, and it was on fast forward replay in his mind, was to kill her in a myriad of colorful ways, go get his family, and then get the hell out of here. Of course, the practicality of such things were completely nothing, but he thoroughly hoped she was scanning his mind again, just so she could see the inventive and gruesome ways he would imagine her demise. His response, because he apparently had a learning disability, did not wane at all on the sarcasm. Her last words, about following the force, only exacerbated the sarcastic bitterness.

"The vacation home wasn't enough to you? I was planning to have my mother marry a priest and we'd start a traveling singing group while fleeing from mustachio'd Sith. There's a musical in there somewhere. We're slaves, the fact that we planned ahead enough to steal a ship and get out of Sith space is impressive. We're focused on not starving, not careers. And no, I want nothing to do with your witchcraft."

Witchcraft was said with a rather impressive snarl.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]​

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She let him down on one of the couches in the front room of her private quarters though she wasn’t quite yet ready to let go of the hold she had on his wrists. That required a little bit of her concentration, though not enough to bother her – really, she was looking forward to whatever he might try when she let go. It had been a while since she’d gotten in a good, simple fist-fight.

Sitting herself across from him, she crossed her legs and leaned against the arm of the sofa, her durasteel arm hanging over the side. There was something she liked about his expression when he felt she was being intentionally daft. She knew he was irritated with her questions when she could just have the answer. But in truth being able to take truth or learn secrets with little to no effort had removed some of the fun of a good discussion for her. And to rely on it always was to fall in to complacency. A little challenge was good every once in a while.

That, and she liked watching him squirm.

Hades lifted himself from his spot by one of the viewports, walking away with his drawing pad under his arm and a long expression on his face as he studied the newcomer. He was what most force-users referred to as a ‘witch’, someone who used the force more esoterically than the general practice of the light and the dark as they were understood. Matsu waited until he was gone before continuing – not because he wasn’t privy, but rather because he had a tendency to be unnerving and she didn’t want him to butt in on the conversation and offer his two cents on the nature of human consciousness and the pointlessness of freeing yourself or something like that after hearing Gen refer to the Force as ‘witchcraft’. (It was as Kesare said – ‘where do we keep picking up these people?’)

“Yet we rarely get what we want,” she answered in response to his snarl, narrowing her eyes slightly in consideration. There was potential in him, but not if he wouldn’t accept the Force. He would have his uses either way – he was equally advantageous as something to hold up in front of herself when someone threw something at her as an actual ally. But she thinks he holds power he isn’t even aware of and she would have him at her side – forcibly or otherwise. It was his choice and perhaps someday he’d thank her. (And for a moment she’s imagining throwing him as a shield when someone volleyed a force-breaker grenade at her, letting it stick in his guts and the way he’d tear in slow-motion.)

“I’ll let your family go if you stay with me and my people. And since I’m sure you want to know why, it’s simply because like it or not I sense something in you. You can be great. Come with me and your family goes free, or I can dissect all of you.” She let go of her hold on his wrists.

Isn’t being free wonderful?

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​

 

[Gen Gurasame]

There were, quite frankly, a lot of things for Gen to react to and silence was the proper reaction to almost all of them. The man, whose name he had not yet learned, was staring at him in an incredibly off putting way that felt pretty fitting for what he had been dealing with lately. Somehow, the creepy man who studied him like a foreign animal was by far the least creepy person he'd seen on this ship. Granted, so far his competition was the two murderous looking henchman and a crazy psychic lady with a metal arm, he kind of won by default. He didn't stay however, which bothered Gen, oddly. For obvious reasons, he really did not wish to be alone with Matsu. He wasn't sure why he wanted another one of his fecal abominations here but the mere thought of being alone with the woman filled him with equal parts concern and fury and he was sure she was getting a righteous kick out of it, which only made him more concerned and infuriated. The couch was oddly comfortable though, despite the situation and the fact that he had been forced to rest upon it. Gen gave a fruitless tug at the invisible tethers keeping his wrists in place before aggravatingly resigning to their lot in life for the time being. Gen wasn't going to be subjected to silence for much longer though and he was not sure if it was a blessing or a curse.

He still wasn't. If she had released his wrists ten seconds earlier, Gen would have rose off that couch with a quickness and begun wildly swinging his fists at her face. Gen had expected a lot of things coming in here. He expected torture, he expected psychological warfare, maybe some coerced spooning(honestly the most concerning option with that arm menacingly gleaming at him) but what he was not expecting was what came out of her mouth. The "why" didn't surprise him. He wasn't ignorant to his aptitude with the force, he needed to be aware of it to actively repress it, but he thought he had done a better job of hiding it. Then again, the woman did jackhammer in to his brain, it probably didn't matter if he was hiding it. The confusion came from that, first, she asked him and that she actually wanted him. The universe really wasn't lacking people sensitive in the force. If they put a bunch of pictures on a board of relevant people in the galaxy and threw a dart at it, there was an eighty percent chance they'd hit someone force sensitive. Was there no one more pressing for her to try and pry power from? He was sure any of the stooges she'd find on the street would be willing to partake in her magic. Gen still wanted to swing at her...and do a long list of much more gruesome things to her, but while he was angry, impulsive, and way too arrogant for his own good, he wasn't an idiot. Before, he had nothing to lose, finding some miracle way to kill her and flee the ship was the only way this story ended well for him and his family, he had nothing to lose that hadn't already practically been lost. Now, he had something to lose. If she actually wanted this and wasn't just messing with his head, she'd need some way to keep him obedient and that'd just put his family in another cage. If Gen had his way though, it would at least be a gilded cage.

"I want them taken to Bakura and provided for."

Gen's voice didn't change much, it was still filled with self-righteous fury, but it was strangely devoid of the snark that had been so familiar thus far and he had inadvertently revealed that he had considerably more planned out than he said. Pushing for this was a risk, but Gen had at least made himself believe it was a calculated. No Sith he had ever met would bargain if they could get what they wanted simply by taking it. While this Sith had hardly been typical, that seemed to be a pretty fundamental aspect of the Sith belief system. She would not be giving him a choice if she did not need, in some part, some compliance from him. Gen could tell from this monster of a ship alone that giving his family a comfortable life on Bakura wasn't even close to breaking her budget and he doubted pushing for this much was enough for her to deem whatever she wanted from him to be not worth it...or at least he hoped so. If all else failed, he could go back to swinging at her, he still really wanted to do it.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

There was a time Matsu had been angry. She hadn’t started that way – no, purgatory had come with the advent of Krius Syonis. She’d been born to wealth and comfort and back then she’d been wild, expending her power in great, meteoritic but short lived displays: pulling small transports from the sky, blowing away craters of Earth around her in training – all displays that showed promise but carelessness, a refusal to accept that there was any better way than the one that felt like ecstasy. She killed because she was an animal, untamed and unrefined.

When he’d taken her arm, he’d turned that reveling in to the anger her kind was known for. She no longer did things simply because it was fun – she did it because she had a bone to pick, a blood-grudge that she took out on everyone and everything else.

It had been a little while before Jared Ovmar had quieted her, had ripped in to her mind with an ease that promised she could do the same – and protect herself from the same – if she could concentrate for just a moment. She owed him her life and it was a debt that she did not mind holding. She had come in to a power of her own that helped her repay what he’d given her. And she’d stopped being so very angry.

It was strange, really. The Sith were known to be quick to anger, to fall to passion. And in the latter Matsu was no different – she felt everything tenfold. Victory, joy, lust, excitement; she knew them all. She sipped on other’s pain and anger and fear but the one thing she rarely felt herself was rage. It was not to say she never did – she was, after all, only human – but somewhere along the way she’d made the connection between all her past failures and being blinded by the emotion that always erased common sense and good planning. She’d taught herself not to destroy her enemies with an explosion of dark power that left her immediately spent, but to concentrate her natural connection – something white-hot, something under pressure. Direct application was more devastating than random bursts at anything and everything.

Maybe she offers the deal because she sees something of herself in him: the potential to be someone that changed the Galaxy if he could temper himself.

The snark he should keep. She rather liked that.

When he agrees she nods, getting to her feet. She had gotten what she wanted and at the moment she required little else from him. “Granted. Someone will bring you clothes and something to eat.” She swept past where he was seated, stopping by the doorway before she left to look over her shoulder at him. “We’re headed to Annaj. I’ll figure out where to keep you then.” She wasn’t too worried about him running. He had been, after all a slave outside of Fringe space and she had friends there. She found the practice abhorrent if she were being honest, but she wasn’t above holding his, for lack of a better word, ‘wanted’ status over his head should he decide to try and skip out.

She felt a flicker of confusion from him when she left and smiled. True, she had agreed with almost no haggling to his end of the bargain. But he’d only said he wanted them taken to Bakura and provided for.

He hadn’t said she couldn’t work on them first.

[member="Gen Gurasame"]​