Noticeably Absent [Sky]

[Sarge Potteiger]

Sarge wasn't familiar with the mark himself, but he took a quick pic and sent it through the database of information that was available at a moments notice. "You can cover up now. It'll be a few minutes." Or possibly a few hours depending on how deep down the information was buried.

He'd had it start from the oldest information available though, so hopefully it wouldn't take too long. "I'm afraid I can't help personally, but I sent it through the system." He seemed genuinely sorry he couldn't help, as though helping was something he prided himself on being able to do.

Handing her the pad, he sits down next to the water and picks up a small rock, skipping it across the shallow creek as he waits. "When it finds it, you'll know."

 

[Sky Kerberos]

Waiting was both a blessing and not so much one. She wanted the results, wanted to see what it said. But of course part of her did not want to know. The closer she came to answers, the more she did not want them.

What to do as time ticked down to possibly the worst moment in your life? Maybe Sarge was right, make new memories. New times, and new friendships, and then whatever happens, she would be further away from her past--and closer to simply living in the present without weights.

"Before the results...lets do one of two thing. Explore the forest, become lost and then live as hermits or let's go hunt down the crime lord who is using children to commit pretty acts of thief. Up to you."

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

The man paused, looking at her for a moment before smirking a little. "I vote for the forest. A few credits missing here and there never hurt anyone, and the woods call to me." Besides, he'd just wind up killing the criminal, and doing that in front of children didn't sit well with him.

As he turned back towards the creek and stepped across it, she'd get a good view of the way the photoreactive fibers in his cape worked to mimic the environment around him. The creek appeared briefly across the cloth before disappearing as he cleared it.

A hand appeared from under the cloak and extended towards her so that she could grab on; the same calloused hand she'd shaken just a half hour earlier. "Let's explore.", he says with a warm smile.

 

[Sky Kerberos]

She was glad he chose the forest, for the city blocks were cumbersome for her. The people who collected there, crowding the sidewalks as vehicles rushed in the roads. It was as if this huge planet was open to them, but in their own filth they convened. Out here, out in the forest...they were alone.

They did not need to deal with those who avoided them. They did not need to struggle to find their place.

Yet, the forest did hold secrets of her past. Ghosts that haunted her spawned within their shadows. To go, to be open to them...

"Let's," she said, and took his hand as she stepped on the rocks cross the creek. At least she had Sarge by his side, his cloak as camouflaged as his soul was to her. "Did you try to uncover what happened to you during your missing time, Sarge? Or do you simply accept it?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

It took him a few seconds to actually leave go of her hand for some reason, but he did his best to pay it no mind. Non-violent physical contact wasn't something he was used to, and likely he'd not even realized he was doing it. Or maybe he did.

Like with anything involving him, it was near impossible to tell.

She might notice, now that they moved, how he seemed to make not a single noise as he moved. No twigs or branches were snapped underfoot, nor were leaves crunched by his wide boots. If she didn't know any better, she might have thought he was hovering over the ground.

But he wasn't. He was actually moving that quietly.

"I accept it for what it is. Shortly after I woke up the Plague hit, and information went the way of water down a drain. It was easier to accept than pummel my head against a brick wall."

"I can't say I'm not curious, but it is what it is. We move on."

 

[Sky Kerberos]

Though his hand took longer to leave hers, she did not care. She found a type of providence in him, as if his care was sprung from the supernatural. For that was what he was to her...the Force being Nature. And him without it? A truly supernatural being, and one which gave her a sense of wellness and guardianship.

A blush came over her cheeks, for she felt silly believing in such mystical analogies but could not help it when confronted with the void which was he. Like a blackhole...most saw them as a threatening force. One of devastation. One which held nothing, not space, not even time. But truly? They spawn from hypernovas, which are the father of the Universe. Without the hypernova and hence the blackhole, there would be no stardust, no life, nothing. And in the middle of the blackhole lies the singularity...the unknown phenomena which perhaps holds the gateway to another universe, or another dimension. Was that what laid within Sarge? He, the blackhole, and at his core the key to so much.

"The Plague?" she asked, for she had been of this time for only a few months. All memories were based from years ago, and she felt completely out of Time.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

He paused, quite visibly, at her lack of knowledge. Then, the lightbulb went off and he recalled that she was a clone with shoddy memory. "The Gulag Virus. The galaxy used to be one giant community, more or less, with most planets in daily contact with each other. Huge governments attempted to rule the stars, much like now, but with fleets and armies far more vast."

"The virus hit 400 years ago, sending the galaxy into a dark age where scores of people does daily. Populations were decimated, and the survivors scrambled to get by. It was in this chaos I found myself, and the rest is history."

He'd all but just admitted to being four centuries old. "Perhaps that's when your template died. Who knows."

 

[Sky Kerberos]

Without knowledge of such a huge event, she wondered what other events she could not remember on a historic scale. Epic wars between Sith and Jedi, Empires which rose and fell. At least with those memories though, she could always go to the archives and read about the galaxy's history. That, at least, would not have been wiped from the mainframe as her name had been.

"Well, you do look wonderful for your age," she said, uncertain how he had come to live four hundred years. He was surely a beautiful mystery to her. "But no...the one I came from died around twenty years ago, so not from the plague though I do not know what claimed her life."

She reflected back on her thoughts, and spoke softly, stepping over moss covered ground deeper within the woods. "You are like a blackhole, Sarge. Absent of the Force, but containing...so much more. Have you always been this way?"

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"I've always been me, if that's what you're asking." Again, a simple smile as they trekked into the woods; her sometimes clumsy footsteps making enough noise for the both of them. He had to bite back snapping about noise discipline, but it was what it was.

It was a beautiful day, sunny, with the kiss of a cool breeze weaving through the woods. No reason to be angry. All the reason to be happy.

He pauses, turning, as he pushes through a bush and finds himself on the shore of a lake. "I'm not sure being a black hole is necessarily a good thing...", he muses with every bit of humor.

 

[Sky Kerberos]

It was as if saying the sun was not a good thing, but even worse. At first she could not answer, just to confounded by his reply. Being how he was, so absent of the Force, and believing her comparison of him to a black hole was not a good thing...

"It is a good thing. It should be treasured, it is truly amazing to witness the void that you generate. Black holes--they are the one thing that holds the key and understanding to what the real universe is. They spawn from supernovae which give life itself to everything, they form galaxies by binding them together, laying at their centers. And in the center of them? A singularity. An unimaginable concept which leads to the otherworlds and other dimensions. Perhaps you are not as massive as a black hole, but I believe you contain all of its importance...its awe."

She smiled, perhaps she was stretching the imagination quite a bit, but he was a singularity if she ever had seen one.

The lake before them offered a peaceful plateau between the forests. The creek entered it, adding to the fresh turbulence, and she bent over and ran her hand gently along the water's surface. She had never been in water before, outside of the cloning chamber and showers, at least not in this body, nothing in which her physical senses recalled.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

Kneeling to scoop more water to drink, he begins to cough. Not because of her, but just because it had gone down the wrong pipe. It's a few moments of pounding his chest before he's able to respond. "I'm... Uh, thank you... Sky."

No one had ever paid him such a compliment before. Compliments made him uneasy anyway, because he didn't much care for them. He'd never considered himself anything special.

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."

Looking to her, he moves over and crouches beside her. "You seem puzzled. Water something new?"

 

[Sky Kerberos]

A bit of sadness coursed through her, for if that was the nicest thing...then others obviously had not looked upon him to see what she saw. Perhaps they simply saw a tool to try to warp to their own using. Or someone to stay away from, for all a Jedi or Sith's training would be negated in his presence.

"I remember swimming in my past, but just like words on a book. To remember the feel of it? I cannot even imagine."

"Have you swam before?"

ooc. Leaving tomorrow, hoping I will not be limited to my phone for 3 weeks (hate typing on it)--but I will be for at least several days.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"When I was a child; I've lost the practice since then. But you never forget how to do it.", he adds, brow raising under the hood. She made him feel like a child, but not in a bad way. Sky was inquisitive, vibrant, she made him want to nurture her, guide her.

Help her to grow.

Most curiously, she made him feel... carefree. It was a good feeling. He'd lost that feeling so long ago...

 

[Sky Kerberos]

She wondered if that was true to her? Probably not, for he spoke of muscle memory and this body never swam. Even fighting, she wondered how she would do, and spent countless hours in sparring in hopes to rebuild her muscle memory. But how could hours make up for years lost?

A smile hinted at her lips as she thought of Sarge as a child, but came up short on picturing it. She could not see him as a carefree boy, lost in his imagination and play. All she could picture was a miniature version of the male besides her trying to swim in full uniform. "Then lets see if you remember."

She wasn't going to go nude, not that she cared either way herself, but felt that Ben would be upset with her. So she scanned the horizon, finding what seemed to be a summer house that now lay abandoned. "I bet they have swim suits, perhaps some flotation devices for the not so confident swimmer as well," she said, speaking of herself.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"I swim in my underwear. Learned that in secondary school." He snorted, chuckled, and set about undressing. No shame. None.

 

[Sky Kerberos]

Sure, she may drown but then perhaps feeling the water was worth the consequences. She quickly stripped down to her shirt and underwear and jumped in before the cold air consumed her.

Though of course she was right. The muscle memory was not kicking in, she couldn't swim at all, though luckily it wasn't over her head.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

It took him a bit longer than her to undress, since he was wearing armor, but by the time he was done it was easy to see he'd seen more than his fair share of combat. Most of his chest was lined by incision scars, possibly from blade fighting.

But most peculiar was the mass of burn tissue that took up most of the stomach region of the man. Still, a line of hair up his abdomen struggled to grow through the scar tissue, and whatever hair he'd had on his upper torso was also a bit worse for the wear.

Rolling a shoulder, the man of wiry muscle eased himself into the water, always one to enjoy the sensation of water rising around him slowly and without threat. "You alright?", he chirps happily.

 

[Sky Kerberos]

Her sight went cautiously over his body as he entered, not in romance but in curiosity to see what he looked like beyond all the armor. Scars were over his body, but it did the opposite of disgust her for what was a warrior without the marks of war? It showed her that he was truly a gladiator.

Her skin though…

Flawless, and she did not think that thought with pride. All her marks that showed her wars were gone, all the scars which should remind her of both victories and defeats were wiped away.

She hated it.

Instead of loses, she attempted to refocus on the water. It was unusual, feeling the current hit against her, the cool suck from her her body heat. Lifting her legs from the ground, she tried again to swim and failed.

"I'm alright," she said, though frustration did enter her voice at her failures to remember such a simple task.

 

[Sarge Potteiger]

"You sound a bit miffed, not 'alright'.", he adds with a wry grin and a brief shake of his head. Walking over to her, he's entertained by her attempts, and failures, to swim. And though he may laugh, it wasn't mocking. Despite it all, it was a laughter of warmth. Almost endearment. Like what she was trying to do touched something in him.

It finally clicked for him why. She reminded him of his days watching over children. Their endless need to explore; to do things on their own without help, because they just had to prove they were adults.

"Need help? Could always start by doggy paddling. Worked for me when I was learning." Giving her a wink, he gives her an example of what a doggy paddle was; he didn't move far, nor fast, but it kept him afloat and moving. So, technically, swimming. "It looks stupid, but ya gotta start somewhere."

With that, he rotated to float on his back and began to lazily push himself downstream.

 

[Sky Kerberos]

He made it look easy enough, though it was an awkward way to swim. She could visualize bodies moving gracefully through the waters, but never like he demonstrated. Except for maybe when she visualized a child.

She blushed thoroughly, for she realized her inability to do such a simplistic things would classify her as such. And was she not in the eyes to some, no more than months old?

Laying stomach down in the water, she started moving her arms and legs like Sarge demonstrated. The first foot it went well, the second deeper, the third foot and she was underwater--the fourth out of water, standing and gasping for air. Why couldn't this be as easy as remembering how to fight?