So I Took A Big Chance

[Matsu Xiangu]

Force, she hated that karking smirk on the Future’s face.
She
would
pick
him
apart.

Her world went black. She clutched at the table as agony overwhelmed her, threatening to pull her under. Memories flooded the Force.

(Quiet. Loneliness. The hiss of snow carousing through the branches of pines soaring high overhead, seeming to reach for each other in hopes of warmth that never quite seemed to reach them. A layer of frost crunching underfoot, a slick rain frozen to crust the inches of snow swallowing her step. The sun can barely reach, filtering through green needles and tumbling over jagged ledges of rock, traversing forest’s winding path through metamorphic erosion. It breathes. The earth watches down on her, peering from its unreachable heights, snow-capped where she looks up to the underside, shadows of argillite peering from blankets of white. Shhhhhhh, shhhhhhh, the snow whispers - and yet here she finds no comfort. Dusty swirls of it stick to her cheeks, melting and making her face wet and cold as she pushes on to everywhere and nowhere.

Breaking the treeline, she stands at a riverbank. Its waters are sluggish, choked by thick ice floes that creak and groan in the winter’s silence, crunching against one another in their plodding desire to move on. The water that peers from beneath its icy sheet is dark, blue and bottomless. Mountains line the horizon, dancing in jagged peaks like partners. A rabbit, lone and quiet, hops along the border of the riverbank across from her.

There is no sun, though it may hide behind the clouds.
It is dark here, gray and cold.

Somewhere in the forest she’d just left, a wolf howls - low at first, though growing long and sorrowful as she looks over her shoulder to watch the pines twisting in a gust of wind.)

It disappeared and it took everything she had not to collapse. This place was taking its toll on her, pulling more and more memories from her mind. She did not fear its intrusion, but she did find it important that Jacob make his decision before they were both lost.

“The choice is yours. I can assist you in whichever it is. But I will give you my advice. The Past is weak, stuck, inadequate. It is the things you were before, and they will not necessarily hold you back, but they will keep you stagnant. The Future…”

She turned her head towards the male, her face flat in expression though her eyes rolled slowly with barely contained dislike.

“He is arrogant. He is arrogant because he doesn’t embrace his fear. He pretends. He tells himself he is not afraid. But underneath that smirk...he is terrified.”

She looked back at Jacob.

“If you choose the Future, teach him to love his fear. Twist him.”

[member="Jacob Crawford"]​

 

[Jacob Crawford]

Jacob turned his head to look at Matsu, listening to her words and noting the slight strain in how she spoke. He frowned, wondering what the cause was but his current disconnected state to his own mind, he was oblivious to the toll it was taking on the Atrisian. He picked up on the disdain in both Matsu's expression and words as she addressed the male, who seemed disinterested in reaction. Jacob took her advice to heart, his thoughts turning to what choices were laid out before him.

"It is as the little Spider said. You have a choice to make, but it ultimately comes down to the manner in which you decide."

"You could destroy the Dark, and embrace the Light."

"Or you could cast aside the Past, and accept the Future. There is little strength in 'what once was', in comparison to the potential of 'what could be'."

"Either way, after today you will consume us both and you will be whole once again."

Jacob walked forwards, but halted after a few moments as he felt something try and pull him back. But he was having one of it and continued on, pulling against the invisible strings that were trying to hold him back, and had also been dictating his actions. The void around them started to crumble, its supportive pillars were beginning to collapse as the power that once held Jacob's mind together unravelled. He soon found himself standing before the woman; 'Elena', the one who used his mother's guise as a face. Jacob raised his hand gently cupping her cheek, his neutral expression slipping away slightly to a more softer gaze.

He was brought into a bitter memory. The smell of sterilization was in the air, the sounds of machines beeping and the drowned out chatter of people nearby. He was in a medical clinic, located on Nar Shaddaa. Jacob; or rather his four year old self was sitting at his mother's bedside, his small hands cradling around his mother's bony ones. Standing to his side was his father, in a state he rarely ever remember amongst the drinking, gambling and abuse. Even though it was just a memory, Jacob couldn't help but feel pity for his younger self, knowing what he'd be going through soon enough. Jacob saw his mother's eyes linger over to his child self, a sad smile on her face as she tried to breath correctly. All he saw was the weakness, what the illness had done to her. He knew this memory well, and watched as the last minute ticked away until his mother's eyes closed for the last time.

When he returned back to the void, Jacob found his hand not caressing her cheek, but instead wrapped around her neck. There was no panic, no real emotion in the fake Elena's expression. Just conviction, knowing this was going to be her fate.
"Goodbye," he said before tightening his hold. And like a poof of smoke, she was gone.

Jacob looked at his hand, and realized he felt nothing. There had been no satisfaction, just simple necessity. Because as the moments passed, he could feel a surge of power flow through him. His consumption one of the phantoms had finally re-established his connection. Jacob could feel the tiredness in Matsu, and how dead the void around them felt.

"Excellent, you've chosen well my boy." The man said, a wide grin spreading across his face. He finally made a move, stepping towards Jacob. But as he raised a stony arm, he suddenly felt a crushing vice around it.

"No."

Jacob's voice thundered across the landscape, raw power leaking from them as he turned his gaze on the last phantom. His hand was wrapped around rock, and despite the size difference, he was able to crush the hardened rock that formed the man's arm

"Kneel."

There was nothing the male could do but obey, as he felt the increasing return of Jacob's control over his own mind.

"You are both of the past, shadows of who I left behind in the Netherworld. While it had torn me apart, it also led the way for my rebirth. So I will consume you both and make use of what I need to make my own path. Not rely on wretches like yourself." Jacob looked down at the man, the fear evident in his featureless eyes. "Now die." He placed his hand around the man's bald head, and focused his power. The man began to scream as the cracks that littered his body began to glow increasingly bright, until he exploded into tiny pieces.

Now that had felt satisfying, especially so as Jacob felt it all return to him.

He had chosen a third path, and he was now whole once more. Complete, without the shackles that were holding him back.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She went with him. She saw the things he saw. Felt that little boy’s flare and flood of emotion as he held on to his Mother’s wrists. Saw a Father so different from the glimpse she’d gotten in other memories.

But she had her own too, spliced between the flash of his.

Wind. It was all she could hear, a distant whistle at first that slowly woke her with its wail. It danced over her cheekbones, willed her to wake up. Her eyelids fluttered open, a veil of snow picked up in a gust off her eyelashes. Her fingers were curled in white, half her face cradled in its freezing embrace as she lay on her stomach spread-eagle. Rolling her eyes in her skull, whale-like and white, she caught a glimpse of a sky so dark-blue she was sure there was no sun in this place. Clouds rolled along its endless deep, broken by stars and a single glorious moon somewhere far in the distance. And she was so close to it. She might reach out and touch.

She was pulled from her observations by the crunch of snow underfoot, her eyes rolling back to look forward. Her vision was blurred but she could make out fine black dress-shoes that had no place in such an environment, capped by the finely tailored legs of some suit bottoms.

He sat down next to her, cross-legged and wrapping his arms around his knees, seemingly oblivious to the cold.

“Do you remember this place?” he asked. He was a stranger.

She struggled to get up, pushing up on her forearms and eventually managing to roll herself on to her back, and then in to a position in which she could sit up.

They were perched thousands of miles above the earth below, nestled at the apex of the tallest mountain on one of the most glorious ranges she’d ever seen. Dozens of peaks stretched out before them, all reaching for the navy sky. It was peaceful, fog rolling soundlessly between the behemoths, dark jets of rock jutting from underneath mounds of snow. An avalanche free-fell down the face of a mountain to their right, powder flying up in to the wind and carried to another peak.

When she looked back at him, he was looking at her with such pointed intensity – something she couldn’t describe – that it nearly drove her back down.

“This is where you’ll die.”

And suddenly, it all made sense. Snow. Mountains. Places she'd nearly died. Netherworld. Somehow, by looking at the things she made...she could see the things that might have tortured her there, the wide chasm down which she’d have fallen before pulling herself up and out as Hell spit them all back out when it was done. It should have been a curse. Instead it was some novel blessing.

She came back just as the Man began to scream. Lines etched in to his face, red light seeping out as his limbs started to slowly disintegrate. The Third Path. (I dream for an absentee and oft-maligned thing - the accident-maker, the soul-taker.) And she felt that reality shattering with him, dripping in hot, fat strings off her consciousness as the mindscape started to wilt without purpose. They came out.

Her vision was warped, rosy with the tinge of looking at the sun too long. Surrounded by infinite horizon.

Her gaze fell on Jacob.

“That’s not a path I’m sure many would have seen, let alone chosen. Metered. Calculated. Based on the worth of past knowledge and future power combined. You could be...something,” she said, hesitating on ‘great’. She was wary, wary of the failure she’d seen time and time again. But it was up to him.

[member="Jacob Crawford"]​

 

[Jacob Crawford]

As the walls of his mindscape crumbled around them, Jacob simply stood like a musical conductor. His will forcing the void to fade away into nothing. He absorbed that sensation of being in control, finally able to grasp ahold of what was once lost. It was like a pulse none too dissimilar to the ones he unleashed on the Maena beach. Jacob reined it in, then pushed it out with an aggressive, yet calculated action. He was testing what he could do, like a fish to water; only being drowned in it instead and welcoming it.

Four years spent trapped in the Netherworld. Another locked away on Dxun. He was now finally free. Whole, and with purpose.

Before the last peninsula could fade away, both of them were transported back to reality. Jacob's eyes slowly opened, blinking rapidly as though adjusting to a bright light after being encompassed by the dark for so long. But there was no such thing, not anymore. There would be no light for Jacob after this day, just the darkness of the Force. And he accepted it gladly, letting it twist and swirl around him like the air he breathed.

Since Dxun had he been trapped in a bubble, a temperamental connection to the Force that had been a threat to himself and anyone near him. That had been remedied by him simply letting go, unleashing the sheer power behind it and leaving a destroyed beach in his wake as a result. But with this, he had to take the control, wrench it away from the chains he had forged in order to survive years ago. Now there was no need for their existance other than to be tools for him to use at his leisure. But they were only the mental ones, there still remained the physical bindings that lingered out in the galaxy. Already, Jacob's mind was busy identifying them and drawing up plans.

His gaze fell on Matsu as she knelt opposite him. The room was still as dimly lit as before, a contrast to how unnaturally bright his mindscape had been. Nonetheless, he could see the woman's eyes as they stared at him, examining him with a calculating gaze. She had practically seen all of him, the struggles, what made him tick, his potential. Jacob noted the wariness in her voice, but did not question it for it was understandable.

Slowly he stood up along with her, though Jacob's legs shook and wobbled as he tried to stand to his full height. He was fatigued; mentally speaking, but also physically impairing. It was like a strange sense of nausea, to have his mind returned to him fully. But he pushed passed it, as there was still one last thing he needed to do.

"I am grateful for the help and chance you have given me." Jacob's eyes were like orbs of fire, a window into the inferno that was now raging within him. "But I would ask one last thing."

He had come to her for help with his mind, and through that he was now complete. Yet as he stood there, Jacob felt as though he had found something else, something more.

A teacher, and a master.

"Allow me to prove I can be something...through your teachings."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

How many times had people asked her for the same?

Before she’d been Matsu Xiangu, Sith Lord...she had just been Matsu, a newcomer to a band of outlaws, mercenaries, and misfits that found sanctuary in the Unknown Regions called the Lords of the Fringe. They had been a strange group filled with Jedi, Sith, those in between, and those who could not use the Force at all. Alignment had meant next to nothing there. She had learned from every one of them, techniques on every notch of the spectrum. Of course, she had chosen to specialize. But she found it useful to see all sides to the gift she’d been given. To this day it gave her an advantage.

But in many ways, the dissolving of that band of thieves - the one group of people with whom, perhaps, she had ever truly felt at home - had left her with a hole she had never replaced. And an extremely high bar for those around her to reach.

The names of her companions were household, legendary. Ashin Varanin, and her wife Spencer. Jared Ovmar. Dissero. Alen Na’varro. Matsu had seen greatness. And so very many fell short of that bar.

And so, with most, she hesitated if not immediately outright refused to waste her time.

But those with the potential for true prowess in mentalism were rare. Those with the ability for their mindscape to take a toll on her own, even more so. Some part of her told her she would be remiss in passing up the opportunity to see what he became. Her situation was strange in that she had no faction she believed in, no organization to fanatically train future generations for. So why did it matter?

For the reason it all did - just to see.

“Alright,” she said quietly, her legs growing more solid beneath her. “I require sacrifice of my apprentices before they find their way to Knighthood. Physical, or mental - I do not care which. If this is something you can accept...then I will take you on.”

And if he proved that he couldn’t keep to his word...well, hundreds of apprentices disappeared.

[member="Jacob Crawford"]​

 

[Jacob Crawford]

A sacrifice...

Jacob was still running on that high, the sheer adrenaline that had been rushing through him since they had returned from his mind. He wanted to scoff at the idea, what was a sacrifice in comparison to what he had been through. The years spent trapped in the Netherworld, his entire being torn apart. Forced to seperate pieces of his own mind to keep himself alive. Then the year imprisoned, made a science experiment pitted against beasts every day.

Even now as he stood there, he could feel the fragments that were his mind. Their actions within hadn't necessarily 'healed' it, but rather formed a connection between all the pieces. Whereas before, a few of them had been intentionally severed.

Whole, but not entirely pieced together. Like a puzzle where you have the remaining pieces all organized and yet have yet to place them with the rest.

But then he thought on it further, the subject matter swirling about like a storm. A sacrifice could be anything. Something minor and easily ignored, or significant and severely debilitating.

Losing a limb, or maybe an eye. Perhaps his entire vision?

It could be anything.

At the same time, Jacob could just as easily hold out an arm and directly ask for Matsu to severe it. But that wasn't who he was. Instead he would let fate decide just what he'd lose.

"Of course," he said as he bowed his head. "I will accept whatever sacrifice is required of me as I walk that road."

There was no question in whether Jacob would accept. He would've been a truly foolish man to walk away from this and not became Matsu's student. After what he had seen her do, helped him in accomplishing. Even with what Maena had become under her rule. There was never a chance he would ever turn his back to this opportunity.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]