Starry Starry Night (completed)

[Darth Ren Malgus]

[SIZE=12pt]Location: Kyrikal 9[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Serena could not explain to the Grandmaster or to [member="Connor Harrison"] this unexpected departure from Voss everything seemed to point to the death of her father. She wanted to explain it to them to have them help her but right now she needed to remove the doubts from her own mind.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She only knew that right now she needed space from it all. This system within the Levantine Space seemed far enough away that if she could get there perhaps a nature priest could help her, maybe prescribe an herb for the pain.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She left by transport and after many days she found herself finally at her destination. Dressed as a geologist, a scientist she showed her credentials, “Just want to collect some surface samples” She was informed of the permit she needed to file not to collect but to remove.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]How different this world was from some of the others she had visited. She was running though she knew it HE probably knew it to.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She wandered the streets and stayed in what resembled a tree house, and then by day she walked along with her collection bag often sitting on a rock staring off towards the direction of Voss.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]After a time of reflecting she sent a message to her mother to tell her she was ok. What she left out was her concerns over being a Jedi.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Was she really Jedi material?[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt][member="Seydon of Arda"][/SIZE]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

+Kyriaki Space+
+3rd Moon on Gas Giant Orbit+
+Adoraca/Border City/Quiet Metropolitan+


It wasn't murderous territory. Report and reputation cited the worst symptom of occasional breaches in civility resulted in a noted, studied, and so far clenching divide in dispersed wealth between bloated upper and lower monetary classes. Adoraca slept through its days and nights, built up on eco-symbiotic architectural principles influenced by local nature-priest guilds, a networked hub of boroughs run through by partially buried aqueduct super-highways, speeder-lanes overhead lined in holo-droveways maintaining congestion. Interior A, the city-administrative aorta network, was a hunched set of crystal-steel scallop keep's scaled by slit-oval windows, with an overlying skein of plasteel filter-webs. Airborne pollutants caught in the webs, then exhaled through pinnacle chimneys atop the buildings, attempting to keep up with relatively minor smog issues. Adoraca contented to stay snoozed. Levant rangers were rarely contracted to deal with municipal issues. Outside their scope of practice, beyond their purview.

An officer dressed up smartly in a tanned button breech-uniform, writing off a holo-tab citation to a grumpily speeding Rodian, watched Seydon come strolling off a foot-traffic bridge. He stood wearing his worn pants, boots, a dusted and tucked tunic beneath a blue-striped jacket, bearing up a heavy duffel-sack over his shoulder. The Dunaan was tall, fierce with compact muscle, whiskery around his mouth and jaw with whitened hair slicked and pulled into a tight tail down his scalp and nape. It was a restock trip; re-caching spent equipment broken or lost in the field. He'd be back onto the Trail before next sun-up. The officer kept an eye while he strolled by the sidewalk; most local statute-enforcers were always a little unsure of what to make of the Levant patroller's. No two were the same. And most bore up reputations emphasizing independence, self-sufficiency. They grated against overt controls.

Seydon strolled briskly up a shadowed avenue between hab-block rental spires and lesser hotel suites fashioned like faux-deciduous truncations, capsule rooms and grander suites built into or onto painted steel-ceramite boughs. Evening was suggesting south. Kyrikal, storm giant of a world, revolved overhead veiled by an ison-blue sky and rolls of fat, smokey-white clouding. He pressed against a slight pedestrian current on the walk, and felt someone bump against his shoulder. Sensory, sharpened to abnormal, preturnatural, inhuman degrees, picked up shampoo, slight deodorant, sweat-salt, gum-spiced breath, a steady breathing rate with strong quality.

He paused, turning on his hip and leg. Seydon was 'sense-blunt'; an opposite of empaths, like his wife. His mental structure was an unsubtle mechanism of turning duraplast cogs that failed against checking for Sensitives in his near vicinity. The only hint telling [member="Serena Bouie"] was exceptionally psi-pathic was a quick, throb-twinge behind his ear at their shoulder brush.

"...Lost, miss?"

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

Serena was lost in her own thoughts as she passed by the other pedestrians. She worked hard to keep out the thoughts of the others, but their emotions kept seeping in.

She tried concentrating on the collection bag, how many had she picked up? What reasoning could she apply to why they were found where they were. She had to keep the scientist awake in her while pushing the jedi down to keep quiet the emotions around her.

Looking down as she walked she looked at the shoes and boots that imprinted the paths she wondered how many other paths had they walked. She looked at her own for a moment. In that moment there was a minor shove a spark snapped her attention to stop turn and slowly pull her gaze from down to up.

He was asking her if she was lost. Internally she laughed if he only knew how lost she could feel at times. There was something about him though he was different. Oh this new skill the force was blossoming in her was confusing. What did the color around him mean? This aura it had to mean something right?

He was waiting for an answer while she stood there having a private conversation, she half smiled, "Yes I think I am" her response more philosophical than physical.

"I'm a geologist I've been picking up some samples for study." She felt she had to explain standing there in an old pair of soft cotton tan pants, with the wife beater covered by a jacket. Working outside was hard work.

She wanted to ask him what he was, but held back. Her openness had caused too many problems already.

"I'm also new to this world I'm lost daily, are you from here?" Small talk, it was better than what are you.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

"Just on a re-stock run," He shouldered the duffel-sack and cocked a thumb back up the avenue-way, gesturing through heat-hazes of warm air-curtains at a low, boxy 'mall'. Bracketed, holo-neon signs and more subtle painted aluminum deck-cards advertised shops catering to outdoorsy practitioners, mountaineers, general 'extremists' wanting minimalist but hardy, functional tool-sets. "But no. I don't hail locally."

Seydon glanced slit-eyes over her. She fit her affixed description; a grubby pair of field trousers worn thread-bare and patched at knee and hip creases, hooped with stowed rock-knives and a folded all-purpose hack-axe, a sweaty work-shirt atop drying in the evening warmth, and a thinned, dust lined jacket, bossy with copper buttoning and faded denim. A woman back from extended geological work, probably up to knee and elbow in fickle sandstone, imagining her hands working a pick into an unseen bed of fossilized clam-husks.

"...You're looking to get somewhere?" He asked. Blunt as he was, psychically, he could still read pauses in conversation. Seydon goaded their communication forward, though albeit curious why there was an impression of unspoken queries badgering the moment.

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

Serena felt uncertain how she could stand here looking up at this man and not reveal her own force sensitivity while trying to find out his. She could sense no danger from him, but the surrounding halo of color was unlike any Jedi or Sith she had come across. Plus add into the fact that she was still learning what these colors meant she could be dealing with a serial killer.

The color drained from her face as that thought gave her pause. Connor's instruction on resistance was helpful, but she was still practicing. If he attacked her one word came to mind toast.

So the question was she trying to get somewhere?

She half smiled as she mentally said a little prayer, "Yes there are some other sites that I need to get to. This one location" She turned slightly to go through her bag for some reason her fingers refused to work. She looked up nervous then turned back to the bag. "Oh" to find the map pulling it out, "I GOT it" she began unfolding the worn map to find the place, "Here" she pointed to the area near the mountains, the base of the cliff.

"Can you help me get there?" This would give her time to talk to him, and complete her sample box. There was a risk involved in this if he decided to smoosh her like a bug no one would know. She tried not to laugh at the moment, as her nerves were beginning to unmake her.

Perhaps farther away from people she could ask him bluntly the question that was now nagging at her. Did her emotions give her away already?

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon reached and took the filmy paper out of her jittery fingers, planing it slightly to the light. It was a printed topography describing a slate of north-eastern region, mostly tamed forestry save for occasional plains-wolves coming down from the further fold-tundras, hardy stocks of rain-caribou, rare green-recluse arachnids, and drunk sport-hunters. He hadn't visited, but faint green edging running around a chevron-spaced border implied it was more or less public territory. Seydon took a mental-check against the maps stamped co-ords against the running hour.

"...We go now and we'll make it a little before early evening," He nodded and hailed them down a lazily drifting aircar cab. It was a more elderly mark and model, with peculiar aromatics, but Seydon made a swift promise on at least splitting the fair. They took up flight and followed through a trio of air-guidance buoys, briefly running foul of a mid-air graze that had two motorists arguing window-to-window, suspended amid the airlane, cussed out by passing flyers trying to pilot round their bout of swapping blame, abuse, and insurance bar-codes.

Ordinarily, the Dunaan would make the trip via hiking or beast-mount. Ms. Paleontologist, he'd not queried for her name yet, didn't appear to have that kind of charitable time. They landed at an out-rider field, Seydon paying out for their loaned transportation. A simple two-seater repulsor-bike, pre-packaged with basic outdoor amenities as vacuu-packed tenting, pitching kit, freeze-dried rations, a duraluminum cooking frame, a semi-rudimentary water filtration, torch, batteries, solar-recharger, and a mutli-channel bead-comm. With her settled and buckled in behind him, Seydon took up steering duties. Quickly, they were kicking up dust backwash, as he flew them up into the hinterlands.

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

[SIZE=12pt]Serena felt bad she was filthy dirty in her digging clothes, and now was imposing on a stranger all because of two things, she was having a hard time navigating and she was curious.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]“We can go now” she did not need to think about this, “Ok I’m ready” She didn’t have much anyhow.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]Serena followed him around like a puppy, watching and calculating as she would pay him back, and account for the credits to those funding her dig. She was buckled in and soon off. She put her hand out just a little to feel the breeze. This felt good; she smiled and took in a deep breath. The natural beauty that surrounded them as they moved she couldn’t help but feel the force everywhere now.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]She closed her eyes for a brief moment she let down her guard wanting to be able to feel the connections around her. She shook her head and then opened her eyes, without thinking having been taken away by the solace that echoed around her in the force.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]“My Dad would have loved this place, this world” She then realized she had not given her name him, “I’m sorry my manners are a bit lax, I’m Serena” She should have thought of that earlier, she was like the nutty professor forgetting things as important as her manners.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=12pt]“I really appreciate all your help.” She sunk down for a moment, “I haven’t been myself” she said very quietly those words probably lost on the wind. Out here though she felt more like herself more like the woman who loved being outside, who loved books, getting dirty, and discovering history long lost.[/SIZE]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

His head cocked out slightly at that half-murmured reflection, but left no comment. Seydon kept attention on steering duties, not admitting he was rusty with speeder control, though he had an able foot on the drift petals and finally got the sensitive 'pulsor grip-guage under guidance. Directions were inputted and updated over a small holo-node reading out a minute graphic-slate; their bike was a light-spark following through hardlight grid lines on a hazy buoy marker trail. It was dusty hurtle up through rough clearance in the woodland. Seydon had to continually throttle down, or risk missing a vague turn and end up smearing their bodies along rowed birch copses. Light sheered through the canopy, lighting underbrush in luminous columns. Grey-deer pranced and dashed out of their way, flights of pine-pidgeons winging in iridescent arcs at their tail.

"There," Seydon nodded. A high, sheer bute-wall of calcified stone streaked red with iron deposits. It languished under the watching prow of its parent, a vast pyramidal alpine, its faces like a blade fuller with light washing down like warm blood. Distant flocks of high white eagles kept up circuiting rotations around the summit throat, no more than faint snow flakes to the evergreen floor. Seydon slowed, driving them to a piled collection of displaced boulders overgrowing in velvet lichen, cutting power until the bike coasted to a steady, whumping stall and drop.

"...I'm Seydon," He said. They were pulling storage and pack-crates off netting rails welded across the bike's flanks. "Are you a naturalist, Serena. Is that why you've come out this far to Wild Space?"

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

There was beauty in everything including rocks. Serena had picked up a piece of granite as a child without the deep grays that covered the stone Serena had seen the flecks of red and black. It was one of the most beautiful things she had ever see.

Serena was helping pull supplies and dragging them to a place to set up. She would stop occasionally to look at the wall she could only imagine how thousands of years ago a giant glacier coming through and carving out this place.

As she reached another bag she heard him say his name Seydon. She had to admit that she had never heard the name Seydon. She would have to ask him if it were tied to a specific culture. She stood up straight to stretch as his next question came. "I'm mostly a geologist" She sighed slightly, "I'm way out here because it is quiet, out of the way, and not too many people will think to look for me out here" She looked over to him to see how he would react to that since she had made it seem like she was hiding.

She was hiding. Since they were asking questions she paused, and then gathered her nerve, "Seydon, are you a Jedi?" If he was how would she explain the colors she saw surrounding him not matching others that she had seen. Instead of letting her mind run wild she waited to see what he would say.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon paused. He was kneeling and flushing out a low bowl into the earth with a small hand-shovel, in the business of effecting a simple fusion stove. It sat on a lattice of interlocked grid-metals snapped together where their fitting teeth gnashed, that he began hemming with hemp rags, twigs, fuel-cotton, and heftier strips of deadwood collected round the clearing. He'd only planned to help the girl settle her encampment and take his leave shortly, make the walk back Adoraca overnight. The bike could stay with her and see a return to the dealership whenever her geological excursion finished. It would be no hassle nor trial. But that query digging at his Force sensitivity caught him off-guard, and he rounded on her, staring with mixed wariness.

"No," He said. An agent, assassin? Her demeanor spoke just calm meekness tinged with professional hesitance, but some contractors drew their notoriety by employing acting crafts. There were seventeen individual objects, implements, that would make due in place of conventional weaponry strewn across the camp. Seydon woke the stove and tuned the heat to a careful glow, sparking up the hemp and twig. He peered across at Serena over the fire glow. "I'm not, Serena. ...Who put you up to ask that?"

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]​

​

When he spun around and looked at her she caught a glimpse and felt a very brief moment of surprise. She stopped everything she was doing now clearly her question had touched a nerve. She smiled trying to relax and sense him out, his aura flickered again it taking her by surprise.

Her blue eyes looked into his eyes she inched closer rather than back something intuition told her it would be ok. He turned back after answering her with a very sure No. The way his aura changed she had a feeling that there was something there so if he wasn't a Jedi, was he a Sith? Was he hiding from something just like her? She moved around till she was opposite him, she kneeled down reaching out with her palms toward the fire. The heat radiated towards her it was a comfort warming her palms. Not that she was cold but for some reason heat just made her feel relaxed.

When he spoke again his question of who started to confirm that he was a private person and not accustomed to being asked questions.

No one asked me to do it. I she always hesitated when she was getting ready to expose herself to someone. She did not know how individuals would react and so far her excursions always lead to trouble for her. I when I look at people I see auras, it's something I'm still trying to get control of. She looked down into the fire she had been raised to be honest not lie, or deceive. You have an aura that I've not seen before it makes me curious, when you said no before it flickered. She shrugged her shoulders flickered was only what she called it how it looked she half smiled this time as she kept her gaze on him.

The flicker could be an emotion or it could be something else but I believe you are force sensitive and that's why I can see the aura. It was the only thing that made sense and as she looked around she realized he could probably kill her with a few things that were here. But it was his eyes how they looked at her and then seemed to take an accounting of their location that made her think that she could be in trouble, again.

So are you going to kill me Seydon?

 

[Seydon of Arda]

"No, I am not," Seydon shook his head, askance. His hand came up and he gestured to an empty spot opposite the coal-shallow dug up against the loam. Evening wasn't a suggestion in the north anymore. Cold was coming with a thick overcast night soaking the countryside in choked shadows, pitching velvet-pines and sour-leafed, hunching birches into flinty hues. He paused as he put a kettle on, spending a few litres of portioned, sterilized h2o.

"It'd take every degree of audacious spite and wickedness to slay someone over a simple question," He lifted a clasp locked over a small secondary spout on the kettle and scooped in a finger-fulls of rosy weed. "...I didn't mean to scare you. I just wasn't sure what you were after, and I have a few enemies. I'm not a Jedi, Serena. I was younger than you are now when I walked away from that. And I can account for any weirdness that's bothered you about me, but it's a long, unkind tale."

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

Serena moved to where directed, "I'm sure you know that people have been killed for less" She knew he spoke the truth his intent was not filled completely with suspicion Serena relaxed. She looked up the skies would soon be filled with stars her family was out there pushing through their days just like her. Sadness welled up inside her again knowing they were one short.

She looked across to Seydon "I have always enjoyed stories based on fact. But if you're not a Jedi." Her next question could be considered insulting but if she asked it right maybe he would explain. "I am going to assume you're not a Sith either, which means I don't know what you are"

She never before flinched at the unknown but then she had never met anyone that produced these visuals before. "Are you avoiding the galaxy by being out here?" Was he hiding.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He shrugged. "Maybe," He said, adjusting a dial reader on the small porta-stove. More deadwood was pressed into the fire beneath it, that he stoked with a low, smooth breath until fire-scallops ate up the dried grain. It bought them an hour's tract of warmth. The kettle was starting to shiver slightly atop the heat-grille.

"Sanctum space is usually quiet, that's all. Work takes me... everywhere. Sometimes to places folks don't like seeing tread. Jedi tolerate me. Sith mostly think I'm some strange anachronism. Or, a cheap tool to throw at a problem they don't want to deal with themselves. I'm a monster hunter, Serena. I don't take bounties and I don't hire out for mercenary work," Seydon said. "And I don't kill arbitrarily."

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

There was a silence falling around them the evening with its dark corners circled them. She had always enjoyed camping with her family this was a lot like that except this was quieter. She moved to where she would sit cross legged in comfort. Serena felt the cool of the night as it kissed her skin. The nights on Voss were different the call of the jungle haunted her the mystic waited for her she knew she could not defy him much longer.

She turned her thoughts back to the present. Monsters he said. "Monsters are a label that can be applied to men and creatures." Her blue eyes went to the fire the Jedi tolerate the Sith use. It sounded as though he had experiences with both that had left him with a bitter taste. "Do you hunt men and creatures?" Men meaning sentient creatures.

Serena found herself biting her nails. What kind of man hunted monsters? Righteous? His answer would drive her questions he had said he'd help her understand him. Was the changes in his aura because he meant actions for good but darkness was used in those acts?

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The kettle blew sharply. Seydon snatched his hand forward and quickly whisked it off the grille, then killed the fusion-stove element, planting the kettle's hot bottom pan onto a scrabble of cushioned lichen. Between them, he settled a pair of brass-etched porcelain stack-cups, pouring out warmly heady liquid coloured like carmine wine. Warning Serena against possible heat transfer through the baked glass cupping, he took up his own beverage, and sipped.

"Creatures," He answered in a while. "Just warped beasts, animals, things you classify as man-eaters and destroyers. Things that are irrevocably warped or hostile to natural life. Sithspawn, mostly. With men you never know. A curse? A spell? They're wrapped up in nasty, awful little tales that question every course you can take to stop or aid them. When you're faced with a wyrm composed of stone and glass, breathing grave-rot into your face, you don't question that thing is monstrous. It will devour and maim without hesitance, because evil compels it to do so...

"...When you're facing a boy converted to vampirism, and he's crying out of sheer terror and want to go back to normal, what's evil then?" Seydon paused, refilling his cup. "What good can you do? I take responsibility every time I unsheathe a blade. Silver or steel... That's what my work entails, Serena. Long and short of it."

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

Serena lightstened to every word. Each word Seydon spoke told her something about him. Each tone inflicted. Here across from her sat a man who was ridding the galaxy of creatures. Not the creatures that you could see coming but the creatures that your mom tells you stories of on dark scary nights when she wants you to stay in bed or come home early. The creature under the bed hidden in shadows that went bump in the night.

It really didn't seem like a job but of a mission. How do you deem something evil that is the victim of evil and now only acts because it wants to survive. The choices made did Seydon feel like a monster on those nights? Did dreams echo and remind him of the actions that could not be altered?

"Seydon did you lose someone to these monsters?" What brought him to this calling she wondered. Accident. Life. Or something she could not see.


[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He served her a second helping of rose-weed tea. Seydon upended his own cup before lifting the kettle free of its cooling grille-rest and helped himself to another wash of brew. Razor-crickets in the thrush bracken hemming round the small, dry clearing were singing uproariously now. The Dunaan wasn't keen on explaining himself, or the particulars of his work, ethic, and code, to anyone. It was simple: for a fee, he would venture out and battle creations too deadly or difficult to contest against. The how and why he'd gotten drawn into this work... Seydon drew out of rumination, glancing at Miss Bouie across the low fire pit. Strange, pitted shadows darted over her cheeks.

"...Yes," He said eventually. "I suppose. From a certain point of view. ...Serena, why do you want to know?"

[member="Serena Bouie"]

 

[Darth Ren Malgus]

She was enjoying the tea it was like what she would have with her Grandmother as a child. But Grams was gone now age had taken her from them but she had lived a wonderful life and this little reminder made her greatful that there were still simplier times to be had in a complicated galaxy.

She dropped her gaze from his for a moment she hated that she could hear or feel these things. It was almost intrusive upon his privacy. Unfortunately she had been brought up that it was better to ask than to assume. Slowly she looked over to him again.

"I" her voice was soft, sympathic, "felt it in your words. Behind all the talk of monsters and what they are, I could feel a hint of sadness, vengeance it's hard to know." She sipped her tea quickly.

"I've read." She shook her head, "No, I've experienced for myself. I will do something because I'm hurt, and it gives me reason to do it. At least in my mind. But inside me, I feel sick." Serena was not proud of what she had just admitted but it was a truth and would be found out soone or later.

"Does that make sense to you Seydon?" She was not seeking justification she just wanted to know that what she felt was not isolated to her.

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Reflex, what Seydon vaguely understood, was divided by neural-motor skills and nerve connections differentiating between conscious and unconscious physical reply. Breathing, a heartbeat, both were subtle, uncontrolled lest through extreme biologic conditioning. Tapping a bored hand over a keyboard, answering a riposte with a second counter-move, or just swallowing, were indicators of aware control. Pain and loss bred a marriage of both: an anger that silenced and quelled away better natures until evil equal or greater than what had been suffered was meted out in return. He finished his second cup, and stuck it aside in a grooved notch along his rolled log-seat.

"It does, I think," He said over snaps of boiling sap in the firewood. "It's like pain begets retribution. The agonies you've suffered blot out any second consideration, until you're locked in a mode where your action, your purpose, is wholly justified. Vengeance or something like it. And then you finish. That's when your conscience catches up and you feel a sickness..."

Seydon tapped a pair of fingers over his breast-bone. "In your heart. Do I have that right?"

[member="Serena Bouie"]