Private The Chemist

[Dagon Kaze]

Not the best part of town. Not the best part to flaunt an NJO symbol out in the open, Damsy knew that well enough. But definitely the part of town where scant clothing didn't surprise anyone. She shuffled with quick, evasive steps through the passing commuters, yet Dagon managed to follow. Maybe she just didn't have that promised drier and was too embarrassed to tell him?

Yeah, surely that's the reason; that's definitely the reason a sithspawn's trying to lose a Jedi off her tail. Part of him wondered whether it was that - a malicious intent borne out of the lingering dark - or simply some form of self-preservation instinct. He didn't see himself as a threat, neither was that his intentions but the 'stigma' of being a Jedi was strong all across the galaxy. Sithspawn or not.

"'ey, fair warning, Dragon." Now, that one, whether he believed it or not, was unintentional. A Freudian slip as she thought about what lay inside her pad - rather, its den. "I have a pet. You'll get 'long great, 'm sure. Real similar. Blue-eyed, clingy, must got a fethin' death wish." Kinda cute, she didn't add.

Dagon let a short laugh escape his lips but said nothing until the pet dragon materialized before him upon their entry, "I can see it - it's cute too." he threw the witty remark back as he crouched to look at--

Kezi, Kaze. Really now?

He'd never before seen anything like it. Looked clearly of aquatic nature and somehow that didn't surprise him given...well, given Damsy. He allowed it to circle around his extended arm as it seemed to try and 'decipher' this new being in its domain. If she had a pet with her, then she'd been here for long or was intending to stay for long. As the typical investigator that he was, Dagon's eyes scanned the immediate area for further clues.

"Ex-military?" he called out at her as he stood back up from playing with KEZI.

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damsy didn't think about not answering. Well, she did, but not as a practical option. She was all too used to Kezi's intrusions into her mind, but she didn't want Dagon's to top them off. She didn't trust him like she trusted her. Loved her.

The outstanding solution was to answer his questions freely, or at least most of them. As she pulled her modified blacks top on and tucked it into a pair of cargo pants, she began, "Yup, Confederate special forces. Got to Adjunct-Major," called back to the living room area, voice slightly muffled through the thin blast door leading to the bedroom. "Though my service record is a bit more varied than that." Dauntless, then Knights Obsidian and House Verd, but she kinda hoped he wouldn’t ask. Those muddy waters held a majority of her life’s shame.

Call that selfish. Sithy.

She left Dag’s jacket on a closet hanger, though she knew drying it like that or in any other way either was beyond hope, and exited her room for the kitchen. As she passed the entryway, she gestured again for him to follow her. "Now let's see here…" She stood up slightly on her toes to reach into a particular cabinet and pull out a first aid kit. On one of its sides, a small square was painted over in a grey similar to the surrounding durasteel, but the faint outline of a CIS hexagon could still be seen. "How's that lip?" Not a rhetorical question, but she didn’t pause straight away for answer. "I can't do Force healing. Never learned it from my, uh, master..." She thought about Gerwald first, but the same was actually true about King Adron too. "...but I got field aid down pat, don't worry."

Not that he looked like the type to worry.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Confed special forces? This gets more and more interesting. Ex-CIS, out here, in shanty town? As a guard for a lowlife dreg? Things just weren't lining up - they were just getting more tangled into a knot. That didn't help sate his curiosity at all, on the contrary - he was hooked onto it like any good detective. Even if all such cases, he knew, led to a bad end.

She passed by the hallway and beckoned him to follow. No longer with the oversized Jedi jacket, instead a black top; looked pretty good, even if, "Jacket looked better on her, no?" he asked Kezi almost inaudibly, then shook his head. Man, I'm tired. He really was. Bad guys worked at night and so did he, but unlike them, he also had things to do during the day. His eyes wanted a shut down and the cold wind rushing through the speeder on their way here did little more than turn his already damp shirt into an ice block.

"Not as bad as I thought." Dag lied after caressing his lower lip; it was split. Not too gruesomely but she did sure put her back into that thrust earlier. "So you were taught to use it? The Force, that is." he slightly arched an eyebrow. Sithspawn, mostly, were little more than just ruthless, obedient servants to their masters. Fewer were the exceptions to that rule; Damsy's preserved conscious indicated she fell under the latter category. The case kept getting more complicated. Especially when it concerned their...neighbors from the Southern Systems. He knew where the New Jedi stood on that, but politics were a headache; one he couldn't afford having now. "How come you ended up here of all places?"

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

She had almost missed the follow-ups thinking about Typhan again - though not seeing this time. Because of him, Damsy knew precisely how to treat a busted lip. The lesson had been years ago now, but it had stuck with her. She didn’t know it, hadn’t heard of the fate of the half of the squad she had left on Dantooine, but she was the only one left besides him to remember instances of his unparalleled leadership. The new Omegas, whoever they were, were lucky to have him for it. What she did know was how he felt about her now, which only made her hold the memory dearer:

Returning to HQ having lost the mortar-maimed gunner, Damsy had been the last of the Omegas to fall into rank at semi-realized attention around two of their numbers. First Sergeant Jorgen Fengris stood facing Lieutenant Typhan Berrezz .

“Fengris, one lash for as many as you gave ‘im.”

“Berr, he’s a son of a schutta like the rest of ‘em and you know it.”

“Doesn’t mean you can go around dishing up justice. That’s a prerogative for the courts, not us. C’mon, square up.”

“...how hard?”

“Hard as you can. Butt of your sidearm. Lessgo.”

The olive-skinned officer had been lucky that the squad’s personal engineer had only struck the captured Hellfire Marine once. Unluckily, Fengris hadn’t put nearly all of his force behind the blow. Typhan, knowing his battle brother perhaps better than he knew himself, called him on it, dripping blood on the dusty trench floor all the while. Even though an already-swelling mouth, he managed to keep his voice both even and commanding.

“I said as hard as you can!”

Unlike Dag, a few of Ty’s teeth had bitten the literal dust of Rylothian earth. Only when he crumpled to the ground did he let Damsy approach him from the onlookers, if only because he couldn’t hope to argue against it. Nor against being fireman carried back to her trench dugout. She had been only a corporal at the time, technically not only his subordinate but Fengris’ too, but then again stripes nor stars had meant much between them from the moment they had met - on the sardined transport to that particular battlefield, actually.

“That was dumb…”

“Damsy--”

“...but I’m not, either. I get why you did it.”

There had been at least a dozen other ways to teach men and women the lesson of humane treatment in war, but not one of them would have landed quite as hard as the option he had opted for. No Omega rose a hand, or blaster, at a POW ever again, not because they didn’t have anger to expend but because they didn’t want their beloved lieutenant to take its brunt.

Damsy shook her head, and vision back into focus as she finished fishing around in the medkit for a compress. "It's all a story and a half--" she began, answering both questions - where to begin? Kamino? Atrisia? - before glancing up and holding it out to gauge its size relative to him. “--don’t touch it, iiaa! What's wrong with you?!” If her obscure Kaminoan profanity didn't startle his hand away from his face, her slap on his wrist surely would. But she packed much less of a figurative punch than Syreni had earlier by a long shot.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

“--don’t touch it, iiaa! What's wrong with you?!”

"Where do I start?" Dagon grinned stupidly but lowered his hand down, nonetheless. "Hold on--" he looked around and found a short stool to sit on. "Better." easier for her to work on his busted lip and also he could feel the exhaustion weighing him down already.

"I've got time for a story and half," he began, "Not really a sight to see an ex-commando of the Southern Systems down here. Or anywhere for that matter." except Dantooine, but that was another headache he couldn't be dealing with right now. If a Sithspawn didn't kill him, then politics would surely be the death of him. He wasn't ever sure how Auteme managed it. But then again there was a reason she was the Shield of the Jedi.

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

As she listened to Dag, Damsy wandered over to the kitchen sink to run the compress under cold water. Before she did so, though, she pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. She sighed, defeated as she rung out the thing and returned. She placed it gently against his lip and held it there until he hopefully took the hint and took over. “Mm. That's 'cause most of ‘em don’t get dishonourably discharged, see,” she offered. In medias res was a good enough to start a story anyway. “Live out their lives in the cloud, even in retirement.” The sad truth, though not many saw it that way as far as she could figure, was that the international reputation of the CIS was getting so poor that none of her civilians could very easily vacation anywhere else in the galaxy for fear of bias or bodily harm.

Add ‘sithspawn’ to her list and she was taking even a bigger risk in having expatriated. “Not me.” She just hoped freedom turned out to be worth it.

She stepped away the moment she could to find her spice cabinet. Gathering the turmeric and salt jars out of it, and a small bowl and spoon out of the pantry above, Damsy returned to the sink. “The leadership and I...had different ideas about how they did their job. Still do too. I couldn’t convince ‘em of my way, so I cut their loss and split.” Ahem. “Once. It’s was a dumb idea, sorta a boycott in conception. I went back after six months, thinking things had changed in my absence, that it had somehow - I dunno - shocked the brass into overhaul. But it hadn’t, so I took the L, started up in a different position, someone hitched a ride--” he’d understand who she meant, right? “--then I realized I had to leave for good.”

In the space of talking, Damsy had both mixed up a culinary paste with the same ingredients she had prepared it with for Ty from their MRE kits and stood in front of Dag again. “You want to do it, or should I? I don't think I have a handheld mirror around, but I can look.”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Dagon mused over her story as his eyes followed her around the kitchen. He'd vaguely heard about some leadership issues within the Confeds but didn't expect it to be involved with a, what did she say, Adjunct-Major? The only time he'd witnessed a soldier...dealing with leadership issues was Suri when she stormed the Chancellor's Box during the benefit for the casualties of the war against the Sith. The memory threw a faint shade over his eyes, recalling the reason for that outburst. It threatened to open up recent wounds, still fresh in his memory. Ther Jedi found himself staring at Damsy's deep blue eyes inadvertently.

“You want to do it, or should I? I don't think I have a handheld mirror around, but I can look.”

"Uh, go ahead and do it. I'm not the best field medic out here." he snapped out of it, glancing down at his lip, then back to her, "Your brothers-in-arms didn't follow you?" he knew the answer to that; her accommodations clearly indicated a living space for one. Maybe he had to tune down the detective's flair.

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

“Nah, no such luck. They’re still serving the Vicepeople,” Damsy scoffed before pulling of her gloves one by one and set them on the counter. “My second, Berrezz, knew I was going AWOL back when. Co-conspired but got off with a slap on his wrist. Good on him. But me, I karked up. Was supposed to come back like, I don’t know, prodigal daughter--” in more ways than one “--to lead again, but ended up losing my station and so didn’t get to deliver on my promise to rearrange the leadership an’ get my squad the type of treatment they deserved.” She sniffed the tears threatening to breach back into her waterlines.

“B...'dislikes me' is pretty kind. Probably the same for the rest. Don't blame ‘em, though. I karked up. Boo hoo. Water under the bridge, y’know?” With two fingers, she scooped up a dollop of the prepared paste. She bent slightly over and carefully began to apply it directly to the wound. The sting would be instant, but not too strong just yet. As it sat, dried, maybe that would be a different story.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Did he really just allow a sithspawn to brew something up and apply it on his wound? Dagon was either exhausted beyond belief or getting comfortable for some reason, maybe the somber undertones as she told her story? Or a mixture of both. He couldn't tell.

"Mhm." the Jedi nodded. She tried, failed, then was discharged. Essentially, free of all responsibilities to the CIS. Must've been hard, he assumed. Soldiers usually developed strong bonds with each other, some brotherly, some more than that. He'd witnessed it serving along with the Alliance Defence Force troopers. Their attachments were as dangerous as the old Jedi Codes preached about. Especially when they were intensely exposed to the risk of death on a daily basis.

Something else caught his attention, though.

"Prodigal daughter?" he arched an eyebrow, on the brink of reaching for the Force to prod.

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

Damn.

“Yup.” She licked her own lips, slightly nervous.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

He squinted. Suspicion slowly shuffling in his guts.

"Whose?"

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

Double damn.

“You’re the smartie here, iiaa." A pause for effect and wordsmithing. "What’s the Confed’s biggest export outside tin cans?”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Dagon's eyes widened at the first thought that flashed across his mind.

He scoffed.

Chuckled.

"You're joking, right?"

The grin began to slowly vanish.

"His daughter?" the grin shifted into a frown, "Are they searching for you?"

No way he would've woke up today and ever imagine this scenario would be unfolding.

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

She took her fingers away from Dag’s lip, straightened up and took a few steps back to either admire her handiwork or gain a bit of distance. Maybe a bit of both. “Relax. I don’t fight wars anymore, much less start them.”

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

Dagon scoffed, again, as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The paste began to dry, accompanied by the growing stinging sensation. He let the silence carry on for a bit before he looked up at her.

"This has been a loooong day. And an even longer night." he remarked mostly to himself, then leaned back on his hands behind his head, "I'm not worried, least not that worried. Spec-ops usually have a way to cover their tracks, no? Coruscant's underbelly's a great start."

"I'm more worried about--" Dagon mused over how to words this, "--that thing we pushed back. For a while."

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

"Spec-ops usually have a way to cover their tracks, no? Coruscant's underbelly's a great start."

Plus there was the fact she had done it for six months prior to this walk-out, so not really a start start. She had one running.

"I'm more worried about -- that thing we pushed back. For a while."

Damsy sighed, leaning back on the counter. She rubbed her fingers together to get the majority of extra paste off them, then crossed her arms. She glanced over at the wall chronometer to take note of the time, but probably to look away from him too. Because she didn’t return her glance, bouncing it in fact anywhere but back to him. “Me too. She’s not got like that since…”

...I tried to massacre...

“...Gamorr.”

She was all too aware she had yet to explicitly apologize.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

His slow, casual leaning back and forth stopped. "There's a way." the voice was serious. Solemn. Bigger chance they failed, even bigger that she...died in the process. He leaned back forward, his hands falling on his knees.

"The Light can purify what the Dark taints." he recalled both bringing in Kai to the Masters in the Temple and also his own, rather different, experience when Sardun cleansed his spirit with the empyrean over Ziost.

A moment later he was up on his feet with his hand softly placed on her shoulder, "It's not an easy process but I-- we need to do it."

He withheld any mention of the mortality rates. Necessary good?

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

He didn't have to. If her taste of the Lightside in the warehouse was any suggestion, which she knew it was, purification might well kill her.

She agreed with him, all things considered. Win-win for everyone, live or die.

Perhaps it would be shocking to a Jedi that a Sithspawn would prefer the former.

Damsy finally looked up at Dagon, but stayed silent for the time it took to sweep his hands off with a shimmy of shoulders. "Man, I may've been born in a bacta tank," she began, "but not fethin' yesterday. If we're gonna do this, we best start off by being honest with each other."

She just didn't trust him, not yet.

Dagon Kaze

 

[Dagon Kaze]

His hand dropped by his side and Dagon remained planted, just looking at her and trying to figure out how to serve the knowledge best. Sometimes he wished he had Auteme's way of delivering news, that diplomat's flair but all he had learned was how to dig up stuff, solve problems. The Jedi's last attempt at diplomacy...well, let's say the Hapan succession crisis occurred on his watch.

Damsy might be in to do it, but he doubted the spawn inside thought the same. It was a precarious situation and he feared it might resurface again. They also had to find a way to keep it under rugs for the time being, too. But when didn't Dagon end up with an insurmountable case to figure out.

He licked his upper lip, "Chances of you dying in the process are high. Extremely high." she was right. They had to be honest, he had to be honest.

One way or the other, the Jedi had a duty.

And the cost was never pretty.

"I can only promise to do all I can to avert that."

Dagon's eyes narrowed at her.

"No matter what."

Damsy Callat

 

[Damsy Callat]

She had asked for it, confirmed her suspicions, but hearing it was…almost too honest. Syreni shifted somewhere deep, deep within - though maybe that was just her own nerves suddenly finding themselves. Unsteeling and threatening to cave in on themselves.

It was a survival instinct, self-preserving desire in its purest form.

She had to lock herself in this before she went and changed her mind.

"No matter what."

She rose her brow, squinted closed one of her eyes. What she had weren't doubts per se. Also weren't not. “Mind yourself,” Damsy said, metaphorically shrugging off his concern and seemingly her own as well. “You only have one more lip.”

She didn’t mean that as a threat, but Syreni did.

Dagon Kaze