Private The Take Down

[Sylvia Virtos]

: The inevitable encounter :
: Undisclosed grasslands, Dantooine :
: The Take Down :
: Elle Mors :
​

Ever since enduring the heartbreak she felt on Krayiss II, the woman had been restless, yet filled with a level of dedication and determination she'd never had before. Allyson Locke was the first-hand witness to Sylvia's growth, proving she truly was a mechu deru prodigy. From smaller, personal projects to the major project she was working on together with Leliana to create automatons created out of a combination of mechu deru and Sith alchemy, her abilities had grown immensely.

It was like Sylvia had something to prove, and deep down she did. She had something to prove to herself. If Ellie didn't want her then she'd pursue that which was still possible, and that was to mean something to the empire. To make sure her efforts to master a skill so valuable yet rare did not go unnoticed. Then, when the Force decided it was time, she'd confront Ellie one more time and claim the title she chased.

Sith.

Ellie had abandoned her twice over, but Sylvia knew it was her own fault. She should've been honest with herself and with the blonde, but it was too late now. Ellie had no reservations about taking her down now, and so she couldn't be hesitant either. And yet, despite feeling like she had no choices left to make, the woman still felt conflicted. Part of her still wondered how things would've been like had she asked Ellie to stay back in her dorm, what would've happened had she come with Ellie on Krayiss II. Perhaps she would've been happy, then. Despite her resolve, found in the fact she saw no other path for herself to take anymore, she still found herself going to sleep with tears in her eyes some nights. Ellie still lingered in her mind, no matter how much she wanted to see her as nothing but an enemy. She had made her decisions, but regretted every single one.

It had gotten to her head once again today. When Sylvia concluded she couldn't sleep she snuck out of the camp she and a number of Sith had set up in the grasslands of Dantooine. They had been tasked with tracking down a number of beasts that had escape some kind of research facility, though many details had been omitted. After the first day they hadn't found a single one, meaning they were likely in for the long haul.

The magenta-haired girl began to wander in a random direction with Spark by her side, and before she knew it the camp was nowhere left to be seen. All she could see now were the moonlit grasslands that surrounded her and all she could hear was the slight breeze rustling through the high grass. Even Spark was silent as it sat in a little pod on Sylvia's shoulder in a passive state. Things were peaceful here, but she still couldn't shake Ellie's visage from her mind. It was like the Force was trying to tell her something. She looked around, but saw nobody.

With a sigh, Sylvia sat down and crossed her legs. She closed her eyes, focusing her attention solely on the sound of rustling grass. Hopefully it'd help getting the image out of her head. Rain droplets began to fall and the wind began blowing past her just a little faster, but it bothered the woman little. Something else was coming, she could sense it, and that overshadowed anything the weather could throw at her.

 

[Elle Mors]

There were no peaceful nights anymore - and Elle didn't sleep. Terrors in the night kept her from ever truly enjoying rest, nightmares that kept her awake and pushed visions of acts of terror made by the dark side in a galaxy that refused to swell up against it onto her. All of them beginning the very same way - all with that same fateful meeting on Krayiss and branching off from there. A sickening thunk of steel through her stomach, or a hissing blaze of red light cutting through her chest, they were all variations of the same thing.

Dantooine, a world the force had carried her to, was a world that was distinctly opposite of her terrors and yet still connected to them in some way that had not been revealed to her. Standing in a sea of grass that reached mid-way up her thigh, the clouds starting to converge as moisture began to loosen from the sky, it occurred to her how quickly she'd grown in such a short span of time. A memory of a stolen glance brought a tiny smile to her lips, but that smile fell as Sylvia Virtos was caught in her gaze.

Her heart pounded in her chest almost immediately, blood pressure rising like steam in a kettle caught over a fire - there had been little time in her head to dwell on what she'd said, but she didn't need to in order to recognize how cruel she'd been, not that she didn't feel justified in some way for how she'd acted. Justification didn't change how much it hurt to realize her empty threat becoming a reality, or the fact that she was here to lessen the scales on the dark side so things could slowly swing steadily back into balance.

"Sylvia."

There was still a respectable distance between the two of them, a fact the blonde was glad for as the wind slowly started to pick up and the droplets of rain began to fall, but they were close enough to at least speak toward one another.

 

[Sylvia Virtos]

Sylvia wasn't ready to hear that voice again, but in a strange way she wasn't surprised. The Force was a mysterious thing, pulling invisible strings to set things in motion it deemed necessary to happen. Her eyes opened and before her she stood, the one woman who had thrown her life into so much disarray that she couldn't even think of how things would've been like had she never met her. The Force had decided it was time for their final confrontation to take place, and the magenta-haired woman had no say in the matter. This was it.

"Hey, Ellie."

Her voice was low, monotone. The swirling of emotion, the relentless beating of her heart was hidden behind a stone-faced, numbed demeanor, one that took all of her strength to retain. She knew what had to happen here, but she hoped Elle would end up giving her no choice. If the blonde forced her to fight until one of them was returned to the Force, things would be infinitely easier. And if she herself was the one to meet her end here, then she'd deserved it. She had messed up too many times already. Finding happiness seemed impossible anymore, anyway.

A sense of finality overcame her and she accepted that this was the consequence of her own actions. She should've been honest from the start and her failure to do so ended with them standing on opposite sides. As those thoughts circled around in her mind, a wave of energy in the Force tapped against her aura. It spoke of mechu deru, though it wasn't of her own creation. She couldn't let it distract her. She wouldn't let it.

Sylvia got to her feet and gazed into Elle's eyes, they looked so much different now. Perhaps it wasn't just herself that caused things to be this way. Something about the blonde was off, even more so than when they met on Krayiss II. This wasn't the Elle she'd known for all those years, but if this was what Sylvia was meant to do, then who the blonde had become mattered little.

"I don't know what happened to you, but whatever got into your head changed you." Lightning flashed in the distance, and a few seconds later the thunderclap reached their ears. A crack in her mask formed, and a very slight sadness crept into her voice.

"It's time, isn't it?"

Elle Mors ​

 

[Elle Mors]

'What am I doing?'

She frowned, eyes narrowing as she pushed the quiet thought down. She seemed so accepting of this - of fighting her, was this what she wanted? Her hands balled into fists as the irrational anger crept up her spine, whispering into her ears even now, her body still changing. "It shouldn't be." She said through a clenched jaw, feeling her muscles tense along the middle of her back and along her shoulders. 'I shouldn't have left.'

That one hurt, even if it was a pin prick under all of the numbness she had become so accustomed to, and she shook her head, perhaps appearing to disagree with Sylvia while in reality she was disagreeing with the voice of herself in her own head, arguing with the one in control - also her. "This wasn't supposed to happen, you should have just left with me." Ellie said firmly, her words spoken as if in response to Sylvia's, in truth a rebuke of her own thoughts. "I don't want to fight you, but you're on the wrong side of this - the Sith are evil, you are falling and you don't even realize it."

She paused, seeming lost for words, and then took a step closer. Her eyes spoke of resolve, but the corner of her lip wavered in anxiety.

"But I will do what I must if you won't see the light."

Sylvia Virtos

 

[Sylvia Virtos]

It shouldn't be.

The words caused Sylvia to let out a scoff, coated in that same sadness she spoke with. This wasn't her doing, it was Elle's and now she was acting like she didn't want this. Elle was the one who left her behind. Elle was the one who turned her back on her. Elle was the one who wouldn't even give her time to think on a life-altering decision. Elle was the one who vowed to kill in the name of the Light.

"No."

Something changed within Sylvia.

"I'm not taking the blame for this any longer." Sadness turned to anger, and no longer was it aimed at herself. "You left me, and I spent all this time thinking it was all my my own doing," she retorted, showing a level of certainty she'd never shown before. Elle had taken a step forward, but Sylvia stood her ground. Even if something had gotten to her head, This was something from long before that. "But looking back on Krayiss, I now see that all this was never my fault."

Sylvia was finally getting that off her chest which weighed her down so immensely. It was nothing short of cathartic, even in the face of what would end up causing nothing but heartbreak and pain.

"You gave me an impossible choice and expected me to follow you blindly. You didn't even give me time to think," Sylvia continued, "but maybe that was for the better. When you're so easily willing to kill for a cause, you aren't any different from-"

This wasn't Elle. It couldn't be. This wasn't who she was, and Sylvia refused to believe she'd resort to this in her sound mind. The magenta-haired woman had known her since childhood. She simply refused to believe she had this in her. Her visage steeled, looking straight into Elle's eyes. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to see how far the blonde was truly willing to go.

The Force tugged at her, urging her to draw her attention to the mechu deru signature she sensed within Elle, but right now it told her nothing. It was something that potentially could give her an advantage, though, when understood.

"Come on, then. I'm not joining your murderous crusade, so do what you have to do." Sylvia unclipped her lightsaber, gripping the hilt tightly in anticipation. Either Elle would come to her senses, or she'd have to do the one thing she never wanted to have to do. This was how things would go, and Sylvia accepted this.

"Show me you can kill me."

To show her that Elle wasn't any better than the Sith.

Elle Mors ​

 

[Elle Mors]

Fighting was easy for Elle.

She had been a trained killing machine for the Sith, by the Sith. She'd been taught to use her body as a greater weapon than she could have ever used a lightsaber, taught to use the later more like a defense against others that wielded one. Every fight she had ever had was personal, a fist to the gut, a knee to the face, she had never been unable to cope with getting her hands dirty.

Not until now.

Even though every fiber of her being was telling her that Sylv had gone too far, fallen below the event horizon of the pull of the dark side, it physically hurt her to consider that this was something that had to be done. "I left you?" She asked, incredulous, pulling the force into her body to enhance her strength. "You told me to leave, I wanted to stay!" She shouted, her cheeks red. Her emotions ran high, momentarily pushing her out of her subconscious manipulations. "You told me not to think about you, what else was there for me in that force-forsaken prison?"

Show her she could kill her?

'I can't.'

'You will.'

Then she was off, her body propelled towards the source of so much of her troubles, lightsaber drawn and held in a tight reverse grip to be used as a shield rather than as a weapon. Sylv knew her better than anyone, even if she thought she didn't - Ellie would try to put her on the ground with her hands, there wasn't a chance in the nine Corellian hells that she would turn her blade on her.

Sylvia Virtos

 

[Sylvia Virtos]

She could've replied. A retort for a retort, to wage a war of words over who was right and who was wrong. In the end, though, it would not have made any difference. She knew the only way this conflict would find a resolution and that was through the physical. In a perfect world, she could've dropped her weapon and find a way to make things works, but she had given up on dreaming a very long time ago. The galaxy would never let her be happy. The sight of her only true friend rushing towards her was the ultimate reminder of that. It would dangle hope in front of her face before mercilessly crushing it into its fist.

The rain intensified and with it, tears began rolling down Sylvia's cheeks. The blue in her eyes fought to stave off the corrupting amber that very slowly began creeping into her irises. Her teeth clenched together as a crimson beam erupted from her lightsaber hilt and in an outburst of emotion, she let out a near-feral growl.

But it still wasn't hate. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't hate Elle. This tiny speck of hope, hope that things could still be fixed, remained, and it caused more pain than she had ever felt before. That hope made her hesitate for just a second, and pushed down to the ground Sylvia was, causing her to lose her grip on her lightsaber. Her back flared up in pain, physical pain, jolting her reflexes. Sparks of lighting erupted from curled fingers that then balled up into a fist that raced towards Elle's face.

Whether the punch landed or not and whether she was able to get Elle off her or not, she used the time it bought to recall the dropped saber to her hand and ignited it once again. That moment of contact, however, told her more than Elle could've realized. Sylvia's Mechu Deru-rooted instincts were able to read into the blonde's body somehow, a big piece of the puzzle she was slowly putting together. It confirmed that something was most definitely off, and if it was based in Mechu Deru, she could do something about it.

That small speck of hope wasn't going anywhere.

Elle Mors ​