There is No (Re)Doubt Of Our Effort(OS Redoubt Dominion)

[Reverance]

Having killed his own father, Gabriel appreciated the sort of lasting impact that vengeance could have on a person. People tend to preach and lecture on how it doesn't make you feel better and once you get your revenge, then what do you have? You have nothing, they say, on their ivory towers and pedestals. And then, when they talk to much, they bleed all the same. The cycle continues on and on, a positive feed back loop, the angry dog that's feeds itself on scraps of flesh that never ends. So to hear that Vrag had a regret concerning such things, he furrowed his brow in a moment of unusual expressiveness and perched his bottom lip.

He took a swig of the rum, noticing her ever changing proximity with a raise of an eye brow. "I killed my father..." He blurted out, absentmindedly. He wasn't even sure he had discussed it to such a detail with Matsu. One of these days, they would need to get drunk and hop down memory lane. "It's very freeing...all this anger, this hatred, and I focus it on something and then I realized it, way after the fact." He held up his finger, an epiphany captured like the moving wind. "I didn't hate my father. I was grateful to him. Every action he committed or forced me to do...made me into the man I am today. But it took me burying my hands in his blood to realize it."

"Tell me something, Vrag..." He tossed his bottle away and rummaged through the crate, uncorking another. Childhood trauma fascinated him to an extent, but then again, all trauma did in it's own way. "If you could go and kill him, right now...would you? Would not having that regret make you a stronger person?" He licked his lips, sort of smacking them a little bit, as he noticed a bit of dry mouth. Something remedied by a swig of the fresh rum. "Cause I'll tell ya this, if I had the opportunity...I'd maybe bring my old man back to life. He had a knack for pain, that one, and the sort of obsessiveness that can really streamline research." He made a motion, as if his hand was a jet or some sort of space craft. "He was a bitter old bastard...I think we'd get along."

[member="Vrag"]

 

[Amaethon]

[member="Nyrrea Danton"]

The masked Acolyte regarded the Twi'lek with head tilted. She was attempting to ingratiate herself while also looking casual and unafraid. He didn't drink nor indulge in drugs, seeing them as an addiction and therefore a weakness.

"Do as...you will." He rasped finally.

He regarded the datapad she had snatched up and dismissed it before turning around and walking back towards the ship.

 

[Vrag]

"Good on you," she chuckled openly, her laughter unrestrained for once. It was strangely liberating, this feeling of intoxication. Vrag was familiar with thrill — had felt it time and time again as she watched the life drain out of her victims' eyes — but this was something different altogether. An odd sensation of being completely and utterly unbridled in her behavior, a swelling inside her chest that bubbled with something that wasn't quite happiness, but it was certainly close. Not mischievous amusement either — she knew that well — but rather something that slumbered in the deepest recesses of memory, a wondrous beast that hadn't been let out to taste the air in more than a decade.

"I hate him," she said, her words a mirrored echo of [member="Reverance"]'s story. "But he taught me something." She soaked her parched lips with the amber liquid once more, reveling in the burn it left on its way to her stomach. Each slow swallow reminded her just how much she treasured being alive; just how strong she was for breaking those chains which used to bind her. The physical bonds were long gone now, but there remained a sliver, a vestige that still tethered her to that nightmare. Bête noire.

She let out a strangled sort of sound, something between a chortle and a wail, quickly covering it up with another generous swig of rum. Her blue eyes decided that the floor was far more interesting than her strange companion, and the woman swayed ever so imperceptibly while her mind raced to find an answer to the brutally piercing question.

"I…" she trailed off, glancing towards the stars as if they could somehow provide guidance. Bullpoodoo. "I don't know, Rev." The admission carried the power of a punch to the gut, and although she didn't exactly keel over, Vrag certainly felt like it. "Feth," barely more than a murmur.

"Which, you know… is funny." Her voice didn't reflect that, though. "Because I've probably killed thousands since I left. Ha!" the woman snorted derisively, the target of her contempt not quite clear. Was it herself? The man she loathed with a passion unlike any other she'd ever felt in her whole life? Force only knew, and the firrerreo was a bottle too deep in the drink to be a reliable judge.

"But… I'd like to see him suffer. Yeah… that'd be nice," her eyes glazed over as her thoughts began to wonder about all the things she could do to him. How much she'd learned during her years of freedom; all of that knowledge could be put to good use if she ever laid her hands upon the man again. "I'd make him cry. Then I'd bathe him in kolto… and do it aaaall over again," a mirthless, predatory grin pulled at her lips as she spoke, and her voice spoke of desires long buried. Satin and low, it was like the caress of a sharp blade against flesh just before the skin breaks.

"He would beg for death a thousand times over," barely more than a breath; a moan, "and I would end him only when there was nothing left… to take."

 

[Dara Gola]

She watched as [member="Amaethon"] walked away. She knew he would be one to watch, his contempt for her oozed off of him, she felt a chill as his words left his mouth. She felt something different this time, she didn't feel the fear in her gut, she felt anger and hatred at his treatment of her. She had completed her task just as he had, she had gotten inside without any help. She was capable of doing what was required of her. He would have a big surprise in store for him if he decided she was a threat. I'll show him what a threat I can be


She sighed and looked at the carnage around her and walked out, back to the hanger and her ship.

 

[Reverance]

"I wasn't telling you to brag...though truth be told, I'm not really sure why I told you that." He couldn't recall the last time he told that story to someone or recounted the events of his life in such dramatic detail. It was like slipping down a hill, once he crested and stumbled, inertia and gravity became the cruelest of enemies. And so he listened to her reason out her life and the choices she might make if given the chance, a circumstance pocketed for a future unwritten. Perhaps, she would one day, get the opportunity to discern her true value and strength of will. It was one thing to continually carry out vengeance, it was another to surmise it's ending, to finally let go. In his own way, his inner turmoils sounded like the musing a Jedi teacher would give to their jedi underlings and brats. But in his own way, he wasn't so far removed from Jedi in mentality. The main difference being that he would go to whatever lengths required, to enact his vision. Where the Jedi were reactive, he was proactive. Destiny wasn't something to fall into his lap, but something he forced to bow before him with demands of payment and fealty.

"And what then..." He said as he dropped the bottle neck from his lips, feeling the burn in slight semblance to acid reflux. It was a good kind of discomfort, the sort that kept 'em awake at night and kept the mind focused. Honestly, he would be down for long term torture, he could appreciate the sort of pensive release. But nevertheless, his mind was unusually focused given his inebriation and taking to the bottle. "Suppose you drag him along and bring him back and bring him down and bring him back. Suppose you strip flesh from bone to see it grow back just to do it all over again. The mind bends..." He twirled his hand in revolutions, the one free from the bottle and wafting cigarra smoke. "...and bends and bends and bends, until it breaks. And the the loud screams turn to quiet whimpers and cuts don't bleed and you suddenly can't find a spot on the body not bruised. And so you end him...what then?" He eyed the woman, a moment of realization that he was seeing something in her that he had known in himself. Admiration? Maybe.

Tilting the bottle back, he chugged three solid swigs and popped his neck, pointing at her with the bottle. "That hate doesn't go away [member="Vrag"], it never goes away. People spend their lives fighting it and toiling with it until they die of heartache and disease and weakness. It's not enough to just be angry...it must be focused. There are two types of people in this world: Those you hate and those you don't. So my advice?" He smiled as he set the bottle down, nearly empty and held his hands out, as if trying to hug the universe "Don't just hate the man, hate the circumstances that allowed him to flourish. Hate the grocer who bagged his groceries, hate the landlord that offered him shelter, hate the farmer who supplied his food." He bared his teeth, a dose of passion overtaking the normally complacent man, his hand balled into a fist. "Take that metal, molten and hot, and forge it into something of use. Cause lets face it, there is nothing worse then useless and broken things." As he shook his fist, he tongued the side of his cheek, his passionate expression kind of lost in the blue nictitating...things. That's right, they're eye balls. "If the weak and useless deserve anything in this world, it's your hate and your focus and your mercy. And that mercy...comes with the most permanent of consequences."

 

[Vrag]

"So many words, Rev," the woman chuckled and shook her head lightly from side to side. With her visor down, the red and black locks of her short hair were free to fall on her eyes as she leaned forward, reaching for a new bottle as she discarded the last one. Two things could be said for certain about the stash they'd found; 1) It was excellent. With an all-around taste of pungent sweetness and a light caramel undertone when the drink went down the throat, the rum was truly top-notch quality despite its considerable age. If anything, the centuries and battles witnessed by the caskets had only tempered the fine alcohol.

2) …uh. Well, something about its strength, perhaps, but since Vrag was experiencing said trait of the drink first-hand — or would that be first-mouth? — the ability to describe it properly had long disappeared along with the copious amounts of the drink she'd already consumed in the past hour.

"And then he's dead?" The question seemed silly, really, but she wasn't really thinking clearly right now. It wasn't an exaggeration to say that her judgement was impaired; then again, her judgement was impaired even when she was sober, if compared to the high-and-mighty standards of the Republic. "My one mistake in life," a long, deep swig of the rum, "is fixed. I have no more regrets." She shrugged with her free hand, casually reaching to sweep the impudent hair out of her face. "Doesn't sound very bad to me."

"Oh, I know," her eyes glinted in the dusk of the sunless space, and her red lips pulled into a cold leer. "I know, [member="Reverance"]," a dark, low voice that spoke of a body familiar with such deeds; it breathed not of fantasies, but of memories, of deeds committed. When he finished, the woman simply sat there, looking at him for the longest time. The silence wasn't an uncomfortable one, for the pair had killed together — that, and much, much worse — and such acts have a rather peculiar effect on familiarity that two people can share. Her blue eyes traced the contours of his face, watching with a sort of morbid amusement the way his scar pulled and deformed when he went through the gamut of his expressions.

"What if we break the things that make us weak?" A single question uttered, her lips parted as if there was more to say. "What are we then?"

 

[Reverance]

The Sith Lord had the tendency to become quite verbose when intoxicated. What inhibitions he had, pertaining to his preferred image of silent and mysterious, were released and removed with the slip of alcohol. He knew that, it was why he often did not partake except for with certain individuals. He waited for her to rebuttal his words, responding in kind with drunken slurs and over expressed mannerisms, mixed with additional intake of the rum. It was really quite good, he was starting to grow concerned that Alset wouldn't see a drop of it. Nah, he wasn't all that concerned in truth.

"What happens when we break the things that make us weak?" He said, parroting her words with hands filled in cigarra and rum. He felt the sudden desire to share the cigarra with her, but was hit by the realization of two things: 1) he was a selfish individual and 2) she probably didn't smoke, despite the healing and regenerative capabilities of her species. Odd, he thought, almost echoing the sentiments in spoken form. "Regrets shouldn't hold power over you...to see yourself freed from it assumes you were shackled in the first place..." He squinted, realizing how deep and awesome he was. Rum is awesome. Gabriel wasn't a poetic drunk, but he was damn well close. "Regret is a reminder of the things you were, a recollection of where you came from. It should weaken you no more than that one time you forgot to turn the caf pot off..." He stood up, the bottle jostling rum from the neck. "We are Sith! We are absolute! We don't regret things, we forge paths free of it, living our life without compromise..." And approaching her, he tapped her bottle of rum with his. "You break the things that weaken you...you relinquish any hold left over you...and you become a God."

He was proper drunk, the constant squinting of the crimson eye, the glassing of his gaze, the loose manner of his tongue: they were all evidence in support of the hypothesis. And as he declared his own sanctity, he stepped back mid chug, and not even feeling the slat of wood beneath his feet, stumbling back and fell on his ass, hitting the back of his head against the metal wall. A thump, he chuckled and inspected his the bottle. "We are Gods, @Vrag...towering high above the ants."

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Somewhere in the Galaxy Matsu was laughing and also mad she wasn't really drunk and listening to [member="Reverance"] being all wise sage and [member="Vrag"] being all contemplative mass murderer.

 

[Vrag]

The woman leaned back to adjust the bottle at her lips to the optimal angle for a continued flow of alcohol down her gullet, and the crate behind her finally gave out beneath the combined weight of muscle, armor, and her character. With a groan, the centuries-old plasteel — or whichever futuristic-sounding material these things were made out of, who cares — cracked and twisted, and the woman lost her already questionable balance.

With a rather undignified flail and a small yelp, the firrerreo fell back into the casket, the durasteel plates crushing countless bottles as the uncoordinated drunk tried and failed to pick herself up with sufficient speed. Vrag let out a string of slurred profanities as she finally found purchase with her free hand; it would be a crime to spill the tasty golden drink, and Force knew she'd already done enough of that today. She truly was a destroyer, it seemed.

Too intoxicated to ponder on the implications of that revelation, the woman picked herself up just as [member="Reverance"] jumped to his feet in excited gesticulation, and the strange sight was nearly enough to make her flop back on her ass. Now, it was a good thing she was wearing armor, or the incident would've had her pulling shards of glass out of the most interesting of places; an embarrassment of epic proportions, to be sure.

Unconcerned with such potential scenarios, however, Vrag thrust her rum-equipped hand in the air as well, a silent echo of the Sith Lord's sentiment (though the word 'sentiment' might not be the best choice here, seeing as neither of them were in a state conducive to rational, coherent thought). She nearly choked on the drink as the usually graceful man collapsed against the back wall, and the Knight knew she would treasure the memory forever; that is, if she would remember anything at all in the morning.

"We are… Gods." She rolled the word around her mouth, vainly attempting to taste it with the buds that had been all but scorched by the alcohol on its way down. "I like the sound of that." How typically grandiose of them; Sith who consider themselves Gods. Or is it Gods that are also Sith? Who knows.

"To Gods, then! To apotatosis!" Which would've been way funnier if they were drinking vodka, but Vrag was too wasted to care.

 

[Reverance]

[member="Vrag"]

"To...whatever word that was." He smiled as he pushed himself up from the ground, his mind dragging as his brain took on a sort of tunnel vision while the room spun. He pressed a hand against his temple as he wobbled to find his center, his right leg bracing in front to form a triangle between his hip and two legs. Of all the thoughts, geometry moved to him. With a press against the hull, his right hand came out, offering to help Vrag up from her position. He may have not been in the best position to form sound thoughts, tumbling from his soap box, but by God this rum was making him a nice drunk. But not that nice, watch yourself!

"Lets go Vrag...places to go, people to slaughter. We'll make a proper sith out of you yet." He smiled, toothful, the jab about as untrue as could possible be done. "Vrag...what kind of name is that, anyway? Is there a last name or is that it?" Wasn't really in a place to talk, about names, but his was one of a state of mind of enemies and allies alike. At least that's what he told himself, deciding to not take a darth title.

His real name was something far more regular though he hadn't afforded it to many, Vrag having not been on the receiving end of it's confirmation. She had surely earned it at this point but he hadn't divulged just yet, he couldn't really understand why. Maybe it was hubris? Maybe he liked the way she shortened his name, or maybe he was just being lazy. Either way, his hand would hold to lift her up should she need it. And they would make there way out of the crash site soon enough, transporting what was left of the rum to the Good Doctor. There had to be a few bottles left in there somewhere.