Your Devils & Your Gods

[Matsu Xiangu]

[SIZE=18pt]Sullust[/SIZE]
[SIZE=18pt]Late Morning[/SIZE]

There was a time simply entering Sullust’s atmosphere would have been borrowing trouble.

As many years of her life as she’d given to the One Sith, she hadn’t been sad to leave it behind. Life had called her elsewhere, and though she’d found her way back to this galaxy, she drifted now much as she did all those years ago - before the OS, before the Lords of the Fringe…when it was just her.

In so many ways, it would always be just her.
She, made of stars and glass.

She slipped from her small ship, quiet and unobtrusive. Dressed simply (though, of course as Vrag would point out were she present, impeccably fashionable), she took care to draw as little attention to herself as possible. It was easier now. Years had passed since she’d disappeared from the galaxy, since the Sith had been forced to make excuses for the sudden absence of one of their own. She did not think the Jedi foolish enough to believe that was the end of her, but she’d also noticed it was much easier to move around undetected. They had monsters that showed their face more often to preoccupy their time - one demon could use the underground to her advantage.

Though the underground in this case was quite literal, the encompassing feeling of being beneath the planet’s surface almost comforting, reminding her of the lower floors back home on Coruscant. The staccato sound of the Sullustan language hummed all around her as she moved in further. She had no real intentions for being on the planet - it just struck her as important to figure out all the new factions dotting the galaxy since she’d left, and she’d never been to this particular world at any point, let alone when it served as a capital for an organization.

“De-te’ill! DOU! DOU!”

Matsu snapped her gaze in the direction of the shouts, slowing her pace to watch as a small, female Sullustan sprinted away from a spaceport vendor’s neat, tidy stall with something clutched in her arms. Appearing as a tourist, she watched to see what might become of the girl - whether she escaped with her bounty, or was caught, it would teach her much of the climate of the planet and it’s law.

[member="Avalore Eden"]​

 

[Avalore Eden]

It would be wrong to say that the Alliance's presence here on Sullust had fixed all of the planet's problems. Sullust was not known for its blooming economy or its spotless record of diplomacy. It wasn't anything close to being a traveler's paradise and certainly was far from a destination for any wandering civilian. Sullust served a very specific niche and purpose in the galaxy, and presently that wasn't as glorified as many people liked to believe.

There was still poverty. There was still crime. Likely, Avalore thought as she witnessed the very same event from the opposite side, it would be here to stay for some time to come. A place where impoverished children could still get away with petty theft if they were fast enough. The Order and the Alliance Militia couldn't be everywhere at once, after all, and just like the thoughts of the dark-haired woman across the way, there were far greater monsters to deal with.

"What did she take?" Master Healer Avalore Eden could do very little for the vendor on her own, but perhaps she could find someone who could.

"Mmmm," growled the merchant as he slowly returned to the stool behind his stand, "a timekeep, very expensive. Phrik plated for lifetime durability."

She had some doubts it was actually phrik plated. Phrik wasn't something you plated a timekeep with but timekeeps alone were expensive wares, "I'll send a Guard over for you to file a report with."

"Pah, what good will that do?! She'll sell it to someone within the hour. Can't you just find her, Master Jedi? Isn't that one of your powers?"

"That would be convenient, wouldn't it? I'm afraid I'm just a Healer. The Guards can keep their jobs afterall." She wasn't made of stars and glass. Avalore wasn't sure what she was made of, but it certainly wasn't Jedi spacemagick. The Healer glanced up to the wall behind the stand to make note of the number before stepping off, uttering a quiet excuse me as she stepped by [member="Matsu Xiangu"] and back into the crowds, attributing a strange chill running up her spine to the cold air billowing down through ceiling vents.

Nothing quite so simple.

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She would be the first to admit she was Sith mostly because of her proclivities. For some it was an ideology and others a lifestyle - for her it was merely the only box in which she fit most neatly, perhaps with a limb or two haphazardly sticking from its edges. She was not the most comically evil, nor riding the line to skip back to the Light. At the end of the day she was unconcerned with what she should be, with imposing order or chaos on the galaxy, with instilling fear or corralling followers with carefully masked rhetoric that made her appear the savior. Matsu had embarked in to the galaxy as a lone, wide-eyed explorer, and one day she would die much the same.

Perhaps along the way she’d cause a little suffering, but one had to get their kicks somewhere.

She could have turned the corner and followed the flitting shadow of the little Sullustan’s mental trail, wrested the trinket back from her and placed it in the Jedi woman’s hands - for how could she have missed that conversation? - but instead she just rotated on her heel to fall in to step next to the brunette. Even she couldn’t have said why. It would have been more wise to leave well enough alone.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. What do you think?” she asked quietly, black eyes darting between faces of those passing them by though it was obvious she was speaking to the Jedi. “Are the Sullustan people improved by the Jedi presence? It seems to me most peoples resent the Order - old or new - wherever it goes.”

As she finished her sentence, she turned her head to look at the Healer. Corruption was evident in the pale quality of her skin, dewy and pulled tight around cheekbones that seemed to cut through. It hadn’t reached her eyes, at least not when her emotions ran quiet. They were as dark as ever. It seemed to clash with a placid personality.

[member="Avalore Eden"]​

 

[Avalore Eden]

"What I think hardly matters," the Healer replied quietly to the strange woman. Eyes the color of ashen brown peered from their corners, whites showing in curiosity more than anything. Avalore was not a shy type - never had been - something about that woman's glance unnerved her. Made her think of Preacher.

Black, she thought.

"People don't resent the Order, they resent what it stands for; Change. Individually and as a whole, especially as a whole, people don't like change, they'll fight against it to a bitter end, and that's what the presence of the Order creates. If they're doing better they likely won't say a word because it means that the change they abhor was for the best, and they'll resent the Order for that because it means that they couldn't do it without the help."

A glance around as she walked, gaze panning for the image of the uniformed guards on patrol, "But what do I know, I'm simply a Healer. All I can say is I hope the Order's presence here has made a difference for the better. Only time will really tell I suppose...are you a journalist or something?" Avalore looked back to her, still feeling as though there were something peculiar about her. Couldn't place it.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She’d never been particularly good at being human. Maybe when she was younger she had been something recognizable - an angry teenager bent on seeing the galaxy with no cares but her own. But time and circumstance had seen fit to make her something that version of herself wouldn’t recognize - though, she thought, she was still something that girl would have been eager to become. But she could sense the other woman’s disquiet, as low as it was. As such, she reminded herself she wasn’t exactly unrecognizable and hunkered in to one of her ever-changing faces, splitting some of her concentration to tamping down her presence in the Force. At first she hadn’t cared, but each passing minute made her more interested in the brunette woman walking beside her.

Admittedly, she felt something like surprise at the sense in the Jedi’s succinct answer. Whether it was something she’d given extensive thought before or she was merely exceptionally perceptive remained to be seen, but either way Matsu found herself nodding in agreement. The same nod morphed in to its opposite at the Jedi’s stab at her identity.

“Oh no, no. I’m between jobs I guess you could say. The Sith took over my home.” Lies were best told when buried in truth. Coruscant was her home and indeed the Sith had taken it, but of course that only made it a more comfortable respite. “I’m something of a healer as well, though not to the extent I imagine you are, Master Jedi,” she explained, adopting the merchant woman’s honorific though with a decidedly less mocking tone. And that wasn’t so much a lie either if you considered bringing someone back from the dead a form of healing. Even if that person wasn’t themselves anymore and wanted nothing but to eat the brains of those it had once considered dear. “I suppose I’m looking for purpose somewhere again, as it was taken from me.”

[member="Avalore Eden"]​

 

[Avalore Eden]

"Oh..." the Master Healer paused in her footfalls at the news of a home lost to Sith, frown pulling at her expression but now fully forming, "that's very unfortunate. A home is a difficult thing to recreate." And it never got any easier after the second, third, fourth...

It wasn't just a building or a location. It wasn't the time spent or the comfort provided. Home was a feeling. A sense of belonging and connection. A source of -

purpose.

"Are you?" For the briefest of moments Avalore felt the rising twinge of suspicion. How strange, she thought, to stumble upon a woman so like herself here of all places. Despite being a Jedi, she was pragmatic. Avalore did not believe in fate, nor did she believe in destiny. What the Healer did believe was that missed opportunity was a sin. Brown eyes narrowed, hinting at this momentary struggle to take in this curious circumstantial meeting. Perhaps she was simply jumping to conclusions and needed more information to understand.

"Is that why you're here at Sullust?"

Or perhaps she was simply being paranoid - an attribute that had rarely lead her astray.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Shielding herself took concentration and even if she had been willing to try and read the Jedi’s thoughts more specifically, she wouldn’t have taken the risk to do so when it meant lowering the effort to hide the shadows she occupied. However, she needed none of her mentalism to gather the slight change in the woman’s train of thought. Matsu had started her training by an extreme amount of people watching, learning facial expressions and the subtle changes in pose and form that indicated different emotions. Even an excellent liar had little defense against her when she brought her power to bear, but suspicion was one of those emotions she was most highly tuned to.

People watching had once been an exercise in learning them well enough to thwart them, but as she had grown older and felt farther away from human it had also been a helpful exercise in maintaining a veneer of normalcy. She kept her reaction to the Jedi’s line of questioning neutral, accepting it as the normal learning of a stranger on a strange world one was obligated to defend. A demure smile, a nod.

“Yes, but as I said, I’m sure I don’t have your skill. I grew up on Atrisia and both my parents were folk healers - herbs, decoctions, things of that nature. They set bones and cleaned wounds. Humble beginnings for meager reward, but their teaching has kept me alive long enough. I’m not capable of the things they say a Jedi is, however.”

That Matsu had the Force was probably undeniable no matter how she tried to hide it, but her concentration on dampening it was enough that she probably felt rather weak if Eden took the time to try and get a measure of her. Perhaps enough to aid her supposed healing, give her the leg up on those without her gift.

“Sullust represents purpose, I guess. A new center of the Alliance, a large population that undoubtedly needs more help. I confess I didn’t have much of a plan on coming here, but every day on Coruscant was a threat.” Her sad smile would have made any con artist proud. “Does the Alliance have a place someone like me can help?”

[member="Avalore Eden"]​

 

[Avalore Eden]

The Healer raised a brow, "Humble maybe, but a good foundation for any Jedi Healer. Unfortunately herbal remedies and decoctions are not something most Jedi Orders really cover in any breadth of detail. I am primarily self-taught in those areas," she gave the woman a considering glance, ignorant to the minutiae of Force play at work here. Avalore was not known for her grasp of the esoteric - in so much as that she could not sense others in the Force and rarely picked up on the changes or flux associated with Darkside presences. Her shortcomings within Jedi teachings and learnings were many and her skillset was quite short and specific.

She was one of the only focused Force Healers around and she was good at what she did and little else.

"We could use someone with that knowledge here. Even I would like to learn more but it is not up to me who the Alliance employs. Perhaps you'll want to speak to Master Omai Rhen, the Grand Marshall of the New Jedi Order. I could take you to him, if you like."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]