The Force Always Says Yes [Star Wars]

Nerim could feel the pipes rumbling and rattling in the walls as the building ever-so-slightly swayed in the strong wind. He approached the restrooms, and Haaka gave him a cautious look. When Nerim went to reach for the door, Haaka held up a hand. "Hold on, Chey-Linn is—"

Nerim ignored him and pushed open the door, slightly, so his voice could carry inside. "Chey-Linn? Can we please talk?"

There was silence for a few moments. Eventually, when he didn't leave, a choked voice, muffled from inside one of the stalls. "What do you want from me?"

"I'm sorry, but we need your help."

Silence, again. The wind howled outside, and the pipes rattled. Haaka seemed unsure what to say, either to Nerim or his Padawan.

"Is this some sort of joke?" He heard her voice, just barely, unsure if he was meant to.

"I know you've been through a lot. And we don't have a good history. And we both have good reasons to hate one another," Nerim said somberly. "But I trust you—"

A pipe suddenly burst in the ceiling. A high pressure jet of some sort of gaseous mixture, probably meant to make a habitable atmosphere condition in a room for some species or another, began spewing down and burst a panel out of the ceiling above the entrance to the bathrooms. "Whoa!" Nerim dodged aside somewhat unnecessarily, half-stepping into the doorway, shoving the restrooms door mostly open and placing himself at the corner next to the hinges.

The gas rapidly began to fill the room. It was cold and opaque, a silvery dark cyan, forming a pillar from the ceiling that began billowing into a cloud that immediately obscured everything in his vicinity. He couldn't see an inch in front of his face. The conversation among the crowd stopped, but nobody jumped to extremes, as none of the Force Users sensed danger. More bursts occurred in the pipe, lowering the pressure around Nerim, but spreading the gas further around the room. It didn't seem particularly toxic, in that it didn't burn his eyes much, although he began holding his breath reflexively, and felt fairly certain it was displacing the air he needed to breathe. And it was very cold.

A blazing blue lightsaber blade stabbed through the door Nerim had huddled against, between his arm and his torso, burning his coat and spewing bits of liquid metal from the door against his skin. He yelped in pain and threw himself away and to the side, and as he did so, the blade slashed down and through the door. Nerim landed wrong on his heel, twisting his ankle and falling to his back on the floor. Suddenly, there was an overwhelming aura of rage bellowing through the room, that Dark feeling manifest.

He scrambled backwards in the opaque nothingness unable to stand up, nothing visible in the dull cyan cloud but the white godrays of the ceiling lights and the cold blue blade in front of him. It swung down and he dodged to the side, unable to see the floor, but seeing the blade's light transition into orange liquid metal glow and disappear beneath a plane invisible to him. It was almost too disorientating to even know what direction was up or down, where physical objects started or ended. The blade was all there was.

He felt his Master's presence, and the pressure increase around him. In a sphere centered just above and to his right, the gasses were pushed away, creating a brief moment of visibility. The figure holding the blade remained cloaked in the gas, humanoid in stature with what may have been a flowing robe or just cloudy wisps. The sphere of clarity continued to expand, but struggled around the figure. That overwhelming sensation of the Dark, of intent to kill, saturated the room and lashed out randomly in every direction. Ceiling panels bent and floor tiles cracked. A connection began to appear before him, the Dark Side attempting to act through him, telling him to kill Chey-Linn.

This time, his inner animal was not impressed, and it stood with his inner voice. He thrust his hand forward and then clawed into the Dark Side and pulled it back, and a cloud of Emerald Lightning exploded from his arm, transforming the cloudy room to a viridian nimbus. There was a definite change in tone, a portion of the rage turning to shock, as figured raised its blade and blocked the bulk of the tamed Dark Side energy. Unlike Sith Lightning, it was relatively easy to maintain a defense against it, so long as one raised their defenses before it hit.

The figure seemed to figure out what he was doing, and all of the rage disappeared, as if a faucet was simply shut off. The Emerald Lightning sputtered to nothing along with it, and Nerim had very little in the realm of internal reserves to maintain any defense through the Force. The figure rushed towards him, dragging the wall of fog with it in a hazy indistinct mass, and began to swing down.

A gauntlet intercepted the blade before it could hit Nerim, and Jianno emerged from the fog behind him. She held the blade in her hand, and clenched her fist. "I don't think so," her metallic voice came through her helmet coldly. The blade's containment field began to crack as the beskar crushgaunt exerted an immense force against it. The figure deactivated their blade before it could break, and then shot back into the fog wall, towards where he thought the restrooms were. The entire exchange lasted only a few seconds. Jianno grabbed Nerim and hauled him up, supporting him as he stood on one foot.

Arwain almost finished buffeting the atmospheric contamination back up towards the ceiling, holding it up like an angry storm cloud above them, covering the ceiling lights and leaving them in a dim haze. Still, Nerim could only see a few feet around himself in the frigid cold. The doors to the courtroom had opened at some point and the Commandos emerged blasters raised. Now able to take stock of his surroundings, he saw Haaka's form begin to emerge, pressed against the wall, searching for the door. "Chey-Linn!" He screamed. "Chey-Linn, no!"

Nerim tried to shout, but as he took in breath, he sputtered on the taste of ice and a scent somewhere between crab and sulfur. "It's not Chey-Linn!" He managed to croak out.

If anyone heard him, they didn't have time to question it before the second restrooms door burst open, and another wall of fog began to escape from it. Aesha emerged, dragging Pappino by the shoulders out. She collapsed to the floor and took a gasp of breath, and then shouted "Kiseti is still in there!" and ran back in.

Nerim caught sight of Tetha, who gave him one last nervous glance and ran in after Aesha. Haaka Mahn had rushed into the other restrooms while he wasn't looking. One of the Commandos approached Nerim. "Injured!" He called out. The camera droids began floating in the doorway of the court room.

"It's not Chey-Linn!" He repeated through coughs. The Commandos grabbed him and began ushering the group out of the room and back into the court. He resisted, trying to limp forward, but the soldier was strong and pulled him hard. Aesha and Tetha emerged with Kiseti, who was covered in frost. The other restroom had its atmosphere cleared in a similar way to how Arwain had done, and through the flapping door he could barely make out Vocta and Haaka Mahn standing over Chey-Linn, who was on her hands and knees on the floor, hyperventilating and eyes unfocused.

Then, he was pulled around the corner and separated from the group, while a bailiff held him down and insisted on asking about his injuries.

___________________________________________________________________________________



The security forces had separated everyone, unsure at first who the offending party was. There were no major injuries beyond some early signs of hypothermia and Nerim's twisted ankle and burns. Nerim was kept in a small windowless room with a round featureless white couch and a holoprojector table, while one of the Commandos stood next to the door, and an officer sat across from him.

The officer questioned him on what he saw, and he replied as best as he could recall. He hadn't been tracking the positions of everyone prior to the event happening, trying instead to keep his focus on that Dark presence. Through the questioning, he realized that he didn't have a solid idea of where anyone was prior to the gas leak, beyond Haaka Mahn and Chey-Linn. Once it occurred, he had no accounting for anyone's exact whereabouts until Jianno saved him.

"And you're sure the one who attacked you wasn't Chey-Linn?" The officer asked. "How, if you couldn't see or identify them otherwise?"

"I could sense through the Force that it wasn't her," he answered reluctantly. "I know it's not something I can explain to a non-User, but—"

The door slid open. With the tapping of his cane, Yoda shuffled in. "Believe him, I do."

The officer stood up and saluted as Yoda entered. Yoda nodded to him and walked over to the couch, climbing up onto it and taking his place. Once he settled in on crossed legs, he looked across the table to Nerim, silent for a few moments.

"Lightning," the old Master said as if commenting on the weather.

"Emerald lightning!" Nerim responded defensively.

"Yes..." Yoda nodded slowly. "But to use it, a connection is required. A firm grasp of the Dark."

Nerim raised his hands. "I know it looks—"

"The wrong impression, I have given," Yoda interrupted, gesturing for him to stop. "Questioning your usage, I am not. To underline your knowledge, I am trying."

Nerim lowered his arms and furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"To utilize the Dark in such a manner, one must sense it clearly," Yoda pointed with his walking stick. "Bothered, I am, that no one saw this coming. That none could navigate the room without their eyes. Better than that, a Jedi's senses are. Clouded, their senses in the Force must have been."

He didn't respond immediately, sensing something else was on Yoda's mind. His silence prompted Yoda to speak.

"Or lying, someone is."

Nerim looked down at the table. "I've been persistently sensing a Dark presence since we arrived on Coruscant. Since I first entered the room with Chey-Linn and the others, specifically. No one else from our group can sense it clearly. Tetha has described a sense of deja vu, which I share. Arwain has gotten whiffs of something bad, which I share. But I feel a presence and emotions, specifically."

Yoda closed his eyes and focused. Then he shook his head. "Vocta, Mahn, Ya-Ban, Lohwan, Chey-Linn. Reported a vague sense of Darkness, they all have. From your table, or so they assume. Suspicions I share."

"It wasn't one of us," Nerim replied confidently.

"Mm. When 'us' you say, to whom do you refer?" Yoda challenged.

"Well, to all of us. None of our Force Users could have done that," he replied awkwardly. He didn't want to admit Aesha was training in the Force, even though Yoda could likely tell.

And as if he were trying to read Nerim's thoughts, Yoda stared at him. Then Yoda ran a hand through his sparse hair and sighed. "Difficult to read, I always thought you were. Closed, your thoughts seem. Diversionary, your expressions. Deeply unsettled was I by your lack of comment when we exiled you. To that moment my mind kept returning. 'How could he have nothing to say', I asked myself. 'Make clear your thoughts to me', I wanted. Hmm."

"Big talk coming from the guy who speaks backwards."

"Hm. Hmhm." Yoda laughed through his nose. "I kept my broken manner of speech on purpose, to force people to actively listen to me. In decoding the order of my words they would have to actually think about each one and how they fit together. I refused to perfect my Basic because I was tired of working harder to communicate in a new language and seeing my words receive less attention for the effort. Fae was right about you. You're actually an open book. We just did not actively engage with how you communicated. Impatient, we were, to get to the matter that interested us. Like a Padawan just nodding along through a lecture until he can get to the lightsaber lessons. Missing why the blade mattered in the first place, we arrived to a place where we held it, and knew not what to do but swing."

Nerim's eyes narrowed as he took in the words. "Are you admitting my exile was...wrong?"

"Rethink the concept of exile, I feel we must. Yours? Not sure," he chuckled. "A great pain, it would have been, had you performed that stunt on Boonta while under our colors. Worried, I was, that you would defy the Code, that you would lead other Jedi astray, that you would take actions which endanger yourself and others and tarnish the reputation of the Order and undermine the trust the Republic puts in us. And these things all, you have done. Although I am not so old and dotty to not see that we have contributed greatly to your efforts in all of these areas in our own way. Overestimate, you, the amount Fae would approve of your actions. And roping Saarkane into it, of all systems. Hm. A 'Do as I say, not as I do' type person, was she."

Yoda looked him in the eye. "My point being, see through you now, I can. Transparent your intentions are. And the stain of the Dark I do not sense. So I trust you. But flawless your judgment is not. So I ask, who can you rule out, and why?"

Well, when you can't think of a good lie...

Nerim crossed his arms and leaned back. "It can't be me, because I'm me. It can't be Arwain, Tetha, or Aesha, because I have an intimate understanding of their presence in the Force after training together for so long, and I feel them distinct from the Darkness. It can't be our lawyers or Jarroa, because they're not Force Users. It can't be Chey-Linn, because I have felt separation between the Dark and her. That leaves Ya-Ban, Lohwan, Haaka, and Vocta that I'm unsure of, but all seem unlikely to me. I also wasn't keeping track of the media or Commandos, who could have snuck by without my notice. Or the Justices, as far-fetched as that sounds. Theoretically, it could have even been someone I don't know about at all, who was hiding in the ceiling and following me around the city during the entire trial. Honestly, that's where I'm leaning."

Yoda nodded along and hummed in thought. "Impossible to tell which lightsaber was used against you. Vocta, Chey-Linn, and Haaka all used blue blades. Chey-Linn suffered from hypoxia and hypothermia. Little memory of the event, she has. When she awoke, a nightmare, she thought it was."

The two were silent for a time, and then Yoda spoke. "Agree with you that it was not Chey-Linn, I do."

"Glad to see the Order's inability to see her doing any wrong is working out in favor of the truth for once," Nerim grumbled.

Yoda paused at that, and then readjusted in his seat. "Changes, the trial will undergo. Our Servicemen and Vocta, we will cycle out. Haaka Mahn will be kept in the Temple. Tell this not, to your friends. If the Dark presence persists, information, we will gain."

"What? No." Nerim frowned. "Changing out Chey-Linn's lawyers this late in the trial would be unfair. It would disadvantage her. And you can't rob her of her Master's support!"

"Heh!" Yoda laughed, standing up. "Like a coin you flip in the name of justice. Widdimur, you remind me of. Still, it must be done."

"You can't just throw her under the streetcar!" He protested.

"Keeping a potential Dark Jedi on her legal team is no better for her," Yoda reasoned, hopping off the couch. "If so sure you are that your friends are not to blame, then great is the chance it is one of her team. Mm?"

"I don't like what you're implying about my friends..." Nerim warned as Yoda stretched his legs out and began to walk away. "Has it escaped you that the Order just lost a case trying to persecute us under these same circumstances?"

Yoda stopped, without turning back to face him. "No. But think a layer deeper of what that means. Trouble you, it should. True Darkness did lurk, then. Darkness lurking again is the last thing we need. Your duty it is to remain vigilant against such threats, as a 'Jedi Knight'."

Yoda walked out the door, and Nerim blinked. "Wait, did I just get a promotion?"

He paused again in the doorway. "Backwards, I was speaking. Knight Jedi, I meant."

The next morning, Nerim awoke with a sharp discomfort as a beam of sunlight glared into his eyes. Then he realized and shot up, opening his bleary eyes.

"Hhrmmgh..." Tetha grumbled unhappily, curling up tighter beneath the blankets and screwing her eyes tightly shut. "Why do you always wake up like that..."

"The sun's out."

She shot up also.

They each helped each other get dressed, which generally took longer than getting dressed themselves, and then rushed out and into an elevator. The window showed a spectacular view of the Coruscant skyline with the sky by painted by the morning light in a blue sky and golden clouds above sparkling wet skyscrapers. They reached their target floor and went back to those large glass doors, where both froze.

Dripping with rainwater on the landing pad was a familiar light freighter with the words "Bu Gusha Wermo" printed on the side. Tetha squealed in joy, and rushed out the door, Nerim quickly in tow. The air was still cold and a little windy, in a way he found quite refreshing.

"How?!" Tetha asked. "It must have been Yenchara! Oh! When she told me to have a good evening..."

"What an effective bribe!" He agreed. Then he skid to a stop. "Wait. Do you think this is a trap?"

"If it is, I don't care! It's my ship!" Tetha said, excitedly tapping at her fob and waiting for the boarding ramp to lower.

Nerim placed a hand to his chin and reached out. He didn't sense that Dark presence. It wasn't near. All this time he had only been passively observing, like an antenna receiving radio waves. But it had occurred to him that, at any time, he could take a more active role. Try to reply, or even tug it towards him. He had refrained, and thought better than to mess with things. But if this were a trap, they were deeply in danger. And if it weren't a trap...It was a golden opportunity.

Nerim closed his eyes, tuned a string of the Force to that particular imprint of that Dark presence, and rather rudely tugged upon it. As if yanking a cat by the tail, it suddenly appeared before his soul, disorientated and distant—quite distant, and bleary-eyed. Whatever it was, it was asleep. He flashed it with the thought of a light freighter set upon a landing pad, and felt only non-recognition and confused scrambling in response. It didn't know. But it recognized him. Then he felt iron, anger, and acid. More strings emerged from the Unifying Force, whipping towards Nerim in a frenzy. Then he fell from the Unifying Force and into Force Immunity, and it all disappeared, without, he hoped, leaking any more information back to the presence.

He opened his eyes and gasped for breath. It may or may not have been a trap set by Yenchara, but it wasn't understood by the presence, and that meant two things: They weren't working together, and he could transform it into a tool against the Dark Sider.

The boarding ramp hit the durasteel landing pad, and Tetha rushed up, with Nerim swiftly behind. They checked through the ship, which seemed more or less intact, although the furniture had all been removed or rearranged, and several components had been replaced—including, they realized, the hyperdrive, which was now a significantly better model. Sitting on the dashboard of the cockpit was a datapad, which Tetha picked up.

It contained nothing but a simple message from Yenchara, in Huttese of course. It explained that she was informed that the owner of the spaceport they had landed at 'repossessed' their ship after a few days without them showing up, and sold it to a chop shop, who found it was in good enough condition to sell as is, who sold it to a smuggler that worked for Yenchara. The smuggler then went about upgrading the ship to do a Kessel run, only for Yenchara to realize who it belonged to.

The message then frankly stated that right now, Yenchara was in the business of making friends, and that she considered them quite valuable as potential friends, and that if they ever needed anything, her communication data was in the ship's computers.

Nerim sat in the seat next to Tetha and swiveled it towards her. "Tetha, we have an opportunity here."

"Y-you want to get into the spice trade?" She raised an eyebrow.

"What? Oh. No," he shook his head. "No, I mean, I'm certain that whatever the Dark Jedi that's been following us is, it doesn't know about this ship. We don't know how it's been tracking us, but with this, it will only be able to rely on the Force. And the Force takes patience, which means it takes time. Which means we have maybe a couple hours with this thing before it finds us. More importantly, we only have a couple hours until the Galactic Cup finals are on holo."

"Okay..." Tetha began the startup procedure. "What do you want to do with those hours?"

He thought for a moment. "The Dark presence seems to become excited by conflict. Not just when we're winning our case, but when we're losing, and even outside the case. I twice felt it strongly when Chey-Linn and I were arguing during court recess. It knows we know about it, so I don't know if we can trick it into revealing itself just by ourselves. But it doesn't know that Chey-Linn is working with us."

Tetha paused with her finger hovering over the sublight ignition switch. She looked at him. "We're working with Chey-Linn?"

"Not yet."

She flipped the switch, and the engines purred to life. "Alright. Are we going to the Temple?"

"No," he said, looking out at the skyline. "It seems to have a connection to me, and may sense if I'm approaching a vergence in the Force, like the Temple. Then the jig is up. That said, we should go somewhere with a lot of energy, to mask our presences..."

"Is Chey-Linn going to just show up somewhere for you? She hates you. She hates all of us."

He took a deep breath. "I don't know. She's at an inflection point, right now. Ever since the events on Cathar, I get the feeling she's built a large part of her identity on the belief that she was the hero in that situation. Now that that's been broken, she has two options. She can refuse to acknowledge the fall and double down, or she can change. She's at rock bottom now, so she might be willing to gamble. We just need to pick a location and hope."

Tetha placed her hands on the yoke and thought for a moment, tapping her fingers on the controls. Then she turned to him. "Wanna go see the game in person? Parking starts hours early. It's always packed."

___________________________________________________________________________________



The parking garage for the Galactic City All-Stars Stadium was a grand structure of open air arches and platforms that circled the entire stadium, almost like an aqueduct in appearance as it funneled in spectators. The vast, vast majority of viewers took public transport, but those who wanted to arrive in style or from space directly could pay a hefty sum to land directly on the garage, guided by an air traffic control team the size of a small town.

The Lucky Worm landed on a high level at the skyline, flanked on one side by a clunky beast covered in painted-on skulls that Nerim recognized as Mandalorian, and a small and sleek yellow airspeeder with more than a few dents and scratches. Tetha and Nerim emerged, and a pack of Mandalorians in common clothing passed by, laughing and drinking already. Behind them was about two dozen Saarkanians, most rippling yellow and red, singing out war chants in Saarkanian. A handful of Geonosians flit past through the air, and a lone Wookiee loped past wearing nothing but a white T-shirt with poorly translated Basic saying "BIRN TO DIE" and carrying a cardboard sign that said "They Might Never Lose Again."

There were precious few Near-Humans outside of the Mandalorian crowd, or Coruscanti individuals at all, really. For some reason, bolo-ball was quite unpopular in the Core. It was sometimes called the "sport of poverty", given the lack of advanced technical gadgets, like nunaball or gravball. The Coruscanti also uniquely called it "limmie" for some reason, which explains why Nerim had never heard of the Mandalorian-originated sport until Jianno introduced him to it.

Nerim and Tetha circled the Lucky Worm to the yellow convertible airspeeder, which retracted its scratched and dented roof to reveal Chey-Linn's mistrusting face, one of her hands still on the controls, the other down by her hip. She glared at them, and didn't speak.

Nerim placed his hands atop the door opposite her, where she could see them. "Chey-Linn, I know you didn't attack me."

The corners of her mouth twitched downwards. "Good. Because I didn't."

"What happened?" Tetha asked.

Chey-Linn looked at her dashboard. "I don't know. A pipe burst and I couldn't breathe or see anything. Normally I could hold my breath, but I—" She stopped before admitting she was crying in there. "I couldn't. And then I lost all control of my body and fell over. I don't remember anything else. And now both of my lawyers quit and Master Haaka is grounded at the Temple. It's like I'm being punished."

Nerim nodded. "It sort of seems that way. But what they're doing is trying to flush out who did this. Don't tell him this, but I spoke with Yoda after it happened."

"Grand Master Yoda spoke with you?" She repeated in disbelief.

"He's doing his due diligence to investigate every possible person as the potential Dark Sider. All he knows for certain is that it wasn't me, and it wasn't you."

Her grip tightened on the yoke of her airspeeder. "You mean he suspects the Jedi? My Master?"

"Not really," Nerim sighed. "I think he's only doing it to be thorough. He seems pretty convinced it's someone from the Cathar group."

"It probably is! I half-think the reason you asked me here is to murder me while I'm alone!"

"Well if it is one of us, I have a way to find out."

"...I'm listening."

"I'm going to need you to instruct your new legal team to come to the same restaurant as my team while we're planning tomorrow during lunch, and inquire about a settlement. I want you to be there, and look unhappy about it, like you're being forced to by the Order to save face. And then Tetha is going to start antagonizing you, and you have to draw on her."

Chey-Linn's brow furrowed. "What?! Why?"

An Ithorian blowing vuvuzelas out of both of his mouths walked past. Nerim leaned in. "Because I'm pretty sure whatever the Dark Sider is, it wants us to fight. Surely you've felt it rise whenever you and I are around each other. I'm guessing that's why you suspect it's me. That's why I suspected it was you. But I think it's actually just invested in our fight. I've been sensing it during the trial, especially during the verdict reading. It's not happy that we're winning, it has some sort of particular problem with you. I think whatever it is, it wants you to be guilty on all counts. If you try to settle, it will become enraged, and if you then do something to jeopardize yourself, it will be surprised and elated. That swing in emotion, I think, will out it. If it's one of us, then we'll know."

Chey-Linn's eyes narrowed. "Is this a trick to get me to incriminate myself?"

"No," Tetha said, holding up a recorder that had been running the whole time, and then tossing it to Chey-Linn. "You can have proof we set this up. It's all theatrics."

Chey-Linn looked down at the device, and then back up at them. "This is...highly unorthodox."

"There is no orthodox way to catch a hiding Dark Sider," Nerim shrugged. "Frankly, I still don't believe it's one of us. I think it's a third party. But disproving it is the only way to get Yoda to trust us and actually work together."

The young Jedi mulled over the thought in her head for a few moments, staring out at the skyline. "...Why are you sure it's not me?" She asked in a small voice.

"Because, you're a Jedi."

Chey-Linn looked back up at him.

"Also, because you're not kriffin' subtle."

The corners of her mouth twitched up. She took a deep breath, and then nodded. "Okay. Alright. We'll try it."

"Great," Nerim smiled. "Wanna watch the game with us?"

Chey-Linn adopted that confused expression again, and shook her head. "Uh, no. I'm not into limmie. Also, we're not friends."

"Your loss!" Nerim grinned and shrugged, stepping back from the airspeeder. Chey-Linn pressed a button and the roof went back in place, and then she took off with the warbling of her speeder's repulsorlift.

Nerim and Tetha watched it rise into the late morning sky. Suddenly, one of the Saarkanians passing by stopped in his tracks, head twisted towards the two. His fur flashed white in surprise, and pointed directly at them. "Smoda gretchka! It's Nerim!"

Nerim looked down at the Saarkanian and frowned. "Am I really that recognizable...?"

Tetha blinked. "Is this going to be a thing everywhere now?"

"Nerim? Mar'e! Su'cuy'gar, cabur!" A Twi'lek Mandalorian shouted out, cup held high. "Tell me you're not here for the Alderaanians!"

"Sharks all the way!" Nerim raised a fist, his shout echoing through the garage. The crowds erupted with a mixture of cheers and boos.

___________________________________________________________________________________



A large color television on the wall of the diner played the highlights of last night's game, particularly the bicycle kick that the Saarkanian's star striker performed at the last minute, and the innumerable golden lights from the stands as each of the Saarkanians in the audience turned bright yellow in totality. Nerim smiled. Somehow, knowing he was somewhere in the distance there made him feel more...real.

"Nerim? You listening?" Jethro asked, obviously knowing the answer, and obviously unhappy about it.

"Um, sorta," Nerim said sheepishly, and then took another bite of his bantha burger. The storms had returned, not quite as bad as they were, but still with very heavy rain against the diner's windows.

Arwain sighed and pushed her chair back. "Listen, I think it's a great strategy and all, but if my part of the planning phase is done...?"

"Uh," Nerim frowned. "You're leaving? Where are you going?"

"It's not every day you get to take a spa day with a Mandalorian!" She grinned.

Jianno glared at her. "You said you wouldn't—" She sighed and dropped her fork, standing up alongside Arwain.

Nerim had a bad feeling about this, and a quick look with Tetha confirmed it. But neither of them could show it, not at this point. Besides, he could be certain it wasn't Arwain or Jianno, anyways. He wished them luck with the discretion to not make it sound like he was wishing them a good date, and they left, exiting out the side to avoid the rain.

Pappino grinned pointed towards the door after they left. "Okay, I have to ask."

"You don't have to get an answer," Kiseti cut him off. She had barely touched her soup.

"Oh? Touchy about client privacy? I get it," Pappino laughed.

"I just don't find it that interesting," she grumbled, readjusting her glasses.

"Come on! It's like a fairy tale—"

The doors rang as they opened, and two figures in robes entered, Chey-Linn and an older Human gentleman Nerim had not seen before, but could instantly tell was a Jedi. Chey-Linn entered with a rather authentic aura of repressed rage. Everyone at Nerim's table, especially Aesha, tensed. Jarroa placed a hand on her wrist, while the three lawyers craned their heads in surprise.

Pappino stood up and offered his hand, and the older Jedi shook it. "Hello. Apologize to bother you during lunch. My name is Jirr Kalata, Jedi Serviceman. I'm Miss Sunrider's new attorney."

The surprise at the table increased. "New attorney?" Jethro asked. "You've picked a hell of a time to drop in."

"Yes. Well, in part that is what I am here to talk to you about," he said, reaching into his robes and producing a datapad. Chey-Linn's mouth twitched with anger and shame. Kiseti's eyes narrowed, and Jethro rubbed his hands together, but Pappino did not react visibly, politely waiting for the other shoe to drop. "We are here to inquire as to a settlement, in regards to the counterclaim."

Nerim searched for that Darkness. Where ever it might be, it hadn't reacted strongly.

Aesha snorted. "Really? You think you get the easy way out, after what you did?"

Chey-Linn's hands clenched into fists. "This wasn't my idea..." She mumbled between clenched teeth, technically truthful.

Tetha placed her hands on the table. "Settle? You coward. You don't even have the dignity to accept consequences."

Jethro shot daggers at Tetha and Aesha, gesturing subtly for them to tone it down.

Chey-Linn crossed her arms. "I'm not like you, or your husband here, running away from all your responsibilities. Don't you have a family you left behind, somewhere?"

Tetha's pupils shrank at that, and she stood up. Nerim sensed her to be genuinely upset, if still in control. "Better to have run away from home than to have home throw you away. Your parents took one look at your face and handed you over to some robed lunatic."

"Wh—" Chey-Linn's eyes widened, and then she stamped her foot. That was an actual sore spot for her. "You little harlot! What do you know about families? My mother sacrificed everything for me! Yours probably just forgot to take birth control! We're all lucky both your insipid bloodlines ends with you!"

Nerim's blood ran cold. There it was. He started to feel that Dark presence again, biting against the edges of his consciousness—biting at its own edges, actually, as they touched against his. It was trying very hard to hide itself. He looked out the windows, almost expecting to see it right there, staring in and grinning. Where was it?

"Chey-Linn!" Her attorney admonished, shocked. At the same time, Jarroa reached up and grabbed Tetha's arm to hold her back. Nerim started to get nervous now. This was not play fighting. The sadistic glee intensified.

Tetha shook off Jarroa's grip and walked up to her, raising her voice. "And you're also lucky you took a vow of chastity to spare you the embarrassment of knowing that nobody would ever want to love you!"

"You bitch!" Chey-Linn screamed, drawing her blade and activating it with a flash of light and electric hum. The patrons and staff, which had been watching with great interest, now screamed. It was now or never.

Nerim reached out and grabbed onto that presence, wherever it was, and tugged it as hard as he possibly could. The Dark presence was projected into his head—into the minds of everyone at the table, pulled from the ether of the Unifying Force and searing into the Living, into the Physical.

Yes! It shouted in vicious joy, echoing from the middle of the table, and suddenly everyone stopped. The sadistic glee turned into ice cold shock, and sudden realization. Everyone turned towards Kiseti.

She took off her glasses, folded them, and then slammed her fist against the table. The diner exploded in a storm of lightning.


_________________________________

Stumbling through darkness, gasping for breath and ignoring that horrible grinding noise her shoulder made every time it moved, she leaned against the wall and left a deep dark red trail behind as she did. There was one place to go, now. There was only one place. And when she went there, she would no longer have anywhere to go, but that didn't matter right now because she needed to not be here.

She stepped over corpses, somehow avoiding the attention of those in the battle. She was a hunter, once, when she lived on a world that supported animal life other than rats. She had a special sense for wounded animals. It was lucky nobody else here had that. Not anymore, anyways. Her mentor did. That was how they met. Now, she was alone again. Now she was holding her own leash.

She walked across the grounds, now outside. Sometimes the ground crunched beneath her, gritty sand crushed between sandal and stone. Sometimes it was wet with blood and just silently stuck. She had to move. She had to survive. Her belly felt hot, pooling with blood where one of her ribs had broken. She had no idea how she was hobbling in the first place, with what she thought must have been a broken knee. Every time she got closer to death, she got stronger, but this was something different. It wasn't strength. It was as if she were...outside of her own body, treating it as a puppet.

No, that was right. This body meant nothing, now. It was flesh, and it wasn't good. She needed out. She needed out of it. She lifted her arm, where her hand dangled limply. She tried to move her fingers one at a time, testing if they still worked. They mostly could curl inwards. She needed out. That wasn't her.

Something like time passed, her mind desperately trying to untether itself. She stopped moving, and wondered if her body had died. But then she took her senses again, and found she was at her destination.

A man in front of her cocked his head sideways, a feather drifting from his scalp. He had no face, just an endless maze that descended through space. Nothing was...right, here. The buildings were the wrong shapes. The man turned into two men, and then four, but their features didn't sit right, their faces each hallways with too many doors, their hands backwards, their words scraping the edge of meaning. There was a wind roaring through her hollow soul.

They placed her on a slab, and began cutting with their claws. She didn't react. Their labyrinth faces bent down and tore at her flesh, swirling it through some sort of journey before regurgitating it back into place. A claw grabbed her face and ripped at it, plucking out eyes and inverting teeth, but it was okay, because none of that was her. In that time between bodies, she realized what she truly was. A will, an unlimited being, stuffed into a limited and fragile shell. She looked down at the body, now unrecognizable to her. She needed to not be here.

Suddenly, someone was looking down at the body with her. It had appeared as if from nothing, and the mazefaces scattered. This new thing picking over her corpse was a man with bulbous black bug eyes, and metal claws where his arms should have been. The thing introduced itself.

"You understand what it is to be a slave. This means you can imagine what it is to be free. This means you are Sith. I am Darth Tenebrous. This means you are mine."

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The new desert was red, its sand made of dust and shattered rock, rather than glass and plastic. Chips of bone were omnipresent, teeth and slivers of femurs, entire skulls on occasion. Mountains were everywhere, surrounding her at all times, and even when she climbed to the top she realized there were yet more mountains surrounding her and above her, all barren and jagged. It was warm, but the sun never burnt her. It seemed dim. Old. Dying. The sky was usually cloudy anyways, though she did not know with what. It could not have been water vapor. She could not see well. It all blurred at some point or another.

There was life, here. Something like that. It was everywhere, desiccated and calcified. It was a life adapted to death, paralyzed and hibernating. She could easily see that there were entire valleys full of creatures preying on one another that had not experienced any movement in centuries, each of the semi-fossilized creatures waiting for something to change, some circumstance to arise in which they could get the upper hand. She could kick over a rock and suddenly it would all come alive, hounds would rise and jaws would snap, bugs would scatter and bats would try and take flight. Not too long later, like time had frozen again, they would all simply come to a stop.

All of the water of this world seemed to have already been captured in its biosphere—in its necrosphere. Nothing here reproduced. The population only ever dropped. And it was not enough. Everything was dying, slowly, very slowly, so slowly as to have been an effectively eternal hell. The only way to drink was to drink blood, and each supped vein represented another century of torment to these creatures, and yet they could not stop themselves. It almost seemed like a mercy to kill them. If she could, she would have crushed the whole planet in her claws and scattered the dust into the Maw.

She did not know how long it took before she saw her first man-made structure. It was grand and crumbling, made of orange sandstone carved into a mountainside. She entered, matted fur stained with blood like an animal, only the thought of finding another sentient reminding her that her body was, in fact, seen as a part of her, and not just like one of the tools she had fashioned to hunt with.

There she found corpses of the immortal, the Sith who had forever escaped nonexistence by learning to exist within death. She wondered if they had learned from and become the animals, or if the animals had learned from and became them. And then she ate them, because either way, that was what she had already been doing.

Darth Tenebrous appeared before her again, then. That feeling of disconnection, he told her, was now complete. Had she been stolen away by the mazefaces, Syaniids, or worse, the Jedi, she would have lost it, forgotten what it meant to be an unlimited will. Now, it was permanent. Now, she was ready to begin her training.

Darth Tenebrous was very much unlike her former Mistress. He did not care how she accomplished her tasks. And he did not set tasks before her, not at first. He simply offered, that if she were to climb, there might be things waiting for her. A blade, a meal, an exit. Many passings of the dead sun later, she found a ship. She checked the date, only to realize, she did not remember what the date was when she had died. Not the day. Not the year. She didn't even remember her name.

When she arose to the stars and by instinct navigated to a dark place far away from any stars where Darth Tenebrous was waiting, he gave her two new names. One was Kiseti Kara, which was to be her camouflage. It belonged to a Cathar who superficially resembled her, and who he presented to her to kill and eat the Force out of, as she had done to many other animals. This was the first one she could recall to beg her not to. The second name was her real name, the one that represented her unlimited being. Darth Carrion.

Tenebrous told her the secret of the Sith, the Rule of Two that had kept the Order alive for the near-thousand-years that the Jedi dominated the Galaxy. That for this entire time, they had constructed a Grand Plan, a method by which to subvert the Republic, to poison the Jedi from the inside out and destroy them once and for all. He told her that at one point, this had been carried out for revenge. But now, they carried it on for freedom. That as long as the Jedi existed, as long as they insisted on the limiting of the unlimited will, all Sith would be forever trapped within their decaying bodies, their inadequate forms, surrounded by walls and noncompliance.

But the Jedi's insistence on their so-called 'purity,' made of slave chains, was their weakness. Every year, every generation, some number of Jedi rebelled, for reasons good or ill. It was statistics. It was a numbers game. And statistically speaking, one day, it had to reach a critical mass. One day, the wrong Jedi, and the wrong number of Jedi, would find themselves coming to blows with the Order. And then the Sith could destroy them from the inside out, use the conflict to separate the Jedi from the Republic, and divide and conquer. It was their job to maintain the Sith ways, to prepare the Galaxy for the oncoming reformation, and to tip the scales of the numbers game in their favor.

After she had become half-feral, Tenebrous bid her to regain the ability to put on a mask of society. It wasn't as difficult as one might have assumed. Even the animal that she had become wasn't really her. The mazefaces had never finished her eyes, and Tenebrous reminded her that most Sentients still required their eyes to see, and so she adopted a primitive technology called spectacles, and she began to wear clothes again, and speak using words made by her lungs. Limited. Limited.

Darth Tenebrous already had a use in mind, for her. The Grand Plan had already subverted much of the Galaxy's grandest institutions, though she was never told exactly how much. It was unclear to her if Tenebrous held the entire Intergalactic Banking Clan by the throat, or only a few members, but he had leverage over a Muun lawyer of extreme stature, both physical and metaphorical. She was made to study under him, to repeat her false history to herself every night.

She did not know why, but she could guess. Tenebrous himself was an engineer and wealthy businessman, who designed star yachts for clients of the highest prestige all across the Galaxy, putting him in direct contact with anyone he could name. A single degree of separation at most, an opportunity to manipulate where they lived and where they went, and gather intelligence on all. His Master had been a material scientist of similar repute, and their Master, and so on. Tenebrous was uninterested in turning her into a scientist. Perhaps he didn't think she was capable, and relegated her to the subject he held with great disdain called 'law', but she understood the power held within those words more than him. To constrain others, and force compliance. To free herself, just a bit.

She became an excellent liar. Better, she realized, than her Master. Better by far. He could turn it on when he needed, deceive a Jedi Master to his face, but so great was his disdain for reality and for the creatures that inhabited it that he rarely did turn it on. Kiseti did not hate the people around her. She didn't quite recognize them as people. But Tenebrous was not that great a fool. He realized this also. And he approved. And so he assigned her a mission of extreme importance.

A trial was to be held in a few short weeks, one involving the Jedi Order, and a particular problem child within it. This Human, a girl named Chey-Linn Sunrider, was possessed of great turmoil and zeal in equal amounts, ideal for the Grand Plan. Tenebrous explained that if she were exiled from the Order, it was likely she could be provoked into schismatic activity, further driving a wedge between the Order and the Republic. He did not say, but Carrion understood, that Sunrider was a potential Sith apprentice. She did not say, but she understood, that this was a direct threat to her, and to the Rule of Two. He did not understand that this was a threat to him.

But there was a second layer to the plan, involving the defendants. He showed her a hologram, a group of beings. One was a Cathar, who she vaguely realized was the same species as her body, but did not recognize. The second was Near-Human of some sort, who she vaguely knew to be a Dark Sider, although she did not recall how she knew. The third...The third made her remember. For the first time in a year, she remembered. She remembered when she was her body, and she remembered when that killed her. The Mirialan in front of her. He killed her. She remembered.

She pointed as if in a daze and asked what his name was.

"Nerim. Some protege of a protege of Fae Coven. Your murderer. And if you can deceive in his presence, and split the Order in thirds, your training will be complete."

___________________________________________________________________________________



Her purpose clear, she walked the body she was wearing into the conference room. There he sat, ignorant, and yet with a puzzled expression. Soon she would come to understand that he often wore such an expression. He spoke with the others as if his words were him.

The woman beside him, who was once to be Sith, she realized now had fully abandoned the path of truth, and the path of power. She once had potential. Tenebrous had spoken to her about Tetha's early contact with a pre-Banite Sith holocron, estimated that she had a 38% likelihood of turning back to Sith ways, becoming a potential useful idiot. She now knew her Master's powers of prediction were completely skewed. There was no such chance.

She peeled her lips back in a way that the bodies around her considered friendly, and she held her posture in a way that they considered nonthreatening. And when the bumbling Nerim expressed his confusion at the goings on, she feared, for it meant he was actively listening. She fossilized her soul, like the creatures in that red desert.

When time came to officiate the wedding, Pappino had mysteriously disappeared. Likely her Master's doing, she realized. Forcing Carrion to take their place, testing her, forcing her to watch her greatest enemy experience the happiest moment of his life. The fool understood nothing about her. And, apparently, nothing about him. Nerim did not understand the gravitas placed on the moment. Neither did she. Membranes flicked across those things on her body's face they thought she saw out of, and she watched them kiss with blank noncomprehension.

But when they pulled back, and she saw the joy in Tetha's eyes and her spirit swirled about the room, it made contact with Carrion's own soul, and she heard something. A deep, hollow noise. Like a bell. There was something that wasn't in there. Was it a weight, a limit, that she had lost somewhere? Or was it a part of her, taken away? Was her will really so unlimited? She wanted to leave, and meditate on it.

Then Nerim turned around, faced her, and a beam of sunshine filtered through the glass chandelier that was his soul and asked her to stay and partake and be merry. She reached out and grabbed the fruit, bit it. Nothing happened.

___________________________________________________________________________________



The Galactic Court was placed upon a steel desert, one that threatened to unleash a once-in-a-lifetime downpour upon them. Nerim and the Cathar group had already begun this leg of the Grand Plan without her, to claim the mantle of Jedi, thus reducing the legitimacy of the Coruscant Order and sowing the seeds for a civil war. Her mission was to maintain this separation, and split into three parts the Order; a rump state on Coruscant, a splinter faction on Cathar, and a lone, angry, exiled Sunrider.

To that end, the three matters in court had to be settled in favor of the Cathar group. To separate them from the Sith, to maintain their independence, and to ensure Chey-Linn was found guilty and unceremoniously thrown from the Order. It would be easy to keep up her guise around the Jedi of either faction, given her short term goals were aligned with what was expected of her. But more than that, she was to sow visible discord.

The Coruscant Order had an infuriating habit of settling matters behind closed doors, obfuscating themselves to the Galaxy, undergoing shifts and purges without the wider Republic even realizing, and solving internal strife before it could affect the mundane Sentients. She needed it to be visible. To be televised. The Grand Plan called for a large portion of the Galaxy to not only become aware of the conflict, but to take the Cathar's side. To distrust the Coruscant Order, and hate Chey-Linn. And she needed all of this to drive the Coruscant Order further into fear and mistrust of Nerim and his splinter faction.

In time, the Jedi of both groups began speaking of the vague Darkness they all sensed. She wasn't able to completely mask her presence; no Sith could. But this, too, worked to her advantage. As long as both sides thought the other had fallen to the Dark, the wedge would grow only deeper.

She placed whatever it was she felt about her past body into that hollow space in her soul. She did not allow her personal feelings to come into it. Everything was in service to the Grand Plan. She, accidentally, allowed herself only one exception.

When Nerim was asked how many lives he had ended, she saw the faces in his mind's eye. Vena Riila, the quartermaster, the Mistress, and four Syaniids besides. One of them was her old body. Her new body was just a puppet, and so she did not have to hide a liar's smile on it, but her soul began to grin wickedly. Wrong. I lived.

And when the verdict came down, she stared into the souls of the Justices, and realized an unsettling assuredness in them all. If taken right now, the verdict for wrongful arrest would be not guilty, 3-2. That, she could not allow. However, there was still yet a way to ensure Chey-Linn's exile, and the tarnishing of the Coruscant Order's reputation...

When she entered the restrooms, she entered a stall, and left the dead meat she had been puppeting. She reached through the Unifying Force, her powers cold and black as stealth fighters, and cracked open the pipes. Her soul fell from the ceiling, and while Chey-Linn was a trained Jedi, the girl's mind was already on the verge of broken. It only took a single concentrated impression of all of Carrion's power to toss her out of the stall and to the ground, where she hit her head, and the gas would do the rest. Then, Carrion took the girl's lightsaber into the air with the Force, and went to work.

She turned the blade against Nerim, aiming to maim him, as 'she' had done to Aesha already. She kept a cloud of vapors telekinetically tethered around the blade, in the shape of the fragile young Jedi. At some point, her discipline slipped. She attempted to strike a killing blow, and Nerim raised his hand and a shower of lightning emerged. It caught her offguard, but reflex served where mindfulness did not; Tenebrous was never able to use lightning against her, and thus felt comfortable teaching her how to defend against it.

She controlled herself, reasserting authority over her soul, refusing to allow Nerim to use it against her. Then, before she could strike him down, the blade was captured in a gauntlet of beskar. The maiming would not be. No matter. The attack was all she really needed. She deactivated the blade, returned it to the restroom floor next to Chey-Linn, and then attempted to navigate back to her body. It was freezing and asphyxiated, but it was of little concern to her. It was an animal of Korriban.

___________________________________________________________________________________



In dreams and fitful sleep, she felt a presence move across her soul, a beam of Light directing its gaze to her. She felt very small, and very vulnerable. She felt something she had never experienced before, this gnawing feeling inside of her that the spotlight brought out. And then suddenly she was tugged from the sarcophagus she hid in, and placed face-to-face with a being that was not hidden and yet she could not quite see, a glass angel that gripped her by the tail and held her up underneath its face as if it was the magnifying glass itself.

She scrambled in its grasp, and with searing light a question she did not comprehend was burnt into her mind. Then she stopped, frozen. It was Nerim. She tried to lash out, but he simply dropped her soul to the floor, like a toy he had grown tired of, and disappeared.

He found her in the Force. But what bothered her more was the disregard with which he handled her.

She just wasn't that important to him.

That night, she asked Darth Tenebrous if she should disappear. He didn't agree. He calculated a very low chance that she would be caught.

And besides, he knew that he had somehow, accidentally, produced a true Sith in her. She would accept death before dishonor. And if she were to die...she wasn't that important to him, either.

She understood, now. There was no room for half measures. Her victory had to be absolute, or it was worthless. The Jedi must falter. Tenebrous, that fake Sith, had to die next. And then...And then...

She thought back to Chey-Linn, gasping for breath on the ground, blind and insensate, lashing out and desperate to exit this reality and go back to one that made sense. Teetering over that edge. An infatuation bloomed. And, in a way, she loved her.

The way a true Sith loves.