Happy Sith Friends

Visited a cantina.  Met Saw Spoke to Ixor’something just Ixor.  There were many several drunk people.  Sith.  A Darth.  Tal’something Tal, big red Twi’lek.  Powerful.

It would be fun to fight spar with him.  Not sure.  Drank something fizzy and pink.  White-haired Sith suggested not drinking because it’s terrible.

Examining him felt wrong.  It was done to me so much to evaluate my health that it was automatic when I wanted to figure out and see his strength first-hand.  His claws.  I am jealous.  Mine aren’t nearly so cared-for.  I’ll see if I can get mine looked after.  Ask Tal who looks after his claws

That is the most stupid question, Bi’juta.

Ixor was also a gladiator.  Should ask about his experiences sometime.  Wonder how long he fought.

Don’t remember how old I am.

That shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.

Hard to keep track of so many people, so many voices.  Trying to relax.  Relaxing is a good thing.  Right?  Yes.

Speaking of.

Bi’juta had claw envy.

Well, everything envy.  Tal’vessul was the best example of everything a Twi’lek warrior ought to be: he was big, he was strong, his claws were sharp and he had enough confidence to fuel a battleship for eons.  If Bi’juta had been set aside for breeding, he would have been the type of Twi’lek she’d hope to father her children.

He made her feel as if she was missing something.

Whenever she looked at her gloved hands, she remembered his claws, how proudly they were displayed, and she frowned.  She had never been encouraged to care for hers, to use them; her audience wanted barbaric weapons, but not quite the level of barbarism that fighting with tooth and claw entailed.  A real warrior can use their claws.  A real warrior.

Even Ixor’semo, scrawny as he seemed to her, had fought with his claws — but not her.

Maybe she could be taught.

The armoury aboard Nehlahn’s ship was well-stocked, though most of her weapon collection was ancient and mostly for show.  It brought back memories that she thought were long-suppressed.

Holding her first two-handed axe.  Training for combat as a child.  Learning where to strike to produce the bloodiest wound — immediate kills weren’t important, amount of bloodshed was.  She would practice her movements when she felt she was alone, moving from stance to stance with ease that seemed uncharacteristic of a woman her size.

Perhaps her lack of claws was not an issue — she had other things, other training.  She was a forged weapon.  She was Sith.

That other Twi’lek, though.  She’d watch him, she’d learn from him, and then she’d decide what to do about him — if anything at all.

“Just make it stop hurting!”

- OHK-99

Bi’juta knew what it was like to have no control over what she was doing, where she was going.  She knew what it was like to feel trapped and scared.

The droid’s plea for her to end it all struck a nerve, and looking to the dead soldier on the slab behind her solidified her decision.  Lightsaber in hand, the Twi’lek woman wasted no time in getting to that control panel, and the room’s lone guard felt the extent of her rage when she left him in a heap on the floor.

When Bi’juta gave the order to deactivate the experimental droids, she knew what she was doing was a major disservice to the Empire — but she would be doing something for those soldiers that nobody had, in the beginning, done for her.

They were free.

She sometimes has trouble thinking, coming up with words.  Words she used to know.  Words that, at one time, came to her without trouble.  Complicated concepts are often impossible for her to get her head around.  Sometimes she has flashes of brilliance, but for the most part, she is simply muscle and combat prowess.

She can understand fighting.  Fighting is easy, fighting is her job.  She enjoys it, gets lost in the forms and predicting the movements of her enemy.  It’s not as down-and-dirty as gladiatorial matches, it’s more of an art, and she likes that.

She can’t help but be unnerved by high-ranking Sith.  All of that power isn’t a good thing and she fears having it used against her.  Fear drove her once, she doesn’t want it to drive her again — instead, she lets anger power her blows.  Anger at being captured so young, anger at a lost childhood, anger at intimate aspects of her life being a game for so many years.  She likes what Nehlahn proposed.

Death to the Slavers, freedom to the slaves.

But she could not be her Master.

Someone attempted to speak to me privately through the holocomm.

He felt that I was “noticeably communicative”.

I have a bad feeling about this one.

A very bad feeling.

I hope I never run into him, whoever he is.

Note to self:  Mind your own damned business, Kivalliq.

Meanwhile, I have a lead and I am following it.

Strongly considering firing the pilot.  He is complicating matters.

He keeps making me promise I will not die.

This stems, I believe, from recent events that have let me feeling quite under the weather, further aggravated by the weather on Dromund Kaas, where we are stationed as we attempt to … figure various things out.

The Darth that has been pursuing us killed the apprentices I inherited from my Master.  I obtained another in the form of the twi’lek Bi’juta, though I am more comfortable calling her a “student”, not an apprentice.

On top of this, Lahn’a has decided to bugger off.  I am in no condition to chase her.  I have been unable to find further information regarding our father, either.  Our ghost-hunts have proven to be effective, however, but some… complications have arisen and between over-exerting myself against the Darth’s apprentice, dealing with the ghosts within my body, the fragility of my body due to my involvement with the Dark Side, I am not at peak health.

At least the ship is running well.

The pilot has asked if I would marry him and I told him I need time.  I do not want him stuck with a sickly wife, nor do I want to marry him only to leave him behind in death.

He has stated that he is quite happy to take me as I am.

I do not know what I think of this.

The archaeologist that we obtained from Hoth has taken up duties as ship’s doctor and has been tending to me while I am ill.  He is quite good at what he does and I appreciate our conversations regarding the history of the galaxy — he has enlightened me on things I had not before understood, and he is quite an intelligent man.  It is refreshing to find that there is more than one man in this galaxy that is worthy of my attention.

I require rest.  My bed awaits me, as does the warmth provided by the man that would dare desire to be my husband.  I will never understand why.

(( Edited to make references to Andronikos into Generic Pilot Dude, and make the story more Official Nehl-Canon Friendly. ))

Lahn’a felt like a small, defenseless animal approaching the den of a massive predator — maybe a nexu — when she quietly stepped up to the door of her sister’s quarters.  She could feel the Dark Side energy in her bones and she hated how it felt, how it made her sister look and act.  She hated how it had twisted her sister’s body and pitted it against her, made Nehlahn look more and more like some kind of monster.

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