helloeverybunny | OPEN RP POST • STAR WARS MINGLE ⭐️

She blinks and moves to look over his shoulder, frowning at the screen. "That's Imperial territory. The back end of it, anyway. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that if any corporations tried to claim some of our space as theirs, we would both notice and be, shall we say, less than amused."

To put it mildly, given how possessive and territorial Sith are.

Right, back to her own terminal. "So far, I haven't recognized any of the events being talked about on the news." Which was disquieting, to say the least. "What isn't just financial minutiae, gossip, and so on involve something called a New Republic."

"'New' Republic?"

A new government wouldn't just label themselves the New Republic or anything so vague. They would be The New Republic of the such-and-such Alliance or whatever, to avoid confusion with the Galactic Republic.

"I, um...I don't like this. A planet in your space claiming to belong to a sector we've never heard of, a government with a vague name clearly meant to sound like the one I've come from...and I don't recognize this dating system."

He folds his arms, looking at establishment dates of these destinations as if staring at it could tell him what "BBY" stood for. It being on the HoloNet meant there wasn't much chance of it being endemic to Cantonica, either.

((I had actually been thinking about pming you to ask if you'd lost interest/lost this, since the wait had been longer than usual. >_>))

"I don't like this either, you realize," she says irritably, using the irritation to mask her unease. She was also starting to get a nasty suspicion. "Start looking into historical information on the Republic; I'll do the same for the Sith Empire."

Which should give a hint to him as to where all of the information they've gathered so far is making her think. If she's right, she's likely going to need to find something no one particularly needs for anything to destroy. Better that than destroying a person who likely has nothing to do with what's happened. Not only would whoever it was not deserve it, she'd have to deal with the Jedi not reacting well and it may be for the best if they not antagonize each other too much. Not if they're the only people from their time.

In all honesty, he was in denial. Because the amount of time that had passed...were his friends still alive? He didn’t want to think about it. He could imagine any number of Masters who would frown on his loved ones preoccupying his thoughts like this, such that he casts aside a potential truth before it’s investigated, but he can’t bring himself to care about what they might say.

“I-...” he shakes his head. “If you can believe I’m afraid?” Not that she’ll have to believe it when it’s practically clinging to him.

But he does as he’s asked. And finds...

“...There was a...a purge of information. I see mostly anecdotes or old family tales, trying to fill in the gaps.”

And there’s no further way to avoid admitting this was the future, somehow. “I guess you guys won for a while...” New Republic would then mean the remnants rose up again.

“But, how did we-...why were we-...”

He finds he can’t complete that sentence, his throat tightening and tears pricking his eyes. How long has it been? How long?

Sith who refuse to face reality tend to end up dead, so while she wasn't remotely happy about the prospect of being in the wrong time, trying to deny it won't help whatsoever.

"Given that the Sith Empire, from what I can make out, hasn't existed for centuries at best, I'd say the Jedi won first," she says tonelessly. Time to bottle up her feelings; now was not the time to unleash them. Even if something in the room just crunched in on itself in response to her emotions.

"I've seen mentions of a Galactic Empire, but I haven't gone into depth on that yet; I'll start looking that one up now. The New Republic is probably its replacement."

Flow jumps in response to the crunching of metal, then folds his arms tight with a hard shiver. His thoughts and heart are racing, and his breath is threatening to try to catch up.

Did he just disappear one day, then? Or did his friends know how he went missing and could do nothing? Did they spend their lives wondering where he’d gone? Did they spend them trying in vain to recover him?

“These governments, these victories...how long?”

Fire in his chest and throat, ice at his extremities. Flow braces himself on the terminal’s sides, trying and failing desperately to summon any measure of calm.

"You do realize that I haven't really had time to look that up yet?" she asks in a mostly patient tone although unable to fully hide her irritation. It's not like he suddenly lost the ability to use his own terminal to look this information up.

She's not letting herself think about how any of her own people would have taken her own disappearance; she can think about it and fall apart later. Right now, it's best to push through.

So the Jedi falls apart while the Sith keeps her cool - the irony would draw a remark from those absent friends, for sure. It isn’t helping.

He shakes his head, unable to summon words. He’s crying in earnest when he finally does, tears rolling down his cheeks and dripping onto the console in silent sobbing. But he’s managed to wrest the worst of his panic under control, to at least speak, to keep looking.

“We need- we need to know who would do this to us. How, and why...”. He swallows heavily, trying to find whatever he can.

“No matter who’s telling the story, we - Jedi and Sith - are practically legends. I mean - we could have guessed that, nobody seemed to know what to think of us, but-“. He swiped his tears away with the back of his hand, sniffled to try to keep more under control, with questionable success. “...We’ll wipe each other out. That’s what everything in our time leads to.”

Edited (Accidentally a word...) 2019-10-05 08:21 (UTC)

"Assuming it was a person," she points out, after taking a moment to decide if she should react to his falling apart before choosing to ignore it. Drawing attention to it probably won't do any good and it's not like he doesn't know it's not particularly helpful right now.

Then she shrugs. "The Jedi want us dead and plenty of us want the Jedi dead. Can you say you're entirely surprised? I'm going to go back to looking things up now."

She probably follows her words with taking action to do so, reading closely about the start of the Galactic Empire. It's maybe twenty minutes later when she speaks up again. "I... don't know how much of this I believe, as the victors always write the histories, but apparently some among the Jedi--it's not clear who--tried to assassinate the Chancellor of the Republic around fifty years ago. He promptly ordered the executions of the entire Order along with forming the Galactic Empire."

She gives him a sardonic look at that. "I wonder what he could have possibly been." Moment of sarcasm aside she shakes her head. "It looks like the Sith had only resurfaced in recent years--for back then--when that happened. If they found out that he was a Sith, I can't say I'm entirely surprised that was the option they went with. Even if it turned out to be an incredibly unwise one, given he was the most powerful man in the Republic."

Flow shakes his head. “Not all of us. There are people on both sides- were people on both sides - that wanted peace. I had hoped...”. He shakes his head.

And then he lapses into silence as she searches, half heartedly looking for things of his own. He pauses only when she speaks. He thinks about that a bit, blinking away the remnants of his tears as he returns to searching.

“The account can’t even name the Jedi responsible. I’m going to see if anyone can...”

Of course, several minutes later, he shakes his head. “Either nobody knows or they were silenced. It sounds suspicious to me that- he would have had to deliberately avoid naming his attackers-” realization hits as he speaks, “-...to cast the blame on the entire Order.” He heaves a sigh.

“So Saresh wasn’t an anomaly. If a Sith could become Chancellor unnoticed...either he was a very good actor, or there must have been many more like her.”

His limbs suddenly feel heavy. Why bother? What is there left to defend, if this is what everyone wanted? He lets out another shaking breath, and starts looking for things to inspire him. The elements that rose up and fought back.

“Well there’s something that’s endured - the hero of the hour is an Organa.” At long last, he gets to crack a small smile as he keeps following the HoloNet equivalent of a link trail. “Glad to see they’re still-...” his smile fades abruptly, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth as if to try to calm the ripple of anger he’s too upset already to contain. “...down to just her.” And as quickly as it came, the anger fades into despair. “Why did there have to be another world destroyer? Weren’t the past - five, six, eight, enough?” He shakes his head. “This needs to stop.”

Hearing the words 'Organa' and 'world destroyer' in near enough the same breath does not make her happy. Nor does the anger she senses. She does a quick search of her own, already having a pretty good idea of what she was going to find, still sucking in a breath in a hiss as she finds what she's looking for. "Well. So much for my plans to visit when there wasn't a war on."

While the words are said lightly enough, there's an underlying feeling of horror lurking beneath them. "At least Taris was still in one piece. Best left to the rakghouls in our time, but there was at least some hope of it being settled on again. And yes, I'm aware the Empire ruined the Republic's plans to clean it up; I got dragged into things while I was there for something entirely unrelated. At least I was able to minimize the amount of loss of life, somewhat."

She sits back, rubbing her face as she thinks. "If we don't want to be stuck here, we're going to need to acquire a ship." No, she's not planning to pay for whatever ship they run off with; it's not like they have any money and the resort seems to be full of plenty of rich people; they'll cope without whatever ship she picks.

“Where do you want to go? We don’t even know where to begin looking for answers.”

He honestly doesn’t want to stay here, either. He can feel, faintly but exacerbated by his own pain, an undercurrent of suffering running somewhere beyond the gambling crowd of mingled excitement and desperation. But at the same time, he wants to find it and stop it. And he wants to keep looking for clues. Why were they here?

“The only things I can think of are...Korriban’s Force attunement could have had a hand in it. Unless you know something about this area of space I don’t, it’s the closest strongly-attuned world. I-“ He suppresses a shiver, swallowing hard. In his state, would it prove a spark of volatility? “I’m sure you can understand my reluctance to go there. But if it has answers, I’m willing to look. The other thing, I think- look for help in this New Republic?”

She cocks an eyebrow at him. "Dromuund Kaas and Ziost aren't that far away from Korriban. As for where to go, the first place I'd go is Nar Shaddaa to sell whatever ship we've gotten and buy a new one with the money from it."

Basically putting the stolen ship into the hands of career criminals to do what they liked with it and have a presumably legally-bought ship in their possession so whatever law enforcement were looking for the other one wouldn't be able to track them down.

"Before we go poking any governments with sticks, let's look into if there's any Jedi native to this time left, hmm? Or people who are close enough to any that they may be of help." A pause. "No, I'm not planning on poking them with sticks be it literally or metaphorically. You'll note that I didn't suggest seeing if there's surviving Sith."

As said potential Sith would be far more inclined to eliminate them.

He flinches at the mention of Ziost, quietly returning to picking at that thread on his glove. He seems several times as if he’s about to say something in response to the rest, but only nods in silent agreement.

Finally, he offers a wan smile. “You also said you tried to minimize loss of life. I believe you.”

He looks down at his hands again, takes a deep breath. “I wish more Sith could have been like you. But the Sith I know who know kindness and mercy are less than I can count on one hand, including you. And now...” He looks up again, and offers his hand. The smile has faded, but he’s trying to hide his upset. “I think we missed proper introductions. Flow Volere.”

"I didn't--and still don't--see the point in massacring people who were just trying to find somewhere to live," she says with a shrug. "Even if, personally, I would have picked a planet without Rakghouls."

"You wanting the name the galaxy at large knows--knew--me as, or the one my parents gave me?" she asks with a crooked grin, accepting the handshake. "So far as the former goes, Darth Imperious. Which may explain some things for you, depending on what you've heard connected to that name."

“Whichever you’re more comfortable with...” He’s reluctant, a little, to let go - it’s the first positive contact he’s had since arriving here, and it goes a long way in calming him. It makes him feel less alone. For one who is attuned so well to the presence of life, it makes little sense. It’s one of those things he avoids questioning, lest it make him feel inadequate, somehow, over something that seems to matter so little.

He folds his hands in front of himself again, somewhat embarrassed, both by his momentary clinginess and the lack of knowledge he’s about to admit. “I’m afraid I didn’t- I couldn’t keep up with happenings on your Council, with only a few exceptions. I’m sorry.”

She shrugs, folding her own hands in front of herself as she leans back in her seat. "Darth Thanaton, the previous holder of my seat, hated my Master enough to not only want her dead, but everyone connected with her dead as well. As you can see, he was to be sadly disappointed by the survival of one of her apprentices, given I rather obviously came out on top in our power struggle. I think I'm the only one of my peers who wasn't trying to get a seat on the Council; I was rather more concerned with staying alive."

Although being on the ruling body of the Empire got to be a nice bonus to her survival. Granted, she could do without needing to metaphorically look over her shoulder for competitors.

“From what I’ve heard, it sounds like the life of a Sith is nothing but danger. I can’t imagine staying alive is far from anyone’s mind, even at the top.”

He looks at the display in front of him, of events that hadn’t yet happened when he woke up this morning, and that weren’t meant to happen for many years to come.

“...I mean, was,” he adds sullenly. “This isn’t the way I would have wanted all that infighting to end. Your people - and everyone - deserved better than what they’ve had.”

"Mmm." She goes quiet for a few minutes, doing a new search that has absolutely nothing to do with what they've been looking for. After she's found what she was looking for, she makes a note of the location and clears her various search results. It won't stop anyone who really wanted to know what she's been looking for, but it'll at least keep random busybodies out of the loop.

She rises from her seat a moment later. "You can either keep looking things up on the holonet to depress yourself with further or look for a likely ship. Your choice. I'll be doing something else."

“You want the Jedi to look for a good ship to steal. Right.” He gives a sullen little sigh with an accompanying slump in his seat, as if disappointed he failed to raise his spirits any with his own humor.

“What will you be doing? Maybe I’ll have better luck helping you.”

She smiles faintly. "Would you have preferred I eased you into it by having you steal utensils first?"

Not that her humor lasts long. She gives him a bleak look. "You've had your breakdown, it's time for me to go have mine where it won't matter if things are destroyed. You can best help by staying out of the way where you won't potentially get taken down or out by something flying through the air."

He better appreciate that she's actually telling him what she's doing instead of telling him to mind his own business and do what she told him to.

Oh...

[He seems as if he’s about to reach out, try to comfort her, but he hesitates and withdraws his hand. It takes him a moment to speak.]

I’ll...I’ll try. Maybe some of my friend’s commentary on starship design sank in deeper than I thought.

[He lets out a slow breath, swallows through the lump in his throat. He stands to go attempt his task, but...he can’t just leave like this. He half-turns back to her.]

Keep yourself safe, too, in all of that.

[He leaves, and makes his careful, nervous way towards where he thinks people are arriving from. Suspicious looks are unavoidable, but as long as he doesn’t do anything suspicious, he’s safe, right? And if he absolutely needs to, he can simply encourage people not to notice him for a few minutes.

Still, he doesn’t know the first thing about stealing a ship, or how to determine a ship’s worth, or anything like that. Whenever she comes to find him, he’ll have made himself as inconspicuous as possible on a couch, undoubtedly meant for people waiting for someone to show, looking at a sleek shuttle. Of course, it reminds him of a friend’s. But it’s probably fast.

None of that is his first concern. His first concern is whether or not his new ally will be all right, and between glances at the shuttle to ensure nobody’s in or entering it, he watches the door, waiting for her anxiously.]

She smiles thinly in answer and heads off in the direction of the junkyard she picked for completely losing it. After a half-hour spent destroying basically anything that was in range, followed by her sinking to the ground and crying before huddling in exhausted misery, she finally makes her way out, stretching out in the Force to find him.

"Find anything?" she asks quietly, once she's found him. She may or may not have stopped off at a refresher along the way to clean up a bit. She's certainly doing her best to avoid showing how she's feeling at the very least; her emotional state isn't random people's business, thank you.

He looks up at her as she approaches, getting to his feet. Though she’s attempting to hide, which is as clear an indicator of not wanting to talk about it as he could ever ask for, the first words out of his mouth are, “Are you okay?”

He pauses an awkward beat, and shifts his weight. “I’m sorry. That’s- it’s a stupid question. You don’t have to answer.”

He looks up, then, at the shuttle, to give her an extra out. “I’ve never done this before. What do you think of that shuttle? It’s small, probably gets out of atmosphere quickly... I don’t really have an eye for anything else, I’m afraid.”

She looks at him for a moment. "That's good, because I'm going to pretend that you didn't just ask that."

She shakes her head a moment later. Honestly. Of course it was a stupid question.

She then turns her attention to the shuttle, tilting her head slightly. "Hmm. It'll probably be fast, yes, but what about defenses? We're likely to be shot at on our way out if the owner catches on."

To say nothing about the fact that certain amenities tend to be lacking on shuttles. Not that she cares about fripperies like how padded the seats are. She's more concerned about things like decent places to sleep and the presence of a galley.

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omg I'm so sorry this notif got lost somehow

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