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There was an unspoken distance at the feast between Darth Nyrys and the rank and file. Her reputation as a literal maneater was spreading, and while that didn’t stop the troops from checking her out, it still meant that they kept a healthy distance. She wasn’t in the mood for such things anyway, so admired from afar worked for her. This was the first time in a long time that she had the ability to simply sit and think. She did not care for it, not one bit. In theory the brawl should have appealed to her, but in reality, she didn’t know how to fight without killing. In her anthro classes at uni, they had talked about the sword being a symbol for war because it was often the first weapon societies would invent solely for the purpose of war. Other weapons either doubled as tools or implements for hunting, but the sword was of singular purpose. Right now Darth Nyrys felt like a sword at peace time. An unusually close presence disturbed Nyrys from her moping, a Sith trooper, tall even by Sith trooper standards, loomed over her. It would have been an imposing presence if the soldier’s mumbling hadn’t been picked up by his helmet mic. A vague familiarity clung to the man, and her unnatural sight revealed him to be different from his peers. Most Sith troopers had blood on their hands, but this one was clean, and through the lens of the Force his armor looked like the polished metal of a questing knight of forgotten eras. He looked like the kind of person Nyrys wanted to be fighting for, protecting him and others like him from the hypocrisy of the Jedi. “Look buddy, I think you’re still a few beers short of having the courage to hit on me or whatever, but I like the look of you so while you’re trying to find a line in the bottom of a glass you can sit next to me.” Somehow she could tell through the armor that he was flustered and searching for words, which he found at last, “I’m... looking for a girl…” “That is… not the best pick up line I’ve heard, but it’s by far not the worst either. You’re in luck, tall awkward and armored, because I am in fact a girl. Mostly. Bits of monster mixed in.” “Her name is Ailbasí, Ailbasí Zirtani.” It was weird enough to feel the presence of a ghost, but for that ghost to be the disquietude of her old life was a whole new level of strange. Nyrys had intentionally distanced herself from anything even marginally related to her past, cutting out even close friends and family. She had seen early on how wanton some Sith could be with violence towards bystanders and didn’t want anyone she cared about becoming collateral damage. But it didn’t surprise her that someone might come looking anyway, or at least hire someone to look into it. “I know her, but this just turned into a private conversation. Follow me.” She got up and started to lead him away from prying ears. “Ma’am, my friend is also looking for her, he’ll probably want to hear this too, may he join us?” Ailbasí would have had very large concerns with going somewhere private with two presumably armed and armored strangers. Darth Nyrys however did not live a life ruled by fear and potential hazards, so she responded coyly with, “Well, if he’s cute.” “He certainly thinks so…” the trooper responded with no small amount of frustration in his voice. ===================== The soldier’s friend turned out to be a field officer, although he kept his armor better maintained and polished than most bridge officers. His bearing wasn’t just disciplined, it felt in some way regal. He was attached to a different unit than the first trooper, so most likely they knew each other outside of the chain of command. When the door shut, he spoke first. “We’ve been trying to find her since her abduction on Onderon. We found her ship on Cathar, along with a body, but for some reason my compatriot swears upon all of the stars that he has a feeling that she’s still alive. And while I think that he’s crazy, you never know with cloning technology these days. So we’re still asking around, and your name came up a few times in regards to her. So if you know anything, even if it’s the fact that she died on Cathar, please, let us know.” Nyrys regarded each of them for a time, a tumult of emotions swirling inside her gut. She could lie, give them some measure of closure. Were they actually Sith troopers? Or were they just stupid enough to try and sneak on board an active warship in disguises? If the latter, it was a security breach that needed to be addressed quickly. Also, if the tall one was actually sensing her condition through the Force without training, that could make him a powerful asset with the right training. “A feeling, huh?” she responded casually, “Have you reported to special projects for testing? If you turn up positive, I have room in my schedule for an apprentice.” “Every trooper gets tested as part of processing these days. They said I was about as Force sensitive as a nerf and cheese sandwich, but they also said that sometimes regular folk can get residual effects from exposure to a powerful practitioner like a Sith. SpecPro said that you lot call them bonds or leashes.” With sudden anticipation and a “feeling” of her own, Nyrys reached up and removed the trooper’s helmet. Even with her completely unreasonable heels she had to stretch a fair bit to get it all the way over. She couldn’t see the way that she had on Onderon, so she ran her gloved fingers over his face to compare it to features in her memory. “...Knell?” Knell had been the rookie cop on Onderon that had interceded when she had been attacked. It was before her training had begun in earnest, and without his intervention she would have died. Even without hearing a verbal confirmation she knew in her soul that it was him, and with a joyfulful eardrum shattering squeal she launched herself into a pouncing hug. “Is… is she attacking you?” The voice of the mystery friend sounded more than a little amused. “I don’t know, I’m confused,” Knell responded. “No dumbass, I’m overenthusiastically hugging you. When I died on Cathar I hopped bodies to this one, because apparently that is a thing that I can do. Be honest, does this look do anything for you? Because I’ve been striking out a lot since I switched into it and… WAIT, you didn’t enlist just to find me did you?” Crazy awesome body strength let her keep her perch while jabbing him with an accusatory finger. “Now I’m somehow even more confused. But I didn’t enlist to find you, I enlisted because I felt it was my duty to join after the Jedi tried to attack Onderon twice. I became a cop to protect people, but with the war returning there is only so much I can do with a badge. Finding you just happened to coincide with that. Side note, do you know who shot me at the hospital, because I have words for them.” Nyrys finally released Knell from her hug before speaking again, sheepishly this time. “That was… well, kind of my ex, but it’s super over now. My life was very crazy for awhile, and when I found someone that I thought I could have some stability with, I latched on without really considering what he wanted out of it. He didn’t hurt me or anything, I think he was just too damaged to reciprocate in the way that I wanted. I didn’t handle it in the most mature manner, but I still think ending things was the right decision. It’s not my job to fix people that I’m dating.” At this point the mystery officer chimed in, “I did join for a girl, but it was a different girl and she left me and my shattered heart behind when she decided to go full career upon making bridge crew for a star destroyer. I was drowning my sorrows in brandy when I heard Corporal Maqlin asking about you. I don’t remember much of the conversation, or much of that night for that matter, but apparently I promised to help him find you. That being said I must admit that I am relieved to find you well, miss Zirtani.” It was Nyrys’s turn to be confused again, “Do I know you from Uni or something…?” The officer removed his helmet before speaking again in a voice that Nyrys instantly recognized, “I don’t know, did you watch holotoons in college?” Nyrys almost launched into another hug but stopped mid pounce. “Am I allowed to hug you… yee… thee… wait, I’m a Sith, I don’t have to acknowledge etiquette hugging boundaries!” She had spent less time with the crown prince than Knell during her time on Onderon, but he had a special place in her heart from the roles she had seen him in (or heard him in when it came to voice acting). So he too got a hug. After a brief silence, Nyrys spoke again, far more solemnly this time, “You’re going to hear things about me, things that you won’t want to believe are true. I need you both to understand that they are probably true, or at least based on truths. If circumstances were different, I would beg you to save me from what I’ve become, but we’ve all seen what the Jedi and their allies are capable of. I need to be this monster that I’ve become if there’s going to be any hope of stopping them. I hope that you can accept that, but if you can’t, then I need you to walk away because it won’t be safe for you to be around me. Not going to lie, I considered letting you think that I had died to protect you from who I am now, but we’re all adults here and able to make our own choices.” The following silence was sobering, but what she had said had all been things that needed to be said. Too many people depended on her for her to try and pretend to be the girl that she used to be. The days of mercurial desire and idly pivoting direction to get what she wanted were fading away as the only true constant in the galaxy loomed ever closer, war. “That ugliness aside, it means a lot that you came this far to find me. I’m not really in a place to figure out what to do with that right now, and I think we all need to come to terms with how each other has changed. I guess what I’m trying to say is thanks, and that I need time to process all of this.”