Tatooine

[Rose Cariadus]

Rose sat, her hands clasped in her lap as she listened to the surroundings of the medical facility. The relentless beeping from the monitor attached to her left arm signalled her fluttering heart. But how did it beat so relentlessly when it was so broken? Her breathing was slowing as she stared distantly at those two pale hands, slowly digging the nail of her left forefinger into the palm of her right hand until a spot of blood curled to drip onto the towel, turning the white fabric crimson with every drop. A rueful stain that expanded millimeter by millimeter as she pushed harder and the blood dripped past her cuticle, but even that pain did not give her clarity of mind, so she stopped. She withdrew her finger with its bloody mantle and pressed it against her pale lips, tasting the coppery metallic of the blood.

 

At least that taste was familiar and it had been her companion since the first time her mother had struck her. Except this was no overturned flask of nerf milk to be boxed around the head and neck over, this was the death of someone most loved and she was hoping to rely on. And here she was, returning like a dog to its own vomit, the well practised ritual of self harm to bring clarity to a mind that was fractured. The tears came again, unbidden, and she pressed the hem of the towel covering her against the bleeding hand as tears covered her vision with their watery mist. Then the muscles in her back seized up, straightening her painfully from her slouch and in the pain there was a voice.

 

“If you despair over the loss of such a brave warrior then you are Arasuum. He is in my legion and you will meet him when you return to me with ten million souls reaped in my harvest.”

I will see him again?

 

“If you turn from this pitiful display and bathe yourself in the blood of a Crusade and return to me, carbon scored and covered in the blood of the unworthy you will walk in the halls of my kingdom arm in arm.”

 

The muscles in her back relaxed but she kept her back straight, with her shoulders back. She stood as her vision cleared and the voice answered her question before she could think it.

 

“Qat”

 

Qat Chrystac it would be then. The last bastion of the faithful and she would venture there to offer her fealty for this crusade. Her mind was finally clear, and though her hand still bled, she was at peace with the dead of her beloved. The certainty in her mind was shocking and she was for the first time in her life convinced of where her life would lead her. She had an objective, a life to live, and millions of unworthy to kill.

 

The door slid open behind her and she turned, seeing the Bounty hunter that had brought them to fight the dragon but he stood in a face known to her from her time on Mandalore. Canderous Bralor, the feared, eyeless, and the lasted of a cursed clan. But still he was wore the face of a friend, forged in battle and death together, and his real identity was shocking but she felt no different about him. He was as broken as she had been minutes before and his tears were wet upon his face.

 

She hesitated as two Black Sun sergeants wheeled in a very expensive set of armour, leered at her, then were quickly shooed from the room by the medical staff who kept a long distance away from the pair of mandalorians.

 

She extended her bleeding hand and touched him on the forehead, an inch below his hairline. She leaned forward to press her other hand upon his short blond hair whispering her next words through a throat worn raw from sobbing.

“You are not a failure Canderous Bralor, and you did not fail us, though we perished I am reborn with a purpose. I release you from sorrow. For in my death Ha’rangir spoke to me and sent me back to do his will. Canderous…” She let her voice trail off as her bleeding hand began to move, tracing a trail of blood down to his nose then to his lips, then up to touch below his eyes and across. Tracing a mandalorian visor of blood.

 

“You are Mandalorian brother, I have a purpose and I would like you to join me in scourging the galaxy of the unworthy.”

 

She leaned forward and pressed her own forehead against his before releasing him. It was weird request and one that she would not have made unless she trusted him fully. He was her brother in arms now and she stalked to the armour display and let the towel drop to put on the armour weave.

 

“Will you join me brother?”

[Rose Cariadus]

The possession was an interesting sight to behold and Rose considered its validity for a moment before considering that Kad Ha’rangir had the right to speak to and through his dominion as he wished. And his voice was strong and she could hear his conviction. She accepted the cross on her face tasting the blood and she decided she would do the same when any joined their cause, like the knights of old had been blessed by the priests in blood, so too would be the crusaders. She smiled and nodded solemnly before she stepped back to her armour.

 

The armour weave that she wore was skintight, and could withstand vacuum, fire, and freezing cold. It covered her body and clung to her like Karus Silk, showing nearly every line of her body and in that it was very revealing. But it was stronger than her last amourweave, and she slowly began to attach her armour. It was not the sparse armour of the modern Mandalorian as she had learned that lesson. Though there were gaps in which the armourweave could be seen the plates themselves contoured to her body, strongest over her vitals with horizontal interlocking Lames that fit over her thin stomach and abdomen. It still allowed for movement and was made of reinforces plastoid, where the main segments; the helmet, breastplate, vambraces, gorget, abdomen, thighs, and greaves were made of the Mandalorian iron of her adopted people. Blue and black were the colours that adorned her armour and finally when she had tied her kama around her waist she turned back to Canderous who if he had been watching would have gotten a good view. A view that regrettably, Roarroar had never seen.

 

“How do I look? Ready to light the fires of war?” She asked with a sudden flush of embarrassment as she grabbed his arm and began to walk to the shuttlebay.

 

And a shuttle was waiting for them, booked earlier by contract with the Black Sun to take them to Qat, the capital of the Crusaders. Rose would leave this world behind, with all its horrible memories, until she had served her purpose. If she had not died in the attempt, she resigned to herself in secret to come back to the pile of rubble where her darling lay entombed, and slit her own throat over the rocks. Then, she thought, she would be at peace.

[Rose Cariadus]

It was like escaping death and coming into the pale illuminated comparison of it. 

 

A deep cavernous breath and the room came into full view, Rose blinked goopy bacta and preservatives out of her eyes. She took another breath and coughed a mouthful of the clear synthetics out of her lungs. She was weak, that she knew, but she still hauled herself out of the tank and furtively covered herself up with her hands looking about at the myriad of medical droids lying dormant. The feeling of dust against her feet and the flickering of sparse lights in recessed panels told her that she was likely in storage. The symbols scrawled onto the case that she had just left told her she was in a Black Sun Facility. 

 

“Hello?”

[Rose Cariadus]

She sneezed violently and spat a glob of thick preservation gel onto the floor at her feet. She looked at the operative approaching with a mixture of confusion and gladness that at least someone was buried in the dark with her. Upon seeing the clear white of his cataracted eyes she relaxed, still mostly covering herself for modesties sake, she retrieved the satchel of equipment the agent had laid at her feet and sat down on a dusty crate. The sticky feeling of the gel made her skin crawl, so she quickly found a towel from the bag and wiped herself down, but she still needed a shower to get the congealed matte out of her hair and the crusty flakes of it off her rapidly drying skin. Her hair felt so long, it weighed down the back of her head in a odd feeling that was disorientating. 

 

Her mind was racing as she looked through the satchel, finding a flightsuit, boots, a blaster and not much else. It was only then that she really heard the words of the Black Sun Agent and snapped herself out of her revery. She stopped drying off for a moment and considered. 

 

“Rose Cariadus, agent ID Gamma Blue.” Her thin hands moved in conjunction to her sentences, a trait of her life before the memory scan. Growing up on Lorrd, where they spoke mostly in hand signals.

 

She cocked her head to the side and her eyes looked confused.

 

“I am afraid I don’t know much other then some vage memories of missions and mandalorians. I am sure it will come back to me, but my memory implant must be very old.” She looked at the chronometer on a datapad from the satchel and coughed. “The last memories I have are sitting down to be mind scanned some…” She moaned loudly. “Five years ago?” 

 

She looked up, her heart racing. Whoever she had once been was now thoroughly gone. But something lingered in the back of her head. Perhaps it could be found if she could just be clean.

 

“Do you have a shower or sanisteam available?”

[Rose Cariadus]

It was an older model sanisteam, the design that had kept the same for water abundant worlds for millennia, though if this was Tatooine like she suspected. This was yet another expression of the sloppy opulent wealth that the Sunners had so often flashed around. It hurt to think back, the entirety of her past having been made into a formless fuzzy relief that she could barely interpret. She knew her own name, that she had been an Agent, that she had fought for the Mandalorians and in the Lorrdian militia when she had turned twelve. But she couldn’t remember much more. Had she fought in a jungle recently? Why did she have the distinct scent of spice and musk in her nose? Whatever had brought her past life to a brutal end had left a few impressions. A strong embrace maybe? It was all so distant, and she cursed her past self for not updating her memory scan. 

 

She let the water run over her and down the drain for a while, scrubbing herself thoroughly with a bar of casmium soap, then taking some gels from the dispenser inside the sanisteam, she washed her overlong hair. It reached nearly to her waist, likely from the lack of input or care from the clone technicians, and the feeling of it made her anxious. Plus the long strands of hair held copious amounts of water from the sanisteam and would need a lot of drying. She decided to cut it short again, especially if she was ever going to wear another helmet in battle. That and get her muscles into a less spastic shape. She was in perfect health and fitness, as most clones were, but exercise would give her the control she needed to get used to the body again. 

 

She reached out with a steady hand and turned the handle of the hot water to the left, closing the valve and cutting the fogginess from her head with a stream of pure and ice cold water that made her body tingle. She coughed the rest of the preservation fluid out of her lungs and then turned the handle of the cold water as well, shutting off the sanisteam and she looked for a towel on the rack beside the cubicle. None. She cursed, then seeing one on the bench beside a lump of other equipment, she swiped back the hanging curtain and set about drying herself off. 

 

When she stepped out, partially wrapped in the towel and reaching for her flight suit, a loud and explosive crash echoed through the small refresher unit. She tossed the flightsuit asid, and grabbed the Beskad from the bench before seeing that it was someone who had likely fainted and taken out a good two hundred thousand credit cloning tank alongside. She wrapped the towel around her waist, not caring much for modesty, but enough to not expose absolutely everything, and ran over to the pile of cloaks that might be a humanoid, leaving a long trail of wet footprints. She wished she could put something more protective on than a towel, but if this was an intruder or a friend, it was better to eliminate or help them right then, instead of waiting and giving them a good minute for her to put her armour on. 

 

She tossed her hair over her shoulder so that it was laying in a wet mess down her back, and holding the knife behind her thigh she arrived beside the fallen...Tusken Raider? 

 

What? 

 

Well they were certainly on Tatooine that was for sure, but those were dangerous savages right? She pushed off with her bare feet and made the last few steps in a leap, straddling the downed man and pushing the mandalorian iron knife under his chin. 

 

“What are y-” 

 

But his scent. The spicy smell of it hit her brain in a wave. She grabbed the back of his neck and with wide blue eyes looked into his clone tank gel covered goggles. 

 

“Who are you?” 

[Rose Cariadus]

It all seemed so familiar! The strong grip, that distinctive smell. It met with no firm memories, but the feeling was there, though unplaceable. As her hair spilled down her shoulders and the rough cloth of his Tusken Raider outfit abraded her skin she could feel tears filling up her eyes. As her tears began to stream down her face she started to cry for real. She didn’t know why, only that she was crying in what could only be the happiest moment of her life. And she didn’t even know who he was, it was locked in there somewhere, distant, behind an image of a dragon and a piercing pain in her side. THrough her tears she mumbled again,

 

“Who are you? Who are you? Who areyouwhoareyou….” Until it became a wracking sob of tears and laughter.

 

When the tears finally dried, she pulled herself off of the tusken and saluted the Black Sun Agents who were watching wryly from a corner. It was a crisp and military salute that was well practiced even from the long stasis of a cloning tube. She leaned down to offer a hand to whoever it was at her feet, pulling him up beside her, and holding the Beskad in the other. Unused and unbloody. She didn’t try to cover herself, it was pointless at this juncture anyway. 

 

“Are we in the service of the Black Sun?” 

[Rose Cariadus]

 

Rose let herself fall into the kiss, even with how unexpected it was, feeling the stubble of his chin against her face. Memories, strange and foriegn flooded through her from the kiss. All flavoured by that spicy sweet smell of the Tusken Raider. Rruror’rur’rr, a name she could not pronounce, a mighty dragon, and the soft stillness of relief. She certainly had known this man in whatever past life she had lived. She finished the caress, and smiled shyly back before she heard the words of the Black Sun Agent. 

 

“I will go where he goes, if it is your Agency I am happy to do it again. If anything to get my fighting experience back. Speak the words and I'll sign my name.” 

 

She grinned at Rruror’rur’rr as her hands spelled out the words she was saying in her Lorrdian expression. 

 

“What do you wish to do Roar Roar roar roar roar-” She coughed at spat again. “Do you have a easier to pronounce name?”

[Rose Cariadus]

Rose scrunched up her face as she thought about what the Black Sun tusken had just said, before getting knocked off her feet by whatever shenanigans the other agent had just pulled off. She pulled herself to her feet and helped Rruror’rur’rr back to his feet. Squeezing his hand in return. 

 

“Right. Uh yeah give us a mission, and some time for me to change into something other than a towel and were your personal vendetta squad or whatever you need.” 

 

She signed this out with her unoccupied hand as well of course, almost like a nervous tick. 

 

“Got hutts to kill or Jedi to assassinate? Seems like I may have been good at that.” 

 

She laughed and shook her head sadly. 

 

“But it's a bit hard to remember you know.”

[Rose Cariadus]

The redressing took a lot longer than the undressing. Firstly the jumpsuit provided was not the proper size, perhaps being a size too big in the bust, and she had to pin the uniform back in place and the addition of a few straps to the armour chestpeice made it all fit a bit better. All the while of course she was under the protection of her Tusken angel, which gave her heart a bit of a flutter. Thinking that she must absolutely say something other than leaving an awkward silence she broke the stale air with a cheery voice. 

 

“So how are you?  I should apologize for not knowing you super well, despite our shared experiences. Please forgive my brain.” 

 

She grinned widely and finished tying up her boots. 

 

“So are we down to bathe in blood together for these criminals?”

 

It wasn't a judgement call, but credits were very nice to have if you wanted to forge a destiny together. 

[Rose Cariadus]

Rose let the grin on her face set to a amiable smile and took her vibroblade from the belt that was snugging down her oversized uniform. She hefted it for a moment as she walked towards the refresher’s large plate mirrors and glared hard at herself. Pale sallow skin that had not seen UV in ages, and far too long hair. She ticked her head to the side and gathered up her hair into her fist, letting a long tangle of it hang down to her belt. She scrunched up her face and measured by sight as she flicked the switch on the handle of the knife. 

 

“Measure once, twice, thrice, then slash eh?” 

 

She laughed and sliced away at the hair with a nimble and deft attack. Cutting long strands away until she looked almost normal. Hair only down to her shoulders, even it was a bit ragged. She considered doing something about bangs, but decided firmly against it. Instead pulling her remaining hair into a short tail at the top of her head, held in place by one of the metrielastine bands that had been included in her clothing's package. She grimaced at her face again before turning back to Rruror’rur’rr. 

 

She mockingly saluted and then grabbed him into a fierce hug. Her voice soft in his ear. 

 

“Then let us find enemies to defeat and honour to take.” She smiled at the old weapon in his arms and giggled. “I should get an old slugthrower too, perhaps after this mission.” The weapons seemed so elegant compared to a blaster rifle. There was something so very interesting in using an ancient weapon to kill someone. She took his hand and led him out the door of the refresher and stopped dead in her tracks. 

 

There was something familiar in the newest person that had arrived, but she couldn’t place it, and she couldn’t smell him to make sure of it. Instead she inclined her head respectively to the audience and Dhon  and looked to the host. 

 

“We are ready if you are. Sorry to keep you waiting.” Then turned her eyes back to the large Cathar. Who was he?