"Alright," Karasuba said, taking a deep, steadying breath.
Her partners were present, having had a good dip in some warm bacta and been given some new, warm, and dry clothes to wear. Fluffy, fuzzy robes, really, but they seemed to be much appreciated. Vette, the twi'lek woman, had additionally had a thick, fluffy towel wrapped around her lekku, keeping them insulated as well. Down here in the base, we kept things comfortably warm, but all the same, I doubted they'd be comfortable in the chill again anytime soon.
"So, I'm apprenticed to Darth Baras," Karasuba said. "A cunning mastermind type Sith, who works behind the scenes and has his fingers in every pie. Me, though, I'm not his successor, I'm his minion, his hitwoman." Karasuba snorted. "Yeah. Real familiar, ain't it?" She sighed, wearily. "Well. Vette here, the twi'lek-"
"Hey," Vette said.
"Yo," I said, reminded that I was still in my own twi'lek form.
"-used to be a slave, but is now a freedwoman," Karasuba said. "She still sticks with me because she likes me, I guess."
"The benefits are pretty good, too," Vette added. "I managed to buy my mom and my older sister out of slavery, thanks to Kara."
"And Jaesa here is... another, much more complicated story," Karasuba continued.
"Jaesa Wilsaam, former Padawan, at your service," the human said, bowing to me.
"See, she has a unique Force power," Karasuba continued. "She can look past all the layers, and see who someone truly is, deep down. Naturally, a man operating an espionage network didn't appreciate her being brought around to sniff out his deep-cover operatives." Karasuba turned to look at Jaesa, pensively. "But, well. When I confronted her master... he'd gone off the deep end, turning to face the light and backflipping into the Dark Side. Jaesa interrupted our duel, saw the truth of who her master was, and who I was, and decided that she'd rather work with a good woman in a bad environment than a bad man in a good environment."
"More or less," Jaesa said, sipping at her hot chocolate.
"Well, I suppose if Jaesa's not ratting out Baras' spies, he doesn't actually care what happens to her, one way or the other," I said. "Alright. But... well, why Hoth? I'm here because it's a desolate waste that nobody in their right mind would try to live on-"
"Actually, a band of Ortolans are trying to colonize the planet," Jaesa supplied.
"-and I'm on the run from Darth Thanaton, but why are you here?"
"To kill someone," Karasuba said. "The details honestly aren't that interesting. Weakening the Republic military in preparation for the resumption of war. You know how it is."
"Ah," I said. "Your target's in hiding, then?"
"Mhm," Karasuba said, nodding.
"Well, in the interest of preserving life, I don't suppose you'd be interested in simply incarcerating your target here?" I asked.
"No," Karasuba said. "I kept Jaesa because she's useful, and because I can keep an eye on her. Keeping a Jedi prisoner..." Karasuba shook her head. "No. No, that simply isn't going to work."
I sighed.
"Well, I tried," I said with a sad little shrug. "Stay here a bit longer, will you? We'll get you all hooked up with some proper winter gear, as well as some rest and relaxation. You look like you need it."
----------------------------------------
"Master Corcoran?" Jaesa asked.
"Just Rose will be fine, Jaesa," I said, opening my eyes. "What do you need?"
I had been meditating, practicing feeling out the community around me with the Force, and growing my powers; I could ill afford to neglect them, if I wished to stand any chance of defeating Thanaton. If I could just find a way of breaking that vampiric strength effect...
"I wanted to talk to you," Jaesa said. "To... get to know you, and understand what it is my senses are telling me about you."
"Alright," I said, adjusting my legs to sit more casually. "Well, what do your senses tell you about me?"
"Nobody is pure Light or pure Dark," Jaesa began. "But you... you're a more even and balanced mixture of Light and Dark than I've ever seen. You are moved by powerful lusts, angers, sorrows, and joys, and yet... you also maintain such a tight grip on these impulses, allowing them to manifest only as you judge acceptable, even if you'd rather give in."
"...Is this about the foxgirls?" I asked. "Look, they're the ones who petitioned me for headpats. Besides, it's not that weird; pretty much all social animals will perform affectionate quasi-grooming for a larger group than they'll have sex with. It's not some herculean effort to touch their ears and not their boobs."
"That is..." Jaesa trailed off, blinking. "...not quite what I meant, no. But, I can see how that's a part of it."
I grunted.
"Out of curiosity," Jaesa said, "what is the reason you feel conflicted about 'performing affection' with these... foxgirls?"
"Well, put simply," I began, "I created them. You've seen how they're all Force Sensitive? That's because, when I created the primordial ooze that would grow and divide and give rise to them all, I added in a single drop of my blood, to jumpstart their connection to the Force." I shrugged. "In a very real way, I am their father, and they are my children. They love me, and serve me loyally... and I, in turn, must be very careful with that love and loyalty."
"I see," Jaesa said, nodding. "You love them in turn... but you fear yourself, your own impulses, and so shackle them with discipline."
Stolen story; please report.
I sighed.
"In the Sith Academy, when I was simply Acolyte Khar'cair," I began, "I joined the Cult of Revan, a secretive Sith Heresy that practices both the Light and Dark, in reverence for the legendary Jedi Master and Sith Lord of three centuries ago, and in preservation of that legend's teachings. Of course, shortly after Revan's heyday, the Jedi Order was nearly destroyed and had to be rebuilt nearly from scratch by a handful of survivors who had reason to question their old ways and find new ones. And I say all of this to you, Jaesa Wilsaam, because, while I really do not know just what the fuck they teach you in the Jedi Order these days, I cannot help but feel like a Jedi should have no trouble at all understanding the concept of practicing self-control and maintaining healthy boundaries."
"I understand it, of course," Jaesa said, nodding. "And yet, your self-control... you only seek to control what you do, how you act. Not how you think or feel."
"Because those ultimately don't matter," I said. "Let me tell you another little story, Padawan: a very, very long time ago, before humanity had left their cradle, before they even knew what blaster rifles were, there were once a people called the Romans. Their language shapes ours, to this day, and it is from them that we derive the word virtue- in their words, it was virtuus, meaning manliness, but their idea of virtue was not completely good."
"What was the rest of their idea of virtue?" Jaesa asked.
"The Roman ideal for a man was a man of powerful drive and passion, who felt so very deeply and truly, and yet also possessed powerful discipline and prudence, capable of leashing his passion and bringing it to heel. A man who could ride the ragged edge of his love and his fury to the very end, but who could just as easily swallow those passions and maintain his composure as the situation called for it." I grunted. "Does that sound familiar to you, Jaesa? That even admixture of Dark and Light, of drive and discipline?" I shrugged. "I'm no Roman, nor do I think the Romans were a perfect people who got everything correct. The Roman Empire regularly employed mass violence, committing atrocities fit to make even Sith Lords queasy. But... well. You're right that nobody is purely one thing. The Romans were a vast, complex people. And their idea of virtue... well, it resonates with me. It spoke to me, and my quest to better myself; to cultivate passion and prudence, hand and hand."
"And so you create a vibrant culture of beautiful, loving people," Jaesa said, "so that you can deny yourself its most tempting fruit."
"Well, no," I said. "I didn't make them look like that to cultivate virtue. That was an error in judgement caused by my erection, and it's simply too late to correct it without making my problem into everyone's problem."
Jaesa snickered a little.
"Well, at least you're able to admit when you're wrong," Jaesa said.
"Some days, it feels like that's all I have going for me," I said. "What do you think of Karasuba?"
Jaesa hummed quietly.
"I see... a powerful force for good, within her," Jaesa said. "A hatred for injustice, a despair for the world's cruelties... but... it's shackled, under layers of callus and weary apathy. She hates what she does, but she doesn't see any other path forward." Jaesa sighed. "It is my hope that, one day, she can heal, that those layers of scars and apathy can be shed like scabs, but..."
"But," I agreed, "in the meantime, she's a sorrowful, sympathetic monster, who keeps you and Vette around to be a moral compass."
"Precisely," Jaesa said, nodding. "When the impulse to be better comes from us, from without rather than within, she's more receptive to it."
"I think..." I sighed. "I think I know what may help her, but... it would be piercing those layers, not shedding them. It is risky. It may not work. And... I will not perform it, or say what it is. If it is to be, it will happen in its own time, to her as it did to me." I sighed. "Well. Thank you for the company, Jaesa."
"Thank you for your wisdom, Rose."
----------------------------------------
Karasuba and her friends stayed only three days, during which time Karasuba and I exchanged a few more very, very lovely hugs, but then they had to leave and hunt down their quarry, and then leave the planet once more. At least I'd finally gotten to use my special Force power of learning other people's special Force powers; obnoxiously, Sith Sorcery did not qualify as "Force powers" to my own power, and so I could not copy it by any method other than the hard way. Very annoying.
A few weeks after they'd left, I'd received some interesting news from my R&D department, and been talked around on the subject of biotechnology; yes, I had serious reservations about making people into tools, but as I'd demonstrated with the primordial ooze, it was possible to apply our Body Mod bullshit to mindless slimes that didn't even qualify as animals, let alone people.
More important than the biotechnology angle, however, was the question of Zash's clone body. If you didn't give a shit about brain development, then growing a full adult human body took about a year. That was... a long time, and I didn't know if we had that much time. If I could best Thanaton and ascend to the Dark Council as his successor- that was how promotions could work in the Empire, I'd gathered- then I would be in a leadership position in this den of snakes, and would have more power to curb its worst atrocities, and turn it towards ends that were at least somewhat good.
But if I waited a year to grow Zash a new body? Well, then there was a good chance the war would resume, and all that blood would be on my hands because I'd been sitting on them instead of trying to stop it.
"It's almost time," the nurse informed me.
Hence why we were doing it this way. Cheat Death was a perk granted by the Essential Body Mod that allowed you to come back from being dead, in a manner of your choosing. Examples and suggestions were given, of course- a vampire turning to mist and returning to their coffin, or a lich exploding and reforming at their reliquary- but nothing was strictly prescribed.
Naturally, we were about to abuse the hell out of that vagueness.
Thana Zash was euthanized quickly and cleanly, and a few hours later, with some loud and deeply unpleasant noises, a pregnant catgirl gave birth to twins. One looked just like her mother, her ears folded over and plastered against her skull, whereas the other bore wispy blonde hair and a smug grin, for all of three seconds, before shifting and growing, taking on the form, once more, of Darth Zash.
"Thank you, Mother," Zash said, leaning down and kissing the back of the catgirl's hand. "It worked."