“Greetings, Master C’baoth,” Thrawn raised an eyebrow at the rather un-Jedi like tone of the weathered old man. He glanced at Dan, then back to the holo-com. “I am Commander Thrawn, of the Chiss Ascendancy… you and your vessel are free to go, so long as you chart a course around our territories.”
“Impossible,” C’baoth snorted as his head gave a dismissive shake. His projection emanated a mental hum, filled with menace. “We follow the path the Force has laid out, not the boundaries of some backwoods empire… you WILL allow us to pass!”
Dan tapped a finger against the briefing room table. His touch imprinted a simple defensive rune onto the unknown wood. It flashed and the others around the table shuddered, freed from C’baoth’s mental influence.
“That wasn’t very ‘Jedi’ of you, Master C’baoth,” Dan turned his eyes to stare at the man directly, rather than look at the hologram within Thrawn’s ship. Once again, the fallen Jedi marked the observation and glanced around the com room of the Outbound Flight. “I’m sure that Master Yoda and the other council members would have something to say about your actions against the Outbound colonists.”
“Who ARE you?” C’baoth snarled as he stood from his com panel and met Dan’s distant gaze. The holo projection faltered as the Jedi Master moved from its range, all his focus to his unseen observer. “You are not a Jedi, of that I am certain… are you an agent of the Council, sent to spy and report back to those ignorant fools?”
The madness in C’baoth’s eyes brought a frown to Dan’s lips. While this Jedi Master was power hungry and corrupted, he shouldn’t be insane. Jorus C’baoth was known as one of the strongest Jedi of his time, Palpatine even had him cloned to use as a guardian for his many safehouses.
“I don’t work for the Jedi, but I have a feeling that you haven’t been a true member of the Order for some time,” Dan extended his other senses and scanned the old man’s body. The Ki within had turned a turbid black, coiled around half-dead organs. “I’m not even sure you’re actually Jorus C’baoth anymore…”
A hideous smile twisted the lips of the fallen Jedi Master. It ripped at the edges of the old man’s mouth, up his jaw until it met with his ears. The eyes beneath his untamed eyebrows filled with an ink-black fog, pupils reduced to pinpricks of distant light.
“You…” Dan placed both palms onto the table and expanded his defensive spell, a chain of glowing runes that enveloped Thrawn's warship in a mental barrier. He recognized those eyes, lost to madness and twisted longing. “It’s an honour to finally meet a part of you, Abeloth.”
“You truly are a most interesting anomaly,” C’baoth’s skull tipped back in a terrible laugh that sprayed out a river of blood. His flesh twisted, bones snapped and reformed, a well wrung dishcloth that unfolded into a new shape. “My newest child has nothing but hatred for you, but he is blinded by past grudges… I can see that we share something, a love of family and a willingness to do anything to remain by their side.”
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Dan hesitated, focused on the newly formed flesh avatar of the Mother of Chaos. She had erased all features of C’baoth, a tall, pale skinned woman in a light summer dress. Long black hair fell over her shoulders, long enough to kiss at her bare feet. For now her face was the picture of beauty, but Dan knew the truth behind the facade.
“Anything we share between us is coincidence, not commonality,” Dan held up a hand to hold back Thrawn’s questioning gaze and motioned for Anissa to stand. His runic circle could keep Abeloth from the minds of those on this ship, but not the others within the fleet. “It must be consuming a tremendous amount of energy to maintain this avatar, I’ve got eyes on the locks to your prison and they’re all still well in place.”
Dan waved for Thrawn to follow as he transferred the commlink to his suit and headed for the door. This avatar had to die, and the ship's weapons would be up to the task. The Chiss Commander nodded, his observational brilliance enough to let him know the situation was dangerous. He ordered his soldiers to make way and led them to a more direct path to a hanger bay.
“The best part about family is that you don’t have to act alone,” Abeloth’s grin inched slightly too far up her face. She was also on the move, the walls of the Outbound Flight like paper as she forced a path toward the void of space. “My youngest son holds the cracks open, just wide enough for me to whisper into the minds of the galaxy once more.”
Dan frowned. As far as he knew, Abeloth had only one son. The Celestial who presided over the dark side, a member of the Ones on Mortis. If she had found someone to replace her lost loved ones, it was most certainly a problem.
“You say that your son has a grudge against me,” Dan sent a text message into a nearby display, before he and Anissa floated toward the hanger’s magnetic field. It told Thrawn to keep ready for an attack, and to not trust the other ships in his fleet. “That means I know him… I only have one enemy who escaped me, so that would make your adoptive child Lord Sidious.”
“He is such an obedient boy!” Abeloth wrapped her arms around herself. They stretched and coiled, distended, pale-white snakes that looped around her again and again. “He’s promised me all that I’ve ever needed… we’ll create a family so large and powerful that no one will ever want to leave it!”
----------------------------------------
“Hmmm?” May squinted at the sky, a bizarre tug in her mind that emanated from around Krypton’s star. Someone was messing about with the Starforge. “Cal, send word to Master Qui-gon, I may need him to finish out all my classes for the day.”
A flicker of her biofield carried her from the open air classroom and beyond the atmosphere. Luminous blue stirred beneath the Starforge’s hull, a glow that built to blinding intensity as she closed with the station. The mental hum of the Starforge’s simple mind resonated to a crescendo, transformed from a nearly unaware entity to a full blown consciousness.
“Where am I?” A mechanical, discordant mixture of voices poured against her mental shields, a river that sourced from a mighty ocean. “Are you my mother?”
May scanned through the dimming brilliance, eyes wide as she took in the station’s change in form. In place of the symmetrical, smooth sided Starforge, was a mechanical Titan. It stretched its body, hands extended to capture the light of the sun. With a vaguely female appearance, it was as if a young girl warmed her hands by a mighty fire.
“I suppose you can call me that, but I wasn’t the one that built you,” May drifted to the side, until she found the source of the blue-white glow. Ultron’s main body floated next to the changed Starforge, chest opened to reveal the power of the All-Spark. “It looks like I’ve found your ‘fathers’… why don’t you stay put, while your parents have a nice, long chat.”