Log:Log: Mygeeto Aftermath - Uncomfortable Questions

Mygeeto Aftermath - Uncomfortable Questions

OOC Date: February 25, 2025
Location: Mygeeto
Participants: Ben Solo Alys Zapal

[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= Outside, the battle winds down. The whine of blaster bolts cutting through the air, the last desperate shots of both the Banking Clan troops and those of the Empire start to fade. The snow swirls, obscuring the dead and dying, hiding the aftermath of such brutality, but it sings in the Force.

Or screams in agony, depending on your point of view.

Flush with the Dark Side, burning red lightsaber in her fist, Alys follows the unknown Jedi into the caves. It may be foolish, but the strange familiarity of the man eats at her, feeding her frustration. The familiarity due to a shadowed shape in the stars in her dreams. Asking questions that she's never asked herself. Questions that she never -wants- to ask herself. Thus fueling the cycle of anger.

Deeper and deeper she goes, eyes open for an ambush, because it's what she would do. Will a Jedi ambush her? She assumes so, the Sith education on Jedi is lacking beyond 'Destroy them'.

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

A sour, yellow note. It's easy to mistake the dissonant, deafening echo for strength; after all, the Force itself is the thing wounded by enough focused violence, hate, atrocity. It's a resounding tone that Solo once misjudged, himself; but it was never a reflection of his will, or even his own strength. Much as such distortion exists outside Alys herself; even as its siren call enraptures her, feeds the cycle.

// Who are you? // Her mental shields have no doubt been trained-- at least to an extent. But it isn't even with ire, intensity, brute force that Ben enters those thoughts; it's a subtle thing, on melodic currents Zapal bearly hears, a tremulous harmony of light ever-present in all but the most sundered nexus. // What do you -want-? // Baffling questions, to all too many; at least to answer with any deeper truth, without parroting what one has been told, or the trappings of role and ambition. // Why are you -here-? // And impossible to contextualize without the third companion.

On its face, it's the easiest query: why, despite so many visions of her own death and darkness, would Alys pursue this path? Because she knows no other. Because conquest is the only option; and the seeming inevitable end. She's alone in the darkness of the caves, but not. Only the paranoid glow of her lightsaber illuminates her way-- and casts threatening shadows on the edges of her vision, elongated monsters birthed from every flawed, ancient crystal that dominates the largely strip-mined caverns... the deeper one goes.

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= It might be this place, the resonating of the crystals in the Force, or it might be her own perceived weakness letting it in. Deep down, she knows what she wants, but it doesn't serve power, so it's been discarded. She's never truly known who she is. Not since ... No. No time to think of that now. Even brushing against it, the pain is sharp and raw. So she feeds it to the furnace. If it burns, if it empowers her, it can't -hurt- anymore.

Who is she? Sith. Is there anything else to be? They pulled her from the streets of Coruscant's undercity. Destined to be a guttersnipe, a thief or worse, she was lifted. Elevated. Given power and authority, money and luxury. All she has to do is serve. A life of nothing but squalid want to one of consequence.

Her senses extend, seeking. Hunting. Where did he go?

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

To serve. And when, exactly, do the purported broken chains come in? The Jedi-- if indeed that is what the Force User who fought the Sith on Mygeeto is-- waits at the end of difficult moments left alone with the thoughts, with the doubt, with the suffusing power of the shadowed Force; but is her connection to such actualization, or delusion?

Solo waits with his back to the ledge above a vast underground lake, its waters frozen solid; deceptively placid. It's into these depths that the black-and-white clad Ronin gazes, focusing himself. The resonance of violence, of pain, of death-- it's not absent this deep, it's safe to say Mygeeto itself is permeated, at this point. New wounds, old scars, trauma compounds trauma. His thigh-length coat obscures any armaments that he might carry, and no-- Solo does not ambush Alys, even if such would /certainly/ be the most efficient way to engage, were assassination his purpose.

"You have seen your own death, inexorably born of your own tunnel vision, at the end of this pursuit; over and over again. Why seek it out? Do you think the darkness would relinquish you-- even in death?" He asks it as if of the lake, patient for Zapal to pick her way down to his position... or perhaps leap into the fray directly.

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= Alys moves confidently through the darkness of the cave, the refracted light from her ignited lightsaber casting strange and eerie shadows as she moves. When he speaks, she stops, staring down from her vantage, knowing that their gazes are locked. She doesn't flinch away at his words.

"My first death was when I was a child," she says, her voice steadier than her mind. "I was rescued from squalor, given power and elevated."

She starts to pick her way down, boots occasionally skidding on rocks as she slides across the rocks. "Death comes for us all, Jedi. I have already died once. The next will be final. Eternally silent. I can accept it."

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

In this instance, Solo doesn't actually bother to track Alys' precarious journey; not with his eyes. "I sense the conflict within you." He muses, a half-smile hidden beneath cloth mask as he studies whatever it is he sees in the glassy blackness of the frozen subterranean lake. "Plucked from despair to perpetrate another horror; but perhaps be spared it yourself."

It's not analogous to his own trauma, to his own Fall; but the emotional core of it resonates, nonetheless. "The Dark Lords do prefer vulnerability in their tools. It makes one more easily manipulated." In another tone, it could be condemnation. For Solo, it's only all too familiar. "Willing to do -anything- to spare one's self their deepest fears; to mute out the hurt. The believe that purpose comes /from/ pain."

Then, the Ronin turns, and his dark eyes do seek Zapal out. "Death is no release for one so subsumed. A slave to power in life, a slave to power in death, so deafened to the truth of the Force that... even it cannot reconnect to a spirit in such a state." This, too, rings sympathetic; even sad.

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= He's right, she lets it wash over her, but he's right. It's how the Sith Empire works. Unless you're from one of the aristocratic families, but then they have other leverage. "-Power- comes from pain," she corrects. She doesn't know him. She can't see his face in the dark. She doesn't -know- he knows these truths intimately. She just assumes he's spouting bog standard Jedi rhetoric, and worst of all, pity.

Her teeth become bared, and she's not entirely sure why. Disgust, maybe. "Power is the only thing in the Galaxy worth grasping. Power does not judge. Power does not pity. Cloak yourself in power, and no one can hurt you. There's a cost, but nothing is free. I am no slave, Jedi. The Force does my will. The Empire gives me my due. I have left squalor and starvation and hiding behind."

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

"Power..." Solo muses, stoic but disbelieving. "For whom?" It's an important distinction. Perhaps THE critical distinction. Perhaps why Alys has no answer for any of the introspective wanderings into self-awareness and realized purpose.

"The Dark Side blinds the truth of such strength as surely as it allows one a shortcut to /feel/ it... to touch it, but never to truly grasp. Its will is not /yours/... any more than those who refuse to even glance at their own shadow understand its truth." The Council. So many old Masters. The archetypal paladin Ben is not.

"Open your mind past the resonance of hate, feel the suffering inflicted on this world; it is a consuming thing, and such ravenous need ends only one way, time and time and time anew. The Force is resilient, endless.... here I stand at the heart of the storm your Empire has conjured, untainted by it; and stronger than you even within. A slave, a tool, a cost to pay-- however you choose to couch it, if your power were so great, you would not echo other excuses for its use. You would not be outmatched, even here."

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= Jedi always speak in riddles, and they make Alys's teeth grind. Not that the Lords of the Sith are much better, honestly. Still, their riddles are things she understands. Hate. Fury. Pain. What is serenity? What is harmony? These are things she doesn't, she's never understood.

'They never told you -why- we hunt the Jedi,' a tiny voice in her head says. 'Only that they are to be hunted. He speaks nonsense, but surely the Empress isn't afraid of nonsense.' What that has to do with the current conversation is, honestly, nothing. The sapient mind, though, does what it wants.

He taunts her, even if it's unintentional, she takes it that way. She hefts her still burning lightsaber, pointing it at him, her hand steady. "Who -are- you? Why did you appear in my dreams!? Why lure me down here if not to try and kill me?!"

That last one is the true question. It's what she'd do. Why didn't he?

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

-Is- it irrelevant? Because surely, 25 million credits speaks of substantial dread; more than warranted by nonsense, weakness, or impotence.

"This war cannot be won through attrition; not by the Rebellion, but neither by the Sith. That future is not strength, but its polished, mirror black facade; endless insurgency, perpetual war. The potential of each sapient, of the Galaxy itself torn apart so that a few can become drunk on the Power /actually/ holding the flight yoke. Hate is easy, killing a simple equation. Win or lose; live or die." Which is-- /why/ he is here, connected by a myriad web to all the deeper implications of that cause.

"You tell yourself you have no choice, but the choices have always been there, hardest to see in the bleakest despair. Even the most consumed by their hate, by their fear, by their pain continues to nurture that darkness due to its frightful hold over one's will-- over one's sense of self." It's not easy, nor quite that simple. Any more than telling a Spice addict to put down the concentrate.

"There is far more to the Force than such teachings allow you to feel. I brought you here to see if you have the spark, the potential, the strength to make a different choice." /That/ is what Ben wants.

Who he is? No words are offered on this subject, not now. The Ronin merely lifts his gloved hands slowly, gracefully, and draws back his hood; pulls down his facemask. Solo. The Blood of Skywalker. A Fallen Jedi, once arguably -the- heir to an Empire awfully akin to the one Alys now serves. Reconnected to the wider Force only by the impact of his mother's love-- her final sacrifice. Alive only through the will of the Force, reborn through a Vergence, his purpose not yet fulfilled.

"I return to you now, at the turn of the tide." Arrogant indeed to presume anything has shifted against the Sith; but the calm assertion actually states the opposite, if one considers it more deeply. The darkness looms, its shadow cast everywhere, even here-- in the farthest reaches of the Galaxy. Nonetheless, he stands against it, a flame-lit nav buoy in the cold expanse, confident that the light still shines. That hope still burns.

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= What hold does the Light have, what tether, to Alys? None. Her father dead in an accident. Her mother swiftly remarried to an abusive man who gave her ultimatums that she refused, her mother doing nothing to protect her. A youth on the street, scared, starving. Weak. Her abilities attracted the Sith who took her in. Taught her. Clothed and fed her.

They also starved her. Hurt her. Made her sever the lines to her past. Her first kill? Her stepfather. Her second? Her own mother. She has no ties. No lines to pull out of the mire of the Dark. Her eyes go wide as he drops his hood, her hand trembling ever so slightly. "You're ... Kylo Ren .... Were Kylo Ren," she says quietly. She's heard the stories. Seen some archival footage. How could the pit of fury that was the Master of the Knights of Ren become ... this? Serenity and calm poise. Still monstrously powerful, she can feel it. But...

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

What ties anyone to the Light? Attachments, if severed, can whiplash even more harshly. Support, once lost, more devestating perhaps than its total absence. No one is infallible, no one incorruptible, no one inherently 'good' or inherently 'bad'.

There are only personal apocalypses. It matters little the details of the source, once the surging waters cover one's head. Ben nods once, the slightest tension to the gesture.

"So I called myself; sought to forge a new destiny, thought I had broken free of the foolish and the weak-- that everything I was warranted only purging flame. By the time I realized otherwise, nearly everything was lost-- much of it, by my own hand." There is still pain in these truths, in the memories they stir. Han falling into blackness, his face a shocked mask of love, of faith betrayed. Luke giving his life to try to show Ben that his conceptions of power were flawed, incomplete, short-sighted; a crutch. Leia-- well. As Solo says, nearly everything was lost.

It hurts, it's terrifying even... but the Ronin is not shaken by difficult truths often, anymore. "There is always a way back. A time to say no more; that no matter our own pain, we will protect and uplift, no longer vent our savagery on endless others... as its intensity only builds. As less and less of us is left in the cockpit. Who /are/ you, Alys Zapal? The Galaxy's tormentor, unable to ever open yourself beyond your hate again... or someone who would have protected you, as a child. Who would see more than a tool to be honed, to be used to another's end?"

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[ Alys Zapal (Alys)]============================================================================= She's heard the stories. She felt like she understood Kylo Ren. The mask that Ben wore. The reasons were different, she didn't, doesn't have the weight of a legacy like that. She doesn't have a wicked sorcerer whispering into her ear from afar, coaxing her. Truly, they barely speak to her at all. Her hand trembles, the blade of her lightsaber quaking.

She hates this. She knows she's no match for him. He was a terror as Kylo Ren, and now, with this quiet, earthshaking power? She would lose. She would likely die in this cave and truly be one with the darkness for eternity.

His words hit her like blows, each phrase making her take a step back. His final question enough to nearly make her knees buckle. "I ...," she starts, her usual quiet, near monotone a whisper that seems to echo in the darkness. Her hand trembles again, and she then takes the hilt in both hands, bringing it to the ready, shaking her head. "You don't know me. You don't know what it was like! Eating from the trash, hiding from the authorities, sleeping in alleys and the gutter! Anything is better than that, anything!"

She's clearly shaken, and her words seem forced. Like she's giving the answer she's expected to give because she knows the right answer might shatter her. Still holding the weapon in both hands, she backs up, picking her way back up the path backwards, eyes still on Ben. The reflection is haunted, the rage of the Sith warring with conflicted introspection and genuine fear. Not the fear of physical danger, this is the fear that one's entire life has been a wasteful lie. That another path could have been chosen, and now she stands at a fork in the road, and it's absolutely horrifying.

Once she's back up onto the path, she's still for another moment, looking at Ben with a mix of that fear, confusion, and anger on her face before she turns and bolts. The echo of her boots on stone rings like a bell through the caves, the light of her crimson lightsaber fading as she runs away like a lost and terrified child.

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[ Ben Solo (BS)]=================================================================================

Even Kylo Ren did not understand Kylo Ren. Does Ben Solo? Perhaps only by a margin of 'better'. Such things are more a journey than a destination. No one tends to pin a medal on one's chest for such endeavours. The dull, flawed crystalline remnants still resonate with the Force, still sing even beyond the discordant tone that dominates Mygeeto. The depths are not sanctuary; but neither are they purged of all their beauty, of the tenacity and resilience of life itself.

Alys climbs-- no, /scrambles/ back the way she came, and for a moment, Solo observes the flight. A moment later, and he strides to that cliff, leaping its height and landing deftly atop in a flutter of longcoat. Only then are the lightsaber and blaster beneath illuminated, for only a moment. "I don't." The Ronin acknowledges, and steps aside to put his back to one cavern wall-- the space is open for Zapal to continue running. "But you leave here at my mercy, and the blood you spill from here will be on my conscience. We both know you feel it, the pull of the Light, the truth of the Force, the reality of strength."

She grapples with the Dark Side, tries to focus her intense emotions, and there he stands-- at relative peace with his own horrific acts, and still a force of nature. The subtle wind and coursing river through an ancient canyon, a note distant, yet clarion enough in its ring that a whisper is enough to convey true magnitude. "Better-- is not enough. You have surrendered again." And he doesn't mean running from this fight.