Baptism by Fire One

[Minion Alghieri]

**The world: Varunda Nine. Jungle. Hot. Home to possibly the most genetically diverse population in galactic history, culminating in the multiple crossbreed known as Orc, a race that makes up a full quarter of the world's inhabitants. Also the birthplace of at least two Sith.**

Minion Stanley Alghieri - the first name being only microscopically preferable to the second - turned away from the view of Varunda's capital city offered by the apartment's massive window. The ornamental glass distorted the light of sunset ever so slightly, giving the window's upper and lower edges a subtle reddish glow. To either side, the ends of the panoramic window bore bars of a more precisely reflected light that burned into his orc eyes.

Talons picked absently at fangs as Alghieri turned away from the view to face his visitor. Though only a Knight, barely half-way up the scale as such things went, Olra'en was just as dangerous in the grand scheme as his crimelord host, and infinitely more so at close ranges. Alghieri had extensive first-hand experience with Dark Jedi - again, in the grand scheme, nigh indistinguishable from Sith such as the far younger man before him. Alghieri, moreover, wasn't an idiot.

Which lent itself to the question of why he had invited Olra'en here in the first place. A question that he wasn't sure he could answer.

"Thank you for coming," he said, flicking a particle of something from his talons. Olra'en, born and raised on Varunda Nine, was used to such orcish habits and mostly ignored it. A minute curl of the Sith Knight's lip betrayed him.

"I was in the neighbourhood." For a nineteen-year-old human (mostly), the Knight's voice was remarkably dead. Fitting irony, Alghieri assumed, for the sheer number of sentients the young man had dispatched over the past year. If Je'gan Olra'en had a soul left after that, there was little doubt in the gangster's mind that it had shrunk down to a pittance, a fraction of what it once was.

Abruptly, Olra'en smirked, displaying even white teeth in a jovial predator's grimace. "A crime lord pontificating over the state of a soul seems a little hypocritical, wouldn't you agree."

It wasn't a question. Not for the first time since he'd invited Olra'en here, Alghieri reminded himself that anyone who could manipulate minds like childhood toys was certainly aware of the thoughts in the heads around him. Cuulvaer, the Barabel Dark Jedi his organization had tangled with almost fifteen years ago, had been adept at it.

Je'gan Olra'en had killed Cuulvaer nine months ago.

"I invited you here as an equal," Alghieri said coldly, turning back to the window and knotting powerful hands behind his back. "A possible partner. For whatever reason you choose, stay out of my mind." It wouldn't be out of fear; they both knew that. Alghieri could draw on a pool of four Forcewielders, the collective abilities of which might be able to overcome the Sith Knight now staring at his back like an immobile vulture. Guillaume Merchall. Baracc Olra'en, Je'gan's younger brother. Choir Aztaroth, currently on maternity leave. Michel Torentin; like Aztaroth, brainwashed for absolute obedience. It didn't help to consider that Je'gan had functioned as the mindtwister team in question.

No, not fear. Respect, possibly. Alghieri had once outmaneuvered Cuulvaer - by all reports, a cunning and highly powerful Dark Jedi - and Olra'en...

He glanced over his shoulder. Yes. Olra'en afforded him some respect for that.

"Your mind is sacrosanct," the Sith said quietly, striding forward in a swirl of green cape to stand beside Alghieri. "I'll leave it strictly alone."

They stared out at the last firey rays together until only glowing clouds could be seen in the western sky. At last, Alghieri spoke.

"I'd like your help with something."

It was only out of the corner of his eye, but he could swear that Olra'en's lips didn't move.

"What?"

The orc licked his lips. "The Varundana DEA is cracking down on my operations. Merchall and Torentin are pinned down. Baracc and Aztaroth are out of my reach for the forseeable future. I need someone I can trust."

"And I'm the next best thing, I guess?" Olra'en chuckled, and Alghieri, after a brief moment of nervousness, snorted his own amusement.

"You are that. Not to mention that you're probably five times as effective as any of the others would be." He hadn't seen the Knight in action personally - unless one counted Aztaroth's attempt to use Baracc Olra'en as a hostage against Alghieri's organization - but on four occasions holotapes of Je'gan's exploits had come to his attention. They resembled some of the music vids that the Core was pumping out lately: lightshows, indistinct blurs, and a soundtrack composed of screams. The security-cam vid from the Huttese palace was especially disturbing. He'd used the freshly decapitated slug's hover-bed as an impromptu maul, crushing armed lackeys by the dozens. There was no doubt in Alghieri's mind that the Sith Knight could handle anything Varundana DEA could offer.

"Refresh my memory for me. It's been a while since I was here, and I'm not sure I recall much about Drug Enforcement."

"As it happens, the blackcoat HQ is less than two kilometres away. In fact-" he grinned, snaggle-toothed "-their commandant lives in this very building, two floors down from me. Needless to say, I live here under an alias."

"Anybody specific you want this pinned on?"

"No. I'd appreciate it, though, if you tossed in a few just-too-neat clues pointing to me."

"They're smart, but they don't think much of the underworld's intelligence?"

"Exactly."

Silence reigned until the very last of the clouds had shifted from red to grey-blue. At last, Je'gan cleared his throat.

"You wouldn't mind reciprocating the favour, would you?"

Alghieri frowned, making his way to a console. "Ask away," he replied, uncertain that he knew what the favour would be.

"Find me the father of Choir Aztaroth's baby." He smirked at the look on Alghieri's face. "No worries. It's just that we've been in telepathic contact for nine months now, and never once have I found out. It strikes me as a bit odd, y'know? Baracc said that it wasn't anyone in your organization-"

He broke off as Alghieri wheeled on him. Another flicker passed over the young Knight's face, too swiftly to identify. He was still staring out at the skyline, focused on something very, very distant.

The mongrel's voice was harsh. "How'd you know that?"

"Baracc's my brother. We talk."

But Alghieri was shaking his head. "He reports to me, and often. You haven't said two words to him. Now either you've been messing with my head more than I seem to recall, or you've reprogrammed Aztaroth. Which is it?"

Olra'en shook his head minutely, said nothing.

Neither. Then how?

Comprehension came slowly. "Irreantum. You've suborned Irreantum." The accountant had been the only other present at that discussion, during Jacen Dantarno's abortive attempt at a criminal's coalition. Alghieri, Seren Irreantum, Baracc Olra'en. Nobody else. Sealed room. It had to be Irreantum...

"Why," Olra'en said quietly, "would I suborn an accountant of all people, Alghieri? Mind-control uses a great deal of power that would be better spent elsewhere; likewise with bribery. No, my solution was, I think, somewhat better." His face flickered in profile, taking on a few years, arching the nose and lowering the brows. The colouring remained essentially the same, save for the fading of certain facial scars.

It took only a handful of seconds, but when he turned to face his host at last, he had become Seren Irreantum.

"Where's the real Irreantum, then?" Alghieri demanded.

"There is none. There never was, not outside of your mind and mine."

Altered memories... "Baracc knew?"

"He invited me along. Just in case Dantarno was up to no good."

"Then I'm giving him a raise when he gets back from Corellia," Alghieri retorted, sitting down on a leather sofa and tapping his claws on the armrest, hard enough to dent. "But now...why'd'you want to know about Aztaroth of all people?"

"I already-"

"I know what you already said, Olra'en," Alghieri barked. "Tell me why."

Olra'en, or Irreantum, hesitated before taking a seat on the armchair opposite the couch. A flick of his hand turned on the gas-burning fireplace and - somehow - sparked it. "I don't know," he said finally, looking into the blaze with hooded lids. "I don't even have a clue. But something's bothering me. Something's nibbling away at the back of my mind, and for whatever reason, I can't find it." He turned pleading, hooded eyes to the crime lord, black eyes that reflected the flames in a disconcerting way. "I know my own mind like the back of my hand. When I'm Irreantum, as I am now, I'm different. My mind works in different ways. I made it that way. I gave myself an alternate personality. And yet if I know my own psyche well enough to do that, why can't I find this?"

[Choir Aztaroth]

"Find your centre," Torentin urged. The scrawny, goatee'ed human was sitting on a plastic chair, the twin of Choir's own. He seemed unusually tense, but then again he was a Forcewielder and had been for over half a year. He could feel Choir's anxiety as his own. She wondered why he'd come; certainly he'd never displayed this level of paternal concern before.

"I'm not going to embrace the Dark Side now," she muttered, clutching her bulging stomach. They'd been in the waiting room for a minor eternity - two hours ten minutes. The baby would be here soon enough, and quite frankly, she was terrified. First of all, she was only sixteen, and had never had a baby before. The doctors had assured her that there would be few - if any - complications, but that didn't stop her from being frightened by every first-baby horror story that came her way. Second, she had stupidly used the Dark Side on several occasions. From all she'd seen, that wasn't a good thing to do when one was pregnant. It almost - almost - persuaded her to look into Jedi teachings.

Third - well, whatever number three had been, it was gone as she felt something distinctly unsettling. Unless she was mistaken, she was going to go into labour very soon. Torentin, picking up on it, moved quietly over to the desk, and after a short dialogue, a nurse came out to lead her into the hospital proper.

"I'm gone for the next few days," Torentin said. "Take care of yourself, ma'am."

Somehow or other she smiled. "Will do."

[Je'gan Olra'en]

The walls of the turbolift seemed unusually constricting after a year going up and down by stairs or not at all. Even the most tightly wound of staircases - such as the one that led to what he considered 'his' meditation chamber in the Palace on Corellia - didn't have the same feeling of entrapment that modernity had come to imply for him. Perhaps there was another factor: the sheer amount of time he'd spent on backwards worlds, honing his sword skills and learning to speak what he'd dubbed Old Basic, though it was nothing but a highly debased offspring of that most common galactic tongue.

There was that, but then again, he never felt truly safe. He had four chambers in the Sith Palace, but none of them offered more than a temporary haven against something undefinable. Even the trophy room that had once sheltered his most precious possession, now stripped bare of all but the smallest things, had been at best a burrow, a cave, a redoubt that he could only cower in without knowledge of his attacker - much less the capacity to strike back. The trophies that remained ranged from amulets of cult origin to a lock of Ceres Duvall's hair. They told a sketchy but accurate picture of his exploits, enough to convince any visitor that this was the extent of his memorabilia. More deception. More secrets. A way of life that he'd resorted to even though he didn't know who he was hiding from.

He stepped out of the turbolift with the hood of his long cape up. His was a notorious face, as notorious as any low-ranking Forcewielder. That didn't, of course, count for much: most Darksiders either died or disappeared long before they gained any prominence. Such prominence, and such dedication, tended to coincide with the title of Lord or Master. Try as he might, he couldn't recall a single truly notorious Knight of the Dark Side. Knights had a much better deal in the GJO.

So even though he was dedicated, he still fit into the low-key stereotype of almost any Darksider below the rank of Lord. And thus, the only people who'd recognize him would be that small but growing number who had a pre-existing grudge. Some knew he was Varundana. Not two months ago he'd gone to his and Baracc's old home and found himself having to mop the floor with a handful of well-equipped thugs. The reek of glop grenades had taken massive treatment to get out of his clothing: the cleaning droids at the Palaced had waxed eloquent.

His forthright stride slowed as he cleared the lobby and the canopied entranceway. Something nearby was screaming danger. He called on the Force, turned a full circle, homed in on it. His eyes, closed for a better focus, snapped open-

Facing his speeder. There were many possibilites, of course, but the one that came to mind first was an explosive. Taking control of a passerby whose path would take him very close to where Je'gan was standing, he ordered the man to enter the speeder. He telekinesced the keys through the air, Illusion masking them from sight, and commanded the subject of his mind-control to start the speeder's engine. His danger-sense flared again, and he ducked behind a two-by-two, squared-off stone pillar as the darkened street erupted in flame.

They knew they hadn't gotten their man. His danger-sense was going off in a manner that he'd come to associate with Force-based Farseeing, but which he supposed would work for just about any kind of observation. A moment later, blaster fire began to chew into the other side of the pillar from a high angle. The stone canopy was ancient but reasonably sturdy; until they took out the pillar, he'd be protected from anything these low-yield weapons could deliver.

And in the meantime...

Closing his eyes, he reached out and projected an illusionary double of himself. It didn't need to be terribly detailed, not when he was wearing a cloak that covered everything including his face, so he could maintain control of it for a long time and/or a sizeable distance. The double walked out of the canopy's shelter under its expert puppeteer's control, dashed for a convenient dumpster, got targeted and fired at, and upon taking no less than six bolts slumped convincingly to the ground.

The danger-sense eased slightly. A speeder flashed by, doing a wide U-turn at the nearest intersection. Carefully, he made himself invisible - possible while maintaining the simple illusion of the crumpled figure on the pavement - and waited as the vehicle slowed. Two trenchcoated men got out and started for the 'body.' He let them lean down to pick it up, then dropped both illusions and stepped into view less than five metres to their left. They went for their guns, heavy-duty blaster pistols that cleared their crossdraw holsters in record time. Je'gan, however, was substantially faster. Shadowlightning, gleaming in the firelight, ripped them apart.

He reclaimed the infinite-black tendrils and destroyed the driver's mind just as the sniper opened fire from above. Bolts rained down around him, none striking him from a combination of Sith reflexes and sheer luck. He backtracked the stream of fire, took control of the sniper's mind, and planted a simple, immutable command.

Five stories up, a body crashed through the closed half of an office window. Je'gan had reached the apartment building's front door before the sniper hit the pavement. He closed his eyes again and sparked the fuel tanks of the speeder's maneuvering jets just so.

A second fireball ripped the street apart.

The door closed behind him.

[Minion Alghieri]

The chaotic noise of the events below hadn't escaped Alghieri's acute hearing. In point of fact, he'd watched everything from his balcony, starting just after the speederbomb got his attention. His normally grey-green face, he noted sourly as he stared at the blasterproof window, was lightening to a creamy beige.

Just as he'd anticipated, the apartment's buzzer sounded. He took his time coming in from the balcony, gathering scattered thoughts.

Not as he'd anticipated, the visitor wasn't Olra'en. A police droid, looking as unamused as all others of its line, was flanked by a pair of orcish constables.

"Can I help you?" he growled in a practiced, bemused tone. The ID had been perfect; there was no way he could be recognized. He had a very plain face for an orc, and there were a lot of plain-faced orcs out there. Too, he was undistinguished in height and build, and had long since removed all identifying features. He was, or should be, perfectly safe.

"Minion Stanley Alghieri," the droid said tonelessly, "you are charged with-"

Most people in his situation would have tried to escape, or fought and been captured. Alghieri wasn't most people, but he did intend to fight. Police droids were common, especially in this city. For a long time now, higher-ups in his organization had carried portable EMP's. Alghieri had set the trend. The flat metallic slab in his pocket was linked to a subvocal transmitter, same as the rest of his gear. Once he used the EMP, most of that would become useful for little more than paperwieghts. But once he used the EMP, the droid would be down, and the constables' comlinks and blasters would be harmless.

He cleared his throat and subvocalized the command.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

The turbolift stopped, the lights died, and safety clamps outside the compartment's walls engaged loudly.

"Oh, this is just wonderful."

He drew his lightsaber and spat something in Old Basic. Whatever had just happened - and he had his suspicions - his weaponry was fried. Both lightsabers, the dirk, and the hold-out blaster, absolutely inert. That left the rapier and, of course, the Dark Side.

It could have been a reaction to his escape from the assassination attempt, of course. But while it did deprive him of some very useful weapons, it seemed a bit extreme to use a pulse that could disable the building's circuits, just to get to him. There were, after all, more effective ways, and from what he could tell, there weren't any ysalamiri in the vicinity. Chemical or biological weapons had a distinct signature in his danger-sense, a signature that was notably absent.

Either he was facing incompetents, or it wasn't directed at him after all.

Je'gan focused and blew the maintenance door on top of the turbolift cylinder at both hinges and the locked clasp. The displaced square of durasteel floated away telekinetically in the darkness. He Force-leapt to the roof, landing just about perfectly. He'd been on the twelfth floor when the turbolift stopped, and Alghieri's apartment was just two floors up. That translated to about six or seven metres. For someone as experienced at physical enhancement as he, that wasn't a problem. Shadow flowed down his hands from the wrist-reservoirs and condensed into a set of climbing claws. He gathered his legs under him and leapt with hands raking.

The hooked claws caught the bottom edge of the turbolift's fourteenth-floor door. He inserted a tendril of Shadow between the halves of the door and flexed it hard enough to overcome whatever was keeping them in place. Dim light trickled through, and he slithered up through the nine-inch crack in time to get trampled by panicked residents stampeding for the stairwells.

Alghieri was waiting, an antique slugthrower in his hands and three bodies - two organic, one droid - stashed inside the door. His face was impassive, unreadable. Je'gan was sorely tempted to break his word and find out what lay behind that grey visage.

"They thought I was behind that little escapade downstairs," the orc growled, tucking the gun into a crossdraw holster beneath his coat. Without a mindtap, Je'gan couldn't verify the truth of anything, which left him at a disadvantage. All he knew from his earlier intrusions was that Alghieri hadn't known about the actual attempt. Either the police had framed the crime lord - which was possible - or they'd honestly believed the charges and had merely let the hit commence in the hopes that he, Sith and Public Enemy, would be removed as an inconvenience.

"They lived that long?"

"I let the droid run its voder before I hit the EMP." Alghieri leaned down, tripped a catch on the underside of the caf table, and removed another, identical slugthrower and a blaster. He discarded the blaster and threw the Sith Knight the shiny chrome slug pistol. Je'gan caught it and examined it. His experience with blasters was limited, and he'd but rarely used anything that had a solid projectile save a lanvarok. Nevertheless, its trigger and machinery were about as intuitive as these things could get. With the Force on his side, he might actually be able to hit the broad side of a freighter.

"You fried my sabers," he said conversationally. "Don't do that again, please. They took a month apiece to make, and repairing them's going to take almost as long."

"You've got the swords," the crime lord retorted, dead flat, "and you won a championship title with them, if memory serves. I don't see what you're complaining about."

For a long moment, Je'gan considered mentioning that the dirk - thin shortsword, really, with eighteen inches of blade - had also been reduced from its lofty position as a disguised, rigid neuronic whip. The dirk had taken almost as long as a lightsaber to put together, once he factored in time spent getting acquainted with the technology. But it would serve no purpose; and all at once, he knew that getting into such a petty squabble would waste valuable time, time that could be spent killing things.

Under pretext of examining the gun, he sorted through the shreds that remained of the driver's mind. Those shreds were fast fading in the unfriendly terrain of their captor's psyche, but there might be something useful in there. Surface thoughts tended to stick around, and in there should be something regarding the job the man had been on.

He cocked his head, smiling. "Does the name Magre mean anything to you, Alghieri?"

The brief narrowing of the crimelord's eyes told him everything he needed to know. "DEA, then?"

"Blackcoats through and through," Je'gan confirmed. "Commissioner Magre - the one who happens to live just two floors down in this same building - did this all off the record. Apparently they were getting a bit ticked with you for your repeated thumbing of your prominent nose. It came to the attention of the regulars, and there you are." He gestured with the pistol's muzzle towards the bodies. "Those droids don't come cheap."

"So the blackcoats frame me for their buddies. The buddies get my ID, get nosy, get killed, and there are probably a lot more buddies on their way."

Je'gan blinked, licked his lips in momentary confusion, then reached out with the Force and danced between the people in the area. "You've got no idea. We're looking at two or three hundred disciplined minds moving towards us."

Alghieri ripped apart a file cabinet and retrieved a large block of assorted ammunition. Sorting through the clipped-together cases, he retrieved magazines that looked as if they fit the two pistols. Redundant ammunition; smart move. "ETA?"

Je'gan tapped one psyche with more discipline than the rest. "Seven minutes."

"Is Magre still in the building?"

"First thing I checked. Nobody with that sort of mind within a hundred metres of us."

"You sure?"

"It's my job. I don't tell you how to coordinate system-wide heists or hijack military transports, now do I?"

"Fair enough."

They descended by redlit emergency stair, guns hidden and Je'gan's cape notably absent. The building's denizens had moved fast; only the stragglers were still there. Explosions, gunfire and loss of power had prompted a far more effective evac than the police could ever have hoped for. Their path took them through the deserted lobby and out into the equally empty streets. The fires in the speeders were burning lower now, yet still bright enough to illuminate the entire block. Nothing was yet in sight, but the dull thumps of a police walker's footfalls penetrated over the crackling of upholstery and plasteel. It sounded like an AT-ST or something similar.

Yet both knew that the Varundana police only used walkers for backup. Meaning that the enemy was a lot closer than that. Je'gan stretched out to the Force again and verified that the drivers were among the closest disciplined minds.

"Ah..."

Hulking droids, grenade launchers and sonic weapons raised menacingly, advanced around both corners of the block, less than fifty metres away. The Shadow at Je'gan's wrists flowed out and covered his ears in a thick layer of sound-deadening blackness.

"Back into the apartments," he said, a bit too loud. "This stuff burns, and it's not too great as a set of earplugs. Let's move."

Alghieri nodded. They raced back the way they had come, laying down cover fire with the slugthrowers until they cleared the doors. The sonics began to squeal at extreme range, audible to Je'gan and painful for his companion. The Sith Knight gestured towards the staircase. Alghieri ran; the thick doors closed behind him.

Je'gan turned back to face the droids.

Shadow had little effect on mechanicals. Mentalics didn't have a prayer. Yet he didn't need to use either against the droids...

Ducking into a side room, he settled down and dropped himself into the fastest trance he knew. The walker's personnel yielded rapidly to him; within moments, he was seeing through their eyes and controlling their actions. The walker lumbered around the corner and spun to face the street that housed the apartment building's entranceway. A brace of blaster cannon opened up, strafing the droids as they reached the canopied entrance. Electronic reflexes put the droids under cover and firing glop grenades at the walker's armament.

The concussion grenade launcher on the walker's side spat three times before glop plugged it, and the droids were gone.

Je'gan dropped the trance and stood to return to the lobby. Alghieri was waiting for him, relief evident on his brutal face.

"They've got the building completely surrounded," Je'gan reported tersely. "The walker's being boarded just now." And what a fight it would be. The compulsions he'd left in the crewmen's minds would lead them to attack anything and everything. Outside, the blaster cannon fired sporadically, culminating in a mindless firing of the plugged grenade launcher. An explosion rattled the glass.

"Let's move out, shall we?"

Alghieri's jaw dropped. "You're not serious."

"With the droids gone, Illusion will work perfectly. They won't see us. Trust me."

[Choir Aztaroth]

She snapped her eyes open as the first contraction hit. Two explosions had gone off only a few minutes ago, and now there was blasterfire and a third. It was all coming from a region near Alghieri's residence.

Alghieri...

"Torentin!"

"Shush, dear," the nurse said soothingly. Choir didn't listen. Her eyes focused and unfocused, darting everywhere: the walls, the door, the sunglasses on the table. Of all the times for her curse to come into effect, this had to be the worst.

A commotion arose in the hall; a loud bang percolated into the room, and two orderlies flew past. The door blew open. Torentin appeared, stopping his headlong rush with a hand on the frame. The other hand, she was pleased to note, held his wand.

"What is it?"

"Go check on Alghieri," she snapped over the nurse's bleating. "Those blasts are coming from the direction of his new apartment."

To his credit, the older Adept took such abrupt instruction well considering that his curse, like hers, ecompassed loyalty and obedience only to the Olra'en brothers and to Alghieri. Nothing connected them but fellowship in a cursed existence. The curse, too, allowed him some leeway. Nevertheless, he took off in what had to be a Force-enhanced run. The orderlies pursued him in vain.

Choir settled her head back down in the hospital bed's pillow, closed her eyes, and began exerting all her willpower towards preventing the curse from making her summon the Dark Side.

[Minion Alghieri]

MINION ALGHIERI

Torentin's flight continued until he reached his speeder. He ripped open the door and jammed a thumb onto the activation pad. By this point, the curse had kicked in. The orderlies, just clearing the entranceway behind him, were no more than inconvenient annoyances. Alghieri was in trouble; the thought ate away at his conditioned brain. His driving became more and more maniacal. At one point, his speeder was going three times the legal limit.

He smashed through a line of policemen and abandoned the badly damaged vehicle inside the lobby of the torn-up apartment complex. He put away the wand and pulled his staff from the back seat, the length of polished alloy being a much more effective focus object. A dark presence in the Force gave him only minimal pause. Shouts arose behind him; he dashed up an emergency stairwell, shouting for his boss. A squad of police clambered behind him.

*** *** ***

The boss in question was now cloaked in Illusion and losing sight of the police troops around the corner. That crazed driver had created a perfect hole in the police formation; Olra'en had sneaked them through without a hitch. It was just as well, he supposed; the slugthrowers were of impressive caliber, fine quality
and reliable model, but against a few hundred armed soldiers, he was asking a little much of the manufacturers.

He hefted the slugthrower one last time and put it away before turning to his invisible rescuer. This 'Illusion' that the Sith Knight kept touting...well, it had taken a leap of faith to walk out of cover and through the crowd, following telepathic instructions from an invisible man and being forced to assume that he, too, was invisible. In fact, he didn't even know that Olra'en was there. He had to assume, though, that his guest hadn't just abandoned him.

"Now what?" he said, belatedly looking over his shoulders. He tried to keep his voice quiet, and succeeded. Olra'en rippled into existence more or less where he'd guessed, and slipped a dirk back into its sheath. The look on the Sith Knight's face was not pleasant. He seemed, however, to appreciate near-silence as much as Alghieri did.

"Now we go back to my place, kick back, drink some kefir..."

Alghieri blinked and took the proffered slugthrower. On second thought, Olra'en didn't need that any more than he did. "Some what?"

"It'll be alcohol for you, then," Olra'en said grimly. "Never touch the stuff, myself."

The gangster chose to let his question slide. "How defensible is 'your place'?"

"A Sith Lord and a battalion couldn't take it."

He winced. "Sounds obvious, even ostentatious."

"Only as obvious as a pitch-black tower in the middle of the jungle. Don't worry: it's perfectly safe."

The injunction, Alghieri noted sourly, had failed before it had even passed the younger man's lips. He was plenty worried, and to his way of thinking he had evey right to be.

"Does it have comm gear? Heavy weapons?"

Olra'en snorted. "Comm, yes, but the heaviest thing I've got there is a durasteel mace and chain. Hope you've got a good throwing arm."

That earned him a quelling look. "If you're into primitive weapons, I suppose it's too much to hope that you've at least got some hunting bows?" Any ranged weapon was better than none - and even bows would be better than the handguns. Quieter, for one.

"Solid wood longbows," the young man confirmed. "Shall we?"

[Choir Aztaroth]

The contractions were coming fast and hard now. This delivery, she knew, was going faster than normal. While getting it over with was strong in her mind, a part of her also regretted that she didn't have time to adjust to the pain between each blast.

Her eyes, reddened further from the weeping of a few furious tears, focused as she heard a pair of voices coming from an adjacent room. Focus was necessary to prevent taking her baby's life in her hands by using the Dark Side to protect Alghieri, wherever he was. The conversation gave the young Dark Jedi the opportunity to focus on something besides her current situation; thus, understandably, she listened in.

"You're sure, then?"

"Glitterstim in the blood, aye. And worse spices."

Choir bit her lip, thankful that she was in enough pain for the worry on her face to go unremarked-upon.

"Decay traces going back how long?"

"Until the point where they break down entirely. Certainly a matter of years."

Yes, years. Six, to be exact. At eleven, she'd tried ryll and been hooked. Glitterstim to help with her Force mind skills, and before that simply for recreation. Tomo, too, for variety. Fortunately, none of those addictions transferred to infants, at least not according to what she'd read over the past nine months.

"You've called it in?"

"Not yet."

Oh, how she wanted to sieze the Dark Side and drive those thoughts from the minds of the nurse and doctor. It almost broke her.

"It's your call, sir, after all," the distant nurse continued. The young Zeltron considered Conflagration, still in her effects. A lightsaber would solve a great deal.

"I'll call, then. After the delivery. After she's had a chance to meet her son."

A moan skewed Choir's vocal chords around and turned into a brief shriek. There was no escape. There would be no revenge.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

"Wait."

He turned back towards the skyscrapers, frowning, not looking to see if Alghieri had in fact stopped. His mind reached out, out, looking for the source of the disturbance.

"What is it?" The voice, though seeming distant, sounded close behind him. Still sorting through the mental stimuli, Je'gan hesitated.

"I think...a Forcewielder just died."

"One of mine?"

The sense was obscure, but... "I think we can count Torentin a loss." He turned to the crime lord. "Got caught by that sweep, I think."

Alghieri's eyes were fixed on the tops of the highest buildings, one of which he'd lived in until recently. One of which was now trailing smoke out of a fourteenth-floor window. "Got caught by your curse, you mean."

They locked gazes for a moment. Je'gan was the first to look away. "Yes."

[Je'gan Olra'en]

Shadows' Hold had changed with its creator. Bare months ago, when the tower had been constructed, Je'gan had enjoyed the simplicity of black-on-black, the smooth lines and curves that had come from his imagination, and the sterile, foreboding atmosphere. Shadow being - essentially - a physical manifestation of the emotions he'd been feeling at the time of its creation, the entire place was strong in the Dark Side. It had been glorious.

It had also been boring. Now, as his tastes changed day to day, it had become less of a laboratory and more of a home. Comfortable furniture decorated the rooms; on the walls were carpets and paintings of a definitely Dark origin. The ensemble had been taken intact, on Je'gan's orders, from its previous location, less than a week ago. It had been a long time since he'd disturbed the sancitity of that place, walked its scarred corridors. Graveyards had a special aura when you'd been the executioner.

Alghieri, understandably, wouldn't touch the Hold's walls, or anything made of that same black solid. The gangster's boots were thick enough to stop the Shadow of the floors from burning him, but otherwise he was quite unprotected. Je'gan paid him no mind. One burn had been enough to keep the orc out of his way.

They'd come in the front door only a few minutes ago, Je'gan calm, Alghieri on edge from a close encounter with the mind-altered animals that patrolled the Hold's perimeter. Like a dutiful host, the Sith Knight had taken Alghieri up a spiralling staircase to a guest chamber, let the crime lord get comfortable, then retreated to his study. For whatever reason - lack of secular reading material, perhaps - Alghieri had followed him.

As they cleared the last flight and passed a set of double doors, Je'gan let himself smile. He had indeed referred to this room as the 'study', but by intent it was more than that. A huge semicircle, it took up half a level of the tower, and the black floor was littered with protrusions, pedestals that held trophies or equipment. They had entered at the middle of the curved wall; before them, a raised, T-shaped lane projected to the opposite wall and split to terminate in a pair of large cylinders composed of Shadow. Metal shimmered and cloth glared in the light of the lamps implanted in the ceiling. The sheer volume of knickknacks was astounding even to Je'gan, who'd collected each and every one.

He strode down the walkway intently, boots making no sound on the slightly elastic Shadow. Behind him, the thumping footsteps of Alghieri violated the silence. The Sith Knight suppressed his irritation with effort.

"What's this?"

He turned to see Alghieri examining a faceted red gemstone about the size of Je'gan's own fist. Stifling a sigh, Je'gan retraced his steps.

"That's..." Certainty faded as the young man's brow wrinkled. "I don't know. I actually don't. Fought a Sith Lord on Coruscant, almost died...the usual. That was on his belt, or in a pouch. I somehow got hold of it when I grappled with him. He thought it was important, but I never got around to testing it to find out exactly what it is."

He looked back up from the jewel to see Alghieri examining it with an experienced eye. After a moment, the crime lord met his gaze and blinked. "The jewel's normal enough," Alghieri said, "but something about the reflections..."

"Yes?"

"Is that thing hollow?"

"Yes, it is. It's a vial of some sort. The jewel appears normal enough, really." Je'gan frowned again and picked it up from its pedestal of Shadow. It felt...strange. Genuinely strange. Not at all like anything he'd ever encountered before.

He came to a decision. Wordless, he wheeled and headed down the lane once more. When he turned - left - he noticed that Alghieri wasn't following. Je'gan cocked an eyebrow challengingly.

"You don't get an invite to the home of a Sith very often, Alghieri. Aren't you curious?"

Without waiting for a reply, he continued down the left fork of the 'T' until he stood before one of the cylinders. Three metres high and roughly half that in diameter, it was utterly featureless until he tapped into the groundlinks of the Shadow that made up the building and sent a simple command. Shadow peeled down from the sides in rippling waves until at last an irregular lump of high technology presented itself.

"For the..."

Alghieri's voice startled him as he reached forward to trip a catch. Compensating, he withdrew a rack of capillary-action tubules from the revealed recess and selected one. The top of the vial screwed off intuitively enough; dipping the tubule into the reddish-brown liquid revealed, he collected a sample and injected it into a waiting tray.

//Analysis in progress//

Several tense seconds passed in which neither humanoid said a word. Another intelligence was at work here, incomprehensible and uncomprehending, doing what it did best.

//Analysis complete. Display?//

"Affirmative," Je'gan said, tapping a prominent holoprojector online. The plate hummed once and displayed a strangely familiar structure. He wracked his brain; it hadn't even been three years since he'd finished high school. Whatever it was, though, eluded him.

//Composition of 99.9 percent of substance is as follows: messenger ribonucleic acid of composition methionine, leucine-//

"Detail biochemical effects on a humanoid subject." MRNA alone, he vaguely recalled, wouldn't have survived in that vial - but the shape was blocky, irregular, constricted. It was a single helix, but it didn't look anything like proper mRNA should. Some kind of...mm...protein coat, maybe?

//Decreased production of endorphins,// the machine responded immediately. //Highly increased production of-//

His eyes widened as he listened. Though only a few of those names were familiar, those that were reminded him strongly of senior Biochemistry. So much so that he even began to remember what they were for. And if that wasn't enlightening...

Not bad for a complete guess.

"Summarize likely neurological and behavioural responses."

The droid brain within hummed audibly, unused, Je'gan knew, to requests along those lines. He re-sealed the vial nervously. These guesses were leading him somewhere dangerously exciting.

//Depression. Aggression.//

"Severity index?"

Humm.

//High//

Incongruously, Je'gan found himself yawning. Dalamar had used katanas that were Force artifacts; it was a reasonable supposition that the Vampire had experience with other artifacts, perhaps even the making of such.

"How old is it?"

He hadn't used the proper wording; nevertheless, after a moment, he got a response.

//Sample varies with normal deviation. Mean is Four Standard Years, one month, three days, nine hours and four minutes//

"So Warlord Dalamar, formerly of the Shrine, can make Sith poison..."

He wheeled on Alghieri, eyes ablaze with a very boyish excitement, translucent vial clutched in a vise-like grip.

"Sith poison, Alghieri!"

//Restate instructions//

"Deactivate," Je'gan snapped, still intent on his guest.

Alghieri eyed the vial uncomfortably. "What's Sith poison?"

"Use it on a Jedi, it'll turn them to the Dark Side. A simple enough concept, really, once you think about it, but to have it in your very hands is something new, something powerful. I'm liking this.

"To tell the truth, Alghieri, for whatever reason I was losing my faith."

They walked back through the maze of armour and weapons and baubles, silence prevailing until Alghieri coughed.

"That's not something you can easily think of a Sith saying, Olra'en."

Je'gan hastened his pace along the walkway until he faced the other cylinder. This, too, rippled away to disgorge a piece of modern technology: a stasis chamber forged of transparisteel and spiderleg circuitry. Within its confines, a woman hovered, eyes closed sleepily and a thin discolouration in the centre of her chest. As they walked a full circle around the stasis box, an identical mark was presented, right beside her spine.

"This was the first reason I lost my faith," the Knight explained in a harsh whisper. "It was just after I killed her, and I didn't have any guidance, nor any guide. So I built walls around myself and swore I'd never love again."

Alghieri remained silent. Taking this as the tacit approval he didn't really need, Je'gan placed a hand on the transparisteel in front of him, roughly level with Ceres' knee, and continued to pour out his soul.

"That solved that. The second time was when I was confronted by my conscience for all the blood on my hands. That took time to resolve-"

A darkened room, a man screaming in pain, clawing at his own flesh and leaving marks with nails that have grown too long. A stench. A locked door, with the lock on the inside.

"-oh, how it took time." Grimly, he pushed away from the immense cylinder and hopped off the dais into the forest of black pedestals. A segmented, mail-draped helmet fell, only to be caught in midair by Je'gan's prenaturnal reflexes. Rather than replace it, he threw it to Alghieri, who caught the brunt of the miasma that surrounded it and hastily leapt down onto the floor to put it in its lonely space.

Flash. The image, more felt than seen, of the inside of a person's mind. The impression of blades and nails, the memory of an invisible pain. The sensation of something finally awakening, subsuming parts of the man's mind for the duration of its dominance - subsuming even the connection to the soul.

"I reworked my own mind like I did Aztaroth's, and as then I had to do it twice. Once was a trial run: Seren Irreantum. Alternate personality, really, if not another mind entirely, working in conjunction with my own psyche. That personality could be turned on and off at will." Je'gan paused to examine delicate jewelry, arranged with care across a small table of unvarnished wood. The ornaments had belonged to Galarra. He levitated one, a brooch, to his hand and peered at it.

"The second time, I remade what was left, remade my primary personality to make myself more of a Sith than I had hitherto been. I dubbed myself Darth Shule."

Alghieri had caught up to him, having taken the time necessary to avoid the Shadow of the pedestals. "Does it hurt," the gangster asked, "when you alter yourself? It hurt Torentin and Aztaroth. Can you block the pain, then?"

Je'gan's fist tightened. The unfortunate brooch condensed itself to the size and shape of a small marble. Almost growling, he replaced it. The arrangement was thrown off by the shift in that one brooch's dimensions.

"I can't block pain. I use it. I hate it, and I use it all the same. I'm constantly in pain, Alghieri. Even when I'm not actually injured, phantom pain crawls up from my fingertips and makes me-"

He shot out his flat palm, fingers curled like claws, arm pointed in the direction of a tall podium that held a set of plain swords. The Shadow convulsed abnormally, not like the earlier ripplings whose cause had been a direct and natural control of the Hold's Force matrix. This was obviously something quite different.

"-twitch."

The pedestal blew apart into a hundred thousand glittering shards of darkness. Je'gan's left hand came up in front of the both of them with the edge of his cloak grasped firmly. The Shadow hit the reinforced fabric and failed to penetrate.

"And so you see, this is the third time I've lost my faith. First by confusion, second by opposition, third by apathy. Apathy! I'm learning more than I ever thought possible, and I'm apathetic!"

He strode through a set of nearby doors and up the spiral staircase beyond, not caring if the crime lord followed or not. The windows blocked themselves off as he neared them. After a handful of revolutions, he came to another room, large and spare, with racks of assorted weapons on the walls. Immediately, he selected a one-handed broadsword and cast his effects off in a pile by the largest of the windows that ringed the training room. There was no way he knew of to make Shadow transparent; thus, the amorphous element of the Hold's design dictated that he discard all possibility of using transparisteel or glass. The window was either open or closed; it either existed, or it didn't. When it didn't, all he really had to do was smooth out the Shadow from the sill and fill in the gap. At this point, all the windows were open, and a harsh breeze passed through from one side to the other. A thin film of dirt was more noticeable here than in the room below; not only was the light better here, but the pedestals had obscured much of the floor. The once-black floor was now a dull grey-brown.

"It hasn't been that long," he muttered, swinging the wide, heavy sword around him in fanciful arcs. "I really thought I'd been here more often than that." But no; as his eyes were drawn downward more and more in the series of sword velocities he assigned himself, he saw that dust and the finer jungle dirt indeed covered the floor in a thin film that his boots left tracks in.

Danger whispered; without thought, he whipped the sword in an infinity loop that terminated, blade vertical and pointed upwards, behind his back, just in time for what had to be a lanvarok disk hit it square-on and test the strength of his wrist. A shallow cut from the ricochet began to drip down his back. He didn't turn, merely began another velocity while calling a second sword to his left hand.

"You like the lanvarok, Alghieri?"

"It's a unique weapon. Not one that I come across that often." The tiny but unmistakeable click of the second disk chambering reached his ears. He spun, pointing both swords in a thoroughly useless defensive posture, and the lanvarok suddenly wouldn't fire, its spring having shattered by force of Je'gan's will. Alghieri looked a bit disgruntled.

"There's a spare spring under the table by the window," Je'gan said. His right blade whirled into a horizontal, eye-level cut while his left backhanded upward; more of that velocity. "If you can't figure out how to take it apart by the time I'm done, tell me and I'll do it for you."

His right arm continued on, looping around behind his back until his wrist was by his left hip and the black blade had scythed its way to point straight forward. Meanwhile, his left sword arm had been pulled in close to his stomach and his wrist bent downwards, blade slashing horizontally at the chest of an imaginary foe. The first was the more obvious stroke and would have been blocked; the second would likely have gone through. You lose some, he reflected, you win some.

And wasn't it a heartening thought that since he became a Sith, he'd never actually been beaten blade-to-blade?

He ignored Alghieri and replaced the swords on the wall. Instead, he summoned a long rapier and parrying dagger, and began that very same velocity with appropriate adjustments. Either weapon was really quite useless when slashing; he preferred his lightsabers in that regard. But solid blades were his babies...

"Babies," he muttered, becoming a whirling top made entirely of black metal. His path strayed to close to the wall, leaving several minute gashes in the Shadow. "Why am I always thinking babies?"

"Because a Forcewielder just had one, and you're feeling some kind of sympathy through the Force."

Je'gan stopped feinting and parrying and looked over his shoulder at his guest. The lanvarok was intact on the table, with the broken spring laid out beside it. Alghieri was making swift, sure passes with a battleaxe, and didn't look to have been the source of that voice. But it had been Alghieri's voice, after all...and now the orc's scarred lips were moving again.

"Aztaroth was due today. Makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Oh was she..." Somewhere out there, Je'gan felt something laugh at him; either cosmic irony was beginning to ensnare him again, or else...yes, that did feel like Aztaroth. Disconcerted, he tossed the sword and long dagger onto their brackets and took out his lightsabers. Both had been fried by the EMP; he clicked each activator switch on and off several times without visible result. He hissed and moved past the flailing axe towards the stairs. His lightsaber lab was an adjunct to the trophy chamber. Now that he'd worked out a few kinks, he could get down to the business of repairing the weapons. Alghieri, meanwhile, could be heard trading his axe in for something that jangled bitterly - probably the morning star. How the orc had managed to go this long without touching Shadow was a puzzle, but other things drove such pointless thoughts from Je'gan's head as he cleared the last revolution of the staircase and strode down a corridor to a small, square room without feature.

A command to the Shadow brought tables, benches, chairs and racks from the floor and walls. The top of each had a different...frequency, he supposed was the right word...of chaos than the simple Shadow that made up most of the Hold's fabric. This let him feel their presence easily...a good thing considering that locked safely within each was an array of tools and components. These swam into view. Taking a seat, Je'gan commenced the disassembly of his lightsabers.

[Choir Aztaroth]

Time had passed, and the urgency had faded. She didn't know if that was funny or not: she'd always thought that the breaking of the curse would happen all at once, some great trial or confrontation. That made sense, didn't it?

Labour was a trial, though, and things were breaking down. She could hear more whispered discussion in the side room: they were going to come for her, and soon. Though that meant labour would be over soon-

Her thoughts deserted her again as a fresh blast of pain struck her. Keening, she managed to back something up in her throat until she dissolved in a fit of coughing. For a long moment, all there was was pain.

A Dark Jedi should be able to take pain, she whispered to herself, not sure if the words had actually reached her lips or not. Whether or not she has the Force with her. This should be making me stronger.

Shoulda woulda coulda. And now you're just rambling.

She bit her lip, hard, and didn't taste the blood until she choked on it. Some part of her burrowed down further into herself, away from the pain and her hopeless situation. Enough of her became that, that she didn't hear when people began to talk to her. She was gone within herself.

Simple sequence of events. Give birth. Use the pain. Take the lightsaber. Get out. Simple. But it all depends: can I learn to use the pain in the time I have? I can't even touch the Force now...

[Je'gan Olra'en]

Je'gan stomped into Alghieri's room several hours later, a lightsaber in each hand and a massive arsenal on a series of belts that looped around his hips, thighs and chest. For once, he wasn't wearing a cloak, a problem that was rectified as the Shadow on his arms slithered up to his shoulders and stretched out into a floor-length black cape that draped itself around him and his weaponry. Now revealed on his forearms were a pair of lanvaroks, each with a distended magazine that somehow managed to wrap its way around the circumference of his forearm.

"I'm done," he growled. "And we're done here. Let's go kill Magre."

"WHAT!"

The orc bounded from his seat, jaws slavering and an indescribable look in his eyes. It might have had something to do with respect.

"We're going to march into DEA headquarters and we're going to slaughter them."

"Armed with swords."

"Yes, we are. Take your pick of the weapons in the training room."

"This is suicide." But Alghieri was already on his way past Je'gan, into the stairwell. He turned as one clawed hand gripped the rail. "This is actual suicide!"

"You know what I'm capable of when I'm using combinations of mentalics and more generic Force effects. You've never seen me as a pure mentalist, Alghieri. I'm only high Apprentice level for many of the standards. I'm low Master level in the mind."

"Well, it certainly didn't take you long to fix those blades of yours."

"Distance and shielding. They didn't take as much of a blast as I'd thought. You want one?"

"I'd fillet myself. Are you sure you don't have any blasters?"

Je'gan grinned, thin-lipped but amused. "Nothing bigger than a hold-out. How long will it take you to equip?"

"I won't be long." The orc disappeared up the stairwell, footfalls loud enough to make a noise against the Shadow.

[Minion Alghieri]

Reluctant as Alghieri still was - here, ten metres from the door of DEA HQ - he had to admit that he admired the dedication, the single-mindedness of which Je'gan Olra'en seemed to be an incarnation. He envied it, too, but only to the level of regretting wasted time in his youth. Then again, that was just as useless as regretting that he hadn't been born a Force-sensitive.

Or, for that matter, with opposable toes.

He snorted and covered the indiscretion by coughing into the sleeve of the trenchcoat stretched over his massive figure. Beneath it, barely concealed, was almost forty pounds of unbelievably primitive weaponry. He hadn't believed Je'gan when the Sith Knight had told him that nobody would see any irregularity in it - but then he'd looked down and hadn't seen it either. Je'gan assured him that the minds controlling the security cameras were within the illusion's effective radius. Going in with an amended purpose - get in, kill Magre, get out - they appeared completely unarmed.

"We haven't been shot at yet," Je'gan mumbled, "and that's the main thing." The younger man, similarly attired but far smaller in the same size of trenchcoat, was standing beside Alghieri in the doorway of a meeting hall of sorts. Alghieri shot him an angry glare. "You said you were going to stay out of my head."

He had the pleasure of seeing Je'gan cringe. "Apologies," Je'gan said - or rather, Irreantum said. "Really, I'm sorry. Habit."

They broke gazes and looked out across the street at their mutual foe, the impassive three-story granite building that was the throne of Drug Enforcement Authourity Commissioner Magre. After a long moment, Alghieri spoke.

"It's time?"

"Yes."

They headed across the street, making no pretensions of their objective. The door was visibly guarded. All of a sudden, the four guardsmen's composure shattered; as one, they ran out of sight. Alghieri caught his breath-

"They have to use the facilities," Je'gan said. "Urgently."

Alghieri found himself chuckling.

[Je'gan Olra'en]

The feat was simple enough to repeat: a basic compulsion linked to a natural bodily function always had a high success rate. One or two of the more dedicated DEA troops - and, surprisingly, receptionists - held their ground for over a minute, but in the end they, too, surrendered, and Je'gan and Alghieri walked by unseen, through doors that would otherwise be under the most vigilant guard. The watchmen of the security cameras, of course, were among the first to have to take sudden, urgent 'fresher trips. The problem was time (how long would it take those particular men to return?) - and that was easily dealt with. Every five minutes or so, Je'gan gave those individuals a new set of compulsions. Extreme thirst or hunger interspersed itself with the trips to the 'fresher.

He'd dropped the illusion, so it wasn't his most impressive display of mentalics ever - but he wasn't disappointed in himself.

They finished searching the ground floor unhindered, path terminating at a turbolift that they really shouldn't have been able to get access to. A handily stolen key in hand, Je'gan opened the door and went inside.

"Don't you ever fail?" Alghieri grumbled, clearing the doors as they began to close. Je'gan gave him a look, and the gangster fell silent.

"I've failed more times than you know," the Sith Knight said as he pressed the button for the second floor. "But every time I fail, I get better." He grimaced, remembering his last encounter with Sorsha Kasajian. "I'm very, very good by now."

Alghieri didn't dispute this. Then again, he didn't have a chance: the lift was already opening for the second floor. A man stood there in a suit, staring blankly; nobody else was in sight.

"Force Blindness and mind-numbing," Je'gan said conversationally as they passed the man and continued on. "He can't think, he can't move, and he can't see. Simple, eh?"

"Indeed."

Je'gan glanced over at Alghieri, who was just closing the door of a side room. "Anything wrong?"

The gangster shrugged. "Just questioning myself."

"About recruiting Forcewielders?"

"Oui. They're a great asset, but what happens when Baracc hits Knight?"

Je'gan took a moment to think it over. He'd long since accepted that Alghieri had a better-than-average grasp of the hierarchy, behaviour and ability of the average Darksider; what he was pondering was the answer to the question, no more and no less.

"Arrogance. He wouldn't try to take over - he's both smarter and humbler than that - but he might start demanding more resources and more intensive recruitment. Speaking of which, how're you going to replace Torentin?"

Alghieri gnawed on his lip. With fangs that size, the process didn't look conducive to thought in any way, shape or form.

"I think your brother was onto something with recruitment from high schools," the orc said at last. "I know Force potential is usually manifested younger than that, but I don't have the resources or personnel to spare looking after preteens."

"Or infants."

"Or infants. Older teenagers, I can deal with. Baracc certainly turned out all right."

Je'gan mumbled something and stretched out farther through the Force, sensing and 'incapacitating' minds before they got within hearing distance. As Alghieri opened his mouth to continue, though, Je'gan stopped and cut him off with a quick wave of his hand. Ten seconds passed in silence, and then the Sith Knight's eyes widened.

"Where's Aztaroth?"

"She went into hospital about twelve hours ago, I think," Alghieri said. "Why? She isn't here...is she?"

"Spice dealer. They must have pulled her in - and this is the closest place to General."

Three corners and two sets of guards later, Je'gan knocked on the door of a containment room. Two minds were inside, both normal humanoid, one markedly adult and one the mind of a teenager. The adult moved towards the door; the teenager, Aztaroth, did not.

The door opened inwards, and a brutal face peeked out about a head above Je'gan's eyes. This orc, wearing the black uniform of the DEA, was one of the largest Je'gan had ever seen - certainly bigger than Alghieri.

"Yes?" the blackcoat said clippedly in a stentorian rumble. "I understood I wasn't to be disturbed."

"Plans change." Je'gan's voice was level as he marked the rapidly bunching eyebrows of a being who had just realized that neither of the two 'visitors' was wearing anything like a uniform. "For example, you die."

He settled a hard Force Choke around the orc's neck and shoved him backwards with an open hand. The door burst open; behind it, a small room yawned, containing a bruised, fallen Aztaroth and an abandoned chair. Je'gan kicked the momentarily hanging interrogator before his telekinetic grasp could let the orc collapse. The tip of his boot connected with the massive, suspended figure's nose at a perfect angle. The orc dropped dead.

Je'gan turned to find Alghieri already hoisting Aztaroth on his shoulders. "Let's go," he said tersely. "Magre won't wait, and I have other things on my schedule. I'm a busy-holy-!" He jerked back, only barely catching himself on the still wildly swinging door. Aztaroth's thoughts, incongruously, were full of a strange triumph.

For one easily identifiable reason.

He felt his own face go pale as he closed the door and drew his lightsabers. Aztaroth, face covered by a few strands of dirty, chalk-white hair, flinched back against Alghieri's shoulder. Je'gan felt himself hesitate...

...and then rammed both sky-blue blades into the ceiling, giving each a semicircle's spin as it bit through the dense flooring. Up above, he quieted a trio of nearby minds by hitting them with unconsciousness. He stepped to the side as a dic-shaped plug of steel and wiring fell to the floor with a crash.

"Stand on the chair to follow me," he said, face and voice numb. Gathering the Force to him, he leapt up through the hole and found himself in a conference room. Three bodies, all in suits, lay about twitching. Cursing himself for sloppiness, he waited for his companions.

Alghieri wore armoured, hobnailed gloves, which allowed him to get a safe grip on the still red-hot edge of the hole. With him, barely fitting through in her horizontal position, came Aztaroth with a few strands of hair smoking. The crime lord nodded his readiness to proceed. After another long moment of contemplation, Je'gan nodded in return.

They popped their heads out the door to take a look at the situation. The hallway terminated in a Y-intersection, completely blind on either side and without any helpful mirrors. Instinct told Je'gan that to step into that intersection would be a very bad idea. His danger-sense confirmed it.

"Turn around and get out," he said absently, spinning the lightsabers in his hands. Behind him, Alghieri stirred.

"I want Magre's blood," the orc growled. "Call it stereotypical if you want, or pathetically instinct-based, or any of the adjectives that are no doubt running through your head. I don't care."

Je'gan turned to face his companion, sparing the still-listless Aztaroth a frigid glance. "Then I'll kill him and bring you his head. But you won't make it through the next twenty metres of corridor, even if you leave her here. Somewhere - too far away for me to control - the alarm has been raised. Before we get to Magre, there is intense danger of a non-living variety. I could get us through if it were a hundred men. I can't get us through this. The only way Magre is going to die in any remotely satisfying way is if you go back through that hole in the floor."

As he watched Alghieri, he realized that there was really very little way the orc could refuse. If all else failed, he could go back on his word and use mind control. Simple enough.

"Fine," Alghieri spat at last, and went back through the door, leaving Je'gan alone in the hall. Nodding to himself, the Sith Knight dropped all his efforts and began to subsume himself in the Force.

There was no way Form Two could get him through what he suspected he was about to face. Not with just one blade, at least. He had two, though, but aside from rapier-and-dagger fighting, he had relatively little double-weapon experience. It was in the Force's hands - it had to be.

The first thing he summoned was his danger-sense, at a level far greater than that which he usually maintained. The slightest threat stood out boldly, almost visible, a haze of colours that each had a deep meaning to his subconscious. Aztaroth's revelation was forgotten as Je'gan dove deeper and deeper into the Force. He took control of it and let it strengthen him, quicken his physical reflexes and voluntary movements, and give him that dash of prescience that was so essential to the whole weave. His hands loosened about the hilts of his weapons, changing grip to something more suited for close combat or blocking.

He charged, covering the ten metres or more to the intersection in about two seconds. The Force whispered to him and raised both his blades, deflecting two streams of iridescent automatic fire, one from each fork of the Y. Turrets, he knew, with plenty of tracking capability. Dropping his right knee, he rolled into that fork, using the time it took for the turret to depress to come back up to face it. Azubah and Magor hummed and pirouetted. The walls began to speckle in earnest with char marks from deflected shots. Then the shots began to head straight back at the turret. The barrel melted under an assault from three sequential bolts. Je'gan rolled sideways into the second fork just as the first turret exploded.

The process of destroying the second turret was much the same, except easier as he became used to the play of danger associated with using two blades. He could easily lop off his own arms - but as he strengthened the connection between his danger-sense and his subconscious mind, avoiding that scenario became second nature. There was no teacher like need.

He leapt over the glowing lump of metal to find himself in a long room, with himself at one end. Blasterfire had scorched the wall in front of him, and at the other end was the hulk of the first turret. There was more danger, but not just yet. It was behind the door in the middle of the wall he was facing.

The blades hummed as he sliced the doors apart. Behind them was an empty chair and desk, made of greel wood that seemed to glow in the light from a high window to the left. The entrance was a thin passage. Je'gan smiled as he sensed the trap and threw Azubah, underhand, into the ceiling.

There was an abortive spurt of something or other, and then sparks started to rain down. He called his lightsaber back and examined it: undamaged. It had been pointing towards the trap, and the blade and dense, round hilt had prevented anything from reaching the curved weapon's delicate innards. A few wisps of steam drifted off it, then nothing. There was no more danger.

He stepped through into the office, which was totally devoid of life. A mind, a smart, disciplined, ruthless one, was moving on the floor just below. Je'gan checked on Alghieri and Aztaroth to make sure that they were out of the building, then extended his arms to either side, pointed his lightsabers down and turned a hundred and eighty degrees. A two-metre-diameter disk of ferrocrete topped by a Sith Knight crashed down to the second floor, putting Je'gan face-to-face with a rather stunned man in his middle years.

Who was now pointing a pair of disruptors at him.

"Commissioner Magre, I presume?" Je'gan said, dousing his blades.

The disruptors didn't waver.

"And you are Je'gan Olra'en."

"Yes. Do not shoot. Drop the weapons."

It was a struggle. For the first time in what seemed like years, Je'gan's mental influence was on the verge of failing. Magre's mind was not weak by any stretch of the imagination. Locked in mental combat, neither could effective move, Marge to fire the disruptor pistols, or Je'gan to evade.

Skillfully, the Sith Knight manipulated shock and awe to decrease the Commissioner's confidence to such a point that he could complete what he'd started. Magre buckled. The disruptors thudded to the floor.

[Choir Aztaroth]

It was done. After ten months, almost an eternity, it was finally done.

Such triumph was incredible, battering away at the discipline she'd long since imposed on her thoughts. The feeling would have swept her into a dance - nothing formal, just dancing around singing at the top of her lungs - in other circumstances. Just now, she was sitting at a table in a deserted restaurant, nursing her baby boy and waiting for Je'gan. After Alghieri had stationed her here - the two of them having stopped off at the government orphanage to get the baby - he had headed back to the DEA building for the Sith Knight.

Footsteps crunched on the debris, bringing Choir's pale face up. Her fledgeling Force connection strained as she scanned the approaching minds - or mind. It was Alghieri, and he was alone.

"Get out," she spat. "I don't want another command to come from your mouth. I'm tired of being cursed."

The curse was gone, but she wasn't about to tell Alghieri that, not when he believed it to be still in effect.

But the gangster respected her as something a bit more than just a slave soldier. She had to give him that. And as she watched his inscrutable, fanged face, she realized that he wasn't that bad of a master.

He said nothing. At last, after a tense but wordless standoff, he left.

~FIN~