Salem's Training I: Down In The Park

[Jeseth Cloak]

Jeseth walked down a civilian sector of Corellia, looking over the human beings that passed him by. Following behind, Salem sped to keep up as the winged knight moved through the crowd seamlessly. It would appear as if they were not even an obstacle to him. He came to a small park which sunk down into a pit, children playing with small toys and climbing over tiny trees. "This will do fine. I want you to take one of those children from it's parents without either of them crying for help, and without alerting any witnesses. Understood?"

[Salem Ave]

Salem looked at Jeseth for a moment, puzzled. The look on his Masters face was deadly serious, although why he would want Salem to do such a thing bewildered him. He shrugged off the confusion inwardly and edged his way down towards the pit.

He knew the odds were stacked against him - for one, his attire was not the most pleasing for children to look at. Most found his feeble attempt at looking more gothic to be either laughable or slightly frightening. It was fairly obvious which the children would pick up on.

For a minute or so he sat at the edge of the area, watching the children playing. The all seemed to be away in a world of their own, only one or two playing together. They didn't speak with sense often, so their was no chance of catching a name to try and lure one up towards him. Instead, he assumed, the force would need to be implemented - however that did not mean he himself could put it into practice. Each child would be weak of mind, it was only a matter of choosing the toddler who would not cry out at the first sign of some disturbance.

Salem decided to pick upon the duo of children who giggled over at the far side of the pit. He rose upwards and turned away from the group, looking up into the sky.

"Hey, sport!" he called out in a gruff voice, "Come 'ere, your mom is calling for you."

A few of the children looked up at Salem and he heard laughs coming from behind him. Pink flushed in his cheeks ever so slightly as he looked towards his Master, sighing.

[Jeseth Cloak]

Jeseth raised a brow and smiled, his fanged set of teeth very visible in the sunlight. He would show Salem how it was done. Watch and learn... The knight walked towards a child playing amidst the strange alien trees and raised his hand to a child's eyes. The small one looked up at Jeseth's fingers, transfixed upon the way they seemed to move about. You might have thought Jeseth was performing a magic trick, but there was nothing in his hands at all. The little boy got up and raced towards him, but Jeseth just turned around and began to walk away. Eventually the child reached the edge of the pit, closer to main street where parents and there children constantly walked by.

He looked up and smiled as he saw Jeseth towering above him. The Dark Jedi stood at an average five feet and eleven inches, easily overshadowing the little black-haired boy who must have been at the most three feet tall. "Hello little one..." Jeseth glanced down at Salem who was at the other end of the park, down at the very bottom of the tiny "children's valley." Salem could see the little boy clutching at his throat and falling to his knees in front of Jeseth, who looked back to Salem and shrugged innocently as if he had nothing to do with the child's sudden suffocation.

Eventually, the little boys parents walked up to Jeseth and asked him something, but Salem couldn't make out what was transpiring between the two adults and his master. Jeseth was explaining something to them, and the three humans walked away, the parents coddling the child who was crying and holding for his throat, not saying a word.

Reach out to their minds… they are such simple creatures, after all.

[Salem Ave]

Reaching out to their minds with the force - it sounded in easy, just a little mind manipulation through the darkside. The darkside which he could not yet harness or use in anyway. He'd heard of it from his fellow students as some of them liked to think they practiced it - it gave them a more steady reputation of being 'dark'.

Salem had no such interest in faking his abilities. He stared towards one of the children near him, trying to mimic what his Master had done. If Jeseth could cause the child to almost choke to death by simply looking at him, surely Salem could tempt one away.

He fixed his mind on the small boy closing his eyes as he did so. He leant back slightly, and would have looked to passersby as if he were simply relaxing - however something more sombre transpired in his thoughts. He thought of the childs mind, imagining it as a small box. The box was flimsy and ill-built, it's wall paper thin.

Though he was mindful of his actions both physically and mentally, a slight twitch in a muscle below his right eye gave away the focus he attempted to gain. The box was not hard to grasp, and soon in his mind dark fingers edged their way around the walls, falling delicately against the structure. The small child could now be seen stopping playing, looking around for the unseen source of his interuption.

The hands clasped further around the box, picking carefully at the corners of the cub to pull a thin strip of the partition away, allowing for the index finger of one hand to pry its way into the box. The hand with a strong hold clasped tightly around the mind of the child, though was careful not to crush it for fear of making the boy cry. Gently, ever so gently, the hand moved, swaying the toddler.

Salems eyes snapped open as he felt the tug of the tiny hand on his own. The child wrapped it's full hand around Ave's thumb and once again tugged, craving his attention. He looked up to his Master and began to walk across the pit slowly with the boy, cringing inside, hoping no one would notice.

[Jeseth Cloak]

Jeseth nodded and signaled for Salem to continue, the sound of children playing and speeders racing by making it difficult to hear one's own thoughts. Excellent. The parents are coming behind you... they do not know you have their child. He was watching the two adults approach Salem, wondering how his apprentice was about to react to this situation. He had lied. The boys parents were not, in fact, anywhere behind Salem. They were directly in his path and he was about to run in to them. They already saw him with their boy. This would be quite interesting...

[Salem Ave]

The boy didn't seem bothered, neither did Salem - but he was. Keeping a grip on the child’s mind and trying to deal with the problem all at once was no doubt going to prove to be a difficult task. His pace picked up slightly as he tried to gain some distance between himself and the parents.

Then it struck him. Before him a couple approached, their pace picking up, eyes darting from the small child to Salem. He cursed in his mind, glancing down towards the boy, shooting him a glare for having such attentive parents.

"Excuse me, what are you doing with our son?"

The hold on the box loosened as Salem slipped one hand away, clawing with a hunger towards the two better built packages before him. The shadowy talons stretched quickly across the tops of the two minds, stroking at them.

"Sorry, I think you've got the wrong person. This is my son."

The two people looked surprised, the woman more so than the man as she began to lower herself to the height of 'Salem’s son'. He looked worriedly towards Jeseth before turning his attention back to the parents. As he began to speak to them, the hand nudged the three nets closer together, allowing the fingers to slip comfortably around all three, tips pushing beneath the faults at the seams.

“What…” the woman’s lips stopped, and she turned a light pink in hue, rising to stand once more, “I’m terribly sorry. He looks very much like our little John.”

Salem smiled, relieved, and laughed quietly, tugging the boy’s hand.

“Come on, let’s go see your uncle,” he said, a dark feeling of accomplishment washing over his being.

[Jeseth Cloak]

Most impressive... Jeseth could tell that Salem showed exceptional talent at prying at the minds of weaker beings. As the man approached with the child in hand, Jeseth began to clap. "They'll be looking for him again soon... we have to go." Jeseth started walking away from the park, then stopped. "bring him along. We'll have use for him yet." He started walking again, moving alongside the many speeders that were making their way through the ground level of the royal city. As they approached the shops the smell of freshly prepared food began to waft to their noses. He led Salem and the boy down an alley beside a shop, turning and looking to see if they had been followed. The coast was cleared, so he grinned at Ave. "Have you ever taken a life?"

[Salem Ave]

His grip had loosened as soon as they had gotten out of sight of the parents, and now that they were in the shade of the alley he no longer felt the need to hold onto the link at all. The child, therefore, began to whimper and sob.

"Never, Master," he said, looking down to the child as he realised what was coming next.

[Jeseth Cloak]

"Could you take a life if you were asked?" Jeseth grabbed the child's hand and pulled him closer to himself, looking down at the crying boy. "Look at him. He's done nothing to you. Could you kill him?" He lifted the little human's face up to look at Salem. "And if you did, what remorse would you feel?"

[Salem Ave]

"If I was asked to, Master, yes..."

He stared into the damp eyes, innocent eyes of the child, his humanity telling him that he should not even think such a thought.

"... I believe I could."

What had the child done to him? Nothing, exactly. He deserved no special respect or treatment, he may as well have not existed, so why not remove him from the planet - trim down the population some.

[Jeseth Cloak]

"But you have no desire to kill this wretched thing, correct?" Jeseth tossed the human child to the ground behind him and pointed at it. "Don't kill him... I have something better in mind. I want you to sever his hands." Jeseth unclipped a saber from his belt, activated it, and tossed it to Salem. It once belonged to the Jedi Knight Fire Hazzard... before she died at Jeseth's hands. The orange beam shone brightly, reflecting from the little boy's teary eyes. Somewhere out there his parents were going mad searching for him. All of the little boy's thoughts were focused upon finding his way home and coming out of this alive. He didn't understand what was happening at all.

"Do it."

[Salem Ave]

Salem nodded grimly as the weapon landed in his hands. He fumbled it for a moment before catching it's weight firmly in his right hand. He stepped over the child, looking down at him with a smile of pity.

"You won't even notice they're gone," he said almost sarcastically, lifting the boys left hand firmly. He brought the small palm over to meet the childs right hand, rolling the struggling body over onto it's side.

In a quick motion Salem brought the blade downwards, moving his own hand down to bind the childs wrists as the saber beam cut with a hiss through the flesh of the tiny clamy hands.

[Jeseth Cloak]

As the boy fell to the ground in tears, moaning out in pain, Jeseth smiled and took the saber back from Salem. "You have damned him to a fate worse than death. I asked you to do this to see how far you would be willing to go for the knowledge you crave... I now see you would be willing to do anything at another's expense, but do not forget that the time will come when the expense shall be your own." Jeseth raised his left hand, the glove over it hiding the electronic devices within. His right hand clipped the saber back against his belt.

"Lets go. We have much to do for today." He gave one last glance at the child and took a deep breath. When the two emerged from the alley, the little boy followed, running in the opposite direction and crying hysterically.

They arrived back at the palace about an hour lately, both of them stepping out of a luxurious personal transport that was provided for them upon Jeseth's requests. He led Salem to the diplomatic quarters, high above near the very top of the beautiful white structure. Stepping inside, Salem could see that Jeseth's room was near barren. He had a med that was neatly made, a desk with several papers scattered about it, and an open window that led out onto a balcony. Near the desk there was a dark wood bookshelf with several volumes tossed into it. None of them seemed important in the least.

"Wait for me on the balcony." The winged man waited for Salem to walk out of the room and then kneeled down beside the bed, running his hand over a section of the smooth floor. It fell away at his touch and a gray book was revealed. Jeseth took it up from the whole and resealed it with another light tap of his hand. It was designed to respond to the mechanisms within his artificial hand.

The knight walked out onto the balcony and handed the book to Salem. "This will tell you about the history of the Sith... you are to read this by our next session. If you have questions, now is the time to ask them."

[Salem Ave]

Salem stood stairing out onto the grounds of the Sith Palace, his hands tapping lightly against the railing that ran around the balcony. As Jeseth walked out also he turned to face the Sith Knight and nodded as he accepted the large book..

"No questions at this moment, Master...except.."

Salem tucked the tablet under his left arm and glanced up into the air idly.

"What are we going to do now, Master? What tasks do you have planned?"

[Jeseth Cloak]

"I will be going to Vjun... to speak with the rest of my brethren at Bast Castle. War is upon us, Ave." Jeseth looked up at the clouds and sneered. The sky was clearing up... He held his hand up to the wind and uttered a few words, his voice echoing down across the palace grounds. Thunder struck and rain began to pour quite unexpectedly. The sky grew dark again. "When I return, be prepared to leave Corellia." He looked at Salem curiously. "Have you ever been off world before?"

[Salem Ave]

"Not much, no Master."

Vjun, Bast Castle - he wondered just what or where these places were. The mention of War also tweaked his curiousity, though he did not ask about it as it was really not any of his business.

"Where will we be going to?"

[Jeseth Cloak]

"We will be going to a planet." The statement was extremely vague, but Jeseth didn't wish to speak the planet's name just yet. There may have been other ears listening. "You will see, all in due time... I have one last thing for you. In your quarters there is a saber. It was placed there by a droid at my request. Use it... there are training droids and opponents readily available here. If those do no suit your tastes, use a servant. They are expendable."

[Salem Ave]

Jeseth's dark sense of humor made Salem smile slightly.

"Very well, Master. I will improve my skills to the best they can be in your absence."

Salem bowed to his Master and began to pace away, eager to get ahold of the saber that awaited him in his domicile.