In My Blood
By Sapadu
A/N: Good God. It's another one of those 'Fanfictions I swore I would never write'. Which, if my other project from Brain Torture Central is any indicator, will probably turn out to be a great hit and a project I really like writing.
For starters, from the Star Wars side of things, if you check out my profile, you really should know by now which character I'm using for this one. Not any of the characters from the movies or the really well-known books. I'm using Ken, the Jedi Prince. But, in my defense, he's the only character that would really make this fic work.
And, in the opposite corner, this crossover is based on a trilogy written by Michael Schieffelbein, featuring Victor Decimus. If you haven't read those books, you should. They're actually pretty good, given the subject matter, and a nice, welcome change from all the Twilight mania going around. Just be warned that they're all very dark and twisted and on the shelves at Barnes and Noble's LGBT section. Thus, this fic is likely to be very dark and twisted. But probably not terribly sex-heavy or graphic.
Not much else to say except this whole story comes purely from my demented imagination after reading these two book series back-to-back, I claim no copyright, and I hope somebody enjoys this, if only for the sheer discomfort it's gonna cause me.
Chapter 1
Ken
When I woke up, face down on the soft, spongy ground, it was humid, hot, and the air palpable with water. The sky was thick with clouds and fog. Even though I was on dry land, I was soaked with sweat, my jacket clinging to me with perspiration. The air smelled like rotting plants, combined with a smoky smell of industrial plants churning from somewhere in the distance. I lifted my head, not seeing anything even remotely familiar. Even the trees looked like some bizarre creation from an insane botanist's lab.
The only things I did know were 1) I had crashed in the escape pod on this planet, though how I'd gotten out and where the pod was now, I couldn't figure out, and 2) I had no kriffing clue what planet this was. I didn't even know what star system or what sector it was. Had Miss Kendalina steered us further into the Unknown Regions, or had she taken us back to the inner rims of the galaxy?
Standing, I had a chance to survey myself. I had quite literally nothing on me – just the clothes I'd crashed in, a few scraps of flimsiplast, a pen, and various odds and ends in my pockets and... my hand hit something hard and bulky against my leg. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my lightsaber. And that was it. I didn't even have a spare credit chip with emergency money. I felt my arms and legs, checking for breaks or bruises. Nothing seemed wrong with me. I felt my head, making sure I had no concussions. There wasn't even anything beyond some mud in my hair.
In addition, I couldn't help but notice how much lighter I felt. For a moment, I wondered if I was dizzy or if I really had hurt myself before I experimentally jumped into the air. I went up by about half a meter, and that was without even really trying. It wasn't me – it was the planet. The gravity was different from any other planet I'd ever been to. I hadn't thought it was possible for a planet to be this noticeably smaller and still have enough gravity to hold in an atmosphere.
"Hello?" I called. My voice bounced a few times, at first loudly and slowly growing fainter. I could obviously still hear just fine, and there didn't seem anything wrong with my voice, "Kendal Orewahime, born in seven Before Battle of Yavin, Kessandra settlement on Kessel to inmate, Triclops and nurse, Kendalina, nineteen galactic standard years of age, former resident of the Lost City of the Jedi, apprentice to Luke Skywalker..." And I seemed to remember everything just fine.
All in all, things could have been worse. But there was nothing I could do about any of it. My best chance was to try and find some form of life on this planet and see if I could gather any information from that. I hid my lightsaber in the deepest pocket of my pants, relieved that it at least fit. If this was some planet where visitors were considered hostile, I wasn't about to announce that I was a Jedi right off the start.
I didn't have to go far. Just a matter of moments walking got me through a marsh, then onto the border of a city. It didn't look like any that I'd seen before. The walls of all the buildings were jagged, broken up into small pieces, and a dark red and brown color. Everything was covered in pieces of wood and painted boards, and absolutely nothing was evenly level. From the windows or the ground between the buildings, I heard voices shouting in a rough dialect that I'd sometimes heard from Captain Solo or Miss Kendalina.
Within the city limits, I could see even more movement and heard even more loud shouting and excitement. Most of it came from Humans with dark, sagging skin and black hair that swirled around their ears or under wraps on their jaws. A majority of them were women in white, shapeless dresses that billowed around their sagging knees. Others were children even younger than myself, some without shoes, some without shirts, even one chubby little girl with a pink ribbon around her head and a shirt that only just covered her diaper.
Where are all the other species? Are Humans really the only sentient life on this planet? I was confused. Not to mention virtually everyone was staring at me. It was enough to make me wonder if none of them had ever seen another Human before. I even tried stopping a woman to ask for basic directions.
"Excuse me, Miss." A woman with an inky black face and a puckered jaw turned and gave me a disdainful glance over, "I'm just a little lost. Could you tell me where I am?"
"I say you is. What a boy like y'all be doing in this quarter?" She brayed before sauntering off with an almost pompous air. I blinked, completely taken aback by the response. Maybe I was wrong about the language here. Or was I mistaken in assuming these were Humans? Were they, possibly, Humanoids of some sort that were able to tell I was a completely different species?
Several more minutes took me into wider streets with not only more people, but vehicles speeding along on the ground. I noticed this one particularly after a large, box-shaped machine blared an alarm noise at me before turning onto the walkway. I was the last person to move out of the way, feeling the rush of air ruffle my hair as the vehicle went down one of the side streets I'd come out of.
I had to find a much more crowded street before a hunched over, wrinkled old creature with plastic on her head politely told me this place was called New Orleans. But by this time, I had come on a new problem entirely – on virtually every building, where signs would normally hanging advertising the name of the establishment, I saw unintelligible symbols. Some glowed, some flashed, some were simply pasted onto the windows of their residence.
Oh, this can't be good. Was the language completely different, altogether, or was it just the alphabet? I had to duck back out of traffic into a less crowded side street to collect myself and form a plan of action. If some inhabitants on New Orleans were so hostile towards visitors for not knowing where they were, then it seemed fairly reasonable that not being able to read might be equally as unusual.
Well, the answer should be obvious. I knew that much. I guess it was just my pride that stopped me from actually admitting it. Use the Force. Just a little bit couldn't hurt. Not to just figure out where you need to go.
Where I needed to go was to a library. A library was a good, innocuous way of gathering information and keeping a low profile. The trouble was how to get there.
Just a little push. You could trick someone into taking you there. You could just ask them any questions and have your answers. And then what? Grabbing someone was bound to attract attention. And even if I could use the Force to lure them in on their own, two complete strangers talking in a side street would look suspicious and I didn't have enough control over my abilities to make any kind of mind trick look natural. All I could do was watch the various people going past me, trying to think of some way I could do this without using the Force.
My answer came in the form of a skinny old man pushing a wiry rack with wheels. He moved slowly and the bumps in the ground seemed to give him as much difficulty as if he were pushing up a steep cliff. Brown packages in the rack rattled and shifted, precariously. A little spark of inspiration hit me – one that I didn't need to use the Force to make this work. I stepped out, back into the flow of people.
"Sir, would you like some help?" I asked in the best helpful tone I could muster as I glided up behind the old man. He turned to blink his beady eyes at me. I counted three brown freckles over his right, stringy, white eyebrow.
"Thanks, sonny." I had to fight to keep my mouth closed, tightly, at the word. I'd had enough of being called 'kid' or 'son' or any other such noun when I was twelve. It was even more irritating coming from this old thing. With the best smile I had, I picked the rack up and started to push it through the crowd, the old man still clinging to it for support and talking to me about subjects I couldn't have remembered. He mentioned having children, I said How nice! He complained they never called, I replied That's a pity! He talked about the supposed aliens that had been spotted over the marshes last night, I said Oh, I see, and resisted the urge to correct his assumption. It grated on my nerves and the man's impossible quaver made my eardrums quake, but I continued to smile and nod. I had to make this guy feel willing to help me.
When I finally helped him up the steps to a slated, white building with squares of glass stuck on the front and sides, that was when I pressed the question.
"Would you be able to point me to the library?" The old man's right wrist trembled as he pulled a bright yellow piece of metal out of his blue pants pocket. He gave me a strange, half tilted head look, before pointing straight down the street to a building we'd passed a block ago. Still sweating with nervousness, I thanked him and tried not to run through the swarm of people towards the building. It hadn't answered my question of how to understand the letters, but it really didn't matter as far as I was concerned. Just getting out of the way was my priority, especially with the strange looks I kept getting from everyone.
Just like everything else, the library was a strangely low-built building. The front door was the only thing I really recognized, but all other features of the building were chunky and blocklike, and it made me feel like I was walking into a cinderblock to step inside. The lighting was the same, fluorescent blue like any star cruiser, and the floor a blue and gray linoleum tile. Instead of thin racks of files, there were large, clunky towers with oddly shaped volumes. Some had colors on their sides, some were thick, some were thin, some barely fit between the shelves and dwarfed others, and all of them had the same, strange lettering on their labels. There were barely any computers – only five, boxlike machines in a corner near an office with fogged glass in the windows.
I almost wanted to stare, except I knew that would draw only more stares, myself. Avoiding the eyes of a wide-eyed female Human pawing through a shelf of the volumes, I proceeded through the aisles. A children's section was bound to have some kind of alphabet learning tool. It was the only chance I had at finding some kind of translation, and I could work things out from there. The only other option I could think of was trying to persuade another person that I simply couldn't read this writing system and hoping they could translate the letters to aurebesh with me.
I did not see that last option going over quite so well.
Thankfully, I found a brightly colored section with a number of oddly shaped, minature chairs, obviously not intended for adults. After a few minutes of inspecting, I pulled out a piece that fell open, pieces of flimsiplast flipping between the bindings. Each page had one of the unusual letters on it with pictures accompanying it. Close towards the end, I saw a curved letter with a picture of a snake on the page, and on the next, a bar-like structure with a picture of a table.
After minutes of skimming the album and making notes on the flimsi in my pocket, I had almost all the alphabet and it's corresponding aurebesh letters noted. The only missing characters were the dipthong letters, but I supposed, with only twenty-six letters, the people on New Orleans probably got along just fine.
A guide to the letters in hand, I went for the computers, ready to look up any information I needed on this planet.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
It had taken me several hours to work the computer – partly because of the keyboard being marked with all the strange letters that I didn't understand, and partly because the layout was so unusual compared to anything I'd ever seen. I did manage with a lot of hunt and peck, and I was immensely relieved that I hadn't made a stupid mistake by trying to use voice commands. But the end results had been even stranger. Each item I entered into the search box had lead me to an entirely new question, and every time I thought I had an answer, I realized that I didn't understand it fully and went back in, again.
My first idea had been to simply type in questions and look for the answers. The problem with that idea had been the results usually ending up as 'Take this online quiz, now!' screens that pulled up without my clicking on anything. My next strategy was to enter in the only name I knew about this planet and moving through pages, that way. Now, I had a few points specifically worked out:
1) New Orleans was not, as I'd thought, the name of the planet. It was, instead, a city in a province called Louisiana, which was a state in a country called America, which was in the northern hemisphere of a planet known as Earth. 2) The planet Earth was in a galaxy that I had never heard of with no record of coordinates. 3) The inhabitants of this planet had no concept of systems beyond their own – in fact, they all considered their planet to be the only one in space capable of supporting life. 4) There was no reliable means of space travel, and thus, no record of other systems or any maps that would give me a relative idea of home. 5) Humans were the only officially recognized sentient species on this planet. Non-Humans were either domesticated as farm animals or pets, or left in the wild, and there was absolutely no such thing as a non-organic creature on this planet – no droids, no creatures that breathed something other than oxygen, absolutely nothing.
Even more mind-boggling was that Earth wasn't even the classification of the society – it was the name of the planet, and nothing more. Actual societies had different names, different locations, different headquarters. I didn't think I'd ever heard of a planet which had multiple cultures and governments simultaneously operating. It was like stepping into a completely different era of societal evolution. They hadn't even developed hover technology, yet. Everything rested firmly on the ground, and all motion equipped vehicles traveled on wheels.
It was entirely too much for me to absorb. I was, very well and truly, lost. Not only was I stranded, but there wasn't even a means for me to even regain contact with any other planet. To these people, the entire galaxy I came from didn't even exist.
I didn't know how long I sat at the computer terminal, staring into the blue screen, completely unable to believe what I had just read. When I did return to myself, I started to frantically search for some acknowledgement. No star system could be this primitive – there HAD to be something that they knew of.
I typed in as many famous planets as I could. I found surreal, fantasy paintings that were nothing like the real thing. I entered in the Galactic Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The articles I found were all headed under an unusual title about 'Star Wars'. I ran a search on the Jedi Order. A screen popped up instructing me to use the arrow keys on the keyboard in some sort of game.
I failed to see the entertainment of it.
I even entered in the name Luke Skywalker. Somebody had to have heard of him. Instead, I was directed to the profile of an actor. For a moment, I almost believed I'd found something: he did look similar – the same hair, basic face shape, and body – but it wasn't the same. There were scars missing from his chin and forehead, his nose was the wrong shape, and his eyes were just utterly wrong: The wrong shade of blue, the wrong shape, missing all the specks and tints and shades that the real Luke Skywalker's eyes possessed. And the biography mentioned nothing of Tatooine, Anakin Skywalker, the war, the Jedi, or anything. It was as though the galaxy was a mere dream for this planet.
The last name I entered was Emperor Palpatine. Screen opened up several pages, and the first one I clicked on had these first few words: Palpatine is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the Star Wars saga.
I couldn't keep going. It was as though the words just refused to register. I could not, honestly just could not, believe I had read that. Fictional? FICTIONAL? The sole source of pure, concentrated evil; the being that had single-handedly destroyed our galaxy was a mere character in a story? I almost choked. I wanted to scream. I just could not believe that anyone or anything could be so ignorant, and an entire planet of people believed this.
For the longest time, I sat in that chair, eyes glazed over as I held in a scream. If anyone had so much as spoke to me, I don't think I could have restrained myself. But when I did sit back up and begin to think again, something entirely new occurred to me: If this planet knew nothing of the Galactic Empire, the horrible things it had done, and the monster the Emperor had been... maybe, just maybe... maybe it meant that nobody on this planet would care. If anyone found out who I was or where I came from... it wouldn't matter.
The next breath I took, I suddenly became aware of the unusual smell in the building – the smell of the air, this strange, alien atmosphere that permeated everything on this planet. It smelled unlike any kind of air I had ever breathed. It smelled like freedom.
Instead of getting out of my chair and just dancing with utter glee, I returned my attention back to my research. I was, after all, stuck on this planet, indefinitely. I had to find a place to stay, some way to blend in with the locals, and a means to feed myself. I was going to have to learn as much as I could about this planet before the library closed for the night.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~
The sun had set by the time I was through. My research had yielded much more ready information about residences for those without any income, about jobs, about the geography of New Orleans and the people who resided inside, and any other information I could have thought of for immediate use.
The most immediately useful information was that of names and ages. The planet Earth had a slightly shorter year than the galactic standard, and it's system of keeping time was broken into different lengths. Also, a name like 'Orewahime' would most likely rouse suspicion with any acquaintances – it didn't even match a name from some other language on this planet. Instead, I would introduce myself as Ken Gray. My supposed date of birth would be the fifteenth of March from the year nineteen eighty-four, putting me at barely twenty years old. I had lost my parents recently in a boating accident on the Mississippi and most of my memories along with it.
That was my story and I would stick to it.
I would need to stay at a shelter for homeless youth, but I didn't quite mind that prospect – compared to having to constantly run and hide, a cheap bed in a large common seemed refreshing. I'd be able to search for jobs in the morning, and return to the library for more research materials. Indeed, when I showed up at the gate of a gold and red bricked residence, the woman who let me in the front door was smiling in an almost anxious manner, even if she did give my clothes the same strange and confused look everyone else did. Maybe she assumed I was wearing second-hand from a parent or something. She jabbered at me with a rough accent that I barely understood, but I smiled and nodded at what I hoped were the right moments.
All of this, I'd managed without calling on the Force, once. I honestly thought I might just be happy on this planet, Earth. It was as though the shackle around my neck had broken, and with it, my connection to the galaxy and everything I'd run away from.
It's only going to get worse. Just give it time, and it'll all come back to get you. I tried my hardest not to think about it.
I promised myself, just before I fell asleep, that I would never use the Force again. It just wasn't worth it. And I would rather be an unknown face on this planet than the greatest Jedi in history, back home where it had done nothing but bring everyone misery.
Chapter 2
Victor
I impatiently rapped my knuckles on the bar. Everywhere was noisy and crowded, like it always was in New Orleans, but this place seemed especially so.
I had thought that New Orleans would at least distract me, somewhat, but it only seemed to punctuate my unhappiness. I missed Paul. The first few months, I had been so unbearably lonely, I hadn't even bothered with activity. I'd fed sparsely, only every dozen days or so, on cowardly teenagers who dared each other into the house I now haunted. It had been a whole season before I even left the house. Kyle had long since perished – fuck him, anyway, it was all he deserved for meddling in mine and Paul's affairs – and I had no desire to make any associations, anyway.
In time, though, my despondency had started to yield into that familiar vengeful anger I was used to feeling. I preferred being angry, anyway. I'd lived with anger for so much longer. I knew how to feel it. It was a fuel, a drive, a key that wound my gears. My first real, active month in New Orleans, I set out into the city and it's ghettos with a vengeance. Prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless bums, and anyone who walked alone, I'd follow and tear into their flesh with my fangs. Some of them were easy; most struggled, screamed, cried, and prayed. A month of that had been enough; enough that it at least made me feel better.
Paul would have been horrified. That must be why my rage lost its momentum so quickly. Now, I had resorted to a much more mundane existence. I had rules, this time. Not rules that anyone else had governed, but my own, and I kept them with the old pride of a soldier, the pride that I could discipline myself. I fed when I needed to, I ceased killing, and I kept the evidence completely away from me. I refused to be found and killed by humans after so long, but there was no way out of it. I was going to have an eternity of this.
I was going to have an eternity of hell on earth.
So, I mulled over an empty glass that I would never ask to be filled. I brought these into bars for camouflage, and no bartender ever asked me what I was having to drink or if I wanted another. A curvy girl with a mesh shirt over her bra slid into the seat next to me, hand on my leg.
"You alone, Mista?" She asked, voice thick with a slur. I could smell a heavy perfume from her neck, right where I saw her pulse throbbing like a tempting morsel, waiting to be bitten.
"Very." I replied, running my hand up her arm to the hook under her shoulder. The girl pulled out a slim, brown roll of tobacco and stuck it into an ivory cigarette holder.
"I got a car out back." Of course she did. But I had no desire to be caught by a patrolling state trooper as I fed in a back alley. That only caused me more trouble, and would eventually lead to suspicions, all over again.
"Would you mind somewhere a bit more private?" I put a hand around her back, right under a tattoo on her left shoulder blade. The girl smiled as best she could around the cigarette. A better gentleman might have lit that suggestive tobacco for her, but I was in no mood for games.
I was very rarely in a mood for games when I was hungry, these days.
"You got a place in mind?"
"My place. Neighborhood on the hill." I assured her, pressing on her back even stronger to follow me out of the bar. She came willingly. Most houses in the same neighborhood as mine were regarded as prime spots. The same pictures realtors used were also put on postcards and brochures for romantic getaway vacations.
I never saw it. All that I could see were the only residences in the entire city with decent basements.
Along the climb along the hill houses, that was when I felt the chill. I could tell, immediately, that it was something otherworldly – the sensation had been a stark contrast from the sticky, nauseating air of this southern city. I couldn't even understand what it was – I felt as though something was hovering over my head, watching me. I raised my eyes to the clouded sky over us. The girl took my pause in.
"Y'all heard 'bout them aliens, right?" She asked, and when I said I hadn't, I quickly learned, "They was on the news this morning. Some lights up in the sky last night and someone saw 'em land in the marshes. Ain't no creature'a God's, I tell you that."
I barely listened. It was one of the many modern obsessions that had never interested me, this fascination with what was beyond this planet. It never mattered what planet you could get to – if it was just a matter of how far, I didn't deem it worth my interest.
And, either way, death would be the same, no matter what soil you stood on.
I didn't have any silence until I stumbled the girl through the door of the house. Then, she immediately ceased to talk – either with resumed attention to her work, or with shock to the actual house. It didn't matter to me. One hand looped around her waist, pinning her arms. The other, I used to bend her head to the side, my fangs reaching for her jugular as though they were being pulled.
I only drank a liter or so before I withdrew and licked the wounds clean. The girl was limp in my arms as I limped back out and down the street with her body resting on my shoulder as though I were supporting a drunk. It was always this way with my victims – I drank enough until they would pass out and not remember a thing the next morning. I left her in the gutter near an alley. She would wake up and assume I had drugged her. I took care to be sure few eyes saw me, and any that did notice always looked the other way, no doubt drawing the same conclusions.
My throat now moistened and thirst, quenched, I returned to the house. My feedings usually lasted me a week, sometimes more, now that I did absolutely nothing during the night. Nothing sparked my interest, nor gave me any desire to leave the walls of my confinement. There had even been some nights, during the most memorable days of the year, when staying inside the house had felt more like protection from prying, human eyes than a cage.
I hid in the cellar during Mardi Gras and the Christmas and Easter holidays. Granted that the abundance of people in the streets would have made feeding much easier and getting caught much less likely during all the bustle and activity. But, in all honesty, it wasn't worth it. So much excitement reminded me of Paul, and all the religious, goodwill bullshit these people threw around reminded me even more painfully of Joshu.
These two reminders made me irritable, before making me wish I could walk out into the sunlight. But I didn't. I had to keep going. If the Fates were going to mock me with these reminders, I would go on, just to spite them.
Rather than remain at peace for the rest of the night, that chill returned. I found myself looking over my shoulder, even though I was against a wall inside the walls of my own residence. I knew why I was anxious – I had had my fill of unnatural forces meddling with my existence. Why would they be coming after me now of all times? I was doing nothing to provoke them, this time at least.
"Who's there?" I demanded, knowing that nothing but silence would answer me. There wasn't even so much as a breeze through the broken glass of the windows to stir any movement. Playing games with spirits and dark powers always made me edgy. There was no real way to confront them, not the way I liked to confront my enemies. But, if anything could console me, it was that they were all too cowardly to face me, directly. It made me wonder if it was because of my nature or some other inane rule of the Dark Kingdom.
And, of course, what could I do to stop them? If I could, this time?
I was grateful for the approaching dawn, but the blood splashing my insides churned with unrest as I returned to my coffin, still unsure what it meant.
A/N: I feel so filthy, now.
