On A Hippie Trail, Head Full of Zombie
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Down Under by Men at Work
Saijo is not the murky, watery ball of depression like Dromund Kaas. But, again, it's not the tropical paradise that he wanted for him and Armitage. Located on K-20 of the Galactic Atlas, Saijo is on the fringes of the Outer Rim and is part of First Order space, even though the First Order has no political or military control over the planet. Saijo and the First Order are trading partners but not exactly allies, which is an apt description for most of the First Order relationships with their alien neighbors.
Kylo, or Matt, has requested Nihl Ren, a former Warlord of Firefist and a Knight of Ren, to compile him a report about the planet. And, like always, Matt has waited 'til the last minute to read the report:
[To: Bogan's Chosen
Subject: A Brief on Saijo
To begin with, Saijo's primary terrains are mountains, oceans, and green river valleys. It is mostly inhabited by my people, but the planet used to belong to the Tofs until I exterminated them. The primary languages spoken there are Nagaian, Sy Bisti, a version of Minnisiat, and Ancient Sith. Since Ancient Sith and Nagaian share a similar syllabary, I had it mandated in the Education curriculum when I was ruling, so most of the younglings should speak it. Recently, Basic and Yuuzhan Vong are gaining traction.
Basic came from interactions with the First Order, but our Basic is heavily accented and only used with humans. Yuuzhan Vong is actually more popular than Basic, even though it is far more difficult to learn. It sounds guttural and animalistic compared to Basic or Nagaian, but it is a language of warriors and thus respected by my people. Its popularity stems from when the Quorealists contacted us and I decided to involve my people into the Yuuzhan Vong War, so we were exposed to the Yuuzhan Vong and their culture.
My Master I suggest that you stick with Basic when interacting with my people, but do practice your Ancient Sith when you can. I also suggest that you and your Beloved check out the Temple of Yun-Shuno. The Temple was built to honor when the Yuuzhan Vong Goddess first spoke to the people of Saijo and requested their aid. It's even built on the exact spot where it all took place. It is a one of a kind temple and would be an ideal location for a picnic.]
With Nihl's reports, Matt has a particularly strong habit of procrastinating on reading them for two reasons. First, Nihl has a habit of referring to events that Matt has no idea about and also has no bearing in his reports. Second, Nihl always writes his reports in impeccable Ancient Sith, a language that Matt is still struggling to learn from his Master and his Knight. So it takes Matt nearly two hours to decipher the brief.
At least he attached a map that doesn't need deciphering! Matt sees that Nihl has highlighted the Temple which resides at the foot of the N'takkilomandrife Mountains. Yeah, I'm just going to call it Knife Mountains instead and I will go to the Temple. With Armitage. And our picnic basket!
Matt is sitting on a stone bench on the side of a dirt road. I've been sitting here for almost an hour now! Armitage messaged me these exact coordinates as soon as I got off the shuttle to meet him here. But I don't see him. Why here? It is like an hour away from the Temples. Is he going to show up on speeder wearing a nice leather number and take me for a ride? Oh Force, I hope that's the reason. We could make-out in that Temple—
He hears a clattering of wooden sandals coming southward. In five minutes, he makes out Armitage running towards him in actual wooden sandals with red toe-socks. He looks like he just stepped out of one of Nihl's samurai movies. He's even wearing those super-baggy pants that swallow up his wooden sandals. Actually, his sleeves look like they swallow up his hands too! It's like his entire body is being swallowed up by the Dark Side…but he does look great in black, especially with that high ponytail showing off the rest of his face. Force, his eyes are super-green today.
"Was I supposed to bring a katana, Mr. Samurai?" Armitage stops only two steps from him; he tilts his head like he's confused. Aww, he look so adorable! Especially in those oversized…robes? Am I ever going to see his bare feet? Or even his hands? I'd kill for a flash of palm!
"Not unless you want to kill Aku, Ashi!" Armitage recovers and chooses to tease him. Matt looks blankly at him. Aku? Ashi? I guess they're part of some other samurai movie.
"Uh, what I meant was why are you dressed like that?" It can't be part of Nagai fashion because I saw most of the locals wearing lighter robes than his.
"Oh, well it's because I was cold. This planet is in the middle of its spring season, but it's a bit chilly for me. Man, you don't seem to have a problem though. Are you half N'Gai?" Matt looks down at his outfit. He's wearing grey shorts with a black belt and a thin black top. Shit, I really should've remembered that Matt does not have the Force and cannot keep himself warm in this outfit…I just wanted to look hot!
"No, but I am part Wookie." He jokes, making Armitage grin. Yes, I still got it!
"It would explain your impressive nasalis!" I don't know what that is. Is that like another word for my nose? Is he not attracted to my arms or ass? Matt specially picked out this outfit because it highlights his best assets. And Armitage seems absolutely content with ignoring his best assets in favor of his worst. Or one of his worsts.
"Yeah….we should get walking. The Temple is about an hour away." Armitage's green eyes flicker down to his wooden picnic basket. It's a classical Nabooian picnic basket; a moon-white wicker basket with a checkered table cloth covering it.
"I made this for our lunch or whenever we get hungry." Armitage's thin lips become a big smile. Aww, he loves it when I make him food. Or gets food at all if I'm going by his painfully thin frame.
"Let's get walking then! I wonder if the mountains still have holes in them from the stingcrawlers; they shouldn't since Nei did tell me that would seed them…" Armitage mutters as he walks onto the dirt road.
Matt stares at Armitage's back as he walks away with one thought on his mind.
What the pfassk is he talking about!?
"So…" Be smooth, Matt! "You've been here before?"
"Well, yes, it's been almost…eight years since I last set foot on this planet. But it was for business rather than pleasure." Armitage practically purrs on pleasure. Matt feels his cheeks flush. I actually might get lucky on this date!
"What was your business? Botany?" Armitage smiles faintly.
"War." War? Well, he did went to the Academy, so maybe he became a mercenary to support his education because I seriously doubt his father left him anything. Matt feels bitterness coloring his thoughts. Three nights ago, he had to repair a malfunctioning control panel, which Kylo had nothing to do with for once, in the Officers' Lounge. He listened to Chief Petty Officer Umano and Captain Phasma regaling stories about the Academy. Most of it was about who got married and who is commanding their own ship. But then they started talking about Armitage and his father….
"I was so shocked when I saw Hux again! I actually wanted to go up to him and ask why he left the Academy. My money is on blackmail."
"No, no, Umano, he left because he actually wanted to. I should know; I was outside the door moving some stuff for the Commandant's secretary when he dropped out."
"Commandant Hux didn't have a secretary. I think he had that weird nanny droid from Arkanis as his secretary."
"No, Commandant Veed, the one that replaced Commandant Hux after his retirement. And I think that droid was called Dee-Dee."
"Oh yeah, wasn't there something weird about Commandant Hux retiring shortly after the spring semester started? And wasn't his son mysteriously absent for a month?"
"Yeah, Hux was in the hospital for a month after the…Trials."
"Oh, that explains it! But he dropped out at sixteen; I thought you had to be eighteen to be allowed to participate."
"Advanced Torture became age-restricted AFTER Hux dropped out; before, all you need was to have near perfect grades to get in. And Hux was the best student that the Academy ever had."
"And he was out for a month! The Trials usually put someone out of commission for a week or less. How long was he tortured?"
"I don't know, but clearly long enough for them to put a time limit AFTER he left. I bet that's why the Commandant 'retired' because someone on his staff was going to show it to High Command and have him fired. Maybe even Veed himself; he seemed slimy enough to do it."
"But would High Command be surprised by that? I've heard all the stories about Hux and his father like how he had a tryst with a kitchen servant while he was married and Hux was the result of that. He only brought Hux to the First Order during the Siege of Arkanis because the Order needed all the children they can get. I wouldn't be surprised if he intended for Hux to become one of the first in his long-proposed Stormtrooper program, but was rejected because Grand Admiral Sloane felt sorry for the boy."
"Even High Command has limits to a parent's cruelty to their child. No matter how illegitimate. And Maker knows what happened to Hux whenever he went to his father's office. He always did have a terribly high pain tolerance…"
"….Matt? Matt?" He hears Armitage's voice break through the memory. He sees Armitage looking at him with puzzlement.
"Sorry, I spaced out for a minute." Armitage chuckles.
"Actually, it was for almost twenty." Okay, I really need to stop…thinking about such unpleasant things. This is a date and I should be focusing on him!
"I was daydreaming."
"Well, it must've been an unpleasant one. You were frowning and glaring the entire time." When you've learned someone you care for was abused by their own father, you tend to get pissed. Matt bites his tongue and fumbles for a lie.
"A Stormtrooper was talking shit about Lord Ren again." It's not untrue. Matt's heard plenty of Stormtroopers talk about him behind his back. And they wonder why I fling them across hallways.
"Oh…" Armitage looks awkwardly down at his feet. "Lord Ren is pretty cool."
"Really? I know you aren't supposed to…legally talk about your mission since you were with such a high-ranking member of the Order. But weren't you scared? Especially when you saw his awesome lightsaber?" Armitage sheepishly grins and shakes his head; his ponytail snaps at the air.
"No. I know he wasn't going to use it on me. Even if I was scared, it was only because of the composition of the lightsaber. He really needs to get a new Kyber crystal or synthesize a more stable one. Lord Ren was really….nice." Armitage blushes slightly and Matt feels his pants tighten.
Oh Force, he likes Kylo! I mean me! The real me. Oooh, what if he has an affair with me but not knowing it's me. It would so illicit and dirty! He could blow me, Kylo, in a storage closet, but then come home to me, Matt, feeling all guilty and filthy and try to repent by fucking my brains out! Okay, okay, calm down! You're getting ahead of yourself. Matt's pants now feel like they're five sizes too small.
"Oh, should I be jealous?" Of course, he won't admit that—
"Of course not! He's exactly like the Commandant!" Armitage declares cheerfully. Matt halts and watches Armitage leave him in the dust.
He then goes off the dirt road and into the surrounding forest. He finds a tree with a thick, sturdy trunk and punches it until he stops seeing red.
"You were gone for a long time." Armitage comments when Matt finally returns. He isn't frowning at Matt's absence, but grinning at the technician.
"Sorry, I had to…use the 'fresher." It's been a while since I had to heal myself, but it's not like I could show up with bloodied knuckles.
"Oh, do you need hand sanitizer? The oil from the tea trees around us can act as hand sanitizer." Well, that explains why my knuckles stung after punching that fern-looking tree. Matt shakes his head.
"No need; I had some in the basket just in case our hands got sticky from the food." Which is true, Matt did put hand sanitizer in the basket for that very reason.
They then walk for five minutes in silence.
"So…..what's the Temple called? Or is it just the Temple?" Armitage asks. It takes Matt a moment to figure out a way to pronounce the temple's name since Nihl neglected to do so.
"I believe it is called the Temple of Yun-Shuno; I think it's dedicated to some Yuuzhan Vong Goddess or something." Armitage halts immediately.
"Uh, Armitage, are you okay?" He's so still…did that Goddess do something bad to him? Am I going to have to deface another temple again? But not with fire, but with…sex? Maybe. Vengeance makes people horny. It makes me horny.
"We have to go now!" Armitage grabs him and runs like his life depends on it. Matt is more amazed that Armitage can run so fast in those shoes than by how Armitage is able to yank him along. He uses the Force to make sure that none of the contents of the picnic basket spill out.
It takes them ten minutes of running to finally make it to their destination.
The dirt road becomes black pebbles, almost the size of moonstones that Ben would find on Naboo, and white gravel. Crunch, crunch, crunch, Matt hears for a minute as they transition from dirt to rock. They stop at the stairs.
The stairs are moss-covered with wooden railings jutting out from the ground like bamboo stalks. There is a fence on both sides of the stairs; the fence only covers a meter of ground on each side, but it is about a meter taller than Matt so he cannot see what's on the other side.
But I see a thousand eyes looking at me. Green. Blue. Black. They eyes…some of them look human because they have pupils, but most of them have no iris; they're just a pitcher of color. So is this Yun-Shuno an All-Seeing Goddess? Like over Her people or over all of time? AND HOLY SHIT, THEY JUST BLINKED! Matt pales as the eyes blink once more at him.
"I really love how they kept the Nagai curved eaves for the roofs. And if you look at the roof tiles close enough, you can see stars scratched on them from the Tehk'la blades!" Armitage gushes, clearly not disturbed by the blinking eyes.
Matt feels himself being pulled up the steps and dive into the Temple's heart.
It's a courtyard of flowers and plants that Matt has never seen before. Some of them look like green, oblong roses with furry stems; others look like slithering, golden snakes. And then there are some that look like honeycombs filled with fly-like plants in amniotic-looking sacs. But he cannot feel the Force coming from any of them. No signs of life, but he sees life.
"Oh Shiraya…" Matt utters.
And at the center of this alien nursery is a statue of Yun-Shuno. A statue that looks exactly like his Armitage.
On closer inspection, the statue almost matches the living article, except the skin is moon-white and the cheekbones are far too sharp. There is a headdress on the statue that reminds Matt of the ruby coral reefs on Mon Calamari if they were twisted into writhing tentacles. At the center of the headdress are three pair of eyes, green, blue, and black eyes like the blinking eyes on the fence. Matt shivers in memory of those eyes.
The statue is clothed in a membranous, strapless dress that acts more like a second skin than an actual dress. Its color is a rich red like the blossom wine that Ben would secretly drink at his mom's political functions.
His eyes are then drawn to the mottled, pinkish red of the painted statue's left arm. Matt quickly deduces that the left arm is covered in a massive burn and realizes that Armitage's left arm must be burned too. The right arm is perfectly smooth and covered in the familiar tattoos that Matt has come to associate with him. The right hand is loosely gripping an oddly constructed sword. The sword has the leather brown hilt of a lance, the red with golden embellishments of a rapier's basket, and the silver blade of a broadsword.
Armitage looks…alien. Like even more alien than when I first met him. But he also looks like a warrior. Oh Force, did he kill so many people for these Yuuzhan Vong that they deified him? Does he still have that super-tight dress and oddly beautiful headdress? And is he even wearing underwear under that dress? Matt strategically covers his crotch with the picnic basket.
"I've got admit the statue is pretty accurate. Well, back when I first arrived here. They even got my short hair right! The outfit I'm wearing is basically what a Master Shaper would wear and I shouldn't have been wearing it since I was like an Initiate at the time, but I was acting Yun-Shuno, so I had to look impressive." I have no pfassking idea what he's saying. Which sums up 90% of our conversations thus far.
"What's a Master Shaper? Who is Yun-Shuno? Why did you have to impersonate Her? And do you still have that outfit with the headdress?" Matt chooses only four of the hundred questions that he has for Armitage. Mostly because he would like to eat soon.
"A Master Shaper is the highest rank that a Shaper can obtain. A Shaper is essentially like a bioengineer or a scientist to the Yuuzhan Vong. Yun-Shuno is one of the Goddesses that the Yuuzhan Vong, or more specifically the Shaper caste, worships. She is the Goddess of Forgiveness and also known as The Pardoner; she was worshipped by the Shamed Ones and then by the Exalted Ones. She is usually depicted as one of the most hideous deities and takes on the form of a thousand eyes so she could watch over and protect her equally imperfect followers from the other Gods." Well, that explains the eye motif on the fence.
"Before I explain why I took on her mantle, Matt, I need you to answer a question for me. How would you physically describe me?"
Oh shit, is this a trick question? Am I supposed to say he's like the handsomest or most beautiful person I've ever know? Because that is not true. Shit, shit, shit, what do I say? I can't just say he's the skinniest person I've ever met, which is true, and I can't say he's the smartest since he emphasized on the physical. I have to give him an answer and this answer will probably determine if there's going to be another date! Matt feels sweat dripping down his forehead.
"W-Well…you're a ginger. And…lithe. And kind of tall. And tattooed. And you have a pleasant face. And a long neck. And…..hands. I think you're hot." Matt is now certain there's not going to be a third date. Armitage chuckles and shakes his head.
"You might find me hot, but to many Yuuzhan Vong and other non-human races, I am hideous. So who better than a hideous being such as I to play Yun-Shuno? And who better to motivate the Shamed Ones to fight against the false Supreme Overlord than their Goddess? And to answer your final question, yes, I still have the outfit and headdress even though I am just an Adept." Matt opens his mouth to ask more questions, but Armitage lays one red index finger on his plush lips.
"I am famished. If you still have questions for me, I'll answer them on the next date. Let me use my mouth for something more." Armitage trails his left hand to the back of Matt's head and brings Matt's lips closer to his. They share their first kiss. It's languid and chaste and….
I can taste the Light on his lips.
Author's Comments: Here are the links-
Mary Jo Duffy, the creator of the Nagai, has stated she was inspired by anime and a Japanese comic about a tragic vampire, and I would not be surprised if she was also inspired by Japanese culture in general when creating the Nagai: a href=" . /starwars/images/2/29/Nagai_ /revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/150?cb=20071217212445"Link/a
I was inspired by the Toshogu Shrine in Japan to make the Temple of Yun-Shuno in this story. However, I made it far smaller than the actual shrine and it's more….Yuuzhan Vong with some beehive aspects: a href=" . "Link/a
I was sorely tempted to extend the last bit dialogue, but then it would've been too much exposition for this story. Even though there's a lot exposition in this one too. And a nod to a certain cartoon.
Next time: Kylo meditates on his relationship with Armitage Hux, while Armitage welcomes a new arrival!