Such Boundless Pleasure
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Let Go by Frou Frou
"Maladi, I need you to alter the records for Matt the Radar Technician." Maladi Ren hears from her comlink in speaker mode while she is performing surgery on Broonmark Ren. Her fellow knight had the misfortune of taking shrapnel from a raid.
And Broonmark would have mostly walked around with the shrapnel in his body until he inevitably experienced internal bleeding.
But Broonmark is one of the few knights who actually attends his mandatory check-ups after a mission.
"What would you like altered, Master Ren?" She inquires as she uses the Force to carefully extract one of the final shards of shrapnel from Broonmark. This piece is unfortunately lodged fairly close to his spine. If her grip on the Force becomes tenuous, then he'll lose the ability to walk.
There is not a drop of sweat on her orange-red, furless skin.
"I need you to add that Matt had an identical twin."
"Do you have a name for the twin, Master Ren?" She pulls the glass shard, almost the size of a toothpick, away from the Talz's spine.
"Yes, me." There's a pause. "But my name's redacted because the parents gave me up to Master Snoke."
"Understood. However, Matt would no longer be orphaned from birth, which means he will need parents and a surname, Master Ren." She works silently for five minutes as she finally pulls the shard cleanly out and deposits the indigo-bloody shard into the pan with the rest of the pieces.
"The parents' names are Indy and Amelia, while the surname is Amidala. Wait, wouldn't having a surname be suspicious since my technician badge only has 'Matt' on there?" She begins sewing up Broonmark's back.
"In the First Order Manual for Technicians, it states that technicians need to only put one name on their badge. Usually, the name that is succinct and pronounceable, Master Ren." She finishes up and then gestures for the med-droid on standby to take Broonmark to the bacta tanks.
"Good, I also need you aboard the Finalizer."
"When, Master Ren?"
"As soon as possible. Master Snoke has a mission for us."
"I will be there shortly, Master Ren."
Lehon, formerly Rakata Prime, was the seat of the Rakatan Infinite Empire and home of the Star Forge that helped the Rakata expand their influence to as far as primitive Coruscant. Millennia after its collapse, Darth Revan came and powered up the Star Forge to begin the Second Sith War; he ended it by destroying the Star Forge after his return to the Light.
The last Sith Lord to set foot on Lehon's white shores was Darth Bane.
"Maladi, do you believe will find anything here?"
"The Temple of the Ancients was a great importance to the Infinite Empire and the Order of Revan; I doubt we'll unearth anymore secrets from this most holy of grounds." She offers clinically, and expects only a polite nod like in the past.
"The Force tells me otherwise." She closes her yellow eyes and feels the Force. The Force tells her nothing, but she knows that she is not strong as Master Ren.
"Kylo Ren is the Apprentince I have been promised by the Force. He is strong in the Light and the Dark, strong as his grandfather. But such strength comes at a high cost." He pauses as they both listen to the screams from the other room.
Kylo Ren screams in fury, Ben Solo cries in grief.
"Master, the draught you prescribed for him shall reveal if he truly is your Apprentince." She made the draught for torturing the truth out of her victims.
"And he is. However, if I have somehow misread the Force, then at least we are rid of the Jedi's last hope." Kylo Ren or Ben Solo murdered his fellow Jedi Padawans at her Master's behest.
"Master, is Jedi Master Skywalker no longer a factor? Will not the massacre of his pupils spur him to avenge them?" Her Master laughs and it rattles her skull like when her father shook 'emotional control' in her.
"Oh, the Light was done with him the moment he brought his father back to the Light! He is no longer the Chosen One, just a broken man who shall flee like his Master before him."
"So is Kylo Ren or Ben Solo the new Chosen One since it appears to be hereditary?" Her Master shakes his head, a smile cutting his face in two.
"Oh no, he'll never be the Jedi Chosen One or the Sith'ari. He is powerful, but he'll never be wise." For a moment, she wonders if it is pity welling up in her chest. But then she remembers that Kylo Ren or Ben Solo flung her across the medbay when she went to retrieve him from the burning Praxeum.
It is just one of her dislocated ribs scraping against her left lung.
"Do you believe he'll serve you forever? His grandfather promised to serve Darth Sidious forever, but he failed." The smile does not leave his cracking lips.
"He is like a cur; all I have to do is keep him on a leash." The screams have finally ceased. The durasteel doors flung open like they are paper; the red Praetorian Guards readied their vibro-voulges.
Kylo Ren or Ben Solo pants like a dog needing to sweat; his sweat has seeps through the clean parts of his bloodied Jedi tunic. He looks at them with a hint of red in his wild brown eyes.
"Who are you?" Her Master inquires formally.
"I am Kylo Ren."
They walk to the temple in solitary silence, though she could hear the Force roiling around Master Ren like he's about to perform an impossible feat of strength.
She would sigh if she were vulgar like Chantique.
They make it to the temple in under an hour without any distractions as though the native fauna have collectively decided to leave them be. This is one of Master Ren's strengths.
The Temple of the Ancients looks like the core of a fruit picked clean; its white edifices are a murky gray like the color of her face plate. The white monoliths that once decorated its green fields have become piles of rubble nearly hidden by the sea of palm trees.
Yet, the temple stood twenty meters tall in the face of time's abuse.
"The entrance has been fortunately cleared." The entrance into the temple was once blocked by the collapse of the hall brought on by Darth Bane's duel with Sith Lord Kas'im. However, it has been cleared away; most likely by Minister Veris Hydan's crew during the height of the Empire.
They step onto the stairs and walk into the sunlit temple. The interior has fared better than the exterior; the walls are only a few shades short of its original purity, minus a few scorch-marks and body-shaped holes from Darth Bane's duel.
"We should explore the right side of the temple. There's such promise on that side in the Force." She nods politely and they go to the right.
They search the rooms for a shred of a secret and find nothing; she is near certain that there is nothing here. They reach the ends of the first floor and come across an abandon greenhouse; she senses a faint impression in the Force.
"An animal?" Master Ren stiffens like he's about to be lecture by Master Snoke.
"No…" In a flash, a giant moth comes towards them.
"SHEEVA!" He shorts out his vocoder with his yell.
The "Sheeva" stops and then flies away from them, clearly not liking to be yelled at. Master Ren runs to catch the "Sheeva," while she follows on his heels. Master Ren skids to a halt when he sees a human with green tattoos and waist-length red hair.
"Oh, hey, Kylo!" The human greets Master Ren like an old friend.
"I-I, what are you doing here!?" The "Sheeva" sits atop the human's hair with its legs crossed.
"Tending to the greenhouse plants." The human's blue eyes flick towards her.
"She's Maladi Ren, one of my knights." Master Ren introduces for her. The human nods and then does a small bow.
"Hi, I'm Armitage Hux!"
This is what she knows of Armitage Hux: he is the only child of the former Commandant Brendol Hux and an unnamed kitchen worker. He entered the Academy at the age of ten and outpaced his age-mates to the point where he was taking courses in Command by fourteen. He dropped out of the Academy at sixteen, shortly after the Commandant's resignation, and forfeited his chance at full First Order citizenship. At twenty-nine, he returned to the First Order for a private consultation on adapting food crops to harsh climates at the personal request of General Juno. Now, he is Master Ren's, under the guise of Matt the Radar Technician, latest lover.
This is what she didn't know of Armitage Hux: he is only a centimeter shorter than Master Ren. The entirety of his left arm is covered in burns. His bare chest is covered in the same green tattoos that decorate the rest of his freckled body. His jade-green skirt rustle against the ancient stone steps like a princess's skirts. His eyes can change from curious blue to lovely green. His teeth are slightly crooked. His voice is heavy with alien accents and camaraderie. He smells bittersweet like poppy tears.
"….Hello, Mr. Hux." She responds, not returning the bow for he is beneath her.
"You may call me Armitage." She expects a terrible joke to be utter next. "Kylo does, so why not his knights?"
"….Understood." She replies after looking at Master Ren for orders, but he gives her none.
"And the moth-fairy-child on my head is Sheeva. They are shy around new people." Sheeva's golden eyes look at her and then at its legs.
"They? I thought you said Sheeva was sexless." Master Ren comments with some mirth in his electric voice.
"Getting my friends to go with gender neutral terms in Basic was nigh impossible, so I decided to just use they, them, or their like them. Sheeva has made no complaints." Her eyes lower to the floor and widen slightly when she sees a bundle of gray worm-like creatures with black spikes on their backs slither out from Armitage's skirt.
"What the pfassk is that?" Master Ren nearly physically recoils, but Armitage disarms his fear with a smile.
"Viper plants." She opens her black lips slightly, nearly forming an O in shock. "Viper plants are quite poisonous if you step on them, so avoid the spikes if possible."
"But they were slithering out of your skirt!" Worry colors Master Ren Force-signature orange.
"My legs are tough like a dragon's hide." His green eyes nearly fade back to blue. "And they only excrete their poison when they feel threatened."
"Oh…..why were they in your skirt?" I hope they were just around his legs! Yet, she feels a pinch of arousal from Master Ren.
"They like the feel of my legs, reminds them of the hard ground they grew out of." She sees Master Ren's right hand twitch like he's about to use the Force to lift up his skirt, but Master Ren's eyes are distracted by the grim line of Armitage's thin lips. Sheeva frowns down at them.
"That, and I've been the only one giving them attention in like decades." He then mutters under his breath. "Though I thought Sidious was fond of serpents."
"Why are you in the greenhouse?" Master Ren finally asks, which causes Armitage to give him a pointed look."
"This is where I cultivate my poisons." He points his brown gloved fingers at each poisonous plant he lists off:
"That's darkkoninn." A green bush from Gorsh that grows succulent, poisonous black berries.
"That's a Yerdua Poison-Spitter." A green, meter-tall plant from Felucia with a trunk like a tree and four thick petals that form a poison-spitting head.
"That's Harrowbane." Purple weeds from Randorn 2 that burned like acid if touched.
"That's a Kewafi flower." A blue flower from Joralla that can shoot poisonous barbs.
"That's Coma-bloom." A patch of yellow, horn-shaped flowers from Sojourn that is highly poisonous if ingested.
"That's dagger thorn." A duo of sharp, white plants that curve like thorns and ooze poisonous sap that can kill a human with a single scratch.
"And the rest have no translatable name in Basic." And the rest look like rainbow-colored coral with blinking eyes.
"I….why would you need this much poison?" She is certain that the amount of poisons in the room could easily kill off a planet filled with people if applied wisely.
"Poisons aren't just used for assassinations; they can be used medicinally. Half of the poisons I grow are for medicinal purposes. I typically sell those to the Chiss." She tries to probe his mind to find out exactly who he sells the rest to, but she is met with nothing as though he has no mind.
"Um, shouldn't you have a shirt on if you're going to interact with all these poisonous plants?" She sees from the corner of her eye as Master Ren's eyes rove Armitage's naked chest, particularly focusing on his two pink nipples.
"Your armor must be climate-controlled if you can't feel the heat here." She finally notices the thin layer of sweat coating his naked limbs like dew on grass. Sheeva fans themselves with a hand.
"You're hot." Master Ren blurts like he's a pubescent teenager again.
"Quite." Armitage replies, completely missing that awkward piece of flirting. "I'm guessing you're here to uncover some Sith secret, aren't you?"
"…..Yes." Master Ren mumbles like an embarrassed child.
"I doubt you'll find anything substantial beside the greenhouse. All of the Sith Lords after Revan have picked this place cleaner than Rock-vultures." She feels the truth of his words in the Force.
"Oh….." Master Ren shifts his feet slightly, bending his right knee a bit to have a more casual posture. "So you excited about your third date?"
"Of course! I can't wait to show Matt my bed!" He exclaims with a pink flush in his sharp cheeks; he cannot see that Master Ren's Force-signature is also pink.
"What?!"
"Oh no, I'm not going to bang your brother on the third date! That would be rude." Armitage laughs like a barking fox.
"Yes…..that would be." Master Ren's Force-signature turns a sulky blue.
"Nah, I'm planning on us just settling into bed, watching a holo, and letting things progress from there." Now, Master Ren's Force-signature turns a hopeful white.
"That's nice." Silence ensues between them for a minute before Armitage looks back at her.
"I can give you a discount for my poisons given the ren of you knights." She sees his thin lips twist into a smirk at his secret joke.
"I would appreciate that." She replies with a curt nod. Her eyes settle on the rainbow coral wondering what kind of poisons she can make from that.
"You can peruse through the greenhouse after your mission." Armitage reminds them both of the original mission; they depart after Master Ren spends a minute saying goodbye to both Armitage and Sheeva.
She knows that Master Snoke would be quite interested to learn about Master Ren's strong feelings for Armitage Hux, but those feelings aren't wholly Light.
Perhaps, I should keep a closer eye on Armitage, to make sure that he doesn't mislead Master Ren.
She would not mind looking at him some more.
Author's Comments- No links this time.
I was stuck for the longest time on how I wanted this story to go and how I was going to characterize Maladi. You see I only have the first two volumes of Star Wars: Legacy comics and Maladi is a very quiet character unless she's mocking her fellow Sith or tending to Darth Krayt. So I thought about how her relationship with Snoke would play out since Krayt and Snoke share some similarities, except Krayt is more like an active conqueror that wanted to succeed where Sidious failed while Snoke did his best to emulate Palpatine and pass it off as his own brand of originality, and, like her comic book counterpart, she is Snoke's dutiful "assistant" in this.
Then, I recalled Kylo's past in TLJ and decided how best to adapt it to this story since I was writing this series way before TLJ came out and was just speculating on the Knights of Ren. Before TLJ, I presumed he murdered ALL of his fellow Padawans and then was either given the knights or had to find knights for his order. Turns out that he and six other Padawans murdered the rest of the Padawans and the survivors became the Knights of Ren, which blew away my theory that the Knights of Ren were some ancient order, possibly formed by Darth Millennial only to be fucked up by Snoke, even farther from New Canon. But I never promised fidelity to New Canon anyways.
I used to have a very clear-cut path for this series, but now it has diverged into multiple paths that I could take with it. Technically, we haven't reached the fork for those paths, but we're getting close. I'm not sure which path I'll choose, but, come hell or high water, it's ultimately a Kylux fic.