"You can't go alone," Tali pointed out as soon Avrria finished telling her about Mikul, "He clearly can't be trusted!"
Avrria stared down at the table nervously, "I know. But..." She trailed off, pausing as she debated with herself. She couldn't tell Tali of the strange trust she felt for him. She didn't understand it herself. "I have a plan." She finished, bluffing her way through it.
"Well, I hope it's a good one. One that will result in his death!" Tali encouraged with a slightly terrifying grin.
"Yeah..." Avie nodded unconvincingly as she got up to go.
As soon as she left, Tali rolled her eyes and got up too, her hand resting on her lightsaber hilt as she muttered to herself, "Oh Force, It seems I have to do everything around here myself!" She raised her voice to add, "Jaesa! I know you're listening at the door, so get in here!"
Her apprentice appeared, looking concerned, "Are you seriously going to let her go off like that? She clearly doesn't have a plan!"
"Ha! I'm not as dumb as our dear little Avie seems to believe. I can tell when she's lying to me, but we'll let her handle this one if she wants to," Tali caught Jaesa's look of shock and added her final reassurance, "But of course, we're still going to follow her, just in case!"
As the two Sith were setting off, Avrria, recalling the shortcuts Tali had shown her, was already making her way though the tomb. She snuck past a ancient droid guardian and turned into the chamber where Mikul had said he would meet her. From the top of a small stairway, she could already see him standing there, his back to her in front of a shelf. She could see some holocrons there, and the hilt of a lightsaber.
Her only living rival stood in front of her. Yet she held back, hesitating at the top of the steps. Mikul turned, and smiled at her, not altogether friendly in spite of the hand he held out to her. "Come," He said simply.
Before, she had been so sure of her trust in him, even though she hadn't known why she trusted him and had been equally sure it was misplaced. Now, her mind was divided. Could she truly trust someone she had been competing with until very recently? "I can handle a few stairs!" She insisted indignantly, waving away his hand and her own doubts as she began to walk into the room.
There was a glimmer of mirth in his eyes as he lowered his outstretched arm and watched her approach. "As you wish," He shrugged. She got the feeling he was mocking her, as she always did whenever he appeared to respect her, but she didn't have time to say anything about it before he began to speak again, "Now, Avrria, there's something I have to tell you," He was suddenly deadly serious.
Her heart was racing madly and her senses screamed at her that something strange was at hand, but she tried to stay calm as she nodded and waited to hear what he had to say.
"I cannot challenge you any longer. But I hope neither of us is going to return to the Academy," He told her, standing a little too close and watching for any sign of reaction in her face.
She frowned, unsure of what she was hearing. "What do you mean?" Avrria asked him, curious and nervous at the same time.
"I have a new offer for you. A better offer than Sholkarr can make." Mikul told her, his tone eager and urgent now, as he took her hand, leaving her too shocked to protest, "I want to take you away from here and show you real power. You and me are the special ones, Avrria, we're not just acolytes, and we deserve better. My father is a part of something bigger than this, something that can get us what we deserve!"
There was a lot of hints in his words and a lot he wasn't saying, but Avrria had sharp Force senses and the ability to read between the lines. She knew what he was trying to say. "You're asking me to betray the Empire my family fought to build..." She breathed, shocked. Then disgust kicked in. "You're asking me to abandon the Empire and my family...For you?! To feed your ambitions?!" She snapped as she wrenched her hand away from him.
To her increasing surprise and anger, he chuckled and raised his hand to her face instead, gently caressing her cheek as he pulled her head up, forcing her to meet his eyes. He was looking back at her angry gaze oddly tenderly. "Ah, forgive me, I forgot. You're attached. How adorable. But...Don't you think it's time you indulged your own ambitions? With your power, and my help, of course...You could be anything." He leant in close, bending his head to bring his face close to hers. "Come with me. It's not like you need anyone else."
Avrria glowered into his eyes, close up, "It's not about what you think I need. It's about what I want!" She sneered at him, annoyed.
"And don't you want to loosen your mother's lead, for once? That's why you're doing this, isn't it? It's not about what you want, it's about what mummy says, isn't it?" He shook his head despairingly, but he seemed amused by his own taunts all the same, "Perhaps you're too young to see. But I could take you right out of her grip, if you want..." With Avrria lost in thought, hating him but wondering if she did let her mother control her too much at the same time, he glanced up past her.
The pureblood laughed again at what he saw in the doorway, not something many people would do when facing an angry Emperor's Wrath. "Speaking of your mother's lead...Here's the lady she pays to hold it," He joked, "Looks like it's decision time. Me or them. If you're allowed to make your own decisions, that is."
Avie glanced over her shoulder to note that 'them' was a furious-looking Tali, who had surveyed the whole scene and clearly didn't approve of it one little bit, and Jaesa, who was making 'kill him' gestures at her. She vaguely wondered how long they had been there, but right now, more important things were on her mind.
Tali, who was still giving Mikul a look that implied he was something odorous and unpleasant on her footwear, spoke up, "Oh, she makes her own decisions alright and if you want, I'll unleash her," At this point, he really should have noticed her nasty grin, but didn't appear to have as he egged her on, "Okay, Av, over to you," The Sith Lady stated as she watched Avie.
The young Sith glanced back to Mikul nervously. She despised him and the way he treated her, even when they had had their pretense at friendship, but she had to admit he had invoked curiosity in her and doubt in her family. And she still felt, oddly, as though she should trust him...She closed her eyes and reached out in the Force, testing that feeling. For some reason, the closer he was to her and the more she thought about their interactions, the feeling weakened, as though it hadn't been real at all. She shook her head and tried to concentrate more deeply, but the feeling didn't fade. It got worse, as though she had been seeing an illusion and now she had looked close enough to see the truth.
She reached out further, feeling her way to something else and calling it closer. She heard the lightsaber ignite and her eyes snapped open in time to see the look of shock, confusion and anger on his face before it sliced his head clean off, then twisted neatly around and flew hilt-first into her hand. She barely felt the new weight in her grip, staring down at the floor as the body dropped down beside her, smoking from the severed neck.
"Nice one, Av! What a slimeball!" Tali remarked from the doorway, "Now let's head back and get you on that shuttle to Dromund Kaas, 'kay?"
But Avrria watched the body, distracted. Unless you counted K'lor'slugs, insane people roaming around, and all the other charming aspects of Korriban's wildlife, this was her first kill. A sentient being. It took some processing, especially knowing he had expected her trust and now, thanks to her, his head was rolling around somewhere on the floor of a tomb. But, she shrugged to herself, at least her mother would be proud. And he had manipulated her, after all...
"Yeah, let's do that!" She agreed as she turned and wandered back towards Tali and Jaesa, pocketing the lightsaber as she did so. Whoever's it had been, it was hers now.