AN: Alright, uh...this one really got away from me, so consider this your warning. This chapter is quite brutal, so if you're at all squeamish or adverse to violence of ALL kinds, I really suggest skipping this one. For those of you that don't mind, enjoy, you sick bastards. It's been a long time since we've seen our dear Obi be evil as shit.
Chapter 12: Viscera
Darth Lumis strolled into the brig, shrugged off his robes and rolled up the sleeves of his tunic, glancing casually at the handful of cells that lined the walls and smiling softly as he listened to the pained moans, the desperate gasps of fear, the frantic pleas for help, each like music to his ears, deep and profound and moving, the Dark Side purring with the pleasure of it as it swirled thick in his blood. The lighting was low, a hindrance to neither Sith nor Chiss, the circular room open, but the atmosphere was claustrophobic, surrounded by cells and lacking the long viewports that looked out into space like so many rooms in the ship possessed. Obi-Wan didn't need to see out into space to know that Ord Mantell hung beneath them, to feel the red glow of a planet ever consumed in flames, to sense the darkness that poured out of the wound in the Force that hung heavy around the planet, unsettling to most, but to him, it felt like power, like blood, like victory, painful and consuming and eternal.
After his success in the space around Kalee, Obi-Wan had returned Ezra, Sabine and Zeb to their caretakers on the Ghost, and while Hera was highly suspicious of their assertion that nothing had happened, that everything was fine, that Kenobi was, as a babysitter, both competent and safe, almost as though he was a father himself, she was willing to let it go, at least for a time. It was clear to Obi-Wan that, while suspicious, she was also relieved that it at least appeared that se had a reliable babysitter. The strains and tensions of her duty, coupled with the lack of peace that came from a full ship of rambunctious free spirits left her no time for a moment of quiet to spend for herself, a thing she desperately needed, and knowing that she had a place to drop the kids off while she and Kanan spent some much needed time in each other's arms was an opportunity too good to pass up. She chose not to press Kenobi on the matter of what they did. Everyone was safe, and that was what mattered.
After safely returning the Spectres to their ship, Obi-Wan left the Lothal system, made quick contact with Leia and had the girl send him the present coordinates of Bail Organa's ship, the Tantive IV so he could borrow the Senator's protocol droid, a thing Leia was certain Bail would do, but he wouldn't be happy about it, given the Sith Lord's history of droid abuse. However, after swearing not to cause any harm to the droid that had once been Padmé's, Bail had turned over the fussy protocol droid to Kenobi's care, and as soon as it was in his possession, Obi-Wan set to uploading the information on the Chiss language, Cheunh, from the recovered datablock into the droid's programming. The language, C-3PO had told him, had been easily incorporated, and after a swift test of its understanding by speaking to the prisoner Chiss, the droid confirmed that the integration of the language into its databanks was a success.
That was the only thing about this task that C-3PO found even remotely acceptable.
"Master Kenobi," the droid tentatively said as it stiffly and reluctantly walked into the brig after the Sith Lord. "Your treatment of these beings has been in violation of several-"
"Blah, blah, blah is all I hear when you speak without my permission, droid," Obi-Wan said, rolling his eyes. "I need you for two reasons. Translate between me and the Chiss while I work if I need you, and help me learn their language when they need a break. I didn't bring you here to listen to your programmed morality," he said mockingly. "Not that you can understand the nuances anyway, you just repeat what's in your programming..."
C-3PO straightened up in offense. "Sir, I don't think any moral code anywhere would consider what has happened here anything short of evil."
"Evil," Obi-Wan scoffed, waving his hand in the air to dismiss the idea. "Such a tired, simplistic concept. This isn't evil, it's science," he emphasized, running his hand over the restraining table in the center of the room, its metallic surface clean and shiny now, but had previously been slicked with blood, as it would be again soon. "How else am I supposed to learn about the biology of this alien race?"
"Master Kenobi," the droid said in a superior, admonishing tone, "a biological scanner can tell you everything that the results of your...dissections yield." The droid paused. "You have such a scanner on the ship, sir!"
"What?" Kenobi gasped in surprise, his hand clutching his chest as he grabbed for the aforementioned scanner and held it tightly. "I have such a thing? Where?!"
"Sir, it is in your hand, you know it is in your hand..."
"Ohhh..." Obi-Wan drawled, looking at the device with a cruel, amused smile on his lips. "That's what this is for. Funny, I thought it could only scan organs after they had been removed."
"You most certainly did not think that."
"Well!" Kenobi chirped, dropping the scanner on to a small table covered in scalpels and syringes and a host of menacing equipment. "I've already started, so I may as well continue, or I have just been wasting my time. I prefer a hands on approach anyway, technology can be so misleading..." He patted the droid on his metallic chest. "Don't worry, droid. I promised to delete your memory of all of this when I'm finished. Just two days to go."
C-3PO wailed mournfully, bemoaning his fate and going on and on about how everything was hopeless, and Kenobi sauntered to the cells, walking before them and deciding which of the Chiss to play with next. There were only three left. The other two, the male and female engineers, had died in the course of the first rounds of torture, unable to withstand the searing agony of pain ripping through them and setting their every nerve on fire. This wasn't done exclusively for the pleasure of cruelty, of course. These were tests, like everything else, a way to see what the Chiss could endure, if they somehow possessed a remarkable resilience that would make crushing Thrawn significantly more difficult. And while the Chiss possessed several similarities to the humans they resembled, there were notable key differences between them.
A dissection of the Chiss' red eye showed an increased level of photoreceptors, the cause of their outstanding low-light vision, and an analysis of their brain chemistry revealed an increased metabolism, accounting for the athleticism of the specimens that went beyond mere training and a substantially lower body temperature from standard humans. There were differences in their vocal cords, leaving them with different vocal abilities that left them well suited to their own complex language, one that humans found difficult to speak. Physically, beyond the blue pigmentation of their skin and the pronounced ridges on their forehead, the Chiss male reproductive organs were tucked neatly away in a genital slit low in their abdomens, which left their bodies sleek and well-protected by strong, defined muscles.
And, most frustrating of all, their minds were exceptionally difficult to read, like lines of neatly ordered equations written with foreign numbers. Lumis could break them, of course, could sift through their shattered minds and read the emotions that lay bare before him, but even then, they seemed guarded, the cipher to their minds slowly revealed as he grasped and understood their language, though their pattern of thought still remained difficult to comprehend, as if there was something within them that only the Chiss could truly understand for having lived as one.
He had also discovered, by mistake, of course, that the bright colors of their skin and eyes fluctuated with the level of oxygen present, greater levels leading to brighter colors, and when he had used the Force to suspend one of the Chiss, his grip tight around his throat, the blue skin turned dark, almost black in color. It ultimately meant nothing, of course, but the change was unusual and pleasing to Kenobi, and his Chiss captives found themselves on the receiving end of the Dark Side's hold far more than they would have been if Obi-Wan hadn't delighted in watching the pallor of their skin fluctuate. It was how the female engineer had died, the result of Lumis experimenting to see how vast the range was and neglecting to monitor her vitals as she gasped and struggled in his grasp.
Most importantly, however, was something that he had found in their brain chemistry, something that accounted for their advanced intellectual maturity, something that stood to solve a problem that Obi-Wan had long felt looming above him. The Chiss rapidly aged through childhood, a ten year old Chiss possessing the physical maturity of a twenty year old human, followed by a rapid adolescence, meeting full adulthood by the age of fourteen, at which they seemed to age at a much, much slower rate. Their life span was comparable to that of humans, but the Chiss appeared to age slower after their rapid childhoods, which gave the blue-skinned race the illusion of living longer, having an extended period of time in what they considered to be young adulthood, their physical prime lasting until over fifty years of age. This extended adulthood made the Chiss more emotionally mature, more careful, more measured than their human counterparts, but more importantly, as the Chiss were near-human and an obvious, ancient off-shoot of humanity, it made it a distinct possibility that Chiss brain chemistry could be successfully applied to baseline humans.
The slowed adulthood aging could, possibly, be applied to Cody.
It had been a growing concern since the fall of the Republic, since he and his constant clone companion had been on the run together, and living together so closely had made Kenobi keenly aware of Cody's rapid aging, a natural process made even more alarming in that he aged at twice the normal rate, while Obi-Wan aged not at all. It was a stark contrast, a highly distressing one that stood as a physical reminder that life was fleeting, especially so for a clone made to age swift and die young. Obi-Wan was older than Cody by over twenty years, but the clone had long ago surpassed him, his thirty years doubled by his genetics, and where they had once looked like brothers, now Cody seemed more the parent to Kenobi's eternal youth.
It was a problem Obi-Wan sought to correct through the adaptation of his own abilities, channeling the life he stole into not himself, but into his clone brother, but all previous at practicing the ability on other beings ended...poorly. Exposed to high concentrations of the Force, the stormtroopers, the people, the animals he had captured had been sent screaming and writhing in pain as the Force ripped through them with a vengeance, poisonous in the veins of one who lacked the ability to control it, leaving the subjects horribly deformed, their bodies broken, their organs rupturing and bleeding with no way to stop it. The Force, used in this way, was toxic, fatal to those without the inclination to control its might.
It explained what had happened to Darth Sidious when he had attempted the same thing, leaving his body scared and deformed, his humanity torn from him and exposing him for what he was, a warped, twisted, corrupted creature of darkness that had reached too far into realms where he simply lacked the inclination. It didn't make him weak, it simply made him...disinclined, the instinct to absorb life absent within him, filled instead with a talent for subtle manipulation, careful planning and patience, such a talent that Lumis couldn't deny the strength of his influence, and after all this time, he still admired him for it. Together, they had been two parts of a whole that could have dominated the galaxy, but with the introduction of Anakin Skywalker, with Vader, their paths had diverged, Sidious on the path of domination of the Force, ensuring that the Force could never strike back, and Lumis on the path of ensuring that the Force never needed to strike back by working in tandem and harmony with it.
If the biological aspect of Chiss biology responsible for their slowed, extended youth could somehow be isolated and extracted, perhaps an implant could be made, stimulating the parts of the brain in humans that would prompt the same slowed growth. If such a thing could be manufactured and implanted within faithful Cody, it may just give Kenobi the time he needed to deepen his studies in the Dark Side and discover how to share his stolen life. If the Jedi could use the Force to heal, Obi-Wan saw no reason why a Sith Lord couldn't take that same process and amplify it, not just to heal wounds, but to heal aging, itself a wound on the face of the immortality. The wear, the cuts, the ravages of age could be healed, leaving a body younger, faster, stronger, reverted to its prime in exchange for the life of another, a small price to pay for such a large gain. Cody could be healed, allowed to be kept at his side for all eternity, the one friend he still held close and dear, the only one that the Jedi and the Sith had been unable to tear from him. He just needed time.
With the Force, all things were possible.
He grinned wickedly as he paced before the three cells the Chiss sat contained within, each of them cowering in the back corner of the small room, making themselves small in the hopes that those glowing yellow eyes would somehow pass them by. It didn't work in the days before, and it didn't work now. The two males would be dead within the next day, their bodies prepared and packed alongside their dissected comrades, a process which the Sith Lord had forced them to watch, their dead friends opened up and their organs removed and studied, his findings recorded on a holodisc to be saved and used for later. Two days of brutal dissection and experimentation had ended with the emptied, open cavities of the Chiss male and female packed away into cooled stasis crates, their individual innards carefully wrapped and treated for preservation and stored with the bodies they belonged to.
The other three, stronger than the ones who had succumbed to torture and allowed death to take them, were assigned very specific roles in the remainder of his studies, partially to see how the Chiss psychologically withstood the treatment, but mostly because he enjoyed it. He had almost forgotten how good it felt to allow the Dark Side loose, to feel its unrestrained savagery tearing through his body and permeate deep within his bones. For so long, he had to be subtle and measured, careful in his care of his children, in keeping his rebellion hidden, in not touching the deepest of depths in the event that Sidious could somehow sense him churning the Dark Side, a vergence awakened and drawing darkness to it. He felt safer near the wound in the Force that was Ord Mantell, a disturbance so deep and profound that it masked any individual darkness he might exhibit. Here, he felt hidden, even from Sidious.
But he loved it, the rush, the exhilaration, the cries of mercy, the moans of pain and agony, the smell of blood, the power of holding the life of another in his hands, a flame that could be easily extinguished on a whim were he to wish it. When he turned himself over to the Dark Side, there was no pain, no anguish, no deep, bleeding hole where Satine lay dead within him, no memory of the feel of his son's life vanishing before he could hold him, no self-loathing of what he was forced to do to Padmé to protect her children, no pain of his many betrayals. It was all just pleasure, raw and primal in its strength, pain and hate and anger giving way to power, pure and undiluted, and that pleased him, made his body, his mind, the corrupted remains of his soul crave more just so the suffering could end, if only for a time. The pain always returned afterwards, but it made the times he was free from it all the sweeter.
This was how the unsuspecting were seduced. This is how the susceptible fell. This was how the unprepared were consumed.
With a small smirk on his lips, he pointed to one of the Chiss males and turned off the energy barrier on the cell, his hand extended as he commanded the Chiss to obey, and with a swift shudder, the man complied, offering little resistance at all as he shuffled his feet to the table, hoisted himself up on it, and laid back, his eyes averted as his wrists and ankles were restrained, the cuffs locking tightly around his shaking limbs. Obi-Wan ran his hand down his bare chest, feeling the cold skin beneath his fingers, watching the taut muscles quiver in his wake, and with his other hand, he used the Force to shut off the other male's cell barrier, a thought in his direction making the man shuffle out to stand with his back against the wall, his arms raised as restraints bolted him against the cold surface, his breath uneven and shaking when Kenobi let go of his mind, his awareness returning.
"Ttis'ah," the Chiss on the wall said, his voice shaking as he watched as the female was also released, commanded to stand beside him, and was also restrained to the wall, a far more defeated look on her face as she braced for what she knew was coming. It was the same torture every day, without remorse and without mercy, becoming more effective as their jailer and Master learned more about them. " K'ir nah k'ir csei s."
C-3PO hesitantly turned to Obi-Wan. "He said-"
"I know what he said," Obi-Wan said softly, holding his hand up to stop the droid. "Five days of the same things repeated over and over, how am I supposed to become fluent of they just say the same things?!"
"Well, you could try talking to them," the droid intoned, and Kenobi quickly dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand.
"Vzah csihn vim ch'ah csah nah tisib vah vuct'icu'asi," the Sith Lord gently said, his hand resting delicately on the chest of the Chiss on the table, the blue skinned alien's heartbeat fast and strong and frightened under his fingertips as the Cheunh words rolled easily off his tongue. "Veo k'ir vah vsabah ch'ah csarcican't tisib hah ch'at vah non?" Five days and I have not shown you mercy. What makes you think I will show it to you now?
He could hear the circuits inside C-3PO whir, and after a moment, the droid indignantly said, "Master Kenobi, if I am unneeded for translation purposes, why do you insist on my presence?"
"Oh, 3PO, I do need you!" Kenobi drawled, tapping the droid on his chest. "I need you to record my work, and if I make errors, I need you to correct them. Cheunh is a difficult, complex language that I desire to master. I will need constant correction, and my guests dislike correcting me." He paused, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "I wonder why..."
"You speak with an accent," the droid said flatly, and Kenobi rolled his eyes.
"I know that, there isn't a language I speak that isn't affected by my accent..."
"And you attempt to be far too direct with the language," 3PO said, drawing up and his tone become light and patronizing, almost as if he forgot what was about to happen in the room he stood in. Kenobi didn't seem to mind, and carefully listened to the droid as he prepared a syringe, filling it with a light blue liquid and flicking the small vial to knock any excess air out of it. The droid prattled on, oblivious to its surroundings, occasionally stopping to answer questions Obi-Wan occasionally had as he continued to work, tuning out the Chiss' begging for mercy as he slid the needle into his neck and injected the liquid. The red eyes clouded over almost instantly, his breathing becoming slow and measured, his mouth hanging open as all tension left his body, the drug rampaging through him and leaving him in a haze.
"You are," C-3PO concluded, "possibly conversationally fluent in Cheunh. Though you make errors, your intention is often clear." He was silent for a moment as he watched the Sith Lord, a pen in hand and drawing white lines down the blue skin of the Chiss on the table. "...you are at least conversationally fluent if the conversation takes place in a torture chamber. Or a morgue." He was met only with a faint, cruel smile from the Sith Lord. "Oh dear..." the droid bemoaned. "Are you preforming another autopsy?" There was no answer from the Sith as he prepared another syringe, this one with a pale pink liquid within the thin vial. "This does not follow the protocol of a proper dissection, Master Kenobi, let alone the proper treatment of a prisoner. He is still alive, sir!"
"I know, droid," Obi-Wan drawled, sliding the needle into the Chiss' arm and injecting the liquid into the vein. "That's why this isn't a dissection. It's a vivisection."
"A vivisection!" C-3PO repeated, completely aghast, and Kenobi nodded as he walked away from the table, allowing the drugs time to do their work, and he sauntered to the two Chiss shackled to the wall.
"I lack complete understanding if I do not see the Chiss internal organs as they are working," the Sith Lord quietly explained. "They may look like humans internally, but the organs may function differently while the subject is alive. I need to be made aware of any variances, and I will benefit from a first hand view." Kenobi grinned as he dragged his finger down the woman's cheek, drawing closer as she shivered under his touch. "Three subjects...one for observations on physical pain, one for studying the effects of the Force on your bodies, and you, my dear..." He kissed the woman's neck, the female gasping as teeth nipped at her blue skin, and she wriggled in an attempt to get away, but to no avail. "I will break you with pleasure. You've been resilient so far, but I have more time with you than the others."
"Csei s carcir csoscan'cahn!" the woman gasped, and Obi-Wan swiftly withdrew, his finger pointed toward her as he felt at her mind.
"Oh, sweetheart, hah carcir nor csoscan'cahn bah vah k'ir hah cseo. It is only torture if you make it so!" He pressed his finger to her forehead, and the glowing red eyes instantly began to glow brighter, her breath hitching as Obi-Wan stimulated the pleasure centers of her brain, sending wave after wave of euphoria through her, and he could feel arousal rush thick and heavy in her blood, heightening her sensations to a maddening degree. She shut her eyes tightly when the Sith Lord hooked his fingers under her chin and forced her face to face with him, her limbs shaking as her hands clenched into fists in her resistance, and a long, deep moan in her throat as lust gripped her and pulled her toward painful, maddening arousal.
"Sir, my basic programming-"
"Droid, mute your audio output until I say otherwise," Obi-Wan said softly, waving his hand before the male beside the panting, moaning female, and his body convulsed, pain exploding behind his eyes and setting fire to every nerve that ran through his body, His teeth clenched and he grunted in pain, but to his credit, he did not scream and no longer tried to beg. The Chiss were strong, their mentality admirable, a proud race with reason to be so, if the specimens he captured were typical of their species. Regardless, he had to assume that Thrawn was atypical, extraordinary among his own people, be it physically or mentally, he did not know, but the patient planning, the testing, the information gathering all spoke to a genius mind, one very much in line with Palpatine's own careful political machinations.
However, it was not the memories contained within the minds of the Chiss that provided Obi-Wan with his most important piece of information. It was the datablock, a thing that he had slowly been reading through as he became more competent with the dense, complicated language of the Chiss. There was nothing confidential, no secrets, nothing that could be potentially damaging should someone with ill-intent get their hands on it, but it did contain military records, mostly closed and confidential, but the files were there, offering up basic information on their considerable force. Useless information, for the most part. Active members of the Chiss military force held no interest to him, but a quick perusal of the files found his attention drawn to one in particular. A high ranking officer in the military, his file stamped in red with the Chiss word, Cavpet. Exile. And that was very interesting. The reasons for the exile were missing from the report, but in time, Obi-Wan would come to understand why it was that Mitth'raw'nuruodo had been cast away from his people.
Thrawn. A man without a people, without a home, and adopted by Darth Sidious for his brilliance. Such an enemy was a dangerous one, fiercely loyal, but somehow, Obi-Wan thought he could use this. True, this slightly diminished the secondary aspects of his plans, but perhaps there were some yet unseen benefits to this. After all, he didn't yet know Thrawn terribly well, and how he may react to the deaths of his people in light of his exile was an unknown factor. But he'd soon find out.
"Nah nat'sah k'ir nah roncacehe'ah ch'at tucan'si," Obi-Wan said softly, picking up a long, sharp blade from among his tools and drumming his fingers on the chest of the drugged Chiss on the table, his cruel, golden eyes locked on the pleasure-flushed face of the female. "Tur ea. You do not submit to domination by anyone. That is what you said to me the day after I captured you, is it not?" he continued in Cheunh, his words accented as C-3PO had said, but the woman was able to easily understand him, and she looked back at him with glowing red eyes, hazy with arousal but still staunchly defiant, even as her body shook under the pulses of pleasure.
"We will not be dominated by you," she growled in a quivering voice, and a wide, delighted smile spread across Kenobi's face.
"We shall see, Seg'rotth'uruodo," he said, drawing out the syllables of her name and watching as shivers of pleasure caused her to bite her lip to stifle a moan, her hips involuntarily rolling in search of contact and relief, but finding none, the arousal she felt spiking into a painful, needy ache. "But I doubt your people have ever truly encountered something like me before." He paused, holding the knife in a loose, easy grasp as his other hand stroked his beard in thought. "The Force," he said in Basic. "Qyâsik, to my people. Bazehn, to yours, I believe. You even have a word for the warriors of the Force. Tocu'ren'mur." Kenobi grinned wickedly. "Jedi."
"You are no Jedi..." the woman said in a breathless moan, her eyes shut tight as she struggled for control, the needs of her body beginning to seep into her mind and infect her thoughts, turning her away from fear and toward lustful need for something, anything to help relieve the painful ache of arousal.
"You're right, I'm not," he said softly, slowly walking toward her and stopping just inches from her struggling, writhing body, only just out of her reach when she arched her back toward him, a silent plea for contact. "I don't know if your people have a word for what I am. You know the Jedi, you know the Force, but my kind are...different. Ch'ittoco tocu'ren'mur. Dark Jedi, if you will. Sith." Red eyes fell on him, filled with sudden fear beyond the lust.
"Ch'ittoci'ren'musi," she said softly, her voice shivering and quiet as she softly moaned, her eyes closing and her head lowering in submission.
"Ch'ittoci'ren'musi," Obi-Wan slowly repeated, looking to the droid for confirmation, and after a moment, the soft whir of the processing carried in the air, C-3PO bowed slightly, and Obi-Wan looked back to the woman, reaching up and stroking her cheek, and with a long, needy moan, she leaned into his touch. "The Sith...Masters of all we touch, all we see, all we desire. Even you, ch'eo vir. So much for not accepting domination. You have no choice. None of you have a choice." He laughed lightly as the woman trembled in a final resistance, but her will was quickly failing. "Seg'rotth'uruodo...such a name. Your naming conventions would see you called Grotthu among your inner circle, yes?" She didn't answer, but the Sith smiled anyway. "How appropriate. In Sith, your name directly translates to slave. Fitting, yes? You were made for this." He stepped away, a loud, keening whine torn from her throat at the prospect of the man leaving her in such a state with no satisfaction. "But not today."
He turned from the woman, his eyes closed and breathing deeply, a soft sigh of satisfaction on his lips as he listened to the desperate, wanting moans from the woman and the short, sharp gasps of pain from the man beside her, the music of the Dark Side, insufferable agony and mindless pleasure mixing interchangeably with each other. The Sith walked around the table, observing the drugged Chiss firmly secured to it, his red eyes razed and rolling, his jaw slack and mouth opened as he gaped for air, and Obi-Wan laid his hand on his chest, felt the beating of his heart, strong and even in relaxation, and he ran his fingers lightly down the white line of dashes drawn upon the blue skin.
"Begin recording, droid," Obi-Wan softly demanded, and when C-3PO hesitated, forced to comply to the order but clearly objecting to what it was asked to do, Kenobi rolled his eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I need to get a droid..."
"I've been saying that for years." Obi-Wan's eyes shot up to the room's entrance, watching as Cody walked in, datapad in hand, and the female Chiss on the walls began her moaning anew at the presence of a new and hopefully more compliant male, loud and demanding as she rolled her hips, a yearning for contact and an open invitation for anyone to enter her. Cody looked at her cooly, unmoved by the wanton display. "Didn't you tell her there's no sex allowed in the Umbra?"
"Yes, but nobody listens to me." Cody snorted with laughter, his eyes roving over the body that he knew would belong to the Sith Lord the second they were groundside.
"Maybe you're just garbage at the language," the clone suggested, coming to stand beside the droid as the Sith Lord considered the work laid out before him on the operating table.
"That is a distinct possibility, yes," Kenobi said softly, putting the knife down and picking up the pen, carefully drawing new lines across the blue skin of the drug-hazed male. "The language isn't so complicated as Sith, but it is very intricate, and there are some vocalizations that I am just not able to produce." He frowned. "Language has always come quickly to me, but I don't suspect I'll be fluent for some time." He shrugged, grinning madly when his subject shivered as the pen was dragged down his neck. "The grammar is easy enough. Nothing at all like Sith. I shall have to see how their throats move when they speak, I should like to find a way to mimic it."
C-3PO made a strangled sound, almost as if he were gagging, and both men looked at the droid, Obi-Wan with disgust and Cody with something just short of pity. "If you had your own droid, you could program it without moral parameters. This wouldn't be a problem," Cody drawled, and Obi-Wan nodded as he capped the pen and took up the knife, gesturing to the droid with it.
"Now that you're here, I don't need him. Shut him down." C-3PO drew up in surprise, a gasp of shock emitting from his vocal output just as Cody reached behind him and switched the droid off, the light in its eyes shutting off as it slumped forward at the waist.
"Feeling merciful?" Cody asked, vaguely amused, and Obi-Wan shot him a glare that lacked the menace it usually did, the golden eyes soft, a look reserved only for Cody and his children.
"There's no pleasure to be had in torturing a droid, they don't feel pain or fear. It's all just...programmed responses." He sighed heavily. "I hate droids...delete its memory of the past five days, Cody. No sense giving that thing even more anxiety." Cody nodded, quickly opened the golden droid's back panel and reached inside, pulling out a long connecting cable that he plugged into his datapad, and with a few quick swipes of his finger, he began downloading the recorded files to save to his own device before the deletion program was run.
"What about Syndulla's droid?" Cody asked, setting up the holorecorder on an empty tool table and making the necessary adjustments, making certain that both the entire Chiss and the Sith Lord could be seen in frame. "You like that one."
"Yes, but only because it isn't mine..." Kenobi grumbled, his elbows resting on his prone subject as he watched Cody work. "It's a terribly foul tempered construction. I need something that I can speak to, something that isn't bogged down by protocol."
"You can reprogram a droid to do anything, sir."
"Yes, but a collapse of the basic programming can result in...problems. I'm not looking to build a droid from the ground up." He sighed heavily. "Sidious had a droid. Wonderful creation, inherited from his Master." He absently stroked at the Chiss' chest, the drugged man groaning softly at the tingling, gentle sensation of a warm caress against his chilled skin. "11-4D. That was a droid. Absent of any pesky moral constraints, obedient, versatile." He shrugged. "Not much in terms of personality, but one doesn't keep a droid for the illusion of companionship."
"You might, you sentimental bastard," Cody said, a wry, knowing smile on his lips as he swiped his fingers across the datapad and began running the deletion program on C-3PO's memory, and though he didn't look up, he could feel the Sith's golden gaze upon him, not narrowed in anger, but appraising and curious as he reflected. "I'll secure you a droid that matches you, brother," the clone said softly, placing the datapad down and smirking at Kenobi. "You need a companion that will last you a long time."
"I do not need one, I have you." Cody chuckled and shook his head.
"Obi-Wan, I'm-"
"Don't say it," Kenobi snarled. "Don't you dare." Cody obeyed, but he didn't need to say anything for the look in his eyes to convey exactly what he was going to say. Everybody dies, and eventually, everything ends. It was a cold, hard truth, and one that he knew all too well. Everything ended, and the things Obi-Wan touched all seemed to end before their time, by his hand, or by another. His son and Satine, Padmé, Quinlan, Ventress, Dooku, Barriss, Grievous, Luminara, hundreds and hundreds of others, the Chiss that had fallen into his tender care included. All of them, dead. Some of it was fate, meant to be, but so, so much was cruelly ripped from his grasp, the price he was unwilling to pay for the powers he had come to possess. Before, his connection to the Dark Side was anchored in pleasure, in the joyous glee of his own powers, bolstered by vanity and the many things he possessed, and by a lingering hatred of those that betrayed him, a deep fissure of resentment toward the Jedi.
He drifted toward Mastery only when he lost it all, his tremendous strength coming from hatred and anguish, agony rooted in the deep, bleeding wounds where his friends and lovers used to rest in his heart. It was gone now, a gaping, bloody void the only evidence of the heart he once possessed, or it would have been, had Cody and Luke and Leia not clung to the edge, bright, shining points of light in oppressive darkness. Perhaps it was them that kept him from the deepest reached of the Dark Side, from achieving the awesome powers of Sith Lords like Nihilus and Valkorion, but there were some things that even he couldn't give up. It was a weakness, yes, but it was also a font of strength, the one thing that kept him human, the only thing that stopped him from putting the entire, wretched galaxy to the torch and being done with it.
Even Vader once had a heart that beat so strong for Padmé Amidala that it had ruptured, spilling forth blood and darkness in his quest to keep her and make her his, possession and jealousy that the Jedi forbid for that exact reason. There was a reason those that stood in the light of the Jedi were forbidden for such things. If one owned nothing, there was nothing to steal, nothing to seek vengeance for, and without Qui-Gon Jinn to bandage the gash the Sith had created within him, Anakin Skywalker bled out, kindness and humanity and decency the first victims of his turn to darkness, just as it had been for Obi-Wan so long ago. It all turned to hatred, to rage, to revenge, to murder, and each one only made the next one easier. The Jedi had been right. Once the first step was taken, there was no returning from it. Darkness begot more darkness, and that had never been more clear than with what had happened to him and Vader.
If there was something left of Anakin Skywalker inside Darth Vader, than Obi-Wan couldn't see it, though he had never truly known the boy when he was a bastion of the light, if he had ever been. Sidious had designs upon him from the very beginning, so it was unlikely that the young Jedi ever stood a chance, not with how well Sidious played that particular game.
It was...astounding to Obi-Wan how skilled and how dark Sidious was, and he struggled to understand how he had come to be that way. Unlike Kenobi, Sidious didn't have refined or expensive tastes, saw no use for wealth or opulence, took no pleasure with women, had no lovers. For him, the only thing that had ever mattered was the Dark Side and the pleasure of his own power. It made him...different from the other Sith. Obi-Wan had fallen because the Jedi were wrong, because the Republic was weak, and through the Sith, the galaxy could be brought to order, and as he grew, he embraced darkness for the power it gave him, for the thrill of passion, the freedom to do as he wished with the powers he was born to. Even Dooku had been politically motivated, fallen to ease his growing disgust and disillusionment with the Jedi Order and the Republic they served. Vader, he suspected, fell out of desperation, a man forced into a corner that reached for savagery and cruelty to overcome his foes, and when the battle was over, had nothing left but the Master he now served.
But Sidious...was never a Jedi, never fell, not like the others. He was simply born...empty. Without emotion or kindness, without the spark of light that gave the living the potential for good. Within him was a void, not made, but born, and inside it, there was only darkness and a lust for power, a pull so strong that it attracted the notice of the Sith. The training would make him wrathful, filled with hate and anger, but Sidious was too patient, to calculating to burn with the fires of passion as the other Sith did because the flame didn't burn within him. Fire burned, casting shadows, but also light, and there was no light within Darth Sidious. Just cold blood and murderous intent, a patient killer that had been clever and cunning enough to ascend to the seat of Emperor on stairs built from the bodies of those he had slain.
Obi-Wan was different from Sidious. But not by much. He too would come to rule the galaxy through the execution of those that stood in his way, even if he was disinclined to slaughter. He would much rather make allies, inspire true loyalty, even force submission, if need be, but murder was a tool, and one that he used well and effectively because he stayed his hand more often than not. But not today. Today, murder was necessary. Not just for preparation for his gift to his former Master, but...for science.
Everything ends eventually. Obi-Wan chuckled bitterly and pushed aside the tightness in his chest as he stood above the Chiss and rotated the knife in his hand, his eyes focused on the clone as he fiddled with the datapad wired to C-3PO. Cody would not end, if he had anything to say about it. But this Chiss was going to.
"Are you ready to begin?" Obi-Wan asked softly, and Cody looked up from his work, his dark eyes meeting the Sith Lord's, and he smiled, small and genuine and warm, a stark contrast to the torture that was happening in the room.
"Whenever you are, boss. Recording now."
With a quick, cruel smile, Obi-Wan touched the tip of the blade to the pit of the Chiss' neck and cut downwards, the cut long, but not deep as it ran along drawn lines, the drugged face registering no pain, no recognition of his state as the Sith Lord peeled back skin and muscle and exposed his innards to the chill of the air, each one pulsing and moving and beating with life as though nothing was wrong, the work of powerful drugs to separate the mind from the body, and awareness from the mind.
The other two Chiss, however, knew exactly what was happening, and despite their own torture, one sexual and one through the Force, they screamed for their comrade, calling his name and begging and pleading for their torturer and executioner to have mercy. The Sith didn't listen, only looked over to them, his golden eyes glowing with sinister delight, and he increased the pressure on them, the male howling in pain as the pain increased tenfold, and the female moaning loudly in mind-numbing ecstasy, chasing the pleasures of fulfillment that lay just out of reach. Cody looked at them and shook his head.
"We're going to have to edit this," he said to the Sith Lord as the man began applying nodes and electric needles to different areas and quickly jotting down notes as he observed. "If you plan on giving a report, their screaming is going to drown it out."
"I was planning on doing that anyway," Kenobi muttered as he worked, reaching into the open cavity and beginning to remove organs he considered non-vital and dropping them into small stasis containers, sealing them when they held what was needed and setting them aside for later when he delivered them. "We have all of tomorrow to get it done, I'm finishing it today. Can you contact Organa and tell him I will return his droid within twelve hours?" Cody looked over at the screaming Chiss, then back at the Sith Lord.
"What, now? You don't think the screaming may put him in something of a foul mood?" Kenobi rolled his eyes.
"Not now, you idiot, when we're done. I want to stop by before we head to meet our smuggler." He removed a large organ from the body, held it in his hands as if weighing it, and dropped it inside the container, his lightsaber quickly in hand as he touched the blade to the bleeding blood vessels and cauterized them. "Maybe we can pick up Leia while we're there, I don't think Organa will mind if we're a day early."
"I think he might, he loves that girl."
"Everyone loves my girl. We'll have to get Luke too. Can you sand word to Owen?"
"Will do, boss." Obi-Wan smiled in satisfaction, his heart beating faster with the prospect of seeing his children a day ahead of time. Their birthday was the day after tomorrow, and he was going to make the most of it.
A swift, violent jerk from the Chiss' open body sent the precision blade of the scalple on the Sith's hands tearing jaggedly through one of the creature's kidneys, and with a quick curse, Obi-Wan removed the bleeding organ as fast as he could, but the damage had been done. The pain and horror of what was happening hit the Chiss, his red eyes wide and suddenly unclouded as shock and fear overcame the drug haze, and he violently jerked to get away, which only worsened the situation. A string of curses left Obi-Wan's mouth as he swiftly slit up the man's throat, exposing the trachea and the vocal chords within, and he leaned close as the man began screaming in a thin, strangled voice, watching the mechanics of his voice work. It wasn't ideal, and it became less so when he began convulsing as he went into shock.
Kenobi reached out with the Force, trying to grab hold of his life and stabilize him, but it was to no effect, and when his heart stopped, he couldn't restart it, not with the Force, not with jolts of lightning summoned from his fingers, and moments later, the Chiss was dead, the third of the five he had captured. The Dark Side howled, fed and bolstered by the life spent and craving more, and with little else to be gained, Kenobi allowed the Dark Side to move in unison beside him, filling him with power and strength and cruelty far beyond what it had been before, and he laid his savage eyes on the last remaining of the males, a hungry glow in his intense golden gaze.
"Cody..." the Sith said in a whisper, his voice dark and hungry and not his own. "Are we alone."
"No ships in the surrounding area, Master, and we're ready to make the jump to lightspeed at a moment's notice." Cody stepped back, keeping a respectful distance. Years of living beside not just Kenobi, but the beast that lay within him had taught the clone exactly how to navigate safely around the man when he was at his most dangerous. This was it, the culmination of five days of listening to screams of pain and frustrated moans of pleasure, and the raging, wrathful Dark Side could take it no longer. It was best to stand back and let it have what it wanted.
"Good..." the Sith whispered, his hand extended toward the Chiss as he felt his panicked breathing, his elevated heart rate, and with a sigh, Cody turned and left the room to head for the cockpit to make the jump to the nearest planet. It was foolish to think that the Sith Lord would finish without finally putting his hands on the lustful, achingly aroused female.
Lumis laid his hand on the fearful Chiss' chest, his fingers clutching at the smooth blue shin, his heart throbbing under his palm, and the Sith reached deep within him, felt the frantic flow of his life pulse in the Force, and slowly, Obi-Wan controlled it, commanded it, contained it, and the Chiss relaxed under his grasp, his eyes still wide and fearful, but his body sagged with submission. He knew what was coming, but his Master had commanded him not to fight, and he no longer had the ability to do anything but obey.
Slowly, the Sith tightened his grip and began to pull, drawing the Force to him and grinning wickedly as he took the flames of his life in his hands, flickering and jumping in terror, and he softly soothed it, not extinguishing the fire, but consuming it, the Force compelled to fly from the Chiss and flow directly into the Sith Lord. The man was dead in moments, his skin paling to a pale, icy blue, the glowing red of his eyes darkening as the very Force within him was torn out of him, and he hung limply in his restraints, the body seeming somehow shriveled and dead far longer than just a few moments. Beside him, the woman shut her eyes tightly, her body still gripped in the throes of insatiable lust as she turned her head away.
Obi-Wan leaned his back against the wall, his eyes closed and his hands in his hair as he felt the Dark Side within him rise up to tear and consume the life it had taken, absorbed, and Kenobi could feel it spread within him, warm and blissful and intoxicating, far more than any alcohol, far more potent than any drugs, and he relished the feeling he felt so rarely, denying himself the pleasures of consuming life because of the dangers the act possessed. Like any drug, it was highly addictive, and even now, only moments after he had consumed the life of the captive Chiss, he yearned for it again, his entire body aching with the craving for it as ravenous golden eyes stared intently at the panting, moaning woman.
With a deep, feral growl, Kenobi strode the small distance between them, slammed his hand beside her head and kissed her, hard and deep and hungry, as if the act could draw the Force out of her on its own. Her quick, insistent movements against him stoked the Dark Side into a roaring, snarling frenzy, not for blood or life, but for pleasure, the desire for satisfaction and satiation through lust pushing away the powerful drive for consumption and the need to submit to the addiction that edged at his mind.
"I think," Lumis growled deeply, his hands running over the sensitive, receptive body before him, "that I'm going to record what I do to you and send it to my friend Thrawn...he needs to know what his people are to the Sith." He kissed her again, harder than before and pressing closer when he touched her mind and found all her previous fight gone, replaced instead with lust and submission, and he only pulled away when the intercom crackled, filling the room with a swift burst of static.
"No sex in the Umbra," Cody's voice said, and the Sith could only respond with a ferocious snarl, his hand tightening possessively on her hip as he bit at her neck, a sharp cry of pain and pleasure rushing through the sole survivor. "Really, brother, your current state is upsetting Yoda. If you don't calm yourself, I feel he may tear through the hull."
There was silence for a long while as Kenobi rested his forehead against her shoulder, his hand wandering and petting and stroking and eliciting sharp cries of pained yearning from the woman. His eyes closed and breathing deep, Obi-Wan slowly pushed away from the wall, hissing curses under his breath in every language he knew as he backed away and slowly sat, his legs folded underneath him, his hands resting on his knees, and his golden eyes never leaving the moaning Chiss' face.
Even as he felt his body revitalizing, the Force rushing through him and repairing the damage time had wrought, leaving him younger, faster, stronger than before, he knew there were other ways to feel the darkness. The addiction took many forms, and he was strong enough to resist the pull that Darth Nihilus had so eagerly embraced. Consumption of life, death, blood, murder, pain, lust, all these and more fed the Dark Side, fueled it, the sacrifices required to achieve true power, the price that had to be paid to walk the Dark Side. But he was patient, he was careful, and above all else, Obi-Wan was a Master, one that could let the Dark Side rage through him like the beast it was, only to be quickly brought to heel when he commanded it to still.
His gaze never left the writhing woman, his next conquest, his next slave that wore the chains the Dark Side had fashioned for her. She would accept him, willingly or no, despite the fact that he had tortured and murdered her crew before her eyes, and in time, even she would choose her chains to freedom, just as Maul had once done, just as Thrawn would do.
"Let me know when we land, Cody," Obi-Wan said softly, his gaze never leaving the woman as he sunk into the Force in attentive meditation. "There's only two days before Empire Day, and I still have much to do."