32: Folded, Spindled and Mutilated
The forests of Endor were old. They were old in a way that the inhabitants of most civilized worlds could scarcely imagine, a galactic treasure of antiquity that had stood since the days of the first Emperor. But this didn't stop the Empire from pulverizing a dozen of its mighty, unfathomably ancient trees to make space for its landing platform, which now stood as a massive gleaming insult to the forest's grandeur.
A vessel descended on whispery repulsors towards the platform; the Dream Knife. It was spindly, delicate and angular, almost resembling a purple metallic insect as it landed and its wings folded into their landing position. Before its engine had even cycled down fully, the canopy opened and Ayumu emerged.
She wore a light blouse, brown trousers and a wide-brimmed straw hat, perfect for the weather but totally unsuited to a Sith or a noble. The only hold those two personas had on her at the moment were in her lightsabers, gilded ceremonial hilt on one hip, sleek black weapon on the other.
"Welcome back."
She looked down in surprise, putting a hand to her hat to keep it from blowing away. The Brothers stood in a triangle on the platform beneath her, three men of wildly different build and bearing, linked only by their orange hair and soulless eyes. Though Ayumu had likened her encounter with Chiyo to a puppet show, these were beings that truly fit the label. "Hi, there," she replied pleasantly. "What brings you guys up here?"
"Lord Nochichi wanted us to see you before he did."
"Really? Why's that?"
"Mercy…" at that growled word, three red lightsabers ignited and the brothers spread out. Ayumu's hat flew away on the wind as she sat on the Dream Knife's folded wing and slouched to look at them.
"Because he'd break every bone in my body, huh? He must be really pissed," she said easily. "Did he tell you why, by any chance? Did any of you ask?" The brothers looked at her as if she were speaking Gamorrean. "Oh, you poor things. You don't even know how far gone…"
"Don't!" the eldest pointed up at her. "You fear us!"
"Is that what he told you…?" Ayumu shook her head sadly. "It's not you I fear, it's what you are. It's… what Nochichi might make of me." She looked at her hands, not even appearing to notice as the two younger brothers jumped to the nose and tail of her ship and started closing in. "My thoughts and dreams are really all I have now. If I were to lose them, well... I'd want to die." Red sabers rose over her head on either side, but still she didn't stir. "Mercy… if that's what you're here for, I guess I'll have to give it to you."
Tomo and Kagura sat facing each other over a table in one of the Mon Remonda's lounges, the soldier's reconciliation present sitting between them half-empty. Yomi sat in the couch next to Tomo, eyes scanning a textbook without really seeing it. Her misgivings about the Armada and its mission had blossomed into full-grown anxiety, but when she tried to confide in her partner, all it got her was a thorough taunting.
"I can't believe it…" Kagura sipped some of the ale and shook her head. "I mean, she was a little weird, but who'd have thought she was mynock-shit insane?"
"She'd never do anything like that." Tomo downed her glass and started refilling it. "She was my best friend at Livingston, and I know she wouldn't hurt a fly." When the bulb was full she downed it again.
"Haven't you had enough of that?" Yomi suggested.
"Yes," Tomo replied positively, refilling the glass yet again.
"Can't you find a more constructive way to deal with this?"
"What could be more constructive than copious amounts of ale?" Kagura asked.
Yomi looked back and forth between them. "Bonkuras," she finally said despairingly. "I'm surrounded." Instead of drinking down her latest glass, Tomo leaned against the Valerian and sighed deeply.
Chiyo entered with a mass of brown fabric over her shoulder and Yuka in tow. The powder monkey hadn't left her side since they returned from Dagobah; it wasn't clear from her bearing what Chiyo thought of this. In addition to her old moisture-farmer clothes (which seemed to be getting a little small on her), she wore a frayed, dark gray headband.
She sat at another couch in their circle and started sewing, which, even with the aid of the Force, was a difficult proposition, one-handed. (The tattered remains of her artificial arm were back on the Katana, being examined by Ishihara.) Yuka sat next to her with an unspoken offer to help; the Jedi smiled briefly to her but then went back to her work without accepting.
"What're you workin' on, shorty?" Kagura asked.
"Something I should've done a long time ago," Chiyo answered, holding the seam she had just made up and inspecting it critically. "I guess it just never occurred to me…"
"Really? What-?"
Before the soldier could continue, Princess Kaori came rushing up. Chiyo glanced up at her approach and nodded pleasantly, giving the distinct impression that she was supposed to be concerned by the Princess's approach and yet wasn't in the least.
"Hi, Princess!" Kagura greeted cheerfully. "Hey, it's like a party! When was the last time we were all together? I th…" she noticed that the room's vibe was a little tense and trailed off.
"I'm really sorry about the jacket," Chiyo said, "I know you and Ms. Chihiro worked hard on it… but Yuka and I had to make bandages out of something. I kept part of it," she added, indicating the ridiculous headband. "And now that I think of it, it makes a good symbolic-"
"Forget the damn jacket," Kaori cut her off, agitated, "Is all that stuff you said to Professor Kurosawa true?"
"Of course," the girl seemed surprised. "Why would I lie about something like that?"
"But you're… you're just…!"
Except for the despondent Tomo, the others looked between them, interested. They'd evidently missed something important. "I'm just what?" Her voice was innocent but also a little annoyed. "Am I doing anything wrong?"
"Are you doing… you seceded from the Rebellion?"
Everybody around the circle flinched in unison, except for Chiyo, who looked up from her work and nodded blandly. "Yes. I'm still helping you, though."
"But why?"
"Look…" Chiyo sighed and visibly took a moment to compose her thoughts. "I've just been charged with rebuilding the Jedi Order. I can't… the Order can't be subsumed by anything else, and a Jedi can't owe their allegiance to anything but the Order. The Empire is a horrible institution that needs to be removed, so for now our aims are the same."
"For now…" Kaori shook her head. "And are there any other Jedi?"
"Not really."
"So what you're saying is you only owe allegiance to yourself?"
"I never thought of it that way, but I guess so. Is there anything wrong with that?"
"Is there any… you've got so much power, though. You ought to…" Kaori floundered. "Well, I don't have any authority over you now. Just… I'd like to tell you that what you're doing now is the same arrangement that Nochichi has with the Empire."
Chiyo's eyes were suddenly cold. "Don't compare me to him."
Kaori shrugged. "I've said my piece." Part of being a diplomat was knowing when to quit, after all. As soon as she was out of sight, Kagura turned and yelped, "You what?"
"I left. I'm not going to be a part of anyone's agenda…"
"Except your own."
Chiyo stopped and hung her head with another sigh. "That is a little dangerous, isn't it? But what would make Ms. Kaori's or even the Professor's judgment any more valid than mine?" She pulled the mass of brown fabric over her head and now stood in a simple Jedi robe. "All I can do is what seems best, right?"
With an angry huff, Tomo stood.
"Wait, Ms. Tomo, what's wrong?"
Tomo looked like she was going to leave without responding, but turned back to the young Jedi, eyes lowered. "Did you… did you have to kill her?"
"Actually…" Chiyo seemed troubled. "I'm not so sure I did."
"What?" Yuka jolted in surprise. "But-!"
"I was too angry to realize it at the time," Chiyo sat again. "But I'm beginning to think Darth Mito somehow survived. I'm not sure what to do about it, either…"
"I hope she's hurt!" Yuka said fiercely. "After what she did to you, I hope she's hurt twice as bad!"
On this point, the Jedi was even more troubled. "I wouldn't worry…"
Ayumu coughed, groggily trying to rise. She was in the middle of a huge scar on the landing deck; a network of blackened lines shaped almost like the pattern of light on the bottom of a sunlit pool. There was a perfectly Ayumu-shaped gap at its center; distantly, she wondered what the janitors would make of it.
"You travel to Dagobah…" a wall of Force slammed into her side, knocking her sprawling, "Try to conspire with my mortal enemy…" another blow struck her face before she could even move, dashing her head against the metal deck. "Confront my daughter without my permission…" Her arm snapped like a wet broom handle. "Have her at your mercy, and refrain from killing her…" Ayumu gasped as her organs twisted. "And you BOTHER COMING BACK?"
Purple lightning shrieked through her again for who knew how long. When the blazing agony finally faded, she stared into the sky through a haze of tears. Ah, there was a cloud that looked like a dragon… and that one kinda looked like a sea cucumber… and that-
Her throat closed. "Are you listening to me?"
After a moment, Ayumu whimpered an affirmative.
"Honestly. I don't know what to do with you… though I have a few ideas."
The last two words were punctuated by snapping fingers. She tried to shield herself, but not even Kamineko would be able to stand against the terror of Darth Nochichi's assault. Effortlessly reaching through her incoherent screens, he plucked her into the air and held her before his hideous mask. "Are you… are you going to kill me?" she asked weakly.
"In a week or two," came the judicious reply, "When I finally get bored."
"I always wondered… how ya managed anythin' when ya… kept killin' your employees."
Nochichi chuckled. The sound dunked Ayumu's spine in ice water; she seriously wished she hadn't cracked wise just then. "That was the main reason I kept you around at first. You amused me. But then I got to thinking that you could be more than a minion, that you... what?"
That last was even stranger. Nochichi was often angry and occasionally a little perplexed, but there was never a time when he wasn't completely in control of whatever situation he found himself a part of. But this exclamation was… concerned. It didn't fit him in the slightest.
They hovered there for a full minute, Ayumu hardly daring to breathe. She noted with a pang of guilt that she was dripping blood on the decking. After a while longer, though, the tension became unbearable. "Er… is… is something the matter?"
"I felt a disturbance in the Force. Something has happened on Eddore. What were we just talking about?"
"You were, uh, telling me to fly away and never let you see me again?" she suggested hopefully.
"Nice try. There's been a change in plans… I must depart immediately. The Empress will have much to say and at great length, but she has no authority in this matter. You will obey her as if she was me- do you understand?"
So close. "Y-yes."
"I suspect that the Rebels will launch their foolish attack while I am away, so you will be the Empress's only line of defense against my daughter. I expect you to protect her with your life, if need be. Do not fail; you are every bit as powerful as Chiyo, in your way."
"But… but I can't…!"
A rough probe of the Force made her shoulder joints grind together uncomfortably. "Silence. I find your lack of faith disturbing."
He dropped her to the landing platform and drifted away. As she blacked out, Ayumu reflected that even the fall killed her, the thudsplat! of her body hitting the deck was entertaining enough to make it all worthwhile.
"A care package? From whom?" Chiyo took the parcel and pressed her ear to it. Nope, no ticking… "Thank you, Miru." She sat in the hangar bay at the skids of the craft she and Yuka had hijacked, gazing out at the stars.
"No problem," Miru replied, then turned to their other friend. "Hey, you're coming on duty in five minutes."
"I'll be right there," Yuka replied, not moving. When she finally decided to, it would be an awkward time; Maya had declared her lap his sovereign territory. She scratched his ears on autopilot, not even noticing his soft purring.
Chiyo unwrapped the package as Miru left, conscientiously reading the card before looking at what was within. "Dear Ms. Mihama," she read aloud, "I heard about your secession yesterday- very brave! It makes me sad that you'll never be able to come work for me, though. Enclosed are a few books I thought you would enjoy, some cookies my Aunt made (simply tremendous!), and a surprise. Love, Mako Spince."
"The crimelord?" Yuka squeaked. "And he didn't send a bomb?"
"I don't think he'd…" Chiyo had carefully removed the contents- a few books and cookies as promised, along with a lump of something that looked like- "YAAAHHH!" She chucked it out through the mag-con field into space, where it exploded silently.
"Told you," Yuka quavered.
Chiyo leaned back on the skid and shook her head. "Very nice."
"Damn. Just up and left," Garus said. The old guardsman didn't look at home in his dark day uniform, but under the helm and mantle, he was as intimidating as a man half his age and twice his height. "But I guess our jobs still aren't too hard here."
"Sure," Tarvis nodded absently. "Her Majesty's on the most powerful Battlestation in existence, surrounded by twelve-hundred stormtroopers and half the fleet. I'd say there's not much for us to do."
"So why do you go courting death, then?" Garus asked impatiently. "You'll never live to see my age at this rate."
The two men came to a halt at Medical Ward Seventeen, submitting to retinal scans before being admitted. It was mostly empty; there would probably never be a time when the Death Star's hundred and fifty wards all saw use, knock on wood. "I'm not courting death, you old badger!" Tarvis replied, just as impatient. "I'm just volunteering to help someone… who's very important to the security of the Empress, by the way… get through bacta disorientation. After spending so long in that stuff, she won't know which way is up!"
"She's not like she was before…" Garus said fearfully, "Did you see what happened to the Brothers? She hacked one of 'em right in two! The only reason the youngest is still barely clinging to life is that Nochichi showed up when he did!"
"If you don't have anything helpful to say, shove off."
One room within the ward had a row of five bacta tanks, but only one was filled with the turquoise fluid, its occupant curled tightly into a ball at its center. Looking at Ayumu there, so small and vulnerable, it was hard to imagine that she was capable of harming anything, let alone routing the rebels of Borleas, slaughtering two dozen Vratix warriors and fighting "the Prodigy," that feared and reviled Rebel agent, to a standstill.
"You're just in time," the doctor said, "She should be waking up any time now."
"That's what you said when I came a half-hour ago," Tarvis pointed out dryly.
"This one's a little slow, I guess. Oh… there, here she comes."
Huge brown eyes opened heavily. Ayumu unfolded slowly and kicked towards the top of the tank, accepting the hand of an attendant on the tank's platform. The woman lifted her out easily and helped her into a white robe, tying the belt when the still sluggish Sithling proved unable. After a moment to regain her balance, she thanked the attendant and climbed unsteadily down.
Scars… an instant before the robe fell over her, Tarvis noted that her pale skin was crisscrossed with angry pink lines. What kind of scars didn't fade after hours of bacta treatment? And worse, the lighter ghosts of similar marks ran between them. What in the galaxy had happened to her?
"I'm glad you're out, Lady Mito," the doctor said, "You had us worried, there."
"Mito…" Ayumu shook her head, spattering them with turquoise droplets from her hair. "It wasn't a dream, then… shoot…"
"This gentleman volunteered to help you through your disorientation."
Ayumu's eyes lit up. "Corporal! You didn't die!"
"Huh?" the guardsmen glanced at each other in confusion.
"Oh… sorry… I, uh, I thought you were someone else." She scrubbed her eyes vigorously. "Thanks for coming, Tarvis."
"Sorry I wasn't who you were hoping for."
"That's okay," Ayumu put a hand to her newly healed arm and smiled a little. "I'm just glad to be bacta normal."
Tarvis laughed out loud. "I told you! She hasn't changed a bit."
"But have I?" Ayumu wondered later, washing her hands in preparation to head down to the mess. An old bar of fragrant soap from Thyferra slid between her fingers, the scent filling her with nostalgia. "I'm a totally different person than I was… oops!"
The soap squirted out of her hands, and her frantic efforts to catch it only made it jump higher and higher. Finally it shot up out of her reach and slapped against the ceiling. Focusing herself, Ayumu shot out a hand towards it and caught it in a vice-like grip of the Force. (Her telekinetic abilities were up to such a small, simple task.)
"Ha!" she crowed. As if it had heard her, the soap shot out of her Force grip and out the door, ricocheting down the hall until somebody in the distance yelled, "Ahh! My leg!"
"S-sorry!" Ayumu cried, rushing after. Perhaps she hadn't changed as much as she'd thought.
"An anonymous letter?" Kaori accepted the envelope and turned it over in her hands. "How does mail even find us here?"
"Oh, there's a system," the courier answered readily. "First, the letters…"
"You don't have to explain it to me. Thank you, carry on."
The courier nodded and rushed off. After a moment to inspect the envelope, she withdrew the letter and started in on it. "My Dearest Kaorin," she read to herself, "I hope this letter finds you well. I'm writing to make a confession that…" Her eyes scanned down the rows of neat handwriting in mounting horror. "…in short, I love you. Signed… Grand Moff K…"
Kaori sat staring at the letter for a very long time, eye twitching. Her intercom buzzed. "Princess? I have a-" her secretary started.
"AAAARRRRRRGGGHH!" she tore the letter into tiny pieces and threw it all over the room.
"I'll tell them to come back later."
Incredibly, the Empress's throne room had been reproduced wholesale in the Death Star. It was hard to imagine a more frivolous waste of resources, but it was pretty nice to stand in there and pretend that you weren't on a Battlestation in the cold depths of space.
Ayumu sat on the shoulder of Emperor Tanizaki I's statue, going through a short stack of mail that had piled up over her recuperation. Most of it was the usual; fawning letters by schemers who hoped to sway her one way or the other, form letters to important nobles, a bill for her treatment, thoughtfully waived…
But there was one item of interest- a rather fat envelope from the Chimera, an Imperial vessel currently plunging into the Unknown Regions in a war of conquest. It had been written in a cipher based on her collected poems, which was a little embarrassing, as it was her fervent hope that nobody actually read the thing.
Dear Lady Mito,
News comes that you are having difficulty dealing with your opposite number. While I have every confidence in your ability, enclosed is information that you may find useful. I had been holding the knowledge of Myrkyr and its creatures for my own use, but it seems you may have greater need.
Your Friend and Colleague,
Mitth'raw'nuruodo
PS: Concerning the fourth poem; there is no logical connection between panties and blasters. Why did you even try?
She stared at the name for a moment, then slowly drew a circle around the middle so that it read Mit(th'ra'wn)uruodo. "Thank you, Grand Admiral," Ayumu said, pleased with her discovery. The enclosed document was a zoology report about a race of creatures called Ysalimir, which she read cover to cover.
"Is she allowed to be up there?" a stormtrooper asked quietly on the floor below.
"Do you want to be the one to tell her she isn't?" another replied.
"I'm a busy man," Matsuyama said in clipped syllables, "Impress me."
Yomi cleared her throat uneasily. The Intelligence officer sympathized a little; he knew the feeling well. Her friend, evidently dragged along for moral support, sat in the corner of his office, looking bored. Matsuyama didn't like having bored people in his office. They were a security risk.
"This is all monumentally stupid," Yomi finally said.
"Oh?"
"Why does the Death Star even exist? You don't need a moon-sized Battlestation that sucks the energy out of stars to destroy planets. All you need is a fleet of ships that cost a tenth as much, or one good Von Neumann machine… heck, a great big rock would work just fine."
"Um…"
"I'm not done! It's the most stupid thing you can imagine! Why do you want to destroy a planet instead of taking it? Two or three metanukes could remove the military presence from any world you want. And it's not like the Rebellion is dumb enough to put its bases on isolated worlds that the Empire would have no problem nuking, jungle moons and crap like that, right?"
"Well, actually…"
"The Death Star isn't even good as a symbol! What does the Empire need with yet another symbol of terror and oppression? And they're building the damn thing in secret! What was the official line?"
"Hideki Yukari II Research Institute," Matsuyama said tiredly, "Tragically destroyed in the solar flare that consumed Alderaan."
"I thought it was something retarded like that… You know what the Death Star really is?"
He hissed through his teeth. "Enlighten me."
"It's a great big god-damned galactic 'kick-me' sign! I can't think of a more blatantly obvious trap!"
"You don't know…"
Yomi pounded a fist on the desk. "Mark my words- they have half their fleet waiting around that station, and it'll swallow this little armada like nothing! All these starry-eyed idealists and reckless smugglers and brave soldiers are going to die! For nothing!"
"I'll talk to Ms. Kurosawa, but what else do you expect us to do?"
"I don't know… but you'd better figure it out."
(A/N: Thanks to Section 8 for the care-package idea and pointing me to the "How to Destroy Earth" website. Whee!)
