Lots more Grievous this time around and that's how it should be…all you devoted Grievophiles, enjoy! Also, thanks so much for all the kind comments to date. They are appreciated. This chapter should clear up a well-noted query or two as well. The character of Gregory is the touch of Dragonball Z content, except that he's an alien in his universe, not a droid. If I could have created an original character that was similar enough to please me without seeming like a rip-off, I would have, but I couldn't, so here he is. Hope you don't mind his continued presence in a Star Wars story…

THE ESSENCES OF LIFE

Chapter 2 – No Return Invite For This One!

The early morning sunshine warmed Lissa's face as she gulped down the last of yet another cup of java. She needed it, badly. What a night it'd been! The greenish sky was crystal clear, the air mild and calm. It looked like the start of a beautiful day. Yet another reason for Lissa to like Marku. Its benign weather generated a lot of beautiful days.

The woman was standing in the big open bay door entrance to the enclosed space that served as her lab and office, workshop and attached garage, all in one. The other end of the simple rectangular building she called home housed her actual living quarters, which she shared with her droids. She and the droids had built the prefab structure several years ago, doing all the work themselves, their Markusian neighbours watching with good-natured interest from afar although they wouldn't do a stroke to help out. They were still like that, still refusing to visit or even closely approach her abode under normal circumstances, yet perfectly willing to be friendly whenever she entered their village for supplies or just to smooze. As long as she left her machines behind. That was just the way it had to be.

Her small space shuttle sat parked a short distance away, weeds growing up and twining in amongst the landing struts. She hadn't used the vessel in an awfully long time.

Lissa strolled back through her big open workspace and through the connecting doorway into her living area to return her empty mug. Lola, her silver-plated protocol droid, snapped it up at once, making a huge deal out of the simple task of cleaning it. The protocol droid's actual designation was L-0LA, but naturally that had gotten subverted into its current form in next to no time. She'd been programmed with a female personality by someone who'd evidently had a thing for giddy, talkative airheads, and was just as silly as she was efficient.

Lissa didn't mind. Lola's chatter was just part of the background noise of the woman's comfortable, everyday life. Of course, there'd been nothing everyday about the past couple of hours.

She returned to her workspace eagerly. All was as she'd left it. She dropped down into her chair again, leaned forward, propped her face with her hands, and then just sat, looking down, her flaxen greying hair trailing past her cheeks, slate-coloured eyes bright with curiosity and anticipation.

Her delightfully intriguing visitor lay on blankets that she'd spread over a cushioning mat on the floor. She and Trigger could've probably muscled him into the house proper despite his weight—a whopping 157 kilos, according to the loader droid—but the gesture would have been pointless. He was far too big for her bed or couch and besides, she wanted him close to her lab equipment in order to properly examine him. She'd known he was Geonosian-built as soon as they'd gotten him out of his ship and she'd seen his long legs with their low-set hock and stifle joints and big, clawed, grasping feet. The Geonosians often went for a spare functionality modeled after their own lean frames, everything pared down to the essentials, nothing exaggerated or without its purpose. This cyborg's body was like that, just a really beautiful, a consummate design.

His faceplate was the most unfamiliar and alien-appearing thing about him. There was some art there… Someone had gone to the trouble of sculpting in a subtlety of form and elegance of line that endowed him with a certain expressiveness. She studied the vertical marks etched into the mask above his eyes, the paired ritual lines Gregory had referenced. Someone had done that too, preserved this symbol of his Kaleesh heritage. Lissa found it impossible to speculate on why the Geonosians would work with a Kalee in the first place. She didn't exactly keep up with politics.

She lifted one of the cyborg's hands up between her own to admire its construction. He'd been given six digits, four fingers and two opposable thumbs, almost wholly coated with ceramic duranium, the same as his armour plating, yet they remained fully flexible and dexterous, almost delicate in appearance. Most amazing of all, his hands and entire arms were designed to split in half and function independently—it was one of the damnedest features she'd ever seen.

She kept hold of his hand while she considered the man within the alien-designed body. His continued unconsciousness was worrisome. The droids she'd sent back out to his fighter at dawn had already found and repaired a coolant leak, and when Lissa had drawn a little blood to confirm his species ID, she'd also run a quick tox screen that had revealed trace residuals of some unspecified contaminant. It was probable that her visitor's air supply had been poisoned. It was further probable that a programmed failsafe had forced him into torpor before he'd inhaled a lethal dose, in which case all she had left to do was kick back and wait for the cyborg's body to complete its job of detoxifying his organics. His vitals seemed good and had been growing steadily stronger ever since he'd first shown signs of life. But still she worried, and she wished he would wake up soon.

Lola was fussing again, unable to decide on some inanity to do with lunch, and Lissa went back into her living area for a bit to tend to her request. The protocol droid was always finding something to agonize over. When she, Trigger and Gregory sometimes got into it together, Lissa would swear it was like having three young teeners in the house.

Crisis averted, the woman hurried back to her workspace. She'd rather not leave her guest alone to revive by himself. He was sure to be confused, would undoubtedly appreciate reassuring words as he woke up, a kind smile…

The cyborg sprang at her the instant she entered and slammed her up against the nearest wall. "Where am I!" he hissed directly into her face.

Lissa gasped for breath, utterly confused. She had no idea how she'd suddenly gone from stepping through the doorway to being pinned on the wall. The intervening action had been so fast that all she really registered was that the mask-like faceplate she'd been earlier admiring was now entirely filling her field of vision and that the eyes glaring out of the faux sockets were wild and molten and terrifying in their burning intensity.

"Answer! Where AM I!"

"Mar-Marku," she managed to choke out. "A planetoid. You're in my home."

"Who are you?"

"Lissa Veleroko. Human. Civilian. No threat whatsoever, I promise."

Her words, promptly delivered, seemed to mollify him. The all-encompassing vision of his bone-white face withdrew. She became aware of his hands painfully engulfing her shoulders, squeezing them, then letting go. He stepped back, away from her.

Lissa had to look up at him, way up. He was a big sucker all right.

"Your starfighter landed nearby," she went on in a still shaky voice. "We found you unconscious in it, brought you here to try and help you."

"We?"

"My droids and I."

But he'd already lost interest in her. He began casing her workspace. Lissa watched, with fascination and not a little awe. He'd self-evidently recovered perfectly from his ordeal all on his own. His motions were impressively graceful despite his extensive droid components. He moved like a living thing, balancing his weight easily, his feet stepping lightly, not machine-like at all. And had that been a breathy live undertone to his husky, accented, synthesized voice? She wished he'd say more, but was too leery of interrupting him at his self-appointed surveillance to initiate further conversation.

When he heard the drift of Lola's voice starting in on a fresh round of fussing, he rushed to the interconnecting doorway at once and went through. "Oh shoot," Lissa muttered, and ran after him.

The cyborg roared through the house like a whirlwind, checking every room, terrifying Lola, moving sometimes at an arrogant high-headed walk, other times slouching into a half-crouch during which he'd dart forward at a slinking run that seemed to float him over the ground. He didn't stop until he'd strode outside—Lissa and the gibbering Lola watched through the window as he stood for a moment in the front yard, restless, wary, his head swivelling about. Then a dash out of sight to one side and they soon heard the clack of his clawed feet on the hard floor in the workspace again.

Lissa found him staring at some droid prototypes on one of her workbenches.

"You're, ah, welcome to examine those," she called, desperate for some sort of rapport with him, to get him talking. The look he flung at her was vile. She felt her patience and goodwill starting to slip.

"Your body is Geonosian-designed, isn't it? And you, you're Kaleesh, yes?"

That finally got his attention. She saw his eyes widen, showing the whites. "How do you know that?" he snarled.

"Well, I guess I can read a damn DNA analysis!"

Her subconscious was turning somersaults by now, pleading with her to please desist, to mind her mouth, to give some thought to her visitor's lethal potential, but she steadfastly ignored it. The cyborg regarded her with a speculative air.

Her work desk and terminal caught his eye and he pushed aside her chair and began accessing her computer from a standing position. Lissa opened her mouth to yell at him, changed her mind, and planted her hands on her hips instead, her expression deeply disapproving and not a little disappointed. To hell with him, she thought. He wouldn't get far.

Sure enough, it only took a few minutes before he ran up against the crypto-vault. His hands slowed over the keyboard, stabbed in a sequence, stopped, stabbed again. Lissa could tell by the tension in his stance that his futile efforts were frustrating him. After a further moment, his long face turned slowly towards her, the simple motion alone exuding remarkable malevolence.

"You've secured some of your files," he stated, his tone low and menacing.

"Yes."

"Release them."

"Sorry, no."

"Release them now!" he demanded.

"Damn it, no!" Lissa shot back "Who do you think you are!"

The cyborg bridled, whirled, and stormed towards her. Lissa watched him advance with the same expression on her face with which people sometimes watch the approach of a tornado or wildfire, too stupefied by their own dumb fascination to flee before being engulfed by the very disaster enthralling them. He seemed to loom higher and higher as he came. In that instant, Lissa understood better than any human being before her the true meaning of the term 'towering rage'.

He glared down at her and she stared right back. Inexplicably, she found herself wondering whether the sulphurous fire blazing in his orbs was due to natural eye shine or artificially generated by the cybernetic implants.

His attention shifted. He focused inward. He jerked back, breaking the impasse, and swung about and headed for the big bay door. She ran after him and watched him halt outside and tuck his face and begin twisting his head from side to side, holding it at strange angles. He began stabbing with one hand at something on his arm, angrily. Everything he did seemed laced with hatred and violence.

"Uh, the offworld reception's very bad here," she called. He looked at her and she motioned downward at the ground. "Lots of metal. Ore deposits."

"Take me to my ship," he ordered.

Lissa was more than happy to obey. He was one visitor she couldn't get rid of fast enough. He dogged her steps and hovered unnecessarily close to her the whole time they hiked to his landing site, all but breathing down her neck, refusing to walk abreast or go on ahead, even though having to restrain his stride to match her own was clearly a great irritation to him. As soon as he saw his starfighter, however, he sped past her with his peculiar running walk, gliding over the ground.

Gregory, who had no doubt assigned himself the task of supervising the other droids and so was basically doing nothing but hovering in place, saw the cyborg striding up and his mouth fell open in a comical exaggerated 'o' of surprise. He began to fly forward, to greet their guest, identified and processed said guest's expression and attitude with rather more intelligence and a far better sense of self-preservation than had Lissa, and wisely decided to get the hell out of the way. The alien cyborg swept by, ignoring him. He ignored all the droids as he rapidly did a walkabout of his ship, then put a hand on the edge of the open cockpit and leapt up and in with breathtaking ease.

Lissa found herself running after him for the third time that morning. "We replaced…some coolant for you," she panted, "and the feed line…a section ruptured and the droids fixed it."

She might as well have been speaking to the ship itself. The cyborg's attention was focused on his instrument panel. She could hear the whispery clatter of his duranium fingers as they worked unseen controls. Probably running his own diagnostic checks. It was what she would have done before declaring the starfighter fit for service again.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, never mind that he'd been nothing but aggressive, ungrateful and surly from the start, Lissa was still shocked when he suddenly fired up his engines without the slightest warning or saying a single further word to her. She had just time enough to scramble away from the ship's side—as did Trigger and Gregory—and fling herself to the ground before the starfighter blasted off almost straight up into the air, showering them all with an enormous gust of hot dust and debris. The astromech droid, slower to retreat, was tossed end over end. It came to rest upside-down in a bush twenty meters away.

Lissa rolled slowly back up onto all fours and then to her feet and spat out a mouthful of sand. The starfighter was already just a speck in the sky. "Unbelievable!" she croaked, watching it wink out of sight.

"Ditto," Gregory sniffed, as he came flitting back to his mistress. "That was a rude man. A very rude man!"

"He was rather discourteous," Trigger agreed. A small branch had gotten tangled up in the two long spatulate antennae perched like ears on top of his long head, making him look woebegone and ridiculous. "Are you all right, ma'am?" he asked with concern.

"I'm fine. And trust me, you don't know the half of it," Lissa replied with a grin.

She pulled the branch out from between Trigger's antennae, let Gregory settle into her arms for a reassuring cuddle, and the three of them went to rescue the upended, forlornly beeping astromech unit. No harm done in the long run, and that was the main thing. The personal droids would enjoy hearing about what had happened at the house and Lola would be in a tizzy for days.

She also found herself feeling supremely relieved that their nasty guest hadn't discovered all the deep scans she'd taken of him—whoa!

Lissa Veleroko would have felt a lot more relieved had she ever had any inkling of who her guest had really been. He was no ordinary cyborg, this part machine, part alien being who'd just left her household in an uproar and rocketed away. He was a creation of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the Supreme Commander of the Separatists' mighty droid armies, and his name was General Grievous. And at just that moment, the good General was in one of the foulest moods yet of his strange and altered existence.

He still wasn't sure which was worse, the excruciating humiliation of discovering that the body he now lived in could override his will and shut him temporarily down like a piece of overheated equipment, or that of waking up to find that he'd been captured by an unarmed human female and a pack of worthless service droids. Luckily for him, the woman had turned out to be some sort of moronic do-gooder who was naïve beyond belief and without apparent affiliations, but he'd still have to do something about her. She'd ferreted out far too much information about him already.

The comm box on his instrument panel cracked and spat and suddenly resolved itself and emitted a perfectly good clear signal, the same one he'd detected trying to reach him back on the planetoid. He stabbed on the speaker and made contact with one of his battle droid commanders.

"—reach you, General Grievous. Are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine," he snapped. "Status?"

"Battle zone secured. Operational standby," the reedy voice of the battle droid supplied promptly. "We dispatched AGDs117 and 239 to recover you, but had trouble establishing your precise location, sir. Our apologies for the delay."

"There was some local interference. Which AGD is closest to me?"

"I am, sir. 239."

"Vector me in. I'm coming aboard."

Grievous punched in the codes he received, then sat back, letting the automated systems take over, feeling a degree of calm for the first time since regaining consciousness. In truth, he would have preferred rejoining his fleet via his own starfighter, but he simply didn't trust the repair work that had just been done to his ship. One of the AGDs—heavily armed, exclusively droid-manned frigates—would get him back almost as fast and could accommodate and check over his personal craft in the meantime.

His relief vanished when he set foot on what passed as 239's bridge and was told by the ship's captain that Count Dooku was expecting a call ASAP.

A communications alcove set off to one sided offered a measure of privacy once Grievous ordered the nearest droids away. Grievous thought he would need it and he was correct. Dooku was not at all happy with him.

"General Grievous. At last," the hologram of his superior said as soon as it appeared. Count Dooku, the human political head of the Separatists and Commander In Chief of Grievous's armies, had a suave, low-timbred voice perfectly in keeping with his well-bred looks and aristocratic bearing. It was also a voice well suited for dripping sarcasm, as Grievous was about to experience first-hand. "I was informed earlier of the particulars of the skirmish your fleet just engaged in. Imagine my surprise to find myself being briefed not by my battle commander, but by one of his droid subordinates. Would you care to account for your whereabouts for the past six hours, General?"

"My fighter came under fire and was somewhat disabled. I jumped blind in order to avoid destruction and emerged from hyperspace in an atmosphere. My ship flamed out. I had to land and wait for the engines to cool," Grievous explained, deciding on the spot to edit out certain facts of his most recent brush with death. Dooku frowned.

"Your fighter. Your starfighter, you mean," the Count intoned.

"Yes."

"And you were in your starfighter doing—what? Leading the battle? Inspiring your troops? Please tell me that you weren't thinking that you could inspire your fellow droids with a show of reckless heroism, General."

"I…" Grievous hated how the human could make him feel a fool with only a few choice words and a glance. His reply trailed off. There was nothing he could really say in his defence.

"This sort of behaviour is unacceptable," Dooku went on. "I insist that it stop. It isn't the first such incident. You also took unnecessary risks on Hypori."

"All superior leaders take risks," Grievous pointed out.

"That may be," said Dooku, "but you must understand, General, that you represent a substantial outlay of funding and technology and as such owe us a great debt. I won't have you squandering that investment. Your duty is to provide leadership and win battles, not engage in your own petty vainglorious pursuits."

Grievous bore the chastisement in stony silence, with only the slight tightening of the skin about his eyes betraying his resentment.

Dooku continued to look his Supreme Commander over with some distaste. "Perhaps we should assign you a personal pilot in the future. It might aid in helping you to avoid any further unnecessary side trips," he concluded.

That finally prompted a response. The cyborg jerked his sleek head up a tiny notch. "Count Dooku, there is one further matter concerning my…side trip," Grievous rasped, his voice rougher than usual. "I may have discovered an unexpected resource."

"Oh?"

"A private researcher. On the planetoid I landed on. She has some knowledge of cybernetics."

"A woman? What species?"

"Your own, Count. Human."

"Indeed. And you believe her knowledge may be of use to us?"

"She recognized that my droid components were Geonosian-built. I was able to scan some of her research. It has value."

The patrician features were already shifting, assuming an expression far more approving. "I see. Then perhaps your little escapade was not entirely worthless after all. May I assume that you'll secure this resource and have no trouble persuading the woman to, ah, cooperate?"

Grievous let his face tilt downward and his eyes hood over menacingly. "None whatsoever. She is alone and helpless," he growled.

Dooku smiled. "Carry on then, General."

"Count."

As soon as the holographic image of his superior faded, the cyborg's big body hunched over and his hands slammed down on the console on either side of the holo-emitter. The long fingers curled up into tightly clenched fists.

Fellow droids! Reckless heroism!

TBC