11/14/35 ABY

Kylo's very happy to see the first of his training droids show up. It's bright, shiny black, articulated like a human, walks a lot like one, and the man from the company who makes them puts it through what looks like an impressive demonstration.

At least, against him it looks good.

But Kylo knows he's a better fighter than the man. Everything they're doing is basic combat.

The man is panting a little, tired, pleased. "Does it meet your needs, My Lord?"

Kylo shucks off his cloak, and strips out of his tunic, too. It had done well against the man from the company, so he strips off his shirt, too, hopeful this will at least result in a decent workout if not a good fight.

"We'll see. Hardened selenium-steel plate armor?"

The man nods. "Like you requested."

That means he should be able to hit it a few times with his saber without destroying it. He has a training saber, a light, flexible baton that allows him to hit, but not destroy, but he prefers to work with his lightsaber. The flame can hurt him just as easily as someone else, and training with something else might dull his own edge.

He extends his saber, and moves into his usual defensive half-crouch.

The Droid has one of their execution axes. A more than formidable weapon, and its electro-blade can deflect a lightsaber hit. It extends it, blade glowing, and gives it a few testing swishes.

Kylo watches the actions. Basic, starting up, day one of armed hand-to-hand martial combat training moves.

"Do you want any protective gear?" the sales rep says.

Kylo shakes his head. He's still wearing his gloves, and they're flame retardant, and have a thin layer of plexiplast, enough to give him an extra second or two of protection against his blade, or the droid's. They're enough. If this thing manages to lay a hit on him, he'll be shocked.

"You have to tell it to attack."

"What if I want to be surprised?"

"E4, attack at will."

E4 waits for a few more breaths, and then springs. It's fast. Kylo will give it that, but it's planning an attack based on the idea that he's a new recruit with a standard list of potential counter attacks. Kylo dodges out of the way, bends back, spins, lunges, whips his saber into play, three fast, hard hits while he sweeps down, leg extending, kicking it's knee joint, hard, stabbing up with his saber again, and then springing up, elbowing it right where it's chin would be.

By the time he's stopped moving, there's a pile of expensive hardware, with sparks streaming out of its midsection, crumpled on the ground, two of its limbs no longer attached, and the axe is buried in the wall behind them.

The manufacturer winces. "I'll be back with a better one."

Kylo stares at him long and steady, until he feels the fear rising in the manufacturer. "Do so."

Kylo looks at his elbow; it's bright red, and he's got the feeling he may have bruised himself by hitting the hard surface of the droid's face.

"If you could make the outside more human, that'd be good, too."

"It's doable. Uh…" The manufacture swallows… "The… pleasure droids… are extremely… lifelike… on that level."

"Teach one of them to really fight, and bring it to me."

He can feel the manufacture wondering if Kylo wants it to have all of its functions in addition to combat, but he decides not to ask. Instead he says, "What would you like it to look like?"

"I couldn't care less." His look makes it clear he intends to kill the thing, not fuck it, and the manufacturer's knees buckle with fear at that misstep. "I won't be able to tailor whomever attacks me to suit my preferences, so I don't expect that to be true of the training droids. Get one that works, if it's satisfactory, make a selection of them in a variety of shapes and sizes. At least some of them should be bigger and stronger than I am, but beyond that, I don't care." He pulls his shirt back on. Didn't even break a sweat. Disappointing.

"On it, my Lord."

"Good."

"Would you like company, my Lord?"

Kylo eyes the commander in front of him. TF-478. Major TF-478. He's been part of the Officer corps for fifteen years and is, Kylo guesses, five years younger than he is. A Hux method graduate, but because of his IQ and facility with quantum problem solving, he was shunted to the 'officer' path early on.

They'd been talking about his navigator training program. Namely, they need more of them. Especially as he moves away from larger craft to smaller ones, he needs a navi team for each one and… And that takes time, and training, and effort, and even the best computer needs an equally good person at its helm to figure out where it needs to go.

Kylo's given him the go ahead to increase the training program by a factor of three, or basically, everyone in their collection of sub-adults, new recruits, and officer corps who have the IQ and quantum processing test scores to do it, and everyone else he can beg, borrow, or bribe out of every other transit corporation or sky navy.

And he'd been hoping to go beat his punching bag and a few other of his training tools into a pulp because now he's got to figure out how to pay for the equipment, teachers, and replacements for the people he's shifting into those positions.

Right now a chance to really pound something or better yet, someone would help, a lot.

And when TF offers, for a second Kylo thrills at it.

And for a second, he goes cold, wondering what TF's motivation is, but… he's not feeling any malice here. There's no alternative plans, no getting to know how he fights so he can use it later to his advantage. Actually… There's almost a sense of a kindred spirit. Kylo's got to shift funds around to cover this. TF's got to find the equipment, teachers, and recruits to train, none of which are readily available.

Just because they've come to an agreement that something has to happen, doesn't mean that getting that thing will be easy.

"I'm rated on every standard weapon the First Order uses, sir, and it's been a few days since I've had a good fight."

Kylo blinks. TF's not very big. He's… nose high on Kylo, slender, likely wiry under his uniform. Kylo's going to flatten him in three hits. And if he's not speed of light fast, those three hits will happen less than a minute into the fight.

"And I've always… kind of… wondered… how a lightsaber works." There's actually some excitement there.

Kylo's not sure if he should welcome that or not. He finally says, "You're not wearing armor."

"Would I need to be?"

"I don't play fight, Major, even when I'm training. If you aren't blindingly fast and wearing armor, you're going to lose limbs if you train against me while I'm using my saber."

"Hand to hand?" He's looking up at Kylo, excited he's managed to get this far into the conversation. TF was sure he'd be turned down flat long before now.

"Do you enjoy pain?"

"I enjoy a good fight, and you look like you'd be one."

Kylo thinks about it, feeling an itch to get to really, truly hit someone, and then nods. "I am." He looks back at TF. "But not for you. You're too valuable to risk damaging." He thinks about it for a moment longer. "I should have some decent training droids eventually. When they finally get them right, you're welcome to work on one of them near me."

TF smiles. "I'll enjoy that."

A week later, the Manufacturer is back, with a second droid.

It may be an improvement. At least, it's certainly closer to what Kylo asked for. It looks like a person. Somewhat.

It's about the same size as Kylo, maybe a little bigger, intentionally gender neutral, with light brown skin, and light brown hair, and light brown eyes. Actually, aside from the coloring and lack of breasts, it puts him in mind of Phasma.

Except, it doesn't.

Phasma was, no matter what, alive. Even if, coated in armor as she was, you couldn't tell just by glancing at her.

And this thing… Kylo's got no idea how desperate you'd need to be to have sex with one of them. The body is perfectly human-shaped, he assumes the skin probably feels perfect, though he's reticent to touch it, because its eyes are dead, it's room temperature, and there's just no lifethere.

Though, he supposes that if you couldn't feel the life in something just by feeling maybe they wouldn't be so off-putting.

As it is, he's finding looking directly at it disconcerting. He'd almost rather go back to fighting the armored droids and just deal with the bruises.

But he's not about to allow that to show up on his face.

"More to your liking? These have been modified so that the outer flesh is as close to human as possible, and we've set the bone strength at human level, too. You'll be able to hit this the same way you would a person, with similar results."

Kylo puts his lightsaber down. This thing's not wearing armor, and if he hits it with his saber, that'll be the end of that.

He reaches for his training blade, calling it to his hand. The Manufacture goggles to see it fly through the room. It's the same weight, and a similar balance to his lightsaber. It can't be exactly right, after all, it has to have a blade so he can make sure he hits, while the blade of his light saber is light so it doesn't weigh anything. Likewise, there are heated spikes on the side of this, sharp and hot enough to keep him aware of them, but not nearly as dangerous as the heat vents on his own blade.

"Same commands as before?" he asks.

"Just tell it to attack at will, and it'll come at you when it sees an opening."

Kylo crouches into his defensive stance, blade out, waiting. "E4 attack at will."

This one is armed with a baton as well. Just a training fight.

Kylo keeps waiting, and for a long minute E4 appears to be watching him, judging what to do next, and then it springs. It's still very fast, and its attack plans appear to be getting somewhat better. But it's focused on the training blade, and in three quick moves Kylo's got its baton from it, and has whacked it with his elbow hard enough to have snapped its neck.

"Somewhat stronger skeletal system on the next one," Kylo suggests.

"And a more rigorous fight algorithm."

Kylo nods, looking at the electronic corpse on the floor. Then he says, voice low. "Make sure the next one is right."

The Manufacture blanches. And nods. And stammers, "Yes, sir."

"Who's next, C8?" Kylo asks, toweling off, fast, before pulling his shirt back on. He's found that if he has an especially frustrating meeting, which his last one was, that taking five or ten minutes to go to his gym and just whale on something makes for much more productive meetings for the rest of the day.

He's really hoping the next iteration of the training droids are up to his expectations, because at this point he's killed his punching bag more times than he can count. He's wary of fighting with anyone else on his staff, they're either too useful to him to risk hurting them, or too dangerous to him to risk letting them get a good idea of how to plan an effective attack against him.

There are several reasons why he never trained with Hux. But that was the biggest of them. He never, ever wanted Hux to know any of his weaknesses. He's sure that if Hux ever found one, the blade he wore on his arm would be through it before Kylo could stop him.

It occurs to him, that he's hated, deeply and often, but Hux is likely the only man, only non-Force wielder he ever feared.

That's the thing about rabid curs, only an insane man rests easy with one at his back.

The man entering his training room is about as not Hux as it's possible to be, though they both have a similar build and coloring. Tall, slender, pale skin, though Frakes is blonde, but Hux, even Hux standing still, looked dangerous. Assuming he slept, Hux probably looked dangerous when he was asleep, though he never thought to ask Phasma if that was actually true.

Nothing about Major Frakes inspires fear or hate or for that matter, even an inkling of a dangerous mind. He wears his command grays easily, like they were made for him, but for all Kylo knows, they were. It's possible that Frakes is part of the team who designed this uniform, made sure it looks the way it does.

And given how well it looks on him, Kylo's thinking that's likely. He pulls his tunic over his shirt, and begins to fasten the hooks and eyes. "Major."

"My Lord." He has a box in his hand, and a sketch pad on top of it. "If this is a bad time, we can reschedule."

"No. It's good. What do you have for me?"

Frakes puts the box down, moves the pad to the side, and opens it carefully. Kylo's breath hitches a little as he lifts the first piece out and offers it to him.

Kylo takes it in hands that aren't shaking, but feel like they might, if this were a different audience. It's his mask. Perfect. Down to the damage on the face plates. It's exactly the way it was before he shattered it. It feels the same in his hands and the tiny motion of his thumb to unlatch it makes for a familiar hiss.

Frakes is watching him, eyes bright, waiting to see what he does with it.

Kylo looks at it, strokes his hand over it, and then gently places it down. He's not trying it on with an audience. That's a moment for him, and his ghosts, alone.

"Thank you, it looks perfect."

Apparently, Frakes can read his gesture well enough to not ask him to try it on and make sure it's right. He pulls out a piece of black fabric, that, as he unfolds it, Kylo recognizes as a shirt. With his mark of office on it.

He takes that, too, fingers on the badge.

"The mark of the Supreme Leader," Frakes says.

Kylo stares at it, and he feels another moment of how he's about to change things, how he's going to shift his world. "No, Major, no more Supreme Leaders." His fingers graze over the badge. "This is the mark of a Master." He can see, and feel, that Frakes is a little confused at that, but he doesn't much care.

He's not Snoke, and he doesn't need to be Snoke, and… And he's killing the past, not retooling it to make it fit him.

Though he supposes calling himself the Master of the Order, and suddenly he just knows that's what he is, is retooling the past. After all, there was a full year in which he was Master Ben, and then one more as Master Kylo, but it's an older past, it's a past that was supposed to wear tan and brown robes and wield a blue lightsaber, and serve at the will of a Republic.

He's undoing his tunic, letting it drop to the floor, pulling his shirt off, ready to try this on, to feel the shift that goes with it. And it's good. It goes on smooth, readily slipping onto his skin, onto his self.

Master Ben Solo was supposed to serve.

Kylo Ren, Master of the Order, rules.

Master Solo took orders and shaped the universe to fit those orders. He was a tool of the will of… He doesn't know. His mother and her cadre of politicians.

Master Ren will offer his people a voice, he'll hear their call, and secure them the future they want.

Master Solo had no ego, no will, no skin in the game. He was a means to an end.

Master Ren will shape the game, make the rules, and then allow anyone who wishes to join him to play.

One whole wall of the gym is mirrors. Ostensibly to make sure that one keeps their form properly aligned, though Kylo usually ignores it. It's been decades since he was at the stage when he still needed to look to see if his form was off. But he's not ignoring them right now. He's looking at himself, new mark on his sleeve, nodding slowly.

"This is excellent, Major Frakes."

Frakes is beaming, genuinely pleased at this, excited, too. He nods to his pad. "Come, look. I've got ideas for your rally set."

Kylo joins him, sitting next to him on the benches against the training room wall. "Usually, in this sort of thing, the man talking shares the stage with other important people, but… We're not doing that. This is about you, and your place in the galaxy, and you're not sharing it with anyone. We're putting you on a raised stage, because I want everyone to be able to see you, though there'd be a certain poetry to just having you at floor level, and letting you just loom over everyone with your natural height… But, too many people for that. I want the back row to see you just as easily as the front."

The sketch Kylo is looking at is him, at a podium, on a stage, huge banners with his symbol hanging down behind him, and on the podium, around him, stretching through the entire flight deck of the Supremacy is every man who can be spared from work. He knows their current complement is close to 850,000 men, and if he had to guess, Frakes intends to have half a million of them on the deck for this.

He flips to the next sketch. "Instead of putting the other high and mighty up with you, they're going down here." He's got a place for 'honored guests' but it's clear that they are not, literally, not, on his level. They're at least two meters below his feet. "We'll make them feel important by putting them up close, and assigning someone to make them feel taken care of, give them nice staterooms when they're here, but we're going to make it clear that they aren't your equal."

Kylo nods at that, liking it, and then another idea hits. "How many seats is this?"

"Two thousand, do you want more, sir?"

"Yes, make it five thousands. I want my five thousand longest serving members here. I want the silver marks of citizenship already on their arms."

Frakes grins, understanding that. "I like that." He takes his stylus, and then makes a box around the seats behind the front ranks. "High and mighty back here."

"Certainly."

"Two thousand of them?"

"Uh…" He doesn't know if he even knows of two thousand high and mighties to invite to something like this. After Hux destroyed the Hosnian system, the galaxy has been a bit low on high and mighties, and lower yet on ones likely to trust an invitation from him. "I'll have C8 give you a final count."

"That will be fine."

"What's the timeframe on this?" Kylo asks.

"Ten weeks. We're still scouring the galaxy for silver thread. You'd think it'd be easy to find, but we're burning through thousands of kilometers of it getting things ready, but by the time we're done, every mark will have been re-done. Caps, jackets, coats. We've got the stencils cut, and are waiting for a few days to do a massive, get all the ships changed over at once push.

"Set the date for this, not less than ten weeks from now, and I'll make sure the entire First Order is rebranded in time for you to set foot on that stage."

"Good. I'm also going to need pamphlets."

That throws Frakes for a loop. "Uh… sir?"

"We were slaves to the First Order, but we're going to be citizens of The Order, and I have a feeling I'm going to need to spell out what that means."

"I imagine that would help." It's clear on his face that Frakes has never conceptualized the idea that they were slaves to the First Order, but thinking about it, and how they get their youngest members, he's starting to think of it that way, and he's not comfortable with that thought. "But… I'm not the one who does pamphlets. You have a publishing department and they're the ones who handle all of the regs, keeping track of them, making sure everyone can find them, stuff like that."

Kylo nods, making a mental note to ask C8 to set up that meeting, and then says to Frakes, "Major, your own mark, will it have a silver band?"

"Yes, sir. I've been with the F—Order, for ten years."

"Good." He taps the sketch. Front row, far right of the section right in front of the stage. "That one is yours."

He shows Rey the shirt later that night. "Kylo Ren, Master of the Order."

She touches the mark on his shirt, and nods slowly, liking yet another sign of him killing The First Order.

He's pacing around, ideas flowing fast and free. "We were slaves. Many literally stolen from their homes. Executed for disobeying orders or making mistakes. A successful graduate of the Hux method had his will literally beaten out of him. No more. We're going to be volunteers, and citizens, and we're going to make something great.

"My mother and her politicians and rebels, what did they want? A republic, that's what they kept asking for. But who got to vote, and who got represented? Politicians and planets. Fuck that! People. Any person, any species, anywhere. Put your five years in, and get your voice." He touches the wall behind him. "This was the best idea Snoke ever had."

Her eyebrows scrunch together.

"The Supremacy. He never bound himself to a planet. He didn't care about ground. It was pretty much useless to him. I'm keeping that. We're not going to send Stormtroopers all over the galaxy to conquer planets. We're going to collect citizens from everywhere, and who cares where they are? Anywhere, anyone, they'll have a voice with me."

"And if they decide they want to speak to their local planet, maybe you'll help them find their voice," Rey adds.

Kylo smiles at that. "If enough of them want to, if they vote for it, yes. They're going to come to me, Rey, I'm not going to take them, they're going to give themselves to me, because I'll give them something they can't get otherwise!"

It's two more weeks before the manufacturer is back. And by this point Kylo's itching to fight something. He's almost ready to take T8 on that offer, risk to his best navigator be damned.

This time the Manufacturer has three different droids with him. They're all still more or less human looking but…

"We diversified. Part of the problem was we were trying to give you a droid that could do everything. And it could, just not to the level you needed. So, instead of that… E4 is a bladed combat specialist. E6 is for hand to hand. And E9 is for when you're feeling up to a challenge."

Kylo nods. It's been much too long since he's had a real fight. "E9 it is."

E9 is another head taller than he is, and likely has thirty kilos on him. He's wearing armor, and has a club and some sort of electro-bladed weapon, but he doesn't know what sort yet.

"Metal skeleton?"

"Hybrid, three times as strong as human bone. You won't hurt yourself too bad, but you won't be able to break him too easily."

"Good."

Kylo strips out of his tunic and shirt again, keeping on his gloves. He ignites his saber.

"Attack at will E9."

And before he's even in his defensive crouch, E9 is on him. He's honestly not sure what happened, other than it hurt significantly more than he was expecting, and it's a good thing E9 never pulled his blade.

He calls time when he's aching from head to toe, dripping with sweat, and already half covered in dark purple-black bruises from where the club's crashed into his body.

He's panting, dizzy from a few hits to his head, and thrilled. He hasn't had a fight this good in more than a year, and for as much as it hurts, his body is zinging from the endorphins, and his mind is whirling with new attack plans.

"Make me a lot of them in all sizes! Armored and not."

This time, The Manufacturer leaves with a smile on his face and a spring in his step, and an invitation to what isn't being called a coronation, after all, republics don't have kings, though they may have a Master.

"You're hurt," Rey says, voice quiet, looking at the bruises all over Kylo's chest, shoulder, and arms. He's usually in his office when she shifts through, but today she's coming through to his bed, where he's laying, very still, covered in about a dozen ice packs.

He shrugs, slowly, gently. During the fight is excellent. Right after the fight, he felt amazing. Right now, he'd consider death to be a blessing. "The training droids finally showed up. It took them a while to get all the kinks really worked out." He looks at the purple black lines crisscrossing his arms. "These ones…"

"Unkinked?" She sits gently next to him, not wanting to jostle, or touch him too much.

"Unkinked. I haven't been this sore in…" He doesn't have to finish that. She was at the last fight where anyone managed to actually hit him. "They fight like humans. Good humans. And they don't have brains, so I can't feel what they're going to do next, so… It was a learning experience."

"Good one?" She keeps looking him up and down thinking that maybe he didn't need quite that many lessons at one time.

"I think so." He rolls his eyes a little, shifts, grunts with pain. The medical droid mended the broken bones, but they still ache and will for a few days, and the bacta gel took care of the cuts, but his bruises just heal on their own. He could have pain medication. It's available, but he refuses to take it. At best it makes him feel loopy, at worst it'll open him up to visions he's not interested in having. "I might not actually be a good fighter, just good at feeling what's coming my way. Take that away, and I don't know how to read the fight. I could only block one out of three hits."

He can feel she wants to kiss him, but she's not sure if she can touch him without hurting him. His tongue darts out to his bottom lip, feeling the sore, swollen part where it split when E9 hit him in the face. "Tomorrow or the day after."

She nods and carefully lays her fingers on an inch of unbruised skin on his shoulder. He feels her mustering her own Force skills, and though she's never intentionally tried to heal anyone before, her touch is a balm. He's not suddenly healed, but he's better for it. The full body toothache sensation recedes, and though his eyes are closed, he guesses that the bruises are a little less black and blue.

"By the time I kill these, I will be a good fighter. Force or no."

Rey supposes that's a good thing. "You want to spar with me?" It's been a long time since she's done anything with her lightstaff more complicated than mow grass, and cut prefab plates that don't quite fit each other.

"Maybe when I heal up. Your lake is cold, and right now, a soak in hot water will just make everything worse. Go for a cold soak with me?"

"I'll sit on the bank and keep you company."

She takes him through to Lirium, and does sit on the bank while he dips himself in the lake, shrieking when it hits his skin, and then settling into the cold, feeling it numb everything down.

There are whispers about the disk.

The several people who have seen him train more than once have noticed that The Supreme Leader appears to be wearing a child's toy, on a leather thong, around his neck.

The Manufacturer for example. His children enjoy that game, and he'll admit there's something very soothing about watching the little disk spinning around in the junjan bowl.

He has no idea of the significance of it, and isn't about to ask, but he does mention it to several of the other owners of Epherium Inc. who are intrigued by the idea of it, but also aren't about to ask.

After all, it doesn't do to ask a man, The Supreme Leader, who just thrashed two or three training droids with his laser sword, why he chooses to, sometimes, wear a toy on a string.