In the years that followed Sakajin's 'adoption', she was quick to learn a great many things. These ranged from purely technological understanding to day-to-day common sense. She learned how to put together and take apart several models of droids and how to repair some and scavenge others for parts, which was what she had mostly expected of herself.
But the young girl also learned how to mend her own clothes when work tore them to shreds, or even how to take care of her own cuts, scratches and bruises that came from working in her day-to-day environment. Among everything she did have to learn, Sakajin never had to worry about being mugged or hurt for her money.
And who was going to do that on a ship-the droids themselves?
The Black Halo, a large battleship which she knew little about, quickly transformed from ship to home in her eyes. It had been the place she slept and worked since the day Count Dooku took her in, plucked straight off the streets of Coruscant. There really were a lot of perks to living on a ship and in the employment with its owner, with one of them being the fact that she never worried about where she'd sleep or if she'd have enough food to eat. In sacrifice, however, Sakajin almost never saw anyone. Not a soul. Nobody that wasn't composed of durasteel at least.
No non-droids actually seemed to live on the ship; besides herself and Dooku at least. Most whom Sakajin wound up seeing from day-to-day, maybe even twice a week, wound up being political ambassadors from some planet or system;. They were people who wanted to talk to Count Dooku alone for some reason or another, Sakajin never bothered to ask anything much.
There was never a need or desire to question Count Dooku's affiliation. Just easier that way, not making herself worry on who was doing good or bad in the galaxy-no other politician or government helped her all that much, so she felt little loyalty to anyone beside Dooku himself.
But she wasn't ignorant. Nor did she block the news out completely, what filtered through databases and from Dooku himself in the very rare times Sakajin saw him face-to-face. War was coming. Systems were separating from the Galactic Republic at an almost alarming rate. And how did she know this? Well, Dooku was one of the reasons several had already separated. But she cared not what side she was on, or the reasons that there were even sides at all-she was mechanic, not a politician.
But, due to those highly mechanical talents and perhaps even related to the growing hostilities, Sakajin became the ship's droid specialist. Her job included keeping tabs on the quality of the droids on the ship, and repairing those that weren't so easily replaced. But of course, that's not how she started-how could anyone ask a 14-year-old girl to do work that required years of experience first? And that's what Dooku did-he let her get experience, another thing she had to add to reasons she felt loyal to the man, when he could have easily kept walking on the street.
She begun with the B1 models, which were almost laughably simplistic even when she started on the Black Halo. The droid consisted of a durasteel skeleton, a working system of joints, and a fairly basic AI program loaded onto the internal server so they understood basic orders and combatives with blasters.
Once the mechanic had figured out their ins-and-outs, she moved onto another model (B1 Super Battle Droids), and then another model of droid (Droidekas). After her first year of learning and tinkering, Sakajin was finally assigned the task it seemed that Dooku had planned for in the first place, which finally answered quite a few questions that the girl could never get much of an answer for (as they had a fairly standard system for recycling broken droids already in place).
Sakajin found a certain level of beauty in the IG-100 Magnaguard model. It was beyond anything she had seen in a droid thus far, with a variety of capabilities that made her wonder what sort of genius had even designed something like it, let alone what it was created to do.
Experimental, Dooku had said. It was a droid he wanted to commission more for, but he wanted her to start learning how to repair it, how to utilize all the parts that made it up. Sakajin never recalled asking why.
The first ones she had to play with were hollow, lacking a functioning AI system beyond what kept them standing up on their own feet. They were the first few created, and the goal was simply to learn how to take them apart and put them back together-learn how every part fit with another one in the giant interconnected system of the droid itself. It was how Sakajin had learned most of what she knew in the first place for any other droid model.
A few months into her part-time tinkering, she was given the first working models from their unknown creator. That was the day she came into her own personal workshop to find two pairs of glowing red eyes staring down at her, as if waiting for an order, droids with a metallic frame still so shiny and new that she could see her face in the reflection over their chests. At a foot or two taller than she was herself, Sakajin found the droids...intimidating, at best.
Unlike the B1 or Droideka, the Magnaguards had a surprising capacity to learn, specifically to fight (no surprise there). And while she could test their dexterity, speed and basic maneuverability in her own tests, fighting….that wasn't her thing at all. Sakajin no more knew how to teach the droids on using a electrostaff or blaster than she did on how to cook a nice dinner.
Eventually, Sakajin approached Count Dooku on what he wanted when it came to testing the droids on their combat capabilities.
"You've done your job," he had told her, giving one of those half-warm smiles that vaguely akin to what every ambassador wore when they came on the ship. "There is someone else who will be furthering their...programming, your job with them is done, for now."
He left without letting her ask what he'd meant-off to another meeting, another planet to annex into the Separatist movement; it had been gaining traction and followership since Sakajin could remember taking apart her first B1 droid, though even then, the political strife in the galaxy continued to feel inconsequential to her.
His words didn't make sense until shortly after the mechanic's 17th birthday, nearly a month later.
Her morning begun as they always did-to the sharp, crackling sound of beeping from the comlink on her wrist. Sakajin slid out of bed with the edges of her dreams still clinging to her eyes, and started dressing herself with the plainclothes she'd mended at least four or five times over. Considering how many times the clothes had been sewn back together, it wouldn't be a surprise if there wasn't actually a scrap of the original cloth left. Their stitched appearance didn't matter all that much anyway, most of Sakajin's clothes were hand-made, and based purely on their function rather than looks. Gloves to keep from cutting up her hands, wraps for her feet, and a sash to hold any extra little bits and pieces a mechanic came to figure they needed every day.
After pulling on her short, poncho-like top, she retrieved her belt of tools that hung on the corner of her bed and counted off every pocket to make sure the tool was there. There had been more than one occasion that one came up missing, and Sakajin much rather figure out they had merely fell and rolled beneath her bed before she went to the mechanical issuing bay to try getting a replacement.
Ten minutes; that's all the time she needed to get ready for the day after getting out of bed. After nearly three years, it had become almost second-nature to her, a rhythm she'd memorized to get started each day.
Sakajin saw a breathtaking sight when she finally stepped out of her room and glanced up, just across the hall: A red-orange gas-giant, just outside the ship's window. It was hundreds of miles away from their spot in an orbit, but yet it looked close enough to reach out a hand and run fingers through it's milky sunset-colored clouds. It looked like planet filled with a sea of sunsets. Despite the wonder that shivered within her mind, Sakajin wasn't at all surprised by the sight.
She'd seen the same view several times before with several different worlds, but the effect was never truly muffled. Her emerald eyes gazed over each world with the same child-like wonder as the last. It was akin to waking up to a sunrise outside a bedroom window, being a visage of awe-inspiring beauty that most might attempt to weave poetry about-but she merely let it fuel her day.
One could even say the sight served as much functionally as it did aesthetically in Sakajin's morning routine.
Orbiting a planet typically meant that Count Dooku was meeting with someone, someone very important. This could have been taking place on the ship itself, though since the last couple times had the Count leaving the ship to meet the leaders on their own planet, Sakajin figured the pattern would remain the same. At least she'd be working at her own pace, as he'd be gone for the whole day and wouldn't bother adding any more tasks to her workload.
Sakajin found herself lingering in the hallway for just a few extra minutes. A glance wouldn't be appropriate to take in the planet in its entirety, especially when it could hold so many intricate wonders that she'd never experienced before-and it was, for another being, their entire life and existence. It glowed and glimmered in it's fullest spectrum-her human-built eyes could see the gentle orange glow, but the second set above them, the ones seemed given to her by her mother, could see a flurry of colors more. The planet glowed, far more in the sense that it was doing more than just reflecting light-she could see the faint layer just above the clouds, like a bubble that enveloped the entire planet. She never learned what it was called, but she figured it had something to do with how the sunlight reached the atmosphere-and regardless of her ignorance, it was beautiful.
When was the last time she was planetside? A year? Two years?
The surprising thing was that Sakajin didn't know-whenever they were orbiting a planet, it was almost always political in intent. It wasn't as if she could get permission to land on the surface for a sightseeing trip. The ship itself provided everything she needed-water, food, clothing (second-hand, but clothing nonetheless). The only thing that ever seemed to lack was the ability to talk to people, and that wasn't particularly necessary for her job, so thus, no going down to a planet. Dooku had mentioned on a few occasions he had an interest in taking her with one time or another, but he hadn't brought it up again for a while. Sakajin lost a lot of hope in ever seeing a planet's surface again, honestly.
She did pretty well by herself-she'd done the same a child anyway, keeping her mind entertained on tinkering and learning the skills required for (essentially) knowing just about every bolt for several common or powerful droid models.. And there was so much to learn for the young girl; not even five combined years of working with machinery had given her more than the very start of mastery. Sakajin knew there was still so much more she'd yet to even begin, especially if she would want to learn more droid models, or even the basics of programming that went into their AI system.
The view of the planet eventually begun to wear off, and Sakajin, linger as she might, knew she had actual work to do that day. She left the window with a bittersweet smile, wondering in the back of her head if she should bring up the possibility of asking the Count if she could attend one of his meetings sometime. Even if she got to see the surface of a new planet, the mechanic knew it would be enough for her. It was easy to forget what actual dirt or grass felt like beneath her feet, and dreams could only give her so much sensory satisfaction before they too wore thin.
The workshop wasn't all that far from Sakajin's small, personal quarters. Perhaps a ten minute walk at most, a few floors down a lift. It had almost everything she could desire or want of a workshop. From the most to the most advanced tools, scrap parts, and even broken droid shells themselves to tinker with if she ever got bored and just wanted to take them apart like puzzles (the B1 was perfect for that purpose); it seemed to have everything a mechanic could ever want or need. It was even mildly spacious-if she extended both arms out from her body, Sakajin could fit perhaps five of her across from the door to one wall, then maybe ten along the opposite axis. It was just enough room for her to work, especially since she was often the only person in there at all, and she had grown more than used to its size in the three years she had been on-ship.
It had become as familiar to her as the streets of Coruscant had-with far less noise and chaos everywhere. Er. Well, her chaos at times was at least under control, rather than the mindless crowd of people and the zooming hovercars overhead.
Sakajin stepped out of the lift with her eyes already turning down the hall, tail trailing in a softly flicking motion with each gentle step on the metal floor. Her steps were quiet, muffled if only by the fact that she wore no hard-sole shoe, but rather the soft wrappings to protect the back half of her foot. But she never seemed to get used to how cold it felt-even after several years. One of the reasons the entirety of her workroom floor was covered in non-flammable cloth.
The doors slid open for her upon approach, with the command console blinking green, needing no password nor fingerprint when it already had locked the permissions. Too much of a hassle to try finding her card or trying to let it read her fingerprints. She had lasted in using the lock for maybe the first month, sometimes having to wait up to a minute or two just for the system to stop locking up (no pun intended) and finally open the door so she could get started on her work-and locking the permissions didn't take any work. Just reroute some very basic settings from the command console itself from inside the room.
Nobody ever came into the workroom besides herself and Count Dooku.
The first hour of working was tedious, and the worst kind of them all; Sakajin had to sit through, reading various tasks she'd been given over the last week, checking serial numbers of droids she'd repaired and making sure they were correct, and checking to see if there were any new shipments coming in she'd been assigned to check for quality control.
Oh, it was the real fun of her job.
It was only supposed to take, at most, an hour of her day.
Only after twenty minutes though, Sakajin heard the sound of the door opening across the room. It didn't alarm her, but with the possibility of it being the Count or one of the ranking battle droids with orders, she didn't want to simply ignore them. She turned to look away from the screen, mouth opening already to ask what they needed-
And it wasn't Count Dooku. Nor was it a battle droid. In fact, with a sinking feeling in her stomach, the woman realized that she had never actually met this person before, and he had just….walked right in. There was an instant feeling of regret in locking the permissions of the door's lock.
He was tall-unbelievably so, even though the figure appeared as though he was hunched over-with the eyes like a beast. In fact, the golden, slitted orbs seemed to be the only natural thing about him. From what Sakajin could gain from barely a glance within the shroud of his black cloak, the being seemed to be almost entirely made of durasteel. The pieces of his thin body gleamed, even in the dim light of her workroom. He seemed to speak with an anger that made the entire room tremble.
"You!" He hissed, voice deep and dripping with disdain, and he hadn't been in the room more than a few seconds. He reached up an arm to jab a pointed, claw-like finger at her. "You are the mechanic?" He took a step forward. Sakajin took a step back. He towered over her, easily, and by instinct alone the intimidation that this unknown creature seethed with was enough to make her stutter.
"I-I am...s-sir?" It was equal parts fear and confusion that caused the mechanic's brain to stop working. She'd never met this creature before, but he looked at her with a fury of a beast on a hunt. And this metallic beast, for lack of better description, glared at her for an empty second. She didn't know if her response meant something to him-as if confirming her job had any sense or logic into whether he should continue to look as though ready to murder her then and there. She gulped and took the chance. "...Is there anything I can do for y-"
"Fix this droid," He spat, interrupting her without care as he gestured to a droid that stepped into the room behind him-a Magnaguard. It's arm was almost missing, with bits and pieces hanging off by the wires themselves. The edges of what was left of the droid's arm looked burned and scorched with what she could only guess was some sort of laser cutter. It stood there, frozen, waiting for another order that never came from either mechanic or the unknown metallic alien who seemed plenty pissed at her without her knowing his name.
As she stared at the droid, the cloaked figure growled, kicking at a piece of scrap metal that had rolled beside his foot from his aggressive entrance as if offended that it had neared him.
"I want it repaired by the end of this solar cycle, and I'll return for it." He turned towards her with one sharp movement, and it made Sakajin twitch in subtle surprise. She could feel his eyes glaring holes into her as he continued to hiss lowly. "I won't stand for anything less than perfection in what Dooku promised to me as fighters."
Sakajin wasn't sure if that sentence actually required a response from her-it was always hard to tell what was hypothetical, and what was a legitimate comment, hanging, waiting for her input.
"...I can assure you there shouldn't be any defects," She tried to explain, feeling that maybe this was some ambassador, a man who had been given the droids in some sort of recent trade or deal made with the Count. "I tested the alpha's myself and I-"
"Shut your mouth, girl," The figure hissed, sharp and quick enough that not only did it cut off the mechanic's words, it also kept her from speaking. He was the embodiment of fear, and she wanted no reason to cross him, make him remain any longer in her workroom than absolutely needed. When she didn't try to start talking again, he let out a slow, rough sigh, and stood up straighter. "I will be back in half a solar cycle." And without even letting Sakajin gape in his ludicrous demand-how did he expect her to repair an entire limb from essentially nothing in half a day?-the figure strode out of the room just as quickly as he had entered. The air was left feeling thin, cold, and gave a sour taste in Sakajin's mouth. She peered over at the droid, who stood there silently-a perfect example of how well the Magnaguards could take orders, standing as still and lifeless as a metal statue until given a job to do, with no intelligent AI besides one programmed only to fight or pilot ships.
How anyone could take off its entire arm, she didn't know. But what really made her curious was the marks left behind-scorched metal outlined on the shoulder where it had been, essentially, sliced right off, with the only pieces left being those that attached other than the shoulder itself, with some frayed, burned wires. How the man had been able to do that was far beyond Sakajin's imagination.
That was the day that Sakajin, without knowing who he was in name or stature, met General Grievous, new commander newly-formed Separatist droid armies. And, unfortunately for the hope that he had just been an aggressive ambassador, he was someone that Sakajin saw very often.
Far, far more often than she wanted.
He didn't even bother to learn that she had a name until at least the third or fourth week of working her like a slave. He had her doing tasks constantly-most of them running tests or repairing Magnaguards. It wasn't until then that she learned what the droids had been for in the first place, or why the Count had been so vague in who would program their fighting ability-he had been referring to the General.
Grievous was, as Sakajin learned through rumor and snippets of information that the General himself wouldn't filter with his near-constant snarling at her, the apprentice of Count Dooku. He was a fighter, obviously, but it didn't dawn on her that the scorch marks she had originally observed on the first Magnaguard were the evidence of a lightsaber slice. From then, she had to continue to repair whatever of them that Grievous brought to her, often having a very short span of time to get them done (and more often than not, she failed).
Time became a blur, as did her interactions-which were frequent-with the general. He became a daily figure in her life, someone that she had to report to where Count Dooku had once been.
She didn't like the General in the slightest. Where Dooku, while as sly as a snake, was at least seemingly polite and held no physical punishment when Sakajin failed, Grievous was as much of a beast as her original observations had made him out. On more than one occasions she'd felt what it was like to suffocate, held up by the collar of her shirt and feeling the fabric tighten around her neck. For being a skeleton of durasteel, Grievous was nothing less than raw power.
But it seemed that threats didn't appease him well enough after a few weeks. Instead, the general seemed to devise a much better method of intimidating her, just in the days that Sakajin felt as though the trickle of Magnaguards needing repairs were starting to slow.
She was so, so wrong.
He had her in his sparring room on one random day, with no warning as to the reason or what he even wanted her for. She had done everything in her power to struggle, but his grip only tightened with every word as he dragged her there. She wasn't a fighter. Sakajin, in no way, shape or form, was anything other than a mechanic. She didn't want to die either-she had come to figure going by the strike of a lightsaber was probably a pretty painful death. But it scared her even more to think that perhaps she simply wasn't useful enough to keep alive anymore-that somehow, Grievous thought it was a good idea to off the little mechanic for his own amusement.
While she did plenty for the quality control of the droid armies on the Black Halo and for his personal Magnaguard group, Sakajin knew she wasn't all that important of personnel-after all, she was one of the only ones on the ship that wasn't made of metal. And after three (four?) years living a peaceful, healthy life as a stupid little mechanic, it only seemed that the life had to end at some point.
The sparring room was enormous. The center was a flat, empty floor, with her on one side and he on another. Honestly, Sakajin was amazed that she was even able to stand there, legs wobbling, but stable only from her annoyance and anger alone. She was sick of how he treated her, sick of being tossed around like a ragdoll and downright pissed that he was going to strike her down like a useless scrap of metal from a bigger piece. It pissed her off as much as it terrified her. She simply couldn't defend herself-from the few times Sakajin had caught the last few moments of he and Dooku sparring, it was obvious she was little more than an infant in terms of a threat.
She was as good as dead if he truly wanted to kill her.
But where she expected to shut her eyes in the very same moment that a white-hot lightsaber would come crashing down her shoulder, Sakajin instead felt the hard, solid weight of metal crashing into her chest. It felt at first like a blow, and she was sent back as the weight knocked her off-balance, but falling with her as she came crashing down hard onto the metal floor.
A long, rod-like shape pressing over her stomach, an object that didn't move. It wasn't a blow. When Sakajin opened up her eyes-dazed as she was-she found a weapon sitting on her body, sparking and sizzling at each end with a pink-hued energy.
It took her a few seconds to realize it was an electrostaff that had been thrown at her instead of an actual strike of a weapon-as Grievous stood there with one himself, poised in a solid fighter's stance and a look of amusement in his darkened eyes.
He was toying with her.
It took a few more seconds to realize that she was given it to use-because before the woman had a chance to get back up onto her feet and catch her break, a shadow was already towering over her form.
She had barely a moment of time before she launched herself to one side in a frantic attempt to avoid the white-hot blade that came down in the spot she was just milliseconds before. The landing wasn't graceful either, as Sakajin landed rolling, hitting the ground hip-first and feeling a sharp, deep pain flash through her entire body.
"You have good reaction time," Grievous purred mockingly, though Sakajin only heard bits and pieces from the throbbing that she felt in her body, mind barely able to concentrate about anything other than how much it hurt to try standing up again. But she managed, pulling herself up and awkwardly trying to figure out how to hold the metal staff in her hands. Grievous….waited. He just waited for her to get up again, his eyes looking just as sharp and toying as they had before. "You might prove somewhat amusing for me, girl."
Sakajin only had a split second of time to react from the end of his sentence to his approach-a sharp step forward, managing to travel ground much faster than she expected of someone who weighed three or four times more than she did. She reacted in fear. It was a bristling feeling, like needles up and down her spine, and it forced her on instinct to raise the only weapon she held above her head, blocking the downward strike of the lightsaber only by luck alone with one sparking end of the electrostaff-the two weapons sizzled and sparked for a moment before Sakajin, who had absolutely no strength in comparison to Grievous, practically crumpled beneath the pressure and weight.
She went down like dead weight, falling back as the General's strength prevailed over her own-but instead of falling straight down, she rolled once more off to the side. Somehow, she managed to pull her weapon with her, that time narrowly missing the strike of the lightsaber to her tail by mere millimeters-she sworn there was a slight smell of burning fur in the air.
Like before, she didn't land on her feet-as if luck loathed her, the mechanic fell again onto her hip, the same hip as the first time. It slammed into the metal and jolted her into a moment of panic and pain. But this time, Grievous didn't wait for her to get up. Before she had a moment to breathe, he was over her again. The cyborg kicked the electrostaff right out of her hands and sent it flying until it hit the wall on the other side of the room, leaving her defenseless to his strike. She curled her arms over her head instinctively and waited for the end, the blackness of death
It didn't come. However, what did come to her was the definite feeling of pain. A burning to her forearms, sharp and throbbing, that only lasted for a few seconds at most. She yelped and rolled away from the pain on instinct, finally kneeling on the floor, cradling her limbs close against her chest as she looked up to Grievous, who stood there like he was gloating over her pain.
In all honesty, Sakajin had expected to be dead, so her eyes were frantic, staring from his weapon to his face, not quite understanding the fact that she was alive, or at the very least still had her arms attached, even if they were stinging and burning.
It seems that Grievous had more of a plan in his mind than just killing her. And he laughed; it was a deep, rough sound that made the mechanic shiver, because good things almost never followed it-physically, or verbally.
"Count Dooku would find it very disappointing if you perished," He said in another low, mocking purr, as if he had known all along she'd been thinking he was about to kill her-probably took some sadistic joy in the fear that had been in her eyes. "But you lasted longer than I thought you did. Perhaps you will be of more amusement than aggravation to me after all, little girl." Sakajin couldn't describe how those words, just those words alone, sent a chill down her spine. Those words held a suggestion that the cyborg general would want to do that again.
"But sir-" She said, despite the fear and the pain throbbing through her arms. "I'm a mechanic-"
"You are nothing," Grievous interrupted with a snarl. "Be grateful that the most damage my weapon can cause to you is burns. I despise having my own lightsaber at low power." The words sounded like a curse, as if it made his mouth bitter in merely speaking them-but it explained why Sakajin's arms were still attached to her body. She had never once thought that a lightsaber could do anything less than what she'd heard in stories, could actually be tuned back to a lower level of damage.
She didn't feel all that grateful though when, an hour later, she was in her workshop and trying to wrap her forearms with bandages. The pain from the burning subsided a little with a salve she managed to get from the medical wing, but it wasn't made for her biology, so the dosage wasn't high enough to take away all of it, leaving every movement for a few days stinging just enough to make the mechanic twitch.
That cycle continued for as long as Sakajin could remember. Though Grievous began asking little of her services to repair his Magnaguards, since he was finally training them enough so that they didn't lose limbs, he began forcing her to act as some sort of plaything. She couldn't understand the logic-he had a whole team of Magnaguards, finally attuned to his fighting style and the styles of other warriors, and he chose to make Sakajin fear that she'd die of terror whenever he came bursting into her workroom to tell her he wanted to spar again.
She wasn't even a fighter.
And it was obvious that she wasn't-the first several, long, painful weeks of his odd torture left her with more burns on her arms and legs than Sakajin could count, and a solid bruise that bloomed on her hip from the first fight that seemed to take longer to heal than anything else.
Sakajin became a mechanic and, apparently, a part-time punching bag. She sure felt like one, barely able to last more than a minute or two at a time when her superior decided he needed to take out frustrations on her inability to fight back. At first, at least-apparently she started to learn some manner of defense, and over the same painful weeks (which turned into a few months), Sakajin's time went from a minute to two, then to five. Eventually, she was able to hold her own (somewhat) for nearly five to ten minutes at a time. But Grievous, she knew, was barely using his skill against her.
It still felt like progress. She started learning how to parry, how to block, how to use the once-useless skills from her dual race to her advantage. The air would vibrate just before he struck her, a moment of hissing that she could slowly learn to predict, if only slightly. It was one of the only times in her life that Sakajin felt grateful that she wasn't just human.
"You're improving," Grievous had hissed on one particularly strange day, when Sakajin could feel like she was starting to get the hang of it, starting to have some manner of resistance against the General's rather questionable use of sparring as a method of stress control, probably. "You're starting to prove a slight inconvenience at last." She didn't know if he meant it as a compliment, or out of surprise that she was actually able to defend herself.
Regardless, Sakajin took it for face value. She did her best to keep improving-it meant that she'd hurt less. And it also meant, if only slightly, that she could use the very same sessions of sparring to funnel out her own aggravation. She used them to push out her anger, her annoyance, every little bottled up feeling that she couldn't find an outlet for. Whether the general realized she was doing the same as him, Sakajin never figured out.
It didn't matter all that much.
It had been nearly a full year since Sakajin had met Grievous. She had since fallen into a new schedule, balancing the duties of her mechanical job and unofficial sparring amusement of the general. Count Dooku never confronted the fact that she had started having less and less time for her primary job, which was odd in itself. But he never talked all that much about it. The only time he ever did, it was a short, light compliment when she had been summoned into the conference room and caught the last moments of he and Grievous discussing something political. He had later tasked her with more menial work on some droid squadron who needed repairs, but he begun the conversation with just a moment of surprise-a moment that left as fast as it came.
"I've heard that you have some talents as a fighter; do continue honing them."
It surprised Sakajin that he never seemed to defend her-not so much in a fatherly way, but in the sense that he had been her boss and employer-he hired her to be a mechanic, and didn't seem all that angry or surprised that Grievous had taken her away from a lot of what she was supposed to be doing. She was never scolded for missing deadlines, primarily those that came in conflict to the days that Grievous had her in the sparring room. It didn't make any sense-and soon, Sakajin had felt silly for thinking that the Count would do anything to save her from General Grievous' odd ideas of punishment. Or training?
She didn't understand the point of getting beat up a little less with every painful day sparring with him. It didn't exactly serve a purpose. But Sakajin didn't argue after the second or third week, knowing fully well it did nothing to help. Instead, she started finding an interest in learning more-even outside the sparring, she had started scouring the ship's database for anything that could help her. She used spare metal rods acting as a mock weapon as she begun to practice stances and moves she manage to learn from the database-even going so far as to spend hours of her own time trying to perfect blocks, how to jump away from a strike without nearly breaking her hips or wrists.
The fighting finally started to have a purpose. Not one to Grievous-Sakajin never understood his mind than she did the mind of any other leader she met, even if briefly. The purpose was for herself. Her life as a mechanic was peaceful and monotonous. She never realized what it felt like to work towards something, to fail constantly and find a reason to get better from the insults and pain that came from being a failure at fighting.
It became a hobby for her, and then, a reason to keep improving every day.
But it seemed that Grievous wasn't the only one to notice her shift in attitude. She was taking a moment to herself in one of the hangars, leaning against the railing and enjoying the hum of the droids below when Sakajin was approached from behind. She felt it before she heard-the steps against the metal the shift of moving cloth. The mechanic realized that it wasn't Grievous before she even turned her head to see who it was, though her pounding heart and wide eyes were instinct at that point, fearful that he'd drag her to the sparring room at the most inopportune of moments, when she was finally taking a moment to relax with her own thoughts.
But, thank the stars, it wasn't him. But it surprised her just as much to see Count Dooku staring down at her. She instantly stiffened and pressed her arms to her sides, expression pricking up to a firm, blank look.
"Count Dooku, sir!" She exclaimed, waiting for him to ask why she was there or, at least, give her another task to add to the list back in the workroom. Instead, he stepped beside her, glancing down at the ships below the walkway. Sakajin only felt more intimidated by his silence, briefly wondering if the time had come-she was going to be punished for something or another. Had he caught wind that she was practicing in her own time? Was she not allowed to do that when Grievous wasn't forcing her to spar?
The thoughts were a storming frenzy, only stopped by the sound of the Count's voice.
"I've heard about your improving combat skills." It was a statement. Not a question, nor something that he wanted Sakajin to confirm. It was just a fact that he knew-probably from various different sources that she had never knew existed. But the most frightening thing was that Sakajin didn't know if he was pleased by that information or not. He had hired her to be a mechanic. He had done her mother a favor by giving her a life off the street, though he still had neglected to tell Sakajin anything about her mother, nor why he had a favor yet to give.
She tensed up further, slowly turning around and facing the railing again, but not daring to lean on them.
"The general tells me that you're actively learning how to defend yourself." Another statement, though Sakajin felt that his words were just a tad warmer. Pleased? It was hard to tell when she was tensed up, unable to pick up on the intricacies of his voice when she wasn't letting her senses work properly by forcing herself to keep still. Dooku continued. "I can't say I'm pleased with the loss of your work-but it has been an….unforeseen interest. It is perhaps what is willed by powers greater than myself."
She felt a twitch from the obvious disappointment in his first sentence-but genuine shock from the rest. Sakajin didn't try to ask what he meant though-she was still too worried that anything she said would be taken the wrong way. Taken as disrespect, perhaps. She already had an enemy of Grievous-didn't didn't want to give the Count a reason to start disliking her as well.
After a second, the man let out a hum. "Though a path may change, the outcome will always be the same as fate had willed it to be." It didn't sound like he was talking to her for that moment-as he brought a hand up to stroke at his chin, as if contemplating something far beyond what she could understand. But that didn't last for all too long, as the Count turned to look at her. Sakajin froze again, but shared the man's glance.
Her heart froze with her body when he said the next sentence.
"You look very much like your mother," Dooku said, just as curiously as before. "...It seems you share more than just an appearance." The mention was what finally broke Sakajin's stature, a curiosity that was overwhelming in the face of a topic she almost never had the opportunity to breach before.
"How am I like my mother?" She could only pray that he'd indulge the question. She knew so little about the woman-little more outside of her family background and name. "She was...she was a fighter too, right?" It wasn't a topic her father liked to talk about, so Sakajin had heard only rumors about it. About her mother.
The sounds of the hangar below were the only things filling up the air for a few seconds. The gentle beeps and buzzes of the droids working, like a colony of insects working towards the same goal.
"She was," came his only acknowledgement of an answer. "She had a lot of talent that was very...useful. A fellow force-user, even. I...respected your mother." Before Sakajin could try to pry any deeper, the Count was already transitioning elsewhere, tapping his fingers against the metal bar of the rails as he looked her over. "But if you have any chance of being anything worthwhile, you will need a mentor to guide you. Mere hobbyistic sparring will not ever offer you more than a form of entertainment, as is learning how to use such a half-rate weapon when compared to something more composed and intricate."
Sakajin peered at him, deciphering the message until she came out with the realization that he was...complimenting her? Encouraging her? It was hard to tell, but she bowed her head anyway.
"Thank you, sir," She whispered, drawing her head and eyes back up. His dark, enigmatic eyes caught hers for a few seconds, and she didn't know if shifting-or breathing-was a good idea under such intense scrutiny. Did she say something wrong to him? Was she supposed to pull herself down, deny that she had an ironic interest in the same fighting that the general had at first forced her to do?
"I'm interested in seeing where you go," He finally said, in a tone so low and cold that it made the woman shiver. There was no denying that there was something else in the older man's gaze-something that she couldn't begin to understand.
But then, the moment passed, and the Count's gaze was as gentle as it had been when she first met him. "Just make sure that the fine general doesn't cause enough injury to keep you from your duties, little one." He turned and started walking away, closing the conversation as abruptly as it began, leaving Sakajin to wonder what the point was-he didn't give her a task. Hell, he didn't even ask her much of any questions, just informed her that her fighting was….good?
Interesting. Her fighting, or rather, her ability to fight at all seemed….interesting. Sakajin started to wonder if there was some hidden meaning behind the word that she should feel worried about, because she didn't feel all that complimented or proud of herself when she let herself think about the conversation for the rest of the day. She had some deep, nagging feeling in her stomach that the conversation wasn't random nor insignificant. Something was coming, and she could only attempt to predict what that might be.
But at least she learned something intriguing about her mother. The woman had been a fighter-did that mean she had used a lightsaber? From experience, most force-users wielded a lightsaber; so did that mean that Sakajin's mother had as well?
Too many questions. Too much worry. Too many things that Sakajin didn't need to think about-all she wanted to do in the first place that morning was to forget about her bruises and fear, but instead she was left to a sleepless night thinking about what significance there was in her connection to the mechanic's long-missing mother. A woman that Sakajin didn't even know anything about.
Well, a little less than anything now.