Chapter 19: Appeasing the Masses
Thane opened his eyes.
"What happened?" he asked.
It was Brazilla who answered. "Erika tells me you walked into a bar."
"Oh, ha-ha," Thane said, sitting up. His head hurt. And when he put his hand to his forehead, a large welt met his fingers with an angry Hello. "You've got to be kidding me," he muttered. "That's really lame."
He gave the sky a good stink eye and stood up, taking in an eyeful of Brazilla as he did, admiring her outfit of choice for the sunny planet. She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced away, heavy hair falling over one shoulder. "I assume you'll be fine?"
"I'm always fine," he said with a grin. "What're you doing out here, honey? I thought for sure you'd stay on the ship for the duration of the stay."
She shrugged and looked the other way. "Don't ask me. Erika decided that she had had enough and requested that I replace her. Something about popular demand. I assume she was talking about you." She allowed her eyes a glance at him, drinking in his tall glass of coolness under the hot afternoon sun.
"I hadn't actually said anything about you," Thane admitted. "Sorry. I do remember saying something about how her uncanny ability to find her way around a map wasn't working quite as well as she always claims it to and she got all puffy and upset." He shrugged. "Glad to see you off the ship, though. You've been looking a little pale lately. Don't Amazons like hanging out in the sun? Is that why you chose not to come with us the first time 'round? Tricky, little girl. Very tricky. You'd make an excellent smuggler."
Brazilla just snorted and turned to look at Jolie, who seemed to be off in his own little world, most likely thinking about his days spent in the past. It took several throat clearings and a good poke to his shoulder to bring him back to the present.
"Eh, what do you want?" he asked, turning a look at her. "You're not the girl."
"No, I'm the other one."
"I can see that," Jolie said. "I ain't dull."
"That could be argued," Thane said, leaning into Brazilla's ear. She didn't push him away, though, allowing the proximity.
"I ain't deaf, either, kiddo, so watch it."
Thane lifted his brow and stood up to his full imposing height, the air growing suddenly darker. It was so slight, however, that only the Jedi picked up on it, Brazilla's mind instantly taking a turn down Memory Lane to the man Thane had once been. If there were anyone else living inside of her skull besides her, he might have found the frequency of her trips down that particular road quite repetitive and her obsession over Thane's possible re-demise quite boring, but considering it was only her, no one was complaining. At least no one on the inside.
"And I don't think I'm quite as carefree as I play at," Thane went on to say. Brazilla's heart leapt into her throat, jockeying with her esophagus for adequate space. It made swallowing difficult. "I used to be a smuggler, you know, and a damn good one, I take it. I don't know what I used to do to people considering my memories stop about two months back around the time I woke up on that ship, but I do remember that people would sometimes pay dearly for crossing me. You don't get hired by the Republic unless you're the best and you don't get to be the best by stepping kindly around other people's flower gardens. You barge right on through. That much I do remember."
This time Jolie joined in on Brazilla's worry. He, like Garth, knew that he had seen Thane somewhere before, but there was something blocking off that part of his brain, almost as if the knowledge had been erased from his memory, too. Sometimes when Thane was on the very opposite end of the ship he was able to think and could almost get there, but considering the size of Thane's ego, no one ever quite made it to discovering the truth.
Except, of course, for the ones who already knew and Brazilla was getting more worried by the nanosecond. She was here to stop him from going back down the path of being a very bad little boy and it wasn't going all that well as far as she could tell. He told dark jokes and more than once, now, his eyes had darkened from their normal robin blue to something more cobalt in nature. Once, they were almost black, but she had an explanation for that.
Brazilla blushed. It went unnoticed, however, considering Thane was currently the center of attention.
"I also remember a whole lot of lilting pop music, which is real strange."
"Not that strange, all things considered," Brazilla said. She instantly clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. They hadn't yet reached the point of being able to talk about his previous associations casually, mostly because he didn't know who he used to be.
Thane frowned at her. "What do you mean by that?"
"Ah…" She started to play with her hair. "Well… Being a smuggler you must have ended up in jail at some point."
"Probably." He shrugged. "So?"
"No reason, really. Relevant used to use pop music to torture his prisoners." She shrugged, too, though it wasn't nearly as nonchalant as his had been. In fact, she was quivering, but not for any good or pleasurable reason. That and Jolie's stare could have burned a hole in the side of her face. She brushed at her right temple.
Thane stared at her, too, before he smiled. And when he did, the sun brightened; no one other than the Jedi noticed the difference in the weather, though, just as before. The vacationers were too absorbed in their own lives to notice that the man who had almost killed them all was standing in their midst. Societal denial was pretty sweet in that regard.
"So…" Brazilla said. "What were you two up to before Erika decided to head back to the ship?"
"Trying to break a potential murderer out of jail," Thane said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and admired a group of young women as they walked past. Brazilla narrowed her eyes at him, but the scathing went unnoticed.
"That's not very Jedi-like behavior, you know," she said.
He shrugged again. "Jolie's the one in charge of this outfit, so pick your bone with him if you've got a problem. I'm just along to admire the view and to push us in the general direction of the Map. Though, now that you're here, I can give up that secondary task to you."
"I've nothing on Can'nonbe'ach to admire."
"Which is why I'm giving you the less important task of getting us to the Map," Thane said, smiling his killer smile. "I'm likely to get too distracted to get us there. All I know is that I need to go see some guy who likes to hang out in curtains somewhere on the East Pier. I don't know which East Pier, but he's bound to be on one of them."
"He's probably in the Embassy since that's where we were told to go," Jolie said.
"That'd be the place. Good. I don't really want to talk to some creep." But then Thane seemed to think about it. He even frowned a little bit. "Though, he is probably a politician of some variety seeing as he's in the Embassy… Right. Anyway. Which way were we going before running into that tangent?"
"You mean the bar?" Brazilla asked.
"Ha-ha. Let's never talk about that again." Thane narrowed his eyes at her and though something in Brazilla's heart thumped with excitement as it wrapped its arm-like ventricles around her esophagus… Well, there's no need to get back into her concerns about Thane becoming Relevant again.
"Actually," Jolie was saying while Brazilla was worrying and trying to swallow, "we were just about to walk into a bar to ask for directions."
"I thought we weren't—"
Jolie cut him off by pointing at the Lazy Lungfish Lounge. "It is the one you walked into if you want to get damn technical about it, but I figured we'd use the existing door this time as opposed to trying to make one of our own. It might work a bit better."
In perfect fairness to Thane, he had been distracted in the seconds before walking into the bar, or at least into its side. What with Erika's sudden bad mood, the hordes of scantily clad women, and the fact that he was looking behind him as he continued to walk forward, it was a mistake anyone could have made, even a Jedi whose level of awareness was supposed to be something super-(not)human—sort of like walking into a telephone pole on the outskirts of a crowded sidewalk while talking to a friend; an easy mistake.
"But I don't need directions," Thane argued. "I always know where I'm going."
"Which is why we've visited seventy piers today?"
"Exactly." Thane smiled and winked at him. "But if you want to go in and figure out where the hell you're going, I'm not gonna stop you. 'Zill and I will just wait for you here."
"Figures," Jolie said. "I shouldn't expect you kids to do anything responsible."
"I'm saving the galaxy here, gramps. That's pretty damn responsible in my book."
Jolie looked him up and down. "I never had any children."
"Excuse me?"
"I'm not a grandfather."
Thane put up a hand. "Okay. Whatever. Look, we'll be right here waiting for you. Unless, of course, I take her to buy something pretty." He pointed at Brazilla. "I've got credits burning a hole in my pocket and they're screaming to be spent on something frivolous."
He slung his arm around the woman's shoulders. She promptly pushed it off.
"I don't enjoy frivolity," she replied.
"I wouldn't have guessed." Thane glanced at her. Jolie bah'd and went inside.
--
Meanwhile, on the far side of the galaxy and…
Just past the Rhineland Sector in a particularly cold part of space, a rather ostentatious ship established orbit around a land of ice and snow otherwise known as the planet Asgard. Other smaller ships came up around it and scattered themselves like jacks, ready to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of Darth Talck, Ultra-bad Villain More-Extraordinaire and Current Dark Lord of the Sith. In the distance, a battle station that was too big to be a battle station slowly absorbed the energy of the smaller of two suns: Stars Forge—the galaxy's largest manufacturer of unauthorized biographies and iron weaponry.
Talck was pacing the bridge of his flagship, the Baldr Dash, muttering to himself as well as a man in an iron mask can. While it only covered half of his face, it was the half that mattered when it came to muttering to oneself in frustration. The rest was a kind of powdery white accented with yellow-green eyes and short-cropped black hair growing over strange tattoos—the kind of face that used to be handsome before the bottom half of it was lopped off. He rubbed at that hair now, surprised at its length. Normally he kept it close to nonexistent, but the disappearance of Brazilla and reappearance of his formerly-dead-but-not-quite Master had been occupying his thoughts of late. He hadn't known of Thane's continued life until the day before yesterday, but it was troubling enough to keep his mind off his grooming.
He paused at the viewport and stood up straight like a man finally free of years spent slouching in order to appear shorter than he actually was. Relevant hadn't liked the taller height of his apprentice; it had made him feel inadequate, somehow, and the thought still made Talck scowl… Would have made him scowl, had he more than one lip to scowl with. Once again the doing of his former master, Relevant had made sure Talck wouldn't be able to do much in the way of lower-facial expressions for the rest of his life.
It also made eating a terribly difficult task. Talck still wasn't used to the perceived taste of meal-in-a-bag.
Running the back of his fingernails over his iron forged jaw, Talck paused to observe both his domain and his domain-to-be. Just like eating, it was a rather difficult thing to do considering he was way beyond the border of known space. Still, he decided, most of the stars out there probably belonged to him. At least the ones that were in this galaxy. And somewhere, somewhere, Thane and Brazilla were doing too good a job of both avoiding his detection and attracting attention away from him.
He would have to fix that.
He turned his practically glowing, nearly ruined eyes to the pit of engineers beneath him and barked out a command as well as he could through his vocalizer.
"Get us out of here," he said to no one in particular. Gaines, Garth's former mentor, was the one who answered. He had been standing next to Talck for the entirety of his pacing but was such a thoroughly insignificant man that he hardly deserved attention or mention for some relative months.
"But we've only just arrived," he said. "Don't you think it prudent that we establish our hold over the Makers now rather than leave them to their own devises? Outside influences might swoop in and turn them against us."
The Current Dark Lord of the Sith narrowed his eyes at Gaines as if surprised by his presence.
"Ha," Talck laughed as a droid might. "Ha-ha-ha. They wouldn't dare. They know exactly what Relevant would have done to them if they had ever chosen crossed his word and both leaders still think that I managed to kill him. They're quaking in their pointy little horned hats." He stabbed his finger at the planet hanging beneath them and then at the one outside the viewport. "They can wait. Brazilla and Relevant cannot."
Gaines swallowed, a fact that he had to hide from Talck. Thankfully, the high collar of his uniform hid the tell-tale wobble of his Adam's apple. "Where would you have us go?"
Talck smiled cruelly with his eyes and top lip. "To Spring Break, of course. If I know the man Relevant used to be and currently is, that's where he'll be. The fact that there's a Map there is hardly relevant."
Gaines was about to ask how the Map could possibly be Talck's former Master, hardly or not, when he thought about it for a moment and decided that he rather liked his head and his privates just where they were, thank you very much, so he remained silent. And he nodded.
"Can'nonbe'ach it is, my Lord," Gaines said, adding in a deep bow just in case Talck was displeased in any way. Talck just glanced at him and walked back to the viewport, stroking his immobile jaw with one hand and wiping his shoulder clean of some powder with the other.
Gaines was immediately forgotten.
--
"So," Thane was saying as he leaned over Brazilla in a dark corner outside the Lazy Lungfish, "you've been hanging around in the shallow pools of lust that drown our tallest women again, have you? I might be able to help you back out of them, lovely."
Brazilla blushed and glanced away, an errant giggle escaping her lips. She put her hand on her cheek, ashamed of herself. Giggling was not a part of the Jedi repertoire.
"I thought so," he said, tilting her face back to his and leaning close enough to kiss her nose. "You know, the only reason I was looking at anyone else was to work you into a jealous fit of rage."
"But I've been trained to be emotionless," she whispered back. "I can't feel jealousy or rage."
He touched her in the middle of the chest. "I know you have it in your heart, if only for me."
"I don't think I will satisfy you with that kind of attention."
Thane smiled against her top lip. "There's lots of other things you can do, you know."
Brazilla scowled but didn't break their contact, slight though it was. "You are a terrible man."
"I am a wonderful man."
She didn't answer, her eyes closing halfway. "Would you do anything I asked?"
"I would conquer the galaxy for you."
Her heart fluttered, but not because of whom he had once been. Out of habit, she replied with, "Talk like that leads to the dark side, Thane."
"Everyone's got a dark side, honey." He ran his fingers through her hair and held onto its weight. "Even Jedi."
"I don't know how much I like that," she said against his lips.
"I don't know how much I like that, either," Jolie also said. Brazilla leapt backwards. Thane smirked and remained where he was. "I can't leave you two alone for one second, can I?"
"You could leave us alone for a whole hour, if you like," Thane replied, straightening from his reclined posture against the wall. "I wouldn't mind and I know that she would stop minding eventually."
Brazilla did her best to frown. Jolie's version was more successful.
"I don't want to warn you about the path that can lead you down because that would make me sound like a Jedi," Jolie went on to say. "And I ain't much of a Jedi anymore."
Thane shrugged. Again. He seemed particularly fond of the gesture today. "I wasn't a Jedi up until recently and I'm not so sure how much I like it. The power is nice, the restrictions not so much. Maybe Relevant and Talck had it right."
"I wouldn't go around spoutin' your mouth like that." Jolie turned his attention to Brazilla as he said it, expecting her to give a good tongue-lashing. Instead, she just narrowed her eyes as if there wasn't much of a point anymore. And though Jolie hated having premonitions, he felt as if something ominous was coming. These two kids could serve a world of hurt to the galaxy and then some if they chose to follow a certain path. He was an old man who had seen a lot in his life and he knew the tell-tale signs of disillusionment. This could be bad.
And then Thane broke the suddenly somber mood.
"I guess we should get on going," he said, throwing his thumb over his shoulder. "Find out anything useful?"
"Yeah. The jail's just around the corner. Let's go talk to Sunny."
"Sounds like a plan, Stan," Thane said. "Lead the way."
Jolie gave the two younger Jedi one last look before turning his back on them and heading off to find his friend. This was bound to be interesting.
--
A/N – Thanks everyone for the lovely reviews and such. They really keep me writing. And sorry if seriousness has leaked in; it was bound to happen eventually, I figure. But hey, a chapter so quickly after the last! That's either inspiration or me avoiding working on the sequels to Savior or a little of both…
And, look! Our pasty baddie finally gets to make an appearance as he finally decided to come out and play. His ship, in case you're curious, is named for Baldr, a Norse God associated with light and beauty that probably isn't pronounced "balder" as much as it is pronounced "bal(strange breathy sound in back of throat similar to the sound a TH and an R would make together; or sound of coughing up phlegm)". Ain't the Scandinavian languages a blast?
Credit:
The lyric "shallow pools of lust that drown our tallest women" is from Adam Green's song Hairy Women and the bit about Jolie not being a grandfather was inspired by Shepherd Book in Firefly. Also, for those who didn't pick it up, there were slight Watchmen references in the previous chapter. The comic is a little piece of pure awesomeness, if you haven't read it.