AN: First and foremost, I want to give a huge shout-out to Master Krumina who is beta(ing) for me, and doing a fabulous job. If all high schoolers grasped the English language like she does, this country would be in better shape.
On to the Reviews for Chapter 8:
Jedi Master Misty Sman-Esay: Jacen's plans can't blow up in his face! What will happen to the galaxy without him? He knows he's the only one who can keep it all together…
Lordban: Trouble does seem to be swirling around him. You're right! I think he's dashing too.
Master Krumina: I spoiled it for you by making you read a horrible second draft... SORRY!
Loteva: Welcome aboard! Great to hear you liked it. Jacen's LotF character assassination saddened me greatly. Perhaps Lumiya will enter the scene eventually MUAHAHAHAHA!
Onimiman: Jacen lashing out… so mature!
Utuu: It's tough to write. And I am still unsure where I am going with the "vibe". Not letting it threaten the integrity of the story, that's for sure.
Jacen had to keep instructing his driver to maintain some distance from the taxi before him. The driver, a young Weequay, always followed his instructions as he gave it, and then forgetting them several seconds later. She always returned to asking him more questions about what it's like to be a Jedi and whether the rumors about him and Tenel Ka were true and whether or not he was afraid at any time when he was chasing the Chief of State's assassin and whether he was chasing a criminal at this very moment and how oh so exciting it all was. Jacen did not actually answer the enthusiastically posed rapid-fire questions, merely interjecting every once in a while in order to reiterate the need to keep their distance.
Lar'shan's taxi was actually going in the general direction of Mara's apartment which annoyed him immensely. Did he merely go out of his way to tell everyone that he was going to a hotel in order to spare Mara any disapproval from her family? Jacen felt anger rise inside of him and he was not sure why. He attributed it to his growing dislike of the man he was presently following. As they approached the tower that contained Mara's apartment, the Taxi ahead of them suddenly dipped and started to descend down into the lower portions of the city, rather than continue onward towards what Jacen had assumed to be their destination.
His driver once again started closing with the target she was following. "You will fracking refrain from getting closer than 100 meters to the taxi we are following." He commanded, waving his hand, backing up the demand with a copious amount of force persuasion.
She repeated his command in a monotone voice and promptly throttled the taxi's speed, letting some distance develop between them and the taxi they were pursuing. As they continued to slowly drop from one speeder lane to the next and descend deeper into Coruscant's underbelly, Jacen began to wonder where exactly they were going. Unless Lar'shan enjoyed shady hotels, along with his nice clothes and flamboyant style, they were clearly going somewhere other than Lar'shan's nightly domicile. Jacen watched as the taxi before them came to a stop in front of an outcropping that extended from the main superstructure it was attached to. Everything at this level of Coruscant seemed like one giant interconnected permacrete complex but they were likely just at the lower third of an enormous sky scraper.
"Stop!" He commanded.
His driver did as asked and brought the taxi to a complete stop.
"Turn off the headlights."
She immediately did as she was told. He was not even using force suggestions to prompt obedience. She had more sense than he had initially assumed. He watched as Lar'shan left the taxi, scanned the surrounding area, and then approached the door that led into the structure.
"Unlock the back door."
He heard a beep announcing that the rear door was unlocked. Jacen handed her a hundred credits which she took gratefully. As she turned to place the chip into the appropriate compartment he touched the back of her head, rubbing away her memory of him. She gasped in discomfort. "You will not turn around and look at me. In precisely ten seconds you will return to Topicas and continue your shift. Until then close your eyes."
Jacen opened the door, and gathered the force to his aid. He jumped and sailed clear across the open crevasse that yawned beneath him, for at least two kilometers. He landed on a permasteel girder that hung off the side of the building nearest to him. Jacen used a telekinetic shove to close the taxi's door behind him once he had found his balance. Several force guided leaps from one structural anomaly to the next brought him rather close to the building Lar'shan had disappeared into. Jacen glided the rest of the way at a steady descent until he landed on the porch that Lar'shan had been standing on a minute before.
He approached the door and recognized it as too big to be anything but the service entrance to some sort warehouse or other industrial sub-structure. Jacen was not about to just barge in the front door. Going through the side door was usually the paranoid approach but it never hurt to be safe. While going through the front door was usually the right thing to do… except for the few instances when it was not. Jacen swept his eyes across the building's façade and spotted a window up and to the right. Unfortunately, it was not above the porch he was standing on but rather suspended over the abyss that stretched down below him.
Jacen sighed and went to the edge of the platform behind him to give himself a running start. With Force assisted speed he sprinted and leapt. He guided himself the fifteen meters to his target and threw his hands to either side of the square opening in the otherwise smooth building façade. He dug his fingers into the permacrete with enough strength as to bruise his fingertips. His nerve endings shot signals of pain into his brain but this merely honed his focus. Jacen drew himself up and into the small enclosure. He now had just enough footing to allow himself a moment to look at the window before him, which was blocking his entry.
It was not a glass window but a transparisteel one. This meant that the only way to open it from the outside, typically, would be a powerful force push. He would be unbalanced if he followed that approach, likely knocking him off his precarious position… resulting in him falling to an inglorious death or alert anyone inside that he was there. Jacen stretched out with the force and searched for any nearby organics. He was in luck. There was no one. Jacen looked at the obstruction ahead of him again, but this time he used an ability created by Mace Windu. The transparisteel vanished and instead he saw thousands of tiny lines lines . . . strands really, that all converged at a single point. He placed one hand against the material, gently tugging it towards him with the force. Then he tapped the fingernail of his other hand's index finger against the point of the glass that he had seen as its weak point. It instantly shattered, and thanks to his force tug it did not shatter inwards but rather in his direction. A cone like shield protected him and caused the shards to glance off of him and out into the Coruscant night. The shards would fall for a while. A particularly conscientious Jedi might worry that the glass would hit someone on the way down but Jacen did not bother with such trivialities.
What he saw inside was indeed a warehouse. Rows of storage units and large shelves stretched out before him. Jacen could hear voices in the distance. He used the Force to aid him in a silent jump that dropped him onto the top of a shelving unit ahead of him. He muffled the drop as best he could and steadily ran along the tops of the shelves. When he reached the end of one, he jumped to the next until he arrived at a more well-lit area. Below him he saw Lar'shan talking to three thuggish looking types.
"And everything is as I asked?" Lar'shan queried.
"Yes boss," the central figure replied. He was a burly green Twi'lek with a long scar that ran down half his face.
"How much did this cost me?" Lar'shan asked.
"I'unno. Like a lot of credits. We had to buy all that stuff you wanted and those little pets you had us buy are expensive," the Twi'lek replied, shrugging.
Jacen kept listening intently from his perch.
"Don't concern yourself with those. Just keep them alive and fed." Lar'shan pushed past the thugs. "Now all I need to do is lure that Jedi bitch down here and then… it's payback time."
Jacen felt his blood boil. He didn't have his lightsaber with him, but against three thugs and their smarmy leader he would not need it. He jumped down into the open area at the end of the warehouse that they were standing, using the force to steady his drop—
And found the Force slipping through his fingers. He was suddenly without his trusted ally, the floor racing towards him much too quickly. A last second roll took the worst out of the impact. Pain still shot up his legs and the rest of his body as he rolled and came up in a crouch. The three thugs and Lar'shan turned immediately to face him.
"What the kriff?" Lar'shan exclaimed. "Jacen?"
Jacen knew he was in trouble. He had no lightsaber, and even with it he was at the mercy of the first incoming blaster bolt. Only with the Force could he anticipate its trajectory and block or deflect it back to its source. The three thugs had leveled their blasters at him.
"You followed me here?" Lar'shan asked incredulously.
Jacen remained silent, willing his right knee to stop shaking from the pain that his sprained ankle was broadcasting.
"That's too bad," Lar'shan sighed sadly. "You may have noticed that you're missing something in here." Lar'shan walked up to a cage in the corner of the room and unhooked it from a chain hanging from the ceiling. "Fascinating creatures aren't they?" he mused carrying it back to the center of the open area where the thugs had Jacen frozen at blasterpoint. Jacen knew what was in the cage and why he was helpless. "Ysalamiri are expensive, but they level the playing field quite nicely don't they?"
"If you say so," Jacen replied.
"I assume that by now you're suspecting the truth." Lar'shan continued. "That I am, in fact, the head of the Noctun cartel, and that, in order to protect myself, I had to pretend to be an underling and help Mara dismantle my own headquarters. Thankfully, regular injections of Ysalamiri bone marrow made it possible for me to lie to a Jedi and get away with it."
Lar'shan smiled his fake sad smile again. "Unfortunately, I can't let you leave with this knowledge." He laughed. "Of course after the way you've threatened me, I'm probably going to enjoy this." He nodded at his underlings. "Grab him! I want him alive." he shouted, addressing his hired muscle.
The three thugs approached Jacen warily. The first one who reached him put his hand on Jacen's shoulder and tried to spin the Jedi around. He had a nasty looking pair of permasteel cuffs in his large hands. The moment he placed his hand on Jacen's shoulder, the Jedi grabbed the thug's wrist and brought up his other hand in a split second, repeatedly thrusting it into the throat of his assailant.
Jacen had to dodge to the right, forcing him to release his would-be captor, in order to avoid an incoming punch from his left. This brought him directly in front of the other goon who kicked him in his side as he rolled passed. Jacen stumbled, but came to his feet again, turning around in order to try and run towards the entrance of the warehouse were there had been no Ysalamiri. This brought him face to face with yet more guards. Jacen cursed himself. There must have been cages near the entrance too, hanging low to the floor, hiding guards within their fields. Jacen twisted to avoid a blow coming from behind, the thug who attempted it announcing himself through heavy breathing. Jacen grabbed the fist as it whooshed past his head and used the momentum to throw the brute over his back. If he had had the Force he could have thrown the thug into his companions, who were blocking Jacen's retreat. As it stood he only managed to bring the felon crashing to the ground before his feet.
Jacen tried to reach for the gun in the holster of the fallen thug's belt but was grabbed from behind. One of the guards who had manned the warehouse entrance closed in on him from his front as Jacen was lifted off his feet by the hulking Devaronian behind him. Jacen pulled his legs in and kicked the approaching attacker square in the face. The thug saw it coming and partially managed to cover his face. Nevertheless, the guard was still knocked off his feet. Jacen's already strained ankle protested at the abuse and a flare of pain shot up his body.
One of his hands, still forced against his torso by the man crushing him from behind found the handle of something. Jacen ripped it out of the belt and brought it up to try and shoot the attackers in front of him who were approaching slowly, hoping the Devaronian would subdue Jacen with no risk of injury to themselves. Jacen couldn't see the weapon but he realized it was missing a trigger on the handle. In a split second Jacen thrust the heavier end of it into the leg of the brute that was crushing his torso. A bellow followed and Jacen was dropped to his feet. What he had grabbed must have been the thug's melee weapon rather than a balster. Not bothering to look at it, lest he draw attention to what he had stealthily appropriated, Jacen twirled the blade and angled it against his wrist in order to hide the weapon he had garnered from the thugs.
Jacen found himself standing in the middle of six thugs. Lar'shan was standing a bit off to the side, shouting into a com-unit. Jacen refocused on the bravest of the six thugs who was the first to approach him, likely drawn in by Jacen's limping stance and pained expression. The moment he was close enough, Jacen leapt and parted the man's throat with a well-aimed slice. Even without the force a trained Jedi was a master martial artist and weapons expert. As the fatally wounded man grasped his throat in a vain attempt to stifle the blood flow, the others took a step back and started to finger their blasters. Jacen used their moment of indecision, and looked in Lar'shan's direction and started to run towards him, his weapon grasped in his hand. The thugs started to bring their weapons to bear on him but Lar'shan was quicker. Just as Jacen was about to reach him, Lar'shan leveled a blaster rifle that he'd previously not had on Jacen. That must be what he was yelling into the com about, Jacen thought as a stun bolt shot towards him. Jacen reflexively brought his blade up to block it, and he almost managed to intercept it even without the force when it impacted the right side of his chest, spinning him around.
Jacen immediately felt the paralyzing and tranquilizing effect of the bolt course through his body. He bit his tongue in an attempt to stay conscious. The pain and the blood in his mouth caused him to regain a moment of clarity, his strength of will pushing back against the paralyzing agent. He looked to the right and severed the Achilles tendon of an approaching goon, then rolled to the side to avoid another grabbing him by the shoulder. He propelled himself back to his feet, with a practiced Teräs Käsi technique and spat blood at Lar'shan who had recalibrated his weapon in order to fire off another stun bolt. The blood spattered onto Lar'shan's trousers. Jacen felt a punch drive into his kidney from behind, which caused him to black out for a moment and stumble dangerously. A moment later another bolt impacted his chest. Jacen grimaced again, growling at Lar'shan as he dropped to his knees.
"Will you stay down, you freak?" Lar'shan asked in annoyance and confusion. He leveled his blaster rifle at Jacen once again, firing. Concordant with the incoming bold, Jacen felt something hard and metal impact the back of his head. Jacen was enveloped in the blackness of unconsciousness a moment later.
Jacen was drawn back towards consciousness by pain coursing through his back and chest and every other part of his body. As he parted his eyelids the first thing he saw was Lar'shan leering at him, less than a meter from his face. Jacen tried to move his hands, which were stretched apart towards either side of him. He could not move them more than a little. He looked to his right side and saw that they were held in place by shackles. The shackles were connected to the ceiling by a linked chain. He was in an old fashioned cell, which was more makeshift than anything else. The cell was sequestered from the rest of the room by steel bars; a woefully outdated way of imprisoning people. But that was irrelevant because even in here he could not touch the force, and Lar'shan knew it.
"You've looked better," Lar'shan pointed out, playing with a vibroblade.
The back of Jacen's head throbbed. He felt dried blood caked and dried up against the back of his neck. The thug who had hit him with the blaster pistol butt made sure to be thorough.
"Was that Teräs Käsi you were using?" Lar'shan asked. Jacen did not respond. He merely glared. "I gotta hand it to you. You're pretty dangerous, even without the force. One of my men dead, one needs to have his Achilles tendon surgically rebuilt." Lar'shan laughed, amused. "Not that I'm gonna pay for that mind you. Oh and one paralyzed from the waist down because his spine is cracked. A thorough job."
Jacen smiled, his pain wracked frame protesting as he tried to stand straighter. "I'm glad you enjoyed the show."
Lar'shan shook his head in mock disappointment. "But you see, I really didn't. It costs me money to outfit this place with creepy lizards and to hire muscle to guard the place. And it cost me even more money when your bitch of an aunt forced me to shut down my headquarters." Jacen felt his blood rise at the expletive. "She was fracking relentless. Finding my customers and threatening them and even assaulting them. Rescuing young women individually and bringing them to doctor's off-world… She just wouldn't stop coming after my operation. And then she attacked us head on and I knew I couldn't stop her but I was looking into ways how. So I played along while I invested millions of credits into getting this place operational… so close to her apartment." He said, grinning and pointed towards the ceiling. "She's there right now, like two kilometers that way."
Jacen listened to the speech. "Were you born a disgusting slaver of women so they could be raped and prostituted for your personal gain, or did you just, at some point during your formative years, reach a point where you were like… damn that's what I want to do with my life?"
Lar'shan punched him in the jaw, hard. Jacen's head snapped to the right and his vision momentarily blacked out, a ringing blocking his hearing.
"—nothing about where I come from. We don't all grow up in the Imperial Palace amongst wealth and luxury." He made out as his hearing returned.
"The tough childhood speech?" Jacen mumbled, and spat some blood on the floor. "So you were forced to live with some misery, unlike me whose life has been one long fracking joyride, and that makes it alright to spread misery?"
Lar'shan frowned and nodded to a nasty looking bruiser nearby who flipped a switch. Arcs of electrical energy coursed around him and through him, causing his body to shake uncontrollably. Jacen's eyes widened in pain his entire nervous system erupted in agony, but he did not scream.
"That subdue your urge to smart mouth me a bit?" Lar'shan asked after he signaled to cut the power. Jacen slumped. He could hear a bit of confusion in Lar'shan's voice. He had expected his victim to audibly react.
"You think I'm smart?" Jacen asked with all the mock joy he could muster, mumbling.
Lar'shan walked up to Jacen and grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head up so as to be able to look into the Jedi's eyes. "What? I couldn't hear you, Jedi scum."
"Whoa there," Jacen replied grinning. "No need to get so intimate, I like women." Lar'shan kneed Jacen in the stomach, causing the Jedi to groan. Jacen guffawed, in pain and amusement. "Is this how you tried to woo your first crush as you were growing up? No wonder you turned to prostitution." Jacen said this in a tone of fake realization and shook his head slightly, his head still held in place by Lar'shan's grip. "This is so the wrong way to go about getting a woman to reciprocate your interest…" Jacen smiled. "Or a man. A man will turn you down too."
The thug next to Jacen snorted. Lar'shan glared at his underling. "Something funny?"
The man fidgeted and shook his head. "No boss."
"Shock him again then."
The underling did as instructed, and Jacen felt his blood boil as electricity raced through his body. Jacen forced himself to remain conscious by homing in on the anger he felt for this man. He wanted to see him in agony. To see him suffer. To watch the life drain from his eyes.
As the electricity stopped, moments from sending him spiraling into darkness, Jacen felt the familiar dull thudding pain that his entire body was in, rather than the sharp agony of the raw energy burning his life away.
Lar'shan looked at him in growing confusion. "Are you not affected by the pain or something?" The crime boss turned around, making eye contact with the ysalamiri cage. "The lizard is moving around so how are you not bothered by this?"
Jacen just glared at him and shrugged his shoulders. Lar'shan gestured with a nod at the table which Jacen could make out in his left eye's peripheral vision. He saw some shiny devices laid out. Jacen was confused that he did not feel any dread at what was about to happen. He just wanted to survive this and kill the scum in front of him and save his daughter from a horrible future filled with Sith and crazed dark side monsters. And Ben too. And all his family really. Mara's face appeared in his mind's eye as well, starkly real and vividly beautiful. Tragic. Surviving. Fiery. And alive. And then he thought of her being lured to this place and killed. He had to get out of this and protect her!
The thug came over, holding a pair of steel pliers. Jacen raised his eyebrow at the man's approach. He stepped to Jacen's left side and grabbed his shackled wrist. Jacen frowned and stared Lar'shan in the eye. The moment he felt the plier take hold of his fingernail he knew what was about to happen. He smiled while looking at Lar'shan who was staring into Jacen's eyes searching for a reaction. As the fingernail was ripped from his finger, his nerves alight with the cutting edge of physical torment he never allowed the smile to leave his face, much less flinch at the sensation ripping up his arm.
Lar'shan started to shake his head. "When I said 'something is deeply wrong with you' I wasn't mistaken."
Jacen chuckled, spitting blood from his still bleeding tongue. The wound kept reopening. "Can you have him do my other index finger? I don't want anything lopsided."
"To hell with it!" Lar'shan announced. "Leave him here. I'll see if I can find someone who is willing to buy him from us. Make back some of the money this has all cost me. I highly doubt it though. I'll be back in an hour to kill him personally in the likely event that no one wants to take him off my hands." The torturer nodded and followed his boss out of the cell, closing and locking the door behind him.
From one moment to the next he was alone. Jacen's mind was muddled, his ability to touch the force blocked. His left hand was throbbing and his body was shaking from the electrical shocks it had been subjected to. His jaw felt like it was coming loose from the punch it had taken. He barely made out Lar'shan leaving the larger chamber that housed the cell. The thug had not left but instead sat down outside his cell. Jacen watched as the criminal turned on a holoprojector. Jacen could hardly make out what he was watching but the commentator's enthusiasm indicated a bolo-ball match.
Jacen tried to clear his mind, focusing in on his pain and using it to focus his faculties on nothing but his ferocious appetite for slaughtering everyone in this place. Slowly his faculties came back under his control. He took stock of the situation he was in and inhaled deeply. The circumstance was grim. He was shackled in a permacrete cell, and locked behind steel bars, while in a poor physical state. With the force he could get out, but without it… it was impossible. He looked at the ysalamiri cage hanging from a chain in the center of the chamber. He tried to break past the force block field it was emitting, but he simply could not. His concentration was strained to the limit. He was employing enough force power to move starships but his full strength was affecting the cage less than a light breeze.
It struck him like lightning from a clear sky, suddenly and unexpectedly. The Aing-Tii had initiated him in the art of object teleportation, called fold-space. He had learned to move small objects such as cups and writing objects, but it required so much concentration and focus, and such a high degree of spatial awareness of the location and destination that the object would exchange that he had considered it impractical. But now it might be his saving grace. He looked at the ground near his feet and committed its every detail to memory. Then he looked at the cage and tried to make out the details of the ysalamiri inside. But he could not.
Cursing the situation he puzzled over the solution. As he looked around his glance fell on the table with the torture instruments. He made out the details of the knife and glanced at the back of the guard's head. But then he remembered that the Aing-Tii had told him teleporting something into something other than a relatively vacant space was next to impossible. The empty void of space was easiest, open air doable. He concentrated on the knife and the floor to his feet. He stood there for several seconds and strained his mind. All of a sudden he dimly heard an almost inaudible popping sound over the holoprojector. When Jacen opened his eyes, the knife was lying between his feet.
Struggling for several minutes, he managed to activate its ultrasonic generator and settle it between his feet, holding it at a slightly forward facing angle. Now, he focused his concentration on the cage hanging from the chain and the empty space a meter in front of his face. He strained and concentrated but nothing happened. After minutes of vain attempts he wanted to scream in angry frustration. That wouldn't solve anything, however. And in thirty minutes he would likely be dead or Force knew what. He doubted Lar'shan would really sell him. Likely he wanted to see if Jacen would break with time and uncertainty. A hidden camera was maybe even pointing at him right now. Hopefully it would not notice what was going on at his feet or, more like, his feet where out of its recording scope.
Jacen closed his eyes again and this time imagined the room from the corner of the area, seeing himself in his mind's eye. He concentrated on the area just in front of him, picturing it from different angles and mentally triangulating the intersecting spot he wanted the cage to appear in. Suddenly he felt sharp pain in his head and he opened his eyes, just in time to see the cage appear in front of him. With blind hope he kicked upwards, at the small cage, the blade pointing in the air. The knife made contact with metal, a clear clanging announcing the impact. The strain of his entire weight being momentarily held by his shoulders was almost unbearable. But then he heard a squeak. The thug jumped to his feet, and ran to the cell door. And suddenly the Force flowed through Jacen again and he welcomed it, caressing the sensation internally, his old friend a welcome joy.
The moment the thug opened the cell door, Jacen grabbed the chain that connected his right hand's shackle with the ceiling and pulled with Force-assisted strength. Jacen smiled a terrible smile at his captor as the chain ripped out of the ceiling, showering the room with particles of permacrete. The thug's eyes widened as Jacen pulled forward and up, a chunk of permacrete still attached to the end. As it crashed into Jacen's assailant, the man was lifted from his feet by the impact, tumbling almost an entire meter. He coughed blood, the impact having caught him in his chest and struggled to get up. Jacen gestured and lifted the criminal's body into the air and then started crushing him with the force. The man's eyes bulged and audible bone cracking could be heard. Jacen kept him from screaming by closing off his windpipe simultaneously. The man expired seconds later.
Jacen freed himself quickly, knowing that he wouldn't be alone for long. No alarm could be heard, however, he realized. There must not have been a camera monitoring the room after all. The ysalamiri had lulled his captors into a false sense of complacency. Jacen used the vibroblade that was lying on the floor to cut the shackles from his wrist. The weapon held in his hand, he limped out of the cell and made for the door.
The next several minutes he spent sneaking around the main warehouse area, evading the few guards, and killing all the Ysalamiri he could find. When he was satisfied that he'd gotten them all, four in each corner and one in the hall's center, he went about systematically exterminating the guard's as stealthily as possible. Even the ones not guarding the path towards what used to be the offices that overlooked the warehouse, where he assumed Lar'shan had retreated to. The thirst for blood was as keen as the pain coursing through his body.
As he approached the last guard he realized a moment too late that the force had once again been ripped from him. The sensation was so keen that he couldn't keep himself from gasping. The guard spun around instantly a long vibrosword clutched in his hand. The thug was a Falleen, and must have thought guns beneath him, an atypically arrogant notion which was not uncommon for his species. He thrust at Jacen, so fast that Jacen barely managed to dodge the blow, his small weapon ineffective for true parrying. He turned his dodge to the side into a pirouette which culminated with him ramming his blade into the Falleen's chest.
As his victim's eyes widened Jacen grasped the back of the Falleen's neck and whispered in his ear. "You never stood a chance, you fool."
As Jacen backed up, out of the Force blocking aura he momentarily lost his footing. Frowning he looked down. Blood was spilling from a wound on his left side, just above his hip bone. It was deep, and if left untreated it would be fatal. Jacen ripped a large piece of cloth from the Faleen's clothing and with some difficulty he tied it around his midriff, tightening it as much as he could. The wound, though life threatening with time, was not even very painful. His whole body was an amalgam of pain at this point. Only the Force and Vergere's training kept him going now. He looked over to the stairway that spiraled up to the office, in which he could not sense anyone, but which he knew Lar'shan to be in, unless the crimeboss had left the structure entirely. He was sorely tempted to lift a shelving unit from the ground and hurtle it at the office. But Lar'shan deserved a more personal treatment. And he was not sure if the ysalamiri would stop the object too far from the office, making it crash uselessly to the ground, alerting the crime boss as to his impending doom.
Jacen stealthily ascended the stairs. The door at the top was old fashioned. It had a little window through which one could look, and a pad on the door that made it open. Jacen peeped into the window, from either side first, insuring no unpleasant surprise would come through the window—like a blaster bolt that would perforate his skull. He spotted Lar'shan at a console, talking animatedly. An ysalamiri cage was next to him, and Lar'shan was feeding the lizard something. Jacen hit the doorpad.
The door swooshed open and as Jacen stepped inside, Lar'shan turned around slowly, still talking.
"… no, I don't know when operations can go—" He fell silent when he caught sight of Jacen moving towards him. Jacen instantly stopped.
"Jacen!" he announced, in a gleeful tone, attempting to mask his shock and ending his com connection. "You look bad, my friend." Lar'shan gestured empathetically with his hands. "I was just thinking about how fun it'll be to bring your aunt down here and knock her around a little. Put her on a drug regimen. Make her dependent. And then selling her, every night, to the dirtiest of Coruscant's under city denizens. They'd pay anything for a no-questions-asked hour with Mara Jade Skywalker."
Jacen felt his rage rise up in him, drowning out all sense and reason. He considered throwing his blade at the lizard or Lar'shan, but either move would leave him weaponless, should it fail. Lar'shan had not attempted to go for his blaster, which was not easily removed from the holster while he was sitting. Lar'shan must have known that, because he had not tried to get up, which was what Jacen was waiting for.
Lar'shan laughed. "Your anger is really hilarious. You make it sound like I'm monstrous because I seek revenge against someone who cost me millions of credits. And yet here you are wanting to kill me because I hurt you and am threatening to do the same to your aunt."
Jacen watched his opponent's eyes closely, waiting for the moment to strike. His body was starting to fail him. He harnessed the clarity of pain once more, letting it fuel him.
"You're not talking? That's too bad. I was hoping you'd share some—" And suddenly Lar'shan's eyes flicked to the side, glancing at his desk.
As Lar'shan's hand rapidly reached for something, Jacen threw his weapon, aiming it with all the skill he possessed. The weapon cut through the air, much faster than Lar'shan could move. And then it stopped parting air, instead parting flesh. Lar'shan cried out as the weapon pinned his hand to the wall against which the desk was propped. Jacen sprinted over, quicker than the bastard could grab the blade's handle, and punched the man in the throat. He proceeded to rip the weapon out of the man's perforated palm, and thrust it into Lar'shan's kneecap. Jacen relished the disgusting man's scream.
"Do you have a camera in this room?" he asked Lar'shan.
When the criminal refused to answer Jacen ripped the blade out and thrust it into his other knee. Lar'shan reacted the same way he had before, voicing his anguish aloud.
"Answer me!" Jacen roared.
Lar'shan nodded his uninjured hand fumbling at the knife handle, utterly unwilling to pull it out and turn it against his assailant, for fear of the pain that pulling it out would cause. Jacen smiled at the pitiful sight.
"Can I access it from this console?"
Lar'shan nodded again, tears streaming down his face.
"You're lucky, you piece of poodoo. You know that?" Jacen explained.
Lar'shan stared at him quizzically, followed by a glimmer of hope entering his expression. Jacen laughed.
"No. I won't hand you over to the authorities. Don't be ridiculous. You threatened people I love. But I'm dying and can't bring you with me as I leave this place. So you won't get tortured for weeks. Isn't that a silver lining?" Jacen announced, cheerfully.
He did not wait for Lar'shan to respond. He pulled the knife from the man's kneecap in a split second move and plunged it into the ysalamiri. As the Force returned he used it to stifle his bleeding and reinvigorate him slightly, while tossing Lar'shan out of the chair and sitting down in his place. Jacen focused his anger and fury on Lar'shan's windpipe, closing it off. As he did this he calmly opened the surveillance program on the console and started to wipe footage. Just before he deleted any proof of his presence, besides the blood he had spilt in the place, he copied some files to a holodisc. As Lar'shan's life left his body forever, Jacen stood and exited the warehouse office.