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trans_92009-08-05 03:58 am
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"This is Siaynoq." She said. "All that remains of the Tyrant's greatest ritual." [OPEN]
Sheeana doesn't like to train in the sensorium. There's something about the guarantee of safety, the artificiality of the sorroundings...It dulls her edge. Her reactions are a fraction of a second too slow.
Instead she's brought her little maker to the park with her. Purple grass. Strange, crystalline trees. Bags of multicolored sand lie in a heap a few meters away, where she's dragged them from the nearby playground.
The sandworm is barely seven feet long on its diet of scraps and sickly from the humid environment. Even still, it rears back and snaps at her with impressive speed on the purple grass. Sheeana dodges back and twists side to side. Each snap of the tripartite jaws closes just a few inches from her. She is a literal blur of motion, dancing evasively then vaulting over it like a naked ancient Greek on a vase.
There is something to this scene of a boy wrestling with his dog. It can be seen on the Dune waif's little crook of a smile.
She draws her crysknife. The bone-white blade is the tooth of an adult maker, and she tells her charge so: "Someday you'll have teeth this big too."
She feints playfully at it, careful to keep her arm from getting caught in it mouth with its rows of little daggers and blazing internal fire.
She doesn't realize she's not alone at first.
Instead she's brought her little maker to the park with her. Purple grass. Strange, crystalline trees. Bags of multicolored sand lie in a heap a few meters away, where she's dragged them from the nearby playground.
The sandworm is barely seven feet long on its diet of scraps and sickly from the humid environment. Even still, it rears back and snaps at her with impressive speed on the purple grass. Sheeana dodges back and twists side to side. Each snap of the tripartite jaws closes just a few inches from her. She is a literal blur of motion, dancing evasively then vaulting over it like a naked ancient Greek on a vase.
There is something to this scene of a boy wrestling with his dog. It can be seen on the Dune waif's little crook of a smile.
She draws her crysknife. The bone-white blade is the tooth of an adult maker, and she tells her charge so: "Someday you'll have teeth this big too."
She feints playfully at it, careful to keep her arm from getting caught in it mouth with its rows of little daggers and blazing internal fire.
She doesn't realize she's not alone at first.
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Glad of the weight of the lightsaber at his hip, Luke had set out into the city, thoughts whirring but ever vigilant, as he'd been told the city wasn't the safest of places on the ship. Still, he couldn't stay safe all the time especially if they were to be eradicating a universal threat.
It was a whisper, a nudge from the Force that he barely noticed guiding his feet. Go this way, it whispered. And he saw the worm, and felt the same impression as he had from Arha's worm. Arha's was bigger than it but still stunted perhaps by its container, and from the way the Force eddied sluggishly around this worm it wasn't much better off. Luke was again reminded of the thernbee he'd encountered while a captive of Kueller. But it seemed happy with the girl who was darting around it with a strange white knife.
Curious, Luke went to investigate closer, leaning on a strange tree to watch.
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"Hold!" She cried at it and it stopped immediately. "This man means us no harm." There it sat, wriggling in place and turning over, waiting for reassurance.
She smiled her mischevious desert waif's smile. "Isn't that right?" Trained eyes studied him. There were fast twitch muscles there, a kind of electric crackling always around him. This one had been trained as a warrior. He smelled different too...stronger. Without knowing it, her sensitive nose picked up the influence of the midichlorians.
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"I met one that Arha has," he said, addressing Sheeana now. "You two are from the same place, aren't you?"
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"Bene Gesserit?" He asked. "What are they?"
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"Home is with the Jedi Order, on Coruscant."
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-That alertness, the muscles always ready to strike like a Weirding Way adept...that must be where he learned that.
-If the order is healthy, he wasn't born to it. Such organizations seldom look close to home for recruits. They need hybrid vigor to survive. I'm proof of that.
"Where you live or where you were raised? And are you Jedi teachers as well?"
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He thought about her second question a moment. "We can be teachers," he said after a moment. "We mostly protect and negotiate, and if all else fails, we are called upon to fight."
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The worm travels toward him, somehow sensing for his good intent. It's sniffing (well it would be if it had a nose), deciding wether to beg for pets or bite him. At least in Sheeana's presence, this worm is thoroughly domesticated. "I have given you my name, but you haven't done the same. And who calls upon you to fight?" At this range, she can smell a chemical difference to him. Something extra, but organic, a subtle cellular activity, a buzzing like ozone. What could it be?
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What struck him the most about Arha and now Sheeana was how perceptive they were, how their blue-in-blue eyes seemed to pierce even him. With his gaze, Luke had been said to see through others; now it seemed he was the one who was transparent, a glass containing his thoughts for them to see. And oddly enough, he didn't feel any trepidation, knowing through the Force that he could trust Arha, and Sheeana.
And the question she'd asked was a sticky one. After Caedus' atrocities, the Jedi Order had had a discussion on exactly where its loyalties lay, and the idea had been put forth--and widely accepted--that the Jedi could be their own autonomous group. So really, the question got down to the core of the purpose of the Order itself. Who did they fight for?
"We fight when there are people who need defending," he said at last, carefully. "Jedi are guardians of peace and justice, and they always have been. Where those things are not, the Jedi will do their best to put it right."
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If she could reframe their problem, place it in a different universe, it would become clearer to her. Duncan had used that technique plenty of times.
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"We've been hunted," he said. "The Purges are spots in our Order's history where everything goes blank for a long time."
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"Our history is never blank. We have it..." She tapped her temple with a fingertip. "Here. Every Reverend Mother back to the founding of our order."
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Sheeana couldn't help herself. She laughed (it was a small laugh that sighed like the mineral shush of sand shifting). "No, no. Every Reverend Mother, that is one who has gone through the Spice agony, has the memory-lives of all previous Reverend Mothers within her."
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"You inherit the memories of all the--the Reverend Mothers before you?" he said, trying to understand. "What's the Spice agony?"
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"Their memories and personalities. Our order knows history because we carry it. Thus we have no need for histories. How much has Sister Masaari told you about the Spice?"
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Luke's brow furrowed for a moment, but he let it go. He didn't know these creatures very well, and whatever unusual things sent out in the Force could be perfectly normal for them. He thought it rude to ask so soon after meeting Sheeana and her worm. It seemed like the kind of question for later on.
"Not a lot," he said. "I know it smells like cinnamon and without it, she would die--and probably you too, since you have the same eyes."
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"Yes it is an addiction, a dear coin to pay in. But because of it...Well, there are reasons the Spice is the most valuable substance in our universe. It expands consciousness, allows interstellar travel and extends life. And by ingesting a variant of Spice that is normally a poison, a Bene Gesserit acolyte becomes a Reverend Mother...If she survives, of course." She doesn't mention that the sandworms are the source of it...He'll figure it out soon enough from the heavy scent of the small one's breath.
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"If she survives?" Luke repeated. "You get dosed with poison as part of your Trials?"
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"The final test. If the potential Reverend Mother can convert the poison in the Water of Life within her body, it unlocks the Other Memory I told you of. It's a final test of our bodily control. Once that has passed...Well, it's pretty much impossible to poison one of us. Nor do we get diseases."
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From its position folder under her palm, Sheeana absentmindedly pricked her fingertip with the tip of the crysknife. It took a few seconds for a tiny drop of blood to well up there which she allowed to fall between her lips before sheathing the blade. Old habits died hard.
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He caught a glint of something and saw her sucking her finger, but didn't press it. It seemed a reflexive action almost.
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"We have our own charges to protect, but we try to avoid getting involved as a political force in our own right. Bene Gesserit do not hold power anywhere but our own planet of Chapterhouse. Thus we protect ourselves. I hope for your sake your order follows a similar precept." This was fascinating to her, the differences and similarities. That there could be an order so similar to her own, yet composed (if Luke was any indication) of men...It was something she would not normally have thought possible.
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"Jedi try to avoid politics as well, but sometimes, it seems impossible to not get involved." He thought of the recently-concluded war, the sentiments that the Jedi themselves could be an autonomous nation, a consortium of Force-users that could in their own right hold political clout. Part of that, surely, was that he was brother to one of the most celebrated senators in the Galactic Alliance, and a hero himself. "We defend and advise, we don't try to rule."
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"We fear that the Honored Matres who now hunt us may be an offshoot of us who did exactly that."
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He was partly asking her, partly thinking out loud, sitting on the ground now with an expression of thought on his face. Being used to constant demands on his time and expertise, even sitting here was making him feel lazy. Not that he hadn't needed a vacation.
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Add Darwi's name to the list of probable casualties... Her mentor had embarked on a dangerous mission to Spider Queen's lair. She probably wasn't coming back.
She sat across from him and the worm slid into her lap.
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"It sounds like all of you have great ability. Wouldn't it be easier to band together?"
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"But I don't trust them. I watched them glass Arrakis in a fit of pique. If our woman is knocked off her throne...They have a tradition of ascension by assassination you see...Then we're all dead. There's twenty of them to one of us and each more deadly. So me and a minority of other dissenters stole a No-ship and a sandworm and fled for the uncharted parts of the universe. I felt...As if I could paint this great blank canvas myself. That was two days before I was captured." She didn't bother to hide from Luke the frustration and pain of being constricted again. Her years of BG training had taught her responsibility but at heart she was a wild thing and chafed at being caged.
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The conversation with Kara had been... interesting. To put things mildly. Brainy decides he'd like to talk with her again at any rate, even if he's still trying to find out how she and his counterpart think of each other.
He's on his way back from that part of the city when he catches sight of movement in the park and pauses overhead, floating on the air as his eyes narrow in on the scene below. The girl's movements are interesting and speak of extensive training, but it's the worm creature that draws his attention, and Brainiac 5 floats down to land nearby where he knows he'll be spotted easily.
"Hello," he says once he's certain he has her attention. "I don't believe we've met?"
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What a strange way of getting around. Is he using suspensors? She thinks and sniffs. She gets...nothing. Absolutely no human pheremones, no sweat, none of the chemical cacaphony associated with a person. Her face is a pleasant mask but internally she is on her guard.
"How do you do? I am Sheeana."
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His attention shifts to the worm for a moment and he continues speaking. "I noticed you and your... pet as I was passing by. What is it?"
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"This is Shai Halud, the great sandworm of my home planet. This one's still an infant, but adults have been measured at kilometres long."
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The sandworm gets another curious look, and this time Brainy's eyes light up as he scans it in order to learn more. "It came here with you?"
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She listened again. That subtle whirring...Thinking machine! Had she not been trained against it, her face would have registered alarm. "I call this one Tyrant." She said, still seemingly smiling. But behind her total blue eyes, gears were spinning, murders considered.
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"Is there any reason you call him that?" he asked absently as he worked.
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"Stop!" I understand how you feel. But we must bide our time. The worm obeyed, no longer looking as if it were going to lunge at him, but it was far from quiescent. "I'm sorry...it seems being scanned distresses him." Her smile was all sweetness but her interior state was closer to the worm a few moments ago.
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He stands up and turns to face Sheena again. Maybe just a little too late, it occurs to him that he should have asked first. "You don't mind, do you?" It obvious the question is just him being polite, the idea that the answer would be anything other than 'no' hasn't even crossed his mind.