Two guys... you know...talking and stuff...

[Dean]

Ara was pacing up and down the room where she had slept the last few nights. She didn’t know if it would be her room yet. In the jedi temple she had been used to having a little room with even less possessions. The only thing that had been a constant factor was her lightsaber and that wasn’t even hers. It was for the people or so they said. But now she was in the sith ranks all that was different, since she had come to korriban she felt emotions stronger and she felt the darkside stronger then ever.

She had also gained perspective, she had realized after meeting aurellius that she would have to do what the higher ups said, the only thing she could do was climb the ranks faster then other people and gain respect in the temple. For that last part she didn’t even have to climb the ranks. She just had to be nice to people, she didn’t even had to mean it. Also she had to prove her dominance. All in due time though since now she was only pacing around her –for lack of a better word- chamber and thinking of a plan.

She would have to get to know people with power. People that didn’t care. Getting to know people and finding out what they thought was a major risk and could be found out, she had to find a way to get to reliable people. Did she know someone strong in the force? Yes she did, she had met him when she landed on the planet. Aurellius would know people and he was strong. A believer of the temple maybe but he had semi dropped that he didn’t agree with the masters always. That’s where she would have to start.

She set out and walked down the temple, the corridors seemed endless and she didn’t even know where she was walking. Thinking that he might be at the training grounds she set course towards the training grounds. She remembered the boring lessons that she had. In the back of her mind she was proud that she had trained on her footwork a bit more, She had not even complained. Much.

She walked into the training grounds as if her feet had memories of their own.

’’Now lets see’’

[Rugs]

Evening found Nieraan in the training grounds. They were a comfortable place, like a familiar old friend on Korriban's craggy face.

He was in a quiet place now, away from the other Sith that trained and sparred and fought to make themselves the best they could be. His duties for the day were long done, as was the day's offered instruction to his personal apprentice. Now Nieraan worked for himself, with silence as his only partner.

The silence was broken rhythmically by the sound of boots on sand and palms slapping on rough stone. Nieraan moved among a set of blocky stone constructs that looked haphazardly strewn about, but were in fact set up intentionally to form a short, tightly contained sort of obstacle course that looped in on itself. It was not a thing for the weak or unprepared.

He'd lost count of how many times he'd gone through it for his session. It was perhaps the twelfth time around, or somewhere in there.

The exact count didn't matter. It was work to keep the make the body strong and keep it busy to so his mind could wander.

His hand slapped loudly as he jumped up to reach the top of a column. He put up his other hand and quickly swung up the rest of his body weight. Immediately, he flowed into a leap at a nearby wall and sprang off of it to another column.

His mind wandered as his body went through the motions. Kamirille was still an issue that he'd have to deal with, and it'd been a while since he reported to her like she commanded him to. She was a tricky problem, though, and troublingly so.

There was Cadyren as well, and some of the politics of the order. Jack and whatever he had in mind, though he was off somewhere in the Temple for a time. His students, his own path up through the Sith. That new woman.

Too many things.

As he reached the top of the tallest column, he pushed himself up on the strength of his arms into a handstand, pressing his body further and testing the limits of his balance. He held himself there for a moment, body straight as a sword up into the air and steady as the midday heat.

Nieraan was prepared to do more, but the Force told him another was coming. His senses flicked out casaually to the edge of the approaching presence, and he knew it to be Araati without even laying eyes on her.

Great.

His sighed softly and lowered himself. In an easy movement he brought his body down and twisted around so that he was sitting atop the column, facing the approaching woman. Sweat beaded his silver skin, and some of his hair clung wetly to his forehead, as parts of his clothing stuck with an uncomfortable warmness to his skin.

Nieraan looked down at her, somewhat annoyed to be interrupted. Even with the sun setting behind him, a light below him reflected faintly from his yellow eyes.

He spoke bluntly.

"What do you want?"

[Dean]

She could see him make the last jump before he acknowledged that she was present. It was a pretty decent acrobatic feat. Not really impressive for a force user, but still more then she had seen from some other force users on the academy. She smiled as he sat down.

She could see that he had been at it for a while, he was sweating and his hair was a mess. That is what she would call discipline. There were some things to be said for a training schedule. On the academy here it was about making yourself better. Maybe you could join a class or something but you had to do most of the work yourself. This was of course a way to keep the weak separated from the strong, which was probably a wise move.

She didn’t feel like screaming across the training grounds, surely as she had things to discuss that not everyone had to know about. Her knees bent slowly and she launched herself gracefully with the force as her tool. She landed on the column closest to Aurellius. It wasn’t as high as his but now she could atleast look at him without messing up her neck. She smiled at him and sat down too.

’’Nice course’’

She looked around and looked up at him again.

’’Looks….Challenging’’

She thought of a way to bring her issue to his attention without doing it the wrong way. She hadn’t really thought about that part of the plan yet but decided to improvise it.

’’Aurellius, I’m going to be straight with you. I noticed that it might be worth both our whiles to have eachother as allies. You can teach me about the dark side and I am already a pretty powerfull force user in my own right so I think we can help eachother in becoming the best. We can fight after we’re the strongest.’’

[Rugs]

Neiraan wiped his brow with his forearm, though the sweaty skin of his forearm did little to help move sweat from his forehead. It seemed he was fated to endure more than one annoyance for the moment.

He glanced down to the woman just as she leapt up to one of the columns near his. Even without feeling the Force curl around the woman, he knew she'd used the Force; the height was too high for any Human to jump unassisted, or without moving to it from one of the others.

Nieraan snorted softly at it. He never used the Force, not here among these columns. Just the thought of it made him feel silly. Lazy, even.

"Nice course," the woman said. ’’Looks….Challenging’’

Nieraan snorted a second time. "What do you want?" he repeated, looking sidelong at her.

For a few moments, the woman was silent, seeming to gather her thoughts. Nieraan considered just hopping down from the columns and leaving her up there while he went back to his quarters. But she would undoubtedly find him again. Best to get the annoyance out of the way now.

Araati found her tongue and spoke her proposition. Nieraan almost laughed the woman off her column when she did. Instead he did decide it was time to leave the columns, lifted his weight up with his arms and hopped down to the stony ground.

"And I'd almost thought you'd come with something serious," he called over his shoulder as he began to walk away from her. Then he paused, turning to glance with an eye back at her. "But you're serious aren't you? Yeah, you are."

Silently he wondered if the woman would find herself in the company of Wroth and his ilk. Anathema among the Sith. A pariah due to her own foolishlishness.

"Tell me, why should I teach you anything? You're capable on your own and I have better ways to use my time. Even with my position, I don't have any obligation to train people like you. Unless I feel like it, as you know."

He turned half around, looking at her with an amused little smile on his face. "So, tell me. I'm don't really care for giving people the same sword they'll plant in my back."

Not that he did that with anyone; even Cadyren's training had things withheld from it. The boy would learn, and Nieraan would make him strong, but certain things, certain techniques that Nieraan knew were withheld. His general students only received basic instruction. Nieraan knew the way the Sith acted, and he'd learned his own lessons sharing power while he plotted to kill his mother, even as she trained him into what he was today.

Of course, Kamirille still lived...

"Well, come on. Out with it."

[Dean]

She had laid her cards out on the table and without being overly sensitive to the telepathic side of the force she knew that he would disagree with her first and she would have to sway him towards her way of thinking, or at least understand what she was thinking before he would consider her offer. In the jedi temple this kind of offer would ofcourse been an obvious accept since there would be no thought of betraying eachother afterwards.

She understood where he was coming from and with a sigh rose to her feet as he jumped down and started walking to the ground, explaining to him what he was allowed to do with his position in the temple. She had known this ofcourse, no sith would freely share his knowledge with anyone without thinking of the consequences.

She jumped again, this time roughly to where she had been when she jumped the first time. She was now in front of Aurellius and started to speak again, explaining her reasons for a partnership that would be mutually beneficial.

’’Look, I have done some soul searching and some thinking. A temple full of force powerfull power seeking sith initiates is not the best place for an instructor to be. Eventually they will want to test their power on you in a deathmatch. Maybe they will even gang up on you and you will fall to sheer numbers.’’

She smiled as she would now explain their partnership.

’’Whereas I am powerful enough to know I am now your equal and we could both grow in terms of power if we helped eachother. The only time I would raise my sword to you is if we are the last two standing, something I do not see happen in the near future.’’

She crossed her arms in front of her and looked Aurellius in the eye.

’’In return for teaching me, I will help you may the time come your precious students try to gank you. Also we would work toward your goal, not mine for the time our partnership lasts.’’

[Rugs]

Nieraan snorted and shook his head, turning his back on the woman again. It was possible that the scenario she'd outlined could happen. In fact, soon after he'd been promoted to his position, two Initiates with egos too big for their heads had called him out before a group of some of the other students, thinking they'd humble him.

One of them got an arm and three ribs broken. The other, the ringleader, got beaten within an inch of his life. He still moved with a bad limp.

Since that demonstration, no one had dared challenge him, but Nieraan knew the time would come again. He was wary of the possibility, but not overly concerned; it would be years before any of them could come close to challenging him, and as they learned the basics, they caught the eye of other masters who took them under their wing proper. Often, that meant Nieraan was forgotten, and the ire of the students turned to their teacher tormenters.

Much like Cadyren's had, once Nieraan took the boy into his instruction.

He's a bigger threat to me than any of those toothless pups.

"I'm sorry," he said, beginning to walk away from the woman again, "but hollow promises don't resonate with me. You felt like you'd smelled something foul when I told you this place is a brotherhood. You don't like me, and I don't like you. And I'm supposed to believe that, in the face of some hypothetical rebellion, you'll come to my aid if I help you here?"

Nieraan snorted loudly. "Please."

He looked back over his shoulder at her. "If you want someone to show you things, why don't you find Wroth?" He smirked as he turned around and shook his head. "I'm sure the two of you would get along just fine.

"And your offer is kind, but my goals are my own and mine alone." Hard ones to reach--his mother was a very hard woman to best, let alone kill--but his own. Even if the thought of Kamirille running the woman through was amusing...

"I don't need your help."

[Dean]

Aurellius turned his back on her again and started to walk away yet again, whereas she wasn’t done talking to him yet. She could feel anger coming up inside her but she let it slip for now. She merely tilted her head to one side as he started talking while he was walking away. He was yammering on about what she had said and done when she first came here. She still had those beliefs and stood by them. But still the boy could do something for her.

She walked behind him as she started talking again.

’’In my time as a jedi I mainly hunted Dark Jedi. That was kind of my occupation. I was confident I could beat them all, pride and arrogance got the best of them anyways. If you aren’t wary of being attacked you are a fool. If you are confident that people can’t hurt you, you are also a fool. Twenty non force sensitive’s could kill a sith lord just by having sheer numbers on him. The same goes for twenty of your low students.’’

She stood still as she prepared for the second part of her diatribe. She had become insanely good at those the last few days. Maybe she should stop thinking.

’’I am not talking about promises nor kinship between us. I am just talking about a deal. I probably won’t ever like you or trust you and likewise you won’t like or trust me. I’m not even aiming for that to ever happen.’’

She walked on as she wasn’t about to let him just leave without her having her word. She didn’t care if they were accepted but she would take vengeance if they weren’t, maybe she would even search out this wroth guy he talked about in low demeanor. Could be a potential ally.

’’ I will promise you only this; when the time comes I am certainly stronger then you I will let your students strike you down with everything they have. The exact moment you become useless to me I won’t have anything to protect you from. But when you are useful to me, I will be usefull to you.’’

[Rugs]

Nieraan laughed, shaking his head as the woman lectured him as though he were a child. Former Jedi... I can tell. Barely knows me and feels like she gets to lecture me. Says she isn't talking about promises and makes a promise.

Typical Jedi.

"Tell you what, if you can tell me when I said I don't consider the possibility of that threat, I'll buy you a dinner next time I leave the Temple."

He turned, grinning wryly at her with one brow raised, allowing a few breaths worth of pause. "No? That's what I thought." Without another word, he turned and continued along, shaggy hair waving as he shook his head.

"I know how the people here think and work. I know about the will to rise up and betrayal and all that." As he walked, he glanced in her direction from the corner of his eye, sure that he was still being trailed. "Unlike some people here, I am not a fool."

Nieraan grunted and shrugged, continuing on without looking at her. "Which is precisely why I'm not exactly thrilled by the thought of trading you strength for the weight of a hollow promise and empty words." Trust was a foolish thing among the Sith. Yet Nieraan already had a network of allies, among those that were more in line with his goals and thoughts than others.

Perhaps, if the woman hadn't made such a poor first impression, things would be different. But you only got one first impression, as his father used to tell him. Before his mother stole him away.

"Besides," he added, grinning as he paused near a door at the courtyard's edge, "I don't have anything I want to show you. I like to keep my cards face down. If I have one you don't, well... that's not really my problem, is it?"

He offered her a sad smile and a shrug, and disappeared into the door to continue on his way.

[Dean]

Ara’s face showed no expression whatsoever as Aurellius made some more remarks about how he had everything in hand and she had nothing to go on. He was kind of right of course but she made sure that nothing would reach outside through the force that even hinted at that. In stead of that she put a cruel smile on her face and listened to him as he went on and on about him knowing people and saying he was not a fool.

He might know much but he doesn’t have wisdom. This was the thought that ran through Ara’s head. Some jedi master had told her that about some Dark Jedi. It meant as much as: he has cookie dough but he can’t bake cookies. It was pathetic, but it opened a road. She would have to play it very cool though, maybe some kind of long run deal. Planning wasn’t her business up till now but she could.

’’ You know what Aurellius, you are totally right. I am sorry I discussed it with you.’’

She walked past him at the door.

’’ you are wise to not let you’re biggest adversary know your secrets, heck I wouldn’t. I will just find someone that blows in lightsaber combat even more then you do.’’

With that she walked at the door of the training room.

[Rugs]

Nieraan smirked silently as he walked, still hounded by the insufferable woman. It was funny, how she never tried backing up her claim that he didn't understand the latent threat training students of the Sith provided.

Fancy that.

"You know what Aurellius, you are totally right. I am sorry I discussed it with you.’’

He fought the urge to roll his eyes and just shook his head, grabbing a towel and wiping a bit of sweat from the back of his neck as he passed inside. "Your contriteness is so convincing," the Firrerreo answered, his voice a mix of wryness and annoyance.

And you're bad at lying, he added silently. But let the woman think what she wished; Nieraan knew he hadn't near seen the last of her and her annoyances. She would rear her head again, just as sure as the sun would rise in the morning. He'd been nothing but a thorn to her since her arrival--because of her own actions, of course, but he doubted she had the strength of mind to see that.

No, she'd been bitten, and what was Sith nature, if not to bite back?

’’ you are wise to not let you’re biggest adversary know your secrets, heck I wouldn’t."

"Stop it," he quipped dryly, "or you might just make me blush."

"I will just find someone that blows in lightsaber combat even more then you do.’’

He almost laughed. Skill with a blade alone wasn't what she'd need to best him; combat's puzzle was complex, and her focus was narrow. But who am I to stop her?

"Enjoy yourself," Nieraan said, continuing along the way he'd been going without much care for where Aarati chose to go. "Though that might be counterproductive for you..." He smirked a little, toying with the woman's choice of words.

"And if you do," he continued, glancing idly back over his shoulder to show her a lazy, toothy smile, "do be sure they work with you to clean up your footwork. You're sloppy sometimes."

That said, he turned around and continued on his way. She was a minor threat for now--and certainly no Kamirille--but not one to act out against. Not yet. For the time being, Nieraan would keep an eye on her and an ear to the rail.

Until something came up with her, he had better things to worry himself with. Like finding Makura...