Misery deserves company (Thalia Crazell)

[Cain]

The two alien figures strafed around one another, each gauging the other's technique before lunging in for the kill. The Nautolan deftly drew a vibroknife from his boot and buried it into the Rodian's throat. The holo image of the Rodian flickered as the combatant faultered and quickly vanished before the virtual combatant hit the ground.

"Cheating bastard," Jack growled through a cloud of smoke. He slid down in his seat and sent his holopad spinning through the air with an agitated flick of his wrist.

"Is this right, Master?" A timid voice inquired from somewhere beyond the haze of anger and cigarette smoke.

Jack did not respond. His hand immediately rose to his temple. "Unbelievable..." he whispered to himself, massaging the side of his head.

"Lord Makura!?" The voice called again, somehow even more shrill than before. Across the room a Zabrak initiate stared nervously in Jack's direction, tightly griping his training saber in both hands. The boy's simple robes were pock-marked with blaster scores from remote droid he'd been training with.

As the droid rose and whirred back into action, the Zabrak boy nearly leapt out of his boots with surprise. He waved his weapon inpotently at the first blaster bolt, taking the shot right in the thigh.

With a yelp the boy crumpled to the floor.

Jack offered no reaction. He stared straight through the opposite wall, a spent cigarette butt hanging limply from his bottom lip.

"Don't worry, Master," the boy said through clinched teeth, hobbling back to his feet, "I really think I'm getting the hang of it. Just a few more.."

"Kill me." Jack interrupted, suddenly straightening in his seat.

"Master?"

"I'm serious." Jack said with a straight face, his eyes locking with the Zabrak apprentice, "Kill me now, because clearly there's no point."

"But, Lord Makura, the penalty for killing a Lord of the Sith is... well we all saw what they did to that Twi'lek girl who stole Lord Aurellius' muffin... didn't know lekku could stretch that far..."

Jack loosed a deep sigh, spitting his spent cigarette butt onto the floor, "Do you know what the penalty is for disobeying your Lord?"

The apprentice hesitated. His eyes darted from side to side as if searching for the answer Jack wanted to hear.

"Umm, not good... I suppose?"

"No!" Jack scolded, grabbing hold of his seat and pusing himself onto his feet, "Not good is your reward on the rare occasions that you don't irritate me."

"Death?" The word barely escaped the Zabrak's lips, beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead.

Jack shook his head, "Disobey and you'll spend the next month scooping the Noghri's sh*t box." Jack paused, a look of amused contemplation wasing over his face. "Then I'll kill you."

The boy swallowed hard, his eyes examining his training saber, then returning to Jack. With apprehension he raised his weapon, limbs trembling. He leaned forward, unsteady, reconsidering half way through his first step and stumbling awkwardly to the side.

"I'm waiting." Jack said, closing his eyes and spreading his arms.

"M-my Lord," the apprentice stuttered, "just give me one more chance, I know I can do it right with just one more chance!"

Jack groaned, letting his arms fall limp to his sides. "Useless. Can't even kill myself."

Jack's eyes flashed upward, locking with his apprentice. The young man froze, his eyes growing wide and his body still.

"The Noghri had three courses this evening," Jack said flatly, "Don't forget the shovel."

"Yes, my Lord," the Zabrak droned, his practice blade slipping from his fingers. Silently he turned sharply on his heel and slogged out the door.

Jack stood in place for a long moment, surveying the training chamber. He located his discarded holopad and retrieved it from the floor. Queing the device up, a glitching, static-ridden figure of an old Sith Overseer materialized in Jack's palm.

"Send in the next one," Jack sighed. As the Overseer began to respond he dropped the holopad, her image snuffed out when the pad struck the floor.

[Moonfire]

There were several sorts of initiates in the Sith Temple Thalia found. Having spent the last six months on the dusty, miserable planet swinging between states of palpable boredom and disgust the teenaged-girl had pegged down exactly what sort she was. There were the eager ones-- Loud, usually arrogant and full of braggadocios talks about rage and anger and passion. They were the ones that wanted to become powerful. Full of ambition and stupidity, they shouted codes with disturbing fervor. Cowering behind those were the scared ones-- the sniveling zabrak boy carrying a shovel and muttering to himself between gasping sobs. Disappointing. Usually 'special snowflake' slaves who couldn't handle the pressure. Emotionally stinted. Embarrassing.

But Thalia, Thalia was self aware enough beneath her sneering veneer of superiority to know what sort she was. Disinterested. Belligerent. She knew that this unbearably uncomfortable ball of sand was just another pissing contest. The initiates were bumbling, bikini clad idiots, the lords were f*cking jokes and the Darths barely present enough to actually matter. It was bullsh*t. The whole damn thing. And when the Overseer barked an order for her to head to the sparring room for training with some Lord Makura she'd considered faintly not showing up at all. Instead though the sullen red head sulked into the room, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned back against the right wall.

Lord Makura was hardly impressive. Heavy bags beneath his eyes, dirty lank hair, sallow skin. Couldn't they have at least one attractive Sith Lord? Just for interest. And not that pretty boy shiny rosy skinned Zeltron sort. No, just a normal, decent looking human.

Giving him a sidelong look the prickly teenager let the silence fill the room before giving a weary sigh. "Well?"

[Cain]

The Sith girl was a tall, spindly creature with a glacial personality. It hardly seemed possible that anyone could have wanted to be in that room less than Jack. Though she only spoke a single word, body language communicated all Jack needed to know about this Initiate's general disposition.

Jack stood over his busted holopad, shoulders slumped, head cocked slightly and tilted up toward Thalia. A tense silence hung between the indignant pair. The girl was an open book. Her thoughts were like a bantha stampede; unrelenting, unapologetic. Her instantaneous disdain for Jack was amusing. The previous initiates had presented themselves with a mixure of fear and fervor. Neither being qualities he found very interesting.

Jack broke the silence with what, for him, qualified as a giggle. A short, sharp shot of air exhaled through the nostrils behind a stonefaced expression.

"Do you play chess?" Jack asked, taking a single step forward and crusing his still smoldering cigarette butt beneath his boot, a smug smirk on his face. "Of course you don't," he replied to himself, "you're hardly the type. You really should take the time to learn. Fascinating game."

Jack took another step. The sharp pain in his temple distracted him enough to cause him to misjudge the distance to the floor and stumble slightly. Following a momentary hesitation he reached into his jacket and fumbled around inside. "So," Jack said, fighting back a yawn, "do you have any talents that don't draw upon inexhaustible post-pubecent angst? Or is that too much to hope for?"

[Moonfire]

Thalia's dark painted nails picked at the fraying hem of her roughly sewn together clothes. To the trained eye they could see how expensive the material was, luxurious and shiny- probably handcrafted by some old blind woman and her convent on some godforsaken cotton plantation on Naboo, but to the dismissive and practical it was clear what they were. Old ballgowns, no longer necessary in this queer new life of hers turned into something more befitting of a Sith Lord's pet, an acolyte if only in title. The redhead didn't care for the dirty, short little slip of a man who slouched besides a pile of broken datapad parts, she didn't bother to watch his expression, simply picking at the thin, delicately shining strings of silver and black.

"Do you play chess?"

Now that. That was unexpected. The girl's head tilted up, bored expression breaking as her nose wrinkled with further disdain. Of course she didn't? She was hardly the type? Irritation swept through the girl, shoulders tensed as she pressed herself further into her corner. How little this Lord knew. Like all of them, just blustering blow-hards with far too much time on their hands. Thalia's own pale nostrils flared, though lacking Jack's own amusement she shifted, sneering at the man.

"I'm not the type? I'm sorry, you must have me confused with the grubby vagabonds they call Sith here. I can play chess." Cool eyes, the color of crushed glass made their way across his face.

"As for talents, I've mastered bathing regularly, which seems in short supply here. You really should take the time to learn. Fascinating practice, hygiene is. Has a whole host of health benefits." Her voice was crisp and formal despite the snarl that punctuated every word.

[Cain]

Fumbling in his duster jacket's brest pocket, Jack grasped what he'd been searching for. He drew a pack of Bloodstripes from beneath a fold of weathered, black leather and tapped it lightly against his palm.

"Wonderful," Jack said, biting down on a cigarette and drawing it from the pack. Jack slid his hand back into his jacket, this time producing what appeared to be a worn out deconstruction of a lightsaber with its synth crystal exposed. Somehow the loose amalgamation of parts managed to produce a thin, red blade which Jack used to light up his Bloodstripe.

"My congratulations to you for rising above the 'grubby vagabonds' shuffling through the halls." Jack returned his lightsaber to his duster and quickly raised his cigarette, sucking in the smoke and plucking it off his lip, "Between your mastery of chess and bathing, you must have this whole Sith thing pretty much figured out."

Jack exhaled slowly, filling the space between he and Thalia with smoke."In truth, you may be closer than you think," he said, inspecting his potential new apprentice one more time.

The girl's attire was as strange as Jack's in the context of the Sith Academy. Many of the Sith prefered loose fitting robes, or bulky armor plating, things that might be practicle in a combat situation. Thalia looked as if she'd be dumped at prom and was still waiting for someone to take her home. Her attitude and unorthodox appearance were promising for starters, but Jack would need to know more to be sure.

"This whole... 'Sith' thing," Jack began, raising his cigarette hand and motioning to the Academy all around them with a quick twirl of his wrist, "it's not important. It's kind of a bad joke, actually. The words 'Sith' and 'Order' should never occupy the same sentence.

"The Overseers will have taught you the Sith Code, they'll tell you to serve the will of the Inner Sanctum and that you can belong to their Order... fantasy. All of it."

Jack took another drag from his Bloodstripe, watching Thalia's reaction carefully. "The dark side's power stems from self-preservation. Self-aggrandizement. Self-empowerment. Therefore, any Sith who would claim not to place themselves before the Order is doing it wrong. But, how can any collection of self-important individuals be an Order?"

Jack paused, allowing his question to hang, unanswered in the air around them like so much smoke. His eyes, which had been studying the young Initiate attentively, now deliberately settled on hers. The Force rapidly enveloped Thalia, prodding and pervading her mind.

"You were a slave," Jack said, very matter-of-fact, "are a slave." He corrected. "Your family... it is a great source of contempt. I know the feeling. Unsure of your identity... only certain of your hatred for the one they left you."

The Force gradually abated from Thalia's mind as Jack closed his eyes. He had seen all he needed to see. Willing or not, this Acolyte was the one. Her thoughts betrayed a striking similarity between the two of them. However, what was of most import was her disdain toward the Sith themselves. She had no pre-programmed loyalties, no hero worship of the Darths. She was an amorphous ball of clay, waiting for a shape...

"Chains can be broken, Thalia," Jack said, refering to her by name for the first time, "but not by joining with the Sith. It is the reason I've chosen to make my father's name and my Sith name one in the same. Here they call me Lord Makura. You may call me Jack, apprentice."

[Moonfire]

Thalia had taken an instant dislike to Lord Makura. He was greasy looking, pale, distasteful all around. The set of his shoulders and the roll of his words screamed or a man who thought himself smarter and better than her. Unfortunately for them both, Jack was not alone in his superiority complex. Thalia didn't just think she was better. She knew. She had years of pedigree, servants, titles and an influential surname to back her up. All that amounted to nothing here on this blighted rock of dust and boredom.

But she'd been able to forgive the more minor transgressions, they were part of having to live here really and he was by some stroke of ill advisement, her better-- of only in rank among the Sith they both felt nothing but contempt for. But that most minor of allowances in her behaviour quickly shifted when he decided to invade her thoughts.

Pretty face twisted into a snarl as the probing, grasping tendrils of the force invaded the sanctity of her thoughts, her memories.

"How dare you." The girl hissed, long nailed fingers pressing against her temples as the Sith lord skimmed the surface of her mind, like a bored patron reviewed a book in the shop.

And then, it was over, only the taunting exhausted voice of the slim man to recount what be saw. "Stay -the fu*k- out of my head,"

Rubbing at her temples she seethed, biting in her tongue. She wanted to scream, to threaten and destroy. But what he said had merit... as blind as her wounded ego made her. "What do you want from me then, -Jack- ?"