Overture; The Nebula

[Dastan Imatari]

'If you will have me, then I am yours."

"Indeed." His voice hissed- she may not have known how true that was about to be.

He couldn't help but smile at the wrath of Mercy's agitated voice, his head turned to her for a moment- sometimes the girl needed to vent- then back to Rahab, "She is right though... and, Your reflex to flee will dissolve. But we can use those emotions to help you strengthen your bond with the force..." Though he would leave that a vague statement. Constantly putting her in stressful situations will get her used to the idea of standing ground, too. Though fear was a good ally to have overall. Fear, anxiety, frustration. Those were things that Dastan learned to harness the force with, himself.

He gave a nod of the head toward their own docking bay to Mercy, signaling that it was time to go. "Well, Rahab. Things are going to change for you. You've made a choice many others were too afraid to make. Come with us. We have much to do."

He turned to walk toward the way they entered. A docking bay a way's walk the opposite direction.

"Once we get to my ship, Mercy and I can teach you to feel the force. You may have a fleeting relationship with it now- but in time, you will be able to do amazing things." He then looked to Mercy, thinking If she survives. Knowing she may be thinking the same thing. Even before they do that, however, Dastan will make her swear fealty to them in a slightly more ceremonious way. Not like an accolade- like Mercy was due for, but similar...

[Rahab Aapofi]

Rahab had expected something…else, like perhaps the formal exchange of each others names and a rush of relief or even an instantaneous familial belonging but when none of that came she was left feeling, on top of her queasiness, incredibly vulnerable. And a sort of panic that came with that, merged with an inkling that she had committed, if the woman’s reaction was anything to go by, a social faux pas. She returned her hands into her sleeves.

Was she expected to apologizing for misunderstanding the situation? Rahab didn’t think she had anything to apologize for, while neither of their intentions had been what she thought, only a fool would have remained still. Without knowing what she was really feeling from them she could only apply an understanding through familiar things. The man felt like natural disaster, something torrential, something engulfing and the woman felt like a terrible grievance, something swift, something violent. Without knowing her placement against the two, she held her tongue and tried to find something appropriate to say.

“I was very impressed with your fast movements,” She said to the woman, deciding on something complementary. Rahab assumed the woman was above her in station, whatever that station was now. If they were equals, they would have time to sooth their bruised egos later.

At the mention of things, even in that different context, Rahab had remembered her belongings. When the two turned, she hurried the few steps back to her suitcase and with it open; scooped up whatever was close like a fishing net and held it in front of her, holding the unreliable clasp with both hands and then made up the few beats she fell behind with an unnecessary jog, as if they and the opportunity along with them would vanish if there was a half inch of physical distance.

She had many questions and was not sure what to start with or how to ask. The only things she felt capable of doing in that moment were nauseous things. Rahab kept a pace behind them. This was going so fast, this new world she was entering was fast and urgent.

“I am grateful for this opportunity to learn,” which felt like a safe thing to say, “of things which, I admit, I do not understand. Without evidence, I know what you are saying is true.”

She hesitated, before starting in the shallow end of her questions,”Is this knowing?” She paused and tried again, “Does this knowing?,” That felt equally as wrong, “ Is the Force the source of this certainty?”

[Slade Xandir]

Taking that subtle nod as a release form the infuriating situation, Mercy wasted not a single second from being let off her leash. She began walking in a hurried pace back to the dock, almost leading the way,
“I was very impressed with your fast movements,”
but hearing that meek voice behind her, she paused. Emotional conflict spiraled a maelstrom of blacks and whites mixing with a viscous and chokingly complicated slurry of greys. How the hell was she supposed to respond to something like that?

"You're not good at hitting stuff with stuff, but- we'll get you there." the vixen replied awkwardly. Frakk, she was turning into a lame being around this chick. Either she had to shape her quick, or kill her quick, because she wasn't venturing down a path of being a loser, anymore. She looked down on the weak, and this entire situation rubbed the fur of her standards completely backwards. Mercy was being nice at first, yea, but that was for easy extraction. The bambi fled at the sign of niceness, or what she considered niceness, and gods forbid she throw a harsh word of how she really felt at the four braided girl. She would probably poof into dust and tears in seconds.

Finishing the 'please don't continue' conversation, she resumed her extreme pace, opening the ship and preparing it for Dastan's arrival with the new 'hopeful'. After the systems were properly booted and set for immediate takeoff once the modules were activated, she waited for them to enter, tapping her nails against the steel rim of the control station in the pilot seat.

[Dastan Imatari]

Her gratitude was welcome. She was rather polite compared to others who had jumped on their radar as force sensitives. It was slightly refreshing- tugging on Dastan's more human side. Though in the world she was about to enter, gratitude was demonstrated in other ways. By showing success, victory, understanding, and humility. Dastan would never ask her to thank him for anything he has done. Everything he did- he did for a reason. The sith had a less than thankless job- and frankly, most people in the galaxy hated them. But for some reason, this 'thanks' almost made him smile.

The thought was fleeting.

"The answers will come to you in time." he stated plainly to the girl as they walked along after she grabbed her bag. He still didn't bother to introduce himself- he'd wait until they were aboard his ship. Mercy trotted away quickly- scurrying up the ramp, disappearing into the belly of his rounded, flat ship- The Merciless. It was a light freighter that was retrofitted with some enhancements befitting a sith craft. It served as a transport, a mobile headquarters, as well as a heavy starfighter when the need arose. It was manned by a crew of droids that followed the whims of both Mercy and Dastan as their masters.

"For now- let's get you situated." He extended a hand to allow Rahab to walk up the ramp before him. He'd lead her around to the left- the hallway was a constant bend around into a semicircle. There was a door on the right that had a green 'unlocked' light above it. The door would hiss open quickly to reveal something of a locker room.

"Locker four is yours to use as you see fit for now. Go ahead and get settled, and meet us in the cockpit when you're done,"

With that, Dastan walked out- leaving her to her devices. There was a wall that had lockers set up, and a few benches and a table along another small wall. The rest of his ship was pretty locked down, so if she wanted to get anywhere that Dastan didn't want her- she couldn't gain access.

Outside the door, the semicircular hall would further lead to an escape pod door, and an airlock door at a dead end. Coming back the way they entered, there would be an engine room door, cargo hold 2, the entrance ramp, cargo hold 1, and a hallway that lead to a holonode before a door with a green light above it- the cockpit door.

Inside would be Mercy, the ever present pilot droid, and Dastan, standing behind the two.

[Rahab Aapofi]

Her eyes followed the woman as she boarded before taking the ship in herself. Rahab was awestruck by it. Nothing she had traveled in thus far was as striking in appearance.

“Oh—“ If her attention hadn’t been lost in the ship’s design, she would have declined. But Rahab took his hand and with his assistance made it up the ramp and ambled into the starship in a sort of daze. She followed along with him, her nerves momentarily soothed by the new environment.

Her eyes wandered to and fro as if they weren’t passing through something mundane as a hallway.

Rahab hummed a “Hm!” hoping that it would convey that she had been listening and both understood and agreed to what he had said. She didn’t know what a ‘Locker’ was and ‘for now’ sounded like a rather hefty asterisk on the ownership of something which she found disagreeable.

She glanced over her shoulder, watching him leave for a moment before entering the room in front of her.

As the door closed behind her, she took in the room. Rahab placed her luggage on a long seat before taking a closer look at the ‘lockers’. They were, obviously, storage units. She felt a bit of academic delight in adding a new word to her growing vocabulary and found one marked four. She placed her hand on it to open it and her mood deflated.

Rahab leaned forward until her forehead was pressed into the cool surface of the locker. And a sound she was grateful no one was there to hear rattled out of her chest. A shameful amalgamation of a laugh, a sigh, a sob. Something vile that got stuck in her throat and came out choked. She didn’t understand what was over taking her. Relief? Stress? Grief; mourning for possibility of other futures lost?

What events would ripple out from this moment? Would this be a decision that they, her and the pair, would come to regret. And as that crossed her mind a new thought took it its place. And Rahab lifted her head up, looking at the other lockers. Where there others besides them on the ship?

She knocked against her locker, listening for a sound, before doing the same to the others. Satiating her curiosity had calmed her down some and she made quick work of unpacking what was left of her belongings. When she was finished she placed her now empty suitcase in the far corner of the room.

Rahab would have liked to change clothes and didn’t think something like that was suppose to happen in this wide open space so she tidied herself up the best she could, dusting the front of her and re-securing her hair. She found the bone pins in her hair and pushed them down until the tips of them grazed her scalp and then set off looking for more private quarters.

After finding a dead end, a dread was mounting. It grew larger than the enjoyment that came with being in a new space. And by the time she got to the green-lit door, she was nearly too nervous to go in.

Rahab gasped, loud enough to be audible over the compression of air as the door moved back revealing the cockpit. What an amazing room of lights and buttons and switches. She couldn't imagine what purpose she was suppose to serve in this room but the wonder of it had dispelled her anxiety for the time being.

“You have automatons!” She exclaimed, moving into the room as if she was afraid she was going to damage something.

“Ah, forgive me,” She brought a hand up to her mouth, leveling out her volume “I have only seen them from afar in my travels," And when the mainlanders first came to the islands, though they were differently shaped than these ones. She looked about the room, unsure where to start with the numerous amount of questions she wanted to ask.

[Slade Xandir]

Mercy stared at the map, her confusion evident. How the hell was a planet that small supposed to be trouble being conquered? It took only the reminder of the planetary shield and multiple turrets, along with very little flying-room atop the almost moon-sized sphere, Dastan's reminder to see a bigger picture while watching your back for the smaller details, such as the poisonous and deadly creature and humanoids alike, that he reminded her of. As much as she hated when he was right, the man had an point. And a very good eye. With time, it could be slowly edged to conquer, if they would just-

“You have automatons!” came and abruptly ended her plot she was sure Dastan had already both idealized and executed. The voice was sharp, and growing familiar in the vixen's mind; it was Rahab. Turning away from the star map and swiveling in the chair to see the four-braided new girl, Mercy inhaled a slow breath to calm her already insidious vex she had growing against the Hopeful. She was Force Sensitive, so she was obviously useful. Would have been a shame if she was killed and didn't have anything done around here.

“Ah, forgive me, I have only seen them from afar in my travels," came the response after her noted presence. With a snort, Mercy accented her own response with a raised eyebrow. This girl was pretty funny. The even more cartoony bit was she was serious.

"Yea, they're called droid, robots, or just bots. You'll be up against em soon enough."

Mercy wanted to scare the girl - naivity was a gift many didn't have plopped into their laps, too often. This girl was truly a newborn, and Mercy wanted to just fill her with horror stories. 'Droids coming into your room while you slept and placing datachips in your brain, making you a robot too' kinda scare. But she held off on the stories until the hellion knew the girl was for sure a keeper. Turning to Dastan, Fury waited for him to make his gain with her.

[Dastan Imatari]

His conversation with Mercy had been short before the girl arrived. The doors behind him hissed open- and she piped up about the droids. She wasn't that well traveled, if she had only seen the droids from afar. There was much she hasn't seen, and that would all be changing. The Sith would show Rahab the Galaxy. Dastan had his first apprentice before him, and a new one behind him. Gone were the days of old when a sith would take a single apprentice. Sure, it may have seemed like a great idea years ago, but now- now the force was exploding with sensitives all over the place.

"They prove quite useful." he assured quickly, after Mercy gave another gamut of names they've got.. "This one-" he pointed down to the droid 'seated' in the chair he was leaning over, "Is RX- my pilot droid. Efficient, ruthless, and best of all- I don't have to tell him anything twice." He then cleared his throat, and looked back to Rahab.

"Welcome to my ship. This is a YT-2000, a light freighter that's been retrofit with some of my own... changes. It's name is 'The Merciless." his hand gestured upward- like he were introducing his ship.
He passed a look to Mercy, though despite still having his helmet on, he smirked, then turned his attention to Rahab. "I can tell you've got plenty of questions. That's good. I'm also glad you seem to know that there is a time and place to ask them." He stood straight from leaning forward on the back of the droid's chair, and turned to face Rahab full on. "Soon you will have plenty of time for questions. For now, I want to get some basics taken care of."

"I think it's time to take a look at your connection with the force." He turned at the waist to gesture that Mercy would be in on it, too.

"Let's go to bay 2." He lead the way from the cockpit- down the hallway to reach the circular hall. The first door to the left was the cargo bay 2. The doorlock indicator light flipped from red to green as Dastan neared- having unlocked it with the force from the inside. The long door hissed open. Instead of a cargo bay- this appeared to be equal parts meditation area, gym, and equipment room. Weapons and armor stuck on a magnetic pegboard on one wall, droids balled up in deactivated and condensed fetal position- jacked into a power station in the corner, another wall held resistance equipment, and in the center was something of a spongy carpet, or mat.

The room didn't smell like sweat- as most dojo or gym's would. It smelled a bit like cleaning chemicals- but it did have a certain coppery scent, mixed with burnt carbon gas and a hint of melted duraplast. Strange, but not overpowering. It was also fairly dim. The light setup was lining the ceiling in rows- though the ones toward the center were dimmer than the ones toward the walls.

"Go ahead, step into the center of the room." Dastan gestured. He also gestured gently to Mercy for her to stand next to him. Dastan was about to do some introductions.

[Rahab Aapofi]

As the woman spoke, Rahab lowered her hand from her face and resumed looking about the cockpit fervently, as if she was trying to memorize every inch of it. She already knew the words this woman was rattling off she had just made the decision to try and create a pleasing arrangement of sounds with this ugly common tongue but that wasn’t something she was going to voice. Even if she had been brazen enough to speak her mind in front of them, there had been something far more pressing that the woman had said which had given Rahab pause.

Having a place to redirect her eyes saved her from looking perplexed at the woman for too long. Her attention drifted but not far, she thought of what might be contained in this robot’s casing; gears and wires and a power core of some sort. ‘Ruthless’ cut through her thoughts and remained stuck in her mind like an echo. There was something obvious that she was not yet grasping.

Rahab was still processing what it really meant to be here, with these people, on this ship.

She was brought back to full attention when the man cleared his throat. The concept of the droids possessing any sort of sentients was far beyond what Rahab assumed of their functionality so she rationalized that this man had made a joke about programming. Had she been expected to laugh? Her mouth was so dry and her chest felt tight, she could feel herself start to panic and was grateful that the conversation was moving quickly.

Following his gesture, she tilted her head up towards the ceiling. She welcomed a moment of not having the two in her line of sight. It allowed her to put some breath back into her lungs. Rahab steadied her breathing as he described the ship to her and that had been the final piece she needed to bring what she had been struggling with into a clarity.

She opened her mouth, about to say what she realized a loud but caught herself. This…was a war ship. A vessel intended for combat. What had the woman said before she had boarded? Hitting things with other things, was it? Rahab had never even held a conventional weapon before but now she was a vessel for combat.

Closing her mouth, she lowered her head. Even though it was the fear of being reproached that kept her tongue still, she was taking his words as compliments. Rahab nodded slightly, she could not imagine the means of procuring something that sounded ethereal and unquantifiable.

She turned to follow after him, glancing back at the woman and wondered for a brief second if she should allow her to go first before just exiting into the hall. Each step leading to this other room was creating an unbearable amount of apprehension within her that felt physical like a pressure against her bones.

Something about the door becoming accessible only when the man drew near struck Rahab in a very peculiar way that had dissipate some of the terrible weight.

So much of her life now felt like a hazy dream, only becoming clear in bits and pieces as her mind accepted new realities and as Rahab entered this room, it fully dawned on her that this ship was really lived in. The starships she had been prior had been nothing more than a means to get to one place to the next. But this was so much more than that, and the wonder of such creations which were magnificent already could be so much more offset a bit of her anxiety. The smell was alien (though not disagreeable, there was something nearly comforting about it, in the way a family home is comforting despite any negative connotations), as were many of the things in the room. She squinted to get a better look at everything. Rahab could see that this was a room that involved weaponry. Was she going to be tested physically? Right here? Right now? The thought made it feel like her stomach was twisting about, untethered within her.

She did as she was told, taking careful steps forward. The texture difference had given her a bit of a start and she continued with even more caution as if she was afraid that the floor was going to give beneath her. But that last only a few footfalls, seeing that it was just some kind of artificial flooring. Rahab turned about to face them. She desperately wanted to start asking questions, not knowing what was going to be happening was leaving her in a terrible state but she could recognize the building of an atmosphere. She had been, after all, a priest a life time ago.

[Slade Xandir]

"Welcome to my ship. This is a YT-2000, a light freighter that's been retrofit with some of my own... changes. It's name is 'The Merciless'"

If she could roll her eyes any harder, they would either get stuck in the back of her skull, or pop out from the extreme pressure of how hard she rolled them. One of these days, Dastan was gonna find her stuck to the side of the ship like some squid monster, scraping away at the name with either her saber or a chisel. Till then, she covered up her intentions with a sassy, "Damn right, it is."

But soon they were on the move to Bay 2, one of the first doors down the extended hallway of this reliable and familiar ship, walking through the sliding doors with nothing more than a neutral 'ssssh' both announcing and repressing their presence in the empty room. Right beside him, Mercy waited for the timid girl to make her way on the platform amidst the gym. Dastan kept his things clean, and whether it be to keep his bacterial count to a minimum or traces of his own identity to himself, he had things scraped to near newdom. If it was his, the only way you would be able to tell was if it had nothing dealing with him, on it. She was still trying to figure him out, but that was at a later time. Right here and right now, she was keeping her hands full trying to shout her frustrations to the rest of the galaxy for this girl moving either too slow or too cautiously. The hard part was over, which was trying not kill her for making her run after her.
The harder part was trying not to kill her for the girl being so painstakingly paranoid of them.
Was Rahab even paranoid?
Or was she doing this to get on Mercy's nerves?

Standing next to her mentor, Mercy stared Rahab down with crossed arms behind the long curtain of hair she kept covering 75% of her face at nearly all times. It was on brink of a glare, but once Rahab situated herself atop the platform, it softened just barely into hard analysis. The minx was mainly here to learn from Dastan how he handled new people besides herself, not really to help this chick out. But in order to be a leader, apparently she was to follow. How else was she supposed to learn the ropes if she were to be a Sith Lady, one day?

[Dastan Imatari]

Mercy debriefed Dastan quickly in the cockpit before Rahab came to join them earlier, so he knew her name. She had yet to learn his.

As the girl stepped into the center of the room, Dastan began to speak.

"Rahab. You are about to begin your new life. A life of hardship- no doubt, but also one filled with pride and fulfillment..." he waited a moment to let that soak in. "A life dedicated to the service of the dark side of the force, and learning the secrets of life. Your successes will mount beneath you, and you will stand tall among the order beneath me."

In that instant, his black gloved hand called his lightsaber to it. It flipped once from his belt before it clapped into his grip, and it immediately ignited. The sound was atypical - a deep electronic bending boom sending the blazing red pillar to life, crackling lightly. It's hum was a deep babbling growl amid the random crackling of its firy nature. An unstable blade, as it's always been since it's creation years ago...

Dastan stepped forward swiftly, holding the blade casually down and to the side- tip pointing down.

"Kneel before me."

"I am Dastan. Sith Lord. Your new Master." He swung the blade with a flourish right toward Rahab, though it would stop lightning quick before it reached the left side of her neck area. Dramatic tactics, "Your life now belongs to me. To the Dark Side." Another brief pause. "To the Order of the Sith... Serve me well, and you will prosper."

The blade still babbled unmoving by her ear.
"Fail me... And you will perish. The strong survive at all costs... Rise, Rahab, and let us see your connection to the force."

The blade would deactivate with a firy hiss.