oh no who let these guys meet

[psychometry]

CHARACTERS: Bass & Quinlan ( coarse & psychometry )
LOCATION: A dark, lonely corridor on one of the unpopulated passenger decks.
WARNINGS: Violence? Mild gore? Someone in this thread is going to lose an arm, either way.
SUMMARY: Howard Stark, whilst probably delicious, didn't keep Bass full for all that long! One month later and everyone's favouritest little human-eating monster is on the prowl for something (read: someone) else to eat - but Jedi don't go down too easily. INDIGESTION JOKE. Not a blow job joke.
NOTES: Forward-dated! A network post from Quinlan requesting some SEC back up will be posted later. ALSO NOTE this starter post has a shameful amount of star wars references so gold stars if you get them.

Quinlan Vos was many things, and nearly all of them were contradictions. A defender of the Republic who had publicly doubted whether perhaps the Confederates were right all along. A master who could barely remember his own apprenticeship. A man - no, a Kiffar - who has trained all of his life to be one thing, only to have that life wiped clean from his memory. A peacekeeper that has murdered his own kin in cold blood. An adept of a forbidden Vapaad lightsaber form mastered by only three other people in the galaxy who missed the feel off a blaster in his hand (and how uncivilised it was).

But above all, Quinlan Vos was a Jedi. And for many, this was an undisputed fact: they could see the man, look at his cloak, point at his lightsaber. I saw your laser sword. Only Jedi carry that kind of weapon, they could say, and that might be that.

Except, by his own admission, Quinlan Vos is not a very good Jedi.

What kind of Jedi carries a red lightsaber? What kind of Jedi wears the mask of a dead Sith Lord's face, who calls upon the Dark Side like a weapon whilst knowing only too well that the weapon could turn on him at any moment?

What kind of Jedi could only tell himself that he believed in the Fourth Precept of the Jedi Code, but not quite grasp it with his whole heart. 'There is no Death - there is only the Force' the Code taught him - but Quinlan Vos, for all the death he had dealt out at the end of his lightsaber, was terrified of death. To be a Jedi was to move without fear of the end, to commit oneself to a battle knowing that the Force may take him at any moment, and to know that to return to the embrace of the Force was not a a death at all but the merely the beginning of a greater understanding of the galaxy.

But Quinlan had experienced death already, and he knew that it is not peaceful. It was pain, and rage, and a screaming terror as your killer eats away at your flesh and sucks your brains out through your nose just in the periphery of your vision... He had felt exactly that - he had already lived the death of his parents at the claws of the brain-eating Anzati vampires as if it had been his own. And not even the Force, or the Jedi - with all their tenets of peace and letting go and moving on - could heal the Darkness it had brought him.

No, Quinlan Vos was not a very good Jedi. And on a ship full of fear and frustration and death, armed with his bloodshine lightsaber and the face of a dead Dark Lord for a mask, Quinlan Vos was on the prowl.

Somewhere in the decks above him Quinlan knows that Obi-Wan Kenobi is working in the shuttle bay. Kenobi is a bright dot on his horizon, an unwavering burst of pure Light Sided goodness that glimmers and winks like a star amidst the grey bleakness of the rest of the Tranquility. In contrast to the river of the Force that Kenobi epitomises as he industrially works away on the broken shuttles amongst the rest of the flight crew Quinlan, squinting against the Light, is a barely-contained storm cloud of burning ash and dark heat. A fist of fire clenched around the heart of someone who once was just as much a river of light as Kenobi was - except now, weighed down by the mask and the mission and the memory of too many deaths, that Jedi is nearly all but gone.

Now, as he walks the abandoned corridors of Passenger Deck 1138 and looks out through the eyesockets of a Dark Lord's corpse, he is something else entirely. And out there in the Force another kind of something else was moving. He couldn't see it - not with his eyes, at least, but with an outstretched mind he looks. Someone else, someone with black intentions and a desperation and an all-consuming hunger that reminds him only of one possible kind of creature approaches. Quinlan, a black storm in the Force with a dead man's face, stops in his tracks and waits for the other kind of Something Else to find him.

Comments

(un)fashionably late you say

[coarse]

He hasn't been counting - Bass never needed to. Whenever a hybrid needs to feed, if he or she needs to feed, they will know about it before it's too late. Muscles will start to ache, their strength will fade, skin will react violently to any alteration, and the mind will slow down until it suddenly fires up with pure instinct. That's when you know it's too late. That's when someone has to die.

Bass doesn't count the weeks, but as he looks down to trace the lines of exhaustion and weakness on his skin, drawing a wheeze from his throat, he knows it's still too soon to be this close to the edge. The memory of his reflection showing a new and improved man in the middle of an unsuspecting crowd is still fresh in his mind, bright skin, healthy eyes, practically unrecognizable. Now his head lifts up, face pale and worn, back against the wall, legs flat on the floor. This is wrong. A hybrid's hunger should not consume so quickly. (A hybrid's hunger should not be worn on one's face.)

Panic and paranoia keep him from showing himself, panic and paranoia dictate that he can't be seen, can't be heard. It tells him that they know a monster is among them, that they know a death has been caused by something that won't stop. He might have thought about reaching out, turning himself in for the sake of everyone's safety, but not anymore. They can't know it's him. They will - unless he does things right and survives.

An idle hand crawls on the texture of the eyeless mask settled next to him, bare teeth waiting to cup around his mouth. Slowly, movements strange and uncoordinated, he places it around his head. Then he waits for the shape of his sister to call for him. (It isn't her. It isn't her voice - it's someone new. Someone real.) Then he follows.

Blind steps take him to where Quinlan stands. He's desperate, reaching for the first opportunity he can find, breathing loudly, pacing heavily, standing between walls with empty hands at his sides. His mind is a growing mess or furious demands and loud encouragements, stark contrast to the sudden stillness freezing the distance between them.

He doesn't count the seconds to his first attack.

[psychometry]

No matter where one falls in the spectrum of the Force, the strength of the connection increases only with years of meditation and practice. What manifests as 'just knowing' as a youngling later develops in to a deeply unique and personal connection as a Master. As Bass draws closer Quinlan can feel the man's mind – a black frenzy of writhing, coiling hunger and need. He can feel the Darkness of the ship – no hope, no escape, nothing but the absence of Light. Between rolling clouds of bleakness that seeps from the very pores of the ship and the mind of the creature that confronts him in the hallway Quinlan's connection is complete. Down here, in the pits of the ship, the Force is a deep, fathomless sea and Quinlan is the thunderstorm that rages over it.

Quinlan calls his lightsaber from his belt and grips it lightly with both hands. In the shadows behind his mask he silently relishes what will come next.

Bass attacks and the Force says move moments before the other man can make any kind of physical connection. Quinlan wordlessly collapses to one knee, lightsaber streaking in to life in the same movement, and locks his arms in to a horizontal parry. No flourish – but no warning either. Just a sharp, savage defense, an uplifted lightsaber barring the way of the man's outstretched arm as he lunges.

Quinlan braces his arms against the familiar heaviness of a weightless blade cutting through bone. The smell of ozone – of oxygen molecules themselves being cut in half by the lightsaber's plasma – is overpowered by the smell of freshly cauterised flesh as Bass's arm passes seemingly effortlessly through the red blade, falling away at the elbow with a heavy thud.

[coarse]

His attack should have been brutal but swift, giving no room for escape, no time for retribution. Even those who can fight back should be at a disadvantage - his ability to hear their thoughts would give away their reactions before they had the chance to turn into reality - but Bass's despair makes him reckless and makes his adversary as unpredictable as he is.

He doesn't realize he never had a chance. Quinlan is a warrior; Bass is anything but.

At first there's nothing, when the arm is severed and a sharp smell creeps in, but Bass's body is immediate to react and he falls over with pain that splits through his instinct. His screams are muffled until he claws the mask off with his hand, revealing black eyes and deformed teeth between gasps and scratched cries.

He stumbles inelegantly with confusion, skin shining with sweat, expression distorted and wild. Bass still tries to reach for him again, but this time he is only fueled by the desire to destroy. He wants to speak, wants to curse and threat, but no words come. Instead Quinlan's mind is flooded by mad words, disconnected and loud, echoing the influence of his mask and the atmosphere of the ship until something forces it shut.

[psychometry]

It's perhaps a testament to his training that, even with the mask tight across his face, Quinlan knows that this was not the Jedi way. A warning, a chance to surrender, a nudge with the Force - not bodily mutilation. Somewhere at the other end of the corridor a ghost flickers - Aayla, unnaturally pale in the half-light of the corridor, watches Quinlan carefully before turning her back on her Master. But the thought leaves as quickly and as silently as it came; Quinlan spares her only a moment's thought (she's only a ghost here, he knows this) before Bass tries to grasp at him and his attention is drawn away.

If he didn't know Bass's mind - if Bass had been reaching out to him as an injured foe grabbing at Quinlan in supplication and not rage - Quinlan would have stayed his hand. But, feeling the wildness and the hate, Quinlan returns like with like. He calls the Force to his non-lightsaber hand and balls it in to a rock hard fist. With a sharp gesture he throws Bass away from him with a wall of invisible pressure.

He hasn't said a word so far, but now he snarls a challenge from behind the dead skin of the mask.

"You think you can attack me?"