Snapping her head to the left, Kowani tapped lightly at Sabine’s shoulder, reaching a finger through the crook between the Mandalorians elbow and abdomen to point in yet another direction. Sabine lowered her head in frustration, letting the throttle die altogether as she released her grip on the bike. The 74-Z came to a slow deceleration, its repulsors bobbing it slowly before coming to rest with a mild lurch into the slender trunk of a tall bamboo tree. “Ani, you have no idea where we’re going do you?” She said, containing the majority of the irritation she wanted to convey.
Kowani knew the honest answer should be ‘no, I don’t,’ but a nagging sense of familiarity compelled her to press forward, “Sabine...I am trying.” She said slowly in response, lifting her helmet from her head, “something is interfering…” She admitted, hoping the chaotic swirl of golden ribbons of Force energy would present themselves more clearly without any obstruction.
Sabine turned in the saddle, removing her own helmet in the process, “Ani, I thought you knew.” She remained successful in her efforts to minimize any frustrations, working to provide support instead of criticism.
Kowani barely heard the comment in any case, her head tossing in various, random, directions as she attempted to follow the chaos only she could see. She lifted both hands in the air, feeling for the winds around her and any relation they may have to the ribbons of energy that flowed in patterns both archaic and aggressive. She shook her head through her own frustrations, finding no correlation between the two, “I never said I knew, only that the answer was here…” Kowani said in growing agitation herself, fighting against her oaths of honesty yet remaining true to them.
A distant whine and trailing howl alerted them both that they were not alone in the thick stretch of bamboo and dense underbrush. Sabine immediately swung her head to the left, transfixed on the echoes of approaching speeder bikes, snatching a Westar from its holster at her side. Kowani instinctively grabbed for her saber hilt as the sound pierced her thoughts, throwing her concentration into utter chaos as the tightly woven bands of confusing Force energies slowed to a trickle, almost fading from her view entirely.
“Yes….yes.” The voice returned to Kowani’s dismay, seething through imagined teeth in a harsh aggression of its own. “Confront the chaos with the only weapon fit for the task Kowani Y’mmat.” It continued, oozing a familiarity she found disturbing at best, the breeze that had tickled the skin on her hands dying to an uncomfortable silence as the flows of the Force began to band together all around her and Sabine.
‘What weapon?’ Kowani thought to herself as the whine grew in pitch and volume, the howls echoing through the massive stands of bamboo trees doing their best to scramble any sense of location. ‘And what task?’ She asked herself again, turning her head slowly with a canted ear.
“Certainly not Sundari’s savior young Mirialan, at least...not yet.” The voice was crisp and vicious, reverberating through her bones as it sought to channel the very weapon it referenced. “You are no messiah Kowani Y’mmat, quite the opposite in fact.” The baritone seemed fixated on fueling that which she would keep dormant, a finely honed, double-bladed edge that worked its way slowly into her subconscious, piercing every wall she had steadfastly erected to prevent her inner rage complete control.
Kowani slowly stood from the bike’s saddle and jumped to the ground with a dedicated resolve, fighting herself within to prevent any confrontation outwardly.
“What are you doing Ani, we can’t stay here?” Sabine whispered loudly, her voice sounding almost frantic despite the notable lack of danger Kowani suspected.
“It’s only a patrol Sabine...relax.” Kowani said, turning to the Mandalorian over her shoulder slightly, pausing briefly as she noted the changes, vast changes, within the flows of the circling Force flows.
“You know the task of which I speak, Ani…” The voice had gone nowhere, grating, and rigid, like a sharpened sieve that sought to peel the barriers of her moral conscious through its center.
“Ani, if they see us gunships will respond.” Sabine didn’t bother whispering, a tension in her voice that told Kowani the Mandalorian was already preparing for confrontation.
“Let them come…” The voice continued, giving her own thoughts the words they needed to route her mind toward the task that was becoming clear.
‘Revenge is it? That’s what this is about?’ Kowani thought, almost losing her ability to contain the words to thought alone.
“Only if your passion is so narrow sighted!” The voice shouted, a thunder within her that shook her reservations from their foundations. She felt her knees buckle with an involuntary shudder, ready to cast doubt aside as her moral compass spun wildly out of control. “Kowani….Ani, let those chains of reservation break themselves and embrace that which you’ve denied yourself.”
‘...I...I can’t….’ Kowani thought sullenly, the whine and howl of the approaching bikes strangling her ability to think straight, sending the last form of message she would receive in the seconds it would take to be revealed.
“The decision has been made...now, you will either fight, or die.” The aggression within the voice gave way to a cool and calm reserve she felt timely.
Kowani sensed the approaching bikes, traveling in their direction from the East on a clear patrol path they had most likely utilized for quite some time. She saw the confrontation unfold in her mind, envisioning her artful form of destruction without any hesitation or remorse, firing both hands out before her in a detached resolve that tightened her core muscles like finely braided bands of cortosis. Her mind reaching into the flows of energies that whipped to a froth all around her, leaching all measure of complacent Force energies from neighboring trees and scraggly underbrush, becoming a vacuum to the flows that hesitated and those non complicit. She erected the impenetrable bulwark of her own resolution, a wall that would not yield while slamming both palms forward the instant the bikes were upon them.
The echoing whine of the VV318 was immediately choked from existence, the screeching howls that echoed like a bird of prey, its fear inducing ululation, halted instantaneously. The cascading sounds of metal crunching and incendiary demise stole all precepts of imagination from Kowani, the Scoris repulsor housings folding the totality of the craft in upon itself with deafening report just before the unit ignited from severed fuel lines and leaking fluids. She could feel the heat through the force of the explosion brush past her face, leaves and small twigs snap across her cheeks from the ensuing concussive shock. And then silence. If the riders, the troopers that became the focus of her decision, had uttered their last cries prior to obliteration, she never heard them.
Kowani stood, frozen in place to the silence left after destructions wake, a cocooning of pressures only broken by the slamming of her heart in her chest and the rapid inhales and exhales of her lungs. The seconds passed, feeling like hours as she stood ready to embrace the morality of her actions, waiting for the mental breakdown to scold her for her ruthlessness, finding nothing in return but adoration and an intoxication of her own will consume her. She felt her arms strain, realizing she hadn’t even lowered them yet, the muscles taught and ready for any ensuing lethal command she was more than willing to levy. The knowledge should have brought with it a compassionate remorse, one that would lower her hands and arms for her so that she may reflect upon what she had done, but it didn’t. Kowani embraced the fuel that ran freely through her, imbibing more from the source as she began clenching her fingers inward. The sounds rocketing through her mind, snapping trees and the crunching of metal, signified the destruction at her command with a swooshing whirl of leaves in torment and resounding thuds and vibrations of their hosts slamming viciously into the ground upon the scraps left of the annihilated speeder bikes.
Kowani heard a muted screech from behind her, a declaration to cease and desist coming from the sister she had chosen, the same Mandalorian that had chosen her. Through the garbled message, Kowani slowly relaxed her fingers, letting the silence return once again to an oppressive vacuum, realizing only then that the bright flash she had attributed to the explosive results of her actions had not retreated at all. The haze of darkness beyond her eyes lifting its veil to subdued shades of gray and obscured greens, a realization that dropped her to her knees. She felt her bones react to the suddenness of her fall but felt no shudder nor pressure from the action, waving her hands slowly in front of her. Kowani could see the movement if not the fingers themselves, each digit casting its own shadow through the opaque light beyond them. But nothing else. The flows of Force energies that had guided her through her personal darkness were gone.
“Welcome Kowani Y’mmat.” The voice teetered between elation and contempt, a baritone chortle that felt mocking following the simple message she couldn’t interpret.
‘To what?’ She thought in return, a sensation that she should be feeling some form of trepidation became apparent, setting everything that had transpired in the last few moments aside as she contemplated the meanings, yet very aware that Sabine was still calling out for her. Kowani could feel her own eyes flare open as her knees pressed into the soft fertile ground below them, a sense of shock overwhelming her and threatening to grip what little contents her stomach held, doubling over to satiate the nausea consuming her by planting her forehead slowly into the leaves before her, leaves that she could identify more clearly with each passing second.
“….to the Dark Side of course…” The voice whispered in noted jubilation, affirming her that the growing apprehension was up to the task of supplying a fear that should have been present. Kowani was shocked, however, that it was not.
✦
“CZ, I am reading a transmission planet side only a few kilometers removed from your drop off position. Distress relay of sorts.” N’dali informed the medical droid that found himself lacking any useful task with which to direct his immediate attention, “the operation here is symbiotic across the northern hemisphere, whatever they are looking for is irrelevant at the moment.”
“Irrelevant in what capacity?” CZ responded, curious indeed.
“Because they have ceased individual operations and are mobilizing to converge on the mentioned signal. Apparently the Empire does learn from some past mistakes.” N’dali responded with a very curious tone of her own, a subjective inclusion CZ was quite proud of himself for noticing, but one question remained.
“How are you able to confirm this N’dali, you have admitted to your withdrawal from the Imperial networks?”
“As long as ‘Seven’ is operational, I will continue to maintain the ability to access local networks.
“If something has occurred already to draw out responding forces, I am sure both of them are responsible...what is ‘Seven’?” CZ responded, clearly confused.
“Quite the contrary, both of them are adept at minimizing their presence. If something has occurred already, I fear it may run much deeper than simply overlooking an objective.” N’dali stated, CZ noting the casual nature in which N’dali referenced herself and the second time she had conveyed emotional sentiment. He also realized she had not answered his question.
“Perhaps if you made yourself known to them, we could eradicate the need to speak in hyperbole?” The med droid circumvented the omission altogether.
N’dali did not respond immediately, thinking only to answer the question with another, establishing a redundancy she felt would be a waste of time. Then she noticed it too. A subjective approach and possible solution based almost entirely on unquantifiable data points that could never be derived from mathematical equation. ‘Feel. Fear. Curiosity.’ She processed the words as if they were statements, realizing they had nothing to do with coding or programming at all. They were in her possession, but she couldn’t understand how. The problem had no solution, and with that, no clear direction or computation to either allow or disavow any contained relevancy to her own stated tasks. She determined that, in essence, it was the same quandary posed to Chams, yet she could identify the nuances that determined her approach whereas the younger system could not. A curiosity that would need further investigation when warranted with the time to do so.
“No CZ, not yet.” N’dali finally answered him as she began running through several different sets of routines to establish the appropriate response to the shift in Imperial activity, “She will contact us if she needs to. We need to be ready to minimize any potential aggression they may incur.” She finished, hoping she was right. Again, pausing to reflect on the sentiment conveyed, admitting to herself that the dictated procedure was the right one, but not because her algorithms could prove or disprove her findings. It was a sentient trait, one shared by trillions upon trillions across the galaxy but rarely through circuits and openly shared software. ‘Hope.’ She thought to herself briefly, establishing courses of action taking shape simultaneous to the thought through her threat assessments, realizing the virtues and vices involved.
CZ was able to read the distinguishable connotations without missing a beat, his processors running through self-diagnostic sweep after sweep to try to identify what had changed within the entity between this exact point in time and her subjugation of the ‘Morai’s’ systems. There was a very notable shift that had occurred in real time, but only after the dissemination of Chams’ fate, he established, taking great strides to incorporate the vast amounts of medical data at his disposal. CZ could not have queried something so far removed from what had always been predictable, and most certainly not involving the woman herself. “It is nice to have you back N’dali Fardi.” He decided to say, sure it would be something a human might.
✦
“NO! NO! NO! NO!” Kowani repeated to herself, smashing the fallen leaves before her further into the mossy ground beneath them, visions she had hoped to forget forging through her mind recklessly. The screams of terror and outright horror, mingled with the pangs of broken glass and shattered stone. Lifeless thuds of fallen bodies torn and shredded as they caromed into resting places never intended. Hot dry air burning her lungs as she silently screamed her own horrid plight and the stench in the smoldering ruin of simple shops and markets, the putrid rank of cooked flesh and spoiled meat. She had become what she swore she would never, even now trying to force the images of the ruin and rubble, decadence and mutilation left in Ahsoka’s wake inflicted upon the innocence of a wide street on Nar Shaddaa.
Kowani folded in upon herself, burying her face deep into the peat, moss and leaves of the forest floor, horror stricken by the effects of her own rage. The surge of power, which she had willingly coveted, became a thing of nightmares on the spot. The only constant she had ever believed, a lie she herself has disproven through her own action.
“There is never just the Force Kowani Y’mmat..” The voice began, finding the apex in timing where the words would be sharpest. “There will always be the Dark Side, only a fool believes otherwise.” It cajoled, pushing her further toward the brink of internal breakdown. “You can either accept that, or…” It beckoned for response, one she wasn’t committed to giving.
“Ani!” Kowani finally heard Sabines shouts, thrusting her once more to the bloodied streets of Nar Shaddaa, where she had been in the Mandalorians position. Rough hands pulled her head from the dirt, Kowani, mouth agape, drawing in the warm tropical air just as another of Ciutric’s customary bouts of constant rain bathed the detritus from her face and neck. Meandering rivers of black and brown, streaking wildly down her smooth olive skin, staining the loose-fitting tan shift she had adorned. “Ani!” Sabine cried again, the Mandalorians voice a beacon of salvation from the personal trauma, a cove inset deeply into the rock of land in the maelstrom of her own emotions. Kowani could feel hands upon her shoulders, thumbs pressing against her shoulder blades despite the pauldrons adorning each, shaking her loose of the self-imposed immediacy of the exile she had thrust herself.
Kowani felt the pelting rain drops smash into closed eye lids, huge droplets that felt both torturous and calming, nourishing, and damning. She opened her eyes, ready for the dark haze to take her once again, finding the brown eyes of her sister staring back at her. Sabines tan skin mirroring her own as beads and threads of heavy water ran with freedom from her cheeks. Kowani was bewildered, even as the Mandalorians hands shifted from the stability of her shoulders to either of her cheeks, holding her steady through the deluge of rain and forcing her to stare deeply within those brown eyes. The silence that pervaded following her destructive decision, eradicated by the consuming torrent of water plunging through dense foliage and the decay of the forest floor, building to a crescendo that made hearing Sabine almost impossible. Her sister pressed forward nonetheless, offering words Kowani was certain she rarely offered as her hands clamped tighter into her cheeks. They were both on their knees, the actions for the moment, forgotten, their surroundings irrelevant. To Kowani all that mattered at the moment was the stability of the hands on her and the sight before her own eyes, sight once again that was her own.
✦
Through the darkness that engulfed all three of them, Ahsoka sensed a tremendous fluctuation within the Force, a certain pull or push, she couldn’t be sure, at either end of the spectrum through which she felt every facet of. Concentrating the majority of her composure on breathing through her mouth, she mistakenly inhaled a short breath of the rancid contents of the pod they had hijacked into her nose, sending her forward slightly with a retching gag.
“I told you this is disgusting…” Rex reminded everyone quickly, then proceeded with his own mouth breathing once more.
Ahsoka could feel Nara squeezing her hand behind her, nobody willing to utter another word for fear of imbibing more of the questionable residue. The squeeze meant more to her than mere proximity, it was an assurance that she wasn’t the only one sensing the shift, and by Nara’s inclusion, it more than likely had everything to do with Kowani.
Something had changed, and neither had any indication what it might be, only the source.
“What’s that sound?” Rex risked another verbal message, cueing both Ahsoka and Nara to the gushing and hissing that was growing louder the further they were carried into the pitch of absolute darkness.
✦
“Ani..I am here….Ani, I am here!” Sabine repeated, the fog of remorse lifting gently, its talons forcibly peeled back from the clutch they had on her soul. “Look at me...look at me.” Sabine repeated another message that Kowani obeyed complicitly, losing her dread and terror within the brown eyes she could so clearly see. She was ambivalent to the pounding rains, each strike a measure of recourse she felt warranted, some excise of punishment for the crime she felt she had committed, only wanting to rest back on her legs and stare into the sky above.
“I...I…” Kowani stammered, finding her voice bereft of anything worthy to say, something, anything, that would vindicate her, assuage the grief within over the action she felt impossible, “don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything.” Sabine uttered as the rains began to taper off from above, pulling the Mirialan into her own chest with a massive embrace. Kowani knew she was adding her own tears to the torrents of rain water running down her cheeks, now washing over Sabine’s pauldrons as well. She let go of all voluntary control and let Sabine hold her tight, wishing in that moment she could have understood what Ahsoka had gone through, wishing that she could have been the one to offer the support. The reminder did nothing to abate the growing unease within her, only the flaw in character that so clearly identified itself upon inflection.
‘Have I truly been that naive this whole time?’ Kowani questioned herself, Sabine offering further assistance as she pulled them both to their feet in the thickening mud. She knew the voice would follow and prepared herself for it, despite the tenuous grasp she had over her own senses.
“Without instruction, naivety is quite objective, or do you consider yourself sage even with recent proof to the contrary?” It came as expected the tone more instructional, formal, than the mocking jab she had expected, “it is foolish to deem anything detrimental without the knowledge to reinforce theory.” The voice continued, its deep baritone register almost commanding her full attention, but she had other, more pressing, matters she would contend with.
“Sabine, there is something here that I must find, the reasons will remain my secret, my burden alone.” Kowani said bluntly when words would return once more, her conviction boldened by the consistent voice that continued to remind her of her failings.
“Whatever it is Ani, you don’t ever have to carry anything alone.” Sabine replied, Kowani looked inwardly for the advice that would be hard to hear, along with an admission that would be hard to utter, “it isn’t something you can help with Sabine, not until you can recognize the Force around you.” It wasn’t easy but it was the truth, and she had vowed to disdain any lie. Sabine, to her credit, did not look away. She only maintained the lock she had on Kowani’s own black eyes.
“I’ve said many times that I can feel it Ani, I don’t know what you or Ahsoka could possibly expect from me beyond that…” She said, her expression unchanging.
Kowani closed her eyes sullenly, blowing out a short breath in response to her growing agitation over the subject entirely. “Sabine, if that is to be the status quo then let it be the status quo, but until that changes, you will have to accept that this particular burden is mine alone to carry.”
“It could be so much more if you just explain what you mean Ani. I don’t understand why all this Force stuff has to be so cryptic all the time….” Sabine offered her usual response, “Kanan always….ALWAYS, talked like that. Ahsoka, ALWAYS, talks like that...and now you do to. What am I missing? Sabine was becoming furious at the situation, Kowani sensing the frustration hidden discreetly behind the veil of anger, even though her own mind was far from clear given recent events.
Kowani just wanted to reach out, take Sabine’s hand with her own, and plunge it into the currents that….were… “What!??” Kowani suddenly shouted aloud, turning frantically in all directions, her heart hammering as adrenaline began coursing through her veins.
“What what?” Sabine was becoming assuredly lost in the conversation, noting the many turns it had already taken, and now, the frenzied actions of the sister she had just offered support, was once again, lost to something she couldn’t see.
“I can’t see them anymore!” Kowani blurted, any sense of a silent approach lost in the ruckus she was making as she physically plowed her feet through piles of leaves and weaved in and around the thick trunks of the nearest bamboo trees. Her feet laced into a rock just beneath a layer of mosses sending her crashing to the forest floor once more, again a heap of sobbing flesh and ready to give herself up to the Empire.
“Ani! Get a hold of yourself! You’ve changed gears so many times in the last five minutes, I am not quite sure to whom I am even talking!” Sabine shouted, unwilling to rush to Kowani’s aid this time.
“That is the way of the Force young one. Use it for your own gain, and it will require payment be made.” The voice overtook the shouting Mandalorian as it echoed its presence in Kowani’s mind. “Everything has a price, Ani, and the Force is never clear what the cost will be. Much the same way your cryptic ramblings may sound to this Mandalorian, you will have to accept a measure of yourself lost in the process.” Kowani couldn’t determine the intention behind the words, or the intonation used as she lay on her back in the soft peat and moss staring at the blue sky above the swaying fronds of the tall trees, each leaf fluttering in different directions as they clung with all they had to the thinnest of branches.
‘I’ve forsaken the tether I had always had to my dying mother in order murder two nameless Imperials…’ She thought to herself, stretching her arms wide with her palms up.
“Yet you’ve regained eyesight that will become ever clearer Ani. For every cost that is determined, there is a gift in return.”
‘That sounds so stupid.’ She thought in retrospect, yet provocative in ways she couldn’t explain. Kowani could hear Sabine mouthing something with a quip, then vent her frustration with an audible grunt. Despite the nature of her own erratic behavior, she knew she should at least apologize, but more importantly, that they should prioritize a strategy to push forth. She could do neither, feeling like her limbs weighed metric tons, her soul a tiny speck of itself and her mind the latest pod racing course.
“But it is the gamble itself that is intoxicating if unlimited power is beyond your desire.”
“I’ve no use for unlimited power, my vision was just that…” Kowani said aloud, hoping after the fact that Sabine wasn’t within earshot.
“Aye. A vision can be many things, but the power to forge that into your reality is but a mere question removed.” The voice stated with a power Kowani found unnerving, her mind finding no reason whatsoever to discredit the admission outright. She let the statement flourish within her imagination, finding credible and legitimate reasons to pursue the question she was unwilling to ask, yet not the courage to actually do so. It dawned on her that it had become something far removed from courage altogether to bask in the what if realm of conjecture, something nearing contempt for her own sanity, but the thought of questioning would not relent, and the task at hand no closer to completion.
With a thought in tow that she would not credit until she was sure, Kowani pushed herself up from the mossy bed and blinked the brightness of their surroundings into reality. Her sight had returned, that much was true. She looked over toward Sabine who was standing astride her bike with her arms crossed over her chest. Kowani approached, tossed her arms around the Mandalorian, and pressed her forehead into Sabine’s temple, “I am sorry Sabine.” She said sincerely, kissed her ear and walked to the rear of the lead bike, disengaging the energy binder. Sabine silently watched with growing curiosity as Kowani approached the fore of the second bike and switched off the energy binder on it as well before approaching the saddle and throwing herself atop it. Kowani throttled the grips with unusual determination, rocketing the Scoris’ vent housing completely open with a whine and howl of her own. She crept the bike astride the Mandalorian who hadn’t moved a muscle, “Let’s go sis, I’ll take point.” And disappeared down the path the doomed patrol had come.
“Well, I guess she can see now…” Sabine said to herself, tossing on her helmet and pulling from the tree she had planned for cover, ‘where are we even going?’ She couldn’t avoid asking herself as she copied Kowani’s actions and shot from the scene.
“Bane...show me the way.” Kowani shouted to the open air and whipping winds that tore the tight braids from her hair. Despite the watery flow of the acceleration sourced tears, Kowani smiled brightly as she dived and ducked her way through the dense vegetation never once restraining her grip on the throttle with less severe determination.
“But of course….apprentice.”