The Rebel Faction

Xireon deflected the lightning with one hand, letting it strike harmlessly, but explosively, on the sewer wall. Grabbing out with his other clawed hand, he caught the Jedi in midair, grasping him around the neck. "Foolish, foolish, foolish boy," he said, looking the boy in the eye as he hung there, several feet off the ground. The Sith was strong -- impossibly strong. He truly was a monster. "Don't you understand, boy? Are you really so stupid as to believe I would simply kill you?"

Placing one finger from his other hand on Mat's chest -- from which his shirt had been torn by the fire -- Xireon shook his head. "There are things much worse than death, Mat. So much worse." From the place his finger had touched, the skin began to blacken, spreading like a plague. Soon it covered a considerable portion of his chest -- the portion where the heart was.

Xireon dropped him to the ground, his body going limp immediately. Mat's body was dead, but the soul, as with any, lived on. And in this case, the soul's time on the material realm was nowhere near complete. His torment had only but begun. Quickly muttering a few syllables and shaping the Force in his mind, the Sith touched the body and performed the embalming spell to preserve it.

Tobal, now emerging from a state of transfixion upon Mat's final moments, had taken off down the sewers. Almost as an afterthought, Xireon waved a hand at him, the flaming rocks from all about the sewer flying into the Jedi at speeds enough to bury themselves into his skin. Like bullets they struck, but the Jedi kept running.

The voice of Xireon Jiren echoed in his mind as he fled. Escape if you will, then, but know that in your soul, you made your choice. You could have stopped him. But it was... convenient, wasn't it? The boy was too dark to be one of you, and so you allowed him to sacrifice himself. You have shown to me your true self, and that is what I desired. Remember my words, Tobal Hadul; you and I are the same, on the inside. The same ancestry flows through our veins: know that you are but one step away from being what you know you can become only in your heart of darkness.

A sadistic laugh, this one real, echoed down the tunnel until it reached Tobal as he left Xireon's sight.

Pain, pain deeper than that capable of being inflicted through the mortal flesh stabbed deep into Tobal’s chest as he ran down the sewers, toward open sunlight. How he had managed to get past the Sith he did not know. The force surged through his legs, propelling him faster than he had ever gone before. Pebbles buried themselves into his flesh, but he kept going.

Light appeared at the end of the endlessly black sewer, the light of the exit. With a cry, Tobal flung himself out of the opening, and into the air. His force accelerated body shot out across and over the small lake, over the heads of the waiting Massassi warriors, and out into the awaiting snow.

Landing with a painful crunch, Tobal gasped as the snow covered his face, hands, and neck. It shocked him to reality, the cold. And a cold reality it was to return to.

you made your choice. You could have stopped him

“No!” cried Tobal, standing as the voice of the demon echoed in his mind.

convenient, wasn't it?

“NO!” shouted Tobal, casting his gaze about himself like a caged animal.

you allowed him to sacrifice himself

“That’s not TRUE!” he bellowed, his eyes finally coming to rest upon something solid.

You have shown to me your true self,

“NO! NOT TRUE!” screamed the young shadow as the voice echoed through his head. Before his eyes he saw Mat jumping, and being caught. With a scream of anguish and pain Tobal lept forward into the midst of the perusing Massassi, lightsaber a blur.

you allowed

The voice echoed in his head, and his blade parted flesh from flesh.

convenient, wasn't it?

The impact of his lightsaber against some toughened armor register but slightly, and he powered the blade through the hapless Massassi.

You could have stopped him

His cries became more guttural, and Tobal snarled in rage as another Massassi came into view. He slammed his fist into the clone’s face, not caring how much it hurt his own body. Jerking his saber around in a full circle, Tobal gutted another clone, and head butted yet another. Moving like an animal, the Shadow slaughtered clones to the tune of his on mind.

convenint

allowed

could have

didn’t

convenient

could have

convenient

Grabbing the head of one Massassi, he slammed it into another’s face. Pulling his saber from the body in which it rested, he guided the weapon through another clone. White hair flying, eyes glazed, Tobal continued. A cut to the throat of one, split the skull of another. Push three away, jump on one.

allowed allowed allowed allowed allowed allowed allowed

Four Massassi clones struggled to their feet from the squad he had just gone through, and Tobal killed them where they stood, their bodies spontaneously combusting.

The words rang through his head, and Tobal gave one last desperate cry before falling to the snow.

"NO MAT!"

Slipping, slipping, away from the focus and solidity of the green Force hue to his eyes, this Jedi Shadow lost control. Among the Massassi he had deliberately decided to take control of, this Shadow slayed them all. Each soul, each being, destroyed from uncontrolled impulses much like what Arkan was capable of. The darkness made anyone powerful, except they were blind of any other sense.

He turned and walked away, letting the Massassi seal their fate in trying to take on the wild Jedi... a furious shadow of darkness. But he stopped short and turned, all of the Massassi under his command were slain in a mix of burnt flesh, appendages, and unsealed bodies whose wounds continually sputtered blood across the ground.

The Jedi Shadow fell to the snow. Arkan was well aware of the dangers in encountering Jedi Shadows, their skills in battle were reknowned against the Dark Jedi and Sith. Although he knew this, he still approached because this one was too lost in this sense of grief and loss that sensibility was lost on this fellow.

His right arm reached up to one of his front horns, Zabrak horns, checking if it was still sharp for no particular reason other than to pass the time. Then he lowered his arm to check its sleek black metal covering of the robotic machinery under. Then toward the Jedi at his feet, face buried in the snow and still lost in the void of his consciousness.

"You are pathetic, Shadow," Arkan kneeled down a couple feet away from him, the amphistaves slithering in their coiled positions on his waist and on his left arm, the voduun crab loosening to accustom itself to his kneeling down in the cold snow, "Your mind is such a maze, yet so open because you seem to have lost something...

"It echoes," Arkan stretched his right arm out to the sky, "Out into the depths of the Force... such grief... such pain. But that is life, Mister Hadul, that is the life of being a Jedi. The ups and downs. Much like the Sith. Much like any user of a power barely anyone can comprehend."

Arkan stood up, still looking down at this Shadow, Tobal Hadul, from what he had picked-up from this one's grieving soul. Then he took a few steps back, "I have a choice, do battle with an enraged Jedi Shadow, whom I hold no grudge against except for what he is. Or. I could walk away, facing the wrath of my Sith superiors and losing my entire mission and gain. This day, you have failed, so have all the others. You are nothing, Mister Hadul, you did not go through what I am currently going through to attain the rightful privilege of Jedi Shadow. No, you do not understand, you underestimate the role of Jedi Shadow, you cannot fight an opposition as an opposition, you do not cancel out, you only recycle the process. To defeat the darkness, you must recognize it very well. Those who know how to combat immorality best, have been immoral or have known others close to have experienced immorality to be wise enough not to BE immoral. Do you get what I mean, Jedi?"

Arkan took up his own organic lightsaber, letting it unclasp its pincers from his belt's ring before bringing it up. If this Shadow did not rise in time, he would have to slay this abomination of a 'Jedi Shadow' and get on with the slaying of the other 'Jedi Shadows', since this was his purpose to cleanse the line of them and make it pure of those who knew what they were doing and not shock-troops for the Jedi.

"Come and face fate," Arkan said to the man.

"The Force has been needing, the Force has been wanting, the Force has compelled me to stand before you and test the resolve you have as a supposed Jedi of the Shadows!," Arkan said to the man on this island of life, in the cold isolation where death was the sea that surrounded them.

Arkan pushed himself up from the snow, barely understanding the sting of the Jedi Shadow's fist. He pushed away from the wall and smiled. This was to be expected. When Arkan had found Tobal, he understood that this imbalanced Force signature was not truly the one he sought, but perhaps someone would approach considering Arkan's Force signature was open to all without the ysalimiri by his side. Arkan's senses within him grew out again, although he was focused, the pain from such a blatant abuse combined with the pain of all events in the past, present, and strangely in the future, amalgamated into something perversely strong.

Like the effects of his abuse in entering The Dark Circle, Arkan could not contain the buried frustrations within, the focus he understood in the reality before him melted into the chaos that slowly became his being. He roared up into the air, the soundwaves constantly changing pitch as though the Force could not be defined in any one part of his form. Sparks of electricity began to erupt off Arkan, randomly and uncontrolled, same as before in the Sith Temple and same as before in the Jedi Praxeum. Arkan did not like to be blatantly abused, he would rather talk than fight, but it did not look like he had an option here. Especially since his mind was engulfed in the flood of chaos and fury relative to the conflagration of an uncontrolled forest-fire on Endor. The ground rumble a little and the air rippled outward like a sphere expanding then vanishing a dozen feet outward.

"I have anticipated such a conflict, Jedi Shadow," Arkan spoke in the deepest and most inhuman voice that fluctuated between loud and normal randomly, "Although a more civilized form of entrance would have sufficed instead of your brash introduction of abuse! To me, the Jedi Shadow and the Shadow Jedi are all the same. Your tainted being appals me, but I concur to the fact that I am also a tainted being. You can consider me... undead in a way. I may serve the Sith, but I do not declare myself as such.

"I shall show you how accusations of ignorance affect those who are the true ignorant ones!"

Arkan's eyes flashed silver again. Then again. Again. And again until his eyes were just silver. He let his lightsaber clip itself back to his belt. He then raised his black-gloved hands to the air. The green particles of the focused Force to Arkan's perceptions, flashed into reality in his left hand. The purple particles of the raw Force to Arkan's perceptions, flashed into reality in his right hand. From the materialization of the Force which would have just been perceptions to Arkan's second sight, Arkan let these energies disperse. But then they pulled into Arkan's being, illuminating the reddish Force signature that Arkan had but was constantly growing and shrinking chaotically.

With silver eyes, he looked onto the opposing mass of the Jedi Shadow, declared the last of his line. A challenge. But that was not his focus right now, he felt control slipping from him and he was giving into his rage and more of the darkness that he would have rather understood than merge with. Electricity still seemed to spawn from him, but he did not notice, he did not care. The amphistaves seemed to protest this as much as the dovin basal on the back, but he continued on.

Raising his left hand out to this Jedi Shadow, he pushed Tobal's form aside with the Force. Then to the Jedi Shadow himself, he began to increase the magnitude of his "focus", spiraling particles of green and purple, light and dark, traveled across his arm and fused into his hand. With this concentration of energy, Arkan locked onto the Force-signature of the Jedi Shadow and let a speeding streamline of concentrated air, gravity, and the Force envelop and push the hulking mass a dozen feet back.

And again, Arkan roared as he whipped his hand to the side in frustration.

Kamon stopped suddenly. He had been using the shadows to his advantage, Using them to slip around unseen. Now he had been confronted. He smiled and stepped out of the shadows right in front of Jade.

"So, Jade. We meet again."