The Rebel Faction

It is hard to describe exactly what is going through a human being’s mind during combat. There are many possible reasons for why this is. Mostly probably because the ones stupid and curious enough to ask that question aren’t the ones fighting and the ones doing the fighting are too busy trying to forget the fighting to answer. That was what Zarko liked to believe, anyway.

He also liked to believe that during combat, a human being’s rational mind temporarily shut down and let its less advanced, more instinctual side take over. Mostly because the rational mind was the part of a human being that would likely freak out and get the human being in question killed during a fight, and the less advanced, more instinctual side was the part of a human being that was damn good at fighting.

So it can easily be forgiven that Zarko did not register the question Silus asked as he asked it, right after he asked it, while he was lunging, and as he was preparing to strike. He was too busy keeping his rational mind from getting him killed.

Zarko’s body jerked backward into a sideways posture, his right hand stretching back even farther as if winding up. Force energy built up within his hand, built up quickly. He didn’t have much time. Swinging his hand back around, he jerked it to a stop in front of him, arm outstretched, palm facing the advancing Jedi. Tendrils of dark Force burst from his hand.

Such attacks were mostly used offensively, in order to inflict pain and damage upon the enemy’s body itself, but Zarko was most definitely rushed for time. The force of the energy attack was enough to keep Silus’s lightsaber at bay, preventing him from cutting down through Zarko’s arm and into his head. He struggled to channel the form of Force magick, but the build up had been too rushed, the strain was too great, and slowly but surely Silus’s lightsaber began to gain grown. He had to act.

Zarko dove out of the way, holding the energy for as long as he could before he had to let go. It was close; much too close. Especially for the one who was supposed to be in control of the battle. He hadn’t expected a Jedi to make such an offensive move. Somewhere Zarko remembered hearing it was in their Code not to strike first. But, he realized, he should’ve expected such things from preachers of false ideals.

In the end, he made it. The saber singed the heel of his shoes, but he made it. Leveling out into a roll, Zarko leapt to his feet, lightsaber in hand, swirling around to parry the Jedi’s next attack. Their lightsabers clashed…and held.

Zarko finally had time to think.

Finally had time to come to terms with what Silus had said.

“How long have you been hearing voices?”

How long have you been hearing voices.

How long…

Hearing voices.

How long have I been hearing voices? Zarko asked himself. He still had not fully realized what that meant, coming from the mouth of a man he had only just met, How long?

He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know.

And then it hit him.

HE KNOWS! the thought itself was so loud it gave Zarko a headache as he thought it, HE KNOWS! How?!

[FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]Never mind how! Kill him! Kill! KILL![/SIZE][/FONT]

“NO!” Zarko screamed out loud, unable to distinguish the difference between the outside world and the inside of his mind anymore.

With a heave not proportional to his physical capabilities, Zarko broke the saber clash and stumbled backward, falling to his knees. His lightsaber lay forgotten, deactivated on the ground somewhere. He crawled. For the first time in his life since he had not yet learned how to walk, Zarko crawled. And he was a child. Once more, he was a child. Innocent. He was innocent.

And the situation he was in all-too-suddenly came back to him, and the peril he faced became clearer than it had ever been before. Behind him was a man he had mistaken for a Jedi. The anger. The red lightsaber. The…offensiveness. He had made a mistake. He had erred.

He had to fix it.

He had to kill Silus.

Slowly, but surely, he climbed back to his feet. There was a sudden boom in the background, and he winced until he realized it was thunder. Lightening followed. It began to rain. The clear day; the care free day; the day during which he had spoken so carelessly to Silus about philosophers and excitement five minutes ago was gone. It was night. It was night in Zarko’s world. The real time be damned, it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t know or care what time of day it was. It was night in his mind.

Before Silus could react, the forgotten lightsaber was recalled to him. This was no longer a fight. This was combat.

Zarko lunged.

There were a million things flashing through Zarko’s mind as Silus spoke; a million responses, a million retorts, a million threats. Some part of him, a part of him that was growing stronger by the second, recognized the latter to be planted there by the sort of…tumor…the cancer that had bided its time in the darkness of his mind until today.

Their lightsabers clashed, and yet Zarko could tell that neither of them was concentrating all that hard on the fight at hand. This was the beginning stages of the fight, he realized. Silus was still feeling him out, testing his emotional responses for weakness. He was baiting him. Or at least that’s what Zarko’s, admittedly, extremely paranoid brain led him to believe.

His eventual response surprised them both. Or at least, it surprised Zarko; quite considerably.

He laughed.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was impolite to speak during a lightsaber duel?” Zarko asked, a smile spreading across his face, “No? Neither did mine, I suppose.”

Slash, slash, parry, jab, parry, counter, slash.

“And don’t worry about it,” Zarko’s face seemed warm, calming, cheerful. But his eyes…there was most definitely something wrong with the eyes. Not wrong…per say…but something…not right, “I assume its just left over from the ol’ Sith days.”

Slash, slash, counter, slash, jab.

“What, you’re the only one who can read people?” Zarko asked him, giving another laugh, “I imagine they were entertaining for you. You know; the looting and pillaging, slaughtering innocents. Yo ho me buckos, the loot is fine this eve! I imagine you must have thought yourself very dashing.”

The duel began to heat up, and Zarko found himself paying more attention to keeping his foe’s lightsaber at bay than studying the expression on his face. Whether Zarko had struck a nerve or Silus just wanted to shut him up, he didn’t care. The conversation seemed to affect Silus on some level, whether it be deeply emotional or just an annoyance.

“What, just because we’ve both heard the same voice all of the sudden means you know me? You understand me?” Zarko asked, chortling, “I may be a lot of things, Mr. Silus, but I’m not an executioner. I’m not a Sith. I’m not that weak.”

As the duel carried on, Zarko felt the beginnings of panic creeping up on him. This was most definitely not how he had intended things to happen. The anomaly that had presented himself in the form of this Sith turned Jedi was one…equation, that he could not quite solve. He couldn’t exploit him. He couldn’t manipulate him. And Zarko was damn well sure that Silus would not give him enough time to fire off a catastrophic enough spell to end the fight quickly.

It was supposed to be simple. Lure the Jedi into the forest. Play with him for a little while. Exploit his emotions and destroy whatever flawed sort of philosophy he had on life, the universe, and everything, and eventually kill the man, or woman, off using a variety of different techniques that until then would have been not properly…‘field tested’, so to speak.

There was also the issue of the Jedi Order in the nearby city, and no one around to serve as Zarko’s hostage in case the Jedi got the brilliant idea of calling for help. The Dark Jedi supposed he could attempt to intercept any Force communications and snatch them right out of the sky, a tricky little spell he had learned in one of his more valuable books. Unfortunately, it required him to concentrate rather intensely on the Force around him and even then, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to pull it off. It hadn’t exactly been ‘field tested’ either.

Using the Force to enhance a skid to the side, Zarko narrowly avoided a saber strike that would have cleaved him in half. Blast this Jedi! Couldn’t he give him a few moments to collect his thoughts? Apparently not. The saber duel was getting more intense by the second. Zarko had, for the time being, stopped his taunting, giving Silus the opportunity to completely focus on severing any limbs he might be able to from his Dark Jedi foe’s body.

“You need to stop taking things so seriously,” Zarko said aloud, as much to himself as to Silus, “You’re trying way too hard, and it shows.”

It was bullshit. Zarko was definitely bluffing on that one. Silus was, he had to admit, extremely good with the lightsaber, and the Dark Jedi realized he had literally been putting his life in very great danger by thinking about things other than avoiding the wrong end of the red lightsaber Silus held in his hands.

But it was not something he could help. He needed a way out. His experiment had gone horribly wrong, and Zarko saw no way of being able to salvage it. Salvage it, what was he thinking? The thought of getting away with his life was looking less and less promising by the moment. He had no real way of gaining much distance from Silus, and without distance his immense arsenal of Force spells was completely useless. He himself was pretty good with the saber, but he hadn’t devoted his life to it, the way he had with his vocabulary of dark abilities.

[FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]There is a way to save the experiment,[/SIZE][/FONT] the voice came once more, [FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]A way to not only escape with your life, but test one of your most powerful spells.[/SIZE][/FONT]

I thought I told you to go the hell away, Zarko snapped back.

[FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]You know I can’t do that,[/SIZE][/FONT] the voice replied, [FONT=Garamond][SIZE=3]Just as you know, deep down, that I hold what could be the only way out.[/SIZE][/FONT]

I hate you, I just want you to know that, Zarko hissed, What’s this idea of yours?

As the voice that didn’t exist explained its master plan, a devilish little smirk began to grow out of the corner of Zarko’s lips.

Losing his lightsaber had been a ploy, although Zarko conceded that if he had allowed for the duel to continue on for much longer it likely would have happened anyway, only he would not have been so prepared for it. He had not anticipated his words would cut Silus so deeply, and so the ferocity with which the ‘Jedi’ attacked without hesitation was very unnerving.

It was close.

Unfortunately, the spell he had in mind was much too complex to be preformed in the middle of a lightsaber duel, but Zarko had ways of giving himself more time. Ways that required far less amounts of concentration. As Silus came in, Zarko dropped to his knees as if in a plea for mercy, and his had smacked hard, palm down, against the ground, as if to steady his balance.

Channeling the built of Force energy through his arm and into his hand, he muttered a few key words, and the ground directly underneath Silus exploded. Not literally, of course. But a rather large chunk of it literally blew from its natural spot on the ground, sending the Jedi far up into the air and then crashing down, a victim of gravity, on the other side of the clearing.

Immediately, Zarko began chanting. He had stunned the man, possibly knocked him unconscious briefly, but he was no fool. Silus was very strong, both in his mind and body. It would not take him long to recover from his little trip up into the sky. Already Zarko sensed the Jedi beginning to stir. Shutting that and everything else, he focused completely on the spell at hand.

Apart from building up the necessary Force energy required to manipulate the ground in such a way, Zarko had also searched his mind for the proper incantations. Now, as he raced against time and Silus’s recovery, the words appeared in his mind as if the very book he had originally learned them in was hovering right before him.

Luckily, Silus proved to be very slow to recover from the attack. His recuperation likely would have been quicker if Zarko had come rushing in, lightsaber in hand, swinging away. But the Jedi likely sensed no immediate threat in the area. Zarko, standing there with his eyes closed and muttering words under his breath likely didn’t present much of an imminent danger to his senses.

He would have shaken his head if he could have afforded enough attention away from what he was doing. Very disappointing. Very disappointing indeed. Zarko had expected much better from Silus, although he realized that if it was him that had gone on that ride, he wouldn’t have been quick to get up, even if Silus had charged in.

There! The gateway in his mind had been opened, the spell was nearly complete. All he had to do was to pick someone; some unlucky soul. Who should it be? A serial killer? A scared and confused little child? He wasn’t sure what would occupy Silus for longer, or, more importantly, what would be most entertaining.

[FONT=Book Antiqua][SIZE=1]That one…there,[/SIZE][/FONT] a voice inside him whispered. It was not the voice that he had heard so commonly before. It seemed familiar. Hadn’t he heard it…?

It didn’t matter. And he supposed the one the voice had pointed out in his mind was just as good as any other. Reaching in with his inner hand, he plucked the soul from the swirling vortex and with a few more incantations, abruptly shot him at Silus…mentally, of course. To the casual viewer, nothing had happened. But to Zarko, and Silus, if he had regained enough of his senses, there was a very beautiful and very terrifying explosion of blue aura.

Shrugging, Zarko moved to make his escape, but paused and reconsidered. Turning, and with a few quick words, he placed a two more quick spells on Silus. Just in case he didn’t notice at first what Zarko had done to him or completely ignored it. Either possibility wasn’t very likely, but Zarko decided he better make sure.

Both spells were very temporary pain spells. The first one he placed would give Silus the biggest headache he had ever experienced, drinker or not. The second one, and the one that Zarko believed would be far more effective, was placed in the…lower regions. It would feel as if someone had kicked him in the genitals and not taken their foot away.

Neither spell would last for very long, but they would be effective long enough for Zarko to make his getaway. Speaking of which…

The Dark Jedi, using the Force to increase his speed considerably, sped away from the clearing in which he had met and fought Silus, and did not look back. He hoped to make it to the spaceport before the rain let up. It would wash most of his footprints away. This was definitely the last day he would be spending on Naboo.

A shame, he thought to himself, It really was quite beautiful.

Meanwhile…

“Son of a bitch!” were the first words that spewed from his mouth, “What the hell was that?”

Looking around, his confusion deepened considerably.

“Naboo? What the frell am I doing here?” the man said aloud to himself. He looked up, “Is this one of those things you feel it necessary I see or something? I mean, come on, I can’t really do anything about…well, anything anymore, now can I?”

There was no response. He had not expected any. The man shrugged and looked more deeply at his surroundings. He was in a clearing, for some reason. Part of the ground had been torn up, but other than that, everything was normal. Oh, and there was a man on the ground. Hmm…that wasn’t a commonplace in the forests of Naboo. Or was it? He had been out of it for a while.

No no, things might have changed in his absence, but he highly doubted men laying clearings in the middle of nowhere had turned into a perfectly acceptable or highly stylish thing. Was he dead? When he thought about it, the man realized he didn’t really care much. There were so many people dying in so many places every second, the idea of death had kind of become a moot concept to him.

He looked down, checking to see if there was anything else he had missed, and that’s when things got very weird for him. The first thing was his body was blue. It was completely blue, and glowing. It was also translucent. It was kind of pretty, when he thought about it. The second thing was, he had a body.

The late Zark Ekan began to scream.