OPM Shi Long (Obelisk) Battle Team Arete of Arcona [ACC: I][SA:III]
SB / GC / SC-SoA / AC-RoF / DC-GP / GN-AgL / SN-AuL / Cr-3R-7A-8S-19E-3T-7Q / CI-SC / DSS / SoF / LS-AuL / SoL-BE / S:-1D-3Dk-3Rm-5P-6U-4B-8De-2Ret-2Dec-3Aff-1Rn
{SA: MVN - MVS}
Apostate of Sadow
Dossier# 7925
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The Ministry of Refinement, comp# 7334
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Dajorra System
Eldar
Shihon, Veridian Quarter
The more that things change, the more they stay the same.
Repeated in one way or another by thousands of species in thousands of languages, the sentiment can be said to be both a comfort and an allowance for one’s laughing in Fate’s face by way of a bittersweet acceptance.
For the people within the quarter’s slum district - separated forever from the decadence of the entertainment district a massive duraconstructed wall away - the saying was devastatingly accurate. The abject poverty festering in the shadows of the factories dotting this half of the area had first been established by Shogun Theros Feng, and though the man was twenty-five years dead, his legacy was astonishingly effective, as evidenced by both districts’ respective enduring states.
Despair, once institutionalized within a people, is a hard thing to shake off. It thrives on frustration of the impoverished, their dreams both fueled and shattered by the promise of the better life that sang within the sounds from beyond the wall, as it was a life they could never really hope to attain.
Shi Long had seen it all before. As the man still known as Sai, when he’d been Consul of Naga Sadow. It didn’t matter that now he was an Arconan by allegiance and walking as comfortably down a filthy street here in the slums as he would be down an arcade in the entertainment district. All the sights, sounds and smells were as they were on Aeotheran, in the “Tent City” as it had come to be called. There was a familiarity here, even down to the sepia-hued sky; Dajorra struggled mightily to shine through the dust-choked air.
Sentiment did not drive that familiarity, not for Shi. Though he’d seen these conditions before, he wasn’t here to serve some sort of self-imposed penance for any mistakes with Naga Sadow. That was Sai’s burden.
And, unknown to all but three in the galaxy, Sai was dead.
For Shi Long, the familiarity came from the feeling of oppression that pervaded the slums and fed a sort of anxiety that was smoldering beneath a veritable power-keg of potential violence. Conditions such as these always fostered these sorts of feelings.
Soon, those feelings would need release.
-=[]=-
Scant weeks had passed since the final actions on Ziost, since the Brotherhood’s forces had been ordered to stand down and recalled to their respective Houses and Clans. After being in kept in a state of warfare for as long as the Crusades, it stood to reason that there were still some hostile and aggressive feelings that required satisfaction.
It was no different from the Sadowan Assassin who’d followed Sai from Ziost to the slums in the Veridian Quarter. A powerful Battlelord, he was dispatched by the Overlord himself to destroy the Primarch; Astronicus Sadow was hard-pressed to forgive a slight, and Sai had committed the most grievous. Cloaked in the darkness of an alley just off of the street, he watched his quarry approach him from his right, oblivious to his presence. The Sith’s yellowed-eyes glinted with contempt as he struggled against his mounting anger to keep himself small in the Force. Though he was confident, absolute surprise would be necessary if he were to succeed as quickly as possible. The Sadowan knew that a long, drawn-out encounter would spell his doom, if not by the Obelisk’s hand then by the Arconans’ that would soon be alerted to his presence. His fate was sealed. Either he would win, or he would die.
His quarry was now just off of his position. The assassin closed his eyes, mentally counting off paces.
‘...three....four....five...’
The assassin stood. He allowed himself two heartbeats and a breathless whisper before he stepped out of the alley and into the light.
“For Sadow...”
-=[]=-
Shi Long continued to walk down the street, tiny plumes of dust arising with every step. Looking around, the Arconan got an inexplicable sense of anxious excitement from the surrounding residents as they went about their business. At first, he attributed it to the general malaise that had pervaded every nook and cranny of the district since it had been built. He’d gone there for precisely that reason; the place was a hotbed for trouble, and the most likely place that he’d be expected to go.
Especially by those who might be looking for him.
But, this feeling was different. It was more prescient, more...immediate. Although Shi didn’t get these impressions in the traditional sense, the Dark Side spoke to him in a different way.
It showed him way a ragged-clothed mother chided her child a bit too harshly for dropping a half-molded crust of bread to the ground; she cuffed him about the ear so hard that it bled. Curiously, the defiance in the youth’s eyes blazed as he stared her down.
It showed him many such little pockets of hurt and aggression; people shouldering one another forcefully as they passed in the street with bared teeth and threats; the preamble to a fight. Shi Long allowed the sensations to wash over him, and his breathing quickened, his body’s response to being flooded with endorphins and adrenaline.
Shi stopped in the middle of the street, just past an alleyway the sun’s rays had not yet been able to quite reach. He had the unshakeable feeling he was exactly where he needed to be.
On cue, a flimsy door to Shi’s right flew open, and a man burst out, a purple-knot on his forehead. A step behind was a slip of a girl, her hand seemingly dwarfed by the chunk of duracrete it clutched and her face wearing the mask of one who’d had enough of abuse and had decided not to take it anymore.
Shi’s head flew to his right at the initial sound, his hand filling with his lightsaber even before the man had taken his first stumbling step down the ramshackle stoop towards him.
Shi noted with a mild sense of wonder at how the man’s face was still a rictus of pained rage as he tenderly probed the knot on his head, still coming towards him as if what had happened were his fault. It might have been that focus on that man that had saved Shi; the Primarch, still locked on the man’s face, had seen it subtly melt into a look of questioning surprise at something behind Shi and just off his left shoulder.
Shi Long spun to his right, his right arm raising even as he sank. Nenshogeru roared to life, its ragged blade piercing the day as Shi took a knee and intercepted the assassin’s amethyst-hued overhand strike. Shi’s would-be-killer was stopped cold, his downward chop held in place just above the Obelisk’s face. Shi smiled despite wincing and turning his face away from the spark-spitting juncture of weaponry.
At that moment, the Sith allowed the Dark Side’s full fury to envelop him, thinking that his efforts to conceal himself - now thwarted, obviously - also made him weak; how in the Nine Hells was Shi keeping him at bay with only one arm? He bore down as he felt his muscles cord.
Shi’s smile shone incredibly bright, his teeth impossibly white. “Was wondering - unf - if you were gonna get....serious!” The Arconan felt the oily fire of the Dark Side fill the space around them, and he basked in the undercurrent of strife and hate roiling throughout the Force. Shi, still holding the lock with one arm, began to rise, despite the Sith’s increased strength. The unstable blade of Nenshogeru made a protracted lock of blades nearly impossible, and the purple blade of the assassin began to skip and jump along Shi’s.
The Sadowan disengaged, his teeth bared in frustration. He sprang back a pace or two, awaiting the customary lull when combatants would fill the space with useless banter, each assessing the other. Shi Long, it seemed, did not play by such “rules”. The assassin’s first foot fall barely disturbed the dirt of the road before Shi set upon him, sunset-hued crescents threatening to bisect the man at opposing angles.
A purple blade scarcely had time to weave a basket of protection around the assassin, such was the furious alacrity of Shi Long’s attack. The assassin’s blade jostled this way and that under the hammer-blows that were coming from Shi, and it was all he could do to create space from the man.
People had begun to watch warily from the relative shelter of their shanties. Their apprehension, confusion and collective fear wafted off of them, and both combatants’ senses were electric with the raw emotion flooding the area. Emboldened, the assassin broke off his defense and came at Shi low, the purple weapon scything the air where the Primarch’s legs began to pump in escape. Shi Long leapt away, stopping the assassin’s advance with a tangerine stroke that nearly clipped the Sadowan’s chin; the Sith sprang away himself, mounting a nigh-impossible leap that took him atop a small, one-story dwelling. The roof buckled under his weight, but held.
Shi Long tracked his attacker’s flight, and he offered a compliment in the best way he knew. “Alright; you have some skill.” The Sith atop the roof sneered, thinking Shi’s statement was a precursor to admitting defeat.
He should’ve spent more time studying his prey; all the Assassin thought of was the glory that would come with destroying the Arconan. Study would have granted him wisdom: this was a Fool’s errand.
The powerful Arconan extinguished his blade and drew upon as much as the Dark Side as he could. His skin began to nettle as the Force ravaged him, and he roared enthusiastically at the sensation. The assassin, sensing something amiss, began to step away from the rooftop’s edge, but it was too late for him. Shi Long thrust hands with hooked fingers in front of him, and the air veritably shimmered as the telekinetic wave he released slammed into the flimsy facade of the building.
A more sturdy, recently built building might have only suffered some shattered panes of glass or splintered transparisteel; as it was, the conglomeration of refuse and mismatched parts thrown together for shelter didn’t have a chance.
The entirety of the front blew inwards spectacularly, dirt and dust billowing outwards in a fog of filth. The assassin, not expecting the severity of Shi’s onslaught, lost both his ‘saber and his balance as the roof collapsed, and tumbled awkwardly towards the ground.
Shi Long did not wait, did not hesitate. Where Sai may have waited to let the “beauty” of his opponent’s fall culminate with him landing in a dusty, broken heap on the ground, Shi was an entirely different animal. The opening apparent, the Arconan leapt to meet the falling Sadowan. Nenshogeru was simultaneously drawn and ignited; in such a position, with Shi rising and the assassin falling, all that remained was a singular swipe.
Shi Long obliged the circumstance, playing his role perfectly. The sunset column tore through the man’s ribcage, decimating both flesh and bone alike in a ragged trail of ruin. The assassin moaned once, his body tumbling wetly a short distance from where it landed.
Shi whirled, a creeping madness evident upon his sun-bronzed face. Destroying his attacker, though satisfying for a moment, seemed to ignite an unquenchable thirst within him. The sensation was like a drug, a habit that needed to be fed. He was not done. Quickly, he scanned the area for another threat, another life to take. Many of the citizens who’d decided to stay to watch the fight shrank back from the heavily breathing Arconan.
A spike of frigidity laced Shi Long’s baritone when he spoke: “Oh, you’ll do nicely!” He began to advance on a small group...
...and the Arconan patrol that had arrived hit Shi Long with a barrage of stun-bolts. His legs buckled and went weak; the vision began to fade from him as he sank to his knees, his lightsaber and blood-lust for the moment, forgotten. As he fell face-forward into the dirt, his ears picked up what the patrol’s captain had relayed via commlink:
“He was right here, sir, just as you said he would be. Aye, sir; ETA, 16 mikes....”
Darkness claimed him.
-=[]=-
Taiyo Province
Just as voices heralded Shi Long’s brief flight into unconsciousness, so too did they welcome him back to the waking world.
As far as he could tell, he was in the back of a cramped transport. His wrists were manacled, and his face, hooded. Curiously, he could still feel the weight of both his blaster and Nenshogeru at his side.
‘Interesting...they bind me, yet keep me armed?’ Shi Long was halfway to figuring out the why when the first voice rang out.
“He is awake, that much I can tell.” The voice’s clipped pronunciations were of Hapan origin, reminding Shi of Marick. This voice was much younger, though and female. A bit of unsurety floated on her words edges. Shi felt the familiar twinge in his head that came with an attempted telepathic probe; his mouth’s corners curled as he knew that in his current condition, no one excepting the most skilled would be able to pry his secrets from him and even then, very painfully.
Another voice concurred. A familiar one. “I...can’t get anything except faint impressions. Even those are sort of...muddled. But, he is awake.” This woman, he knew Sai had been close to at some point. Her confusion was just as evident as the first woman’s.
“Then, let’s let him out, see what he has to say.” Gruff. Authoritative. He knew this one well. It had been with him in some recent actions, but this time the voice was strangely deferential, as if he were awaiting permission of a sort to open the transport’s bay.
Heartbeats passed, then Shi got the impression that permission to let him out was granted; there was a sudden flaring of the Dark Side as six Force-users simultaneously drew upon its ethereal boon. Shi was flattered after a fashion, and said so as the hatch swung upwards. A hand removed the hood, and he craned his eyes towards the light, squinting as he spoke.
“Six of you...for me? Seems like a waste, but I’ll make it worth your...”
His pronouncement stuck in his throat as his eyes adjusted to the fading daylight. Several of his confronters were more than familiar. The Chiss, the hulking Theelin. Even the older of the two women, her skin darkened by years of exposure to a desert sun. All had fought with him. Bled with him.
Killed with him.
Their credit established, Shi decided that for the moment they were of no threat, but he did espy the reason for the Theelin’s deference. Standing in the middle of the group, flanked by them yet clearly in charge, was an old acquaintance, as far as his memory served. The twinge in his gut confirmed the tall handsome man’s identity. All eyes were on Shi Long as he stepped out of the transport, bringing himself to his full height. He scanned their surroundings; the architecture here was familiar as well, calling to mind one of Sai’s ancestral homeworlds. It was as he were dreaming of an old neighborhood, where the buildings were identical but the numbers on the front were all skewed.
Things changing, yet remaining, indeed.
Looking again towards the group, his mercurial eyes locked with each pair; admirably, none flinched away from his gaze. The man in charge lowered his head a micron; the unspoken question did not go unheeded by Shi. He responded by holding out his shackled wrists, head cocked impishly to the side. “I promise I’ll be good.”
The tall man - Timeros - regarded Shi before he spoke to the older of the women - Socorra - at his side. “You are correct. He’s the same...but different. Curious.” He paused a beat before motioning to the patrol’s captain to release Shi Long from the binders. “No matter, it cannot be helped, and we have our orders.
“Welcome to Arete.”
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