thefinaljedi | Appointments

The lack of vehicles extends to farm equipment as well then, I take it.

[It's not quite a question. He hasn't seen a single car, truck, or vehicle of any kind. Most technology seemed very subdued at best, things like clocks and watches. Why hadn't anyone simply built more?]

.... My world was also a binary system, with a half-dozen moons as well. The desert alternates between rocky and sandy, the few species that live there suited to it, besides humankind. The only 'farming' that existed was the enslavement of my people and abusing them until they used their natural power to supply food and water to humanity. There were no gardens, no true forests, nothing like this. There is only one place where even a tree grew, and that supported by the will and gifts of one of my Sisters, trapped underground.

[Nothing changes in the tone of his voice as this is said, but black hatred boils up beneath it, the sort that could and has led to the massacre of millions. Knives throttles it back down neatly; he's had a lot of practice. Luke wasn't using his kind to keep this place growing. Only, as far as he could see, the dirt, sunlight and water.

Something close to serenity is easy enough for Knives to recapture, replacing the moment of violent dislike completely, though he eyes the offered hand roughly the same way someone might regard being handed a poisonous snake. But after a moment, with extreme reluctance, the offered hand is taken. Knives is careful to not squeeze in the process. Humans were so fragile.]

Knives Millions. I'm somewhat new to this prison.

[Luke can't help but sense that hatred, and while it makes him wonder he also knows better than to pry. Especially where Lucetians were concerned. There were enough people with pasts as checkered as his own, after all.

Luke's grip is surprisingly strong. Too strong, in fact. The cybernetics, and his own attunement to the Force had pushed him well beyond human standards. With a shake, he nods and retracts the hand.]

I thought so. I didn't recognize you, and I've been here over a year myself. If you don't mind my asking, are you from a starfaring civilization as well?

[Simple politeness, instead of curtness or hostility, is a real challenge to pull off when dealing with humans. Ignoring fifteen centuries of habit takes Knives quite a bit of effort. The best way: focus on other things.

Like the grip from a hand that felt cybernetic. The shift of cables under false skin and metal bone beneath that felt distinctly different from an ordinary and fairly fragile human hand. It's far more lifelike than he's used to seeing in prosthetics, but a strong grip doesn't seem to cause him any harm at least.

It's just.. interesting. He hadn't been able to tell at all, til then. If Knives' attention is diverted to the replacement hand, it's probably for the best.]

That's a surprise. Most people recognize me by virtue of thinking I'm Vash. [Which he didn't much like, but identical twins were identical twins, and he dealt with it by a different haircut and black hair instead of Vash's healthy blond.]

.... Technically, yes. My kind are more the engines than the passengers, but we are capable of space travel. Most of the travelling through space for proper passengers and crew is done in cryosleep to get from world to world but it's possible.

[He wondered if the Earth coalition had figured it out; it took them much shorter time to reach No Man's Land than it did for the original colonists to arrive.] ..I imagine once a safe faster-than-light method of space travel is found, 'spacefaring' will be a more appropriate term.

I don't know Vash well, but I've met him. I just assumed you were related, but you feel different. Your presence, that is.

[He quirks his head, his own curiosity now caught]

Your kind?

Apparently 'experiments' and 'shifts' are so common that several simply assumed I was he. It is ...refreshing to encounter someone who knows otherwise so quickly.

[Which seems genuine enough. It might be a common headache for identical twins, even though they rarely spent a lot of time around each other. It's true that at their most base points both Vash and Knives are very alike, but everything built on it.. well. Vash won't have the same issues with racist hatred that his brother has.

..Probably for the best.]

We are not human. [He seems willing to clarify, and there's nothing really imperative behind it, it's simply information.] We may look like them, and sound like them, and even act like them at times, but we are not. We're plants. Not like the ones growing here, closer to 'power plants' than anything related to a vegetable. Vash and I are the only living male members of our species. The rest are female, and most of them live in a communal mind-link. We are outside it, and thus are 'independent'.

[Knives pauses, turning a bit to consider Luke directly again.]

You are human, are you not? Is your species space-faring? You seem too .... calm to be a member of the parasitic and virulent sort of humanity I know of.

[Calm isn't the word he wants, which annoys him. But it's the closest he can get.]

[Luke absorbs that little bit of information without blinking. Human-like aliens are one thing he's more than passingly familiar with. It's a little strange, certainly, but nothing too shocking for Luke.]

Yes, I am human. My galaxy is a starfaring one, as well though we've developed faster than light transit. We can cross the galaxy in a matter of days or sometimes hours depending on the Hyperspace route. And as for my...calm...I am a Jedi. A peacekeeper in my galaxy.

[There's a brief moment of displeasure; Knives doesn't like humans. It's only for his missing true brother that he even bothers to try to be nice.]

Rarely do 'peacekeeper' and 'calm' go hand in hand, in my experience. Presumably being ... a 'jedi' does more for it than simply being an enforcer of supposed peace. Did your people develop the technology themselves to cross space, or steal it from others?

[Vegeta's people were parasites in that fashion, it made sense that other races would be too.]

[Luke's not sure he likes those prickles, but he shrugs them off for the moment. Knives is obviously a paranoid man.]

A Jedi is able to sense the Force. A kind of energy field that binds all life together. It...in some ways...makes us more than ordinary beings. In simple terms, it's a bit like magic, chi, or chakras. It's more than that, but that's an important part of being a Jedi.

And as for that, I honestly have no idea. Space flight technology has existed for over 25,000 years, and Hyperspace technology for nearly 10,000. Nobody is precisely sure.

[It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. ... Though now that he was on a different world, maybe it really was paranoia.

The explanation he's given doesn't quite.. make sense, beyond 'it's something like magic', which he'd been encountering more often in luceti than any other time in the past century and a half.]

And this somehow influences your temperament? I know little of magic, chi or chakras, such things have little influence where I'm from. But the energy of life..

[Maybe that. Maybe. It's put aside, without the thought being completed. Twenty-five thousand years was a lot longer than humanity's had most any form of technology, as far as he knew. It must have come from some other race, but whether given or taken would be ..long lost to time.]

One would think that would be the sort of thing to keep in the record books. The harnessing of fire. Discovery and utilizing of electricity. When and how spaceflight became so commonplace that cross-galactic journeys aren't the task of lifetimes..

It does. It has a calming influence, if one meditates on it enough.

[Luke smiles sadly at the commentary on time.]

Knives, I don't even know much about my world's history from sixty years ago, let alone centuries. War is a pretty constant thing, and it destroys a lot of the libraries. Not to mention propaganda.

['A calming influence'. Knives will withhold judgment on that one, until he has more information to work with. Meditation certainly never helped anyone where he was from. And what Luke follows it up with only lines certainty in that it doesn't help anywhere else either. The brief glance Luke's given is terribly, bitterly unsurprised.]

Pathetic.

[There's no real anger behind the word, but he does mean it.]

Species too stupid to know to not destroy everything they come across seem overwhelmingly common in the universe. I'd hoped to find out that my own people and the sandworms aren't the only peaceful races in existence, but the only commonality in almost every species I've heard of so far is how mindlessly hell-bent on warfare you are. The rest of us will be better off when you finally drive yourselves to extinction in an orgy of ignorance and ruination.

[It might be a peculiar statement to make, but Knives clearly doesn't consider himself among those violent peoples. Maybe he isn't; he's paranoid and suspicious, but he doesn't seem inclined towards destruction without considerable provocation.]

[Luke doesn't bristle, he doesn't react at all really. He just replies in a flat voice.]

Have you never dealt with oppressive governments then? Some men are mad for power, or just want to hurt people. And in my world, sometimes those people find themselves in positions of power, or with similar powers to my own. The reason wars happen is because ideologies clash. And because sometimes people can only stand so much. I've been in a war since I was eighteen. I'm aware of how pointless it is, but if someone tried to take your home and your life, would you defend yourself or not?

I've dealt with oppressive governments.

[Something dangerous edges into his tone, but it's restrained. Control is something Knives has long learned. A lack of it led to disaster.]

Those that made the mistake of opposing me I gave to the desert. Those who imprisoned and leeched off my people, I made pay blood for blood. And when their oppressive governments came to stop me..

[His smile is thin, humorless. Knives knows plenty of war.]

Those too were shown the ...errors of their ways. Don't think to lecture to me of what one might do to protect home, life and people. Because of that terrible task, to save my people and my home, hundreds of millions of human lives were reduced to one shattered city. But I didn't destroy their histories and works. Only their lives. One cannot learn from mistakes if there is no lesson left behind.

[Knives turns to watch the single sun rise, still half-expecting a second to rise with it.]

Perhaps your painfully short lives is why you wage war so carelessly. I sickened of bloodshed in a handful of decades, and kept on only to preserve my kind alive and safe. I was the only one who would, who could rise up and fight back. Ideology? Ideology alone kept me from wiping out the last remnants of mankind on my world, then taking the ships they came to kill me with and burning them from the galaxy.

[For Knives, it's a speech. The dangerous tone had long since bled out, leaving only weariness. He sounds, seems, much older than his apparent mid-twenties.]

I know plenty of warfare, Luke Skywalker. Of oppression, suffering and pain. But I learned ..am still learning, to walk away. To put hatred and fear aside and try to believe in someone else's foolish dreams for a better future. It isn't easy. His belief that life can be lived in harmony and peace is ignorant and stupid. It's a naive dream, but I've chosen to believe in it. Perhaps it would do your kind some good to do the same.

[Again, Luke silently bears it, calm, cool, and collected.]

Perhaps it's our short lives. I don't know about that. I'm human, and I can only speak from what I know. But putting aside emotions and trying to build a better future is exactly why the Rebellion rose up in the first place. And why others have. I don't know about your world, and I don't like using such blanket terms, but the people who've caused these wars, the Sith, are truly evil beings. They're consumed by their own lust for power, and they've stopped at nothing, time and time again, to take control over the entire galaxy.

That, Knives, is something the Jedi will not allow. They are our dark mirror, our opposite, and for the last thirty years they've ruled my galaxy. I won't bore you with the details, but when they're purging entire sentient races from existence and destroying planets with billions of lives on them, it goes beyond hatred and fear. It comes down to right and wrong.

Maybe we'll learn a better way in the future, but for my people there's only so many options when it comes down to fight or die.

[For a moment, when the plant smiles, it's not the thinly veiled unpleasantness from before. It seems almost genuine, and a touch sad. And it makes him look a lot more like his brother.]

There's always other options, if you look for them. I didn't think so for a long time, but that less-- [He pauses, shaking the thought off without completing the sentence. Thinking too much on his brother, his real brother, and the things that Vash had done, hurt too much in his absence.] Right and wrong, justice and injustice, are constructs of civilization; and civilization, as you know, is very, very easily rewritten. What you might call murder another might call revenge, or justice, or even mercy. Even 'truth' and reality itself is a matter of perspective.

[The smile fades.]

I should like to be bored with the details of these Sith and their rule, actually. If there is true, genuine evil I would like to know what it is before I encounter it, if I am not already in that category myself. This place draws all kinds.

[Knives isn't evil. He's troubled and damaged and violently suspicious but he has a stronger grasp on the light than the darkness. Did trying to change from the killer he was matter in the face of 'right and wrong'?]

I'm not sure the Empire or the Sith could be written as anything less than evil. They've wiped out entire star clusters, destroyed suns and planets, and poisoned more worlds than can be counted. [All true. Luke's voice gets a slight edge to it now. He doesn't really like thinking about Alderaan, or what they did to Mon Calamari, or Taris, Dantooine, and other worlds in just his lifetime alone.]

But if you want to know more. The Sith are an order of Force Adepts as well, tapping into the Dark Side of the Force. It's viewed as a quick path to power, and the Dark Side actually twists the body and mind. They use fear, anger, aggression, and hatred to draw out more of the Force and it leaves them scarred and in some cases quite mad. This is converse to the Jedi philosophy which, while not perfect, rarely leads to destructive rage and madness. As for their rule...well, there have been several times they've had great power but the most recent one was by far the most successful.

Thirty years ago, a Sith Lord masquerading as a politician managed to gain a lot of political power in the Republic Senate. He used this influence to spark a war, and as it came to a close he took complete control and staged a military coup that killed the majority of the Jedi protecting the people. He turned the Republic into an Empire, and put into place a harsh government, proclaiming himself Emperor. Some of his policies included harsher treatment for non-humans, xenophobic slavery, experimentation on living sentient life, and even women not being allowed to hold rank in the military anymore. Several species were brought to the brink of extinction and entire worlds were harvested for funding to create superweapons. One had the power to destroy a planet in a single shot, another could do the same to a star. They were used a few times, and billions if not trillions died. Ruling through fear was their goal, but a rebellion formed, and the Emperor was defeated. He's been dead for about three years now but the Empire still fights in his name.

[Knives doesn't seem to care if there's an edge to Luke's voice, either unconcerned about painful memories or simply not thinking they're relevant. It's hard to tell, and he's not explaining. Instead he's listening; he did want to know, and even if Luke's original statement hadn't been an offer, the plant was going to take the not-offer to explain anyway.

All of it is placed against what he already knows and weighed as to whether he'd categorize it as 'evil'. Politics didn't matter much, or harsh governments, but he could weigh slavery and the stripping of resources and superweapons. It's all weighed and measured with thoughtful consideration, far more thoroughly than anyone probably should. After all, it should be obvious these are acts of heinous evil, shouldn't it?

.. Perhaps not. Aliens do have different views than humans, after all.]

How long was this Sith Lord in power for? A generation? Two? More? How long was it from the Empire's inception to rebellion by its populace? Where did the rebellion start?

[Each question isn't posed precisely rapidfire, but with measured care, each one thought about before it's presented. Knives wanted to know, but he wasn't just asking questions for the sake of questions. If he was going to bother, he was going to make sure his questions weren't foolish.]

Is this 'Force', in both its light and dark aspects, natural?

Palpatine was in power for two generations. And the Rebellion began immediately following the Empire's foundation. It didn't gain traction until about sixteen years ago, when several senators were able to take a stand after traditional planetary governments were displaced in favor of military and martial law.

As for the where? Corellia. A major population center near the center of the galaxy. That's where the rebellion ceremonially began, though the first actual act of rebellion predated it by a year, on the Rim World of Kamino.

[Now Luke can't really understand why Knives is asking so many questions, about places and people who he's never heard of and will likely never visit or meet, but if he wants answers it's the polite thing to provide them.]

The light is natural, the dark unnatural. The corruptive influence comes from an outside source that we have never really understood fully.

[Luke hasn't had the ~~good~~ fortune of being exposed to Abeloth yet, for example.]

[It's hard to say that he might never meet such people, in this place of all places. That he'll ever see these worlds? That's unlikely; Knives doesn't have the lifespan anymore to even try to see if he might be in the same galaxy, just some forgotten region.

It doesn't keep him from listening, and building a small mental timeline. It didn't strike him the same way it did Luke. True evil seemed... different, to him, than simple destruction of worlds and lives. Terrible things, yes, but not the worst.]

If you don't understand its source, how do you know it's unnatural?

[There's absolutely no sense that Knives is arguing that the Dark Side IS natural, simply.. thinking aloud. He's never encountered this sort of thing before, but all power was just power where he's from. How it's used is what makes it bad or good..]

It might only seem so to you, because the 'light side' is your natural habitat so to speak. A fish might find the air unnatural and deadly, but it isn't to things meant to be part of it.

[Luke shakes his head, huffing a faint laugh.]

Unnatural might be the wrong word. Tainted is probably more right, as it seems into the essence of things that use it and changes them. It does have a mind of it's own. I know from experience.

[As close an admission as he will give that he's dabbled himself. Luke Skywalker is no stranger to the Dark Side and it's offers of power.]

The fish analogy would work better if you thought of it more as a fish in oil. It can survive there, but eventually the oil will overcome it. It's the same for the Dark Side. It will eventually consume and kill anyone closely associated with it.

[The plant weighs this.]

Although it's stretching the metaphor to silliness, as I know very well what you are intending at this point, it is still overwhelmingly tempting to point out the bacteria that can still live and thrive in and on oil.

Not so much this 'dark side' of yours, I imagine.

[Questions with purpose, though stalled for a moment. It was best to know and not need the information, than need it and not know..]

I suppose you would be disinclined to explain further about it having its own will. Does the 'light side' have a will of its own as well?

[If Luke was adverse to the negative, perhaps he'd be more open with the positive.]

And so can some fish, at least where I'm from. But they've evolved differently, because of the influence of the oil. Changed by the outside influence.

[Star Wars has some weird fish.]

I wouldn't be disinclined at all. The Dark and the Light both have their own will. The Light often guides people towards answers, and sometimes offers visions to point people in a direction. When it exerts it's will, an adept will experience a moment of clarity. As for the Dark, it brings out violent urges, accompanied by rage. It too offers visions of the future, but often warped, and they aren't quite as accurate as the Light Side's.

Life finds a way to adapt to any environment it seems. There is little oil on my world to adapt to, but the desert has many other things living in it.

[The likes of which Luke might well be able to make reasonable guesses at, being raised on a desert with binary stars as well.]

If both the Dark and the Light offer obvious benefits, else nobody would use them at all.. given the drawbacks of using the dark's power, such as uncontrollability, why would anyone turn to it at all? Is it stronger? A simpler path?

[Knives can't use the Force. The power he had was.. fairly different and he had no intention of using it. But it's interesting to know.. and if he ever happened across another Jedi he wouldn't be completely helpless by way of information.]

...Though, warped how? Have you experienced visions from both sides of the spectrum? Is there a neutral medium between them, or simply black and white?

[That's an easier question to answer.]

It's far simpler to grow angry than it is to master your own emotions. The Dark Side is a quick route to power, and in some ways, mainly ways to destroy or hurt, it is more powerful. But it can't heal or shield like the Light.

[Luke nods at that question, too.]

I have experienced both, yes. During my training, I was confronted by visions from the Dark Side, and it's something my family struggles with. Steering clear of our tempers. As to the...grey? Yes and no. That's a matter of debate between different philosophers. I personally feel there are some aspects of the Force that are entirely neutral, and some that are good and some evil. Others feel differently, but as I don't agree I can hardly speak on their behalf impartially.

[This, Knives can't deny. He struggled to keep his own hatreds and fears at bay on a daily basis and at least maintain outward calm and not act on those destructive, violent habits. Anger came so much easier than calm, but he tried.

He tried very hard. One day he wasn't going to succeed..]

Rage provides little power that I've experienced. Only the blindness to ignore all else in favor of the target.

[It's not an argument for why anger is good. Far from it.]

Were I younger, perhaps such a quick route to power would be tempting indeed.

[Knives still sticks on the idea of power itself being evil. It didn't feel right to him somehow. What one chooses to do with it could be wrong or right, but the power itself..? He thinks about it a moment before putting it aside.]

It's a good object lesson. You should try it, for practice. To weigh another's perspective as neutrally as you can, and to keep one's own biases and expectations out of it is an incredible struggle but often valuable. ..Perhaps on something not quite so potentially corruptive as this Dark Side, but other things.

Appointments

[Action set in a dishpan to dry]

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[Action and eggs with a muffin]

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[Action lightly poached]

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[Action seasoned with too much pepper]

[Action seasoned with too little soy]

[Action with peppers and onions] AND VERY BELATED AAAAaaa sorry

[Action with steak and potatos] s'ok

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[Action with a stolen pear]

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[Action with a pineapple, unsliced] Sorry for delay, job's been brutal ;_;

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[Action with a smidgen of pigeon]

[Action with a pinch of finch]

[Action with a salty winch...for loading boxes]

[Action with a stethoscope.]

[Action with a periscope! Dive Dive!.] And sorry this is short.

[Action on a bouy] NEVER FORGIVE

[Action on a pier] NEVER FORGET

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[Action on a piece of mind!]

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[Action, slightly beer flavored.]