epidemiology | (no subject)

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CHARACTERS: Kylo Ren and YOU
DATE: Early October.
WARNINGS: Potential roughhousing
SUMMARY: Fighting crime isn't really his schtick, but its an easy way to fix an anger problem.

[His father was a smuggler, once. When he was young, Han Solo had told him stories until he grew too old to be impressed by them any longer. It had been a simpler time. That period of life had been short.

Years as an enforcer of the First Order's will had put him in contact with enough people who knew how to put up a fight for their lives. Kylo Ren cannot be told to stay within city limits -- he'd always been free to roam the galaxy, whenever his presence was not needed for one thing or another, and he isn't about to be tied down because of a few so-called bandits.

He's already encountered one group of them near one of the mines and had dealt with them when they had made the mistake of attempting to turn on him. This is when he addresses the Audentes at large, but he doesn't vacate the area quickly. After all, he hardly reached city limits before coming in contact with them. Perhaps there were more -- and so he hunts, lightsaber in hand but deactivated.

But the moment he hears or senses someone get to close to him, he will hold it out and threaten with its activation, regardless of who comes up on him.]

I am busy.

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[Aang has, in fact, both completely missed Kylo Ren's earlier memo as well as the slew of bandits left behind. (Gotta keep things relatively PG-13 around here.) He's off doing his own thing, as most 12 years with slightly too much free time are wont to do, when he spots this strange new guy doing his dark broody thing.

Initially, all he intends to do is say hi - all strangers are friends until proven otherwise, right? - but his face immediately lights up as soon as the lightsaber, well, also lights up.]

Coooooool! [He's never seen a lightsaber before, don't judge him.] What is that?

[That's not the reaction he was expecting, so Ren turns enough to look over his shoulder and spots...a child.

Momentarily, he is distracted from his task and turns all the way around in order to consider him, straining his neck in order to do so. In spite of himself, Ren finds his brows knitting together. What was a child doing outside of city limits? What was a child doing among them at all?]

A weapon.

[First and foremost.]

It is called a lightsaber.

[The world is large and vast and moves in mysterious ways. And so does Aang, who looks not a inch perturbed by the solemnity of Kylo Ren's voice, who instead of keeping back where he is, bounces a few steps closer to get a better look. (Self-preservation and wisdom, two things he currently lacks at this moment in time.)]

Really? [His voice is dubious.] It looks like a glowy stick. Do you just wave it around and make angry noises to scare people off?

[Maybe this guy's just messing with him.]

[Luckily, this is not his first experience with this sort of conversation. A sigh comes heavy out of his nose, and he holds the blade out toward Aang, sideways.]

Go on then. Touch it. You'll lose a finger almost instantly, if you do.

[The red beam crackles angrily, as if to agree with Kylo Ren's remark.]

Do not say I didn't warn you.

[The temperature seems to drop a few degrees as soon as the lightsaber swings his way, and what previously had seemed warm and inviting now seems awfully ominous. Aang takes a step back, shrinking down.]

Thaaaat's okay. I'll trust you on that.

[Probably a huge mistake. Regardless, he presses on.]

What are you looking for out here? If you want to ride the sandworms, there're a bunch out the opposite direction.

[Good, a smart one. Finally.

Ren deactivates his saber then, and returns it to the clip on his belt while considering what Aang had proposed.]

Nothing in particular. I find things are often better seen with one's own eyes.

[--sandworms?]

[How cryptic. It sounds like something General Iroh would say, or maybe Bumi in his half-mad half-sane state. Either way, Aang wrinkles his nose, not quite sure what to make of this strange guy with his glowy stick.]

What's that supposed to mean?

Our dossiers were oddly dire, don't you think?

[He nods out into the sands and glances downward before continuing his pursuit. Its a nonverbal invitation of sorts -- he hardly preferred the company of children, but this one seemed simple enough. Perhaps easily manipulated into favors.

Couldn't hurt.]

I suppose such circumstances don't intimidate you, if you were with the sandworms.

[Whatever less than savory plans Kylo Ren might have lurking in the back of his mind goes straight over the small boy's head, Aang too obvious to note much more than this person's willingness to talk. Which, quite frankly, is enough for him.

He steps closer again, trailing behind.]

Well, I was trying to ride one but I guess it wasn't very happy with that because it kept trying to throw me off and burying itself under the ground. Do you think it'll work better if I try riding one of the lizards around here instead?

No, I do not.

[Optimistic, aren't we? He pauses long enough to give the horizon a scan, until he spots one of the aforementioned lizards a little farther off. Its not a pack of bandits to kick around, but its something to do that will keep him out of his own head for a bit.

He nods in said direction.]

You may try.

[!!!

That sure is a good piece of news, to which Aang responds with enthusiasm, head immediately lifting up and an excited grin spreading across his face.]

Lizards!

[Like penguins, but way better. (Maybe?) He takes a step forward then pauses, head swinging back towards Kylo Ren.]

You should come too!

[Ren pauses for a long moment, glancing back in the direction he had originally come from before stepping down to follow the boy. One of his own steps would likely cover six of Aang's -- but:]

I was headed in that direction anyway.

[Exploration is exploration, even with a teenager in tow.]

[It's enough of an assent for Aang, whose grin reappears at the sudden prospect of a new friend with which to go lizard-riding in these most trying of times with. (A friend with a dangerous glowstick, admittedly, but hey he's dealt with worse.)

It's also enough of an assent for Aang to resume his chatter, childish voice tumbling through all the possibilities that lie before them now as he bounces his way forward and towards the promise of lizards in the distance.]

Great! Have you ever been lizard-riding before? —Do you even have giant lizards where you come from? I was talking to this other guy, I don't remember what his name was, but he didn't have giant lizards where he comes from and he also didn't have elephant koi. He didn't even know what elephant koi were! He thought they had tusks and big ears and—

[He's gonna keep going like this until he's stopped...]

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sololoquy - 2016-11-02 16:44 (UTC) - Expand

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twinkle_toes - 2016-11-05 21:44 (UTC) - Expand

[ In the video, the bandit had still a breath of life in him. Death as a necessity in battle, Rey knew. Murder of someone incapable of fighting back, though, that was something else entirely, so when she saw it, she knew she needed to do something she'd been avoiding for a long time now.

If she tracked Kylo Ren down, maybe she would find the both of them—maybe in time to do something about it.

Usually she took conscious precaution to keep her awareness of him to a minimum, but distantly, even trying to wall herself off, she could feel the other Force users in Perdition's Rest. She knew well enough that meant Luke was not among their number anymore. Reassigned, she supposed, though she hadn't asked. Now, though, she chased that feeling, cleared her mind to try and isolate it so she could follow it back to its source.

That feeling drew Rey towards the mouht of the mines, where the hunched figure of Kylo Ren paced, leather glove gripped in a strangehold around the hilt of a lightsaber. It raised when he felt her approach, and she stopped with a few yards still between them. ]

I saw. [ There was no mistaking the distaste in her voice over what hobby he'd busied himself with. ] Where is he?

[For all Kylo Ren was, killing an unarmed man was hardly beneath him. Killing a pack of them, even less so. There had been one voice in his broadcast that had allowed them to live, though it was easy to mistake otherwise with their unconscious bodies littering the roadway on the way to Ren himself.

He owed Daenerys his respect, though he hardly appreciated being ordered around in public.

That said, Rey only gets a sneer in response once he realizes who has chosen to approach him. His hand lowers almost instantly, and he turns his back on her like she hadn't been there at all. He hadn't forgotten how he'd last left her -- a chance for her darker self to retreat, a chance she had taken smartly and readily. A piece of him still regrets letting her leave, rather than trying harder to force her into better terms with him.

But he will hardly say as much.]

You likely passed him, on your way here. Or he has gone away on his own. The former is more likely.

[ A trail of bodies suited her image of him, hadn't prompted her to stop to examine them in her ceaseless pursuit when she thought it was only a matter of time before he added to it. She knew what he meant, and she had passed them. But it was too easy to assume the worst of the monster that loomed before her, too difficult to see past the monster now that she had seen firsthand what he was.

And more to the point, she wanted to reassure herself that there was some dividing line between the two of them. ]

Dead?

[ The word hung heavy in the air, paradoxically full of presumption and fleeting, fading hope alike that maybe something could still be done. She thought of Lance and Keith and (most of all) Finn; people who she couldn't help. Bandit or not, he should survive. Being there in Perdition's Rest didn't give them a free ticket to do whatever they want. ]

[He moves forward as she asks her presumptuous question, moving aside a large bolder with the Force to keep it from impeding his immediate walking path.]

What concern of it is your's? They were criminals.

[Said after he he has put some distance between them, so she cannot immediately question him further without first catching up. The lightsaber stays in his hand -- he doesn't trust her not to immediately blow a gasket, given how she'd chosen to approach him.

And frankly, he still finds himself on edge after the entire ordeal. It had taken great control not to kill them instantly after he'd been told not to.]

[ Rey glances behind her, reflexively. In part she seems to be checking that no one else is here to see her, in part because she feels some stirring warning within her trying to tell her that pursuing Ren is a bad idea. She follows him anyway, boots kicking up dust with the urgency of her steps, though she never calls out for him to wait. ]

They deserved a chance. [ Her voice raised to reach him, even as she hustled to close the distance between them. Even he got one, one that he didn't deserve, one that he spurned and met with violence, but a chance all the same. ] They don't know what they're dealing with.

[ The Force, for Rey, still feels an awful lot like cheating. She's seen what Ren can do with it. She doesn't trust that the bandit ever stood a chance of survival against him. ]

If they didn't know what they were dealing with, then perhaps they should not have attacked in the first place.

[Finally, he spins around abruptly to face her, the moment she decides to quicken her steps to catch up to him, so they are only feet apart when she skids to a halt. He's forced his way into her mind before -- he knows the sort of woman he is dealing with.

And the sort of woman he was dealing with would not have rolled over if she was attacked by a group expecting to overwhelm her.]

You speak as though you would not have done the very same. You cannot deny it. I know better.

[ Like most things in Rey's life—her thirst for affection and praise, her stony efficiency, and now this—it was an overcorrection. She came to an abrupt halt before him, a stutter in her step as she tried to gain distance with paradoxical eagerness, like flipping a magnet's polarity so it repulsed suddenly and violently. She found few things more unnerving than Kylo Ren willing to share her company.

But looking into the funhouse mirror of her future unnerved her on a deep, existential level that left her wondering at the inevitability of such a fate, at how she could prevent not just her eventual fall, but Finn's death. Surely, Fate could be changed.

Surely.

She wasn't sure. And because she wasn't sure, she needed to find every avenue to convince herself, extreme stance on bandit slaying included. It had stuck with her to see the one she'd felled with Han's blaster amidst the blood and ruin Achilles left behind, for that macabre showed the truth of war, and made her wonder if she wasn't just a tool of it like any other, if she could resist the eventuality of her descent.

Now, to be called on it, she bristled. ]

Don't presume that a specter of an uncertain future gave you any insight into what I would do. You know nothing about me. You can't even stand to call me by my name.

[Ren's mouth clips shut almost immediately, shoulders straightening backward and spine stiffening. Not because she had the courage to stand up to him, but on the matter as to which she chose to call him out on. In truth, it had nothing to do with the machiavellian futuristic version of her that he'd briefly managed to spend time with before things returned to normal -- it had simply been what he'd known of her, the harsh environment she came from, the need to defend herself at every turn.

He had willfully pushed the entire ordeal to the back of his mind, and had not expected her to bring it up. Briefly, his nose wrinkles, as he tries to figure out how to reply back to her -- whether to address it, or to ignore it.]

You forget that I have seen your mind before. I know where you come from. I know all I need to know about you.

[He does not use her name, because she had tried to goad him into it. He does not use her name, because he can't tell if she wants him to or not.

There is a hanging pause between them, thoughts filled with the purple lightsaber -- the reminder of the dark enveloping him again, through her coaxing. The momentary horror he'd experienced, waking up in his own robes with his memories absolved and the whispers gone.

She could know nothing of that.]

I remember.

[ The hard, embittered way she says it twists the words to sound more akin to, I'll never forget. For a moment, all she can think of is the pain, lancing and constant like a drill bearing down, and her expression hardens into stone, begrudging him it.

Had she not turned it back on him, she would think it an attack all its own that he'd brought it up at all. But she remembered too the fear in his eyes when he realized that she could see into his thoughts too. That she had pushed back.

But still it unnerves her to her very bones. She knew what was in her mind, and not just in the way every person assumes they know themselves—she knew herself with the intimacy of a girl who had spent fifteen years with nothing but her own company to hold onto. Kylo Ren, though, knew what to measure it against. He had the scale, the instruction manual, the outside knowledge of what those inner workings meant when the Force entered the equation. When he says he knows better, when he says he knows all that he needs to, he speaks of the feral creature ready to tear him apart in the snow of Starkiller Base. It is easy to picture that beast doing the same to bandits, but Rey wonders how much of it is really in her.

Because Ren isn't the only one who has seen her, taken her measure, and knows how to read it. Instead of giving him the power of certainty over her, she held tight to the memory of Maz Kanata, the tiny green outlaw, telling her to hold the Light tight within her. ]

But what you've done goes beyond survival.

[ It's not the same, she thinks, stubbornly digging in her heels. ]

I wouldn't enjoy it.

Oh, but of course.

[A noise comes from his teeth, and he doesn't bother denying her claim. She's not exactly wrong -- he had enjoyed it, though his prime motivator hadn't been to hunt them. It had taken great control not to simply cut them down, as much as the entire ordeal had caused his gut to churn.

Things had been different since then.]

Whatever you must tell yourself to sleep.

[He doesn't believe it -- he's seen that feral stare before, not just one on the defense, but the pleasure of showing someone that she was stronger than their initial measure. He remembered that satisfied snarl she'd given him, when she'd managed to push back against his attack on her mind.

But, there some measure of satisfaction in him, to confirm to her that he'd done beyond what was necessary, a feeling he can't quite place. Its pushed aside -- he can't afford to dwell on thoughts too long.]

[ At night, desperate to sleep.

The accusation had changed forms, but it persisted nonetheless. And she did struggle still to find reprieve in the loneliness of her own mind, particularly now that she had the haunting patchwork memories of her future self to contend with. She could not deny that, though she would stubbornly insist that it was not for the reasons he asserted. ]

And you? [ Her grinding teeth and flexing fists were the only outward evidence of her frustrations, for she paralyzed her throat into a forced levelness to her voice. Turn it back on him, perhaps. ] Have you given up that hope? Or do you sleep soundly knowing what you've done? What you will do?

Hope.

[It sounds like an accusation, but he squints in her direction, obviously not comprehending why he shouldn't sleep. After all, everything he did was for the First Order. To bring about a galaxy free of conflict and question.

Or perhaps, she speaks of what she had tried to show him, of his father. Perhaps she speaks of the quivering Jedi he had once been. He forces both thoughts from his mind as soon as they appear, to prevent from betraying himself. Either way:]

Sleep comes soundly to those who serve the First Order.

[Unsurprising, of course. The whispers of the Dark had seemed like nightmares, until he was given the clarity to understand them. Nobody ever had vision like the Supreme Leader. Oh, and how he could use his guidance at this moment. No doubt, he should strike the Scavenger down and rid himself of a very persistent thorn in his side. It might almost be a fair trade to once again focus his attentions on his grandfather.]

I will continue, as I always have.

there is no way this could go wrong (there are so many ways)

oh god i'm ready for this

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omg sorry for the delay

same tho

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