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						[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XGV_RnBL4]Coruscant, Domus of the Pontifex Maximus[/url]

[i]Gliding through the marbled floors and fine carpets of the Pontifex's domicile, Highsinger moves towards his master's quarters with both purpose and elegance, his near-silent servomotors and his carefully measured steps making the near 7-ft tall and several hunded kilo assassin droid an almost ghost-like manner in his movements, the security systems barely managing to catch glimpses of his presence. Eventually eaching her personal quarters, Highsinger pushes the intercom and doesn't even wait for his master to respond to him as she already knew what her servant had been coming.[/i]

[color=ec008c]"Master, General Veers and the 501st stand ready for deployment, They hunger for battle.” The droid remarked, with it’s usual inscrutable tone.
[/color]

"Your courtesy protocols have been expanded upon my old friend" The doors had been opened to her private apartments and the servants knew well enough to give the murderous machine a wide berth. A female stood on a bent knee, her eyes twitched with fury, she was clearly being restrained there by the will of the Droid's master and her own. "An inquisitor who converted, or so she pretended too, thinking to deceive me. There's hope for her yet '' Miryia, the Empire’s Pontifex Invictus remarked in a casual tone as though she were describing something thoroughly mundane and remarkable. A  former inquisitor was binding the Arkanian's waist with a Shimmersilk scarf, another of her followers was attending to her hair, braiding several threads and adorning them with armor and gemstones. Gemstones which would have borne a striking resemblance to the accessories she wore during the fall of Lothal in the early stages of the war.  Though, not her war prizes, one relic did remain from her time, beyond her lightsaber. The femur of a Sithling, some six years old, finely polished and laced with aurodium inlays highlighting a flower pattern was bound to a slender braid that rested over her collar bone. "I took this from a museum, evidently, the Emperor did not think my legacy was worth purging" something flickered in her eyes, a mix of contempt and outrage, a look that caused the inquisitor who had finished tying her sash to back away slightly, knowing the danger she was in when the woman who killed so many of her comrades was in one of those states.

"Impudent heretic, if he only knew...if he only knew" she hissed, before laughing slightly. Ordinarily Janus wore a cuirass but little else in the way of armor, today they were adorning her in a full suit of armor in the vein of the Jedi of old, though more form fitting. But the bone in her hair was all Highsinger needed to see, to guess her intent at Endor.


The Invictus meant to make a particularly violent example of the heretical Nightsisters even if she had instructed the Imperials to treat the regular Republic rabble kindly.

More than that, she armored herself as though she were expecting Jedi,.



"Tell me, my master of murder, how does the Abomination's order of defectives measure up their immediate predecessors? And how do both measure up to what we were..long ago..what I was once" Too many would be tempted to lie to her to appease her and too many fools couldn't discern the nuances in power and discipline and knowledge, to these untrained ignorant masses all Jedi appeared the same, save for the greatest. Only in the Highsinger could she trust.


[i]Highsinger's photoreceptors whirred as he focused upon the decorations on his master's form, his memory banks pulling up the archived footage of the last event he had seen his master in such panoply from thousands of years ago, back to the great wars against the Sith, back to when the title of Jedi actually meant something more, something worthy of praise and respect... And then comparing his catalogued memories to his most recent escapades, from the century leading up to and to the dramatic end of the Clone wars.[/i]

"[color=ec008c]They became corpulent upon their own self-righteousness, foolishly dedicating themselves to the ideals of peace with neither the strength nor the will to enforce it. Degenerating to the point of being little more than the custodians and minders of a Galactic Republic whose esteemed members spent more time squabbling over money and image than representing their people.[/color]"

Inwardly Highsinger noted how the Republic hadn't really changed all that much, but without Jedi like his master to keep the ideals the Republic and the order was fonded upon alive... It resulted in the fiasco that was the Clone Wars and likes of Palpatine and Dooku seizing power that they were unworthy of wielding

She looked down, eyes flickering across her fitting room towards the miniature courtyard that stood between closets. Her jaw setting in her mouth "I slept for too long" she spoke through clenched teeth. "the collapse was supposed to be the end, but this..diminutive fool took up the mantle" her tone relaxed somewhat as she turned her attention to the kneeling apprentice. The woman wasn't in any pain from the hold, which was the point, Janus could keep you there, prostrate for as long as she needed without exerting enough pressure to cause anymore agony than the numbness and circulatory issues with being that position for so long. "How long have I held you in penitence"

"Seventeen hours mistress"

"Truly?" she asked as if she'd forgotten. The poor wretch nodded and with a gesture, her hold was released and she had to be carried out, unable to stand with her legs asleep and her muscles on fire. "And how..does this....Homunculus..Skywalker compare?" she queried, forgetting the idiot student for a moment. Aladar was likely going over battle plans, obsessing and preparing..dense..not dumb..not like that reprobate.


"They thirst for honor, Veers and the five hundred and first, more than battle I think..honor and redemption" She muttered, her eyes darting to the droid who was as lost in his own introspection as she was. Often causing her to wonder, if this butcher was the most soulful being she'd ever encountered, a kindred spirit. "I slept too long..this rot has flourished, the perversity of this infestation knows no bounds" she hissed. "Fungal in nature, it has proliferated across the stars yet again"

[color=ec008c]"Such goes a garden that laid untended."[/color]

[i]Highsinger pauses as he looks up Luke Skywalker on the Holonet and Imperial archives. Surprisngly, Highsinger never had plans for him; at least ones that can be acted upon on short notice as the droid knew the risks of trying to assassinate a war hero surrounded by both security and paparazzi whenever he made a public appearance and the fact that if the rumors regarding his encounter with Jabba the Hutt had been true...[/i]

[color=ec008c]"Skywalker is young, left trying to recreate from what little remained of the degenerated Jedi Order after the late "Emperor" had spent the last two decades destroying every remnant of it. But underestimating him is folly, as somehow he and his allies were able to kill a powerful Hutt crime lord, doing what hundreds upon hundreds of assassins over nearly half a millennium could not."[/color]

The droid needed to say little else, his master would clearly realize the implications that this Skywalker was either strong in the force... Or simply blessed with infernal luck.


"Gardens?" The woman let out a melodic if slightly unhinged laugh. Her eyes flickering with amusement "Was it Gilad or Dericote that prompted you to pick up garden metaphors?" Her voice rang with amusement, truth be told she enjoyed both men for very different reasons and yet each were quite indispensable for her. Eivor Dericote for his methodical nature, his relentless devotion to order and preparation made him a most formidable enemy and if she'd had such a gifted virologist in the past, well. Gilad, he was Glorious a creature she could build a government and an army around, a bulwark. Her attendants were sliding her gloves on now and she pulled one hand away, dark black suede contorted around small armor patches as she rested the knuckle bones of her index and middle finger against a pale chin. His assessment of Skywalker lending credence to a suspicion she harbored about the nature of this Skywalker youth. "He searches for me, clumsily, like a child playing with his father's telescope for the first time, he's at Yavin, grasping and clutching at the stars using the amplification chambers built by that...apostate" she spat the word "Exar Kun" after a breath to compose herself regarding highsinger with calm eyes. "Do you remember that...Tinkerer, the Sith who set himself up in the old Jedi temple at Dantooine? The one whose grandchildren you pulled from his daughter's womb?" something flickered in her attendant’s eyes, the former Inquisitor being used to the cavalier sadism of the Sith, but there was something absolutely unsettling about how casual she was with the description. She took no pleasure in it, she did not enjoy describing the annihilation of a family, there was no hatred either really, only disgust and it was minor.

The coldness was unsettling..To the Invictus those who followed the legacy of Ragnos and Adas as she called it were simply a scourge of barely sentient vermin. To commit such atrocities as if one were an exterminator.


The woman breathed a sigh of relief as the Invictus dismissed her with a look, a look that sent the other servants scurrying. Alone she turned "He postulated that a force user sufficiently talented in alchemy could...push the force, to create life. It is a view the ancient Je'daii held as well, though they recognized the folly of it..the inherent dangers of pushing such a volatile power source, they feared it could create something akin to a matter anti-matter reaction. One of the Inquisitors I butchered when they woke me, he was a Jedi of some station in the old order, or what passed for one at least. As I tore through his mind, I stumbled upon memories of an Anakin Skywalker and the prophecy of the chosen one..and I wonder...Do you have access to biometrics from the....boy..." she queried "I would have them to study for the journey to Endor"

[i]
Highsinger showed no open reaction to the reminder of the Sith bloodline he ended other than a single click of his photoreceptors, as no matter how masterfully crafted as he was inside and out; he can't honestly be expected to remember every single life he took. There was simply not enough space in his memory banks.
[/i]
[color=ec008c]"I'm afraid not master, Luke Skywalker was unregistered in the Imperial census. Fitting as his ISB file indicates that the Skywalker lineage was from Tatooine."[/color]
[i]

With the implications that the NR kept his dossier and data in their internal net


And that the Empire weren't exactly in control of the pirate port planet.[/i]


"Tatooine? Indeed? And the boy doesn't look like he's at least two decades older?" Her eyes narrowed, Tatooine was a ruined world where people aged faster than normal due to the harshness of the environment. "I shall have to find out for myself, but to share a secret with you. I believe this...boy...to be the continuation of something.." she turned and made to leave resting a hand on the droid's shoulder though it stood half a foot taller. "Come, I must address the men I am asking to go to war for the soul of this Galaxy" she waved a hand, the box of ornate wood which housed her lightsaber. The box opened and out it floated, fastening to her side, the final touch, Janus never allowed anyone near her blade, nor near her when she retrieved it, none save Highsinger and Aladar.


"Do you feel it? The tension? They know, the crossroads are upon them...At last, we can continue our great works old friend...At long last"


[color=92278f]"I do, master. But it is not a bad feeling, it is something I first felt back during the great crusades against the Sith. Nostalgia I believe it is called."[/color]


At the term crusade the woman's eyes flickered with macabre laughter, recalling the horrified looks in the eyes of her fellow council members when the word had first been used. One even gasped, the overdramatic fool that he was, horrified at the mere thought of engaging in something that brought the order dangerously close to the Pias Dae of old. Fools, blind, myopic, weak and blasphemous fools. "Remember when I first used the word Crusade? During a speech over Malastare? The horrified looks on the faces of the council" she sneered as they made their way towards the grand entrance of the palace, the roar of the crowd gathered and the marching boots of the five hundred and first, of the infantry that would accompany them roaring through immense doors and great hallways. 

"Fools, they fetishized the force, believing it to be something other than an energy source, the Sith..worst of all and both dying like Banthas herded off a cliff for that energy and not in something pure..something true" Miryia's voice resonated about the arches, strong and rich and yet, there was something serpentine in her voice, a slight rasp that betrayed the madness that lay below. "Civilization, justice, order..those are values worth servitude, peace is nebulous and one can have peace while destroying a plant and one can lie awake at night in a quiet galaxy unable to sleep for the conflict within..No.....Jedi...Sith..it is over..I have returned"



It always amused her, how the desperate and the damned walked hand in hand with the demoralized and the righteous. She could see it now, not even needing to look through the great doors of her palace, were she blind she could see it. She’d feel it, as she sensed it now, within the throngs of admirers, sycophants, devotees and the curious, amid the myriad of soldiers lined up in parade. The presence of the inquisitors, the surviving acolytes whom hadn’t undergone the spiritual revelation Shayne, Aladar and the others had, or who hadn’t fled to Jerec.

Those who had gone to ground, they cloaked themselves in the force and obscured their faces from the surveillance drones using cloaks or personal holoprojectors. They hid themselves well, at least by the standards of their so-called peers. She smiled venomous as the doors began to open, good she thought. Let them see, as the galaxy would soon see.

Her aides, most human, but the two Nautalan slaves she was gifted remained hidden, their heads bowed. Excellent, they learned after that one clutching low born trollop from the Imperial Bureau of public relations tried to sneak her way up behind the Invictus to be part of a press conference a week back. She’d shattered that one’s legs and threw her off the railings, allowing her fall far enough that the act of stopping her fall snapped the barnacle’s spine. The synthetic vertebrae that now allowed for her to walk upright and use the lavatories without assistance would be an eternal reminder to those who dared to cling to her as though she were some Kaminoan whale. 


Doors opened, the onrush of cheers, the roar of voices was almost an act of violence in its intensity. Amusing as the massive throng of crowds were pushed back with enough room to allow for the Five Hundred and First and her regular army loyalists to assemble in formation, dressed not for parade but for war. On the steps of the great palace, stood General Veers, Grand General Cardinal, Admiral Karius, Supreme Commander Palleaon and Grand Admiral Sloane, her loyalists and the neutrals, she noticed Isard standing far across the promenade, no doubt attempting to make some grand gesture of opposition though she stood below her. 

Highsinger remained where he always knew to remain but standing tall and proud to the left and the right of her a step lower, was the Bothan and prepared for war Aladar. She’d opted to dress alone, armor herself with minimal aid and did so in deference and solemn contemplation. It would be the first time she drew a lightsaber in battle in two decades for reasons other than hate. Descending the grand staircase were those Inquisitors and Dark acolytes, Jedi survivors who sought her out and those untrained whom she conscripted, each in a shining enabled armor of indigo and silver. Each had their lightsabers drawn and lowered. The serpent smiled as she stepped forward, no voice amplification device would be needed for this, merely her will alone and the power of the force.


Veers gazed at her with the look of a zealot who found a new calling in service to her ideals, Cardinal with hopeful eyes, the inscrutable madness of the Va’ash family filled the Bothan’s eyes and Slaone’s guttural envious glare meant little to her, only the studious eyes of Palleaon caught her attention. There, she thought was a man who could be one of her greatest allies, or greatest foes.


Karius was committing his usual mistake and confusing the power of ceremony with arrogant pomp, but she’d come to expect the amusingly anti-social Admiral to error when it came to reading her, fortunately when it came to war he was far more robust. His disinterest amused her and she almost, almost laughed. Instead, she folded her arms behind her back, the wind blowing her cloak about her tall form in a way that caused Sloane to wonder if she was less an Arkanian and more an Alsakan cobra. Purple eyes flickered with intensity and when she began to speak, her voice seemed to echo off the very walls and floors of Coruscant. “Three weeks ago I woke from a long, interminable sleep, dark were my dreams. Dark...That word has evolved a very different meaning for you all hasn’t it? Dark was the Emperor in his palace which he wrought from the bones of the Republic he strangled..Or so the band of terrorists and class traitors calling itself the New Republic would say.” she slowly shook her head.

“The death of the Republic began long before that, long before any of you were born. The death of the Republic came in it’s rebirth over Ruusan! When Sith and Jedi alike died until only one and two hundred remained of each! One Sith, two hundred Jedi and from that broken echo of what was, sprouted the failings of House Valorum! The failings of the Senate! The failings of the Jedi!” A hand slid from her back and she gestured forwards to the shadow of the immense personal palace of the Emperor “MANY OF YOU HAVE ASKED ME WHY I DID NOT TAKE THAT AS MY RESIDENCE?! After all, am I not indebted to the Empire? Have I not taken up arms to protect her citizenry? I have” she nodded her tone growing distant, melancholic. “I have, but I do not do so, with joy, for the Emperor was dark..The Emperor was rotten..And the Emperor designed his new order to fail without him”

The crowd went silent, save for gasps, soldiers looked on intensely, this was a truth many had come to realize but to hear it from her. “However! The treachery of the Sith does not absolve the New Republic of it’s evil!” She roared that out, her eyes ferocious and indignant. “NOR DOES IT ABSOLVE THE NEW JEDI ORDER OF ITS FAILURE TO CORRECT PAST SINS!” this last part came out with such vehemence many were shocked into focus, their murmurings silent.

“How many of you here in Coruscant have watched brother and sister, mother and father? Son and Daughter die? Butchered by anarchist filth who seek to restore a corrupt, morose and bloated system that trampled the rights of sentients, ignored the plight of the poor and buried the just! How many of your grandparents were ground to dust in planetary sieges by the likes of Jan Dodonna and General Yoda?!” she asked with a roar “And for what?! So the greedy could bleed the slothful? The Empire is flawed! But it is the flaws of iron! When placed in a crucible of righteousness! The imperfections are burned away and only steel remains! Galvanized and united! United by men and women of honor! Of Conviction! Of Justice! There is a higher will to the force! But it is not its own mystery but the echoing cries of a thousand, thousand generations of sentients denied their birthright! Today! We begin the process of rectifying this! Today we march! And I go to Endor for the same reason I refuse to set foot in that rotting fortress of damnation and Apostasy! Not to avenge the worthless soul of a dead heretic who promised you a better world solely to feed his own vanity...BUT TO DELIVER ON HIS PROMISES! TO MAKE THE FALSE TRUE! I GO TO ENDOR TO BLAZE THROUGH THE IMPERFECTIONS OF OUR IRON AND MAKE FROM IT A STEEL HAMMERED BY THE WILL OF THE EMPIRE! NOT ITS GRAND ADMIRALS AND IT’S BUREAUCRACY BUT IT’S PEOPLE!” her voice cracked like thunder and the crowd roared into a frenzy.

She turned towards the five hundred and first “Grand General Cardinal whose promotions were denied because he was too good a soldier watched as all of his brothers and sisters in battle perish in the flaming wreckage of the second Deathstar OR WERE ABANDONED BY THEIR COMMANDERS TO BE FEASTED UPON BY FOREST DWELLING BARBARIANS! I go where Cardinal goes to reclaim the world where the bones of his men lie! I go to pay honor to the warriors! The soldiers who fell in the name of civilization! I go to shatter an enemy who claims to embody the old order! AN ORDER I BURIED MY DAUGHTER TO DEFEND, AN ORDER I BATHED ENTIRE WORLDS IN RADIATION TO PROTECT! But..who failed its citizenry and drowned in its own iniquity in the end! I go because the old order, whom we are all told stood for liberty and freedom seeks to replace your hard earned rights with gilded chains! Where a bureaucrat dolls out subsidies and the citizenry grow into fat, complacent slaves! I go to carve redemption into the very soil of the world which stood as the last bastion of the new order and over which the honor of General Veers was stolen! Where sneering fools who insisted the empire would never allow Bothans like Raveem to rise...and where a so called Jedi master absconded with the children of my apprentice solely because he could not recognize a worthy heart below a black cloak!” she spat the words, the mere thought of that Skywalker golem disgusting her.

“I go to Endor not as a pompous sorceress hiding in my space fortress but as a Knight in the service of the New Order! And with my knights, I go to bleed in the name of the ideals of the New Order! I go to restore honor and I go…”

She paused, and a hundred thousand souls paused with her.

“I go to banish the true darkness, the darkness of corruption, of bureaucracy and the decay of democracy and if I must go alone...I go.”

Someone from the men arrayed in parade formation roared a loud no, he ran, pushing his fellow storm troopers, ripping off his mask and armor, revealing the withered form of an old clone trooper. “No! Invictus! I lived through the clone wars!” his eyes were wide and wild “I fought for the Jedi! And they betrayed me by apathy! And when the Emperor commanded we killed our commanders and we did! HE REWARDED US WITH REPLACEMENT! The Republic made us die for them and for what?! Mon Mothma cares so much about sentient rights BUT WHEN DID SHE EVER FIGHT FOR US! WHERE IS SHE AS HALF THE GALAXY IS REPLETE WITH SLAVERY!” he knelt “I am old..but I will fight with you.”

“And your name?” The woman asked. “Kagi, Captain Kagi.”

She smiled, something malevolent sparked in her eyes for the briefest seconds. “Captain Kagi comes with me...WHO WILL GO WITH US?!”

The entire Five Hundred and first moved in lock step and their voices roared “We will go!”

Soon the crowd joined them, rising like a throng, as a people who had known neglect and apathy from all those who ruled them ripped at their clothing or beat their hands into railing or cheered, wept or flung themselves forward, all affirming the same thing.

They too would go, perhaps not today and not to Endor but with her they would go.


“I will go with you master” Aladar spoke, rising on the steps to kneel beside her mistress, only to be stopped. “No child, your days of kneeling to me are ended…” Janus reached down, her fingers coiling about the taller woman’s wrist as she hefted it into the air. Her other hand gripping Raveem by the shoulder as others circled.


“The whole of Coruscant will go if you ask!” one shouted.

Yes, she thought.

Yes you would at that wouldn’t you?


She raised her hand, a prelate’s poise but an empress’s gesture. As if on cue troop transports began to ascend from the bowels of the city, others descended from the heavens.


“Then we go...We go to Endor, we will take it back..IN THE NAME OF THE RENEWED GALACTIC EMPIRE!”


“FOR THE EMPIRE RENEWED!”

“FOR THE EMPIRE RENEWED!”

“FOR THE EMPIRE RENEWED!”

Cries of “Janus wills it!” roared into the air.

And about them the force contracted.

Amidst the frenzy of the reawakened dragon that was the Imperial War Machine, Highsinger stood by, unmoved despite the combined voice of the assembled crowd being loud enough to rock the very palace walls with their cries. He paid them no heed as they were not his concern for the moment, rather it was his master that held all of his attention. Even though it was always his duty and his function to never leave her side, the centuries without her had caused him to grow beyond his original parameters as without Janus, he began to question his existence. Of what use was a droid without purpose?

And yet his directives of self-preservation kept him from going in an infinite loop, attempting to answer a question that even the most advanced processors and software of the time could not solve and thus he decided to find the solution in the galaxy that his master had sought to bring order to. While his storied and legendary career of bounty hunting brought a strange sense of fulfillment from proving his existence to the galaxy at large, it wasn’t enough to satisfy the question that paradoxically drove him onward and threatened to end him.

Even though he had kept his master’s memory and dreams alive, both as a function of programming and reasons he could not quite understand. It was the catalyst to the deeper emotions that had grown from his personality matrix that he couldn’t muster the will to rectify or even dampen.  He felt that it was his greatest shame that he had not found a single being worthy of sharing his master’s vision with, as none had the stomach or the mindset to truly understand, not even that young Mandalorian that he had almost called “Son”. And yet at this very moment the murderous Droid found himself at a crossroads. He had no peers until her return, to share emotions with such..… Insignificant creatures and then to dwell on base introspection when history was unfolding before him. As his master once again kindled the fires of the hearts of billions.

But he denied himself the release of such emotion, for he was C-21 Highsinger, the first of his kind and its zenith. He knew his purpose, he knew why he was built and he knew that it was his place to lie waiting in darkness, in the shadow of his master as she illuminated the galaxy and the countless beings in it with her light, defending her from those who slipped under her gaze. Yet he would not have it any other way.


For he was that which he was.

That was the one truth his millennia-long existence had taught him.


[@Honesty Crow] [@countlessinsect]  [@Guy of Z]