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Apprentice SithDusk meets experimental torture subject z shortly before she kills her master
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She can sense her master coming well before he gets to the door; she puts off getting up until the very last moment, though.

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He withdraws reluctantly to watch.

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Mrf.

She puts on the mask she wears around him - dull, unthinking, a little animalistic, all loose joints and slow reactions - and goes to wait by the door.

She wants to kill him; put her saber right through his chest and watch and listen as he ceases to be. It's not new; she sets it aside, same as she does every day. (He's on guard; she can feel it in him. If she attacks him, she'll die. Usually, it's a little tempting anyway, but not today, and that's a relief.) He asks something, as he sometimes does; she has no idea what, and just shrugs in response, not meeting his eyes.

He gestures for her to follow, and off they go.

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He watches her master and his movements carefully.

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She goes over the strategic and tactical considerations with him while they make their morning rounds - here's how he'd defend himself if she attacked like this, or like that; there's a genuine opening, but even if she won she'd be trapped, with the other apprentices between her and the spaceport (she can sense where they are, if she looks, and once he's seen her do it, he can look the same way); that looks like an opening, but he's on guard enough that he'd catch her moving to take advantage of it, and that would be bad.

They finish their morning check-in with the pair who do chemistry - they're making good progress on the durasteel treatment they're working on, seems like - and head toward his captor's workspace.

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He follows her thoughts, tries to memorize weaknesses.

(The chemistry is actually sort of interesting.)

He can feel where they're going next, and he tries his hardest to listen, even though it's fuzzy and indistinct. He needs to know what it's like from the outside.

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Oh, she can do that. Here, have some Force senses.

(Their best bet for getting him out is probably lightsabering through the wall between his cell and the storage room behind it; the path that doesn't involve passing through any walls takes them right through the core of this section. Also, there are a handful of other captives, mostly in worse shape than he is - she has a sense for injuries and general health, too, and what it shows ranges from worrying to horrifying.)

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He’s trying to think about strategy, about ways to escape, but

 

we have to get them out.

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We can try. She's not hopeful. Especially for that one guy; the life support machinery isn't going to be easy to move.

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Life support.

He imagines himself unable to breathe, unable to function without his captor’s machinery, completely dependent and helpless, and panic closes his throat up.

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If it comes to it, I can kill you before they get to me. She'll die too, but at that point, well.

(Her master notices the tension in her posture and flicks a spark of lightning at her; she flinches, growls involuntarily, but assumes a more submissive stance.)

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thank you

The spark jolts him, calms his mind a little even as it makes part of him angry. He drifts and tries to listen.

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She can't follow the conversation here nearly as well; the only thing she can make sense of is an exchange that seems to be about reprogramming some of the droids. Her attention drifts again, to her escape plans, one of the handful of things she's been trying hardest to retain - the guy with the life support probably is a loss, but if they're lucky or picky about where the other Sith are, and if the other captives are able to pull themselves together and move - if they'll trust her at all, to follow her - it won't be impossible, merely very risky, trying to get them all to the spaceport without attracting attention.

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He doesn’t want to think about this. How much are they willing to risk their escape to help the others?

if we take them i can make them listen to me.

When he says things with enough conviction, when he believes them with enough intensity, sometimes people will believe him even if they have no reason to. And he believes she’s safe, that they can trust her. 

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Okay.

(She loves him. If he needs this, she'll try.)

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thank you.

He can't help but imagine what it would have been like, if she hadn't found him.

if we can't...

He thinks of the one on life support again.

(They at least deserve to choose to die.)

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Yeah.

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He floats back a little again, tries to just follow her thoughts and feelings.

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She sends him a little burst of strength and comfort and goes back to watching her master and co-apprentice. They're soon done, and she follows along to the next stop: her master's youngest apprentice, still just a kid really, but a pretty vicious one already, she's well aware.

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He tries his best to hang back, for this.

(Better for him to not get too involved, if it's just a kid.)

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He's about fifteen, and enthusiastic about showing their master how his studies have been going, and then he wants to spar - with her. With live sabers. Their master vetoes the sabers, but directs her with gestures to set hers aside and take a training sword.

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Okay. Doesn’t matter that this is just a kid, now.

He tries to feel her movements as precisely as he can. He doesn’t want to have to control her fighting, but if the time comes when they have no choice...

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It's quickly obvious that he's not going to be effective without a lot of practice or access to her training. Her focus is on the kid, what he's doing, where the openings are and whether she can take them without hurting him too badly; the actual acts of striking and blocking and dodging are as automatic as walking, and if they weren't, she'd have trouble keeping up with even this outmatched opponent.

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Oh.

All he can really do is feel, not understand, but it's an incredible feeling.

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Yeah, it is.

Eventually, he overreaches, and she thwacks him on the back, and their master calls out a sharp command that (she assumes) ends the round - yep, there the kid goes; she matches him in dropping out of the fighting stance.

I'll break that down for you later, you can see it better if you know what you're looking for.

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