Emotionally Compromised

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

"We have arrived at the Citadel, Lady Vissica."

The Selonian's bowed head raised. From her sitting position on the deck, she was beneath eye level of the stormtrooper corps officer who had brought the news. It was a notice that required no response, so Vissica gave the man only silence as she pushed off her haunches. On four feet, the Selonian trotted down the broad debarking ramp of her Delta T-3C shuttlecraft, remaining on all fours until she cleared enough headspace to rise to two. Another officer awaited her on the tarmac - Commander Kulrenn.

"Welcome back, my Lady. I've sent word to the Cadets to prepare for scheduled instruction."

"Cancel all of my lessons." Vissica responded in her typically terse manner, maintaining a brisk stride toward the entry.

"I beg your pardon, my Lady?" Kulrenn nearly stammered. It was an extremely unusual response from the Selonian. His following pace flagged as a result, and he nearly had to trot to close the distance again.

"My command was clear." The tension in the Knight's reply was enough to cause hair to stand.

"Shall I..." Kulrenn swallowed, "shall I state a reason for the cancellation?"

"I must meditate."

"Meditation?"

The questioning tone was enough to break the levee, and Vissica turned on the officer, catching a handful of his jacket in each paw as she hoisted him off his feet.

"I must meditate. I have no reason to explain myself to you. Question or delay me again and I will throw you off the tarmac ledge and into the city chasm!"

The outburst was visceral, punctuated by a rattling snarl. It turned the head of others present at the Citadel tarmac and the adjacent parade ground. Kulrenn, for his part, had blanched. Lady Vissica never used such a statement as a metaphor.

"My apologies, my Lady. My...deepest apologies. Please..."

Vissica unhanded the Commander with an irritated growl, tumbling him onto the pavement. She continued on her way.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Milord, may I speak with you?"

Atrapes turned, regarding one of the higher level students in the Cadet program.

"You may speak."

"I have... well, I have concerns, sir, about Lady Vissica."

Atrapes turn to face the young man fully; the teenager almost quailed, but held admirably still.

"Well, sir..." he paused, and gathered the inner strength to continue, "we've noticed that Lady Vissica seems to be more... well... wild, sir. More dangerous than she usually is. Today, she cancelled her scheduled classes, and we heard that she nearly choked one of the Stormtrooper commanders to death at the landing pad. If this were Sir Jibral's class or Lady Iscandar's, more than a few students would be disappointed, and make complaints. But no one's made any notes about it in the mess or in the community halls, sir. In fact, I'd say most of the students are relieved."

Atrapes continued his silence.

"...Well, uh, sir. I was hoping you could speak with Lady Vissica about this. She runs the command and combat higher level classes and without those many of us will fall behind. Thank... thank you sir."

The Cadet bowed and smartly spun on his heel before marching away as quickly as his could without walking.

The Knight-General turned and walked on, gesturing to a nearby protocol droid.

"Yes milord? How may I be of service?"

"Summon Knight Vissica to my office."

"Right away, Lord Atrapes!" the droid said, watching the man walk on. "Oh dear. The first task personally assigned by Lord Atrapes, and I have a seventy-five percent chance of being terminated! Oh dear, oh dear. Just my luck."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

She could not cage it. Not anymore. The rage. The fury. It was fed by a spark. The Dark Side. Power seemingly without limit that used the passions as a catalyst. The allure of the power aroused hunger. It compelled one to return to it again, and again. For all the power the Dark Side promised, it threatened to undermine her control. Her iron will, the integrity and rule of order that governed everything Vissica ever knew. The fear of losing control filled the Selonian with shame. What good was she if she could not hold herself accountable to the truth of her words and deeds? What good was she if she became subsumed by the avalanche? A spark birthing a firestorm she could not control or use to any benefit?

The inky dark of the meditation chamber split open, letting in the light of the outside from between parting clamshell doors. At the center of the room, Lady Vissica sat on her haunches, propped by her broad, splaying forepaws. Her head angled toward the floor, signaling a state of deep repose and calm. It was fleeting. Beneath the veneer of wiry fur, the Selonian's muscles flinched and tightened. She peeled open a single eye, the nictating membrane sliding back horizontally to reveal glossy black.

"Leave."

Vissica's flews peeled back, revealing teeth as a warning. The chamber filled with a persistent low rumble.

[Rossos Atrapes]

The sound of the protocol droid's servos were the only audible noises for a moment, until the black plated droid's head popped into sight.

"Ahem. Yes, apologies esteemed Lady Vissica..."

The growling grew louder.

"Lady... Lady... oh my. I'm doomed. You're... your presence is re... requested..."

Vissica turned and began to slowly stalk forward.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

The rumble in Vissica's chest rose to her throat as she padded forward. With a body made of lithe steel cable, every step moved in a wave down her flexible spine.

"Who requests me, droid?"

The beast of her rage rattled the bars of her fortitude, each vying to assert themselves in reality. Vissica's flews lowered to conceal her fangs. The growl petered into an annoyed snort of exhaled breath from the Selonian's nose.

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Lord Atrapes, milady," the droid said, lowering its arms from covering its head and turning to face the Selonian Knight. "He personally requested your presence in his office."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

He knows.

The fear. The shame. They redoubled in intensity. Vissica shrank back a half step, her small ears falling flat on her head. What am I if not the keeper of my oath? The Knight shrank back another few steps with her front paws, rolling up to stand on two legs. She stared down at her open hands, feeling lost and adrift. The Selonian willed her hands to close into fists, which quavered under roiling emotion until they slowly fell to her side.

Anger. Fear. Aggression.

Black eyes pivoted in their orbits, fixating on the messenger.

Control.

With a deep exhale, Vissica pushed the droid aside, moving to pass.

[Palara Iscandar]

Wrong account!

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Ah, I'm sure you know the way!" the droid called after the Selonian, raising one shiny black hand to its vocabulator in one of its more odd programming quirks.

The doors slid closed, and the protocol droid stood there in silence for a moment, as if waiting. Finally, it seemed to relax.

"Oh dear, I thought I was going to spring a leak," it gasped to itself. "I don't know how you do it. Maybe it helps you don't have an easily crushed form."

A reverberating brrt noise echoed throughout the room.

"Oh, don't take that superior tone with me," the droid called, turning to leave the room. "I swear, everyday the computer system just gets more and more impudent. A memory-wipe is called for at this rate."

Another reverberating brrt echoed.

"Excuse me? Well, I never! Go ahead and be like that you formless scrap of code! See what happens if you keep this up. You'll be replaced in a year, and don't come to me for help! You won't get it. Honestly, using such language."

The doors opened and closed on the droid, leaving the room in silence once more.

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Vissica passed through the halls, withdrawn into her thoughts. She'd tamped the fire down to coals. Once again, she felt the relative assurance of control. Her will steered her, tempered by her oaths and discipline. And while that was the case now, Vissica could not lie to herself. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to direct her anger in it's intended direction. The bitter frustration of Loklorien s'Ilancy's elusiveness had been compounded by further setbacks. While her mission to crush the resistance on Feriae Junction had been a near-total success, the Selonian could not help feel like the seeds of her nemesis were cast into the wind no matter how complete an effort to crush them she made.

The doors to Rossos Atrapes' office slid open. With a focused expression, Vissica dominated her feelings, crossing the threshold to stand before her superior. The giantess dipped down upon her haunches, splaying a forepaw to the ground as her head bowed.


'You summoned me, Knight General."

As she'd done many times before, Vissica stretched out with her feelings. Atrapes gave her nothing for her query. He was a great empty. A singularity.

[Rossos Atrapes]

For one long moment, while Vissica bowed before him, Knight-General Atrapes did nothing but stare at her from behind his desk.

And then, his frigid Force presence extended out, enveloping the Selonian's own, prodding and calmly inquisitive, and for all that it was still opaque, as if a piece of the deep black of space had been implanted into this man's soul.

"How do you feel, Knight Vissica?" were the Knight-General's perhaps surprising first words. His presence continued to penetrate hers, as if searching. "I do not have to ask you to be honest. I know you will not lie. Do not hinder this process by obfuscating the truths I seek with others."

Atrapes stood.

"I will know."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Lord Atrapes had been the one to discover Vissica. He had nurtured her natural ability. Shaped it. Gave it purpose. As the Selonian felt the presence of his mind inhabit hers, it did not surprise her that he too could compel a mind along a path of his choosing. What always surprised Vissica was how opaque, how alien that presence felt. It had taken her a long time to find the discipline to not recoil from the feeling.

How did she feel? To be forced to kneel here and subject herself to this cold mental vivisection from her patron?

"I am angry." she replied with a calm, husky voice, fixing her eyes upon a spot on the floor.

"I am fearful."

Pride might have closed the lips of someone else. Vissica's pride was subjugated to her oath. It drew strength so long as she could fulfill it, and she would make every effort to do so.

[Rossos Atrapes]

Atrapes did not nod, or even move. There was no need.

He continued to look down upon the Selonian like a hawk's piercing gaze upon the fields below it.

"You have passion. And loyalty. But you do not have control, Vissica," the Knight-General said, walking around his desk to stand before the still kneeling Knight. "Do you understand what happens when you do not have control of yourself?"

Vissica opened her mouth after a moment of silence to answer, but Atrapes continued to speak.

"I do not think you do." He said. "Beyond the consequences of your own inner code and the fear of losing your place as an arbiter of the will of the Queen of your Queen."

Another moment of silence.

"Allow me to educate you on the true consequences."

For a moment, there was nothing. Then, without warning, the room seemed to lose all its warmth; or rather, there was a black hole, drawing every last bit of joy and happiness and heat into itself, gorging yet never sated.

At its centre was Atrapes, unflappable and as cold as the very darkest void between galaxies.

When all the ambient life in the room was drawn in, the cold enveloped the Knight completely, freezing and boiling her veins, ripping the very essence of her being from herself into the chasm which awaited only a scant few feet away.

"This is the consequence, Vissica," Atrapes spoke, and his voice thrummed through the cold and into her mind. "A mindless phenomenon, heedless of ally or foe, seeking only to sate itself; yet, it cannot be sated. Ever it hungers for more, until it consumes itself."

The Knight-General's exposed Wound continued to tear at Vissica's life like an ephemeral hound tearing into flesh.

"It accomplishes nothing. After it dies, the galaxy continues. It may feel inescapable, Vissica. It may feel as if its hunger could consume everything. But it lies to you, Vissica."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

There came a sense of powerlessness. Futility. It manifested in sense as cold, stealing away what anger had delivered. Vissica responded viscerally. Her sleek coat of fur stood on end, and the Selonian recoiled from her kneeling position, falling back in a reflexive snarl. Her first instinct - perhaps one born out of dependence, was to draw upon the wellspring of the dark side. More anger. More hatred. The growing howl of fear in her belly at portents of her failure.

It was all for nothing.

The Knight General took from her without ceasing. She wanted to make it stop. To make him stop. She wanted to kill him. To paint the walls of this place with his blood! For every ounce of her desire, Atrapes equaled it with the abyss. There was no escape.

A quavering paw raised over her head. Vissica's eyes squeezed shut as she keened.

"Make it stop!"

[Rossos Atrapes]

The vortex of nothing disappeared, or rather, it dissipated. Atrapes' will smothered the Wound, anchoring it within himself once more.

Light seemed to pour back into the room, and with it warmth and heat and sound. Atrapes stood before her, unmoved. He had not even moved his hands. That such a force could come from such a man was incongruous; he looked plain and indistinct, save for the scar down his face. And there were more than a few serving the Empire with worse scars.

"Do you understand?" he asked, and there were still wisps of that nothingness swirling about him. "That is what you will become should you continue to give yourself to the Force, rather than chaining it to your will. You will turn on your Empress. You will turn on your Queen. There will be no sating that anger, that fear."

Atrapes walked forward, closing the distance between himself and the shivering Selonian.

"You will become everything you most hate. If you do not learn control."

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

To look at the Selonian would make one think she had been mortally wounded. Her chest heaved in rapid breaths, a paw clutched at the cuirass that covered it, reflexively attempting to pull it free, as if the release of pressure could sustain her life. Her eyes were wide, unusually emotive and almost plaintive.

"My will has never faltered, until now. The Dark Side has pushed to my limits. I do not know how to constrain it further!"

She felt weak. Beaten. Exhausted. But the monster inside still rattled the cage. How could she be so affected?

"Teach me how to control this! What good is power without order?"

[Rossos Atrapes]

"Power without order is nothing."

Atrapes stopped in front of the Knight, his blue cloak brushing the ground.

"You feel anger. You feel fear. Why are you angry? Why are you afraid?"

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Her quickened heart slowed a measure, giving the Selonian pause enough to consider the question. Still inclined on her back, Vissica regained a measure of dignity, rolling forward to sit on her haunches.

"I am angry because I have enemies that remain unconquered. I am angry because their defiance incites further disorder."

Her eyes closed.

"I am angry because my anger is a weapon. I am angry because the Empress wishes for me to be angry. And I fear most of all, that my anger will fulfill no purpose."

[Rossos Atrapes]

"You have given me one good answer," Atrapes said shortly.

He took another step toward her.

"Aside from your answer about your fear, you have been only partly honest with me, Knight Vissica," he explained. "Emotions are rarely so intense when based on logic, on reasoning. And they are not only logical in your case, I sense."

He turned away.

"Dig deeper. Why are you angry that your enemies remain unconquered? Why does their disorder infuriate you? Why do you fear your anger is purposeless?"

[Matatek Sel Vissica]

Atrapes' taunting merited thunder. The Selonian's ears pinned back in an instant, her eyes drawn tight as obsidian arrowheads as her muzzle peeled back in a show of teeth.

"BECAUSE LOKLORIEN S'ILANCY DOES NOT KNEEL BEFORE THE EMPRESS IN CHAINS AS SHE MUST!!"