Post by Charlotte on Feb 29, 2020 22:33:06 GMT -5
Abandoned; the infant starves alone in the dark hangar.
Before he can be anyone, anything.
Mother slain, father drunk; he freezes in his bed.
Door left unlocked, the growing boy opens it, proud of how tall he’s become, how high is his reach; his skin purples as he dies writhing, choked on noxious air.
A dozen beatings by strangers; a dozen deaths. Shattered bones; internal seepage; the body poisons itself. He dies black-lipped. He dies stinking.
Against a backdrop of stars, agony in every fiber as he swells, vision pinched out by swollen lids, blotted out by a dying brain. The boy’s final view is of the shrinking airlock doors, and the single functioning blue light winking from the scratched up hull.
Death by blaster; death by puncture. Death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating, cold and hard and crawling with growths. Death in pieces; death whole. Death on his knees--so many of those. Death with his knuckles bloodied; death with his own kill fallen beneath him.
Jaquau the Hutt is not amused, so he dies gut-shot, he dies with his face gone; he dies with his throat cut. Iusego the Hutt has had enough of his human stench; the boy is tossed to his pets. Iusego realizes he’s been tricked; the fat Hutt roars for his henchmen to shoot him--tear him apart--the airlock again--the airlock a hundred times--he sees his hands dark with his own blood clear across the audience chamber, sees them gleefully kicked and crushed, before he sees nothing else. The weapon he tests explodes, destroying itself and him with it. He feels the moment when he goes from flesh to cinders. He fails to see the shadow behind him, and dies with lungs full of his own blood. Batuus orders him shot; Thedo orders him shot; Jida orders him shot. Random muggings; attacks by rivals; underworld espionage gone awry. He dies, he dies, he dies.
His spine cracks in three places as Rois loses patience with Thedo’s slicer and sets her men to kill him in his own arcade. He misses a deadline; death. Far away from the spin of the underworld, a chain reaction sends a shockwave across a distance he thought enough to allow safe observation. He betrays Thedo, betrays Batuus; that done, Jida has no more use for him. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Ashmael Meloch brings caf, but reads a fate he does not like; the young man dies then and there in his cell, to a crushing fist he cannot see. Ashmael Meloch will not be disrespected; Ashmael Meloch does not approve of his approach; Ashmael Meloch perceives mockery, falseness, the slippery attention of the selfish survivor.
He dies, he dies, he dies.
His view inverts as his head tumbles free from his neck, the alien drone of the lightsaber slicing through his astonishment just as effortlessly as the blade cut his flesh. He is choked to death, twitching on the floor. He burns. Ashmael Meloch is Ashton Moonrider is Phobos, and has no more need of him, no desire for a loose end. He is torn apart, and the last sound he hears is another man’s self-satisfied laughter.
He is found by Hutt-paid bounty-hunters. His end does not even slow traffic.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone. He dies barely a curious specimen, blacking out, neck cracking in the dead station.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone. He is flung aside like so much trash; his skull cracks against the bulkhead, the catwalk support; his neck snaps back when it hits the underside of the next level.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone--then drops him off the catwalk with negligent disinterest.
He dies.
He dies to his daughter. She kills him for his hypocrisy, for his small vision, for his mere presence. She kills him because she can. She kills him for madness--for hers, for his. She kills him for Moonrider. He opens his mouth at the wrong moment; says the wrong thing; tries the wrong tactic. He loses his tongue, then his life. The life is boiled out of him by her cules when they work, by his own when they do not.
He fails to be swift enough; he dies. He turns the wrong corner; he dies.
More airlocks, more blasters, more mistakes; he dies.
Bad luck; he dies.
Ele and Rosalyn Blackmoon give up on his usefulness and part ways with him; he goes down alone, swarmed by bounty hunters, converged upon by Praetorians, flushed out by Mekhetu. Out of nowhere, Jonas Cato assaults him on Haven; he dies to the unseen. He dies marooned in the snow, freezing--in the sands, withering--a condemned killer--justice served. He dies multiple times to Ith’li, who ceases to be intrigued, who ceases to feel the allure of possible gain. Mekhetu finds him; he is annihilated to the molecule.
His allies murder him to keep him out of the hands of the enemy. He dies on the run; he dies during capture. The bounty-hunters lose their cool; they shoot him. They space him. They don’t have time for his shit. Moonrider greets him with a beheading, with strangulation, the discarding of deadweight. He dies a thousand more times in custody, to him. To her.
His execution succeeds; his heart stops; he stops; he is over.
His execution fails--at first. His heart stops, restarts, stops again, restarts, stops again. He is over.
He is shot in the back, falls to his knees, fades out of consciousness as his rescuers shout words at him he cannot hear. He is gone before he can thank them. Before he can by any measure repay them. Just gone, frozen in time as a memory, all debts unpaid forever.
He dies to Dark Jedi; he dies to Dracmus Esseles. I could just give them you, says Caedmon Cato, and does so, and he is finished.
Stray bolts in battle; stray shrapnel in space; random collisions, random malfunctions. Countless projects of his own destroy him. Miscalculations social; miscalculations political; miscalculations mechanical. His deaths come by the bushel. Keiran Lang flips a coin; he dies. Maltez Buffton flips a coin; he dies. He dreams himself to death in the Rifts. He should wake up, but doesn’t. His cules burn themselves out, and him with them. His body stutters to a halt, and there is no miracle: he disappears. The Banak’tu refuse to risk sparing him, so he is not spared. The Banak’tu have time only for their own, and he is as nothing, of no importance, no interest; they put him down like a stray they don’t care to keep.
He is executed by Jedi for murder; it happens before he can open his mouth to argue.
A young colony of independent droids destroys him, not out of fear of him but in the name of efficiency. They kill him by mistake. They kill him from star-eyed curiosity and record it.
Ja’eeth Va’lor blows him to pieces in revenge; Ker’dan Akir traps and fights and kills him to make a point. Solomon Tekal destroys him by accident, lashing out in self-defense; Solomon Tekal snaps and destroys him on purpose. Jeryndi Trander demonstrates how fine is the line between a Healing art and a killing one when vengeance whispers.
Claudia fakes interest in an alliance in order to kill him. Succeeds. ZeroOne/Ro/Zee/Quorra/Zephyr flick him away like a dust mote. His ship is left drifting empty, his projects unfinished, his fate too insignificant for mention.
Thirty-one hours of psychic torture take their toll; he dies.
Maltez Buffton has him shot on sight. Zaal takes no chances. He dies.
He touches his captive, a girl named Rin; collapses. His death crashes down like an avalanche--but far away, in unknown hands. He storms headlong into a fight with a pack of Mandalorians and is killed. He miscalculates the impact of the arrival of DAIS near Kuat; he misjudges his control over the Ring.
Luce explodes out of her stasis chamber; he is killed on impact. He is out of tricks; he dies. Dani kills him in revenge, because she can, because it amuses her. Zaal kills him in revenge, because he can, because it amuses him. Zaal kills him because he's in his face; Zaal kills him as a demonstration to Eva Grey, to Maltez Buffton. Zaal kills him for pride. The airlock again; blasters; lightsabers; the lifeforce of the universe called up to make plain the pecking order. He dies while having tea in a garden, and at countless junctures after that. They see through him, do his enemies; the future is revealed to them in dreams; Zee calculates the likelihood that he will betray all of them. Once a traitor….
One foot wrong. One half-second of misfortune. One missed cue, one guess too far off the mark. One revelation of the depth of his frustration, his disapproval.
He dies.
Among the Mandalorians, he dies, he dies, he dies. Half a step to the left; a glance in the wrong direction.
He dies to assassins, to a coup. He dies to disgruntled thugs who don’t recognize him. He dies when he tries to play peacemaker, when he does not lead with a fist. His end comes on Hapes, by traitors, by Kar’ida. His end comes on Mandalore, by rebels, by Kel’dan. He’s finished before he begins. His ship is destroyed taking off from the Aud. He meets his end once for every square foot of the place. He is slain at Um-Shara Yaim; he dies on the way.
The Red impact vaporizes him. Just like that. He suffocates in the dust storm after, back arched from his final gasping breaths, hands curled, eyes wide. He Dreams--and cannot save himself. He is killed by Ori’ade, by wakek, by Mandal, by traitor, by ally, by dehydration, by rotten chance.
Near-misses.
Fates half-breaths apart.
Some paths are longer than others.
The Mechanic opened his eyes.
Before he can be anyone, anything.
Mother slain, father drunk; he freezes in his bed.
Door left unlocked, the growing boy opens it, proud of how tall he’s become, how high is his reach; his skin purples as he dies writhing, choked on noxious air.
A dozen beatings by strangers; a dozen deaths. Shattered bones; internal seepage; the body poisons itself. He dies black-lipped. He dies stinking.
Against a backdrop of stars, agony in every fiber as he swells, vision pinched out by swollen lids, blotted out by a dying brain. The boy’s final view is of the shrinking airlock doors, and the single functioning blue light winking from the scratched up hull.
Death by blaster; death by puncture. Death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating; death on ridged deck grating, cold and hard and crawling with growths. Death in pieces; death whole. Death on his knees--so many of those. Death with his knuckles bloodied; death with his own kill fallen beneath him.
Jaquau the Hutt is not amused, so he dies gut-shot, he dies with his face gone; he dies with his throat cut. Iusego the Hutt has had enough of his human stench; the boy is tossed to his pets. Iusego realizes he’s been tricked; the fat Hutt roars for his henchmen to shoot him--tear him apart--the airlock again--the airlock a hundred times--he sees his hands dark with his own blood clear across the audience chamber, sees them gleefully kicked and crushed, before he sees nothing else. The weapon he tests explodes, destroying itself and him with it. He feels the moment when he goes from flesh to cinders. He fails to see the shadow behind him, and dies with lungs full of his own blood. Batuus orders him shot; Thedo orders him shot; Jida orders him shot. Random muggings; attacks by rivals; underworld espionage gone awry. He dies, he dies, he dies.
His spine cracks in three places as Rois loses patience with Thedo’s slicer and sets her men to kill him in his own arcade. He misses a deadline; death. Far away from the spin of the underworld, a chain reaction sends a shockwave across a distance he thought enough to allow safe observation. He betrays Thedo, betrays Batuus; that done, Jida has no more use for him. Once a traitor, always a traitor. Ashmael Meloch brings caf, but reads a fate he does not like; the young man dies then and there in his cell, to a crushing fist he cannot see. Ashmael Meloch will not be disrespected; Ashmael Meloch does not approve of his approach; Ashmael Meloch perceives mockery, falseness, the slippery attention of the selfish survivor.
He dies, he dies, he dies.
His view inverts as his head tumbles free from his neck, the alien drone of the lightsaber slicing through his astonishment just as effortlessly as the blade cut his flesh. He is choked to death, twitching on the floor. He burns. Ashmael Meloch is Ashton Moonrider is Phobos, and has no more need of him, no desire for a loose end. He is torn apart, and the last sound he hears is another man’s self-satisfied laughter.
He is found by Hutt-paid bounty-hunters. His end does not even slow traffic.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone. He dies barely a curious specimen, blacking out, neck cracking in the dead station.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone. He is flung aside like so much trash; his skull cracks against the bulkhead, the catwalk support; his neck snaps back when it hits the underside of the next level.
His feet jerk; Ith’li Shaon holds him aloft by will alone--then drops him off the catwalk with negligent disinterest.
He dies.
He dies to his daughter. She kills him for his hypocrisy, for his small vision, for his mere presence. She kills him because she can. She kills him for madness--for hers, for his. She kills him for Moonrider. He opens his mouth at the wrong moment; says the wrong thing; tries the wrong tactic. He loses his tongue, then his life. The life is boiled out of him by her cules when they work, by his own when they do not.
He fails to be swift enough; he dies. He turns the wrong corner; he dies.
More airlocks, more blasters, more mistakes; he dies.
Bad luck; he dies.
Ele and Rosalyn Blackmoon give up on his usefulness and part ways with him; he goes down alone, swarmed by bounty hunters, converged upon by Praetorians, flushed out by Mekhetu. Out of nowhere, Jonas Cato assaults him on Haven; he dies to the unseen. He dies marooned in the snow, freezing--in the sands, withering--a condemned killer--justice served. He dies multiple times to Ith’li, who ceases to be intrigued, who ceases to feel the allure of possible gain. Mekhetu finds him; he is annihilated to the molecule.
His allies murder him to keep him out of the hands of the enemy. He dies on the run; he dies during capture. The bounty-hunters lose their cool; they shoot him. They space him. They don’t have time for his shit. Moonrider greets him with a beheading, with strangulation, the discarding of deadweight. He dies a thousand more times in custody, to him. To her.
His execution succeeds; his heart stops; he stops; he is over.
His execution fails--at first. His heart stops, restarts, stops again, restarts, stops again. He is over.
He is shot in the back, falls to his knees, fades out of consciousness as his rescuers shout words at him he cannot hear. He is gone before he can thank them. Before he can by any measure repay them. Just gone, frozen in time as a memory, all debts unpaid forever.
He dies to Dark Jedi; he dies to Dracmus Esseles. I could just give them you, says Caedmon Cato, and does so, and he is finished.
Stray bolts in battle; stray shrapnel in space; random collisions, random malfunctions. Countless projects of his own destroy him. Miscalculations social; miscalculations political; miscalculations mechanical. His deaths come by the bushel. Keiran Lang flips a coin; he dies. Maltez Buffton flips a coin; he dies. He dreams himself to death in the Rifts. He should wake up, but doesn’t. His cules burn themselves out, and him with them. His body stutters to a halt, and there is no miracle: he disappears. The Banak’tu refuse to risk sparing him, so he is not spared. The Banak’tu have time only for their own, and he is as nothing, of no importance, no interest; they put him down like a stray they don’t care to keep.
He is executed by Jedi for murder; it happens before he can open his mouth to argue.
A young colony of independent droids destroys him, not out of fear of him but in the name of efficiency. They kill him by mistake. They kill him from star-eyed curiosity and record it.
Ja’eeth Va’lor blows him to pieces in revenge; Ker’dan Akir traps and fights and kills him to make a point. Solomon Tekal destroys him by accident, lashing out in self-defense; Solomon Tekal snaps and destroys him on purpose. Jeryndi Trander demonstrates how fine is the line between a Healing art and a killing one when vengeance whispers.
Claudia fakes interest in an alliance in order to kill him. Succeeds. ZeroOne/Ro/Zee/Quorra/Zephyr flick him away like a dust mote. His ship is left drifting empty, his projects unfinished, his fate too insignificant for mention.
Thirty-one hours of psychic torture take their toll; he dies.
Maltez Buffton has him shot on sight. Zaal takes no chances. He dies.
He touches his captive, a girl named Rin; collapses. His death crashes down like an avalanche--but far away, in unknown hands. He storms headlong into a fight with a pack of Mandalorians and is killed. He miscalculates the impact of the arrival of DAIS near Kuat; he misjudges his control over the Ring.
Luce explodes out of her stasis chamber; he is killed on impact. He is out of tricks; he dies. Dani kills him in revenge, because she can, because it amuses her. Zaal kills him in revenge, because he can, because it amuses him. Zaal kills him because he's in his face; Zaal kills him as a demonstration to Eva Grey, to Maltez Buffton. Zaal kills him for pride. The airlock again; blasters; lightsabers; the lifeforce of the universe called up to make plain the pecking order. He dies while having tea in a garden, and at countless junctures after that. They see through him, do his enemies; the future is revealed to them in dreams; Zee calculates the likelihood that he will betray all of them. Once a traitor….
One foot wrong. One half-second of misfortune. One missed cue, one guess too far off the mark. One revelation of the depth of his frustration, his disapproval.
He dies.
Among the Mandalorians, he dies, he dies, he dies. Half a step to the left; a glance in the wrong direction.
He dies to assassins, to a coup. He dies to disgruntled thugs who don’t recognize him. He dies when he tries to play peacemaker, when he does not lead with a fist. His end comes on Hapes, by traitors, by Kar’ida. His end comes on Mandalore, by rebels, by Kel’dan. He’s finished before he begins. His ship is destroyed taking off from the Aud. He meets his end once for every square foot of the place. He is slain at Um-Shara Yaim; he dies on the way.
The Red impact vaporizes him. Just like that. He suffocates in the dust storm after, back arched from his final gasping breaths, hands curled, eyes wide. He Dreams--and cannot save himself. He is killed by Ori’ade, by wakek, by Mandal, by traitor, by ally, by dehydration, by rotten chance.
Near-misses.
Fates half-breaths apart.
Some paths are longer than others.
The Mechanic opened his eyes.