Bro you'll never believe this... I was researching some common laws while sitting outside and the sky was full of these amazing shades of blue but then some yellowjackets came by and stung me!! Crazy right? Right? :)
Heavy breathing.....
That's..... That's so crazy man..
....... Hgrhr
What kind of common laws were you researching,,...
Brilliant white light bathed the trio who stood triumphant in the doorway.
The vault was hospital clean, sparkling and sterile. Some objects were displayed in shining cabinets, some on their own pedestals, others yet contained within energy fields.
The sound that Ulfran at the sight of the room and its contents bordered on lustful.
Ahuska’a snickered and jabbed a clawed finger into his side. “Nerd.”
Kassandra’s eyes roved the artifacts desperately, not knowing what to look for yet still determined to beat them to it. She had no plans for beyond that, merely a vague hope that somehow possessing the Shard would grant her the ability to out-do the callous Sith and the cruel Bothan.
“So? Which one is it…?” Ahuska’a needled Ulfran, not wanting to wait a moment longer.
“I need a moment,” he lied. He’d spotted the Shard almost immediately, over to the far left of the room. But he’d never described the artifact to Ahuska’a, never let on that he knew exactly what to search for. Because as much as he’d enjoyed her brutish company in accomplishing his goal, he certainly didn’t trust her.
Ulfran prowled the room, his hungry eyes taking it all in. Some items he recognized immediately, others he could only make educated guesses, and he immediately wished he’d come better prepared to take more.
The others followed, stepping softly across the pristine floor. Three sets of guarded, glimmering red eyes probed the collection of treasures. Ahuska’a noted the way Ulfran veered well clear of a sizeable stone pyramid, settled on a high pedestal behind a glittering orange field. Ulfran noted the way Kassandra watched them both like a wary prey beast, the way she seemed coiled and tense, ready to dart at any moment. The tension in the room was stifling.
Slowly, carefully, Ulfran worked his way over to a dagger that was arranged artfully on a fold of silk, behind a mere wall of glass. Nothing like the roughly cut crystal the others were half expecting to find, but he knew it was there, forged into the blade, disguised long before it would have fallen into Ronan Ve’lora’s hands. He wondered if he could take it somehow, make it look like a passing whim, a secondary prize while he sought out the ‘real’ shard...
But his gaze lingered on it a little too long. Ahuska’a and Kassandra both guessed at what the dagger must be, and Kassandra moved like lightning. Only to be struck by lightning. She grabbed an ornamental scepter from a rack by the wall, swinging it into the glass cabinet that guarded the weapon, and in the next hearbeat Ulfran thrust her away with a liberal thundering of the Force. Electrical charges surged through her body and she writhed on the floor, seething.
With the shard’s casing now in pieces on the floor, Ulfran reached for the dagger, and nothing could compare to the heady satisfaction that welled up inside him to finally possess what he had chased for so long. It was his. It was his!
“Bit much, don’t you think?” Ahuska’a sidled up to him, motioning toward the prone Kassandra with a tilt of her snout.
Ulfran sidestepped away from her with a sneer, and a fiercely possessive glint in his scarlet eyes.
She watched him warily, her own eyes narrowing slowly, fingers toying with the switch on her whip. “Come on then. That’s it, isn’t it? Let’s get out of here…”
Still Ulfran hesitated. Suddenly, the thought of letting anyone else utilise the shard was abhorrent.
A moment of hurt flashed across Ahuska’a’s expression as she saw that change come upon him, and then there was naught but fury in her eyes. “Ulfran. We did this together. What makes you think you can get a-“
But her sentence was cut short as a blast of the Force propelled her backward, crashing into an electrified field that flung her to the ground, shaking violently. “Chakaar,” she cursed at him in her native tongue, fighting to regain her breath and find her feet.
But he was already darting away from her, intent on his exit, only to have his feet swept out from under him as Kassandra swung that scepter again, completely unexpectedly from behind the cabinet she’d crawled over to, unnoticed. He swore colourfully as he fell, slamming into a marble pedestal that rocked lazily before it, too, toppled to the ground, yet still he clutched the dagger… at least, until a flash of red flicked out from where Ahuska’a staggered to her feet, lashing at his hand with her whip.
She had it set searingly hot; Ulfran’s voice and breath were both knocked out of him as the knife dropped to the ground, along with half of his hand. All colour drained from his cheeks, his eyes went wide with rage and shock, and he channeled every bit of that pain into the rending Force thrust that he directed at the two women who both dove for the dagger as it skittered across the floor.
Kassandra cried out sharply at the cutting wind that tore at her, curling in on herself and turning away from the source of the blast that made her feel as though her skin was going to be torn off. But Ahuska’a… she snarled, facing into it, flinging her arms forward with a firm and throaty “NO.” And she was just as surprised as Ulfran when he found himself flung bodily backward through the vault.
Breathing hard from the exertion, the Bothan lurched toward the dagger unimpeded, and it was very nearly in her grasp… when Ulfran tugged it forward, gripping it artfully with the Force and sending it coasting through the air toward him.
From which Kassandra snatched it before it could reach him.
Again that red glare flashed through the air, but Ahuska’a’s aim was thrown out by the sudden distracting movement in the corner of her eye, and she had to leap to dodge that great stone pyramid as Ulfran lifted his burned, bloodied half-hand to send it sweeping through the air toward her. As it hit the ground with a heavy thud, Ahuska’a then flung herself toward Kassandra, not knowing how she could possibly win with the Sith now against her, but unwilling to back down. Even as she bore down on the Chiss, she saw him lift his hands again, and the hunk of carved stone once more lifted into the air. She lashed her whip but couldn’t reach him… she bolted forward, enraged, throwing herself toward the pyramid and slamming bodily into it, forcing it back toward him.
As she hit it, the world spun and brilliant white light bloomed behind her eyes.
So unexpected was her action that Ulfran barely had the time to mouth ‘no..!’ before both Ahuska and the stone slammed into him, and he too felt his perception of the world grow slippery. He was completely unaware of Kassandra following up behind Ahsuka’a, operating purely on adrenaline, arm lifted high before it plunged down somewhere at the Bothan’s back, delving the dagger deep into her.
The three were locked in place, with the stone pyramid between them.
Everything was white.
An endless expanse of white nothing.
Ulfran felt a horrid, overwhelming sense of vertigo, as he tried to get his bearings. Tried to find some way to ground himself. But he knew where he was; where they all must be. Trapped inside that object he had feared to touch. A mind prison. Where was Nela?
No, wait…
Ulfran shook his head, nearly losing his balance as his head spun. Nela? Who was… no. Kassandra? Ahuska? Who was he? Which was he? He had fallen, fallen so far, and the version of him that had succumbed to power and desire was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the one who had not, and the shame he felt was dizzying. What was going on? This wasn’t real. This was just a vision, just one of Nela’s visions… no, no, he had the shard, they had the shard, he had to figure out how to use it and fix things so that he could be that better version of himself, he had to wake up, he…
Ulfran, I’m scared! Where are you??! Nela’s voice whipped through the blinding whiteness, and he spun, but it all looked the same. Endless. Empty.
What is this! Where are we!? Nines… no, Kassandra?
“Stay where you are, we’re trapped, let me try to find you…!” Ulfran shouted into the void, fearing that the expanse swallowed his voice before any of the others could perceive it. “Kriff,” part of him fought hard for calm, told himself he must rise above the panic. Part of him wanted to rage and thrash about, set the endless white up in flames.
OH, HELLO.
Ulfran!!
“Be quiet! Be still! We’re not alone in here!” Ulfran had no idea if they could hear him, but somehow he was positive that that whatever was behind that other voice could.
What is it!!?? Help, it’s all around…!! Ulfran please, get us out..!
LOOK AT YOU ALL! SO LONG, I HAVE AWAITED A VESSEL. AND NOW I AM SPOILED FOR CHOICE!
Dread welled up inside him. What was happening? How had he and Nela shifted from observers to participants in this re-telling of time? Who the kriff was Nela, and where the kriff was Kassandra with that dagger?
THE RULES OF TIME DO NOT APPLY HERE. I SUPPOSE I SHOULD THANK YOU FOR THIS BREACH.
Ulfran felt something, then. Like fingers of ice, crawling across his skin. He jerked away and stared about, but there was nothing to see.
STRONG, BUT NOT AS STRONG AS HER. SHE WILL SERVE BETTER.
Ulfran!! Nela’s thought-voice had raised to a shriek. It’s trying to get me! I can’t… I don’t know how to get us out… aah!
Ulfran wrestled with himself, as part of him cast about desperately with the Force, trying to get a sense of Kassandra or Ahuska’a. To find them, seize the shard, and maybe with its power manage to free himself and continue his mission. But the rest of him fought back fiercely, unwilling to let half of his self simply abandon Nela to whatever fate, whatever long imprisoned being was now clawing for her. He would not leave her! Gathering himself together, Ulfran threw all reservations to the wind and flung himself through the endless wasteland of the prison, giving in to the ethereal nature of the place. He probed and reached with the Force, felt its ebb and flow, sought out that dreadful, tickling cold attached to that smug, otherworldly voice. The rules of time do not apply here, it had said. Something was broken, breached, not as it should be.
And as he searched, he found… Ahuska. No, Ahuska’a. Her life force flickering, fading, as outside of the prison her physical body also began to fail, with the Tempus shard stuck firm inside her. There was something particularly intangible about her, a shimmering aspect to her Force presence that Ulfran had never encountered before.
Help, she called out with her mind. I’m lost. I need to… to fix… I need Crow. No. Mar’an? Who is… oh help. I’m lost, I don’t know how-
ULFRAAANN!
I’m coming, Nela! I’m coming! Completely uncertain about what he was doing, operating in streams of the Force that were utterly unknown to him, Ulfran tried to sweep up Ahuska’a’s presence and carry it with him as he rushed toward Nela’s screams and that bitter, evil cold that threatened her.
Ulfran!
Something buffeted him to the side, a heavy blow that rattled him through and burned at the same time. LET HER GO, YOU FETHIN’ DIRTY SITH BASTARD!! Half of Ulfran knew that voice, cringed at that voice roaring through his head, and his bewilderment only grew. How was he here!? Pain ruptured all over him, or echoes of pain, he knew about it, but only felt it distantly... he heard, or felt, or knew about a crack… his face? His jaw? Endlessly he was pummeled, sworn at, clawed at, and he tried in vain to shake Crow off while he sought out the being that was wrapping its icy tendrils around Nela.
“I’m trying to help her, you idiot!”
LIKE HELL YOU ARE. LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER.
LET ME GO! Ulfran tried to ignore him, spread his presence thin and intangible as he came crashing through the smothering whiteness, hurling every bit of mental energy he had toward the being that desired to use Nela to escape its imprisonment. GET OFF HER! You will not have her! He couldn’t fix a shape to the being he fought, only a vague sense of size, the idea of shimmering purple hues, a feeling of ancient bitterness and malevolence. He felt the strength of his darker half joining the battle, meeting the being with his own wrath and hateful fury.
You have to help fix this, Nela, he shouted, prying her presence away and wrapping it up with the Ahuska’a’s.
Suddenly it was as though the entirety of existence opened up in front of him. Oh, he’d always known how powerfully the Force had flown through Nela, but now he saw it. He felt it. And with his greater understanding and familiarity of its nature... with Ahuska’a’s dying presence embedded with the power of that glittering shard... he knew what had to happen with absolute clarity.
As easily as swinging open an unlocked door, he made the way for them, and gently pushed Nela and the Bothan through. Help her fix this.
The way closed, and icy daggers thrust through him. THIEF. I WILL END YOU AND THEN I WILL TAKE HER.
LIKE FETHIN’ HELL YOU WILL! The fight was joined by Kassandra, hurtling through, her essence a wild and formless mess of fury, unable to contain the raw emotion she felt with any sense of shape or scale. She simply was, and she was pissed, and she didn’t like this thing all in her space.
BRING ME BACK MY STARS DAMNED DAUGHTER.
YOU ARE MINE.
Ulfran knew nothing but pain. He fought desperately to free himself, and every tendril he tore out was new agony. His spirit was being torn apart while his body, somewhere, distantly, was being battered. All he had was the hope that Nela would know what to do.
***
Ahuska stood on the dirty pavement of a grimy alleyway in the Coruscant undercity. Nela was there, hunched and whimpering, holding her head the way she did when she had her episodes.
She felt strange, light, and wondered where her dogs were. No, where her nexu was. She didn’t have any dogs.
“Nel? Are you okay?”
“You need to fix it. I can’t.”
Everything felt just faintly off, like the whole world was out of sync with itself. “Fix what?”
With considerable effort, Nela stood and stared about, then grabbed for Ahuska’s hand to pull her over to the far end of the alley. A towering, graffiti riddled wall dominated the intersection, forcing beings to either turn hard left, hard right, or go back the way they’d come.
“The wall? I… nnng. Ow.” Ahuska turned and winced, grasping at her back. Something hurt there, she could swear there was something wedged between her shoulders, except her flailing hand couldn’t find it.
“Please, hurry, I think it’s going to kill him. We don’t have time.”
“Time for what? What am I supposed to fix?”
Nela was kicking through the bags of rubbish that littered the streets, or at least she was trying to, but her feet were passing through everything and she groaned with frustration. “You need to draw. Pick that up, I can’t. You’re more here than I am.”
Ahuska stooped to pick up the piece of chalk Nela indicated, feeling more confused by the moment. “What does that mean?”
“Hurry! Draw Meatballs… the- the wolf. Right there.”
“What?”
“Draw him there! On the wall, you have to make him point to the right.”
Ahuska walked up to the wall as though in a haze, doing as Nela bid. She drew hastily, a very quick and crude rendition of the animal, because she really wanted to go back and see if the girl was okay. She worried about her.
This was a very odd little dream she was having.
***
Ulfran woke to pain, aches all over, a splitting headache and some new searing sensation in his jaw. He rolled across the floor, some external force shoving him away. He tried to ask what was going on, but it hurt to move his mouth. He was kicked again, rolling a little further along the floor.
He opened his eyes, and it was unbridled fury that stared him in the face. Crow was seething, snarling, itching to continue his assault. Nines stood behind him, fists clenched, with only Lyrisal’s hand on her shoulder keeping her at bay. And Ahuska had placed herself protectively between him and Nela, glaring at him with all the ferocity of a mother wolf.
“You call this TEACHING!?” Crow roared. “You’re supposed to be helping her, not sneaking onto my ship and doing… whatever the feth that was…!!”
“I…” Ulfran strained to find his voice, to defend himself, while his mind still reeled from what he’d just experienced.
“Dad, leave him alone, i-it was my fault, please…”
“Shhh, Nel.” Ahuska tried to soothe her. Waking up to the sound of Nela’s screams and Crow’s bellowing had shaken her, and seeing her sitting there with Ulfran, both of them transfixed and frozen, had been even more rattling.
Crow had not reacted particularly gracefully. Lurching off the couch in a barely woken state, he didn’t hesitate to take a swing at the man, but it didn’t seem to have any effect. Nela was still screaming, her hand wrapped around his wrist, and he tried to pry her fingers free to no avail. “LET HER GO, YOU FETHIN’ DIRTY SITH BASTARD!” he’d shouted, and somewhere from the depths of his trance Ulfran had wheezed out a pained response.
“I’m trying to help her, you idiot.”
“LIKE HELL YOU ARE. LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER.” Crow had begun his assault in earnest, and nothing was going to stop him freeing Nela.
It was to this that Ahuska had woken from her strange dream, just moments before Nela’s own eyes burst open, and the girl reeled back with a gasp while Crow moved in to kick Ulfran away, forcing distance between himself and his daughter.
Ulfran tried to set his thoughts straight. Tried to ground himself back in reality. They were all staring at him; Crow, Ahuska and Nines were furious, Lyrisal blank-faced save the lift of a single questioning eyebrow, and Nela, her eyes wide, haunted, confused, having just been through it all with him but having an even harder time making sense of it all.
“I-it’s okay, Ulfran. I think we… fixed it…”
“QUIET, Nel,” Crow interrupted, still glaring daggers at Ulfran.
Ulfran cringed back, lowering his head. “I’m… going.” He knew he wasn’t going to be able to explain what had happened in a hurry. He could barely speak, and none of them seemed to be in the mood to listen. He hurt, everywhere, and knew he had to get out.
Ulfran fled Crow’s ship, and Nela’s family crowded around her. He felt the savage heat of their love for one another as he staggered away across the cold sand.
***
Ulfran made himself scarce, the next few days. He didn’t want to draw more ire upon himself, and his fractured jaw needed rest. He also had a terrible amount of thinking to do.
He spent a great deal of time in meditation, and actively avoided contact with the Deserters.
It was Nela who eventually came to him, one morning, trotting over as he was headed toward the medical barracks, both for his own check-up and to see how the other patients were.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, reaching out to just briefly touch his hand. “I didn’t think it would go like that.”
“It’s my fault,” he murmured. “I went chasing after things I shouldn’t have.”
“Except we had to,” she stated. “Ahuska had to draw the wolf.”
Ulfran paused his step, and he shot Nela a very odd look. It was too much for him to wrap his head around, trying to sort what had been real, or if any had been at all. Had they truly changed things? Had the reality they’d known actually been in any danger, had they needed to go back and fix things to increase the odds of Crow turning right? Had they undone time, had they always been living in an altered version of events…? What had they actually experienced? He had no answers. He couldn’t accept it as simply as Nela seemed to. But his urgency to locate and destroy the shard had been rekindled, because his twisting, hopeless over-thinking always wound up leading to a single conclusion. That power, if it was real, was something no being should ever wield.
“They’re not so mad any more. I tried to explain why it was so important, and that it was... all my fault. Dad doesn’t actually want me to stop learning from you. We just… scared them all a bit.”
Ulfran stared at her a long while. In the timeline where Crow had turned left, everything had fallen apart at the end, because there had been no trust. No love between them. But here, now, in the timeline where Crow had gone the right way... maybe they were in with a fighting chance.
“Nela,” he started, speaking as softly as he had to to avoid excessive pain rioting through his jaw.
“Mm?”
“Do you realize what an important person your father is?”
Nela stared at him as though he’d said something utterly daft. “Well of course he is, dummy. What in the universe could ever be more important than your family?”
Renouncing my status as a zadr shipper, I no longer ship zadr- been that way for a really long time now
I haven’t genuinely shipped it since like middle school and stepped away from the invader zim fandom cuz of it- I pretended i still shipped it for a long time cuz I made a lot of friends through it and I was known for it but uh I’m not friends with most of those people anymore and this blog has very much turned into whatever tf I want it to be about rather than JUST invader zim like it used to be soooooo
I am free!!! I can just exist! Kinda stupid I acted like i couldn’t- wasn’t like I was popular or anything but also I had die hard zadr friends and peer pressure is a bitch. This blog was so dead and tbh it still kinda is but bunny maloney gave me the spark to actually enjoy posting again
