A Mother clutched her month-old daughter close. The ship shook, fire danced in the corner of her eye. Outside, a dark figure loomed. Another ship, the attacker, raining bolts down on its prey.
Oh the life they had planned. The love, happiness… The hard times and anger, sadness. All of it they were prepared to face together, forever.
But not this. Never this.
The child she held in her arms cried, either from the jostling of her mother’s running, or the loud, terrifying sounds of battle that engulfed the ship whole. Soon, soon they could escape.
The woman felt terrible. Torn between the men and women of the crew that had helped her so much, the urge to stay and fight for them like they were for her… or her daughter, her Star, and the life she would surely have if she took an escape pod and ran.
The Captain knew what choice she would make, the crew knew. No one held it against her, even as she rushed away, no time spared for goodbyes.
He only looked at her, stoic as always, nodding once. She smiled grimly, the first hit rocking their ship on its axis.
She ran. The Captain turned and started barking battle orders.
That was the last she ever saw of them, the valiant crew and their leader.
It was not meant to be.
It was hot as hell on this planet, the humidity in air stuck to the skin, only adding to the sweat that formed over faces and arms- for the humans anyway.
Men and women alike wore sandals as they walked down solar-paneled sidewalks. Bicycles casually rolled past on the sidewalk separate from the pedestrian path. Every few feet the solar-panels displayed the image of a figure walking on the appropriate lane, and little bike signals on the bike path.
Leafy, flowering vines grew up telephone poles and hanging baskets dropped down within reaching distance, most full of small pitcher plants to help control the insect population. Although the wild variety smelled like rotting flesh, these small domestic ones smelled like overly ripe fruit. Edible plants and berry bushes hung down as well, such as ripe red strawberries, plump peaches, juicy oranges and many others, both from different planets and native to Linus.
Natural bridges went over highways for both human and fauna safety alike. Every block had a shaded solar charging port surrounded by benches, walkways that led to the beaches, bicycle racks and parking lots. The skyscrapers in the distance grew with greenery, bearing a strong resemblances to the massive forests surrounding most of the coastal capital.
The community, whether native or not, enjoyed this planet’s climate immensely… however the foreign General felt his sweat squelch in his thick military boots and under his formal uniform. The locals merely wore bikinis and shorts, with only the rare few daring to cover up with sundresses and tank tops.
He had only been here for barely half a Standard Galactic Day, and already he hated it with determined vehemence.
The man stopped under some shade, both to catch his breath and check in with Head Quarters. Taking his communicator off the clip on his coat, he clicked it to the correct signal.
“General reporting, Sir come in, Sir.” The man states, pressing the receiver of the little device, all the while shaking sand out of the speakers despite it not having been exposed to the beaches at all.
“Oh hun, always so uptight and formal… you couldn’t just lay your head back and relax for the day could you…” An effeminate voice chimed through static from the other end. One could just imagine him in his Cat’s eye sunglasses, filing his nails. The General fought back a cringe of disgust.
“They didn’t know about the mineral… they don’t apparently use much mining resources… pride themselves on being green, having low impacts on the environment and all that… A biologist I found along the shore did not suitably help… he was more concerned with some species of cat beasts and a slug…”
“Ah yes….” The man on the other end of the line hummed. “I heard about those cuties. I think I may have seen one earlier today… maybe two if wolves in sheep’s clothing count. Very adorable little things, really. It makes me want one…” he hummed in a slight airy manner, with noticeable emphasis on the want.
“Sir, I do not think it a wise course of action…”
However within moments he was walking down the sidewalk to visit the flea markets, casting cold, grey eyes along colourful stalls that seemed to sell everything on this planet. From exotic fruit and meat, to equipment for ships, Earth antiques, and every species imaginable living on Linus, which seemed as good a candidate for ‘pet’ you could get, in as loose a sense of the word as possible.
He decided upon a particularly dedicated looking vendor, which was really just a collection of small play gates and cages full of animals. The first creature to greet him was a many-eyed reptilian-looking cat with 6 arms. It started growling- the man assumed- for it made a repeating, aggressive ticking sound combined with a series of rattling snarls. Eventually it turned to lay contentedly under a heat lamp. Then, he saw an odd looking snake whose eyes seemed to jut out like a chameleon’s and whose tail wrapped around a branch like it had a mind of its own. A certain scaly thing even vaguely resembled a dragon. But one species in particular caught his eye. If one had lived on Earth, in its golden age, one would compare it to a cute, chubby baby otter. To the people of Linus, they were Mimics. And, to the people who knew what they were capable of, limitless sources of potential.
The stern General was, however, hoping he wouldn’t have to go through with this tomfoolery.
Approaching the manager, or owner of sorts, he cleared his throat and presented his dilemma.
“I need a pet for someone… a Service Dog like animal. Something smart. Something vicious.” He said, with a glint in his eye.
“Ah, is it perhaps for that special lady in your life? I mean, it all depends on what you want smart for exactly…” The manager replied, the local Linus lilt colouring his speech as he scrutinized his latest client.
The man grimaced, disgusted by the latest developments. He supposed one could call his Commander a ‘special lady’ alright… special with a helmet maybe.
“You pry too much…” He retorted, in a very smooth, very dangerous tone despite his apparent anger. “I came to ask questions, not to answer them…. I am here for a Mimic.”
The vendor- thought he seemed slightly dumbfounded- laughed heartily. “Pardon my manners, us mainlanders don’t mean to pry as much as we do. Should have just been straight forward- we got a whole litter. I hear even the SDF are starting to use these guys. I do warn ya, they aren’t pets. With ‘em little guys it’s like adopting a kid of your own…”
He motioned to a small group of Mimics, round chubby faces with antenna like whiskers. One seeming to be a small white female, another a large dapple grey, the third a grey with a black back and light underbelly. The fourth, and final one was a small black, and white male, standing just slightly taller than the female.
“That one right there, he’s a smart one I’ll tell ya.” He says pouring some milk into a saucer with a small amount of cat food. By the time the dishes were placed in their pen, the “alpha” Mimics were chittering and hollering loudly. Already they had started to mimic the noises of the animals surrounding them. The small black and white male remained silent as the two others pushed and shoved, snapping at one another for the food.
“Chester, come over here boy.” The puppy, though young, seemed to have a natural aptitude towards this sort of thing. He stood up his hind legs, prancing up and down as if he were a kangaroo jumping in delight before the dish was placed down in front him. Followed by another one for the other two Mimics.
While the two grey males fought over who would drink first, the black puppy stared at them. When the moment was right, he snuck his snout under their chests to stealthily pick dish up carefully in his mouth, all the while pushing the other with his flippers. Once his thievery accomplished, the small male sat by the passive white female, with whom he shared his prize. She pressed up against him, affectionate, but most certainly shy.
Then, suddenly, the black male looked up at the scowling General, their gaze locking. A galaxy of blue ocean waves and worlds of the multi-hued coral beneath seemed to scrutinize the man’s very person- for he had no more soul. They glowed with multitudes of deeper secrets, hidden thoughts he would never see. Perhaps it was intelligence. Or maybe not.
Was it, perhaps, something more?
It didn’t take long before the Grey’s realized what had happened and approached. They bristled and snarled, copying all sorts of offended animal calls. The black male, Chester, simply looked at them before growling and making a noise that the man had heard before, upon approaching the stall. The Mimic pup got up on his hind legs and made a noise resembling the roar of one of Linus’ big cats, albeit softer and smaller, babyfied, almost. Now, before the Grey’s, stood an almost perfect replica of the reptilian, six armed cat who slept a few cages over.
The male’s siblings retreated in a frenzy, fearfully whining high pitched screeches that made the General want to shoot them.
But nevertheless. If his Commander had stated he wanted a pet, he would have his damn pet.
And if it was to be, the General would make sure its usefulness would be maximized. He would make damn well sure.
And if he was to be stuck with an overgrown, doggish copy-parrot, he would make sure it wasn’t a dumb overgrown, doggish copy-parrot.
This would be it.
The man spent the rest of the day carrying an unstable cardboard box, with holes punched in the top, under his arm. Heavily annoyed, very unamused.
Little did he know, this was the beginning of 15 years of annoyance and un-amusement.
Pairing: Poe Dameron x (OFC) Princess Calista Ordell
Series Masterlist | About Thesmora | Main Masterlist | A03
Words: 1k | Warnings: Ramblings of a delusional fanfic writer... Nothing.
A/N: This is the prologue so we won’t meet the main characters in this chapter, this scene sets up the stage for another character who will become important as we go along. I hope you give this fic a chance, it’s 90% original characters I know, but I’ve been struggling to get this out into the ether and... here it is. Also, this fic takes place between TFA and TLJ.
Somewhere in the Outer Rim…
"I think I lost him," Mokk-Toh breathed heavy, sweat trailing down his face along his proud age lines. There was no fear in his eyes. No, that had been trained out of him at the academy, but something was hiding behind his apathetic mud coloured eyes, a failure to reconcile. An internal schism.
"Contact me as soon as you meet with your contact," Lenora's hologram relayed in an unwavering tone. Her voice a beacon of strength in the fray.
Mokk-Toh gave a slow nod, his eyes closing for a second too long.
A chiming sound rippled through from the hologram. Lenora turned and sighed, something disturbed her, but now wasn’t the time to offer his ear. "My sister requests an audience with me."
Lenora looked him in the eye, a youthful smile reversing the signs of age from her face for a brief moment. The cold blue projection of the transmission washing away all of her warm colours. And yet, tranquillity took purchase in Mokk-Toh’s thoughts, calm waves washing away the jagged glass that littered across the golden shores of his mind.
Lenora always had this effect on him. She was his queen and the power she had over him was unquantifiable. She was the only one who ever made Mokk-Toh feel fear, fear from vulnerability. From a look so simple, so earnest, he felt like he had been permitted to breathe again. The pain knocking against his joints was starting to ebb away.
"Be careful," Lenora said sincerely. "Come back to me."
Her words meant something else.
Through the years, Mokk-Toh had always given her the same answer, "Don't I always?"
His words meant something different too.
This was their way, their mantra through the years; substituted words for the ones they could never be allowed to say aloud.
Lenora's smile grew wider, her hand pausing for a moment before the hologram cut out leaving Mokk-Toh alone to bandage his wounds under the cover of damp, mossy steam tunnels. He tore a piece of cloth from his coat, wrapping the blue material around the long cut than ran up his arm- blood appearing as dark spots on the fine material.
Resting his head against the damp wall, Mokk-Toh used this time of quiet to rest his eyes and regain some strength. He had been hunted from one quadrant to the next, relentlessly. The bounty-hunter was a force of reckoning, a rageful spirit trapped beneath soldered armour.
Mokk-Toh had heard whispers of such a man through the ages, he had prayed they were just that, whispers in the dark, but now he wasn’t so sure that this ghost was completely a ghost. The underworld called him Versengen and he was shaping up to be a worthy adversary.
The air began to tingle. There was a disturbance. Something unhinged was disrupting the calm that Mokk-Toh savoured. It wasn't until the clanky sound of metal meeting concrete resonated through the abandoned tunnels that Mokk-Toh realised he was being hunted again.
Despite the contusions and seeping cuts that wore his body down, Mokk-Toh gripped the wall and forced his legs to go on. As he ran, flames began to seek him out, hungry and volatile, the heat almost close enough to touch.
A thud echoed behind him as the explosion kept clawing towards him like a rabid dog. The pressure of a bruise on his leg forced him to hobble, the fire sticking to the cylindrical walls of the tunnels with the adhesion of water. Droplets of moisture fizzling out into pitiful clouds of steam.
"How long do you think you can keep this up?" A distorted voice behind the wall of flames bellowed out. Breathing morphed into a mechanical whir from the blocked mouthpiece of his helmet, each breath was slow and purposeful. It was clear now that Versengen didn't run after his prey, the flames did that for him.
Mokk-Toh could all but taste the anger hiding behind those taunting words, it was contagious, like a sickness. Rage was always so easy to tap into, but it was also poisonous.
As he kept up his fight, one foot in front of the other, one foot a misplaced step from being devoured by flames, Mokk-Toh spotted a forking path leading to a spillway.
"I will find you," Versengen promised as the flames died down, replaced by a thick curtain of black smoke. He was all but foaming at the mouth.
When Mokk-Toh looked behind him he saw the bounty-hunter emerge from the blackness.
Versengen was a monster stitched together from the remnants of older, more obsolete monsters. His armour pieced together from fallen Stormtroopers- the red plating on his chest scavenged from a shock trooper, the camo-green helmet and knee padding stolen from a scout, and a scorched black arm ripped off a death trooper. Scratches, indents and charred metal plates imposing upon the greens, blacks and reds of his patch-work armour. Ashen marks a clear indication of his proclivity for fire. The flames that once devoured his cloak were nothing more than singe marks now. It was like he found solace in being bathed in flame the same way Mokk-Toh would find solace in Lenora’s warm sea-foam eyes.
Mokk-Toh stopped dead in his tracks when he came to the edge of the spillway. The jump a long way down. The water at the bottom too peaceful in contrast to the perilous atmosphere above. He clutched his collar and steadied his breathing.
Versengen's heavy footsteps had stopped a few feet away, another incendiary grenade pressed between his palm and thumb. Mokk-Toh imagined him smiling beneath his verdant green helmet.
Versengen tilted his head to the side, watching Mokk-Toh debate between fighting and jumping. With an exhale, he dropped the grenade, pressure trigger activating, and the sound of a spring popping as metal met concrete once more.
Mokk-Toh closed his eyes, imagining Lenora's smile and finding strength in that fleeting picture, fingers wrapping around the data-chip looped around his neck. The wind trickled against his nape, his loose hairs brushing forward, and with determination, he stepped off the edge. Just then, the hissing roar of growing flames danced to life.
Versengen's unhinged laugh seemingly feeding the flames.
Mokk-Toh's body hit the water like a tonne of bricks, an unnatural sound rippling into the waves as he felt a bone rub against another and snap. The force of the fall smacking against the base of his skull like a lead pipe to the face. An unintended gasp forced what little air he had swallowed bubble out. The distorted sight of orange flames viewed beneath blue waters transformed into his new sky. White speckles bombarded Mokk-Toh's dark eyes until all he saw was a sheet of white.
“Come back to me.”
“Don't I always?”
A venomous sneer echoed down through the water, "This isn't over..."
MASTERPOST | About Thesmora | AO3
Ever wonder what it would be like if the cutthroat politics associated with the Iron Throne of A Song of Ice and Fire was integrated into the large expanse of the space opera Star Wars? No? Well, this is the brutal and bloody royal squabble no one asked for, but you’re getting it anyway! Original Characters and Planets!
Summary: A princess on the run from her homeworld, a reluctant pilot with a secret mission and a former admiral lost to the stars.
When Calista’s whole life is destroyed by the malicious actions of her power-hungry aunt, she is left with few choices as she races against time in an effort to gain new allies within the Resistance in order to retake her homeworld and her birthright.
>>Prologue || Chapter One || Chapter Two || Chapter Three || Chapter Four || Chapter Five || Chapter Six || Chapter Seven || Chapter Eight || Chapter Nine || Chapter Ten || Chapter Eleven || Chapter Twelve || Chapter Thirteen || Chapter Fourteen || Chapter Fifteen || Chapter Sixteen || Chapter Seventeen || Chapter Eighteen || Chapter Nineteen || LATEST CHAPTER
