#synthclothing

[ghostowlattic]

TECHNICOLOR SYNTHESIZER DREAMCOATS 

unreal generative nonsense clothing ideations - secret power mittens

[jpitha]

Humans rig stuff together

The battle had been close. The Gren Warfinder had completely surprised them. They flipped nearby on a stolen drive and had started pounding the convoy. They were clearly trying to cut supply lines to the Colony in an attempt to starve them into surrendering. More than half of the ships in the convoy were destroyed before the Coalition was able to mount a response. Iixan was thankful that their ship was only mostly destroyed instead of completely destroyed. The Coalition dreadnought could waste no resources to repair though. They offloaded the cargo, handed out a case of multi-species ration bars and said that if the crew couldn’t fix the ship, someone would be by in 30 solar days or so to rescue them. With a ‘luck be with you’ they flipped away, giving chase to the Gren.

Iixan was ordered by the captain to assess the damage. The hull was holed in at least five places and two of them were too large to patch. They were going to be in suits for the duration. That was frustrating, but survivable.

What wasn’t survivable was the fact that two of the three reactors were offline, with one of them reduced to slag. Iixan found himself next to the non slagged reactor with the three human crew members standing over it. They stood around the reactor, one with their hands on their hips. Iixan didn’t know much about human body language, but they knew that pose was an important one.

He found their comm channel and clipped in. “…I’m telling you, we can just do a hard restart with something in place of the fusion fuse.”

“That’s insane. The fuse exists for a reason. If we let the field get too strong then the whole thing will collapse.”

“Is it better to have a rickety reactor and be able to Flash home, or no reactor and sit here, cold in our suits, eating-“ here the human shuddered “-multi-species ration bars for a month while we wait for the Coalition to remember we’re stuck out here?”

“Okay, wait. Maybe we can split the difference. What if we- oh hey Iixan! What’s up?”

At the mention of his name, the three humans turned to face Iixan. Their suits were bulkier and armored where his was just barely a skin of synthcloth and a helmet. He always wondered why human suits always looked like battle armor. Their large bulbous helmets were clear now, but they could be completely blackened, or even mirrored when necessary. Iixan always felt a little uncomfortable when multiple humans turned to give him their full attention. “Uh, Commander Mizzen asked me to do a damage assessment.” He peered around the humans at the three reactors. “Looks… bad?”

The first human nodded and gestured towards the pile of melted metal, still smoking slightly. The light of a nearby star shone through the smoke, giving it a pretty effect. “Reactor three is toast. There’s no fixing that one. Reactor one is offline with… minor damage. Reactor two is online and keeping us alive for now. We’re trying to decide if we can rig Reactor one to work enough to Flash home.”

“Rig?”

“You know” The second human shrugged in their suit. “Make it work enough to get us somewhere. It’s not fixing it, not really. Just like pretending it’s fixed to the point where it doesn’t realize it’s broken and it’ll run until it notices that it’s actually broken.” The other two looked at him and he looked embarrassed. “Figuatively that is.”

Iixan’s upper arms crossed themselves and made a motion like rubbing warmth into his arms. “And that works?”

“It’s a little more than pretending it’s going to work.” The first human sighed. “We can get it going, but it won’t be pretty and it probably won’t be… that safe. I know your sapient group is more sensitive to high magnetic fields and the reactor is going to be… leaky so you should probably tell the captain to keep the reactor hall humans only if we get it running.”

“You’ll be all right?”

The third human had a strange lilt to his speech. Iixan asked once and he said that he grew up in a place called ‘Minnesota.’ “Oh yah, it’ll be fine, but doncha know, it’ll be a mite dangerous for everyone. No worries though, we’ll make it work enough to Flash.”

The first human nodded. “Come back in a demicycle Iixan, you’ll see.”

Iixan completed his survey and reported to the captain. While he was out, people were able to seal some of the smaller holes to the point where you could take your helmet off in a few rooms. That would make eating easier at least.

One demicycle later, and Iixan returned to the reactor hall. The slagged reactor was in even more pieces than he thought possible, and Reactor one was partially disassembled. Iixan swore that he saw melted parts of Reactor three wired into the reactor. When he clipped into the comm channel they turned. “Oh Hi Iixan! We’re just about ready to test.”

Iixan pointed at the parts. “What are the… melted parts?”

“Oh, that was Will’s idea. We stole some of the… less melted parts from Reactor three to try and kick Reactor one over. They’re not exactly the same model, but I think it’ll be close enough. Just had to put in a few bodge wires in to get power and signal where it needed to be.”

Peering closer, Iixan saw that there was nearly an entire plain’s worth of wires roughly soldered into different parts of the reactor, crossing back and forth and across. The Reactor looked utterly broken. He looked up at the humans. “This… will work?”

Will smiled. “One way to find out, right? We’re going to force a hard restart and see if it’ll work. Tell the Captain to get ready, okay?”

Iixan made a gesture of supplication to the Machine Spirits and called the Captain. The Captain was just as dubious as Iixan was, but agreed to let them try. He signaled Will and the other two and they made that odd gesture of theirs where they curl their large fingers together except for their shortest one and stick it straight into the air.

“Here we go!” Will reached deep inside the Reactor and flipped some switches that were added while they were bogding.

After Will flipped the levers, the three of them jumped back almost as if they were injured. Iixan took another step back as the reactor spun up. The reactor hall had no atmosphere so he coulnd’t hear anything, but he could feel it. It had a thrumming vibration that was getting faster and faster. Iixan wasn’t a reactor technician but even he knew it didn’t sound right. The thrumming was… off balance somehow? It also sounded rougher? Still, the vibration was more and more intense until it felt like the grated floor was a shake table moving them around.

Suddenly, there was a prismatic flash and a shaft of pure white light shot out of the reactor towards the back wall. The humans jumped back and one of them reached towards a bundle of wires that was draped on the floor towards a wall when Will shouted “No! Leave it! We knew containment might leak. It’s otherwise holding steady. Let me refactor.” Will glanced down at his pad and furiously typed and slowly, the white beam faded.

It felt like the room would shake apart, and the reactor blurred in Iixan’s vision in a disconcerting way, but it was running. Will and the other two bounded up to Iixan. “That’s as good as we’re going to get it I think. It’s running at around 74.8%. If we run Reactor two at 112% We should be able to Flash home. We’ll have to stay in our suits, but that’s a sight better than hanging around here.”

The Captain was stunned when Iixan told him and demanded to see for himself. He was led to the Reactor hall but Will had warning him not to enter due to the danger. He stood in the open doorway watching the Reactor vibrate and blur as Reactor two ran with yellow and orange warnings all over the indicators as it was… gently overloaded. “Ancestors. You got it running.” He looked at Will. “How?”

Will demurred. “Oh, just a little bit of experience with these kind of Reactors and a human willingness to rig up a temporary solution. If it’s stupid and works, it’s not stupid.”

The Captain met Will’s gaze. “No. It’s still stupid. But right now we need some stupid. Well done. Now pardon me, I need to get the calculations to Flash home started before that-“ he points at the rigged reactor “-fails and traps us somewhere even worse than here.”

[kylo-wrecked]

❝ if i disappeared, would you look for me? ❞ (dark!ren)

{ 🕯️ You conjured: Dark!Ren }

Ren marked Brunnhilde's wings raised in the ovals of his half-closed eyes. Ren marked her wings within his vision, in this in-between place she was forbidden to enter, edging his mind’s shoreline. One set motion of flight, and the wraith stirred from his deep meditation, becoming a dark storm raging down a darker hall. 

All was silent after the clangor that was the blast doors torn from their shelter, sensors, gear motors, belt and pulley flung away, steel skeletons smashed upon blank floor panels. Ren, a shadow on an alloy wall, the ship's empty corridor resounding around his furor. The cybernetic mandible caught the dying light as he came in. 

He swept into her chamber. A dream. In a dream, someone could lift another with one hand at the base of the head. Yet here he dragged her just so, while she was wide awake, wingless, and thrashing like a star in the grip of an anti-Force. Raised her from her sleeper and ran her and the synthcloth bedcover into the ground. 

Ren knelt, pressing his viscus white glare on Brunnhilde's eyes, which were glossy with broken sleep and fury. His hair fell over his face and hers. His breath smelled of metal; his voice streamed deep and wide as a basin. 

"We do not walk dreams here, Winged One. You won't find answers in dreams. Only phantoms."

He fitted his palm to the back of her head and sunk his fingers beyond her nape, beyond flyaways escaped from her tumbling braid, into Brunnhilde's skull, stirring cloaked intentions, locks on other doors he could blow down. His shadow voice filled her mind's halls, like thunder and unlike thunder. A screaming chasm in the sky no winged thing would peril. 

You voice one question and ask another. Tell me what you want to know, and I'll show you, and you will suffer for the answer. 

[tessiete]

16 (“If you want, we could go together?”) or 46 (“Shut up, I am a delight!”) for Obi-Wan & Padme, but no pressure whatsoever <3 <3 <3

Pressure! Pressure! Pressure! Lots of pressure. You know how my vanity requires that everything I write be capital P Profound.

This was a lot of fun to write - I forgot how much I love Padme. Now I’m contriving how to have her and Satine in the same fic and see how different they are.

In the meantime, here’s 2k of Padme just staring at Obi-Wan. Hope you’re at work @tree-scapes 

AND NEVER DO HARM TO THE WORLD

She asks him before she’s certain of the wisdom in it, herself, and he looks at her as if he’s only certain of its absence.

“If you want,” she says, “We could go together?”

The hitch in his step makes her wince as they reach the top of the Temple steps. She’s trapped him now, she knows, and feels guilty, but there’s no way for her to withdraw without causing further injury to both their dignities.

“I only suggest it since I know it’s a burden to - to me,” she explains. “And my usual escort is indisposed.”

He smiles. It’s a stiff and awkward line, as though drawn across his face by the unpracticed hand of a child, but he bows, and acquiesces with grace.

“Of course, Senator,” he says. She’s senator again, though moments before with Masters Windu and Koon she’d been Padme, so she knows it’s not the company.

“If it’s no inconvenience. I wouldn’t want to impose on your schedule, if you’d only meant to go for a short -”

“It’s no inconvenience at all,” he insists. His smile is kinder now, his awkwardness eased by the desire to alleviate her own obvious discomfort. “It would be my pleasure.”

“Good. Then I will know to expect you,” she says. With one more shallow bow, and the press of his fingers to hers, she hurries away, anxious to escape the louring gaze of the Temple guardians, and Obi-Wan’s curious stare.

She expects that he will show up, as promised.

She expects he will be, in all ways, gracious and prepared.

She expects stilted conversation, and wonders how often her tongue will stray to speak of Anakin, hoping the wine and frizz won’t alleviate one problem only to create another.

She expects she will spend the evening regretting her impulsive invitation, and making him regret it, if he doesn’t already.

What she does not expect is to be met at her door by a man she hardly recognises.

She has known Obi-Wan Kenobi since she was a girl, and he, hardly more than a boy, though in her eyes even then he’d been a man well beyond the reach of her childish ambition. Met again, he’d seemed...not ancient - one could hardly call him that - but aged, perhaps. Somber. Solemn to the point of serenity. He had an authority of a kind she’d only seen in grandmothers and wild prey, a sort of amused resignation to the motions of life, and an understanding gained through loss and sorrow. Whatever it was, it was something very distant from her, as if he’d grown out while she’d been busy growing up.

But the man that stands before her now is young, and sparkling. And nervous. It is a side of him she’s not seen before, and it has her counting the distance of years in her head. Is it ten? Less than? Surely not more. Are they truly peers?

He wears a skirt of muted blue, with three deep pleats pressed the full length on his right side. The creams of his traditional tabards are replaced with a stiff white tunic, and a thigh-length jacket with wide sleeves that drapes soft as the sky over his shoulders and down his back. It is a curious mix of imposed structure and natural elegance.

“Jedi formalwear,” he explains beneath her curious inspection. His fingers twist at the inside of a sleeve where the fabric hangs just long enough to hide his hand. He extends his opposite arm to offer her proper support. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” she agrees, and instead of the more sophisticated and out-dated practice of simply laying her hand atop his, she tucks her arm beneath, and steps close until their arms are pressed between them, more like comrades than indifferent chaperones.

They stay that way until they reach the Feano Lyceum, Obi-Wan’s arm against hers. She is presented first, and his name follows. She thinks he may pull away here, in public, but his hold remains neither loose enough to encourage release, nor tight enough to prove her suspicions about his disquiet correct.

A few ambassadors and fellow diplomats nod in greeting at their arrival, but they are not questioned about their connection. This, Padme realises with some relief, and then worries that the Jedi may sense some of that and go looking for its source. She isn’t certain, yet, what lies within the power of the Force to provide. Anakin seems as attuned to her moods as she is at times, and then so oblivious at others that she thinks they must be total strangers. It would be unfortunate if Obi-Wan were to tend towards the former. If he knew about whom she thought of so often and so well...

It’s been six months since she’d wed her knight, and she’d heard lots about Obi-Wan second-hand, but only as a father, or an overly strict mentor. He is neither of these things tonight. And he is neither of these things to her. So what is Obi-Wan Kenobi?

A Jedi, certainly. Wise. Accomplished. Just. Driven. Demanding. These were all revealed to her by Anakin, and proved to her by history. But he’d said more she was less convinced of.

Stern? Perhaps, though she might instead say serious.

Aloof? Not that. Not judging by the way he leans into her at the approach of the senator from Alk’Lellish III who courts him with a lascivious flick of her tongue, and lingering prehensile limbs.

Cold? Not by the way he nudges her to draw her attention to the buffet table where two politicians abandon a vehement argument to fall into an enthusiastic embrace, stifling a smirk.

Pretentious? Not in how he coaxes her to try some sort of elegantly twisted hors d’oeuvres only to break out into genuine laughter as he watches the spice hit her tongue.

“You knew,” she accuses, trying in vain to wipe at her mouth with a synthcloth napkin in an elegant fashion.

“I might have,” he acknowledges, before mercifully passing over a cocktail from the bar. “It’s a White Knight. Made with nerf-milk. It’ll soothe the sting.”

She throws the drink back with the steel of a seasoned professional, and Obi-Wan’s brow rises in surprise.

“I’ve been in politics a long time,” she says, a warning in her tone.

“Ah,” he says, signalling for two more. “So have I.”

His own drink disappears as quickly as her first, and he calls for a flute of frizz while she sips at the Knight.

“I was under the impression you’d be above all this,” she says. “You know - as a Master of the Order.”

“I had similar delusions,” he agrees, taking a long draught of his drink. “However, it turns out there’s rather more politicking in times of war than of peace.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, it seems that now we are required to be paraded about as the face of the Republic at these things as often as possible. To show we are here. To demonstrate our investment. To prove that the Chancellor is doing something about the Separatist threat.”

He finishes that drink, and reaches for another passing by on a tray. Padme’s smile turns to a frown as she watches that one disappear nearly as rapidly.

“You sound as though you don’t approve,” she says.

Obi-Wan tenses beside her, and turns away to set his empty glass aside. She cannot see his face, so must read what she can in the rigid line of his back as he says, “I lost many friends on Geonosis.”

“I’m sorry.”

When he turns back he is smiling softly once more, and she can’t tell if it is the Knight or some otherworldly radiance of his own that makes him blur at the edges, disguising his hurt, and transforming his disgust into dust, swept away by the fine skirts, and elevated company.

“Don’t be,” he says, deliberately applying her apology to a far less serious wound. “That’s why I came tonight with you. I had hoped you might ease my way, and perform all necessary flattery for me.”

“Oh, I hardly think you need my help in that,” she says, rolling her eyes, content to follow him to safer ground. “Maybe only to keep your admirers at bay.”

A short, sharp exhalation of air, and he falls silent, looking away.

“Why, Master Kenobi,” she cries, entranced and in utter delight, “Are you blushing?”

“That would be rather undignified for someone of my rank,” he denies. “It’s only a flush from the heat of the room.”

“You are blushing!”

“I am not,” he says. “It’s the ventilation that’s lacking.”

She waits. He watches her out of the corner of his eye, until she catches his gaze and holds it. His lips twitch. She can see his facade begin to splinter. It only pushes her to a higher mirth, and she laughs outright as it gives way entirely, leaving them both breathless and gasping.

Their joy catches the interest of several nearby dignitaries, one of whom is the Lellish ambassador with the wandering appendages, and before Obi-Wan can revert back to the blandly pleasant stoic he plays at, she takes him by the hand and leads him to the floor.

“Dance with me,” she says.

His smile remains, though his head tilts in confusion.

“This doesn’t seem a particularly effective way to solicit political support,” he suggests.

“No,” she says. “Not at all. But then I don’t find myself particularly interested in politics tonight, do you, Master Kenobi?”

“Obi-Wan,” he corrects, eyes shining.

“I thought not,” she says, and a smirk winds its way across her lips like the arched spine of a smug felinx.

They dance one set, and then the next, twirling away in a flourish of colour and light the moment anyone steps too near, or looks too close, and for a time they cannot be touched, and when they are spent, they fall laughing, out of line, upon each other.

“Anakin won’t believe this!” she says, her voice still rising with the excitement of the music. She doesn’t realise what she’s said until Obi-Wan’s eyes turn cloudy, and a wedge forms between his brows as he looks on her with a strange regard. “Next time I see him,” she amends. “I’ll tell him your secret.”

The Jedi coughs to clear some stray thought from his throat before it can be said aloud, and looks out over the room.

“Yes, I - I’m sure he’ll be amused,” he agrees. “Though we have attended many functions such as this before. Growing up. On a variety of worlds. It can be of little surprise to him - it seems that such civilized negotiations are common everywhere.”

Padme settles her skirts, and treads cautiously. “I suppose that’s true,” she allows.

“Though I imagine he little suspects that I am capable of such delight.”

“He has never said that,” she says, unwilling to slander Anakin even in her denial of him.

“But evidently, he thinks it,” Obi-Wan says, then sighs, gathering himself again. “Forgive me,” he says. “I find myself more and more uncertain what Anakin thinks, and feels. He doesn’t come to me as - Forgive me. You’re much too young, but I suppose one day, when you have your own younglings eaten up by adulthood you’ll feel it, too.”

“You’re not so old as all that, Obi-Wan,” she chides. “Hardly older than me, and not much older than Anakin. Certainly not old enough to be his father.”

“I was his master,” he corrects. “And now that he is knighted, I’m not certain what I am, anymore. He is changing faster than I am.”

She watches him as he watches the room spin, whirling by him in a wild array of colour and form that he cannot possibly follow - or if he can, then he is even more distant, even more removed from her ability to reckon. He is different. He is set apart, even from Anakin, and she suddenly wonders if that is because of the Force, or because of himself. Is it he who feels removed? He who feels shut out? He who feels divested of his place in the world, defined only by the title others call him and lacking the distinction of earnest comprehension? It isn’t enough, she thinks, to see in him what Anakin sees, or what she might expect. She needs to see him for himself, and appreciate him for that.

“His brother then,” she concludes, and she takes his hand. “And my friend, whatever else besides, no matter what he thinks.”

“If you say so,” he says, and she can feel him yield beneath the pressure of her hand, and the firmness of her conviction.

“I absolutely do. Let’s not think of him. Let’s be whatever we are right now. Let’s be delighted and delightful together, and have just one more dance.”

[thirst-order-confessions-renewed]

Yo so I love Hux and the triplets as much as the next Sinner™, but can I request some sexy stuff from the Ladies? Like...Leia, specifically...? (I'm sorry I'm just hella gay and you guys have A+ content, I thought I'd ask) Ilysm!!

Consider Hoth’s frigid cold, how everyone on the base is bundled up tightly, layers upon layers of thick synthcloth. The bunks aren’t much better; the rebellion is stretched thin, despite their win at the Battle of Yavin, the Empire still controls so much of the galaxy it’s hard to acquire what they need- especially such menial things as creature comforts- like extra blankets. 

And Hoth is much colder than Alderaan. It starts out of necessity- General Organa is a central part to the Rebellion, and her sudden insomnia at the base’s freezing temperature is poorly timed. Though you intended to bed her originally- the cold making her nipples stiff under your fingers, the heat of your mouth making Leia moan, coaxing her to orgasm with your fingers and tongue until her legs shake, her whole body shivering just once from something not the unbearable cold-- but it doesn’t quite go as expect.

Yes, you sleep with her (and frequently)- but it’s less the intimacy that lulls your general to sleep; she’s more than pleased to burrow into your arms, to tuck her cold limbs into your warmth. To hide away from the overbearing pressure of the Rebellion and sleep contently in your embrace.

[kylo-wrecked]

“You didn’t answer me right away. You had to think about it first, didn’t you?” (cael)

{ 🎁  You know you want: Ren, The Harbinger }

She'd asked a simple question; he hadn't intended to answer. And the gale chips no block from the shoulder of the mountain, for all it whipped at the summit.  

In his first days, when he donned the aboriginal flesh, Kylo Ren might have retaliated with sardonic questions of his own. Celebrate what? Observe life? For a single day? What trifle. But even this ember within him, which kept the soul he used as a hearth to the Ren aflame for decades, existed only in his mind's eye as a half-remembered dream.

Caelesis had entered that dream ephemerally, in the Valdrada-ridden quarter that formed parallel to Ren as it fed on the body he refused. She had leaned his fallen crown on her arm and dragged him to shore. She had demanded he not bleed here, into the sea. Perhaps she'd demanded the aid of the Dius, demanded their blood. 

Her voice had shaped Ren, the way strong winds cause snowdrifts, rockfalls, and erosions, subtle shifts that occur over millennia. He let Cael perform her naive experiments on his vessel, where flesh wove with durasteel and beskar. He allowed her onto his transport. A breathing thing, he called it. Not like her. The ship had no viewports and no ramp; it was an organism. When he pressed his carnal palm to it, a seam opened in its aloe-soft abdomen, and they stepped inside. Nothing could be seen from within because it knew where to go with concord and awareness. It had a name and a pulse. It understood hyperspace and couldn't be traced; it was not registered and ate metals, cables, and compounds. 

The ship was given to him in those first days, days filled with questions, some answered, some unresolved. Caelesis was voracious with questions. Questions about Eventide pyres, Winterfest night raids and witches. She wanted his old days, too. There were none to tell of. 

Yes, he admitted, in his secret tongue. He did not use words, but if he had, they might have been:  I can't recall. The past fades once one grows beyond it and only sears when held upon.

The ship breathed, a vein in its roof pulsed . Ren was a monolith draped in thick, dark synthcloth. He made no breath, no sound. Only his tattered shroud, feathered and full of bones, made any noise.

Unwise to hold to pain that sows no seeds. He turned to her, helmet cocked affectionately, to the degree it could be named so, his dull red eye peering at her through the shards of his visor. Why do you wish to know?

Ren didn't have to ask. He could pluck the answer from Cael's pristine, clockwork head like a fig, like the finger of a rival in war, rawed down to the bone and hung on his cowl, but she had stamped him with her sight and her wonder, and he was curious. 

@nightmarefuele

[kylo-wrecked]

❝ I move the stars for no one. ❞

The bond had drawn her to him once more, and Rey had appeared in his quarters this time. Kylo moved toward the viewports as to peer through them (it’s where she seemed to materialize, out in the black). His face was stern but not unkind. He was dressed casually, loose-fitting trousers and a dark synthcloth top that did nothing to dissuade his broad form.  

"You will for me." 

Kylo still couldn't make out the spaces beyond her. There was just her, in the center of a hazy halo. Her silhouette seemed to lose focus whenever she moved, softened at points, serrulated at others, making her hard to reach. She was not so distant that he couldn't touch her if he deigned to try. Once, when the Force had thrust them together, awaking their link deep one night, he had stuck his hand into the darkness surrounding Rey's cot and brushed his fingertips over her loose hair as she slept.

When he touched her, he suddenly felt that there were manifold worlds, years, and lives between them and that the stars would always move for them, either by their hand or, and always, by the will of the Force.

[kylo-wrecked]

“That’s your problem for trusting me.” ( drops hux here )

<< 0200 hours, The Finalizer Command Bridge >>

Kylo Ren stares at him. General Hux, in his starch-stiff uniform, impeccable in synthcloth and gaberwool, cruelly composed and rosy pink. Not like Ren, who has gone white with rage, while his eyes become red around the rims. He stares into General Hux's perfectly cool blue eyes and wants to scream. To tear him down along with the command bridge and Hux's petty officers. All the king's horses and all the king's men. 

How could-- Ren's chin trembles. He resets his jaw, blinks tears away like diamond shards. 

"I'm almost positive I don't know what you mean," he says in a low voice. "But whatever you think you've accomplished here will become your problem, and very soon.”

Then Kylo turns on his heel and stalks away. The engineers flinch as he passes by, but none of them hurt like he does.

[kylo-wrecked]

✉ + ✿ ? (You don’t have to but I thought it would be interesting lol.) - To Odara, if you want to do it.

[ He hits the heavy bag, grunts as his knuckles meet gravitated synthcloth. A small droid hums around his head, monitoring his progress. It bleeps dismally. Ren looks daggers at the droid, and hits the bag again, harder. Again, and again. 

His holopad lights up for a fraction of a second. It’s a message from Odara. Her words materialize over his own. Ren doesn’t see it. 

His unsent message blinks twice before disappearing. ]

‘Come to my room and we’ll see which one of us has more stamina and which one of us needs a good  *i**** **w*.’

[ New function. What happens when you wait too long. ] 

[kylo-wrecked]

“Why did you stop me from killing her?”

<< Corfax Fen, Mustafar >>

She could not see the look on his face because of the helmet.

"Isn't it obvious?" Kylo Ren whirred quietly. 

Pernix Ren curled against her speeder, spine showing through black duraknit synthcloth. Vera's saber was solvent to Pernix's Phrik vertebra. Blood steeped through her armor, and she was breathing heavily. Kylo stooped beside her a moment, nudged his helmet against hers, put his hand on her shoulder. The young knight shivered unbearably at his touch. It was unclear whether he'd healed her. In the dark, everything looked velvet. Black and wet. Smoke whorled at the bases of the irontrees. 

Kylo Ren rose after a moment and moved toward Vera, whose saber still blared. He moved in close. He could hear the weapon hum by his ear as he whispered at her profile. His voice was measured, controlled, and stripped of almost all expression, but the helmet couldn't hide what his body language made plain. 

"If you kill her, there is no going back," he murmured. "You must either become her or worse." 

He was patient. Kylo Ren's attention never left Vera, even as Pernix wheezed. Eventually, he reached a hand out toward the Jedi woman, as if to coax the wild, white flame. As if he were pleading with her. 

“Do not take this life. It will destroy you.”