Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Juno Eclipse   Currently, the Rogue Shadow is some light years away from the Tatoo system, near the borders of the Arkanis Sector. There is a small sprinkling of astral debris butted up against a nebula, something between failed planetoids and space junk, which makes for an excellent blind to most conventional sensor arrays. All the metallic objects make it difficult to pick out actual starships that might be hiding. The nebula accounts for the rest, causing sensors to go haywire in its vicinity.

  Although it's been too risky to make use of open communication channels, the ship's pilot had instead sent a tightband burst of coordinates directly to the Ebon Hawk's registered frequencies, lurking with cloaking systems activated until the ship showed up -- just in case her summons had brought along any uninvited guests interested in collecting on the bounty.

  Fortunately, it hadn't. The Ebon Hawk had arrived, and for the first time in perhaps a week, Juno Eclipse had finally gotten some decent sleep. No sooner had she reached the crew quarters than she'd kicked off her boots, collapsed into bed, and promptly stopped buying into the world of the living.

  That was twelve hours ago.

  Now, with the ship's lights brightened to the wake cycle, ship's day, the pilot has only now finally begun to stir. Even better, Galen had been given an opportunity to sleep, too; with each former Imperials more comfortable knowing that the other has a safe chance to rest. In fact, that's where she leaves Galen as she carefully slides out of bed, pulling on her boots and a quick change of clothes, raking fingers through her hair, peering into the quarters' small mirror, and deciding that's close enough to civilised to make the cut.

  The cockpit chairs had been offered to Revan, and so that's where Juno makes her way up, still moving a little slowly but looking less deathly exhausted than she has over the past week.

  "Lowri...?"
Revan      It had been years since Revan had seen this part of the galaxy before, and found herself idly wondering if there had always been this much space junk along the hyperspace route. Not that she was going to complain at all; it was passable cover, particularly since she hadn't been entirely confident after her first look at the controls of the Rogue Shadow that she could fly the ship decently if disaster came knocking. Fortunately the Force had been with her and the ship's regular crew because it hadn't, but she had spent considerable time trying to figure them out just in case. The autopilot had been active ever since Juno had passed out.

     In truth, she had expected to fly alongside the Rogue Shadow, so it came as something of a surprise to be invited on board. And with the Ebon Hawk currently being flown by T3-M4, she hadn't had to worry about slaving her own comparatively ancient freighter to the sleek stealth fighter...not that the systems would probably have been compatible, anyway. That had meant passing the time attempting to figure out the controls and meditating. Lowri didn't dare sleep in the event that disaster she was anticipating indeed came knocking. When Juno finally came down to the cockpit bleary-eyed, she had been doing the latter, her eyes closed but her mind opened out to space beyond the viewscreen.

     It had been 12 hours, but in honesty she had been expecting to be meditating for a lot longer. For once, the usually sarcastic and mercurial Jedi hadn't been making her usual snarky comments. To be fair, she had been generally serious around the former ragtag crew of the Ebon Hawk, but this situation was a little different. "Oh hey," she greeted, mismatched eyes opening but remaining slightly hooded. It would take a moment for her to refocus on her immediate surroundings. "I thought you'd be out for another day."
Juno Eclipse   Although it might not seem like much from outside, the Rogue Shadow is on the bleeding edge of this Galactic Empire's technological advancements. It's a surprisingly complex ship, despite its humble chassis adapted from a transport ship or light freighter, and piloting it is probably something of a nightmare to the uninitiated. Yet for all that, the ship is not half as predatory as it looks, too large to dogfight and not armed enough to stand toe to toe to many combat-oriented ships. Even the Ebon Hawk more than likely overpowers it.

  Its pilot can handle the ship practically in her sleep -- in fact, she's probably come close to doing so over the last week and a half -- but to anyone else, it's an overwhelming array of switches, buttons, toggles, console panels, head-up displays, and more. Likely the only thing familiar out of all that is the throttle controls, and the heading and trim control mechanisms. The forward controls are all soft red lights and status readings, almost bewildering in its variety to the uninitiated.

  Fortunately, it has a sophisticated autopilot function, and the forward chairs in the cockpit are most comfortable.

  Juno ambles into the cockpit, eyes squinting shut at the cockpit lights as she rolls to a halt at the doorway, reaching up and dragging fingers through her hair. For a moment she doesn't answer, as though she might not have heard the Jedi's greeting.

  In fact, it takes her several seconds longer to process it, during which she manages a deep yawn, and a rib-popping stretch, arms high overhead. She's wearing simple clothes; a grey halter top that bares her arms, and dark leggings tucked into scuffed combat boots. She folds her arms, leaning against the doorway as she regards Revan with her head slightly tilted.

  One hand rises to try and tame her hair, though it looks like a futile effort. After a moment she gives up on that, shuffling over to the co-pilot's chair and staring, blearily, at the controls.

  "I feel like I probably should, but I had to get up..." Her eyes hood as she stares at the display, without really seeing it. "Galen's still asleep... I didn't have the heart to wake him up..."

  The normally sharp-minded Juno Eclipse is... not really awake, no.
Revan      Some of the controls seemed familiar -- how much could basics be improved on, really -- but everything else was guesswork. She honestly had no idea how Juno figured it all out. "You skip forward only a few thousand years and /everything/ changes," she quipped wryly to herself.

     In the back of her mind she thought she should probably get something to eat, but for some reason she wasn't hungry. Deep meditation had that effect sometimes, where she completely lost track of time and the rest of her was slow to catch up. Give it a few more hours and she would probably feel as if she could devour an entire bantha...not that the idea was particularly appealing.

     The beleaguered former Imperial might have looked like a mess, but Lowri didn't remark on it even as her vision came back into focus.

     "You look a lot better but you still seem like you're half asleep." Blunt and to the point, the Guardian didn't bother to dance around her observation. She had loosened her long platinum hair out of its bun had shrugged off her jacket to a black sleeveless turtleneck shirt sometime during the flight, somewhat relaxed but not entirely.

     "But I'm guessing you can't go back to sleep?"
Juno Eclipse   "That's because I am half asleep." Juno reaches up to run her fingers through her hair one last time, bringing her hands down to rub some life back into her face. Yawning, she winces slightly as her jaw pops, slumping back in the co-pilot's chair. "Probably more than half. I'm not used to sleeping so long. And I've needed it for a week and a half."

  She rubs at her face some more, shaking her head; reaching up again, she gathers it into a messy twist over one shoulder. Close enough, until she can tame it with a comb and throw it into its usual horsetail. In the meantime, she brushes the remainder out of her face, looking somewhat blearily toward the Rogue Shadow's consoles. Unsteady as her reactions are, the sharpness is back in her eyes once she's monitoring the ship -- alert, as though all it took were the sight of that soft red light.

  Systems appear to be normal. She leans forward, tapping out a few commands on the co-pilot's chair, confirming what the displays are telling her. They're alone, and the only company they have out here on the Arkanis System's border is space junk.

  She abandons her double-checking of the sensors and leans back in her chair, eyes closing, tilting her head back with a sigh.

  "Not really, no." She half-smiles, but she doesn't bother opening her eyes. "It's not easy to sleep when you've got half the galaxy after you, and then a few Confederate Elites besides."
Revan      "Good to see my powers of observation are back to normal, then," Revan commented, shifting slightly in the pilot's seat. Comfy, but not /too/ comfy. She never understood why yacht manufacturers tried to make seats in the cockpit as comfortable as possible, as if the ones seated in them didn't need to pilot the ship. "I'd tell you to try sleeping some more, but I doubt that would do do any good."

     The Jedi sighed softly. "No, it's not. It's tough enough when you're evading one Empire, let alone scores of bounty hunters and a handful of Elites."

     Her head lolled to one side, glancing at the Ebon Hawk off the starboard of the Rogue Shadow. The smuggler ship cruised along as T3 guided it, and if Ulaire was fully charged she would be keeping an eye on their scanners. Tiny, she imagined, would be taking over for T3's usual maintenance duties as the utility droid maintained the controls. It was nice to have something of a crew back, even though the lack thereof had been entirely of her own choosing. Revan had resolved to keeping her friends out of her mess. How she ended up where she was now was enough to boggle the mind.
Juno Eclipse   "Maybe." The pilot leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows over her knees, dropping her face into her hands. "Ugh. I'm still tired, so even your powers of perception are going to be better than mine, right now. No, I don't think I can sleep any more right now. Twelve hours? Was I really out that long...?"

  She rubs at her face again, sighing. "I take it we're still on the hinterlands of the Arkanis System, hiding in the space junk. I'm sure this was probably something the Empire made another example of. They do enjoy their examples."

  "The ship hasn't been giving you any trouble, I hope. I'm afraid it's still not in the best of shape, but it's still managing to keep us out of Confederate and Imperial hands." Juno offers a half-smile. "And... thank you. For everything. I haven't really had a chance to say that, yet, but I mean it. Without your help we'd both be dead."
Revan      "Sure were," Lowri replied, gesturing to the chronometer on the console. "It's better than keeping on as you had been -- not that you had any choice in the matter -- but really, I wasn't expecting to even hear from you for another twelve."

     Brushing a strand of hair out of her face, she studied a particular piece of debris, something which looked nearly as old as the Ebon Hawk would have been had it not been pulled out of their timeline. "Some of it probably is," she mused with an uncharacteristic grim note. "Some of it might be older...or else they made examples out of more than just a handful of smugglers. It seems to be a regular event for these guys."

     The Jedi shook her head. "Not really, just feeling my age, as it were. I'm a tad bit behind the times, so I don't even recognise half these controls. Thank the Force no one has been able to find us so far, I'm not too proud to admit I couldn't handle her half as well as you do."

     She shrugged, but smiled. "You're welcome. And you deserve more than just some pat answer about 'Jedi duty' and all that. It's a little complicated."
Juno Eclipse   "I don't usually like sleeping that long." Juno rubs her face again, pressing the heels of her hands against her closed eyes. "I guess I'd taken my Imperial training to heart and learned to function on little sleep. Catnapping in the pilot's seat, a few hours here or there... working as a pilot of the Inquisition, I had to live that way, since I never knew when Galen would be calling for the ship to pick him up, or when trouble would rear its ugly head. Most of the time, the safest place to sleep was while the ship was in hyperspace, during the autopilot sequence."

  She drops herhands, staring blearily out the viewport. It's not a very flattering view, but by the same token, she doesn't look like she's really seeing what's out there.

  Juno yawns again, letting her head hang.

  "Dunno. Wouldn't surprise me. Or maybe this was just pushed along by solar wind and wound up here, butted up against the asteroids. Part of this was a planetoid, I think, just looking at what's out there." She picks her head up, tilting it this way and that to pop her neck, grimacing a little. "It is, I think. A regular event for them. Like I told the Legatus last night, the Empire is very fond of their examples. The best part of that... you don't need to leave anyone alive. A dead planet speaks more eloquently than any words. Not to say this was a planet, though. I think there wasn't enough mass here to be a full planet."

  Half a glance is flicked to the Jedi, appraising. She certainly looks more youthful than her years, even if her mismatched eyes suggest more years than her appearance would suggest. Juno grins at Lowri's appraisal of the controls. "Don't worry too much about it. You wouldn't recognise half the controls even if you were from this timeline. The Rogue Shadow is a cut above the rest of the Imperial fleet, and when it's properly repaired, it can outrun anything in the Imperial Navy."

  "Exactly what it says on the tin, really. It was designed to get an Inquisitor in and out of its target location smoothly. Hiding in plain sight, manoeuvring fast, and threading its way through hot zones with a minimum of fuss... those are what the Rogue Shadow does best. And now," Juno adds, patting the co-pilot's console fondly, "hiding from the very Imperials it flew for."

  She looks out the viewport again, sighing. "I feel terrible asking so much of it, in the state it's in. The starboard sublight is still an inoperable mess." Indeed, from the Ebon Hawk, intermittent arcs of electricity can be seen sparking and snapping from the wrecked husk. "Someday I might even get the time to make repairs."

  "Hm?" Those crisp blue eyes settle sidelong on Lowri, one brow arching. "Complicated? Do tell. And as long as we're being honest, here, I suppose the least I can do is offer the same, considering you're risking your life every time you help us..."
Revan      Lowri chuckled softly, though without much humour; it was almost nostalgic, if anything. "I always feel sluggish if I sleep longer than eight hours," she mused. "I can only assume it was part of my training, but..."

     She made an almost helpless gesture. There was little point in hiding it, if any point at all. "The truth is that I don't remember /any/ of it, not a single day. Everything before six years ago in my time-line is almost a complete blank."

     An idle question formed in her head, not one she would have asked before this point. For all its casual nature, not long ago it would have been deemed too personal, and even had she asked, the intensely cautious pilot would have refused to answer. "How long have you two known each other?"

     Lowri rolled her shoulder back, making a fairly satisfying light pop as the joint released its built-up gases. "It wouldn't be the first Empire to destroy a planet," she observed. "The pieces of planets destroyed millennia ago are probably scatted all over the galaxy. It's the kind of example people never forget, no matter how much they might want to. Even after the Empire has long since fallen."

     She sighed, shifting in her seat again. "It's a small consolation, but this one will fall eventually, too. I'd just rather it sooner rather than a few more centuries."

     As youthful as she might otherwise seen, the years and strain were beginning to catch up to her, and the faint traces of crow's feet lay at the edges of her eyes. If her hair wasn't already nearly-white, the true-white hairs would stand out. With a slight chuckle, she shook her head. "I had a feeling there was more to it than just me being out of date," she quipped before sighing with some regret. "I wish we'd had more time back on the Flotilla. Between T3 and Tiny, that could have been patched up. It's almost painful to see for such an amazing ship."

     Chuckling softly, she jerked her thumb out to starboard. "You're well-acquainted with my rustbucket. There's a story, but she was the fastest thing in the galaxy when we, ah, 'liberated' her from an Exchange boss."

     Revan shifted forward with her elbows resting on her knees, her eyes hooded. "I should be up-front; after I returned to the multiverse and became a Union ally, I started looking into your background. I wasn't sure exactly why, but there was some rumours of a 'Blackout' being a Confederate agent."

     She shrugged slightly, tossing a thick lock of hair over her shoulder. "You're a hard person to track, not surprisingly. But I managed to find a few contacts who led me to you on Bespin. The problem was, it was the wrong version. Instead of the contact I was supposed to meet, I ran into you. Only, it was you if you had been a part of the Rebel Alliance for years."

     "The version of you there told me about your time with the Black Eights and how you ended up piloting the Rogue Shadow. So...it's only square that I be up front with you and give you the same courtesy of knowing about me."
Juno Eclipse   "These days, I feel like I'll regret it if I get more than fifteen minutes' worth of sleep at a time." Juno tosses a hand in dismissive gesture, her tone one of sarcasm. "I'd already gotten used to not sleeping very much at a time, and now I think I'm starting to get used to the bare minimum. Or below that, even."

  She yawns again, even as she listens to Lowri's explanation, keeping an eye on the Jedi from the corner of her eye. "I'm sorry. It's frustrating, not being able to remember things." She shakes her head. "It's not the same as forgetting my entire past, but I understand, at least a little. I still don't remember what happened to me while I was in Imperial custody... although I guess that's probably for the best. Heaven only knows what Vader did, or ordered done..."

  In truth, she doesn't want to think about that too hard. Any number of things could be true, as much as nothing at all.

  That casual question earns a look from Juno, some of the fog seeming to clear from her expression. The sleep seems to have done her some good. Those crisp blue eyes are regaining some of their alertness. She considers it for a moment, leaning back in the co-pilot's chair and letting her eyes half-close as she considers. It's a harmless question, and at this point, she owes Lowri the honesty. A little honesty is a small price to pay for saving her life -- and she's no longer obligated to be evasive.

  "A few years. I was trained as a TIE fighter pilot, and I flew over one hundred missions for the Empire. I was rotated into the Black Eight Squadron; the top squadron in the Navy, under Vader's personal command, but after one mission I was rotated back out." Something shifts in her, a sort of heaviness that reflects through the Force. The memories, whatever they are, aren't fond ones. "I was assigned to pilot the Rogue Shadow, after that." She half-smiles. "Actually, we didn't get along too well, at first."
Juno Eclipse   She bows her head forward, running her fingers through her hair again. It's usually bound so often that leaving it loose makes it seem a bit longer, white-gold like sunlit straw. She stays that way for a moment, holding her head in her hands, fingers still half-threaded through her hair. Her eyes gradually close. "I know. But destroying planets..." Again, that sharp note of dissonance through the Force, the unspoken confirmation of some kind of ugly memory. "They don't need to destroy it. They only need to compromise its ability to support life. A planet left over... that's more of a haunting example than debris, isn't it?"

  Like Callos.

  "Yeah." She doesn't sound convinced. "They will. The Rebel Alliance is still a fledgeling organisation, though, and it seems like they're too apprehensive about causing any real damage. I can't blame them... but they're going to have to find their courage if they want their movement to succeed. It sounds like their leadership can't agree on what to do, just watching HoloNet reports of their activity... but the Empire isn't going to last. No tyrant can rule forever."

  She sighs in response to the Rogue Shadow's state, the sound a little bit miserable. "Yeah. I know. It's Galen's ship, but piloting and maintaining it has been my responsibility since I was assigned to it." She reaches out, giving the console an apologetic pat. "It hurts to see it in this kind of state."

  It's her baby, more or less -- she cares for the ship as though it were her own. It's the closest thing to home she has, something familiar, with fond memories associated with it.

  "An Imperial black-ops pilot that's easy to track is a dead Imperial black-ops pilot," Juno points out, wryly. "And now I'm even harder to track, because it's my life on the line... still, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone went poking around. I've done my fair share of damage to Union facilities and territories, not to mention tangling with a few of their Elites. Your allies are a little frightening," she adds.

  She seems to consider for a moment, especially when Lowri relates the story about Bespin. "Me? In Cloud City?" She frowns, slightly. It's a bit like an invasion of privacy, to have had that stripped away... but it was her, too; she can't exactly complain about that. What an awkward feeling.

  Emotion ripples through the Force again, dark and heavy; but not anger -- regret, and maybe a thread of despair. "So... you know about the Bombing of Callos, then..."
Revan      The Jedi shrugged. "To be honest? It was really for the best. I might have my occasional issues with the Council, but they really did act in the best interests of everyone when they wiped my memory...even me."

     She paused, as if considering elaborating on the fact that she had told Juno outright that she had been deliberately brainwashed, and by Jedi, no less. But she held off, as if waiting for a better moment to elaborate. "The mind can do that, sometimes. What's important is that you're not there, you're not being tortured into mindlessness. When I was tortured, I blacked out once my body simply couldn't take any more. I had to be told later than my captor continued torturing me even after that."

     Her expression was sober as she considered the debris. "No...although, sometimes even the resolve of 'Never again' can lead down some dark paths of their own," she mused cryptically, her gaze not seeing the debris, but something else, a past she couldn't remember herself yet haunted her nevertheless.

     She couldn't help herself; Lowri laughed right out loud at the idea of Juno and Galen not getting along...and probably the arguments she could only imagine. "Oh, you would be surprised at how many intense relationships begin like that. Did you ever call him a Gamorrean man-pig?"

     With an exasperated frown, the Guardian sighed in frustration. "If they're still arguing over details, they're certainly the remnants of the Republic, all right," she sniped. Not at Juno, of course...the Republic had apparently fallen well before she was even born. "I hate to say it doesn't surprise me. And they obviously don't have the Order to bail them out this time."

     Her expression as Juno spoke about the haven they were on was an understanding, even nostalgic smile. "Maybe she's technically his, but you're her pilot and her caretaker. A ship isn't just a vehicle, she's a part of your crew, and she's a home...heh. As much as I joke about the Ebon Hawk, I wouldn't trade her for the fanciest ship in the galaxy. We've been through a lot together. And right now, she's the only home I have."

     "Well, yes," Lowri replied with an equal wry note. As for her allies, she shrugged, rolling her shoulders back. She wasn't going to mention Juno's former Confederate associates. But some of her unaffiliated allies were just as insane. "Hey, George still owes me for a few parts for setting off grenades inside the Hawk. Even *I'm* not that crazy."

     Her expression sobered once she had started to reveal that she knew about Calllos. "I know about it, yes. I also know you did everything you could to stop it, to somehow mitigate Vader's wrath. I know you blame yourself, and I don't need any Force powers to tell me that."

     She chuckled slightly, though it was mirthless, even slightly bitter. "I don't use my Force powers nearly as much as you might think. I have certain gifts in seeing people, reading them...and influencing them. And I never have to use the Force at all to do it."

     Lowri continued. "I'm not saying you're a hero for trying to protect Callos somehow. But what I /am/ saying is that there's nothing you could have done to stop it. You made a gamble and lost, but you tried. And you survived for a very important role, much more than you can probably realise."

     Her head jerked back towards the crew quarters where Galen was resting. "If it wasn't for you, he would be cursed to a life as Vader's puppet. You gave him that opportunity, and to his credit, he took it."

     Juno wouldn't be able to sense the weariness in the Jedi, but she would certainly be able to see the traces of a haunted expression in her hooded, mismatched eyes. "The version of you on Bespin was broken. You saved him, but at a cost. He gave his life to save you, and that Juno Eclipse told me that she was never the same after that. All she had left was his legacy, and joined the Rebellion to bring down the Empire which had taken him from her."
Juno Eclipse   Although the pilot's brow furrows at that admission, she doesn't comment on it. Juno's a fairly sharp woman; she can put the pieces together reasonably quickly. She isn't as good with concealing her reactions, though, and her flicker of apprehension quickly blooms into horror before she can stifle it. "They /wiped/ your /memories/?" She sounds somewhere between indignant and disbelieving, but apparently she remembers her place, clamping down on both her emotions and her outburst.

  Oh, but she wants to. The ramifications of that are horrific to consider; even more horrifying that the Jedi Council were the ones to do that... but she calms, because she does eventually remember that this is by necessity a different assemblage than the one from her own timeline. If, indeed, there still exists a Council. There are passing few Jedi left, after all, thanks to Vader -- and her own and Galen's dogged efforts.

  "I think they drugged me, actually." Juno narrows her eyes, trying to remember back to that blurry stretch of time. "I... I really can't remember, but it's probably the only way they would have kept me docile. I wasn't about to cooperate with them, not willingly. All I can remember are impressions... pieces. The holding cell aboard the Executor. Some place that was brightly lit, all sterility and white light, but I can't place it... and the inside of the Emperor's Justice, of course."

  She looks worried for a moment; memory loss on that scale is not a normal thing, and it's worrying to contemplate what might have happened during that helpless stretch. What had they done with her? What did Vader need her for; what pivotal thing had made him decide she was no longer worth anything to him alive, when it had been so imperative to use her as bait, before...?

  The implications from that are a frightening, and chances are she's better off not contemplating them.

  "'Gamorrean man-pig?' No, I don't think I ever used that one." Juno shakes her head, with a wry half-smile. "We bickered more than we insulted one another. We still do, honestly. It's... like a comfortable routine, sometimes, although now it isn't necessary to hide what we are to one another..." She leans back in her seat, sighing. "That's still a bit strange to me. Not having to hide like that."

  She glances over. "I think it's less that they're arguing over the details, and more that they're frightened of bringing the full weight of the Empire down on themselves. I have to respect that kind of caution. Look at what they've done just to recapture one pilot... imagine what they'd do in pursuit of an organised group. You can't exactly blame them for that, can you? The Rebel Alliance is more than just soldiers and fighters volunteering to stand up against the Empire, as Vergesso proved... they've got their families to consider, too. And their families didn't sign up to fight..."
Juno Eclipse   "Yeah. The Rogue Shadow's been home, and almost a familiar personality, to me. I know every square inch of this ship, from stem to stern, and I know how it behaves, how it reacts..." She reaches out, patting the console fondly. "It's as much a familiar face to me as Galen, or PROXY. Even if it weren't on the bleeding edge of Imperial technology, I wouldn't trade the Rogue Shadow for anything. We've been through a lot together, too... the Rogue Shadow, and Galen and I both."

  "I owe the Flotilla a lot. My life, in fact. They took me in when I had nowhere else to go, and I feel terrible that their space was compromised because of me." Juno shakes her head. "I want to make it right to them, but... I've got to let that solar wind settle, first. There's still too much attention on the Rogue Shadow right now. Things need to cool down."

  Leaning forward, she sighs, bowing her head and resting her elbows over her knees. Her eyes close. Callos is a terrible memory, no matter how much of a positive light she tries to paint it in. There's no erasing the horror of what she had done, once she became aware of the ramifications -- once she knew, with a terrible and gut-wrenching certainty, that the reactor's failsafes didn't engage.

  No, she's not a hero, or at least that's what the emotion rippling through the Force suggests. She does glance over as Lowri mentions her current role, of saving the other half of the Rogue Shadow's crew. There is certainly that. If not her, then who would have spared him from Vader's twisted ambitions?

  Something else ripples through her at the mention of that other Juno, though. Horror grips her as she imagines the fate of the one whose beloved had sacrificed himself. Although they'd only known one another for a few short years, those bonds are tried and tempered in war and in defiance of the Empire itself; stronger than durasteel. She can't imagine a life without him, although it's a thought that's crossed her mind before. Already she knows what would become of her -- if her existence is Galen's proof against the Dark Side, his is her proof against despair.

  There would be nothing left for her to live for, would there?

  "How..." Her throat closes over the sentence, bowing her head again. "No. I--I can't let that happen. I'd... I'd be the same as her, wouldn't I? Without him... I wouldn't have anything left to live for."
Revan      "It's not something you'd expect the Jedi to do, is it?" Lowri replied with a smile hinting at mixed emotions. "I'll admit I was disgusted at first when I learned what they did to me...though there's more to it than just that. I'm not even sure where to begin..."

     The pale-haired Guardian shook her head. "But in all honesty, I can't really blame them. They were desperate, and I happened to be their only link to stopping a threat to both the Republic and the Jedi. And the truth of the matter is that by coincidence they gave me a second chance at life. The real frustration now is that there are things I /need/ to remember but I /can't/."

     Lowri groaned softly, her frustration plain as day. "But...one crisis at a time. Though I do wish I knew how your galaxy solved my current problem...that is, if it had existed in yours. Blasted multiverse, it's impossible to tell." She had to trust in the Force to reveal to her what she needed to know when she needed to know it, but she hated the idea of not being able to plan ahead. That, and she just hated being in the dark in particular.

     But Juno's lack of memories suggested a different kind of tampering. "That's the most likely explanation," Lowri replied. "But the good news -- or bad, depending on your perspective -- is that if it /is/ drug-induced, it should be reversible. Hypnosis, or even some Force delving into your mind...though Galen would have to be careful if you decided to try. And he would have to control himself, because what he would see would doubtless drive him into a rage. But truthfully, this is all speculation."

     Her grin became wistful, yet at the same time wry. "Carth had saved my life, but man was he a pain at times when we were trying to escape Taris. I even told him as much. Personally, I happened to like 'hairless Wookie' but he insisted I could do better than that. So, 'Gamorrean man-pig' it was," she recounted.

     "Point," Lowri conceded. "The Republic was in a better position, in spite of the Sith breathing down their necks not even a few years after the Mandalorians nearly decimated it. But they can't stay on the defence forever. A full-out assault is entirely out of the question, but smaller pockets of guerilla troops could start to weaken the foundation if planned right. Ones constantly on the move, which would be untraceable with the right kind of counter-intelligence."

     Her hand sliced downward in a guillotine motion. "Cut their supply lines, disrupt weapons production and food sources. Disrupt communications and broadcast an anti-propaganda campaign to wear down morale. Make them fight a multi-front war where cutting off one head only leads to two more replacing it..."

     The Guardian heaved a weary sigh, sitting back. They certainly didn't need a former Sith Lord making things worse for them. "Ah, nevermind. I'm sure they've already made solid plans."

     Talk of the Flotilla earned another slight smile. "They'll be fine, I think. They're a tough lot. Rather like the Mandalorians in some ways...though thankfully without the need to conquer other worlds or seek out battle just for the sake of fighting something potentially stronger than they are."
Revan      Lowri had no need of Force abilities to sense that anguish, and to understand it. She truly believed what Jolee had told her, but what of that void when love was lost? How could a person -- sensitive to the Force or not -- defend against that all-consuming despair?

     "I came out here alone," Lowri managed to say after a long pause in reflection. "I left all my friends, the people who had fought by my side and believed in me, behind. I couldn't ask them to come with me yet again on another quest to save the galaxy after they had already sacrificed so much. How could I ask them to do that all over again? But especially, I couldn't risk his life. He would have followed me into hell itself, but I couldn't let him. He means far too much for me to put him in that kind of danger." Another low chuckle, barely a breath, and regretful. Her eyes were trained on the debris past the viewscreen, yet seeing something else entirely. "You know...Jedi aren't supposed to form attachments. Too great a risk when those strong in the Force can't control their emotions and succumb to the Dark Side. But when I fell, there was no one to stop me. And when I had my second chance, he was what kept me from falling again."

     Her eyes came into focus again, back on Juno, seeing her completely. "She pleaded with me to watch over the both of you, to keep you two out of Imperial hands. But the truth is...I had my own motivation pretty much from the moment I figured out what you meant to each other. In you, I didn't just see a potential future for you. I saw myself."
Juno Eclipse   "I have to admit that my expectations of the Jedi aren't very high." Juno shrugs. "Not because I have any particular grudge against them, but because I just don't know much about them. Looking up that kind of information would have been suspect to a seemingly loyal Imperial, and besides that, I suppose I never had much of any interest. There wasn't much point in sympathising with them, considering they were originally designated as Galen's targets."

  She leans back in her chair, looking up at the ship controls overhead -- yes, there's even a bank overhead, necessitating one to reach high up to fiddle with them. No doubt Juno knows exactly what every switch, knob, dial, toggle, and touch-control does. Right now, she looks at them without really seeing them.

  "I guess it doesn't really make a day seem so bad, does it? Missing that much of your life... I'm sorry. That must be hard." She folds her arms behind her head, leaning back and kicking her boots up onto an unused portion of the console. It's a ridiculously casual position to take, but she's still not entirely awake, and the autopilot's safely engaged. "I guess that's something else we've got in common."

  She only shakes her head, to Lowri's indirect appeal. "I don't know. The records are murky when you go that far back... and now I can't access half of what I would have been able to, before. Imperial records might be biased, but if you dig past the security far enough, you'll eventually find something worth reading. I'm afraid that's lost to me, now. I'm fairly certain I could still slice into the relevant databases, but they'll know that I've tried. And then they'll likely trace the Rogue Shadow's signal. It's not worth it."

  "You might try asking that Kyle fellow, though. He might be able to help you get into a few places you ought not be able to get into..." Her eyes close. "He's that mercenary fellow you'd brought with you in Aquilaris, isn't he? I thought I recognised his face and his voice, but I was too tired to make the connection."

  One eye cracks open as Lowri cites some possible hope at retrieving the details. "No. I don't want Galen muddling with my memories. It isn't that I don't trust him, but like you say, it might send him into a rage. I'd sooner trust you to it. Even if you do have some kind of ulterior motive... well, you've saved our lives more than once. And at this point, what have I got to lose?" Her eye slides closed again. "I wouldn't be against this."

  Juno listens carefully to the wistful tone Lowri takes, but she doesn't comment right away. The way she talks about this Carth fellow... it's the same way she talks about Galen, isn't it? Whoever Carth is, he obviously means a great deal to her. He's someone she loves, that much is clear.

  Someone she had to leave behind, by the sound of it.

  "You miss him," she says softly. "I'm sorry."
Juno Eclipse   She falls silent, listening to the talk of Lowri's journey, and how she had come to the multiverse alone, leaving behind her allies, her friends, and her beloved. Her eyes open to half-mast, looking to the viewport, focusing on those distant stars without really seeing them. How does she have the strength to do that? She couldn't do any of the things she's done up until now without Galen by her side. She spoke truthfully, about that; although they are a fatal flaw for one another, they're also one another's greatest source of strength.

  How did Carth feel about being left behind? She can't imagine this fellow was very happy about it. Maybe Lowri left by herself, quietly, and gave them no chance to chase after her. That's almost as painful, too, not knowing.

  It's a difficult situation. Which path is the correct one? Is there a correct one? Probably not, she reasons, silently. Life is never as binary as the Light Side or the Dark Side, like the Jedi and Sith like to imply; in her experience, there's always a shade of grey in the middle. Is there a place for them, in those limnal areas? For Galen, who is closer to the grey than either side? Or for herself?

  Juno can only hope so, pulling herself straight, bracing elbows on knees and letting her tired spine slouch.

  That last statement brings her to open her eyes and look to Lowri, subdued. She simply stares at the other woman for a moment, a roil of competing emotions rippling through the Force. None of them quite settle, but several of them flash briefly, like fish startled into motion; cast into brief light before they're gone again. Apprehension. Anxiety. Fear. Discomfort, at having to rely on someone so. But behind those, there are other emotions, too. Hope. Resolution.

  Letting out a quiet breath, she bows her head.

  "Thank you," she whispers. "I... you're right. I do love him. And I... I don't want to become her. She has the rebellion, at least, some kind of outlet for that pain. But I don't," she says, picking up her head and fixing a somewhat haunted look on the Jedi Knight. "They don't trust me, as well they shouldn't. What do I have, if he's gone...? So..." She looks down to her hands, clasped between her knees. "I can't lose him. I /can't/. No more than he can lose me..."
Revan      "I'm not entirely sure I can really call myself one any more," she admitted. "I may be in good standing with the Order, but when we finished what we set out to do, I didn't return to Dantooine to help rebuild the Enclave or go to Coruscant to the Temple there. I wanted to be with the man I love, so I went with him to Telos to help the Republic rebuild. Maybe I still am a Jedi...or maybe I'm something else." The Guardian leaned forward, resting an elbow on the edge of the console, propping her chin in her hand. "I can't really see things in purely Light or Dark, not any more. The Dark Side is absolute evil -- Vader is proof enough of that -- but if remaining in the Light means retreating from the universe while people suffer...I can't agree with that, either." Was she in something of the same place as Galen, somewhere between Light and Dark?

     "Thanks," Lowri replied, "It might not be especially important...I don't think I could even remember what my parents were like...but even what it was like growing up in the Enclave is gone. Or maybe...there isn't much to remember. The Jedi take children who are sensitive to the Force as early as three years old, so I probably never had much to remember about my family to begin with."

     Sitting back again and folding her arms over her chest, she leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes. "The hardest part sometimes is sorting out which of my memories are true or false. When my memory was wiped, it was replaced with a false identity and set of memories. The distant ones are obviously faked, but the more recent ones I'm not entirely sure about. I can remember some flashes here and there of things which had happened about six or seven years ago...I just wish I could at least remember my real name."

     The Guardian shook her head. "Don't worry about it...even if you did, I doubt you'd find anything. It's not that what happened is necessarily a big secret, it's just been lost. Three thousand years is more than enough time to lose any records which might have existed."

     Her pale eyebrows lifted slightly. "Kyle? Oh. Yeah, I suppose you could say he's one of my contacts. He was the first Elite I encountered when my galaxy first Unified. It, ah, wasn't the smoothest of first encounters."

     In other words, she had spooked the hell out of him, looking for all the world like a high-ranking Sith in the middle of Sith ruins with Dark Side permeating the very air. It was weirdly fortunate that they had been attacked by actual Sith, or else who knew how that meeting would have gone down. "He was also on board the Ebon Hawk at Vergesso, so he knows what went down there."

     The corner of her mouth quirked slightly into something of a grimace. She sounded personally reluctant to try, probably given she knows what it's like to have her mind tampered with. In truth, she had done more than enough of that sort of thing as Darth Revan, and she very much did not want to start down that path all over again. "It's a drastic measure, to be frank. If things are desperate enough, it's an option, but not one to take unless it's the last one."
Revan      Her smile was a slightly saddened one. "Very much. But the Republic needs men like him to lead it right now. His work is much more important than following me around on some multiversal goose chase."

     With a weary sigh, Lowri's eyes drifted back out to space, though her true gaze as inward. "Hell, I couldn't ask /any/ of my friends to go down this path with me. I miss all of them, but they have lives that I can't interfere with. This is my mess to clean up."

     From the sound of it, she held herself personally responsible for whatever it was she was hunting. Or rather, stumbling along blindly without the necessary memories to guide her. Even if it was for the best that she had been effectively brainwashed, but the lack of any kind of direction made her task more than merely frustrating. She wondered if she would even be able to stop the threat in time.

     Lowri didn't recoil from the emotions she could sense, perhaps even feel herself. She had been taught that such things are dangerous, but at the same time, they were at the heart of what it meant to be a human being. Or even a sentient being, to look at all the different species with the same emotions humans had. And there it was, that which drove humans forward to shape destiny for the better. Hope. Resolution.

     "They have less of a reason to trust me, if you want to know the truth." Lowri rubbed her face lightly before letting her hand fall back to her side. "You have more than you think. But...when I was told that 'love will save you, not condemn you,' I didn't understand it at the time. The one who told me that was speaking from his own experiences, and he had been forced to kill the one he loved after she had fallen to the Dark Side. It's not my story to tell, but I think what he was trying to teach me was that love in itself is a saving force, but not to allow passion to control me."

     "I can't even imagine hurting Carth, but if I allowed myself to slip back towards the Dark Side, if I went far enough, I would kill him even as I fear losing him more than anything. It doesn't even make sense, yet that's what allowing fear and passion to control me could lead to."

     She sighed, shifting again in her seat. "For Galen, and for yourself. You need each other, and I'll do whatever I can to protect you. But the way you'll be saved is ultimately to balance that love with the darker feelings it can encourage."
Revan      "You won't hear a lot of people arguing it's a good idea," the Guardian admitted. "The general thinking is that because a child's mind is much more open than an adult's, they take to the training better, especially when it comes to learning the necessary discipline. Some parents seem to believe being given over to the Order is a great opportunity for their child, and maybe it is. But ultimately, I'm not convinced the good outweighs the bad, though the Council isn't exactly inclined to listen to someone who already defied them once and with some disastrous results."

     She frowned, her brow furrowing with the expression. "Of course, the other reason is to sever attachments for a potential Jedi to be free of. That I definitely can't approve of, since my first-hand experience has been that attachments are more likely to save someone from the Dark Side rather than lead them into it."

     She smiled faintly. "Fortunately, you won't have to worry about that. I've been told that the new Jedi Order did away with the practise...it's a step in the right direction, in my opinion."

     She let the issue of Kyle lie, not because she didn't trust Juno, but it wasn't her place to speak for him. The former Imperial would likely find out soon enough. Likewise, she was more than relieved to let the option of attempting to fish out the memories from when Juno had been taken prisoner. It might become necessary, but the former Sith Lord was certainly not inclined to take it unless there was no other way. It might be that they need to know, there might be some information vital to the war against the Empire, but she could only trust that the Force would hint at whether or not it would be necessary. Force-willing, not at all.

     It was disconcerting to think that a Sith Lord who, for all the galaxy seemed as brutish as Malak had become, was capable of such subtle tactics. Not a comforting thought in the least. If the metaphorical dejarik board was level it would be one thing, but this was Vader's native galaxy and time. There was still so much that Revan didn't know about either, if her accent when playing the part of a mercenary was anything to go by. "Once you both are rested and the ship isn't limping through space, I think it'll be high time to find us some more allies. And I have a fairly good idea about who to ask first."

     It might be the ideal time to meet that 'Master Skywalker' Kyle had spoken so highly of.

     "Oh believe you me, Carth more than proved himself long ago, and not simply because he saved my life when we had to make that crash landing on Taris. Those were my first /real/ memories, in fact; I woke up on a battleship, the Endar Spire, right in the middle of a Sith boarding party. We managed to make it to an escape pod before the whole ship came down on the planet, but I got knocked out for a few days in the process, while he dragged my unconscious hide all the way to the place we ended up hiding out until we could get off the planet."

     Juno might get the feeling that this was the first time she had talked about what happened to her with anyone. Perhaps even Jedi needed someone to talk to now and then. "Admittedly he has a touch of Force sensitivity," Lowri continued. "Not enough for him to hurl boulders at anything, but enough to have a very, /very/ good set of instincts. Ones I learned to listen to if I wanted to stay alive."

     Shaking her head, she continued. "It wasn't just him, either. Four of us in our merry bunch of misfits were Jedi, but the other four weren't. And I couldn't have brought down the Star Forge without a single one of them. It takes more than just one ~all-powerful Jedi~ to destroy an ancient weapons factory churning out entire fleets of warships and orbital fortress threatening to wipe out the Republic."
Revan      She sighed, her head lolling back to stare at the ceiling without seeing it. "I don't know. I told him that the Republic needed him...he's probably an Admiral by now...and it probably does. The war might be over but the Republic is still weakened, and even though the Sith are in a disarray they still have teeth and claws. It's a complete basket case..."

     Lowri sounded as if she considered elaborating, but shook her head and redirected her train of thought on another track for the moment. "What worries me the most isn't what we might face, but what I could become again. I think that I'm the biggest threat to him than anything out there. But I'm not sure I can make that clear without a bit of background. Got time for a story?"

     "No, it doesn't. Even if when we lose someone and they rejoin the Force, we still feel the pain of being left behind. They watch over us, but we can't be with them the same way. It's a bit pessimistic to prepare for the day we have to eventually part, so I prefer to focus on the present. Take advantage of the time you have together, that sort of thing."

     The pale-haired woman was rather bad at being a proper Jedi, after all.

     "He's still lost, when it comes down to it," Lowri observed. "He'll continue until he's finally stopped, but he's still lost, no matter what happens. And maybe he knows it."
Revan      "That's basically the idea," Lowri replied with a hint of a grim note. "It's intended to mitigate the risk of allowing passions to lead to the Dark Side, but not only does it not necessarily work, but it weakens Jedi when they have to deal with those emotions from other people. Reading thoughts takes conscious effort but sensing emotions comes naturally. And strong emotions to a Jedi are like deafening someone with sensitive hearing with loud noise."

     Lowri tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Come to think of it, I should probably teach that to the both of you, if you don't know how to. It's a way to keep your thoughts from being read by a Force sensitive. The best part is that you don't have to be Force sensitive yourself to do it."

     Back on the subject of one of the Jedi's more morally dubious practices, she nodded. "That was my thinking, actually. I personally believe they're focusing on the wrong things and going about the whole problem all wrong. Rather than driving wedges between people, they should teach how to control passions not by avoiding human emotions, but by recognising and controlling those which can lead to the Dark Side if left unchecked." She shrugged, almost resigned. "But I suppose I'll deal with that problem once I get this crisis taken care of."

     She might have been grinning behind the hand propping up her chin and covering her mouth as she leaned forward on the console again. It was probably impossible to really tell.

     The Guardian waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. "It's fine. I'll even loan you T3 or Tiny...probably T3 since he's a lot smaller." And far less grotesque-scary in appearance. After he'd been tamed, Tiny had become as docile as an iriaz calf, but he was objectively terrifying to look at for most normal people.

     In truth, Lowri herself was divided on the issue. The selfish part of her would be ecstatic to be by his side again, not to mention no one could match his cover fire and instincts. She wasn't too proud to admit his eclipsed even hers as a Jedi. But she had once been someone who was at least indirectly responsible for the death of his wife and the destruction of his homeworld. If she should fall again -- and the presence of this alternate HK-47 weighed heavily in her mind how that was a very real possibility -- she wanted him as far away from her as possible. Even though he had vowed to protect her and offered himself up as a reason to remain in the Light, she was forced to admit she was afraid...afraid of what she might do. Perhaps she was being too paranoid and overprotective, but he didn't deserve that possible fate.

     "He's never been tested that I know of...in fact, he thought whatever apprehension and bad feelings he had about a given situation were just paranoia. But that 'gut instinct' is entirely /too/ accurate to be anything else. Even I don't have senses that accurate, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm not sure his piloting skills are from any kind of Force sensitivity, though." So that's why she's such a good pilot, he must have been the one to teach her.

     "Well, you never know...this one's a doozy," she quipped with a hint of her usual humour. "I don't doubt he's just as exhausted. Contrary to popular belief, Force sensitives are human beings with human frailties...except when they're some other species, in which case they have that species' frailties."

     The Jedi wasn't about to ask how or where she had managed to get the recipe or means or whatever. Why question a miracle? "~Excellent~," she drawled, accepting the glass before taking a long pull. Indeed, that might have been one of the few good things to have come from a rather depressing meeting. Not to mention she was going to need it for the darker parts of her tale.
Revan      "This is all second-hand information up until the Endar Spire, so I'm probably getting some details wrong, but it's better than nothing."

     "Nearly ten years ago in my galaxy, the Mandalorians suddenly began expanding their clans and conquering worlds in the Outer Rim. You'd probably never know it to look at what they've become by your time, but once they were nearly an empire unto themselves. They were a warrior culture which lived for the challenge of battle. Win or lose, it didn't matter so long as they found glory in the conquest or a failed attempt."

     "Anyway, at first the Republic tried to ignore the threat, since those worlds weren't under Republic protection. But when the Mandalorians began to the Republic finally mobilised and asked the Jedi for help. The Jedi sensed that the Mandalorians were being controlled by something which eluded them, though, and felt it would take time to uncover the true threat behind them. The problem was that people were still dying to Mandalorian raids while the Jedi refused to act. But one Jedi Knight couldn't sit by and meditate while the Outer Rim burned, first appealing to the Council to aid the Republic and then, when they refused, gathered likeminded Jedi and came to the Republic's aid. The Jedi took the name 'Revan' and those followers became the Revanchists."

     "Revan decimated the Mandalorians utterly through tactics they weren't expecting from the Republic, which had been playing it safe rather than deviating from standard manoeuvres. Finally, Mandalore the Ultimate challenged Revan to single combat, ending when Revan decapitated him, took his helmet, and hid it so that a new Mandalore couldn't be chosen. After that, the Mandalorians became little more than the bounty hunters and mercenaries you see today, the warrior culture was little more than a proud memory for them."

     "But rather than returning to the Order, Revan and Alek -- Revan's friend and second -- left for the Unknown Regions with the Revanchists and even dedicated followers from the Republic. They realised the Council hadn't been wrong, but rather than simply waiting again for this threat to make itself known, the Revanchists went hunting for it. No one knows what happened out there, but when they returned, they returned as Sith, with a seemingly never-ending fleet of alien ships at their disposal. Revan had become Darth Revan, with Alek becoming the apprentice Darth Malak. They laid siege to the Republic, though strangely Darth Revan was exceedingly careful in how this was done, as if to keep as many worlds and infrastructure intact as possible. It's speculated Revan was in truth preparing the Republic and attempting to bring it under the Dark Lord's single control."

     "Whatever plans Darth Revan might have had came to a screeching halt after Darth Malak did what Sith always do and attempted to take his master's place. While Revan was fighting off a Jedi strike team which had boarded the Dark Lord's ship, Malak fired on it from his own, and that was essentially the end of Darth Revan. After Malak usurped his master, he continued the onslaught but in a far more brutal fashion. That was basically where things were when I woke up on the Endar Spire"
Revan      "That was the flagship of Bastila Shan. She's a Jedi who can use Battle Meditation, a rare ability which can considerably boost the morale, stamina, and overall battle prowess of allies while at the same time reduce the combat-effectiveness of an enemy army by eroding their will to fight, and from what I understood at the time, she was coming to assist an attempt to break a Sith blockade over Taris. At any rate, I was stationed on board as one of the Republic's commandos and specially assigned to her, though as I mentioned earlier I wasn't able to do much besides fight my way through a Sith boarding party sent to capture Bastila and escape with Carth to the Taris Upper City."

     "It was the two of us for a while trying to avoid being picked up by Sith soldiers on the ground while finding where Bastila had crashed. It was one big complicated mess to find her and rescue her from one of the local swoop gangs -- though she'll insist /she/ saved /me/ -- and finally get off Taris. We had a lot of help from several others who ended up joining us; Mission Vao, Zalbaar, Canderous Ordo. I also bought T3 to break into the Sith base to get the launch codes necessary to get off Taris without being blown out of the sky."

     "Canderous had been working for Davik Kang, an Exchange boss who was basically running the entire Tarisian economy, who happened to have a ship that he boasted was the fastest thing in the galaxy."

     Lowri paused long enough to point out to the Ebon Hawk to starboard. "That was when Malak apparently got fed up with the search for Bastila and had the bright idea of bombarding the planet to rubble. Davik had the roof caved in on him, and we took off with the Ebon Hawk for Dantooine."

     "Once we landed at the Enclave, Bastila met with the Council to report what had happened on Taris. She had told me that she could sense I was 'strong' in the Force back on Taris and repeated that to the Council, and after some deliberation, they decided to train me as a Jedi. I'm not sure they would have if there wasn't the looming crisis that there was, not to mention Bastila and I were inexplicably sharing dreams of Darth Revan and Darth Malak searching for something. So, even though I was far older than the age they typically took in apprentices, I underwent the training and became a Padawan before the Council tasked us with finding whatever it was that the Sith Lords had been searching for."

     "What we found in the ruins Revan and Malak had been searching was some kind of artefact called a Star Map. The Council believed finding the rest of the Star Maps scattered across several planets throughout the galaxy would lead us to a means of defeating Darth Malak, so we were all sent out on a mission to find them and locate whatever it was they lead to."
Revan      "We managed to find all the Star Maps on Kashyyyk, Manaan, and Tatooine, and were setting out to recover the final one on Korriban before we were captured by the Leviathan, the ship of Admiral Saul Karath. The Admiral had been a decorated Republic officer and Carth's mentor before he followed Revan and Malak into the Unknown Regions and returned at the head of the Sith fleet. But worse than that, Malak had tested his loyalty by ordering him to bomb Telos, Carth's homeworld and a major Republic military and commerce hub. Carth's wife was killed in the bombardment and his son went missing, and from that point on, he became paranoid about trusting anyone again and was bent on revenge against Saul."

     "We had enough time to prepare after they had locked a tractor beam on us, so Mission hid herself and evaded capture. She was able to break us out -- entirely without the use of Force powers, I might add, since she's not a Jedi -- but not before Carth, Bastila, and I were tortured. 'For information' was Saul's pretence, but as Carth pointed out, he already knew the answers and it was just some perverse pleasure he was getting out of it. But he seemed to recognise me from somewhere, though he just mocked me when I demanded to know how. Luckily for us he left long enough for Mission to bust us out and try to make our way off the ship before Malak's ship arrived."

     "We didn't make it, though...Malak boarded before we could escape on the Ebon Hawk."

     Lowri paused to take an especially long pull from her margarita, as if preparing herself. "This was the worst of it for me, personally. When Malak caught sight of me he just started laughing and taunting me about when I didn't recognise him. 'How long could the Council keep it hidden from you, I wonder?' And that's when everything finally clicked into place, every terrible coincidence and vision. The reason /why/ Bastila and I kept dreaming of Revan and Malak, the reason why I seemed to have been to these places before...all the elusiveness of the Council and their reluctance to train me. It all came crashing down, where I could see myself in some far-off, ancient ruins, removing a mask..."

     Mismatched eyes were haunted at the memory, and she seemed as if she struggled to finish, but Lowri pressed on. "I wasn't Lowri Melior, Republic commando and neophyte Padawan. All my memories, even my name, were lies."

     "I was Revan."
Juno Eclipse   "I wouldn't argue with any self-defense measures Galen and I could use." Juno chews at her lower lip, expression sliding into something more uncertain for a moment. Part of her wonders what exactly Vader might have ripped from her mind while she was busy languishing under the effects of an Imperial chemical cocktail. "It might be useful in other situations, too."

  "We'd be grateful for anything we could use," she murmurs. "I don't exactly know how much any Force-sensitive person can listen in on, you know? I'm more comfortable taking a defensive stance, these days, although I suppose that much is obvious. And while I don't know what his limits are, I know Vader is probably potent in the Force. He was directing those prisoners aboard the Emperor's Justice... he had to be. They couldn't even function before they started reaching for blasters and the like -- they were behaving like uncoordinated beasts."

  She nods, faintly, at the mention of teaching the Force-sensitive to accept and control their emotions, instead of denying them; or pretending that they don't exist. That way lies madness. Especially when dealing with a small child, who wouldn't necessarily understand what they're feeling, or why; it just seems like the fastest way to give the Force-sensitive a shove towards the Dark Side. Foolishness... and that's not even getting into the broken family that's left behind.

  "I'd appreciate it," she sighs, poking disconsolately at the controls. The diagnostic report comes up, a small holographic image of the Rogue Shadow, and the entire right side where the starboard exhaust is lights up in red warning diagnostics. "Between T3 and PROXY, I should be able to bring the worst of the damage under control. I don't trust firing up the starboard sublight right now, though. With my luck lately it'll rupture, and I'm not about to risk it."

  Her thoughts on keeping Carth away she doesn't voice, although she shakes her head in mild disagreement. Apparently she doesn't necessarily approve of protecting him for his own good; not without his consultation in the matter... but it's Lowri's life, and Juno isn't about to tell her how to live it, not when Juno isn't doing such a great job of living, herself.

  Thankfully... margaritas.

  Juno settles into her chair, shifting to sit slightly sideways in it, crossing her legs so her feet are tucked beneath herself. She listens, for the time being, because this sounds like it's going to be a doozy of a story... and it turns out that is a true and accurate assessment! It is in fact a doozy of a story, which Juno is respectful enough to stay quiet through most of.
Juno Eclipse   Occasionally she glances down at her drink, or even takes a sip from it, but for the most part her eyes remain on Lowri. Juno proves an attentive listener, even if most of the things she's talking about aren't necessarily familiar to her.

  That's a lot of information to take in... but take it in she does, although most of the terminology is unfamiliar. It sounds as though the galaxy was a very different time, in Revan's era -- but the more some things change, the more they stay the same. It's still the story of a vast Sith Empire, and a fledgeling rebel organisation who have had enough of it, rising up to throw off their shackles. Or, you know, close enough to make very little difference, and to draw a lot of parallels. Small wonder that Lowri had taken an interest in the former Imperial pilot, in that case...

  She blows out a sigh by the end of it all, brow furrowed, as though she's still trying to take in all the details.

  "I'm sorry. I... had no idea."

  Juno lifts her eyes to regard Lowri, but there's no wariness in it; learning that she used to be Darth Revan apparently isn't that much of a scare. After all, Galen Marek is a former Sith assassin. While he may not have been a Sith Lord, he was still tremendously powerful when he drew on that hatred and rage. Close as she is to him, it's hard, and probably a bit hypocritical, for her to recoil from Lowri. Why should she? Lowri's saved her life, after all.

  Frowning, she takes a drink from her own margarita, eyeing the onetime Sith Lord with some sympathy.

  And then, one hand reaches out to rest over her arm, as though to lend strength when Lowri falters at those final memories; as she reveals explicitly who it is that she used to be.

  "If that's supposed to scare me off, congratulations," she says, with a faint half-smile that tries to be reassuring, and falls somewhat short. It almost comes across as more of a grimace. "Well, sorry, but I guess you've just made yourself too indispensible to me." A flicker of a slightly less terrible-looking smile. "After all, my lover is a former Sith assassin and I pushed the button on an entire planet. So, I suppose we're in something of the same boat... different stories, with different details... but we're all together in it. Funny how the Force leads people together, isn't it...?"
Revan      "It's even more useful in the multiverse," Lowri mused. "It seems as if you can't throw a metaphorical rock without hitting a psychic." Cortex was a sweet guy but his powers were rather common in Paragon City. And that was just /one/ of the worlds out there. "When Galen returns to the land of the living, we can give it a try."

     Aboard the Emperor's Justice, Revan had been able to hear the mental screams of the prisoners echoing in her head, nearly dropping her to her knees. At a very bad time, no less...right when she was fending off one of the HK-51 models. How much worse it must have been for Galen at ground zero. "I'm sure he's still trying to heal from those screams echoing in his head...it was bad enough for me even at a distance. It's a little like having a sonic grenade go off; it hurts your ears like all hell even at the outer edge of the blast, but you feel like you want to die if it goes off right next to you."

     Her brow furrowed at the memory of the prisoners themselves, tortured into a Dark Side madness. "There are techniques to control beasts...the Beast Masters of Onderon use them, as do some Sith Beast Masters. But to use it on human beings or other sentients, their minds have to be broken down to the point where they're little more than beasts."

     She shook her head, gritting her teeth. "So there wasn't a /damn/ thing we could do to help them. Not that we didn't try, but..." She had hoped to save at least one.

     "I'll bring him over once we pull into port," Lowri agreed. "A few hours should be enough once he's familiar with the system. If we have at least /some/ time wherever we end up, Tiny could take care of the really bad parts outside. Cybertronians are ridiculously sophisticated, even Insecticons...I've never seen such repair skills and adaptability." Juno would probably hear the almost reverent tone in her voice as she described the giant robots, though coloured with some regret. Something must have happened to them, and she had learned about it.

     Even if they didn't agree, Lowri could appreciate the sentiment. But the words of the alternate HK-47 echoed in her mind. She still didn't know what that key element was that had led her down the Dark path all over again, and ultimately led her to killing the man she loved. Did that Revan, the one who became the Sith Empress, even regret her actions at all? As if to answer that, she took another sip of her margarita.

     In truth, she just wanted to get the story over with, grateful that Juno hadn't asked questions. Quite honestly, none of it was really important save for the fact that she had discovered she was actually an amnesiac Sith Lord. To say it had been an unpleasant experience would have been the understatement of the decade.
Revan      There was a hint of her usual slight, irreverent grin. Maybe Juno wasn't used to being reassuring, but she was trying, even successful for all its awkwardness. "Heh...thanks," she replied with a soft chuckle. "To tell you the truth, I just thought you had the right to know. I'd like to think Darth Revan is dead, and that's what I tell everyone, but just the finding out was horrifying enough to make me wonder sometimes."

     "It's still something I'm coming to grips with, myself. I didn't even believe it, and I remember yelling at Malak that it was a lie, some kind of sick Sith trick. But even as I did, I knew the truth. Even worse, Bastila knew the entire time. The fact is that she was the one who lead that strike team on Revan's...on my ship. She was there when Malak tried to blast me out of the sky, and it was she who saved my life. Worse for her, we were Force-bonded after she tried to keep my mind from frying completely."

     It was getting a little easier to talk about it, at least. Or maybe that was the margarita talking. Either way, something worked. "That's why I chose the name that I did. Lowri, for the second chance the Council gave me even if the circumstances are more than a little sketchy, and Shan after Bastila for saving my life."

     Pausing for another grateful sip, she continued. "I was still pissed off at her at the time, though...accused her of lying to me and being no better than the Sith. But she still sacrificed herself to buy us enough time to get away, so I was feeling guilty for a good long while after we escaped. He didn't kill her, though...Malak needed her Battle Meditation too much to do that. He tortured her to the point of turning her, though."

     Another chuckle, but this time not filled with regrets. "It certainly is," she commented. "Even now, I'm still learning what that really means."
Juno Eclipse   "Yeah. I'm not going to wake him up before he's ready, though." Juno shakes her head, glancing back towards the corridor. "Putting aside what happened aboard the Emperor's Justice, he's just as exhausted as I am. If he's still asleep, which is where I left him, I'd as soon let him stay there. He needs it even more than I do."

  She glances over to Lowri, not quite looking at her when she describes the proximity effects of a sonic grenade. Feeling like wanting to die? She has no doubt that Galen must have had a flicker of that, given how he had pled to his allies not to slaughter the prisoners. The look on her face suggests a certain sympathy by association. "I have no doubt that he's still trying to heal. It's why I haven't disturbed him."

  Well, aside from crawling out of bed, anyway. It had taken some careful manoeuvring not to wake him. Her smile is subdued, but at least she still makes the effort. "No. I don't think so. Whatever was done to them, it was permanent. I... don't like it, but ending their misery and their suffering was probably the kindest thing we could have done for them. They were just too far gone."

  "That would help." She dips her head, absently raising her glass and swilling it around once or twice, squinting critically at the contents. Everything seems accounted for and she hasn't quite finished it off yet, so she leaves off her appraisal. "Whatever time he needs to familiarise himself with the systems should be fine. There's too much work to be done on the starboard sublight to be picky about what's helping split the load. Besides that, I'd be more comfortable if I could take one more opportunity to go through the Rogue Shadow's computer cores again. I don't trust Vader, or Vader's underlings, not to have installed some kind of tracking functionality. I'm fairly certain that Murasame found out about it because of information passed on from the Empire's intelligence. It had to be. No one else knew I was there, except for you and Kyra Hyral. And I trust you both not to spill your guts to the first contracting corporation to come around."

  Juno rolls one shoulder when Lowri tells her she has a right to know. "Maybe. Maybe not. To be honest, while I appreciate the honesty, the details are... not really relevant to me, are they? We're talking about over four thousand years. The Galactic Republic that your Carth is currently manning? It's the same Galactic Empire that I'm running from. At least, that's what it became, after Palpatine seized power." She smiles, but the expression is almost annoyed. "I've got to admit that the irony in that is pretty delicious."

  "Maybe," she says, to the matter of the Force. "I'm still not wholly convinced it's pulling all of the strings, you know. I don't have the benefit of feeling it, or knowing it, or whatever mystic nonsense it is that the Jedi like to spout. It's hard to place too much faith in it when you have no connection to it. Maybe it's different for you, and for Galen; but for me it's just..." She gestures, nebulously, as though she were attempting to pluck the words from the air itself. "It's just there, you know? I prefer to concentrate on the things that matter to me. Galen. Avoiding the bounty hunters and the Imperials. Staying alive." A brief, cold smile flickers across her face. "Spiting the Empire, eventually." The smile fades. "But mostly, Galen, and staying alive."

  She gives the hull a rap with her knuckles. "And right now, that means getting this poor ship back on its feet. I feel terrible, seeing the Rogue Shadow in a state like this. It's like home, you know? Nobody likes seeing their home in shambles."
Revan      "I tried to guide him...I'm the farthest thing from a proper Master, I won't lie...I just know how hard it can be. He held it together as much as he could..."

     Lowri shook her head. "He has a lot of strength, no doubt thanks to you. I suppose that we managed to stay in the Light because we at least tried, but damned if that wasn't risky. He's earned whatever rest he's getting now. It'll be hard for him, though...thank the Force you're there for him."

     The Guardian let her head fall back heavily against the headrest. "Yeah...still. It was probably best to just end their suffering and let them rejoin the Force, but still. I was redeemed, so I can't help feeling responsible. I think he feels that, too...why did the Force grant /us/ second chances but not them?"

     Rubbing her forehead, Lowri nodded. "That has to be it...but finding it is going to take some work. T3 can slice like nobody's business, but we're behind the times and your Empire doesn't play games. But maybe taking some of the repair load off you will give you enough of a window to find it."

     The Jedi smirked. "Czerka couldn't afford me. Er...I think they're still around, aren't they?"

     With a sigh, she rolled her head, cracking the stiff muscles in her neck. It hurt a little, but felt a lot better after that. "Point," she conceded. "I doubt even Vader knows what happened that far back. That works out great for me personally, but I hate seeing people make the same mistakes I did." Lowri groaned softly, running a hand through her bangs. "I never would have thought the Sith would have learned that kind of subtlety. Not a sliver of charisma, but it hardly matters."

     To the question of the Force pulling all the strings, Lowri shrugged. "I don't think it's really pulling the strings, necessarily. I believe it guides us, reveals things to us, but ultimately it's up to us decide what to do with that wisdom. It touches everything and everyone, even those who don't have 'Force sensitivity' as we know it. It's just that we don't know how to really sense it or measure it. Sure, someone who can shoot lightning out of his fingers is easy enough to see, but just knowing the right hyperspace lane to take or other things called 'luck'? That's not so simple."

     She folded her arms over her arms, her expression contemplative. "Our 'luck' would have run out long ago if it was just that. Mine should have run out when Malak fired on my ship. But here I am. The Star Forge is gone, Bastila is back on the Light path..in my time-line, anyway."

     Lowri's expression turned haunted for a brief moment, shaking her head as if deciding to bury whatever she had been thinking about for now. "That's true," she mused, eyeing the console. "They're not just ships...not for us."
Juno Eclipse   Juno wraps both hands around the cold glass, glancing over her shoulder, down the corridor towards the sleeping quarters. For a moment she doesn't comment. Her expression is drawn; worried, although it seems as much weary as it does anything else. She's worried about him. It doesn't take a Force-sensitive to know that.

  "I appreciate it, all the same. Dealing with the Force... that's not something I can do." Juno shakes her head before settling back into her chair, sighing and taking a drink from her glass. Miraculously, it doesn't taste like hyperdrive coolant as she had originally expected it to. She's probably had worse in the streets of Pixelito, or elsewhere, in equally seedy spaceports. "He needs all the help he can get. We both do."

  Leaning back, she lets her shoulders curl a bit, cupping the glass, long fingers settling over the condensation. "Maybe... sometimes I wonder how long I can hold out; how long I can be strong for him." She closes her eyes for a moment. "I'm so tired, Lowri. And it's not just from not sleeping. I'm worried. I don't know what to do for him. I don't know if there's anything I /can/ do for him."

  She turns her glass around and around in her hands, slow careful circles on its axis, watching the liquid inside ripple, and thinks about the captives aboard the prison ship. She had seen a glimpse of one or two; the burnt features, the bestial sounds they'd made.

  "Because Vader had a hand in whatever it was that happened to them," she murmurs. "I don't know what he did to them, or ordered done to them, but that was the end of whatever chance they might have had. He might have had a use for them, once, but he didn't by the time they were bound for Mustafar. It's where the Jedi and are sent to vanish."

  It's why she's so grateful she was rescued from the prison ship. Her fate would have been to vanish on that planet, too.
Juno Eclipse   She looks down at her glass. "I can slice, too, and I know better what I want to be looking for. I think with T3's help that would speed things up considerably, though. Even if we're short on time... looking for Vader's tampering isn't something I want to rush. Finding it and ripping it out may mean the difference between outrunning the Empire, or being ambushed by them. If they're in these computers at all, they're listening. And they know where I'm going."

  Even if she, herself, hasn't necessarily decided. They can follow the navcomputer's output.

  "I could make my jumps without touching the navcomputer -- have I told you? I can perform hyperspace jumps without a navcomputer... well, under normal circumstances. But without a navcomputer, as tired as I've been, that's taking an enormous risk for both of us. One miscalculation, and... well..." She trails off morosely, shrugging. "You know."

  She shakes her head. "Czerka's still around. They're an exclusive supplier to the Empire, although sometimes things still manage to slip through the cracks, here and there..."

  "Maybe it's not symptomatic of the Sith, but Vader. Although I suppose one could make the argument that the Emperor is also wily, given what he did to the Jedi, but I don't know anything about him. For all I know he's just a figurehead, and Vader's the one running the show." She shrugs. "I've never even seen him."

  She leans back in her chair. "Maybe," she murmurs, to the matter of luck, and the Force. "I can't really give you any good news about whatever might've happened here, at least in regards to your timeline. It's out of the archives, and the archives are beyond my reach."

  "Not this one." Juno leans forward, patting the console fondly. "I want to get this one up and running properly as quickly as possible. It's not really fair to ask so much of it; to flee halfway across the multiverse in this kind of shape... and it's not safe for us, either. If the hyperdrive fails, we'll be stranded. The backup hyperdrive won't get us far enough to make a difference, not if we've got Imperials on our tail."
Revan      Lowri leaned an elbow on the edge of he console, propping her chin on the open hand not occupied with her glass. "I think I can relate. We were sent off into the galaxy into some dangerous places while somehow managing to avoid the Sith finding us, yet the Council didn't send any Masters with us since it would attract too much attention. I was sort of on my own -- Bastila tried, but she really didn't have much experience -- until we picked up Jolee on Kashyyyk. He didn't consider himself a Jedi, just an old man who had seen too much, but he's never steered me wrong. Maybe...seeing Galen struggling, that might have been what Jolee saw in me."

     Her head tilted slightly as she regarded the pilot. The Masters would likely insist that her advice was the worst possible advice she could give, but she was much more inclined to trust her own experiences and observations than tradition for the sake of tradition. "Don't sell yourself short, though. You're the most important part of his destiny, wherever that leads."

     Shifting her glass to her opposite hand, the Jedi leaned over and patted Juno's arm, not unlike she had done not long ago. "Trust me, without you, he would still be Vader's puppet. I know this sounds strange coming from a Jedi when we're supposed to eschew personal attachments, but just having that one person to reassure us we're on the right path or make us rethink a wrong one is a strength. Even my best friend couldn't do that for me...he fell right along with me."

     Her hand fell away and she sat back, her eyes closing in contemplation. "Carth had worried the same thing; he could fight, he could fly a ship, but he was no Jedi. I asked him why he didn't return to the front lines, and he said that what we were doing was more important, that he would help however way he could."

     She chuckled softly. "He was really selling himself short...really, absolutely fantastic cover fire."

     After lifting her glass to her lips for another sip, she continued. "Later, his purpose became protecting me, whether from the Sith or myself. Maybe he thought I might be insulted by the idea of a Republic soldier protecting a Jedi, rather than be touched. I think Galen would be, too. Force powers or not, it still means a lot when someone says he'll protect us. It can make all the difference between falling into the Dark or remaining in the Light."

     But then, Revan wasn't entirely certain, herself. She was certain that Carth had saved her -- he'd never had to scold her about her path, but just his presence alone was enough -- yet the existence of that mysterious Sith Empress HK-47 served made her worried. Not to mention if she wondered that the Emperor she had overthrown was what she was hunting for. Finding helping the former Imperial pilot and the Sith assassin evade the Empire was oddly a boon to her, giving her the time to mull over things and perhaps even find some proper information. And figure out just how she was going to get some of that information from the alternate HK-47.

     She remained silent on the subject of the prisoners, mulling over their situation. There hadn't been anything the could do other than defend themselves at the time, and especially not now. "All we can do now, I think, is to prevent that from happening again. Although, the first order of business is not getting killed."
Revan      She frowned slightly, mulling over what the Dark Lord's next move might be. even if they could listen in, they hadn't revealed anything especially important to the Imperials...or rather, nothing the Imperials would likely consider important. And if they could figure out how to use that intelligence...well. They weren't the only ones with surprises up their sleeves. "Even without bugging your system, I think Vader already expects you to turn to the Alliance for help. They're the only ones in the galaxy in a position to do anything."

     It was a question of where to go, and whether their planned route was actually a feint, or even a series of feints. "He covered all the bases; bugging the navcomputer so they'd have co-ordinates as soon as you entered then, keeping you too exhausted to plot a proper course without it."

     It seemed wrong that, of all the things to truly last, it would be that conglomerate of opportunists. "I'd like to say that it's good at least some things never change," she commented sardonically. "But when it comes to Czerka...not so much. I doubt it's in any records, but in my time they'd essentially enslaved Kashyyyk. Slavery's illegal in the Republic, but that didn't stop them from kidnapping wookies and selling them off. Of course, Czerka is allied with the Sith and has been selling them weapons, so it's not as if they were worried about what the Republic would do. It wasn't until the wookies mounted a revolt that they were able to drive Czerka off the planet."

     Lowri took a long sip from her glass. "I might have had a little to do with that."

     Shaking her had slightly, she wasn't entirely sure how different the Sith of Juno's time were compared to hers. So far, she had learned precious little. "The Sith in my time were basically the Empire of the day," she explained. "Most were general soldiers rather than Force users, though the Dark Jedi were generally in charge. And at the top, there were the Dark Lords, a Master and the master's apprentice. I would imagine that if Vader hasn't yet moved to take his Master's place, his Master must be even more dangerous."

     She waved her free hand slightly. "I have a potential lead...the problem will be getting within rage without being shot at. And it's nothing that can't wait. I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment."

     With a sigh, she leaned back, stretching her legs out underneath the console. She wasn't about to put her feet up on it unless it was the Ebon Hawk, though. That would be rude as all get-out. "Once we get to a safe enough port, she can have a much-needed break. all of you need one, actually." Lifting her hand, she tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Question for you. Do you have hidden compartments in the ship, large enough to hide in?"
Juno Eclipse   "Kashyyyk..." Juno tilts her head slightly at that familiar name, eyes slipping out of focus as she considers. "If I'm remembering my Imperial databases correctly, they've got a Skyhook under construction there. The Empire. I'm not certain why. It may well be worth looking into, once we've gotten ourselves out of hot water for the moment."

  She glances over when Revan cautions her not to sell herself short, closing her eyes and sighing wearily. "I suppose there's only one way to find out, and that's wait and see. It isn't like I plan on abandoning him, so..."

  No matter what happens, she'll be at his side when it does. There's no denying that; no arguing that bloom through the Force of quiet but steel-true determination, and warmth. There is affection, there, no doubt, but there's also a core of something stronger and harder and more enduring than durasteel. He'd tear apart the Empire with his bare hands for her sake -- and she'd do the very same, for him.

  Perhaps the fact that she doesn't have the Force to fall back on is more of a frightening thing. She'd have to get creative if they were separated, and as Sanary cornering her proved, she is capable of shockingly cold-blooded cruelty if she feels her life, or Galen's, is on the line.

  Juno Eclipse is more than she thinks she is. Maybe it's a holdover from her loveless and cold childhood, her lack of regard for her own self; a product of Colthe Eclipse's ignorance and negligence where his own daughter was concerned.

  Sagging back in her chair, Juno lets her eyes nearly close, as her thoughts gradually slow and chase themselves into tired circles.

  "Most probably he does. I could turn to the Union, openly, but that would be dangerous for us right now. The Confederacy already wants us to burn. I can't fight a war against them and the Empire at the same time, single-handedly; I think my current state is commentary enough, on that." Juno swills her glass, before shrugging and draining it. "I'm still keeping the option on the table, if we're desperate enough. The Union /can/ provide protection."

  She regards her empty glass with eyes half-closed, elbow on the arm of her chair, cheek resting against a loosely-curled fist. "I doubt your people would want to associate openly with us, though... between my service record and Galen's, well, we're hardly worthy of their trust. /I/ wouldn't trust us, in their position."

  "I don't know." This, in regards to Vader. "I don't think anyone knows Vader's plans save Vader himself," she murmurs, as her eyes gradually close. "Just thinking about anticipating him makes my head hurt. He's alike to what you've told me of the Sith, but he plays the long game, too. That's what makes him so dangerous. He's cunning."

  When Lowri mentions they need a break, she sighs, not bothering to open her eyes. "Yeah. We do." Hidden compartments? "Check to your left, along the wall, just behind you. I keep my blaster there. It's not much, but if you don't know it's there... I could also improvise a secure hold or two within the cargo hold, if you needed one, but otherwise the ship's compartments are straightforward." She cracks an eye open, eyeing Lowri. "Why? What did you have in mind...?"
Revan      Lowri frowned. "A Skyhook?" As far as she knew, the Rakatan computer on the (ridiculously dangerous) forest floor had shut itself down once she had recovered the Star Map. Had they found something else? "I'll have to do some poking around once I have some free time again," she mused. "Kashyyyk was the location of one of the Star Maps I was looking for. The computer shut down once I'd retrieved it, but who knows what else might have been left down there."

     She considered going into the Rakatans and the existence of the Infinite Empire, but that would have to wait for the resolution of the current crisis.

     Her smile was slightly wry. "Oh, I'm more than certain you've already proved yourself." Her smile faded at her next observation, however. "It's not going to get easier from here on out. What happened on the Emperor's Justice was only the beginning. He's going to be tested, and you're going to need all that strength to be the calm at the centre of the storm."

     Was that a hint of her Force insight, the small glimpses into what was and what had yet to be? Perhaps.

     But she need not have worried about not having the Force to fall back on. Even those who couldn't use it the same way as Lowri and Galen could were far from defenceless...and far from purposeless in that omnipresent, living power. They simply needed some extra preparation...and the Jedi could handle that part.

     Juno Eclipse had value, much more than even as the leader of an elite fighter squadron.

     "I think I can speak for Toph and Kyra when I say that it would help us sleep better if you did," Lowri quipped with a slight, lopsided grin before it faded back into a neutral expression. "But ultimately, it's your decision and it depends on whether you and galen feel ready or not."

     She shifted, resting an elbow on the armrest of her seat. "I don't think it's so much your service record as that you're coming from the Confederacy," Lowri replied with a slight shrug. "I imagine the Union itself is taking a wait-and-see approach to make sure this isn't an attempt to place a double agent in the ranks. Personally, I'm confident that what matters to them is what you're trying to do now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm fairly sure that Former Sith Lord still ranks lower on the trustworthiness scale."

     "Besides which," she added, "Toph has already vouched for you, and I don't think there are than many Union people who don't trust her, if the radio chatter is anything to go by."

     The pale-haired Jedi shrugged slightly. "Probably not," she agreed. "And I don't think even a Master could pry them out of his mind. Still, as cunning as he is, there has to be some weakness, some blind spot. Even Sith Lords aren't invincible."

     The index finger of her left hand tapped thoughtfully on the edge of the console. "Just considering plans in worst-case scenarios," she mused. "I suppose it's a matter of which one of you is better at stealth..."

     She imagined Galen wasn't it. "If the Rogue Shadow's captured again -- Force forbid -- I can think of a few things we can do, but either you or Galen will have to hide somewhere. I'm leaning towards you, since...well, I have to be honest, he's about as subtle as a bantha stampede. I hope it doesn't come down to it, but I'd prefer to have some kind of plan in place."
Revan      Lowri frowned. "A Skyhook?" As far as she knew, the Rakatan computer on the (ridiculously dangerous) forest floor had shut itself down once she had recovered the Star Map. Had they found something else? "I'll have to do some poking around once I have some free time again," she mused before explaining. "Kashyyyk was the location of one of the Star Maps I was looking for. The computer shut down once I'd retrieved it, but who knows what else might have been left down there."

     She considered going into the Rakatan race and the existence of the Infinite Empire, but that would have to wait for the resolution of the current crisis.

     Her smile was slightly wry. "Oh, I'm more than certain you've already proved yourself." Her smile faded at her next observation, however. "It's not going to get easier from here on out. What happened on the Emperor's Justice was only the beginning. Galen is going to be tested, and you're going to need all that strength to be the calm at the centre of the storm."

     Was that a hint of her Force Insight, the small glimpses into what was and what had yet to be? Perhaps. Juno wouldn't have any way of knowing, but it would hardly be the first time; visions were a fairly common occurrence for the Guardian.

     But the former Imperial need not have worried about not having the Force to fall back on. Even those who couldn't use it the same way as Lowri and Galen could were far from defenceless...and far from purposeless in that omnipresent, living power. They simply needed some extra preparation, and that was something Lowri could handle. "When you suspect someone will try to invade your mind, the first form of defence is to occupy it with something trivial. Anything will do, but the more tedious, the better. Count the power cycles of an engine, think of how wet and miserable you were on Aquilaris...whatever comes to mind. Focus on them, concentrate on the minute details."

     Juno Eclipse had value, much more than even as the leader of an elite fighter squadron. And this was something she could do.

     "I think I can speak for Toph and Kyra when I say that it would help us sleep better if you did," Lowri quipped with a slight, lopsided grin before it faded back into a neutral expression. "But ultimately, it's your decision and it depends on whether you and Galen feel ready or not. If you even decide to turn to us in an official capacity for help."

     She shifted, resting an elbow on the armrest of her seat. "I don't think it's so much your service record as that you're coming from the Confederacy," Lowri replied with a slight shrug. "It appears that the Union itself is taking a wait-and-see approach, likely to make sure this isn't an attempt to place a double agent in the ranks. Personally, I believe that what matters to them is what you're trying to do now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm fairly sure that Former Sith Lord still ranks lower on the trustworthiness scale."

     "Besides which," she added, "Toph has already vouched for you, and I don't think there are than many Union people who don't trust her, if the radio chatter is anything to go by."

     The pale-haired Jedi shrugged slightly. "Probably not," she agreed. "And I don't think even a Master could pry them out of his mind. Still, as cunning as he is, there has to be some weakness, some blind spot. Even Sith Lords aren't invincible."

     The index finger of her left hand tapped thoughtfully on the edge of the console. "Just considering plans in worst-case scenarios," she mused. "I suppose it's a matter of which one of you is better at stealth..."

     She imagined Galen wasn't it. "If the Rogue Shadow's captured again -- Force forbid -- I can think of a few things we can do, but either you or Galen will have to hide somewhere. I'm leaning towards you, since...well, I have to be honest, he's about as subtle as a bantha stampede. I hope it doesn't come down to it, but I'd prefer to have some kind of plan in place."
Juno Eclipse   "A Skyhook," Juno confirms, leaning back in her chair. Tilting her head back, she kicks her feet up on the co-pilot's console and closes her eyes, gesturing vaguely with her glass. "Bloody monstrous construct used either to shuttle something up from the surface, or something down to the surface. I can't imagine what would be on Kashyyyk to interest the Empire, honestly."

  "Wookiees are smart and strong," she murmurs, gesturing languidly with the glass again, "and they'd be useful slaves if they could be controlled. But they're notoriously tempermental to Imperial sensibilities. I don't know that they could even control them, not on the grand scale of deporting them via Skyhook. I'm not certain what their purpose is, but whatever it is, it probably bears investigating." She sets her glass down, wedging it into the chair between her hip and the chair's arm.

  Silence falls for a few moments, and she's either listening to Lowri's affirmations on her character, or she's fallen asleep.

  Eventually she opens her eyes, puffing out a breath. Whether the sigh is one of exasperation or thoughtfulness or even simple weariness, it's hard to tell. Maybe it's all of them.

  "Something trivial... I can do that." She lifts her eyes to the viewport and the pieces of asteroid that hover beyond it. Although she doesn't quite laugh, her chuckle is a little slurred. The alcohol must finally be affecting her. "Did you know? I can chart hyperspace jumps without a navcomputer. All I need to do is run through the calculations in my head... it's not something most pilots can do. They use the navcomputer. Oh, I use it too, just to be sure... but..." But it's nightmarishly complex, the kind of thing the layman wouldn't understand. "Something to keep in mind... power cycles of a starship engine works, too..."

  Her eyes slide almost closed, mere slits of icy blue. "Doubt it," she murmurs, in response to Vader. "Maybe. Dunno what it is, though. S'bloody crafty, he is. Be hard to find that chink... in his armour. Got to be there somewhere."

  "Hiding..." She chuckles again, not much more than a breath. "That's no good. And you're right. Subtle as a brick. Brick with a lightsaber. Don't mind, myself, one of us's got to be strong, right? But sure. Yeah. I can hide..." Sinking back in her chair, she reaches up, folding her hands behind her head and closing her eyes. "Hopefully won't come to that. 'F it comes to that, then I failed, as a pilot. Don't like failure too much..."

  Silence again, this time long enough to suspect she might really have passed out this time. She certainly seems calm, at least through the Force; nerves finally soothed from their discordant jangling of earlier.

  She murmurs again into the silence of the cockpit, though, evidently not as asleep as she might have seemed. "Worst comes to worst, though... I'd rather die than let them take me again."
Revan      Swirling her drink in its glass, Lowri seemed to either study it or contemplate what that meant. "I really hope they didn't find something like what I did down on the forest floor," she murmured. "Even if the Star Map computer is nothing but scrap, the race who built it might have left something else. Not that I hope they're using those to transport slaves, either. But for something on that scale, it'd have to be something else."

     Of course, the Empire might be transporting something to Kashyyyk rather than excavating something.

     The Jedi shook her head. "Wookies are temperamental, period. Czerka had to torture them and threaten their tribes to control them. One tribal leader was kind of a scumball and had a deal worked out with them, but once the rightful chieftain was restored, Czerka had a nasty surprise waiting for them."

     It might have been a combination of thoughtfulness, exasperation, or weariness; not that Lowri had expected anything at the moment. Force visions sometimes weren't nearly as useful as they seemed, and anyone involved wouldn't necessarily know until the last second that the foreseen moment was upon them. Moreover, Juno seemed to have had some other underlying issues, ones that the Jedi hadn't delved into during her investigation. She had planned to hunt around for a psychological profile once she's found Rancor on Bespin, but things hadn't quite worked out that way. Still, she wasn't going to be the one to ultimately reassure the pilot that she was a lot more important than she might think she was.

     Of course, it could have just been the margaritas.

     "I haven't known that many who could," she admitted. "Actually, just one, and I already told you about him. A lot of other pilots rely on droids like I do. Good thing I know my way around the inside of a droid."

     Oh right, there was /that/ particular issue. The pale-haired Knight wasn't sure it was the best of times to bring up HK-47, given that Juno's speech was starting to slur. Maybe some proverbial testing of the water was in order; if her attention started to drift or she seemed too tired to follow, Lowri would drop it. "Not just repair, either. I can build complex droids...maybe not as much as I used to, but simple droids aren't too hard."

     She smirked a little. Juno was probably going to wring her neck after this. "It beats counting Pazaak cards, that's for sure."

     With a long pull of margarita, she considered options, possibilities. Her mind was still reasonably clear -- it took more than that to start affecting her, and Force abilities had nothing to do with it -- but sleep would pull at her after a few more. She'd have to stay sharp so Juno could get some desperately-needed rest. "I'll see what Kyle knows," she mused. "Maybe his galaxy isn't the same, but it's worth a shot."

     Lowri chuckled softly. "Hey, a brick with a lightsaber has its uses, just...not this one. Hopefully we won't need to, but just in case, we don't have to panic if we're blindsided. I doubt it'll come to that, though."

     She swirled the drink in her glass, watching the younger woman. She seemed like she was half-asleep already...but not quite yet. "At least you won't have to worry about that. I think Galen will tear the Empire apart with his bare hands before that happens again."
Juno Eclipse   "Guess I should be charting those jumps myself." Juno lets her eyes half-close as she sags back in her seat. Her arms fold over her chest, the fingers of one hand drumming absently against the opposite forearm. "Less to track. They can't follow a compromised navcomputer if I don't use it..."

  That circles back to the reason why she hasn't been, though. The hardware may be compromised, but she's too tired to trust charting those hops herself. It's extremely risky business to attempt a hyperspace jump without triple-checking the coordinates and the pathing. Accidents in hyperspace happen, from time to time, and the stores are never pretty. About the only consolation is that death is pretty much instantaneous.

  Droids? She mutters something, almost incoherent, before flicking one hand in an almost dismissive gesture. "Probably met PROXY by now. He's Galen's, but he helps with repairing the ship. Don't trust him to pilot. Galen trusts him, but... still not sure he's got Imperial subroutines scrubbed out of his system, myself."

  She snorts. "Only other droids /I've/ been lucky to meet are the ones wantin' t' kill me. Take that HK-47 fellow. Psychotic. Sociopathic. Somethin'-pathic." She shudders. "He's one of the Feds. Followed Vader around like a lost puppy. Wanted t' kill me, too. Vader threw me across a room to keep him from gettin' hold of me proper-like. Pretty sure he would've been happy to torture me slowly..."

  Mention of Pazaak cards brings the pilot to scowl. Yes, she still remembers that little hobby, as much as she might prefer not to. She also remembers how unreasonably frustrating it is. "Don't remind me."

  "Check with him. I wouldn't argue with another Jedi on our side." She folds her arms over her chest, closing her eyes. "He does. But he's no good at stealth. Too direct. Probably reads like a floodlight in the Force when he's awake, too. Not so sure about that..." It's not something she can sense, after all. "Hope you're right. That it won't come down to that..."

  She gives a brief snort of a laugh, half-smiling. "Yeah. He will." Her eyes open, flicking to regard Lowri obliquely. "What they don't know is that I'll do the same thing. And if they get their hands on him... I'll have a lot less to lose." Her smile turns almost cold. "Somethin' I learned as a TIE pilot. There's no opponent worse than one that thinks he's got nothing to lose..."
Revan      Rather than insist that no, she was /not/ going to jeopardise herself doing that, Lowri took another tack. "When the navicomputer calculates a jump, what sends it to the hyperdrive?" Yes, she had an idea."If it's possible to input co-ordinates into it but re-route the actual command to the hyperdrive, that might just throw them off our trail until we manage to rip out that tracking device. Meanwhile, T3 can plot a course for us somewhere else."

     Why no, Juno was not going to try to while she was nearly dead on her feet. If Lowri had to keep plying her with margaritas to keep her knocked out, by space that's what she was going to do. Peering with a jaundiced eye into the glass, she was seriously considering that option. Whatever was in the concoction was stronger than it appeared. Usually for something to have any kind of kick, it needed to taste like engine grease. The whiskey that Onderon distilled was /less/ like that and more like peat smoke, but it still wasn't something that...well, appealed to her sweet tooth.

     And luckily, she would trust T3 with her life...and often had. That might have been the real reason that she had been so fascinated with them in the grip of the Dark Side: not that they would obey any order without question, but when you were a Sith Lord, there really wasn't anyone else you could trust not to blast you in the back.

     "I could take a look at him, if it'll set your mind at ease," she offered. Of course, droids had doubtlessly gotten more complex over the millennia, but it wasn't as if she couldn't learn. She'd need to, anyway.

     It seemed that now was the time. "I know HK. I built him based off a Czerka model. Well, not /me/, specifically, but the 'me' he knows. The one who kept on flying down the Dark Side even after the second chance. I took it...she didn't. And damned if I knew /why/."

     Right, so maybe she wasn't quite as sober as she thought she was. Lowri could probably exert a little bit of Force ability to clear her mind, but she decided to save that for after Juno crashed and she needed to keep an eye out for unpleasant surprises. "So that's why I wanna keep him back home. Still dunno what the difference between me and her is.../she/ killed him. I can't even...I can't even think about that, his whole existence it too precious to me, but she did. I'm the most dangerous thing he knows. What's to stop /me/ from falling and...well."

     The margarita was starting to taste a little sour, given her line of thought.

     She was almost glad to think about that damned game, and her grin was empathetic. "Sorry...I know I know, share the misery. Think I've only won once other than...back then."

     Waving a hand, she had far less grace than before with her mind beginning to be clouded with tequila-laced drink. "Yeah...not someone you can ignore," she admitted. Not that she was, either. "There's ways to hide it, but it takes concentration. I was broadcasting all over the place, even on Korriban. That's where the Academy was and a bunch of Lord's tombs. So they all knew I was there, even though they thought I was some fallen Jedi. Didn't learn until after how to hide properly."

     Thinking of Korriban was depressing in spite of the good she did there. "There was even a ghost...poor guy. Ancient Sith Lord, one of the first. But the sorrow nearly bowled me over." There it was, the hint at how she had fallen. Revan was a massive softie.

     "Yeah...I know. That you I met on Bespin? Would've been content to rejoin the Force just to see him again...it was only the Rebellion's promise of bringing the Empire down that kept her going. I couldn't do anything for her, but I'd be damned if I let that happen to you."
Juno Eclipse   "The navcomputer?" Juno sinks back into her chair, folding her arms over her chest. Talking about engineering does seem to perk her up a little; there's more alertness in her tone. "It sends a signal directly to the hyperdrive or the backup hyperdrive, depending on which one's active at the time. TIEs don't even have a hyperdrive, and I'm told the Incom starfighters rely on their astromechs to handle the jumps. Pre-loaded coordinates, since their navcomputers aren't powerful enough to actually crunch the calculations themselves."

  She unfolds her arms, reaching one hand up to rub at her jaw. "Wouldn't work, not with the way the Rogue Shadow's set up. Navcomputer routes directly to the hyperdrive. Less chance for error. I can fine-tune the system, but there's not much I can do about it. No; if there's a bug on this ship, it's somewhere in the computer core, and it's probably affecting the entirety of the ship. If Vader's listening, he can hear everything I'm saying right now."

  Juno falls silent for an instant.

  "No... if something's in the cores, it's got the entire navcomputer covered. I could run an analysis but it would take more time than we have in any given place." Her eyes hood as she thinks. "Think I could probably use T3 somehow. Clean out the cores, maybe. Just need to think on that. After I sleep some more, maybe."

  To whether or not to look over PROXY, Juno shakes her head. "You'll have to ask Galen. PROXY belongs to him. Even I won't touch his inner workings, although that's admittedly because droids aren't my specialty. Starships are."

  Her gaze slowly slides sideways as Lowri reveals that she was the original architect of that nightmare-droid. She just eyes the Jedi Knight for a long moment, so bland that that must surely be an insult in and of itself.

  "Wow," she drawls. "Dark Side-You really was a bitch. Never mind whatever you did as a Sith Lord. Designing that little horror is the top of the list." She grins, though, to dispel any potential hostilities. "Nice work."

  She shrugs, gesturing vaguely over Lowri's reluctance to involve Carth in any goings-on. "Maybe. Can't protect someone from everything, though. Worryin' about somethin' stupid, confusing you for her and her for you, if you ask me... different people." Juno snorts, sinking back into her chair, eyes half-closing. "Like confusing me for my father or my father for me. Totally different people." Although her expression never changes, there's a stab of annoyance through the Force -- there's absolutely no love lost between Juno and her father, it seems. "Or my father and my mother. Like... like... binary stars. Might orbit, a little, maybe, but far apart most of the time..."

  "Haven't told you about them, have I?" she murmurs, looking toward the cockpit's viewport. "He's why I went into the academy."

  Her eyes slide sidelong to regard Revan while the Jedi Knight speaks on Korriban. Not a place Juno herself's ever been to, and by the description of it, not somewhere she's ever likely to go of her own volition. It sounds like it's about as much fun to be around as Mustafar, the place where Jedi and prisoners go to disappear.

  Sighing, she rests an elbow on the chair's arm, and cups her chin in her palm. "I'm not really surprised. I... can't really imagine life without him, even though we've only known each other for a few years," she says softly, voice subdued but a little more alert than it had been. "It sounds like that me on Bespin had nothing left to live for but the rebellion itself. What would she have had if they'd succeeded, though? I've got a feeling, from what you've said about her, that she'd probably rejoin him once she had no more ties to the Rebel Alliance..."

  "I can't lose him," she murmurs. "I need him, as much as he needs me. I... really can't. I can't imagine life without him. After all we've been through and done together..."
Revan      Well, drat. So much for that particular plan. It wasn't as if she didn't have several others. Though she rather liked that one, Revan had learned not to get too attached to them because they always needed to be updated because no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. But at least this time, she didn't have to worry about being shot in the back.

     Although if there was some listening device, she would have to wait to discuss those other plans. Lowri preferred to err on the side of caution and assume there was some kind of holographic transmitter. It might work out to their advantage, possibly leading Vader to think that she considered using the navcomputer and discarded the idea. What he wouldn't know was that she was simply amending her plans.

     Then again, he might. She wasn't dealing with Malak who simply bombed planets when a search was taking too long. Typical Sith in some ways or not, the Dark Lord had enough sense where to be subtle.

     "I'll have him look into it, then," she replied. "We can figure out where to go from there once you've had some proper sleep."

     On the subject of PROXY, the Jedi shrugged. "I'll let him know I can look at his droid if he wants. If he had PROXY wipe his subroutines though, that's usually enough, but probably better to be thorough." Because she wouldn't put it past Vader to have hidden something on that front, too.

     Lowri merely stared at Juno for a long minute before...laughing. In fact, she nearly fell out of her chair. Either she was already tipsy or found that highly amusing. When it came to the pale-haired Jedi...probably both. "To be fair, the idea was to prevent having to wipe out a planet full of enemies and our own troops," she explained, her snickering dying down. "We collapsed the entire gravity of a planet, which isn't any better than knocking out a reactor. I thought -- at least I imagine this is what I thought -- creating a droid to eliminate single Jedi targets would prevent another Malachor. Like what Galen was trained to do, only using a droid."

% After rolling her shoulder back to ease her stiff muscles there, she went on. "After my forced redemption, though, he wasn't so bad. Still too trigger happy, so I had to shut him down rather than risk an incident. But he'll obey me should I reactivate him again, he just doesn't enjoy when I try to resolve things without a bloodbath. Unfortunately, this other one obeys /his/ master, who seems to be perfectly fine with them."

     Lowri sighed, leaning her head back against the headrest and closing her eyes. "You're probably right. I left him behind both to protect him and to let him keep protecting the Republic, even before I knew there was a multiverse with multiple 'me's. It seemed like that was the right thing to do at the time."

     Opening her eyes a crack, she regarded Juno thoughtfully. "You wanted to prove yourself?" she guessed. That was a likely explanation, given what she'd learned and the subtle tells she picked up through simple observation and the Force.

     Personally, she would consider it a relief and an achievement if she never had to return to Korriban. The entire planet was steeped in Dark Side, and Revan had probably done all the good it was possible to do there. Unless Tulak Hord decided he regretted his life as a Dark Lord and wished to be redeemed, too. Somehow, she doubted it.

     "I think the other thing keeping her going is not letting his sacrifice be for nothing. He loved her enough to make it, and I don't think these other versions are that much different from you. My job here is to make sure he doesn't need to."

     She closed her eyes again, sighing. "I guess getting involved was a bit on the selfish side, knowing what it's like. I...can't lose him. I retired from being a Jedi to be with him, and it's only when my past started to catch up with me that I had to leave, to finish what I'd started."
Juno Eclipse   "Really prefer to be thorough in this matter." Juno sinks back into her chair, losing some of that alert edge. She's not necessarily falling asleep, but there's nothing compelling her to remain on quite such high alert. "He's complex. I don't know all the details. Droids really aren't my specialty... better t' just let him know."

  She cracks an eye open as Revan suddenly bursts into laughter, not quite grinning. Funny how she had originally imagined herself at odds with the Jedi Knight, and now she's one of the most trusted allies of the Rogue Shadow's crew. "That droid's the worst. Seriously. Nothin' makes him happier than mass destruction and death. S'bloody sickening, it is. Maybe Vader knew that. Trained Galen 'cause he knew droids can't be relied on, n'matter how complex they are..."

  "Dunno," she adds, on the matter of the other hunter-killer droid. "Never seen his master. Wonderin' if maybe he answers to Vader or somethin' now. Vader was able to order him, sort of. Still had t' fling me across a room to keep Rustbucket from doin' anything hasty t' me..."

  She falls silent, then, thoughts chasing themselves into slow, weary circles. Would she leave Galen behind if she thought that was the best thing for his safety? Probably not, she decides. They're an anchor for one anohter, and they rely too much on the grounding effect each has; the simple reassurance and encouragement that one provides the other. She couldn't send him away or give him the slip, especially not where he might worry about her fate, not any more than he could do to her.

  "Yeah." This, given faintly to the matter of why she left home. "Wouldn't've liked him, my father. Staunch Imperialist. All his life. Tried t' go into the Imperial Navy, but washed out on the physical. Bad back," she adds, eyes hooding. "Couldn't make the cut. Still spread their propaganda all over. Not sure why he married my mother. Night an' day, those two, she wasn't like him at all. Lookin' back... probably she wasn't sure about the Empire, I think, but she never said it out loud." Her eyes hood further, but they don't quite close. "Sure she wasn't actually hit in crossfire, these days. Probably assassinated. Covered up. Like usual." Juno heaves a long sigh. "Family fell apart after that. My father withdrew. Never really spoke t' me. Tried t' earn his approval. When I was accepted into the Imperial Academy on Corulag, youngest ever t' be accepted there... realised nothin' was going to get his attention. Left home. Never went back. Haven't seen him since." Her eyes finally slide closed. "Don't even know if he's still alive. Not sure I care."
Juno Eclipse   Silence falls again, and this time it stretches just long enough to suggest she might have actually fallen asleep... but after a moment, once Revan's had a chance to talk about the alternate version of her, Juno opens her eyes to half-mast again.

  "Maybe." Her voice is quiet. "Maybe she just wants th' Empire who took him from 'er to pay hell, first, before she goes t' join him." Her voice quiets even more. "S'what I'd do. Couldn't go on without him, though. Not f'rever... wouldn't /want/ to."

  She doesn't answer immediately, but makes a long, drawn-out, thoughtful 'hmmm' that sounds more comical than anything else; she's just a little too inebriated for it to sound properly serious. "Mmmm... y' should go find him, Lowri." She cracks half a smile. "Keep him where y' can watch him. And where he can help you. If y' love him, don't push him away. Stay close. Help each other. Like Galen and I. 'F he's as good as y' say he is... y' won't need t' worry about him..."

  There comes no more from the former Imperial, but she hasn't quite fallen asleep yet. She's staring at the viewport, eyes lingering on the chunks of asteroid, but the way she looks at them suggests she's not really seeing them. She's thinking, perhaps, of the alternate version of herself somewhere in the multiverse, in terrible agony... and thinking, perhaps, that she might like to go curl up with Galen while she has the time and opportunity to, because life is a terribly short and uncertain affair on a cold, dark night like this one, with imaginary enemies lurking all about.

  "Glad I have him," she finally murmurs.
Revan      Juno might have already been more than a little tipsy, but Lowri wasn't far behind her. "I know I irritated at least one of the masters who taught me," she commented with a snicker. "My memory's like...whatever that cheese is with the holes in it. 'Swiss'? Anyway, she thought it was a useful skill to have, but she didn't really like 'em herself and she nagged me a few times about wasting time with 'em. But I like building and repairing them more than that Force-forsaken game."

     She rubber her face slightly with a soft groan. "Not sure what I was thinkin' at the time. Guess I thought he'd be harder to predict..." She paused, snickering again. "Though the 'meatbag' thing's pretty funny. Said that when I first activated him and asked what he thought of Malak, he called him a 'meatbag' so I programmed him to call all organics that. Said Malak was really annoyed, which is partly why I did it."

     Lowri shook her head. "I don't think so. Temporary master, maybe...but he's still loyal t' her. Sith Empress...how th' hell did /that/ happen? But she built 'im, an' lettin' 'im cut loose like he enjoys....no, if she told 'im to try killing Vader, he'd do it."

     Taking a long sip, she sighed. "I think he might know who I am, or at least suspects somethin'. Maybe after the prison break, if one'o the knock-offs sent something back. At the very least, he suspects'm connected to 'is master somehow."

     She was certain Carth was worried about her, and he had probably suspected she would leave without telling him. But ultimately, this was her mess, her responsibility. As much as she wanted him by her side, it wouldn't have been fair to drag him along with her, especially when he was a soldier with duties to the Republic. She doubted she could even do what she had set out to do on her own, but she had to. Even if the loneliness and guilt ate at her subtly.
Revan      She stayed quiet as Juno recounted her family life and what had set her on the path to where she now found herself. The Jedi didn't speak for a while, her eyes closed as if she had fallen asleep until she finally spoke. "Hard t' tell," she murmured. "Some people hide behind causes...maybe he didn't wanna believe they'd do that...'course they do it all the time, but maybe all he has t'live for, he thinks. Didn't pay attention 't what he had. An idiot, but I pity people like that."

     She nodded slightly, though it lacked her pre-margarita grace. "Probably. Seemed that way. She was angry, but it burned out quickly..she was just tired. And weary. If the war ends and the Empire's destroyed, she 'n Kota'll probably drink themselves to death in Cloud City. Lost too many people."

     The Guardian fell silent again, as if dozing off herself. If Juno had been Force-sensitive, she would have sensed the morose, almost fatalistic current to her emotions...but likely, she didn't need the Force to clue her in to it. She /wanted/ to go back -- at least to let him know she was still alive -- and her willpower and resolve to keep him and her friends out of the mess was already eroding. Part of the reason she had left in the middle of the night without telling him in the first place was so that he couldn't try to talk her out of going alone. It would have been far too easy for him to do just that.

     Her answer was a deep sigh. "He's gonna try t' talk me out've it," she protested. "I'm not gonna be able t' say no." But Lowri lacked the already fragile resolve. "Still...maybe. Maybe I should."

     Her head lolled against the headrest to regard the pilot. "Should probably get some sleep," she murmured. "Probably misses you, even if he's asleep."
Juno Eclipse   "Not funny." Juno stays right where she is, slumped in her chair. "Definitely not funny. Not when he's callin' y' that while he's lookin' t' tear out half your throat with his bare hands. Claws. Whatever." The pilot seems content to let the matter of the hunter-killer droid go. Although that's a problem that won't vanish by burying her head in the sand, there isn't much that can be done about him right at the moment. He'll have to be dealt with later... and with more sobriety. Definitely with more sobriety.

  She sighs, a long and drawn-out breath, chest falling and shoulders slumping as she does. "Wouldn't mind watching those two duke it out. From a few galaxies an' half the multiverse away, anyway. Think Vader'd win though. Yeah..."

  "Maybe..." Her eyes fall nearly closed again. The chair is a comfortable one, and one of the things she insisted on if she was going to pilot Galen around the galaxy with any regularity. Not to set her at ease, necessarily, but because she spent so much time in the pilot's chair, proverbially sweating in her seat over the danger Galen threw himself into time and time again -- she would already be tense, but factoring in a seat that would ruin her back wasn't necessarily something she wanted to deal with on top of all of that stress.

  Still, it's the sort of chair she's happy to let eat her, right now. Juno folds her arms over her chest and closes her eyes, but she's still thinking, slow and muddled though her thoughts may be.

  "No." Her eyes open only enough to fix a narrow slit of blue from their corner on Lowri. "My father... that man's not worth your pity. Knew what he was going into. Sure he knew what he was doing, too. Changed, after my mother died... but... think he knew. Think he didn't care what the changed into." Her eyes slide closed, expression mostly relaxed but for the troubled knit of her brows. "Argued about that with him, sometimes... wouldn't even visit my mother's grave... I took her flowers, every week..."

  She goes quiet for a second or two, but only to choose her words. "Still try t' go there... every year... not any more, though. Have t' figure somethin' else out... I can do for her..." Juno smiles, but the expression is half-hearted at best. "Miss her, y' know... she had such a great smile... made y' feel like nothin' was impossible..."
Juno Eclipse   Silence again, as she mulls over the alternate version of her, and the alternate version of this General Kota. Wasn't Kota one of Galen's first targets? She was sure he had killed the old Jedi, but maybe he must have survived in this other timeline. Or, maybe Kota isn't quite as dead as he's credited for. He had fallen to Nal Hutta, after they had destroyed the shipyard they'd been fighting in, and she had caught Galen with a quick bit of piloting... that's something to think about later, if she ever remembers.

  "Maybe... I'd be tired, too," she mumbles. "Already tired. Only thing keepin' me goin' is him, an'... an' you, an'... our other allies." She sighs again. "So tired. Runnin' from th' Empire... it's exhausting. Makes y' feel like y've got nothin' left t' live for after a while. But not having him... I think... yeah. I'd want t' go get roarin' drunk with that Kota fellow, too... I think..."

  If the Guardian's emotions carry that fatalistic and morose current, so too does the pilot's. She half-smiles at Lowri's protests, though. "I'm gonna try t' talk you out of it, too," she murmurs. "Sorry. Know it's not what y' wanna do, but... y' should talk t' him. Keep him with y'. Yeah...? Good for both of y'..."

  Her eyes slide closed. She doesn't answer Lowri for a long moment, but in the end she finally sighs. It's a beleaguered, weary expression that states better than any words that she really, really doesn't want to get up out of that chair. But she will, because it's her friend suggesting it, and also Lowri's suggestion is an excellent one.

  "Yeah... I miss him, too." Juno stays that way for a moment more, before finally lurching forward to sit up. Taking a moment to find her balance, she cautiously lurches to her feet, using the chair to stay upright. "G'night, Lowri. An'... thanks. For everything." She manages a half-smile, though it's uncertain, because trying to talk and stay on her feet at the same time is suddenly very difficult.

  From there she uses the console and the walls to keep herself from falling over, shuffling her way back towards the crew quarters with far more care and caution than she should really need.

  "G'night." There comes a mumble from the exhausted pilot, before the hiss of the crew quarter door drowns out her shuffling.

  Lowri might feel a flicker of the pilot's contentment through the Force as Juno finds her way back to her bed, but maybe it's just the margarita.
Revan      Lowri was content to let that matter drop, though it still personally amused her that Malak had been the original 'meatbag'. It wouldn't have surprised her to learn if she had done that specifically to annoy him. considering all he had done and how absolutely he had fallen to the Dark Side, a minor bit of annoyance was the least she had done.

     "Against HK? Yeah, he would. Droid can take out individual Jedi'r Sith, but prob'ly not a Master and definitely not a Sith Lord. Though Vader might be in a kolto vat for a week're two as a result. Knows how t'exploit Force user weaknesses too well. Knows mine too, 'm sure. Gotta be careful..."

     It was a good thing the assassin droid was nowhere near them at the moment, not with her mental acumen as compromised as it currently was. she might have to sit on the floor and meditate for a while to properly sober up; that chair threatened to drag her down into sleep.

     "Familiar story, a little," she sighed. "Don't have t'be a Force user to be Dark Side...less dangerous than a Sith maybe, but 's still Dark Side. Still evil...like Karath. Not a Sith but not any less evil. Dunno how're why."

     Lowri fell silent again for a little while before shaking her head almost comically. "Maybe one day you an go back. Or something else...she's watching over you so she understands...."

     The Jedi sat back again, polishing off the rest of her drink. Definitely will need to meditate to get that out of her system if she was going to keep a proper eye out. "Just a little longer," she replied, doing her best to sound reassuring. "Little longer, then..." she gestured vaguely. More margaritas at midnight. Sounded like a plan.

     Lowri groaned softly; no, it wasn't something she thought was a good idea, but at this rate Juno was going to nag at her until she did. Still, it was touching. "Thanks," she replied with a half-smile of her own.

     "Careful..." she cautioned as the inebriated pilot wobbled on her feet, though that was probably about as careful as she could be at the moment. "N' you're welcome."

     Once she could sense the flicker of contentment, Revan summoned willpower of her own to get up out of her chair to sit cross-legged on the cold metal floor. Definitely not as comfortable as the chair, but necessary. It had been a great relief to let off steam for the both of them, even if there had been some alcoholic assistance. Meditation seemed to come easier this time...or maybe it was just the margarita.