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Walk Not Alone
Written by Sailor Stroiketcy
She looked older than her years, he thought. Older than she deserved, and he felt a sudden flash of knowledge, he saw an image of what this young girl would become when he added his burdens to hers. A shell, filled with nightmares and horrors unmentionable. He had to remind himself that the Force knew what it was doing, It knew what her destiny was. He hoped It knew what his was.
The iron blast door slid shut and the deep, metallic thud resonated through the bar.
It seemed that the noise was a trigger in Carmelle, the hard lines vanished from her face and her shoulders sagged. Several outdated cleaning droids began righting the room - he wasn't entirely sure where they had come from, but there they were - and Carmelle quietly began putting bottles back into the conservator below the counter. He was struck by the difference in her appearance -- now her eyes were all that betrayed her lifestyle, her face was young and soft, and he had an almost impossibly strong inclination to simply leave her be. She was a child forced to survive alone, how could he possibly allow himself to make that worse?
He couldn't help the small gasp he let out when she lifted her head and looked straight at him. She blinked a few times and tilted her head, her expression hardening again.
"Well that's just special," she muttered. He stared at her. She rolled her eyes. "Comprende vous? Parle Basique?"
"Yes I speak Basic but - what - what do you mean special?"
She shrugged, hanging a freshly cleaned glass on the rack. "Well," she ducked her head under the bar and reappeared a moment later with an opaque black jar. "Normally to see your kind takes glitterstim," she held the jar up for his perusal. "As the fact that my pupils aren't extraordinarily dilated, and my voice is not quite in the soprano range, you can see that I have not taken any today. Thus why me being able to see you is highly unusual."
He looked at the jar, and suddenly her slightly sunken eyes made too much sense. "You're a glit addict?"
"Not an addict," she bit out. "I don't want the stuff, I never wanted it, but if I want to see you, well, not you apparently, but your kind, I have to!"
He frowned at her. "I'm not a hallucination."
"Didn't say you were," she rolled her eyes. "You're one of the dead-yet-not-passed, you are stubbornly holding onto this life despite the lovely enticing things on the other side. Forty virgins and a mule, all that."
He could only imagine that he looked confused, as she sighed in response.
"I wasn't serious, I have no idea what is on the other side," she shrugged. "So what do you need in order to... go?"
He just looked at her for a long moment, and reached out with the Force, allowing his senses to seek through the room. She felt...muddled, somehow. Not how a human would normally feel. Of course, he'd never had the opportunity to read a Senshi's Force-signature before either. "Have you ever heard of Stroiketcy?" He asked, after a moment.
"Is it a drink?" She looked at him askance, eyebrows quirked.
"It's a planet."
"Ah, well then you're definitely asking the wrong woman," she caressed the bar idly, her eyes darkening with something unspoken. "I've never even seen a spaceport. Not a whole lotta interest in what's past the atmosphere."
"You're the right - woman," he had almost said girl, but he knew now that the word would not describe her. "Stroiketcy is your birthright. The connection may reveal itself in time - but you are the heir of the planet's power. A soldier empowered by the Force."
Her lips pursed suddenly and he knew something, somewhere in his speech, had been dreadfully wrong.
"The Force?" She tilted her head. "You Jedi disgust me. You are given gifts by the Gods, and yet you mock them by pretending to tap into their very essence? The Force, the Jedi, it's all bullshit. You are nothing but a pathetic excuse for an acolyte."
He held out his hands in a calming gesture. "I apologize, Miss Cherry. I don't wish to offend, I respect your religious beliefs but do not share them. Please allow me to say then, that a Higher Power of an unknown nature has given you specific powers, in order to war against the coming darkness."
She did not look convinced. "You have as much backbone as a newborn pittin. Does anyone actually fall for that hippie crap?"
He shrugged. "I was trained as a peacemaker."
"You've been trained to be a pansy." She pursed her lips again. "Alright, I'll bite. What powers has "The Force" granted me?" He could hear the sarcastic quote marks in her voice.
"Well clearly to see the dead, though I didn't really know about that before," he paused thoughtfully. "Perhaps it will be involved in your overall powers. You are the Sailor Senshi of your home, Sailor Stroiketcy."
"I think Sailor Coruscant Underbelly would be a better title." She raised one eyebrow and her expression turned dour. "Clearly I'm wasting my time," she muttered.
"No, really," he allowed his senses to search the room, knowing the Force would lead him to the correct items. "You already have your Sacred Chalice, it would have been passed to you." 'Aha!' he moved toward a cabinet behind the bar, passing through it effortlessly. It still gave him pause to do that, it was a rather odd sensation, not feeling anything. He waved a hand at the door, attempting to use the Force against its locks. He had noticed, however, that since his death his grip on such influences had dwindled, especially as the years passed.
The bartender rolled her eyes and opened the door for him, standing in front of it. "You're looking at my personal stash of glassware, none of which classify as 'chalices'."
He smiled to himself and pointed to a handcrafted bit of crystal. "That one," he stated firmly.
"That?" She looked at it, picked it up and examined it. "This is my mother's martini glass. It's no Sacred Chalice."
The Jedi shook his head. "No, it is. Hold it above your head, shout the words that come to mind."
She rolled her eyes and placed both hands on the glass, holding it above her head. Words came to her lips, unbidden.
"Stroiketcy Soldier Salud!"
Suddenly she couldn't control her limbs anymore, as the chalice lifted out of her hands and hovered over her head. Her arms lowered of their own accord and a cold clear liquid began to spill from the glass, covering her from head to toe and solidifying into frosty ice around her. A few moments later the ice shattered, and she emerged from her frozen cocoon in what she knew had to be her mystic soldier's garb.
It could almost be a soft summer dress, pale violet at the shoulders fading to white at the waist which in turn slid seamlessly to the shimmering grey of the skirt, and then into flowing strips of soft, cheerful color. However, it was the black leather corset tied about her waist, which she couldn't help but feel had been drawn too tightly, that prevented it from seeming quite like a soft summer dress. The final addition, a large clear blue-purple gem, was embedded into her forehead, white clouds swirling through the orb and brightening as she came out of her henshin-induced shock.
"Sailor Stroiketcy, Senshi of Atmosphere and Intuition and one true Agent of the Spirit World." She strode forward calmly, one hand behind her back and the other pointing forward as she posed, a cold glare on her face. She jumped away and shuddered as the transformation's control on her ceased. She ran her fingers through her hair shakily, giving her ghostly visitor a glare. "If you put something in my drink I'm going to exorcise you!"
"No, I haven't done anything at all, this is perfectly real," Lal-Akis explained gently. "You are Sailor Stroiketcy, as I've said."
She tensed as her skirts moved from an unseen breeze. She looked down at her legs, encased in loosely netted tights and tall black heeled boots. She shivered. "I think," she said softly, only now meeting her spirit's eyes. "I think I will need to purchase more vodka."