OOC: Character development, however anyone interested in participation can freely notify me at [LordHexadragon@aol.com].

IC:



Curling his forearms upward with an uneasy awakening, a series of weary burbles rumbled outwards from Hexyra’s jagged airway – a structure having steadily given way to an impending ailment since the year’s beginning. With forehead throbbing in a pulse consistent to that of his heart, an additional glossed layer wrapped both eyes, each shimmering beneath the overhung florescent bulbs. Set before his eyes danced a collage of knotted colors, altogether twisting and slanting to different oblong forms through every twitch rippling over his brow.

Without initial notice to him, an assortment of voice pitches gradually heightened in a chamber of echoes, passing to and fro between each of his ears. The words came blurred and inaudible. His senses became ablaze with random breaks of bawls and screeches; swirling within his head as though being suspended exclusively by their ricocheting from the walls of his skull.

“Ksishr…ksishr! Sarkata!”

What was that which continued to haunt him? Babbled words: intermittent demands bombarding his incapacitated awareness. They spoke and insisted of him in a tongue universally foreign. Relenting, though, they snapped at him in spite of having no meaning.[i]

“Sishr! Sishr!”

[i]Clearer and clearer. But still the remarks drowned his comprehension in a ramble of nothingness. The blasts of sound were cleverly administered into his area, he noticed nonetheless. No…they were not figments of his imagination, but a phalanx line of genuine entities. All hovering around him.

“Sir!”

Finally the words sifted once more into a logical formation – a harmony fluctuating fluently into his ear. The crooked pigments once twirling in his eyes shifted to blurred faces visible to the bland realization of being existent and feasible. As a collection of overcast faces, agitated and dejected, yielded to his flamboyant vision, he thoughtfully considered whether he would rather remain in the perplexing daze than in his reality of infuriated creatures scowling about. Of course, the choice was no longer his, but he preferred to at least lessen the blow by the sensation of choosing to “return:” pushing him to believe that he brandished strength over what was not his to decide.

Prior to the completion of his vain mental game, he began to careen farther back into the actuality he so resented. The infuriated tones howled louder than ever before and gradually every furrowed cheek of those around him was depicted to the rear of his head.

“You’re back,” a derisive mutter spat from a pair of downwardly crescent lips, “and we nearly decided to cut our losses in you and break to that bar on 83rd before anyone noticed.”

A muffled sort of amusement rolled faintly across the horded crowd of officers and interlaced among the corridors beyond. Wrapped in disdain, though in a silence exposing a depth of thought, Xylon stared blankly into the agonizing pitch of an effervescent light fixture ahead. His ears to some extent heard the gossiping whispers floating amid the chamber’s visages, however his eyes saw only a hue of incapability in the brightness before him.

“Impudence,” the word drummed from Xylon’s lungs, “impudence.”

Chatter screeched to a halt and the fog of harmless hilarity steadily eased upwards from the hall. Despite an evident alteration of sentiment from those having surrounded the gaunt creature, Xylon himself flinched not since the period preceding the instance of his spoken word. Inch by inch his hunched skeletal outline then rose from the emaciated fence of a chair and proceeded to two unsure feet.[i]

“Excuse me,” he had spoken while gathering his flailing robes into bundle by his side, “however I have other matters to attend to. In the meantime, Admiral, you should be able to drink yourself to death if you so please.”

[i]Glancing once more about the vicinity in which the slanted maws stared, he departed through a thin blast-door sealed in the Republic’s crest. Beyond the elliptical chamber of dark drama ran an endless passage enveloped in white atop every face. Monotonous door-wells dimpled each wall, precisely symmetric at every few paces. In all, the void insisted that the aged mortal gape into his very spirit, for nothing else would grant him just as much.

The memories…the lies…the deceit…and the debauchery.

“Great divinity,” he pleaded vainly, “what have I done? This is not my meaning; this life of falsehood…no, it cannot be.”

"He did what?"

Han Solo sat before the holocomm console, rubbing his aching forhead and closing his eyes hard, once or twice, moistening his dry eyes. Legendary smuggler, gifted pilot, reduced to filling out paperwork for the New Republic. The fallout of the second wave of the recent Csillan expedition, of which Han had been a part; now, with the exploration and heroics in the Falcon over with, he sat, signing orders for more equipment in the Csilla climatization project.

Cocking an eyebrow, the solution to his problem became quite apparent. It wasn't every day that the Supreme Military Chancellor of the Republic he'd helped create mouthed off to an Admiral to a degree that some questioned his sanity. Better to deal with a more interesting issue and leave the paperwork to aides that the NR had failed to assign him.

'Yeah. The admiral he barked at seems shaken; Xylon is normally so... stoic. General Tellien contacted me over the holonet about an hour ago. He's holding the fleet back at Ossus.'

"Oh. It's out of character, yeah... but you're really concerned about him?"

The figure which was Gash Jiren's disembodied, three-dimensional head bobbed up and down thoughtfully. 'Yes. Xylon just doesn't do things like that. Could I return, I would, but the climatization project here on Csilla needs my assistance; we're clearing out the buildings, one at a time. We've only got about 50 square kilometers of cityscape ready for habitation.'

"Right. I don't know him as well as you do, ya know. I've only met him a few times in those bureaucratic meetings."

'Consider yourself an inspirational figure. Xylon needs to be convinced of something.'

"What?"

'I don't know, Han.' Gash sighed. 'If I did, I would have convinced him of it by now.'

"Well, I'll see how he is at least, Gash."

'Thanks. Jiren out.'

The hologram winked off on cue, Han standing up and stretching the backs of his aching legs, smirking slowly. He stepped away from his desk, leaving his quarters in the New Republic Capitol Building, entering the opaque white halls and glancing about. A tall, male CorSec officer paced the halls, and Han hailed him quickly.

'Sir?' He saluted.

"Are you free, officer?"

'Somewhat, sir.'

"Care to direct me to Chancellor Xylon Hexyra's quarters? I've been asked to speak with Chancellor Hexyra on... personal business. From Gash Jiren."

'That's not a very good idea, sir. He-'

"Yeah, I know. It's kind of about that."

The officer contemplated this for a moment. 'As you wish, General Solo.'

With his eyes lofting amid the rafters high above, Xylon lodged his torso within the depths of a fitting chair, his stature resting perpendicular to the wall behind. A stack of worn documents piled itself to altitudes incredulous to even his normally-hefty load; the cumulative labor of the evening before and of that very dawn. Typically his responsibility urged him to leave no end undone and to retain a sense of diligence, taking to mind the utter namesake of his position. Of course, the term ‘Chancellor’ would always come more than audible with its regal touch upon the ear, regardless to whatever classification that would arrive before or after its place - as was his case (being restricted to the military, or so he had figured until the salvo of council invites knocked upon his door). And despite that ‘namesake majesty,’ the mutual respect linking every instance of its esteem would always be not the glory, but the burden: this mound of articles vegetating on his desk and the swarm of bureaucrats ridiculing him for each breath of his lips.

The acknowledgement of this amongst many other factors, unfortunately, entered his proud psyche only now – now, the time of seemingly closed doors and lost hopes.

Never before had he noticed the particulars lurking above his paper-laden desk each day (trying his very best to shift his mind away from the notions that haunted him): the contours of age wrinkling the ceiling, beams of light rustling the dust of the girders slanting from above, and simply the lost space devoid of matter and life between floor and ceiling. He took the floor-ceiling bareness to be bizarre, for only that quintessential emptiness existed in his traffic of thoughts and paperwork. He was beginning to convince himself that he would surely suffocate without that superficial nothingness ‘up there.’ He could not confirm why, to be sure, but somehow – just somehow – that space fed him the oxygen he so needed to purely breath day to day while enclosed in the constant fray. But the truth of the matter was that no longer would this mere presence nourish him. Its air had long ago ran dry, and to take a mouthful of that piece of sky once more would prove to be yet another journey to new horizons. As lengthy of a period it took for him to reach that office yielding to that clear basin of oblivion; in the end, it truly would be all for nothing: perhaps a moment of satisfaction in ignorance and temporary stability, but nothing more.

‘Chancellor,’ a voice rippled at the chamber’s bench-loitered fore, ‘a word, if you would.’ The murmur’s origin thundered of a dubious-looking Chiss figure; one that Xylon found to have a pair of particularly calculating red eyes and an extremist lust for perching beneath shadows. This typical Chiss of the night, though, he rather liked. The loyalty he willingly expressed to Hexyra’s self-pitiful command had always gone without fault, and presently they had become good friends since he – Lieutenant Kahr, to be precise – became an associate from the time of Csilla’s annexation a few chronobrackets [,months,] back.

‘Yes of course, Kahr,’ Xylon returned with a hopeful loosen of the heavy tone; one he had been using rather regularly since the ‘Admiral ordeal.’ His head cocked in a sidelong sort of examination while Kahr cleared the lengthy distance from front to rear. Sporadically they had spoken of the recent encounters over the past couple of days. Briefly, yes, but neither of the two overly had the air of desire for anything more. Already the Republic newscast coverage declined in excitement over it, and the both took this as the signal to disregard it altogether. Xylon could imagine of nothing else that would attract the Lieutenant’s attention, especially an issue warranting the grave glean in his eye with the advance. When having reconsidered those thoughts over the ‘focal subject,’ he quickly decided that his choices of guessing Kahr’s interests were limited and doubtful. The Chiss had been forever known of boasting psychological deception…‘must be good at cards,’ Xylon would occasionally muse when tensions ran not quite so high. ‘Kahr,’ he persisted with the glower’s notice, ‘what is it that’s troubling you so?’

‘You are who is bothering me,’ the Chiss just about chided, but instead coolly hissed a moment before speaking. His head began to droop downwards, ashamed of his anxious tone.

Hexyra clasped his lips to an idle halt, realizing the fault in his assumption. No matter how cryptically the Lieutenant had hinted at his purpose, he was now sure of his. ‘So it was that,’ he mentally screeched at himself. ‘Yes, I can imagine.’ His voice weighted itself as it trudged forward, ‘I bother myself.’

‘I’ve become certain of just this in my long life of tribulation and horror…’ Kahr’s heavy accent bounced from plate to plate in the chamber, haunting, no, cursing Hexyra with what he knew was to follow. ‘It’s, to put in its natural bluntness, that nothing is coincidental…and that as does the universe’s implicit waltz know nothing but what’s true, all of its steps share an undisputed resolve.'

The hampered Military Chancellor remained quiet; contemplating.

‘You just need to find it,’ he concluded in a withdraw to the chamber’s center. ‘One more thing,’ his eyes flickered in remembering the ‘official’ purpose for his address. ‘A Han Solo has arranged a meeting with you, beginning I’d say in a moment.’

Gradually the chamber’s doorknob eased into a turn, and squeaked open, there entering this ‘Han Solo.’[/i]