//------------------------------// // 11: Situation FUBAR // Story: A Sunset Across the Galaxy // by Professor Donger //------------------------------// Have you ever had a moment, just a split second, where you contemplate your life choices and think that what you are about to do wasn’t worth it? Sunset was currently having one of those moments, she had come to get her ponies out as quickly as possible, as quietly as possible, but everything was thoroughly bucked up now.  Her rage would not subside, she heard surprised shouts as objects started floating and breaking around not only her but everyone standing on the dock. She didn’t even wait for the skiff to stop properly; she leapt onto the dock, the moment she did every stormtrooper, excluding Randal and Gus, aimed their weapons toward her, but she ignored them. Her helmeted gaze was trained on the monster before her, the one that held three of her ponies captive. The moment she had jumped, she saw that Vader had resisted the urge to call his lightsaber to his hand, which was strange to her. Obviously the Sith saw her as a threat, she felt that through the Force, she saw it in his body language, so what he did next surprised the young padawan. With a nod of his head he merely turned around and began walking away, the troops around her lowered their blasters and began going about their business and two of the ponies that she had come to save turned and followed the Sith, like a pair of lost puppies. Sunset was so surprised by this turn of events that everything she had levitated came crashing to the ground, much to the chagrin of the stormtroopers who had to jump out of the way of falling objects and clean up the mess.  Sunset looked over at the only other person standing with her, a nervous looking blue skinned girl, who merely beckoned for her to follow before turning around and waiting for Sunset to begin walking. Taking a calming breath and soothing her nerves she walked up next to the girl and the two began to make their way after the Sith Lord. In the distance Sunset heard Randal’s confused voice ask Gus, “What the hell just happened?” causing the last of her nerves to filter away. The two had walked in silence for a few moments, allowing Sonata to collect her thoughts regarding the Equestrian walking alongside her. She knew what was coming, what her master had planned for her would be savior, but she couldn’t bring herself to try and stop it. At least not right away, she had a plan, but her priorities were to her family first, so instead of focusing on that she opted for small talk. “That helmet must be stuffy.”  The Equestrian twitched in surprise, probably not expecting Sonata to start up a conversation. After another tense moment the pony chuckled “I really don’t get why, you’d think the Empire would at least give it’s troops proper helmets! I can barely see in this thing!” Sonata couldn’t relate, but before she could say anything else or make further small talk they had arrived. they stopped Infront of a sliding door, closed to the world as if waiting for them to arrive, which knowing Vader it probably was. He probably knew they were just outside and was having one of her sisters keep it closed for Dramatic effect. Casting her mind into the force, looking for the forced bond that tied her to the Sith Lord, she tried to mentally tap his shoulder as it were, to tell him that she had arrived, but she found that she couldn’t. Frowning mentally, she looked closer at the “bond” and she nearly felt her heart stop when she realized that he was blocking it. Taking a deep mental breath, she tried to rationalize it. ‘maybe he doesn’t want the Pony to know…to maybe catch wind of their plan?’ she thought. Ignoring her bond with Vader, she instead tried to contact her sisters, and this time her heart did stop…if only for a second. The bonds that had tied her to her sisters for their entire lives were gone. When she had first learned to tap into the Force, especially the Dark Side, the one thing that gave her and eventually her sisters when she taught them how to do the same, comfort was the bond they shared. If it had a physical manifestation, it’d be a long red string, tying them all together, showing that even in the darkness of the Sith they found themselves subservient too, they still had each other. Now that beautiful red string was cut, severed and frayed, with no way to repair it. How had she not noticed that it had been cut? When had it been cut? She at first wanted to blame Vader, but she knew he wasn’t to blame… Force bonds are nearly impossible for people outside the bond to cut,  if Vader had severed the connection there would have been a struggle, the mental string would look pulled apart, not cleanly cut and there would be pain…lots and lots of pain. That meant one of her sisters had cut it, Sonata growled audibly at that, causing the pony waiting with her to jump slightly at the noise. Her Gem glowed at her rage and she felt the darkness begin to form at the edge of her consciousness, and this time she didn’t bother trying to hold it back. She turned her slowly yellowing eyes to the fake trooper before her and spoke “Do you have a lightsaber?” she grunted out. She felt the girl's shock echo through the Force and cut her denial off before it even began “Whatever plan you had, Equestrian, whatever rescue attempt you wanted to pull off? It’s Fubar now.” She turned to the door, thankful that it was soundproof. “We have five minutes before that door opens, and I don’t intend to be here when it does, so answer my question, do you have a lightsaber?” Slowly the girl nodded and reached behind her to pull said saber from her armor’s thermal detonator case. Sonata didn’t bother smiling instead she turned around and began walking “Come on then, we have to find a way off this rock before HE decides he’s tired of the charade.” As they began their run down the hall, Sonata let her rage stew, her sisters had betrayed her… Her SISTERS had betrayed her. Turning her head, she growled at the Equestrian who managed to keep pace with her “and Take off that helmet!” She ignored the girls grumbling, instead she focused on getting them to the Hangar before Vader realized they weren’t outside the door anymore. Darth Vader sat within the conference room; hands held together on the table while the two sisters behind him shuffled in anticipation. Vader knew that Sonata had planned to betray him, She was going to try and get herself, and her sisters off Mustafar with or without the Jedi’s help. She had somehow surmised that he had no real plan of upholding his end of the “deal” that he had made with her. Originally when the two other Sirens had brought this to his attention through the Force, he had wanted to just turn and kill Sonata Dusk right then and there, but he stayed his hand, reminding himself that if he wanted a more powerful apprentice to take down his master, he’d need her alive for the moment. He would continue with the original plan of capturing the Jedi, forcing it into his service and having it kill the very person it had come to save, or at least…he would have had the Jedi not committed two grave sins against him. The First was somehow and from some great distance away, ripping memories from his mind like it was child’s play. Anakin Skywalker was never a great practitioner of the mind arts, but his Force Walls were strong and no mere Jedi Knight could have touched his mind so easily because of his latent power in the Force. Darth Vader, on the other hand, was a powerful mind reader and defender of his own mind by necessity, especially when he was on Mustafar. The Dark Side here was so in tune with his own inner darkness, so molded by his will that even his Master didn’t bother trying to glean information from his mind while on Mustafar. Yet this girl had somehow done so easily, bypassing every defense he had. The other sin that she had committed was DARING to challenge his supremacy over the latent darkness that coated the world. Master and Apprentice Sith lords would almost never challenge each other in their own domains, it was unheard of, primarily because a world that a Sith had claimed, especially worlds coated in the Dark Side would not heed the call of the Sith that didn’t claim it. Vader would never challenge Palpatine on Coruscant, Koraban or Exegol, while Palpatine would never try to curtail Vader on Mustafar unless he absolutely had too. So, when this Jedi had somehow managed to push back against his Darkness, and not with the Light at first but with Darkness of her own, that made Vader’s blood boil. That was why Vader led the two Dazzlings away from Sonata and the fake trooper and why he didn’t bother dealing with them on the spot. The two would suffer for their insolence in thinking that they could challenge him. No one challenges a King in his castle after all. Reaching out with the Force he located the bond he shared with Sonata Dusk, reached out with a metaphorical hand and wrapped his fingers around it and he pulled. Ripping it to shreds in an instant. To him the pain meant nothing, just a slight pounding in the front of his eyes and a ringing in his ears, but that was because he had faced far worse pain in his life than this and he merely ignored it. For Sonata Dusk however, the pain would be excruciating, the first part of her punishment that was yet to come. He didn’t bother looking at the two Dazzlings behind him, feeling their anticipation and impatience building when he finally spoke the order. “11th Sister, 12th Sister, you have your orders.” He intoned, the sound of activating lightsabers echoed throughout the chamber “Search and Destroy.” “As you command, My Lord” with that the two sisters sprinted forward and out the door, eager to prove themselves worthy where Sonata was not. Alone within the conference Room Vader didn’t bother to move, but once the girls were out of sight the Sith Lord grunted out a short “all too easy.” Before turning his chair to watch the feeds from the hidden cameras on Sonata, Adagio and Aria’s uniforms.