“Care to tell me what that was all about?” I said to Alhoy. The two of us were currently giving X2 a hand in inspecting and repairing the hull while Alha assisted Bariss. I wasn’t an engineer by any means, but had learned rudimentary understanding of how to use power tools from Zaros’s memories. So, even he wasn’t above welding panels back on the ships’ frame.

Alhoy was beside me, hammering one of the other durasteel panels back into place. Alhoy went slack jawed for a few moments and then retorted, “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“We can all discuss the crash together, but I’m more interested in how you acted back at the hut,” I replied.

“At the hut? Do you mean having magic used on my sister? Why shouldn’t we talk about it first?” he asked.

I stopped welding the panels together and turned a burning set of yellow eyes on him. “I said we would have time to discuss it. I’m asking why you threw a fit in front of a potential business partner,” I explained coldly.

He flinched for a moment then looked away and went back to hammering his panel. “Alha trusts you, so as soon as you offered something like that up, it was like you endorsed it as the right thing to do,” he replied.

“Well yeah, I do think she should do it,” I said after restarting my own work.

“That is the problem. If you think it’s the right thing to do, then she won’t even give it a thought,” he explained.

Then before I could answer he continued, “She’s done everything you asked, even everything you suggested, and she still thinks it’s not enough.”

“Of course. Anyone who really wants to improve will acknowledge that they could be doing more,” I replied.

“You don’t get it; she’s always been like this. She thinks it’s her job to do everything she can to protect me, to protect you, to protect her family,” he replied.

I stopped working again. “Listen, I like you two a lot, but we’ve known each other for less than two months-“ I started to say.

“Two months of constant fighting; two months where you personally trained her, saved us in fights. Kriff you gave us this entirely new life. Of course, we’re family!” retorted Alhoy. “We had to basically drag her out of the prison when you stayed behind. She wanted to help that much. She only left when Hunter convinced she would be useless in that type of duel,” he explained.

I was stunned, but I shouldn’t have been. I was attached to them; to the point that I was making illogical decisions. Sure, Alhoy was a good shot and a decent fighter, but it would be years before he could really match a trained killer like a Mandalorian. Tactically speaking, I should’ve been making plans to, if not ditch him, then recruit other better gunners on the team. Instead, my plans were purely based on training him and getting better gadgets.

My relationship with Alha was even worse in this aspect. The girl wasn’t even force sensitive as far as I could tell. Yet I was taking a significant amount of time to train and now power her up. Hell, I beat Malicos so easily that I could have become their leader and forced one of the nightbrothers to join me and turned it into a weapon. I didn’t. Instead, I’ve been making plans based on the assumption that the siblings would be with me for the long haul.

“That’s all the more reason she needs this. If she’s that driven, then she needs to be able to back it up, or she’ll just get herself killed,” I replied after a while.

“I just don’t want to lose her,” he said quietly.

“We won’t,” I assured him.

Bariss wobbled, then almost fell before Alhoy caught her; saving her from hitting the hard floor of the cargo hull. I hadn’t taken stock of my, admittedly chaotic and unorganized hold the entire time. It wasn’t exactly my fault. In-game, your items just appeared in your inventory and stash when you needed them, which made it easy to hoard. When I landed on Korriban, all of that was somehow transformed into a slew of crates, chests, and storage lockers all filled to the brim with items accumulated over years of play. Some bought, others won as trophies, but all disorganized to the point I’d forgotten exactly what was there. Add in the rewards from Alderaan and multiple dogfights throwing everything around and the place was basically a maze.

Sure, I had time before now to search through it. Yet, every time I even entertained the idea of organizing the place, excuses for doing anything else came easily. Except now we had nothing on our plate. Shelish informed us that the ritual could only take place at midnight and the Fury wouldn’t be ready to fly until tomorrow. So, it was decided we would check if there was anything of use in the hold while we waited.

“You ok?” he asked as he helped her find some footing.

“I’m fine, it’s just much harder than I expected,” she replied.

“We could still go with the backpack,” I interjected.

“No, this feels amazing. I haven’t walked in months,” she said wistfully. The woman was currently balanced on 2V’s unwillingly donated legs and dressed in one of my many sets of black robes. We didn’t have the time or parts to make a proper cybernetic connection, so the pieces were operating with the barest of nerve controls instead of a cerebral link. It was a rough solution, though it would have to do until a real specialist could work on the issue.

“Is this a toy ship?” asked Alhoy. He was holding up my remote-controlled Ebon Hawk that she fished out from a pile of other items.

“It is…a remote-controlled model,” I replied carefully.

“I’ve never seen that type is it a YT?” asked Alhoy.

“That’s the Ebon Hawk, I’m not sure the make, though it was originally a freighter,” I explained.

“Why do you have a toy freighter?” he asked.

“It’s like a status symbol I guess, and it’s not just a freighter. The ship was famously used by Revan and Meetra Surik,” I replied.

“Who?” the siblings said at the same time.

“Maybe Bariss can enlighten you on the history of two heroes. No doubt the Jedi have kept their stories alive through the years,” I replied before going back to my search.

Bariss raised an eyebrow at me. Then said, “It is a cautionary tale. Revan fell to the dark side after leading an unsanctioned war against the Mandalorians. Surik was a follower of his until he forced her to commit an unspeakable act. Afterward, she cut herself off from the force and went into exile.”

I stopped my rummaging and looked up. “Revan I can understand, but that’s all they taught you about Surik?” I asked incredulously.

“It is a story from the Old Republic, thousands of years old. I’m sure some things were lost along the way,” she said with a shrug.

“Revan redeemed himself and ended a dark Jedi empire. Meetra Surik saved the galaxy from a triumvirate looking to destroy the force itself. Yet somehow, only the parts where they failed survived?” I retorted.

“Oh this could help you get around!” Interjected Alha. She was holding an exceptionally long saber handle up. After activating one of its mechanisms, the handle telescoped out into the size of a staff.

“That!” I shouted as I scrambled over to her. “Is not a walking stick,” I continued once I grabbed it out of her hands. By activating the pike’s other mechanism, a blue lightsaber appeared from the top.

“I didn’t know your collection included spears,” Alha replied.

“They’re called pikes,” I corrected.

“Collection? No doubt trophies from your conquests,” Bariss said with a hint of disgust.

“Some,” I replied with annoyance. I deactivated the pike and tossed it to Bariss, who unsteadily caught it.

“Most, like that one, are recreations of famous weapons that I purchased,” I explained.

“You should examine the rest of his collection! I particularly like the beautiful purple blade with diagonal cross guards,” Alha interjected.

“The dark honor gua- wait when did you get into my collection?”

“We spend a lot of time on the ship,” She replied.

I just shook my head then examined the rest of the hold. Over the course of a few hours, we took stock of and straightened the place up as much as possible. What at once appeared like the ship’s dumping grounds had morphed into a particularly well-kept space that was easy to move around in. Everything was now arranged in rows, sorted into types, and labeled.

Of course, this all took place under the watchful eye of 2V, who had been chomping at the bit to clean the place up. It was anathema to his programming to allow such a mess, though as a true servant droid he couldn’t rearrange the place without my watch. It was probably ironic that he only got the chance to see it done and not participate. Without his legs, he was propped against the wall with a data-pad in hand. The poor droid settled for label-making and record keeping.

“2V how’s the list coming along?”

“I believe everything has been fully catalogued, sir.” 2V replied. I walked down the isles for a few moments. I knew there was a lot of stuff from the games, but now I could really visualize it. I mean an entire corner of the hold was taken up by the forty sets of armor and twelve assorted robes I accumulated. Another held close to thirty different blasters and weapons like an electro blade and Zakuulian pike.

That Ebon Hawk wasn’t the only toy we found either, and much like when you are cleaning an attic, many mildly amusing things came up. It was particularly funny when Alhoy accidentally turned on the holodancer which reached a significant state of undress by the time he shut it off. We even found my old RE-1 scout pet. The droid was basically programmed like a friendly cat. So, I’ll leave you with the imagery of it zoning in on Bariss as the only person in the room not trying to attract its attention. It promptly climbed onto her shoulder and entered rest mode.

“And our funds?” I asked.

“Aside from the two million in worthless ancient credits? We still have 201,672 republic credits from Queen Organna,” the droid said. Even the republic credits were unusable at the moment. The Empire was now in the process of switching over to imperial credits. We would need working chain codes to have ours transferred. I seemed to have become somewhat of a Tantalus with money. Every time I had it in hand, it was useless. Don’t even get me started on how we broke open the Lucrehulk war chests only to find that they were filled with the now-worthless CIS credits.

Our lack of funds is in part what drove us to our current activity. Sure, it needed to happen simply because it was a mess, but we needed to figure out exactly what we were working with. I also wanted to see if there were any HK parts lying around. One of his arms or a pair of legs would have served well until Baris received real cybernetics instead of the far flimsier parts from 2V.

Ultimately it proved fruitless, and we couldn’t even find anything of his, which meant we would have to make another trip to the Mustafar system. Between the copy of HK-47 and the forgotten research and development station there, we would have all the schematics for creating a powerful army. Though, any such trip would have to wait until the system had calmed down from our recent excursion.

A knock at the door to the hold took me out of my musings. It was Merrin who had come to tell us, “My sister is ready for the ritual.”

The ritual didn’t take place in Shelish’s hut. Instead, we were led over to what I originally thought was a shed. The building was just one large room with the roof exposed, giving it a vaulted ceiling. By that point, the cool night air created swamp mists that seemed to descend upon her little compound. The ritual site was no different, as a grey mist seemed to obscure the floor entirely. Oddly though, it didn’t rise beyond this point and stayed around a foot from the ground.

Six green braziers, burning the ichor of Dathomir lit up as we walked in. They were arranged in a circle around a human-sized stone slab that lay in the center of the room. The hooded figure of Shelish stood at its head and beckoned us in.

As we entered, Merrin had us stand near the door and only allowed Alha to go farther in. She seemed to almost lose her nerves at this point and turned towards us. Alhoy offered his hands, and she readily grasped them. Then she looked at me, and I offered a reassuring nod.

“The worst thing that can happen, is that it ends in failure. Then we’ll just hunt down some Sith artifacts instead,” I lied. There were probably worse things than failure and I really didn’t want to hand her something like the Mask of Nihilus. Hell, I only ever saw this ritual happen once. Shelish assured me it was relatively safe, though I wasn’t totally sure if our definitions of the word matched.

She gave me a weak smile and then hugged Alhoy. They stayed like that for a while before she finally withdrew and followed Merrin. From there the girl had Alha undress down to her underwear before helping her up onto the stone.

As she did, Merrin warned her, “this will hurt.”

Merrin took up a position opposite of Shelish, who simply noted, “Let us begin.”

The two nightsisters began chanting in an unintelligible language. Their hands glowed a sickening green as they channeled their magics. The braziers grew brighter and green smoke descended from them before mixing with the natural mists of the swamp. From Merrins hands, green tendrils snaked their way around Alha’s limbs and pulled them taught to the stone. Almost immediately after that finished, the green smoke coalesced around the stone and ascended around it.

More tendrils of green appeared from the smoke and wrapped around Alha’s body. The nightsister’s chants grew louder and faster. Then like an invading force, the smoke seeped into Alha and she began to scream. She convulsed in pain and pulled against her bonds to the point that Merrin was straining to keep her down.

Alhoy almost jumped in to stop the whole thing, but I held him in place with an impossibly strong grip. I too had my misgivings, but at this point, I knew instinctively that the worst thing to do would be to stop the ritual.

At this point, the smoke had almost entirely obscured her body. Only her head was exposed, but this too was quickly being covered by the smoke. Soon it was just her face, then her mouth. Then the screaming stopped, muffled completely by the magic.

What emerged from the smoke after an uncomfortably long time was a changed Alha. Now far more muscular and even a little taller, she really looked the part of a warrior. In a fantasy setting, as opposed to a science fantasy setting, she would have easily slotted into the barbarian role. Her shoulders were boulders, and her abs could probably grate cheese.

"Wow," was all I could muster for a moment.

"How do you feel!?" exclaimed Alhoy as he ran up to her.

"Oddly good, but that was probably worse than when I almost lost my leg," she replied while scooping up her brother in a hug. She lifted him easily into the air and twirled him around.

"Wait till you earn your tattoos," I replied.

"There's no way tattoos could top that," she said.

"You'd be surpised," I said with a smirk. Pincerbugs, the traditional Sith tattooing method, should not be underestimated. From Zaros's memories, the few tattoos that he got led him to almost destroy the ritual site in a rage induced force storm.

Alha just shrugged and then turned her attention to Merrin.

"tHiS WiLl HuRt?!" She said with a sneer. "I ought to tie you up, you little harpy!" she yelled before pouncing on the young teen.

Merrin squeaked in resistance and tried to fight the now gargantuan woman off of her. It was no use. Now far stronger and faster, Alha had scooped the girl up.

Thankfully, and to Merrin's relief, the bear-hug maneuver she used didn't break anything. Though that relief turned to embarrassment, when she ended up being carted around like a ragdoll.

"Thank you," I said to Shelish and stuck my hand out for a shake.

She accepted the gesture with a smile and offered, "You are welcome. May she serve you as a great warrior."

"I was being serious. When I brought up the alliance," I then said.

"We shall see. I apparently have another Sister to find," she replied.

"And afterwards?"

"I imagine the other clans will take this opportunity to keep the Nightsisters weak."

"Give me a call. I'm sure my team is more than able to kill some witches," I replied.

"Come on Merrin, I thought you were raised by the greatest warriors and I was just a country bumpkin?" taunted Alha. She was enjoying this too much.

“That was…intense,” Bariss said to me on the walk back. She was quiet for a while and that was the first thing she said to me since we said our goodbyes.

Oddly enough, Alha found it hard to part from Merrin. She even shed a few tears after squeezing the girl into a crushing hug. Maybe she was just lamenting that she wouldn't be able to pay the girl back for all their sparring sessions. Maybe she had mentally adopted her into our group. Whatever the reason, I wasn't too worried. We'd see the Nightsisters again someday, especially since Shelish had more or less come around to my idea of an alliance.

“Yeah. This isn’t something that happens every day with us, so I hope it wasn’t too great of a turn-off,” I replied.

“Why did I punch you on my tenth birthday?” Alhoy was interrogating Alha.

“Easy. I was mad you wouldn’t share, so I knocked over the sweets that Suden gave you,” she replied. In doing so the credit that floated just above her hand dropped to the ground and I could feel a flair of annoyance radiate out of her.

“Ok that checks then what about…” he replied. He had been asking her intrusive questions since she got off the table. At first, it was probably to make sure she was the same Alha he always knew. At this point, halfway into the trek back to the ship, I can only imagine it was some kind of coping mechanism for the fact that she was bigger than him now.

“Turn off, as in you wanted to make a good impression?” she asked. “Does that mean I could leave?”

“Yeah, I want to make a good impression. And originally you were allowed to leave whenever, but now you’ll have to at least work off all the repair costs of crashing my ship,” I said. “There’s also the cost of your new limbs. Let’s just say you’ll be with us for a while,” I continued.

“Fair enough, she muttered.

"That was a joke, but I do want you on the team," I replied.

"Why me? Why should I join?" she asked.

"First, you're a trained fighter not affiliated with the Jedi. As for why you should join up...maybe decide after you've been with us for a while," I explained.

She thought for a moment, then said, "it is for the greater good that I keep an eye on any rogue Sith galivanting around the galaxy,” she replied.

Then, probably to herself, she mumbled, “it is not like I have anyone else to turn to.”

The conversation stopped for a while after that. Bariss seemed to be working through some thoughts, though she suddenly asked, “Where are we planning on getting replacements for my limbs?”

“There are two places in the galaxy where money is king,” I replied. “I don’t trust Hutt surgeons not to steal your liver, so we’ll be heading to the corporate sector for the operation. We do have to pick up an archaeologist on the way though,” I continued.

She looked at me for a second, then asked, “What does an archaeologist have to do with the corporate sector?”

“Nothing, Aphra’s house is just on the way,” I replied.

“Ok, then why do you need an archaeologist?” she asked.

“Why does anyone need an archaeologist? To find artifacts,” I replied.

“And if he doesn’t want to come with us?”

“Don't worry, I'll make a good impression. Besides, we’re going to make sure his wife isn’t murdered by raiders, so even if we have to kidnap him, it’ll be for his own good,” I replied.

Again, Bariss went silent.