The Dark Siders Chronicles

Seijoutai Priire, Nagareboshi, and Nom Da’Gara sipped their respective drinks. Priire let the blue liquid in hers swirl around as she looked up and spoke softly. “I had a dream last night.”

Pushing her green drink away, Nom looked at her. “Was it bad?” the Dathomirian asked, tense.

“It wasn’t...” Boshi started.

Priire nodded into Boshi’s vanishing sentence. “Yeah, it was.”

The three were quiet. Boshi’s red drink was the only one that was still full, and it sloshed as she set it down untasted. “You know what this means?”

It was a question, one that they were reluctant to face. Nom shook her head. “I do not know.”

“Sith.” Priire’s curse deadened the table’s noise. “It’s starting again.”

Tears welled in the crystal blue eyes of the woman. She sat alone, one hand on a new grave and the other clasped around a charm of some kind. Footsteps made her turn to see what being was intruding on her sadness.

At first, she didn’t see anyone. She scooped up a handful of the dirt she sat beside. It seemed as if she was toying with the idea that if she could only touch the body beneath maybe she could bring him back.

“Weeping over lost children, Xarae? It makes you weak.”

Darth Sidious was the last person that Xarae wanted to intrude on her grief. All of the other mourners had left; why couldn’t he follow their example? The man seemed to thrive on tormenting the forlorn woman. She brushed her brown hair back from her face and let her eyes wander across the multitude of other graves around her. There were so many...

“And there will be more.” The man cackled softly as he leaned closer to the grieving woman. “There are a million ways for each to die... it is a pity they can only die once.”

Xarae looked at him through tear-clouded eyes. His face was much too near to hers for her comfort, but she resisted pulling away. It didn’t matter to him that she was uncomfortable, she suspected he truly enjoyed her discomfort.

“I seem to recall mentioning that it would do you well to stay away from my apprentice.” He paused and leaned back. “Odd how such things happen when I am not obeyed.”

“No...” her soft voice had no trouble forming the word, but shocked breath couldn’t sustain it for long.

There was no doubt of the meaning behind the evil man’s words. Xarae’s numbed mind could barely accept them, however. She wanted to refuse to believe that her first child’s death was her fault, yet she resisted letting the blame fall on Sidious’s shoulders. For a moment she entertained the thought that maybe he was lying, maybe he was only tormenting her with his oily words and shifty messages...

Then he spat on her child’s grave.

New tears pushed themselves to the surface and she let them run down he cheeks and onto the grave, almost as if she wanted to wash away any tarnish that remained. A sharp pain in her hand made her remember the charm she held. It was a tiny flower on a chain. There was an imprint on her left hand traced in blood from where she had clenched her hands so tightly around it. Tears burned into the slight wound as she cried. Mingled with blood, the salty tears fell to the ground and were soaked up by the dry dirt. Maul... Khamir had given her the charm when her son was born. She longed more than anything to have him with her now, to feel his arms around her body, comforting her, smoothing her hair, wiping away her tears... but with the tattoos that marked his body, he couldn’t go outside. She closed her eyes and let the charm fall. If only he was here to hold her...

Darth Sidious’s cloak blew in the wind as he walked off. A mental message, a partial thought, reached her mind. ...next time the seductress won’t get off so easily...

And Xarae was afraid.

“You’re kidding,” Xarae sighed to herself. It was a sign of great trust that Priire had let Xarae borrow one of her ships, even if it was the Black Fire Clone. The Clone was the ship that Priire had the least emotional ties to... but she would still kill the older woman if Xarae even scratched the paint.

Or wiped the navicomp’s memory.

She had no idea how it had happened. Xarae’s best guess was some kind of hyperspace bomb. Perhaps one that sent out an ionic burst; Priire had warned that the smugglers used them in the Outer Rim... but Xarae had no time to think about that. Right now her attention was focused on landing the ship and figuring out how she could fix the navicomp.

Slender hands that hid powerful grace pried open the computer’s casing. Despite her fears, the computer wasn’t physically damaged. It’s only problem was the lack of memory. Xarae flipped her long brown hair — which she’d braided to keep out of her way — over her shoulder and sat the hydrospanner down. Knowing Priire, the older woman expected to find a hardcopy backup of the memories for various parts of the ship... somewhere. The Clone didn’t see much ferrying action because of the multitude of other moderate sized ships, but several of the younger senshi had been using it as their personal hideout.

“What a mess.” Xarae thumbed through the stack of manga someone had left. A folded piece of paper fell out from between magna in the stack and onto the floor. Surprised, Xarae reached down and picked it up. It, unlike the comics she held in her other hand, was clean of any sugar and candy residue. Suspicion more than curiosity made her unfold it and study the picture.

Almost of its own accord the paper fluttered back out of her hand and onto the floor. Someone had drawn and left a picture of Darth Sidious. Normally she wouldn’t have been so bothered by the picture, but the man and images of her children had possessed her dreams of late. Her children that no one had the right to take away from her. Her children... her children...

“Reminiscing over the past, dark angel?” a snarling voice that would have better suited a temperamental krayt dragon than a woman asked. “Or did you just lose something?”

Xarae furiously wiped a tear out of her eye and turned to the woman behind her. “Ariel. Why are you here?”

The Sailor Sith made a sweeping bow that swished her black cape. “At your service. Or not,” she laughed cruelly, twirling her finger in the air. The picture that Xarae had let fall lifted itself off the floor and spun around as if it was caught in a slow tornado.

“Wonderful.” Xarae stood up and glared at the other woman. “You are truly the last thing I need right now. I’m really fairly busy, so if you would just do me the kindness of leaving...”

Ariel wrinkled her nose. “We’re in a bad mood today, dark angel, aren’t we? Why? Didn’t like my little picture?”

Shaking her head, Xarae replied, “My emotions are not yours to comment on. Or toy with.” A flash of lightning illuminated the dark clouds that surrounded the woman as she spoke. “Iridonia Force, Make Up!” As the stormy weather subsided, it left in its wake a darkly dressed senshi with huge gray wings. “I am Sailor Iridonia, the senshi of death and of children!” she proclaimed.

“All right, I get the message. You want to play rough,” Ayameru’s eyes lit up. “Good thing too, because so do I. Black Fire Engulf!” Dancing from her fingers came waves of dark flames that reached out to swallow the brown-haired sailor.

Sailor Iridonia didn’t have time to pause and think of how ironic it was that the Black Fire Clone was being eaten by Ayameru’s attack because she was busy countering with one of her own. As powerful as Ayameru was, she was less than an equal to the dark-winged senshi.

The Sith frowned at her opponent. “That’s not very nice,” she complained with a frown. In a dark flash the two fighters were outside the little ship in a dusty asteroid crater.

Iridonia brushed asteroid dirt off her dark wings. She glared at the Sailor Sith and straightened the displaced feathers. “You are making me mad,” the dark-haired woman warned. Holding out her hands, she conjured up a double handful of lightning and prepared to throw it at the Sailor Sith.

A sudden move on the part of the evil being sent black flames hurling towards the Sailor. Iridonia lost her grip on the lightning and dropped it between the two. The misplaced attack stirred up the dust that had been lying for centuries undisturbed. Ayameru laughed and twirled her hands in the air forcing the dust into a hurricane-like spiral. The Sith continued to laugh as the dust pounded the two combatants, driving dust and small rocks into every part of their clothing. Iridonia swore there was a rock the size of the asteroid they were on inside of her boot. One at least twice that size flew toward her head, forcing her to duck under it. “Ayameru! Stop this!” Iridonia yelled.

The evil Sith continued to laugh cruelly. She threw her head back and threw her hands up to the sky, lifting all of the debris out of the crater and preparing to dump it all onto Iridonia’s head.

The senshi raised a wing over her head to protect herself as the torrent of dirt and rock plummeted back to the face of the asteroid. Iridonia’s shout of frustration was cut off by the mass of dust that piled on top of her.

Smiling a smile that would have rivaled any that her evil mistress could have shown, Ayameru stretched. “Ahh! One less Sailor brat to worry over. Won’t Sidious be proud of me?” The red-and-yellow-eyed woman finished stretching then spoke again. “Or, more likely, won’t Sidious be proud of Kougo Ada for planning this? Such is the life of an underling.”

A shudder ran through the dust.

Ayameru stared at the pile. “What the...? Oh no, you are not coming out of there.” Determined to keep the trapped Sailor trapped, Ayameru used the Force to grab a huge rock. “You won’t get out from under this rock...”

The prediction came true because Iridonia was never under the rock. She burst out of the pile, sending dust flying out from around her. The woman glared at her foe as she spoke. “You’ve gone to far this time, Ayameru.”

“Darn. Now I don’t get my brownie points from Sidious,” Ayameru sighed. “Well, I’ll just have to kill you again.”

Sailor Iridonia shook all over, just once. “You can’t.” She looked down on Ayameru from the top of the dirt pile. “I don’t stay dead.”

The Sith nodded. “Sure seems to be that way. Who is it that can kill you, again?” With cruel malice, Ayameru hissed out the name. “Darth Sidious...”

That was the straw that broke the nerf’s back. Sailor Iridonia looked down at the Sith with something like horror in her eyes. Then, with the grace that made her one of the most elegant senshi, she crossed her hands over her heart and tilted her head back to the heavens. A whisper came out of her dusty lips forming the words of an attack that were new to her. “Sidious... Fear...” As she spoke the words she extended her arms, still crossed, in the direction of the Sailor Sith. As the last “s” trailed off, Iridonia opened her startlingly blue eyes and focused right on Ayameru. “Bondage!” she screamed.

When the word left her lips, ribbons of a darker shade than black streamed from her chest and swirled down her arms until they reached her fingers. Then the dark ribbons leapt from her fingers to surround the Sith. Ayameru screamed as the dark attack squeezed her. The Sith’s only defense was to create a bolthole and flee through it, shedding the ribbons as she went.

When the Sailor Sith was gone, Xarae collapsed on to the dust. She was unsure of what had just happened. “What...?” she asked the swirling winds. They had no answer for her... the answer, she felt, was in her past and the past of three other Sailor Jedi.

Priire’s prediction had been correct. The pattern of dark side attacks was starting again.