Chapter Text
Sigun has been perfectly content to ignore everything. What did it matter that the bad music had started up again? It wasn't in Il Mheg, it wasn't their problem. True it bothered Daen, but everything bothered Daen. Not that Sigun wasn’t grateful for all Daen had done and all, but ever since Aenc left, making Daen the official Oldest, Daen has been extra bothered.
If the King was going to ignore the fact that her soul was cracking at the seams and the fact that what she was vomiting up in the middle of the night cycle was the exact opposite of natural, Sigun was going to ignore it too.
And if Daen wanted to reappropriate some holocrons that were being kept in Pandaemonium before chasing after the Fuath, well King and Captain. Who was Sigun to say anything?
FeoUl has a very different opinion on the matter.
An opinion made extremely obvious by the way the holotransmitter goes flying across the room, barely missing Sigun’s head. The projection of Lahabrea’s grumpy face flickering off.
“I ought to take a hammer to that empty head of yours and use it as a drum!” Sigun’s red-headed sibling and technical leader shouts loud enough to shake the numerous and elaborate windows of Lyhe Ghiah.
Sigun fiddles with their hair, eyeing the way the light through the stained glass plays over it.
“D’you think green is my colour?” Sigun asks. “I mean you’ve pretty much claimed red for yourself, AencThon’s picked blue for their lot, and Ryne’s been eying the orange for a bit.”
FeoUl makes a screeching noise reminiscent of a tooka whose tail has been stepped on - or BeqLuqq when being handed yet another one of Eo’s broken blades.
Sigun checks their datapad while FeoUl gets it out of their system. HaganTyr and their squad were having fun with some stocky bipedal lizards charmingly called blurrgs on a planet called Ryloth. The holos were cute.
Sigun ducks a flimsiweight from FeoUl’s table, thumbing through the messages. Most of them were just images and vids of neat things the littles saw on the planets they were visiting. Even Ryne and Eo were contributing with weird and interesting bits and bobs that they had found on Coruscant. Core-tech was somehow both mind-boggingly complex and indescribably quaint at the same time.
The consistent message that the aether was screaming in pain on every planet and that there was something undeniably awful on Coruscant, significantly less so, but not Sigun’s problem. It was giving OseTyr headaches, so Sigun puts in a reminder to send over Sul’s old notes on using aether to heal minor ailments to the little Fuathlings.
FeoUl has started ranting about something or other about the Republic, the Convocation and a whole lot of stuff that sounds incredibly boring.
And Sigun decides to let their sibling know it.
“I don’t see how any of this is my problem,” Sigun shrugs dramatically.
“Oh it is your problem. As regent, I'm appointing you as our PR pixie.”
“What?!”
“It’s now your problem to make sure the Republic thinks that we’re all adorable sprouts who can’t stomach the sight of an apkallu.” FeoUl’s grin is pure malice. “Adorable, ineffectual, flighty, delicate flower blossoms.”
“That’s true enough of the littles.” Sigun grumbles, remembering how bad the under Elevens were at gear maintenance and weapons safety. They wouldn’t last ten seconds against even the weakest of the eaters. But it wasn’t Sigun’s job to teach them the basics - that was OseGyuf’s problem, and OseGyuf liked to go on about how they didn’t have to know that stuff now.
“The soldiers of the GAR are mostly under Elevens. They just made them look older to get around child labour law.”
Well that was horrifying. But also - also! - not Sigun’s problem.
“And since the Convocation has gone and technically placed Etheirys under the Republic’s jurisdiction, there is potential that they would insist on drafting all of us into their army.”
“Why should we-”
“We can’t fight all of them. We can’t fight Etheirys, the Republic and a droid army on our own. There aren’t enough of us left.” FeoUl says bluntly, to which Sigun slumps irritably. No wonder Daen was so mad about the Fuath posting to the Net. FeoUl was right of course. The Oracles did number in the low-thousands, but those of them that could be deemed combat-capable was in the low hundreds. Those that were combat-ready was maybe fifty. Of those fifty, there were maybe seven or eight of them that Sigun could trust to come out of a battle mostly intact.
The next best thing would be to give the impression that drafting them was a spectacularly stupid idea. Not that the Republic seemed to be run by people of sense.
Looking small, dumb and particularly stupid in front of outsiders was a specialty of Sigun’s - not so small though now that they’d sprouted up a couple of inches since joining the ranks of the Sixteens, but the littles were excellent at that.
Kark all of it. It was going to be on Sigun as the most tech-savvy of their siblings to start restricting and adjusting things.
Sigun liked messing around on the AetherNet, and looking around the HoloNet had been fun.
This is not going to be fun at all.
“We still have all the helmet footage from Amh Areng?” Sigun sighs. That had been one of the worst in recent history.
“High definition straight from Alisaie Leveilleur.” FeoUl says. “And the Crystarium Archives are open to us, as per order of our crystal friend. JulOul’s sneaking through Eulmore’s records for what might be useful.”
Sigun crosses their arms and huffs.
“I want dibs on all of the muja flavour candies from the Second Serving and every choco- cake from the Last Dregs.”
Smug is an obnoxious expression on their face, but FeoUl wears it infuriatingly well.
“And I want a list of the holocrons Daen took from the grumpiest one on the Convocation.”
Thinking more on the whole thing, FeoUl was probably going to ransom them back to Lahabrea. That sounds like it would be fun to watch.
“Deal.”
-0-
Frankly, Jedi Initiate Jan Torfer was not quite sure what to expect when the Coruscant Guard arrived with a small detachment to escort more visitors from the Etheirys system to the Temple.
Outer Rim Masters were rare sights, and while most of them rarely roamed the galaxy in Jedi robes, they usually did keep to the warm beige, tans and browns of the Order in their clothes.
The Etheiryans on the other appear to strongly favour dark colours.
Given Jan has a total sample size of the two sentients in front of him, he is not about to jump to conclusions about them. Both of them are decked out from head to toe in black - though their clothing is nowhere near as austere as Representative Emet-Selch and Elidibus’ robes, with the male presenting sentient is covered in multiple gold coloured bangles and jewelry that sings in the Force.
“Masters Jedi, please be welcome to the Coruscant Temple.”
“Thank you,” the woman of an unknown species smiles at him kindly and Jan abruptly realizes from the unfocused and clouded gaze of her silver eyes that she is in fact blind.
“A thousand thanks. Prithee, young one, canst thou direct myself and mine esteemed colleague towards our compatriot of the Convocation. Thy planetary guard relayed that the Emissary of our star speaketh with thine own congregation,” the very tall near-human with pointed ears speaks smoothly and clearly.
Jan thinks every word of that was Basic, but he has no idea what the man has just said. He glances towards the Guard troopers who offer absolutely no help. They too did not understand a thing the man had said.
“Uhh… I-I’m sorry, I didn’t quite-”
“Urianger, mayhaps you might leave the speaking to me?” the woman huffs amusedly.
“As you prefer, Master Matoya.”
“You must excuse Master Aurugelt. We found him frozen in carbonite in a storage cellar from a thousand years ago beneath Labyrinthos.”
“Uhhhh-”
“The lady jesteth. Master Matoya is well known amongst the Sharlayan Forum for her levity and comedic talent.” Master Aurugelt declares with a perfectly straight face.
Master Matoya sighs heavily. “If you could direct us towards the Jedi Council. I believe we are expected.”
“C-certainly!” Jan bobs his head respectfully to the two Masters and the Coruscant Guard.
“Good luck kid,” one of the troopers nods towards him.
Jan thinks he is definitely going to need it. And that he needs to refresh his language modules to include as much archaic Basic as he can.
-0-
It is apparently customary for Etheiryans from the desert region of one of their planets known as Ala Mhigo to greet bosom companions and friends feet first - at least that’s the story that Senator Azem tries to sell Click and Vent.
They don’t even have to look at each other to know that neither of them are buying it. Even for Mandalorians - even ones as traditional as the ones that seemed to be on Etheirys, it was kind of pushing it. Given the way Representative Emet-Selch is screeching into a holoprojector about delinquents at some other Etheiryans across the galaxy, they know these people.
One of them even has a title and is apparently a planetary representative - of course it’s the tooka man covered in soot stains. The - the small humanoid of unknown species with pointy ears who is not much taller than Master Yoda, is an Etheiryan Jedi Master called Papalymo and the human blonde who Senator Azem presently has in a headlock after trying to dropkick him, is his Padawan Lyse Hext.
“Why did you bring that one with you Archon?” Representative Emet-Selch demands irritably.
“I figured she could distract Azem from some of his more explosive plans,” the diminutive sentient shrugs as he rights the upturned furniture with a wave of his hand.
“Now, please explain, most Honourable Architect, why there is a Blasphemy on Coruscant?” Master Papalymo asks, perfectly pleasant, though his expression is almost as sour as the Representative’s mask.
“We’re not sure if it actually is a Blasphemy,” Senator Azem replies. “If it is, it’s a weird one. I figured that since you were coming Papalymo, that I could have you lead that investigation with the other Scions.”
The Senator turns to Click and Vent and his expression falls a little, and the Padawan manages to escape his grip..
“Blasphemies are what we called those that were affected by ah - dark Force stuff. They’re uh, awful. I don’t recommend looking them up.”
“And one of them is on Coruscant, sir?” Vent asks and instantly regrets it as all of the Etheiryans’ attention is now on him.
“Yes.” “Most likely.” “Maybe.” “Ehh fifty-fifty chance.” “No.” They say as one before looking amongst each other. Representative Emet-Selch’s hand is twitching towards his mask, the frown underneath must be something. Padawan Hext is bouncing on the balls of her feet, as she grins at the Representative. That’s an expression Vent can recognize from some of his more headstrong brothers. That’s someone who’s itching for a fight.
The Representative glances over at Senator Azem before dropping his hand and sighing.
“We've detected anomalies in the Force that closely resemble the same effect some of the stronger, more dangerous Blasphemies exude upon their surroundings on Coruscant. We are working with the Jedi Order to try and isolate the source.”
Wait. So there was some weird Sith Force osik on Coruscant which was why Senator Azem was running around the lower levels causing problems left right and centre for the Guard?
“You've been monster hunting without us?!” Padawan Hext gasps in horror, while the tooka man is stifling his laughter into his soot-covered clothing.
“No, no!” the Senator offers placatingly. “It’s mostly just dealing with little crime rings and things before Eo gets it into her head to try and do something.”
There are currently seven different crime families with bounties on Senator Azem’s beskar covered head. The tooka-man in the soot-covered mechanic’s uniform seems to sense Vent’s skepticism.
“The Scions do take some time getting used to,” the man smiles kindly in the troopers’ direction, his fluffy red tail swishing behind him.
“You say that like you’re not one of us.” Padawan Hext groans.
“I am the Crystal Exarch - Keeper of Syrcus Tower and Defender of Lakeland and the Crystarium first and foremost before I am an Archon of Baldesion or Scion of the Seventh Dawn.” the red-haired man says diplomatically.
“You’re a right pain in the arse, is what you are.” Representative Emet-Selch grumbles irritably.
“I’m sorry, did you hear something? Was that the sound of someone nearly destroying all of Norvrandt?” tooka-man snaps irritably.
“Now now, it all worked out in the end, didn’t it? No one died and we’re all on the same side now!” Senator Azem says interposing himself between the Representative and the newcomers.
It is an odd picture to Click and Vent - Senator Azem playing peacekeeper when the man starts all sorts of osik with the Senate.
“Not for lack of trying,” Padawan Hext smiles innocently, which earns her a reprimanding smack from her Master.
They’re going to have to tell Commander Fox that they’re going to need to somehow put together another squad to keep an eye on these other troublemakers.