Coruscant, Early Wednesday Fandom Time

[weetuskenraider]

Whenever she got back to Fandom, Tahiri was going to have to thank Master Skywalker for the lesson in crash-landing half a Star Destroyer, because it had not been fun crash-landing their stolen Yuuzhan Vong ship into what used to be Coruscant's Western Sea to the tune of Corran's repeated and acerbic commentary. He'd been needling her the whole time with comments meant to constantly remind her that he didn't trust her, because he didn't know who she was any more. Granted, that Star Destroyer had had standard technological controls and not the living cognition hood she had to wear to fly this ship (and that hadn't been any more fun this time around either), but she felt like the principle was largely the same.

By the time she'd steered the ship clear of the giant digestive system that the worldshapers had grown to replace the planet's sewage system and brought it to the surface of the liquid (whatever it was, it could digest yorik coral so it wasn't just water) and they were picking their way through the caverns of Coruscant's underlevels, she'd absolutely had enough.

The constant enclosed darkness wasn't helping, and Tahiri shivered. "I can't imagine living like this, below-ground, surrounded by metal, no sky, no stars."

Corran grunted. "Is that Tahiri or Riina talking?"

The question was, again, a test, and Tahiri bit back a snarl. "Neither one of them would have liked this," she said. "Tahiri grew up in the desert and in the jungles of Yavin Four. Riina grew up in a worldship. Both were surrounded by life."

"Riina didn't grow up anywhere," he insisted. "Riina was created in a laboratory."

Ouch. "You think that makes a difference?" she asked. "How do you know all your memories are real? If you found out your memories of Mirax were implanted, that there was no such person, would she be any less real to you?" The argument was made just a touch more bizarre by knowing the younger Mirax, yes.

"Unh-unh," Corran said, and Tahiri really missed Ghanima's comparative rhetorical elegance. "Not buying the sophomoric philosophy. Part of you was once a real person. Part of you was created, like a computer program."

She bit back a snarl. "You think Threepio isn't real?"

Corran held his ground, insisting, "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Tahiri said, completely fed up and torn between wanting to cry and hit him. "And I'll bet I've thought about it a lot more than you have. What I don't know is why you're pushing this, here, now. I thought we covered this before leaving Mon Calamari."

Corran pulled up to a stop and looked at her squarely in the light of their glowrods. "No, we didn't. Or, rather, none of my worries were really resolved. You asked if I trusted you. It's not that I don't trust you, Tahiri; I don't know who you are. I don't know what might be sleeping in you, waiting to wake up when the right stimulus comes along. And I can't believe that you can be sure about that either."

I got it from someone who looks a lot like you, she remembered Ben saying when he'd told her about the lightsaber scar across his back. "No, of course I can't," she finally managed. "But I'm not part Tahiri and part Riina. There aren't two voices in my head. Those two fought, and joined, and I was born. They were sort of like my parents. Nothing about either one of them is perfect in me. Even if I inherited something nasty from Riina, it will be flawed. I'll be able to fight it."

"Unless you don't want to. Unless it's something that would have appealed to both Tahiri and Riina."

Okay, she had to give him that. "You've already taken the risk, Corran. Why didn't we have this conversation days ago?"

"Because I wanted to see something of who you've become."

"And who have I become?"

"You're bright and talented and far too confident. I'm not sure you're afraid of anything, and that's bad."

Tahiri almost laughed, but the urge to haul off on him was still too strong. "I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"Fear. Anger."

"The dark side."

He had no idea. "Anakin saw me as a Dark Jedi with Yuuzhan Vong markings. He was strong in the Force." She shook her head and clamped her jaw shut on what she could have said about Ben's version of her. And then it hit her, where he had it wrong. "It's not some hidden Yuuzhan Vong part of me that should worry you, Corran. It's the Jedi part. Tahiri was trained as a Jedi from childhood. I -- the person I've become -- was not."

She'd gotten him on that one; his eyebrows nearly shot up into his hairline. "That's an interesting thing to say. I hadn't thought of it that way."

Tahiri snorted. "Most people haven't."

"Okay," Corran said. "We'll take this up later, when we aren't skulking."

"Are we skulking now?"

"Yes, because we're almost at our destination. If there's anyone waiting for us, I'd rather they didn't interrupt an interesting conversation."

Oh. Joy.

***

They found a Yuuzhan Vong, but a warrior who introduced himself as Kunra instead of the Prophet, and Tahiri could have lived without the awed expression on his face in the glow of their ignited lightsabers, or the worshipful tone in his voice when he greeted her in Yuuzhan Vong as the "One-Who-Was-Shaped." She could really pass on the whole title thing; it made her profoundly uncomfortable.

Then he turned to Corran and blurted out in Basic, "The slayer of Shedao Shai! We expected Jeedai, but not the most august of them." That made her feel better; she wasn't the only one on the spot.

"Ah, there are still a few higher on the ladder than us," Corran demurred. "Luke Skywalker, for instance."

Kunra objected, "But he does not figure in our sacred tales!"

This was really getting to be too much, and Tahiri snapped, "I asked you a question."

"I was a coward," Kunra replied, ducking his head. Well, that made a lot of sense. Cowardice among a warrior race was not a welcome trait, to put it lightly.

"You seem to have some courage." That was Corran, with a significant you could stand to learn from my example here glance at Tahiri. "You came down here, not knowing if you would find us or an ambush."

"I serve the Truth now. It gives me courage, though I am still unworthy."

A new voice came from the corridor. "And yet the most worthy of my disciples."

Tahiri glanced up -- up being the key word, because as all Yuuzhan Vong (except her) were, the newcomer was ridiculously tall. This one was definitely a Shamed One, with the festering sores and unhealed scars all over his face as evidence of that, not to mention his missing right ear and the yellow, distended bags beneath his eyes. Something wasn't right, though.

"You're Yu'shaa?" Corran asked.

"I am. It is my honor to meet the great Tahiri Veila and Corran Horn."

All Tahiri could do to that was nod curtly, really, really fed up with all the praise. Beings could stop attaching overblown adjectives to her name any minute.

"This is truly a blessed day," the Prophet said with a bow, and seriously, could he stop now?

"Right," Corran said, probably about as fed up as Tahiri was. "Though for a blessed day, we've had some fairly unblessed setbacks. Including the fact that our ship was destroyed in coming here."

"You were discovered?" the Prophet asked, a bit sharply.

"No. At least I don't think so." Corran went on to describe what had happened, and Tahiri listened carefully.

"You are correct, Blessed One," the Prophet said when Corran had finished, and Tahiri sensed a ripple of quickly-suppressed irritation from him. "It is unlikely that you were discovered. I suspect your firing of the plasma weapon caused some sort of malfunction in the maw luur's reflexes. There are hundreds, if not thousands of such malfunctions every day, and I doubt this one will be closely scrutinized. As to the other, once more we see that the universe favors our cause. The final member of our party claims to have a ship at her disposal."

"Final member of the party?" Tahiri thought Corran might as well have said You want me to kiss a gundark?

"Yes. A shaper who holds the secret to our redemption."

"I thought you . . ."

"I am the Prophet. I speak the truth and foretell what is to come. I am not myself the key to redemption -- I merely see it."

"That's interesting," Corran said, glancing at Tahiri, "but our mission, as I understood it, was to come here and get you and take you to Zonama Sekot. Now you want us to change the mission to include someone else. In my experience, changes in the mission can lead to unpleasant results."

"I am sorry," the Prophet said. "But as you said, your mission has changed already -- now we must have a ship. As to the shaper -- I could not speak of her on the qahsa. She is placed very close to Shimrra -- it is how she discovered Zonama Sekot in the first place."

Tahiri narrowed her eyes as Corran sighed and demanded, "Explain."

The Prophet complied, telling them how a Yuuzhan Vong commander had been defeated on Zonama Sekot, but returned with samples from the planet which had since been studied by the shaper in question. How a link between Zonama Sekot and the Yuuzhan Vong had been found. That struck Tahiri as odd; none of the legends had even hinted at such a thing. But the Prophet insisted that the relationship between Zonama Sekot and the Yuuzhan Vong was real, and Shimrra feared it, which had to mean that the planet was a sign of the Shamed Ones' redemption.

Corran suspected that the shaper might be betraying Yu'shaa, and Tahiri had to agree. It didn't sound any less insane when they realized he was saying they had to break the shaper out of Supreme Overlord Shimrra's compound.

Which meant that now was the time to listen to her instincts and ask, abruptly, "Yu'shaa -- why are you wearing a masquer?"

Corran's suspicion rippled through the Force, but he stayed silent and kept an eye on the Prophet, who didn't react to the question with any surprise. Instead, he confirmed her question, explaining that the masquer was basically sutured to his face, which sort of made sense; the masquers had originally been a ritual sort of wear, rather than a disguise. Still, it didn't quite ring true, so when Corran asked him to excuse them she went along gladly.

They headed a comfortable distance down the corridor before they began to converse, agreeing that something didn't seem right. "There's something about him I don't like, that's for sure," Tahiri declared.

Corran nodded. "Well, that makes two of us. But the question isn't whether we like him, or even whether we trust him. The question is, Is he telling us the truth at this moment, as he knows it?"

"I can't say for sure." Tahiri shook her head. "But this all seems pretty elaborate for a trap."

"My thought exactly. It doesn't make any sense -- if they were going to do something, why not here? No, this has the feel of a real plan, albeit a pretty shoddy one. In fact, it's sort of reassuring." He smiled. "Are you still game? "

She could have laughed, which was an improvement over wanting to cry or hit him like she had for most of the trip here. "Of course. I thought you would be the one to object."

"We're in pretty deep already. You've shown me you can handle yourself. And Kenth was right to send you along -- I couldn't have made the call about the masquer. Let's at least see what the plan is."

She could go along with that.

[OOC: The NFI/NFB/slightly-tl;dr/OOC-okay dance goes on, as does the dance of still-adapted-from The Final Prophecy by Greg Keyes. I swear, I really did cut this down. It's just there's all this great Tahiri and Corran banter and it's haaaaaaaaard.]