Chapter Text
Chapter 1 -
Borgin whisked as he twisted the last knob. "Real' hope I got' 't thi' 'ime."
If he showed the working hover-cart to the Boss, maybe he'd be sponsored for an apprenticeship at that mechanic shop. He really hoped this time it's be a success. He didn't know if he could continue on this piece of junk.
If old-sent' J was correct, and Borgin knew, because he'd never known the old-sent' to be wrong, the thing was at least 200 standard cycles old.
Age was a great indicator to tell you if a sent' was a great sent'. Only the knowledgeable and capable got to that age.
At least they were more capable than his dead mother, the poor slave had been bought by a Trailing Sector senator. She'd only survived long enough to bring him to an orphanage.
Borgin shook his head, thinking about how he'd moved from orphanage to orphanage until ending up homeless in the lower levels wasn't good for moral.
He checked over the hover-cart one last time, glancing at his cracked 'pad's screen, no errors flagged.
"Tha' show's 'oo," he said proud, "time too 'est!"
At that he turned the dial, sending power to the thrusters. The hover-cart rose, an audible sound leaving it was it did so. It started to vibrate, the ring rising in pitch.
"Kriff!" Borgin tried to turn it off, but the remote function failed, he went for the manual shutdown only for him to trip over a tool, sending it towards the thrusters.
His wide eyes followed the knob-winder as it flew in a seemingly slow arc, but Borgin couldn't move.
The thrusters outer piece detached in clean way.
Hadn't Borgin spent extra time trying to attach the thing?
The piece jumped through the air, Borgin turned, trying to see where it'd land.
Only to see a giant humanoid sleeping on damp the ground - when did they kriffing arrive?! They were pink of hair, and their back was facing him, and they were wearing some sort of white coat.
"Pinky-!" He exclaimed hand extended, trying to reach something he couldn't.
The outer-piece seemed to slow as it neared the laying figure before it hit the being right on their head, making a loud, if less than it could have been, this echo in his ears.
Borgin jumped up, speeding towards the pink haired sentient - wait they had four arms? No matter.
"Are you alright, gent'?" He said in a shaky voice, trying to be polite.
The being groaned - they were alive then, much to Borgin's relief. They reached for their head, red painting their pink hair.
The being looked at Borgin, was that a glare?
A step forwards.
Borgin stepped back. Cowering.
"Look gent', I'm uh- real sorry," he said, trying to appease the giant or explain what happened. The words tumbled out in a rush. "Didn't mean for- accident! Yes! Accident with the hover-cart, the thr’ster piec’ jus’-"
The pink-haired being took another step forward, their four arms flexing. Blood continued to trickle down their face, staining their white coat.
Borgin's back hit the wall behind him. There was nowhere left to run.
The being bared their teeth. Starting to speak in a language that wasn’t basic, their voice loud even when they just seemed to speak.
Borgin’s eyes were wide.
Borgin’s body was frozen.
Borgin was going to die.
J'son sipped his flask leisurely, deep in thought. Wondering what street to hit, certainly not the Senate district he thought when his gaze fell on the holonews feed hovering above the news subscription droid, eyes trailing the aurubesh making up one of the latest headlines.
He was too old to continue picking the rich's pockets, maybe he should focus more on burglaries? Hmm, something to ponder.
The half jawa tapped the flash's opening on his chin, a soft trill leaving his lips as he sighed. His knees cracked as he stood up, back curved by the weight of years.
Thud.
J'son jumped.
Just as soon the sound of metal hitting the asphalt sounded, the distinct ring of duracreed echoing in a way it only ever did in the deep still inhabited levels of Coruscant.
The shouts that followed were clearly coming from a near human.
The being, likely tall and muscular by the sound of it, kept shouting prompting the old under-dweller to approach, curious to see what was happening and if he could gain something from this scene.
He advanced, steps careful and soundless, the liquid in his flask near immobile.
His eyes widened when he saw, hidden by the corner building he glimpsed a pink haired four-armed behemoth holding the two halves of a youngling's body.
The body's head lolled to the side, it's face now visible to the hidden J'son.
Borgin.
Karking young half-twi'lek half-devaronian had managed to get himself killed.
Just J'son's luck to be near when it happened.
Wherever the young sentient was now, J'son hoped it was better life than what Coruscant born under-dwellers like them had and will continue to live.
J'son let go of any thoughts about the dead young under-dweller, he needed to get away before he could be noticed by this new being.
And he didn't need this new being to see his face and know exactly what he was, Depth knew how hard it was to find something to hide his features.
Few knew what jawa looked like under their hoods, but him, a half-jawa half-hour-knew-what didn't want to take the chance. Looking like a jawa made you a lot of enemies.
Damn giant.
What was he?
Four arms and some galactic standard human traits?
Couldn't be those.. maybe a half-ardenian half-human?
No, he was too tall, and far too muscular.
J'son climbed in a droid service corridor, cramped but not enough so that he'd be unable to stand.
His vestigial tail twitched under his cloths.
Maybe they had been a half-besalisk? Or perhaps it was just an odd quirk of genetic, Depth knew how many sentients had been apart of 'illegal' sentient-experimentation.
The tavern sat nestled in the Port District, some 150 levels beneath the Guild Cantina, the air was thick, the ambient smell it carried poignant with recycled air, the smell of cheap liquor, and the acrid tang of smouldering deathsticks.
Kiv'aar wiped down the bar with a rag that had seen better days. His long fingers moved with practised efficiency, the motions automatic after decades of tending this establishment.
Four standard weeks had passed since whispers started circulating about the pink tuffed giant in the lower levels. Kiv'aar had heard the stories, everyone had. A four-armed near-human of a behemoth who'd appeared from nowhere, killing as they pleased. He'd seen and heard of stranger things, but this one, this newest player had staying power in the rumour mill.
That usually meant credits to be made, one way or another.
The third song of Figrin Da’n’s latest album started playing, Kiv’aar bobbed his head rhythmically head melons moving with the movement. This, these little things made him proud of being a Bith. Feet tapping the duraplast covered floor as he moved towards the patron that just neared the bar, an empty glass already in his hand ready to slide across the bar once filled with the newcomer's poison of choice. The being, a Quarren by the look of the facial tentacles, settled onto a stool with a grunt.
"What can I get you?" Kiv'aar asked, his voice carrying that natural Bith harmonic quality that made even casual conversation sound almost melodic.
The Quarren's tentacles twitched as he considered. "Something strong. Long shift."
Correlian huh? Another spacer the Bith noted whipping the counter in front of him, "Rough shift?" Kiv'aar asked as he reached for a bottle.
The Quarren's tentacles twitched again in what might have been agreement. "Port authority's cracking down on customs again. Makes everything take twice as long."
Kiv'aar poured and set the glass down, waiting for credits. "Heard they busted a new spice trafficking ring not long ago…"
"Nah… They’re searching for someone," The Quarren slid payment across the bar. "A republic cargo went missing three cycles back. Republic Navy surplus, if the rumours are true.” Kiv’aar slides the glass to the Correlian spacer, “And we all know how these prissy kriffers get when something gets missing," A sip, “’specially when a senator pokes their nose in the investigation.”
Kiv'aar nodded, feeling the shift of the vestigial melons on the top of his head accompany the movement, filling the information away, it wasn’t his business, but information had value, especially information pertaining the port security forces’ movement, maybe even the the Coruscant Constabulary if the Underworld Police found something worth escalating. Kiv'aar's practised, habitual wiping movement stuttered for half a beat before resuming it's rhythm, bobbing his head along Figrin Da'n's tune.
He returned to his position behind the sink, cleaning glasses, keeping his hands occupied, ignoring the constantly shifting holp-advertisement at the center of the tavern, one eye on a Rodian who was nursing his drink, another on the group in the corner booth whose conversation had grown more animated.
The music shifted to the fourth track, and Kiv'aar found his head swaying from side to side again.
Simple pleasures, he mused.
He didn't much care for gossip beyond its monetary value, not after working so long in a cantina. His tavern saw plenty of beings who counted credits like they were the last rations on a failing life support system. Desperate folk, dangerous folk, and those just trying to survive another rotation. Even a few blaster fights this past standard year, one left scorch marks on the durasteel that no amount of scrubbing would remove.
The Bith tavern owner relaxed his facial muscles, an angry barman was a deterrent to good business. And with the tavern's proximity to the Space Port, it meant a bad reputation would affect his income even with the steady stream of spacers, smugglers, freight haulers, port workers looking to forget their shifts, refugees trying to scrape together passage off-world…
A Rodian stumbled through the entrance, antenna twitching as he scanned the dim interior. Kiv'aar noted the worn flight suit, the way the being's hand rested near his blaster.
"What'll it be?" Kiv'aar asked, his voice carrying the slight harmonic quality common to his species.
The Rodian slid onto a stool. "Whatever's cheap and strong."
Kiv'aar poured without comment, them all wanting the same thing made logistics easier, even if he had to keep each species in mind when choosing the drink, sliding the glass across the scarred durasteel surface. Credits exchanged hands.
The door hissed open again. This time, a group entered, mixed species, all with that edge that came from living in the depths. They took a corner booth, voices low. One briefly came to the bar ordering their drinks.
Just another night in the Port District. Just another cycle of beings trying to find their way in a galaxy that didn't care whether they lived or died.
Kiv'aar returned to wiping the bar, his large eyes taking in everything while appearing to notice nothing at all.
The door hissed open with a rush of recycled air from the corridor beyond. Kiv'aar's eyes flicked toward the entrance, a courier he’d seen a couple of times, wiry, human, and wearing a nondescript grey magnilock jacket, hood pulled low.
They carried themselves with the practised ease of Core World nobility slumming in the underworld, all clean lines and carefully calculated discomfort, as if one wrong step might soil their boots. The kind of high-caste youth whose parents would have them flogged for descending this far into the underlevels without a security detail.
But the boots gave them away. Worn, dirty, solid make, nothing someone from the higher levels would wear. Kiv'aar had to appreciate the tradecraft otherwise, the posture was convincing enough to fool casual observers, the mannerisms professional enough to disappear into the Port District's endless parade of desperate faces and calculated risks.
Someone wanted eyes to turn to Kiv’aar’s tavern, perhaps a power-play, a reminder. Must be that Chiss.
The courier approached the bar with quick, purposeful steps, sliding onto a stool directly in front of Kiv'aar. Without preamble, they tapped the counter before drumming their fingers on it’s scarred durasteel surface.
"Package for you," the courier said, voice barely above a whisper. "You didn't get this from me."
Kiv'aar's large eyes fixed on the being’s eyes. He tilted his head prompting the disguised courier to continue.
The courier leaned in, voice dropping even lower. "Footage. Your pink-haired friend." They paused, glancing over their shoulder before continuing. "Showed up in the neighbourhood yesterday. Killed three drunkards outside a gambling den on Level 1313. Clean, fast, brutal. Security cam caught the whole thing before it got wiped."
Kiv'aar's head melons shifted slightly in acknowledgement. He'd heard worse.
The courier straightened. "Someone wanted you to have it. Said you'd know what to do with it."
Without missing a beat, Kiv'aar leaned forward, his voice a low harmonic murmur that wouldn't carry past the bar's edge. "Keep your head down when you leave. Port authority's been watching the entrance tonight."
To any observer, it was a simple transaction - information exchanged for credits, the kind of deal that happened a hundred times a night in places like this. The courier's hand moved to their pocket, mimicking the motion of securing payment, a slight of hand insuring the datachip found it’s way in the Bith’s hands.
Kiv'aar straightened, his large black eyes fixed on the human courier. He dismissed them with a subtle jerk of his head toward the exit. Then, as if nothing of consequence had occurred, because this wasn’t an unusual event, he returned to wiping the bar's scarred surface with practised disinterest, his movements deliberate and unhurried.
The courier nodded once, a brief acknowledgement, then slid off the stool and headed for the exit with the same purposeful stride they'd entered with. The door hissed shut behind them, and the tavern's ambient noise swallowed the moment whole.
Kiv'aar's hand brushed against the chip in his pocket.
His expression remained unreadable behind his large, black eyes.
Three drunkards. Yesterday. The rumours weren't just rumours anymore.
The Bith smiled.
Dovan sighed, tense aching muscles relaxing as he fell back in his chair.
His stationary communicator blinked on his desk, "Damn it." Here he'd thought his day was nearly over, 30 minutes and he would be well on his way back to the barracks.
Arm extended he tapped the play message key.
"Sir… This is Head Director Plank of the Lifted Power plant There was a surge in the L-38 fusion reactor, line Gamma-Leaf-9 has corroded. Situation code 4. Engineer Lofti shut down that branch and Fourmis redirected power towards the affected districts… The situation is now stable and the preliminary reports on the situation have been sent to your secretary."
Dovan groaned, 'why had he decided to become an Oversear again?' head falling back on his backrest, body sliding on his chair. He couldn't wait for his 4 weeks in central to be over so he could go back to the top floors of Coruscant.
"Chief Slomath has decided that we are going to perform analysis' of the entire quadrant's state 3 months ahead of planning. You'll receive the quaterly estimated maintenance budget in the coming days."
The Dav-olid paused, then a oud exhale sounded.
Dovan's lips twitched.
"On another note… and non work related note, are you still good for tungsday, Dovan? We haven't eaten together once this week. Comm me back tomorow morning- well relative morning, it's not like we get dayled down here. This haran pit of- kriff, I feel haruc b'aalyc with all that kriff."
"Careful Dav-olid your Mandalorian is showing," the Overseer mumbled tiredly. "Damn senate is going to block our demand again… If only we weren't 6534 floors from that cesspit.."
His head rose then fell back with a dull thud on the cushioned backrest. "Damn politics. If you want half of the planet to be without power… Then by my kriffing leave. Why did I listen to my parents and apply to the central power generator station again?"
'Right the salary,' eight times the base wage without counting the hazard pay.
Seven. Days.
That was how long Sukuna had spent in this place.
A city, he'd determined. Not immediately - the first day had been spent killing things, first a small thing that had injured him, then ones that had pointed their triangle-shaped weapons at him and learning, in the process, that he could no longer perform Dismantle. Or anything else he's done with Cursed Energy.
The second day had been less eventful.
By the third he'd found the pit.
He sat above it now, on a rusted walkway suspended between two districts, eating something wrapped in material he had no name for. Below him the smog sat thick and full of miasma, a handful of lights drowning in it. He'd looked for the bottom on the fourth day. Hadn't found one. Hadn't looked since.
The more one went down the less civilized it was.
After killing a fifteenth giant rat like animal he'd gone back up, lungs and eyes burning despite the goggle he'd taken off a corpse.
The city layered in every direction. Sprawling, indifferent, loud in the way things were loud when they'd never had reason to be quiet. Things moved through it that he'd initially categorized as curses - the shape, the appearance was close enough - but weren't. They spoke. Traded. Lacked that predatory behaviour innate to anything cursed.
They feared death in way humans did, hid their true intention like them too.
Their weapons threw compressed light. Their transportation flew. He'd stopped examining the specifics after the first few days. There was too much of it and none of it was interesting enough to warrant the effort.
What had been worth noting was that this place had no law.
Or, rather, it it had laws they weren't more than suggestion.
He'd determined this on the second day, when he'd killed two armoured - dirty stinky vagrants with mismatched pieces - ones who'd decided his currency was easier to take than earn, and nobody had done anything about it except step around the bodies he was divesting. The armoured type was common enough.
Obvious weapons, obvious intent, moving through the city like they owned whatever they could currently see. He'd killed a few more since, taken their weapons - the triangle ones and longer variants he hadn't fully examined before selling them to some type of pawn shop - and their currency.
This had been straightforward.
His frame drew eyes but not the sustained attention he might have expected. The sustained attention he'd. gotten when he had still lived, when he had yet to acquire his title. His name.
Four arms, a size that put most of these creatures at chest height or below. On the first day he'd assumed this would be a constant problem. It wasn't. Whatever else moved through this city, enough of it was stranger than Sukuna appeared. Enough that he registered as merely another entry in a long list.
Most didn't glance more than twice. A few didn't glance at all, at least overtly. He found this either useful or vaguely insulting depending on his mood.
What negative emotion pooled in this place - and there was plenty, thick as the air - didn't coalesce into anything. No Veil. No cursed spirit dragging itself into existence from the accumulated misery of these things. It simply sat there. Inert. Wasted.
Except for that one current. Thin, directional, amassing somewhere to the left. He'd waited two days for it to do something. It hadn't. He'd stopped waiting.
The energy, this replacement to the cursed energy he'd known and mastered, he'd found by accident, mid-strike, reaching on reflex for something that he had forgotten wasn't there anymore.
It had answered.
His own, and yet not. Slower. Blunter. Perhaps it would change.
It had put the mantis-shaped anthropomorphic thing down without getting up, one punch making it careen through the air until it hit a wall with a dull thud and the clack of metal on stone.
This alone made it sufficient as a remplacement.
He was still learning it's limits. It's use cost him hours of a fatigue he found irritating.
Sukuna was working on it, practising.
It was irritating.
His feelings changed nothing about the cost.
A sound.
Footsteps from below, coming up the left district.
The pitter-patter of someone small in stature, someone that did not fear to be heard, footsteps audible despite the ambient sound.
They slowed. Stopped. Closer than most dared.
He knew he'd acquired some kind of reputation the last few days.
There was no attack.
Sukuna looked. All four of his eyes landing on this newest insect.
It was a small thing.
It stood at the far end of the walkway, which explained why it had dared to get this close.
Knee-height, roughly. Large eyes that caught the sparse light from below and held it, the way certain animals' eyes did. Some kind of fur, or something close enough to fur that the distinction wasn't worth making. It was looking at him with the particular stillness of something that had already decided running was pointless.
Or perhaps… this was a summons of sort.
A rictus twisted Sukuna's lips, right cheek unincumbered by the now absent protrusion he'd lived the last few years before his appearance in this realm.
Shrewd, for something that small, or daft, Sukuna hasn't decided yet.
Sukuna looked at it for a moment, then looked away. Finishing his meal. Set the wrapping loose in front of him, watching as it fell, dancing through the air guided by faint currents.
The creature didn't move.
He'd seen its kind before - twice, maybe three times, moving through the lower districts in pairs or alone, never in the larger groups. Not vendors. Not the armoured ones.
What he had determined was that they spoke the local tongue.
That same rounded language as the rest, or a variant of it, his ear wasn't yet keen enough to parse the different languages of this place.
He looked back at it.
It still hadn't run.
"A stubborn one I see," his voice sounded, the rictus hadn't disapeared. Sukuna saw it jump, "hmm, I let you live."
The language was the most pressing problem. He could barely parse individual sounds, matching a handful of words through context had been a pain.
As smart as he was, Sukuna knew learning a new tongue wasn't done by killing of half of those one interacted with.
He'd conducted most of his business through gesture and the universal communication of holding something valuable until the correct amount of currency was placed in his other hand, or holding something dangerous until whatever was in his way moved.
It functioned. It was also, increasingly, insufficient.
The creature blinked. One of its ears moved.
Sukuna stood, metal groaning as he shifted his body.
It flinched again, a full-body thing, weight dropping back onto its haunches. "An amusing little thing," His smiled dropped into something more sudble seeing the thing didn't bolt.
It stayed exactly where it was while he crossed the walkway toward it, the rusted metal shifting under his feet. Faintly choing seconds later in this large cacofonous ambiance. He stopped close enough that it had to angle its oversized head and eyes upward to keep looking at him. It looked at him with the expression of something that had made a decision and was committed to seeing it through.
He crouched down to its level.
Bottom resting on his heals, his blood stained clothes caressing the ground.
This close he could see how thin it was. A resident of this realm for and not a visitor, then.
In one small hand it held something that might have been food, or might have been currency, gripped tight enough that the knuckles, or whatever passed for knuckles creaked effort.
It said something for him, then.
It opened it's mouth, speaking in tongues incomprehensible to the four armed former king.
The sounds were too close together to separate cleanly, but he caught one - second syllable of the second word, a sound he'd heard used as a marker of uncertainty.
A question, then. Or a qualification.
Something that didn't commit.
Smart.
Sukuna said nothing. Reached out slowly, which made the creature go very still, and tapped the walkway next to it once. Then he stood, and walked back to where he'd been sitting, and sat back down.
The creature stayed where it was for a long moment.
Then it came and sat near him. Not close. But near. It kept the object it heald, now gripped in both hands in its lap, and watched the pit below with its reflective eyes, and said nothing else.
Sufficient.
He'd learn its specific sounds first. It was small and it lived in theses floors and it clearly had the survival instincts of something that had spent considerable time making itself useful to larger, more dangerous things.
It would do.
And if at some point it stopped being useful-
Well.
Sukuna could always kill it.