A New Jedi in an Old Republic

A crimson lightsabre ignited, crossing the space between its wielder and him. Obi-wan activated his in a smooth motion, eyes focused on the enemy across from him, blue against red.

"Sith?" Padme leaped back, getting out of the way of the active weapons even as she reached for her own blaster.

Jan stood. "STAND DOWN!" she roared.

"Jedi," Ventress had one weapon active, hand on the second. She hadn't activated it yet. "What a pleasure."

"She's a Sith? She's a Confederate?" Padme added reaching for her blaster.

"We prefer Separatist." Ventress told her snidely even as she kept her eyes on the Jedi in the room.

"Calm down!" Jan tied to get people to stop but no one was listening to her.

"Are you here to assassinate the Senator, I wonder?" Obi-wan refused to back down in the face of the threat, recognizing the danger she represented. He was planning how best to take this fight, and could see that the Dark Sider was also doing the same thing. He needed to protect the Senator first and foremost, trusting in the skills and experience of the Agent to hold her own.

"Of course not," the Sith replied with a sneer of cruel contempt. She didn't waver at all, though she did keep the table she was working on between her and Obi-wan. "If I wanted her dead, you would have never known, never found the body."

"Would you please start acting like ADULTS?" Jan raised her voice to try and gain some semblance of control, but both Jedi and Sith were too well trained in disregarding distractions to allow her to dictate control of the situation. Padme had her blaster out and finger on the trigger but hadn't raised it yet.

"Perhaps we should step outside?" Obi-wan suggested. "Leave the ladies to their work?"

"But Ventress was helping? Jan, you said she was a fellow agent!"

Jan didn't respond, knowing a situation spiraling out of control when she saw one. And she wasn't much help here given that her own actions had helped cause this. She needed an out. Something that could focus everyone's attention on something or other that wasn't being hostile with each other.

Memories of the story of how Leia had bluffed a Hutt with a Thermal Detonator came and went and while on any other day, that would have brought a smile to her face, she lacked the time for that - as well as a thermal detonator as they were all with Kyle. "Can we all just STOP?" she yelled again to no avail.

"Ah!" 3PO said as he entered, "I have everyone's drinks. For you, Senator, your tea." He moved around the still potential combatants and started setting down the drinks people had forgotten that they had requested of the droid. "Agent Ors, your coffee, and Miss Ventress, your water. Oh! And as for you Master Kenobi, your water as well." Seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room, the protocol droid put the refreshments in front of everyone, then stepped back to wait for the next instructions.

"Thank you, 3PO," the Senator found her voice as she had settled on not-quite-pointing her blaster at Ventress. "That will be all."

"Of course, Senator. Good day to you all." The droid shuffled out carefully and everyone just stood there.

"Well, I don't know about you," Jan said firmly as she set her bare hands down on the table they were working on, "but I think we should all take a deep breath, calm down, have our drinks, and talk."

"Jan, this person is a Sith, and she has manipulated her way into your good graces," Obi-wan conjectured. "She cannot be trusted."

"I don't trust her," Jan replied. "What I do trust is that her interests and ours align, and as such we are willing to cooperate for now on a mutually beneficial arrangement."

That sounded a lot like diplomacy to Obi-Wan's ears. "Ventress, is that right? Are you perhaps the same Ventress that encountered one Knight-Errant Katarn on Garamost?" He had been privy to the debriefings regarding that incident. And thus, the question about the name.

"Yes," Ventress agreed. "I met him. Which is why I am willing to worry with the Agent. I do not wish to cross him." There was a tinge of fear in her voice, one that gave Obi-Wan the flash of an idea.

"I can accept that," he said with utter calmness as he deactivated his lightsabre, sat down and took his drink in his hands. "He has that sort of affect on people, so I would not hold it against you in the least." He gestured at her own glass of water. "Well?"

Ventress looked down for a moment, her weapon not once wavering. Then at Jan, who was sipping her own drink. She joined Obi-wan in politeness and deactivated her weapon and casually leaning in her chair to emphasize just how unconcerned she was over the presence of the Jedi Master, even if it was a bluff.

Padme took the hint and holstered her own weapon. "You're a Sith?" she asked Ventress. "Right, Yes. That makes sense. You're the Separatists' answer and counter-point to the Jedi. "I am sorry for over-reacting," she cast an accusing glance at Obi-wan who deflected it with all the grace of a man who never made any threats at all, and never escalated.

"It is more to that than that," Ventress coolly commented. "The Sith are just as ancient as the Jedi, drawing on the Force as well for our own purposes."

"Now, please forgive me and my ignorance," Obi-wan interjected with intent, "however the Sith as we knew them died out about a thousand years ago at the Seventh Battle of Ruusan. That you have taken their name, you and Count Dooku makes me wonder, well, why?"

Jan quietly let this byplay happen. More talking meant less violence. Which meant better things in the long run.

"What does it matter to you?" Ventress sneered, and even Padme could tell she was covering for her own lack of knowledge.

"It matters because if there is to be any chance of reconciliation between the Republic and the Separatists, you too would be part of that!" She already knew that it would not be easy, that wounds now torn open would take years, if not lifetimes to heal. "We need to understand you, we need to be understood so that this senseless violence can come to an end!"

"Senseless?" Ventress hissed at the Senator. "Have you seen the rot that exists in the Republic? And on the edges? And everywhere between?"

"And the Separatists are any better? My first encounter with yo... them was when I saw an arena being used as a cruel and barbaric execution chamber, where wild animals were set loose on those who could not have defended themselves in the interest of entertainment! And Count Dooku led the events!"

Ventress blinked at that. The Count was Sith, and cruelty like that... "I do not know what you speak of," she deflected, then inspiration struck her. "But the necessity of cruelty is not in the act of cruelty itself. Rather it is in the example it sets. Fear is a motivator for the guilty while at the same time, the innocent are assured that those who ... deviate receive punishment that demonstrates that those with power are serious about the enforcement of the laws that apply to all."

"Your argument is that cruelty is necessary to discipline and punishment in order to have an effect on the rest of society, to reinforce the results of behavior both good and bad?" Obi-wan mused. "That is curious. Who, or what defines what is necessary or cruel? What of the opposite? Do you lavish grand rewards on those to exceed?"

Ventress was massively uncomfortable with this, being drawn into Obi-wan's questions and finding that she didn't have those answers. She found an out. "Distracting me? I thought Jedi were the sort of people to let others finish their work."

"We are," Obi-wan agreed without missing a beat. "Agent Ors is well versed in her trade, and the Senator has an eye for the larger picture that cannot be denied. You and I, we are superfluous to their work at this time, so why should we not engage in polite conversation?"

Ventress did not want polite conversation. She wanted the information that the Agent was providing, and so she had to wait for that to be made available. Patience wasn't the greatest of virtues to the Sith as she had found in her interactions with her fellow Acolytes. They valued action. She wanted action, her blood called out for her to attack, but she was on a battlefield that she had no knowledge of.

Attacking was foolishness.

Defending was impossible.

Change the battlefield.

"And what of you?" she asked with a smile on her face, full of the enjoyment of a predator, "Is it your tradition to greet guests with weapon drawn before learning their intentions and motivations?" She threw his own aggression back in his face.

"You are correct," Obi-wan agreed with a tilt of his head and a thoughtful expression on his face. "As I may have mentioned, all my previous encounters with Sith and Dark Jedi have been violent ones in the end. Seeing one willing to sit and talk like a civilized person is a refreshing change of pace."

Padme watched this byplay and recognizing a lull point made to ask her own question. "Master Ventress," she defaulted to the proper title for her, "you speak as though being Sith is fundamentally different than being Jedi," she knew she had many, many more questions to ask, but also recognized that the Separatist at her table was not about to open up with their life story. She had to work from the sides and be subtle. "Can you elaborate?"

This was something that Ventress was more comfortable affirming. "We believe that the Jedi limit themselves," she said with a tone of pity, "they refuse to admit to their emotions, to live as they are. Instead, they shackle themselves with chains of their own creation."

She saw that Obi-wan wanted to respond, but held his tongue to let her speak her piece. But she didn't. Through Victory, my chains are Broken. She had chosen her words loosely, yet it seemed that she had not. The second to last line of the Sith Code was something she was not ready to examine yet, as she had focused on working her way through it line by line. Point by point. But she had accepted that the Sith Code was an internal one, that Strength and Power were not the same thing.

"Ventress?" Obi-wan tried to get her attention. "Is something wrong?"

"Peace is a Lie," she repeated to herself. "Passion, a drive. Strength, to change. "Power, to be changed. Victory is the expression of change, and our chains are broken. The Force shall set me free."

"I'm pretty sure you skipped a bit of the Sith Code, but what are you getting at?"

"It's in the wrong order," Ventress pointed out, leaving the two non-Force Sensitives behind, "The Force is the first thing, not the last."

"It is the same way in the Jedi Code. There is no Death, there is only the Force. What is the importance of that?"

"The importance is that the Force is the beginning of all things. The chains that bind us are only there because we allow them to be placed on ourselves. No one can bind us unless we are willing, and it is through the Force that we are made free. Can you not see? We must master ourselves and that mastery can only come through the Force. We must have a drive to give us strength, that strength becomes power when in the service of victory. And the only victory worth having is in over ourselves. The Force shall set me me," she rambled on as the thoughts and words flowed like forgotten rivers. She could never have said this on Serrano, she knew.

She was not free. Not yet. "I understand now," she said to Obi-Wan in a hushed voice. She stood up. "I shall take my leave. Contact me when you have the information for me," she told the Agent. "Going back on our bargain would be a ... poor choice."

"Not going to," Ors agreed. The three Republicans watched as the Sith left freely through the back ways of the Senator's quarters.

"What was that all about?" Padme asked, very confused.

Obi-wan answered. "I think Ventress is not a Master, but an apprentice herself. She said something that started to make sense to her regarding the Code of the Sith, and now she finds that she must think about it. I suggest leaving her too it." He leaned over the table. "Now, what have we learned? Is there anything we can bring to the Duchess?"