Some time passed as Felicity was taken care of on Tatooine. It had been discovered that her uncle had been hellish toward her when she was in his custody. So measures were being taken to prevent him from ever getting his hands on her again.
But no one had any idea that someone else had naferious designs on her as well until the night she went missing.
Felicity awoke in a strange place, and for a moment, she thought she was back at her uncle's. The first thing she was aware of was the inability to move because of the tight restraints. It was this inability to change position that awakened her. "Elf?" She called.
To her consternation, it was not Elf who answered her Nor was it her friendMichella, who had arranged this and had coaxed her cooperation without telling her what was really going on.
"How are you, my child?"
The voice she heard now was bringing back all of her memories of it from those days at her uncle's. He had been the very same one who had appeared in what she couldn't be sure were vivid dreams or reality. He had talked to her in these visions or dreams about his pain and the suit that caused it. He had made her feel sorry for him, yet nervous of him all at the same time. He had tried calming her anger toward her abusive uncle by telling her that this uncle was not truly evil, just messed up and misunderstood, like himself. But he also promised her he would take her away from her uncle's house, to live with him in a much fancier place. On his last visit to that home, this apparition had promised her he had a new place prepared, and a woman was there who would be as a mother to her, and that would make him the father figure. And then it happened. Felicity was whisked away from her uncle's and swept headlong into a stormy night, where he left her, exposed to the elements.
The next time she heard from him was just after her rescue at the compound. There, he was not the seemingly kind fatherly figure he made himself out to be in his previous nightly appearances. Instead of being greeted with a fatherly figure who welcomed her with a warm hug and a "Welcome, my child," he had subjected her to a judgment ritual that made her feel fearful, dreading rejection, in awe of him, and finally terrified of being swallowed up by him. During that time, he had bored through her chest with his forceful piercing eyes. She never did find out if he deemed her worthy of his consideration or not, but he ignored her after that, then just disappeared. And there never was a woman waiting to be a new mother for Felicity.
Now, here he was, holding her hostage in a strange place with restraints. What he planned to do to her was anyone's guess and she was terrified. There was something ominous in his voice. All kinds of horrifying thoughts raced through her head, including the possibility that she would be punished for not living up to her captor's standards for what made a child worthy of him. If he knew all her thoughts and what was in her heart, maybe he would use all of that against her. Maybe he would literally force her to do something that was very much against her will.
And who had set this all in motion? None other than her good friend Michella. It had to be. It was all too coincidental.
"Where is Elf?" Felicity asked anxiously.
"Calm yourself, my child, you will see her soon."
Felicity didn't trust or like the way that sounded. Would she see Elf alive, or dead? Was Elf already dead?
"Don't try calling for Ben or Sheev," he spoke again, "I will not be expecting them just yet. I am, however, expecting someone else shortly."
At this, a violent shudder ran through Felicity, and she turned white as a ghost.
He must've noticed this, for he then said, "Why so frightened? It is not your uncle who should be arriving... That can be arranged if you don't behave." He casually brushed her cheek with a whip.
At this, Felicity couldn't help the terrified whimper that escaped her. She realized now that without a doubt, this man had been toying with her since day one, and his intentions were definitely not good.
The door opened, and a familiar voice cooed, "Lissy, it's okay, it's me, Michella."
"Michella," Felicity repeated, turning toward the sound of the voice. "Please help me."
"Don't worry, my friend, it's not as bad as it seems. It'll be okay."
"I'm scared, Michella, I don't like this."
"Trust me, Lissy, I care deeply for you and Ocean, you must know that."
"Where's Elf?" Felicity repeated.
"She's on her way. We're just playing a joke on her."
"You, and him?" An awful realization coming to Felicity.
"Sweety, would I let any harm come to you? Trust me, when she realizes it's all a joke, she'll be laughing right along with us." Michella said with a slight giggle.
Felicity went silent, the uneasy feeling was mounting by the second. She recalled how Ocean had pointed out to her in the past that what Michella did and said never made sense, and how Michella always seemed to make herself scarce whenever Felicity wanted her to be properly introduced to the residents at the compound. She also knew for a fact that Ocean would not find this idea of a joke funny at all. And if Michella cared so much for Felicity, why had she arranged with this man to kidnap Felicity in the middle of the night just to get a rise out of Elf? Surely if she cared as much as she said she did, she would've insisted on leaving Felicity alone and letting her rest and recover. Ocean was right, nothing Michella said made any sense.
Something else dawned on Felicity. "You told me back there that Ocean was sick and could die."
"No, I only said enough to make you think it."
"I don't understand you at all, Michella."
"Honey, would you have agreed to go with me if I told you we were going to chain you up to play a joke on Ocean?"
"No!"
"See? I had to do it this way."
"It was rotten, Michella!"
Be quiet, child!" Vader's voice boomed.
"Sheev?" a woman's voice called from somewhere outside.
"Ah, and here she is at last." Vader said, dropping the whip under the bed.
"Elf!" Felicity called out of a mix of relief and desperation.
Vader withdrew from the side of the bed to open the door. He stepped out and watched as Ocean Elf approached.
"Ugh!" the elf was clearly not happy to see him. "If I had any idea this was your doing...?
He grinned. "So good of you to come."
Shut up!" she snapped. Then she saw the inside of the one-room shack, and the terrified child in the bed. This was no cozy little hut. It was more like a cell with one tiny window near the top. Against the walls were various punishment items, whips, chains and the like.
And she also saw someone else. A tall black woman who looked uncannily like Monique (Moses) Ingram.
Ocean's eyes went wide for a moment, and she gaped. "Is there no depth to where you won't stoop, In-Vader? If that inquizitor has done anything to Felicity I will personally
"Inquizitor?" Felicity whimpered, confused. Was there another person besides Vader, Elf and Michella here. "Michella, how could you let that happen when you said you cared?"
"Lissy, sweety, relax. You'll be fine."
"No, Reva, she is not fine!" Ocean answered her pointedly.
Reva?" Felicity squealed, terrified. "You mean -
"Michella my foot! That's Reva Sevander!" Ocean confirmed.
Felicity burst into tears. "I should've listened to you, Elf."
"Silence!" Vader snapped at Felicity.
"Raise your voice at her like that again and I'll pulverize you, creep!" The elf raged, glaring at Vader.
He shuddered and moved out of the direction of her stare, composed himself and sneered, "You would have refused to come, leaving this poor child to suffer who knows what."
"Don't start that hogwash," the elf growled, "I would never knowingly leave any child alone with the likes of you two."
Vader's angry force frightened Felicity, but so did Ocean's. Felicity remembered how friendly Ocean was initially at the training area, until Anakin was mentioned. Then her demeanor suddenly turned cool. Felicity got the feeling Ocean did not like Anakin, and now that they were both here, this was made very clear.
What worried Felicity now was that if they fought and one of them kicked the other out, what would happen to her? If Vader got his way, would he punish both Felicity and Ocean? Would he then enlist Felicity's uncle to help with the job? This idea made Felicity feel sick to her stomach. She thought she had escaped that with Anakin's and Michella's help, and now it turned out the man had a nefarious agenda which might end in more abuse for her.
On the other hand, if Ocean won, and managed to kick Vader out, would she then unleash her anger at Felicity for wishing to see him back at the training area in the first place? All of these fearful ideas take only a fraction to race into the mind, but a lot longer to describe. Vader had turned out to not be the man he'd lead her to believe. She knew she wouldn't be able to take that kind of bitter disappointment from Ocean as well. But she remembered how Ocean had reacted to learning of the things Brandon had done. That made the likelihood of Ocean going from Miss Jeckle to Miss Hyde very unlikely.
"You don't have to leave her alone with us, Elfie,"
This was met by the angry elf lunging toward him and giving him a slap to his face. "That's OCEAN to you! Only my good friends get to call me Elf...!"
"Ocey, then," he said.
The elf stared at him with a mixture of surprise, suspicion and irritation. "And how in the world did you come up with that one? You were supposed to have taken a hike by the time it was ever mentioned...!"
"Does that really matter?" Reva asked as casually as she could manage.
I'm sorry, I called you Ocey during my chats with the person I thought was Michella." Felicity confessed.
The elf sighed. "This is not your fault, Felicity." She had moved over to her and put a hand on her shoulder to reassure her.
"Give it time, I'm sure you will learn that it is better to be my ally than an enemy, especially as the mother of this child, our child - " Vader said to Ocean.
"Never in a million years!" Ocean hissed, "and she is not your child!"
Suddenly, Vader convulsed and sank to the floor. Then he started panting for breath. His eyes went wide with terror as his torture devices melt or disintegrated into nothing.
"What have you done, you freak!?" Reva/Michella yelped, gaping at Ocean.
Ignoring Reva, Ocean rounded on Vader. "Oh, what a clod." said Ocean. "You really think making that junk disappear will erase my memory of seeing it? Think again!"
Vader recovered after a few moments and slowly got to his feet. "Elf, you are too dangerous for your own good." he said.
"It's Ocean!" she corrected him, "And if you're implying I got rid of all that junk just lickety-split like that, you've really lost your marbles. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"
"It's true, I saw you myself." Reva backed Vader up.
"Oh, and we all know you are Miss Tell-The-Truth 2.0, Michella!" Ocean shot back, putting a sneering emphasis on the name.
"Then how do you explain the whip that bit me when I tried to pick it up? The one lying on your dresser." Reva challenged.
"Then it actually worked!" the elf said, pleased. "But that also means you were in my room at some point." She scowled at Reva. "You have no right and no business in our room!"
"I had to in order to get Felicity here." Reva admitted.
"Wrong! you didn't have to. You should've kept out! The story behind the whip on the dresser is none of your concern except that no one, including you, will ever use it to make another suffer. But now you realized 'oops, I can't have Ocean see all my torture tools, better make them disappear fast and she'll be none the wiser. Wrong!"
I didn't destroy those!"
"Well one of you did, hoping they'd disappear before I saw them! Doesn't matter. you're a murdering torturing scumbag! That's a fact!"
"I never tortured - " Reva began.
"You killed and mained countless people, and you were all set to torture a clone child, when another clone spoiled that little party for you. Then you tried to cry your way out of the consequences! You used all kinds of dark magic and whatnot to get away with it - until now!" Ocean said mennacingly.
"Come now, calm yourself, you wouldn't want to make a scene and frighten the child, would you?" Vader said, thinking he had and would be able to maintain the upper hand.
"As if you cared!" Ocean spat. "You, who killed thousands of children and parents and single people! You, who had people tortured in so many ways!"
"Must you make me pay for that for the rest of my life!?" the man shouted.
Yes!" Ocean flung back sharply.
Felicity shuddered.
Ocean continued. "You, who boasted about how you'd make them scream! You burned, froze, used torture droids and other means, including mind-control to make people feel extreme pain!"
"I did all of that because Palpatine made me!" he retorted.
"Don't give me that excuse! You did it because you could! You didn't just lose control and slug one person out of anger! You did this kind of stuff over and over and over! And ultimately it was your choice to follow Palpatine!"
"You can blame him for what I did too." Reva hoped Ocean would be so focussed on Vader that she would just overlook Reva the way Clone Ben had.
"You are all about vengeance, not justice. You are responsible for your own actions!" Ocean shot back.
Vader's creepy plotting, Reva "Michella's" deception, and Ocean's raw anger made Felicity shudder in her bonds. She still didn't dare to say anything.
Vader seemed to be having trouble breathing, and Felicity heard this when Ocean was through with her screaming tirade.
"What!?" Felicity exclaimed, the realization of the true nature of this man now dawning on her. She looked horrified. "He burned and killed people?" She muttered fearfully. "Michella did too? Just like Uncle Brandon!"
"Yes, and that's why I can't stand either of them." Ocean confirmed grimly as she turned her gaze on the girl.
"That's why you turned so angry when I mentioned wanting to see Anakin back at the training area, just before that judgment thing?" she asked.
"Exactly." Ocean drew near to Felicity. But as the blanket was over the girl, the restraints were not visible. "He is not fit to be around children, and I think he must've found you and brought you to Tatooine as a means of trapping me into marrying him. He and Reva, excuse me, Michella, have quite a history of off again on again. She's so mixed up that she wanted to get even with Vader for killing a bunch of younglings, then she wanted to get even with Ben for not stopping Vader, because nothing is ever her own fault."
"Stop talking about me like I'm not even here!" Reva protested.
"Why? You've been disappearing every time Felicity tried to get us to meet online. It's no wonder. You knew you might be recognized for who you are, Michella Sevander!"
Vader seemed to regain his breath and his might. "You could refuse me on Earth, but you will obey me even if it takes locking you up in here for years!"
"No!" Ocean turned to glare at him again. "I wouldn't even raise a pet fish with you, let alone a child! I will forcibly take her from you first!"
"You wouldn't dare!" he said.
"You're still saying this after you learned I don't make idle threats?" she railed. "I can't stand anything about you! I hate your mask, I hate your healed face, I hate your voice, I hate the way you skulk and move about, because all I see, all I feel when I'm in your presence," she was in a full on snarling rant now, "is all the agony and death you caused without remorse! There will never be a good excuse for what you did!"
"Not even after my healing? I thought you'd at least find me a little handsome."
"I don't care about looks! It's personality that matters and you have deliberate and extensive commission of torture in your past! So when I look at you, that is all I see!"
"I wouldn't do that now!
"Yeah, right! You had it in you to do it at all!" Ocean began to rage, but was cut off by a sudden outburst from Felicity.
"You would!" Felicity blurted out. "You were supposed to help me get away from Brandon!"
"And I have." he said. "He is not anywhere around here, do you see anyone besides us, Elf?"
"Shut it!" the elf snapped at him. In a gentler voice, she implored "Please, carry on, Felicity. You said he would. Are you talking about that crazy judgment thing, or is there something else he's done to you? I know he brought us both here against our will...!"
"That's not true, Ocean, you volunteered to come, and you let me teleport you here." said Reva.
Vader nodded at Reva.
Felicity looked confused, which was exactly what Vader wanted. His expression turned smug, he thought Reva had put Ocean in her place at last and shut her up.
He was wrong.
"Because You tricked me!" Ocean hissed back. "You wrote me, pretending to be Emperor Sheev!"
"What!?" Felicity exclaimed.
"You told me Judge Hayes had died and I needed to revive him! I had no idea what was really going on! I'll bet it was you who made him sick in the first place!"
"Michella, you did what!?" Felicity couldn't help exclaiming
"Yes!" Ocean confirmed.
"How can you just stand there and accuse me like this?" Reva protested, glaring at Ocean. "I could kill you in an instant.
"Oh my stars!" Felicity cried out, appalled. "Ocean was right about you all along!"
Ocean scoffed. "If you want to damage your dumb looking flying light saber, or yourself, that's fine with me." Then she turned to confront Vader again. "And you! Understand this, Darth Invader! You get no cooperation or sympathy or respect from me! You got that?"
"I thought you had a kind enough heart to care even a little, after you heard me going through that scrubbing - "
"Don't start with me on that again! YOU arranged it so I would hear you! You knew all about that beforehand! YOU got Ben to comply with you so that he would just happen to take me through the medical facility on a tour of the compound JUST AS you were going through that! Sicko!" The elf raged."
"Other girls have thrown themselves at me out of sympathy, and their sympathy sometimes turned to real love, which I never returned, or else just obsession. I killed some who bothered me too much. But you are different. I tried everything to get you to open up to me and you are hopelessly stubborn!" The man ranted.
"Not stubborn." the elf corrected. "Determined. It is you who are stubborn. You still refuse to take a hint after that blow-out back on earth."
"What blow-out?" Felicity asked.
"Oh, just one day he went blundering into our headquarters and made a huge fool of himself!" Ocean said bluntly.
"You owed me some respect, Elf," Vader objected.
"Ocean hissed.
Vader continued. "I never put you through a judgment. I just greeted you in person when we first met. Felicity would not be the only child put through a judgment, anyone else would. That was meant to show you how much on the light side I really am."
"Bull!" The elf snapped back.
"No, hear me out." He tried to appeal, "You annihilated a notorious creepy pasta monster, so you had nothing to prove - "
"I thought we went over this the day you kidnapped me. I already told you, mission incomplete!"
Reva grinned smugly.
"And I'm sure you had nothing to do with that either, Reeeeeeeeva!" Ocean accused her, drawling out her name in a most provoking manner.
"I'll get you for that!" Reva started toward Ocean.
"Don't you two start!" Vader interjected. "Ocean, I just know we would be a great team, or even a couple.
Both Ocean and Reva gagged.
Vader continued. "Just think of all the creepy pastas we could dominate, and annihilate at will!"
"I said NO!" Ocean shouted at him. "No, no, NO! I don't make deals with one devil to bring down another!"
"I didn't wait and plot over the past few years just to be denied!" Vader fumed.
"Tough darts! You are denied!" the elf said coldly.
"Why can't I make you listen? Everyone else was so easy. They were sorry for me. They were so amazed to see me come back from the dead as it were," he chuckled malevolently.
"Wait." Ocean said. "You mentioned the past few years. It was just a few years ago that you turned up at the compound, then?"
"The very day my force sense picked up on your destroying of that monster's wood."
Ocean got this "Eureka!" look on her face.
The man looked for a moment as if he was about to say "Oh, crap." over giving his lie away. But he just continued. She'd figured out that much anyway. "Once I was sure I had them all trusting and feeling sorry for me, I knew there was a better chance at getting to you, with their help. I used family connections to appeal to them, and your aversion to suffering to appeal to you."
"You were planning to entrap me for the past few years? Ugh!" The elf was disgusted beyond belief. "I was right all along, you are nothing but an unusually repulsive creep, whatever you conned others into believing about you!"
"If you'd just give it a chance, you'd realize what a powerful force we could be." Vader said.
"The answer is NO!"
Vader sighed. "Ben told me this was useless."
Ocean looked suspiciously at him., "You were not actually scrubbed every month for the past 30 years." she theorized, looking relieved.
"No, not really." he admitted. Noticing her expression, he confessed, Not even once." Then, he tried to shift the focus of the conversation off himself and possibly get her to reconsider. "You are a complicated one, Miss Ocean Elf. I can see the relief on your face. You disdain me, yet you are glad I was not turtured for years."
"There is nothing complicated about that." The elf replied sharply. "Just because I can't stand you, does *NOT* mean I'd take any delight in seeing you suffer. Seeing your smuggness disappear is a completely different thing." Her expression hardened. "But this is not about me. It's about you, and your story over the last few years. It was all a lie, a big act."
He nodded, and explained. "I had everyone not allowed in while my droids and I put it all on. I made such convincing screams that Luke was put out of sorts for a while, every time. Good lad, that."
"Ugh!" The elf scowled. "You toyed with everyone." she spat.
"when Ben told me you were upset enough to run off sobbing," he continued, "I thought I might have a good chance at you."
"And you and your acomplice here, were even willing to manipulate the mind of this young girl along with all the rest." The elf gazed impassively at him.
He shuddered as if suddenly very uncomfortable. Then he tried to justify his actions. "All for the greater good," he said.
"There is no good with anything you do!" Elf said firmly.
"Oh?" he countered. "So destroying Palpatine was not for the greater good?"
"You weren't required or welcome to be part of that." said Elf. "The others may disagree, but as far as I'm concerned, you and he are the same! If you weren't biologically related to Luke, you would've done squat for him."
"I don't understand how you can believe that!" he exclaimed, exasperated.
"Figure it out, stupid!" the elf spat.
"Let me tell you something, Elf, it was I who told them Palpatine was back. They never would've discovered it without me!"
"Always wanting to take the credit and the limelight, as usual!" the elf snarled at him. "That thing was probably just a clone anyway, if not a super life-like droid."
"Forget it, she's got that much figured out." said Reva to Vader. "You'll never get her.
"Are you saying I created Palpatine?" he rounded on Elf.
"I wouldn't put it past you." she shouted.
"In my condition?"
"Your condition nothing! You just admitted to faking that, remember?"
He scowled. "Why must you always be difficult?"
"You snatched me right off my property. If you could do that, you're strong enough to make some likeness of Palpatine." Elf concluded.
"So that's what happened!" Felicity realized. "You snatched me from my uncle's then left me to die in the desert!"
"No!" he cut her off. "Ben ruined that plan! I was going to find Elf and get her to help me rescue you, right after my miraculous healing!"
"Oh, you scum!" The elf raged.
"And if I couldn't get to her, I would've gotten Lady Kerrisa and Mish-Reva," he corrected himself, to foster you - "
Felicity let out a horrified shriek.
"Until Elf reconsidered!" the man continued.
The elf was too enraged to speak. Trembling, she glared at Vader, who moved out of her direct line of sight. She turned her glare on Reva, who also moved away, cringing.
"You lied to me!" Felicity lamented. "You said you would get me out of there. And now I find out you were going to bring them here instead? And Michella isn't Michella at all, she's that awful inquisitor!"
"Only if Elf doesn't agree to raise you with me." he said smugly.
"Haven't you learned by now not to underestimate me?" Elf said in a low, menacing tone, fixing him with an unblinking gaze. "I will take her away from you!"
Vader sighed heavily. "I tried everything short of going on bended knee to get just a little consideration from you, and you have cruelly rejected me at every turn!" he said, sounding exhausted and near tears.
"Cruel indeed..." Ocean said incredulously, rolling her eyes. "Look at you, the guy who laid low so many people without a thought and left mass destruction in your wake, and then conned and emotionally abused more. And here you are, carrying on over some girl!"
"That's how you think of yourself, some girl?" he said.
"When it comes to you, yes."
"How wrong you are, Ocean. You are much more than that." It was a blatant attempt at flattery, and it failed miserably.
"Okay then, I'm not just some girl, I'm your sworn enemy!" Ocean declared.
"You are impossible!" the man yelled in frustration.
"And you are revolting!" the elf shot back.
Felicity fought hard to stifle a laugh.
"I will skew the force itself if necessary!" he threatened.
"Oh, I'm sure you and Reva already did that!" the elf said icily.
"I had every one of them eating out of my hand. Well, if I can't make you join me willingly, I can always use the force to turn everyone against you and have them believe you were the real threat instead of Palpatine. Then who would you have?"
"Get this through your thick skull!" Elf shouted, "I will NEVER join forces with you! Not even if you get everyone at the compound to hate me! If that were to happen, it would be the last you or any of them would ever see of Felicity. I'd take her with me and that would be it."
"You are all such fools!" he ranted, his voice going deeper and darker.
"Says the fool who thinks he can run the universe and then goes to pieces when his ego gets bruised!" the elf taunted.
"I have made people scream ten times for every insult!" he blustered.
"This is exactly why I hate you!" Ocean railed. "You're a sadistic freak! That can't be fixed!
"There is no talking to you!" he said in an angry, frustrated sulk.
The elf continued. "And you had the gall to think I would want to be associated with the likes of you!"
"Enough!" he roared.
But Elf was in full-on rant and wouldn't be hushed. "You were hoping that deep down I had a mushy side that would make me fall in love with you, after all the effort you put into trying to win me over. You found out otherwise. So you should've taken a hint and given up. But the real reason you went after me is because you thought I was strong in the force. That's why you were so interested to know about my test the night you got healed. You tried to make it seem like small talk. Now I just realized what your actual motive has been all along! It's all about power and domination with you. The lengths to which you go for that are insane, and you will never conquer me...!"
"Oh?" he challenged, "If you care about this child at all," he stared at the girl in the bed.
Felicity cried out in pain.
"you will stop resisting me." Vader demanded.
"Knock it off!" the elf shouted, lunging for him and punching him in the nose.
It had the desired effect. Vader's stare was broken, and Felicity stopped wailing and moaning.
Back at the compound, Ben, Luke, Yoda and Sheev, all experienced a terrible disturbance in the force that jolted them awake. It was night time, and Felicity was in danger.
Unfortunately, it took what seemed like ages just getting out of their night clothes, then quickly piling into a space craft to attempt a rescue.