--- David McMillan <SkyeFire@aol.com> wrote:

   Hmm.  Am I the only one here who finds the
concept of a Sith Ami both
disturbing and oddly enticing at the same time?

---

With Ami, it was all about control.  Hers over
everyone, to be exact.

Her minimal dress was part of the act.  A simple,
brief, black leather two-piece trimmed in blue, with a
slick sheen reminiscent of oil ice.  Perhaps a few
more square centimeters of flesh could be exposed
while still keeping the garment intact, but that was
not the point.  Effortless slutty seductiveness that
tempted even avowed heterosexual females, and aliens
who considered most other humans repulsive, was - with
emphasis on "effortless".  Between her magic and her
technology, Ami's beauty simply was, so she could
devote her conscious mind to intellectual affairs -
and maintain the arrogance to dismiss anyone who let
themselves be distracted by her body.  Which was
precisely the effect she desired.

This was her second level of control.  Her first was,
of course, being Empress of a vast nation that claimed
at least a quarter of its galaxy as its domain.  While
many cried out against her cold, ruthless methods, she
somehow managed to know just when a particular
population was ready to rebel against her; her
soliders had a reputation for showing up just after
irrevocable decisions had been made and evidenced,
such that the resulting mass executions were easily
justified to what remained of the legal system.  Some
said this was due to her consort, and this was in part
true.  Only those who won her trust - or at least won
an audience with her and kept their mind on the
conversation instead of her, which often amounted to
the same thing given how few were capable of it - knew
that this was due to her third level of control.

Always with the Sith, for as long as records go back,
there was one master and one student.  For a long
time, the only way the occupants of these roles
changed was for one or the other to die, sometimes at
the hands of the other Sith.  But when Ami's consort,
Urawa, gained these powers and inducted Ami, her prior
training as a scientist knocked this system for a
loop.  Ami would learn more, some of which Urawa
himself did not know, then the two would trade titles.
So often had this happened that they had long since
lost track of who was the master - and their mutual
feelings were now almost the only love their hearts
felt.  Most of those they had personally cared for
were long since dead, while the very few whom Ami had
sworn to protect were indeed protected, from a certain
point of view.

Ami had barely shed a tear when her ambitions lead her
to seal away her friends.  Having studied the magic
that predated Terran civilization - the Force - from
records found after humanity discovered remnants of
previous civilizations among the stars, she actually
found herself a bit rusty with senshi magic as she
used it to construct their cryogenic coffins, relying
on magic's tendency to reflect the intent of the user
to get around a lack of viable suspended animation
technology.  Perhaps she would unfreeze them in time
for Crystal Tokyo, in...it was now 2451, so just over
five hundred years hence.  In the mean time, their
looks of panic, outrage, fear, or just plain sadness
sometimes bothered her guests, so she had had them
moved to storage back in the 23rd century.  Had she
had it to do over again, she might have preferred
carbonite; ironically, word of it reached her ears
mere hours after the freezing was complete.

Very few people knew all of this.  To most people, Ami
was just the very efficient person in charge, whose
many posters and statues inspired loyalty while being
pleasing to all eyes.  Any time they wanted
reassurance that the Empire was on the right track,
they needed but look upon her image.  Even those who
knew something about the mechanisms these images
contained could still open themselves to the effect,
and most did.  Which was exactly how Ami wanted it.

After all, the only way to control a person was to be
given control.  And to use the Force required control.

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