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Occlus hadn't hesitated to agree when Acina asked her to come along for an artifact retrieval. It happened. Frequently. Sometimes into the middle of the very vaults that Acina guarded.
She didn't tend to ask many questions. If she needed information ahead of time Acina would provide it. Otherwise, it was generally good manners not to demand unvolunteered information from a Dark Lord, even when one was also a Dark Lord.
(That wasn't why she didn't ask, though. Occlus had never hesitated to be rude when doing so was in her better interest. She didn't ask because casual expressions of trust were guaranteed to fluster the other sith and any time she could pull it off it made it that much more likely that she was about to get laid.)
She hadn't considered a lightsided world.
At least not like this.
They were in orbit, sheltered from the planet by the world's moon, and she could already feel it. Still. Harmonious. Living.
She wanted to explode something just to break the resonance. She wanted to launch missiles down onto that planet and send herself vids of all that overgrown vegetation burning.
"I've never met a lightsided planet that lured," she remarked placidly instead.
"It's rare, but dangerous." Acina frowned at a recent scan of the planet. It was almost entirely, blindingly, green. Teeming with plantlife. According to the scans there were oceans under some of that green, hidden away under soil that had formed from so many millions of years of rapid growth.
"If it has this much of an aura from here, this is going to be a problem." The temple they were raiding was on the moon--even the ancient Jedi hadn't been foolish enough to try to build it on the planet--and if Acina's people had calculated things right they would have a small window of time where the temple would be safe to approach, a couple of hours, max, before the rotation of the moon turned the temple again towards the planet.
If they were still there when that happened, they likely wouldn't be leaving.
"We should have just leaked the location to the Jedi. Let them strip their own temple and steal it from them afterwards," Occlus complained.
Acina chuckled. "Tempting, but they might just decide to stay--or become trapped themselves--and then we'd have an even harder retrieval."
Occlus made a disgruntled sound, leaning against the table. "Next time you ask me to do something, remind me that following your into temples might involve less fun and blood and lightning and more planets that are going to try to trap me into endless meditation."
Approaching the moon was a delicate thing. The shuttle was linked to some sort of AI on Acina's ship. Not a normal droid but something else. Acina didn't offer details and Occlus didn't ask (yet), but Occlus was more than capable of recognizing a repurposed artifact when she saw it.
The important thing was that the AI was loyal and capable of piloting the shuttle even through force manipulations, since Occlus and Acina very well might not be able to handle that themselves by the time they made it back.
If they weren't able to make it back at all, well, that was the risk they were taking.
There was no reassurance that it would return Occlus if she reached the shuttle without Acina. Occlus most certainly would have told it not to leave without her, if it had been her AI. That was just good planning. Not that she expected Acina to try to leave her, but in situations like this any sith would understandably prioritize their own safety.
When they landed, it was in blazing sunlight. The moon had a thin atmosphere that wouldn't have been able to support life without significant interference from the planet below, and every moment spent in the heat of the sun withered that life. It was a constant war between the Light and light. Almost poetic, really, how the force struggled in the face of its namesake.
The force energy being so at war with nature kept it from tormenting Occlus and Acina while they too were under the heat of the sun.
Unfortunately, Temples tended to have roofs.
The moment they stepped into the shade, they could both feel it rushing in. Tranquil. It felt like the time Occlus had discovered, to her horror, that she was a very giggly drunk.
Occlus bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and tried to focus on anger.
It was a bit hard to do that, with Acina striding ahead of her. Was she really going to be angry, with Acina in those pants with that ass?
"The old defenses should be long worn away by now," Acina said, voice a bit strained. "We should have no problem getting into the temple."
Occlus nodded absently, following after her.
"Occlus?" Acina said, half turning.
Occlus shook herself slightly, digging fingernails into her hands. "If the defenses have worn away, what are the chances of an artifact surviving?"
"Jedi defenses wouldn't be trying to keep the force of a lightsided planet out, so they'd be vulnerable. Any seals on an artifact would be trying to isolate the power of that object."
Occlus should have known that.
She was dealing with this worse than she had expected, and they were barely into the temple. They had only been here for minutes. The further they went in, the more the force permeating the area would be quietly waiting for a victim to gently calm down and lure into an eternal trance.
She needed to keep the Light out. She was a Dark Lord, that should be easy.
She needed to treat it like a battle.
Occlus pulled a lightning shield up around her, the arcs of lightning twitching painfully over her skin and her head suddenly going blessedly clear.
Acina spun, alarmed, lightning jumping to her own hands. Almost as quickly as Occlus realized that summoning lightning behind another Dark Lord's back probably looked like an attack, Acina's expression cleared.
"Oh," Acina said. "That is better."
"Next time I'll warn you. This planet is messing with my head."
Acina chuckled, lightning shimmering between her fingers and swirling around her in an arc as she turned again. "Yes. We need to move quickly. We have ten minutes until it reaches the most optional angle, and maybe an hour after that before the moon will turn away from the star."
"If the vault follows the same patterns of other Jedi temples from this timeperiod, it'll take us more than those ten minutes to get there."
"Do you suggest we run?"
"In? No. We need to be sure we don't miss anything. A brisk walk at most. Out? Yes. We'll need as much passion and focus as possible while we lose the star's protection."
Acina chuckled. "I can think of better ways to stir energy and passions than running."
Occlus smirked at her back. "Those don't get us quickly to the surface. Though when we inevitably need something to stir up passion and drive the lightside back…"
"It would be something to fuck in a Jedi vault. We might even scandalize the force to back off. Sad about the time limit."
"I'm sure we can figure out something both passionate and quick," Occlus said, her eyes flicking to the carvings as they walked through the hallway even while her thoughts were elsewhere. Even just imagining it was helping keep her thoughts nice and crystal clear.
She sent lightning out every time she could feel the planet trying to get it's horrible calmness through her shield. It burnt at the inscriptions in the floor and made her fingers feel near bleeding.
Acina just raised an eyebrow at her.
"If it's attacking me then it's an enemy," Occlus said blithely. It was hardly like she was the first sith to fling lightning at an inanimate object. In fact, doing so could be said to be the reason why she was here.
The lightning skittered oddly over an inscription and she stopped, eyes narrowing. "Hidden passage, near the strike. If we're lucky it'll go to a vault."
"And if we're unlucky it will open into a shelter." Acina was moving towards the inscription, though, clearly having noted the same change in pattern that Occlus had. "That's not a normal placement for a vault."
"Not a normal placement for a shelter, either."
Occlus watched as Acina shifted something on the inscription, clearly more familiar with the exact hidden mechanism than Occlus was.
The wall slid ominously open, and they exchanged a glance. Nothing felt different, but further down could easily mean dealing with more of the smothering Light that permeated the area.
"I'll go first," Occlus offered, smirking at her. "Drag my body back out with you if the damn planet tries to turn me into a Jedi, will you?"
Acina huffed out a laugh, waving for her to go ahead. "I'm surprised it hasn't taken one look at you and given you up completely."
"I'm desirable like that. Forbidden fruit. Either that or the Light doesn't know when to quit."
"Most likely."
The stairs downward were short, ending in a small landing and another, more obvious, door. It still wasn't clear whether it was a vault or a shelter. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was the latrine.
Acina opened the door, and for a moment everything was pure calm.
Then Occlus's knees hit the floor, the brief moment of pain jarring her enough that she was able to follow it with more pain from her own lightning as she struggled to clear her head. For a moment she thought for sure it had been a trap.
A glance up through the doorway put paid to that thought.
It was a vault.
A vault filled with far more of the planet's power than either of them had been prepared to deal with.
Acina was still on her feet, experience making her better able to handle this sort of energy and denying her any sudden pain to snap her out of it. Her lightning shield had dropped.
Occlus couldn't fix that, but she could add some pain. She gathered lightning in her hand, letting it burn at her fingers, and flung it at the other woman.
Acina let out a yell, back arcing as the lightning raced through her. Occlus grabbed onto every bit of the visual that appealed to her, clawing at every bit of darkness and passion she could get from it to bolster her against the Light surrounding them.
Lightning sprung once again to the other Sith's hands and she spun. If Acina attacked back that was fine. They could work things out over a fight and that would keep the calmness at bay.
Instead, Acina steadied herself, looking back over her shoulder in annoyance at the doorway. "It's the vault."
"No shit. You think your blueprints are still accurate?"
"At a glance, yes." Acina drew in a shaky breath, the only indication of how much she must be struggling. "We need some way of shielding ourselves."
"Not possible, we'll need to be quick."
"One mistake--"
"No time for hesitating!" Occlus braced her hands against the floor, wondering if it would work better for her to stay here as backup or to go with. "Sometimes you just need to do the thing and if it fucks you over you deal with that later."
"We need a--"
Occlus pulled her shirt off, impulsively, which was enough to catch Acina off guard. "Anger isn't easy to keep up without something other than a planet to be pissed at, let's try passion."
Acina shook her head, but her lightning was strengthening around her as if to prove Occlus's point. "You can't fuck your way through the vault."
"I am a wild thing made of rage and spite," Occlus declared, lightning arcing over her bare skin. "If I need to fuck my way free of the light side I can and I will."
Acina let out a laugh, moving closer and reaching a hand down towards her. Occlus took it.
The lightning they both still had over them, shielding them from what it could, clashed, burning their skin and arcing between them like an attack.
It hurt.
It was dangerous as fuck.
It was incredibly centering.
Occlus bared her teeth as Acina pulled her to her feet. "We'll get what we came for or we'll burn in the process."
By the time they stumbled back into the shuttle they were down two shirts and a belt, up an artifact, and in need of more than a bit of kolto.
Occlus collapsed as the door closed behind them, rolling onto her back and letting the cool bite of the metal floor hit the burns over her back. The shuttle started up almost immediately, with the AI saying something about being pleased at the success of plan A.
Acina let the artifact drop to the floor.
"If that thing's shields didn't hold I'm going to be really annoyed," Occlus said. She hadn't asked what it was, but it was something dangerous enough to risk the both of them to obtain it so it had to be useful.
"If they didn't we would know," Acina countered. "It would be leaking force in some way or another."
Occlus eyed it from where she was laying on the floor.
"How badly are you burnt?" Acina asked, gritting her teeth slightly as she let the harsh energy of darksided healing rush over her own burnt skin. She had tossed her own top less for reasons of passion and more out of a need to not melt it to her flesh as the lightning had intensified between them. Occlus wouldn't have said no to stripping bare to spite the Light, but they'd been connected at their hands, not their pants, so it hadn't been necessary.
"Could be worse. I'll survive."
Acina moved towards her, dropping almost bonelessly to straddle Occlus's legs and pressing her hands against Occlus's ribs.
Occlus smirked up at her.
"Brace," Acina advised wrly. "I'm here to heal you, not fuck you."
"Why not both?" Occlus said, voice trailing off into a moan as the healing hit her. She could feel every painful twitch of energy as it forced her burnt skin to heal back into an unburnt state. "We're already half naked."
"You are the only person that I ever seem to end missions with like this," Acina said, exasperated.
Occlus tried to sit up and Acina shoved her back down.
"And here I thought that was why you invited me." There really was no sex like post mission sex, especially after a close call.
"No I invited you because if things went badly I could trust you to come up with a secondary plan."
"Might have been hard to do once the moon turned."
"That's the whole point of this shuttle setup. All you would have to do is get to it."
Occlus paused, putting that together with the mention of 'plan A' when they boarded, and realized that against all logic Acina had told the AI to take Occlus to safety if she returned without Acina.
Because Acina just assumed that Occlus would come back for her.
Occlus let out a breath, and met Acina's eyes.
Acina smirked, hands sliding up Occlus's chest. "Did you think I wouldn't trust you?"
"You never know," Occlus said, trying to play it off. "You know, if you're done healing me--"
Acina cut her off with a kiss.