Jaina Jade Skywalker

((Suggested Listening)) Weightless, she floated in a silent sea, the only sound her own breathing. Curled up, the motherly embrace of her womb-like surroundings warded off her pain. Subtly, rolling waves in her haven jostled her to and fro, and she consented to be rocked to sleep. Here, in her watery home, the only thing visible the red of her own eyelids, she could at last forget. A slow and gentle caress, whispered reassurances, all-too-knowing eyes, a thumb against her cheek, brushing away liquid evidence that yes, she can still feel. Modināt. As if in response to the command, Jaina's eyes snapped open. A scene in watercolor swam before her eyes, and the weightlessness did not abate with consciousness. Was she yet in a dream? No, she could not be. Dreamless sleep did not retain the painful memories that now assailed her. Tares' last whisper to her mind--her name--haunted her. He still had not awakened and gave no indication to his caretakers that he ever would: locked in a netherworld of his mind absent the touch of the Force. Emily's face, scarlet and pained, swam before her mind's eye. For a brief shining moment, she had been relieved that Emily held no ill-will towards her, and she wondered if taking such a hasty leave of her niece's company had caused more problems than it had solved. Then they began to wash over her: waves of words, red-hot as lava, searing agony carving a deeper wound than the blackened kisses from a blaster that marred her skin ever could. Pregnant... Raynuk... I don't have anyone else... Please don't tell him... I can't do it alone... Please... Help me... The harder she tried to burn the thoughts from her mind, the more Jaina's sense of anger and injustice rose. The harder she tried to gain control of her thoughts, the more they festered in her belly. Why was Emily allowed this shining chance at motherhood of which Jaina herself had been robbed? Unstable as they were, the timbre of her relationship with Raynuk would prove a disastrous environment for raising a child, especially if, as Jaina inferred from Emily's teary message, they had already gone their separate ways. Part of her knew she had a promise to keep to Sirvani, and the Jedi way would be to put her own feelings aside in order to comfort and support her niece. But Jaina was not all Jedi, and this level of injustice could not be borne. So the appointed time window that Emily had given had come and gone, and Jaina could not bring herself to reach out to her niece at all. Instead, she found herself floating in a womb of her own, nearly as naked as an unborn child except for the barest coverings. Bacta cleansed the third-degree burns on her leg that rendered her unable to walk, the searing infection in her arm, the surgical scar in her abdomen where they had removed the kidney that had necrotized as a result of being shot. But while her body outwardly convalesced, inwardly, a blackened grief, coated in acidic jealousy, ate away at her fire and resolve. So she hung, seemingly endlessly, in the little world of her own, biding her time, hoping that when she recovered enough to leave this place that she knew something about where she was going. You must finish what you have begun... The ghostly whisper echoed through her mind again, a presence she knew too well and not at all reaching for her, and a spiral of images took her out of herself. Decrepit creatures in a jungle valley, charging at her with bared teeth. The brilliant blaze of an orange saber. Collapsing to the ground on a ship whose deck was sparkling new and startlingly familiar. Small fingers in her own. Raynuk, lying in her hospital bed. Wait, her hospital bed? Once again her mind became her own, and Jaina's face drained of blood, ashen and pale. No, not hers, his own. He was here. And he already knew that she was too. Her mood grew even darker, the mounting weight of the secret she carried like a millstone tied around her soul, numbness threatening to overcome her completely as a tiny tendril of tenderness whispered reminders to stay soft.

Muffled voices. Who? Slits of hazel-green appeared. Lights too bright. They retreated back underground, relegated to hot-pink shade. Dusty, dirty ground, heavy robes, a pulsing rhythm she could not exorcise from her mind. Satisfying crunch of metal, sputtering drippings smothering breathing permacrete rising reign of fire rasping breath ringing ears Black. Intoxicating cologne of velanie flowers, clammy pale heartbeat, waxing and waning of the bronchial tide. Don't leave me alone here, you're all I have now. "IT'S NOT HIM." Ringing, ringing, ringing, tumbling down the dark hole back to the endless jungle, chasing the kitterpat, jakrab leaving scars in its wake. Ssurian's roar from the little girl's open mouth. "GET AWAY FROM HER!" Trembling in his nearness, does he dare notice? Skin melts away in purifying conflagration until all that's left is raw beating heart, exposed and vulnerable, what she swore she would never be again. Not to him. If she is not his enemy, what is she? Better flee than find out. Coward. "I am proud to call you sister." She is a Jedi Knight, or what's left of one. She is a sister, or what's left of one, her family's bodies crumbling into dust beneath burning Almanian wasteland. She is a wife, or what's left of one, covenant ripped in twain by sinister ignorance. She is a mother, or what's left of one, her infant daughter ripped away from her grasp, ripped away from childhood, ripped away from encasing love that could have shielded her from the hardened heart that finds everyone eventually because it is work to stay soft. Sudden flashes of light jolted her out of her thoughts. It was all too confusing. How could she reconcile the aftermath of such a hopeless journey? Adi-Wan's voice, distorted tremolo across forgotten years of memory. "In all the confusion, you must keep your mind clear." Clarity. That was the trick. Haunted by the ghosts of her past, she could never be clear. Clear. Clear. Clear. "CLEAR!" ---------------------------- Jaina lay in the quietude of her hospital room, Corellian countryside out her window, the darkness of her countenance echoed in her grim mood. Their task had been an utter failure. She had pushed Tares to his search, and now he swam in bacta across the hall, unresponsive, feeling through the Force like a shell of the bright silver sun he had been. Tirzah was safe, her dehydration and shock treated by caring and grieved medical personnel, slumbering in the bed that shared Jaina's room, the curtain removing her from sight but not from senses. Celedon was across the hall with Tares, or so they'd told her. For the first time since her arrival in Tyrena, Jaina was sitting up in bed, allowed to eat some gelatinous substance artificially colored to be as brightly violet as her saber. It utterly failed to tempt her appetite. Forlorn, she passed the hours breathing, listening, praying to the Force that Tares would reappear in all his strength to her senses. The only interruption came with the arrival of a Selonian nurse who brought in her comlink. "We found this among your things, and figured you could use the down time getting caught up. No Holonet service in the Unknown Regions, huh?" The jest fell flat, and Jaina refused to acknowledge it, even as the Selonian's face fell as he backed out of the room. She held her comlink limply in her hand. Maybe it was better not to be tied to the outside world. Simpler to disappear inside herself. But those were not the actions of a Jedi Knight. She could be stronger than that. She had to be. For Tirzah's sake, if not for her own. With a slow exhale, she flicked her comlink to life, and the data alerts came streaming in. Carida. "We do not comply." Coronet, and the smoking remains of CoreSec Headquarters. Whispers of the name Faust. More messages from Delta, advances she was halfway tempted to comply with because of the gaping wound of self-loathing that had been carved into her equilibrium like the blast to her abdomen. And one final missive that she was most apprehensive to acknowledge: a voice message from Emily. Jaina's heart had been shattered at the loss of Tirzah; ground into dust at the loss of Andon. When she listened to Emily's message, her glass-dust heart became a cyclone, scattering its pieces to the wind, the crescendo in the final movement of her emotional fragmentation. Too exhausted to cry, too broken to adequately feel, she simply thumbed the comlink off, set it quietly on her bedside table, and stared out the window into malapropos summer sunset, her face a statuesque masterpiece of hollow agony.

Master Tares, her mother, and Celedon had been unconscious for most of the journey back through silent space, leaving Tirzah to watch the bumbling medical droid trying to stabilize them and repeatedly informing her that such injuries were too severe to be handled in the ship's limited surgery. Upon arrival, then, Atlas had summoned a speeder to take them to the hospital. But there was smoke on the horizon as they sped through Coronet. The bodies that had been carted through the double doors of the emergency facility at Tyrena Medical Center were horrific, some of them mangled nearly beyond recognition even to her dim and wispy vision. As they had been waiting in this sterilized lobby, she had caught snippets of conversation centered around some kind of explosion, and even one Zabrak nurse who she had overheard saying "Coronet General is full, these are transfers". What had happened on Corellia in the few short days they'd been away? The Codru-Ji orderly peered over the front desk to stare down her long nose at Tirzah. "Start over for me, at the beginning, and tell me what happened, little one." The girl's face fell, her eyes glassy with tears and shock and fatigue. Turning, she gestured to the trio of hoverstretchers floating behind her, swaying under the weight of her own body. "Shot... burned... gone," she said, somewhere in the back of her mind frustrated by the awareness that her words were making no sense. A moment later, her face contorted and she retched, vomiting on the floor in front of the desk before everything went black.

The kid had made short work of a handful of advancing troopers, but his luck had run out. When Jaina emerged from inside the shuttle, she saw him propped up behind the crate where he had taken cover, afflicted with what appeared to be a blaster wound to the shoulder. Her protective instinct spiked, and regardless of the high level of resting pain she endured, she was determined that he would make it out alive. Holding her palms facing out, a wall of energy proceeded before her, serving as a shield against incoming blaster bolts and rippling outward to knock the advancing troopers off their feet. When she had done so, she turned a worried eye to where the silver-headed teen lay. "Come on, kid," she said gravely, hoisting him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry much as she had done with Tares, and rushing back up the ramp. Slapping the control with her free hand, she laid him on the bunk opposite Tares' and turned to her daughter with solemn eyes. "I know you're frightened, but listen to me. You need to put bacta patches on his wound and stabilize him. I'm getting us out of here." Tirzah's wide eyes met hers, and Jaina saw the flicker of responsibility echo behind the shock the girl obviously displayed. She tilted her head, horrified, in a fractional nod. Jaina reached out to stroke her cheek gently with the backs of her blackened fingers. "I know you can do it," she said quietly. Turning away from the girl, she swung herself into the pilot's seat of the shuttle, firing up the engine's thrusters. In mere moments, they were darting away from the tower. While there were anti-aircraft emplacements, as Celedon had implied, they were not programmed to fire at anything leaving the tower. By the time they had been activated by sentient control, Jaina had taken them nearly out of range, only needing to jink a handful of shots. "Atlas," she called into the comm, "this is Jaina. I have him. Be ready to leave when we arrive at the spaceport." A double-click of affirmative was all the reply she needed. This whole excursion had been an exercise in playing against the clock. If they got wind of the escape and somehow closed down the spaceport by the time she arrived, there would be a whole lot of bloodshed in order for Jaina to escape. And, she thought grimly, given the state of her injuries, she would not like her odds if it came to a firefight. But the worry was unfounded. The base was slow to mobilize, and the shuttle put down next to the Ferro Re with no inhibition. Powering down the shuttle, Jaina pushed herself to her feet, the agony pulsing through her limbs as they threatened to give way. Tirzah had done as she asked, tending to the boy, and had now gone one step farther--thrown Celedon over her shoulder as her mother had done, though she appeared unsteady under the boy's weight. Jaina mirrored her action, and together the two of them staggered down the ramp toward the safety of Tares' ship. Mere moments later, the Re shot through Acrid's atmosphere, Atlas at the helm. Though possessed of a less nimble touch than Jaina, the droid nevertheless carried them through the asteroid field without incident, and its complement of passengers slipped safely into lightspeed toward Corellia and Solaris HQ.

"Oh, not good," slipped out of her mouth before she could recall it. The ring of blasterfire echoed in the small hangar, and Jaina thanked the Force that Celedon evidenced that his ability to fight went beyond his barbed tongue. The troopers nearest them crumpled to the ground instantly. Rallying shouts began to echo with the sound of Celedon's blaster bolts, and Jaina considered for a moment trying to recall the reckless teen from his doomed mission. But the weight of Tares grew ever-heavier on her back, and even the sustaining power of the Force was beginning to drain from her weakened muscles. Utterly sapped by the day's ordeal, she took the boy's advice. It was time to go. Hoisting Tares up the open ramp of the nearest shuttle and dodging the crossfire as they did so, she and Tirzah maneuvered him efficiently to the rear of the shuttle, where they laid him gently on one of the crew bunks. Brushing a lock of silver hair off of his forehead, a knot grew in Jaina's stomach as she paused fractionally to assess his condition. His face was pale and hollow, his expression grim and cold. Her breath caught in her throat. "We need to get him out of here," she rasped to Tirzah. "Keep an eye on him and if he moves or changes in any way, call me. I'm going to start the engines." "Mom, he's gone," Tirzah's statement stopped her in her tracks. "Whatever this is, this isn't Master Tares. It doesn't feel a thing like him." Tears welled up in Jaina's eyes, but she refused to turn around, punching in the requisite preflight checks as she shouted over her shoulder. "It's him, Tirzah. They've done something. I don't know what. We'll find out, we'll fix it." "IT'S NOT HIM." She was shrieking now, a note of hyper panic in her words that caused Jaina to stop in her tracks. "You can't fix this! Stop pretending you can fix everything! You can't! You just make things worse! Master Tares is gone, you're going to die, and so is Celedon, and then I will too!" All remaining moisture disappeared from her mouth as Jaina stared at her daughter. Tears were streaming down the girl's cheeks and her limbs were shaking uncontrollably. The only sound in her ears for a handful of moments was that of her own pulse as wounded heart took in blinded eyes. You're in shock, she thought. You don't know what you're saying. But in her heart of hearts, she knew that Tirzah was halfway right. Best pilot and mechanic in the galaxy or not, there were some things she could not fix. "But it doesn't mean I can't try," she said aloud to her daughter, crossing the shuttle's floor in a pair of strides and gripping Tirzah's shoulders, gazing into the eyes that only saw with the vision of the heart. She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it across the girl's back, unable to meet her eyes any longer, and as the engine roared to life beneath them, she turned back down the ramp. Violet light illuminated the hangar as she emerged in the hangar, saber held at guard before her, hoping to draw the fire away from the silver-haired child. "Celedon!" she yelled, as the boy with the rifle ducked out from behind a large stack of crates and let loose another volley of bolts at what seemed like an endless stream of troopers. "Now or never, kid!" As soon as they got clear of the hangar, she could signal for Atlas. They just had to make it that far.

"Tares," her voice rasped, seemingly coming from outside of herself. She closed the distance between the doorway and the rack where he slumped, suspended, in nearly a single bound. Her hands cupped his face. He was still warm, still breathing, and it was still certainly him--but his presence through the Force was muffled, muted. Not gone, like it would have been under the effects of ysalamiri, but quiet, like the throng of average citizenry outside the tower walls. Her heart sank. While he did not appear outwardly injured, his mind felt sluggish through the Force, and the flame of his spirit was smoldering. What had they done to him? Tirzah's voice came from near her shoulder. "Mom, is it... is it actually Tares? It doesn't feel like him." The girl's observation mirrored her own, and with it, Jaina's concern increased. "Yes, it is," she said hollowly, marking every detail of Tares' features with sharp eyes. "But something's wrong." Jaina scanned the technical readouts of the complicated equipment surrounding him, but she had no way of making heads or tails of any of it. Frantically, her hands moved to release him, tugging on the straps and restraints before her shaking fingers held no more strength and she opted to simply slice through them with her saber, catching the limp form of her friend with her own frail body. Their momentum carried Jaina to her knees, where she held Tares' head in her trembling hand, her arm around his waist, suddenly oblivious to the egregious pain of her wounds. "Tares, wake up," she pleaded, trying to blanket him in the Force's invisible energy but feeling her control slip away at the edges of fear that began to creep in. His features remained stony and still. Drawing his limp head to rest on her shoulder and pressing her cheek against his to hold it in place, she reached out a hand to Celedon. "Help me carry him," she instructed, struggling to stand under her and Tares' combined weight. "How are we getting out of here?" Tirzah piped up, a note of dread in her tone. "Back the way we came in?" In answer, Jaina looked toward Celedon. "Kid, you said shuttles run in and out of here all the time, right?" Setting her jaw, Jaina hoisted Tares up onto her back, lifting him as best as she could given her weak legs and the fact that he was a good six inches taller than she. "We need to find the shuttle bay. That's our way out." One of the computer terminals was still active and logged in, and it did not take Jaina long to find the map layout of the tower station. The shuttle bay was only two units away. It was slow going through the halls, struggling to manage the unconscious form of Tares, but there were even fewer patrols, and the klaxon of the alarm had since quieted. If there were still forces here searching for them, they had switched to observation mode rather than engagement. The whole thing felt like rats had deserted a sinking ship. I have a bad feeling about this, she thought somberly to herself, as they approached the bulkhead door. Peeking into the shuttle bay, she observed three shuttles docked, each the same nondescript variety that had carried Tares away from the surface of Altyr V. A handful of Imperial troopers were stationed at the bottom of each docking ramp, but curiously, a handful of non-troopers were also milling about the hangar: some in white medical coats, some in business clothes, some in the outdated garb of Vader-era Imperial officers, and two in oversized cloaks whose faces were hidden by the patterns of light and shadow formed by the flickering fluorescents overhead. "Any bright ideas, Vortex?" she whispered jocularly to Tares' limp form as she had done on Altyr, desperately hoping for a response with a depth that surprised even herself. Though she was trying to show more confidence than she felt for the benefit of the teenagers, in all likelihood, Tirzah could probably see through to the uncertainty and desperation she felt. Normally, Jaina would be driven by her curiosity to figure out what kind of an operation was being conducted within these white walls, but the hot knife of worry twisting in her gut overruled any delusions of embarking on an investigation. The only thing that mattered was getting Tares to safety and figuring out what the kriff had happened to him.

No, you can't fall asleep! The words echoed distantly through Jaina's mind, calling her out of the healing trance into which her body had slipped instinctively. Her eyes refused to open, her nerves electrifying her mind with the sharp pain of her wounds. A smell like something burning filled her senses and Jaina fought against the nausea that rose up in her at the realization that it was her own grilled flesh. The voice of a young man reverberated, but any reaction it might have prompted was dulled as a fresh wave of pain rocketed up from her charred leg and invaded every process of her mind. A sense of urgency lingered in the pit of her stomach, though for what purpose Jaina couldn't seem to remember. The distinctive smell of bacta was detectable in the mix of zapped ozone and seared flesh, and her fingers crept to the edges of the smoldering wound in her stomach. Several hastily applied patches covered the wreckage, and the image of the silver-headed boy drifted into her thoughts. Cold fingers, smaller than her own and trembling, brushed her right forearm and she felt the cool metal of her saber press into her hand. Without even trying, Jaina could see the beacon of her daughter shining in the Force. Feebly, she reached out to Tirzah, and felt the girl's panic. Shh, shh, don't worry, I'll be fine, she thought as her thoughts began to turn dark. I just need a minute... As though an invisible hand peeled back a curtain in her soul, a sudden brightness jerked Jaina to full consciousness. Tirzah's hands loosed a spiral of frigid healing that soothed the angry burning through Jaina's limbs. For a handful of moments, she blinked in dazed wonderment up at her daughter. The girl's savant power was more than Jaina could have expected. Such capacity was beyond nearly any hopeful and even most Knights. Perhaps it was just the dire circumstance that prompted such an ability, but she could not help the pride that welled in her at Tirzah's mettle. And yet, something in the periphery of her awareness was not quite right. Then the whump-whump-whump of a blaster rang out, and with a knowing look and a squeeze of her frightened daughter's hand, Jaina answered the call to battle. The instant healing wrought in her wounded abdomen would not hold against such acrobatics as she was used to, but Jaina made the best of it. Pulling Celedon back from the door, she leaned up against the inside wall of the room, sending her saber whizzing down the hall on its own. With a great outpouring of what little energy she had left, Jaina gave herself utterly to the waves of the Force, clairvoyance directing the motion of her mind as she became a conduit for the current. A weapon without a wielder, melting through the center of droids like a deadly dart: it whistled down the hall, decapitating and detaching limbs from its prey. Surprised yells from the troopers in the hallway did not deter it; her saber served as a barricade rendering the hallway impassable. Sibylline and efficient, it twirled in a dance of violent reckoning until her performance piece lay silent. Only when the saber flew back to her hand and Jaina relinquished her mental death-grip did she open her eyes to behold the adolescents before her. "Everyone okay?" she coughed a handful of times, swiping at a droplet of blood that appeared in the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. "Someone's bound to have heard that, we should move on." A whisper through the Force shattered her thoroughly, driving a stake of desperation into her heart. Jaina... Then Tares was silent, muted in her mind, the brilliant silver light of his presence reduced to a cold and empty bowl of glass, like a light fixture blown out in a power surge. "NO!" She doubled over with the strength of the outburst, clutching her left arm across her wounded abdomen, as she stood. Shambling down the hallway frantically, she clung on to Tares' location as though he might disappear entirely. They were close now, but something in her spiked with dread at what she would find. Slowing to a stop outside one of the bulkhead doors, she ignited her saber and slapped at the door control. Hold on, Tares, she demanded, whether or not he could still hear her. I'm coming.

Gritting her teeth against the earsplitting whine of the alarm, Jaina groaned audibly, "Not again!" Yanking both teens fully into the room, she slammed and sealed the door shut behind them and yanked the saber off her belt. "That wasn't me this time. Either that, or they found the hole in their fence outside. Stand back, both of you." With a belching sizzle of fried ozone, violet light erupted into the room. Tightening her grip, she plunged the saber through the far wall up to its hilt, and dragged it like a branch upstream in a passable approximation of an oval big enough for them to climb through. Kicking out the plug she had cut from the wall, she ducked out of the eerie blue glow of the cloning equipment into the next room. Immediately, she wished she hadn't. While her senses were correct in detecting a lack of sentient presence in this adjacent compartment, she had unwittingly walked into a hive of the outdated battle droids. By rough estimate, Jaina counted approximately forty. She pressed herself against the wall, blocking the path of the two teenagers. Her danger sense was spiking. She had to keep them out of harm's way. "Hey, you!" The closest one called in its programmed monotone. "You're not supposed to be here." Jaina smiled weakly, mentally scrambling for a clever retort, but then concluded that anything she might come back with would be cheapened by the blazing sword of light she brandished. "Oops," she said simply, punctuating with a shrug. Then the world exploded into light. Jaina rehearsed the steps that she had performed in the brick-laid square, but this time the rhythm of her dance turned deadly. It was as though the song Celedon had belted in the courtyard had seeped into her bones and exploded out of her like a missile, tearing robotic limbs asunder and destroying processor cores. She had made it to the far side of the room, leaving the piecemeal bodies of at least thirty of the droids in her wake. As if in slow motion, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Tirzah beginning to climb through the hole in the wall. Several of the droids were swiveling their bodies, beginning to take aim in the dark-haired girl's direction, and Jaina's heart dropped. "WAIT!" she yelled, but in that moment that she knew she had lost her advantage of momentum. A trio of blaster bolts collided with her body in succession: one in her already-injured right leg, one in her left bicep, and one slamming with full force into her upper abdomen. It was all she could do to keep her lightsaber from clattering out of her hand. Her nerves screamed out in agony as the floor came rushing at her. With the last burst of energy she had, she flung her saber in a spinning arc around the room as she fell, watching as it neatly decapitated the seven remaining droids. Then both the hum of her lightsaber and the crackling fire of the blasters fell silent. Splayed on the durasteel, panting, she stared hazily at the flickering fluorescent light of the ceiling, only one thought on her mind as she attempted to draw on the Force: don't black out, don't black out, don't black out...

As if in response to Celedon's question, Tares' presence touched her mind. Although faint, it nevertheless gave Jaina something to latch onto, like a bloodhound gathering the scent of its quarry off of a discarded article of clothing. He was awake, he was alive, and he was in the tower above them. She could not detect any consciousness that held an outright hostility towards them. Not only that, but the sentient complement of the tower was eerily sparse. They should be be able to pass through undetected, retrieve Tares by whatever means necessary, and escape before they drew any attention to themselves. But for some reason that she could not effectively put a finger on, something felt utterly wrong here. "We need to find a turbolift," she directed succinctly, grasping at Tares' presence through the Force as her feet propelled her into motion. "He's at least a few floors up. Stay close and stay alert." The central desk in the reception area of the tower had been fortuitously empty, though it gave Jaina pause as they quickly discarded their robes and moved silently up one of the twin ramps that ascended the tower on both sides of the lobby. As quickly as could be expected from two teenagers and a wounded Jedi, they made their way through the hall in search of a lift. The first several patrols that passed their way were old, outdated battle droid models, clunking through the halls without any subtlety to speak of, and heard far before they were seen, allowing the trio to duck into niches and corridors in evasive maneuvers each time. When finally she spotted "Turbolift" printed in faded Aurebesh lettering over a door, Jaina scurried toward it. They filed in, Jaina giving a final glance down both directions of the hallway to ensure they had not been spotted. As the lift rocketed upwards, she kept her senses trained on Tares. The guiding influence of the Force was her eyes and ears beyond the walls of the turbolift, and she knew with sudden precognition which floor she would find him on. They exited the lift to find another deserted corridor, with one caveat. The wing in which the Force told Jaina she would find Tares was barricaded by a identification lock requiring either keycard access or handprint scan. "Dammit," she muttered, casting a furtive glance around. Times like these made her wish she had been able to locate either her or Andon's astromech droids, or that she had somehow managed to bring Tares' floating assistant along. She pulled her comlink out and keyed it to life, but even as she did so she felt the futility of her attempt. "Atlas?" A low-frequency hum was the only response. Returning her comlink to her pocket, she sighed. "Transmissions in and out of the tower must be jammed." Her mind scanned quickly through their options. Without any way of knowing which tower personnel had access, trying to incapacitate a guard or official or steal a keycard became incredibly unlikely. She could break open the panel in an attempt to hotwire it, which was risky on a number of levels. While she was equal to the mechanical task, such an action would likely either draw attention to their whereabouts from any security systems which might be in place or she would be unable to complete it before the next patrol came by. They could try to find an alternate route if one existed, or take the old-fashioned Jedi way and create their own. "I've got an idea," she murmured. "This way." Her senses stretched out through the Force, looking for an unoccupied side room adjacent to the sealed wing of the tower. A few meters down the hall, she pressed the control for a room that felt uninhabited, but as the door slid open and they filed in, Jaina let out a gasp. Inside was a fully-equipped medbay with an operating theater, but even that would not have surprised her in a facility such as this. But the room also held a fully-functional cloning chamber. Foreboding grew in the pit of her stomach. "What is this place?" she turned harrowed eyes to Celedon. Suddenly, his likeness to Tares made that much more sense. "What do you know?"

A comm comes in for Delta from an undisclosed location in the Unknown Regions.

No sooner had she formulated a trajectory in her mind based off of Celedon's plan as he disappeared into the throng than a postal droid deposited an ungainly package at her feet. A cursory scan of its contents told Jaina three things: one, Delta had a strange and wildly inaccurate concept of her interests, two, she probably needed to check her comlink for a tracking device, and three, she needed to look up galactic restraining orders. With a heavy sigh, she reached out in the Force and pulled the postal droid back to her side. A succinct reprogramming and a comm to Delta later, and it whizzed off in the direction of the spaceport to deposit its payload on the ship, but not before Jaina pocketed a handful of credit chits from the pink case, thinking they might come in handy if their ruse were to fail. Celedon's voice broke her concentration, the opening strains of his song drawing the crowd into a variety of synchronized movement like some previously rehearsed and intricately choreographed performance. Fascinated, she resisted the impulse to simply watch the spectacle as it unfolded, wondering at the nature and cultural genesis of the ritual. Celedon was right about one thing: he had indeed observed these rituals a time or two. But it was time to move. Sending an illiterate girl whose vision was questionable to work a computer seemed a terribly idea, so she pushing Tirzah toward the throng with a hand on the small of her back, whispering, "Reach out with your senses. Let the Force keep you one step ahead." Making herself nigh invisible in the Force and in the minds of the stormtroopers who stood guard, Jaina slunk along the edges of the throng until she reached the control console. It was outdated and clunky machinery, but, as she expected, encrypted with old Imperial-style codes. She worked feverishly to hack her way into the system, but even as she made her way through the encoding of the first several menu options, a sharp prod from her danger sense made her look over her shoulder. The pair of stormtroopers that had been standing apart from the crowd were making their way to her with determined and purposeful steps and blaster rifles cradled in their arms. Apparently, they had noticed that this gypsy was not following the ritual. She estimated she had about forty-five seconds before they reached her. Like lightning, her fingers moved over the display, until she finally arrived at the forcefield control. Between the helmets of the approaching troops, she spotted one gate on the far side of the square; an entrance to the rear of the tower which was largely blocked from view by the surrounding buildings. Deft taps quenched the shimmering blue light out of existence, and satisfied she had accomplished the task, she logged out of the terminal and disappeared back into the masses before the troopers could identify her as being any different from the assembled gypsies. Gritting her teeth, Jaina let the Force direct her steps, giving the movements of her body over entirely to its direction. The swirl of colored fabric ebbed and flowed, and as the waves of Force energy kept her choreography in step with the stony-eyed gypsy population, she made her way rhythmically through the crowd towards where she could feel Tirzah and Celedon. It's done, let's go, she announced through the Force to their minds.

"This is your plan?" Jaina asked incredulously, looking down at the heavy fabric in her hand. She had impersonated many species and professions in her time, but dancing gypsies was a stretch even for her. She much preferred to do her dancing with a starfighter, or with a lightsaber in hand. With a reticent grimace, she pulled the lengthy charcoal-colored robe over her head and secured it with a long braided belt. Retying the braid that held her hair out of her face, she tucked it down the back of her robe and pulled the cowl over her head. A thin veil of black that tied across the bridge of her nose left only her eyes visible. Tirzah and Celedon were similarly clad, though the girl's grumblings made her disapproval abundantly clear. "They'll have to send us an invoice," Jaina quipped amusedly at the set of bulky robes that was her daughter. "I didn't exactly expect to be taking a shopping trip." The three of them made their way out into the mottled brick square, keeping their heads down as they passed through the dwindling crowds, though it was hardly necessary in the growing darkness. As they approached the fenced perimeter of the grounds surrounding the Regional Tower, Jaina paused in an alley behind one of the buildings that gave them direct line of sight to the gate. The teenagers filed in behind her, and Jaina turned an eye to Celedon. "So how, exactly, do you propose to get us inside? Even with Jedi powers of persuasion, I don't know if I can convince them to let one of us in, let alone three. And I am not pulling any more dangerous diversionary tactics right now," she finished with an apologetic smile toward Tirzah.

The robes hit Tirzah in the chest before falling to the ground. Crossing her arms she frowned at him for a moment before waving her hand in front of her face. "Don't throw things at me. It isn't nice," she scolded, stooping down and feeling for where the garment had fallen. She was still getting used to processing her new way of seeing and some of the visual data that came through the Force was still confusing. "And don't we have to pay for these?" She pulled the robe over her head and felt somewhat claustrophobic with the fabric against her face, but somehow forced herself to remain calm. "I don't see how anyone could dance in these things. Nor why they'd want to sing."

The exposed wires under the speeder's steering column fell from Jaina's fingers as she regarded the pair of teenagers. Tirzah's uncertain comment gave her pause. Had she really been so bent on her mission that she would drag her daughter with her into the edge of danger? Since she returned, her motivation had been so strong, so hell-bent on finding Tirzah that once that snag had been navigated successfully, it had fixated on another outlet almost immediately. She was jeopardizing the safety of her daughter, for which she had fought so hard, in order to dart between the snapping jaws of death once more. Her daughter was not like Emily, a seasoned combatant, a veteran Force-user able to handle herself in dangerous situations. For all her bravado, Tirzah was still a child, largely untrained and still adjusting to a galaxy's worth of change in her life. Something in Jaina softened as she glanced between the two of them, coupled by a pang of regret for how she had abdicated her niece's presence. But the firm set of Celedon's face brought the current objective irrevocably to Jaina's mind. Wounded or not, foolish or not, she could not abandon Tares to the Tower and the rogue Imperials who Celedon claimed were there. Climbing out of the speeder, she turned to lay both hands on Tirzah's shoulders and stooped her head to meet the girl's eyes. "I know this has been a whirlwind, one thing after another since we left Tython. I know it hasn't been easy, and I've asked more of you than any Jedi initiate should have to deal with. If you want to stay behind on the ship, I would completely understand. But Master Tares is here, and he's in trouble, and I can't just leave him behind to save our skins." She tucked a stray lock of hair behind Tirzah's ear. "He dropped everything to come after you," she said quietly. Her attention shifted to Celedon, and she raised an eyebrow, though she avoided immediate response to his observations of her being a Jedi. In quite the roundabout fashion, she had gotten the response for which she had hoped. "Your town, your way, kid. You got a plan?"

Tirzah looked at the boy and back at her mother and sheepishly admitted, "He's got a point. I don't want to end up dead and I don't want to lose you either."

Tirzah was feeling queasy again, though she thought that was more her overtaxed danger sense. Weren't mother's supposed to protect their children? she wondered idly as Jaina set a stellar example for both pre-teens by stealing a speeder. "Well, are you coming?" Jaina asked, likely more to the other kid, Celedon than her, but Tirzah considered all the same. She did want to go back to the Ferro Re where it was less scary and likely safer than running towards a place that set even the local street kid on edge. Then there was the matter of the other boy; Tirzah didn't trust him to help her mother. Besides, what good would retreating onto the ship do if Jaina got killed rescuing Master Tares and left her completely alone again? She got in the speeder and turned toward the figure of the other boy.

Narrowed eyes pierced the boy like daggers as Jaina regarded him. What he said was consistent with the strange Imperial-like soldiers they had encountered on Altyr's fifth planet, though she still had no concept for a motive for them to abduct Tares. Unless, of course, they were closer than they knew on the trail leading to Drake Vortex. She still could not shake the lingering sense that the boy who called himself Celedon had some connection to the whole scenario. From his other comments, she gathered that some manner of strange experiments might be on the milder end of the unpalatable things happening in that Tower. Tares' presence was still quiet in her senses, but her alarm was mounting. If he was unconscious, and he was a prisoner of these unspeakables that the locals gave a wide berth... "...then we don't have any time to waste," she finished her thought aloud. "We have to save him, and we won't go on foot." Ignoring the bluntly exasperated look she thought she glimpsed on Celedon's face, she scanned the periphery of the street in search of a speeder that might carry them there faster than her feet could take her. It had not escaped her notice that he spoke of the Tower with some degree of educated foreboding that seemed to go beyond just a societal avoidance of a restricted area. "If they kill us," she called over her shoulder as she spotted her quarry unattended--a small four-seat speeder--and moved toward it like a huntress in the gathering darkness, "you'll have no way off this rock, pal. Better idea to come along and lend a hand." Swinging her legs over the side of the speeder, a sizzling firework shot up the length of her nerves, drawing an involuntary wince that she tried to play off with a show of bravado. The bacta strips had filed away the jagged edges of her pain, but her body's clamor for rest and healing was growing louder by the minute. She was getting no stronger, and by the feeling of it, neither was Tares. Panic held at arm's length for the time being, she nonetheless set her jaw in determination. Keying her comm, she patched back into the Ferro Re's systems. "Atlas, it's Jaina," she said quietly as her fingers moved to hotwire the engine of the "borrowed" speeder. "I have an informant here who says Tares is likely being held in the Regional Tower in the City Center. We're going to go check it out. I'll leave my comm line open so you can keep tabs on us. In the meantime, see if you can't search any of the public records here for any mention of Drake." The engine coughed to life, a sad downgrade from the sleek purr of the Re's sublight drive, but it would do. Glancing behind her at the pair of teenagers, her signature Cheshire grin playing onto her features, she jerked her head in the direction of the tower. "Well, are you coming?"

Finally relinquishing her hold on the boy, Jaina tensed her muscles, preparing to launch into pursuit if needed, but true to his word, he did not immediately dart away. In nearly every comment he made, she gathered more information about the planet, about his life, and yet it only served to ramp up her curiosity. How much of the planet's population could be described as "underworld"? She weighed how much to divulge concerning their identity and purpose here. While there was no duality obviously detectable in his words, there was something about him she could not seem to put her finger on, and keen eyes did not waver from his form. "Okay," she said simply. "I'll square with you, then you square with me. Deal?" As she took in the horizon, where the planet's star dipped its belly below their line of sight, she was struck by the odd beauty of the light filtering through the ashy haze. Night would come soon, and quickly, and this was a search she did not want to attempt in the unfamiliar dark of the underprivileged city. "Let's walk, and I'll fill you in," she said with a measuring glance to ensure he would follow. In the Force, she put a tiny thought in Tirzah's mind. Stay alert. He knows more about this place than he lets on. WIth a sigh, she began to outline their quest for their erstwhile guide. "Our friend's name is Vortex. He would have arrived sometime within the last hour, more or less. The shuttle that took him away wasn't anywhere in the spaceport. Are there any other notable landing sites in the city we should search?" Realizing that it was unlikely she would receive a name without giving one, she glanced down at him from the corner of her eye as they walked through the dusty Acrid evening. "I'm Jaina, by the way, and this is my daughter Tirzah."

"I'm looking for a friend of mine who was brought here against his will," she said soberly, ensuring she still had tabs on Tares in the Force. "And I'm not a doctor. I have a... highly specialized set of skills that involves rudimentary healing." Jaina's eyes softened as she took in the child's malnourished frame. Maybe the boy was not actually the orphan she had assumed he was. His mention of parents caught her utterly off-guard, and for a moment she considered just turning him loose on the falling dim of Acrid's evening and telling him to forget the whole thing. His mention of doctors intrigued her, though. Was this place a haven for Arkanian scientists, or something? Then it hit her like a ton of bricks. Parents. This boy who very nearly bore Tares' face was mentioning parents. Come on, you call yourself a Jedi? she chided herself. With excitement mounting in her veins, she swallowed and caught her breath before her next question came out in a tumble. "Does the name Drake Vortex mean anything to you?"

As she debarked the ship with Tirzah in tow, Jaina moved past the ships, all in rows. Tares' presence was detectable, but still quiet, and her mind whirred with plans ranging from the stealthy to riots. Entering the open air of the city, their surroundings foreign, she pondered how to begin--this trip had been anything but boring. Acrid's location, near no hyperspace lanes, meant the economy had suffered stagnation and pain. What she could sense of Tares was not adequate to triangulate his position easily, but nevertheless, she followed the flicker of the Force, reaching out with her senses. A thin layer of dust had fallen over the spaceport like a blanket of decay, a comfort object that lent the dingy setting a certain post-apocalyptic homeyness that made Jaina wish she hadn't bothered to swap out her grimy and burned clothes for a fresh outfit. Although Jaina was quite certain she had never before been to Acrid, there was something uncannily familiar that drove a stake of unease into her gut. "Stay sharp," she said stoically to Tirzah, though she draped an arm nonchalantly across the girl's shoulder, endeavoring to make them stick out a little less like a sore thumb--or a burned leg, for that matter. "Our best bet is probably to find someone local who can tell us about anything out of the ordinary or show us where Tares might have been taken." A prickle from the Force caught her attention, and with heightened alertness, Jaina scanned the faces of the crowd that milled about them as they crossed through the spaceport. Nevertheless, they kept moving, until a flash of silver caught her eye. Her sense of warning only grew, and she dropped her arm from Tirzah's side to snatch the wrist of a boy about Tirzah's age who slammed into her with a murmured apology. Immediately she saw his ploy for what it was, but found herself momentarily speechless in addressing him. Here he was, a local dropped in her lap, a street urchin who likely knew the streets better than any businessman or local government official. But that alone was not what gave her pause. The silvery-white hair of the teenager, the bright flash of his striking, oceanic blue eyes that refused to be tempered even by his ragged appearance, the firm set of his jaw--he easily could have been Tares in miniature. Assent gushing from the Force itself told her to cling to this boy. Whatever Tares' location and condition, the presence of this erstwhile pickpocket defied coincidence. But she could not very well sling the kid over her shoulder and haul him back to the ship for safekeeping. Their altercation was beginning to draw stares, and as he pulled against her iron grip, she studied him through the Force. “I'm sorry! Please don't hurt me!" His shuffling, downplayed exterior evaporated in a show of tears and desperation. "I'm only trying to find some money to feed my dying sister. She’s all I have… please just let me go!” A show, indeed, it was: while the boy's desperation felt as real as the gentle touch of Tirzah's hand on her arm, the twinge in his thoughts through the Force told her that somewhere in the construct of his words lurked a bold-faced lie. "Hey, kid, calm down, it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she cooed reassuringly, forsaking her hold on his wrists for resting both hands weightily on his shoulders. Even less than full-grown, he was nearly her height. "What's your name?" At her elbow, Tirzah's voice piped up unexpectedly, her presence brimming with compassion. "Maybe we can help! Take us to your sister, my mom can heal her!" Jaina froze, flicking her eyes about the corridor, certain that they had now attracted the attention of every sentient in the spaceport. Not knowing if the bounty on Force-users had been publicized widely enough to reach the Unknown Regions, nor who had abducted Tares and brought him here, subtlety had been a key player in Jaina's initial plan. With a nearly-audible swallow, she turned her head slowly, ever-so-slowly, to glance at Tirzah. The bashful regret in her eyes told Jaina that she had realized her mistake nigh immediately, though she lacked the self-awareness to see how the display of waterworks had pulled at her gullible heartstrings. The compassionate response was to her credit, however. Perhaps teenage ambivalence had not yet set in incurably. "I mean, uh, she is a doctor," the flustered child stammered, "kind of." With a sigh and a reinforced smile, Jaina turned back to the kid clutching her comlink in his hand. The aura of desperation was a familiar one to Jaina, and the silver-headed urchin wore it in spades. Alone in the spaceport, with what was likely his only set of clothing splattered with what looked like someone or something else's blood... the path forward suddenly became exquisitely clear, as though the Force had painted a glowing neon sign on it. "Look, kid," she said quietly. "I know you're lying to me. I also know you need a way out of here. I'm here looking for someone. I'm sure you know this place better than anyone. If you help me, I'll take you anywhere in this kriffing galaxy you want to go." ((Tirzah's actions posted with permission))

Red-hot pain jerked Jaina out of her subconscious with all the subtlety of meat sizzling as it came into contact with a hot pan. Her face was pressed into the durasteel decking, once again, and while her leg still smarted, it served to clarify her mind, not cloud it. The proximity alarm was sounding. Atlas must have acted quickly. Tares was gone, taken by some sinister force unknown, and it was up to her to get him back. Pushing herself slowly off the floor, she groaned under the crackling fire of seared flesh. "Your care is not complete. I must request that you remain still," a watery mechanical voice came from above her. Skeptical brows knit together as she turned to behold an overlarge medical droid, shuffling between a case of bacta strips that lay next to a huddled Tirzah and where Jaina lay prone in the center of the cargo hold. Mild gratitude flickered--her bandaged leg would hopefully avoid infection and necrosis--but the well-intentioned, bumbling medical droid was now impeding progress. "Thanks, pal, I'll take it from here," she murmured, waving him away and staggering to her feet, limping toward the ship's main corridor despite the protests of the droid. Jaina paused in the doorway, turning toward the crates from behind which her daughter was peeking out. The girl's face was pale, her expression haggard and worried. Resisting the temptation to chuckle at Tirzah's fearful innocence, a wry grin hooked the corner of Jaina's mouth nonetheless. The obvious concern, while mostly unnecessary, that Tirzah held for her reached in and wrapped little fingers around her heartstrings. With tenderness in her voice, Jaina teased, "Quit looking at me like I'm dying, sweetheart, I've had worse. A little third-degree burn is nothing compared to losing a couple arms to your dad's teacher and Lord Ar-Pharazon. You coming?" Without waiting for a response, she limped down the hallway until she reached the cockpit, the hissing hydraulics of the medical droid bouncing along behind her. Only then did it occur to her that her efforts to comfort her daughter may not have actually been that reassuring. Oh well. I'm new at this mom thing... Entering the cockpit and beholding stars, not lines, she checked the navigational charts before turning to address Atlas. "Acrid? They brought him farther into the Unknown Regions?" Before Atlas had a chance to respond, the bridge shuddered beneath her feet, knocking her to the ground. Landing roughly on her injury, her body spiked with lances of adrenaline, pricking her senses to acute response. Clamping down on her pain with the Force, she dug her fingernails into the still-new leather of the pilot's seat as she reoriented herself. "Let me take the helm," she said, steel in her gaze. A hovering field of asteroids hung outside the viewscreen, careening toward them like a drunk Podracer. While it was likely that contacting the planet's landing control would garner her a collection of safe routes through the field and into the atmosphere, without any idea of what faced them on Acrid, Jaina was reticent to give advance notice of their approach. "Buckle up, everybody," she called, bracing her good leg against the floor as the medical droid finally caught up to her, slapping bacta strips on the remaining scalded skin that was still exposed even as she tried to push him away with her foot. "Atlas, please increase the shields to one-third capability. Too much of a field, we risk picking up any asteroids we buzz too closely. Not enough, we're hollowing out dings from the hull for the next month." As her hands ran over the silky console and blasted ahead into the field, Jaina's heart leapt to her throat. While she had studied the ship's capabilities, she had not yet gotten to put the craft through its paces. Nimble, agile, and sleek, the Ferro Re found its way through miniscule gaps between the asteroids like water dripping out from between cupped hands. TIme and again, the ship came within inches of collision before evasive propulsion sidestepped the danger. Jaina's expert hands had never before held the reins of such a magnificent steed as this one. Finally, they broke free of the field into Acrid's atmosphere and touched down at the central spaceport. Jaina sprang to her feet like a hound overeager for the hunt, but found the droid blocking her way, trying to wrap one final layer of dry bandage around her leg. "Look, would you stop? I'm fine," she groaned, rolling her eyes and pushing past it. "Time to go find our friend." Tucking her resilient comlink into her pocket once more and clipping on her lightsaber, Jaina moved resolutely through the corridors, the cargo bay, and then out into the daylight of Acrid, reaching into the Force for Tares as though she were a radar scanning for his homing beacon.

The tuk'ata spoke to Raynuk in the language of the Sith, and allowed him to get brief glimpses of memories that the beast had witnessed just moments before. Raia had attempted to use the Force on her own, and just as had happened the last few times she did so without a strong presence to anchor her, the Force had consumed her to its will. First the tree in Alora's apartment had been shattered, then regrown, then grown even further. It was a series of events that left Raynuk with just one question as he looked between Raia and Tirzah: What was the effect and outcome this time? It was something he would have to wait for one of the two to awaken in order to get answers to. And so he waited, idly stroking Vex'aedr's side as he considered some of the countless thoughts that continued to gnaw at him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raynuk Montar would be waiting a long time indeed--mainly because she was lost. Tirzah was hopelessly and completely lost in some kind of dense jungle. Her head pounded. Her eyes ached in protest of the increased activity to which they had been subjected. On every side, there was no sign of horizon, no hint as to where she might find a clearing or a way to gain her bearings. Slowly, she moved through the underbrush, picking her foot placement carefully. It was marvelous, the ability to discern the location of things around her using just her eyes. But then it hit her-- Even the ability to see couldn’t help her out of this mess. After what seemed like hours of walking, ducking under twisting branches and squeezing between close-clustered trunks, she sank into a heap at the base of a tree to rest her legs. Sweat dripped from the ends of her curly hair, which wound tighter due to the humidity of the forest in which she now found herself. Everything seemed to glow with an eerie haze; the sunlight that filtered through the branches bore a quality that she was unable to describe. Tirzah was getting thirsty. A roar sounded from deep within the jungle, striking alarm into her senses, and a small creature bounded across her path as if in response. It was covered in downy fur, with sturdy back legs that propelled it in leaps and elongated ears protruding from the top of its head. It paused for a moment, turning to stare directly at her, rubbing its tiny furry snout into its front paws. For some reason she couldn’t explain, Tirzah knew this creature. Slowly, so as not to startle it, she leaned forward onto her knees and stretched out a hand. Just a little bit closer, she thought in desperation. A twig snapped somewhere in the forest, and the creature startled. “Hey, wait!” she called, jumping to her feet and running after it. Never had she felt able to run with abandon like this before. All physical activity, for her whole life, had been tempered by the disuse of her eyes. It was a new kind of exhilaration as she chased the mammal through the forest, feeling the hot wind whipping through her damp hair, leaping over fallen logs and ducking under tangles of vines. A branch she hadn’t anticipated slashed at her cheek, and she clapped a hand to her face as she ran, warm, wet blood leaking into her fingers. She looked down for a moment to study the liquid on her hand, and the momentary lapse of attention betrayed her. Her foot caught on a vine in the underbrush, and she went sprawling, tumbling down the side of a ravine. She landed on her belly in the ravine’s basin with a whoosh of air escaping from her lungs. Jerking her head up, she could just barely make out the creature darting down a hole in the distance, lost to her newfound sight. Dirty, bloody, sweaty, wound up in vines, Tirzah slowly pushed herself to her feet. “That went well,” she muttered sarcastically to herself. “Are you okay?” came the soft voice from behind her. Tirzah turned but didn’t immediately see where the voice was coming from, then something stirred amongst the underbrush and ferns, causing her to instinctively reach for a lightsaber that wasn’t there. Finally, she saw it. A small fieldscurry with stormy grey eyes and fur the same color as Tirzah’s hair emerged, approaching the girl cautiously. When it was within a few feet, it shape-changed into the girl she’d just seen in the medbay, Raia. “I'm sorry, this is all my fault.” Raia apologized. “I never should have tried to use the Force without Master Quietus there. And now I've trapped us here, but I don't know where ‘here’ is, other than that it looks like my home world. And this is deeper into the jungles than I have ever ventured before...” Incredulously, Tirzah gaped at her. Had she imagined the fieldscurry? Nothing felt quite real here. Surreptitiously, she pinched herself, but earned only sore skin for her trouble. Brilliant. I’m stuck in an endless jungle with a girl who is also a rodent, she groaned inwardly. But even if this was all happening in her head, or within the Force, she had no way out. Might as well stick close to Raia, who allegedly knew the planet. It was better than the unknown. “Maybe there's someone else out here. I thought I saw another creature up ahead,” she pointed in the direction the scampering long-ear had disappeared. “Although if all the creatures in this jungle are going to turn into people, I’m not sure I want to run into whatever made that sound.” Winding along the path of the rocky ravine, they pressed on in silence. Somehow, there was an understanding between them: to speak would attract unwanted attention. After another ten minutes’ walk, the ravine forked. “Which way, do you think?” she whispered to Raia. “If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there,” came another voice. Instinctively, Tirzah reached out for Raia's arm, linking her own around the older girl's and scanning for the source of the voice. Sitting high up on the bank of the ravine was a predatory feline that sat about as tall as Tirzah stood, gracefully grooming her fur with her tongue. “What?” Tirzah called. “Do you know where you want to go?” The feline blinked impassively at them. “No,” she replied. “Only that we’re trying to find our way back.” “Then it doesn’t matter. If you walk long enough, you’re sure to find your way.” Reticent glances passed between the two girls, but on a prompting from the Force, Tirzah quirked her head at her. “Will you show us?” With a single lithe spring, the animal launched from the bank, and by the time it landed before them, it had taken the form of a woman. Wiry, athletic, and graceful, with dark hair and a mischievous glint in her mismatched eyes, she laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “Follow me,” she said quietly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The two girls walked with the dark haired cat-woman, the name "Emily-Eris" floating vaguely through Raia’s mind as she tried to think of a way to get herself and Tirzah back to the real world. Her steps seemed sure enough, though she didn’t have a clue where she was going. Finally, as they reached a clearing, the woman seemed to fade away, leaving the two girls alone in the forest once again. “Now what?” Tirzah asked. Raia paced for a bit, looking from one tree to another before she leaped up and into the boughs to get any sort of vantage point she could to gauge a direction that might lead them out of where they were. While she was up in the tree, there came matched set of low growls from the underbrush. With a yelp, Tirzah scurried in the direction that Raia had disappeared, grasping at the branches and trying to gain the footholds that the other had achieved with such apparent ease. Two creatures bounded out from the underbrush with a snarl. Both were overlarge, one with stark white fur, the other jet black. Her grasp slipped from a bough as the white one nipped at her heel, and she reached out to grab it again, but missed, and landed on her back in the brush. Covering her face with her hands, expecting a swift and violent end, Tirzah waited. When several moments passed with no sign of aggression, she peeked through her fingers. The snouts of the two beasts instantly appeared, no more than two feet distant from her face. WIth an almighty whuff, they sniffed her in turn, and then, quite unexpectedly, pounced. On each other. Tirzah’s fright and confusion gave way to amusement as the two beasts wrestled each other, nipping at ears and tails. “Um, Raia?” she called quietly to the girl in the tree. “What are these?” Apparently oblivious to the events below her due to the height she was able to gain from years climbing the forests of Dathomir, Raia had begun her descent once she’d spotted another clearing a fair ways off. The familiar noise of the tuk’atas at play caught her attention and she leaped down into a crouch in front of the two beasts and gave a low whistle. “I don’t suppose either of you know the way out of where I’ve landed us, do you?” The two canids played a moment more before turning to the girl’s sharp call. They broke apart, casting a glance at one another before pouncing on Raia. “GET OFF OF ME! We don’t have time to play now. Go back to your Master. See if he’ll play. We’re lost and if you’re not going to help then you can go chase a rancor for all I care!” From the girl’s tone it was apparent she’d been dragged around one too many times by the Force and her patience was thinning. Neither one of the beasts made a move other than staring at her identically, as though expecting something. Raia rolled her eyes, finally guessing what it was they wanted. “Fine. This is Tirzah...You met her Vex. Tirzah these are the pets of Master Quietus and Master Emily--the cat lady from before--Vex’aedr and Roe’gall. They’re very dangerous, apparently, or something.” As though to punctuate her less than serious point, the two let out a baying howl as a streak of white zipped past them and down the forest path, giving chase. “That’s the creature I saw earlier!” Tirzah yelled, breaking into a sprint after the animals. “Come on!” Their frenetic pace was almost impossible to follow, even with speed augmented by the Force. The exhilaration of running was still fresh and exciting to Tirzah, and somehow, she felt as if she could run the whole planet over and not grow tired. The baying grew quieter as Vex’aedr and Roe’gall got farther and farther away from them, and the girls stumbled and tripped their way through the underbrush. Finally, they broke out into a clearing, but the blur of white fluff and both large canines were absent from vision. Instead, the clearing was dotted with delicate flowers amongst the grasses, and punctuated by a large, ornate table intricately laid with more place settings than Tirzah could count. Someone was planning to host a banquet, here, in the middle of these dangerous woods? Then she saw them: two men, lightsabers drawn and locked, standing in the center of the table. Each movement, each parry, each thrust of their weapon was punctuated by some loud cry or retort, and while it felt slightly dangerous, Tirzah couldn’t keep a grin off of her face. “Curious,” she murmured. Dropping onto all fours, she crept toward the end of the table, and barely peered over the edge in the hopes of remaining undetected as she strained her ears to hear what the quarrel was. “If you’re going to betray all the inherent principles of the Force, why not at least do it with flair?” yelled the shorter man, a scar running from brow to jawline, his long hair curling in rakish waves. “Did you come here to flap your jaws or prove your worth?! For I am not impressed!” The taller man, who had straight white hair that contrasted the other’s perfectly, commented back. The two continued to clash their lightsabers back and forth, continuing to circle each other as they danced around the table, occasionally knocking entire place settings flying off the table. Low slashes, high slashes, jabs and parries; the two continued to clash with absolutely no clear advantage on either side. The pair locked together, strength pushing their blades into each other as their faces closed to each other. “I have a surprise for you, old friend…” The taller man said through gritted teeth before kicking the other man away with a deliberate kick, creating separation between them. “NEW LIGHTSABER!” He exclaimed, almost happily as he produced another lightsaber from his belt and renewed the duel in earnest, now clashing with two blades against the dark haired man. “Well that’s not very sporting!” The dark haired man responded, standing again to block the incoming blows, as the pair continued to dance around the table in their duel, clearly having more perverse fun in combat than either of them rightfully should. A hand clasped over Tirzah’s shoulder, bringing the girl back from the edge of the battle as it moved further down the table. “It’s probably best if you move. Those things are also dangerous.” Raia didn’t mention that it had crossed her mind to help Master Quietus against this other opponent, but she just as quickly decided she’d likely be more of a hindrance than an asset. The movement of Raia pulling Tirzah back from the table caught the taller man’s attention, to which he immediately spun, extending his hands out in welcome as the dark haired man was pushed into a chair in front of one of the place settings. “Goodness me! Look! We have GUESTS!” The man exclaimed before bowing as one does before a ceremonial duel. “Please! Come in, come in! Welcome, welcome. You’re just in time for te-- I mean, for instruction! Say hello to our guests my dear opponent!” The other man stood quickly from the chair, recovering from the sudden and unexpected push, and likewise bowed. “Why look there, I do believe that is --” “YES! Of course!” the taller man interrupted, practically bowling over more of the dishes and cups as he walked towards Raia and Tirzah, “It’s our mazais! How could we possibly not recognize her? Oh, you are most welcome at our party.” He reached down and before she could argue or protest, hauled Raia up onto the table before him. “What brings you to our table, mazais? And who is your new friend?!” “Curiouser and curiouser,” Tirzah whispered to herself as Raia was dragged up among the two duelists. Raia looked up, now recognizing the white-haired man as her minder, Master Quietus, setting her feet firmly on the table while the other lifted Tirzah up in a similar manner. “We got lost...and I think Tirzah is looking for someone. Do you think you can help Master Quietus?” The taller man turned to Tirzah, and for a few seconds simply looked at the young girl, as if appraising her. Then he stepped closer and bent over, his face much closer as a few “Hmmmm” sounds escaped from his mouth. Then all at once, he stood back up to his full height and again threw his arms out, only this time he lost the grip on both of his lightsabers, which went flying off into the underbrush that surrounded them. “Oh my. Oops. NEW LIGHTSABER!” He yelled again as he reached around his back and produced yet another lightsaber, ignited it and began swinging it around, clearly distracted once more until Raia grabbed at his sleeve and yanked hard. “Master Quietus! Do you think you can help her?” she again asked. The tall man stopped and looked at Raia, then to Tirzah, and then back at Raia, and then to Tirzah again before he turned the lightsaber off and stashed it on his belt once more. “Right! Yes yes. Always happy to help! Now uhm… what was it you needed?” Suddenly uncomfortable with the circumstance, and halfway wishing for a reversion to blindness such that she would not have actually witnessed the cavalier fashion in which these two men were tossing about their lightsabers, Tirzah looked back and forth between them. “There was… there was a small creature,” she began. “You’re a small creature!” yelled the shorter man, who was suddenly standing on his hands, feet in the air, as quickly as Tirzah could blink. “And here you are! Nothing more to look for.” “No,” she added quickly, “a little furry creature, barely bigger than a fieldscurry, that ran off into the wild. I don’t know how, or why, but I know it somehow. I think it’s our key to getting home.” Tirzah edged closer to Raia, who, while somehow part of this whole charade, still seemed safer than either of the men standing on the table. She reached to her belt, and for the first time, noticed the absence of her recently acquired lightsaber. A sudden idea struck her, and she glanced up at the other two. “You wouldn’t happen to have any of those to spare, would you?” “Oh, there are always more, you just have to know where to look,” babbled the scarred man, with a wink that told Tirzah that he clearly knew more than he was letting on. He reached a hand toward the head of the table, and a small satchel flew into his waiting hand. As he overturned it, a volley of sabers by the dozens began spilling out onto the table, until he himself was buried in it. “Um, I just needed one,” she muttered. This interaction was quickly going from potentially helpful to utterly frustrating. “Never mind, that. Can you help us find it?” The dark-headed man popped his head out of the mountain of sabers. “Oh, don’t listen to him, he doesn’t know anything about that creature. All you need to know is that she comes when you call.” “But what do you call her?” Quizzically, she cocked her head to the side. “I don’t call her,” the man said with another overplayed wink. “Sounds like a personal problem.” “It is quite rude to call someone you don’t even know, you know.” The white haired man said, flipping the lightsaber in his hand. “But the Queen might know!” he caught the saber, his face lighting up. “Yes yes, the Queen. Doesn’t she want you dead though?” The dark haired man countered. “Bah, I’m sure she’s forgotten all about that. Couldn’t be helped I tell you. Yes. You should go ask the Queen. She knows everyone around here, or knows someone who knows who...knows…” he trailed off, sounding confused. Raia again tugged on the man’s sleeve. “The Queen? Where is she?” “What? The Queen? Why would you want to go see the Queen? No no. She ordered me executed once you know.” The man responded matter-of-factly, before being pushed aside as the dark haired man elbowed his way past. “The Queen lives farther through the forest.” He said, his eyes seemingly stuck on Tirzah. “Hey! They weren’t asking you!” The taller man said as he stood up and shoved the other man off the table before turning to the two girls. “Say, do either of you know why a tuk’ata is like a datapad?” He asked. The two girls looked at him confused before turning to each other, both seeing if the other had any idea. Finally Tirzah turned back to him. “No, we give up,” She answered, sounding more than a little exasperated with the whole situation. “I haven’t the slightest idea!” The man said before laughing and jumping off the table after the dark haired man, igniting his lightsaber as he did so. “Now onward in our noble quest for this small creature that is not you!”

"Mom!" Tirzah cried out as Jaina collapsed onto the decking of the Ferro Re, her own head spinning from processing the new visual data through the Force. She knelt next to the prone woman and bit back scared tears of her own as she tried to sort through her own jumbled thoughts and training in order to sort out what to do next. Above her somewhere, a mechanical voice called out to her. "Tirzah, Your mother is in need of medical attention." It took Tirzah a moment to place the voice as belonging to the droid Master Tares had brought with him. "Please locate some bacta strips in the medbay nearby. Then retrieve those and begin applying them directly to the wound area. If you don't act fast enough, your mother may choose to follow the light to a better place." She started crying. She couldn't help it. "But I don't know where it is or what they even look like Atlas!" But the odd echo that represented Altas's hovering form was already retreating back towards the cockpit. Gently Tirzah knelt next to Jaina's still form, rolling her carefully onto her back as she tried to force herself to calmdown. You already lost your dad. Do you want to loose your mom when you've only just met her? she chided herself, sobbing more. This is why the Jedi don't do the whole 'attachment' thing. You can't even think clearly enough to help her. SHE'S DYING! Jedi...training...breathe...calm down...let the Force guide you... A few shaky breaths. She found you against astronomically impossible odds...that has to be the Force's will. A few steadier breaths. You didn't die because...well, I don't know...the Force's will again. That the other girl, Raia, had visions that brought her and that guy to find you... Deeper, calmer breathing. Yeah...and then the descent into madness. That was LOADS of fun...wait, no...focus. Mom needs your help. Did Atlas really have to be such a jerk about it? And Emily is your cousin...I still don't get what mom did to make her go so nuts. Adults are weird. She rose, finally able to find that small voice inside her that was actually more helpful than her own internal ramblings. It took her a few minutes to find the medical bay and even longer to find the supply closet. Opening it, she let out a cry of surprise as another Forceless blob emerged from the locker and into it's larger form before her. "Hello I am M3-D1C. Are you in need of assistance?" a chirpy voice that seemed to belong to the blob intoned. "Yes!" She exclaimed, relieved. "Something happened to my mom. She needs help...Atlas said bacta bandages. Can you help me find them? I don't want her to die." "There, there." The droid patted her on the head. "Take me to her and bring that cart and we shall see. I will give her the best care!" Tirzah sniffed and pulled the cart behind her as she led the medical droid back to the cargo hold where her mother hadn't so much as moved. As the droid set about its task, Tirzah curled up in the corner near some boxes offering a silent prayer to the Force. Please let her be okay. I don't want to be alone anymore.

"Calling for backup won't help, I'm afraid," barked the leader, as the doors hissed open at both ends of the room and another half-dozen troops filed in. There was no mistaking it this time: these were not the bored-looking mechanics they had encountered previously. The sharpness of their manner decried Imperial background, though their uniforms were woefully out-of-date. Almost, she thought wryly, as out-of-date as me. Such a lapse in appearance likely meant that the outpost here had been placed and then abandoned, or at the very least, out of contact with the present Imperial leadership. These men seemed much more a product of the Empire that had taken her prisoner and predicated her apprenticeship with Bishop of Battle. They had the exits blocked, and the reinforced walls did not bode well for an improvised escape route. At the height of her ability, Jaina would not have trusted herself to field every bolt from a dozen Imperials, even out-of-practice ones: and her combat abilities had been relatively untested on this side of her Hapan grave. Not to mention, her efforts to temper the throbbing pain from her wounded leg were becoming more distracted all the time, and as a result, the necrotic flesh presented another liability. It was a risk she would not take with Tirzah in tow. If they just knuckled down, held their position, and waited for Tares to arrive, then they might have a better chance of getting out of here unscathed. Her mind whirred like the servomotors of a droid, spinning a countless number of escape plans in mere seconds, but every one of them came up short. Then her comm clicked to life again, Tares' voice springing from the far side of the room where the Imperial man held her comlink in his hands as though prepared to crush it. "I'd be happy to join. Just don't end the party without…" Jaina's relief evaporated in accordance with Tares' voice. The Imperial's face grew even more smug, and Jaina remembered probably too late to hide the alarm that she felt. He pocketed her comlink and tilted his head in the direction of the mother and daughter standing back-to-back with lightsabers held at the ready, the steady hum and rapid breathing the only sounds in the room. "You see? Now, you can tell me what I want to know, or we can do this the hard way." He turned to one of the uniformed cadets and handed Jaina's comlink over. "Take this for processing and bring me a report of findings." Tares... she whispered into the Force as the cadet moved toward the doorway, reaching out for her friend instinctively. He was still there, but his presence was faint, as though asleep. This situation was getting worse all the time. Glancing at Tirzah out of her peripheral vision, she felt the girl's signature in her mind, small and much more terrified than she let on: Mom... what do we do now? The set of her jaw hardened, and Jaina closed her eyes. Trust me. I'll get us out of here. Much as she had done on Hapes when facing down a couple dozen Black Sun troops, Jaina wove a cocoon of white-hot Force energy around the two of them, channeling the waves of pain from her burned and broken skin that refused to ebb. Reaching for the white-hot coal that burned its bright hope in the center of her being, she twisted the molecules of the air itself as a shockwave burst forth from her, knocking the collected troops backward toward the reinforced wall. In the split second between their backward propulsion and the dissolution of the cocoon, Jaina yanked her comlink from the downed trooper's hand and yelled, "Go!" Sprinting pell-mell out of the open doorway and down the hall, a single step behind Tirzah, Jaina retraced their way through the stale corridors and out into the salty air of the platform. Pulling up the frequency of the Ferro Re, Jaina panted, "Atlas, it's Jaina. Lower the ramp, we need to get Tares and get out of here, now!" The platform was deserted, absent the scattered mechanics that had been present when they arrived. Perhaps they had just been a front for whatever hidden sect of the Imperials still lurked on Altyr V. Whatever the case, the momentary reprieve from dodging blasterfire was welcome. The sudden flare of engines startled her, and she stopped in her tracks to look toward the sky above the platform. A small shuttle streaked towards the atmosphere, and with a flash of horror, Jaina knew: Tares was on board. A small collection of unconscious guards lay about the foot of the open ramp, but Jaina opted not to ask questions as they climbed aboard, slapping the ramp control. Only then did she allow herself to collapse to the floor, her wounded leg trembling from the strain of running and bleeding through cracked skin. "Atlas," she called feebly, "hurry, they have him, we have to follow them!" The cargo bay pirouetted elaborately before her eyes, and with one last push, dragging herself along the ground, Jaina succumbed to encroaching blackness.

The squad detail that had taken Jaina and Tirzah into custody escorted them silently into the heart of the control center, stoically forming a gauntlet around the pair on either side. Their blasters were trained on the women as though expecting them to try some ill-mannered escape at any moment. Their lightsabers were clutched firmly in the hand of the leader. Shackles had been placed on her wrists, though not Tirzah's. Apparently, the girl looked as much like a collateral piece of their erstwhile mission as she was. Don't exactly see many kids running around, Tirzah had quipped. Her age and appearance would serve her well in the matter of their escape, if she could keep a level head. They were led to a large conference-style room, but Jaina noticed the reinforced walls as soon as they entered. It might take them some time to slice their way out of this one. Jaina and Tirzah were seated at opposite ends of the long table in the center of the room, the former wincing as pain shot up her badly burned leg with the movement. With a curt "wait here", the man who seemed to be in charge deposited all of their confiscated items onto the transparisteel table with a decisive thunk and then vanished through the doorway where they had entered, leaving the remaining five guards posted at intervals throughout the room. Drawing on the Force in an initial effort to knit the ailing cells back to wholeness in the brief reprieve, she felt her own rush of adrenaline beginning to subside along with the keenness of her pain. But the intensity of her focus did not sway under the effects of her body's healing effort. If anything, she felt an increase in her awareness, a surprising determination that surpassed even the weight of her own intent to escape this excuse for a planet. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, and a dark valley entered her mind, a faint scream echoing endlessly through space. Her eyes shot open once again. Raynuk. It was Raynuk's determination that she was feeling once more. The heightened adrenaline, the cold, calculating surgical slice of his saber, the worry that nagged at the back of his mind--like water and oil poured into the same container, they were irretrievably mingled, but utterly distinct from her own senses. The hiss of the door as the man reentered the room brought her attention back from across the stars. Heavy, authoritative steps in steel-toed boots brought him to the center of the table. "State your business," he said in sharp Imperial manner. "We don't get visitors here." With unimpressed eyes, Jaina blinked up at him. "That's what they keep telling me, chief," she said sardonically. "A few more times and I might start asking why." Through the Force, she could feel Tirzah's shock and apprehension growing. Embarrass your kid in public, check! she thought blithely. Another parenting milestone down! "Chief" took another menacing step toward her end of the table, brandishing the hilt of her lightsaber. "Let me rephrase. We don't get Jedi poking around here." She smiled mirthlessly. "But apparently you do get CEOs of major tech corporations." "Keep talking like you know something," he sneered at her, tossing her weapon back on the pile. "You don't even know what this place is." Hoping to goad him into revealing some shred of useful information, Jaina's mouth opened with her next prepared retort when the comlink sitting on the table came to life with Tares' voice. "Jaina, I have found the file that we are looking for. I now know where we need to proceed next. Where are you and Tirzah?" Her mouth still open, Jaina's eyes fell to Tirzah, who met her gaze with a mixture of alarm, disbelief, and exasperation. Their interrogator reached for her comlink, but before his outstretched fingers came into contact with it, it skittered away seemingly of its own volition. Keying it to life, Jaina brought it towards her with the Force, but as she did so her danger sense spiked. She rolled sideways onto the floor as four stun bolts hit the high back of the chair she had just vacated. As she came up onto one knee, her ignited lightsaber flew through the air to meet her palm, supernaturally freed from its bonds. Jaina held it at a cross-guard position as Tirzah quickly moved to stand beside her, the green shoto having appeared from seemingly nowhere. Pain shot through her right leg as her weight provoked the preexisting burn wound, and Jaina faltered momentarily in her concentration. Oh, not good... "We're having a board meeting of sorts in the central complex," she called to the comlink that now lay on the floor across the room, simultaneously reaching out to Tares through the Force. As their captors regrouped and trained their weapons on the pair, moving slowly as though not to provoke the Jedi into action, she added, "if you'd like to join us."