Scarif

[Leena Kil]

Leena smiled at Sandy, “Thank you Master Sarna. You are right. Of course you are. I am still a Jedi, regardless of what has happened or would have been. If this world needs healing and hope; then I am here for them. I hope my skills will be of more use and less explosive this time.” 
 

The ship shuddered as it broke atmosphere and descended towards the watery world below. Standing, Leena went over to the viewport, a gasp escaping her as she smiled. “It is very beautiful. Much like Mon Cal, only . . . different. The dark presences just do not permeate like they did back on the world I cane from. Someday, I would like to return there, when I am better prepared for the evils that lurk there, and make things right.” Leena steeled herself, turning her attention towards the future and the world that loomed ahead of them outside.

 

As the ship settled, Leena quickly sat to remove her white plastoid boots and rush out to the warm sands outside. Her toes crunching it between them as she paused, letting the tides wash over her feet. A sense of happiness enveloped her. She was where she needed to be and in spite of what had happened, the force was with her. Reaching out, the girl let her worries and cares be swept out with the tides. Each lapping wave carrying with it the warmth of the glow of the force’s comfort and guidance; a warmth she let wash over her soul. Whatever was here, this was where she belonged.

[Leena Kil]

Smiling, Leena turned at the sound of her name. Hurrying over to fall in step with Sandy, the young Jedi was just happy to feel a sense of peace about her. The whole place just seemed, peaceful. 

 

The woman Sandy waved at gave Leena pause as she felt an unsettling familiarity carried on the waves of the force. The Mon Cal’s eye went wide as she stared unblinking for several seconds. As soon as Sandy finished speaking Leena opened her mouth to speak. “She wasn’t waiting here for you the whole time Master Sarna,” she whispered. “I think she was . . . no. It couldn’t be. Could it?” With her eyes still focused on Sandy’s friend, Leena spoke a little louder; blurting out without any introduction, “Were you in Mon Cal too when the Sith attacked?”

[Leena Kil]

Leena tensed slightly as the woman moved to embrace her. She did not resist, but her mind raced as she tried to comprehend everything. This woman had been on Mon Cal with her. Sandy indicated it had not been a fight that she could win. Maybe she was right. Maybe together they, three Jedi women, could return someday to Mon Cal and right the wrongs wrought there.

 

Offering a smile to T’ali’au Leena stepped back to take in the distant derelict that was apparently the source of their mission; to stop some looming disaster.

 

“What happened out there?” The girl whispered aloud. “This world is so beautiful, so peaceful. How did that thing come to spoil it?”

[Leena Kil]

Leena cocked an eyebrow, slightly confused. The ship did not look that old, to be speaking of ancestor’s ancestors. She kept the thought to herself though as she hurried aboard the ship with the others, anxious to get to work.

 

As they neared the hazardous zone, Leena could feel it. Not only could she taste and just plain feel a change in the air as the poisons radiated out into the world around them, she felt it in her soul. There was sickness and death here. An unnatural blemish on the facade of life that needed washing away. 

Slipping out of her white healer’s robes, Leena carefully folded them and placed them on her seat. All she had on now was a white form-fitting second skin body glove; something she had taken to wearing since serving as a medic in the field hospital’s of Coruscant. Robes and scrubs needed changed often, having something on underneath allowed her to do that faster. Taking her sash-like belt and tying it about her waist, Leena assured herself that lightsaber and other gear was carefully affixed. Still. “Wouldn’t do me any good to loose it on the jump now would it.”

 

Taking a rebreather, Leena popped it into her mouth, offering a goofy reassuring smile to the reptilian woman beside her with a thumbs up. Then she stepped to the edge of the ship and looked down. Her fingers tightened on the edge of the doorway into nothingness. Taking a deep breath, Leena silently reminded herself that she was a Jedi, she was here to help. Closing her eyes, the Mon Calamari girl let go and allowed herself to fall forward into a dive.

 

Like a bullet hitting the water, the fishy girl shot through the surface and down into the seawaters below, a wake of bubbles trailing behind her. She felt it even more now. Even though the water was warm, the unnaturalness of the pervading toxins hung on every droplet. It was a cancer that need expunged.

 

Orienting herself, Leena looked around. Seeing Sandy nearby, she paddled over, offering a goofy rebreather filled grin in greeting. It was time to go to work.

 

 

[Leena Kil]

The irradiated poisons that pierced the water ground their invisible maws against Leena’s body, pressing in against her very spirit. The adulteration of nature all around Leena were the same as the truths that had been twisted to create the darkness on Mon Cal. It felt similar in so many ways. Both darkness perverted the true nature of things all around her.

 

Feeling the glow of light in her heart that had carried her thus far, Leena exhaled a trail of bubbles, focusing herself on her task at hand as they swam into a jagged tear in the vessel’s side. Up close, it was ginormous. 
 

Taking the datapad, Leena stared at it, trying for several moments to make heads or tails of the numerous pages and diagrams. It was like an x-ray of a great metallic beast that she had never laid eyes on. The pounding that was beginning to throb in her head from the ever constant dark mutations around them made it even harder to focus; that is, until suddely, it subsided.

 

Renewing her focus, Leena swiped through diagram after diagram, her eyes darting back and forth, taking in every detail she could. After several minutes, Leena thought she knew where they were. With a fierce inhalation through the rebreather, Leena took in lung fulls of air and let the living force that still swirled amongst the chaos touch the light she carried within.

 

Pointing deeper into the darkness, light illuminated from the girl’s palm and she set off. Her feet and legs powerfully propelled the fishy girl through the waters, creatures that had taken up residence in the dark appearing and vanishing at the fringes of the conical light she cast before her. Pausing only long enough to see that her comrades were behind her and following, Leena pressed on. Somewhere inside this skeletal frame lay a cancerous demon that needed cleansing and severing.

 

Swimming deeper and deeper, Leena led the group, pausing only once to consult the maps and disgrams, towards the main reactor chambers. She only stopped when a battered set of blastdoors barred their way. Here, even beyond Sandy’s protective bubble, Leena could feel the unnatural cancer of death growing steadily stronger, carried on the waters to the world outside.

[Leena Kil]

Leena kicked backwards at Sandy’s command, pushing herself behind the master. She could feel the corrupting nature of the very world around them, twisted and torn asunder from the way nature intended it. As Sandy’s shield faltered and fell, the full weight of the radiating power swept over the young girl, causing her to gasp; drawing a tidal wave of water about the rebreather in her mouth.

 

Allowing the light that she was casting to fade to black left the trio swathed in inky blackness, Leena reached forward to grasp at Sandy’s shoulder. Even now, she could feel the heat radiating upwards through the woman. 
 

And then Sandy’s saber ignited, bathing the area in an otherworldly light that matched the bottomless hunger that ate away at everything.

Leena could feel the radiation eating away at her own body, and at the bodies of her associates; especially Sandy as she allowed the radiation to course through her. Instinctively, Leena drew upon the silvery glow of light that bathed her soul; pushing back against the power that sought a chink in her defenses.

 

Inhaling deeply, Leena spit her rebreather out, the unnaturally warm waters burning her lungs as they drew the oxygen away and into her body. Reaching her free hand out for T’ali’au Leena reached out on the force, drawing on the natural goodness of her companions, of the world around them, and of the reserves of light she carried within. Channelling the slivers and fragments of light together, Leena urged the embers of light to grow until their glow was palpable within her chest. It swelled and grew until her chest was tight.

 

With a direction of thought, Leena pressed the glow of light side energies surging forth from her very soul into Sandy’s rapidly withering form as a wave of healing energies. Their purpose was to bolster and sustain the essence of life in the Jedi Master’s form. Leena felt the energies clashing and battling against the radiation’s power within Sandy. Still, Leena drew forth the light and poured it into the battle until Sandy began to jettison the power of the radiation out of her hands into the boiling water. 
 

Feeling the corrupted power continue to grow about her, Leena fought to force the healing powers of light against it. She drew off the light of whatever she could sense. Leena urged Sandy’s own body to fight back against the death that coursed through her body. From the fish and creatures of the sea, from the underwater plants, the microscopic sea life, the water, the air, the seabed, the sky, if Leena could sense it she drew from it and amplified it’s power before sending forth the healing glow into Sandy.

 

The corrupting power of the radiation washed over Leena’s body as she let it wash past her into the darkness. All that mattered in this moment was the force and the life that it sustained. She was a healer and her fellow Jedi her charges. She would not fail them, not this time.

[Leena Kil]

And suddenly, like that, the dark pressing presence was gone. The peacefulness as the natural world began to flow back into the emptiness left by the radiation almost left Leena gasping as she recoiled in the peace. Even as Sandy’s protective barrier faltered, it did not matter, things were beginning to heal. She could feel it. Now the people of this world could begin to set right that which had been wronged.

 

 There in the darkness, Leena smiled slightly. The world was right for the moment except . . . “Master Sarna!” Leena bubbled as she felt the pain and destruction that radiated from the Jedi Master falling back into her and T’ali’u’s arms. She needed medical attention immediately. More than Leena could offer in the cramped darkness of a sunken star destroyer. 
 

Reaching within, Leena pulled at the shimmering sliver of goodness that she carried in her heart.  Nursing it, the warm light grew exponentially until it radiated outward from Leena’s hands and eyes bathing the hall in dim light. Pulling at Sandy, Leena began the long trek back down the shaft of the destroyer. Mentally, she pushed at T’ali’u, urging her to help get the Jedi Master to safety. Sandy needed healing. Her injuries were more numerous than could be seen or counted. A simple washing of the force across Sandy’s form told the apprentice healer that. If she was going to make it, they had to get her somewhere more stable than the wreckage.

 

Seeing Sandy’s rebreather float off into the darkness, Leena pulled her own from her mouth, the salty water flooding and burning her lungs. She shoved the lifesaving piece of technology into Sandy’s mouth, pushing her mouth closed around it.

[Leena Kil]

Deeper into the ship towards the breach, Leena tugged at Sandy; her powerful legs churning the water behind them. All the while, Leena kept one eye on their pathway out and another on Sandy. Things were not looking good. A body was not meant to undergo that kind of destruction. Only the force seemed to hold the master on this plane of existence. So as her legs churned and her eyes watched, Leena subtly pressed on the force urging whatever positive life giving energies the still-healing waters about them could muster. 
 

‘Just keep breathing,’ she thought as fear clouded the edges of her mind. She could not lose another Jedi. Not after Mon Cal. As long as Sandy kept breathing, there was a fighting chance.

 

After what seemed like forever, but was only several grueling minutes, the dim light of the outside underwater world shone through the jagged hole punched in the ship’s hull. Looking down at Sandy, Leena sighed with exasperation, a stream of bubbles trailing upwards from her mouth. Every minute down here was a step closer to the end. A lifetime of lessons and watching countless unnamed soldiers bleed out in her field hospitals was not enough to stay her heart when her fellow Jedi were on the line.  
 

Steeling her mind and soul, Leena gritted her teeth and pressed onwards out into the open sea. Here she could already feel the currents carrying on their invisible arms the life of the world about them. It energized her, encouraged her, steadied her tiring limbs. Climbing on the currents, Leena tugged the Jedi Master until they broke the surface.
 

There was not time to try and signal the vessel that had brought them here. Keeping Sandy’s head above water, Leena paddled towards the jutting wreckage of the star destroyer above the surface of the sea and carefully Pushed Sandy’s body into what had once been a gun emplacement before pulling herself up after.

 

Kneeling beside Sandy, Leena began to pull the ragged robes away from her more obvious injuries. The woman’s fingers looked like they had been scorched down to the bone! With a deep sigh of exasperation, Leena began to dig at her waist pulling a half dozen small green crystals from her pouch. The Mon Cal smiled. “Where modern medicine fails, the force takes over.” She quoted to herself from one of the many texts she had studied in her lifetime on healing. Inwardly, Leena was trying to sever her personal connection to her patient. This was a professional duty now, she could not let it be anything more; in spite of how deeply she was worried about losing another Jedi. Healing soldiers on the front lines, tending to Jedi in the temples, Leena cared but could almost always distance herself from ‘them’, they that fought in wars or were clumsy enough to hurt themselves in training. This was different though, now Leena was one of those people on the front lines. Even as her own body ached, she still had work to do.

Carefully setting up her crystals about Sandy’s form and her own, Leena settled cross-legged close enough that her knees were pressed up against Sandy. Palms downward, Leena extended them out across Sandy’s fallen form, one over her head and another her navel. Then, the Mon Cal inhaled deeply, clearing her mind, drawing on the faint glow that she carried within. She pulled it forth, urging it to grow, pushing out any doubt or darkness in her mind. From there it flowed like a mist from every pore of her body, across Sandy towards the crystals where it networked within the intricate latices and rebounded within the aura. The healing power of the force growing exponentially within the circle as it surged around Leena and was directed towards Sandy’s wounds, visible and invisible. “Come on Master Sarna. It is not your time yet. The force needs you still. Keep on breathing. Just breath. Let the force and your body do the rest. Accelerate the knitting together of your sinews. You injuries will be closed and filled with life. Your mind resting in a nurturing cocoon of warmth. Just breath.”

[Leena Kil]

Leena pulled back instinctively as Sandy sat up with a scream that shattered the calm sound of water lapping at the ship’s hull. Her eyes were wide with surprise. She had not expected the Jedi master to return so . . . suddenly. Having little to offer, Leena tried to hand the master whatever larger scraps of robe she could still reach. 
 

Smiling at Sandy politely, Leena gingerly placed a forceful hand on the woman’s shoulder and pushed her back down on the hull. “You are not fully healed yet Master Sarna.” Sandy may be a master, and therefore outrank her, but here, in this situation, medical bay or field medic, Leena was the medical provider; Sandy her patient. It warmed the Mon Cal’s soul to see the Jedi pulled back from the brink and she silently thanked the force that still radiated freely around them; the healing waves of light pulsing silently about them. “You must rest.” She continued, nodding as Sandy spoke briefly of knighthood. It was encouraging for Leena doubted strongly if she was capable enough to ascend the ranks of the Order, but in this moment, those thoughts were pushed aside. Her focus remained on and in the force, serving as a conduit and guide to help accelerate the Master’s natural healing, drawing on the calmness about them and infusing it with light and peace. Radiation was not a simple broken limb, it was a dark power that hid in the recesses of health, light, and life. Leena was encouraged by the Jedi’s recovery, but still, she immersed herself in the force, seeking out the darkness where it hid. She, Tali, and Sandy had all been exposed and would need treated; but Sandy had taken the brunt of the blow beneath the waves.

After several minutes, the calm air was pierced by the low throb of engines as the vessel that had deposited them here returned to retrieve them.

 

Jumping into the near craft, Leena grabbed a blanket and scrambled back out, draping it around Sandy’s shoulders. “No sense giving everyone a show.” She smiled playfully as she offered a hand to help the Master into the craft.
 

As soon as they were all aboard, they set about making their return to shore and Tali’s village.