A mission to Fresia (OPEN)

[Quinn Vos]

Fresia Jedi Ruins
Beach

Water dripped from mocha-skin. The breathing apparatus hit the wet sand with a quiet thump. Fiery-green eyes narrowed as she caught a glimpse of tower ruins just beyond the tops of the first line of swaying-palms in the salty-breeze.

It was here.

And she was coming for it.

 

[Quinn Vos]

Approaching Ruins

The force traveled beneath her bare-feet and through the sand. The earth bent and swayed and kicked-up a fountain-like spray to one of the few guards at the temple ruin's entrance. The man stumbled and went for his weapon.

He didn't have a chance.

The Kiffar-warrior moved like an assassin, nagai-blade glinted as it caught the sun before plunging into the guard's neck.

 

[Fen]

"Quinn." A deep, quiet voice, equal parts sorrow and restraint.

A tall, muscular man emerged from behind one of the pillars dotting the ruins, leather boots crunching in the sand. He might've appeared young, save for the stone-like quality of his features. Any boyish fat had been stripped away from his cheeks, leaving a hard, worn exterior.

The light sea breeze tugged at his coarse, white tunic as he briefly strode toward her before coming to a halt. Grey eyes looked toward the fallen body of the guard, where a crimson stain steadily leeched into the sand. Auburn brows drew together, contorting the scar under his right eye. He looked toward the woman and the blood dripping from her blade.

"Don't do this."

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

Flecks of yellow tinted her glowing-green gaze as she turned it to the redhead.

Ryan Korr.

Tattooed-face of a much different woman from when they first met stared back. Polished-marbled features met his rough, stony exterior. Stubborn met stubborn. "I am here to claim something," her words were put more together, but the heavy-Kiffar accent was still there. "Do not get in way." The darkside from Odium's influence on her radiated through her presence like a smoldering fire, a warning.

The other guards would be here soon.

Feet caked in sand, stepped over the body and onto the stone-steps that lead deeper into the ruins. She warily kept her gaze on Ryan even as she pushed deeper in.

 

[Fen]

Long strides headed her off.

"I can't let you."

A silvery cylinder sat in his palm, the weapon of a Jedi. Unlit, for now. One arm stretched out, finger pointing toward the body left forgotten behind her.

"That man you cut down was one of the local militia sent to help us. Do not think my words hollow. He has a family. He had dreams and goals just as you and I do."

Korr came to a stop directly in her path, sand crunching again beneath his determination. A steely gaze searched her sun-kissed face, a ripple of softness beneath, as though he sought for something in those emerald embers that would give him a way out. He breathed in, the calm flow of the Force revitalizing his determination. Steel can bend, but only to a point.

"What happened to you?" he wanted to ask. Instead, "He was innocent." His brow tightened further and muscles in his jaw tensed. An outstretched hand in the Force, fingertips brushing across her presence. Anger. Hurt. Fear. Emotions of the Dark Side. "But he got in the way. I understand.... I understand, but you're wrong."

He wanted to tell her he could help her, he could save her. But she did not want to be saved. She didn't think she needed to be saved. She wanted vengeance. How could he show her that this wasn't the way?

"Please, stop."

[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"]

She stopped with the warm salty-breeze at her back. "No one is innocent, Ryan." There was no sneer or triumph in her voice. Her tone was somber, of someone speaking from intimate experience and the experience of vicariously living that psychometry offered. The gift and the curse.

"I saw who man really was," curved-chin tipped slightly back to the guard. "Like I see them all." Her wrist twitched at her side, ebony-fingers still clutched tightly against the hilt of the bloodied-dagger.

Eyes flickered beyond his shoulder as the breeze picked-up around them. Clouds that should not be there during this time of day began to roll across the sun, sending ominous-shadows across the shelled-sand ground. "What lives in there does not belong to you. You know that. I have come to claim."

Jaw-set, tension rippled along her shoulders. Salt-water trickled from damp-hair down her neck.

"I will not ask again Ryan Korr. Move."

 

[Hytiix]

"Hytiix, what are they doing?" He asked himself quietly in third person.

The Gand sat behind a tall row of wide green bushes that grew in a some what zig zag pattern along a cliff side several meters away from the other two looking downwards on to them. The edge of a scope sat barely sticking out of one of the bushes. Attached to the optic, was his trusty hunting rifle. Hytiix had no desire to take a shot, but the Gand Findsman spot the Kiffar woman a while ago and decided to track her out of curiosity.

 

[Mornhun of House Marr]

[member="Quinn Vos"] [member="Ryan Korr"] [member="Hytiix Mizgar"]

They were here....both of them in the same place. Oh how he wished his maker was here aswell. He pulled his thick black cloak tightly around himself as he looked at them. His eyeless gaze taking them both in and his feelings of malicious intent wafting off him. The Rhak-skuri in him began to crave them and with them, his revenge.

He stayed back for now intent on watching from a distance and wait for a chance to cause Odium the most possible pain. He was made to hunt and torment the man before killing him and he was not able to fully resist but to hurt the woman would be to hurt her lover. That was something he could not pass up.

 

[Fen]

Pain wrenched through his heart. He knew she was right, in her way. No one really could be innocent. People lied. People murdered. History was a web of death, yet Ryan could feel the serenity of the Force flowing through him. He had to believe that there was some greater purpose, some sort of peace that could be found. He just had to keep looking.

They all did.

"He was not the one responsible for your suffering, nor are the countless others you will cut down if I let you pass."

The Jedi Knight did not move.

"Is what resides here really worth their lives?"

[member="Mornhun"] [member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"] @Mornhun @Hytiix Mizgar

Something cold slithered down her spine. Time was running out, maybe for them both. Orbs that held back a floodgate of emotions panned beyond Ryan's shoulders briefly.

"He responsible for his choices. We responsible for the choices we make." Not eloquent but true. Her tribal honor demanded she spare Ryan's life because of Korriban. But that didn't make her hesitate.

She lunged forward and went to swipe the dagger toward Korr's face but she flipped her grip, so it would hit him handle-end first. The force burst through the ground at their feet as she sent a spray of sand and shells to follow-up her swing. Her ultimate goal was to disorient the jedi long enough to slip around his side and continue on her way.

 

[Zatten Black]

Fresia... A place that had seen as much war and as much peace as anywhere else. I was simply here to study the temples here, like so many Jedi before me. But there was a presence like nothing I had ever felt. Pure, blind, evil. I felt two pillars of light, both diluted with slight bits of the dark, and I watched as one pillar lashed out around itself.

The pillars resolved into people, a man and a woman. The woman was steeped in the dark side, but she was still strong in the Light. The man was weaker, but was almost fully in the Light.

But the Dark spot was still not solidifying in my vision. All I could see was its intent to kill. I put my helmet back on, and strode towards the two Light Force users.

"You are in danger. Both of you. A dark spot in the Force approaches. I am Zatten, a Silver Warden of the Jedi. You will both be killed if this individual catches you. Do you understand?"

[member="Quinn Vos"]
[member="Ryan Korr"]
[member="Hytiix Mizgar"]
[member="Mornhun"]

 

[Fen]

"No!" Ryan growled.

The Force flared within him, a sea of calm beating steadily upon the shore, but in the distance he could feel the volcano of power awaiting, calling him by nature as a magnet summons metals. Almost irresistible. Almost. He pushed back the sensations of anger washing over him from her and from this deceptively tranquil place and moved to meet her attack, relying on the Force to guide him.

His hand was in motion even as the pommel-strike came into his peripheral vision. He blocked the blow with a parry, the back of his wrist against the inside of her forearm, shunting her strike off course. Rotating his hand, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tried to jerk her forward, toward him, to off-balance her.

At that moment, the ground erupted, sand and shells flying up at his face. The saber still sat in his other hand, unlit. He gestured with this hand, bidding the earth be still with a push of telekinesis, which sent sand and shells back to the ground.

Frustrated gray eyes looked up, meeting her gaze, their bodies poised mere inches apart in what could soon become a dance of death. The ocean breeze gusted about, billowing out his tunic and bringing a refreshing chill to his skin. The ocean breeze brought with it a new presence in the Force, and words shouted by a strange. Ryan ignored him.

Quinn held his full attention, as she always had.

[member="Quinn Vos"] [member="Zatten Black"]

 

[Zatten Black]

The man ignored me. Quel surprise. I thrust out my fist in a movement that should have caused the man to be knocked to the ground by the Force. I stepped forward, now angry.

"You idiot! If you attack her, you will both die. The presence is coming closer."

[member="Ryan Korr"] [member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Marek S'hadar]

"Calm yourself, padawan." The Jedi Master commanded. Marek didn't have to justify s actions either. He'd tried his best to help the Republic, to re-take Alderann after the first battle had been abruptly ended for him by heavy flak. But in the end his loyalties lay with his loved ones, more specifically Rasu. When he'd trained her they'd been only a year or so apart in age, him just having become stable in the light after years in the dark. Then they both raced to Master, it had been interesting to see, to be a part of, but it wasn't now.

Right now he had a SJO padawan who was losing his temper against an ally, of the order or merely of Marek's. Bottom line was that he wouldn't be harming Korr. Voss was another issue, but Ryan could handle that, Marek would not pile on, he had faith in the Knight who'd sought him out.

But he did sense something approaching, and it was dark. Sliding his saber's hilt into his palm and flipping it into reverse grip, the SJO master waited, keeping himself calm.

[member="Ryan Korr"] [member="Zatten Black"] [member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Mornhun of House Marr]

[member="Ryan Korr"] [member="Quinn Vos"]

He moved now. Odium would feel this no matter the situation he would feel it and Mornhun would bask in his pain. Thakan'dar slid from it's sheath and made a long slow hiss until drawn. The black alchemized steel would not return to it's sheath before liquid sanguine life coated the blade. They would feel him and the pheromones induced fear when he was close enough, how could they not.

He stepped into the shadows and disappeared from brief sight as he moved closer to the metatin Kedi. He moved closer to the shade of a tree and appeared again. Only meters away now his exerted himself and let the Rhak-Skuri gland become active expelling the powerful fear inducing pheromones waft from him.

"I've come for you." He said in a voice filled with hate for the monster who had made him in the forefront of his mind, "I'll being your bodiea to his doorstep and he will know he's next."

 

[Zatten Black]

I drew my own sword, not alchemically reinforced or anything, but a strong hunk of metal with a lot of reach and power behind it. Nothing was cutting through Blacktooth any time soon.

"Oh, monster, how I've wanted to kill something like you. Blacktooth awaits the touch of steel. And I await the touch of your mind, so that I may reach in and crush it. Come to papa, beast."

I turned slightly at the sound of the Jedi Master behind me.

"Calming myself would be a bit counterproductive at the moment, Master. That man would have been dead already, if I hadn't thrown him. And look, the beast is upon us!"

[member="Marek S'hadar"]
[member="Ryan Korr"]
[member="Mornhun"]
[member="Quinn Vos"]

 

[Marek S'hadar]

Scarred, broken, seeking revenge. He related to the monster more than he cared to admit. Marek thumbed the ignition. With a snap-hiss the blade came to life, the blade casting it's sky blue glow across his back as the tip peeked out over his shoulder. His right hand raised up, and the fist became an open palm which loosed the force from. A rather powerful force push was headed for @Mornhun. "Do not rush forward to meet him so eagerly padawan." Marek instructed [member="Zatten Black"] with a firm tone. Rasu would have his head if he let one of the padawan's die, among other things. He didn't pay mind to [member="Ryan Korr"] or [member="Quinn Vos"], that wasn't his concern as of right now.

Lowering himself into a fighting stance Marek kept his eyes on the monster in front of him. Pheromones were powerful thing especially when they produced fear in the mind, but as one who'd been through Val'Ryss' personal hell and the Dark Harvest, Marek was adapted to a degree. The same could not be said for Zatten.

 

[Zatten Black]

Pheromones... I excrete them often enough, that I could recognize them when they were coming off the Dark figure. I grinned evily, and my eyes glowed. I released some musk of my own. My pheromones bolstered my courage, and I laughed out loud.

"Oh, oh. You really should study your opponents before you attack. Pheromones by any other name still don't affect a Zeltron. Especially not an angry Zeltron."

I flipped my sword into the ready stance of Soresu. Now I was ready.

"The Black Warden calls you to your death, Monster. And my Blacktooth thirsts."

[member="Quinn Vos"]
[member="Ryan Korr"]
[member="Marek S'hadar"]
[member="Mornhun"]

 

[Fen]

A lot of things happened at once, prompting Ryan to wonder if the "secret ruins" were really all that secret, if the highly trained Republic guards protecting them were truly all that highly trained, and if the Republic planet of Fresia had been annexed by the Silver Jedi sometime in the last thirty minutes.

 

[Quinn Vos]

[member="Ryan Korr"] [member="Zatten Black"] [member="Marek S'hadar"] [member="Mornhun"]

A voice spoke of danger. A force push rustled harmlessly across the sand where she and Ryan were standing just moments before.

A second spoke of calm.

The flesh of Ryan's fingers wrapped around her mocha-skin. Eyes flashed briefly, a white like the flash of lightning from the storm clouds building high above them, as she fought against the psychometry. Left-foot lunged forward as she stumbled, bringing a quick jab with her balled-up palm toward Ryan's nose but faltered more toward his upper-lip.

The psychometry. His memories. His connection to the light side. They burned like fire down her wrist and threatened to jar the connection that Odium so strongly forged.

A fear not of her own slammed into her senses from behind as a third, and unknown voice accompanied it. With a growl, she twisted her wrist free from Ryan's fingers and reached for the longbow nestled at her back. She swung it like a rod toward the side of Ryan's left knee.

And for the first time, a flicker of worry passed across her gaze.