Public Behind the Walls

[Novac Lyrikal]

Lumiya Dara Aren D'Shade Xur’kai Dren Roqar Zatt Evander Thule Tiber Fel

Novac was being transported by 4 guards armed with electro staffs pointed at him. Novac had already yanking them out of their hands with the force but found he couldn't. They must have something in the building to do so, smart, which knowing them is surprising they can even be smart.

They where almost at his cell when Novac grabbed the guard behind and to the left of him, tossing him towards the one on the back right of him. Before the other gaurds could react novac rushed towards the gaurd to his right.

The guards made one major error when they captured him, they didn't cut his claws. Novac was lucky they where so carless, that they thought they where on top in this place.

His claws on his top left hand slide smoothly into the guards neck. The only one who had time to react was the last guard who was on Novac's left, but he was met with novacs tail slamming him into the wall, his ribs giving a loud crunch.

Quickly riffling through their pockets novac took anything and everything useful, as well as two of their staffs which he now held in both bottom hands. Now the only question is where to go, eh figure it out as i go, he thought. Slithering down the hallway and rounding the corner he nearly ran into this tiny girl.

 

[Aren D'Shade]

Aren barely noticed Roqar leave. By then, the prison had become considerably more interesting than the betting floor behind her. The explosion had thrown enough traffic across the network that half her secondary displays were competing for attention, emergency orders colliding with surveillance feeds, lockdown commands, prisoner counts, medical requests, and the sudden reorganization of security personnel throughout the facility. Her hands moved steadily across the controls, separating useful information from noise while EL helped route anything that met the parameters she had established.

One feed drew her attention almost immediately when the little Jedi's cell door opened. Aren leaned slightly closer to the display as Lumiya slipped through the narrow opening and began moving cautiously along the abandoned corridor. There had been no command sent to the lock, no remote intrusion through the prison network, and nothing in the access logs suggested anyone had released her. Aren brought up the cell telemetry beside the surveillance feed and replayed the moment the mechanism disengaged, her eyebrows lifting slightly as the possibilities narrowed. Apparently whatever the prison used to suppress the Force wasn't quite as effective as its administrators believed.

Before she could examine the anomaly further, another security feed demanded her attention. Four guards had been escorting Novac toward containment, but within seconds that arrangement changed considerably. Aren watched the enormous alien turn on his escort with startling efficiency, dispatching the guards before relieving them of anything useful and taking two electrostaffs for himself. His movements were quickly tagged by her system, and when his projected route appeared beside Lumiya's, Aren noticed the convergence before either prisoner could possibly know what waited around the next corner.

She enlarged the corresponding camera just as the two nearly collided. The little Jedi had escaped her cell while the much larger prisoner had escaped his guards, both independently exploiting the same breakdown in prison control without any idea that someone far beyond Orinackra was watching the entire encounter unfold from several different angles. A faint smile tugged at Aren's lips as she linked their profiles together, instructing the surveillance system to prioritize whichever cameras picked them up next. It was certainly convenient, and for the moment she saw no reason to interfere. Roqar wanted variables, uncertainty, and outcomes worth betting on, and the prison was currently producing all three without requiring any assistance from either of them.

Another feed flashed across the edge of her display before she could settle back. Aren shifted her attention toward the fabrication hall and watched Xur'kai emerge carrying a stolen blaster, communicator, and security badge, leaving behind a guard who was very clearly not going to be reporting for his next shift. Her eyebrows rose as she pulled the Dashade's movements onto the same map. Three prisoners had now exploited the lockdown within minutes of one another, while the Imperial inspection above them was forcing the prison administration into increasingly frantic attempts to regain control. Whatever Roqar had expected from tonight's entertainment, the situation was rapidly becoming something far less predictable.

Aren opened his private channel without taking her eyes from the overlapping feeds. "You may want to hurry back when you're finished charming everyone. Our cast appears to have decided the lockdown is optional." Her fingers continued moving as she adjusted the betting telemetry to account for the rapidly changing circumstances, the faint smile lingering as another set of projections populated her screens. "And they're getting ambitious."

Roqar Zatt @Xur'kai Dren Evander Thule Isolde Malthera Novac Lyrikal Lumiya Dara

 

[Lumiya Dara]

I stopped so abruptly that my feet nearly slipped against the smooth durasteel floor. For a moment, I could do nothing but stare. The figure looming in front of me was unlike anyone that I had encountered in the prison so far. Long and serpentine, with several arms and a tail that moved with a disturbing fluidity, he looked as though he belonged somewhere far less civilized than a prison corridor. Two of his hands carried electrostaffs, their tips still humming faintly with residual energy.

Then I noticed the blood. My stomach immediately turned. There was blood on him. Blood on the weapons. Blood on the corridor. Far more than I could comfortably process. The color seemed almost unnaturally bright beneath the pulsing red emergency lights. I swallowed hard. That was a mistake. The metallic scent reached me a moment later, and suddenly the corridor seemed to tilt beneath my feet. No. Not now. I pressed one hand against the wall, drawing a slow breath through my nose and trying desperately not to look at the stains around his claws.

I had always hated blood. Being a healer had never magically made me immune to it. Quite the opposite, really. I knew exactly what blood meant. How quickly someone could lose it. How little it sometimes took to turn an injury into something fatal. And there was entirely too much of it here.

I closed my eyes for half a second. Breathe. When I opened them again, I carefully kept my gaze above his waist. "Are you..." My voice faltered. I cleared my throat. "Are you hurt?" The question escaped before I could stop it. My knees felt strangely weak. I swallowed again and shifted my weight against the wall, hoping the stranger wouldn't notice that I was using it to keep myself upright.

Somewhere behind me came the distant sound of boots. At first there was only one set. Then another. Then several. My eyes widened. I looked toward the approaching noise before turning my attention back to the strange prisoner standing in my path. "You....you're a prisoner." Again, a rather obvious observation. My mind simply wasn't functioning particularly well at the moment. My gaze flickered briefly toward the weapons in his hands before quickly returning to his face. "Where are you going?"

The footsteps grew louder. A voice echoed through the corridor. "Check the detention block!"

My stomach dropped. They had noticed. I glanced toward the approaching guards, then back toward the stranger. There wasn't anywhere obvious for me to hide. And suddenly I found myself standing in the middle of a prison corridor with a very large, very armed alien between me and whatever was coming next.

I took another careful breath. The room tilted slightly. I squeezed my fingers against the wall. "Are you trying to get out?"

Another set of footsteps joined the first. Closer now. I wasn't sure which concerned me more; the guards who were rapidly approaching, or the fact that if I looked down at the blood again, I was fairly certain I was going to faint. For someone who had spent her life helping people, I was beginning to feel remarkably unhelpful.

Tags: Xur’kai Dren Novac Lyrikal Tiber Fel Evander Thule Aren D'Shade Roqar Zatt

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Xur’kai Dren Tiber Fel Evander Thule Aren D'Shade Lumiya Dara

The girl before him was tiny compared to him, he could probably just pick her up if he wanted. That wasnt the only thing he noticed about her, he saw how she was using the wall to hold herself up, was something wrong with her? was she ok? He then noticed that was when she looked down... oh, the blood, he thought, he wiped off his claws on the underside of his prison shirt, trying to get as much of quickly.

She seemed nice enough, out of everythign she could have said or done she asked if novac was ok "oh? Yea i'm fine Just don't uh..dont go that way." novac says pointing down the hall where the dead guards lay. "Sorry about the mess on my claws. You ok?"

The sudden sound of boots caught his attention, he moved to the side a little. "Behind me. Don't really know where im going, just trying to find a way out. My name is novac, yours?" he said also moving back behind the corner.

 

[Xur’kai Dren]

The large Dashade shifted slightly, so as to avoid his legs falling asleep as he sat in solitude on the refresher, listening to the newly acquired communicator. While he didn't need to go, he knew the likelihood of a guard checking refreshers in the middle of such a highly volatile situation was unlikely.

A transmission came across the communicator, clear as if the person on the other end had been just outside of the door, "Checking the refreshers on East Wing, Level 4."

As the transmission cut, the door to his stall slide open. Xur'kai and the human male guard stood face-to-face for a moment before the guard's face registered anything. Xur'kai feigned surprise and disgust, "Occupied!" The guard's face quickly shifted to one of confusion. Sensing his advantage nearing an end, Xur'kai lunged out of the stall, a powerful headbutt meeting the guard's face in a sickening crunch. "I said occupied!" He was met with a gurgling whimper in response.

Overtaking the guard to get back into the corridor a heavy stomp of a foot on the man's ribcage ended the noises coming from him. After quickly shoving the mangled body into the refresher he began bounding down the East Wing. A series of turns finally led him to a potentially promising door with a sign hanging above, Kitchen.

 

[Lumiya Dara]

I watched as he wiped the blood from his claws against the underside of his prison shirt, and despite everything that had happened, I couldn't help but notice the gesture. He had noticed. He had seen how badly the blood was affecting me and had actually done something about it. "Thank you," I whispered, giving him a small nod. "I'm all right. Mostly." That was probably generous. My legs still felt unsteady, and I was doing my best not to look anywhere near the bodies he had pointed out. I trusted his warning well enough not to question it. Wherever those guards had fallen, I certainly didn't want to go that way.

Then he told me to get behind him. I didn't need to be asked twice. I quickly stepped around the corner and moved behind his considerably larger frame, instinctively keeping as much of myself hidden as I could. It was almost absurd how easily he managed to block me from view. For perhaps the first time since I had entered this prison, I had found myself grateful for someone's size.

My hand drifted toward my shoulder again. There should have been a hood there. My yellow robes; the familiar weight of the fabric around me. Something that had always made me feel just a little less exposed when surrounded by strangers. Instead, there was only coarse grey prison cloth. I missed my robes more than I would have expected in this moment. Perhaps it was foolish to think that clothing could offer protection, but my robes had been mine. They had made me feel like myself. Here, dressed like everyone else, I felt terribly conspicuous despite looking exactly like every other prisoner.

The footsteps were getting closer. I lowered my voice. "I'm Lumiya." I hesitated before adding, "Lumiya Dara." My eyes flicked toward the corridor. Several shadows moved across the wall beneath the pulsing red lights. "Novac..." I whispered, testing his name quietly. "Do you know where we're going?" A foolish question, perhaps, considering he had just admitted that he didn't. I couldn't help the faint, nervous breath that escaped me. "Actually....never mind." I peeked around his side just enough to see the approaching light. "There are guards coming."

The first voices became distinguishable now. "Check every cell!"

"They couldn't have gotten far."

"Watch the intersections!"

I quickly ducked back behind Novac. I had no weapon. No communicator. No idea of where I was. And, as much as I hated to admit it, no idea whether the enormous alien standing between me and the guards was going to protect me or simply decide I was no longer his problem. But for the moment, hiding behind him felt considerably safer than standing alone.

I took another slow breath. "Whatever we're doing," I murmured, "we probably shouldn't let them catch us."

Tags: Novac Lyrikal Xur’kai Dren Tiber Fel Evander Thule Aren D'Shade Roqar Zatt