Big Bassa Boom! [SJO Mission/Private]

[Riamah]

She had the feeling she and Madalena would have it out someday. Once already they had an argument that had been defused before and explosion happened. Ra could keep her temper in check while on this mission. After might be another matter. Greatly appreciating what Josh said to them, she let him know by a slight tightening of her grip on his sides.

Just a few heartbeats later Jongori let loose. The facility below them started to look like an anthill had been turned over.

Turning her head only slightly, what Madalena said seemed off coming from her and not Josh. Hardly a moment later their companion jumped off Jongori. She watched her fall and looked away to almost peer over Josh's shoulder. It was only the two of them now, but she still spoke only loud enough for him to hear.

"If you think I'm doing that too, you're nuts."

Not one to show off, Ra was not really very strong in the Force. Instead, she had focused on her physical fighting.

"So now she's down there, what's our plan?"

[member="Scherezade deWinter"] [member="Josh Dragonsflame"]

 

[Josh Dragovalor]

"I've done my best to scout before firing, but I suppose you're right. Jongori's gonna have to hold his fire until we've done a better job of securing things down there, ensuring there's no slaves in the firing range" Josh remarked, letting out a sigh as he would begin to unhook himself from Jongori's saddle. He watched as Madalena would finish unhooking herself and would jump off. "Bye!" Josh joked, laughing in turn as he watched her fall. Noting she was motioning for them to join her, he nodded his head and finished unhooking himself in time for Ra to proclaim that she was not jumping off. The problem here was that Jongori was not used to Ra as a rider and wouldn't be able to work as effectively while accommodating for her. Not that Jongori could do anything until they had ensured that things were clear of slaves on their end. Something that Josh appreciated Madalena ensuring.

"I totally understand where you're coming from, dear" Josh remarked as he would stop suddenly, dramatically holding up the straps to reveal that he had accidentally undone what was securing her to Jongori as well. "Whoops" He spoke up, shrugging his shoulders. Well, that made things easier. He took her hands, ensuring Maddy was distracted as he placed a quick peck on Ra's lips. It was the quickest and most nonverbal apology he'd ever given for what he knew was about to come. "Well, see that's where there's a problem. See, people are starting to shoot at us, I don't have enough time to re-tie this and seeing as we're not secured-"

As if on cue, Jongori would be forced to take evasive measures as a volley of blaster fire rocketed toward the dragon. The sudden jerk would send Josh and Ra flying into the air.

"That. I would hold on!" Josh called out to Ra as he took her hand, before activating Force Flight and beginning to slow their descent into freefall as much as he could.

Meanwhile on the ground, the ground forces had begun shooting at Madalena as well.

[member="Riamah"] - [member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Madalena let her head roll backwards as she let out a laugh, the shooting having begun just now. Blaster bolts. They were using your average crap blaster guns. Her armor had been specifically designed against that sort of damage and she had little to worry about as the pew pew's continued.

What it did give her time though for, was the dramatic flair – within moments, a dozen Czerka knives flew around her in a fan as two emerald green lightsaber beams ignited into life, and she ran forward.

The thing about blaster shots, was that it was too damned easy to see where they were coming from. They traveled slower through the air than slugts did, so you could nearly always see where they were coming from, even if you blinked. And that gave her the knowledge of where to go to, even without needing to sense forward with the Force.

Jumping through the air, Madalena landed in front of a group of grunts that were doing the pew pew. Her body moved with the grace and elegance of a dancer as she moved quickly, her knives moving each seemingly on its own, stabbing, cutting, and being annoying to the grunts as she took them down, hacking their bodies and splitting them into two pieces or more, leaving not a drop of blood.

Once she was done with those, she turned around, glowing green eyes looking for Josh and Ra.


[member="Josh Dragonsflame"] [member="Riamah"]

 

[Riamah]

It was a good thing Ra had her own armor on, the bad thing about it was it made her appear to be a droid. Right after Josh gave her that quick peck on the lips, she had the helmet glass in place and they were flying. She wasn't one easily scared and she certainly wasn't today, but her heart leaped into her throat as they fell through the air.

This wasn't the first time something like this had happened and Ra assumed it wouldn't be the last. Even though she was clearly involved with a Jedi Master, her own skills in the Force were lacking to a great degree. His flight ability was one of them. While she could have controlled their fall, he had much great control over things and guided their path far better than she could have.

She wasn't close enough to Madalena to know what actions she was doing, but once she and Josh were on the ground, she went looking for her. What troops weren't occupied by the other woman turned to the two of them and started firing. Sending the shots fired at her back, she attempted to make sure they would only disable the opposition and not kill.

Having been with Josh and the Jedi for a while now and even before meeting them, Ra had not been a killer. Only when there was no other option did she kill anybody. That wasn't to say she hadn't killed before, but it was never something she relished the thought of.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"] [member="Josh Dragonsflame"]

 

[Josh Dragovalor]

Once they had dropped down to join Madalena, the group would fight their way through the facility. It wasn’t long before Josh got confirmation from their second team that the slaves had been found and freed, but that it would be best to continue to sweep the facility and find any remaining slavers. Leaving those they had taken out with their team to be transported for arrest, the Boom Squad so to speak left Jongori in their care to help them deal with any slavers that might try and make an attack while they went deeper in. What Josh hadn’t been expecting though, was to find an elevator that led underground.

When the doors opened, though, Josh certainly wasn’t expecting what they found on the other side.

“What the…”

The large chamber was filled to the brim with cloning pods, with a central control booth in the middle. Josh slowed for a moment as he took in the sight around him. What in the world was going on here? What were the purpose of all these pods? What were they trying to clone and why? And was this a facility the slavers had taken over to use as a front? Or was something else going on?

“What the hell is all this?”

But what hit him was the Force signature in the room. For Ra and Madalena, they wouldn’t recognize it. But for Josh, he knew it. His eyes widened, and then his brows furrowed.

“No. No way.”

The Jedi Master stormed forward like a man possessed, moving to one of the pods to try and find the signature. Though as he put a hand on the pod…

“Dead.”

He moved to another pod.

“Damnit… Also dead.”

Every pod that he moved to all had the same body, same looks, all dead. Most of them were disfigured, and Josh didn’t recognize their faces with all the disfigurement and scarring across them. But he knew he recognized that presence, and he needed to know why. His emotions flared up with every passing second, and the two behind him would easily be able to sense that. This continued until he stopped at the pod in front of the panel… And it was that one that he stopped dead.

“No… It can’t be.”

His breath hitched as he recognized the face, in the same spot where the presence was strongest. He shook his head.

“This is impossible…”

He hesitated to place a hand on the pod. They’d never found the body, he knew. He knew it was possible, but… After all this time, the odds of their still being alive in this pod was incredibly slim. And he didn’t know if he could handle it. If he could handle the pain of him dying again. The Jedi let out a hitched breath, finally placing his hand toward it.

“Please be alive…” He whispered in a pleading voice. “Please, please be alive…”

The Jedi’s hand rested on the pod as he searched for life signs.

And then he felt it. A heartbeat. His eyes widened, his pupils shrank, his breath skipped a few times as he tried to wrap his head around all of this.

“Father?”​

He knew that presence, he knew that face. He looked no different from the day he’d seen him last, all those years ago. Before the One Sith bombed Coruscant and the building he’d been staying in. But when his head tilted back up, he started working in a frenzy, tearing his way past the security measures quite literally until he made his way into the control booth. The Jedi Master looked to Ra, motioning her over.

“Can you slice it?” He asked. Once it was done, Josh began going through the records, until he found an entry of interest.

“Whoever has been here, has been experimenting on cloning Force Users, abilities and all. He was hoping by being able to successfully clone this one, by keeping him alive all these years after he…. After he…” Josh trailed off, his voice slowing. “... Found him unconscious in the ruins of Coruscant, dragged him back and began drugging him to keep him in a catonic state while they cloned him over and over, just narrowly keeping him alive all these years as he did. None of the clones survived the attempts to clone a Force User with the capabilities of a Master… The intention was… The intention was to complete the formula, and then use a younger clone body, after displacing the old host, to create clones already capable of wielding the Force in great bursts…. To create an army.”

But all Josh could think about was the fact his father was alive. The more he read it all back to Ra and Madalena, the shakier his voice became. Fighting back tears of hurt, confusion, and who knows what else, he tried to look for a way to release the pods.

A blaster shot fired across the room and hit Josh in the back. The Magnus Armor under his robes absorbed the shot, and the Jedi quickly got to his feet. All of these emotions were swirling through him, and he didn’t know what to do with them. So much was coming down on him at all once. This wasn’t like anything he had encountered before. This wasn’t just simple heartbreak or abandonment, or worry over someone’s safety, not the kind of things that provoked emotion like he was used to… No, this was a completely different breed of stress, and a completely different breed of emotions being bred.

As he stepped out of the control area, a hunched back man with thinning hair fired at him again. “Stay away from my experiments, you freak!” The man screeched at him, and when Josh used the Magnus Armor to swat aside another blaster bolt, he got a good look at what he realized to be one thing.

The monster that took his father away. The monster that made him believe he’d lost him all those years ago, the agony of not being able to save him, of not being able to tell him all that he’d wanted to. The pain of not being able to tell him about Jason, and introduce Jason to his grandfather. All of that pain, all of it centered on that one person.

And Josh didn’t know how to control himself with what came next.

As Josh held out a hand, the man would let out a squeal as he began to fly forward into the grip of the Jedi. But he didn’t keep the grip in the Force. Instead, both hands moved to grab him by the throat. As the man let out several gagging sounds, the Jedi stared at him with one thing, one single thing that neither Ra nor Madalena had likely ever dreamed of seeing from him before.

Pure fury.

Josh let out a resounding growl as he moved and slammed him into the wall, eyes fiercely piercing into him as he pressed him into the wall in the air. It would be so easy to kill him for what he’d done, he realized. He could snap his neck with the Force easily. Yet he didn’t. That little voice in the back of his head kept him from doing it. His grip loosened a bit, and the man’s gurgling stopped, only to manage out…

“They’ll be here soon. They’ll make sure you don’t take away my experiments. And then you’ll be sorry.”

And while Josh’s little voice kept him from killing him, neither Ra or Madalena would have a chance to stop what came next. Something switched on in his head.
And then he moved a hand from him, before he pulled back and slammed his fist into their skull.

And didn’t stop.

Over and over, Josh peppered the man with blows, as he began to vent loudly toward them.

“HE-IS-NOT-YOUR-TOY!” Josh snarled between blows, as the man slumped forward. “SIX YEARS!” He screamed, unable to hold in all of the emotion swirling through him anymore. It was all just too unfamiliar, nothing he had ever dealt with before, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. “SIX YEARS I LOST WITH HIM, SO YOU COULD PLAY GOD! SIX YEARS I COULD HAVE HAD, THAT I WAITED MY WHOLE LIFE TO HAVE, AND YOU TOOK IT AWAY!”

Josh was seething uncontrollably, tears raining down his face as he pulled him up by his shirt. If not stopped, it was unknown if he’d be able to control himself from here. Emotions were running far too high.

[member="Riamah"] - [member="Scherezade deWinter"]

 

[Josh Dragovalor]

-Oops-

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

The slaves had been found and feed. Madalena frowned and pouted, feeling like they'd missed out on a lot of fun. If the slaves weren't around, it meant that any slavers that they hadn't murdered yet were now probably already making their way out. It would take months if not more to track them all down. While she didn't get why the elevator was a surprise to Josh, she followed both him and Ra inside anyway.

Entering the chamber, a smile was etched on her face. Now this, she liked. She could scent it all – the blood, the body parts, all of it. Sure, some of the smells were slightly wrong, but she already knew what they actually were. Cloning technology. She'd learned about the differences between non-clone scents and cloney scents not too long ago, during the life day celebrations.

It took more than a few seconds though, before she realized it. There was one scent there, not multiple. Certainly, it was coming from many different sources, but it all had the same source. She frowned, trying to make sense of what her senses were telling her.

Following Josh, Madalena narrowed her eyes. By the time she understood, it was too late. He had already said it. Father.

But… That didn't make sense. He'd told her the man died, a good long while ago. So what was he doing there? Why was he alive? Who would've taken his DNA to clone him so many times in the attempt to do… What?

Quietly, she listened. To every word spoken.

Only the appearance of the man cause her to move, but Josh was faster than her. His loss of control had taken her by surprise and her focus shifted; from the man, to her best friend.

But by then Josh was already killing the man, and she knew the advancement of more forces was coming in. There was simply no time.

Standing behind Josh, Madalena hoped that his focus would remain on the man he was killing for her to notice what she was doing – aiming to hit the back of his head with the hilt of her lightsaber. If he lost consciousness, she and Ra could carry him the krak out of there – and into safety.

[member="Josh Dragonsflame"] [member="Riamah"]

 

[Riamah]

The grounds were secured and the slaves freed. This brought a small smile to Ra's face and was happy it was covered by her mask. Showing emotion around Josh was one thing, but in front of others, it wasn't something she did. Far too many people were that might see it and that wasn't anything Ra was comfortable with.

Another door opened and it revealed an elevator that would take them downstairs. Lifting a hidden eyebrow, they went down together. The questions Josh gave voice to weren't something she could answer, but she did have an idea. Before she could even start to give her theory, he had taken off in surprise. Looking in the direction of Madalena, she lifted her hands, shrugged her shoulders and started to follow her partner.

Each body in the various pods was dead and lifeless. It made her wonder why they were even kept...whoever the original was, Josh knew who it was. Whatever theory Ra originally had went flying out of her mind at the single word Josh said. Blinking just slightly, as soon as he moved, she was at his side.

He asked if she could slice into the records and it took one touch of her gloved hand to accomplish that. The records were searched and read through. What came of the answer disturbed Ra. It was risky to attempt what was being done here and as they had already seen, most of them had been failures.

A question came to her mind, but a blaster shot hit Josh in the back. His armor took the hit and he was on his feet within moments. Not giving voice to her question, she did think it. Who was creating this army and for what purpose? It was something that would be addressed later and the answer might just be waiting in the files they had just sliced into. Further examination would have to be done to that, but not in this moment.

Not being as good at empathy as she probably should have been, she could tell this whole situation had Josh confused. His emotions boiled over when the man that had shot him spoke up. This was a person that was going to regret quickly just what he had done. To Josh, his father and anybody else he had tinkered with. A person was capable of any number of things while relying on their emotions to control them. This was a boundary Ra had never known Josh to cross. Yet it seemed he did just that right now.

She didn't even attempt to stop him. Her own family had been killed and dead before she even had a memory of them. The man that had raised her had not been remotely close to what a father should have been and instead had treated Ra like a tool. He was upset at being denied six years that he could have had with his father and she shook her head. However, she did feel something akin to sympathy for him.

Noticing when Madalena joined them after looking around the room, she saw exactly what the other woman had in mind. There would soon be incoming and she didn't think they would exactly be friendly. Not this far into the facility. Nodding, Ra was prepared to catch Josh if her hit connected and knocked him out.

[member="Scherezade deWinter"] [member="Josh Dragonsflame"]

 

[Josh Dragovalor]

He wasn't worth it.

That little voice in his head was usually much stronger than this. But while it had been weakened, it was still there. The man was already unconscious and he had no reason to strike him further since his mouth had shut, aside from sate his own anger. But he knew deep down that he wasn't like that. He needed to be stronger than this. Not just for himself, but for Jason. What would Jason think, seeing him like this? What would Jason think if it got out in the future that he had beaten this man to death?

He hated doing this, but Josh let out a sigh as he dropped him. Holding out a hand, he healed his wounds to a degree. Enough to keep him from bleeding out, but not much more than that. He'd rather those wounds stayed with him, and served as a reminder of what he'd done to him. That it was better to quit this nonsense now, or risk getting a beating like that again.

"Quit while you're ahead" Was all he told him as he turned to see Madalena aiming the hilt of her lightsaber toward him. He knew immediately what she had planned, and he looked dead into her eyes with a glare. Was that what she thought of him? As some monster that couldn't be made to see reason? Was that what he looked like to her? He wasn't happy with Madalena in the slightest as he moved past the two of them, quickly wiping the tears from his eyes as he reared back and destroyed the glass holding his father with a fierce blow. Catching his father as he slumped forward, he unhooked him and listened for a heartbeat once more. He then turned to the other two.

"The Rangers have secured the facility and made their arrests. I'll tell them to make one more before we go. We're leaving" He told the two of them as he managed to slump the older man over his shoulder and began to walk out of the room. "I need to act quickly if we're to save him. The methods that monster used to keep him alive were crude and weren't designed for him to survive whenever he decided to stop administering doses."

He didn't want to think about the inevitable long-term damage that this had done. And that was if he would survive at all. The thought that did cross made him almost regret not killing the scientist. But he knew that it was for the best.

[member="Riamah"] - [member="Scherezade deWinter"]