First Reply Cat and Mouse

[Jared Starchaser]

The fact that he had been chasing this mark through how many star systems? And still hadn’t caught them? Yeah that was giving him a mental hold up on if this chase was really worth it. But people had been disappearing, and there was a trail of blood that just had to stop. It was getting out of hand. Children missing now too.

Say what one would about Jared but he was a decent representative of what the Jedi should be. Don’t tell him that, but all the same. He was here to help. And this world? It didn’t seem to be giving the target any chance to run. His TIE Avenger had become his home away from home more than he’d like. The haulcraft was back on the Oasis but he was not just moving cargo.

He was hunting.

Dark leathers from one beast or another, a lightsaber on his hip, and a charric rifle across his back, he stood on the cliffs at sunset, a fairly large village below him, and he could see through his macro binos the swoop making its way in.

He had to catch up. Mounting his own swoop, he and Hopper sped down the hill, pulling into the village controlled, and slow. Seeing the types of people in this village, he moved his rifle to the side of his swoop.

Hunter, but not for a target like this. Feeling more than hearing a panic off to the side, he saw someone take down an alleyway.

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Disobey - by ODDKO
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Tag: Jared Starchaser

Lady Izanami sat upon a broad, rock as though it were a throne carved just for her by the patient hands of the earth itself. The children gathered close, a tumble of bright eyes and dirt-stained knees, their laughter skipping about like stones over a lake. She leaned forward, chin in her palm, golden gaze glimmering with mischief.

"Ah now," she began, voice lilting like a fiddle's tune, "have I ever told you of the time I near got myself sealed in a set of ruins I'd no rightful business pokin' about in?" The children gasped in delight, for they knew that tone; the one that promised trouble dressed up as adventure.

"It was a place older than manners," she went on, waving her hand as though brushing cobwebs from memory. "Great doors carved with faces that frowned at me like I owed them coin. And did I turn back? Not I. I walked in bold as brass; and the door slammed shut behind me with the temper of a jealous lover."

She widened her eyes theatrically, earning squeals. "Traps everywhere! Floors sinkin', walls sighin', statues watchin' me like I'd stolen their supper. I says to meself, 'Izanami, girl, you've truly outdone your foolishness this time."

She laughed, warm and rolling, as she described narrowly dodging darts and convincing an ancient guardian spirit that she was, in fact, "a traveling historian with impeccable manners."

The tale was just reaching the part where she'd escaped by "pure charm and a small bit of running for dear life," when her gaze drifted past the children toward a narrow alley beyond the square. A man hurried through it, glancing over his shoulder like a fox scenting hounds.

A few minutes later, another fellow came pounding after, all sharp breath and sharper intent. Her smile tilted, curiosity sparking like flint. She rose smoothly from her rock, brushing dust from her attire.

"Well now, my little ravens," she said, hands on her hips, "it seems the evening's not done telling stories yet." A chorus of groans and small protests rose at once. She softened, crouching to their level. "Ah, don't be lookin' so mournful. I'll be back before the moon's had time to gossip with the stars."

She tapped one child lightly on the nose. "And who knows? Maybe I'll return with a brand-new tale, one with a bit more mischief in it." With that promise dancing behind her, she turned and strode toward the alley.

 

[Jared Starchaser]

Down the alley. He could follow that way. The Warden, the hunter, the journeyman of the Force and Jedi arts was not sure what he was going to come across, but he was hoping it would be the find he was looking for. The one that was responsible for the killings and the missing beings. Jared had his hand on his lightsaber now. The setting sun was casting shadows of orange and red, and as he stepped into the alley, his green lightsaber contrasted sharply.

But he was thinking he must have imagined it. Looking up, the dead end, he saw the wall. Someone must have scaled it.

What he didn’t suspect was someone coming in behind him. Saber still humming, he rolled the blade in his hand. The being that followed was not what he saw, not what he sensed coming in here. Another chase, another lead coming up empty.

“Where is he?” He commanded, feeling the Force radiate off the other, but knowing it was not his target.

But maybe this one should be.

Morta Izanami

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Disobey - by ODDKO
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Tag: Jared Starchaser

She followed the man at her own unhurried measure as he plunged into the alleyway, the shadows from the buildings and the setting sun folding in close about them like a heavy cloak. The passage was steeped in shadow, its silence broken only by the echo of pursuit now abruptly stilled. The one he hunted had not vanished by sorcery nor smoke, but by muscle and haste.

The man she had trailed turned on her in a flare of frustration, a green lightsaber alive in his grip, its glow washing the alley in an illuminated emerald sheen. He held it out before him, demanding, pressing her for an answer she believed was obviously apparent.

Her eyes settled on the weapon rather than the wielder, her expression touched more by curiosity than concern, as though she were observing a peculiar bit of Jedi craft.

"Ah now," she said at last, her voice lilting with a thick, warm brogue despite the blade leveled her way, "you are trained to hold that thing, not wave it about like some wee child tryin' to knock candy from a tree?" She lifted a brow, unimpressed.

"And if it pleases you, you might ought to stop pointin' the thing at me, I've no wish to leave this alley short a limb on such a blissful twilight; or answerin' questions o'er a missin' persons report." Her lips parted into a playful smile, as her gaze drifted upward to the duracrete wall beside them.

"Your man went o'er the wall, plain as day. We can catch him yet if we follow." Then, with a faint, easy tilt of her head as she stepped toward the climb, she added, "You can tell me why we're chasin' him at all while we're on the way, for I'd dearly love to know whose trouble I've stepped into tonight."

 

[Jared Starchaser]

The first response from her was not what he expected it to be. This was another being who wielded the Force, probably had a decent level of mastery over it, from what he felt. Jared, however, was full of surprises himself. The fact he had the lightsaber out was a misstep on his own end. Looking the other being in the eye, he listened.

“I know what I’m doing with it.” He said, matter-of-factly, flatly. A nod, and he extinguished the blade, the green light dousing from the alleyway, leaving his eyes a second to adjust, and the Force taking over for his danger sense. She was right. He wasn’t going to admit the fault.

“He’s been running a racket in the Core. People disappearing, turning up dead.” He eyed the woman before he looked at the wall. “Most without blood.”

Morta Izanami

 

[Morta Izanami]

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Comfortable Liar - by Chevelle​

Tag: Jared Starchaser

She let the breath slip from her lips as the blade of the Jedi's lightsaber withdrew into its hilt with a hiss like a serpent returning to its den. Relief painted her features with delicate precision; shoulders easing, chin dipping, fingers uncurling from their poised tension, yet there lingered in her eyes a glimmer too deliberate to be mere gratitude.

As he spoke of his query; of people vanishing, of bodies discovered pale and bloodless beneath indifferent stars, she listened with an attentiveness almost tender. Her fingers traced idle patterns in the air, slow arcs and subtle flourishes, as if conducting an unheard symphony. There was curiosity in her eyes, soft and probing, a scholar's fascination with the grotesque arithmetic of disappearance.

The words 'Most without blood' seemed to linger deeper in the witch's mind, unspoken implications thick as incense, while her faint smile suggested not horror, but contemplation; an interest awakened rather than alarmed.

She withdrew into herself, her thoughts spiraling about the shadowed figure the Jedi pursued, whose presence seemed to thin the very air of reason, after all, Jedi don't pursue the innocent without cause, or so it's claimed. Unbidden, her mind turned to the village, their lives bright as fragile lanterns against an encroaching dusk, and she felt a cold arithmetic settle in her bones as she weighed their innocence, her friends, against the rumor of bloodless dead.

She tilted her head ever so slightly, a glint of quicksilver mischief and keen inquiry dancing in her gaze, and said in a voice heavy in her thick brogue, "Now hold a moment, will ye, when ye say most were found without a drop of blood, what is it you're truly after in that tellin'? Are you hintin' at some dark fancy, or have ye a theory tucked away behind those solemn eyes of yers? For I'll not deny it, Jedi, you've stirred my curiosity proper, and I'd dearly like to hear the shape of yer thinkin'."

 

[Jared Starchaser]

He’d learned lessons from his father. Just because someone didn’t fall the narrow view of a Jedi did not mean they were a bad person. Hell, the Starchaser family was barely the best Jedi there were. Just they were loud and worked across borders and Orders. Coren had abandoned his posts plenty of times, but came back to fight wars. Lately, the eldest Starchaser was off doing his rescue-stranded-spacers bit, and left the wayfinding and protection of Rim settlements to his two eldest children.

And some of his best contacts were Witches, not necessarily Dathomiri, but witches all the same.

Eying the woman before him, Jared couldn’t help but consider where she sat in the Force. It didn’t matter, as she wasn’t being seen committing an atrocity now. And if she was someone who could help? Then all the better. Sure, the last statement he made may make people’s skin crawl, and that was why he used it. Jared was a hunter, a seeker… If someone was not ready for what he found, he didn’t want to bring them into something that could harm them.

When she referred to him as Jedi, he smirked. It was mostly true, but only mostly. “Just reports I’ve seen, the bodies. There is a dark energy around them, and it seems they were freshly drained, not desiccated, but drained.” Dry, lighter than they should be, across species. His Rim-ward lilt to his voice, something one would see in surf holovids didn’t match the diction in his words.

“And I’m not willing to take chances of it happening to more.” He nodded to his hand, with the lightsaber hilt in it.

Morta Izanami