Private First Steps, Lasting Paths

[Valery Noble]

​

Outfit: Jedi Jumpsuit
Weapons: Lightsabers

Valery remained still as Tydos reached outward, watching the subtle shifts in his posture. The faint twitch of a hand. The way his brow furrowed, then eased. She could feel the tension radiate outward from him like ripples in still water — and then, slowly, begin to focus. Hone. Shape itself into direction.

Her own senses picked up on the echo of what he found. Faint bursts of emotion — anxiety, vigilance, the thrum of unease from sentries who knew this place was a powder keg waiting for a spark.

When he finally spoke, his voice was clear and level.

"Good work," she said quietly, stepping up beside him and resting one hand lightly on the durasteel wreckage they'd taken cover behind. The metal was warm from the sun, but everything else was hushed and cold. Dust floated in the air like ash, catching in shafts of pale light that filtered down through the broken husks of old ships and shuttles. The wind had settled into a low, steady hum.

Ahead of them, the route curved down through fractured terrain. Rusted hulls, long-forgotten supply crates, collapsed scaffolding. A place built for ambushes. For traps.

Valery looked to him again, her eyes steady.

"You've seen the way. Then lead us there."

She adjusted her stance, saber still clipped but her hand not far from it.

"Stay low. Trust the Force, not just your eyes. If anything feels wrong, don't ignore it."

Then she gave a short nod.

"I'm right behind you, Tydos."

Tydos Kaldan ​

 

[Tydos Kaldan]

Tydos, like the dust that settled around them, moved steadily and with purpose. The echoes of his discoveries tormented him in the direction he had intended to go, and in quieter volume he could even make out the sound of conversations, though the particular content eluded him. He strayed along the outskirts, stopping every so often to avoid the appearance of quickened footfalls to the defenders. To tip them off would ruin the strategy, so every few moments he would stop and shield himself behind a wall to make a more informed determination.

Finally, the first crates were in view. There was a noteworthy presence nearby, emanating stress, worry, and a 'test me' attitude. They wanted the fight, oh so foolish. 'Overconfidence is a weakness,' he reminded himself internally, and he turned to his teacher,

"I sense our first sign of stolen arms, up ahead. Small squad of hostiles, I estimate armed and dangerous. I suggest two potential strategies. The first, I will create a small diversion and pull the attention of the guards. It would allow you to deal with the cache with the least amount of death, and hopefully... avoid alerting the camp to our presence. The second, is we engage."

He was quite eager, confident even. He had developed the plan on a whim and conveyed it with precision. Yet, there was no means to tell exactly what kind of foe they were dealing with. Imperial arms, were they simply upstart dealers? Something more? What if reality proved more dangerous? These were hypotheticals that he had played with prior to the conception of a plan, and were quickly dismissed. No room for paralysis. Action is the mark of vitality, and far better to take these weapons out of evil hands than to do nothing.

As Master Noble did, so too Tydos reached for the hilt of his saber. He felt the verdant blade pulling at him, the call of battle just at his fingertips.

Valery Noble

 

[Valery Noble]

​

Outfit: Jedi Jumpsuit
Weapons: Lightsabers

"Let's do both," she suggested.

After her senses had mapped out the interior of the compound and the guards' positions within, she turned back to Tydos with a grin tugging at her lips. "You create a diversion, and I'll hit the weapons cache. Once they're destroyed and we're sure of our mission success, we trap them between us and take them down." She looked strong and confident, with a fire burning in her orange eyes that spoke of years of experience.

This would even be exciting to her.

"While the weapons are our primary target at this location, they can easily be replaced. There are thousands, if not millions, of illegal weapons being passed around through the Galaxy's underworld. But the people who run these operations? Those are far more valuable. If we can get some intel out of these guards, we might be able to take down far more than just this one storage place."

That did mean that they'd have to use non-lethal force when taking down the guards, but Valery considered that a given for these relatively weak mercenaries.

Turning back to face the building, Valery dipped her head. "Go on, create that diversion. I'll be there." Without another word, Valery tapped into the Force and put her Jedi Shadow training to use. Light and sound bent around her, distorting her presence until she was entirely invisible and moving.

Preparing herself to slip behind their enemies.

Tydos Kaldan ​

 

[Tydos Kaldan]

Tydos dashed across open, dusty plain. Sand brushed his cheek as his boots carried him swiftly across the gap between the two cache houses. He made no effort at concealing his movements, and the sound of his footfalls alerted the guards to him, quickening his pace as the shouts began to erupt. When he reached a position of relative safety, he stretched out in the force. His eyes slowly closed, his heartbeat now regimented and calm, his palm stretched out in the direction of several approaching mercenaries.

The diversion had to sell. Tydos' senses called to him as if an ally on the field beside him. Two of his foe possessed thermal detonators, they were his now. Spherical metal pulled from their belts, to their own startled shouting, and finally both were harmlessly kept in the padawan's possession. He let them drop harmlessly to the ground, as the first blaster bolts screamed across the field. It was a game of strategy that Tydos had played several times in his mind, now unfolding before him. The first bolt flew by and struck a nearby rock, the second nearly missing the padawan as he pulled his head slightly to the right.

More mercenaries began to leave their posts. Good, he thought, and he burst into proactive action. His verdant blade burst into colorful light amidst the bland, brownish landscape, immediately refracting and deflecting bolts of light in either direction. He flung forward, the force his ally, to the first of his targets in range. A swift movement, both halves of what was once a blaster dropped to the ground, ending with a boot to the chin that subdued what remained of the arms dealer's lackey.

This action multiplied into several careful movements, culminating in a break in focus that he had not foreseen. A scattershot blaster caught him off guard, passing through his carefully designed defense and piercing cloth and skin beneath. Burns ravaged his chest and shoulder, and he reached out swiftly to disarm the target of his threatening ordinance. His breath heavy, his confidence and guard shattered, he broke into a new strategy.

The first target, blade found flesh. His body crumpled to the ground. It was too late to glean whether the man had died, Tydos was onto the next. His blade flashed against a drawn vibroblade, and the two danced along the dusty path with several coordinated and desperate blows. Finally, Tydos' blade arced high from beyond his right shoulder, finding the vibroblade again only to swiftly pull into a horizontal swing across the mercenary's torso. A muted gurgle and scream confirmed the worst. Tydos lingered as realization struck.

The others were dealt with in subsequent flurries of blaster fire, blade dances, and all manner of hand to hand scuffles. A count of five wounded, two subdued without injury, and two dead covered the field. The padawan's saber hummed as he stood over his captives, descending to silence with the slow disappearance of its aura as Tydos looked to clip it back to his belt. He looked back into town, and then to his own wounds. Most his chest and neck were now exposed and burned by blaster fire or its effects. The cloth had been torn away, leaving the padawan in tatters of his former strength and appearance.

Valery Noble