Mirror

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

Robes fluttered against the wind as Tai dropped in the river like a little pebble cascading off a slope.

Immediately he sank and immediately the Thirriken realized that this might have been a little bit too much for him to chew on. The barrier - ​blue iridescent hue brushing his form and making waves - pushed back the acidic liquid and kept him dry for the moment. But the sheer metric of the substance pushing back against him from every direction was simply overwhelming.

This wasn't an issue of energy conservation.

It was an issue of focus. Ashin could keep the projection running as a subroutine at the background of her mind, but Tai Fa did not have that kind of experience yet. Instead he found himself sinking to the ground, where little talons pricked themselves neatly into sludgy sand.

There the Thirriken perched... rigid strict and unmoving as the water flowed past them.

He could open his beak fine, the barrier pushing outward to accommodate such, but the medium of liquid made it difficult to pass through sound. So, Tai could not actually speak in any way.

"This might not have been a good idea." The Sith tried to push the thought towards Varanin, but it was difficult to focus on that, while the pressure on his barrier was increasing by the moment.

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

HUMBARINE
ZOPP'S BULK BUY

Zeejay took off down the aisle, leaving the prone Trandoshan behind him. An Enforcer rounded the corner into the aisle about halfway down, trying to intercept Zeejay. But he had been running too fast and quickly slipped, crashing into a shelf decked out with (thankfully unplugged) appliances. There was a loud crash, followed by the downpour of toasters and blenders. Zeejay leapt adroitly over this. He had grown up in this shop, running around it all his life. There was also the fact that he was a courier for hardened gangsters. Running around like this, even in rain-slicked stores, was just another day at work for him. Sure, his dad didn't like it, but would he be complaining now when he got these chumps to follow him out of the store?

Too bad about the water damage, though, but that was just life for you.

"Where the hell did he go?" Someone roared. The Trandoshan. Zeejay didn't usually deal with lizards, so this was something to be added to the resume.

An Enforcer entered Zeejay's view as he took a sharp left down another one of the aisles. "I see him!" This Enforcer remained where he was and pointed his weapon, "Freeze! Hey, I sai-"

Contrary to the order given, Zeejay sped up. When he picked up enough momentum, he dropped on his back and slid. The Enforcer tumbled over and ended up on his stomach, much like his boss had. Zeejay scrambled gracelessly back to his feet and continued running. He reached the end of the aisle. Another pair of Enforcers were making their way up from the right, but Zeejay hadn't been intent on going that way in the first place. Would have just taken him back towards the entrance and where the spooky lizard man was. Zeejay was heading for the back. Zeejay yanked a bunch of random items off the shelves, mostly more canned food, before turning and running away from the Enforcers. His father cried out in anguish again to hear his products being misused in such a manner.

A stun bolt went wide and hit the wall ahead of him, which only made Zeejay speed up.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

Tai's voice murmured in the back of Ajira's mind. Not one for telepathy in general, she opted not to reply. Instead, shin-deep in river-bottom muck, she trudged toward the shore. The steep stone bank yielded to become a tunnel or grotto beneath an overhang. She walked from gloom into darkness and then harsh light. Acidic water sloughed from her as she climbed into a cavern. Dry, she found her footing on smooth sandstone and looked around.

The cavern had been shaped by ancient hands,a reiteration of a familiar trope. Modern lights had been strung up with an eye to examining statuary. Half a dozen beings with red lightsabers stood around the pool that was the tunnel's mouth. Ajira folded her arms and did nothing.

"Thoughts, Tai?"

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

It was a struggle to follow her.

First it was focusing the shield to expand a fraction more to allow himself a wider range of movement, but that was followed by the difficulty of moving and shielding himself at the same time. After gritting his beak Tai finally managed to do so, he was much slower than she was though.

It didn't help that her legs were longer than his either.

Eventually one Thirriken trundled out of the river, climbing himself up next to Ashin. Harsh light forced itself into his eyes as he slowly relinquished his control over the Force - from the bottom up, so any residual acidic liquid would fall down around him instead of reaching his feathers.

"These are not the Mallif." Tai responded to Ashin's question with confusion in his voice. "I think-"

But sadly they did not get the chance to think.

The moment he had accentuated the word 'Mallif' the darksiders moved as one. Their lightsabers angling in the first stance that suggested attack.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

The moment's possibilities constricted as one of the unknown Darksiders lunged for her from the left. In her peripheral vision, a red lightsaber slashed down at the back of her neck. She placed more focus on the shield that had protected her from the acid, and turned to catch the blade against her left forearm. Her right foot slid in and out again, her hips swiveled, and she lunged to smash her right fist into the attacker's gut. Her left hand latched onto his lightsaber hilt and ripped it from his grasp. Another lightsaber blade crashed against her back harmlessly. She spun, leaving the first attacker to vomit and cry, and raked the generic saber across the eyes of the second one. The third backed up, wisely, as she leveled the saber left-handed in his direction.

She spared a glance for Tai Fa and his own three attackers.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

There was a difference of fighting style and philosophy between the two of them.

Karrde was an oak, solid stone mass that was centered and used as little as movement as possible to dish out the most damage capable in the moment. It was efficient, low through the knees and utilizing the momentum of her opponents against themselves. Where Karrde was the mountain standing against the waves, Tai was the air current dashing against it.

His form blurred away from the pool of acid and wingspan extended itself.

The first saber missed him by a feather, it sliced horizontally through the air and he glided over it. His leg - external focus shifting to internal, strengthening the thin paw - crashed into mook number one's face and send him crashing into the second one, both of them tumbled to the ground.

Lightsabers deactivated and that left only one more to deal with for now.

Tai landed lightly on his paws, sharp talons scratching gently against the rocky underground, and he looked up... mook number three stepped back a bit, before igniting his saber.

The second lesson of battle was to control the flow of it - Fa was small, fast, agile and was capable of disrupting expectations and using it to his own advantage.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

One true test of character is behavior towards those who can be of no possible use. Ajira had always believed that to one extent or another, a belief tinged with contempt toward the short-sighted Sith who thought differently. That was why she'd left two out of three injured but alive. She was pleased to note that Tai exercised similar restraint.

The third man adjusted his stance to something like Juyo and closed the gap, blade flickering. The saber she'd taken from his associate was a crude and simple thing, but she adjusted to it without difficulty. Unhurried blocks wound up exactly where they needed to be. She warded off his blade, and when he drew back to pace and reconsider, she raised her empty right hand in a fist. Once she'd choked him to the edge of unconsciousness, she returned her attention to the man she'd punched - still vomiting - and the last phase of Tai's fight.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

By sheer force of coincidence Tai's last opponent was a master.

Already his form had taken the shape of Djem So, not as flashy and stereotypical as Juyo, but it made more than up for it with raw power and the ability to counter any strike it received. In this moment Tai felt that he needed to be careful and cautious, his paws were light on the underfloor of the cave and he tip-toed around his opponent. They circled around one another and time dragged on, at least in Fa's mind, who preferred swift movement in this situation.

Then the Master's momentum shifted from waiting towards movement, long legs got him to the Thirriken within two steps and the lightsaber was already humming through the air.

Long slash diagonally from top left to bottom right in an attempt to cleave Tai Fa in half.

This was not a situation where Tai could fight fair and win. His mastery of the blade was coming along nicely, but it was nowhere near ready for this fight. Instead in that split-second his focus within the Force enfolded and soft feathers suddenly turned rigid sharp and staunch.

He whirred around, the robe of cortosis dashing against the offending lightsaber and cutting it off, immediately - and before the Master could react - rigid feathers dashed against him from the side. The momentum of Tai's turn around his own axis send the Sith flying into the wall, where he crumbled.

"Too close." the Thirriken mumbled to himself as he examined a few singed feathers where they had touched the saber before the cortosis do its work.

His eyes shifted to the crumbled forms of the first two darksiders, they were still entangled and trying to get out of their own mess.

It was always important to take stock of your battle, before changing your attention to your allies, only after ensuring that his part in the battle was over, did Tai look past it all towards Ashin.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

"Nicely done." Ashin dropped the saber and headed deeper into the cave, ignoring the injured Darksiders behind her. If they wanted to take another swing at her, they were welcome to try. "You were lucky, though: more and more people have discovered alternatives to dimetris circuits. Cortosis isn't as reliable as it used to be."

She shot the bird a grin. "Not to deflate your plumage, of course. Just a note for next time."

Deeper within the cave was a gigantic stone seal in the floor. It showed signs of careful but unsuccessful attempts by lightsaber.

"Let's see if we can't lift this free together, shall we?"

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

It had been a risky move, but Tai knew he wouldn't have been able to take the master one-on-one, so in his mind it had been worth the risk to end it quickly.

"I appreciate it and I will probably revise the strategy for next time." Tai responded, after once again checking the injured and/or crying darksiders. One of his opponents wasn't actually hurt, he was simply using the situation to pretend he was - Fa wasn't a mentalist and wasn't sure what the intent behind it was.

Maybe to attack them in the back, maybe to try and avoid the hurt his associates had gone through.

Tai trundled past him and his wing swept in, hitting him over the head, before he could make a move. Knocked out clean and cut and without much fuss.

The seal seemed quite sturdy in make. Especially because the stone didn't seem to be willing to budge under lightsaber pressure, which said a lot about its make. There weren't a lot of materials that Tai knew of that could actually withstand a lightsaber for a very long time.

Even Beskar crumbled under sustained pressure.

"Let's." Circling around to the other side a practiced eye studied the lid, before grabbing hold of it with talons sharp. Internal focus increased and he knelt through his knees - didn't want to break any feathers on this. "Ready?"

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

Ashin crouched opposite him and wrapped the Force around her hands as a focus for greater things. As she got a grip on lightsaber scars, she reached out and grabbed mental hold of the stone plug. She straightened, willing the slab to rise. Six Darksiders, including a Master, had clearly tried this together. Even so, the stone plug began to rise. It slid aside and slammed down with an ear-numbing sound, leaving a crescent-shaped gap a metre wide. Wrapping her body in the Force again, Ashin stepped into the dark and fell.

Her knees bent as she met another stone surface, perhaps ten metres down. From inside her raincoat, she produced a small glowrod and lit it up.

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

Next to her another shape dropped down.

This one quiet and subtle, a plop as his wings broke his fall and little talons clicked against the floor. It was just in time, too, because that was about the moment that Ashin decided to ignite the source of light. It revealed exactly what was in this room and that made Tai blink... once... twice... three times.

In truth he had not been expecting to see this.

Just a myth with no substance to it, but here they were and it made him silent for just a brief moment. Long enough to cough once and then turn his head to look at Ashin.

"Is that a whole arena filled with an army of statues?"

Which presumably were carbonite frozen super assassins.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

"Yes, Tai, it would appear to be."

She stepped up to the nearest statue and crouched by its pedestal. A thick layer of dust puffed away from millennia-old electronics. She eyed the statue, then placed her palm against its leg and closed her eyes.

"This one's dead," she said. "Most of them are. Carbon-freezing doesn't mean immortality. But I'm sensing a good few frozen heartbeats, aren't you?" She stood, ignoring the panel. "Can you get a better sense of what fraction might be salvageable? I'm not much for sensing things."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

They had made similar trade-offs in their lives.

You couldn't have it all after all. Couldn't and strengthen the focus internally and be just as capable of expanding your senses outward to influence things outside.

Or perhaps you could, if you had just enough years to train at it. But Tai Fa wasn't there, not even close to there, in the grand scheme of things he was still a young soul compared to some of the sentients walking this Galaxy. But that did not mean that the Thirriken couldn't lend hid assistance.

"Similar issue, I am afraid." He closed his eyes to focus and then tried to expand his mind across the room. It was like trying to pull at a rubber band tightly strung... too hard and you ran the risk of snapping it. "Hmm... couple of hundred in total? Maybe about two or three dozen still alive?"

It was difficult, because they were so deep inside the stasis that it was hard to figure out if they were still there.

"What do we know about these... people?"

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

HUMBARINE
ZOPP'S BULK BUY

Zeejay was only a few meters away from the back aisle when the Trandoshan lumbered back into view, obstructing his path and carrying a ball of rags or something. Zeejay slid to a halt, considering darting down the left aisle again. Those two Enforcers behind him were catching up now, although very slowly. They were stepping carefully around the cans. Helmets or not, slipping and falling was never a pleasant experience and they didn't want to give Zeejay a chance to vault over them. Zeejay had made up his mind to continue down the left aisle when the ball of rags Derrenger was carrying whimpered helplessly. Funny, that sounded a lot like Zopp Senior.

...Oh no.

Derrenger callously kicked the elder Zopp in front of him. The sputtering codger sprawled on the floor and struggled to lift himself up. Derrenger casually removed the bowcaster from the sheathe on his back and aimed it at the prone, groaning Zopp. "Give me the package," Derrenger demanded. Soaking wet and with a bruise on his snout from when he had fallen, the time for civil negotiations were over. Derrenger squinted at Zeejay, who had frozen on the spot. "Are you deaft?"

Slowly, Zeejay reached into his coat pocket and retrieved what looked like a small, jet-black plasteel case. There was a single letter, dorn, imprinted on it in white. Probably stood for Directorate. Or maybe it was directory? Derrenger did not particularly care. The case matched the description for what he had been looking for. It was good to see that it was still in the case, too. Otherwise water damage might have rendered it inoperable. While clearly a meddlesome little chit, Zeejay was at least slightly intelligent.

"Let him go," Zeejay said, trying to keep his voice steady, "Or I'll break it."

Never mind.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

"Oh, very little. Lost to the sands of time. The Seyugi Dervishes, they were called. I believe the Jedi wiped them out." Ajira gestured around the cavern. "Or tried to."

She walked through the carbonite slabs, getting a sense of the Dark Side's presence in this place. She'd homed in on it using the secret vision-pool on Widow, the nexus.

"I can't divert medical resources here without scrutiny, Tai. I'm a public figure, and that's become inconvenient for a variety of reasons. My wife and I are considering changes, relocation. I'm tired of being bound to a culture that makes fetishes of inaction and cowardice, and the life and body of a woman I hated. I intend to move on, gain latitude, get myself back so I can take advantage of opportunities like this one. The process will take a few months. In the meantime, if anything's to be done about our friends here, you're the only one that can arrange it."

 

[Ugoto Chivaro]

HUMBARINE
ZOPP'S BULK BUY


Plasteel was not the strongest substance and even more fragile than that was the electronic device inside. If Zeejay threw the device on the floor and then stomped on it, it probably would break. There was no way he could afford that gamble. It looked like Derrenger was going to have to negotiate. The Trandoshan squeezed the trigger on the bowcaster, blasting Zopp Senior square in the back. Unfortunately for both father and son, Derrenger believed in his own unique brand of negotiations. The sort that began and ended with a firefight. The shot ended the life of Zopp Senior almost instantly. Zeejay's eyes widened considerably, but he could not process what had just happened quickly enough. A single 9mm BANG round exited the CZ-835 Machine Pistol wielded by one of the Enforcers that had been behind him.

It had been trained on the back of Zeejay's skull, but you know how slugthrowers are. The round entered the back of Zeejay's neck instead, going about halfway through the cervical vertebrae before detonating. It was only a small explosion, but it had the minor effect of blowing Zeejay's head clean off. The plasteel case skittered across the floor towards Derrenger. What remained of Zeejay crumpled to the ground with a wet thump. Blood mixed with the water that had been pooling in the floor.

An Enforcer, one who had been holding a blaster pistol set to stun, lowered his weapon. "What the hell, Craig?"

"Sorry," Craig said. Like he had just spilled a drink instead of executing a teenager. He picked up the spent shell-casing and slid it into his pocket. Company policy. "Thought I had a different slug in it." He checked over his pistol, as though it could have been the weapon that was at fault.

Derrenger said nothing, stepping over the corpse formerly known as the elder Zopp, kneeling, and taking the case which contained Index. He rubbed some of the gore off of it and stood back up.

"We're leaving now."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

Tai frowned at that admission.

In truth, he had already been expecting that Ashin would soon depart from the Alliance. Something in the tone of their last conversation had tipped him off that this wasn't just a fancy. How long could a person of ambition and strength like this one grit her teeth, bow and nod, before something broke inside of her?

"Mmhm." the Thirriken hummed in acknowledgement, while thinking very hard about these.. things.

His natural instinct was to just kill the rest of them and be done with it.

Caution was his to-go-to.

Was there a lot of potential here? Could Tai use them for Humbarine? For himself? For the interests that slowly expanded across the Galaxy by the day? Yes, but what was the cost here? How much risk was there that these people would turn against him and his without a second thought.

"I feel conflicted."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Tai Fa"]

"About me? Oh - about the Dervishes. I'll admit they're likely to be more complicated than most assets. Probably won't speak the language or understand the context. Then again, I keep going back to that old quote by Traya - you know the one? About how the Masters of her age were children playing with toys next to what's been lost? I wouldn't mind a chance to tap into that knowledge, risks or no risks.

"There's nothing forcing us to take or wake them all. We could begin with a pair, say. We each select one by instinct, and go from there. That way we'd have more context to make a broader decision later."

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Ashin Karrde"]

He did not know that particular quote.

But Tai supposed there was a certain sense of wisdom to the idea behind it.

The Sith was a religion of greed and hoarding at the end of the day. Practitioners did not enjoy sharing their wisdom, their strength, their ideas with anyone, because they felt it weakened their own standing and increased the risk of being usurped one day. This did mean that once something happened, be that the destruction of their greatest libraries or the genocide of their wisest masters by the hand of the Jedi or something entirely else... there wasn't anyone who could teach the new generation. Every Sith guarded their own little secrets and developments with an intensity that bordered on the insanity.

It was quite the annoying practice in Lord Fa's experience.

"You have come to know me well, Ashin." Tai responded, while studying the frame of a particularly large Dervish. They would be intense warriors at the least. "The path of ambition should be tempered with healthy caution."

"I will start the slow process of moving assets into place to extract these... people. After our efforts for the Recopia government, I am sure they will not give us too much scrutiny."

The Thirriken shook his head slightly, before looking further down the room and towards the passage ways.

"I am sure we can find an elevator or stairways somewhere here, so we don't have to go for another swim."