Out of the Frying Pan...

[Kiln]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOaRHLXsp-Q

Kiln walked across the deserts of Ryloth, dragging along the tattered shield he had used to claw his way out from the bowels of the Sarlacc. Some of the creature's digestive fluids still covered him, burning his skin and eyes as he continues to walk aimlessly through the expanding desert. After walking for as long as his body would carry him, Kiln collapses into the sand, exhausted and dehydrated. All he could think about was his friends and fellow soldiers. Still alive, within the depths of the Sarlacc Pit...

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Ryloth
Desert Wastes - Daylands
0100 Hours

Perhaps she should have been practicing something her Master Isley had taught her, or sparring with one of her fellow apprentices, or...pretty much everything but tearing through the sky in her new Espada transport, but it wasn't especially in Matsu's nature to be doing what she should be doing. Besides, it was asking too much of her not to test the things capabilities. It was a slick piece of machinery and she couldn't believe that as a member of the Confederacy, and an apprentice under Isley Verd's wing, she'd been gifted one.

But no matter the reasons she was piloting rather recklessly through the skies and testing the ships many, many read-outs when in the desert below her scanners picked up a heat signature different from the otherwise blistering temperatures of the sands below.

Ignore it. Probably dead anyway - no one lives out here. At least not for long.

But it wouldn't leave her alone. Something told her she should touch down and with a sigh at herself and her instincts she piloted the ship down to the hot sands. The second the hatch opened at her feet a wave of hot, dry air flooded the ship. She pulled goggles down over her dark eyes, and a bandanna up over her face to protect against the sand whipping through the seemingly constant air before braving the desert to go see the still figure out in the blankness.

She knelt down once she was close enough, reaching out to pluck the guy's hood and check on him. He was - miraculously - alive though, as expected, in very poor shape. She stretched out her hand and thumped twice on his forehead with two fingers, just enough to get his attention if there was enough of him left to be caught. "This is a bad place for a nap," she said, the rasp of her voice not matching her otherwise delicate face.

If he woke up she'd get him water and drop him off somewhere he could regroup. And get a shower. He smelled like something that died.

Just when she was about to give him up for dead she sensed three creatures heading rapidly in her direction. She tapped him again. "Seriously - you can either smell dead or be dead, but if you don't make your decision in about ten seconds something's gonna make it for you," she urged, thinking she saw the flutter of his eyelids in consciousness. Her free hand went to the hilt of her sword as she watched the dunes for whatever was coming.

Why did she even care?

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

In his daze, Kiln could barley make out the sound of someone's voice. It echoed out from the darkness as he regained consciousness and opened his eyes. There was a figure kneeling down next to him, blocking the sun and staring off into the desert. He tries to say something but the dryness of his throat only allows him to cough into the sand. Kiln gathers whats left of his strength and plants his shield into the ground, slowly pulling himself up off the desert floor and onto his knee. He looks out in the direction the figure was staring in while his eyes adjust to the sunlight, when suddenly three Lyleks come over a hill in the distance, and straight toward them. Kiln takes a deep, exhausted breath as he grips onto the shield and lifts it out of the ground.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

"Oh feth", Matsu uttered when the Lyleks came scuttling over the crest of a dune, a rather lackadaisical expression considering the danger that presented. One of the creatures was enough to pose a serious threat - three with just the two of them, one of whom was barely capable of standing on their own? Impossible.

Even a girl with a stubborn streak like Matsu's could see that.

She would have been relieved that he stood if there weren't about to be eaten. "Get on the ship..." she said, walking backwards and watching the rapidly approaching creatures warily.

It quickly became apparent that if she didn't do something they were both about to die. With a flick of her wrist she promptly lifted the silent man from the sand, dangling him in the air and running towards her ship, pulling him behind her with the Force. She had to sprint for the last few steps as the screeches of the predators behind them became increasingly angrier. The hatch closed behind them just in time and she put the stranger down in the first thing resembling a chair she could find, tossing a stimpack and a pack of water on his lap, hurling herself down in the pilot's chair and lifting the stealth ship off the sands and in to the air.

"If you don't know how to use that Stimpack, I'll gladly stab you with it," she said, taking off. For where? She didn't quite know yet.

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

Kiln wasn't sure what just happened. They were in the desert and now hes out? ...Was he dead? As he looks down at the objects in his lap, he sees the water and immediately grabs it, letting go of his shield and urgently pouring it down his throat. After a few large gulps he pours some over his head, letting out a deep sigh of relief. No. Definitely not dead... Kiln shakes the wet hair out of his eyes and looks at all the unfamiliar things around him before spotting the stranger sitting at the cockpit. He gets to his feet and slowly walks over, peering out the front of the ship into the vanishing desert below. As he breaths another relieved sigh, Kiln lowers his head and leans back against a wall in silence for a moment before coming to a horrifying realization.

"... We have to go back..."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Matsu looked up from the controls when the guy finally spoke.

"Go back?" she asked, raising an eyebrow before going back to the read-outs, trying to decide if she wanted to fly him back to the Confederacy and let him see a healer, or just take him to the nearest city and let him fend for himself. If he could - he'd gulped the water as if he hadn't tasted it in hundreds of years and he seemed barely able to focus his eyes on anything let alone protect himself. Although there was an aire about him like on his better days (when he wasn't sundrunk and smelling like death) he knew a thing or two about holding his own.

"There's nothing back there but sand and lyleks. If you want me to drop you here, be my guest, but it's suicide," she answered bluntly.

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

"My friends... they're still down there." looks at her and then back out the window "They need help."

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Kiln]

"They could have made it out." He says, walking back to the broken shield. He looks around for something he may be able to use to repair the handle, at least.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

Matsu raised a thin, dark eyebrow, tilting back towards the Templar Sanctum. This guy probably cracked his head pretty well but if he managed to get at least a decent distance in the desert without dying he might be useful to the Confederacy. She was often thinking of people like things - in terms of their usefulness, their eventual benefit to her.

"I didn't see a trace of any 'friends' of yours down there. And wherever you were trapped, if they didn't die there, those Lyleks or the heat got them," she said, blunt as ever. "Who are you?"

She watched him with his excuse for a shield. He had to know how to fight. He wouldn't be carrying that shield or have gotten half as far as he had without some kind of prowess. What could he be?

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

"There's a Sarlacc!" Kiln said impatiently, ignoring her question. "Not far from where I was. They're back there!" Surely someone else had made it out. Many of them were warriors, stronger than him. Or maybe it was just the sheer luck of finding that half-digested scrap of metal within the belly of the beast, that allowed him a chance to escape. All he could remember was the darkness. And the burning.

Kiln finds a belt and ties it around the shield, securing the handle. He hangs the shield on his back and turns to the girl in the chair. "They need HELP!" He yells.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She grimaced when he mentioned the Sarlacc. She'd never personally seen one of the monsters but she'd seen enough illustrations (horrible, huge, writing bodies hidden beneath miles and miles of sand, an impossibly large creature leeching the memories, thoughts, feelings of all it's prey - hideous, impressive really) to know that his friends were most likely deep in that thing's clutches.

"No one can help them down there. There's a reason those who escape are legends," she said, glancing over her shoulder at him. Did that mean...? [member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

"We can't leave them in that thing!" Kiln pleads. He paces around anxiously, trying to think straight, but his mind is a blur as he tries to remember anything before the darkness. It all seemed so faint, like he had just woken up from a nightmare. Kiln sits against the wall, holding his forehead. "... How long has it been...?"

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

At first she hadn't believed him. It really was the stuff of legends to get out of a Sarlacc - she'd read of only a handful of people in recorded history that had done it. But his panic and confusion seemed so genuine...

"It's 835 ABY..." she answered as a frame of reference. Whether he would even understand she wasn't sure. She'd met species and cultures that kept time on their own terms.

She looked at him over her shoulder, pushing dark hair out of her eyes again, still unsure as to why she had even helped him in the first place. "Look, I'll take you back if you want - IF I can even find the fething thing, they move you know - but I'm telling you that even if I do there is no way to help your friends, and I'm not risking my neck to try. Or I can take you back to the Confederacy and you can see a healer. Or I drop you in to the nearest settlement and you can try to fend for yourself."

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

Kiln looks at the dry blood on the serrated edges of his shield "There must be a way... Some way to kill it..." The thought of slaying such a monster seemed impossible. It would never fall to any ordinary sword. But if it could bleed, it could die.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Kiln]

Kiln thinks to himself for a moment, weighing his options. "... Whats the Confederacy?"

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She paused, stopping herself from collecting the small bits of power that would come together in a mind shard, drilling in to the still nameless man's brain and causing him the kind of pain one couldn't even fathom until it was experienced. He wanted to kill a Sarlacc and honestly, who was she to say no? It had never been done, but as far as she knew a few lucky force users had been able to tame them for short amounts of time. Maybe she'd read about this delirious stranger someday on the Holonet - a version of him far less delirious and infinitely more powerful.

She smirked.

Switching the plane to auto, its tracker guiding them back to the Templar Sanctum, Matsu stood from the chair and turned to face him, her face a mostly flat but slightly amused expression of challenge. She was no Lord (not yet) but she could still feel the Force in him. "There may be a way. MAY be. But...you'll need something. Get angry. Think of your friends, your family - everyone you love down in that pit digesting slowly with their fears and memories haunting them. Think of that until you're seeing red, and then throw something at me. With your mind only," she said, voice thick with anticipation. It was nothing to her, to tempt him to use anger to manifest his powers, to goad him in to using the dark.

The dark was powerful, and it would be means to the end he sought.

[member="Kiln"]

 

[Kiln]

Kiln stares at her with a raised eyebrow. He had heard stories of people who could do those kinds of things, but never thought they were real. "Is that what happened back there? You moved me, with your mind?"

As he thinks back to his friends and family, he realizes he is having a hard time recalling their names, or imagining their faces. As if it was all something he had dreamed up. Did he even have a family? What happened to him inside the Sarlacc? All he could remember clearly was the image of a burning forest. Home. It was gone. Kiln clenches his fist until his knuckles turn white, and he realizes something else. He was angry. He had been angry for a long time.

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Kiln slams his fist into the wall next to him, and a crate behind him shoots through the air and crashes into the wall. He turns around to look at the crate, and then looks at his hand.

[member="Matsu Xiangu"]

 

[Matsu Xiangu]

She nodded at his question though she said nothing more. She could feel the shifting in the Force as his anger built and she forced a smile off her face. She said nothing, silence until, until --

When the crate lifted she let the smile appear, pulling her red lips up in to a bright half-sickle expression of delight.

"Yes, with your mind alone. Anger is a powerful tool. So is the fear of others," she said, delicacy in her tone. "I can take you where they will help you," and she turned back to her seat, taking the ship off auto-pilot and blazing through the sky back to the Sanctum.

[member="Kiln"]