Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Other than a raging headache, Neri couldn't find anything *wrong* with herself. Some weird bruises that were certainly less than three weeks old, but no less than a week on since whenever they had occurred- yellow and green and fading. There was nothing out of place on her ship, all of her things were there.

So how was she missing three weeks worth of time?

She took a day to scout out Nar Shaddaa, ask around, try to figure out what had happened. It was here that she slowly began to recall the events of the night before the gap. The Sith attack. The smoke in the alley. [member="Darth Ophidia"]. Struggling back up to her knees. Neri's hand ghosted to her ribs, where the grey woman's blade had skipped off of her ribs. Tender to the touch, but healing well enough. She strained to focus past that moment but there was nothing. Just a haze and darkness until she'd woken up, mouth feeling stuffed with cotton and head pounding, three weeks later according to the ship's logs. She'd double checked that with the local calendar, hoping it was a glitch.

It was not.

With a sigh, she plopped down in the pilot's seat. Popping a couple of painkillers she mulled what now. Dead end here, no one knew anything. Her ship had been here the whole time but no one had seen her. The ship's security system marked it as empty until, a few hours before she'd woken up, it simply wasn't anymore. Someone had brought her back but without leaving any trace of themselves on the feed. An uncomfortable prickling sensation skated over the back of her neck, leaving the hair standing on end. It didn't take a genius or a Jedi to fill in the blanks. The Sith.

The question wasn't who though.

The question was why.

Mulling over it all, she itched to get moving. Somewhere- anywhere- but sitting here on the tarmac on the Smuggler's Moon. She needed to make sure she was okay. Sure her own inspection had yielded nothing, but she needed someone with proper bio scanning equipment and probably the Force, just in case.

It really was an easy call.

A short ping- an apology for dropping off the face of the galaxy completely. That everything was okay but could she come to Kashyyyk and get his help on a matter? She needed an outside opinion.

With a confirmation, she maneuvered the small ship up and out of the smoggy atmosphere. She'd have the whole trip to stew over it all. Hopefully by the time she showed up at [member="Delaney Wilder"] 's door she'd have remembered more.
 
It was one of those familiar stories.

A girl, a guy, a big tree drifting through space and somehow alive, romantic candle lights, introspective conversation with a sentient moss forest. You know? The usual things that make life worth it. They had agreed to keep in touch. Understanding that it ain't like they can just... settle down- or drop the things they were already doing. Maybe once they got to know each other.

Who knew.

Then nothing, silence.

Delaney had send her a few messages. No response. Had been odd to him, but ghosting wasn't exactly unheard of. So just a shrug and moving on. Until... [member="Neri Rashal"] suddenly reached out. Apology. Asked for help. Well, maybe some of his feelings were hurt, but you know what? He was bigger than that. To get petty about it.

So she got a response from him back soon after he got it.

Course, I will meet ya in the hangar.

While he was waiting (and reading up on a new article in Herbs Monthly) part of him was scratched at the back of his head. Would she even come?

Until, of course, the ship docked.

Casual stance, Del, nothing to worry about.

That stance was far too casual.

"Sup, Rashal." Two fingers in salute there.
 
Unfortunately the flight from Nar Shaddaa to Kashyyyk didn't offer any new insights. Just the reassignment of her headache from a sharp stab between her eyes to a duller, all around vice grip of her skull that she couldn't really see as much of an improvement.

On a whim as she traveled, she pulled up the electronic version of the journal she kept in her work. Usually she just scanned in whatever notes she took in her physical field journal and uploaded it later, more an afterthought- a back up. But this time just the idea of writing something or sketching made her head hurt worse so she just started dictating the events of the last day. It wasn't her usual method, but she felt like she needed to- try to organize her thoughts. Maybe she had missed something and recounting it would help.

She ended the trip as unenlightened by it all as she had started it. Rubbing her hand over her face and back through her hair she sighed and pushed herself up, closing the file.

It wasn't until she stepped down off of the ramp and was greeted by Del that she realized something else was up here. They'd had a good time on Astra Ko. A really good time. While she would have winced at even the thought of 'settling down' crossing his mind, it was a weird mix of pleasant and a little weird on her part. Neri wasn't looking for a THING. She didn't like it casual and didn't WANT something serious. So what, exactly, was this then?

She'd been caught up in the (understandably) more serious issue of Sith and lost time that she hadn't really much considered him in all of this or that he might have feelings to go along with the whole thing.

But his body language and choice of greeting was.... odd.... after how they had left it.

"Hey Wild," she decided to meet him where he was at, whatever that was right now. "Thanks for getting back to me. I've got.... kind of a conundrum and I needed someone I can trust with a medical scanner."

The current issue took up a lot of room in a very pressing sort of way.

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

Cool, relaxed, nonchalant.

Yeah.

This is working. Clearly. Maybe even a little bit too well, he had a hard time getting a read on her. Well.... besides the fact that she seemed to have the mother of a headache going on. It was pushing against him there. Constant. He absently rubbed his own brow in return. The echo of it causing him to frown a little bit. "Had a long night?" He asks curiously as he shifted positions.

Then a nod.

Hurt or not- didn't matter much. Not when it came to medical stuff, y'know?

Time and place to get the feelings involved. Not here. Not now apparently. "Sure, you okay? Something about the headache?" Added after a moment. Didn't have to be anything, really.

Headaches were a dime in a dozen.

Gesturing for her to follow him to his room.
 
"Haven't the foggiest but that's the theory at least," she mutters, perhaps a touch darker than she meant to.

"Guess that's not particularly subtle. Something about that, yeah. Can we get somewhere private first?"

Once she got a nod that was enough. They made their way through the halls and to his room. Eyebrow arch there as they enter.

"Grade A privacy but do you keep a scanner in your room or did the force tell you it was a good idea? There's a name for that," snapping her fingers, the word escaping her.

"I get hunches sometimes. Not sure if this is one of 'em, or if we gonna be walking to the medicals right after this tho."

Another snap- "Precog, that's the word I wanted. Ugh, I hate that and it's been happening for two days way more often than usual. Driving me nuts. And yeah I am... well, let me explain- but I'm hoping we won't need to."

Resting her hip on his dresser, she folded her arms over her chest.

"You hear about what happened on Nar Shaddaa? Kinda on your doorstep. Well....."

She didn't leave anything out of the story. Told it calmly but the way her brow furrowed showed clear worry.

"Two days ago I woke up on my ship. Last three weeks a complete blank. Can't find any serious injury- some bruises that absolutely were NOT three weeks old. But other than the headache I feel generally okay. But I want a full scan, by someone I trust, and who.... well. I don't know for a fact I was with the Sith. Maybe I was just unconscious in an alley for three weeks and some good sam brought me home, but I'm not about to assume that. But if I was.... need it to be someone, someplace, who can sort things out if I can't be trusted to." Gaze and tone level and even.

She'd fought the Sith under the banner of the Alliance. She knew, all too well, what possible things they could find.

"I want to know if I'm a danger to myself or other people. And if I am, know I'm in the right place to deal with it."

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

He listens calmly.

Asks a question here and there. Trying to get just a little bit more info. It wasn't very helpful. She'd note his facial expression though. From that distant casualness she had found so strange and odd.... to deep, furrowed concern. Brows crunched together. Mouth in a difficult line. Leaning a bit heavier against the table, while chewing on his lip there while she finished the story.

"That... feth." Soft curse. Stepping up, reaching out to tentatively touch her wrist. "I will do what I can to help you, Neri." Squeezing her hand there if allowed.

At first Delaney had been hurt.

Kinda feeling petty.

Annoyed.

That? All that? Wiped it out pretty dang quickly. What was a set of hurt feelings in the face of gorram Sith kidnapping? Exactly nothing. Oh, yeah, Del definitely thought the Sith were involved.

"Could have been an alleyway." He allowed there, but didn't sound very convinced. Three weeks long? Suddenly appearing on her ship? No camera feeds of how she got back? "Come sit down on the bed. If it is the Sith, it could be Force-related. A scanner won't detect something like that." Sitting down with her, if she followed and taking a deep breath there.

"I am glad you are here now, if you don't mind me inserting a little bit of a personal feel into your problem." A bit of a dry tease there.
 
She didn't move away, squeezing his hand in return.

"Could have been, but neither of us really think that," she said, putting voice to the unspoken there.

Neri saw the shift in his stance and expressions. She hadn't brought this to him to make him worried. And maybe if she'd known he'd start making the worried faces at her she might have rethought this particular course of action. What were they to each other? She liked him. They'd had a fling. But could she even say she knew him well enough that they were friends?

If he'd called her for help would she have given it?

Yes, unequivocally. So friends, at least for certain. That eased that concern because if she were being honest, if the situation were reversed, she'd be making worried faces right back at him.

"And even if it's nothing tech or physical the scanners can pick up, it still doesn't have to be force related," she said grimly as she sat on the bed. There were methods- entirely undetectable- that could influence someone. "But I wanted to start with the basics and rule anything like that out before anything else. Unfortunately the lack of anything wrong isn't proof there isn't and I know that."

If they found nothing what then? She'd worry about that later.

"Oh, uh, just so you know- you're gonna find some weird shrapnel with that scanner. That's normal."

Normal.

But his last words gave her pause. Glancing up at him and meeting his eyes for a moment. His tone was dry, but those words combined with the too cool reception, using her last name again, the shift in it all when he found out WHAT-

"You thought I ghosted you."

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

A careful nod there.

"It can be anything, could be nothing. Have you experienced anything since waking up? Feelings of disorientation? Disassociation? A blink and suddenly being elsewhere without memory of getting there?" This wasn't his forte. Sure, healing, but he hadn't actually ever had to deal with a situation like this. Truth to be told? He should bring this to the Council. The Healing Circle. Hell, maybe the Shadows, they had way more experience with this sort of thing. But. She seemed okay. And bringing her to them? It would be out of his hands.

Who knew what they'd do?

The Silver Jedi seemed to be moving back and forth between zealot extremists that vented hangar bays. Back to abandoning entire regions to the Sith, because of a single lost battle.

It was impossible to know how they'd react.

So.

No.

Not them. Not yet, anyway. If Neri proved to be a danger (to herself or anyone else) they'd check that boat. When getting there, but not before. "Weird shrapnel that is normal..." He murmurs, making a note of it. He was about to reach out with his hand. To touch her temple. Investigate. Then... then she brought up the thing. He awkwardly rubbed his neck there.

An even awkwarder cough.

"Um. Yeah, maybe a little bit." A grimace there. "I am sorry, should have given you way more credit than that."
 
A small snort there.

"I ain't mad. Or even hurt." Surprised a little- this was slightly off of the very relaxed and easy going side of him she'd seen so far. The side where everything slid off, like water off of a bird's feathers. What it did make her was cautious. Not with him in general but in the knowledge that this was more important to him than he liked to let on.

"We barely know each other, if we're being honest, Del," she said gently. "I didn't, but I get why you thought I had."

Now was.... super not the time for this. This was why she didn't do casual and didn't want serious. But as he'd asked her- what else did that leave? Nothing this sort of entanglement was what. So what if he was fun to talk to, smart, sweet, thoughtful, honest....

Wow absolutely not the time for this.

She squeezed his hand.

"No, not really. Little dizziness when I first woke up," she brought the topic back around to the thing that really, REALLY couldn't wait here. "The headache. Doing the thing with the word on the tip of my tongue more than usual, but I do that when I'm over tired anyway so it might not mean anything."

She didn't mention the desire to narrate into the digital journal rather than sketching in her book. It didn't even cross her mind as something odd. She was always journaling, jotting things down- and the digital version was simpler than pulling out the paper copy.

The best way to hide that you had done something to someone, was to pick the things they were most likely to do anyway and utilize THAT.

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

A wink there.

"Nah, we don't, but we did have a good time together." Italics for emphasis mine. "So, it caught me off-guard, s'all." Just making sure she didn't think he was ga-ga here. Ring burning a hole in his pocket or anything. Wasn't like that. Del liked her. A lot. But he hadn't been expecting anything much. Just communication, really. Nothing of that mattered right now though.

It was easy to sink into that discussion.

Very easy.

Because the alternative was considering what she had gone through. And the consequences of it. Del squeezed her hand back. Absently. Trying to think of more questions to ask here. So not his forte, this, but what was there to do?

"Anything you have noticed off about yourself otherwise? Changes in your routine, likes? Things you started doing you didn't before?"

It was always strange to him.

How people described using the Force. Drawing on it, or pulling at it, or even... immersing themselves in it. Like it was something separate from them. It was all around them. In them. Outside of them. It was life, death, the things in between that held the universe together. So Delaney didn't try to cast a force spell. Instead... while she talked?

Del tried to feel.

Find her presence next to him. As a first step, anyway.
 
A ghost of a smile at that. They had.

But the good time wasn't why she was here.

"It's only been two days," she said with a shrug. "Not really enough time to catalog all of my routines. Other than those two things, everything feels.... normal. Which. Shouldn't be as worrying as it is. Feels like it should be more off. It just..... ain't."

Neri had been through hell and back. War was like that. Been shot more times than she could count. She'd been blown out of the sky. Almost died. Still carried shards of a weird force crystal in her body that, other than occasional discomfort, she barely noticed these days, but the scars would mark her skin forever. After all of those things she had felt something.

Since she didn't feel anything in particular did that mean that nothing had happened?

Or that it was so deeply buried that she couldn't even feel it?

Neri was good about keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself, beneath the surface. Wasn't hiding, was just private. But this was different. Other than the low grade anxiety of what had happened, there was no pain, no trauma, no fear, nothing. She felt, dare she say it, pretty normal.

Which worried her too.

There was apparently no good answer.

"I thought you said you had a scanner in here?" Not realizing what he was doing.

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

"You lost two weeks of your time, Neri, most likely by the Sith. And ya ain't feeling any much different. I totally understand you worrying about that."

It might sound and feel like a paradox.

Being totally fine. No worse for the wear. But being even more worried about that. It made sense though. If there had at least been some signs. Pointers. Things that Neri could see and point that- see, yeah, that is wrong. Instead all she had were questions. This wasn't a game. If they were lucky? She was completely fine. That was the entire thing though.

If they were wrong?

It wouldn't just be on Neri.

Other people could be hurt too.

"Mmhm, do, but right now..." Eyes closing there as he felt her. Delaney hadn't done this when they first met. It didn't feel right to him. This proximity, this closeness? It was something intimate. In this space, where the Force connected them all, he could do more than feel her presence next to him. This was where the true Neri resided. Where the truth hid from the world.

Bruised, in pain, hurting from scabbed wounds made through decades of living.

"...I found you... in the Force." Reaching out with his hand to squeeze hers. "Since it can be... anything... but they are Sith... so the Force makes sense to do first..."

Hard to talk here.

But he forced himself to. Right now Neri didn't need a disembodied voice talking in her head. Already fearing as is, that would probably freak her out more.

"Think of that moment of the fight, if you can." Del murmured. That way he could trace her memories, hopefully.
 
"That explains the itch," she quipped. Was it a joke?

As it happened, no.

Sure sounded like one. But no.

The 'accident' (in truth caused by [member="Elias Logain"], though Neri never knew) that had almost killed her and had certainly ended her days as an Alliance soldier had left its gifts. The scattering of scar tissue across her torso holding fragments of exploded Ruusan crystal in tight grip inside of her body. Over the years she'd gotten to the point where when someone was trying to affect her with the Force directly- inwardly- if she was paying attention to it she'd get an itch just beneath her skin along her ribs and waist. It was mild enough that in situations that were already life and death she wasn't apt to notice it, but here, where there was nothing to feel but this (and the soft squeeze of Del's hand), it was harder to miss.

Ultimately, those shards did enough to distort the subtle designs and patterns left by [member="Darth Ophidia"]. Without them, they would have been difficult to pick up. With them?

Impossible as they lay dormant.

Her eyes closed, breathing in deeply and letting out a soft whoosh. Thinking back as he asked.

***

Not a Forcer, Neri was unaware of the momentary blip that betrayed Ophidia's location to her apprentice. Good for Ophidia- bad for Neri.

With blaster in hand, Neri tried to navigate the smoke. The wall to her right had been closer, so she started drifting in that direction. Blaster in her left hand, her right reached out, searching for the bricks that would orient her in the haze. Fingertips brushing the rough stone, stepping in and letting her shoulder, then back, then opposite shoulder brush it as she pivoted, continuing to move in the direction she had initially planned. It was a small comfort, having something solid at her back. Something that blocked off at least once direction as an avenue of attack.

The snap hiss of the lightsaber to her left brought the blaster up in a reflexive snap, a pair of bolts aimed at the spot it ignited- the blade MOVING and it took a critical moment to register the type of motion. Not held. A heartbeat needed for Ophidia to close that distance. But Neri sidestepped farther down the wall toward her destination

(move, in the back of her mind, always MOVE after taking a shot, long habit, old habit, die hard habit, survive habit)

Which shifted her out of position just enough- a hissing grunt as the blade sliced through her shirt and deep into the flesh of her side, skipping off of the rib rather than finding purchase between and beneath.

Edge of blade, warmth of hand and shadow- all enough for Neri to know where to aim. Another pair of shots fired, this time at point blank range as she tried to twist away, to pivot on her lead foot off to the side.

***

"Sonofa-"

There was no mistaking the ghoulish face in the smoke. Old bias died hard, but it's not like she was wrong after all. Sith, if there had been any doubt before. But then, why would there be? The Sith were a rot worse than the Smuggler's Moon itself, the black slime eating at dead flesh.

The fragments of the blade left in her side ground against bone and shrapnel from old injuries that had never been properly removed. It was enough to leave her gasping, white stars flecking her vision and threatening more. It was enough that she reacted too slowly to breaking the hold the other woman gained on her wrists.

She couldn't break it, but even as she felt her body lifting, she centered the gun and fired- point blank with her opponent grappling her, could she even miss? The angle wasn't quite right and she knew it, but something.

The smoke disoriented but she could feel the whip of the wind, the strength of the throw and then the sickening suck of gravity as she flipped and landed with a lung emptying OOPH on the filthy pavement flat on her back.

Even with her chest screaming for air, she started to roll- reflexive, muscle memory taking over- to surge back to her feet. But her mind screamed in the back that it was too slow. She'd reach her knees at least.....

***

Then. Black. She remembered nothing after that.

[member="Delaney Wilder"]
 
[member="Neri Rashal"]

As they went his brows furrowed deeper and deeper.

Every single time that he tried to reach past that blackness? Nothing. A maw of silence. No matter how much he pushed, pulled, trying to sink into those memories. It was as if they weren't there. Maybe it was the interference of the crystals. Rebounding like a natural shield against his probing. Maybe it was something else. Regardless, he tried to find something wrong with her.

Anything to explain the two weeks absence.

And yet there wasn't anything. Nothing in the Force to suggest anything was wrong with her.

Once the connection broke? Wilder gasped, eyes opening in a shudder. He was bathed in cold sweat. And he felt alone. This wasn't strange. Opening yourself up to a person was a thing of tenderness. In that moment, that space, you shared parts of each other.

It couldn't be any other way. Nothing like that could last though, so there would always be a sense of loss.

"Nothing... absolutely nothing I can find." That murmur haggard, tired, throat parched dry. As if Wilder had been running a marathon. That, too, was part of the Force. It left you completely spend. He slumped a little bit there. Rubbing his brow at the headache popping up. Leaning just a bit against her. "Woah... I think I was in you too long..." That stretched a silence for a moment, before Del blinked.

"Um. That came out wrong."

After that moment of levity? Serious again. Turning to face her again.

"I will use the scanner just to be sure, but I was thorough with the Force. I don't think I will find anything."
 

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