The Hybrid
Equipment: Hel's Lightclub | Robes
Objective: Dream | Escape | Save
Targets:
Viers Connory
Enemies: TSE | TSE Allies
Allies: Galactic Alliance
NOTES: A Few Posts Put Into A Single Post For Story | Am Sorry For Length
"Mrurh'en'lase...did you get into a fight again?"
The question to her, or rather the voice that asked it was soft and loving and familiar, but distant - the source of it invisible. In fact, everything was invisible. No matter how many times Mrurh'en'lase turned and in what directions she looked, she could find nothing near or far. There was nothing around her but...well...emptiness, at least however she could perceive it. It wasn't dark and it wasn't light and it wasn't grey either. It was a thing for certain, but it was unlike anything she had seen before.
If she could give it a title, it would have to be the purest form of a void that she had ever been born witness to. She should have been afraid of it, and for a long few minutes of blind wandering, she was. Only after those few minutes did she realize that this void somehow felt comfortable. It was not too hot and it was not too cold. It was perfectly cool and balanced. Enough so that she immediately realized that it was something that she would have loved to enjoy forever.
"Mrurh'en'lase...did you get into a fight again?"
The question came again, exactly the same except it sounded closer. Much closer like she was in a room that wasn't there. Mrurh'en'lase took a single step forward towards where she thought the question came from and discovered that she was feather-like. She was floating on a cloud beyond sight - a cloud that began to move on its own. After giving a few gasps of wonderment, the hybrid relaxed and let it carry her in, what she assumed, was up because that is what it felt like. A soft breeze flowed past her as it did, and a smile began to form on her face as she let that weightlessness take her up and up and up and for a brief second she thought that she could see a light forming in the distance.
"Of course she did. Look at her. She's a damned animal."
This voice was angry and conflicted and cold. There was some love born out of disappointment in its tone, and also contempt that made the weightlessness vanish just as quickly as it appeared. Mrurh'en'lase began to lower down onto a hard surface that slowly materialized in shades of black and grey. She blinked once as she felt the cloud dissipate and the cold stone of a dirty floor touch her feet. When she opened her eyes, she found herself back there.
Back in that hovel in that city of steam and oil and smog and clanking gears and old tattered airships. A world of an industrial revolution barely past its teen years that only knew of alien life because of refugees like them. If not for the complete lack of a permanent government, they would have been captured and experimented on. She knew it now, and she knew it then, and a trickle of old fear and loathing at the thought pricked at her heart.
She must have been making an appropriate expression because suddenly, her mother formed from the ether and knelt down in front of her. The mother grinned a toothy grin and clasped her daughter's battered face ever so softly in her hands. The hybrid, who quickly realized that she was back in her childhood body for reasons she could not explain at the moment, felt like crying at the sight and the feeling.
"Honey? Are you okay?" her mother asked as warmly as she could.
Mrurh'en'lase stuttered in response, uncertain of what to say if she could say anything at all. She was confused, elated, fearful, regretful...regretful. The hybrid would be unable to find her words in the end, her father's stern - almost deriding - voice answering for her: "She's fine. She just knows she's in trouble for fighting those dogs. Again."
"That's enough, Horus," her mother snapped, her calm eyes flashing with javelins of anger towards an empty part of the filth-laden room.
The voice of her father remained quiet for a few moments - something he seemed to like to do to bother her, though it was hard to tell if he really did. "You never did let her learn, Lossaa. I tried so hard to teach her discipline and control. Control over herself. And all you did was let her...run rampant. Look at her. Look at the blood. The bruising. She could have been so much more than she is, and she will die because you wouldn't let me show her how to be a Chiss."
Silence permeated the room for several long minutes, the hybrid's breathing ragged and slow as she watched her mother stare at the empty space - unblinking and unmoving. Finally, she found the nerve to ask: "Mother...why am I here?"
Her mother turned back to her and the glare turned into a caring smile once again. She seemed ready to answer that question but was interrupted by a series of thunder cracks and red bolts of lightning streaking through the sky. "Oh, dearest daughter," the mother said as she dropped her hands to the hybrid's shoulders. "I'm afraid I can't answer that. Time is moving too quickly for us right now. You just need...to wake up. People need your help."
She rolled onto her stomach and coughed out the remnants of smoke and embers that filled her lungs before breathing slowly and painfully. Blood dripped from her nose and mouth and she believed that she had lost a back tooth in the heaving fits.
At first, the memories of how she ended up on the planet were lost to her, but upon looking at the smoldering remains of her starfighter, they hit her as hard as that blaster bolt did. An enemy fighter, faster than her and more skilled than her in every facet of space combat. Why Mrurh'en'lase was even in a starfighter - let alone allowed to be in one - was a question that was surely going to be asked a lot by
Allyson Locke
. The mere thought of facing another frustrated stare from her...well it made the hybrid question leaving the planet. When she did decide to move after concluding that dying here was a worse fate, she placed her bruised hands flat against the rocky earth below and pushed herself up into a kneeling position. A spray of stray blaster rounds from...somewhere on this blasted hellscape of a planet struck the mountain faces around her, much to her increasing annoyance. After waiting to see if more would come, the hybrid rose to her feet and muttered: "Frack me...that sucked."
"It did indeed," said a voice completely foreign to her. "Kind of surprised to see that you lived if I'm allowed to be honest."
Swiftly turning around, the hybrid was startled - perhaps even dismayed - to see a man standing atop the now flaming ruin of her starfighter, lighting what appeared to be a cigarette with the burning smoke. She couldn't make out his face in the fumes, nor what he was wearing beyond what looked to be a brown duster. Uncertain of his allegiance, the hybrid retrieved her Lightclub from her belt and ignited it, the blue plasmic blade hissing its battle cry.
"Woah! Easy there, hotshot," the man chuckled as he placed the cigarette into his mouth. His voice's pitch was moderate and his accent a mystery - if anything, it was an anti-accent. "It ain't me you wanna be fighting. Save that for the other guys. But that's for later. You got a job to do."
"Who the hell are you?" the hybrid growled, uncomfortably shifting her stance into a more defensive form as the unease of this unknown began to corrupt the air around her. Her muscles were tense and pulled taught against her skin and the bones underneath from the pain of the crash, and she knew that she would inevitably fall and require medical assistance. She could not afford this battle, but would likely be unable to avoid it.
Or so she thought.
The man took a deep drag of his cigarette as the flames of the crashed starfighter began to reach higher around him. The hybrid, at least partially aware of her dire situation in the face of the unknown, began to slowly back away - knowing that the vessel was close to bursting apart. "Oh, come on. That isn't the question you need to be asking right now," the man declared, stamping his foot rather harshly against the blackened metal roof of the vessel. "Right now, you have to be running down this mountain and helping your people. Your mama said so, and you best start listening to her if you wanna succeed. So. Get. Running. Kid."
The starfighter burst apart as expected, and the concussive wave caught the hybrid off guard, blasting her backward over the edge and sending her tumbling down the mountainside. Only by virtue of her uncanny ability to regain and maintain her balance, Mrurh'en'lase caught herself and transitioned into a rapid sprint down the rocky incline through tainted air, dextrously disengaging her Lightclub and hooking it back onto her belt. Before long, her feet found only air as the incline ended and the hybrid began to fall downward, screaming in surprise.
Thankfully, her time under Master Locke's wing had allowed her to develop some increased chances of survival uninjured for such events, as long as she was willing to rely on motions outside of her comfort zone of brute power. In this instance, she was, and the hybrid's downward fall thankfully found herself on solid flat ground, but no sense of direction to help them carry her further on. Only one thing was clear to her at that moment: she was somewhere quite evil, quite chaotic, and not at all where she wanted to be. She would have much rather preferred to be back in that emptiness on the cloud.
For a while, there was nothing more than the sounds and the barren earth of rocks and what appeared to be distant obelisks strewn in a disorderly fashion. They seemed to always maintain their distance no matter how far she walked and it was difficult for the hybrid to know if she was getting any closer or further away from them. Furthermore, she had no idea at all how long she had been walking by the time she even noticed them. Had the crash been that rough on her? She certainly had internal damages, and mayhaps even a concussion although she didn't feel any of the symptoms associated with that. Mayhaps that was just her hardiness at work, or her body had just grown so numb to it.
And so she walked, and walked, and walked until...she felt something. Warmth in the cold evil, she looked to her left and felt a collective of light. Whether by the design of the universe, her fate, or just plain luck, it seemed that the young hybrid had somehow stumbled into the direct line towards Galactic Alliance forces.
A smile crept across her face and she immediately began to move towards it only to stop five steps into her path and turn back to face the opposite way. Something else was there, in the dark evil. Only some yards away, but imperceptible in the smoke and dust of the tainted world. It was...somewhat like her in a way. There was a faint distant light, but also deep exhaustion. And...regret...regret...regret.
"Catchy thoughts there, kid. If only you knew what it means," the voice said again. The man himself could not be seen when Mrurh'en'last spun around repeatedly to find him. "Why don't you go find 'em. See if they need your help. Make your mama proud."
Making someone proud. That was all she wanted to do. All she desired to do. Make someone proud at least once and not be a failure. If she could do that here, she could do that anywhere? Right? Spurred on by the voice of a man she was now not entirely sure was real, Mrurh'en'lase used what energy she had left to march towards this faint light, her vision growing hazier with each minute that passed until, finally, somehow, she came upon what looked to a courtyard, although she wasn't entirely certain what it was. She only knew that going any further beyond it would be a foolhardy thing and certainly lead to her death as the screams of ghastly creatures screeched through the thick air.
Breathing shallow breaths, the hybrid searched for the source of the faint light - as faint as a white dwarf star at the edge of the galaxy. Finding it in this place was difficult as Mrurh'en'lase's vision was almost entirely blurred by her injuries sustained in the crash. Nausea built slowly in her stomach and would have erupted in full had she eaten anything substantial before the battle. The pain of it all was quickly becoming too much to bear, and she was very close to shutting down and leaving to accept yet another disappointment in her life.
Until she found her, propped up on a bench like a ventriloquist's dummy that had its strings cut. Her face was blank and covered in the residue of battle that had met her in great fury. From a preliminary glance, she looked to have been as old as the hybrid herself, perhaps even a touch younger, but that mattered not. She was undoubtedly a warrior of light, waiting in her rest to be saved. Her wounds were many, and the emotions that radiated off of her would have certainly overwhelmed Mrurh'en'lase in her own weakened state had the girl not been so drained. But she was the one the hybrid was to save. The Alliance was close and this was her moment, so she had to be quick and decisive if she was going to save the girl. Sucking in air sharply, lungs still burning with pain from the embers, the hybrid hooked her hands under the girl's arms and lifted her up and onto her left shoulder like a sack of crops if the crops were as light as a toothpick. Turning on her heels just as quickly, Mrurh'en'lase moved swiftly out of the courtyard and back into the hellscape, exhausted and nearing her own end.
"You're really struggling there, aren't you?" the strange man asked, his footsteps barely audible to the hybrid's right. "Kinda hard to watch."
"Frack...off," she choked out in between steps.
The man was silent as if shocked and then said: "You're really going to tell me to frack off? You know that is very rude of you, kid. I'm your only friend here, so you'd be wise to be nice to me."
Mrurh'en'lase snarled in response as her forward movement had almost completely stopped, her legs heavy and weak and wobbly. Despite this, the girl on her shoulder felt as weightless as she did in the emptiness, and her light was fading. Her life was ending. Mrurh'en'lase growled back into resolve and forced her momentum to continue, holding back tears and screams of pain with each step. Had she broken her legs and only just now began to feel the effects? Torn muscles? Bruised tendons? She couldn't tell, and to keep her mind off the agony that seared her soul, sputtered to the man: "I don't...have...to...be...nice...to...anyone. They...were never...nice...to...me."
The man laughed loudly and placed what felt like a gloved hand on her free shoulder, "Well, if you wanna survive, you're going to have to be. Your pop was right about one thing, kid. Your attitude still needs some work. Try giving the Order a bit less sass and maybe you'll have some actual friends to count on."
She would have punched him if she could, but she couldn't risk dropping the girl in her care. Instead, she hissed at his words and kept forcing her movement. More and more she walked with the weightless girl as the distant lines of light drew closer, but too slowly did they draw. Her vision was almost completely white at this point. Her head was throbbing, her veins protruding against her temples, her ears ringing with deafness, and her heart beating with each exertion.
But she could not care. She did not care - she should have died in that crash, but she survived and this warrior would survive and she would make someone proud.
"You will, kid. You're going to make it."
And so those steps turned into stomps and those stomps quickened and quickened until she was in as near a sprint as she could get. The vision of her eyes began to turn from white to a shade of pink and a pain - thin and sharp - began to spread across her eyes from the corners and behind in her sockets. Heart thumping - war drum - against her chest, Mrurh'en'lase raced to the Alliance forces holding the bulwark of this battle. She could not see them, but she knew they were growing closer and closer until, finally, they were within arms reach.
And then she collapsed with the girl falling from her grasp, and all went dark in her vision as shouts of surprise and orders for the healers and medics rang in her ears. Mrurh'en'lase had saved one
Viers Connory
. It was one life among thousands, but it was a good life to save and it was worth it. Oh, how it was worth it to feel that moment of pure joy before she fell into a deep slumber of unbridled depletion. She had no idea who she made proud, but it was someone. Somewhere.
