Private The Blooming Below

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Robes
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings
Tag: Tigris Aphra

​

The Marrow Green Research Facility was built into the side of a lush, unassuming moon orbiting a nameless gas giant in Colony space, hidden beneath thick jungle canopy and low-atmosphere cloud cover. Originally established a nearly a century ago to study exotic plant life and ecological healing techniques, it had long since been repurposed into a Jedi-affiliated bioscience station, quiet, ethical and self-sufficient.

At least, it had been.

Now, it was silent.

No pings. No manifest updates. No data handoffs through encrypted Jedi channels. No emergency beacons. Just a deep, unnatural stillness.

The last incoming transmission was a fragmented message: distorted by static, but clear enough to make the SIA nervous. A hoarse voice whispering the same phrase, again and again, until it cut to black.

"They’re inside the walls. They remember the shape of us."​

What made it worse — what forced the mission green light — was the psychic echo that followed: dozens of Jedi across the stars jolted awake on the same night, drenched in sweat, their dreams choked with vines and open mouths full of spores.

Something had bloomed in Marrow Green.

And it was not meant to bloom at all.

* * *​

The shuttle descended through thick, pale-green mist, its underbelly brushing cloud tendrils like fingers. The jungle below was wrong. Not just overgrown, but hungry, vines coiling across landing pads, splitting ferrocrete seams, and crawling like veins toward the darkened structure of the research complex.

Eve stood near the front viewport, arms crossed tight against her chest, the filtered light from above catching in her silver hair and the edge of her eyepatch. She didn’t speak for a long while, eyes locked on the quiet sprawl below them, the facility once teeming with life, now overtaken by something... older.

The ship jolted softly as it touched down.

Isari let out a low, uncertain huff from where she crouched near the ramp. Her silver eyes tracked the movement of vines twisting gently around a landing strut. Nothing attacked, but nothing should have been moving at all.

"You're staying here, Isari," said Eve. There was no room for argument in her voice. The fox whined slightly, but conceded almost immediately, as if grasping the severity of the situation... and the risk.

Eve drew a breath and looked to Tigris.

"They said the plants were meant to help terraform lifeless worlds," she murmured. "Fast-growing, Force-sensitive, adaptable. Healing."

She let her gaze fall again to the vine-choked corridor that led from the pad to the main facility doors.

"What happened here..."

Her hand hovered near her saber hilt, not drawing it yet, but close. She took one step toward the ramp, then paused. The air smelled thick, damp, fungal. Not just rot, but spore-heavy.

She glanced back at Tigris, giving the faintest smile.

"Watch my back, my love, and I'll watch yours."

She took a step, then stopped, her smile then turned into something more mischievous.

"Expecially in that new suit or yours."

Then she stepped off the ramp and into the still-green silence of Marrow Green.

 

[Tigris Aphra]

Equipment: Kurohana Bodysuit, Lightsaber, Bracelet, Echo Stone, vibroknife, Mackie Class Droid, NJO Utility belt

Tag: Everest Vale

Tigris maneuvered her ship over a landing pad, angling to avoid the nefarious looking vines that gripped the duracrete so firmly that cracks appeared in the smooth surface. Once the craft lighted upon the ground, she began the power down cycle and moved with Everest towards the hatch. Mack hovered closer, settling into its mount on Tigris' back, while Isara shifted anxiously at their feet.

It was the first mission to which the couple had been assigned together. Everest and Tigris had, individually, been tested through fire and shadow. Now, together, they were tasked with investigating the ominous silence coming from the remote research facility. The couple were well suited for the task. Eve was skilled in living things, plants, animals and ecosystems. Tigris was an infiltrator.

A bronzed palm pressed against the hatch actuator and it slid open, the ramp extending with a hiss to reach the ground. An eerie scene met the padawans. Creeping vines had spread over the compound, some even inched towards the ship, tendrils exploring. It was nothing like the jungles of New Cov. There, vines had moved, attacked, but in the Force, they felt natural. The jungle before them now, at least around the facility, felt definitely menacing. That sense was echoed in the Force.

Tigris returned Eve's glance, tentative, wary. "Looks like science took a wrong turn..." She quipped as her sharp gaze scanned the misty surroundings. "Mack, take a look around." She commanded, the small droid lifting from her back and whirring ahead. Everest began to move down the ramp, Tigris allowing her to take the lead as she gauged the nature of the bizarre invasion of flora, while the Atrisian padawan could keep watch over her.

The heavy mood was broken unexpectedly by Eve's saucy comment about her girlfriend's new gear. Tigris' jedi robes had been replaced by a custom-tailored Atrisian tactical bodysuit that hugged her fit figure. A utility belt hung around her hips, from which her lightsaber dangled. A vibroblade clung magnetically on her other hip. Tigris smirked. "You keep your eyes on where you are going, Angel." She retorted.

Tigris followed Everest onto the tangled ground. It was creepily quiet for a jungle, and for what was supposed to be an occupied facility. She looked ahead at the path to the main entrance, lined with weaving lattice work of the unnatural vines. A beep sounded quietly in her ear comm.

"Mack reports no fauna, but the readings on the flora are not normal... by any means." Tigris announced quietly, as if speaking any louder would awake something dangerous.

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Robes
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings
Tag: Tigris Aphra

​

The silence was the first thing. Not the quiet of nature, not the hush of a sleeping forest, but a void, a wrongness. As soon as Eve stepped off the ramp, her boots sinking slightly into vine-choked soil, she felt it press in around her like wet cloth.

The air was humid and dense, thick with the smell of rot and something sour. A faint mist clung low to the ground, curling around their ankles like smoke. The building loomed ahead, partially swallowed by overgrowth, its once-pristine durasteel walls now veined with thick green and violet stalks, pulsing faintly as if breathing.

They passed through the half-pried open blast doors, and the jungle followed them inside.

The interior was worse.

What light remained flickered, emergency strips guttering like candles. Broken terminals sparked feebly on the walls, casting quick, jittery shadows. Something creaked overhead, not metal, but wooden, like branches shifting against beams. Water — or something like it — dripped steadily from a ruptured pipe, echoing in irregular rhythms like a heartbeat out of sync.

Eve's fingers hovered close to her lightsaber, but she didn’t draw it yet. She stepped carefully, the Force stretching out like a whisper, but it didn’t move naturally here. It recoiled in strange places. It clung to the vines, held in them.

They were being watched.

The vines didn’t simply grow, they shifted. Slowly. With purpose. One tendril, thick and wet-looking, inched just slightly along the wall as they passed, curling back as if recoiling from light... or retreating until the moment was right.

Her skin prickled.

Every breath she drew felt damp in her lungs. Spore-mist hung faintly in the air, catching the light like dust motes, but heavier. Some of it glowed faintly yellow or green where it clustered. Eve held a hand close to her mouth and nose, already feeling her head begin to fog.

"This place is... wrong," she whispered to Tigris, barely audible.

Then she saw it.

Just ahead, half-crumpled against a wall of ruptured plating, was a figure. At first, Eve thought it was just a body, slumped, discarded, lost like so many others. She froze, breath catching in her throat. The light flickered again, and she took a cautious step closer.

What had once been a person was contorted. Twisted. Skin bloated, flesh pulled and ruptured by something inside. From his throat and abdomen sprouted thick fungal stalks, spotted and grey, like decaying coral. His limbs were bent wrong, the hands curled inwards like claws. Mold bloomed over his eyes.

Eve gasped aloud.

It was sharp. Too loud.

And the thing moved.

Its head jerked, first once, then again, as if testing the weight of its own neck. With a sickening crack, it looked up, and even without eyes, she felt it see them. Its jaw twitched, then fell slack, a wet gurgle bubbling from somewhere inside.

And then it launched forward.

Not upright. Not walking. Crawling. Fast.

Limbs scraped the floor with jagged, twitching movements, like a spider half-dead, dragging itself forward in erratic, jarring lunges. Its back arched unnaturally, hips popping, bones snapping beneath its own momentum, but it didn’t stop. The vines moved with it, flaring and twitching as though feeding off its energy.

Eve stumbled back, heart hammering in her chest. Her hand reached for her lightsaber in an instant, a brilliant light shining through the half-light, as she steeled herself.

Down the corridor ahead—movement. Shadows shivering in the mist. More shapes.

They were coming.

 

[Tigris Aphra]

Equipment: Kurohana Bodysuit, Lightsaber, Bracelet, Echo Stone, vibroknife, Mackie Class Droid, NJO Utility belt

Tag: Everest Vale

The couple crept along, nerves on end, perplexed by what they saw and the ominous danger that lingered in the putrid, humid air. As they stalked in through the doors, Tigris paused. She was still acclimating herself to the new bodysuit. It was so light, it had the strange and liberating feeling of being almost nude. It's unique features made movement so instinctive, her muscles more on cue, her reflexes instant, the black glove played on her greatest strengths and magnified them.

And every muscle and nerve was coiled as they entered. Tigris marveled at the utter invasion of the thick vines. The Force was distorted, the place unnerving Tigris in the deepest recess of her psyche, where primal fear dwelt. Eve's statement said it all. It was wrong.

Tigris had hoped her botanical girlfriend could offer more of an explanation, but logic was defied. It sounded as if the very building groaned in the clutches of its intruder. And the Atrisian felt as if she were being swallowed, surrounded, and it put her on edge.

Tigris halted with Eve, seeing the...thing. It was a horror. It had been...someone. But not anymore, like the structure itself, the invasive vine had penetrated the person. Eve crept closer, Tigris lingered, wanting to keep a watch over the Echani.

Eve's soft gasp sounded like a bell in the haunting silence. And it awoke.

Tigris watched aghast as it moved in grotesque movements, a mockery of life, no longer a person, but a monster. It began to crawl and claw its way towards them. "Eve!" Tigris gasped, so repulsed all she could think of was to kill it, kill it immediately.

In an instant her lightsaber was in her hand and ignited, her body lunging forward to cleave through the thing. But not only once, Tigris sliced at it several times, her disgust seizing her until the thing was in pieces.

Only then did her head turn to see Eve frozen, her own blade lit and readied. More...somethings... were moving from the dark towards the jedi. Tigris stood next to Eve, crouching low, her blade held ready. The Force moved around them, through them. Tigris was alive with it, amplified by her suit, her bracelet, the echo stone, and most purely and strongly, through Eve. She was a live wire under precise, deadly control.

"Together..." She said with a determine glance to Eve.

They had vowed to go through everything together. In that moment, they were in a very real, dangerous way.

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Robes
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings
Tag: Tigris Aphra

​

The creatures came in a shambling wave, half-human, half-something else. Their eyes were blind, milky, their mouths slack, but they moved with an unnatural twitching coordination. As if guided by something deeper in the roots.

Tigris didn’t wait. Her blade hissed as it passed through layers of pulsing fungus and bone, severing it cleanly. But even as the corpse crumpled, the vines in its chest writhed like worms, spasming in death. Eve watched, stunned for only a heartbeat, before the next wave came. Tigris' eyes met her own.

"Together..."

Eve nodded.

"Together."

Three more beasts spilled from the corridor, their limbs jerking, legs snapping with each step but refusing to collapse. Eve raised her saber just in time to deflect a clawed swipe, flesh bloated and splitting at the joints, spore-clouds puffing off every movement.

She danced back, then struck. A diagonal cut, then a parry, then a thrust that drove her blade through the skull of one creature. It crumpled, shrieking wetly. Another lashed out behind it— she ducked, rolled, and cleaved low, slicing through its knees. The final one lunged, mouth open wide, and Eve thrust upward, through its jaw, until her hilt met its chin.

Beside her, she felt Tigris moving, graceful, furious, efficient. Her strikes came in fluid arcs, limbs severed with precision, bodies dropped before they could fully close the gap. It was not rage she moved with, but control honed to a blade’s edge. And through their bond, Eve could feel her: focused, lethal, alive. She was incredible.

But it was hard. The bodies did not fall like normal foes. Every strike sent spores into the air, and each creature seemed to fight until completely destroyed. The final creature hit the floor with a wet, crumpled thud, steam rising faintly from the sizzling point where her blade had carved through the spore-riddled skull. The room was still again — not silent, but breathing in a strange way. Like the vines around them were listening.

Eve stood in the thick of it, heart pounding against her ribs, her chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. Her lightsaber remained lit, casting a faint white glow across the clustered growths and half-destroyed consoles. Spatters of blood — or something thicker — clung to her robes and her arms, her silver hair streaked with sweat.

She turned her head slightly, searching through the haze of spores and flickering shadows until her gaze found Tigris. The sight of her — alive, moving, still with her — steadied something deep in Eve’s chest.

"Are you okay?" she asked softly, her voice still low, hoarse from breath and tension.

She then turned again to the corridor ahead — a yawning dark mouth half-choked with vine. Her grip on the lightsaber tightened. The silence that followed was the kind that made her ears ring. Not safety. Not calm. Just the hush before something else.

She took a step forward.

And the vines, once still, twitched.

 

[Tigris Aphra]

Equipment: Kurohana Bodysuit, Lightsaber, Bracelet, Echo Stone, vibroknife, Mackie Class Droid, NJO Utility belt

Tag: Everest Vale

The area was confined, given the pervasive, ghoulish vines that clung to the walls and wrapped around equipment and furniture. The jedi couple fought side by side, with barely enough room for the arching sweeps of their lethal lightsabers, white and green blades that seared through a gruesome abomination of flesh and wood.

The shambling creatures set the hairs on the back of Tigris' neck to stand. The relentless plant zombies reminded her of the horrors of the night terrors she used to suffer, where her past victims ambled from the grave to tear her apart with broken, dirty nails and rotting teeth.

Tigris could see from the corner of her eye Eve's body move, her weapon flourish with skilled lethality. She wished she could watch Everst fight and obxerve how graceful the Echani defended herself.

But the Atrisian could not indulge in such luxury. The things kept coming. Tigris felt as if she were more than just her. A strange concept. Not only was her body coursing with the practiced employment of the Force to hone her strikes, but that connection was amplified by the new bodysuit and the bracelet wrapped around her wrist. It was as if her muscles almost anticipated her thoughts, as she ducked and weaved, wielding her weapon like an extension of her will to cut down the poor wretched, mindless abominations. The bond with Eve, without thought, fed Tigris her strength, as if together they could defeat not twice and may foes, but an exponetially greater number.

One shall slay a thousand, two shall slay ten thousand...

Tigris made a lightning stab that penetrated, then drove upwards to cleave an attacker in two. Feet gliding precisely avoided a lunging reach, both limbs lopped off as a Force-fueled blow of her fist crushed a vine-wrapped skull. Spores clouded the dimly lit room, obscuring vision, clogging nostrils. She was almost surprised when another wasn't lumbering behind her last foe. The onslaught had ceased.

But the uneasy presence was still there.

Tigris looked to Eve. She too panted, more lightly though. The bodysuit wicked away her sweat beneath it, cooling her carefully tuned body. Yet, strands of black stuck to the sweat of her face. Flecks of the same substance that spattered Everest also stuck to Tigris' face, but the substances presence on her suit blended into its inky color.

She nodded in response to Eve's question. Aside from a scratch on the back of her hand, Tigris was unharmed. It seemed, and the bond suggested, taht Eve too ws uninjured.

They had to press on if they were going to unravel the mystery of the facility's demise. Tigris left the mackie droid to hover in the entrance as a sentry. Then, lightsaber in hand, the Atrisian walked side by side with Everest as they moved deeper into the structure. The vines moved, malevolence clinging to the air as thick as the spores from the destroyed zombies.

"They did something wrong here. Didn't they?" Tigris mused. Her unease kept her nerves on end, her muscles ready to react instantly. While she felt an urge to reach for Eve, they could not afford not to be independantly ready to respond. No matter, she held onto the bond between them, more secure and intimate than any casual contact.

 

[Everest Vale]

Outfit: Robes
Equipment: Lightsaber, Bracelet, Earrings
Tag: Tigris Aphra

​

Eve didn't answer Tigris' question. She wanted to. Wanted to say yes—but the words caught somewhere behind her teeth and stayed there. She just kept walking.

The silence between them wasn't empty, though. Tigris would feel it, tight as a wire, aching through their bond. Not fear exactly. Not yet. But a kind of mournful dread, a bone-deep knowing that something here had once been alive and hopeful, and had twisted into something ruinous. Something wrong.

Eve's gaze flicked across the curling vines that pulsed faintly against the walls, following the length of the corridor. The lights overhead buzzed, flickering intermittently, as if uncertain whether to die or stay lit. The air was thicker now. Heavier. It smelled of damp rot, but also… floral. Sweet. Cloying. Unnatural.

She exhaled softly through her nose, trying not to choke on it.

They came to a flickering terminal. Eve crouched, brushing strands of invasive growth from the rusted console, and tapped the screen. It came alive with a painful whine, lines of static running across it. Her fingers, still stained from the earlier fight, navigated the brittle interface until the first of the logs began to play.

A woman's voice, calm and clinical.

"We've made significant breakthroughs by removing GA oversight. Here, we're finally free to explore the upper thresholds of botanical synthesis without ethical bottlenecks. The moon's natural biology offers unique resonance to our spliced growth strains. It's... promising."

A flicker. The next log.

Live trials continue. Failure rate remains... high. Subjects exhibit rapid biomass destabilization within seventy-two hours. The compound's aggressive propagation is beyond our initial projections. I've advised halting Phase IV, but—"

The voice cut off into static.

Another log started mid-recording.

"—getting worse. Not just physically. They scream. One of them sang to the vines last night. Stars, the sounds on the roof... like slithering things, dragging nails across the durasteel…"

Another.

"No more volunteers. We can't contain them. We can't kill them, either—not really. We tried burning them but they wept in the flames. I think… I think we've gone too far."

One more.

"—inside the walls. They remember the shape of us. They're inside the walls. They remember the shape of us. They're inside the walls. They reme—"

The logs ended in static and silence.

Eve stood slowly, eyes still fixed on the blackened screen. Her expression was unreadable for a moment. Then, slowly, she looked at Tigris—and the grief was there. And confusion. And that quiet terror that made her heart press up against her ribs like it wanted out.

She didn't speak. She didn't need to.

The tension in her shoulders, the slight trembling of her hands, the way her eyes lingered too long on the dark corners of the room, they all told the truth.

Her voice, when it came, was barely more than a whisper.

"…What were they trying to do?"

She didn't expect an answer. And yet, they had to go deeper.

 

[Tigris Aphra]

Equipment: Kurohana Bodysuit, Lightsaber, Bracelet, Echo Stone, vibroknife, Mackie Class Droid, NJO Utility belt

Tag: Everest Vale

Tigris stalked down the corridor alongside Everest. Her dark gaze traced along the hallway. The vines surrounded them, ran down the walls, clung to the ceiling. It left Tigris with an unnerving dread, as if any moment they would come alive, like they did in the forest of New Cov. But these vines were more than menacing, they felt malevolent. Even the smell took the usual scent of living flora and turned it into something sickly that made Tigris hesitate to breath deeply.

Eve didn't' answer her question. The Echani didn't need to. Tigris concluded that she was right, that something went wrong with the research. She also knew that Everest would have a slightly different perspective. She loved growing things, the vibrancy of plants. This was almost a mockery of that. Though not ignited, Tigris' saber remained in her hand, thumb on the igniter. Tigris drew on every thing she had, the bracelet, the bodysuit, anything that would heighten her senses in the natural and in the Force. Her being was on a trigger, ready to react.

They stumbled across a control panel. Tigris looked over Eve's shoulder, and then over her own. Everest managed to access some logs, and in the eerie flickering of the straining light bar, they listened.

Tigris' countenance darkened in horror. Many of the terms were not as familiar to her as they would be to Everest, but she got the gist. Live trials, volunteers, can't kill them.... wept when we burned them. Everything about the logs screamed unethical. Tigris might've called it mad science. A cold sweat broke out over her skin. The new bodysuit wicked it away, but it clung to her forehead, lingering in the humid air.

She knew Eve's question was rhetorical. Tigris also knew that Eve would not stop until she knew what was going on. The couple may have uncovered something far more sinister than they anticipated.

Tigris' hand brushed over Eve's shoulder. "Come on." They had ventured to the remote station to discover what happened, they couldn't turn back. She turned to continue further into the facility.