Try not to get killed, okay? [Meeristali]

[Arage Bao]

Kashyyyk​

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He blinked twice, before he finally understood what the lad was saying. It seemed he had been assigned to him, to serve as his padawan and get some training. A strange course of action, if you asked Michael. There had been little love between him and the Council, probably because he had gone rogue for a while and formed his own Army. Maybe. Perhaps. But it seemed they wished bygones to be bygones, and make him work for his little cell in the Order. Which was not really a bad idea, he was getting a bit bored and maybe this was just what he needed. ​

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It felt strange, having someone to look out for. Of course, when he had led the Army of Light.. there were so many people to look out for. But this seemed different, more intimate maybe because it was just one person. As he nodded, and welcomed his new padawan he wondered where they would have to start. His father had always said that a man could only be judged by his actions, and what was a better judgment than an operation... a vague smile appeared on Michael's lips as they entered his chambers. ​

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A plan began to form.​

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**​

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A few days later​

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The first thing Michael had thought his new pupil was a technique which would help him conceal his Force Presence from the outside world. Of course, at this point true Masters of the Force would not be fooled by the trick. But still... they were quite rare, sorta. So it might come in handy regardless. ​

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With the training came a test. Meeristali was left behind in the middle of Kashyyk nowhere, and his mission was really simple. Find Michael Sardun, take him unaware and... survive. ​

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The last objective was a strange one, because Michael had never mentioned what he would be fighting against. Just.. that he had to be careful. Through his contacts he had acquired a multitude of helpers. Foremost, would be ten special.. droids. Besides them, where a bunch of people that had owed him a favor. Force Users. Knight-level. ​

Usage of the new trick Stali had learned was advised.​

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@Meeristali Peradun​

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

After weeks of flitting here and there, picking up as many different training classes as he could get away with, the Order had seen fit to assign him a dedicated Master, and that man, [member="Michael Sardun"], wasted little time in getting the both of them going. A sense of priority, productiveness, and to an extent, similarities in background. They could likely understand one another in ways that most that had been of civilian stock their whole lives could not. The knight had armed him with a rather useful skill, and then dropped him in the middle of the vast jungles of Kashyyyk.

Peradun liked a challenge. This guy was on the right track. He had told him to be careful. He wasn't certain that careful was really the right word in this situation, so much as aware was, but that was unnecessarily splitting hairs. He had already figured out that just because something did not have a signature in the Force, did not mean that it couldn't be sensed. Blank spaces in the field of his sense were not nothing, but rather, the absence of a Force-bound presence of something. Such details were important. And speaking of sensing things in the Force, he was one of those very things that needed to be evasive.

This meant the skill of concealment of his presence, a skill he had worked on again and again until other students began to have difficulty sensing him, and some lower level knights were starting to feel fuzzy about whether there was actually something or someone there, but he had yet to manage to fool any of the masters. Not even any of the newer ones. Additionally, he'd done the same thing with the barriers upon learning them from Master Grayson, working the skill until his energy petered out. These things only got better with practice - like working a new muscle, it only got stronger from being flexed. He'd managed to make the barriers stronger, a little less visible, and had managed to mostly solve the shattering issue.

But in the here and now, he was eyes and ears open, breathing low and barely audible, and his presence was absent. Well, about as absent as it could be, considering how short of a time he had been doing it, even if he'd managed considerable progress on it. He listened for the sound again. A crunch of something with weight disturbing the jungle, and... there it was again. Crunch. And... a whirring?

He rose slowly with his back up against a tree, and carefully peered around it to try and see what thing was after him.. and he saw it alright. And it... did not see him. But if he didn't move, it would come upon him soon. He snuck off from his position, keeping his senses open, and his presence concealed, placing his feet carefully, and trying not to, say, snap any twigs as he sought to put distance between himself and it.

What kind of droid is that thing? He thought. Whatever it was, it didn't look nice, and he had to focus to stay out of its way and out of the way of whatever other things his new master had up his sleeves.

 

[Arage Bao]

There were two distinct hunters gunning after Stali in the jungle. The droids did not possess the Force, as such they wouldn’t pay attention to signatures and all that. Instead they would use their sensors, to try and pick up his figural scent.

It was a good thing Stali was trying to keep his movements as stealthy as possible, the droid kept patrolling in his designated area and completely missed the Jedi Padawan.

But there was one other hunter hunting in the forest, groups of Force Sensitive people were roaming it. In Michael’s travels, and personal war against the Sith he had found many allies and some people had still owed him favors.

When Michael said be careful, he had meant it. Because these hunters were not in the business of sugarcoating their training, if Stali got caught.. well the punishment would be severe indeed.

As the young man left the immediate vicinity of the droid, he would stumble across a clearing of the forest. There, two men were speaking. Did they know he was there to listen in? It was a possibility.

“Boss said we should keep our eyes open, kid seems to be some kind of prodigy or something. Think Michael is overthinking this, I fought kids more dangerous than that. Then again.. that one Sith kid had a bomb strapped to his chest, so that might have had something to do wi-- What was that?”

One of the men turned around, and seemed to be walking at your direction. At the moment he hasn’t located you yet, what do you do?

 

[Meeristali Peradun]

If there was one thing that Kashyyyk had in abundance, it was trees. Large, wide, ancient ones; shorter, skinnier, newer ones, and a variance of other ages and sizes in between. There were more broad, old trees on this world than on any other world the Felacatian had ever set foot, and they were at random-yet-useful intervals, allowing him to move quickly from the concealment of one tree to the next. The only problem with speed is sometimes, no matter how good one is with careful, controlled movements, there is little that can sometimes be done when, say, an unexpectedly crunchy leaf, or an unnoticed twig ended up underfoot.

Which was, in one way or another, what happened... but it was not an error in the movements of the force-concealed padawan, who was listening with his keen, feline hearing to the conversation from a visually concealed position behind a particularly broad tree fifty metres to the left of the opening to the clearing, but rather an Agr snapping into a hard-shelled beetle, as it sat in a tree on some three metres to the right of the opening the man approached, now that his curiosity and caution had been irreversibly piqued. The snapping sound had made the conversation cease, which made Peradun tense, holding his breath for a moment, but as a breeze blew softly, he released the breath in timing with it, and slowly breathed in as the breeze died, and while he did so, he considered his options while keeping an ear on the individual approaching.

He could hear the man's trousers rubbing and scratching against itself as the unnamed man walked, and could hear from his footfalls the particular direction in which he went, if he hesitated, if he stopped... if he began to move faster or slower, for example. What had Sardun told them, anyway? No matter, the intel was useful, as it gave him some idea as to the level of their alert, and how they might act if he were discovered. While in some respects he was indeed dangerous - his prior occupation had made certain of that - he was green as far as this way of life was concerned, but that didn't make him any more vulnerable. If he ended up having to fight, he might be at some disadvantage, but stealth? Stealth he could do, easily.

He looked ahead, and began to feel a gut-urging to move further along the path and further away from the clearing, but no... he would wait a little longer, his back against the moss-covered trunk as he bided his time for the right moment to continue moving. His own movements could easily pass under the noise of their conversation if it restarted, if he maintained his focus.

[member="Michael Sardun"]