First Reply What the feth happened here?

[Kyra Perl]

Incoming SOS from an unsecured network...

Hi. You ...probably don't know me. I'm trying to bounce this as close to the core as I can get. Dad... you there?" She laughed nervously, then grew somber on a dime. "Something's happened in the Artivis Sector. If you're getting this you probably know more than me. It's bad out here. Feth, I lost half my engine to a slaver raid. There's an encampment where..."

She trailed off, her attention shifting warily to something beyond the receivers head.

"I shouldn't say much more. They're listening too. If you're coming through-- get out. And if you got help... we could use it out here. I have a localized beacon set up to draw you in. If you're who I think you are, you'll know it when you feel it."

A twig snapped in the distance, causing her to crouch down and drop her voice. She appeared to have nothing on her, just her own two hands and a thick brown robe. She was alone out there and she knew it.

"Or..." She started, glancing grimly at the receiver. "Just do a girl a favor and bounce this further out.”

Spoiler: Background

Kyra stumbled upon a power vacuum left in MAW territory. Imperial and MAW remnants mix with the local populations, creating clashes of power in the region. Kyra is stranded on Mantooine where she found a makeshift slaver's encampment. Men, woman, and children are being held there, destined for the slaver's market. Kyra has arranged a force beacon to guide any well intended closer in.

But it's not just the force sensitive that could respond. An odd blip in your navigation system will keep rerouting you towards a foresty outcrop. Either your navigation system has suddenly become unreliable, or ...

 

[Kyra Perl]

The force begged for her patience. She had none.

Kyra could see the slavers make their preparations through the trees. She had counted 10 ships of various sizes being fueled and prepared for cargo. No doubt all of them had once belonged to the people who would be loaded like cattle onto their docks. They were out of time and Kyra was out of options.

No one was coming, she told the force.

It whispered its warnings like a fly in her ear. She batted it away and leaned onto her palms. She was the beacon in the force that would draw others in, so if it had worked where were they? She was growing rusty... or just bad at listening.

Never mind that, focus.

Her muscles coiled as she prepared to jump the men leaving the closest ship. ...Round house kick to Man 1's head. Duck the shot, knee to the groin for Man 2. It was a plan. A short sighted one, but...

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan had become a Warden of the Sky. His father, Jacen Voidstalker, had never really been able to express his feelings, but Trextan had the sense he was proud of this choice.

Jacen had been a soldier, had given most of his life and his health to fighting through three galactic wars. For a long time it had seemed like Trextan was going to be drawn into that same path.

He had walked away from it. It had been more difficult than he had expected. Since that day Coruscant was ravaged in a Republic attack on One Sith held Coruscant he had been a pawn in other people's games. Now he tried to help people where he could. He wasn't the best at planning ahead or solving disputes, but the Force was strong with him.

Through the second of those great wars, his father had fought alongside a man called Coren Starchaser. A man Trextan had met a few times. The last of those times had been when the Zeltron girl in the holographic before him had been rallying help for worlds ravaged by way.

The man she was reaching out to. A close friend of his father.

"DG, set a course on that signal," Trextan said to the pilot droid as he relayed the message with more power and also encrypted a copy to send as a digital through a network to other Wardens. He sent a direct message to Jacen too, knowing he might have had a way to contact Coren.

"I cannot hone in on the exact location."

"I'll do the rest DG," Trextan replied.

He idly wondered if she had learned more sense and patience than when she had been trying to find a group of slavers on her own.

"Stones and glass houses," he muttered under his breath.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Round house kick to Man 1's head. Duck the shot, knee to the groin for Man 2.

Her vision cut short and so did her plan. Man 2, while collapsed as curled over on the ground, pulled a blaster and shot at her. It missed entirely, but that was not the point. The other would be slavers had heard it.

Kyra sensed she had moments to regather herself before she was quickly overwhelmed. "Hey!" A new voice called out. She ducked and scattered back into the treeline.


"Well now they know you're here," she chastised under her breath.

Trextan Voidstalker

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

His senses were rusty. The analogy he had heard was that those who were most still, and made the least movements in the surface of the Force could feel the ripples others made. Trextan was loud, bending the Force easily to his will, but he was not a very good listener.

Between the sensors picking up particles from damaged engines and a little guidance from the Force he got close.

He was becoming frustrated, trampling through the forest, when he heard the blaster bolt. Never one to take time to plan, he started to sprint in the direction of the shot.

Kyra had seemed in a desperate situation, but her message had still exuded a calm confidence. He assumed shed been through a fee years of experiences since she'd been clumsily tracking trandoshan. Trextan had no idea.

He unfurled his presence through the Force, clumsily stretching out to try and find her. There was no guarantee that she was even still alive. And if that was the case, Voidstalker would tear through the slavers with reckless abandon.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Oh," Kyra chirped, eyes widening. Trextan's presence blazed through the force. It was hard to miss even on a bad day, but she had so preoccupied with forcing another vision she had not--

"There you are." A hand grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her out of the underbush. Kyra yelped and kicked at their wrists, her hands scrambling to grab onto something.

"Ooooover here!" She called out for backup. She tossed leaves into their face and groped for something more substantial.

Trextan Voidstalker

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Kyra Perl

"Damnit," he spat, turning towards her call.

Trextan had got close and she was alive. Both positive but that shout shouted forced. He was sensitive enough to feel more people in the area.

He started to run. One hand yanked at the strap against his chest, keeping his bag tight to him incase he needed to fight and move freely.

Closing on the scene, he heard a serious of uttered curses and grunts as he found slavers trying to drag Kyra away, but she was putting up a fight.

"Oi!" he shouted.

It was just enough to cause a slight distraction. One of them ran right for him. Trextan couldn't draw and shoot his heavy handcannon without risking hitting Kyra. They carried some kind of stun pike and thrust it at him.

Trextan stepped aside smoothly, catching the pike with his artificial arm and bending it in half. A soft whir as he lashed out with the artificial arm and the gran slaver went down hard.

He draw the handcannon and fired. The spread of blue bolts launched the next slaver off their feet, but he still couldn't shoot at the one trying to pin Kyra.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Took you-" Kyra drove her heel into the men's chin. "Long enough." A second kick freed her ankle from his grasp, and a twist of her legs brought him down to the ground. She grabbed a rotting stick and smashed it over his temple.

"Stop it,"

She scrambled up as he went limp under that. An old comm system buzz from one of the bodies. "What the hell was that?"

Kyra glanced at the tree line containing the trees and didn't hesitate. She grabbed Tristan arm and yanked him back into the perimeter.

"Great," she cursed under her breath. "Perfect. Totally Stealthy." She crunched into the bush and pulled leaves from her hair, eying him as she did so. "Just you then?"

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Stealthy? That was stealthy?" he asked incredulously. It took him a moment to realise she had been sarcastic. Trextan had mentally switched into fighting and wasn't really ready for nuances of conversation.

The young man wore a distinctly grumpy expression.

"Well I'm glad your safe and all but...what is this camp from the message and why..."

He realised he had quite a few too many 'why's' to get through in short order. The reason for Kyra being here was probably the best place to start.

"I didn't pick up a message from anyone else coming," he said. Trextan wasn't always the best at making decisions around complex problems, but if there was a direction he could be pointed at he was confident in his own abilities.

"Do you not even have a blaster?"

One more question, then.

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Who needs it," she dismissed with a shrug. Well if it was just them need, they'd need to get a plan. One that involved more thab only seeing two steps further into the future.

Kyra frowned as she tried to look forward again and found her visions blocked. What the hell was happening with her lately?

She left the moment with a huff and crawled towards another set of bushes. None of his other questions had been answered and it seemed they never would. Kyra ignored the tickle of a leaf on her nose as she watched two men walk warily towards the perimeter. Their clothes were ragged and stained from years of use. They likely were no more than slave workers themselves just weeks before.

Kyra could feel an odd edge of darkness rippling through their soul.

"It's like they're infected."

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Who needs it? Someone who gets attacked...and you're gone. Just crawling off after something else..."

Trextan would have been aghast to find out that muttering to himself when slightly stressed out was a trait he had inherited from his father.

He didn't know if this was a rescue or an escape. Just the frustrating wild zeltron fighting some strangers in the trees after sending a distress signal.

"I have a spare gun you know?" he offered as he crawled along the ground next to her. He kept low to the ground and watched the two men.

"Infected? With what?" he hissed.

Trextan had a vague sense of unease about the situation. He could not quite hone in on where that came from.

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra's nose crinkled in distain. "Darkness." She could feel the way it coiled around their minds. If she didn't know any better she'd say it was praying on them.

It made this moment all that more tricky.

"Turn that stun mode-- and nothing lethal, okay?" She crept back onto her feet and braced as a man crept closer. "We get them out, nothing moaaAR." Her voice carried as she pounced onto the back of the would be slaver. He let out a yelp she couldn't muffle and stumbled as she locked him in a choke hold. Behind her a blaster shot her way, his crew mate running to back him up.

Kyra gave Trexton a fierce look and didn't let the man in her sleeper hold go.

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"Yeah, I get it," he muttered under his breath and she glared him into action.

Trextan was on his feet sharply. An errant weet snagged his boot and made him stumble. A compartment opened on the inside of his right arm.

That had been added to his artificial arm since they had last met. The internal weapon replaced with a chamber for his lightsaber.

The silver blade snapped into life and swung upwards, deflecting the next bolt that had been fired at Kyra.

"What's caused this?" he called out. His handcannon wasn't the right tool for the job so he yanked the spare blaster from a holster and thumbed the safety switch.

He missed with his first shot, stepping forward to put himself between the second man and Kyra.

"Could have borrowed a blaster."

 

[Kyra Perl]

“Do I look like an encyclopedia? Ow,” she huffed, as the man dropped them both to the ground. She held him there and squeezed tight against his throat, grappling against the grown man for control.

His breathing went deep and shallow. Kyra sighed in relief and released them both on the ground.

“Don’t let him call them,” she ordered. Because apparently she was in control here.

“There’s seven more.”

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"This would be a lot easier if he was closer," he said.

One artificial arm and one real arm meant he was never particularly capable of deflecting blaster bolts and aiming with a sidearm at the same time.

The solution, was of course obvious. Trextan was flustered at being thrown into the situation and then not being able to solve the situation with an application of force.

"Oh yeah," he muttered as he stretched out with his mind. The man's blaster pistol and then comm-link crumpled into scrap and then the man was yanked from his feet and pulled through the air.

The next stun ring struck him square in the chest. Trextan slowly lowered the limp body back to the ground.

"You look like someone who has been here longer than me," he replied, stubbornly.

He took a breath. Lightsaber slipped back into the compartment in his arm. Blaster went back into a holster against his side.

"You been practising that," he said, nodding to the man who had been grappled. "Just seven more?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra watched the stunned man fall to the ground. "...Six," she clarified, grabbing her guy by the ankle and dragging him deeper into the bush. "And count our ass lucky non of them are sith. Though that's what should be here-- hell if I know what's happened. They just brought me crashing down. Don't tell me you didn't do a read before coming down here."

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

Trextan copied her, but picked up the other man and threw him over a shoulder. He grunted at the effort.

The young Warden looked more world weary than when Kyra had last seen him. His curly hair was a wild mop and his tunic needed a few seams restitching.

"Well...I saw the ships and camp. And then...I got a bit lost in the woods looking for you," he admitted.

In hindsight, he should have gone straight for the camp and dealt with that.

"Deal with the rest quickly then and hope no Sith show up? You tracked em here?"

 

[Kyra Perl]

"Nope, and that's the weird thing. They're gone. ... Well," she huffed, dropping her guy in small slopping ditch. "Most of them. What the feth happened out there? One moment this was Maw Territory and the next it's not? What did I miss?"

 

[Trextan Voidstalker]

"I don't really keep up with events but you really haven't even tuned into big holonet news recently?" he asked.

Since the collapse of the old Galactic Alliance he had tried to keep out of large scale events. It had been deliberate, trying to avoid looking for a war he could get involved in. He wanted to help people, but he didn't want to be the soldier the sith and then his father had trained him to be.

"Still cultists all over the place, but they collapsed. Last of them fighting some vanguard against the New Jedi Order out in the Unknown Regions."

 

[Kyra Perl]

Kyra sighed and opted not to explain that her receiver had been busted in a rather questionable ship racing maneuver.

"And they left this mess behind. Aight, fine. We go back in, you clear left, I clear right. We knock em out and get these people out of here," She clenched and unclenched a set of bruised knuckles. "I hope you have food on that ship of yours."

"And like. Maybe a tow." She kicked dried leaves over the body and started back for the camp.