Private Wildly Toxic Surroundings

[In Rhan]

Strands, tendrils, cysts, lesions. In had been expecting... something, but it hadn't been to walk into a whole other world on the other side of that door. This looked like the biopsy of a tumor, she imagined, or the inner hive of some loathsome meat-based insect. Even independent of the screeching metal and man-shaped things on the inexplicable sinew-bridges, she felt keenly mortal here. Like prey, in a way she hadn't in awhile. Her heart pounded. Her head swam. She needed to do something but follow Niysha, or else the nervous energy would explode out of her into panic.

This was a nightmare. She shouldn't be here. She should've been on her ship, eating nutrient paste and watching Fraglor the Warrior-Queen while her ship was tended by droids. And, oh god her ship - could the Dancer catch this? Was it already infected? Did she have anyway of knowing?

In bit down on the panic, forcing her frantic gaze to lock in. Action. Niysha knew where to go, but she needed protection. Protection meant distraction. The wild gunfire down the hall was nice, but... distraction. Niysha had wanted one. She was looking around, too.

In spotted the half-eaten ruins of a hoversled covered in water cannisters, connected to a still-floating wubwub machine. Close to the door - presumably not worth rotting yet. She whipped the wubwub machine around and popped it into neutral, kicking it aimlessly down the tendril-bridge. The floor cleaner heroically scoured a streak of bulkhead clean before it hit the railing of the bridge. Thrumming merrily, it pitched directly over the side and down to the floor of the atrium, landing sled-side down with an alarmed SQUARK as though offended at this unauthorized use. It then began pitching wildly about the floor, damaged by the impact. The valorous Final Cleaning created a screeching, thumming fit to fill the atrium with nonsense.

In took only a moment to appreciate the chaos, counting her lucky stars. The human-things though were less impressed. The began shambling forward. In braced her blaster and began spraying wildly into the group, moving ever-closed to the tipped sled with the pressurized canisters.

 

[Niysha]

There was a shriek far too close for comfort. Before the world started to stand still, Niysha was there with... what was that, a pipe? Her swing was desperate and sloppy, like a mother who'd never played baseball trying to practice with her children while chased by a shark. Or... something? The metaphor of the moment was as confused as the situation. The creature fell after a second swing, and Niysha started to cave its head in. It took four swings for the clanging to turn into a wet crunch.

When she was done, she turned back around, panting heavily, holding her makeshift bat in one hand. From this angle, its nature was actually much clearer. It'd been the trunk of some small, potted tree. Now the whole thing was one long, silver pole, lumpy and slightly melted. She held it exactly like a club, and stood looking at what In was attempting to do. Some kind of... explosive trap?

It took her only a moment to identify the situation. Cannisters of high pressure water piled up and In making genuine progress with her blaster. Niysha took a moment to focus, using her barely-contained panic like a blade to cut through uncertainty. It took only a moment to alter the focus of her sight from her immediate surroundings to the near future. Possibilities. Dooms. Destinies. She caught only a glimpse, but it was enough to-

"Stop! Back up two steps and shoot the cans!" Her voice wasn't used to being so loud, so authoritative. It cracked from the stress.

One step further and the shrapnel would've caused severe damage to In when the tanks blew. But as they were, it was just about perfect.

 

[In Rhan]

Something about the tone felt alien when it came from Niysha, but the imperative was beyond doubt. She acted with a decisiveness that surprised her as much as Niysha's tone had. In planted her boot in the chest of one of the creatures and kicked it backwards, then faded backwards two large steps. Her heavy blaster had wild recoil on automatic, accuracy was nearly impossible. Accuracy was, thankfully, unnecessary. As though wafting a flamethrower or smearing paint, In swept her heavy blaster in the vague direction of the water canisters.

She'd expected a small bang and maybe some spraying to add to the havoc and noise. What occurred was an explosion powerful enough to knock In clear off of her feet and onto her backside, crisp chemical-laden water detonating in a half-liquid half-gaseous eruption of heat and fury. One rupturing was sufficient to blow the entire pile, and pieces of the thick metal containers went flying every which way - embedding themselves in the walls, the ceiling, and through the sinew-bridges. In had the sense knocked out of her by the blast, gaping like an idiot for a moment at the sudden fog and destruction. The five-pound nozzle of a canister had blown over her head close enough that she'd have died if she'd been wearing heels. Another shard of metal had spun through the air like a shuriken and struck inches away from her femoral artery, embedding nearly five centimeters deep in the floor.

Now the air wasn't humid, it was proper wet. The floor-cleaner began sucking up water down below, happy to be of service. In clamored to her feet, retrieved her blaster from where it'd skittered under a nearby cyst, and teetered wildly.

Balance was off. Ear things. She leaned on the wall for support, laughing wildly as she switched her blaster back to semi-automatic and resumed firing wildly at the metal man-things.

 

[Niysha]

Having a pretty good idea of what was going to happen meant that Niysha had time to prepare herself and lessen the blow. Hands over her ears, she only felt the vibration of six high-pressure chemical-laced tanks of industrial cleaner being ignited by a magnetized plasma sheath. That on its own was enough to shake her to the literal bone, but a moment of breathing and centering herself steadied her enough that she could stand. Grab the pipe-that-was-a-branch. Move forward.

The station had clearly increased in size since the artifact activated, but not every part of it would have been as radically changed as this room. They needed to get to a quiet place so she could focus. Immediate plan: charge deeper into danger. Shame Lord Adekos, make Lord Ignus proud. She took two steps, then four, then started into a proper charge. Her arms tensed, hands gripped her impromptu weapon tighter, shoulders shifted, and she swung again. There was a mighty thunk, meat on metal on metal on meat. Niysha knew she was going to bruise from that, but the creature in front of her was in far worse shape.

It did a half-cartwheel sideways, feet over head, and fell skull-first into the darkness below. Judging by the wet thud, there wasn't more than a few meters below them.

Check. How was In? Struggling. She could barely stand. Did she need help? No, she seemed... remarkably smooth? Self-assured. Now that she stopped to look, Niysha could see the Force flowing strongly around her Pantoran companion. Far, far stronger than she'd expected. Normally that would be fascinating, but as of this exact moment, it was only a relief. She needed all the help she could get, and at the moment she was blessed with someone the Force had an active interest in protecting.

Judging by how unsteady she was, In likely couldn't hear her. Niysha made a spontaneous decision and engaged in some light telepathy as she spoke, a bit of mystical legerdemain to make it seem, to an addled woman, that her words were coming though clearly, without shouting. "<We need to clear an area and get to a safe place. I need to concentrate. Somewhere quiet.>"

 

[In Rhan]

In barely had time to register the fact that Niyscha had charged past her into danger, or to marvel at how beautifully the blind(?) nerd had swung one of those things off of the bridge with the sort of force that looked like she'd be feeling it in her shoulders for a week. In could sympathize. Her ears were ringing and her everything was sore. Her vision was clear, aside from the pitch-drunken sway of her balance having gone to pitch. In pushed herself off of the wall and took a couple long, stomping steps towards Niyscha. Though she could feel every step reverberating through her body, the clang of boot on bulkhead sounded muted and distant. She'd need to get that looked at. If they survived. Walking carefully only made her slow and clumsy, so she opted for stumble forward recklessly and let momentum throw her where she needed to be.

What was she even doing here? Chasing some spooky girl down into the pits of the netherverse? On what...? A hunch? A guess? She shouldn't be here. There needed to be guards, soldiers, professionals, somebody with qualifications. Anybody besides a moony blind girl and punch-drunk trucker.

In's hearing was fuzzy, but Niysha's voice came in loud and clear, like a spray of ice-cold water in a sauna. The shock of it was wildly refreshing. She hated the way it made her heart flutter in this, the worst possible context, because it just made her motivations for being here feel somehow more stupid. Misguided heroism was one thing, but dying to impress a girl you met twenty minutes ago in the saddest diner ever was profoundly pathetic.

Stumbling forward, In put a hand on Niysha's shoulder to steady herself and give a slight push. "With you." She promised, push-following Niysha forward and away from the bridges. Most corporate stations had very similar layouts, and In had been in thousands of them. They were in the research and residential floors, near the commercial areas. The busiest place on a station. The most metal, flesh, interesting things. They needed quiet. Isolation. Someplace zombies didn't care about.

"Gym, locker-room, bathrooms. Left, Left, right. Big ones in a station like this." In suggested, firing over her shoulder. "Let's go."

 

[Niysha]

Left, left, right. Niysha took a moment to stretch her vision out, trusting In to keep her steady as they moved. When she found what she was looking for - a sealed, extremely empty area with barely any contamination - she held it in her mind and returned to her body. From there, it was literal child's play to find her way there. This is the sort of thing that, she'd learned, she would've been taught early in school on Alpherides. She had to teach herself instead, but it'd worked out just fine. Her vision was sharp. Sharper than she'd ever given herself credit for when she was younger. Reliable, powerful, her main asset.

The tunnels on the way seemed less like corridors than arteries. If the atrium had been some awful, metallic wasp nest, this was a chambered heart. They needed to move through efficiently, and so Niysha ignored the wet, fleshy metal and the sounds of shrieking monsters. Left, left, right. They were running from something, but just seeing the cloud of darkness behind her was plenty of information to keep her moving. She didn't need to know how many or what kind, just where they were and how fast they were moving. "Behind" and "slower," respectively.

They reached a set of doors that were fully overgrown with metallic flesh. Niysha stopped and turned to In, her vision focusing keenly on the monsters behind them. Many. Farther away than she'd expected, closing faster than she'd like. Her hand tapped In's blaster. "<Burn a hole.>" she said and thought at the same time, her soft voice in stereo and shockingly calm.

With that, she turned and brandished her stick, preparing to ward off whatever came up behind them. She would be very, very sore tomorrow.

 

[In Rhan]

It was a little galling that the blind woman was better at navigating this than she was. But then, she was beginning to doubt that Niysha was blind, or at least blind in a way that mattered. Maybe she had echolocation or something. Magnet sense like a bird. Who knew? The Galaxy was wide, the possibilities were infinite, and In was pretty sure she had a concussion. There was never a better time to focus on the task put in front of her and nothing else.

The intricate metal lattice covering the door might have been pretty, if it weren't for the fact that it was in her way and looked a bit like nerves. A small kick found the material fairly spongy, which was good, but In doubted her utility knife would bother it much. Niysha was right - this was a problem for heat. If only she'd brought a plasma cutter!

In braced herself, and fired a couple of point-blank shots at the door while wincing away from the potential ricochets. When she'd cleared off a couple of patches, she trusted the rest to muscle - wedging her utility knife into the crack of the door, planting her foot against her little lever, and pushing until her thighs screamed in protest. The metal flesh reluctantly tore away, opening the door just enough for two women to crawl through After yanking Niysha through, In let the door slam slide closed behind them.

For the moment, things were silent. In took a breather, slipping to the tiled floor of the locker room - anticipating a banging and pounding on the door that at least for the moment did not seem to come.

 

[Niysha]

After enough repetitions, a wet, clanging sound ceases to have specific meaning. There were possibly ten behind them when they stopped, and while Niysha was very confident that she could send them all tumbling with a simple telekinetic wave, they weren't dangerous enough for that. They didn't move quickly, they weren't coordinated. Being in close combat with them was a terrible idea, on account of the corrosive nature of what seemed to be a leaking, haunted relic, but that idea was made less terrible by their rather impressive incompetence.

Slow zombies are not exactly formidable opponents. Even a cowardly weakling could handle them without concern, if she were empowered by the raw, undiluted terror of a dozen Dark Side abominations bearing down on her with the intent and absolute compulsion to tear her flesh apart with whatever metal they had left for teeth.

As a younger Sith, an apprentice, her powers had been fully controlled by her emotional state. Ignus had helped her forge a different path. Her fear wasn't the source of her power, but a catalyst. The Force had a flight path for her, her body was an engine, and mind-numbing terror was a powerful fuel. She moved with surprising grace, fatigue suppressed or simply forgotten. Pain was a distant memory. There were places that her weapon wanted to be, and she placed it there when it was correct for her to do so.

Wet, clanging sounds had ceased to have specific meaning. There were still four or five left out there - her vision was somewhat unfocused - but what she'd done was enough to stall for In. Behind her, the other woman had managed to jimmy the door open enough to get them through. With an almost impressively coordinated spinning maneuver, Niysha delivered a parting blow to another techno-beast's ribs and left her free hand outstretched behind her.

She'd felt it needed to be there.

In grabbed it and yanked her through, and the door snapped shut behind them. After a moment of tense waiting, there was silence. Niysha stood and braced herself on her knees, panting. "They're... gone. Walked away... we're good."

 

[In Rhan]

In stopped panting , held her breath. Listened intently.

No shuffling. No banging. Maybe they were lurking? No. They were pretty mindless. 'Insensate'. Lurking was likely beyond them.

In stopped holding her breath, releasing a ragged and mildly hysterical laugh that echoed in the surprisingly clean locker room. Everything down here was humid, muggy, warm, cancerous. Only now it also smelled like feet. Who's idea was this, anyway?

She was rambling, spiraling. In bonked her head very lightly against the wall she'd collapsed beside, taking stock. Her balance was still shot, her hearing was poor. She felt like she'd had a giant toddler grip her up like a doll and shake the flexibility out of her joints. Drenched in sweat. Several small cuts and water burns. A couple scratches. All in all, In decided, she could keep going. She could be tough awhile longer. She popped the battery out of her blaster to check the charge - under a third. Her knife was bent uselessly by the door. She'd broken her comm at some point. Her emergency smokes were soaked through, but her lighter was fine. A half-used gift card to a theatre chain that probably didn't exist anymore. She'd had less kit before, In decided she'd get by.

Pack of lemonleaf bubblegum. Score. In popped a strip in, then offered one to Niysha.

"Got you your quiet. What's next?" In asked curiously. "Gonna have a think on where the thing is?"

That was downright conversational. It occurred to In that she should probably be angrier about being trapped in a locker room by metallozombies. "Also we're going at least half on that sale after all this." In added tersely.

 

[Niysha]

Deep breath. Niysha centered herself. "Yeah," she replied. "I'm gonna have a think about it."

The Miraluka walked into the closest thing to empty floor space the locker room had, took to her knees, and steadied her breathing. It took little effort to shut herself away from the outside world and focus on herself. Just her. Niysha, renegade, forgotten Sith, in all of her glory. Her unimpressive body, aching and sore, inadequate to the task. Her sharper, more competent mind, a bit strained but still equal to the challenge in front of her. Her resilient soul, swirling and beating in equal measure. The color of her own aura was never quite as Sith as other Sith; she'd once considered that a weakness, or a failure. No more. It was simply part of who she was. An intrinsic, inseparable part. Elemental to her very being.

She was herself. She was here. And now she was in control.

Her senses expanded. The locker room. Every surface on it. Its history. The threads that had been tied up in it, now severed. In Rahn, a Pantoran woman of breathtaking character and resilience, thrumming with the Force in a way Niysha didn't normally see from civilians. She lingered there for a moment, before turning her gaze outward.

The darkness that surrounded them. Deep and thick, but not impenetrable. Not if you could overcome your fear. Deeper still, the paths that had been twisted by the relic. The touch of something very much conscious of what it was doing. The dark heart of the entire event. Not a holocron. Not a trinket. A fetich. A fragment of an old, twisted soul, now gone quite mad. It had little power, and less control. Less a specter and more the shape of a shape. A revenant at war with its own doom. In the center of all things... just there...

She snapped back to reality and took a deep breath. The scorcing black abyss of hatred and madness that was the source of this whole problem was burned into her Sight. She couldn't forget it if she wanted to, and in short order she absolutely did want to. For now, though, she was with In. They needed to talk.

"What do you think is going on?" Niysha asked unhelpfully.

 

[In Rhan]

Breathe in, breathe out. Cold tiles under her, footstink all around. Metal at her back, and on the other side of it, nightmares. In a way, In was less than thrilled that she was getting a breather. It was so much easier to keep going when you were already in motion, but once she stopped and took stock everything seemed much less surmountable. The doubt came in. She put her gum away, chewing quietly. Centering. Thinking.

Watching Niysha sit and think, as well. What was going on behind that blindfold? Was she cracking, or doing some sort of mind palace exercise? In couldn't be sure. Didn't know her well enough. Was interested in changing that. If they survived, maybe. It was something to evaluate when she didn't have a maybe-concussion.

"Something bad down here." In replied, just as helpfully. She looked away from Niyscha, letting her head loll back so she could point closed eyes towards the ceiling. "Spreading. Making... those things. If we leave it, things get worse. If we take it..."

She gestured vaguely, somewhere between a shrug and sigh. "...we fly it away from here, it kills us in warp, and Medi-Creen is saved?" In guessed bleakly. "I can't see anyone buying this. I don't even know who we'd sell it to. How do you contain a thing that turns people into metal and metal into monsters, a wooden box? Throw it into a star?"

In winced at a stabbing pain behind her eyes, opening them again. "This morning I wouldn't have thought something like this could exist. Now I know for sure that something like this cannot exist. I just... don't know what to do with that knowledge. I don't know if we'll survive long enough for it to matter."

A sigh. "That's where I'm at. How are you?"

 

[Niysha]

How was she? How was Niysha doing right now?

Her smile was more full, more genuine than it had been all day. Animated and natural. A Human smile, a Pantoran smile. "Alive," she replied, her voice carrying a vivacious undercurrent of rasp. "Terrified. Excited. My skin is crawling, my hands are shaking, my heart is pounding. I'm surrounded by something powerful, and it is afraid of me." For just one moment, just one minute, Niysha was Sith.

She didn't even feel shame at her little diatribe, and instead patted the floor in front of her. "The bad thing is a ghost, or what's left of a ghost. Certain people are so powerful that pieces of them linger after they die. It's rarely a happy occurrence, and it ends eventually. This one's at the end of its time. No longer powerful enough to keep going. It's melting down like a old fuel cell, making a fantastic show of sparks, but if you don't stick your hand too close, it's not even dangerous."

Continue. Explain the full process. Your partner is extremely effective, but she'll be moreso if you give her a complete perspective. "The things out there are misbegotten and weak, and the warping process is an ugly, inefficient side-effect of power leaking without control. It looks far scarier than it is." With the notable exception of the half-decaying, completely insane Sith specter haunting an ancient relic, at least. "When we get to where the artifact is, stay outside and hold the line. I'll deal with the spirit. When it's gone, there won't be any will animating these things. The growths on the walls will decay into impressively disgusting but benign waste."

Niysha waited until In was sitting down with her. "You're incredible. I don't know if you realize that. No one else on this station could do what you're doing right now." She took a moment, made what amounted to eye contact. "And I want to help you."

 

[In Rhan]

In didn't want to move from her comfortable spot against the wall, where the corner was, to where Niysha was sitting. But a part of her did. Moreover, there was only one person on this station who could fix things. In had to help her do that. She ambled over and sat before Niysha's kneeling figure. Sitting down, one leg splayed, the other crooked enough to support her chin. In had long legs. They'd put in a lot of work today, and they would do more.

Ghost. Half-lives and radiation. It was enough to make her head spin a little. Called her whole understanding of things into question. Kind of. The more In thought about it, the more it boiled down to 'there's a bad thing hurting folk, and we can stop it'. That was the important truth of the whole matter. It was hurting people. Given how Niysha had explained it, maybe it was itself hurting. Things could not continue as they were. Hopefully Niysha was right and stopping it would fix things. In wasn't sure what that meant for the shambling half-people, or the future of the station. Leaving it be wouldn't help, though.

In waved off of the compliment as though brushing away cobwebs. "I'm just doing what anybody with sense would do." She replied confidently. "But you! You do this sort of thing a lot? Is... this-" She gestured towards the shadow of the door behind them, intending the horrors that lay beyond. "-a thing that happens often?" A hard edge had crept into In's voice, a building anger she'd been too busy surviving to let herself continue. "Some statue from nowhere shows up, and every life on a station is ruined unless.... unless there's somebody like you to stop it?"

 

[Niysha]

It wouldn't do to shrug. Niysha instead focused her attention on answering as comprehensively as possible. "This situation only came about as a result of two separate, unrelated, simultaneous instances of malice." She held up a finger. "An old, powerful person lived his life viciously, and left behind a shadow just as cruel." A second finger. "A corporation acquired something exceedingly dangerous, didn't understand that danger, and didn't treat it with the respect it warranted."

Putting her hand down, Niysha returned to her meditative position. The roiling eye of darkness continued to pulsate in her Sight, dominating every moment of her consciousness. She continued staring it down, barely not shaking with fear. She did not panic. "That combination of malice isn't common, but it isn't unique. History is littered with stories like this." She took a moment, looked contemplative, then broke into a smile. "Also stories much better than this, with much happier endings."

Collect your thoughts. Wrap them up in a little box and deliver them to In Rahn. "This story can't have a perfect, happy ending. Many people have died. The people who caused it were likely the first ones to go. But what we can do is stop it from being a complete, irredeemable tragedy." Niysha held up a finger again, not counting. "Mr. Andros never told me what his favorite thing to cook is. I'd love to see him make it again. I'd love to taste it. And I'd love to see the look on his face when I explain how wonderful it is."

The Miraluka began to push herself to her feet, fixing her boots and brushing off her pants. "There are still three living children in the hab block. Two different mothers. No one pregnant, but that could change. There's a supply ship coming by in the next three days, and they'll send word back to Medi-Creen Corporate that there's an interesting scientific development. That'll mean a new security team, a new science team. The station will be thrumming with life in a matter of months."

On her feet. She picked up her makeshift bat. "So. Wanna go punch a ghost?"

 

[In Rhan]

Phew. In had been in crises before, but she'd never felt quite so out of her depth as she did today. That wasn't liable to change. And, anyway, looking back at it she'd always felt unprepared when bad things cropped up. There was always something more she could have done, a tool she could have brought that would've made life that much safer for her. Or somebody. But what did somebody bring to fight a ghost-battery leaking some dead jerk's maliciousness so hard that it warped the world? What could you possibly bring to make that a fairer fight?

Niysha, maybe. Or fury. Fury at how unfair it was for those three kids, or for Andor's miserable little diner or the people who'd just been living their lives when this awful nonsense had happened to them through no fault of their own. Tragedies like that happened every day, everywhere. You didn't ask to be born on the front lines of a territorial conflict, but the bombs didn't care about your opinions. The ghost wasn't going to go to prison for killing all those people, not in any way that was fair or would balance the scales.

In pulled herself upright, staggering slightly at her wonky balance. It was getting better, she was adjusting. Her back groaned slightly as she straightened it out, hands on her hips. "No." In lied thoughtlessly, wincing at the various aches and pains she'd had blown into her. "But the ghost needs punched, so we're gonna have to do it."

A deep breath. In cleared her lungs and thoughts. No doubts. Focus on the feeling, and make it happen. She could process what she'd done later, after what'd needed to get done was. That's where the strength came from. "We get you there. We punch the ghost. We get it out of here." In affirmed, stepping over to a locker. "We get out of here. Maybe make money from it. Invoice Medi-Creen, maybe." A couple hard yanks and a firm kick, and she'd pulled one of the doors off to use as a makeshift shield. She used her belt to secure it to her forearm. "Come back in a year. Dinner at Andor's. Yeah?"

In stood tall with her makeshift shield on one arm and her blaster in the other, chest puffed, pupils mismatched. More ready to die than she'd ever been - hardly ready at all.

 

[Niysha]

Niysha nodded and started walking, this time to a different door. The first one was sealed, this one was even worse. But this time, they were on the inside. A hard enough kick and it'd likely knock the crust loose. As she took one full-body kick at the door, then another, then a third, Niysha detailed her plan. "The main lab is back this way. One left, straight on for three turns, then a right. If I had a credit for every time I needed an object of great importance that was nestled directly in the heart of a fortified complex, I'd have... probably three or four credits."

The fifth kick got it. The door hissed open. Not a lot of meat outside, though there were a few of the techno-beasts further down the corridor. "It's hard to see clearly from this point. The best I can give you is directions and backup." She paused a moment, then physically turned her head back. "Be careful. I'll be right behind you, the whole way."

And back her up she did. Niysha wasn't trained in any techniques to bolster her allies. She didn't normally have allies. If she'd done this alone, the whole thing would've been a stealth mission. They would've had no real way of finding her, and she could move quickly. With In, it was a bit less smooth, but just as important. Just as impactful. The thrill of finding someone so gifted in the Force and helping them onto a path that they needed to be on was more than worth the slightly longer, slightly more dangerous process.

If Niysha was a different Sith, a stronger Sith, she could've cowed the creatures. Sliced them into smoking parts in a heartbeat. Fry the air with lightning until each one was a charred pile of mechu-deru technocyte mass. She was none of those things. She was a weakling and a coward, and she should have been hiding her way through this problem.

This time, though, she had help.

 

[In Rhan]

Right. Door open. In re-tied the shroud covering her hair to keep it safe. Flickering corridor filled with horrors on the other side of it. They were slow, stupid. Did anything of the people they'd been remain in them, In wondered? She hoped not. Perhaps that was why they were so incapable and listless - fragments of the lives they'd once lived, desperately trying to regain the controls. In pushed the thought aside. Doubts later, clarity now. It was easy to move when you were already moving, starting was the hard part.

First step, unsteady. This wasn't her - she wasn't this person. She should find somebody with the skills and knowledge to help, or at the very least find a different way to handle it. Be clever, be sneaky. Her balance was off, her limbs were heavy.

Second step, picking up steam. She'd found the somebody, or the somebody had found her. Niysha was the person, but she couldn't do it alone. Or maybe she could - but the odds were better with help. Setting her shoulder into her makeshift shield helped, tipping forward into a half-stumbling run. If she was already dizzy, why not put it to good use?

Two steps was all it took for In to break into a full-on sprint, Long limbs, long stride - the Pantoran woman covered a shocking amount of distance very quickly, and placed all of that momentum behind her shoulder as she plowed full-tilt into the first shambling techno-beast, slamming it into the wall. Her shoulder screamed with pain. The monster made a furious grinding sound. In screamed at it, pulling back just enough to slam into it again. This time, it crumpled as some critical structure inside the metal lattice body was broken.

One down. In pivoted to face the rest of the group lingering in the crossways, firing wildly into the mass of them. With her shield and boots, she pushed furiously to clear a path for Niysha. She couldn't defeat them all, not really - In only needed to clear the way. That much, she could do. Every muscle straining, teeth clenched, shouting for Niysha to go, go! In knew she could move faster than Niysha could, she could bridge the gaps - Niysha had to keep moving. Her progress was what would win the day.

One group passed. The rest of the hallway to go. In set her shoulder and charged.

 

[Niysha]

Well, at least her partner was locked in. Niysha made a mad break for it when she was instructed to, rounding a corner into a very, very long corridor. Longer than it should've been. That was, again, the spirit at work. What In might've seen was the inside of a carcass, with ribs bracing a long, dark, Geigeresque tube. What Niysha saw was arguably worse; she could make out the fine details on the bands of metallic bone that braced the path, the folds of tinfoil skin that folded together so naturally, so biologically as to be decidedly unnatural. More importantly, she was intrinsically and constantly aware of the depth of the Darkness they were diving into.

At least it wasn't a complete unknown to her. The cave with Tai Fa had been similar to this, but with less mecha-flesh-monstrosity and more ghost. Niysha was, at some level, prepared for it. She definitely wasn't a spinning death chicken, but at the very least she could cave in a technobeast's skull with a baseball bat. Like the one standing in front of her, about eight meters ahead. There were a few more ahead of that, which meant she needed to focus.

As Niysha rather quickly dispatched this one - one blow to the knees, one to the side of the neck, then crushing its head with her pipe and the leverage of her own body, applied through the knee - she mused that this was quite different from the last fight she'd been in. Yes, obviously because it wasn't a fight and she wasn't using her lightsaber (fat lot of good that would've done her regardless), but also in how she was approaching it. She was terrified, obviously, but not paralyzed. Not running or hiding.

"Thrumming with power" was the keyword of the day. First the ghost, then In, now Niysha. When she approached a second wretched, aberrant technobeast, it was even easier than the last. Her fear had given way to anxiety, which developed into excitement. A completely different kind of power, a medley of different strengths. When she swung the petrified branch-pipe-bat-thing she'd picked up at the front door, she felt far more strength in her arms than usual. The misbegotten creature on the business end flew to the side with a loud crunch, like a car crash full of ham, then sank to the ground.

Niysha continued on with all due haste. She could see In behind her and her objective in front of her. Everything else was a momentary distraction.

 

[In Rhan]

In wasn't a warrior. She didn't believe in honor, aside from as a nebulous way of saying that one shouldn't hurt the helpless or steal from people who didn't deserve it. She didn't like or seek out conflict. She certainly didn't enjoy conflict when it was happening. All the panic, the blood and the ozone and the blaster-burnt flesh? No thank you. Her own blaster had fallen silent, the battery exhausted. In had tried to fire it four times before realizing this. She'd replaced her gun with the ever-reliable debris scooped up from the floor - in this case, a chunk of ceiling tile that'd broken free at some point and served as a short bludgeon.

Nishya was in the mix, throwing down. She was also ahead of her. Kicking the leg out from under a mecha-zombie, In took two leaping strides to bring herself back up to her partner's side. Niysha slammed it into the wall, In followed up by shoving the edge of her locker-shield into the monster's jaw. Something broke. It didn't get back up again.

There was only so much more hallway to go, and Niysha was already in motion. In matched her stride and pushed past, breaking through her own lather. The end was in sight. The Pantoran yelled to keep moving over her shoulder, but her voice broke and she wasn't sure where her volume was at at this point. Actions would make up where words failed.

In threw herself forward and plowed into the final group like a wrecking ball ball, limbs tumbling as she parted the way and made herself a bridge for Niysha's progress.

 

[Niysha]

Almost there. In at her side, darkness at her back. Niysha pressed on. This was, without a doubt, the highest-stress situation she'd been through in recent memory. For now, she was thriving. The relatively low danger - not a war, not a naval battle, barely a ghost, monsters that could only hurt her if she made a mistake - was encouraging her to be far, far more assertive than she normally would.

In was doing impressive work. It was a very good thing she wasn't aware of the Force yet. This close to a Dark Side spirit, it probably would've been enough to make her hesitate. Niysha could be aware of nothing but the Force; her vision was blanketed in an oppressive and exceptionally angry cloud of darkness. She was intentionally gazing into the abyss, and as the two approached the main lab and came to a stop outside the door, the abyss within gazed back.

"It may take me a few minutes. Please stay outside." It was hard to put on that calm demeanor given the circumstances, but the last thing In needed right now was more reason to worry. Honestly, Niysha didn't have much reason to worry, when she managed to dig past the anxiety. This spirit was less dangerous than the one that had haunted Ustelach. Old and breaking down, weakened by the weight of aeons... It was difficult to feel anything approaching sympathy for hateful revenant, but at the very least she didn't need to feel as much overwhelming doom.

Niysha tapped the control panel for the lab, and the door obediently hissed open. The air inside was even more disgusting than what had become of this deeper part of the station. It was wet and rusty, as before, but now somehow cold. A cold swamp was hardly natural, even less so one that smelled of flesh and metal. She made sure to close the door behind her, and left her club leaning against the wall outside. A physical weapon wouldn't be of any use to her against this.

The lab itself was in shockingly pristine condition, as if the corruption started just outside the door. The only lights active were in the corners of the room, but that was irrelevant to Niysha. Everything inside glowed in a rainbow of colors that would be impossible to describe in Basic. The language simply lacked the words, and so Niysha - as always - appropriated the names of colors. "Red" and "blue" held no meaning for her as a human would understand them, but if she needed to explain a Sith aura to someone, saying it was "red" and a Jedi's was "blue" seemed to get the point across.

This lab, then, was a pastiche of reds and grays, with a hint of black. The surfaces and objects of mundane life, chairs and tables and data terminals, had no life in their aura. They weren't bleak, but they were certainly dead and at times uninteresting. "Gray." The rest of the room was swirling with Dark Side energy thick enough that even Niysha found it difficult to breathe. Hate so profound and rage so intense that they threatened to overpower her. All of it dull and aching, fermented for hundreds if not thousands of years. "Red."

The troubling part was the truly unwholesome area directly in the center of the room. The counter it was on, the forceps it was held by, they had no aura. The relic itself was so dark, so twisted, so corrupted as to defy reason. It consumed the very idea of an aura, and either her soul or the Force itself granted her the mercy of partially ignoring it. If aura was light, it was such a void that it could only be described as the total absence of it. A tiny spot of abyss in the midst of dark power. "Black."

It was unfortunate but expected that the entity no longer held within its former, physical prison at all was regarding her just as closely.