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Maple clasped the hand of [member="Alwine Lechner"] on instinct, still in shock at the state she had seen Ursula in.
"It was her doomsday Alwine. It was her doomsday." Maple whispered in horror.
What had been killing her? Had the Amalgam done that?
The thought that the purple eyed fiend had subjected her psuedo-parent to such a humiliating and obviously agonizing end sent a surge of rage through her. The lid on the gun case tore itself off the hinges violently, crushing itself into a ball and toppling to the floor with a heavy thud.
"She killed Ursula..." Maple rasped, eyes wet with tears of fury. Her hand gently clasped Alwine's desperately trying to get her emotions under control, but behind Alwine a metal desk and chair ripped themselves in half and then crumple into heaps. The tiles on the floor next to Maple's seat cracked.
Eventually, Maple took a few deep breaths and then got herself under control.
"I'm gonna find The Amalgam. And when I do...a seven point six two by fifty one millimeter depleted uranium round is gonna have her name on it. I'm gonna make that round myself...just for Ursula...lets get outta this bank and into the desert, I need the air..." Maple said, wiping the tears off her face and standing up, going over and picking up the rifle.
"Might as well put this through its paces while we're out there..." she remarked, as the bank receptionist with the eyepatch walked in and saw the damage.
"What the hell?! he snapped.
Maple reached into her jacket and tossed him a thousand credits. "Sorry for the mess..." Maple muttered, walking out of the deposit box vault, holding the rifle over her shoulder, pocketing Ursula's disc.
(Maple has leveled up!)
(New Force Powers Discovered)
POWER: Crush (Neutral)
Crushes inanimate objects. Larger objects can be crushed as strength increases
Power: Crush (Dark)
Telekinetically crush organic material. Stronger beings can be crushed as strength increases
Power: Ballistakinesis
Accelerate small objects to lethal velocity. Range and impact force increases as Character advances
Hands clasped, Alwine remained silent and let Maple speak, letting it out. Doomsday for that woman, doomsday for Ursula. There was little the wolf could say to make things better, to take some of the pain onto herself, so she remained quiet, her gaze intense on Maple's face. The things that moved in the background did not cause her to stir; by comparison to Alwine, Maple was taking it rather well so far.
At last, Maple ceased breaking and tearing things, and began to speak. The Lupine forced a hint of a smile back. Speaking of vengeance was always a great way to deal with grief, she believed. It was better to plan how to tear the Amalgam limb from limb (or riddle her with bullets) than it was to sit there in shock.
"Any assistance you require, Maple Harte," Alwine repeated her earlier promise, "anything that is within my power to help you with, and I shall. You do not have to find her, or face her, alone."
Leaving was the next step, and Alwine followed Maple out quietly, holding another smile back as the other woman tossed the credit chip at the receptionist. One day, Alwine knew, she wanted to be able to do something just like that.
Once outside, the Lupine narrowed her eyes, trying to keep some of the horrendous sunshine out of them. It was too bright again and once more, her nose was assaulted by the stink of the planet.
"What is the next move?" she asked as she increased her pace to keep up with Maple, "how do we track this Amalgam down?"
Alwine had no thoughts of returning to Geonosis... Not yet, anyway. They had come to Tatooine for Ursula, but the story was so far from being complete.
"Thanks, Alwine. That means a great deal. At this point...I NEED a new friend..." Maple replied to [member="Alwine Lechner"].
She wasn't kidding. She may have been a badass, but she was growing more and more concerned that she could not take down the Amalgam on her own. But she worried over dragging her new friend into her now-blood feud with the vile woman all the same...
When they were outside, and Alwine asked what the next steps were, Maple had to genuinely think about it.
"We're dealing with a professional. A cocky professional who's too proud of herself..." Maple trailed, walking over to a clothing vendor in the street and paying fifty more credits for desert ponchos with hoods for her and Alwine.
"The Amalgam hates me...at least...she claims to...yet also claims she has no idea why. But she's obsessed with me. We could take the first, really stupid option and wait for her to come looking for us, or we can go looking for traces of her...and then formulate a plan of attack..." Maple said, handing Alwine one of the sand-colored ponchos.
"We have to find places where she has been. It'll help us discern a pattern that hopefully will allow us to predict her next move. She's been killing my former comrades. I've tried to find them but no luck so far...either they've gone to ground...or she's already gotten most of them." Harte intoned grimly, her wet, piercing green gaze going hard as diamond for a moment at the thought.
"Finding out exactly what her specific weaknesses are beyond her obsession with me is also paramount. We know she's cocky, but given how dangerous she was when I fought her, its arguable she has a right to be. She has no real allies, per se, given what the ghost of Kadmus told me, so she's isolated. But she's a stealth specialist of a far higher caliber than I. She could be watching us right now, concealing her presence in the Force and we would never know it unless she wanted us to. Her species is known as Shi'ido, and they are already among the most dangerous beings in the galaxy even without the Force. You can shapeshift into a wolf--a very dangerous wolf--Shi'ido, especially those of advanced age, can shapeshift into almost anyone. She could look like me, if she wanted..."
Maple then heard a yell from across the market and saw people breaking into a run near the city gates. She saw a man in bloody, tattered rags carrying a much bloodier woman in his arms. He had dropped to his knees, while people rushed to his aid, getting him water and bandages.
"That's not good. We should find out what's going on. He just came from the desert. Where we're headed..." Maple said as she ran to the crowd surrounding the bloody man and woman. The doctor had not arrived yet.
"What happened?" she asked one of the civilians. Skip. She had been taken by the tuskens and raised by them the last forty years eight seconds ago. This delusion lasted years in her head as always, forcing her to grind through the slog of the delusion, even though it was only half a second from everyone else's perspective. Skip. Back to Tattooine and Alwine.
"Tusken Raiders. They've been bad this season. Worse than usual..." the civilian, an old man in sand colored clothing answered.
"They butchered us, butchered the whole mining caravan..." the bloody man moaned in agony. "She and I are the only ones that made it."
"Whats made the tuskens so violent? I mean, besides the fact they never liked visitors." Maple questioned him as the doctor, an Ithorian, finally ran up.
"People have been finding remains of butchered tuskens all over the desert. Piles of their corpses in their own camps. Someone's been 'Anakin-ing' them." the old man next to her spoke..."It seems they have chosen to ramp up their attacks in response..."
"You have a… friend," Alwine said, letting that word roll slowly out of her mouth. A friend. It was not a word that was easily used by the Lupine. There had been no friends on Stewjon. Only other people that could not be trusted. The word could have been used by the woman to describe her brothers, but… They were blood, and the good kind of blood. In essence, calling Maple a friend would give her the first friend she had in her entire life, one that knew that she was a Lupine, one that she did not have to hide it from. "Friend," she repeated, this time with a satisfied smile. Yes. She liked that, and she would take it along with all the responsibilities it included.
Once outside, Alwine took one of the sand colored coverings and stared at it, hanging on to every word uttered by Maple. Species. Shi'ido. Shifters. Dangerous.
"Maple," Alwine began her next question, "when a Shi'ido shifts, do their scent change as well? Every person has their own unique smell and I do not need to rely on the Force in order to scent you if you are close enough. But if she shifts into you but does not have your smell… It will may give me a few precious second to know who I am dealing with, should it come to that."
The scream put the Lupine's questioning to an end, and she chased after Maple to see what was going on. Glancing at the desert looming in the background, Alwine couldn't deny that going into it somewhat worried her. She knew forests, jungles, and lakes. Places that were never too dry, where she could find prey as a wolf and water as a woman. But the desert… It was just never-ending sand wherever you looked. Could she even survive in something like that?
She listened quietly as the man explained… Tusken Raider? What were those? Why did it depend on the season? What was "Anakin-ing"?
"What re these Tusken Raiders and why are people not just putting them out?" she asked out loud, deciding to wait with the rest of the questions for later.
Maple listened to everyone, including Alwine's questions while she had examined the wounds.
Alwine's first question was a very clever one but Maple had to shake her head.
"Shi'ido, in addition to their natural shapeshifting abilities, have a form of telepathy that's capable of fooling people into thinking they have a completely different scent as well as cover up inconsistencies in their shifting, though it would require their full concentration unless very old or skilled...of which she is both. Its a good idea but I'm afraid its not going to be that simple...this is why I hate dealing with the really creepy stealth experts. Always some fethed up gimmick they got up their sleeve. I learned to sneak old school..." Maple grumbled a little at just how hard it would be to locate her prey. Then she looked as the bleeding man and woman and answered the other question as she watched the doctor treat them on the spot.
"The Tuskens have been here as long as Tattooine itself, Alwine. They're violent, xenophobic, barbaric, but they are the original inhabitants. If anything, we're the invaders. But the galaxy and the hutts will never completely release Tattooine from its grasp, and there are simply too many deserts and canyons and caves for the Tuskens to hide in so the eternal stalemate continues."
Maple however also realized how serious this was. If the tuskens were getting more violent and aggressive then it had to be dealt with.
Every planet had an equilibrium of conflict. Tuskens killed everyone who wasn't Tusken. Everyone else defended themselves or reciprocated. But in the dozen or so. Rarely in the dozens. And never without due provocation.
But based on this...this had to have been happening for a while now...
"We have to go into the desert. We need to see what happened at one of the Tusken camps." she told [member="Alwine Lechner"] as she went back to the wounded man.
"Do you know of a camp of Tuskens that got hit?" Maple asked him.
"It...it was...four hundred kilometers from here...north. they never bothered us before...now we risk attack every time we go into the deep desert to trade with other areas...we were lucky...we beat the sandstorm..." the man whispered, drinking water from a canteen the doctor gave him.
Maple turned back to Alwine. "We'll need a sail barge..."
One of the gate guards on a path built on the villages outer defense wall started to yell.
"Tuskens! By the gods, Look at them! Its an entire army!"
Maple (along with almost everyone else in the vicinity) immediately started climbing the outer wall via service steps and whatever else they could use. Maple flicked on the scope, checked the clip. Fully loaded. She stared through the scope as its screen flashed an electric green Jedi Order symbol and immediately displayed information. Maple's mouth dropped open.
Tuskens. Not an army.
A sea.
They moved in unison. She used her scope. No cycler rifles. Battle rifles. The war chiefs were carrying decorated cycler rifles though. Some even had pistols. All had gaderriffi.
Maple assessed the rate of their march. They had forty minutes before they arrived.
"We need to get everyone who can hold a gun on this wall. I've never seen them march before..."
As Alwine listened to Maple's explanation as to why Shi'ido were dangerous, she could not help but feel a pang of jealousy. If she'd had their abilities to affect her surroundings telepathically, her life would have been so much better, so much safer. Though the addition of the matter of scent made her uncomfortable. That bit, she could do without.
As for the Tuskens, she had nothing to feel or add. Matters of who was where first did not truly interest her, and as far as she could tell, this was all just part of the local squabbles. Local squabbles that would never end and always take blood tolls, but you got what you got.
"What?!" she asked as Maple declared that they had to go into the desert, "why are we involving ourselves with local politics and squabbles? We were going to search for leads after the Amalgam."
Four hundred kilometers away. That was far. It was nothing they could easily walk, and taking a vehicle would still take at least an hour or two at best over this terrain, at least with the vehicles that Alwine knew of.
And suddenly there was a warning scream, and the entire crowd moved. She could smell them before Maple could see them. A shift on the breeze of so many bodies lumped so closely together, the unpleasant scent of them too hard in her nose to miss even from this great of a distance. It was one of those rare times in which Alwine wished her sense of smell hadn't been that great.
"Would it not be wiser for us to leave?" she asked. Yet despite her question, the weapon Maple had provided her earlier with was already in her hands, ready to be used, "and come back when this matter is over with?"
"Alwine...I...I can't leave these people to be slaughtered...and the Tuskens will kill all of them...I've never seen them this upset. There are women and children in this place. We can cover the crossing in the ship, check out the site mentioned. The Amalgam isn't going anywhere. Its a fethed up game to her. She wants me to go after her...and I have to find her. But these people come first." Maple answered her friend. "I won't abandon them. I can't."
Maple, to be clear, was absolutely afraid of The Amalgam.
Maple force jumped back to the top of the wall. They were spreading out, surrounding this city from afar.
She stared through the scope of the Zealot. What were they up to?
Suddenly, Maple saw something that made her realize just how angry they were.
It was made of scrap. A spoon laid on its back. Maple knew they could make cyclers. It was not unreasonable to assume the device they now adjusted had been made by them, and not some strange acquisition in some desert treasure vault.
It was a catapult. The tuskens adjusted it and launched a projectile that traveled far, far over crowds of terrified people gathering at the town wall, frantically piling barricades as it impacted against a large, domed building, tumbling to the ground in front of terrified people who quickly gathered around it.
Maple force jumped to the ground, running over and inspecting it.
It was a simple iron ball but it had a single message painted on it in crude basic:
BRING US THE WEREWOLF.
Maple was confused. Werewolf? Was that what they thought was killing them--?
"But one snippet of conversation caught Maple's ear and she listened casually to the man and woman beside her as she stared at the message.
"They want the Werewolf! Why would they think its hiding here?" The man whispered.
"They'll kill us all if we don't deliver! But how do we?! Why would it hide here? Wouldn't we be in as much danger as they are?" The woman asked.
"Excuse me, werewolf?" Maple asked. Skip. The insects had taken over the galaxy and were spinning her and [member="Alwine Lechner"] and everyone else for feasting. Skip. Back to reality. Back to Tattooine.
"Its what the locals nicknamed whatever is killing all the tuskens lately." The man in desert clothes answered. "Sicko claws up the Tuskens, piles up the corpses and leaves pazaak cards near 'em. Chews up the bodies too. Lobotomizes 'em in some cases.
"Military..." Maple said under her breath. "That's a tactic of military psyops...with a dash of psychosis..."
Maple started heading for the ship. "C'mon Alwine! If we hurry we can be back here before the first attack starts. We have to check that camp!"
Alwine sighed. Maple felt the need to save these people instead of taking care of her own hide. Under certain circumstances, that could be commended, but what could one Maple and one Alwine do against a sea of this sand people? Surely if the two of them turned into casualties in a battle that they had no part in prior to joining, it would leave these people as defenseless as they would be if they just upped and left? Alwine was not an evil woman by any means, but she had no philanthropic thumb of any kind within her either. She wished to help Maple with the Amalgam because of her sense of duty, her fondness of Maple, and her wish to help her, but these three things did not extend to the people of Tatooine and Mos Eisly.
As Maple jumped, Alwine jumped to follow her. At least that part of her training, she had down properly by now, and she followed Maple to the ground as well.
She was still trying to read the words when someone screamed something about a werewolf. Alwine blinked, looking up. Lupines had more than once before been referred to as werewolves, but what reason was there for anyone to know she was even there, or what she was? She stared at Maple with some concern, wondering now if this mess was somehow caused by her, even if nothing at all that she could think of should've caused it.
The story that evolved though made Alwine sigh in relief. It had nothing to do with her. Just a nasty coincidence. No one here knew she was a wolf when she changed shapes, no one other than Maple, and no one would need to know it either.
"Military psyops?" she asked, turning to Maple as the woman began to mumble. Lupine ears were sensitive; she could hear whispers across the room if she focused on them. "What is that?"
With a sigh, the petite woman followed Maple to her ship. There was no point in remaining behind with the people if Maple was going to the camp. "What do you hope to uncover?" she asked as the ship took to the air. "And how does anyone know these sand people will back away when they have this werewolf person?"
"PsyOps. Short for Psychological Operations." Maple answered, face drawing to a grim frown, not just because of unpleasant memories, but because [member="Alwine Lechner"] had a damn good point: Maple had no guarantee the Tuskens would not butcher all these people anyway.
But she had to try...
"Sometimes Special Forces units conducting large scale kill/capture campaigns of enemy networks use wide-scale slaughter as a means of intimdation." she explained further as she flew. "Torture, intimidation, spying...its among the nastiest type of spec ops you can engage in. The whole thing about leaving playing cards next to the corpses is right out of The Vaapaad Program about fifteen or sixteen years back. Came across some of the...results...those programs are so fethed up even someone like who I used to be wouldn't touch 'em...though keep in mind I was still a bastard for the most part. A shade removed, really..." she added, steely eyed as she flew over the desert at top speed. They had to assess the damage quickly and get back in time before the Tuskens got in range to truly assault the desert city. Skip. She was a Tusken War Chief and Alwine was the mysterious, guilt ridden bounty hunter. She conquered the city and slaughtered the inhabitants, including Alwine. Skip. Her socks were talking to her, promising fireworks and hard liquor if she recited the Jedi Code backwards.
Trying to ignore all those years as a Tusken that had never happened thirty seconds ago, as well as being fairly certain Zombie Anakin Skywalker would be waiting to challenge them both to a dance off, Maple lost concentration for a split second and the Silent Erika dipped a bit in flight. She corrected rapidly but got a bad jolt.
That...she had actually been distracted by her skips a little longer than normal...that wasn't good. One more reminder that her schizophrenia was degenerative.
"To be honest, Alwine..." Maple said as she corrected her flight pattern. "I don't know if finding and catching this...'Werewolf' or whatever will mollify the Tuskens...they may decide to attack anyway...but I do know that the Tuskens aren't stupid. They know they don't have the numbers or the level of organization to wage extended warfare. That 'army' you and I saw, its large, but taking the city would be one thing...the retribution would be another. If somebody was slaughtering your own like they were cattle, you'd band together too. They want revenge. But in the long run they would lose, and they know it. They simply do not have the resources to wage a war against every visitor. They hate all outsiders, so they assume the people in the city is where such a monster resides. Maybe they're right...but we have to confirm who is doing this and why. Companies here have always tried to feth over the Tuskens. Hutts too...maybe somebody wants to destabilize the power dynamics across Tattooine..." the ex shadow mused, amazed at how she had not given birth to that giant porg eight seconds ago.
Her green eyes went steely as she spotted the remains of the Tuskens from the cockpit, smoke drifting from piles of flaming corpses, the simple tent walls of their settlement crumpled and burning also.
Maple set the ship down, grabbed the Zealot, and stepped out of the hatch...and was greeted by the smell of gore and fecal matter tainting the air. It was a rotted sandwich meat smell carrying through the wind.
Maple grew sick, set the rifle down as she saw how savage the killings were. No one had been spared. No one. Not even the younglings. Blood and entrails painted sand red, made it clump together, like someone had dumped shark chum everywhere.
There were piles of playing cards scattered about also, some already soaked in gore under the hot sun.
Maple ran from the sight a few steps, dropped, and vomited into the sand in disgust and horror. It reminded her of her worst nightmares with the Brain Demon. And of some operations against Sith in the Jungle. The worst ones.
After a moment, Maple regained her composure and picked her rifle back up and, her gaze completely stony and unfeeling, retreating into the mindset of the killer buried in a snow of madness, Maple calmly walked forward to look for clues, though it was clear she was still badly affected because she couldn't stop her hands from trembling, holding Ursula's weapon as she began to examine the more intact corpses, spotting tracks.
"Male. Human. Five feet eight inches. Climbing boots...y'know, the ones with the steel claws mounted on the toe section. Great physical strength and speed...continued mutilating the bodies even after they were dead..." Maple remarked, using her skills as a tracker, picking up on the most minute details.
"Used vibro-type weapons mounted on the fingers...you can tell because of the striation pattern on the...the edges of the torn bits of tissue and how clean the cuts were..." Maple got out in clear nausea as she went on, wondering if her guess at the Werewolf being a soldier was accurate at all. But the playing cards and pattern screamed ex-spec ops...the only difference was that this had been conducted by one sole individual, suggesting considerable combat skill.
Maple saw the Werewolf's tracks going into the desert, specks of blood trailing behind.
"Alwine, can your nose make out anything odd from the slaughter. An out of place scent, or something?" Maple called out.
Alwine stood by Maple as she steered the ship towards their destination, listening quietly. PsyOps were short for Psychological Operations. The mere term send an uncomfortable shiver down the Lupine's spine, as did the description. She supposed that these sort of people were sometimes a necessity, yet with what she had seen of what happens when people were granted power… She did not want to come across them. Ever. The entire notion of the flight taking longer than intended was never realized by her.
"So they are marching with the knowledge that they will be slaughtered?" she asked as Maple explained how she perceived the situation, "where is the logic in that? Why do they not send envoys to try to lure the werewolf out instead? Surely such a path of operation would cost them less of their own lives in the long run as well."
Once outside of the ship, Maple's physical reaction to the stench was worse than Maple's. She had to step aside to vomit the lovely food Maple had made her not too long ago, emptying the contents of her stomach. Lupine noses were sensitive; she could scent and smell things humans could not. This… This was an assault on all of her senses.
"What…" she tried to ask in between the retches, but a full question could ever form on her lips.
Maple began to sort the information she could find out, but it took Alwine a few minutes more before she was able to run to her side and listen to what she was saying. She did not mind the sights of the slaughter; yet with every step it seemed to her that the smell intensified.
And then it was her turn.
Alwine closed her eyes, trying to force herself to concentrate, to not react so strongly to the rancid smells of death and decay. She needed to turn some senses off in order to be able to properly focus on this.
"Yes," she said after a long silence of smelling the air in various directions. The smell had gotten worse, yes, but part of that worse was developing while they stood there. Tatooine had two suns and the heat was almost unbearable, making the whole situation worse. Someone with a weaker sense of smell might not hve picked up on it, but Alwine was now quietly separating the areas by the smell, noting where it was weaker, where it was stronger, and the patterns…
"Our werewolf works fast," she finally said as she opened her eyes, "the differences in smell, where it is worse… It is not because they were slaughtered fast. It is a reaction to the sun and the heat. Note where there are more corpses stacked together, and higher. Those smell more. But the essence…"
She was losing herself in words. She had to focus. "the people here never had a chance, even had they been properly equipped. This was a fast massacre. A handful of minutes at most. For the werewolf… It probably did not feel longer than a sneeze. For the victims, a quick series of sneezes."
Alwine shook her head. "The trail leads into the dessert. If there is nothing else to be learned here, please, let us go. After him or away from the planet, it matters little to me right now. This scents here make me feel like I need to protect myself from them."
Maple sighed at the assessment of [member="Alwine Lechner"].
"Yeah, that sounds about right..." she grunted. Skip. The Brain Demon tortured her in its personal dungeon. Skip. Back to normal. Back to Alwine, where reality rewinded her words about the killer striking fast and then went back to live.
Ignoring the not-fact her spine was made of rabbits she steeled her nerves and walked past the open-air abbatoir and looked for anything else...
Skip.
Uri Udinia had spent all night thinking about Ursula Sandraven's offer. And what it entailed.
She stared at the lightsaber in the confines of her small quarters, the youth trying to contemplate the full weight of what Ursula had asked she become.
Uri had not wanted to leave so many corpses at that floating fortress. That her capacity for killing was what netted Ursula's attention at all disturbed her. It didn't feel right. Not at all. She was not the sort to engage in clandestine measures as Ursula did...
Jedi Shadows, while still recognized as Jedi, tended to leave more than a few piles of the dead in their wake. More than most Jedi did these days.
But things were so messed up. It had all fractured for the Jedi...there were so many flavors to choose from.
Uri had always wanted to be a good Jedi, who never hurt anyone unless she had no other choice.
But with the Shadows, 'No other choice' had a bad habit of becoming 'standard procedure'.
Uri did not want to be nothing more than a killer...
...on the other hand, though...it wasn't as if Uri's talants were suited to anything but combat. She was aggressive in a fight, but not like a Guardian. She had a fairly reasonable command of the Force, but not to the degree of a Consular.
And it wasn't like she had an ear for simply being a Sentinel. If she stopped to think, a shadow was really the most ideal occupation she could have as a Jedi...
Uri had not realized it until Ursula had brought it up...but ever since she had brutally crippled that Sith Lord, she'd gotten funny looks from her teachers. In retrospect, if they had not sent Ursula to examine her, they'd have sent some other shadow.
With growing disquiet, Uri started to suspect she did not quite belong...
And that, more than anything, is why Uri had met Ursula in the field the next morning. Ursula was clad in a skintight, sterile white combat body glove, her sharp blue eyes scanning Uri as the teen entered the meadow. It was early, the sky a soft blue, rays just barely hitting the horizon properly to be considered dawn.
The Twi'lek Jedi gave a small smile. "Welcome, Padawan. I'm glad you chose to at least consider my offer."
"Am I still being assessed, Master Sandraven?" Uri asked.
"You are 'always' being assessed, Padawan. If not by me, then by someone else. If not them, then The Force itself..." Ursula replied crisply, summoning her golden, horse head cane to her hand, readying it.
"I'm still not sure I want to be a Jedi Shadow..."
"Understandable. We shall let the results of this test I have set determine your suitability. It is not enough to actually detect the opponent. You have to be able to engage them also..."
Uri's yellow blade flashed on as Ursula became invisible with the Force. She saw the grass crunch under the invisible Jedi's feet.
Swiping at her would do no good. Ursula had likely planned for that.
Uri decided to be indirect. She used Plant Surge as hard as she could focus, thick vines instantly springing up to coil around invisible legs. Ursula gave a small grunt of surprise as Uri sprang forward, yellow blade going for a small strike at where she believed the arms were located.
Ursula decloaked, blocking the blade with a cortosis weave can.
"You tried to trap me. Good. But sloppy..." Ursula remarked calmly, forcing Uri away with her full strength.
"It is one thing to plan for a trap, Padawan...it is another to execute it..." Ursula added, tearing free of the vines. "Again...and don't use the same tactic because now I will expect it..."
Uri sprinted forward with the Force, now encorporating a drunken style to her movements. Ursula fended off drunken stabs and dodges for the next few seconds before tripping her up with her cane. Uri tumbled to the grass.
Ursula knealt down. "Again." She instructed. "Show me what that Sith Lord feared..."
"You don't want to meet that person..." Uri said quietly, distinctly aware of her own inner darkness at the moment.
"Uri...'that' person is you. And that person is exactly who I want to meet..." Ursula replied, face impassive, rising.
"Again. No holding back..."
Uri sprang up, thinking back to the sensations she had experienced paralyzing the Sith.
She then went after Ursula with everything in her arsenal. And the battle was on...
Skip.
Maple shook herself from the unwanted memory, snapping back to reality.
"We're heading back to the city..." Maple spoke, something about the battle, that first fight with Ursula, feeling oddly familiar some how...but she couldn't place the similarity, because she couldn't tell what it was similar too...
"We won't be able to track him with the head start he has. The trail will be erased by the sands. Buuuuuttt..." she trailed as she started the engines.
"He struck fairly close to the city. At the very least this freak is using the trade routes...I'm guessing they're solitary..." Maple trailed as she flew back to the city on the ship. Her eyes narrowed as she saw parts of the outer wall on fire, the Tuskens already trying to sack it...
"Vengeance makes people stupid. Me included..." Maple said under her breath. "Alwine...get your gun...best way to learn is the doing..."
Maple landedon the docking pad, grabbed the Zealot's Eye and was off the ship, watching panicking, armed civilians rushing to the the tuskens trying to blow the city defense barrier open.
"Not good!" Maple exclaimed as she ran to the barrier, opening fire and blowing a Tusken's chest open as soon as he cleared the top, shrieking a war cry...
They were going back to the city. Alwine could do little other than nod in agreement and grab her gun as instructed. This whole back and forth confused her, if she were to be honest. There were all those hoards of Tuskens waiting to attack the city, there was a nasty creature known as the werewolf who was on the hunt, vengeance…
"Why can't I have my own sword?! Father gave lots of swords to Varick and Gerwald when they were smaller than me!" Alwine yelled in rage, standing in the corner of the kitchen. Her fingers were wrinkled as she'd just finished scrubbing a huge pile of pots and pans, the smell of the soap horrible in her nose. Her sense of smell had already sharpened, but she had still not undergone her first shifting. She prayed for it every day.
"Your brothers are boys, and they will become men," her mother replied with a growl, claws forming in her hands, "you are a girl, and you will be nothing. The gods should have granted me a third son, not you."
"Well you're stuck with me!" the child screamed, "so give me a weapon!"
"You will have no happens, foolish child," her mother said. Her voice was always so calm, so controlled. Yet as she spoke, the claws came down, scratching Alwine's face. She could already smell the blood. Never too hard, never too deep. It had to heal without leaving a scar or her chances of marriage would lessen. But her mother knew. Her mother knew where the most painful points were. "You will be a maid, a cleaning servant, silent, and bow your head. You will never fight and you will never be a true wolf!"
"Yes I will!" Alwine hissed back, unmoving. The blood would come down, she knew. Come down in streaks, and later she will be tasked with getting the stains out of the clothes. "I will grow up and join the Shield Maidens!"
"You will not," the claws went away but instead came the punches, the throwing. Alwine, always small for her age and always too short compared to the rest of the family, was little better than a rag doll. "You have one purpose in this life, child, and that is to bear cubs after I arrange a marriage for you. Quench any hopes for anything else. You are not good enough for anything else, and you will never be."
There was no time to finish. Alwine looked at the gun in her hands, and smiled from ear to ear. Every day since getting off the ship that had carried her away from Stewjon, she was proving her mother wrong. She would never be the silent servant. She would never be just another womb for someone to use. She was powerful – the Force was for her to control, and with new friendships she was making, such as Maple, she was also learning and becoming better, not just with the Force, but with other tools.
Alwine had her weapon.
Jumping behind Maple, the petite blonde fired. The recoil effect of the gun was stronger than she had expected it would be, but that did not stop her. Alwine adjusted herself and shot again, hitting a Sand Person where she thought its heart was. Either way, it dropped to the ground.
She had no war cry of her own, but Maple's cry sounded like music to her ears. Alwine joined in by growling, a sound that no human vocal chords could ever hope to make, and she shot again, and again, and again.
The rush of battle flowed through her and it was like a song. Later, she would think about what any of it meant. Later.
"Maple, DUCK!" Alwine screamed as she saw one of the Tuskens that had somehow managed to sneak behind her friend. But from where she was standing, she could not risk shooting – if she missed, the slug would end up in Maple.
Running forward, gun still in hands, Alwine jumped over Maple with a snarl, landing directly on the Tusken. Her legs closed around him and she used the big gun to smash his head it once, twice, and on the third he was down.
Not missing a single heartbeat, the Lupine raised her weapon and shot again.
It is said that where the Force is concerned, there no accidents, and no such thing as luck.
There were two former Marksmen on Tattooine.
One was dealing with an illness of the mind, the other, an injury of the brain. Both were hideously deadly in the right circumstances but for different reasons.
One took her kills from afar, the one currently on a street opposite of Maple Harte and [member="Alwine Lechner"], brought her prey down up close and personal.
At ten, Laertia Io had been scrounging from the streets of Nar Shaddaa to survive. At fourteen, Laertia had been recruited into the Jedi Order after coming dangerously close to killing her own future Master--the same Ursula Sandraven that would end up recruiting Maple Harte a few years later--with nothing but a knife.
And she had only gotten more dangerous from there.
Laertia, in some ways, was more of a weapon than Maple herself. Thuggish, and crude, there could be no mistaking why she had been brought into the Jedi, and it wasn't to bring peace. It was to bring a sword to smite the enemies of Ashla.
And smote she had, and for the next fifteen years after that recruitment, her life had pretty much been the definition of hack 'n' slash dungeon crawling. She'd lost count of how many had fallen to her green blade, but for her that didn't matter.
Unlike Harte, Io had never regretted her actions. From her point of view, felling all those Sith Lords had merely been a continuation of what she had been forced to do on occasion trying to survive Nar-Shaddaa's worst slums to start with: Killing a thug who had gotten too full of themselves and had to be put down before they ruined everyone else's ability to make a decent, honest cut. Such thugs brought shame to the game.
The injuries to her brain had changed everything. Nowadays, Laertia made a living as a street and stage magician, trying to figure out where it had gone wrong. Io had come here because she had both gotten a job to perform one of her acts here for a local businessman...Moya was settling the contract, and also because she had gotten a package waiting for her at this address.
It had been a package from Ursula. And Laertia was still too scared and nervous to open it. She had decided to take a nap in her pink colored captain's quarters aboard her old Dynamic Class Freighter, The Blessing of Loste, while she debated about when to open up the package. She hadn't slept easily, even though she had made her room to be as relaxing as possible, filled with photo frames of her pet rabbits and of her Marksmen brothers and sisters. Of these photo's, only Uri's was face down.
It was the violence outside that had woken the pale skinned, somewhat tall woman from nightmare filled sleep of all the shrapnel going into her face, which still bore small scars across it.
Moya, having been busy on the ship all day settling the business deal, hadn't sensed the gathering danger until it had massed at the city barriers. Laertia was pulling her stuff on, still trying to get the sleep out of her brain when Moya walked in, in her public guise as an extremely curvy woman with golden brown skin and long, black hair, clad in a long flowing dress of black armorweave.
"The Tuskens are attacking the city!" Moya exclaimed as she rushed into her charge's quarters.
"Yeah, kyndaz pycked upp on dhat..." Laertia replied slapping a bandolier on and getting her sawed off double barreled shotgun, and pulling out her old cross guard lightsaber.
"We could leave. We're still in the docking bay..." Moya suggested.
"I'm nat leevin all dhose peopul out dhere too duh Tusskins..." Laertia said.
Moya sighed. "I was afraid you'd say that..."
"Sahry Moya. But I haad tuh deal wit dhese typez in Shaddaa...I knoww wat itz lyke wen yuh' get shooks downn..."
Moya produced the pill bottle and Laertia took a half dose of the medication...she would need to come off it eventually, as it was starting to damage her internally, but right now the pills were the only thing that could reliably keep the migraines away. For a short while, at least.
"You want me to go with you?" Moya asked.
"Nah. Ain't no redy watah sorce tuh cool yooz dowwn if yooz ovuhheet. Stay. I'll tayk carez of tings. Az usual." Laertia assured her caretaker, though she said it softly not to upset her. Laertia was dependant on this artificial creation, whose primary guise was that of a long deceased Jedi Master, for both financial reason and psychological dependance, partly due to overexposure to the hyper pheremones the Biot used for persuasive arguing. Partly because Laertia, even at 33, was still a lonely, unloved wretch desperately seeking a parental figure. Moya was the best she had. She had fallen into "The Life" too easily, and being forced back to the street was almost too much for her to bear. She had been somebody. Somebody who gave pieces of chit an early dirtnap. She had lived for bringing such people their just desserts, having been kicked around as a child by far too many like them.
And as she headed off the ship, past the docking bay and into the streets, she saw various people, all engaging tuskens, and that old familiar feeling came back a little...
Laertia flicked her odd moe-cut away from her face, pulling out her shotgun and blasting a tusken off an innocent, with one barrel, and another with the other.
Emptying the shells, Laertia loaded in two more and proceeded down the street, teleporting with great strain due to the medication in her system a hundred meters ahead, closer to the barrier, blasting a tusken war chieftain off the wall one handed, though it took most of her considerable strength to keep the shotgun on target. War cries came from behind, and thats when her blade snapped on, the unstable looking green blade and its two guard blades positioned below whirling into the necks of two tuskens about to club her.
Laertia spent the next five minutes proceeding methodically down the street, cutting down any Tusken that came towards her or someone else. There was a lazy contempt in her attacks: She'd already anticipated their chaotic, bandit style strategy, and was bored with it. She'd already killed this type of enemy so many times in the past it had lost its novelty for her as her blade dashed through flesh and tusken cloth.
It wasn't until she rounded a street, spotted Alwine clubbing a tusken to death that she stopped. Because it wasn't her that caught her eye, but Maple, who had shot five more with...with...
Ursula's Rifle...
A jealous anger surged at seeing her old rival with that gun. Even now, Ursula still showed her more favor than she ever had Io.
Maple had nailed yet another from three hundred meters away when her scope fell on Laertia's death glare. The two past their prime killing machines stared at each other, the thunder of the battle to keep the tuskens from overwhelming them seeming to grow distant as they stared. Laertia's blade was still active, her spiky black jacket glinting with its reflected light in the daytime.
"Laertia..." Maple whispered, not quite lowering her rifle.
"Uri." Laertia said tersely, dark gray eyes honed on her with all the purpose of a jungle cat on a hunt.
The pair continued to stare.
"Lookin purty spry fer' a ded gurl..." Laertia said after a moment before walking away to focus on the Tuskens.
"Oh chit..." Maple whispered. "I'll be damned...The Black Knight of Nar Shaddaa lives..."
Maple, hesitantly, began to follow a creature she absolutely knew she would not survive at close range...
"Io, wait!"
"Yuh cann helpz if ya' want..." Laertia growled at her old rival. "Nat dhat I needz it..."
It was a whisper, one that most people would not have heard, especially not with the noise of the fighting around them. But Alwine was not most people; she was a Lupine, and her sense of hearing was sensitive, able to pick up sounds that no human ears could.
Turning to look at the woman, Laertia, Alwine blinked. She did not know her name. Maple had not mentioned her, and she did know what the Black Knight of Nar Shaddaa meant as a title, though it sounded like it meant absolutely nothing good. But suddenly that other woman was walking away, and Maple was making to follow her.
"Maple, no!" Alwine screamed, and ran to stand in front of her, "You did not let me convince you to leave the planet to keep ourselves safe, because you wanted to save the people here. You cannot abandon your mission to follow that woman; the goal you have set is still unattained."
Turning her head, she watched the back of Laertia put more distance between them.
"Let us finish what we began, and then we shall put chase to her."
Maple wanted to talk to Io. The Amalgam had been hunting down her Marksmen brothers and sisters. But [member="Alwine Lechner"] was right. These people came first.
"You are right...we must complete our initial tasks..." Maple breathed, taking notice of the siege again.
Maple dug in the snow, having not really wanted to kill anyone, and not wanting to, even now. But there were innocent people here...
Maple dug into the snow of her own insanity and dug out Uri Udinia...
(Character Theme Song Power Up)
Theme: "GoldenEye" by Tina Turner
https://youtu.be/mOgFS6AYoVc
Maple's green eyes went cold and glassy as she took aim, took a few breaths, squeezed off a few shots with the Zealot and Tusken heads exploded in the distant.
Maple got on one knee, the weight of the Zealot starting to come into play. It was a stolen prototype of a weapon for the Galactic Empire that never saw production. Maple normally preferred lighter rifles, but Ursula's gun had that...mystique to it. A flick of a switch and it could be whatever you needed or wanted it to be, reconfiguring a strategy at a moment's notice. Ursula seemed to have a taste for irony...she made use of imperial aligned tech in her creations whenever she came across it.
Maple soon ran out of bullets for the heavy gun, set it aside on a wall, and removed her staff ends, connecting them, the red tips at the ends, made of a near frictionless material discovered on a cyberized murder-corpse she had discovered on Katanos Seven, crackling with red electricity as she set it to heavy stun.
She dashed forward, fleet footed smacking down a tusken warrior about to skewer a pregnant woman, balletic in her attack pattern, somersaulting, dodging, ducking in a manner that looked drunken, but generating power and momentum to her strikes as smashed through a squad of rampaging tuskens, her staff a disk of black and red that smashed into heads and ribs, breaking collar bones and shoulder blades and fracturing skulls---
Skip.
Uri Udinia attacked Ursula Sandraven, her lightsaber a whirling, spinning flurry against the purple skinned Jedi Master, her sterile white combat suit glaringly out of place amidst the green of the woodlands around them. Ursula defended with her cane, its cortosis weaved metal sparking as a yellow lightsaber impacted off it. Uri focused on repeatedly attacking the same spot on the cane as fast and as hard as possible, knowing the metal would overheat and possibly even melt if subjected to repeated blows.
Uri's eyes had a glassy stare as she attacked as fast as she could, but Ursula seemed to be even faster, ghost like twists of her frame helping her parry or avoid Uri's blade. Uri needed to figure her and fast because she was getting tired and Ursula had figured out her game, and started to press the counter-attack, bringing it down and forcing Uri to block. Sandraven had the strength advantage, and had merely waited until Uri had grown tired, now bringing down her blunt weapon with wide, heavy, but focused strikes aimed close to Uri's wrists, intending to disarm her. Uri refused to accept defeat. She hadn't on Mustafar, she wouldn't here.
Uri batted aside Uri's next three strikes, but on the forth left her self deliberately unguarded as Ursula tried to execute another swing.
Uri's fingers pointed to the ground and a vine sprang from the ground, latching to Ursula's cane and catching it and Uri jumped in that same instant, her feet using the caught cane as a spring board as she used plant surge in mid air, ensnaring her opponent's feet, landing and executing a drop kick that sent Ursula to the ground...or was supposed to, rather, before Ursula corrected and somersaulted before landing.
"Good. You landed a blow. But it will take more than that to impress me. You had the advantage on Mustafar, Uri...the Sith Lord did not expect you to be so creative...I however, have a grasp of your capabilities and know what to prepare for. You will often have to work three times as hard to defeat an opponent who knows what you can do. You've demonstrated creativity...but now you must really push yourself..."
Uri was given pause at her statement.
"How well do you know me, Master Sandraven?"
Ursula gave a small smile.
"Since Mustafar. I was there, Uri, on a mission of my own, I observed you at a distance as you fought your way through the fortress. I could not allow such potential to not go unevaluated by me."
"The Shadows seem to have a lot cards up their sleeve, if you don't mind me saying."
Ursula nodded in acknowledgement. "We have to. Its how we survive."
"If I become a shadow...what will seperate me from an assassin?" Uri asked.
Ursula folded her arms behind her back.
"An assassin kills for money or revenge. We kill to stop threats from the Dark before they become too big for others to handle easily."
"I wonder how many others started out with the same justification..." Uri trailed as she darted towards Ursula somersaulting forward with a Force Leap...
Skip.
She should have taken her own advice, she thought, snapping out of the skip, barely catching the gaderiffi aimed at her face. She had left a trail of either dead or knocked out tuskens in her wake as she fought, at least two dozen.
She should have listened to her misgivings, her doubts...and instead she was left as this...someone who looked perfectly norma...on the outside.
Inside, deep down, she was a chaotic mess and a mountain of corpses, with nothing to show for it.
She loved Ursula like a Mother. She hated Ursula as the creature who molded her in her image. She missed Ursula.
She fought through every tusken in range, her staff giving the sickening crunch of a collapsed skull now and then. Gods how she hated herself sometimes.
There was the sound of a great horn in the distance and a civilian shouted the Tuskens were retreating.
Indeed, she saw many of them running for the very walls they had risked all to climb over.
Maple, as she drop kicked a Tusken, saw Laertia teleport to a street the tuskens were funneling down in their retreat and began cutting through them in her savage and beautiful one handed take on form one, jot hesitating to cleave through any tusken fleeing, impaling beheading, de-limbing, all with a bored, glum expression, like all this was such old hat for her. It was. Maple knew that for certain.
Her old comrade had the most frightening proficiency with a lightsaber she had ever witnessed...as a padawan, she was frequently comfortable dueling much older and more experienced knights...and often times winning. She'd killed her first three Sith while still a padawan. And she'd killed her first four Sith Masters while still a knight. A prodigy. A thug. A magician. A tactician.
And an absolute believer in the cause of the Marksmen. If she knew Laertia, she had stayed with Ursula right to the end, before the Amalgam started to hunt them...and win...
Laertia cut, and slashed, and stabbed. In twenty seconds, fifteen Tuskens were dead. But Maple knew Laertia...she'd been racking up a body count same as Maple had.
As the last Tusken fled over the security barrier, Laertia caught sight of her again. Maple knew they had been comrades, but hadn't been blind to the fact Laertia was jealous of her. Laertia's skill had been sublime, and she knew respect among her companions, so Uri hadn't really understood it until later.
Laertia had never spoken much on her past, but she knew enough to know the signs of lonliness. Of abandonment. Her constant attempts to impress Ursula almost like that of a child craving parental attention. But Ursula had always, in spite of genuinely praising Laertia...always seemed to spend more time lecturing and training Uri.
And the trouble was, Laertia could be a genuinely nice person. But to Uri...she had steadily grown colder and colder, until in the end, any hint of comrades in arms between them had been almost purely formal.
But now there were no Marksmen, and no Ursula to hold back any lingering resentment. The two killers stared at each other.
After a moment, Laertia's blade shut off.
"Ursy's gunn. Wherd yuh getz itz?" Laertia asked, dark gray eyes staring into wet green ones, Laertia's pale, almost ghostly skin, like that of a tombstone, contrasted with Maple's tan.
"She left it for me...gave me a mission. How have you been, Laertia?"
"I getz buyz..." she replied. "Kinda figuhed yuh wazzint dedz..."
"Did you wish I was?" Maple asked tentatively.
Laertia stared, glare somehow getting even colder.
"Dhey'll bee backz, duh tusskins. Dhey dont givz ups afta wun rayd." Laertia answered, changing the subject. "Yuh still flyin' round in dhat sexy darrk birdd 'o' yerz?"
"I would never part with The Silent Erika." Maple answered. "You still got that nice old freighter?"
"Yeah. So...whatz mayde Ursy givez upp herr Zellot Shooty?"
Maple frowned. "Lets go back to your ship. We can talk about Ursula after we figure out this Tusken problem.
Laertia spotted Alwine. "Frend 'o' yerz?" she asked Harte.
"Yeah. Showing her the ropes. Alwine, this is Laertia Io, top saber duelist of The Marksmen. The same group of Jedi Shadows I was part of."
"Plesurz tuh meetcha..." Laertia grunted. "Gotz hurself sum mean reflexes, frum whatz I sawz."
Maple turned to Alwine. "Lets go. We can...trust her..."
Alwine did not know how to respond. Her words had some effect on Maple; after all, she did grab her gun and get right back into the fight. But it seemed like there was a renewed form of vigorness in Maple's movements, in the way she shot each slug and every bullet. It was only seconds before the Lupine realized that the switch in Maple had made her motivated enough to fight not as two, but as an entire unit. Alwine's part in the fighting had in response become redundant, but she was not bothered by that; instead, she looked at her new friend, unable to keep the worry away from her eyes. It was more than blood lust, it was more than a need to protect or extract vengeance. A spot inside Maple had been touched in a dangerous way.
Maple was effective. The Tuskens were retreating. Alwine could only nod to that, but the worry was still pretty much evident in her face.
And then there was Laertia again. Alwine narrowed her eyes, but did not interfere as the two spoke. Laertia's accent was hard for her to follow, but she made due. But apparently… Laertia wasn't a potential enemy? Now Alwine was just confused, but she offered another nod at the introduction nonetheless and made to follow.
"They want the werewolf," she replied, finally finding a way to squeeze herself into the conversation. She did not exactly know who this Laertia was, but she did not trust her at present. Maple seemed to, at least to the extent of speaking with her and agreeing to go to her ship. Was Maple all right? Alwine didn't think so, "someone parading as one, anyway. He or she massacred many of their people. I believe Maple called it anakeeng them. I do not suppose you have any notion of that?"
And there it was. Now Alwine had someone to suspect for no other reason than the fact that something between her and Maple wasn't entirely right.
Laertia didn't know how to react. She wasn't a leader. Never had been. But she was an excellent follower. She was angry. It was her injured brain affecting her judgement, making her not sure whether she just wanted to deck Uri for faking being dead and abandoning Ursula and the others...or just flat out strangle Uri, just a little, for getting all of Ursula's attention. She could do it real easy...not like anyone could escape the grip of a woman whose strength was comparable to that of a very big and strong wookiee in their physical prime. After receiving the blessing of that strange spirit as a child that had increased her physical strength far beyond what her body type or muscle mass would indicate, Laertia had found she actually had to be careful with her strength, lest she hurt someone. Laertia had never liked hurting people as a thug on Nar Shaddaa's streets--she hurt or killed only as an absolute last resort, and she had been disgusted by it every time. That had all changed once Ursula entered her life.
Surviving on one's own merits since she had been five had taken taxes on Laertia's sanity that could never be fully mended. And with all the treachery and backstabbing she had experienced in those terrible days, she had been forced to hide how starved for affection she was, to never let her armor down. That hadn't changed once she joined The Marksmen, just to serve the one adult who had filled her head with the idea she could be something more than a mere thug. Emphasis on joining The Marksmen, not The Jedi. She had joined only because Ursula asked. Ursula, who was so strong and mysterious and powerful and filled her head with genuine aspirations as opposed to just another play at meaningless survival on a world with a people that had let her know many times over that neither it, nor they, would ever care about her.
But among The Marksmen her skills could be put to more use killing Sith Lords than they ever had stealing gemstones and wallets, and she firmly believed, even after all this time, that she had made the galaxy better off with her actions, how many of her targets, had she not come along to cut their career short, would have gone on to spread massive destruction? A metric feth-ton, that's how many!
Laertia tore herself away from her musing as [member="Alwine Lechner"] asked a question. One that seemed to be just short of openly voicing suspicion but not enough that Io wouldn't pick up on the implication.
"Lookz, kiddo, I mytuh carved up lotza tusskins 'fore I evun hadd lunnch, but I justt gaht herez. I serrtannleez wudint goez ovuh to a village 'o' dherz and startz playin' whack-a-banthaz wit 'em." Laertia explained patiently, non hostile in her tone to the young wolf. Laertia had never understood how Uri, who had had the chilliest disposition among the Marksmen, could make friends at all, could get Ursula to shower her with attention and leave a lonely Io in the shadows, practicing against the best saber droids money could buy. Ursula had been chilly herself, but even she had her moments of warmth. Uri...Uri had been an ice cube. Laertia hadn't minded that...Laertia knew one needed to exhibit a certain disposition...but Laertia had been in the Marksmen longer than Uri and she hadn't gotten anywhere near the kind of attention the green eyed, deceptively cute killing machine had.
"B'sides, Lechner...whatz wud be innitz 'fer me, killin' a buncha tusskins at dhere campz? Whoevuh's doin dhat...dhey gotz waaaaaay morr problimz dhen I dooz." Laertia said as they walked, spotting various civilians cleaning up the dead tuskens off the streets. Even the local gangsters were helping.
Laertia spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon. Sandstorm. Now they really did need to get inside.
"I know Laertia's handiwork, Alwine. There's no way its her..." Maple assured Lechner as they arrived at the small docking bay where Laertia's ship, The Blessing of Loste, lay resting. It was an old, Dynamic Class Frieghter that Laertia had lived out of long before she had met Ursula. Its ramp opened and out stepped the curvy, tanned Moya, who blinked dark eyes at Laertia.
"You're back! Are you alright?!" Moya asked, running up to check on her charge, wiping dust off her face in a fussy, motherly manner. Then she noticed Maple. She sighed, having been well acquainted with Laertia's issues with this woman. Laertia had never talked about it during their therapy sessions, despite her best attempts to get her to do so.
"I'll go get the tea ready...welcome aboard..." she said to the guests, before departing.
Maple was staring at the biot, an eyebrow raised.
"Uhh...Laertia? Who is that and why does she look exactly like that dead Jedi Master you were always fan girling over?"
"Sheez a biot. Vong Tech. My...uh...caretaykuh..." Io answered uneasily as she walked aboard.
"Still don't explain why she looks like a dead jedi..." Maple noted quietly.
"Sheez wuz ment az a decoyyz...fer duh real Moya...didn't work out. She gotz putz inn colld storage till I gotz aholdz 'a' herz..." Laertia explained.
"Not like you to mess around with Vong tech..." Maple noted as she followed her up. "And since when have you needed a caretaker?"
Laertia turned, her spiky jacket reflecting the ship lights around her. She parted some of hair from her scalp and Maple fell silent, staring at some of the trenches in her scalp. Impact points. She knew those kinds of wounds. Shrapnel.
"She suffers from migraines. Random. Unpredictable...and very severe..." Moya said. "I actually didn't want her to go out there but..."
Laertia started to swoon, her vision going red at the edges. The medication had worn off. She would have to lay off it for a week or so. Moya caught her before she could fall and hoisted her on one shoulder, setting her down on a seat in her main hold.
Maple as she walked around, spotted a fluffy white rabbit that hopped up to her, sniffing her before hopping up to Alwine, sniffing her.
"Moya...Cortosis gotz outta hiz penn againz..." Laertia called out, the pain making her forget a bit of the past five minutes. Where had they walked from--?
Moya stared, her elegant look out of place with her surroundings. "I think he likes you..." Moya noted with a smile, as the rabbit rubbed against Alwine's leg.
"Cortosis likez evrybuddy..." Laertia muttered, the migraine making her hardly able to focus. "Hee even lyked dhat Syth Lahd dhat broke inn heer fuh ruhvenge laast yeer..."
"Ugh, don't remind me. That guy was a pain in the ass to kill..." Moya scoffed, going over and picking the rabbit up. "You can pet him if you like..." she offered Alwine.
Maple folded her arms, pacing about. "Slashed up bodies. Men, women, children...Anakin'd. Playing cards dumped on the bodies..."
"Damn fethin' Psyy-Oppz..." Laertia grumbled, the migraine disappearing and the pain subsiding. "Wee needz tuh chek fer millitaary bacgrownds...annybuddy whoz settuld heerz inn duh laast syx munthz orr so...anny sighns itt wuz a groop effurt?"
"Nah. Full solo..." Maple answered.
Moya turned. "I could check around. I was getting the local feel for this place."
The kettle whistled in the mess area.
Moya turned to Maple and Alwine. "How do you two like your tea?"
Although Alwine would never admit it out loud, she was thankful that Laertia spoke slowly for her sake. That accent of hers made it hard for the petite to understand, but lowering the speed of the speech made it simpler. She was certain that she still missed a word here or there, but she understood what the scar faced woman was saying; it was not her, and her alibi was perfectly sound.
However, she doubted the woman's claims about having problems. A person's external appearance often spoke volumes about their history and the storms that swirled inside of them. If she was to judge, and she often was, Laertia had more than a fair share of problems to deal with; both in childhood and adulthood, and not the easy kind of problems.
The conversation that occurred between Maple and Laertia as they boarded the ship mostly served to confuse Alwine further. Who was the dead Jedi Moya? And what was this Vong business?
When the wounds upon Laertia's scalp were revealed, Alwine fought the urge to cover her mouth in shock. These were not sights she was accustomed to, not on living people. Medication, migraines, and then she fell.
Was there nothing that could be done for the woman? All of Alwine's suspicion and dislike vanished almost instantly as she saw the scarred woman's struggles, further strengthening the judging she'd done but moments ago. She barely even noticed the bunny. But Moya commented on it, and Alwine blinked in confusion, looking down. "The food likes me?" she asked with wonder. She'd never been much of a pet person. It was sort of hard, when you were part wolf. And suddenly the bunny was in her arms, and the urge to pet and stroke his soft fur did not go challenged.
Alwine was playing with a pet. What a brand new and exciting life.
"Water will be fine," Alwine said quietly, her focus still on the bunny, "or mead, if you have some."
The kettle made its noise, but only now Alwine looked up, chocolate brown eyes focused almost deadly so on Laertia.
"It makes no sense that you would suffer so," she said, raising her chin ever so slightly, "you have access to technology and to space travel. You do not seem like the sort who would be low on credits. The Confederacy has some wonderful medical facilities, or so I have been told, and I am certain that there are ones that could even out do it. Perhaps instead of set chase to Maple or to a werewolf, you could go and take care of yourself. You have the appearance of someone who's not likely to see it to the end of the year, and I am not referring to the scars on your face."
But she was still petting the bunny. She was not letting this bunny go before they turned to leave the ship. She would never stop touching it if it was up to her.
Laertia, in spite of the severe headache, could only chuckle at the comment by [member="Alwine Lechner"] that she looked to be at death's door.
"I'll liv...duh mygraynes come 'n' go...annd az fer treetmentz...I havv benn tuh evry doctuh, evry speshulystt, evry Foyce Heeluh...but myy brainz got mezzed upp goodd by duh shrapnul. Theyy sayz itz permuhnintz."
"It really is a shame..." Moya spoke, bringing back Alwine some water in a tall glass as Laertia was forbidden by Moya to have alcohol, as that would only cause further damage. The sand pelted the outside around the ship, peppering the hull. Maple sipped her tea, finding Laertia's situation--an incurable condition of the brain--terribly familiar...
"I took Laertia to some of the best healers in the galaxy. The healing never takes. The brain always degrades back to its previous condition." Moya explained to Alwine as she sat down next to Laertia nursing her skull.
"That doesn't make any sense, like Alwine said. Brains don't work that. It shouldn't be reversing itself if you heal it..." Maple noted.
"Well as you know, Miss Udinia, Laertia has always had a rather...unique connection to the Force. I have always suspected her brain was wired differently, considering her particular gifts." Moya replied, staring with concern as Laertia swooned in her seat. Maple took note of the biot's concern. Matsu Ike was the head of Sasori Research, and had access to the creation of such beings. But she had never run into an organic droid with the Force before. Moya's signature was faint, difficult to sense though...how had Laertia come across such a creature to care for her?
The pounding in her skull abated as suddenly as it started and Laertia managed to steady herself at last.
"I didintz evun knowwz Uri wuz heer till I sawz hur, Mizz Lechner. Wuzzint ghostin hur 'r' nuthinz. But I amm radduh kuryuss whyz yooz heer, Uri, and wutz yoo doin wit' Ursy's shooty-shootz?" Laertia asked.
Maple's look went dark for a second. She decided to stall. And she knew how it would look.
"Current problems first, Laertia. The Werewolf."
"Ryte. Duh Wherewolffs..." Laertia agreed, though she knew Maple was stalling, trying to put off the news, and chose not to challenge it.
"I'm guessing there's going to be another attack after the sandstorm. All the previous tracks out there will be covered over. A delay of a day or two afterward, perhaps...but no more..." Maple theorized...
"This werewolf of yours sounds rather...prolific..." the Biot observed.
Maple grimaced. "Prolific doesn't even start to describe what I saw out there..."
"The Tuskens have made their enemies, no denying..." Maple mused, pacing about the main hold, noticing posters of Laertia's act as a magician about. Maple noticed Laertia had to wear a lot of make up to hide the scars in the picture, and was wearing a severe black civilian suit, pulling a rabbit--the very same one Alwine was petting, no less--out of a hat.
"But this feels too savage to be simple revenge. None of their supplies were taken...rage filled...that's the impression I got. No real pattern to the killing, from what I saw. Everybody got it equally."
"It could be war trauma...Someone having an episode, reliving something..." Moya theorized herself, her programming coming with Psychological Therapy and Diagnosis. "But so regularly that they keep killing...it would had to have been a very severe trauma...or they could just be a simple psychopath...perhaps some Sith out for a jaunt..."
"Checking with the locals is out of the question. They wouldn't know what to look for. People come here to get lost..." Maple told the biot. "I didn't sense the trace of a dark adept...this is pure normie we got on our hands. And whoever they are, they stick close to population clusters. Might even be using the trade roots."
"Opportunist. Total opportunist..." Moya said. "Picks out where they strike on the route, anger the Tusken Warriors into attacking..."
Laertia jumped up, realization dawning.
"All duh warriorz cayme outtz tuh playz. Almost all, annywayz...so whooz defendin dhere turrfs? Hardli annyonez!"
"While they're all here...the Werewolf is still out there...aren't they? Why would they believe this individual is here?" Moya asked...
"Itz deevyde andd conquerz..." Laertia said, rushing to the cockpit, flipping on the sensors.
"Theyy traccked 'em heerz!" Laertia hissed, trying to tune the systems to work through the sand storm. There were various pictures of rabbits and kittens planted through out the cockpit, all with little hearts drawn on them.
"Feth!" Laertia snapped as Moya joined her, followed by Maple who gestured for Alwine to follow.
Laertia heard it. Weapons discharge from a starship outside the city barriers. Through the sandstorm...
Laertia spotted it on sensors, and felt helpless. An unidentified starship, blasting away at the gathered warriors of the tusskens, the old sensors on the vessel unable to properly track it. It wouldn't even be safe to try and lift the old ship off in the sandstorm.
"I hate sand..." Maple grumbled, hearing the blasts outside the city, feeling the deaths of the Tusken Warriors.
"Maybe the Tuskens were on to something, tracking the Werewolf here..." Moya thought out loud...
"As soon as whoever is doing this is done here, they're going to try and hit all those now-lightly defended settlements..." Maple said. "Upset 'em all off enough to gather in one spot..."
"Andd gunz 'im downz duhrin a sanndstorrm, skrammblin eazy Idhentuhfycayshun..." Laertia finished..."We aintz catchin' em in dhis olld bucketz..."
"The Erika has better sensors...as soon as the sand clears we chase whatever trace we can find...we'll just hurt ourselves and get lost trying to cross the street now..." Maple spoke, looking out the cockpit viewport. The sand was thick and flowing through the air, obscuring everything past two meters of the craft.
Laertia sighed. She should have seen the ambush that had played out over the sensors coming. The laser cannon fire ceased in the distance. And it was possible to hear the whine of a large ship take off.
Laertia wearily walked back to the main hold, depressed at feeling the slaughter of the Tuskens. That stuff earlier had been business. Her skills were meant for killing Sith, not Tuskens looking to kill a psycho.
She spotted Maple walking back out of the cockpit and got curious.
"So..." Laertia grunted. "Nott lyke yooz tuh tayke a stuudint. Dhat iz wut Alwine iz, ryte?"
"Alwine is my friend, and Alwine is the most Alwine of all possible Lechners..." Maple answered humbly.
Laertia turned to Alwine...and rubbed her chin.
"Shee gotz duh eyez fer itt...killin' dhat iz. I alwayz knoww duh pitt fytuhs whenn I seez 'em. Hadta getz goodz att itt onn 'Shaddaa. So wut terf yooz hail frum, Alwine? Not tuh offendz, but ya gotz dhis reel fyshh outta waterz ting goinz..."
"Cortosis likes her." Moya pointed out to troll Laertia, grinning a bit at Alwine.
"Cortosis lykez evrybuddy!" Laertia pointed out sarcastically to the biot.
"Don't take it personal, Miss Lechner, She's really a nice person. Her headaches make her a bit of a grouch...and your companion brings back...issues..." Moya explained delicately, trying to keep the peace.
"Yeahh. Fethin mygraynes...sorryz iffs I seemz snappish, Lechner...dhis iz a lott fer a gal who aintz had combatz inn a whyilz..." Laertia explained.
"See, nice person..." Moya said helpfully to Alwine. "She just needs a little prompting. Where are you from, Miss Lechner?"
Alwine narrowed her eyes as Laertia answered her. It was all too simple to see that the petite blond was displeased with the answer. More than that, it made no sort of sense to her. Why would there be no help? What did the Force have to do with it? There had been no science on Stewjon, not beyond the kind that enabled a person to build a house or prepare a meal, yet she had understood on the most basic of levels was that all that had been terms as "magic" there, the sort of magic that had been dubbed as evil, unholy, a reason to execute someone by fire, had simply been things they did not understand yet. Everything had an inner working, a logic, something that could be explained if one simply had enough knowledge. How could the most advanced of systems have nothing in their knowledge banks to help this woman?
Inward, she cursed. Later, when stories happened that came to be after their desert hunt, she would know who to turn to for an idea, but now, she was in the dark, and had nothing to offer. The migraines seemed to be painful enough on Laertia that she did not need to hear Alwine put to words what she thought of the whole situation. But if this werewolf business did not kill her, if they would all come alive out of it and in one good enough piece, she would return in the future to bring her the knowledge, should she have it. Alwine nodded. There was nothing better she could do at present.
She drank from her water as Maple and Laertia continued their conversation. Despite her initial instincts, she found herself coming to like this Laertia person, and the woman by her side.
There was but one thing that she found herself very much disagreeing with. The women said that after the storm, the tracks would be gone. Now Alwine smiled, rising from her seat to go and look out through the window. The sand was horrible, and coarse, and looked like it would take forever to get out of her fur. But she knew that when the dust settled, her human nose would not be able to catch anything. It would be too feint. Her Lupine nose on the other hand…
It was only when the conversation switched to her being the topic that she turned around again, chocolate eyes narrowing.
"I am a Warrior, not a killer," Alwine corrected the scarred faced woman. There was a difference. But her conviction might not have sounded as strong as she wished for it; it was still in its very early stages, but now that Alwine had received the freedom to train, to become the Warrior she had so yearned for her entire life, she was also exposed to other options that the galaxy held for those who would not be stopped or held back. There were otheroptions than Warrior or Servant for her out there. "If I kill it is out of necessity, not for pleasure…. But I will not deny that my requirements for necessity might be lesser than those of some others."
She gave both women a wolfish smile. Second-guessing her desire to be a Warrior or not, Alwine knew what she was, and what she would always be. Everything else was just the flimsy decoration.
"I am from a backwater planet called Stewjon, and it has absolutely no importance of any kind," she answered at last, "but I am a Lupine, and this means that some of my skills can be set to use against this werewolf."
Motioning to the windows, Alwine continued, "when the storm ends, I will shift, and I will become a wolf, and I shall be able to find the tracks of our werewolf. But when I am in wolf shape I can wield no weapons, and I doubt you have armor that will be suitable. Shifting back as a fight starts will be a death sentence, for that requires a full five minutes. But the sand storm will not be able to hide tracks of scent from me."
