Act I: Sands of Time

[Onrai]

@[member="Young Akala"]

For a moment, Circe eyed the young woman, the one who'd just chosen to belly flop into the river. Motioning to @[member="Darth Vornskr"] and @[member="Domino"], she chose to follow the young woman, giving a soft smile as she too jumped into the water. Her age still seemed... very youthful. Placing her armor to the side, Circe smiled as she looked the woman over. Perhaps she had some sort of importance.

"There are hotter planets, trust me." A soft smile crossed her face as she looked the youthful Akala over. "My name's Circe. Empress of Serpena, Princess of the Falleen, and the last Vinithi. What's your name?"

 

[Alexandra Feanor]

Alexandra remained silent now, taking the moment to reach back and push her hair back out of the way before speaking to the queen once more, nodding at @[member="Vulpesen"] words as they were aimed at @[member="Queen Naala"]. "I must ask too, what is considered lower caste if you might indulge my curiosity, you see we are subject to a strange phenomena that your husband and king was going to explain i think before we were pulled from that point in time as well. He mentioned your people capable of Time Travel though, do you know any more you could tell us than that?" Alexandra kept a close eye on @[member="Tamara"], she didnt want to see the girl frightened once more without someone to act as a guardian for now, she didnt seem weak, just... worried.

 

[Simone]

"Little brat." Simone muttered under her breath as Akala stomped away. People began to ask the queen questions then, but Simone had other ideas. A hundred thousand years into the furture someone wanted them to payy attenion. Someone wanted them to notice Akala. Not the Queen, not the circumstances under which they had been brought here, but the little girl who already had an evil streak running through her veins. So Simone moved away from the main group and to the waters edge where the child had disappeared to. She flopped onto the bank and slipped her feet in. "Her name is Akala." Simone informed Circe with a fed up tone.

"Where I come from," Simone began adressing Akala now."We have a name for girls like you. We call them diva's...or brats." she smiled to herself "You shouldn't be able to speak to us, Galactic Basic hasn't been created yet. You have no fear of species you have not yet been exposed to. Everything about this is wrong. So, Akala, why don't we stop playing games. You have our attention, what are you going to do with it?"

@[member="Jaxton Ravos"] @[member="Circe Savan"] @[member="Young Akala"]

 

[Vorhi Alestrani]

Vorhi stood back briefly. He smirked and let the others play their game. The Queen seemed effectively useless. The right move? Focus on the annoying child and see what unfolds. Simone beat him to it. Smart. He may have to actually buy her that drink. He'd make his play after the kid reacted. That'd mean something. Oh boy, would it mean something. If the kid played it honest, here, that'd matter. if she'd obfuscate like the mother and father did, then he'd try his plan. He adjusted his hat, focusing a small amount of force energy into it. He hoped it would be enough for this trick....

@[member="Simone"] @[member="Gerion Ardik"] @[member="Young Akala"]

 

[Onrai]

Looking at @[member="Simone"], she frowned. "Give the girl a break, Sim. She's a Princess who's detached from everyone else. Probably hasn't had a friend during her entire life. It's not quite a surprise that she'd be like this - it reminds me of my life, actually... Then I made a bad decision, and when I made that decision, everything changed. Like it will all those years from now."

Turning to the Zeltron reporter, she smirked, her head bobbing above the cool water. "Too bad you don't have any recorders on you, because what you're witnessing is the glory days of the Celestials. Right now, they're probably hard at work, enslaving the Killiks and constructing Centerpoint Station. Or perhaps they're preparing superweapons in the Vultar system that Dark Jedi will use thousands of years from now to kill themselves and everyone on the planets. Humanity and the Taung are warring on Coruscant, while the Rakata prepare their revolt, which will occur sixty-five thousand years from now."

Turning to @[member="Young Akala"], she sighed. "It's unfortunate. Seventy thousand years from now, all that'll be left of your culture will be ruins. Not one person from your species will survive."

@[member="Vorhi Alestrani"]

 

[Simone]

"No," said Simone pointedly "She's a little brat. Whatever decisions she has to make she's made them already. None of this is real, Circe its all a game. Though you would be the one to talk to about making mistakes, there's a whole pile of them that make up your life, not just one." She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

"Have you been paying any attention at all? Or did your plant brain decompose a little when we jumped through time?"
@[member="Circe Savan"]

 

[Onrai]

Bringing her hand above water, she found that the Mist atomizing pistols at her hips during the experiment were now a pair of pulse-wave blasters. "Huh... Temporal flux..." Regardless, they disappeared, shrouded by the White Current until needed to come to Circe's hands. "I didn't come here to be denigrated. Certainly not by a woman whose sole goal is to exploit people as a reporter and get big news about them, regardless of whether it's entirely true or not. Now stop your bantha poodoo, or I'll stop it for you the hard way."

Stepping a bit further out of the water, she pointed at @[member="Simone"]. "Now, we're stuck for the moment here in 100,000BBY. Whether it's the matrix or not really doesn't matter - it's an accurate representation of the goings-on at this point in time. This is the perfect experience for you to start doing your research so you can say to your fellow reporters that you have more of an understanding about this than anyone else. I'm going to ask you nicely to stop and move on. If you insist on continuing, I suppose I'll have to perform an archaeological dig when I get back to the present."

Circe had no desire to kill Simone. For all she knew, the results of doing so would cause a paradox, or perhaps destabilize the timeline. But if the woman wouldn't stop with the denigration that Circe would have to put up with for decades a hundred thousand years from now, there would be consequences.

@[member="Young Akala"]

 

[Simone]

"An accurate representation?!" Simone blurted getting to her feet "By the force, your brain really did compose." Clearly the presence of Circe's weapons did not deter Simone who's rampage was clearly not going to leave anyone out.

"None of this is accurate! King Oa stated that the year was a hundred thousand years before the battle of yavin. We didn't start measuring time like that until the after the battle of yavin. There is your first big error, actually, no scrap that its the second. The first error is that Everyone is speaking basic! A language that hasn't been invented yet! The king and queeny over there seem awfully comfortable with the fact that their surrounded by people who have openly stated they are not from this time. I don't give a kriffing chit what my fellow reporters have to say about anything because I'm the only one bloody here. Threaten me all you bloody want Circe Savan, you're still the crap on the bottom of everyone's boots that they can't quite get rid of and you are not going to stand in the way of me getting the answers I need to solve this."

 

[Antares]

The Jedi Knight watched the argument go back and forth. The reporter was quite passionate, evidently. And as far as he knew the green woman was the aggressor in this situation. Should he act? Should he watch? He soon found his legs propelling him down the dune that he had been upon. He heard names being shouted, Atakla, or Akala. Something along those lines surely. And then he found himself at the water's edge. Next to, @[member="Simone"] he said nothing to anybody except to @[member="Circe Savan"]. "You will solve nothing by making threats." He kept his hands clasped within his long black sleeves.

It was probably best to play the part of the diplomat at this moment. If he were to lash out, or be the aggressor in a situation such as this, he might find himself dead...Before he had even been born if what he heard was correct. One hundred thousand years before Yavin?

 

[Onrai]

"I also solve nothing by accepting insults, Jedi... Oh wait. Neither Jedi nor Sith exist at this point in time." She paused, looking the Jedi over before returning to @[member="Simone"]. "Consider that the Celestials had immense control over the Force. Moreso than anyone else who's existed after them. They could've taken the knowledge from our heads about our previous time and incorporated it into their own memory. Hell, they could've been the ones who've transported us here to begin with, since I know neither you nor the Lightsider were testing hyperspace stabilizers or otherwise in hyperspace at the time you were brought here."

Stepping back and looking at @[member="Young Akala"], who'd likely heard everything, she sighed. "The Celestials are, to us, an ancient, overly powerful alien race. Even now, we have little if any true knowledge on their full capabilities. And it seems that every couple hundred years or so, some new Celestial artifact gets reduced to rubble. This is our chance to learn more about their true identities before it's too late."

@[member="Antares Windu"]

 

[Jaxton Ravos]

Jaxton noticed @[member="Simone"] causing another commotion and waddled his way over to her before he heard the name @[member="Circe Savan"], and then went a little on edge. He'd heard the name before from Ember Rekali, as he described her as one of the few who could use the White Current. With a compentent enough White Current master this entire world snd time travellinh phenomenon could be a hoax. Doubting that was the case but keeping his mind sharp he kept a watchful bur distant eye, lest any trouble happen he could prevent.

 

[Onrai]

(posting only because I missed it)

Then Jaxton Ravos showed up. The former Jedi Master's appearance made this even more strenuous, as he likely assumed that this had something to do with her. "No, it's not an illusion, if that's what you're guessing. I'd have to be tapping a solid Force Nexus of immense power to produce an illusion real enough as to be truly indistinguishable, and you'd sense that sort of power. Besides, I don't know any Force power that could summon you, the other Jedi, and the mouthy Zeltron reporter all here from wherever you were in the galaxy, not to mention I hardly have enough knowledge of the Celestials to create something so... so perfect."

@[member="Jaxton Ravos"]

 

[Vorhi Alestrani]

And now, Circe and Simone were going for a few rounds. Good grief, it was like a bleeding day-time talk holo in here. Oh well, substantially not his problem. He sighed walking over and looking at the child, smiling the sort of warm smile uncles with corny jokes smile at family gatherings. He dipped his hat into the water, filling the cone--and then proceeded to dump it on it head, shaking like a wet dog and smirking. "Adults are weird," he said to the kid. "I'm Vorhi. What's your name, young lady?" He said with a nod. The rest of them could act like lunatics. He'd play the game. After all, whomever or whatever decided to do this had a reason. What was it? Why did we need to see this child, from birth to quite probably the grave? He focused a bit more energy into the hat. He hoped this would work.

@[member="Young Akala"]
@other loonies

 

[Jaxton Ravos]

Jaxton reasoned whatever divine power brought them here also granted @[member="Circe Savan"] the power to read minds. After all, Jaxton and Circe had never met in person, Jaxton only hearing of her through Ember Rekali, not even knowing what the woman looked like, and Circe presumably knowing him from holovids and name recognition. Add to that the fair distance away he was, the fact that he hadn't prodded or poked her in any way, and divine intervention seemed the logical reasoning. Then again, if she had truly read his thoughts she'd have also read the dismissal of her ability to perform such a feat and wouldn't have had to justify herself.

Either way, Jaxton was contently keeping himself in the background, observing and waiting for either confrontation or revelation. He didn't have the time to deal with someone like Circe when she wasn't attacking innocents. Part of him wanted to insult her for calling @[member="Simone"] a mouthy reporter, but all of him knew she had a sharper tongue than he did.


Still, part of him wondered how after Onni and the Gulag Plague seemingly wiped history from the galaxy Circe seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge on events that happened some 25 or more millennia ago. He supposed it was irrelevant though. No one really seemed to acknowledge the Gulag Plague in the galaxy anymore anyways.

 

[Tefka]

@[member="Queen Naala"] @[member="Young Akala"]

"Also how is you understand and can speak Galactic Basic, is it your empire's main language?"

Akala blew into the water, her mouth just below the waterline, playfully gleeting in @[member="Alexandra Shadowstalker"]'s general direction.

She giggled.

Young one, might I ask your name? I am called Talos. I am not from around here.

Akala looked at her mother with pride and turned back to Talos, forming an "A" with her fingers.

"AHHHHH-KAH-LAH!"

She jumped backwards and splashed in the water, sinking below the waterline.

 

[Tefka]

"Little brat." Simone muttered under her breath as Akala stomped away. People began to ask the queen questions then, but Simone had other ideas. A hundred thousand years into the furture someone wanted them to payy attenion. Someone wanted them to notice Akala. Not the Queen, not the circumstances under which they had been brought here, but the little girl who already had an evil streak running through her veins. So Simone moved away from the main group and to the waters edge where the child had disappeared to. She flopped onto the bank and slipped her feet in. "Her name is Akala." Simone informed Circe with a fed up tone.

"Where I come from," Simone began adressing Akala now."We have a name for girls like you. We call them diva's...or brats." she smiled to herself "You shouldn't be able to speak to us, Galactic Basic hasn't been created yet. You have no fear of species you have not yet been exposed to. Everything about this is wrong. So, Akala, why don't we stop playing games. You have our attention, what are you going to do with it?"

@[member="Jaxton Ravos"] @[member="Circe Savan"] @[member="Young Akala"]

"YOU'RE FUNNNNNNNNNNY." Akala shouted annoyingly, splashing water with her hands.

 

[Alexandra Feanor]

Alexandra raised a brow in @[member="Young Akala"] direction, watching her for a moment while she sat there and spoke with a light voice that would have been barely noticeable if you were more than ten meters away. "Little Princess, perhaps you will talk with me? Id like to know about you if you would indulge me, i could show you abit of magic if you talk with me." If the Force was reserved for the higher Castes this could be an interesting thing to see how the girl reacts and if it were like @[member="Tamara"] reaction. This was a chance to learn for Alexandra, she didnt care about getting home right now.

@[member="Vulpesen"]

 

[Onrai]

Smilng at @[member="Young Akala"], Circe looked the young girl over. "Splash war?" Her hands were ready to go.

 

[Drifter]

MAIN GROUP -- PINK DEMON @Simone @Jaxton Ravos @[member="Young Akala"] @[member="Circe Savan"] @[member="Antares Windu"]

Through the entire commotion with the Queen and what have you, Habaek silently took a drink of his remaining water bladder. However, as soon as the dramatics grew to such strength with the Pink Demon, one of Habaek's thick bushy black brows rose high into the dark mop of his hair.

Mulling silently to himself, he pondered his options. Then with a shrug, took out his little fanny pack, which he then enthusiastically began searching through it.

"Ah hah!" he found the object he wanted. One of two purple pears he had left. Securing his fanny pack, he sauntered on long legs over to the Pink Demon, coming to a stop next to her with a small swirl of dust from his sandals.

"Oi! Pink Demon!" he said with a grunt, tuffs of black hair flapping back and forth in the breeze. He shoved a pear into her arm. "Here."

He then attempted to pat her on the head, saying "Woooooo saaaaahhhhh." as if to calm her down.

 

[Queen Naala]

@[member="Circe Savan"]@[member="Jaxton Ravos"]@[member="Vorhi Alestrani"]@[member="Antares Windu"]@Simone@Alexandra Shadowstalker

Alexandra remained silent now, taking the moment to reach back and push her hair back out of the way before speaking to the queen once more, nodding at @[member="Vulpesen"] words as they were aimed at @[member="Queen Naala"]. "I must ask too, what is considered lower caste if you might indulge my curiosity, you see we are subject to a strange phenomena that your husband and king was going to explain i think before we were pulled from that point in time as well. He mentioned your people capable of Time Travel though, do you know any more you could tell us than that?" Alexandra kept a close eye on @[member="Tamara"], she didnt want to see the girl frightened once more without someone to act as a guardian for now, she didnt seem weak, just... worried.

"There are several castes among our people, as there are with many others." She listened intently. "I'm sorry, but we possess no powers beyond the ordinary bit of telepathy... And I know nothing of time travel. You'll have to speak with my husband on that issue."

"No," said Simone pointedly "She's a little brat. Whatever decisions she has to make she's made them already. None of this is real, Circe its all a game. Though you would be the one to talk to about making mistakes, there's a whole pile of them that make up your life, not just one." She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.

"Have you been paying any attention at all? Or did your plant brain decompose a little when we jumped through time?"
@[member="Circe Savan"]

"I understand you have been through a lot. You must speak with my husband, I can take you to him. My daughter means you no harm, she's just a child. I'm sure Oa can clear all of this up for you, I can have my caravan ready to leave for the city limits soon."

"An accurate representation?!" Simone blurted getting to her feet "By the force, your brain really did compose." Clearly the presence of Circe's weapons did not deter Simone who's rampage was clearly not going to leave anyone out.

"None of this is accurate! King Oa stated that the year was a hundred thousand years before the battle of yavin. We didn't start measuring time like that until the after the battle of yavin. There is your first big error, actually, no scrap that its the second. The first error is that Everyone is speaking basic! A language that hasn't been invented yet! The king and queeny over there seem awfully comfortable with the fact that their surrounded by people who have openly stated they are not from this time. I don't give a kriffing chit what my fellow reporters have to say about anything because I'm the only one bloody here. Threaten me all you bloody want Circe Savan, you're still the crap on the bottom of everyone's boots that they can't quite get rid of and you are not going to stand in the way of me getting the answers I need to solve this."

"Basic? I am speaking my native language... perhaps something has happened in your travel to cause you to understand our language?" Queen Naala made a warm, welcoming gesture. "I assure you, I am real, this is real, and I beg of you - patience. I believe you, and ask that you come with me to speak to my husband."

"Please, nothing will come of fighting. Let us help you," The Queen gestured to everyone with a worried look on her face. "All of you. If what you say is true, your being here could have immense repercussions on your future."

Alexandra raised a brow in @[member="Young Akala"] direction, watching her for a moment while she sat there and spoke with a light voice that would have been barely noticeable if you were more than ten meters away. "Little Princess, perhaps you will talk with me? Id like to know about you if you would indulge me, i could show you abit of magic if you talk with me." If the Force was reserved for the higher Castes this could be an interesting thing to see how the girl reacts and if it were like @[member="Tamara"] reaction. This was a chance to learn for Alexandra, she didnt care about getting home right now.

@[member="Vulpesen"]

"Please, leave my daughter alone and come with me." Her expression turned to one of concern for her family's well-being.